Regarding my own beliefs about hell, I've never been an adherent of universalism (universal reconciliation). The prospect of eternal life without the prospect of eternal consequences of putting oneself first undermines the principle of fairness. I'm less decided about the nature of these consequences - whether they involve separation, punishment, suffering, etc, or even whether we need to define them in any detail.
Principle of fairness to me is one reason eternal hell cannot exist. What we do wrong in a finite lifespan cannot merit a negative consequence that lasts for eternity.
I don't believe God gives a flying fuck about fairness, in the sense of restricting rewards to those who have earned them - cf. the parable, and indeed paradox, of the labourers in the vineyard. He cares about love, and that requires universalism. Unless horrific, infinite sadism is a feature of love.
Well, that's how I see it. I'm giving @KarlLB 's claim that fairness requires universalism some thought, as it may be weightier than my contention.
The 'principle of fairness' is not as simple as it sounds. I am thinking of the parable of the vineyard owner who paid his employees the same whether they signed on at the beginning or the end of the day. …
Yup - that parable does draw attention the issue of proportionality from a time-bound human perspective. In the vineyard, whether the workers work one hour or a whole day, they are paid the same.
As far as I'm aware, most conceptualisations of universalism agree that if there is a hell, it involves punishment that is corrective or remedial and that, significantly, does not last forever. However, in the economy of eternity, a period of ten thousand years doesn't even make a dent.
If the consequences are finite, then any wrongdoing, no matter how great or small, whether it lasted a single hour or a whole lifetime, receives a punishment that is over in the blink of an eye (which is kind of comparable to the workers in the vineyard). However, compared to the prospect of enjoying the eternity of life that follows, the prospect of facing any finite period of punishment seems inconsequential.
And if it's inconsequential, then hell does not act as a deterrent, and doesn't appear to serve any significant purpose as far as our finite lives on earth are concerned.
Doesn't seem in the slightest inconsequential to me.
Besides - it seems to me that "fairness", if we consider it near synonymous with "justice", can be subverted in one of two ways - over-severity or mercy. We generally consider the former bad but the latter to be a virtue - and one which Christianity has lauded and considered one of the qualities of God. If absolutely proportional justice is not possible, then mercy would seem to be the direction in which God would be expected to lean.
Doesn't seem in the slightest inconsequential to me.
Besides - it seems to me that "fairness", if we consider it near synonymous with "justice", can be subverted in one of two ways - over-severity or mercy. We generally consider the former bad but the latter to be a virtue - and one which Christianity has lauded and considered one of the qualities of God. If absolutely proportional justice is not possible, then mercy would seem to be the direction in which God would be expected to lean.
Amen. In the story about the workers at the 11th hour getting paid as much as the people who came early in the morning, it’s not like the earlier people’s wage is being cut to match a low wage for the workers at the 11th hour.
"Punishment" is a word that deserves some examination.
There's a video I saw once in which a medievalist made the argument that medieval societies engaged in extremely violent punishments because they were incompetent at catching criminals and they knew it. So these cruel and unusual "punishments" were not intended for the criminal themself, they were intended to turn that criminal into an object to scare anyone else in the community into proper behavior. This is to try to reduce the crime rate through sheer terror, concealing their abysmal failures to control the real crime rate.
Extreme suffering isn't about changing the soul, it's about scaring away other people, which is kind of the point of hell, I think. Hell isn't there to reform. The point of hell is to say that there is a place beyond reform. People in hell aren't there to be changed, helped, or offered sympathy. They're examples, objects for study, which is somewhat how Dante treats them. Inferno is basically a morality play, a series of historical grotesques providing a lesson in "don't be like these guys." Ironically I do think that was the purpose of Jesus' "hellfire and brimstone" talk. It wasn't punitive, it was exemplary. "Just don't go there. I warned you. It's destruction."
Just because something is not provable or falsifiable doesn’t mean it’s not true or false.
But then why would you believe it?
Similarly there are a lot of things we believe are true on the basis of the most limited data, although it is true that few of them are “life or death” issues.
Exactly. There's believing my dog will greet me at the door, then there's believing St. Peter will meet me at the gate. They seem to require a different level of "data."
I don't believe God gives a flying fuck about fairness, in the sense of restricting rewards to those who have earned them - cf. the parable, and indeed paradox, of the labourers in the vineyard. He cares about love, and that requires universalism. Unless horrific, infinite sadism is a feature of love.
Well, that's how I see it. I'm giving @KarlLB 's claim that fairness requires universalism some thought, as it may be weightier than my contention.
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Besides - it seems to me that "fairness", if we consider it near synonymous with "justice", can be subverted in one of two ways - over-severity or mercy. We generally consider the former bad but the latter to be a virtue - and one which Christianity has lauded and considered one of the qualities of God. If absolutely proportional justice is not possible, then mercy would seem to be the direction in which God would be expected to lean.
I don't see fairness as being synonymous with justice any more that grace is synonymous with mercy.
And who knows about God, but quite a lot of people care about fairness, and care even more about unfairness. The unfairness of people being born into poverty, living with abuse or dying from pollution hangs heavy on many of us.
How does the prospect of universal reconciliation in the future help to change the unfairness and injustice happening now? Why would anyone profiting from exploitation now be motivated to change their behaviour based on the prospect of a future, time-limited, judgment mercifully tipped in their favour?
I don't believe God gives a flying fuck about fairness, in the sense of restricting rewards to those who have earned them - cf. the parable, and indeed paradox, of the labourers in the vineyard. He cares about love, and that requires universalism. Unless horrific, infinite sadism is a feature of love.
Well, that's how I see it. I'm giving @KarlLB 's claim that fairness requires universalism some thought, as it may be weightier than my contention.
…
Besides - it seems to me that "fairness", if we consider it near synonymous with "justice", can be subverted in one of two ways - over-severity or mercy. We generally consider the former bad but the latter to be a virtue - and one which Christianity has lauded and considered one of the qualities of God. If absolutely proportional justice is not possible, then mercy would seem to be the direction in which God would be expected to lean.
I don't see fairness as being synonymous with justice any more that grace is synonymous with mercy.
And who knows about God, but quite a lot of people care about fairness, and care even more about unfairness. The unfairness of people being born into poverty, living with abuse or dying from pollution hangs heavy on many of us.
How does the prospect of universal reconciliation in the future help to change the unfairness and injustice happening now? Why would anyone profiting from exploitation now be motivated to change their behaviour based on the prospect of a future, time-limited, judgment mercifully tipped in their favour?
Who pays the price for this act of mercy?
If hell is eternal, those there are paying a far higher price than anyone could to "pay for this act of mercy".
My understanding is that those who believe do right things because the Holy Spirit changes them and inspires them so to do - not through fear of Hell. After all, they're assured of forgiveness through Christ anyway. It strikes me that your objection to Universalism applies to Christianity in virtually any form.
If the consequences are finite, then any wrongdoing, no matter how great or small, whether it lasted a single hour or a whole lifetime, receives a punishment that is over in the blink of an eye (which is kind of comparable to the workers in the vineyard). However, compared to the prospect of enjoying the eternity of life that follows, the prospect of facing any finite period of punishment seems inconsequential.
And if it's inconsequential, then hell does not act as a deterrent, and doesn't appear to serve any significant purpose as far as our finite lives on earth are concerned.
But then from that perspective any wrongdoing on earth is equally inconsequential, - and therefore isn't worth deterring, and doesn't merit an infinite period of punishment.
For that matter, the reward of earthly wrongdoing is equally finite and someone who is inclined to discount finite rewards and penalties as you imagine them doing is going to discount the finite rewards of earthly wrongdoing anyway.
I think "justice" is a word that has multiple definitions. If people in a conversation don't share a common meaning, it's a very dangerous word to employ without clarifying which model you're operating from.
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How does the prospect of universal reconciliation in the future help to change the unfairness and injustice happening now? Why would anyone profiting from exploitation now be motivated to change their behaviour based on the prospect of a future, time-limited, judgment mercifully tipped in their favour?
Who pays the price for this act of mercy?
If hell is eternal, those there are paying a far higher price than anyone could to "pay for this act of mercy".
I would say there's an important conceptual distinction between the price paid by the exploiter, and the price paid by the exploited, rather than a difference of degree.
My understanding is that those who believe do right things because the Holy Spirit changes them and inspires them so to do - not through fear of Hell. After all, they're assured of forgiveness through Christ anyway. It strikes me that your objection to Universalism applies to Christianity in virtually any form.
But why would anyone become a believer in the first place? People who want to do good and treat each other with respect, maybe. But what about those who exploit others for their own profit and gain - what motive would they have for becoming believers and giving all that up? And what about those who are exploited or suffer at the hands of others? Looking at the parable of the great feast in Luke, or Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler, it occurs to me that the privileged and entitled have rather more to gain from Universalism than the poor, exploited, marginalised or oppressed
[snip]
Looking at the parable of the great feast in Luke, or Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler, it occurs to me that the privileged and entitled have rather more to gain from Universalism than the poor, exploited, marginalised or oppressed [/snip]
Cynically, this might be why a lot of people who are comfortably privileged and socially aware find universalism very appealing. We just want everyone to get along, we don't want anyone to get hurt.
And I've noticed myself that as times get darker, Dante's visions of hell become more relatable and seem less deranged, in part because I see the world itself becoming deranged.
But why would anyone become a believer in the first place? People who want to do good and treat each other with respect, maybe. But what about those who exploit others for their own profit and gain - what motive would they have for becoming believers and giving all that up? And what about those who are exploited or suffer at the hands of others? Looking at the parable of the great feast in Luke, or Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler, it occurs to me that the privileged and entitled have rather more to gain from Universalism than the poor, exploited, marginalised or oppressed
We're back to the bedrock issue of "because we think it's true." Not everybody believes in something because they think it will be useful to them in some way; in fact, I find that a kind of cynical way of choosing (!) one's beliefs. The whole concept of choosing one's beliefs is foreign to me--I'm trying to figure out what the truth is, and go by that. It seems to me that choosing one's own beliefs for utilitarianism, or comfort, or whatever--ignoring truth--is quite dangerous--the kind of thing that might bring you smack up against reality in an unpleasant way (as, say, the anti-vaxxers are finding). And trying to choose someone ELSE'S beliefs for any purpose but truth (as a parent, a teacher, a propagandist, a publicist) is downright wicked.
I think a lot folks, probably self included, don't become Christians because of the Bible or because of abstract truth values. We become Christians because of the community.
And so application of rational logic gets interesting there. I don't need axiomatic truths. I can even share fellowship with anti-vaxxers.
I think this might be another case where my faith isn't given to a set of beliefs, even if I can recite the Nicene Creed with a straight face. It's fidelity to a body of people. I believe in God, not in my own beliefs or anyone else's. I try to be faithful. And my ideas? They can go to hell, and likely will. I'm no gnostic.
For context, I'm now watching a freakishly long youtube video about the roots of the 7th Day Adventist Church and how one if its founders was pretty blatantly a fraud. I'm thinking about someone I knew in high school who was a member, and how the video guy says the church's way of thinking can incline members to conspiracy theories. It's pretty well done and watching the church evolve over time and try to adapt to its horrendously awkward origins is...a experience.
I think a lot folks, probably self included, don't become Christians because of the Bible or because of abstract truth values. We become Christians because of the community.
And so application of rational logic gets interesting there. I don't need axiomatic truths. I can even share fellowship with anti-vaxxers.
I think this might be another case where my faith isn't given to a set of beliefs, even if I can recite the Nicene Creed with a straight face. It's fidelity to a body of people. I believe in God, not in my own beliefs or anyone else's. I try to be faithful. And my ideas? They can go to hell, and likely will. I'm no gnostic.
For context, I'm now watching a freakishly long youtube video about the roots of the 7th Day Adventist Church and how one if its founders was pretty blatantly a fraud. I'm thinking about someone I knew in high school who was a member, and how the video guy says the church's way of thinking can incline members to conspiracy theories. It's pretty well done and watching the church evolve over time and try to adapt to its horrendously awkward origins is...a experience.
Do the creeds say anything about hell? I only take a passing interest in these things but it is curious that the things some people say are absolutely fundamental to believe don't seem to be the same issues that those involved in the writing of the creeds thought were important.
For example I was reading about the "resurrection of the body" recently and it had me wondering how that relates to this discussion of hell.
he was crucified, died, buried and descended to hell
though I have seen "place of the dead" and Athanasian
Who suffered for our salvation, descended into hell, rose again the third day from the dead. He ascended into heaven, he sitteth at the right hand of the Father, God Almighty, from whence he will come to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all men will rise again with their bodies and shall give account for their own works. And they that have done good shall go into life everlasting; and they that have done evil into everlasting fire.
There is the catch, eternal fire past the last judgement and Hell do not seem to be synonymous in the creeds. I think they may not be synonymous in the Gospels. That is, I think* two words are used in the text, "Hades" which refers to a place of the dead and "Gehenna" which refers to a place of everlasting burnings. Yes, I know Hades is Greek, but it seems to relate to a 1st-century Jewish idea as well about a place where the dead await the last judgement. It has its place of the good and place of the bad within it. Our understanding of Hell seems to me to conflate the two almost entirely.
*I know both are used, I just have not done a close enough word study to work out how they relate to each other in detail to be sure what amount of overlap there is.
There's a place called Sheol in the OT which is hard to distinguish from the literal grave. It appears to mean simply "the place of the dead," good and bad alike. There is some doubt about whether those in Sheol have any ongoing relationship to God at all, praising him, crying out to him, etc--some OT authors question this while others (Psalm 30:3 for instance) speak of God reaching even to Sheol and saving. I suspect Hades is the usual Greek translation for Sheol, as both are universal destinations for the dead. Gehenna, on the other hand, is clearly a place of punishment for the wicked only.
The Creed seems to use "Hell" as a word with a "well, of course we all know what this is, it requires no explanation!" sense, which is frustrating.
If I recall, isn't "the harrowing of hell" also an ancient belief in the church? Not Scriptural, but it has some pretty ancient roots.
And I do think "hades" gets used once or twice in the NT. Hell in the popular American consciousness is a mixture of images and allusions, including multiple ones from the Bible, and splicing those allusions into their component parts is certainly one way that people cope.
As I've matured as a Christian, I sometimes get a little curious about such projects. These things get stitched together over generations, and it's careful work for us to start pulling at threads with our adjustments. Yet, we have to, I think. And I do think sometimes what I've inherited is already a post modern mess.
If the consequences are finite, then any wrongdoing, no matter how great or small, whether it lasted a single hour or a whole lifetime, receives a punishment that is over in the blink of an eye (which is kind of comparable to the workers in the vineyard). However, compared to the prospect of enjoying the eternity of life that follows, the prospect of facing any finite period of punishment seems inconsequential.
And if it's inconsequential, then hell does not act as a deterrent, and doesn't appear to serve any significant purpose as far as our finite lives on earth are concerned.
But then from that perspective any wrongdoing on earth is equally inconsequential, - and therefore isn't worth deterring, and doesn't merit an infinite period of punishment.
For that matter, the reward of earthly wrongdoing is equally finite and someone who is inclined to discount finite rewards and penalties as you imagine them doing is going to discount the finite rewards of earthly wrongdoing anyway.
The rather significant difference is that the wrongdoer gets to enjoy their ill-gotten gains in this life. Only the punishment is deferred. In economics, "discounting" only determines the present value of future cash flows for investment comparison purposes, it doesn't try to compare these future cash flows with enjoyment of one's cash in the here and now. It's up to the investor whether they wish to enjoy increased cash flow in the short term, maintain a stable standard of living, or store up their treasure for the long term.
As Yanis Varoufakis (an economist, writing about economics) tells the tale of Faustus/Faust: in Marlowe's version, once his twenty-four years are up, Doctor Faustus begs, cries and pleads to be released from his contract with Mephistopheles, but to no avail, and he is carried off to Hell. But in Goethe's somewhat later version, Faust is able to achieve redemption: realising his mistake before his time is up, Faust performs acts of public service and so, when Mephistopheles comes to claim his interest, Gods's angels intervene. Singing "He who strives on and lives to strive / Can earn redemption still," they take Faust to heaven instead.
Varoufakis' point is that "Debt is to market societies what hell is to Christianity: unpleasant but indispensable". Thinking back to the discussion (or posts) on evangelicalism and capitalism, I wonder if there's more the relationship than metaphor, for example reflecting the changes to the ending of Faust or the appeal of universalism.
Do we actually have an agreed-upon definition of Hell? Or, maybe, four or five variant definitions?
I think there's a range of interpretations that share some qualities. It's hot, it's unpleasant, it's akin to a prison. Most of these include it being a place for dead people who are somehow immoral or wicked.
Not posted here for a while but FWIW I always feel a 'lift' when I walk into the church I attend and see the large icon of the Harrowing of Hell greeting me there. I always venerate it then move on to venerate the icons of Christ, the Virgin Mary and whichever Saint or biblical event is commemorated that day.
No, it's not scriptural but when has that ever stopped anyone? The solas aren't scriptural either... 😉
More seriously, the point is that the icon depicts a Resurrection hope and however we envisage Hell that's what comes up Trump's- whether we understand it literally or metaphorically.
Yes, I believe in the concept of Hell because it's scriptural (as @Lamb Chopped reminds us, Jesus spoke of it) and because it's part of the belief-system of the community which formed/wrote/received the scriptures in the first place.
The scriptures emerged from and for a faith community, the Church.
We can argue it all ways round, 'The Church through the Bible and the Bible through the Church', but however we understand it and whether we have 'appropriated' these things individually or independently or in the context of a faith community we all apprehend and inherit a body of belief handed down from our forefathers and foremothers in the faith.
So yes, however we cut it, Hell is there in scripture and Tradition / tradition.
We are left then with the issue of how to deal with that.
I think I've mentioned before that a personal or individual belief in Universalism appears to be 'acceptable' within the Orthodox Tradition, providing it's not 'dogmatised', at which point, as I understand it, it becomes 'heretical.'
One of the beefs we Orthodox have with our RC brothers and sisters is the tendency to over-dogmatise things. To over-egg the pudding.
Although individual RCs don't always do that of course.
The RCs have legitimate beefs about us too.
Perhaps I'm unusual but I can live with a degree of uncertainty and ambiguity in all of this.
Which is why I need the icon that greets me each time I attend a service.
Not posted here for a while but FWIW I always feel a 'lift' when I walk into the church I attend and see the large icon of the Harrowing of Hell greeting me there. I always venerate it then move on to venerate the icons of Christ, the Virgin Mary and whichever Saint or biblical event is commemorated that day.
No, it's not scriptural but when has that ever stopped anyone?
Isn’t it? “For this is the reason the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that, though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does.” 1 Peter 4:6.
The solas aren't scriptural either... 😉
Why do you continue to make tongue-in-cheek jabs about the solas when Shipmates from traditions that historically embrace the solas have repeatedly told how tiresome they find it. It’s starting come across as though your baiting people. Please just let it go already.
@Gamma Gamaliel when a jest is aimed at someone else, then use the aphorism "Before you speak, ask yourself if it is true, is it necessary, is it kind?" To constantly dig at people for something key to their tradition fails this on two counts, I would suggest.
Imagine if a shipmate kept going on, making jibes at the Orthodox for downplaying the Son for not having the Holy Spirit proceed from him. Then when challenged said "Only a fraternal jest".
But why would anyone become a believer in the first place? People who want to do good and treat each other with respect, maybe. But what about those who exploit others for their own profit and gain - what motive would they have for becoming believers and giving all that up? And what about those who are exploited or suffer at the hands of others? Looking at the parable of the great feast in Luke, or Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler, it occurs to me that the privileged and entitled have rather more to gain from Universalism than the poor, exploited, marginalised or oppressed
We're back to the bedrock issue of "because we think it's true." Not everybody believes in something because they think it will be useful to them in some way; in fact, I find that a kind of cynical way of choosing (!) one's beliefs. The whole concept of choosing one's beliefs is foreign to me--I'm trying to figure out what the truth is, and go by that. It seems to me that choosing one's own beliefs for utilitarianism, or comfort, or whatever--ignoring truth--is quite dangerous--the kind of thing that might bring you smack up against reality in an unpleasant way (as, say, the anti-vaxxers are finding). And trying to choose someone ELSE'S beliefs for any purpose but truth (as a parent, a teacher, a propagandist, a publicist) is downright wicked.
I find the reference to this being the bedrock intriguing. Regarding beliefs about the afterlife: as soon as the ineffable concept of eternity is introduced into the mix, I can't see how there can be any way for human, time-limited, reasoning to reach a commonly agreed or recognised true/false conclusion. What we have is speculation.
In that context, and being someone who habitually reasons about my own beliefs in a true/false manner, the way I understand our search for true/false conclusions about our beliefs is to accept that looking for true/false conclusions describes how we, as individuals, relate to our beliefs. I still think this matters - just one of the ways being what our reasoning and our conclusions tell us about ourselves.
I suppose I am somewhat cynical in my understanding, including how I relate to my own beliefs. I wouldn't use the word "choose", as I think it's generally less conscious than that, but I think that human beings acquire our beliefs in an overlapping variety of ways, including being sourced from our trusted authorities, as well as our own interests.
Another reason why it matters that we understand how we acquire our beliefs, is that a number of significant people involved in (algorithmic) AI, and a number of significant exploiters of these technologies, are working towards influencing and choosing our beliefs for us. The more we understand about how we acquire our own beliefs, the better placed we'll be to deal with this.
Certainly. I avoid algorithm-controlled "stuff" as much as possible for just this reason.
And how someone acquires a belief is fascinating and something to keep an area on, certainly, and yet still doesn't make the question "is it true?" irrelevant. The same with beliefs about the unprovable (in this lifetime, at least). Some (like me) consider that they've found an authority who knows what he's talking about (Christ), even though the subject would be beyond almost everyone else. The question then becomes whether his credentials are good enough.
@Gamma Gamaliel when a jest is aimed at someone else, then use the aphorism "Before you speak, ask yourself if it is true, is it necessary, is it kind?" To constantly dig at people for something key to their tradition fails this on two counts, I would suggest.
Imagine if a shipmate kept going on, making jibes at the Orthodox for downplaying the Son for not having the Holy Spirit proceed from him. Then when challenged said "Only a fraternal jest".
I'd take it in good part, as well as arguing the contrary.
But yes, point taken.
There are plenty of things we could lay to the account of Orthodoxy. Phyletism. Triumphalism at times. Much more besides.
I could have made my point of course without the jibe about the solas and I've already apologised for that.
For all my faults you've got a very eirenic Orthodoxen here. Which doesn't excuse the jibe of course.
And how someone acquires a belief is fascinating and something to keep an area on, certainly, and yet still doesn't make the question "is it true?" irrelevant. The same with beliefs about the unprovable (in this lifetime, at least). Some (like me) consider that they've found an authority who knows what he's talking about (Christ), even though the subject would be beyond almost everyone else. The question then becomes whether his credentials are good enough.
I concluded a couple of decades ago that belief and identity are artifacts or markers of some type of trauma and/or indoctrination.
I'm watching with considerable sadness my Chinese massage therapist, who is a grown woman of 54 years, forging a new identity through her daily online contact with what I can only describe as a cult run by a Chinese woman who fled the PRC and is living in New York and is proclaiming herself as the incarnated Jesus Christ.
My friend started out as a woman who was really quite naive for all her years, and who struggled with life in Spain after her husband died. We helped her a lot with his estate (he died without a Spanish will, an administrative minefield) and she was generally speaking a relaxed, happy and easy going type of person who wanted to understand Christianity but struggled with the language.
She hooked up with this Chinese group online and started with two six hour online meetings a week. Then three. Now every day four hours in the morning. The amount of material this cult leader has published would choke a horse.
Now my friend is sad, anxious and withdrawn. She believes her homeland is the Great Satan. She accused me yesterday of not loving God because I don't go to church. She posts regularly to Facebook reams of cut and paste paragraphs about the evil of the world and how the Church of Almighty God is the bulwark against this evil. She identifies with this group and wants my husband and I to join so that we will be "saved".
It's very sad to think we might lose her to this group but she is incurably naive and makes baffling, even catastrophic, financial decisions which she comes to us for help to intervene on her behalf with retailers, investment counselors, banking and tax authorities.
All I can do is stand and watch as the new Chang emerges. It makes me very sad.
And how someone acquires a belief is fascinating and something to keep an area on, certainly, and yet still doesn't make the question "is it true?" irrelevant. The same with beliefs about the unprovable (in this lifetime, at least). Some (like me) consider that they've found an authority who knows what he's talking about (Christ), even though the subject would be beyond almost everyone else. The question then becomes whether his credentials are good enough.
I'm reminded of what you said about not being able to choose our beliefs. I suggest that we don't always get to choose our authorities.
Below the age of 10±, we have very little choice about our authorities. If we're fortunate, we gradually gain more agency as we get older, but that can't be taken for granted. Quite a lot of people in this world grow up without ever gaining much agency about their authorities. Learning how to think for ourselves, and access to media that introduces us to new authorities, aren't a given, by any means. If the truths that we find are determined by our authorities, having a basic idea of how we acquire beliefs seems rather more significant than fascinating.
Truth isn't irrelevant, but I'm aware that being able to reason about our beliefs, to the extent that we can (those of us posting on this thread), is something of a luxury. As is having the time, materials and permission to look for and assess the credibility of new authorities.
A Feminine Force, I've just read your post, which seems rather depressingly salient.
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Hello,
Reminding posters again that this is NOT Purgatory.
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Please remember that an insult to a faith tradition is an insult to everyone from that tradition posting here. It might not break C3 in Purgatory but it does break the guidelines for this board.
There are times when people will need to share quite deep criticisms that come from their lived experience but flippant jokes and digs are not that.
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Can someone help me understand how some beliefs are not chosen? It seems hard to reconcile with Christianity being essentially a religion about choice. Choose Christ and all that stuff.
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
Can someone help me understand how some beliefs are not chosen? It seems hard to reconcile with Christianity being essentially a religion about choice. Choose Christ and all that stuff.
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
That's one of my objections to Hell. You can choose to follow Jesus or not if you believe in the claims made for him, but you can't choose to believe those claims. They either seem true, plausible or false. I have too many family members who would love to believe but just - don't.
Can someone help me understand how some beliefs are not chosen? It seems hard to reconcile with Christianity being essentially a religion about choice. Choose Christ and all that stuff.
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
Sure. Children end up with beliefs that aren't chosen all the time. Being told that they are stupid or worthless. I believed that my birth made my mother ill and her post partum depression was my fault.
So many beliefs are internalized as coping mechanisms. Repeated messaging in media results in people believing all manner of things that aren't really chosen. 40 million hairdressers can't be wrong and so on.
Beliefs are especially easy to install when the individual is in a state of trauma or fear. This makes a belief in hell especially easy to install. When you couple that with the group identity that ensures protection against such a traumatic outcome, it's very easy for me to see why the concept of hell is important to some groups in terms of membership identity and growth.
Seems like either it's a choice (like 'Choose Christ') in which case choose a different picture of hell. Or it's not a choice, in which case nothing is.
Can someone help me understand how some beliefs are not chosen? It seems hard to reconcile with Christianity being essentially a religion about choice. Choose Christ and all that stuff.
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
That's one of my objections to Hell. You can choose to follow Jesus or not if you believe in the claims made for him, but you can't choose to believe those claims. They either seem true, plausible or false. I have too many family members who would love to believe but just - don't.
The second sentence here hurts my brain. I can't make it make sense.
Can someone help me understand how some beliefs are not chosen? It seems hard to reconcile with Christianity being essentially a religion about choice. Choose Christ and all that stuff.
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
That's one of my objections to Hell. You can choose to follow Jesus or not if you believe in the claims made for him, but you can't choose to believe those claims. They either seem true, plausible or false. I have too many family members who would love to believe but just - don't.
The second sentence here hurts my brain. I can't make it make sense.
Am I’m struggling to understand why it doesn’t make sense to you. Why should religious beliefs be in a different category from all kinds of other things for which proof of the scientific sort isn’t available or possible?
Can you choose to believe someone loves you without thinking it is true that they love you?
Can someone help me understand how some beliefs are not chosen? It seems hard to reconcile with Christianity being essentially a religion about choice. Choose Christ and all that stuff.
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
That's one of my objections to Hell. You can choose to follow Jesus or not if you believe in the claims made for him, but you can't choose to believe those claims. They either seem true, plausible or false. I have too many family members who would love to believe but just - don't.
The second sentence here hurts my brain. I can't make it make sense.
Am I’m struggling to understand why it doesn’t make sense to you. Why should religious beliefs be in a different category from all kinds of other things for which proof of the scientific sort isn’t available or possible?
Can you choose to believe someone loves you without thinking it is true that they love you?
I think it is possible to believe things on one level but not another.
For example I was thinking about First Nation beliefs I was learning about and speculating that one could presumably be a Meteorologist believing A and B about the wind whilst not seeing the contradiction with the religion saying C.
I'm not speaking for them, of course, but it strikes me that there's a difference between a propositional belief, which is about a set of yes/no or true/false beliefs and an embodied relational belief which is about belonging and a bunch of other things.
In your example it feels like it is possible to live with the contradictions of believing things about brain chemistry and the reality of family love because that's embodied belief.
Firstly, @Louise and everyone else, Hostly admonition accepted.
I'd also like to say that much of what posters here from Christian traditions other than my own resonate very strongly with me and would like to correct any impression there might be that the opposite is the case. It isn't.
I'm finding this thread interesting and helpful and whilst I have to watch that I don't remain in Purgatory mode, I am grateful for the contributions - and admonitions.
I can understand the distinction @Basketactortale is making between embodied and propositional beliefs but am also on a similar page to @Nick Tamen on these matters.
I would also suggest that there is a 'sliding scale' between the propositional and the embodied, as it were, and that all of us are somewhere along a continuum in that respect. I suspect none of us are 'fully' propositional and none of us are fully 'embodied', if we can put it that way. It's all work in progress.
One day we will 'know fully as we are fully known.'
I can't resist a 'both/and' thing at this point ...
Has anyone pointed out that the more common concept of hell today is based on Dante's Inferno? That inferno has many different circles of torment which I am not even going to list at this point. The most interesting thing of that epic poem is not so much about a person's descent into hell; but, rather the persons progression to Salvation. There are three stages in Dante's poem, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. The first level, Inferno is about the realization of the effects of sin. It begins on Maundy Thursday. It is not about going into the depths of hell, but rather turning toward God and reaching Paradise.
Someone up thread mentioned modern translations of the Apostle's Creed says Jesus went to the dead rather than descended into hell. The ancient concept of the place of the dead (Sheol in Hebrew) or the Underworld in Greek was basically a place of shadows, dark, dreary. No real torture, just a place of nonexistence.
When the creed says (Jesus) went to the dead, and after three days rose again, what it is really saying is Jesus did indeed die. There was the thought that the body would begin to decompensate on the third day when the soul finally leeves the body. This is one reason the rising of Lazarus is so miraculous. Lazarus had already been dead for four days.
Of course, in going to the dead, 1 Peter 3:19 says Jesus went to the dead and proclaimed (victory) to the spirits in prison. Jesus went into death's domain and broke it from the inside.
Sheol is still there. But it is empty. Hades is still there, but it has no power. Hell is not to be feared. Thanks be to God.
Indeed. I like that @Gramps49, Christ 'went into Death's domain and broke it from the inside.'
As the old hymn has it:
'He arose the victor o'er the dark domain,
Now he lives forever with his saints to reign.'
In the gnostic cosmology, this sphere was created by the demiurge as a trap for the "divine sparks" or souls. It was a closed loop system of perpetual rebirth with occasional stops in Hades which is alluded to in Plato's Republic.
Hades is a realm with heaven-like, pugatorial, and hell-like regions and according to the wisdom tradition of Platonist gnostics, the kind of life you led determined which region you got to hang out in until your number was called for reincarnation.
Plato's wisdom tradition promoted the development of wisdom through successive incarnations so that one would be able to choose a life from the pile of lives offered that resulted in the least amount of suffering and harm inflicted on oneself and others. This was the best that could be hoped for, but it didn't address the clearing of all the subsequent consequences of lives lived in folly.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The narrative of Christ punching a hole in the back wall of Hades and liberating those divine sparks trapped in the cycle of eternal recurrence, while simultaneously rising again into the world to rule and cleanse it of all the impossibly tangled and unintended consequences of our sins was a powerful "happily ever after" that Plato couldn't offer.
I personally find this a very satisfying narrative that sews up much of the information gained through the course of a strange and wonderful lifetime of experience.
Comments
Principle of fairness to me is one reason eternal hell cannot exist. What we do wrong in a finite lifespan cannot merit a negative consequence that lasts for eternity.
Well, that's how I see it. I'm giving @KarlLB 's claim that fairness requires universalism some thought, as it may be weightier than my contention.
As far as I'm aware, most conceptualisations of universalism agree that if there is a hell, it involves punishment that is corrective or remedial and that, significantly, does not last forever. However, in the economy of eternity, a period of ten thousand years doesn't even make a dent.
If the consequences are finite, then any wrongdoing, no matter how great or small, whether it lasted a single hour or a whole lifetime, receives a punishment that is over in the blink of an eye (which is kind of comparable to the workers in the vineyard). However, compared to the prospect of enjoying the eternity of life that follows, the prospect of facing any finite period of punishment seems inconsequential.
And if it's inconsequential, then hell does not act as a deterrent, and doesn't appear to serve any significant purpose as far as our finite lives on earth are concerned.
Besides - it seems to me that "fairness", if we consider it near synonymous with "justice", can be subverted in one of two ways - over-severity or mercy. We generally consider the former bad but the latter to be a virtue - and one which Christianity has lauded and considered one of the qualities of God. If absolutely proportional justice is not possible, then mercy would seem to be the direction in which God would be expected to lean.
Amen. In the story about the workers at the 11th hour getting paid as much as the people who came early in the morning, it’s not like the earlier people’s wage is being cut to match a low wage for the workers at the 11th hour.
There's a video I saw once in which a medievalist made the argument that medieval societies engaged in extremely violent punishments because they were incompetent at catching criminals and they knew it. So these cruel and unusual "punishments" were not intended for the criminal themself, they were intended to turn that criminal into an object to scare anyone else in the community into proper behavior. This is to try to reduce the crime rate through sheer terror, concealing their abysmal failures to control the real crime rate.
Extreme suffering isn't about changing the soul, it's about scaring away other people, which is kind of the point of hell, I think. Hell isn't there to reform. The point of hell is to say that there is a place beyond reform. People in hell aren't there to be changed, helped, or offered sympathy. They're examples, objects for study, which is somewhat how Dante treats them. Inferno is basically a morality play, a series of historical grotesques providing a lesson in "don't be like these guys." Ironically I do think that was the purpose of Jesus' "hellfire and brimstone" talk. It wasn't punitive, it was exemplary. "Just don't go there. I warned you. It's destruction."
But then why would you believe it?
Exactly. There's believing my dog will greet me at the door, then there's believing St. Peter will meet me at the gate. They seem to require a different level of "data."
And who knows about God, but quite a lot of people care about fairness, and care even more about unfairness. The unfairness of people being born into poverty, living with abuse or dying from pollution hangs heavy on many of us.
How does the prospect of universal reconciliation in the future help to change the unfairness and injustice happening now? Why would anyone profiting from exploitation now be motivated to change their behaviour based on the prospect of a future, time-limited, judgment mercifully tipped in their favour?
Who pays the price for this act of mercy?
If hell is eternal, those there are paying a far higher price than anyone could to "pay for this act of mercy".
My understanding is that those who believe do right things because the Holy Spirit changes them and inspires them so to do - not through fear of Hell. After all, they're assured of forgiveness through Christ anyway. It strikes me that your objection to Universalism applies to Christianity in virtually any form.
For that matter, the reward of earthly wrongdoing is equally finite and someone who is inclined to discount finite rewards and penalties as you imagine them doing is going to discount the finite rewards of earthly wrongdoing anyway.
But why would anyone become a believer in the first place? People who want to do good and treat each other with respect, maybe. But what about those who exploit others for their own profit and gain - what motive would they have for becoming believers and giving all that up? And what about those who are exploited or suffer at the hands of others? Looking at the parable of the great feast in Luke, or Jesus' encounter with the rich young ruler, it occurs to me that the privileged and entitled have rather more to gain from Universalism than the poor, exploited, marginalised or oppressed
And I've noticed myself that as times get darker, Dante's visions of hell become more relatable and seem less deranged, in part because I see the world itself becoming deranged.
We're back to the bedrock issue of "because we think it's true." Not everybody believes in something because they think it will be useful to them in some way; in fact, I find that a kind of cynical way of choosing (!) one's beliefs. The whole concept of choosing one's beliefs is foreign to me--I'm trying to figure out what the truth is, and go by that. It seems to me that choosing one's own beliefs for utilitarianism, or comfort, or whatever--ignoring truth--is quite dangerous--the kind of thing that might bring you smack up against reality in an unpleasant way (as, say, the anti-vaxxers are finding). And trying to choose someone ELSE'S beliefs for any purpose but truth (as a parent, a teacher, a propagandist, a publicist) is downright wicked.
And so application of rational logic gets interesting there. I don't need axiomatic truths. I can even share fellowship with anti-vaxxers.
I think this might be another case where my faith isn't given to a set of beliefs, even if I can recite the Nicene Creed with a straight face. It's fidelity to a body of people. I believe in God, not in my own beliefs or anyone else's. I try to be faithful. And my ideas? They can go to hell, and likely will. I'm no gnostic.
For context, I'm now watching a freakishly long youtube video about the roots of the 7th Day Adventist Church and how one if its founders was pretty blatantly a fraud. I'm thinking about someone I knew in high school who was a member, and how the video guy says the church's way of thinking can incline members to conspiracy theories. It's pretty well done and watching the church evolve over time and try to adapt to its horrendously awkward origins is...a experience.
Link here. Warning, it's a doozy, but well done. I'm not all the way through it.
Do the creeds say anything about hell? I only take a passing interest in these things but it is curious that the things some people say are absolutely fundamental to believe don't seem to be the same issues that those involved in the writing of the creeds thought were important.
For example I was reading about the "resurrection of the body" recently and it had me wondering how that relates to this discussion of hell.
There is the catch, eternal fire past the last judgement and Hell do not seem to be synonymous in the creeds. I think they may not be synonymous in the Gospels. That is, I think* two words are used in the text, "Hades" which refers to a place of the dead and "Gehenna" which refers to a place of everlasting burnings. Yes, I know Hades is Greek, but it seems to relate to a 1st-century Jewish idea as well about a place where the dead await the last judgement. It has its place of the good and place of the bad within it. Our understanding of Hell seems to me to conflate the two almost entirely.
*I know both are used, I just have not done a close enough word study to work out how they relate to each other in detail to be sure what amount of overlap there is.
If I recall, isn't "the harrowing of hell" also an ancient belief in the church? Not Scriptural, but it has some pretty ancient roots.
And I do think "hades" gets used once or twice in the NT. Hell in the popular American consciousness is a mixture of images and allusions, including multiple ones from the Bible, and splicing those allusions into their component parts is certainly one way that people cope.
As I've matured as a Christian, I sometimes get a little curious about such projects. These things get stitched together over generations, and it's careful work for us to start pulling at threads with our adjustments. Yet, we have to, I think. And I do think sometimes what I've inherited is already a post modern mess.
Course not. How could we?
As Yanis Varoufakis (an economist, writing about economics) tells the tale of Faustus/Faust: in Marlowe's version, once his twenty-four years are up, Doctor Faustus begs, cries and pleads to be released from his contract with Mephistopheles, but to no avail, and he is carried off to Hell. But in Goethe's somewhat later version, Faust is able to achieve redemption: realising his mistake before his time is up, Faust performs acts of public service and so, when Mephistopheles comes to claim his interest, Gods's angels intervene. Singing "He who strives on and lives to strive / Can earn redemption still," they take Faust to heaven instead.
Varoufakis' point is that "Debt is to market societies what hell is to Christianity: unpleasant but indispensable". Thinking back to the discussion (or posts) on evangelicalism and capitalism, I wonder if there's more the relationship than metaphor, for example reflecting the changes to the ending of Faust or the appeal of universalism.
I think there's a range of interpretations that share some qualities. It's hot, it's unpleasant, it's akin to a prison. Most of these include it being a place for dead people who are somehow immoral or wicked.
No, it's not scriptural but when has that ever stopped anyone? The solas aren't scriptural either... 😉
More seriously, the point is that the icon depicts a Resurrection hope and however we envisage Hell that's what comes up Trump's- whether we understand it literally or metaphorically.
Yes, I believe in the concept of Hell because it's scriptural (as @Lamb Chopped reminds us, Jesus spoke of it) and because it's part of the belief-system of the community which formed/wrote/received the scriptures in the first place.
The scriptures emerged from and for a faith community, the Church.
We can argue it all ways round, 'The Church through the Bible and the Bible through the Church', but however we understand it and whether we have 'appropriated' these things individually or independently or in the context of a faith community we all apprehend and inherit a body of belief handed down from our forefathers and foremothers in the faith.
So yes, however we cut it, Hell is there in scripture and Tradition / tradition.
We are left then with the issue of how to deal with that.
I think I've mentioned before that a personal or individual belief in Universalism appears to be 'acceptable' within the Orthodox Tradition, providing it's not 'dogmatised', at which point, as I understand it, it becomes 'heretical.'
One of the beefs we Orthodox have with our RC brothers and sisters is the tendency to over-dogmatise things. To over-egg the pudding.
Although individual RCs don't always do that of course.
The RCs have legitimate beefs about us too.
Perhaps I'm unusual but I can live with a degree of uncertainty and ambiguity in all of this.
Which is why I need the icon that greets me each time I attend a service.
How Hellish ...
Like any of us get a choice?
Why do you continue to make tongue-in-cheek jabs about the solas when Shipmates from traditions that historically embrace the solas have repeatedly told how tiresome they find it. It’s starting come across as though your baiting people. Please just let it go already.
And yes, thanks for reminding me of the 1 Peter quote, @Nick Tamen.
Peace be to all!
@Bullfrog, indeed but plenty of people act as if we do ...
Imagine if a shipmate kept going on, making jibes at the Orthodox for downplaying the Son for not having the Holy Spirit proceed from him. Then when challenged said "Only a fraternal jest".
In that context, and being someone who habitually reasons about my own beliefs in a true/false manner, the way I understand our search for true/false conclusions about our beliefs is to accept that looking for true/false conclusions describes how we, as individuals, relate to our beliefs. I still think this matters - just one of the ways being what our reasoning and our conclusions tell us about ourselves.
I suppose I am somewhat cynical in my understanding, including how I relate to my own beliefs. I wouldn't use the word "choose", as I think it's generally less conscious than that, but I think that human beings acquire our beliefs in an overlapping variety of ways, including being sourced from our trusted authorities, as well as our own interests.
Another reason why it matters that we understand how we acquire our beliefs, is that a number of significant people involved in (algorithmic) AI, and a number of significant exploiters of these technologies, are working towards influencing and choosing our beliefs for us. The more we understand about how we acquire our own beliefs, the better placed we'll be to deal with this.
And how someone acquires a belief is fascinating and something to keep an area on, certainly, and yet still doesn't make the question "is it true?" irrelevant. The same with beliefs about the unprovable (in this lifetime, at least). Some (like me) consider that they've found an authority who knows what he's talking about (Christ), even though the subject would be beyond almost everyone else. The question then becomes whether his credentials are good enough.
I'd take it in good part, as well as arguing the contrary.
But yes, point taken.
There are plenty of things we could lay to the account of Orthodoxy. Phyletism. Triumphalism at times. Much more besides.
I could have made my point of course without the jibe about the solas and I've already apologised for that.
For all my faults you've got a very eirenic Orthodoxen here. Which doesn't excuse the jibe of course.
I concluded a couple of decades ago that belief and identity are artifacts or markers of some type of trauma and/or indoctrination.
I'm watching with considerable sadness my Chinese massage therapist, who is a grown woman of 54 years, forging a new identity through her daily online contact with what I can only describe as a cult run by a Chinese woman who fled the PRC and is living in New York and is proclaiming herself as the incarnated Jesus Christ.
My friend started out as a woman who was really quite naive for all her years, and who struggled with life in Spain after her husband died. We helped her a lot with his estate (he died without a Spanish will, an administrative minefield) and she was generally speaking a relaxed, happy and easy going type of person who wanted to understand Christianity but struggled with the language.
She hooked up with this Chinese group online and started with two six hour online meetings a week. Then three. Now every day four hours in the morning. The amount of material this cult leader has published would choke a horse.
Now my friend is sad, anxious and withdrawn. She believes her homeland is the Great Satan. She accused me yesterday of not loving God because I don't go to church. She posts regularly to Facebook reams of cut and paste paragraphs about the evil of the world and how the Church of Almighty God is the bulwark against this evil. She identifies with this group and wants my husband and I to join so that we will be "saved".
It's very sad to think we might lose her to this group but she is incurably naive and makes baffling, even catastrophic, financial decisions which she comes to us for help to intervene on her behalf with retailers, investment counselors, banking and tax authorities.
All I can do is stand and watch as the new Chang emerges. It makes me very sad.
AFF
Below the age of 10±, we have very little choice about our authorities. If we're fortunate, we gradually gain more agency as we get older, but that can't be taken for granted. Quite a lot of people in this world grow up without ever gaining much agency about their authorities. Learning how to think for ourselves, and access to media that introduces us to new authorities, aren't a given, by any means. If the truths that we find are determined by our authorities, having a basic idea of how we acquire beliefs seems rather more significant than fascinating.
Truth isn't irrelevant, but I'm aware that being able to reason about our beliefs, to the extent that we can (those of us posting on this thread), is something of a luxury. As is having the time, materials and permission to look for and assess the credibility of new authorities.
A Feminine Force, I've just read your post, which seems rather depressingly salient.
hosting
Hello,
Reminding posters again that this is NOT Purgatory.
People are sharing deeply personal and sensitive things here and the culture we are looking for is in our guidelines
Please remember that an insult to a faith tradition is an insult to everyone from that tradition posting here. It might not break C3 in Purgatory but it does break the guidelines for this board.
There are times when people will need to share quite deep criticisms that come from their lived experience but flippant jokes and digs are not that.
Thanks very much
Louise
Epiphanies Host
hosting off
If it isn't about choice, how does someone even end up in hell? In their defence, couldn't they say they didn't choose the beliefs that sent them there?
That's one of my objections to Hell. You can choose to follow Jesus or not if you believe in the claims made for him, but you can't choose to believe those claims. They either seem true, plausible or false. I have too many family members who would love to believe but just - don't.
Sure. Children end up with beliefs that aren't chosen all the time. Being told that they are stupid or worthless. I believed that my birth made my mother ill and her post partum depression was my fault.
So many beliefs are internalized as coping mechanisms. Repeated messaging in media results in people believing all manner of things that aren't really chosen. 40 million hairdressers can't be wrong and so on.
Beliefs are especially easy to install when the individual is in a state of trauma or fear. This makes a belief in hell especially easy to install. When you couple that with the group identity that ensures protection against such a traumatic outcome, it's very easy for me to see why the concept of hell is important to some groups in terms of membership identity and growth.
AFF
The second sentence here hurts my brain. I can't make it make sense.
Can you choose to believe someone loves you without thinking it is true that they love you?
I think it is possible to believe things on one level but not another.
For example I was thinking about First Nation beliefs I was learning about and speculating that one could presumably be a Meteorologist believing A and B about the wind whilst not seeing the contradiction with the religion saying C.
I'm not speaking for them, of course, but it strikes me that there's a difference between a propositional belief, which is about a set of yes/no or true/false beliefs and an embodied relational belief which is about belonging and a bunch of other things.
In your example it feels like it is possible to live with the contradictions of believing things about brain chemistry and the reality of family love because that's embodied belief.
I'd also like to say that much of what posters here from Christian traditions other than my own resonate very strongly with me and would like to correct any impression there might be that the opposite is the case. It isn't.
I'm finding this thread interesting and helpful and whilst I have to watch that I don't remain in Purgatory mode, I am grateful for the contributions - and admonitions.
I can understand the distinction @Basketactortale is making between embodied and propositional beliefs but am also on a similar page to @Nick Tamen on these matters.
I would also suggest that there is a 'sliding scale' between the propositional and the embodied, as it were, and that all of us are somewhere along a continuum in that respect. I suspect none of us are 'fully' propositional and none of us are fully 'embodied', if we can put it that way. It's all work in progress.
One day we will 'know fully as we are fully known.'
I can't resist a 'both/and' thing at this point ...
Peace be to all.
Someone up thread mentioned modern translations of the Apostle's Creed says Jesus went to the dead rather than descended into hell. The ancient concept of the place of the dead (Sheol in Hebrew) or the Underworld in Greek was basically a place of shadows, dark, dreary. No real torture, just a place of nonexistence.
When the creed says (Jesus) went to the dead, and after three days rose again, what it is really saying is Jesus did indeed die. There was the thought that the body would begin to decompensate on the third day when the soul finally leeves the body. This is one reason the rising of Lazarus is so miraculous. Lazarus had already been dead for four days.
Of course, in going to the dead, 1 Peter 3:19 says Jesus went to the dead and proclaimed (victory) to the spirits in prison. Jesus went into death's domain and broke it from the inside.
Sheol is still there. But it is empty. Hades is still there, but it has no power. Hell is not to be feared. Thanks be to God.
As the old hymn has it:
'He arose the victor o'er the dark domain,
Now he lives forever with his saints to reign.'
In the gnostic cosmology, this sphere was created by the demiurge as a trap for the "divine sparks" or souls. It was a closed loop system of perpetual rebirth with occasional stops in Hades which is alluded to in Plato's Republic.
Hades is a realm with heaven-like, pugatorial, and hell-like regions and according to the wisdom tradition of Platonist gnostics, the kind of life you led determined which region you got to hang out in until your number was called for reincarnation.
Plato's wisdom tradition promoted the development of wisdom through successive incarnations so that one would be able to choose a life from the pile of lives offered that resulted in the least amount of suffering and harm inflicted on oneself and others. This was the best that could be hoped for, but it didn't address the clearing of all the subsequent consequences of lives lived in folly.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The narrative of Christ punching a hole in the back wall of Hades and liberating those divine sparks trapped in the cycle of eternal recurrence, while simultaneously rising again into the world to rule and cleanse it of all the impossibly tangled and unintended consequences of our sins was a powerful "happily ever after" that Plato couldn't offer.
I personally find this a very satisfying narrative that sews up much of the information gained through the course of a strange and wonderful lifetime of experience.
AFF