Hebrews 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire.

Some reject the idea of hell as a fiery punishment, maintaining that hell is primary a spiritual state, the sinner's own rejection of God (and thus the beatitude that consists of communion with Him). If God is all-loving and good, then why would He need to inflict an additional punishment to this misery that the unrepentant sinner will experience? But if we accept that there is a sensible component to the Divine glory and love that we can experience, and that those who are in beatitude will experience this as a pleasant sensation (the warmth of the sun, to which the warmth of feeling loved by another is compared), then conversely, those who are in hell because they have turned away from God, might they not they also experience the warmth of this Divine Love as something painful, as they have rejected it? Hellfire then would not be a separate punishment, but the sensible consequence of their rejection of God, an unquenchable fire because the sinner has rejected it and the transformation that it would bring to him.

As for purgatory, even if purgatory will end on the Last Day with the resurrection of all who have died, followed by Judgment, perhaps the soul too will somehow experience the Divine Love as a "fire" as a part the purgation process, the removal of any lingering imperfections, which are burned off, while he is heated and transformed in the Divine Love.

Purgatory

If the "fire" or "heat" of purgatory is God's love purifying those who live in Christ from all remaining perfection, then why might hell not be that same love experienced as a form of torture by those who have rejected God?

(The glory of God, the light of those who have been perfectly transformed or deified is in contrast pleasant.)

Not Mutually Exclusive

Hell: punishment or self-inflicted? What if it is both, especially if we keep more than the sense of poena in mind -- that it is a privation. Secondly, God's judgment is not a distinct act from His being or His love.

The Heresy of Hell as Self-Inflicted by Charles Robertson

I also note that while the title calls it a heresy, there is no evidence that it is so, other than that the position that Hell is self-inflicted seems to go against Scripture. And this only if we hold that Hell being self-inflicted contradicts it being a punishment. But more likely than not supporters of Hell being self-inflicted can offer an explanation of how it is still a punishment, or harmonize it with the words of Christ.

Did Hans Urs von Balthasar teach that everyone will certainly be saved? by Mark Brumley
Whatever Balthasar’s position is, and whether or not it is correct, it isn’t universalism.

That He Said This... Believe It or Not?

Pope Francis: 'There Is No Hell' by Michael W. Chapman

Rorate Caeli

Reaction from Pat Buchanan

Christ's Descent to Hell

according to Joseph Ratzinger in his Introduction to Christianity -- Holy Saturday’s Silent Embrace by Fr. Robert P. Imbelli

Is there a confusion of the limbus patrum, the limbo of the fathers, hades/sheol and gehenna?