I'd rather be saved, but if I perish, and cease to exist - well, there won't be owt for me to worry about, will there?
I'm OK with that. The thought of eternal life isn't that appealing, anyway, but that may be due to my lack of imagination as to what it might be like...
Father of Jesus, Love divine,
what rapture it will be,
prostrate before thy throne to lie,
and gaze and gaze on thee!
That's the final verse of the hymn My God, how wonderful thou art by F W Faber (1848). Sounds like a recipe for an eternal crick in the neck...
I like your comments on this hymn by Fr Faber though it may have appealed more to those who toiled for long hours daily in unsalubrious and noisy conditions.
The Catholic catechism teaches us that 'the affirmations of the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon each one of us to make use of our freedoms in view of our eternal destiny.'
I agree with BF that it is difficult for us mortals really to appreciate what eternity is - with eternal bliss and eternal separation from God.
By its affirmation of Saints (see other threads) the Church proclaims its belief that there are some people in Heaven. The Church has never tried to indicate that there are people in Hell, even although biblical passages certainly indicate the existence of Hell.
For myself I can see that we are often or at least some times tempted to do things which our conscience tells us are wrong. When we understand that these are against God's will for mankind and yet do these things we, by our own volition, separate ourselves from God and if we persist in this we remain separated from God (Catholic language calls this 'mortal sin').
What I personally find interesting is that a definition of 'mortal sin' can vary with different societies or periods.
Take the idea of the death penalty. Until fairly recently most people would have considered it only just that the death penalty should be applied in certain conditions,Those who accepted that at that time cannot be blamed for this.
Take again the situation of the 'gays' .Again until fairly recently, most people would have seen the gay lifestyle as one which was not pleasing to God. We should not blame those who in their time thought like that.
Nowadays many of us see things differently and our ideas of what constitutes 'justice' as well as 'mercy' may well have changed.
Nevertheless there are times when we do things which our own conscience tells us are wrong and unless we repent we pay the price.
The trouble is, we have no experience of annihilation of anything--there are always remnants, ruins, leftovers--and so it's a jump to say that God will annihilate anything or anyone. Not something I'd want to bet on.
Coming at it from a different angle, I am completely sure, based on God's character in Scripture, esp. as shown in Jesus, that nobody is going to wind up in hell unjustly or under any circumstances in which any human or angel will be able to say, "That doesn't seem right." The justice and probably pure necessity of any such outcomes will be obvious on that day. I'm hoping, of course, that there won't be any such, but ...
The trouble is, we have no experience of annihilation of anything--there are always remnants, ruins, leftovers--and so it's a jump to say that God will annihilate anything or anyone. Not something I'd want to bet on.
I see perish as being permanently dead like anything that dies
Coming at it from a different angle, I am completely sure, based on God's character in Scripture, esp. as shown in Jesus, that nobody is going to wind up in hell unjustly or under any circumstances in which any human or angel will be able to say, "That doesn't seem right." The justice and probably pure necessity of any such outcomes will be obvious on that day. I'm hoping, of course, that there won't be any such, but ...
On judgement day, I will not be asking for justice. I will be asking for mercy.
Coming at it from a different angle, I am completely sure, based on God's character in Scripture, esp. as shown in Jesus, that nobody is going to wind up in hell unjustly or under any circumstances in which any human or angel will be able to say, "That doesn't seem right." The justice and probably pure necessity of any such outcomes will be obvious on that day.
That was pretty much Abraham's argument before Sodom and Gomorrah. Did his satisfaction at God's reply extend to accepting permanent conscious judgement befalling everyone except Lot and family?
@Martin54 I can cope with that rephrasing a little better.
To rephrase it a little more, should Hell be reinterpreted for today, and if so how do we make sense of the biblical hints of the afterlife for today?
I'm glad. I cannot think how Hell can be interpreted for today except in the light of God as He is. I don't see any Biblical hints of the afterlife. Period. Jesus was scaring the liver out of people to make them change their horrible ways. Whether He believed any of the stories He used, who knows? Humanly He'd have to, unless He was being divinely pragmatic. None of what He said can be taken as having anything to do with the actual afterlife. Apart from it being paradise. For the mythical nuked denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. We make sense of it like that. It's stuff Jesus made up for a good cause at the time. Unless God is incompetent and callous.
Coming at it from a different angle, I am completely sure, based on God's character in Scripture, esp. as shown in Jesus, that nobody is going to wind up in hell unjustly or under any circumstances in which any human or angel will be able to say, "That doesn't seem right." The justice and probably pure necessity of any such outcomes will be obvious on that day.
That was pretty much Abraham's argument before Sodom and Gomorrah. Did his satisfaction at God's reply extend to accepting permanent conscious judgement befalling everyone except Lot and family?
In fairness, Anteater, I think that a fair number of people who are theologically, if not socially, conservative, adopt a basically universalist position, so I'm not convinced it is confined only to (theological) liberals.
Agreed and I should have been clearer. I did say that most liberals who believe in life after death, are universalist, but that isn't a two way relationship, so I agree not all universalists are liberals.
Bentley-Hart is quite conservative in an intellectual sort of way, and fairly conservative catholics like Robert Barron are very open to universalism.
I like your comments on this hymn by Fr Faber though it may have appealed more to those who toiled for long hours daily in unsalubrious and noisy conditions.
Yes, very likely. Quite a few hymns written during the Industrial Revolution were of the Pie In The Sky When You Die genre.
I dunno. It's the thought of the everlastingness of Heaven/Hell that puts me off...but those with more imagination (and/or hope) than I will take a different view.
Many Orthodox also believe in salvation after death
That doesn't tell me what they believe about the possibility of not being saved after death, and what happens in that scenario.
Sigh. If Hell is God as experienced by the ungodly, and you choose to remain ungodly, you continue to experience God as Hell.
The universalists among us believe that everyone will, eventually, choose to accept and reciprocate God's love. Of course we can't know that. We most emphatically do NOT believe in annihilationism. The cessation of the hellishness of the presence of God for the ungodly can only occur if God saves them against their will. Which in our understanding he absolutely will not do.
If you look at the OT understanding of "judgment" it is largely to do with landlords and employers being forced to do right by their tenants/employees. No wonder the slave-owners and their latter day descendants wanted to make it about sexual sins.
I have no belief in eternal conscious torment, a view that has grown in me over half a century. There are several aspects of this, but it starts with the belief that an all knowing (omniscient) God of infinite love could never permit it. If He stands outside time, in eternity, He knows already which creatures will be saved and which will be damned. If He creates a sentient being, knowing it to be damned, then He creates it for that purpose. I know Calvinists believe in such a God, but I don't, or if such a supreme being exists, I am never going to worship such a malevolent entity. And I am not a dualist. " I am the Lord and there is no other. I form light and create darkness. I make weal and create woe. I the Lord do all these things." (Isa 45. 6-7.) There is nothing in creation which is outside God's control. Creation started as One. If there is an eternal hell, then it becomes a duality of good and evil in which God has failed. I don't believe in that God either.
Now to Scripture. Scripture can be used to prove, annihilationism, eternal damnation or universal salvation, depending on one's own preconceived belief. When Paul says that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6.23) or when John says that those who accept Jesus will not perish (John 3.16), we are perfectly entitled to take them at face value. Death is the natural end for us unless God chooses to resurrect us from it. The early Jews had little belief in an afterlife. "For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol who can give you praise?" (Ps 6.5) Even in Christ's time the Sadduces didn't believe in resurrection. The Pharisees, who did, believed in a resurrection to a renewed earth, not a disembodied life in a heaven. There is little reason to believe that Paul had any concept of eternal damnation. Neither does it appear anywhere in John's gospel or letters. Most of the church's belief in it come from a few hard sayings in Matthew, to which I will return.
With the Scriptures in front of them, many of the Church Fathers were universalists. St Augustine who started out as a universalist turned passionately against it, but he wrote in Enchridion that "indeed very many" people in his day were universalists. The phrase is immo quam plurimi, which could be interpreted as a vast majority. The Italian scholar of Patristics, Ilaria Ramelli wrote, "The main Patristic supporters of the apokatastasis theory such as Bardaisan, Clement, Origen, Didymus, St Anthony, St Pamphilus Martyr, Methodius, St Gregory of Nyssa (and probably the two other Cappadocians), St Evagrus Ponticus, St John of Jerusalem, St Jerome, St Augustine (initially) Cassian, St Isaac of Nineveh, John Scottus Eriugena and many others grounded their Christian doctrine of apokatastasis first of all in the Bible.
So much of the early Church held a Scripturally based belief in universal salvation. St Augustine hated Greek so he only had his Latin translations to go on. Men such as Jerome, who was the foremost Hebrew and Greek scholar of his generation, or Eriugena, who translated much from Greek were perhaps closer to the original texts. I don't claim to know any Koine Greek, but I've seem and read of translations such as Young's Literal Translation, which translates what we have as eternal punishment as age-enduring correction. This makes an enormous difference to its meaning. I have little doubt that many people die in a hellish state and many find themselves in outer darkness and pain, allowing that such descriptions are metaphorical. It's said that Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 45 million people. Perhaps he has to suffer the punishment of every one of those deaths, but it doesn't mean he couldn't be cleansed of all his wrongdoings.
There's also a difference between eternal punishment and eternal punishing. If someone is annihilated on death, he of she has received eternal punishment, because the chance to participate in God's Kingdom has been lost. If they suffer eternal conscious torment, they are receiving an infinite punishment for finite sin, because all human sin, however grave if finite. That is not justice, it's vindictiveness, and I don't believe in a God capable of doing that.So I don't believe, as some do, that God's justice demands eternal suffering.
Lastly there is the often used argument that free will is sacrosanct and that God can never compel us to accept Him. I agree that this is the strongest case against universal salvation. But it is no argument against conditional immortality. And there are possibilities here too. Calvinists believe in irresistible grace for the elect. I've already intimated that I find Calvinism to be a repugnant product of an evil mind. But if irresistible grace can exist, why not for all people if God loves us all. St Paul says that every knee shall bend and every tongue acknowledge God (Rom 14.11). For this reason I am a universalist. I can accept annihilationism as fulfilling the demands of a harsh and judging God, but I have more faith in His eternal love. If eternal damnation is true, I will surely be there, because I would never bend the knee to a Being who allows it.
@mousethief thank you. I too have difficulty with the idea that God might save some people against their will, but A Short Stay in Hell is making me think even the most stubborn would be won over in the end, if that option exists, and if one can talk in terms of duration.
@Bishops Finger assuming an "eternal" heaven is also by nature "infinite", provided I'm allowed to keep my curiosity and heaven is not like an endless church service that never reaches the tea and biscuit stage (remember when we had such a thing?), I reckon I'd be content and not too freaked out. Whereas Hell is by the most reliable fictional accounts boring beyond belief and endurance. Which is especially troubling if there is no way out and no end to it (or even if it's large enough to be as near to infinite as makes little practical difference).
@mousethief thank you. I too have difficulty with the idea that God might save some people against their will, but A Short Stay in Hell is making me think even the most stubborn would be won over in the end, if that option exists, and if one can talk in terms of duration.
Universalist Orthodox believe that the stubborn will be won over in the end. Pray so.
The Old Testament concept of the place of the dead--not hell--was Sheol in which the souls of the dead went into a dusty realm. Yes, there are some quotes from Jesus talking about the perpetual fires of Gehenna which was the trash dump outside of Jerusalem. Paul, though never speaks of hell or Sheol, The Petrine letters do mention a hell, but it appears to refer back to Sheol. The Revelation of John makes some allusion to a hell, but he does indicate eventually all evil places and people will be destroyed before the New Jerusalem is established.
The next important statement is from the Apostles' Creed which says Jesus descended to hell (traditional interpretation) or he went to the places of the dead (a contemporary interpretation). This reflects the Petrine description. Contemporary theology says when Jesus went to the place of the dead, he did so to announce the victory over death, There is a saying, there is a hell, but it is empty.
The traditional interpretation of hell comes from the Greek realm of Hades, god of the underworld. As I understand it, there are five levels of the realm of Hades depending on how moral a person was when s/he was in life. When a person dies, they have to cross the river Styx. The crossing cost a small coin which was placed in the mouth of the dead by pious relatives--goes to the tradition of placing a coin over each of the eyes of the dead before burial.
Dante filled out the image of hell in his poem The Divine Comedy in which he travels through Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.
My response to the original question, though, is there is a realm of the dead, but, thanks be to God, it is empty.
The thing is, I see no textual evidence to guarantee that this is so. I certainly hope so; and I think every Christian must hope so. But as for being certain of it, well...
And I think that is by God's design, because he knows what lazy asses we are. If God had revealed to us that everyone would be saved in the end, wouldn't we just sit our butts down in front of the computer and forget about sharing the Good News of Jesus at all? In spite of the fact that our neighbor may be in a living hell right now, and need Christ desperately (not to mention whatever care we can provide personally). "Oh, who cares about the Vietnamese.... they'll make it to the kingdom some day!" Meh.
Everyone now and again I wander past the Ship, and lo and behold there is a thread about Hell. It appears to be a niggling irritation for many people. The skeleton in the family closet which we either ignore or constantly talk about.
As usual, almost no one is prepared to do a full traditional defence of the justness, and righteousness of eternal torment of sinners, willingly and deliberately inflicted on them by God the perfect judge. Mostly people who defend any sort of post-mortem unpleasantness implicitly concede the unjustness of it by attempting to absolve God of blame - it is us locking the door from the inside, don't you know.
But at the same time, few are prepared to openly proclaim God's universal redemption and salvation of all, and I think this stems in a sense from the same root. We are reluctant (unable?) to concede that we are not ourselves in control. We hold tightly to the claim that our immediate day to day choices, here in this messy incarnated fallen world, or in some new world to come, will in the End be the deciding factor. That we will choose our fate.
But I suspect we are, like Paul on the road to Damascus, in the hands of a living God.
The thing is, I see no textual evidence to guarantee that this is so. I certainly hope so; and I think every Christian must hope so. But as for being certain of it, well...
And I think that is by God's design, because he knows what lazy asses we are. If God had revealed to us that everyone would be saved in the end, wouldn't we just sit our butts down in front of the computer and forget about sharing the Good News of Jesus at all? In spite of the fact that our neighbor may be in a living hell right now, and need Christ desperately (not to mention whatever care we can provide personally). "Oh, who cares about the Vietnamese.... they'll make it to the kingdom some day!" Meh.
But this has long struck me as akin to "I had to convert and go to church and pray and all that -- why should they get off so easy? Look how hard I've worked!"
Oh no, I'm screwing up somewhere in my communication. It's not about the others needing to suffer, it's about us (or me) being a lazy asshole in the face of the needs of others. Must try again.
What I mean is analogous to having a class know ahead of time that they'll have an open book test. Fine, say all the lazy bums; I don't have to study, and I won't (even though their whole purpose for being there is to get some good stuff into those heads and learn how to work with it there, and NOT to simply pass a test.) I was in an Old English class like that, where the professor downright discouraged (almost forbade!) students from memorizing vocabulary. "After all, you will always have a glossary. There's no risk of being caught without one." Wanna guess how much value I retain from that class?
Now God does appeal to us to tell others about Jesus for the right motives--love your neighbor and all that. But he's not above using a drop or two of the lower motivations (which as every parent knows are sometimes the only thing that kicks a kid into motion)--namely, here, our uncertainty about what would happen if we didn't do as we're told. Are we ignominious wretches, then, for telling our neighbors about Jesus because we (maybe) have a faint, nagging fear that they might go to hell if we don't? Well, yes. We ought to do it for pure love. But being what we are, we sometimes need more of a kick in the pants than that. And uncertainty supplies that kick.
This of course just my speculation on how universalism MIGHT be true, but God wouldn't tell us if it is. Knowing me, I wouldn't tell me either.
The Old Testament concept of the place of the dead--not hell--was Sheol in which the souls of the dead went into a dusty realm. Yes, there are some quotes from Jesus talking about the perpetual fires of Gehenna which was the trash dump outside of Jerusalem
An OT passage you don't mention is the end of Isaiah 66, the only passage in the Bible that ever brought me literally to my knees once:
“As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,” declares the Lord, “so will your name and descendants endure. From one New Moon to another and from one Sabbath to another, all mankind will come and bow down before me,” says the Lord. “And they will go out and look on the dead bodies of those who rebelled against me; the worms that eat them will not die, the fire that burns them will not be quenched, and they will be loathsome to all mankind.”
.
This implies both retributive justice and annihilation.
Paul, though never speaks of hell or Sheol
No, but he talks a lot about the wrath of God and has the vases "destined for destruction".
If God had revealed to us that everyone would be saved in the end, wouldn't we just sit our butts down in front of the computer and forget about sharing the Good News of Jesus at all?
I think a motivation for evangelism that stems from a fear we personally are responsible for other people potentially going to Hell is a pretty poor one, and it doesn't add up with how I understand God to motivate us.
Like I say, even if everybody is saved in the end, there is nevertheless motivation in the idea that it would be better for those around us to follow Christ starting now. I want people to follow Christ because I believe in the truth of the Gospel (Christ is risen) and think it's immeasurably more fulfilling to follow Christ than do anything else do with one's life - not out of fear of them going to Hell on my account. I might not coerce so many people into conversion that way, but not evangelising from a place of fear or guilt might I think be more effective in the long run.
In short, if a belief in "traditional" Hell is only due to the need for a motivation for evangelism, then I think deconstructing that belief is definitely in order.
It all hinges around whether there is scope for change after the Judgement.
If there is scope for change on the part of the damned, then some sort of afterlife dimension (traditionally portrayed as a duration) is required for that change to come about. Even if it's really really "long", I find that intellectually tolerable if there is ultimately a way out, because that dimension can ultimately pale into insignificance beside the "solidity" (hat-tip to CS Lewis) of Heaven.
If, on the other hand, there is no scope for change on the part of the damned and the judgement is "permanent" or "final" rather than "eternal", then no afterlife dimension is required for the purposes of changing. So any talk of "final" or "permanent" judgement sounds suspiciously like annihilationalism to me.
If in this scenario annihilation is ruled out, any ongoing consciousness, whatever dimension is used to describe it, appears pointless unless God is perversely vindictive. I know of many inmate sentencing plans that appear to be wholly and gratuitously vindictive and they are quite hellish enough without extending infinitely. I find it hard to conceive of God being like that.
As usual, almost no one is prepared to do a full traditional defence of the justness, and righteousness of eternal torment of sinners, willingly and deliberately inflicted on them by God the perfect judge
No-one here is particularly interested in defending the indefensible.
Of course, both retributive and restorative justice are to be found in the bible, and God's judgement is critical for the realisation of either.
He also says that God saves all: some through love, some through correction - which has strong connections to the sheep/goats parable that @Lamb Chopped mentioned earlier - i.e. God is saving both the sheep and the goats, but in different ways.
If that's the case then sin doesn't actually matter.
As usual, almost no one is prepared to do a full traditional defence of the justness, and righteousness of eternal torment of sinners, willingly and deliberately inflicted on them by God the perfect judge
No-one here is particularly interested in defending the indefensible.
If that's the case then sin doesn't actually matter.
Jonathan Edwards' answer to that was to say (paraphrasing) that the extent to which we overcome sin in this life increases our capacity to enjoy God in the next:
“The saints are like so many vessels of different sizes cast into a sea of happiness where every vessel is full: this is eternal life, for a man ever to have his capacity filled. But after all ’tis left to God’s sovereign pleasure, ’tis his prerogative to determine the largeness of the vessel.”
And I discover John Bunyan said much the same:
“He who is most in the bosom of God, and who so acts for him here, he is the man who will be best able to enjoy most of God in the kingdom of heaven.”
I think these perspectives mesh well with the parable of the eleventh-hour workers in the vineyard @mousethief alluded to upthread.
My non-Hell-inspired motivation for living the Christian life now is to make that vessel as big as I can.
As usual, almost no one is prepared to do a full traditional defence of the justness, and righteousness of eternal torment of sinners, willingly and deliberately inflicted on them by God the perfect judge
No-one here is particularly interested in defending the indefensible.
People here defend indefensible positions all the time!
It is interesting though how a position which was standard became indefensible. Clearly for many Christians historically this position wasn't indefensible but irrefutable, and not just ill educated fundamentalists but the Augustines, Aquinases (Aquinii?), Anslems etc. In fact it is hard to find anyone between, say, Origen and James Relly who wouldn't have supported this indefensible view.
My suggestion: our society's rejection of the idea of hell is based on our belief in our own individual sovereignty. So the traditional theological concept of hell diminished with the rise of individualism in the 19th Century, and survives only in a pale version of itself.
@demas your latest answer scratches a large part of the itch I had in starting this thread. I think our changing view of our selves has impacted Christian views on hell. I guess what I'm looking for is a reinterpretation of hell that doesn't simply thrown the Bible out of the window but re-examines it in much the same way as the creation narratives have been re-examined without being gutted of all meaning.
If that's the case then sin doesn't actually matter.
Jonathan Edwards' answer to that was to say (paraphrasing) that the extent to which we overcome sin in this life increases our capacity to enjoy God in the next:
“The saints are like so many vessels of different sizes cast into a sea of happiness where every vessel is full: this is eternal life, for a man ever to have his capacity filled. But after all ’tis left to God’s sovereign pleasure, ’tis his prerogative to determine the largeness of the vessel.”
And I discover John Bunyan said much the same:
“He who is most in the bosom of God, and who so acts for him here, he is the man who will be best able to enjoy most of God in the kingdom of heaven.”
I think these perspectives mesh well with the parable of the eleventh-hour workers in the vineyard @mousethief alluded to upthread.
My non-Hell-inspired motivation for living the Christian life now is to make that vessel as big as I can.
That's all well and good and, to an extent I don't disagree. Sin remains the problem .. if I am happy with the small vessel now then there's a distinct lack of justice in that I get to enjoy God much the same as someone who his ding his utmost to make the vessel as big as possible.
I also don't get this idea of "capacity" when it comes to enjoying God. With God there are no half measures, only fullness.
Perhaps the modern view of hell owes more than a little to the postmodern worldview of distrusting propositional statements alongside a belief that there's no "wrong. " Justice sits very uncomfortably with the inherent tenets of postmodernism (what is there to judge, who can do it) and so "hell" as a concept, or reality, is tough to engage with.
As usual, almost no one is prepared to do a full traditional defence of the justness, and righteousness of eternal torment of sinners, willingly and deliberately inflicted on them by God the perfect judge
No-one here is particularly interested in defending the indefensible.
People here defend indefensible positions all the time!
It is interesting though how a position which was standard became indefensible. Clearly for many Christians historically this position wasn't indefensible but irrefutable, and not just ill educated fundamentalists but the Augustines, Aquinases (Aquinii?), Anslems etc. In fact it is hard to find anyone between, say, Origen and James Relly who wouldn't have supported this indefensible view.
My suggestion: our society's rejection of the idea of hell is based on our belief in our own individual sovereignty. So the traditional theological concept of hell diminished with the rise of individualism in the 19th Century, and survives only in a pale version of itself.
People in the past thought torture, painful public executions for petty crime and flogging were fine as well. I don't pretend to try to get into their minds.
I can only speak for what I can understand. My experience has been that people's ability to accept the nastier versions of Hell is inversely related to how many of those closest to them would end up there. In a society where conformity to a religious belief is the norm, and one's relatives and friends adhere to the same belief, it's easier to be accepting of a terrible fate for those outside as they're other and unknown and one can make oneself believe they "deserve" it.
Nowadays everyone has friends and family members who don't or can't believe and whom it's blatantly clear don't deserve eternal torment. Once that is acknowledged, the question "does anyone deserve eternal torment, when you think about it?" is just around the corner.
Yes, I thought that the abatement of secular punishment is relevant here. Somebody also mentioned postmodernism, thus, a degree of relativization took over the Western world, a move away from polarities. As to why this has happened, no doubt many reasons, including greater prosperity.
People in the past thought torture, painful public executions for petty crime and flogging were fine as well. I don't pretend to try to get into their minds.
Don't we sort of have to, if we're going to be part of a religion grounded in 3,000 or so years of theological discussion?
I can only speak for what I can understand. My experience has been that people's ability to accept the nastier versions of Hell is inversely related to how many of those closest to them would end up there. In a society where conformity to a religious belief is the norm, and one's relatives and friends adhere to the same belief, it's easier to be accepting of a terrible fate for those outside as they're other and unknown and one can make oneself believe they "deserve" it.
Nowadays everyone has friends and family members who don't or can't believe and whom it's blatantly clear don't deserve eternal torment. Once that is acknowledged, the question "does anyone deserve eternal torment, when you think about it?" is just around the corner.
There is probably something in this, but on the other hand I suspect that people have always had loved ones in their lives who they would not wish to see in Hell. Also the decline of Hell theologically seems to me to be clearly 19C with the rise of Victorian moral individualism. Basically this societal change raised your point above - if every individual is of supreme moral importance, how can the eternal torment or destruction of that individual be morally justified?
quetzalcoatl's "abatement of secular punishment" I would put contemporaneously with that, and arising from the same impulse.
You can also see it in the change of justifications for Universalism - before that period you have Universalist theologies built on Calvinism (some of which ended up as the Universalist Church of America) with the alternative being New England Unitarianism. The saying was that "Unitarians thought they were too good for God to damn, and Universalists thought that God was too good to damn them". There was a class angle too - Unitarians (too good to damn) were generally higher class and more educated than Universalists.
if I am happy with the small vessel now then there's a distinct lack of justice in that I get to enjoy God much the same as someone who his ding his utmost to make the vessel as big as possible.
That's like saying it's not fair to get the same pay for five minutes work at 4.55pm as for working through the heat of the day. It's how grace works.
I also don't get this idea of "capacity" when it comes to enjoying God. With God there are no half measures, only fullness.
Read Edwards again. All are full, but how deep that fullness is depends on the size of the vessel.
I think there is something in this idea of a community believing the same thing. Christianity has a choice element (choice made by you as in Baptists, and confirmation in more traditional styles) if you can choose not to believe them people will. In a society like Islam or Judaism you are born into it and have to choose to leave. Where people can choose not to believe we don’t want our family to go to hell.
All saved no matter who does have problems outside of theological argument. If there is no line in the sand the Hitlers, and Bin Ladens of the world are in heaven. Many people find that difficult. How can someone who has acted so awful not be in Hell
I think there is something in this idea of a community believing the same thing. Christianity has a choice element (choice made by you as in Baptists, and confirmation in more traditional styles) if you can choose not to believe them people will. In a society like Islam or Judaism you are born into it and have to choose to leave. Where people can choose not to believe we don’t want our family to go to hell.
All saved no matter who does have problems outside of theological argument. If there is no line in the sand the Hitlers, and Bin Ladens of the world are in heaven. Many people find that difficult. How can someone who has acted so awful not be in Hell
One of the problems with a binary Heaven that's unspeakably good and a Hell that's unspeakably bad is that actual real people are neither of these so actually *deserve* neither. And we can I think cope with getting better than we deserve rather better than we can getting worse. This is perhaps one reason we have a presumption of innocence in our judicial system.
I actually have a bigger problem with Hitler or Bin Laden being in an eternal Hell of conscious suffering than I do them being in a Heaven of conscious bliss.
Conservative Chrisianity still has this eternal Hell for being a bit grumpy one morning fundamental injustice problem.
You can also see it in the change of justifications for Universalism - before that period you have Universalist theologies built on Calvinism (some of which ended up as the Universalist Church of America) with the alternative being New England Unitarianism.
Yeah and no. That's much more recent history. The earlier theology of Apocatastasis was all about a reorientation of creation to its original intended vision. It was much more cosmological in its idea than the more modern 'personal salvation' themes.
Of course, both retributive and restorative justice are to be found in the bible, and God's judgement is critical for the realisation of either.
He also says that God saves all: some through love, some through correction - which has strong connections to the sheep/goats parable that @Lamb Chopped mentioned earlier - i.e. God is saving both the sheep and the goats, but in different ways.
If that's the case then sin doesn't actually matter.
My response would be that this depends on your understanding of what sin is. If one's view of sin is that it's a list of wrong actions which need sorting out, then you may have a point (though I'm not sure what you fully mean by whether sin matters or not).
Or...
To see sin as a fundamental brokenness in the human condition which causes suffering to people, breaks relationships, brings injustices, damages communities and creation, brings hurt and shame and insecurity...
And to realise that bringing healing to that means a lot more than a simple transaction ticking off all the wrongdoings from a list - it involves healing alongside forgiveness, reassurance, discipline, accountability and love.
As @Martin54 said, we are all hybrids and we need all of these things. It is an unfortunate thing that for so many people the gospel has been whittled down to a mere transactional removal of acts from a metaphorical Santa's naughty list.
How can someone as awful as Hitler not be in Hell ? We know what awful things Adolf Hitler was responsible for ,but do we know whether at the last moment after he pulled the trigger he repented and asked for God's mercy ?
It is God who is the judge,not we.
I think there is something in this idea of a community believing the same thing. Christianity has a choice element (choice made by you as in Baptists, and confirmation in more traditional styles) if you can choose not to believe them people will. In a society like Islam or Judaism you are born into it and have to choose to leave. Where people can choose not to believe we don’t want our family to go to hell.
All saved no matter who does have problems outside of theological argument. If there is no line in the sand the Hitlers, and Bin Ladens of the world are in heaven. Many people find that difficult. How can someone who has acted so awful not be in Hell
One of the problems with a binary Heaven that's unspeakably good and a Hell that's unspeakably bad is that actual real people are neither of these so actually *deserve* neither. And we can I think cope with getting better than we deserve rather better than we can getting worse. This is perhaps one reason we have a presumption of innocence in our judicial system.
I actually have a bigger problem with Hitler or Bin Laden being in an eternal Hell of conscious suffering than I do them being in a Heaven of conscious bliss.
Conservative Chrisianity still has this eternal Hell for being a bit grumpy one morning fundamental injustice problem.
Yes that is why God worked salvation not based on being good or bad but on loving God. We do what God asks because he has given us his love and salvation not to get it.
How can someone as awful as Hitler not be in Hell ? We know what awful things Adolf Hitler was responsible for ,but do we know whether at the last moment after he pulled the trigger he repented and asked for God's mercy ?
It is God who is the judge,not we.
If Hitler repented truly then yes he is in heaven. My point was that the idea that all are saved is not acceptable to many people. Justice is also part of God’s personality.
I believe that So long as we accept Jesus as saviour then God’s justice on us is taken care of. If not then justice will be done.
Many people find it offensive that really nasty people will be in heaven.
How can someone as awful as Hitler not be in Hell ? We know what awful things Adolf Hitler was responsible for ,but do we know whether at the last moment after he pulled the trigger he repented and asked for God's mercy ?
It is God who is the judge,not we.
If Hitler repented truly then yes he is in heaven. My point was that the idea that all are saved is not acceptable to many people. Justice is also part of God’s personality. So long as we accept Jesus as saviour then God’s justice on us is taken care of. If not then justice will be done
How can someone as awful as Hitler not be in Hell ? We know what awful things Adolf Hitler was responsible for ,but do we know whether at the last moment after he pulled the trigger he repented and asked for God's mercy ?
It is God who is the judge,not we.
If Hitler repented truly then yes he is in heaven. My point was that the idea that all are saved is not acceptable to many people. Justice is also part of God’s personality. So long as we accept Jesus as saviour then God’s justice on us is taken care of. If not then justice will be done
Eternal torment is not justice. It cannot be.
If I shoot someone and not repentant the judge had guidelines to sentence me. If eternal torment is appropriate for what a person has done then that is the sentence. You will find very few people who would say that eternal torment is not justice for the pain and torment the likes of the Nazis put people through.
How can someone as awful as Hitler not be in Hell ? We know what awful things Adolf Hitler was responsible for ,but do we know whether at the last moment after he pulled the trigger he repented and asked for God's mercy ?
It is God who is the judge,not we.
If Hitler repented truly then yes he is in heaven. My point was that the idea that all are saved is not acceptable to many people. Justice is also part of God’s personality. So long as we accept Jesus as saviour then God’s justice on us is taken care of. If not then justice will be done
Eternal torment is not justice. It cannot be.
If I shoot someone and not repentant the judge had guidelines to sentence me. If eternal torment is appropriate for what a person has done then that is the sentence. You will find very few people who would say that eternal torment is not justice for the pain and torment the likes of the Nazis put people through.
Really? You think that most people think that infinite punishment for a finite crime is justice?
Comments
I'd rather be saved, but if I perish, and cease to exist - well, there won't be owt for me to worry about, will there?
I'm OK with that. The thought of eternal life isn't that appealing, anyway, but that may be due to my lack of imagination as to what it might be like...
Father of Jesus, Love divine,
what rapture it will be,
prostrate before thy throne to lie,
and gaze and gaze on thee!
That's the final verse of the hymn My God, how wonderful thou art by F W Faber (1848). Sounds like a recipe for an eternal crick in the neck...
The Catholic catechism teaches us that 'the affirmations of the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon each one of us to make use of our freedoms in view of our eternal destiny.'
I agree with BF that it is difficult for us mortals really to appreciate what eternity is - with eternal bliss and eternal separation from God.
By its affirmation of Saints (see other threads) the Church proclaims its belief that there are some people in Heaven. The Church has never tried to indicate that there are people in Hell, even although biblical passages certainly indicate the existence of Hell.
For myself I can see that we are often or at least some times tempted to do things which our conscience tells us are wrong. When we understand that these are against God's will for mankind and yet do these things we, by our own volition, separate ourselves from God and if we persist in this we remain separated from God (Catholic language calls this 'mortal sin').
What I personally find interesting is that a definition of 'mortal sin' can vary with different societies or periods.
Take the idea of the death penalty. Until fairly recently most people would have considered it only just that the death penalty should be applied in certain conditions,Those who accepted that at that time cannot be blamed for this.
Take again the situation of the 'gays' .Again until fairly recently, most people would have seen the gay lifestyle as one which was not pleasing to God. We should not blame those who in their time thought like that.
Nowadays many of us see things differently and our ideas of what constitutes 'justice' as well as 'mercy' may well have changed.
Nevertheless there are times when we do things which our own conscience tells us are wrong and unless we repent we pay the price.
Coming at it from a different angle, I am completely sure, based on God's character in Scripture, esp. as shown in Jesus, that nobody is going to wind up in hell unjustly or under any circumstances in which any human or angel will be able to say, "That doesn't seem right." The justice and probably pure necessity of any such outcomes will be obvious on that day. I'm hoping, of course, that there won't be any such, but ...
On judgement day, I will not be asking for justice. I will be asking for mercy.
I'm glad. I cannot think how Hell can be interpreted for today except in the light of God as He is. I don't see any Biblical hints of the afterlife. Period. Jesus was scaring the liver out of people to make them change their horrible ways. Whether He believed any of the stories He used, who knows? Humanly He'd have to, unless He was being divinely pragmatic. None of what He said can be taken as having anything to do with the actual afterlife. Apart from it being paradise. For the mythical nuked denizens of Sodom and Gomorrah. We make sense of it like that. It's stuff Jesus made up for a good cause at the time. Unless God is incompetent and callous.
God knows, and Abraham knows. I don’t. Why?
Bentley-Hart is quite conservative in an intellectual sort of way, and fairly conservative catholics like Robert Barron are very open to universalism.
I like your comments on this hymn by Fr Faber though it may have appealed more to those who toiled for long hours daily in unsalubrious and noisy conditions.
Yes, very likely. Quite a few hymns written during the Industrial Revolution were of the Pie In The Sky When You Die genre.
I dunno. It's the thought of the everlastingness of Heaven/Hell that puts me off...but those with more imagination (and/or hope) than I will take a different view.
Sigh. If Hell is God as experienced by the ungodly, and you choose to remain ungodly, you continue to experience God as Hell.
The universalists among us believe that everyone will, eventually, choose to accept and reciprocate God's love. Of course we can't know that. We most emphatically do NOT believe in annihilationism. The cessation of the hellishness of the presence of God for the ungodly can only occur if God saves them against their will. Which in our understanding he absolutely will not do.
Now to Scripture. Scripture can be used to prove, annihilationism, eternal damnation or universal salvation, depending on one's own preconceived belief. When Paul says that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6.23) or when John says that those who accept Jesus will not perish (John 3.16), we are perfectly entitled to take them at face value. Death is the natural end for us unless God chooses to resurrect us from it. The early Jews had little belief in an afterlife. "For in death there is no remembrance of you. In Sheol who can give you praise?" (Ps 6.5) Even in Christ's time the Sadduces didn't believe in resurrection. The Pharisees, who did, believed in a resurrection to a renewed earth, not a disembodied life in a heaven. There is little reason to believe that Paul had any concept of eternal damnation. Neither does it appear anywhere in John's gospel or letters. Most of the church's belief in it come from a few hard sayings in Matthew, to which I will return.
With the Scriptures in front of them, many of the Church Fathers were universalists. St Augustine who started out as a universalist turned passionately against it, but he wrote in Enchridion that "indeed very many" people in his day were universalists. The phrase is immo quam plurimi, which could be interpreted as a vast majority. The Italian scholar of Patristics, Ilaria Ramelli wrote, "The main Patristic supporters of the apokatastasis theory such as Bardaisan, Clement, Origen, Didymus, St Anthony, St Pamphilus Martyr, Methodius, St Gregory of Nyssa (and probably the two other Cappadocians), St Evagrus Ponticus, St John of Jerusalem, St Jerome, St Augustine (initially) Cassian, St Isaac of Nineveh, John Scottus Eriugena and many others grounded their Christian doctrine of apokatastasis first of all in the Bible.
So much of the early Church held a Scripturally based belief in universal salvation. St Augustine hated Greek so he only had his Latin translations to go on. Men such as Jerome, who was the foremost Hebrew and Greek scholar of his generation, or Eriugena, who translated much from Greek were perhaps closer to the original texts. I don't claim to know any Koine Greek, but I've seem and read of translations such as Young's Literal Translation, which translates what we have as eternal punishment as age-enduring correction. This makes an enormous difference to its meaning. I have little doubt that many people die in a hellish state and many find themselves in outer darkness and pain, allowing that such descriptions are metaphorical. It's said that Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 45 million people. Perhaps he has to suffer the punishment of every one of those deaths, but it doesn't mean he couldn't be cleansed of all his wrongdoings.
There's also a difference between eternal punishment and eternal punishing. If someone is annihilated on death, he of she has received eternal punishment, because the chance to participate in God's Kingdom has been lost. If they suffer eternal conscious torment, they are receiving an infinite punishment for finite sin, because all human sin, however grave if finite. That is not justice, it's vindictiveness, and I don't believe in a God capable of doing that.So I don't believe, as some do, that God's justice demands eternal suffering.
Lastly there is the often used argument that free will is sacrosanct and that God can never compel us to accept Him. I agree that this is the strongest case against universal salvation. But it is no argument against conditional immortality. And there are possibilities here too. Calvinists believe in irresistible grace for the elect. I've already intimated that I find Calvinism to be a repugnant product of an evil mind. But if irresistible grace can exist, why not for all people if God loves us all. St Paul says that every knee shall bend and every tongue acknowledge God (Rom 14.11). For this reason I am a universalist. I can accept annihilationism as fulfilling the demands of a harsh and judging God, but I have more faith in His eternal love. If eternal damnation is true, I will surely be there, because I would never bend the knee to a Being who allows it.
@Bishops Finger assuming an "eternal" heaven is also by nature "infinite", provided I'm allowed to keep my curiosity and heaven is not like an endless church service that never reaches the tea and biscuit stage (remember when we had such a thing?), I reckon I'd be content and not too freaked out. Whereas Hell is by the most reliable fictional accounts boring beyond belief and endurance. Which is especially troubling if there is no way out and no end to it (or even if it's large enough to be as near to infinite as makes little practical difference).
Universalist Orthodox believe that the stubborn will be won over in the end. Pray so.
The next important statement is from the Apostles' Creed which says Jesus descended to hell (traditional interpretation) or he went to the places of the dead (a contemporary interpretation). This reflects the Petrine description. Contemporary theology says when Jesus went to the place of the dead, he did so to announce the victory over death, There is a saying, there is a hell, but it is empty.
The traditional interpretation of hell comes from the Greek realm of Hades, god of the underworld. As I understand it, there are five levels of the realm of Hades depending on how moral a person was when s/he was in life. When a person dies, they have to cross the river Styx. The crossing cost a small coin which was placed in the mouth of the dead by pious relatives--goes to the tradition of placing a coin over each of the eyes of the dead before burial.
Dante filled out the image of hell in his poem The Divine Comedy in which he travels through Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise.
My response to the original question, though, is there is a realm of the dead, but, thanks be to God, it is empty.
And I think that is by God's design, because he knows what lazy asses we are. If God had revealed to us that everyone would be saved in the end, wouldn't we just sit our butts down in front of the computer and forget about sharing the Good News of Jesus at all? In spite of the fact that our neighbor may be in a living hell right now, and need Christ desperately (not to mention whatever care we can provide personally). "Oh, who cares about the Vietnamese.... they'll make it to the kingdom some day!" Meh.
As usual, almost no one is prepared to do a full traditional defence of the justness, and righteousness of eternal torment of sinners, willingly and deliberately inflicted on them by God the perfect judge. Mostly people who defend any sort of post-mortem unpleasantness implicitly concede the unjustness of it by attempting to absolve God of blame - it is us locking the door from the inside, don't you know.
But at the same time, few are prepared to openly proclaim God's universal redemption and salvation of all, and I think this stems in a sense from the same root. We are reluctant (unable?) to concede that we are not ourselves in control. We hold tightly to the claim that our immediate day to day choices, here in this messy incarnated fallen world, or in some new world to come, will in the End be the deciding factor. That we will choose our fate.
But I suspect we are, like Paul on the road to Damascus, in the hands of a living God.
But this has long struck me as akin to "I had to convert and go to church and pray and all that -- why should they get off so easy? Look how hard I've worked!"
What I mean is analogous to having a class know ahead of time that they'll have an open book test. Fine, say all the lazy bums; I don't have to study, and I won't (even though their whole purpose for being there is to get some good stuff into those heads and learn how to work with it there, and NOT to simply pass a test.) I was in an Old English class like that, where the professor downright discouraged (almost forbade!) students from memorizing vocabulary. "After all, you will always have a glossary. There's no risk of being caught without one." Wanna guess how much value I retain from that class?
Now God does appeal to us to tell others about Jesus for the right motives--love your neighbor and all that. But he's not above using a drop or two of the lower motivations (which as every parent knows are sometimes the only thing that kicks a kid into motion)--namely, here, our uncertainty about what would happen if we didn't do as we're told. Are we ignominious wretches, then, for telling our neighbors about Jesus because we (maybe) have a faint, nagging fear that they might go to hell if we don't? Well, yes. We ought to do it for pure love. But being what we are, we sometimes need more of a kick in the pants than that. And uncertainty supplies that kick.
This of course just my speculation on how universalism MIGHT be true, but God wouldn't tell us if it is. Knowing me, I wouldn't tell me either.
This implies both retributive justice and annihilation.
No, but he talks a lot about the wrath of God and has the vases "destined for destruction".
I think a motivation for evangelism that stems from a fear we personally are responsible for other people potentially going to Hell is a pretty poor one, and it doesn't add up with how I understand God to motivate us.
Like I say, even if everybody is saved in the end, there is nevertheless motivation in the idea that it would be better for those around us to follow Christ starting now. I want people to follow Christ because I believe in the truth of the Gospel (Christ is risen) and think it's immeasurably more fulfilling to follow Christ than do anything else do with one's life - not out of fear of them going to Hell on my account. I might not coerce so many people into conversion that way, but not evangelising from a place of fear or guilt might I think be more effective in the long run.
In short, if a belief in "traditional" Hell is only due to the need for a motivation for evangelism, then I think deconstructing that belief is definitely in order.
@Lamb Chopped, @Raptor Eye, let me try and articulate why I don't think it does.
It all hinges around whether there is scope for change after the Judgement.
If there is scope for change on the part of the damned, then some sort of afterlife dimension (traditionally portrayed as a duration) is required for that change to come about. Even if it's really really "long", I find that intellectually tolerable if there is ultimately a way out, because that dimension can ultimately pale into insignificance beside the "solidity" (hat-tip to CS Lewis) of Heaven.
If, on the other hand, there is no scope for change on the part of the damned and the judgement is "permanent" or "final" rather than "eternal", then no afterlife dimension is required for the purposes of changing. So any talk of "final" or "permanent" judgement sounds suspiciously like annihilationalism to me.
If in this scenario annihilation is ruled out, any ongoing consciousness, whatever dimension is used to describe it, appears pointless unless God is perversely vindictive. I know of many inmate sentencing plans that appear to be wholly and gratuitously vindictive and they are quite hellish enough without extending infinitely. I find it hard to conceive of God being like that.
No-one here is particularly interested in defending the indefensible.
Those who believe it ought to at least try.
And I discover John Bunyan said much the same:
I think these perspectives mesh well with the parable of the eleventh-hour workers in the vineyard @mousethief alluded to upthread.
My non-Hell-inspired motivation for living the Christian life now is to make that vessel as big as I can.
It is interesting though how a position which was standard became indefensible. Clearly for many Christians historically this position wasn't indefensible but irrefutable, and not just ill educated fundamentalists but the Augustines, Aquinases (Aquinii?), Anslems etc. In fact it is hard to find anyone between, say, Origen and James Relly who wouldn't have supported this indefensible view.
My suggestion: our society's rejection of the idea of hell is based on our belief in our own individual sovereignty. So the traditional theological concept of hell diminished with the rise of individualism in the 19th Century, and survives only in a pale version of itself.
That's all well and good and, to an extent I don't disagree. Sin remains the problem .. if I am happy with the small vessel now then there's a distinct lack of justice in that I get to enjoy God much the same as someone who his ding his utmost to make the vessel as big as possible.
I also don't get this idea of "capacity" when it comes to enjoying God. With God there are no half measures, only fullness.
Perhaps the modern view of hell owes more than a little to the postmodern worldview of distrusting propositional statements alongside a belief that there's no "wrong. " Justice sits very uncomfortably with the inherent tenets of postmodernism (what is there to judge, who can do it) and so "hell" as a concept, or reality, is tough to engage with.
I think the problem with the Orthodox idea that God refuses to save us against our will is that our will is what we need saving from.
People in the past thought torture, painful public executions for petty crime and flogging were fine as well. I don't pretend to try to get into their minds.
I can only speak for what I can understand. My experience has been that people's ability to accept the nastier versions of Hell is inversely related to how many of those closest to them would end up there. In a society where conformity to a religious belief is the norm, and one's relatives and friends adhere to the same belief, it's easier to be accepting of a terrible fate for those outside as they're other and unknown and one can make oneself believe they "deserve" it.
Nowadays everyone has friends and family members who don't or can't believe and whom it's blatantly clear don't deserve eternal torment. Once that is acknowledged, the question "does anyone deserve eternal torment, when you think about it?" is just around the corner.
Don't we sort of have to, if we're going to be part of a religion grounded in 3,000 or so years of theological discussion?
There is probably something in this, but on the other hand I suspect that people have always had loved ones in their lives who they would not wish to see in Hell. Also the decline of Hell theologically seems to me to be clearly 19C with the rise of Victorian moral individualism. Basically this societal change raised your point above - if every individual is of supreme moral importance, how can the eternal torment or destruction of that individual be morally justified?
quetzalcoatl's "abatement of secular punishment" I would put contemporaneously with that, and arising from the same impulse.
You can also see it in the change of justifications for Universalism - before that period you have Universalist theologies built on Calvinism (some of which ended up as the Universalist Church of America) with the alternative being New England Unitarianism. The saying was that "Unitarians thought they were too good for God to damn, and Universalists thought that God was too good to damn them". There was a class angle too - Unitarians (too good to damn) were generally higher class and more educated than Universalists.
Read Edwards again. All are full, but how deep that fullness is depends on the size of the vessel.
All saved no matter who does have problems outside of theological argument. If there is no line in the sand the Hitlers, and Bin Ladens of the world are in heaven. Many people find that difficult. How can someone who has acted so awful not be in Hell
One of the problems with a binary Heaven that's unspeakably good and a Hell that's unspeakably bad is that actual real people are neither of these so actually *deserve* neither. And we can I think cope with getting better than we deserve rather better than we can getting worse. This is perhaps one reason we have a presumption of innocence in our judicial system.
I actually have a bigger problem with Hitler or Bin Laden being in an eternal Hell of conscious suffering than I do them being in a Heaven of conscious bliss.
Conservative Chrisianity still has this eternal Hell for being a bit grumpy one morning fundamental injustice problem.
My response would be that this depends on your understanding of what sin is. If one's view of sin is that it's a list of wrong actions which need sorting out, then you may have a point (though I'm not sure what you fully mean by whether sin matters or not).
Or...
To see sin as a fundamental brokenness in the human condition which causes suffering to people, breaks relationships, brings injustices, damages communities and creation, brings hurt and shame and insecurity...
And to realise that bringing healing to that means a lot more than a simple transaction ticking off all the wrongdoings from a list - it involves healing alongside forgiveness, reassurance, discipline, accountability and love.
As @Martin54 said, we are all hybrids and we need all of these things. It is an unfortunate thing that for so many people the gospel has been whittled down to a mere transactional removal of acts from a metaphorical Santa's naughty list.
It is God who is the judge,not we.
If Hitler repented truly then yes he is in heaven. My point was that the idea that all are saved is not acceptable to many people. Justice is also part of God’s personality.
I believe that So long as we accept Jesus as saviour then God’s justice on us is taken care of. If not then justice will be done.
Many people find it offensive that really nasty people will be in heaven.
Eternal torment is not justice. It cannot be.
If I shoot someone and not repentant the judge had guidelines to sentence me. If eternal torment is appropriate for what a person has done then that is the sentence. You will find very few people who would say that eternal torment is not justice for the pain and torment the likes of the Nazis put people through.
Really? You think that most people think that infinite punishment for a finite crime is justice?