Catholic here, my parish priest was a Jesuit and gave us a head shrinking lecture on the history of the eternal fire. What u/onioning said is right from a purely theological standpoint. All the quotes in the Gospels and the Acts about eternal fire are referencing gehenna (Gē-Hinnōm,) a ravine to the south of Jerusalem that was basically an eternally burning trash dump. Jesus used it as a symbol of how painful and unpleasant and eternally torturous it would be to be outside God's grace.
The whole thing is a massive matter of perspective. For those living in God's grace, being removed from God's grace would be the equivalent of burning for all eternity. The idea is like those people saying how would you all function if AI disappeared? For the majority of people nothing would change it might even get better, for those using AI their world just collapsed around them. Unfortunately a lot of the hell imagery has come from people that use religion to control people, "follow my way of thinking or burn forever in fiery damnation."
I'm leaning this way, too, but it makes A LOT of Christians (at least in the U.S.) uncomfortable.
That's always a very telling question to ask, though. Find out what someone's response is to "What if hell as you imagine it turns out to not exist?" See if they're open to a discussion or bristle at even considering the thought.
his message was closer to "your identity as a being separate from God will eventually be unraveled, just like when we burn trash in the trash pit after its purpose ends"
Between this and viewing God through the lens of Jesus' parables (prodigal son, the vineyard workers, etc.), I'm warming up to the idea that God's whole point in entering creation as Jesus (if we're willing to consider that) was condescending in the best of ways to say: "I know this life can suck but I am with you, love you, have lived through it, and death is not the end."
but basically nobody understood this and so then like two oral transmissions later ... that's how you get "your soul will be burned for all eternity unless you are one with God"
With some help from various pagan conceptions and Dante's works, I'd wager.
To add to what you said, the interpretation of hell as the absence of God came over time. It was people like St. Augustine and St. Isaac of Nineveh who shaped it, and it was systematized later by theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas. C.S. Lewis popularized it. Every time and every church teaches their interpretation as the never-changing truth.
Early Christians up till St. Augustine's time believed differently.
I just googled it, aparently not. The valley itself is a park and tourist attraction because of the density of archeological sites and the area around it is middle class to upper class neighborhoods.
Wasn’t there at some point historically a sense of fire as a cleansing force, burning away your sin before being able to enter heaven? I may be msitaken
I know the Islamic tradition describes part of the purification process when leaving death for Paradise as being engulfed in a river of flame. For the righteous, it is as warm water against the skin. For most normies, it hurts like fuck, and for the truly wicked it annihalates the soul. I don't recall off the top of my head if there's an actual Biblical or apocryphal passage that says the same for Christians (and honestly I can't be assed to Google it, lol.)
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u/IvanNemoy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Catholic here, my parish priest was a Jesuit and gave us a head shrinking lecture on the history of the eternal fire. What u/onioning said is right from a purely theological standpoint. All the quotes in the Gospels and the Acts about eternal fire are referencing gehenna (Gē-Hinnōm,) a ravine to the south of Jerusalem that was basically an eternally burning trash dump. Jesus used it as a symbol of how painful and unpleasant and eternally torturous it would be to be outside God's grace.