Then that would put me in the minority, which is neither here nor there. I don’t find in the least loathsome that the judge of all the earth will punish those who persistently and unrepentantly rebel against him, particularly when that is the doctrine clearly and repeatedly taught in scripture. I’d further say that if we find it loathsome even though we find it clearly taught in scripture, that illustrates an area where we need greater sanctification. We ought, as Christians, to love the truth.
How common this teaching was is far from certain–extant records of the church in the first three centuries AD are very fragmentary, so it’s nearly impossible to say with any accuracy and intellectual honesty what the prevailing view on any subject may have been. It’s virtually always false to claim that X was the universal position of the “early church.”
But however common this teaching may have been, it’s demonstrably false from scripture–which, unlike Augustine, is authoritative. God’s judgment on Pharaoh was not refining. Neither was his judgment on Sodom. Neither was his judgment in the Flood–just to name three examples. As Lewis writes in chapter 9 of TGD (and illustrates by the dwarves in The Last Battle), there are those to whom God says, in effect, “have it your way.”
…is true, but incomplete–and thus false if taught in isolation. The message of God’s wrath and justice is also true, and also incomplete.
But as to the question of eternal punishment in hell, that question is indistinguishable as far as I can tell from the question of universalism, and we’ve already had that discussion.