For those who find universalism unacceptable the problem is to find adequate justification for the idea that some may be irretrievably lost. Here it should be pointed out that whatever the sufferings of the lost may be, theologians have always agreed that the greatest evil they sustain is final and irremediable separation from God. Nothing could be worse than to be cut off from the love and friendship of a father whose power extends to every detail of the universe, and who invites us to a share in his very life. But if this is the greatest evil of damnation, then no one who ends that way is tr...