The Scottish Minister of Justice, Kenny MacAskill, has responded to criticism of his freeing of Abdelbaset , the convicted Lockerbie bomber, by saying that he will soon face a higher tribunal. This is certainly true if Christians are right; and, if Mr MacAskill is a Christian, this thought, too may have influenced his decision. What's odd and illuminating is that it does not seem to have sunk into much American criticism, assuming, as seems reasonable, that a high proportion of the Americans most outraged by this would think of themselves as Christians.
Consider what the doctrine of hell actually means: that an unrepentant mass-murderer will suffer, when he dies, in ways we find impossible to imagine; and that he will do so for an eternity or thereabouts. If this is true, what awaits al-Megrahi is infinitely worse than anything suffered by his victims as they fell towards the ground; infinitely worse, even, that the pain and suffering of all the relatives. Now, various Christian denominations would differ about whether damnation is eternal, or whether its pains are limited to purgatory. But in any case it is a minimal Christian claim that after his death al-Megrahi will suffer something a whole lot worse than the torments of prostate cancer – worse in fact than any disease could be.
Now, if that is what they really believe, what is the objection to letting him die, and go to hell, from Libya instead of Scotland? It seems to me that anyone really objecting on the grounds that the bastard has not suffered enough (and those are, really, the grounds for all this fury) can't really believe in hell at all,. no matter how Christian they call themselves.
Of course lots of atheists and agnostics find the doctrine of eternal damnation repulsive in itself. It's not clear to me that it is more ethically repulsive to suppose that Stalin is being horribly tormented for his crimes or that he was extinguished after a reasonably happy life.
