Punishment Defense

The Punishment Defense maintains that suffering is God’s punishment for sin.

Does this defense avoid anthropomorphism? Does it account for all of the evil and suffering in our experience?

Well, let’s think about punishment for a bit. Why would God punish? Presumably, not simply for the sadistic sake of punishing people (that would be inconsistent with his goodness), but rather to achieve some other end which he could not achieve in any other way. But what other end?

We punish criminals for a number of reasons, including

1) to deter the criminal from refunding

2) to deter other people from committing similar crimes

3) to rehabilitate the criminal

4) to satisfy our sense of justice

Do you think that any of these reason for punishment would apply to God?