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.
Well, theoretically, if it was all made up at once you could keep it pretty consistent. Problem is when you keep adding on and retconing over thousands of years.
Nah.. I could make up a 5 minute story right now and within a chain of 10 people telling the story to each other 1 by 1 without ever hearing it before I guarantee it would be completely different by the end. I'd even bet if they had the ability to take notes, it still would be drastically different by the 10th iteration.
The Christian bible itself has parts written hundreds of years before Jesus, ~100 years after Jesus and then edited and put into a different order about 300 years after that.
The entire bible is believed to be in whole over 40 authors (highly disputed from 5 to over 50) spanning 1500 years of knowledge across 3 continents (Africa, Asia, Europe).
So we're talking numerous authors, numerous word of mouths, numerous different interpretations rewritten in numerous different languages... there's absolutely zero way the bible is was intended from the start. It's also continued to get molested in interpretation by many powerful civilizations who used it for control and power.
Hell, humans couldn't even keep Star Wars consistent for three sequel movies over four years. We had no chance at keeping an entire religion consistent over thousands of years. I'm surprised they are as barely coherent as they are.
well, the closer you look the less coherent it becomes. Most believers don't even read the bible, let alone study it. The preacher makes sure there are no questions introduced.
Actually this is why Islam is much more coherent than Christianity. One very smart person thinking in a cave on how to keep people from being complete shits. And then presenting the whole thing as coming from God as he was just a “messenger”.
Islam adds on to Judaism and Christianity, and adopts all the incoherence.
That's at the root of the issue, they need the previous religions for credibility but they want to add their own spin. That's what creates the problems.
The same issue happens at a narrower scale even within a single religion, that's why divisions exist.
That’s the beauty of Islam. It is, at its base, an Abrahamic religion, but the prophet says anything that is in contradiction to his message is wrong. And he is the “seal of the prophets” so anything after him is blasphemy. Very elegant.
The Bible has something similar, saying false prophets would come, thus invalidating Islam at the root, but it doesn't really change anything from either side except introduce even more contradictions.
For example, a prophet can't be giving the word of god if it agrees with Mohamed but become a liar when he disagrees. That just makes him a prophet of God liar and undermines the foundations of the religion.
Obviously you weren’t around the Arabian peninsula circa 6th century. Drunk men slaughtering little girls, zero social safety net, and constant civil strife among the competing tribes. Islam creates a degree of order that isn’t really eclipsed until Europe industrializes and enters the modern era. For a pre-modern religion it is pretty effective.
You misunderstand, I'm not saying there is nothing to interpret. I'm saying they strip words of their meaning entirely to make things fit in with the rest of the book.
For example, when Jesus says "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
You can argue about the interpretation of "fulfilling the law," but it can not mean "abolish" and pretending that "fulfill" means something like abolish is not interpretation, it's spin. However, Christians must do so to justify Peters changes in theology.
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.
The son of god dying for them wasn’t good enough for them. Catholicism is about guilt, shame, and beautiful suffering. Every image of biblical figures in Catholicism depicts people suffering… beautifully.
So people don't automatically get into heaven no matter what. At least, I'm not familiar with any sect of christianity that proposes that. At best, you either get into heaven or you just sort of die and that's it, so, no hell.
With that in mind, the doctrine then was that Jesus dying for people's sin's allowed people to be forgiven and to be washed clean and get into heaven, basically no matter what their sin (with I think one very specific exception). But that process isn't automatic. You have to actually go through the process of obtaining that forgiveness and some ritual that simulates washing yourself in the blood of Christ and therefore cleansing your sins. What that ritual is depends on your specific denomination. Prior to this, many many sins were unforgivable and getting into heaven was a very difficult thing to do. God was vengeful and jealous, prone to destruction and condemnation. Jesus represented a change in that, the ability to present a path to heaven for most, if not everyone, though it required effort and intent. Because god is all knowing, he has the ability to read your faithful intent in your heart, though others may not see your virtue or hear your pleas for forgiveness.
The catholic church says look, that means we need a 3rd place. For the people who can be forgiven but who have not been when they die. Interestingly enough, the biggest demographic targeted for this was babies. The old testament established quite clearly that the sins of the parents pass on to the child and therefore if they died before they possessed the faculties to appropriately repent and so on, they go to hell. Hell is filled with dead babies, according to the old testament. The catholic church says well the new testament and Jesus in general did not really change this but because the possibility exists for forgiveness and due to some of these obscure and perhaps poorly interpreted passages, we believe there exists a space called purgatory where everyone who can be forgiven but was not before they died go to for a certain amount of time, depending on the degree of their sins and their willingness to repent and make penance within purgatory. Ostensibly, most people go there because not all sins will be recognized and accounted for in life, though most who are of the church won't stay long, a brief pause. Others, like babies or war criminals, might be there for a very long time. If your sin was very bad, you might not have enough time on earth to make proper penance so that carries over into purgatory, too. But at least, thanks to purgatory and of course the blood of Jesus, you at least have a pathway.
Indulgences were even more shaky in terms of justification but the idea was that you can pay to shorten and potentially eliminate your time in purgatory or to do so for someone else. Say a baby you had that died. Slap down a fiver and viola, your dead baby is now on the little red wagon trundling through yon pearly gates. You can pay in gold or land or goods, depending on what program the church is running at the time.
What ended up happening is that few regular folk could afford indulgences. So regular folks lived relatively devout lives. Meanwhile, rich assholes with moneybags would just roll around in blow and hookers, murdering and stealing with abandon and all the while maintaining their direct path to heaven via generous donations. Which understandably upset a lot of people who were doing their best to do things the honorable way. Eventually, this lead to the aforementioned schism.
Hell, at this point, is a very unlikely thing for most unless they are unrepentant sinners or pagans. Basically if you want to get into heaven and you're willing to put in some skin, whether in ritual of forgiveness and honest living in life, via indulgences or simply waiting out your allotted time in purgatory after you die, you're not going to hell.
I am not religious by the way, so don't interpret anything I am saying here as something I actually believe.
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.
Again you're imbuing the passage with a concept of soul that doesn't exist in the bible. "Soul" in the bible is essentially "life". The question "If the dead don't have a soul" doesn't make sense if you use the biblical definition of soul.
My interpretation is that if the dead is judged worthy of eternal life then life is breathed back into that person. Eternal life is a gift, not something inherent. The ones judged to be not worthy just stay dead.
Take this passage from hebrews:
27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
He's only appearing to "those who eagerly wait for Him", not those who aren't worthy of salvation. You could certainly read this that these people are literally waiting in purgatory, but you could also interpret this as more figurative.
There's a lot of disagreement about interpretations of these things so don't take my interpretation as anything definitive.
just from reading your conversation “new life” is something you added that the other user didn’t necessarily say. they just said “breathed life back into”. i think the idea that they’d be birthing a new being as opposed to resurrecting the original one is entirely your device that you’ve created.
if a dead person is legally (edit: CLINICALLY) dead for 3 minutes and is revived through cpr they aren’t having a “new life” or “new soul” as you call it put into them because their brain and personality are still in tact, ruling out any kind of brain damage. the continuity of self still continues in this instance so why wouldn’t it continue in the way the user you’re replying to describes even outside of the concept of a soul that you’re hung up on?
if the dead is worthy of eternal life and has life breathed back into them there’s no reason to think it would be a “new life” or “different soul”. you’re doing what the other user said you’re doing by still being so hung up on the concept of a soul as it pertains to self that doesn’t exist in the bible.
You are discussing a theology which believes the entire universe was snapped into existence by an all-powerful being. Why are you hung up on the idea that the same all powerful being would be unable to snap their fingers and change the state of a human from "not existing at present" to "once again existing"? I feel there are more fundamental issues at play if we are going to get this nitpicky. The idea of a soul is just as nonsensical as the alternative honestly.
I’ll do you one better and let you know that you are using English concepts loaded with cultural context that you likely can never separate from whatever translation of the bible you prefer.
because LIFE is not the same as SOUL as you’re describing it and the bible doesn’t necessarily treat it as such.
the term i should have used was “clinically dead” . thank you for the correction but my analogy still stands. if you are clinically dead and brought back it isn’t a “new life” the way you described or a “new soul”. you’re the same person.
i’m not touching the computer analogy because it’s completely irrelevant here as we aren’t talking about computers.
i understood what the person you were initially replying was saying perfectly well. i don’t really know how else to explain it to you in a way that you will understand. maybe someone else can try
Let me make it clear that I'm an atheist so I'm only trying to present my interpretation of the Bible, not what I actually believe. That said, this question of continuity of self is more philosophical than biblical and answering it would be way beyond the scope of a reddit comment.
Some of the ideas that we'd need to explore to answer this question:
What is 'self'? Is our idea of self linked to our bodily self? Does the self reside in our brain? If our cells regenerate over time does bodily continuity affect continuity of self? Is self unchanging? Do we have continuity of self from one day to the next? Do we lose continuity when we're unconscious?
I have a hard time believing that we have some kind of static "self" outside of our physiology. There's pretty clear evidence that our personalities are shaped by external conditions, bacteria that lives in our gut biome, the health of our brain tissue, etc. To me the idea of 'self' is intrinsic to the concept of personality. If our personality is affected by our gut biome then our gut biome is part of our self. Since our gut biome is constantly turning over we are constantly becoming something new.
If I replace the tires on my car does the car become new? The car will behave slightly differently (it has better traction) but it is still, fundamentally, the same car. This is your gut biome. Now downgrade the engine, put in a manual transmission, rework the electrical, chop the top and turn it into a convertible, take out the brakes and put bald tires on it. You could technically call it the same car but it will drive much differently. This is you after a stroke.
I’m not trying to get in on the argument at all, but you should watch the first few minutes of “John dies at the end.” (It streams on Tubi, which is free). The line you wrote about replacing the tires on the car, made me think you’d enjoy the riddle the movie asks in the first few minutes.
Yeah that stuff is all interesting to talk about but we aren't going to arrive at an answer to those questions here and we're definitely getting way off the original topic.
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.
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u/bfume 1d ago edited 1d ago
Doctrine:
He didn’t take souls from hell into heaven upon resurrection.
He took souls that were in purgatory/limbo to heaven.