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Angellous vs Angellous: Nature of Hell

  • Thread starter angellous_evangellous
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
OK, aside from all of my other protests concerning the interpretative errors in your prooftexting above, do you even realize what you're saying about God here?
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Sure - that God takes sin seriously, He keeps his promise to judge the world, and the one sin that is final is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit which is the rejection of Christ. It's not that God is baselessly condemning most of the world, but everyone has a chance to accept or reject Christ.

Romans 1 is a perfect example of this: God reveals Himself to everyone on earth, and God is just in condemning people to eternal punishment for their sins if they reject Christ.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
Sure - that God takes sin seriously, He keeps his promise to judge the world, and the one sin that is final is the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit which is the rejection of Christ. It's not that God is baselessly condemning most of the world, but everyone has a chance to accept or reject Christ.

Romans 1 is a perfect example of this: God reveals Himself to everyone on earth, and God is just in condemning people to eternal punishment for their sins if they reject Christ.
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So we have a just and loving God who condemns people to infinate punishment for finite sin?
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
First, I must reject your hell due to its cosmic injustice.


There are people all over the world who live in unimaginable squalor. Not ever hearing the Gospel or even flatly rejecting it due to their religion, billions of humans will have walked the earth in abject misery - never tasting the luxury of freedom that you and your American conservative fundie wacko friends take for granted. How can you possibly condemn these poor people to hell after they have suffered their entire lives by virtue only of their birth on the wrong side of the world?


Only an inhumane people can disrespect their plight.


Believing that these souls will go to hell is unfortunately also perfect grounds to continue allowing them to suffer. What a wretched religion!
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
First, I must reject your hell due to its cosmic injustice.


There are people all over the world who live in unimaginable squalor. Not ever hearing the Gospel or even flatly rejecting it due to their religion, billions of humans will have walked the earth in abject misery - never tasting the luxury of freedom that you and your American conservative fundie wacko friends take for granted. How can you possibly condemn these poor people to hell after they have suffered their entire lives by virtue only of their birth on the wrong side of the world?


Only an inhumane people can disrespect their plight.


Believing that these souls will go to hell is unfortunately also perfect grounds to continue allowing them to suffer. What a wretched religion!
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The Gospel is good news: Christ saves us from condemnation by God that we justly deserve. Unfortunately, sin affects us all, and some of us are subject to greater evils.

Me and my fundie friends help folks around the world through missions and evangelism. We are trying to save as many as we can from the inhumanity of others in this life and help them to escape the wrath of God in the life to come.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
Furthermore, I think that I can say that the Church (that is, folks who think that the majority of people are going to reject Christ and go to hell) has done more to relieve the suffering of humanity historically than any other humanitarian organization.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
Furthermore, I think that I can say that the Church (that is, folks who think that the majority of people are going to reject Christ and go to hell) has done more to relieve the suffering of humanity historically than any other humanitarian organization.
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You could be right about this, Angellous, but the humanitarian efforts of the Church by building hospitals, building churches, and spreading the message of love has a long, dark evil shadow of inhuman treatment due to the belief in hell that extends even to our own day.

People refuse to give in the name of Christ as much as they give in the name of Christ.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
Onto biblical refutes then? You've rejected the traditional doctrine of hell - that people go there because of rejecting Christ - but what about the nature of hell itself.

I'm curious if your views of hell have any contact whatsoever with Scripture.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
The Gospel is good news: Christ saves us from condemnation by God that we justly deserve.
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How can a woman in India who was sold into prostitution as a child and then manages to live to adulthood in destitution justly deserve eternal punishment?

Furthermore, how can you possibly begin to call this message "Good News?"
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
How can a woman in India who was sold into prostitution as a child and then manages to live to adulthood in destitution justly deserve eternal punishment?


Furthermore, how can you possibly begin to call this message "Good News?"
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The Gospel is a message of both salvation and condemnation. People need Jesus for a reason... there can't be Good News without some Bad News.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
Onto biblical refutes then? You've rejected the traditional doctrine of hell - that people go there because of rejecting Christ - but what about the nature of hell itself.

I'm curious if your views of hell have any contact whatsoever with Scripture.
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I've already protested that I think that your doctrine presumes the immortality of the soul, but given the citation of Daniel, I don't think that I can convince you otherwise.

You've gone on, I think, to stetch the meaning of several passages to allow for eternal judgement in duration rather than eternal judgment in effect.



The passage in Matthew only says that there will be eternal punishment, and eternal life, but this does not need to indicate that the ones will live eternally who are being punished: only the believers live everlastingly.


Matthew 25:46
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."




When the Bible refers to fire, we should recognize that fire destroys. If something is cast into fire, it is consumed. The image is one of destruction, and not of eternal torment. Furthermore, it is the fire that is everlasting, not the people or ideas that are thrown into it.

Revelation 20:14-15
14Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. 15And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
Next, the Scripture is clear that the people who suffer in hell will suffer forever:

Mark 9.48
It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into hell, 48'where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.' 49For everyone will be salted with fire.[j] 50Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."

Rev. 14.10
9And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name."
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In Mark 9.48, there is torment, but not everlasting torment. It is the worm that never dies, not the people who are being punished.

In Rev. 14.10, the ones who are judged are tormented - the smoke goes up forever, but not their actual punishment. I'd hate to be a part of that group...
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
angellous_evangellous said:
Quite so.

My position is:

1) The Augustinian concept of hell as eternal punishment is Platonic, and the writers of the Bible were more influenced by the Cynics and Stoics who were dependent on Aristotle - not Plato
2) Plato's eternal nature of the soul is foreign also to the Hebrew anthropology that the Biblical writers had
3) I reject the idea that people are sent to hell only on the basis of their unbelief in Christ
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Ok, I agree that the Augustinian doctrine of hell is influenced by Plato's doctrine of the eternal soul, but that the reality of eternal punishment does not require it. I think that we can agree that God can impower a person to endure torment forever, even if the soul itself is not "naturally" immortal and therefore destined to spend an eternity somewhere, as presented by evangelical wackos.

I agree that I would be hard-pressed to find a representative of this view (the one specifically underlined above), but we can agree that it may exist somewhere.

Even so, I don't think that even you in your infinate wisdom could neatly seperate "Platonic" influence from Hellenistic Jewish influence and decry one or the other. Even the NT itself clearly is syncretic, freely moving from Platonic/philosophical/moral values and Hellenistic Jewish influences - particularly in Paul. That is, sometimes Paul himself seems to emphasize a Platonic anthropology and elsewhere a "Hebrew" one that you think is prevalent in the NT.
 
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angellous_evangellous

Guest
People are still interested in hell for some reason, Angellous.
 
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