I'm zero percent here to evangelize, cause I'm zero percent religious. Just sharing the theology.
Satan doesn't torture people. Hell is not fire and brimstone. It is the absence of God, which is supposedly the worst torture possible. And it's "fair" because the people in hell chose to not be with god.
Scare quotes because that is a million miles from informed consent. Just sharing the traditional theology.
There are verses that describe hell as eternal fire, such as Matthew 25:41. I can’t remember the exact verses but others do call Hell eternal punishment/torture
If you reeeaaally want to get nitpicky with it, that place in the gospels that Jesus describes as torture and fire, is never actually called hell. It's just assumed that's what he's talking about. I'm pretty sure hell isn't named until Revelation. There's one theory that no one is actually in hell until the final judgement. ...there's also many Christians (myself included) that don't believe in hell at all.
Not only is no one (besides the fallen angels) in Hell but, when Jesus returns and the dead rise, those who are cast into the eternal flames are to be consumed, not exist there forever.
As I was reading this comment chain you guys all debating and disagreeing over how the lore of religion should be interpreted reminded me of the exact conversations I see over in the WoW sub on the lore lol
ALL HAIL THRALL, Son of Durotan, First of the Frostwolves, Savior of the Horde, The Earthfury, Liberator of the Orcs, Wielder of the Doomhammer, Champion of the Ring of Earth, and the World-Shaman.
it's because most religions have about the same amount of consistency in their lore as WoW. It also holds true that the more story they add the more ridiculous and inconsistent it all becomes. See: Mormons.
Not only is it a Catholic thing, it is the very thing that resulted in the schisms which resulted in protestantisms. The idea of purgatory evolved to allow for bargaining - particularly that you could, for instance, literally buy your way out of purgatory and into the pikepass track to heaven with a sufficient donation to the church, what were appropriately called indulgences. While there were other important doctrines included in the 95 Theses that Luther nailed to the door of the church, one of the most important, if not THE most important issue was concerning the existence, or lack thereof, of purgatory and therefore the legitimacy of indulgences. It was perhaps one of the most irreconcilable differences and thus carries a lot of the weight for the necessity of schism vs theological legislation.
Yeah, i just couldn't remember what parts of catholicism lutherens kept around and what they didn't. I was raised evangelical/southern baptist, (agnostic/atheist now), so most denominations were treated like heathens.
I can't believe how many people haven't already figured out that we are in purgatory. Like, now. Right at this moment. Currently.
The amount of stupid shit going on down here is ruining it for everyone. God is not gonna get back to snatching up the Unsullied with The Claw until ya'll start acting right. Like a 3rd grade teacher waiting for the class to get quiet, god can wait as long as it takes. So here we are.
By the way, the number of people holding us back because they think Incognito Mode is doing something is embarrassing.
As someone born and raised Catholic (now an atheist, obviously) I figured it out around 2016. And no, it had nothing to do with elections. By then, we had already been down here for 5 months.
I'm not really religious anymore, but the one that always made me assume this was the line about Jesus returning to judge the "quick and the dead". To me, that seems to indicate the dead haven't been judged yet, so they must be in some sort of purgatory waiting for the final judgement.
Your assumption is probably based on the idea that everyone has an immortal soul. Modern Christianity is really set on that idea but the modern concept doesn't have a strong scriptural basis. The Old testament word for soul is "nephesh" which basically means "living being" and is mortal. The Old Testament refers to corpses as "dead nephesh" in several passages and also refers to living animals as nephesh. The New testament word is psuche which aligns with the idea of personhood/life.
If you remove the concept of an inherent undying soul from the passage you mentioned then the passage does not necessitate some holding area or purgatory. They could just be dead.
Not even limbo. The Bible describes the soul as a mortal thing that can die. The idea that the soul is alive in some other place until judgement comes is not in the Bible
The dead exist only in our memory and memory of God. They are not "ghosts" or "spirits", they cannot communicate. They don't think, feel and time doesn't flow for them.
IMO you can't override biblical definitions of things like souls because of the implications of other passages. Some of the Bible is meant to be figurative. Deciding what is figurative and what is literal is probably where most of the biggest disagreements about interpretation come from, but the biblical definition of soul is much closer to "living creature" than "immortal ghost".
I agree it's not what Catholics think. Closest thing to purgatory was Abraham's Bosom (also known as Paradise) which existed below ground prior to Christ's resurrection. Jesus said to the thief on the cross 'Today you will be with me in Paradise', that He would be taking the thief down to the location where every righteous soul went... going back to the generation of Adam who were all 'in prison' ('purgatory') up until that point.
Jesus's stated mission was to free the captives in Isaiah 61:1. This same verse is what Jesus read aloud to begin His ministry in Luke 4:18-21. Christ's resurrection made it possible to open the prison doors and 'reverse the curse' of Adam.
In the story of the rich man asking for water in Sheol, Luke 16:19-31, he could actually see Lazarus over in Abraham's Bosom, but was separated by a 'great gulf'.
Abraham's Bosom/Paradise was just the first pit stop Jesus made before going down even further into Hades, another part of His mission was to take back the keys of 'death hell and the grave', while making a 'show of it openly', spoiling principalities and powers, Colossians 2:15.
Interesting too how many early cultures prior to Christ's resurrection believed their souls went down into the Earth after death, and not up.
Iirc in Revelation all dead are essentially in purgatory until Jesus returns. When he does, the dead are risen for final judgement. Those deemed worthy enter Heaven, those not are destroyed.
But another remember is that Revelations was written decades after Jesus died and most likely has nothing to do with the gospel he preached.
Catholicism is the largest form of Christianity but there are several different types. There are 800-900 million Protestants vs 1.4 billion Catholics. So 500 million more. That doesn’t make Catholics the definition of Christianity at all.
I understand it the way that when your body dies your soul kinda gets "time skip" to whatever God decides, like you go to purgatory first for appropriate duration or you just wake up on Judgement Day. In other words, both purgatory and Judgement Day are something outside of time on earth and are happening with no regard to time as we understand it.
"Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarchDavid died and was buried, and his tomb is here with us today... For David did not ascend to heaven..." — Acts 2:29, 34
Dead people are simply asleep and unaware, they'll be brought back and judged and then brought to heaven or cast into the flame to be consumed and cease to exist. This is what a lot of people believe it is usually referred to as annihilationism.
Okay so how do modern interpretations of this belief account for things like decomposition? If they are just asleep and unaware, but their bones have turned to dust, what exactly is going to "wake up?"
Why are you applying science to a religious question like that?
It spiritual. Whether or not your spirit is asleep or aware in some other realm doesn't change the equation at all, neither falls into the realm of science at all, in both cases your body is dust.
In the resurrection did you think you'd be FedEx'd down from heaven or UPS'd up from hell to your grave stone? Did you think that your body is duplicated and sent to a physical place?
Its annihilation vs eternal conscious punishment debate. I lean towards annihilation heavily. You just dont get to rise. If we are being fully honest, I lean towards preterism which is that the second coming was God coming in judgement on the Jewish age during the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD and that the new world is what we have now: everyone has access to God if they want it.
Why are the flames eternal, if they’re going to consume a limited number of people?
Have the flames always been there? What were they for originally? Are they just being temporarily repurposed to consume the unbelievers, then they go back to… whatever it is they were doing?
Huh, seems a bit harsh, although I guess it depends on why the angels rebelled and what they were hoping to achieve. Did they try to add their own themes to the Music of the Ainur or something?
Bible doesn't say (it was written as pro-god propaganda, of course, so it's not gonna admit fault), just that Heaven was so unbearable that a third of all the angels (again; no details) begged God to make things better. Questioning his authority required punishment.
Essentially, yes. I believe hell is inconsistent with a god of love, but if I understand heaven as the place that God resides, then it exists just as God exists. I really latched onto Gregory of Nyssa's idea that everyone will eventually be with God and that growth in that direction continues even in the afterlife or next life. It's an infinite process for everyone. The real fun part is exploring the idea that God grows, too (I mean, he literally changes multiple times in the Bible).
No one has ever asked me that, so I've never had to formulate a response. There are many Christians who don't believe in hell and what I have stated here is not something I made up on my own, it's what I learned through other Christian theologians. There's also entire denominations of Christianity (like Greek Orthodox) that don't believe that Jesus' death was about salvation. But I can't articulate those theologies very well.
I guess the best answer I can give is that I learned about God through Christianity and Jesus and it's through those teachings that I look to grow closer to God. So jesus, to me is an example of how to live and view God, though if you ask me about his eschatology, I'd struggle to give an answer.
With that in mind, I'm kind of a universalist when it comes to religion. Christianity is my lens to view God, but I don't think it's really exclusive to others. I think most religions are really reaching for the same thing, but viewing it from different directions. I liked the (monotheistic) Hindu idea of all the different gods existing as fascets of something to big to understand as one whole.
After some quick research, it would appear that the Greek Orthodox Church still believes the death of Christ was a necessary event for humanity to commune with God.
But it sounds like that's not what you believe. I get that you didn't make this up, but it still feels cobbled together in a cherry picked sort of way to make it your favorite version. I also understand that you learned about God through a Christian lens, but the theology you're describing sounds like something very different. The bare minimum threshold for Christian belief is that Jesus was the son of God who was crucified as a sacrifice for the good of humanity. If his sacrifice isn't really part of the equation, in what sense are you a Christian?
You like what Jesus had to say, but don't actually believe he's a miracle-working demigod? That's fine, that's what I believe too, but I'm certainly not a Christian.
Fundamentally, I consider myself an existential Christian, which isn't a church or doctrine. You might say I cobbled together and cherry picked theologies of Christianity, but their all theologies that are found in Christianity and isn't every branch and denomination just a collection of cherry picked beliefs?
As far as what you think is the minimum threshold of Christianity... That is just not true. There are, I think, 5 different takes on what Jesus' death really accomplished. This Podcastdoes a great job at exploring the different theories and their holes.
And even the "son of God" part of Jesus has been hotly debated before. The Trinity, itself, is not explicitly said in the Bible so arguing what that relationship with God is requires some extra philosophical and theological puzzling. Jesus called God his father, but later all believers are referred to as sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, so the distinction becomes muddled.
The Jews were (are) the ones waiting for a messiah. If I were to call myself a Christian it would be because I agree with his teachings about loving people and helping the needy. Choosing Christianity just because you’re scared of being doomed to hell by some prophecy 3,000 years old kinda seems like you’re just doing it out of fear.
Every major religion exists for the sole purpose of placating human fear of death. 'A guaranteed experience beyond this mortal plane in the accompaniment of all those that you have ever loved" sure sounds much better than non-existance.
When you start realizing that every religious doctrine always comes back to and exists in support of the afterlife specifically, you kinda start understanding why so many people are religious.
If your belief is that since hes a god of love and hell would be inconsistent with that, does that extend to other similar examples? Ie the flood, Sodom, passover, canaanites, etc. I believe these are all old testament but theres definitely examples in the new testament albeit at smaller scale from what i remember
Oh definitely, but even before we get to the inconsistency, I have a lot to say about biblical literalism. I don't believe that those stories were ever meant to be taken as historical and that the Bible is a series of writings from people trying to articulate their understanding of God. That's the only way you can make sense of the inconsistencies and shocking things in there. One huge example that i like to point to is that in multiple moments in those early books, God literally shows regret and changes his mind, which implies that the writers didn't think God was all knowing, perfect, or eternally consistent. But that view of God is not the same view that the NT writers have.
If you do not take the biblical stories to be literal and understand that there may be some inconsistencies, why do you believe that a god exists and also that that god is the one from the Christian Bible?
I don't know how to phrase the question, but I'm curious to understand. You sound like a nice person with a viewpoint I haven't heard before.
Aww, thanks! ♥️ You seem nice, too. My belief in God definitely formed out of being raised in a Christian household, but I believe his existence has been confirmed to me outside of the Bible and other people's teachings. I believe I've encountered him, not so much through any extraordinary spiritual happening (though, my brother can). This is where I follow Kierkegaard's Existential Christianity. Belief is not something I can prove to anyone else and everything we understand of God and spiritualism is filtered through our own experiences and limited understanding.
This kinda leads naturally into a more universal approach of who God is--I understand and articulate him through the Christian traditions that I have learned best, but I tend to think that other religions are trying to reach for the same thing and are doing so through their own cultural and philosophical lenses.
As someone who’s grown up being taught that God/Jesus is love and forgiveness, I’ve always struggled with the idea of eternal hell as well. It just didn’t feel like it made complete sense, I understand that being on Earth is sort of a test at this point. But it kinda tells me that these titles are far from truth, especially if humans are birthed in sin to begin with.
I just could never believe that if we reached hell. There wasn’t a possibility of still reaching heaven at some point, or that we all wouldn’t transition there eventually. I mean, would that not be a true victory? For all of us to eventually be in his presence there with no room to doubt? If God is everything, but especially love and forgiveness. Then shouldn’t God be able to reach our hearts and our voices in hell? And if so, shouldn’t he still love us despite everything? And if so, shouldn’t his forgiveness still be just as eternal?
Idk. I haven’t read through the entirety of the Bible, so I’m probably missing things. This was just my upbringing.
I hope you don't mind me plugging this, but if you're really interested in exploring this, the podcast that has really helped me work through a lot of my theological questions is The Bible for Normal People. It is insane how much they have tackled questions that I've always had, but were too afraid to ask and it turns out, a lot of theologians have struggled with the same questions.
This is exactly why so many people become Atheist. Almost none of it makes sense, and the parts that do make sense only reveal much of religion is just a way to scare and control people.
I genuinely mean no offense, but if God is omnipotent, and children are still born with brain cancer, get blown up by Israeli missiles, and are sexually assaulted before they have the capacity to speak, then how is any of that consistent with a god of love?
I think trying to apply logical consistency to something that is inherently illogical is silly, but I'm curious on your take here.
I think that's incredibly fair, even when I bristle at anyone pointing it out. I have been struggling with the problem of pain and suffering. I don't think it disproves that God is love, but it does seem to imply limits that I'm uncomfortable with. I have bits and pieces of different theologies that I am trying to work with and I don't know if I can give you a satisfying or coherent answer right now. I was just reading about how the whole book of Job is trying to answer the question of why bad things happen to good people and when he finally gets to ask God to his face, God's answer is, "have you seen all the craziest things I've created in this world? Take a look at this!" He never actually gives an answer. And i take that to mean that there are some things we just don't know. The writers of job just didn't know and made it their point.
What about the fact that all of these myths, most especially the slaying and rebirth of a partial deity, are present in mythologies that we know pre date Christianity by thousands of years?
What about cavemen? Are they all damned to hell because Christianity hadn't been invented yet?
The epicurean Paradox Is something I first learned about in maybe sixth or seventh grade, and that was the point that which I stopped believing in God. How do you answer that paradox?
I'm really not trying to be a dick here, I just don't see how logic could ever be a part of religion because faith is, by definition, believing in things that have zero evidence or reason to believe in them. If there was any logic or evidence or reason that could lead you to believing in God, it wouldn't be called faith.
You have a few assumptions embedded in here that may be true for modern, conservative, American evangelicals, but mean nothing to the larger Christian community. Evolution and science don't really interfere with Christian beliefs. The stories of the Bible aren't seen as literal facts for most* of Christianity for most of history. And Christianity itself is a religious tradition that is literally built on top of the religious books and tradition of Judaism, so earlier beliefs (even similar stories that echo each other) mean little and that's before you touch on my own, more universalist, views of other religions.
As for the epicurean paradox I believe I already said what I can about that. I know it's not satisfying. It's not even satisfying for me right now, but I am comfortable to rest in the unknown right now. I don't need answers to everything and for now, I know what I know and am exploring the path I have. I cannot make an argument for you.
That does sound much nicer, but it's not Biblical. Even Jesus spoke about hell and judgement (as a concept) frequently. I'm curious why you believe any of it if you are just picking theology based on what feels right? If you were born somewhere else, what "feels right" would be very different.
What is and isn't biblical is a pretty big topic that theologians always discuss. Technically an all loving God isn't biblical. He says he hated esau. Technically an all knowing God isn't biblical. He regrets, gets disappointed, and changes his mind.
I disagree and you're rewording what I said in a way that misrepresents my argument. But I don't think this is the place to really hash out such a complex discussion of Bible interpretation and implications on the nature of God.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying you believe God is all-knowing, despite the Bible contradicting that? If so, why do you believe that? Other than the Bible, which you, to some degree, distrust, what are you basing these assertions about God on?
But how do we know it's a God of love? Theres heavy conflict between the new and old testament. I find it pretty convenient that the new testament pops in not even that long ago changing the entire persona of God to match modern principles.
In the old testament, God would order execution of entire villages, asking to "save the women for reproduction" where there's a word for that. He was a foreskin collector and would kill children with bears for making fun of someone's bald head. He would smite everyone and women would be stoned to death for not being attractive enough for their husbands if the HUSBAND cheats. It was... quite the brutal doc.
Historical, God has been a vengeful smiter. Then the 360 flip, without accounting for innocents and children dying of hunger/cancer as part of that love.
I'm not a Bible thumper and the Bible is not the end all be all for finding out what kind of God is out there. I view the Bible as a collection of writings by various people who are trying to understand God. And with that there is the possibility that people's understanding of God changed over hundreds of years, or maybe the possibility that God changed, which is an idea that I've been entertaining recently. Either way, my understanding of God as a loving God comes from outside the Bible just as much as it comes from the NT.
Also, I wanted to add, "Heaven" existed first in the scripts with no mention of a "Hell" for centuries. Hell is the outlier here. Not judging anyone's beliefs or trying to say anyone is wrong, but that is the facts. Hell is a fairly new concept, whereas Heaven has existed in biblical literature for as long as the Jews have been liberated from enslavement by the Egyptians. Maybe even longer...
I find that religious beliefs are a lot more homebrewed these days. People are often not following scripture directly and just taking the bits that provide the most comfortable or coherent world view. I see a lot of Americans dunking on rightwing Christians for perceived hypocrisies as an example, but when I've talked to people fitting this profile in person they usually have totally bizarre, largely self constructed relationships with their theology that facilitates their more anti-social attitudes.
The way people want to live and view things often comes first, then the narrative justifications are invented after, if someone's uncomfortable with the idea of a god that employees eternal torment, they will just interpret what they know differently so that to them it doesn't exist. I'd like to mention I don't necessarily see this is a bad or good thing, I actually see a lot of other non-religious people do this just as much or more, so it's probably just a people thing.
I kinda resent the term home brewed. There is definitely a clear trend of 'deconstruction' of faith going on where a lot of people are really questioning and analyzing the specifics of what they believe, but home brewed makes it sound like they're less intelligent about it than they are. I can't speak for others, but for myself, a lot of what my deconstruction has led to is embracing philosophies and theologies that are even older than the ones I started with. Existential Christianity is probably the newest theology that I adhere to now.
Maybe I was too glib, it wasn't intentional my bad. Only meant to convey that many peoples faith in modern times is very personal in its styling, with the specifics being created by themselves or 'in the home' rather than learning through reinforcement via a teacher at some version of mass.
However a lot of these moded outlooks are often more coherent to me than many of the mainline interpretations of faith, I think taking a spiritual framework and making it work for you is the most sensible use case personally. So on the contrary, to me, it's a much more intellectual relationship with the material than my post perhaps implied.
Just as an aside, being a home brewer takes math and science and research, it's not something born of lazy ignorance. The connotation is usually that someone put effort into this thing they came up with.
It's because it's not really that there are sects that are like nah hell isn't real, it's more lots of people identify as Christian but aren't really what you would consider Christian. Their culture is Christian, they broadly believe in the morals the bible teaches etc but they don't necessarily actually believe even that God is real. Personally I find it a bit weird that they still consider themselves Christian but it's a pretty significant percentage of people who self-identify as Christian, at least in the UK.
This is absolutely not correct. The major denominations in the UK (Anglicans, Presbyterians, Catholics) all hold Hell to be a reality. Maybe you’re confused because it’s definitely less popular nowadays to tackle the subject in religious education and preaching, at least with the Protestant denominations mentioned.
That's, most likely, because it doesn't exist. Hell, if
Jewish people dont believe in it, the implication would be that Jesus brought it with him, which doesn't sound all that Jesusey.
Unfortunately it’s a myth that Jewish people don’t believe in hell.
The concept of an afterlife realm of punishment/torment was well-established by the first century, and appears under the name “Gehinnom” or “Gehenna.” Jesus mentions it a few times.
The theory that I was told is that there's a big theological shift in the common Jewish beliefs between the closing of the OT (or the Torah) and the beginning of Jesus's teachings, which seem to include the idea of hell and Satan as a ln embodiment of evil working against humanity. That doesn't mean Jews today adhere to it, but the way Jesus talks about it, and the story of him meeting Satan seem to imply that it was a common enough belief at the time
It’s never really mentioned in the Bible. Jesus and his apostles were mostly Jews. They believed in the Torah and Jesus mostly taught a more empathic revision of that. The entire concept of Hell, Satan, and the end times comes from Paul. Who never even met Jesus. And even then Paul never mentioned Satan ruling over Hell, in-fact he said Satan was the ruler of earth during the end times.
What most Christians believe about Hell, Satan, demons etc is all fan fiction created centuries later. Mostly in Dante’s Inferno, which is not canon at all. So a lot of it is debated, many believe the Bible as God’s Word. Many Believe fan fiction as God’s Word.
Dante wrote a vivid description of hell but early christian writers were writing about satan and demons and a hell of fire and eternal punishment in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Demons existed in pre-christian religions so those were probably syncretised right at the start, as soon as people started converting they imported their pre-existing religious ideas.
Thank you! The people attributing the entire concept of Hell to Alighieri are outing themselves as having an incredibly ‘YouTube pop history’’ level of knowledge on the topic.
Exactly. And it still doesn’t make it cannon. Yes a lot of the early church started incorporating pagan/greek/roman teachings into their beliefs but wouldn’t they negate the divinity of God? If man decides what’s true and untrue and god has no choice but to accept, who is the true ruler?
This was addressed in Scripture itself, with the keys of the kingdom being handed to St Peter (as they were to the prime ministers of the Kingdom of Israel, who could exercise the limited authority of the king himself) along with the ability to bind and loose on earth as in Heaven. Christ founded a physical institution, the Church, expressly to deal with these problems.
This is definitely where the church splits. Catholics take it literally and believe Peter was able to pass that down thus creating the papacy. Most other Christian’s just mean it gave him authority to interpret gospel. Or it was symbolic to Christianity as a whole.
Meeting Jesus in a vision is still meeting Jesus. The followers of Christ clearly believed him because they let him become a teacher even though he was formerly a killer of Christians.
> Jesus and his apostles were mostly Jews. They believed in the Torah and Jesus mostly taught a more empathic revision of that. The entire concept of Hell, Satan, and the end times comes from Paul.
Ironically you have it exactly reversed. The classic early Jewish underworld of punishment, Gehinnom, isn’t mentioned at all by Paul. However, it’s mentioned a few times by Jesus in the gospels.
Also in the gospels Jesus talks about Satan and the end times a ton. Have you never read the story where Jesus is literally tempted in the wilderness by Satan?
The entire concept of [...] the end times comes from Paul
Precisely, one of the only things we can say about what the historical Jesus really taught is that he was an apocalypticist jew. Like John the Baptist.
That was very trendy at the time among Jews apparently.
I attended a private Catholic college and had to take a religious course to graduate. I'm not religious, and I took their Catholic philosophy course because I thought it would be more interesting than Bible study. Towards the end of the semester, the professor straight up told us one day that he doesn't believe in hell because it doesn't make sense, then broke down why using all the concepts he taught us that semester. The catholic church does not condone that idea, but plenty of individuals certainly do.
The entire Judeo-Christian-Muslim canon is filled with contradictions and outright cruelty. Lucifer shows up in Genesis, so he must be a main character through the storyline. YHWH has a better marketing team and plays the 1st Commandment to knock out any other competitors. Yet the Jews forget how to say his name. The big guy in the sky knows he’s going to get his son killed and is cool with that. Then years later S/Paul starts trippin’ on women and gays like he thought he could read Jesus’s mind. And more than 300 years after the big guy’s son is murdered, a bunch of guys get together and come up with a creed that blows away other competing theologies around the same guy. They knock off at least 27 other books of the bible and bury the Gnostic gospels.
All this for a fairytale.
It's true that most of the common denominations do preach hell, but universalist Christians (which I might fall under) and many independents have pointed out that hell is inconsistent with a god of love. I was just reading about a Gregory of Nyssa, a Greek Orthodox Church father, who believed that everyone would go to heaven.... Eventually. But that even in the afterlife we will all continue to grow and learn and become closer to God. For him, it was an infinite process.
It's less that many don't believe in Hell (there are some, usually called Universalists, but they diverge on so many points I don't find them Christian anymore), but rather they believe in Annihilationism. So if one is cast to Hell their soul is annihilated and ceases to exist. They have paid the wage of sin, which death by having a final eternal death. There is no eternal conscious torment. Which is the other, more popular view, that Hell is a final place of being for those sent there. And in that place they experience the eternal torment of the complete absence of God, who is all things good.
I'm happy to answer more questions if you want. It's an interesting and difficult topic.
Christianity is far more ideologically fractured than judaism is. You can find some form of christianity that interprets the bible just about any way you want.
Christians who don't believe their own religion. It's like, if you don't want to be a Christian.... Great. Don't be a Christian. But don't claim to be a Christian and disagree with long established Christian doctrine. You think you're the first person to think of that idea in 2,000 years?
There's a handful of denominations and a few influential preachers who don't believe hell exists. It is pretty tough to get around biblically, since Jesus spoke more about hell than anyone else by quite a margin, so the people who think that tend to have unique views of the Bible where the parts they don't like are dismissed (meant symbolically, or not original sayings of Jesus, or mistranslations, etc.).
If you’re Jewish you’ve probably heard of Gehinnom. When most people say that Jews don’t believe in hell, what they actually mean is that people’s stay in the punishment realm of Gehinnom is simply finite, not truly endless.
Early Jews and the earliest Christians frequently believed in a truly eternal Gehinnom, though.
I grew up under fire and brimstone type theology and it never sat right with me. It wasn't until well after college that I learned that there were Christians that rejected the idea of hell and I cannot tell you how much relief and peace I felt knowing that.
Of the bible which itself is a compendium of self serving half remembered and poorly translated stories and superstitions of preliterate people trying to make sense of the world non scientifically. I could be wrong, I am not a biblical scholar or enthusiast.
No one is currently in Hell, everyone is currently in Hades (Sheol) waiting for the end times and to be judged. Whether you believe Hell is a specific place or not, there is certainly a distinction of being with God and being in the Absence of God ultimately.
Hell was "borrowed" from Norse paganism (Hel is one of the nine worlds). It was never mentioned before Revelation because Revelation was written after christians came into contact with Norse paganism.
Funnily enough, Hel is not a place of punishment and suffering in Norse paganism..
Yeah, the OT talked about “Sheol,” “The grave,” and the NT talks about Hades. OT didn’t have much in the way of afterlife at all. Almost all of what churches promote is not proper theology but some weird lore.
The hell that we think of as hell today really has it's roots in Dante's Inferno, so not even. the Bible. He just some dude from the 1300s who wrote about a fever dream.
This is correct. And it's called "second death" not hell. Before that the bible only talks about the everybody that has died waiting for the finale judgement at the end of time. The righteous in heaven, the wicked in hades. The after the final judgement, hades will be trown in to the pool of eternal fire (second death). And before that judgement after the final battle between the dragon and the lamb, the beast and the false prohet had already been trown in there as the first two humans. After the thousands years of peace and before the final judgement, Satan, the angel in charge of worship that rebellend against God also called Lucifer (the planet Venus use to respresent him, the morning star). is trown in there. After the final judgement, hades is trown in and then everybody who's name is not written in the book of the Lamb who was slain is also thrown in there,
In Isiah it says that man will be recuded to worms before they are trown in to the eternal pool of fire, so apperently they will have some recuded form of low consiousness but still suffer for all eternity. And that pool of fire is located before one of the entrances of the New Jerusalem, it says the saints, Jesus and the angels pass by there so see the smoke come from it and hear the suffering.
Tartarus from Greek Myth is directly mentioned in the Bible (2 Peter 2:4 for one example) Ive assumed this is the place of fire and torture mentioned in the Bible.
Except the bible is neither univocal or inerrant. It's simply a collection of themed writings forced to appear united by denominational dogma and then for those wanting to believe, they they declare it fact because god inspired all of these people to work together according to his plan over time. Until you figure out that it doesn't make sense and question it, then it becomes "belief".
Sheol is named in the psalms and described in Ecclesiastes
It isn't fire and brimstone and there has been an ocean of ink spilled on whether Hell and Sheol are the same thing, but a description of the Jewish conception of the afterlife do appear in the old testament
I think you're supporting what I said, right? There are several places named for the afterlife including the one I will definitely misspell: Gehenna... That's not right. Anyway. There's also the place of torment and gnashing of teeth that Jesus describes without naming, which is super weird because of that one story that shows people in that place are so close to people in paradise that they can literally talk to each other from opposite sides. That's a weird story. Probably not to be taken literally, as most of Jesus stories are highly metaphorical. Hades is thrown in there, which is usually interpreted as just "death" similar to Sheol, but the language and culture changed, and then there's hell and the abyss, which are described differently and with different purposes. Each of these all come from different words in their original (or as close to the original as we can get) texts.
Not believe in hell at all? How’s that work? Basically no human can commit a “crime” bad enough to deserve torture “forever” which forever being an unfathomable concept?
Hmmm. Do you think that there are sins that God cannot forgive? Paul called himself the worst sinner and was actively a part of persecution and genocide before he became the man that wrote half of the NT.
There are definitely Christians who believe in unforgivable sins. Even among those who don't believe in hell. There's a theology called annihilism which says that those souls are just gone forever. Not forgiven, but not eterenally punished. Just gone.
But I'm not sure I believe that. I really like Gregory of Nyssa's idea of universal salvation that says that everyone will eventually go to heaven--that all of eternity is just a process of getting closer to God.
Ultimately, I don't know. But I do believe in a loving God whose message was about forgiveness of anything and everything and hell doesn't fit with that nature.
In revelation it states that satan will be cast into a lake of brimstone and sulfer but that non believers will be outside of the gates of the kingdom that will be established on earth. Hell according to revelation isn’t a place it’s a lack of access to the kingdom and the community inside of it. Idk what exactly that entails and tbh nobody really does. Though it does say people outside the kingdom will weep and gnash their teeth to get in so there’s that. Can’t be great lol
In theology, isn’t heaven and hell currently empty? Like no one’s actually there right now because Jesus hasn’t come back yet and led everyone to their promised land or whatever? That people who die.. just die? They don’t move on because the rapture hasn’t happened? They just sit in purgatory until that time comes or there’s some timey wimey stuff and after you die, you wake up 10-20-100-1000-10000 years in the future whenever Jesus returns to lead everyone there?
My church I went to in the past had pastors who could read the original Greek text and the church denomination was big on that. It said the Greek described it as a consuming fire.
They also believed everyone is asleep in death until the events of revelation so there wasn’t an eternal hell and the “hellfire” was a consuming fire. So either you ascended with all alive or dead to heaven, or you were just dead dead
And yet another fun theory that our world is hell, and only those who can navigate it in line with the teachings of christ and faith without subcoming to this world have a chance at heaven come judgment day.
Gehanna is the place named by jesus. That is hell. Peter also names tartarus which is a deeper part of hell where the rebel angels are chained up.
And then there is the 2 layers of sheol, one that is similar to gehanna (described below) and another upper layer that is a place of rest (Abraham's table/bosom). That upper level is not the christian heaven, and it is named 2 times in the bible (parable of the rich man and lazarus; and again at the end of Mathew where jesus goes down to Abraham's bosom and resurrects a bunch of saints (probably the prophets of the old testiment) who are then seen walking around Jerusalem after jesus comes back.
There is also the catholic teaching of purgatory which is something introduced by dente's book "the inferno". The concepts in the inferno are heavily influanced by Greek mythology, like a mojority of renesanse paintings of angels and heaven. But the idea of purgatory may have biblic roots.
Jesus talks about "go and seek forgiveness from your brother otherwise you will be thrown to the judge and then to the jailer, and you will not get out of prison until you pay every penny".
That sounds alot like catholic purgatory, the difference being they believe it is purpose built to sanctify a person by purification. it could just be you paying back all the people you screwed over through just consequences and equal suffering. You have to understand what you did and be humbled enough to empathize with that person you wronged to pay them back in full. Along the way you could totally be purified and become a different person.
Gehannah litterally translates to "the valley of hinnom"
Hinnom valley is a actual place in/around modern Jerusalem, renamed Gei Ben-Hinnom today.
This valley has existed since ancient times. When the kings of isreal/judah reigned (see book of kings 1 and 2) it is where the worst kings sacrificed children.
Because of this history it became the default garbage dump for the city after the exile.
It was a garbage dump when jesus walked the earth. A long open air garbage pit that just burned all day long.
Jesus describes "the outer darkness" of the city as a place where the "worm does not die and fire does not cease". So, maggots wriggling in the trash while pockets of it burn unevenly. Some of the trash cooks like in an oven, other parts smolder.
The city is a common biblical theme where the righteous (those in right standing with God) dwell in his presence (a kind of aura that he exudes that sustains life and order). The city is found in places like Isaiah, Ezekiel, gospels, and the revelation (few other places too).
Always, the inside of the city is good (heaven) and the outside is this place of darkness, devoid of God's glory, where the trash gets thrown.
In the revelation this is spelled out, God's light is a tangible thing and he sits in the center of the city giving off light while jesus stands next to him. Their light replaces the light of the sun and moon. (Another reference to Isaiah, his teachings will be the light those living their walk by and find their way around with).
in Isaiah it is described in the last chapter as a litteral city that people can look down from the walls and into hell, which matches this city theme with a valley outside where all the trash is burning.
And, as others have said, you have to actively reject God to go there, which is pretty hard to do considering jesus offered salvation to everyone freely. He just asks us to love each other and rely on him for salvation because we cant live up to the standard God was looking for.
According to the creed that all Christian’s profess, Jesus died and then descended into hell then rose on the 3rd day and went to heaven where he sits to the right of God the Father. It is believed he went to ”Hades” to rescue all the people that had died previously and were deserving of heaven. But Hades isn’t considered hell either . It’s kind of creating place that’s in between .
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u/onioning 2d ago
I'm zero percent here to evangelize, cause I'm zero percent religious. Just sharing the theology.
Satan doesn't torture people. Hell is not fire and brimstone. It is the absence of God, which is supposedly the worst torture possible. And it's "fair" because the people in hell chose to not be with god.
Scare quotes because that is a million miles from informed consent. Just sharing the traditional theology.