A society built on punishment that exceeds the crime is not a just society.
A society where the perpetrators get to choose their punishment is not a just society.
That is not actually addressing anything anyone has said nor is it rebutting a position anyone has advocated.
Who gets to decide whether the punishment exceeds the crime? If the entire population is guilty, as is the case with the debt of sin, then the only way of reaching a just decision is with reference to another authority.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
The number of people on these forums experiencing a strong, enduring emotional reaction and resistance to the idea of hell suggests this is simply not the case. People's fears are oft rooted in their beliefs. 2000 years of Church history illustrates what a fear of hell can achieve.
It seems it's important to you to believe that other people's responses are "emotional reaction and resistance" rather than rational or moral judgements.
Why can't it be a bit of both? Suggesting that our responses are either one or the other sounds like a false binary.
The term 'resistance' in particular has pejorative overtones. It makes your responses appear self-protective rather than respectful.
My understanding is that it can sometimes be seen as pejorative to suggest that people are resistant to new ideas (or other people's ideas). However, it isn't usually seen as controversial to suggest that resistance is a natural human response often rooted in fear or uncertainty. The issue being addressed here is the question of how long people can fear something, in which regard it seems entirely reasonable to consider how long people express negativity about the concept, and the nature of that negativity.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
If God watched the way my friends in undergrad made jokes about Chick Tracts, God would certainly understand. And that is one way of coping with Hell.
The notion is so ridiculously depicted that it becomes an existential punchline. It's a bit like how people deal with any other kind of tyrant, you either cower in terror or you laugh uproariously because the whole premise is - literally - absurd. You're punishing me for not worshiping you? And you call this love? WTF, dude...
Pain compliance is unethical. Full stop. If your rule depends fundamentally on that, you have no business being in charge.
I think this is a fairly modern take, though. In the past maybe it felt right to completely erase bad things.
For example let's say a village was known to be infected with the plague. Cutting them off and burning everything to the ground seemed like a sensible (if not scientifically effective) precaution.
It's a bit circular but if people don't know things it isn't unreasonable for them to act as if they don't know things.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
If God watched the way my friends in undergrad made jokes about Chick Tracts, God would certainly understand. And that is one way of coping with Hell.
The notion is so ridiculously depicted that it becomes an existential punchline. It's a bit like how people deal with any other kind of tyrant, you either cower in terror or you laugh uproariously because the whole premise is - literally - absurd. You're punishing me for not worshiping you? And you call this love? WTF, dude...
Pain compliance is unethical. Full stop. If your rule depends fundamentally on that, you have no business being in charge.
Of course. I would do the same if I believed in that sort of God. It's one reason why I think the deterrent effect is very over-rated.
Can we also talk about the negative effects of teaching about Hell?
Case in point - Smyth. The Inquisitors. Burning Heretics. Crusades. Forced conversions.
There is a catalogue of cruelty down the ages which has been justified in the minds of those inflicting it that they were saving their victims, or at least others who might listen to their victims' "heresy", from a worse fate - eternal torment in Hell.
I don't think it's reasonable to talk about potential benefits of Hell as a deterrent without talking about its other, more questionable, social effects.
If Jesus' message was intended to transform society, which I think it was, one issue is the ways in which it has transformed society, and how society has reacted to this transformation. What we (most of us here) are dealing with today is the message of Jesus in societies that have already been transformed by the message of Jesus and, chronologically, I think that starts being the case well before the historical events that are mentioned above.
I think the abusive behaviours mentioned above only come to be done in, or by, societies whose members have, to a significant extent, internalised the existence of hell. Once hell is a thing to be feared, and becomes the thing feared over all other things, then “the only thing we have to fear is hell itself”, and all other fears become secondary.
However, rather importantly, the way in which Jesus' message is transformational is not primarily about fear. The primary transformational element of Jesus' message is love. Love takes precedence over fear:
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment [or torment]. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Putting this in terms of heaven and hell, I take it that saving people from hell is secondary to saving people for heaven. In contrast, it's long struck me that, for the majority of (evangelical) evangelists I've talked to about this, the primary motivation is not saving people for eternal life in heaven, but saving people from eternal torment in hell.
Even in good faith (ie leaving aside all the bad faith actors involved in the Church's activities over the past 2000 years), I can see how this attitude could inform and reflect an environment in which it would be possible to justify the behaviours described above. This isn't about cause and effect (ie which came first), it's about the significance of the messengers and the way in which the message that people hear can change.
If human free will led to sin, what is the guarantee it won't do so again in heaven?
I would suggest that free will can manifest in two ways. In this life, where good and bad exist beside each other in close proximity, both in our minds and in the world around us, free will naturally manifests as the freedom to make a choice between the two. But in the next life, where good and bad are separated to avoid conflict, free will naturally manifests as the freedom to experience whatever comes from fully embracing what we have chosen, unencumbered by all the obstacles and conflict we encounter in this life.
That free will allowed for sin in this world doesn't necessarily mean it allows for the same possibility in the next.
Aye, it depends on other factors. For free will to lead to sin requires the presence of temptation, which in heaven seems more than unlikely.
It’s being separated, not only from them, but from God and goodness and love, forever. Even if it’s by the offender’s own choice, that’s horrible. It makes any imagery of fire and worms and such minuscule by comparison. I’d rather have fire and the love of Jesus and others rather than luxury and isolation.
Someone (Lewis?) said that Hell is only Hell from the point of view of those outside it. I can see that.
The references to Lewis in this thread remind me that his views were significantly influenced by George MacDonald. MacDonald, however, was a notable believer in (patristic) universalism, a view not shared by Lewis. In The Great Divorce, the protagonist encounters George Macdonald:
‘In your own books, Sir,’ said I, ‘you were a Universalist. You talked as if all men would be saved. And St. Paul too.’
‘Ye can know nothing of the end of all things, or nothing expressible in those terms. It may be, as the Lord said to the Lady Julian, that all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of thing will be well. But it’s ill talking of such questions.’
If God watched the way my friends in undergrad made jokes about Chick Tracts, God would certainly understand. And that is one way of coping with Hell.
The notion is so ridiculously depicted that it becomes an existe of ntial punchline. It's a bit like how people deal with any other kind of tyrant, you either cower in terror or you laugh uproariously because the whole premise is - literally - absurd. You're punishing me for not worshiping you? And you call this love? WTF, dude...
Pain compliance is unethical. Full stop. If your rule depends fundamentally on that, you have no business being in charge.
What about punishment - is completely painless punishment possible?
Neither George MacDonald nor C S Lewis believed in a punitive God, but they both saw God's purpose in human suffering, in Lewis' case, here on earth. From The Problem with Pain:
If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.
…
God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world ... No doubt Pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument: it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment.
There's one issue in connection with the question of hell that this thread hasn't touched on, and I'm curious how the Biblical literalists deal with it, and that's the question of infant damnation. This holds interest for me because I have a very dear friend who started life as a self described pious Catholic alter boy, and has ended up now in his 70s as a total atheist.
The issue that was the final blow to his theism was when, in his college days, one of those Campus Crusade for Christ guys tried to recruit him, and it came out that, yes, the logical outgrowth of his faith was that unbaptized infants and children were in hell. This was such anathema to him that he chucked the whole thing.
So I am curious about how this plays out in the faith of the literalists about hell who have been posting here. I know the Catholic church came up with Limbo to explain this, but have since discarded that. So what's the answer?
There's no reason to think infants and children who are unbaptized go to hell. That's ridiculous, when the verse usually cited (from Mark 16) very carefully avoids saying anything of the sort--"He who believes and is baptized shall be saved but he who does not believe is condemned". Note it does NOT say "He who is not baptized," even though that would be the expected ending to such a sentence beginning. It is deliberately left out. Then there is of course the example of the thief on the cross who was presumably un baptized, and Paul's mysterious words "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive" -- in both instances the qualifier for death / resurrection is simply being a human being. Being human means being part of the "all" who are in Adam and side as a result; but that same "all " gets made alive "in Christ" . And just as infants are not exempt from death, neither are they exempt from resurrection. The same holds true for the severely disabled, both physically and mentally, and for the permanently unconscious. If you are human enough to die, you're human enough to be saved. And the way Paul phrases it suggests that life is an opt-out situation--those who choose to reject Christ certainly may, but those incapable of choice get life. Jesus seems to confirm this when he describes little children as "these little ones who believe in me" even though the child was small enough for Jesus to hold in his arms.
All of this (waves hands) has the further advantage of explaining w where the huge innumerable crowds of people around God's throne in the book of Revelation come from. Because most of the human race has always died before age five, many before birth. If I'm right, these who are too young to refuse him will be saved , as well as those who can't refuse due to other problem like disability. Because we need to remember: God WANTS as many as possible to be saved, his bias is in favor of saving, and he is not anal or a victim of scrupulosity. Nothing will stop him from saving but our own ongoing permanent refusal, chosen with our eyes open. He really does want us.
For some of my teenage years I went to an FIEC* church where the pastor ,in his evangelistic preaching, would point with one hand up towards heaven and downwards with his other hand to a "Christless eternity". The gospel message had an urgency about it and was intended to be seriously thought-provoking.
Since I've been in the warm fuzz of a suburban C of E church I don't think I've ever heard any preaching that has addressed the possibility of 'Hell' or anything like it. And I'd be gob-smacked if I did hear such preaching. As a consequence I think the 'Gospel message' is 'weaker' and I'm not sure what I think about that.
*Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches -whose Doctrinal Basis includes "After His return in glory.. Christ will judge the world... The wicked will be sent to eternal punishment".
I think there's a difference between "pain compliance" and "suffering that is intrinsic to change." Appropriate discipline may involve discomfort, certainly, but that's not the same thing as saying something akin to "You must obey me merely because I have the ability to hurt you."
And in my opinion, Hell is not a place of punishment, because the purpose of punishment is transformation. You "punish" someone to change their behavior. By the time the soul is in Hell, according to most models, there is no hope for change. Transformative change is for Purgatory, or for being alive.
For some of my teenage years I went to an FIEC* church where the pastor ,in his evangelistic preaching, would point with one hand up towards heaven and downwards with his other hand to a "Christless eternity". The gospel message had an urgency about it and was intended to be seriously thought-provoking.
Since I've been in the warm fuzz of a suburban C of E church I don't think I've ever heard any preaching that has addressed the possibility of 'Hell' or anything like it. And I'd be gob-smacked if I did hear such preaching. As a consequence I think the 'Gospel message' is 'weaker' and I'm not sure what I think about that.
I would see it as the other way around, I think. What you describe from your youth strikes me not so much as “intended to be seriously thought-provoking” as it does as intended to be fear-provoking. It has always struck my as a very impoverished and skewed Gospel message, focused as it is almost completely on what happens to an individual—i.e., me—after death.
You know there's an awful lot of literalists who would disagree with you, LC. But I like your take on it.
I'd like to hear them try to support their view from scripture, then! Because the poorly educated we have with us always, and sheer numbers don't make them right.
Thing is, @Lamb Chopped they will state their case from scripture, just as you have done.
They wouldn't accept your 'take' on these things anymore than you would accept theirs.
We have to ground our arguments in scripture of course but a sword-fight with Bible verses rarely yields any positive result - as I so often found in debates with Jehovah's Witnesses and so on.
A debate with a liberalism (and there aren't just Protestant ones of course) will almost invariably end up with stacking up a barricade of proof-texts on either side.
What we need, of course, are cases made on the whole tenor of scripture - as you were doing in your post - and the heft and balance of tradition/Tradition.
That applies whether we go in for Holy Tradition on a macro-level as it were, or small t tradition at a 'localised' level.
I can see where @Merry Vole is coming from in expressing concern about 'weakening' the Gospel if we don't introduce a whiff of sulphur. Thing is, if we take any tradition or tendency seriously within Christianity as a whole, be it a liberal or conservative stance or all stations in between, it's going to make demands on us.
Or should do.
Comfy, cosy, suburban Christianity - what C S Lewis called 'milk and water Christianity' - isn't confined to particular churches or denominations.
Such places can also be Zoars and havens for those battered and bruised in abusive or more full-on settings.
Equally, we can find individuals quietly living out exemplary Christian lives anywhere and everywhere.
I believe there should certainly be some challenge and 'bite' to the way we present the Gospel (although embodying it is better than simply presenting it of course). But I agree with @Nick Tamen that 'turn or burn' isn't the smartest way to proceed.
However we understand these things the biggest challenge is to be as Christ to those around us. He is the Gospel. He is the Good News. The Orient from on high to use a seasonal Orthodox expression.
Sure, propositions and stating cases, deploying and applying scripture is all part of that- and part of what we all do here.
I have no idea how we work all these things out but follow we must.
@NicoleMR: about five hundred years ago, Martin Luther wrote in pastoral concern to those fearful of hell when unbaptized infants died: "As to what becomes of the souls of unbaptized infants, we commend them to the mercy of God."
Luther had a very high opinion of Baptism and the necessity of it, but that did not preclude the active grace of God.
For some of my teenage years I went to an FIEC* church where the pastor ,in his evangelistic preaching, would point with one hand up towards heaven and downwards with his other hand to a "Christless eternity". The gospel message had an urgency about it and was intended to be seriously thought-provoking.
Since I've been in the warm fuzz of a suburban C of E church I don't think I've ever heard any preaching that has addressed the possibility of 'Hell' or anything like it. And I'd be gob-smacked if I did hear such preaching. As a consequence I think the 'Gospel message' is 'weaker' and I'm not sure what I think about that.
I would see it as the other way around, I think. What you describe from your youth strikes me not so much as “intended to be seriously thought-provoking” as it does as intended to be fear-provoking. It has always struck my as a very impoverished and skewed Gospel message, focused as it is almost completely on what happens to an individual—i.e., me—after death.
I'm glad you highlight that because there's an element here that always bothers me. So much talk about Hell, about accepting Jesus and "being saved" and all that - well, many years ago my father was a County Councillor. This was during the Cold War. He was therefore entitled to a place in the local authority's fall-out shelter, should the worst befall. He refused it if there was no place also there for us, his family.
Much of the talk I've heard over the years is individually oriented to the point that you can have heaven, you can have salvation, as long as you're self-centered enough to not care that those you claim to love are, while you're enjoying heaven, enduring indescribable suffering in Hell. This is what I mean when I say that if Hell exists, there is no Heaven, not for those (ie all of us bar psychopaths) who care about the fates, lives and sufferings of others.
This morning I have been visiting a volcanic area to look at geysers and mud pools. The relevance is that there's a smell of sulphur in the air around the town and even when you turn the taps on to run a bath.
I don't think the local people here associate it with damnation though.
So much talk about Hell, about accepting Jesus and "being saved" and all that... <snip> Much of the talk I've heard over the years...
No. Much of the talk you've paid attention to over the years has focused on these things. You have also heard many Shipmates talk about a God of mercy in Jesus Christ, but you do not seem to hear them. You want to debate the points of view of a certain kind of fear-based, hell-focused Evangelical, but there do not seem to be many of them on the decks here. That means that no one is in a position to deal with those points of view. All anyone else can do is say, "That's not what I believe," and watch as you continue to shadowbox.
I think you have been spiritually abused, and I do not know how to heal it. I'm helpless to know how to help you. Continuing to proclaim a God of mercy revealed in Jesus Christ does not seem to get through. The decades you have spent discussing this on the Ship do not seem to have made progress in your healing. I genuinely want you to experience a faith that gives you peace.
Ironically, although that was personal post, it did not seem suited to Hell.
If someone has had an experience in life, that's clearly their experience. Maybe there are other people alive who don't match the experience but if the experience is overwhelmingly one thing and not at all the other, then that's their experience.
And as an aside, I have recently experienced street preachers who are very much preaching about hell as a place for the damned. And that anyone listening who is not saved is damned.
I don't commonly listen to street preachers but I have yet to overhear one with a different message, although maybe the other one doesn't work so well in street preaching.
I think there is a place for 'other' types of street preaching but unfortunately the fire and brimstone brigade seem to have cornered the market ...
I'm often struck by the Apostle Paul's approach with the Athenians. He didn't denounce them as a bunch of wretched hell-bound sinners but pitched his message in a contextual way.
@KarlLB - it's none of my business and you can tell me to sling my hook - or go to Hell - but I humbly submit you'd do well to take heed of @Leaf. For your soul's sake.
No.
It is sadly inappropriate to for @Leaf to write of his own despair at the ship's or Leaf's perceived lack of success, as though it did not meet a KPI, for a matter that seems more suited to epiphanies, if responded to at all in that way in a forum.
This is no place to counsel, and certainly not to imagine that counselling should be initiated.
The history does seem to conform to that trite definition of madness.
@Leaf - if a bottle is labelled orange juice but the contents are red and taste of Tabasco, does it contain fruit juice or chilli sauce?
People can describe God as merciful and loving as much as they like, but if he still torments people in Hell for eternity, then the contents don't match the description.
So much talk about Hell, about accepting Jesus and "being saved" and all that... <snip> Much of the talk I've heard over the years...
You have also heard many Shipmates talk about a God of mercy in Jesus Christ, but you do not seem to hear them.
That's all very well, but the question is the logical question of whether a God of mercy in Jesus Christ would allow or institute Hell; not whether the emphasis of the preaching is on the carrot of salvation or the stick of Hell. It remains difficult to see how a sovereign God of love is compatible the existence of (unending) Hell at all - and I think impossible to see how a God of love and justice is compatible with unending punishment - and the logical difficulty remains even if all the preachers there are concentrate their preaching entirely on the offer of salvation.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am a universalist; furthermore it seems to me difficult to get anything other than universalism out of Paul's epistles without interpretive gymnastics.
@Leaf - if a bottle is labelled orange juice but the contents are red and taste of Tabasco, does it contain fruit juice or chilli sauce?
People can describe God as merciful and loving as much as they like, but if he still torments people in Hell for eternity, then the contents don't match the description.
What about those who have rejected God and continue to reject God after death?
@Leaf - if a bottle is labelled orange juice but the contents are red and taste of Tabasco, does it contain fruit juice or chilli sauce?
People can describe God as merciful and loving as much as they like, but if he still torments people in Hell for eternity, then the contents don't match the description.
What about those who have rejected God and continue to reject God after death?
Why do they need to be tortured? And what does "rejecting God" mean if he's stood there in front of you?
And what does "rejecting God" mean if he's stood there in front of you?
I would take it to mean the same as it would mean for a person standing in front of you—basically some form of saying “I want nothing to do with you.”
Which has never seemed to be the salient issue to me. Everyone I know has always either believed in and accepted God, or not believed he exists so it's a meaningless concept. Or somewhere in between.
I have never met anyone who believes God exists but wants nothing to do with him. Sure, such people may exist; it's not logically impossible. But I don't think it's really the issue here. I think it's a red herring.
And what does "rejecting God" mean if he's stood there in front of you?
I would take it to mean the same as it would mean for a person standing in front of you—basically some form of saying “I want nothing to do with you.”
Which has never seemed to be the salient issue to me. Everyone I know has always either believed in and accepted God, or not believed he exists so it's a meaningless concept. Or somewhere in between.
I have never met anyone who believes God exists but wants nothing to do with him. Sure, such people may exist; it's not logically impossible. But I don't think it's really the issue here. I think it's a red herring.
There are maybe those who's tragic life experiences have made them reject God because they blame him. My comment was hardly a red herring.
And what does "rejecting God" mean if he's stood there in front of you?
I would take it to mean the same as it would mean for a person standing in front of you—basically some form of saying “I want nothing to do with you.”
Which has never seemed to be the salient issue to me. Everyone I know has always either believed in and accepted God, or not believed he exists so it's a meaningless concept. Or somewhere in between.
I have never met anyone who believes God exists but wants nothing to do with him. Sure, such people may exist; it's not logically impossible. But I don't think it's really the issue here. I think it's a red herring.
Why is it a red herring? It seems like the issue to me.
I did say “basically some form of saying ‘I want nothing to do with you,’” and intended for that to be a very broad, very generalized umbrella, not just those specific words or synonyms for them.
The story of the so-called “rich young ruler” or “rich young man” (Matthew, Mark, Luke) seems apt to me. The young man/ruler seems to want to follow Jesus, or at least acknowledges Jesus as a “good teacher.” But when he learns what it will cost him to follow Jesus, he walks away.
So, to put “want nothing to do with him” another way, it’s not that hard for me to imagine someone before whom God is standing to say “Yeah, no thanks, I’d rather do things my way and be the boss of my life.” I mean, I’ve seen plenty of people who claim to believe in God do that. I’ve done it from time to time myself.
It remains difficult to see how a sovereign God of love is compatible the existence of (unending) Hell at all - and I think impossible to see how a God of love and justice is compatible with unending punishment - and the logical difficulty remains even if all the preachers there are concentrate their preaching entirely on the offer of salvation.
I'd like to focus on a couple of words in this: sovereign and punishment.
A sovereign God is free to do whatever the hell (sorry) God wants, including choosing to establish Hell. God also chooses to communicate God's will to mercy, in Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit. Mercy is God's prime directive, so to speak.
I can believe a thing exists, and also that that thing has never been used and may never be used. I can believe a fall-out shelter exists and also that it has never been entered for its intended purpose, and may never be used as such. I do not know whether Hell has been entered or not, or may ever be.
I'll try to express my thoughts on this, and likely fail, as I really don't think about Hell at all. It's like a person in a healthy married relationship doesn't think about divorce, other than recognizing its existence and recognizing a possibility of entering that state, but really not living in existential fear of it. I don't fear Hell, not because I'm so good (ha!) but because I believe God is so good! Trusting in that mercy so far eclipses the fear of Hell that it's not on my functional spiritual horizon.
I think punishment and healing may be two sides of the same coin, or two interpretations of an experience, from a human point of view. Another quote from The Blessed Clive, about the un-dragoning of Eustace from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away...
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious."
Eustace suffered pain in this process. Was he being punished for being a greedy dragon? Was he being healed of his dragonish tendencies, and restored to his rightful self? These are two interpretations of the same experience.
In my view, pain suffered in the afterlife is determined by the will of the person to 'hang on' to their dragon scales. The pain of removal is temporary, redemptive, and directed toward transformation.
…If you are human enough to die, you're human enough to be saved. And the way Paul phrases it suggests that life is an opt-out situation--those who choose to reject Christ certainly may, but those incapable of choice get life. Jesus seems to confirm this when he describes little children as "these little ones who believe in me" even though the child was small enough for Jesus to hold in his arms.
All of this (waves hands) has the further advantage of explaining w where the huge innumerable crowds of people around God's throne in the book of Revelation come from. Because most of the human race has always died before age five, many before birth. If I'm right, these who are too young to refuse him will be saved , as well as those who can't refuse due to other problem like disability. Because we need to remember: God WANTS as many as possible to be saved, his bias is in favor of saving, and he is not anal or a victim of scrupulosity. Nothing will stop him from saving but our own ongoing permanent refusal, chosen with our eyes open. He really does want us.
What occurs to me now, thinking about this question, is that that the younger we are, the easier it is to be saved - the simpler it is to accept salvation (and similarly for the others you mention). The younger we are, the less stuff there is getting in the way between us and God until, going backwards through our lives (as it were), each of us reaches a point in our lives where there's no stuff at all.
I think that this can also be couched in terms of debt. It isn't the sinful nature that creates the debt, it's the sin. At some point in our lives as very young, small people, sufficient self-awareness developed for the first, small, debt to be incurred.
I'm not currently sure how this all holds together. Maybe, if we're unable to articulate anything or even conceive anything about ourselves, all that it takes is for God to reach out to us and for us to reach back.
What occurs to me now, thinking about this question, is that that the younger we are, the easier it is to be saved - the simpler it is to accept salvation (and similarly for the others you mention).
I don’t know. Children can be very selfish and self-centered (and understandably so).
But then, the whole framework of “the easier it is to be saved,” apparently based on a specific decision we make at a specific time in life, is totally foreign to me.
It remains difficult to see how a sovereign God of love is compatible the existence of (unending) Hell at all - and I think impossible to see how a God of love and justice is compatible with unending punishment - and the logical difficulty remains even if all the preachers there are concentrate their preaching entirely on the offer of salvation.
I'd like to focus on a couple of words in this: sovereign and punishment.
A sovereign God is free to do whatever the hell (sorry) God wants, including choosing to establish Hell. God also chooses to communicate God's will to mercy, in Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit. Mercy is God's prime directive, so to speak.
I can believe a thing exists, and also that that thing has never been used and may never be used. I can believe a fall-out shelter exists and also that it has never been entered for its intended purpose, and may never be used as such. I do not know whether Hell has been entered or not, or may ever be.
I'll try to express my thoughts on this, and likely fail, as I really don't think about Hell at all. It's like a person in a healthy married relationship doesn't think about divorce, other than recognizing its existence and recognizing a possibility of entering that state, but really not living in existential fear of it. I don't fear Hell, not because I'm so good (ha!) but because I believe God is so good! Trusting in that mercy so far eclipses the fear of Hell that it's not on my functional spiritual horizon.
I think punishment and healing may be two sides of the same coin, or two interpretations of an experience, from a human point of view. Another quote from The Blessed Clive, about the un-dragoning of Eustace from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away...
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious."
Eustace suffered pain in this process. Was he being punished for being a greedy dragon? Was he being healed of his dragonish tendencies, and restored to his rightful self? These are two interpretations of the same experience.
In my view, pain suffered in the afterlife is determined by the will of the person to 'hang on' to their dragon scales. The pain of removal is temporary, redemptive, and directed toward transformation.
That sounds rather like Purgatory, not Hell.
Incidentally, why would you imagine that happily married people have no fear of divorce?
I do not really see a substantive difference between a) qualifying the afterlife teaching until it becomes something you can stomach and b) making up your own afterlife.
A bunch of people had non-standard beliefs about the afterlife. Ok, so what? Either you choose their explanation or you choose some other one. There's no "there" there.
What occurs to me now, thinking about this question, is that that the younger we are, the easier it is to be saved - the simpler it is to accept salvation (and similarly for the others you mention).
I don’t know. Children can be very selfish and self-centered (and understandably so).
But then, the whole framework of “the easier it is to be saved,” apparently based on a specific decision we make at a specific time in life, is totally foreign to me.
This has me thinking about the varying concepts we might have in mind when talking about salvation, or being saved.
As I wrote above,
I think that this can also be couched in terms of debt. It isn't the sinful nature that creates the debt, it's the sin. At some point in our lives as very young, small people, sufficient self-awareness developed for the first, small, debt to be incurred.
One point that arises from sin being debt is that debt is cumulative, so whatever debt we start to incur when young is only added to as we get older. Once we start becoming selfish and self-centred, just how selfish and self-centred we are at any stage in life isn't relevant to our state of being debtors, people in debt to God.
One aspect of salvation is redemption (possibly the main one as far as some Christians are concerned). As this a word that comes from debt management, we know what it means in relation to debt, and it means that the obligation is satisfied, the price is paid. In relation to our debt of sin, it doesn't seem unreasonable to understand this as being a one-off event that covers our entire lifetime.
However, our sinful nature continues. We continue to sin. The effects of sin, on us and other people, continue. As Christians, we forgive other people (their debts to us) because God has forgiven us (our debt to God). Salvation in the sense of being the work of being saved from our sinful nature, and its consequences, invariably continues for the rest of our mortal lives.
"As Christians, we forgive other people (their debts to us) because God has forgiven us (our debt to God)." Its worth pointing out that the Lord's prayer has the cause and effect the other way round - forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those ..... etc.
What occurs to me now, thinking about this question, is that that the younger we are, the easier it is to be saved - the simpler it is to accept salvation (and similarly for the others you mention).
I don’t know. Children can be very selfish and self-centered (and understandably so).
But then, the whole framework of “the easier it is to be saved,” apparently based on a specific decision we make at a specific time in life, is totally foreign to me.
This has me thinking about the varying concepts we might have in mind when talking about salvation, or being saved.
Well, that is what I was getting at. If we assume when discussing Hell that we all have the same concept(s) of salvation in mind, we’re likely to end up talking past one another.
"As Christians, we forgive other people (their debts to us) because God has forgiven us (our debt to God)." Its worth pointing out that the Lord's prayer has the cause and effect the other way round - forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those ..... etc.
Interesting point. I don't think I've ever read the "as" in the Lord's prayer as implying causality - I've always read it and spoken it as meaning "in the same way that". If there's any causality, I think its more likely to be the other way round, or maybe it's more complex than that.
In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the master first forgives the large debt of the servant. The servant then refuses to forgive the much smaller debt of a fellow servant, and has him thrown in prison. This causes the master to change his mind, and instead of carrying out his previous plan to sell the servant and his family to recover the debt, the unforgiving servant is also thrown into prison, and tormented to boot.
The causality and chronology of debt seem fairly straightforward, the causality and chronology of forgiveness, less so.
I s'pose I was bound to say this sooner or later as an Orthodox Christian convert, but much of this debate sounds very 'western' to me.
Of course concepts like 'debt', 'ransom' and 'redemption' are core scriptural concepts when it comes to soteriology and I'm completely comfortable with all of that.
It can all get rather too juridical and transactional though, if we aren't careful.
I'm not by any means suggesting that those deploying such imagery here are doing so at the expense of other thoroughly scriptural concepts we might consider in relation to these things.
Hell itself is a biblical concept. Our Lord Himself alludes to it in very striking and scary terms. Losing limbs rather than face the prospect etc.
The issue, of course, is how to understand these references. Hyperbolically? Metaphorically? Literally?
I would say this, wouldn't I, but the Orthodox concept that 'Hell' is the flipside of God's fiery love - 'our God is a consuming fire' - does 'appeal' to me on various levels. It's still a scorcher as it were but not a Dantesque 'place' with demons torturing people for eternity.
Heck, it's not at all clear that Dante himself understood it in such literal terms.
I'm still with @Leaf on this one. Even if we take a very traditional view of Hell, as @Lamb Chopped appears to, it doesn't mean that we have to envisage infants broiling there or our 'unsaved' relatives roasting for eternity.
Just because some people take a very 'reductionist' approach to these things doesn't mean we have to. An RC priest once observed to me that we don't know where The Rich Young Ruler was on the day of Pentecost. He could have been among the 3,000 as far as we know.
Even if he wasn't we don't know what happened to him eventually - although I wouldn't be surprised if there was some tradition or other about that - and we don't really need to know either to get the point Christ, as quoted by the Gospel writers, was making.
I pray for the departed, something Shipmates from other Christian traditions don't. I find that helps. Other people have their own approaches commensurate with their own traditions and understandings.
Hell and the after-life isn't the only area where we have to juggle or reconcile difficult or apparently contradictory concepts.
I'm not sure what a very traditional view of hell is--I'd be more comfortable if you'd described it as scriptural--but let that go. Except to stipulate that I absolutely do not agree with the popular view that he's the devils in charge of hell (usually roasting people!) nor with the idea that infants and others incapable of choice get sent to hell, whether baptized or not. IMHO those are popular distortions of Scripture and Christian doctrine.
Comments
Why can't it be a bit of both? Suggesting that our responses are either one or the other sounds like a false binary.
My understanding is that it can sometimes be seen as pejorative to suggest that people are resistant to new ideas (or other people's ideas). However, it isn't usually seen as controversial to suggest that resistance is a natural human response often rooted in fear or uncertainty. The issue being addressed here is the question of how long people can fear something, in which regard it seems entirely reasonable to consider how long people express negativity about the concept, and the nature of that negativity.
If God watched the way my friends in undergrad made jokes about Chick Tracts, God would certainly understand. And that is one way of coping with Hell.
The notion is so ridiculously depicted that it becomes an existential punchline. It's a bit like how people deal with any other kind of tyrant, you either cower in terror or you laugh uproariously because the whole premise is - literally - absurd. You're punishing me for not worshiping you? And you call this love? WTF, dude...
Pain compliance is unethical. Full stop. If your rule depends fundamentally on that, you have no business being in charge.
For example let's say a village was known to be infected with the plague. Cutting them off and burning everything to the ground seemed like a sensible (if not scientifically effective) precaution.
It's a bit circular but if people don't know things it isn't unreasonable for them to act as if they don't know things.
Of course. I would do the same if I believed in that sort of God. It's one reason why I think the deterrent effect is very over-rated.
I think the abusive behaviours mentioned above only come to be done in, or by, societies whose members have, to a significant extent, internalised the existence of hell. Once hell is a thing to be feared, and becomes the thing feared over all other things, then “the only thing we have to fear is hell itself”, and all other fears become secondary.
However, rather importantly, the way in which Jesus' message is transformational is not primarily about fear. The primary transformational element of Jesus' message is love. Love takes precedence over fear: Putting this in terms of heaven and hell, I take it that saving people from hell is secondary to saving people for heaven. In contrast, it's long struck me that, for the majority of (evangelical) evangelists I've talked to about this, the primary motivation is not saving people for eternal life in heaven, but saving people from eternal torment in hell.
Even in good faith (ie leaving aside all the bad faith actors involved in the Church's activities over the past 2000 years), I can see how this attitude could inform and reflect an environment in which it would be possible to justify the behaviours described above. This isn't about cause and effect (ie which came first), it's about the significance of the messengers and the way in which the message that people hear can change.
Aye, it depends on other factors. For free will to lead to sin requires the presence of temptation, which in heaven seems more than unlikely.
What about punishment - is completely painless punishment possible?
Neither George MacDonald nor C S Lewis believed in a punitive God, but they both saw God's purpose in human suffering, in Lewis' case, here on earth. From The Problem with Pain:
The issue that was the final blow to his theism was when, in his college days, one of those Campus Crusade for Christ guys tried to recruit him, and it came out that, yes, the logical outgrowth of his faith was that unbaptized infants and children were in hell. This was such anathema to him that he chucked the whole thing.
So I am curious about how this plays out in the faith of the literalists about hell who have been posting here. I know the Catholic church came up with Limbo to explain this, but have since discarded that. So what's the answer?
All of this (waves hands) has the further advantage of explaining w where the huge innumerable crowds of people around God's throne in the book of Revelation come from. Because most of the human race has always died before age five, many before birth. If I'm right, these who are too young to refuse him will be saved , as well as those who can't refuse due to other problem like disability. Because we need to remember: God WANTS as many as possible to be saved, his bias is in favor of saving, and he is not anal or a victim of scrupulosity. Nothing will stop him from saving but our own ongoing permanent refusal, chosen with our eyes open. He really does want us.
Since I've been in the warm fuzz of a suburban C of E church I don't think I've ever heard any preaching that has addressed the possibility of 'Hell' or anything like it. And I'd be gob-smacked if I did hear such preaching. As a consequence I think the 'Gospel message' is 'weaker' and I'm not sure what I think about that.
*Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches -whose Doctrinal Basis includes "After His return in glory.. Christ will judge the world... The wicked will be sent to eternal punishment".
And in my opinion, Hell is not a place of punishment, because the purpose of punishment is transformation. You "punish" someone to change their behavior. By the time the soul is in Hell, according to most models, there is no hope for change. Transformative change is for Purgatory, or for being alive.
I'd like to hear them try to support their view from scripture, then! Because the poorly educated we have with us always, and sheer numbers don't make them right.
They wouldn't accept your 'take' on these things anymore than you would accept theirs.
We have to ground our arguments in scripture of course but a sword-fight with Bible verses rarely yields any positive result - as I so often found in debates with Jehovah's Witnesses and so on.
A debate with a liberalism (and there aren't just Protestant ones of course) will almost invariably end up with stacking up a barricade of proof-texts on either side.
What we need, of course, are cases made on the whole tenor of scripture - as you were doing in your post - and the heft and balance of tradition/Tradition.
That applies whether we go in for Holy Tradition on a macro-level as it were, or small t tradition at a 'localised' level.
I can see where @Merry Vole is coming from in expressing concern about 'weakening' the Gospel if we don't introduce a whiff of sulphur. Thing is, if we take any tradition or tendency seriously within Christianity as a whole, be it a liberal or conservative stance or all stations in between, it's going to make demands on us.
Or should do.
Comfy, cosy, suburban Christianity - what C S Lewis called 'milk and water Christianity' - isn't confined to particular churches or denominations.
Such places can also be Zoars and havens for those battered and bruised in abusive or more full-on settings.
Equally, we can find individuals quietly living out exemplary Christian lives anywhere and everywhere.
I believe there should certainly be some challenge and 'bite' to the way we present the Gospel (although embodying it is better than simply presenting it of course). But I agree with @Nick Tamen that 'turn or burn' isn't the smartest way to proceed.
However we understand these things the biggest challenge is to be as Christ to those around us. He is the Gospel. He is the Good News. The Orient from on high to use a seasonal Orthodox expression.
Sure, propositions and stating cases, deploying and applying scripture is all part of that- and part of what we all do here.
I have no idea how we work all these things out but follow we must.
Luther had a very high opinion of Baptism and the necessity of it, but that did not preclude the active grace of God.
I'm glad you highlight that because there's an element here that always bothers me. So much talk about Hell, about accepting Jesus and "being saved" and all that - well, many years ago my father was a County Councillor. This was during the Cold War. He was therefore entitled to a place in the local authority's fall-out shelter, should the worst befall. He refused it if there was no place also there for us, his family.
Much of the talk I've heard over the years is individually oriented to the point that you can have heaven, you can have salvation, as long as you're self-centered enough to not care that those you claim to love are, while you're enjoying heaven, enduring indescribable suffering in Hell. This is what I mean when I say that if Hell exists, there is no Heaven, not for those (ie all of us bar psychopaths) who care about the fates, lives and sufferings of others.
I don't think the local people here associate it with damnation though.
No. Much of the talk you've paid attention to over the years has focused on these things. You have also heard many Shipmates talk about a God of mercy in Jesus Christ, but you do not seem to hear them. You want to debate the points of view of a certain kind of fear-based, hell-focused Evangelical, but there do not seem to be many of them on the decks here. That means that no one is in a position to deal with those points of view. All anyone else can do is say, "That's not what I believe," and watch as you continue to shadowbox.
I think you have been spiritually abused, and I do not know how to heal it. I'm helpless to know how to help you. Continuing to proclaim a God of mercy revealed in Jesus Christ does not seem to get through. The decades you have spent discussing this on the Ship do not seem to have made progress in your healing. I genuinely want you to experience a faith that gives you peace.
Ironically, although that was personal post, it did not seem suited to Hell.
I don't commonly listen to street preachers but I have yet to overhear one with a different message, although maybe the other one doesn't work so well in street preaching.
I'm often struck by the Apostle Paul's approach with the Athenians. He didn't denounce them as a bunch of wretched hell-bound sinners but pitched his message in a contextual way.
@KarlLB - it's none of my business and you can tell me to sling my hook - or go to Hell - but I humbly submit you'd do well to take heed of @Leaf. For your soul's sake.
It is sadly inappropriate to for @Leaf to write of his own despair at the ship's or Leaf's perceived lack of success, as though it did not meet a KPI, for a matter that seems more suited to epiphanies, if responded to at all in that way in a forum.
This is no place to counsel, and certainly not to imagine that counselling should be initiated.
The history does seem to conform to that trite definition of madness.
People can describe God as merciful and loving as much as they like, but if he still torments people in Hell for eternity, then the contents don't match the description.
For the avoidance of doubt, I am a universalist; furthermore it seems to me difficult to get anything other than universalism out of Paul's epistles without interpretive gymnastics.
What about those who have rejected God and continue to reject God after death?
Why do they need to be tortured? And what does "rejecting God" mean if he's stood there in front of you?
Which has never seemed to be the salient issue to me. Everyone I know has always either believed in and accepted God, or not believed he exists so it's a meaningless concept. Or somewhere in between.
I have never met anyone who believes God exists but wants nothing to do with him. Sure, such people may exist; it's not logically impossible. But I don't think it's really the issue here. I think it's a red herring.
There are maybe those who's tragic life experiences have made them reject God because they blame him. My comment was hardly a red herring.
I did say “basically some form of saying ‘I want nothing to do with you,’” and intended for that to be a very broad, very generalized umbrella, not just those specific words or synonyms for them.
The story of the so-called “rich young ruler” or “rich young man” (Matthew, Mark, Luke) seems apt to me. The young man/ruler seems to want to follow Jesus, or at least acknowledges Jesus as a “good teacher.” But when he learns what it will cost him to follow Jesus, he walks away.
So, to put “want nothing to do with him” another way, it’s not that hard for me to imagine someone before whom God is standing to say “Yeah, no thanks, I’d rather do things my way and be the boss of my life.” I mean, I’ve seen plenty of people who claim to believe in God do that. I’ve done it from time to time myself.
I'd like to focus on a couple of words in this: sovereign and punishment.
A sovereign God is free to do whatever the hell (sorry) God wants, including choosing to establish Hell. God also chooses to communicate God's will to mercy, in Jesus Christ, by means of the Holy Spirit. Mercy is God's prime directive, so to speak.
I can believe a thing exists, and also that that thing has never been used and may never be used. I can believe a fall-out shelter exists and also that it has never been entered for its intended purpose, and may never be used as such. I do not know whether Hell has been entered or not, or may ever be.
I'll try to express my thoughts on this, and likely fail, as I really don't think about Hell at all. It's like a person in a healthy married relationship doesn't think about divorce, other than recognizing its existence and recognizing a possibility of entering that state, but really not living in existential fear of it. I don't fear Hell, not because I'm so good (ha!) but because I believe God is so good! Trusting in that mercy so far eclipses the fear of Hell that it's not on my functional spiritual horizon.
I think punishment and healing may be two sides of the same coin, or two interpretations of an experience, from a human point of view. Another quote from The Blessed Clive, about the un-dragoning of Eustace from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader:
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away...
Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious."
Eustace suffered pain in this process. Was he being punished for being a greedy dragon? Was he being healed of his dragonish tendencies, and restored to his rightful self? These are two interpretations of the same experience.
In my view, pain suffered in the afterlife is determined by the will of the person to 'hang on' to their dragon scales. The pain of removal is temporary, redemptive, and directed toward transformation.
I think that this can also be couched in terms of debt. It isn't the sinful nature that creates the debt, it's the sin. At some point in our lives as very young, small people, sufficient self-awareness developed for the first, small, debt to be incurred.
I'm not currently sure how this all holds together. Maybe, if we're unable to articulate anything or even conceive anything about ourselves, all that it takes is for God to reach out to us and for us to reach back.
But then, the whole framework of “the easier it is to be saved,” apparently based on a specific decision we make at a specific time in life, is totally foreign to me.
That sounds rather like Purgatory, not Hell.
Incidentally, why would you imagine that happily married people have no fear of divorce?
A bunch of people had non-standard beliefs about the afterlife. Ok, so what? Either you choose their explanation or you choose some other one. There's no "there" there.
As I wrote above, One point that arises from sin being debt is that debt is cumulative, so whatever debt we start to incur when young is only added to as we get older. Once we start becoming selfish and self-centred, just how selfish and self-centred we are at any stage in life isn't relevant to our state of being debtors, people in debt to God.
One aspect of salvation is redemption (possibly the main one as far as some Christians are concerned). As this a word that comes from debt management, we know what it means in relation to debt, and it means that the obligation is satisfied, the price is paid. In relation to our debt of sin, it doesn't seem unreasonable to understand this as being a one-off event that covers our entire lifetime.
However, our sinful nature continues. We continue to sin. The effects of sin, on us and other people, continue. As Christians, we forgive other people (their debts to us) because God has forgiven us (our debt to God). Salvation in the sense of being the work of being saved from our sinful nature, and its consequences, invariably continues for the rest of our mortal lives.
Interesting point. I don't think I've ever read the "as" in the Lord's prayer as implying causality - I've always read it and spoken it as meaning "in the same way that". If there's any causality, I think its more likely to be the other way round, or maybe it's more complex than that.
In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the master first forgives the large debt of the servant. The servant then refuses to forgive the much smaller debt of a fellow servant, and has him thrown in prison. This causes the master to change his mind, and instead of carrying out his previous plan to sell the servant and his family to recover the debt, the unforgiving servant is also thrown into prison, and tormented to boot.
The causality and chronology of debt seem fairly straightforward, the causality and chronology of forgiveness, less so.
Our forgiving others is the background to our praying for forgiveness, and therefore comes first.
Of course concepts like 'debt', 'ransom' and 'redemption' are core scriptural concepts when it comes to soteriology and I'm completely comfortable with all of that.
It can all get rather too juridical and transactional though, if we aren't careful.
I'm not by any means suggesting that those deploying such imagery here are doing so at the expense of other thoroughly scriptural concepts we might consider in relation to these things.
Hell itself is a biblical concept. Our Lord Himself alludes to it in very striking and scary terms. Losing limbs rather than face the prospect etc.
The issue, of course, is how to understand these references. Hyperbolically? Metaphorically? Literally?
I would say this, wouldn't I, but the Orthodox concept that 'Hell' is the flipside of God's fiery love - 'our God is a consuming fire' - does 'appeal' to me on various levels. It's still a scorcher as it were but not a Dantesque 'place' with demons torturing people for eternity.
Heck, it's not at all clear that Dante himself understood it in such literal terms.
I'm still with @Leaf on this one. Even if we take a very traditional view of Hell, as @Lamb Chopped appears to, it doesn't mean that we have to envisage infants broiling there or our 'unsaved' relatives roasting for eternity.
Just because some people take a very 'reductionist' approach to these things doesn't mean we have to. An RC priest once observed to me that we don't know where The Rich Young Ruler was on the day of Pentecost. He could have been among the 3,000 as far as we know.
Even if he wasn't we don't know what happened to him eventually - although I wouldn't be surprised if there was some tradition or other about that - and we don't really need to know either to get the point Christ, as quoted by the Gospel writers, was making.
I pray for the departed, something Shipmates from other Christian traditions don't. I find that helps. Other people have their own approaches commensurate with their own traditions and understandings.
Hell and the after-life isn't the only area where we have to juggle or reconcile difficult or apparently contradictory concepts.