Antony Flew on HELL

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"Throughout the twentieth century teachings about hell have, in at least the mainstream Protestant Churches, been progressively de-emphasized. Indeed the Church of England Commission on Doctrine, reporting in 1995, asserted that 'It is incompatible with the essential Christian affirmation that God is love to say that God brings millions into the world to damn them'. The title of this work, The Mystery of Salvation, is peculiarly apt. For, without the threat of eternal torture, what is the promise of salvation a promise of salvation from? Regrettably, for most of us sinners, the offer of salvation from our sins as such, as opposed the offer of escape from any penalties for committing them, has little appeal. Irreverent unbelievers may be inclined to wonder why it took Protestant Churches so long to recognize openly the incompatibility between an omnipotent love and endless torture, while readers of the present volume will note that Craig persists in a refusal to recognize it.  Thomas Hobbes, who must have devoted a very great deal of his time between the publication of the King James Bible in 1611 and that of his own Leviathan in 1651 to careful critical reading and
rereading of the former work, had a contribution to make here both as a philosopher of religion and as a biblical critic. For, as we have just seen, after arguing in Chapter XXXI of Leviathan, that omnipotent power is its own justification, Hobbes went on to argue that a more careful reading of the New Testament suggests that the Christian hell is not forever:

'And it is said besides in many places [that the wicked] shall go into everlasting fire; and that the worm of conscience never dieth; and all this is comprehended in the word everlasting death, which is
ordinarily interpreted everlasting life in torments. And yet I can find no where that any man shall live in torments everlastingly. Also, it seemeth hard, to say, that God who is the father of mercies; that doth in heaven and earth all that he will; that hath the hearts of all men in his disposing; that worketh in men both to do, and to will; and without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good, nor repentance of evil, should punish men's transgressions without any end of time, and with all the extremity of torture, that men can imagine, and more.'"
From _Does God Exist_