except that I don’t have the defiitive answer.
Hell, I believe, is the absence of God, realizing finally, that He does love you and you Him, but…too late.
The again, in the Bible, it infers that it is eternal puishment without water to quench ones thirst.
If you drill far enough into the earth, you can yell down to the screams and ask… 
You too?!?! L
I believe Hell as Absence is Sheol/Hades while Hell as Presence is Gehenna.
I definitely believe that for someone who realizes they love God, it is never too late. Thus, I also hold to the possibility of Universal Salvation, tho I believe probably that while much of humanity will reconcile to God through Christ in the Afterlife/Resurrection, the few hold-outs will be allowed to dwindle out of existence.
Though yeah, if we could just get to that Siberian mine-shaft to Hell, we’d finally know for sure.
Being locked into a room, for eternity, along with an unending supply of persons who (a) are literalists determined to prove that God’s justice foredooms everyone who doesn’t buy into His escape clause to an eternity of torment, or (b) atheists, agnostics, etc., who are firmly convinced that all Christians believe the viewpoint described in (a).
My concept of Hell, such as it is, is that it is the “out” provided by a loving God to give meaning to the idea of free will and choice to the extreme cases of the people who just plain absolutely and permanently reject His love and forgiveness, and consists of an eternally frozen agonized contemplation of the fact that the pain and agony of death is the end – unless one accepts the gift of a life beyond it.
“Hell is other people.”
-Jean Paul Sartre
I doin’t know about “all Christians,” Polycarp, but (a) is beyond a doubt what Jesus believed. It’s right there in red letters, throughout the Gospels.
Polycarp said:
With due repsect to the “literalists”, whom ever they are, the literal use of the word hell, in it’s propoer context, weight and use, still suggests that hell is nothing more than the common grave. (cites notwithstanding)
Interesting descrpition. And if one doesn’t accept ‘the gift of life’ (and of course the terms associated with it) both death and hell (the residing place of the dead) are in fact the “end.”
BrainGlutton also said:
I don’t believe Jesus believed that people, any people, would suffer the fate of an eternity of torment (as manifested by a burning hell), and my reading of the gospels doesn’t support it.
“Hell is for Children”
–Pat Benetar
I don’t know whether or not you were being ironic, but I actually heard a fundie preacher fulminate against that song for several minutes, having obviously never listened to it, and actually believing that Ms. Benatar was claiming that Hell was a place that only existed as a tale told to children.
(If you were not being ironic, please do read the lyrics.)
Don’t know about Pat Benatar, but I’m pretty sure this quote is authentic (I remember it from high-school American Lit):
“The road to Hell is paved with the skulls of unbaptized children.”
– Jonathan Edwards
(Not the phony psychic cold-reader – the Puritan who wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”)
No I was being ironic.
It’s a song about child abuse, and a heart rending song for anyone who can relate to it’s impact on children.
I went to two different more-or-less fundamentalist (literalist for sure) Bible Colleges (PCB and Moody), and the idea of hell as an actual physical place was not very popular. Certainly the flames, etc. were regarded as metaphorical by 80%+.
The consensus was more along the lines of a “spirtual condition characterized by the total absence of and alienation from God.” That absence is the torture.
Right. Not a place, but a state or condition.
Although I have to admit that Dante had some deliciously creative scenarios into which he put his various deceased detractors and enemies, sometimes thinly disguised and sometimes explicitly.
It isn’t difficult to harmonize the concept of Hell as it appears in the old and new testaments
In the old, it always refers to Sheol, the grave, where everyone goes, righteous or otherwise.
In the first four books of the new, a new concept, Gehenna, appears. Gehenna means the valley of the Hinnom, Jerusalem’s smoldering waste dump. This word appears in Jesus’s lips often, although it is unclear about what he means by this. The old concept of Sheol begins to be translated as Hades.
An interesting passsage in Luke 16:19-31 speaks of the old Sheol/Hades, and specifies that the righteous go to a special section of it called “Abraham´s Bosom”. This is separated from the rest of Sheol/Hades by an impassable chasm. A person who is sent there is conforted, while the others are tormented by “fire”.
The lake of fire in Revelation is very different from Sheol/Hades. This corresponds more closely to Jesus’s Gehenna. It is inaugurated by Satan and his angels. Later, ANYONE whose name isn’t found in the book of life is thrown in it. (Revelation 20:15) Only the saved have their names written in the book of life. The book of life was writen from the creation of the world and list the names of those who would believe in God and so be saved. (Revelation 17:8)
JRDelirious said:
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Right. Not a place, but a state or condition.
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Well…Not quite right…
Hell is simply the common grave. And to the extent it is used, both the condition (state) and place are inseparable. They are intertwined.
To clarify a bit further, in almost all instances where someone specifically is referred to, they are dead. (Either dead, or the threat or reality of death is present) Not just estanged from God or “spiritually” dead, but clinically dead.
As a place, it is the grave you are in, whether that be in a proper tomb, or in the sea. (Or buried below the Meadowlands like Jimmy Hoffa…)
When used as a metaphor, like Gehenna or the cite in Revelations, it takes on the added quality of permanence. Jesus was in hell, and Job sought the protection of hell (death) but in those contexts there was a hope present for a resurection; a redemption from that condition.
But you will not find yourself in the biblical hell and be concious of it. You will be dead. That’s not a minor distinction as the bible makes no use of the word to simply describe someone who is estranged from God. (and alive)
In at least one of Jesus’s parables (that of the rich man and Lazarus, found in Luke 16), Jesus speaks of a hell (or “Hades”) that is characterized by fire and torment, and consciousness and regret. But the point of the parable was not to describe what hell is like, so it’s not necessarily fair to assume that Jesus believed in the exact version of hell he used in his story.
From a Christian perspective, what happens to all the non-christian theists and those unaware of a christian god’s existence?
If you never knew God existed, how would a world without God be hell?
Or for those who believe in a different supreme being, would a world without god make any difference?
Well, to THIS Christian, anyone who can entrust themselves to Christ & does not is risking some sort of unpleasantness- in Christ’s words, they “die in their sins”, perish in their flaws & failures. Perhaps they learn to trust Him in the Afterlife &/or the Resurrection. Perhaps they continue in rejecting Him till they cut themselves off from all Divine Life & thus dwindle out of existence.
For those who had no opportunity or Divine call to trust Christ, they will learn of God/Christ & have their opportunity, tho the character they developed in this life may well influence their response in the next life.
No one will live in Eternity not finding out about Father God & Jesus. No one will experience judgement for rejecting Them without having had opportunity to trust Them.
I do believe the vast majority of non-Christians, when they discover Jesus to be the main Revelation of God, will respond with some shock :smack: Do’h!- then a great deal of happiness & acceptance. And a lot of lifelong Christians will be dismayed & then rebuked by Christ when they complain about Him opening wide the gates.
To answer your first question, according to John 3:16-18, anyone who does not believe in Jesus as the Christ is already condemned. This seems very harsh to people who have never heard about Jesus in a convincing manner. But, when the apostle Paul speaks to the philosophers of Athens, he tells them that God had overlooked their ignorance of him (Acts 17:30).
I suppose ignorance is a valid plea for children, people who are mentally challenged, and those who have never heard about Jesus. Nevertheless, ignorance is not the plea I would choose to determine my eternal destiny, especially when all that God requires is faith in Christ to be saved, according to the new testament. When people believe in Christ, they are acquitted from ALL their sins, even those they have not yet committed.
As for your second question, from a Christian perspective, the universe is an environment provided by God for the enjoyment of humanity, even those who do not know he exists. Therefore, in my opinion, an absence of God (hell?), would also mean an absence of this environment, i.e. air, food, light, water, a body, other humans, etc. A person without these things would be conscious, and probably feel needs for things that would be impossible to fulfill. This might be similar to amputees who still feel pain in their lost limbs.
I kinda like this…