Home » Articles » Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) Serves No Purpose Other Than Cruelty for Cruelty’s Sake

Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) Serves No Purpose Other Than Cruelty for Cruelty’s Sake

by Dr. Eitan Bar
2 minutes read

I know—talking about hell makes many Christians squirm in their chairs.

Yet I believe hell is perhaps the most crucial yet misunderstood doctrine in Western Christian theology. This is partly because those who believe in Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) rarely take the time to study the doctrine in its original context, examine its misuse of metaphors, or explore alternative views of hell—such as the one held by most of the early Church Fathers, which closely resembled the Jewish view of hell.

The Augustinian-Calvinistic view of an endless, torturous hellfire—promoted by fundamentalist Protestant and Catholic groups—not only portrays God as a sadistic torturer but also fails the tests of both logic and morality. Why would a loving God choose to torment someone—let alone most of humanity—forever with no purpose or end goal? If God commands us to forgive endlessly and love even our enemies, why would He eternally torment those who don’t yet know Him? If He created us as finite and limited beings whose minds are easily influenced, how is it justice that He would punish us infinitely for those limitations? If He demands mercy and compassion from us, would He not exhibit it Himself?

Eternal Conscious Torment Fails the Test of Redemptive Justice

Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT), or “hellfire,” serves no redemptive purpose. It doesn’t teach, restore, reconcile, or bring justice. It doesn’t educate or discipline. It is cruelty for cruelty’s sake. The hellfire doctrine reduces the Augustinian-Calvinistic god to a sadistic psychopath who delights in the meaningless suffering of others—a doctrine that numbs many Christians’ sense of empathy.

Consider this: most of humanity is shaped from birth by cultural indoctrination. People often sin out of weakness, ignorance, trauma, survival, or flawed perceptions. It is their sin that needs to be eliminated—not them!

A true Christian heart should ache at the thought of God eternally tormenting most of humanity. Yet many in the West passionately defend this grotesque doctrine with a distorted, Romanized view of justice. Test your own heart: If you find yourself clinging to the idea that unending suffering is somehow “righteous,” then your understanding of God’s character, compassion, and mercy is severely warped.

The God of Israel, revealed in Messiah Yeshua, is a God of restorative justice. He punishes to purify, not to torture. He came not to condemn the world but to save it (John 3:17). Thus, a theology that glorifies endless, sadistic suffering reveals more about human vengeance than about God’s true nature.

After years of researching the doctrine of hell inside-out, I came to reject the notion that hell is God’s torture dungeon or His cosmic furnace (as if God were Hitler). Instead, much like most Church Fathers and Jews, I came to believe that hell should be understood as a place of purification, sanctification, reeducation, and transformation. God’s justice is not about sadistic destruction—it’s about restoration:

“I will put them into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name, and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, ‘The LORD is our God.’” (Zechariah 13:9)


In my new book, Hellfire Deconstructed: An In-Depth Study of the Bible Verses About Hell, I invite you to explore the original context and true meaning of the “scary” Hellfire verses that modern Christians often misinterpret.

Hell deconstruct



All Articles






You may also like:

Dr. Eitan Bar
Author, Theologian, Activist