Hell and Retributive Justice (Revisited)

In my last post, I focused on Adams' objection that eternal hell cannot sustain a scheme of retributive justice. I considered the case of Smith's knocking out one tooth in thirty one different people, and whether or not this warranted Smith having thirty one of his own teeth knocked out on a scheme of retributive justice. 

For a moment, let's presume Smith receives his just punishment in having all of his teeth knocked out as Adams suggests retributive justice would entail. If the doctrine of eternal hell is true, how does this scheme work in eternity--especially if persons are traditionally held to be punished for the iniquities they've committed in their postmortem lives?

One option is to kick the doctrine of eternal hell in favor of another alternative eschatology. If this is done, then we could suggest that Smith can be retributively punished for all of his antemortem iniquities and then finally be redeemed, annihilated, or whatever consequence an alternative eschatology might suggest. If the insufficiency of retributive justice is a defeater for eternal hell in the way Adams makes it out to be, then I would advocate for this option.

But Adams' argument, while insightful into retributive schemes of justice, does not ultimately convince me. Why think divine judgment is a place in which God itemizes every person's iniquities and pays out a judgment in proportion to them? There is one sense, of course, in which each person will stand before God and give an account of all the ways they've sinned against him; still, this does not entail an overly reductive scheme of retributive justice in the way Adams suggests. 

If C.S. Lewis' model of hell is remotely true--such that Hell is a place that is locked from the inside, and that persons are even free to leave hell once they've sufficiently reconciled with God again--then Adams' critique is not really all that powerful. God can be perfectly just in giving people over to their desires, even if these desires result in eternal self-condemnation. Even if we want to maintain that the justice of God is characteristically retributive, Lewis' scheme still leaves room for there to be a temporary (perhaps even purgative?) punishment upon persons, depending on the severity of their lives of iniquity. If the life of a person in heaven is in someway correlative with the virtue of their postmortem life, then I don't find it ridiculous to think that the temporary punishment of postmortem persons is correlative with the severity of their antemortem vices. 

Contra Lewis, here is a more popularized response to Adams' question: retributive justice might be a coherent scheme between two human persons. If Smith wronged Jones, then it might be right to say that Jones would be just in wronging Smith in a similar way. But if Smith wronged God--a being that is not even remotely within the class of 'human person,' and is therefore not subject to the same kinds of moral obligations and systems between human beings--then Smith can be justly condemned for eternity by God in eternal hell because Smith had wronged an infinitely good being. 

I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, but here's a question: if I were to punch a grown adult, would my punishment vary depending on the socioeconomic status of the victim?