The fatal flaw in this is that those people were NOT actually given a choice (or a reason), nor would it exonerate God, since it’s still his choice to let thm exist in a state of suffering when he could just easily “respect their choice” by annihilating them outright. The choice to keep them in a state of agonizing existence is purely gratuitous and sadistic.
Assuming God can love people, then it is a given he could hate them.
If he loved you, why would he send you to hell? I suppose he could love you and not like you; I know we’ve all been in that position.
Personally, I don’t think he does love you if you are in hell.
I don’t think I’ve read the Bible as thoroughly as you have, but IIRC there are conflicting passages on whether that’s the case at all. Some parts seem to say “the dead know nothing” at least until Judgment Day, but one or two passages (which seemed to me to be more like parables and a bit inconsistent with other parts) talked about how some dude was sent to hell and then was begging Abraham to sprinkle water on his tongue to quench his thirst. Aside from that, though, I don’t actually recall anything literally saying there would be eternal punishment.
Lake of Fire
I once talked to a guy raised in a fundamentalist church (the sect that published The Plain Truth (pre-1986), as it happens), that tended to agree. They thought that hell was a place of annihilation, not eternal torture. I see from wikipedia that “…the vast majority of beliefs that the Worldwide Church of God taught under the administration of Herbert W. Armstrong had also been repudiated,” so I don’t know how prevalent this doctrine is. But as you noted, this view has some Biblical support.
Perhaps the Lord loves all his creatures, though He can’t find a place for some in the afterlife. Massacres, tortures, plagues, etc are another matter: on that subject, see Job.
The story you’re talking about is the parable of Lazarus and the Rich man in the Gospel of Luke. That story references both of them going to Hades (often translated as “Hell”), but that story references an ancient Jewish conception of a temporary underworld (called Sheol in Hebrew, and was typically translated as “Hades” in Greek) which was compartmentalized for good people (who went to the “Bosom of Abraham”) and bad people who were temporarily punished. This Sheol was only a holding tank until Judgement Day, though, after which the good people would be given eternal life and the bad people would be annihilated.
The Jewish conception of the underworld evolved over the centuries. Originally Sheol mean no more than the grave, and in some passages of the Bible is used synomously with death or the grave. After the exile, Jewish theology was greatly influenced by Persian thought (i.e Zoroastrianism), and adopted the Persian eschaton, including the idea of a resurrection of the dead, and a day of judgement. That was the point when Sheol began to reconceptualized as a temporary underworld (the details of which were influenced by Greek conceptions of Hades).
It’s all pretty complicated, and I haven’t even mentioned Gehenna, which is a whole NUTHER thing.
Another variant is that hell is uncomfortable because its residents are removed from God’s love, which resides in another sphere. According to this view, popular S&M depictions might be somewhat overblown.
I’ve read the Bible all the way through several times and it seems to me that God loves everyone equally. Whether this should reassure you or scare the shit out of you…I don’t know.
C.S. Lewis posited that for many people, including many Christians, coming face to face with Good (with a capital G) might be the most horrifying experience of their lives.
Don’t know if that’s what you meant, but it reminded me.
This is basically an argument that God is a passive-aggressive jerk. If someone is a misotheist, sure, you could argue that God is respecting their choice. But an atheist does not choose not to love God, he simply does not love Him because he does not realise He exists.
It’s like if you invented a cure for cancer, and decided that you wouldn’t offer it to anyone ignorant of its existence, “respecting their choice” not to want any (ignoring the fact that they don’t want any because they don’t know there’s anything there to want).
Well, JC seemed to have covered that; although in this translation at least, he does also seem to mention an explicit eternal punishment (contrary to what I said before):
There are 3 extreme solutions to the problem of evil, conditional on God’s existence: a) God is evil, b) God is not omnipotent and c) evil doesn’t really exist. The book of Job rules out corner c). There is also an extensive middle territory between those poles.
“God is passive-aggressive”, places itself on near the evil corner. But we can also imagine the Creator being unable to get His world’s parameters adjusted sufficiently so that all pass into eternal bliss. It’s sort of like the scientist who cures cancer, but lacks marketing experience, an advertising budget or even sufficient resources to make his lifesaving drugs available in the third world.
Then again, He could be an under-achiever.
My study Bible references Daniel 12:2 in the footnotes, which apparently is the first clear biblical reference to a resurrection, final judgment and afterlife:
I hasten to add though that the quote refers to a particular time and place and does not imply that the mass resurrection will be a global event.
FWIW, the Jesus Seminar decided to place Mathew 25:31-46 outside of the primary database for considering who Jesus was. It lacks other parallels in the Gospels, but “fits well into Matthew’s theological scheme, which became popular in the post-Easter community.”
It depends on who you ask.
Looking at E72521 and Measure for Measure’s last two posts together, maybe there’s a fourth solution for hell and the problem of evil: God isn’t being totally straightforward with us about what’s really going on. Is that ever mentioned as a possiblity–that God is good, but he’s deliberately misled us or left us to draw our own incorrect conclusions?
Most of the problem of evil concerns events in this world, so head fakes don’t entirely resolve the matter. You make a good point though: implicit (and sometimes explicit) in much of theology is the idea of the mystery of God. It’s also possible that He’s messing with our heads.
Incidentally, this site notes that the full text of the Apocalypse of Peter (not to be confused with the Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter) has only been available in full for about a century. In addition to the section quoted by E7521, it contains graphic depictions of hell.
God loves the sinner, but hates the sin. He loves them enough to grant them free will. If their misuse of their free will lands them in Hell, he weeps for them, but still loves them.
At least, that’s my interpretation of standard Christian theology. I don’t find it intellectually contradictory.
The Matthew 25 Sheep & Goats passage is interesting as the two terms for the fate of the condemned are literally “aionion pyr” and “kolasin aionion”, usually translated as “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment”, although “aionion” actually means what it sounds like, something that endures for an aion or so, and “kolasin” was often used by the Greeks to denote “CORRECTIVE punishment”.
As for the fire, the Old Testament repeatedly refers to God’s Presence as Fire which burns up the evil & refines the righteous. Isaiah 30:33 says that the Fire of Tophet (Gehenna) is kindled as a stream of brimstone from the Breath of YHWH.
There are many ways of looking at the question, even from the view of Bible-believers such as Curtis and I. Are souls necessarily immortal or can they be destroyed? Does “aionion” condemnation endure forever or just as long as necessary for either correction or destruction? Do condemned souls endure their condemnation deprived of God’s Presence or within God’s Presence? May it be true, as I have said and as some in Eastern Orthodoxy teach, that “the Glory of God is the Lake of Gehenna Fire”, that the same Light of God which delights the saved is perpetual torment to the damned (see also John 3:19-21)? I consider all these to be open questions.
Koxinga’s noting of C.S. Lewis’s view is described in Narnia VII:The Last Battle in which all beings come face to face with Aslan & behold Him with either utter adoration or hateful dread, passing either through The Door into New Eternal Narnia or disappearing into His Shadow. Also, later in the New Eternal Narnia, some beings (dwarves actually) exist which are perpetually blind to the beauty around them, locked into the prison of self-absorbtion.
First John says “God is Love”. The Bible says God is loving and just and righteous and wrathful and on and on, but the Bible does not say that “God is Justice” or “God is Righteousness” or “God is Wrath”, but it does say “God is Love”. I take that to mean that all other attributes of God- His Justice & Righteousness & Wrath- are rooted in and come back to His Love. So God may very well temporarily hate those who hurt others, but even that temporal hatred will work into His Eternal Love and that no being will perish forever who has not had opportunity to embrace & be embraced by that Love. I have enough faith in God as revealed in Jesus to totally trust that this is so. Unfortunately, I have enough experience with human willfulness to believe it is quite possible for people to spit in the Face of God/Jesus/Aslan g and embrace their damnation (“myyy precioussss”).*
An Eastern Orthodox perspective is here.
- Yeah, I mixed my Lewis & Tolkien references in one sentence. So sue me!
Yes, not only that but death is not a barrier to God as Jesus has overcome the grave.
I’ve heard that as well, but I have problems with it. God created me as I am. He knew from the dawn of time what my genetic makeup would be and how I would react to different events. He created me exactly that way.
So, by behaving exactly as I was created, I have free will and “deserve” a punishment?
Isn’t it God’s fault for making me that way?
Or is God not omnipotent and just let me make my own choices?
Just hold it right there pardner. Since the whole bible is literally true*, how can there be conflicting passages? :dubious:
- allegedly