the eternal moment of heaven, all is joy and life and praise; in the eternal moment of hell, all is emptiness and sterility and narcissism. There is neither beginning nor ending in heaven and hell; there is no such thing as “semi-eternity.” If the damned exist at all in the eternal state of hell, then they must exist there eternally (this is partly why Lewis can claim that heaven and hell work backwards). Conditional immortality is not a divine paradox, like the Incarnation, but a nonsensical contradiction.