Re: Then what is hell for?

Sounds like Orthodoxy. As you will know, but not all readers may be aware of, the Orthodox liturgy includes a prayer for those bound in Hell, that they might be granted rest and comfort. For the Orthodox, Hell need not be a permanent state, since humans retain their free will in eternity; it is possible to escape from Hell. Also, for the Orthodox, Hell is not a place but a state of pain caused by the rejection of the love of Christ, a love which all souls feel post-mortem and which is a cause of delight to those who have accepted the love of Christ, but a torment to those who rejected it in life. I once knew a Catholic with whom I had a long debate (stretching over years, essentially, since for some reason the topic kept coming up), and I had pretty much convinced him that "Hell is empty" on the ground that a loving God could not possibly create souls knowing that they would be consigned to misery and deprivation forever. Unfortunately, the recent behaviour of Israel has flipped him back to his former view, since he insists that God must have a super special place for boykillers like Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. Of course, I was only arguing from premises my interlocutor would accept; as he well knew, I don't personally believe in the behind-the-scenes eschatological machinery. The world is everything that is the case. No post-mortem phantoms, no metaphysical cobwebs. There is only all the beautiful, tenacious, teeming life of this world, the above-ground, the bright sunlight, the world of the ant and the grasshopper and the hedgehog, the spider forever spinning his web, and the cat curled up on my pillow, all of them valuable, all with a life to lead, for in this world a perfect democracy reigns.