Ronin

Oh, well, if you're not going to go by what the christian bible specifically describes as hell and the only reason why one would be condemned to it ~ then who's going to argue with you.

""If two things don’t fit, but you believe both of them, thinking that somewhere, hidden, there must be a third thing that connects them, that’s credulity." - Umberto Eco (1929-)

I really never can get enough of the creative and utterly unsupported renditions theists can contrive to explain love and hell.

I ate Pascal's Wafer

Tercel, In other words, God created all these little fallible beings such that they will sin at some point in their lives. Then he requires all these little fallible beings to repent of their sins (he apparently does not forgive people on his own, judging how they tried to live their lives rather than the petty sins they may have commited), else they continue to lose God's love until they die and end up in a hell of sorts.

Besides, you would think true love would transcend simple actions. An analogy would be the old parent and child example. During the child's teenage years, he may rebel and go against the will of his parents. However, his parents still love him all the same and still seek to have a good, lasting relationship with their child. Each act he does out of rebellion does not chip away the love his parents have for him. The love of the parents simply does not depend on the little actions their children do.

Of course your god seems to be different. You seem to be suggesting that God loves us, but we are more and more separated from that love as we continue to sin. Eventually, at some point, God stops loving us and we are left to our own devices. This isn't exactly the ideal model of true love.

He hasn't always forgiven sins out of hand. Before Christ came along, he required sacrifices of the innocent to pay for the sins of the guilty. Basically, somebody had to be punished and the blood of the innocent was used to pay for somebody elses sins. When Jesus came all that changed. He simply took the sacrifice on himself, thus paying for everybody's sins. At this point the sins were paid for and people did not need to sacrifice the innocent so that God would forgive them.

Of course all that suggests that God does not forgive sins outright. He doesn't just say, "hmm, you seem truly sorry for that, so even though you didn't say anything I think I'll forgive you." He requires you to repent of your sins and actually accept that Jesus did die so that God could forgive you. Luckily the sacrifice was already made so that this is the only step, but ultimately a sacrifice of the innocent was made so that God would be able to forgive people.

Chapter/verse? Seems like the Bible mentions some things about the lake of fire and everlasting torment for Satan and his people. Perhaps you can show me where it was wrong given the context, but the way they described it certainly seemed like it was a real place.

That's all well and good, but I don't remember seeing this mentioned in the Bible. It is purely speculation and conjecture on your part in order to reconcile hell with a loving deity. It's all nice, but is potentially theologically unsound as one has to do a fair bit of manipulating to get the Bible to support this.

-Nick

braces_for_impact

Kudos for trying though. That's got to be one of the best tries at reconcilliating an all loving god with eternal suffering that I've seen in some time.

It doesn't work all the same, but it was an interesting take on it.

Tercel

I'm sorry you think the Bible does not agree with me. I assume that you would agree with me that the Bible contains contradictions and is a collection of works of what human writers have thought about God and His actions in this world. (The difference between us of course is that I believe that many of them indeed had experienced God acting in the world.) I have studied the Bible for many years, as well as what different Christian denominations teach. I have long come to the conclusion that it is impossible to have a theology that is 100% biblical for the simple reason that the Bible authors make contradictory statements on a number of subjects. However it is entirely possible to have a theology which is the most Biblical and logical, which is what I believe I have done. (My position on salvation is mostly that of the Orthodox Church) As far as I am aware, my theology contains zero logical inconsistencies or tensions and is about 90% Biblical (being hence the most Biblically supported theology).

I am always amused by them too. I assume you are referring to my statements however, so I would again point out that they are both Biblically and logically supported.

emotional

The Bible says:

If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?

And rightly. Since I don't believe what it says about earthly things, I find no reason to believe what it says about matters beyond the grave. To learn about those matters, one must read the spiritualist literature, such as the Silver Birch Anthology.

Briefly speaking: "heaven" and "hell" as the Bible depicts them, as places of eternal bliss or torture, do not exist. There are more "heavenly" states and more "hellish" states, but no such locations as heaven and hell, nor any states of eternal reward or damnation. "Heavenly" means higher in the state of spiritual evolution. Spiritual evolution is attained not by belief in particular creeds, but by doing good works. It doesn't matter what you believe, it matters only that you do good works towards other people. Creeds cannot help, but can only hinder the progress of the spirit (the etheric body). Thus much in the spiritualist literature.

Tercel

That's part of what being fallible means, so yeah.

!!!
Hmm, did you read what I wrote? Some corrections:
1. He forgives people on His own. He completely forgives everyone for everything. How can I say this clearer? Can I use caps, like a ranting fundie? Hmm, probably not... italics instead. Because He is nothing but boundlessly loving and endlessly forgiving we have His forgiveness and love for anything and everything whether we want it or not, because that is who He is.

2. No one can "continue to lose God's love" (!), because no one can lose God's love at all in the first place. He loves everyone completely, He makes no distinction in whom He loves, but just loves ALL. He is not some silly greek superhuman in the sky deity who gets offended when men tick Him off and has emotions or desires for revenge: This is God with a captial G I'm talking about here - the simple unconstrained and unchanging Being who created and loves all that is.

3. The way in which we can "lose God's love" is only that we can lose our perception of it to some extent through sin. A person who becomes blind cannot see the Sun. Have they "lost sunlight" through becoming blind? They've subjectively lost it to some extent (though they can still feell the warmth the sun brings etc) but not because the sun has arbitrarily got upset with them and hidden! God's love like the sun shines on all, always: Whether people have subjectively screwed themselves up or not is another matter.

Er, how does this differ to what I've been saying? Did I explain it badly? Or did you just not read what I wrote carefully enough?

Nope, try again.

Well, firstly you are only talking about the Jewish law, not people in general before Christ. Secondly, no doubt the Jews thought they were obtaining God's forgiveness by making those sacrifices, I simply think they were wrong. Thirdly, the notion of making a sacrifice (ie the cost to you -for them the money paid to buy the sheep or whatever to be sacrificed- rather than the animal itself) every time you sin is an interesting reminder to the people of the importance of maintaining a right relationship with God, -and obviously a financial incentive not to do otherwise! Fourthly, it nicely prefigures Christ's sacrifice.

If you say so. There are also lots of passages to suggest God does forgive sins outright. In the parable of the Prodigal Son, I don't remember the father demanding the son make reparations before he could be "forgiven". When Jesus told his disciples to forgive people not seven times but seven times seventy, are we to suppose that God Himself does not do this? When Jesus said that God's perfection was summarised in his love for both the wicked and the righteous (Mat 5:43-48) are we to suppose that He didn't forgive the wicked? And what about "It was while we were sinners that Christ died for us" - what does that say about God's boundless forgiving love for the wicked?

Repentance of your sins is something required incidentally, not by God: The sun doesn't "require" that you open your eyes before you can see it's light, yet you still have to do it. And He doesn't require acceptance of Jesus before people are forgiven. Consider the book of Jonah, the entire point of the book is to say that God is the loving God of all and He will forgive anyone. What Jesus did those people believe in? None, they lived long before Jesus came, yet God still forgave them.

Church interpretation based on logical extension of a well-supported theme: doesn't have explicit proof-texts. (Or at least, not that I am aware of)

The lake of fire is descibed in Revelation - which uses wierd and wacky metaphors and allegories at the best of times and is down-right incomprehensible at the worst. Why anyone who has two clues would say "Revelation mentions a lake of fire therefore Hell is a literal lake of fire" is beyond me.
The only other thing that comes close to a description of Hell is in one of Jesus' parables where he speaks of a rich man in a very hot place. If you want to take a parable literally, that's your business.

Well, it's the standard teaching of the second largest Christian denomination (the Orthodox) and has also obtained wide support among the other two largest Christian sects (the Roman Catholics and the Anglicans respectively), it is simply part of a paradigm of salvation that is both logically coherent and finds extensive support in the Bible and which has been expounded by numerous theologians throughout the centuries.
As for your complaint, the Bible spends very little time saying anything about what exactly hell is and what exactly the state is of the people who are in it: Hence any statements about this inevitably have no explicit Biblical support, but are simply the logical implications of whatever the person's paradigm of salvation is (which can have explicit biblical support).

Tercel

I really don't understand why you think it doesn't work. Have you ever read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce? Or lacking that this alleged near death experience of Howard Storm's.
Now, given a long long long time (and appropriate conditions - see Lewis' thoughts or Storm's alleged experiences for examples), it seems to me that people are going to gravitate towards one of two extreme conditions: completely good or completely evil.
Or consider it this way: No matter how much God loves somebody, no matter how much good things He gives them, there will always be some people who will utterly insist on rejecting and hating everything because that is who and what they have made themselves. It is a logical consequence of free will: If we accept that people are really free to make of themselves what they choose, then it is an inevitable logical conclusion that some people might choose to make themselves completely evil hate-filled beings devoid of anything good or even the ability to enjoy good things. And nothing an unlimited and loving God can do can change this if He grants free will.

winstonjen

What about create us with an inclination to NOT sin, instead of the other way around? The current state of affairs proves that if your god exists, he wants us to reject him.

I ate Pascal's Wafer

Tercel, If this is the case, then Jesus did not need to die so that our sins would be forgiven (which goes against what many protestants teach, incidentally). If this is the case, then why should I fear hell? My sins are forgiven by God, so I am cleansed before I die. Wouldn't this suggest that even if I experienced this separation from God's love after death, I could theorectically come back to God's love and experience the bliss of heaven? This is the first time I've heard of your particular interpretation of the afterlife (I spent a good number of years as a Roman Catholic and never heard anything about this), so I'm not so sure what you're getting at and exactly how you are defining hell.

Thus, hell cannot be a separation of God's love because God would still love us even after death. Since God loves us, what would stop somebody from coming back to God's love once they have unambiguous evidence of his existence? Surely a loving deity would welcome people back "home" if they changed their mind later, so doesn't this imply that hell is not a permanent state of being?

So what might this loving deity be doing to ensure that people are not continually subjected to this detachment from his love? Would he just leave his creatures to their own devices such that they are subject to their own self-pity for eternity, or would he make plans to help them recover from the situation they got themselves into (this would include after death actions)?

The way you said it suggested that the parents would inactively love the child. The love would be there, but the child is left to his own devices. He may not choose to accept that love, and he is left alone to live in his own self-pity with no help from the parents. That's all well and good, but the truly loving parents would actively try to help their children through the difficult times. They would let their child know that they love him, and they would support the child in all situations, including helping the child get out of difficult situations that he managed to get himself into because of his rebellion. Perhaps your deity is like that too, but I have not heard the first Christian say that God is willing to work with his creation (even after death) without the people willingly calling out for help.

That would be what I was talking about. There are instances in the OT (Leviticus immediately comes to mind) where God himself gave specific rules for offerings and sacrifices. Some of those sacrifices were for the purposes of forgiveness. You can attribute this to Jewish custom and not the actions of God, but in doing so it seems like you would have to state that the particular portion of the Bible is untrue. If you start doing this, then your belief system would start to become a case where you discard portions of the Bible that you do not agree with, and keep the portions that support your beliefs. Is this what you are doing?

I can understand the societal reasons for these sacrifices. However, the OT is not told as an anthropological study into the minds of the people. It is told as if that is what God himself wanted, and these customs formed the foundation of beliefs for people up until Jesus' time. I can see where it would be useful in keeping society intact, but reading the Bible at face value suggests that God needed the sacrifices to forgive certain crimes, not that the society used the sacrifices to keep social norms.

Those are cases of humans forgiving other humans, though. Apparently God thought it best for humans to be able to forgive other humans without requiring some sort of punishment. However, God has historically required some type of punishment so that he could forgive sins. Else, the sacrifices of animals and of Jesus would be unnecessary. Even if there are cases where God chose to forgive people outright, there are still other cases where God required the blood of the innocent to pay for the sins of the guilty.

Sure, he can forgive the wicked, but there seems to be the punishment of the innocent in order to do so. For example, in many protestant teachings (and of the Catholics that I know) they show that Jesus was required to die on the cross so that he could pay for mankind's sins. Before, sinners could be forgiven, but apparently some sort of punishment was still necessary else the sacrifice of Jesus need not be made.

In other words, God can't forgive you if you do not repent. One must seek forgiveness in order to be forgiven.

Since the time of Jesus it is generally accepted among protestants and some Catholics that you have to accept Jesus before you can be forgiven of your sins. Something about "no one can come to the father except through me" comes to mind, and they seem to use that to justify the point that you have to accept Jesus before you can be forgiven. Of course times were different before the NT came along, but in those times people were also offering up sacrifices so that they can be forgiven--a practice which was unnecessary after the NT.

Which church? Several other churches don't agree with such an interpretation. Who is right?

Considering that Revelation is among the more obscure things that I have read, it escapes me why rational people would take it literally as well. However, it is presented as a literal prophecy. The phrase "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him, to show his servants what must happen soon" (Revelation 1:1) can be used to justify a literal interpretation of the book. Later the book warns against adding or taking away parts of the scripture. I don't mind seeing Revelation as a metaphor for some social teachings, but if one is to accept the Bible at face value one must realize that the Bible clearly states that Revelation was intended as a literal prophecy. You may be able to Biblically justify the idea that Revelation is not meant to be a literal prophecy, but you run the risk of opening up doors to discount other portions of the Bible as well.

Your view is extensively supported by the Bible? Isn't this the same Bible that you said doesn't explicitly support one interpretation of hell over the other? As I said, you may be able to reconcile the concept of hell with a loving god, but it would require a fair bit of manipulation to do so.

This may be the case, but when the Bible does talk about the nature of hell, it is considered to be a metaphor by those who do not agree with it. What this amounts to is saying that parts of the Bible which support the lake of fire interpretation are metaphors and not to be taken seriously, but other verses which may require twisting support another version of hell. Superficially this resembles a "pick and choose" version of Christianity, but I'll leave it up to you to show how it's not.

-Nick

Tercel

An inclination NOT to sin, would be an reduction of free will. Such inclination can only come freely as the result of what you choose to make of yourself.
God hasn't made us "inclined" to sin either: God made us without inclination at all, doing freely as we choose and making ourselves what we choose. Of course, the first humans sinned and we have subsequently inherited their condition, but that is merely a consequence not something God magically imposed. But it doesn't really matter, as 1. We aren't guilty of their sin, 2. If we were God would forgive us, and 3. God through Jesus Christ has undone everything "Adam's" sin does and more (Romans 5:12-21).
God is happy for us to learn by experience the nature of good and evil, but God desires that we be eventually reunited with Him completely. How does the current state of affairs make the existence of such a God unlikely?