Ah. My experience with Catholicism is rather limited. I’m perfectly fine with people interpreting their religions as they wish; I just thought I’d point out that such a belief isn’t, strictly speaking, Biblically sound.
I really should probably provide a more detailed explanation for what I have said, because it is easily interpreted as heresy. It is at once an ancient and a modern viewpoint, but one that has not gained acceptance until recently.
First, we can look at what the Bible has to say. fluiddruid already provided some of what the Bible has to say about hell, but I Corinthians 15:22 and I Timothy 2:4 offer a slightly different perspective:
I don’t necessarily offer these as proof of anything other than that Bible verses can be used to support just about any viewpoint, and that includes the viewpoint of an empty hell.
The early Church theologian Origen may have been the first to formally argue that all are saved (restitutio omnium); however, the Church essentially condemned his teachings. It is for some of these teachings that he is not regarded as a saint, or a Church father (see Is Hell Closed Up & Boarded Over? for a cite on that assertion [also provides traditional counterarguments against an empty hell]), but then again, the Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on Origen tries to defend him wherever possible and John Paul II has called Origen one of the “great Church thinkers” (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Does “Eternal Life” Exist?).
In that same document John Paul II also reveals the shift that has gone on in recent times when he says that: “The silence of the Church is, therefore, the only appropriate position for Christian faith [regarding who is saved and who is damned].” (This changing viewpoint can also be seen in the fact that in paragraph 1033 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church the word hell is in quotation marks: “This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell.’”) This stands in contrast to the 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on this topic, in which they assert with fairly strong conviction that “all those who die in personal mortal sin, as enemies of God, and unworthy of eternal life, will be severely punished by God after death,” a view which can be found in different wordings elsewhere. (E.g., “Hell is peopled with damned souls – damned by their own sins and in accordance with the absolute justice and mercy of God [A Catholic Theological FAQ].”) The very strong implication of these statements is that there are people there.
The recently deceased (relatively, 1988) theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, who has been called “the Pope’s favorite theologian” (Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar), was a modern advocate of the concept of an empty hell. He wrote a book called Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? While he doesn’t deny that hell could be populated, he argues that there is a very strong hope that it is not, and that there is a “real possibility of salvation in Christ for all humanity,” and that “neither Holy Scripture nor the Church’s Tradition of faith asserts with certainty of any man that he is actually in hell.” This argument and the preceding quotes are drawn from here, “On hope, heaven, and hell.”
Basically, I am saying that the Catholic viewpoint I described is not heretical and is in fact doctrinally quite acceptable, and some Catholics believe it, but acceptance of it is a definitely a modern phenomenon and by no means do all or even a majority of Catholics accept it.
In my understanding Hell is simply a place of complete isolation from God - since you do not believe in Him, this is where you are headed. For me, since I have come to know and love God, this place would be one very much like a “lake of fire and brimstone, where the worm dieth not and where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth”. For you, since you have either not known this love, or have decided that it is not for you, it may well be considerably less unpleasent. I do not know. I just know that it is not a place that I would want to be!!
I don’t think that you choose Hell - who would? I do think that you choose either to be with God or not, and that determines your “final desination”.
Gp
(Note: my apologies for the lateness of this reply)
First of all, how can you say you choose not to go to hell if you aren’t dead yet? Secondly, if you really are sincere in your disbelief in God, then it means you are actively seeking the truth. God is the Ultimate Truth. So in your disbelief, you may in fact be seeking God. Salvation, according to my (personal) religion, does not come from belief in a set of doctrines, but in the active desire to find the truth and in the acceptance of the truth. If you are provided with all the necessary pieces of the puzzle in your lifetime, you will believe in the Christian doctrines. If you really are honest and still do not believe in God, you do not have all the experience and information necessary to believe. But since you have lived honestly, then at death you will (I guess) then see God, and, out of the honesty you have cultivated in your soul, be able to accept God’s existence.
Why is loving God pain? Is it more painful than Hell? If not, then why wouldn’t people choose to love God? If so, why wouldn’t you want to go to Hell?
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Loving God is painful because it means getting rid of the weeds in your personality, so to speak. It means the death of certain parts of yourself – the parts that would destroy your whole self if they were left alone. Like pride, to use a common example. Loving God is also painful because it means you have to care about all the tragedies of God’s creation (including yourself) and accept (not condone) the evil in the world for what it is.
To me, going to hell means ignoring the truth – which leads to seperation from God. The reason people ignore the truth is to avoid pain. But the pain of Hell is a different kind of pain. It’s the kind that destroys and eventually leaves Nothing behind.
The fire is not quenched, and the worm dieth not, but that doesn’t mean the fire never runs out of fuel or that the worm finisheth not its digesting.
If I had more time I’d go on. Perhaps happily for you, that’s all I can write.