Is God's Justice Able to Survive Hell Eternally?

Marilyn McCord Adams has become one of my favorite philosophers when it comes to answering questions about the goodness of God and evil in the world. Famously, in her Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God, she ultimately answers these questions by making an appeal to universalism for several independent reasons. 

One prominent reason of universalism that is not mentioned in her original magnum opus comes from an older article of hers called "Hell and the God of Justice." In this piece, Adams suggests that eternal hell overwhelms schemes of retributive justice, and is therefore an incoherent eschatology for God to cash out his justice in. She gives several thought experiments to demonstrate such an incoherence--here is my favorite: 

Suppose Smith knocks out one of Jones' teeth. The 'eye for an eye' principle of retributive justice would suggest that the just recompense for Jones is for Smith to have one of his teeth knocked out. But let's make things more interesting: suppose Smith knocked not just one of Jones' teeth, but also one tooth in the mouths of thirty different people. On the 'eye for an eye' principle of retributive justice, it seems like the just recompense for these thirty one people is for each of them to knock one tooth out in Smith's mouth, such that Smith no longer has any teeth at the end of this beating.

Now, the subjective suffering of each individual who had their tooth knocked out might be significant--let's place it at .1 out of a 0 to 1 scale. But the suffering of Smith having all of his teeth knocked out--even if he did things prior to put him in a condemnatory position--is vastly higher than .1. It seems like the swift action of having all one's teeth knocked out is more like .9 (presuming Smith's teeth have been knocked out in the same way he knocked out the teeth of the thirty one others). Is this still a just punishment for Smith?

Some might reply with the "Yes Chad" meme, biting the bullet and affirming that Smith's punishment is exactly what he deserves. But I find that most would probably think that this is a case where retributive justice has been made to be absurd; it seems prima facie wrong to knock out all of the teeth of one person who removed one tooth in thirty one different people. 

This scenario becomes even more problematic once we try to fit into a scheme that goes on for eternity. If we presume the Thomistic doctrine of "postmortem inalterability" such that persons cannot change their eternal fate after death (i.e., a rejection of the idea persons can fluidly move between heaven and hell after their judgment), then we are left with the following situation for persons condemned to Hell:

Suppose Smith was a really bad person; overall, on a scale of 1-1mil, he caused others around him about 970k pain (for the sake of argument, presume we have a clear way of tracking numerically overall pain another person has caused others). Once he dies, the 'eye for an eye' principle of retributive justice requires that Smith be inflicted about 970k pain in his postmortem life. But notice that this cannot go on for an eternity: even if Smith committed a high amount of iniquities and inflicted lots of pain on others, eventually retributive justice will have made recompense for every part of his sins. It seems, then, that not only does retributive justice lead to absurdly harsh penalties, but it also seems to not fit cleanly into an eternal hell.

For now, I'll say that Adams raises an interesting argument, but I don't think it's sufficient to kick eternal hell and buy universalism. I'll say more about this tomorrow.