[Evisse the Blue]

Originally Posted by Lush

But then there is the Virgin Mary. She definitely took a stroll through Hell according to Orthodox theology. I think. Maybe. I was always a bad Orthodox anyway. Will look it up.

Yep, she was given a 'tour' not unlike Dante's, and she was very moved by the suffering, afterwards praying to God to put an end to their misery.
But this is Orthodox faith where there is no Purgatory, only two extremes: Heaven or Hell. And of course God can't forgive people just like that.

In time: Self-withdrawal from Eru, if unrepented of, seen in retrospective, is eternal. So, unless he repents, Sauron is always damned. If he repents, than the time previous to repentance may be seen as the ascend to the culmination point of the repentance and bliss, and therefore also eternal - once blessed, he would have been always blessed.

I know this is hypothetical and none of you think Sauron would ever repent. I'd take it one step further and say 'could not repent'. For some, hell is eternal because their choice of returning to good after a long period of evil would unbalance everything. It has become their fate to be evil. And also think of a place where there is no 'incarnate evil' to fight, like the 4th Age Middle Earth. In the unfinished sequel to LOTR, "A new shadow", Tolkien writes that people will create evil within themselves, even in times of prosperous peace. A sad pessimistic idea, that has no place in a fairytale; no wonder it was discarded.