This article consists of a critical discussion of the debate between Thomas Talbott and Oliver Crisp on the philosophical justification for the traditional Augustinian concept of everlasting punishment in hell. First, I outline the debate, describing Talbott's challenges to the Augustinian retributivist understanding of everlasting punishment and Crisp 's responses to them. Next, I analyse their main points of disagreement, indicating the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments. Finally, I present conclusions arising from analysis of the debate in the framework (...) of Christian theology, and I discuss possible implications for the thesis of everlasting punishment in monotheistic religious thought in general. (shrink)

This article consists of a critical discussion of the debate between Thomas Talbott and Oliver Crisp on the philosophical justification for the traditional Augustinian concept of everlasting punishment in hell. First, I outline the debate, describing Talbott's challenges to the Augustinian retributivist understanding of everlasting punishment and Crisp's responses to them. Next, I analyse their main points of disagreement, indicating the strengths and weaknesses of their arguments. Finally, I present conclusions arising from analysis of the debate in the framework of (...) Christian theology, and I discuss possible implications for the thesis of everlasting punishment in monotheistic religious thought in general. (shrink)

This paper describes developments in punishment theory since the middle of the twentieth century. After the mid–1960s, what Stanley I. Benn called “preventive theories of punishment”—whether strictly utilitarian or more loosely consequentialist like his—entered a long and steep decline, beginning with the virtual disappearance of reform theory in the 1970s. Crowding out preventive theories were various alternatives generally (but, as I shall argue, misleadingly) categorized as “retributive”. These alternatives include both old theories (such as the education theory) resurrected after many (...) decades in philosophy’s graveyard and some new ones (such as the fairness theory). Only in the last decade or so have new vares o “consequentialism” appeared to dilute a debate among philosophers that had become almost entirely about “retributivism”. I shall describe this trend in more detail. The description will be less an update of my 1990 survey than a rethinking of it. The conclusion I draw from this rethinking is that we need to drop the utilitarian–retributivist (and nonconsequentialist–nonconsequentialist) distinction in favor of one sorting punishment theories according to whether they rely in part on empirical considerations (externalist theories) or instead rely (almost) entirely on conceptual relations (internalist theories). (shrink)