Personally, I wonder if the soul requires a body to have free will and thus be able to make choices.
But, once the body dies, it loses its free will and the soul is then fixed, set in its ways, so to speak, as it can no longer change itself.
Because, without the body, there is no free will, and thus no choice and no ability to repent, and thus, no forgiveness for the disembodied soul.
But does that mean eternal damnation? Well...maybe, maybe not. Perhaps the eternal fire of hell is itself a natural purification process that burns away sins.
The sins of a soul are what give it mass and weigh it down, so to speak.
When a sin-free soul is released from its physical body in death, it blasts off to heaven like a rocket being launched into space.
However, the more sin the soul has, the greater the soul’s density or mass or weight, and down, down in hell it sinks to the level of its sin.
However, as the fire burns the sins away, the soul naturally becomes lighter, less dense, and naturally the soul rises higher.
This is not unlike what happens when a soul in a body repents and sins are forgiven, but without a body and a free will to make the choice to repent and seek forgiveness, the sinful soul in hell simply must endure the natural process of being literally being purified by fire for however long that process takes.
Because of the laws of thermal dynamics and how nothing is wasted, I sometimes think that hell is like the furnace/power station that runs the heat and lights for Heaven.
I’ve heard of the great power that is, or that is contained within, a soul and that it is somewhat analogous to the power contained within the atom.
Perhaps hell is naturally hot kinda like a nuclear reactor is hot, due to the great energy of that YUGE concentrated mass of disembodied souls burning away their sins.
Therefore, if there are levels to hell and a soul rises (becomes closer to God) as it becomes less dense, due to its sins burning away, then damnation doesn’t have to be eternal. It just ‘feels’ that way.
Sin must be cleansed from the soul before death and the only thing that does it is the blood of Jesus Christ. It must be forgiven by God. It cannot be eradicated in any other way.
Hebrews 9:22 Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,