Why do people believe in hell?

[ruby sparks]

Wow again. This is just bizarre denialism.

 

[Politesse]

Wow.

Who on earth do you think you’re kidding?

It clearly relates to punishments by god.

Again with the dubious "clearly". Clearly to you and to other conservative Western theologians, sure. But that is because you are interpreting based on the assumptions you already have, rather than on what is actually present in the text itself. Obviously it is not so "clear" if wide segments of the church do not agree with your interpretation. Which so far you have only defended with the word "wow". Not super convincing, as arguments go.

 

[ruby sparks]

In the NT, god is clearly described as being the source of suffering for those who wouldn’t make the cut at judgement.

It’s that simple.

 

[Politesse]

In the NT, god is clearly described as being the source of suffering for those who wouldn’t make the cut at judgement.

It’s that simple.

A statement which you have made several times but have not, yet, been able to convincingly quantify.

 

[ruby sparks]

There might have been other beliefs, among Christians, but that one is obviously a feature of the NT.

Any suggestion to the contrary is clearly untenable by any reasonable standard.

 

[Politesse]

There might have been other beliefs, among Christians, but that one is obviously a feature of the NT.

Any suggestion to the contrary is clearly untenable by any reasonable standard.

Aside from, of course, actual textual support.

 

[DBT]

That is typically ignored, dismissed, downplayed or obfuscated. Every trick in the book comes into play.

 

[ruby sparks]

Aside from, of course, actual textual support.

Nonsense. Of course there’s textual support.

In any case, I’m not convinced you even knew what specific point I was actually making to you at all. I mean, how could you have, since just for starters, you mixed me up with at least two other posters, and got the incorrect order of points raised, and the specific aspects of the topic being discussed at a given time wrong, and also asked me for a text quote after I’d already given it to you.

And also, regarding that text quote, I can’t easily see how you could have thought that a particular book was the relevant context, when your own statement, the one that was being challenged at the time, covered the whole NT.

 

[DBT]

''If the Old Testament had been marketed as a horror story — like a Stephen King novel — we might think differently about it. We applaud King's talent (if not the actions of his characters). Those who read his belief-suspending books can appreciate the literary value of that genre. We wink as we wince. We could make allowances for the crude (or even campWikipedia's W.svg) writing style of the Old Testament authors if we thought their aim was to entertain by shocking. But the real horror story — the one that made Nietzsche say he needed to put on gloves before reading it — is that those writers were not pretending. And neither were the readers. Today, anyone who takes the Old Testament seriously — and does not wink or wince at the gratuitous splattering of blood — is a troubled person.'' - Former evangelical pastor Dan BarkerWikipedia's W.svg,

 

[ruby sparks]

I do think it's a good idea not to treat or mix the OT woo and NT woo together at the same time. Yes I know it's supposed to be the same god and that there was more continuity than many 'New Testament' Christians would prefer to accept, but distinctions are still important, imo. For example, for the OT writers we're mostly talking hardcore Israelites, for the NT there's often a lot more foreign, eg Greek, influences and in many cases the books weren't even written in Israel or by Israelites, they were just set there, with Israel as a backdrop.

Also, as regards the main thread topic, the OT and the NT notions of hell differ, by and large. At some quite early stage, Christian hell became a much, much more nastier threatened punishment. Not that that had anything to do with god, of course, even in terms of it being attributed to him. He was thought, by the authors, to have had retired from his suffering-dispensing duties, apparently. According to some scholarly interpretations at least. My understanding of that interpretation is that the final judgement was going to happen when god was away sunning himself on a Carribean cruise and had left strict instructions that no unbelievers were to experience suffering in his absence. Like many retirees, he may have been going soft in his old age.

 

[Lion IRC]

In the NT, god is clearly described as being the source of suffering for those who wouldn’t make the cut at judgement.

It’s that simple.

A statement which you have made several times but have not, yet, been able to convincingly quantify.

Premiss - God enforces His will / punishes unrepentant evil / hell etc.
Premiss - Hell is sufficiently unpleasant that it entails suffering for its inhabitants.
Faulty conclusion - God causes the suffering in hell.

The suffering of people in hell, being punished for their crimes, does not equate to God
"creating evil." It's not objectively 'evil' to put criminals behind bars and even if it were, the fact of criminals being in jail isn't something we would blame on the police. The police don't cause the suffering of prison life.

 

[atrib]

In the NT, god is clearly described as being the source of suffering for those who wouldn’t make the cut at judgement.

It’s that simple.

A statement which you have made several times but have not, yet, been able to convincingly quantify.

Premiss - God enforces His will / punishes unrepentant evil / hell etc.
Premiss - Hell is sufficiently unpleasant that it entails suffering for its inhabitants.
Faulty conclusion - God causes the suffering in hell.

The suffering of people in hell, being punished for their crimes, does not equate to God
"creating evil." It's not objectively 'evil' to put criminals behind bars and even if it were, the fact of criminals being in jail isn't something we would blame on the police. The police don't cause the suffering of prison life.

1. God made the decision to curse every human with a fallen nature, and humans have no choice in the matter. Humans are being punished for crimes they did not commit, crimes that happened before they were born. This is wrong, and even flawed humans realize that.

2. God programmed us to be sinners, but he expects us to act like saints. This is an absurd requirement, and wrong.

3. You characterize Hell as being "sufficiently unpleasant". Christian theology describes Hell as a place where humans are subject to constant torture. Civilized nations do not torture people who are convicted of crimes, because even flawed humans understand that torturing people is wrong.

4. Humans do not imprison convicted people forever. At worst, they serve life sentences which end when they die. Humans sent to Hell spend eternity in Hell. Their punishment never ends. This is wrong.

5. The God of the Bible is a monster. The Bible describes many atrocities God has inflicted upon humans. But God doesn't get punished. God doesn't hold himself to the standard of behavior he uses to judge humans. This is wrong.

6. All humans have to do to avoid divine punishment (Hell) is to repent, and get on their knees and accept God as their Lord and master. No matter what crimes they have committed, they always have a get-out-of-jail-free card that requires only that they suck up to the judge. This is injestice, and even flawed humans understand that.

 

[DBT]

In the NT, god is clearly described as being the source of suffering for those who wouldn’t make the cut at judgement.

It’s that simple.

A statement which you have made several times but have not, yet, been able to convincingly quantify.

Premiss - God enforces His will / punishes unrepentant evil / hell etc.
Premiss - Hell is sufficiently unpleasant that it entails suffering for its inhabitants.
Faulty conclusion - God causes the suffering in hell.

The suffering of people in hell, being punished for their crimes, does not equate to God
"creating evil."

Those that are in hell are able to set the conditions in hell...so it's within their power to transform hell into a pleasant environment?

 

[Lion IRC]

Why Do Christians Believe in Hell?
https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/01/21/why-do-christians-believe-in-hell/
Critiquing David Bentley Hart's article in the New York Times earlier this month...
(The catalyst for this thread)

"...The Catena Aurea, or “golden chain,” is St. Thomas Aquinas’ remarkable stitching together of commentaries by the Fathers on the Gospels, to produce a single running commentary. It provides a balanced view of authoritative teaching by the Fathers on Scripture. I would start with Mt. 25:46, because that is a proof text for the existence Hell: if anything ever counts as a proof-text, it must be those words from one of Jesus’ own parables."

Hart thinks hell is an abstraction and a translation error and he accuses billions of Christians of malice asserting they take a morbid delight in setting themselves above others.

The idea of eternal damnation is neither biblically, philosophically nor morally justified. But for many it retains a psychological allure.

 

[DBT]

Never mind what is stated about eternal torment in scripture? That doesn't count? David Bentely Hart has the final say?

 

[Lion IRC]

Well I don't agree with him, no.
Matthew 25:46 says eternal life. Jesus doesn't employ two different meanings of "eternal" or "everlasting" - one for eternal salvation and a different one for eternal damnation.

 

[Politesse]

"Ever-lasting" is definitely not a good translation. Anaeon (the word in question) is a statement of quality, not a measure of duration. An aeon was an Age, or Lifespan, an extended but limited period of existence. In other ancient texts, it can refer to a huge span of time, like the length of a dynasty, or just to an individual's lifetime. The whole time that something exists. It's an an adjectival form here, so we don't have a direct equivalent to this word in English; maybe something like "Agely", or even just "aged"?

So reversing to Aneon it gives you a literal meaning of something akin to "ageless" or "non-aging". Something without a natural lifespan. It often has the implied meaning of "immortal" in classic texts, the same adjective you might use to describe the Olympian gods in a work of Hellenistic philosophy. "Eternal" isn't wrong, but its sense is slightly different.

In Gnostic Christianity, the Aeons were quasi-personified manifestations of the God, pure concepts that had primevally divided from the Godhead, easier to understand if you already know something about Neoplatonist philosophy: in their lowest layers, the aeons had become confused layers of materiality in which humanity had become trapped, forgetting our own true natures as sons and daughters of God. "Aeon-less" from this perspective means "freed from the Aeons", ie, having transcended the material world and unified with God again beyond the confines of the physical universe entirely.

 

[DBT]

The same word is used in reference to salvation/eternal life in heaven and damnation and torment. Either both are eternal or neither are eternal.

 

[Lion IRC]

Yes.
It's meaningless to have a literal definition for eternal salvation but a figurative, abstract meaning when talking about eternal damnation.

 

[Politesse]

Are you two arguing against an imaginary opponent?