Jobar

luvluv, can't you see that your rejection of the notion of hell, as is commonly accepted by many (I do not say most) mainstream Christians, is yet more evidence, to us, of the unintelligibility and lack of consistency of Christianity? I have heard the term 'cafeteria Christian'- and I do not mean to be insulting here, simply descriptive. Each individual seems to pick and choose the elements of theology which seems best to him or her- and the meal (religion) you wind up with may bear little or no resemblance to that of someone else also calling themself a Christian! I rather admire your stance that God does not threaten unbelievers with eternal torture- if all Christians did that, I am sure there would be fewer people objecting to Christianity. The fact remains, however, that there are plenty of self-named Christians who insist that all of us are headed for the eternal fire- and I do mean *all* of us, because there are those who would claim that your more gentle theology was in itself cause for damnation!

[ September 24, 2002: Message edited by: Jobar ]</p>

Amos

The "Christian doctrine" does not know anything about heaven or hell because Christians with a doctrine must die before anything good can possibly happen to them.

Catholics have Saints and many Saints have written about hell and can see clearly the suffering endured by their lost brethren in hell now.

The bible is full of hell and for a start the entire gospels take place in purgatory. If Christians can't understand this now what are they going to learn when they die?

luvluv

Jobar I'm not backing off hell at all, what I'm backing off is the that the common conception of hell is the accurate one. I don't think we know that hell literally contains fire, that those who are in hell are tormented for all time, or whether or not hell itself is even eternal. For instance, their is a passage in the book of revelation that states that at the end of the judgement both death and hell would be thrown into the lake of fire and destroyed. That suggets to me that hell, and everyone in it, will not be tormented forever but would simply cease to exist. Also, Jesus quite often used the term Gehena for hell, which was in reference to a trash burning facility just outside of (I believe) Jerusalem. Now, it is safe to say that while Gehena burned pretty much constantly, nothing in Gehena did: the items in Gehena burned until they were consumed and then they ceased to exist. Some Christians are annihilationists, who believe that souls in hell are eventually simply destroyed.

About the only thing we can say for sure about hell is that the people there are conscious that they are there and that they regret coming there. We know it is seperate from heaven. That's about it.

Amos:

You're right in that Catholics may have what they consider to be doctrinal statments about the nature of hell. Other denominations might as well. But there aren't any such documents in the mainline protestant churches. As a fairly orthodox Protestant, I have to say that I don't consider there to be any cannonical descriptions of hell that are any more explicit than those in the Bible. But obviously, a Catholic might disagree.

Amos

In my turn I do not really speak on behalf of Catholic doctrine and it actually troubles me that you read my post for I know that a good soul such as you are should not be exposed to my ramblings.