I wasn't aware that there was any reincarnational element in Gnostic thought and I've never heard of Plstonic Gnostics ... although neo-Platonism certainly had a strong influence on early forms of Christianity.
Apologies for being boringly Creedal but I'm happy to stock wotj the mainstream traditional narrative, although I can see how the line of reasoning that @Gramps49 has outlined and which I've echoed could certainly resolve some issues in the more gnostic schema you appear to favour.
No apologies necessary. It may come as a surprise to you that reincarnation was not a rare concept in first century Mediterranean thought. Plato got it from his mystery school in Alexandria and the Hebrews have long held the concept of the gilgul or transmigrational soul.
Not every gnostic school of thought held the same concept, but it was far from unusual.
Has anyone pointed out that the more common concept of hell today is based on Dante's Inferno?
Yes, a number of shipmates have noted how Inferno shaped concepts of Hell.
The ancient concept of the place of the dead (Sheol in Hebrew) or the Underworld in Greek was basically a place of shadows, dark, dreary. No real torture, just a place of nonexistence.
Not nonexistence. The spirits there existed; it was just a very static existence.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The narrative of Christ punching a hole in the back wall of Hades and liberating those divine sparks trapped in the cycle of eternal recurrence, while simultaneously rising again into the world to rule and cleanse it of all the impossibly tangled and unintended consequences of our sins was a powerful "happily ever after" that Plato couldn't offer.
Given the chronology involved (Plato died in the mid-fourth century BCE) wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Christianity adopted a Platonist narrative than the other way around? You can't adopt a Christian narrative if Christianity doesn't exist.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The narrative of Christ punching a hole in the back wall of Hades and liberating those divine sparks trapped in the cycle of eternal recurrence, while simultaneously rising again into the world to rule and cleanse it of all the impossibly tangled and unintended consequences of our sins was a powerful "happily ever after" that Plato couldn't offer.
Given the chronology involved (Plato died in the mid-fourth century BCE) wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Christianity adopted a Platonist narrative than the other way around? You can't adopt a Christian narrative if Christianity doesn't exist.
Do you think that everyone who incorporated Plato's work into their educational systems and world views lived and died only in Plato's lifetime? Greek schools of thought survived long past the founding philosophers' lifetimes. How do you suppose the Greeks educated themselves?
Christianity came along after Plato. It was a narrative that appealed to Greek people who were educated in Greece in Greek schools of thought that included thinkers like Pythagoras and Plato.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The narrative of Christ punching a hole in the back wall of Hades and liberating those divine sparks trapped in the cycle of eternal recurrence, while simultaneously rising again into the world to rule and cleanse it of all the impossibly tangled and unintended consequences of our sins was a powerful "happily ever after" that Plato couldn't offer.
Given the chronology involved (Plato died in the mid-fourth century BCE) wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Christianity adopted a Platonist narrative than the other way around? You can't adopt a Christian narrative if Christianity doesn't exist.
Do you think that everyone who incorporated Plato's work into their educational systems and world views lived and died only in Plato's lifetime? Greek schools of thought survived long past the founding philosophers' lifetimes.
True, but the Myth of Er is right there in The Republic. That seems to be the source of Plato's adherents' idea of "promot[ing] the development of wisdom through successive incarnations", so it demonstrably dates back to Plato's own lifetime. It's not a later addition to Platonic thought.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The narrative of Christ punching a hole in the back wall of Hades and liberating those divine sparks trapped in the cycle of eternal recurrence, while simultaneously rising again into the world to rule and cleanse it of all the impossibly tangled and unintended consequences of our sins was a powerful "happily ever after" that Plato couldn't offer.
Given the chronology involved (Plato died in the mid-fourth century BCE) wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Christianity adopted a Platonist narrative than the other way around? You can't adopt a Christian narrative if Christianity doesn't exist.
Do you think that everyone who incorporated Plato's work into their educational systems and world views lived and died only in Plato's lifetime? Greek schools of thought survived long past the founding philosophers' lifetimes.
True, but the Myth of Er is right there in The Republic. That seems to be the source of Plato's adherents' idea of "promot[ing] the development of wisdom through successive incarnations", so it demonstrably dates back to Plato's own lifetime. It's not a later addition to Platonic thought.
No it isn't a later addition. What it seems to me that we're doing is putting the philosophical cart before the horse chronologically.
First Plato. Then his wisdom school which survived him. Then the problems and cognitive dissonances arising from the narrative of Er, as I described earlier, within the surviving school, which persisted for a long time. Then Christianity coming along with the resolution of this cognitive dissonance. For a time.
That thread of early Christian conversation that included reincarnation was driven out of common parlance pretty early. Paul was pretty adamant about the "it is appointed to a man to live once and then the judgment" thing. But I think in general, leaving reincarnation out of the equation was a much more attractive and simpler way of viewing reality.
Neo-Platonism is something that I think came up later.
True, but the Myth of Er is right there in The Republic. That seems to be the source of Plato's adherents' idea of "promot[ing] the development of wisdom through successive incarnations", so it demonstrably dates back to Plato's own lifetime. It's not a later addition to Platonic thought.
No it isn't a later addition. What it seems to me that we're doing is putting the philosophical cart before the horse chronologically.
First Plato. Then his wisdom school which survived him. Then the problems and cognitive dissonances arising from the narrative of Er, as I described earlier, within the surviving school, which persisted for a long time. Then Christianity coming along with the resolution of this cognitive dissonance. For a time.
I think you're assuming that any non-Christian school of thought must be cognitively dissonant (i.e. containing some inherent self-contradiction).
Plato's wisdom tradition promoted the development of wisdom through successive incarnations so that one would be able to choose a life from the pile of lives offered that resulted in the least amount of suffering and harm inflicted on oneself and others. This was the best that could be hoped for, but it didn't address the clearing of all the subsequent consequences of lives lived in folly.
Plato's wisdom school was one of the earliest gentile adopters of the Christian narrative because they recognized that Christ solved the problem of eternal recurrence with no hope of fixing the mess left behind in each incarnation.
The idea that eternal recurrence is a problem to be solved seems like it requires an implicit assumption that some kind of Christian salvation is the ultimate goal of human existence. If you make a different assumption, like the idea that the pursuit of wisdom and/or virtue is a goal in itself (as opposed to being a means to an end), the dissonance does not exist.
The more likely cognitive dissonance that would be noted by various pre-Christian Greeks would be something like this.
I think you're assuming that any non-Christian school of thought must be cognitively dissonant (i.e. containing some inherent self-contradiction).
Not at all. I think it's perfectly ordinary for narrative models of the mechanics of reality to come under scrutiny as time passes and for questions to arise from the observation of those mechanics.
The idea that eternal recurrence is a problem to be solved seems like it requires an implicit assumption that some kind of Christian salvation is the ultimate goal of human existence.
I don't think eternal recurrence as a problem requires a Christian salvation as a solution. It's perfectly possible for it to exist as a problem without a solution. But I think that it is solved by Christ's passage through and into this reality.
If you make a different assumption, like the idea that the pursuit of wisdom and/or virtue is a goal in itself (as opposed to being a means to an end), the dissonance does not exist.
This is true. But Plato didn't present it as something to pursue for its own sake. He presented it as a means to an end. A just society (though he never could tell us what justice was) a life between lives that was easy and pleasant, and a future incarnation that minimized suffering for oneself and others.
… That thread of early Christian conversation that included reincarnation was driven out of common parlance pretty early. Paul was pretty adamant about the "it is appointed to a man to live once and then the judgment" thing. But I think in general, leaving reincarnation out of the equation was a much more attractive and simpler way of viewing reality.
… I don't think eternal recurrence as a problem requires a Christian salvation as a solution. It's perfectly possible for it to exist as a problem without a solution. But I think that it is solved by Christ's passage through and into this reality.
I tend to think Zoroastrianism addressed this considerably before Christianity, and may well have influenced Christian thinking on the issue.
Meanwhile, one reason for continuing to believe in an eternal hell is the possibility of unforgivable sin (aka eternal sin). Interpretations tend towards this being sin from which the sinner is no longer able to repent (albeit for a variety of reasons). Any such sinners need somewhere to hang out.
… That thread of early Christian conversation that included reincarnation was driven out of common parlance pretty early. Paul was pretty adamant about the "it is appointed to a man to live once and then the judgment" thing. But I think in general, leaving reincarnation out of the equation was a much more attractive and simpler way of viewing reality.
… I don't think eternal recurrence as a problem requires a Christian salvation as a solution. It's perfectly possible for it to exist as a problem without a solution. But I think that it is solved by Christ's passage through and into this reality.
I tend to think Zoroastrianism addressed this considerably before Christianity, and may well have influenced Christian thinking on the issue.
Meanwhile, one reason for continuing to believe in an eternal hell is the possibility of unforgivable sin (aka eternal sin). Interpretations tend towards this being sin from which the sinner is no longer able to repent (albeit for a variety of reasons). Any such sinners need somewhere to hang out.
An unforgivable sin is one for which punishment cannot be avoided. That doesn't mean the punishment has to be everlasting. It needs to be proportional.
I’m inclined to think that the one unforgivable sin is the one that someone will not repent of, which would fit with “The sin against the Holy Spirit,” i. e. a complete and ultimate permanent rejection of God and His Love on a fundamental level.
In the early church, the unforgivable sin was for a believer to renounce the faith out of convenience or blasphemy against the Holy Spirt. I cannot recall Jesus saying anything about it, though (I know someone will prove me wrong).
Well, the 'sin against the Holy Spirit' is mentioned in the Gospels (which were written by the Early Church of course).
The context is the Pharisees ascribing an exorcism performed by Christ to demonic powers.
So I've always understood the 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit' as the ascribing to evil forces things that properly belong to God.
There were controversies in the early centuries as to whether apostates could be received back into communion based on some tricky passages in Hebrews.
This was particularly acute after the Donatist heresy.
I'm not sure why we should expect Christ to have referenced this and the Gospels don't 'stand alone' over against the rest of the NT of course, although it's been argued that RCs and Orthodox regard the Gospels as a kind of 'canon within a canon' as it were, whilst Protestants do the same with the Epistles.
I can see why that's said but I think the case is overstated and I can't say that I've noticed it particularly on either side ... apart from among some unbalanced types.
There have been instances of course where individuals have suffered terribly fearing that they may have committed the 'unforgivable sin.'
Pastoral wisdom is required in such circumstances.
Whether it is or isn't the context is as I outlined above and it's part of canonical scripture and therefore Tradition / tradition ... *
Whatever else we might say about it I imagine it reflects some kind of tension between Christ and the Pharisees using the often heightened and hyperbolic language that features in these debates.
Beyond that, I'm not prepared to speculate.
* which doesn't mean we shouldn't question and debate it of course.
Well, the 'sin against the Holy Spirit' is mentioned in the Gospels (which were written by the Early Church of course).
The context is the Pharisees ascribing an exorcism performed by Christ to demonic powers.
So I've always understood the 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit' as the ascribing to evil forces things that properly belong to God.
There were controversies in the early centuries as to whether apostates could be received back into communion based on some tricky passages in Hebrews.
This was particularly acute after the Donatist heresy.
I'm not sure why we should expect Christ to have referenced this and the Gospels don't 'stand alone' over against the rest of the NT of course, although it's been argued that RCs and Orthodox regard the Gospels as a kind of 'canon within a canon' as it were, whilst Protestants do the same with the Epistles.
I can see why that's said but I think the case is overstated and I can't say that I've noticed it particularly on either side ... apart from among some unbalanced types.
There have been instances of course where individuals have suffered terribly fearing that they may have committed the 'unforgivable sin.'
Pastoral wisdom is required in such circumstances.
I’m inclined to think that if someone is terrified they’ve committed the unforgivable sin, then they haven’t, and they should just confess it and trust Jesus to forgive them.
It's common for people with OCD to worry about this, especially the type that features really horrifying intrusive thoughts. It took a visit to the pastor for private confession and absolution to get me out of it in my youth. And I simply couldn't confess the content of the intrusive thought, it felt like committing it all over again--so he sat there puzzled for a few minutes until he decided (thank God!) to absolve me anyway.
(OCD feels like you've committed a sin even though logic and reason tell you it's a temptation and you're not really guilty. I still couldn't get free of it without help.)
It's common for people with OCD to worry about this, especially the type that features really horrifying intrusive thoughts. It took a visit to the pastor for private confession and absolution to get me out of it in my youth. And I simply couldn't confess the content of the intrusive thought, it felt like committing it all over again--so he sat there puzzled for a few minutes until he decided (thank God!) to absolve me anyway.
(OCD feels like you've committed a sin even though logic and reason tell you it's a temptation and you're not really guilty. I still couldn't get free of it without help.)
It's common for people with OCD to worry about this, especially the type that features really horrifying intrusive thoughts. It took a visit to the pastor for private confession and absolution to get me out of it in my youth. And I simply couldn't confess the content of the intrusive thought, it felt like committing it all over again--so he sat there puzzled for a few minutes until he decided (thank God!) to absolve me anyway.
(OCD feels like you've committed a sin even though logic and reason tell you it's a temptation and you're not really guilty. I still couldn't get free of it without help.)
@Lamb Chopped is I could gift this to you, I would. It's Danielle Shoyer's book: Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Proper Place. She actually begins her book about how the doctrine of Original Sin has driven many people to even suicide. I know my mother once told me what she learned about original sin fed into her depression.
Micheal Fox also wrote a book with the same title, but I think Danielle's book is much easier to read.
It's common for people with OCD to worry about this, especially the type that features really horrifying intrusive thoughts. It took a visit to the pastor for private confession and absolution to get me out of it in my youth. And I simply couldn't confess the content of the intrusive thought, it felt like committing it all over again--so he sat there puzzled for a few minutes until he decided (thank God!) to absolve me anyway.
(OCD feels like you've committed a sin even though logic and reason tell you it's a temptation and you're not really guilty. I still couldn't get free of it without help.)
Sending hugs and gratitude for that pastor's help!
Folks, I think you're getting confused (though I appreciate the kindness). We were discussing the sin against the Holy Spirit, not original sin, which is something very different and never troubled me. Original sin refers to the way the human race is "infected " by sin from birth and therefore incapable of being or living as God intended us to be and live. It's an explanation for the moral twist in humanity that makes us incapable of living up to even our own standards.
The sin against the Holy Spirit (aka the unforgivable sin) is the mysterious sin discussed in Matthew 12 and possibly elsewhere. Fear of having somehow committed it plagues a lot of young Christians as it did me. It appears to have something to do with a firm, deliberate insistence on seeing good as evil, to the point that the person refuses the Spirit's help toward faith in Christ lifelong. Generally pastors will tell you that, if you are at all concerned about having committed it, that's a sure sign you haven't.
Re Scrupulosity and the kind of OCD I mentioned--yes, I think they are often the same thing, though named differently depending on whether one is working in the field of psychology or pastoral care. There is possibly this difference--I suspect it's possible for people without OCD but with poor teaching or simply a faulty understanding of God's attitude toward them to work themselves into a state of scrupulosity without any psychopathology underlying things. I don't know if that would make it easier or harder to treat.
Returning to an earlier point, one way of coping with the thought of hell as individuals, might be to keep in mind that the punishment of specific individuals isn't an end in itself, it's a means to an end. The purpose of the threat of punishment of individuals is to achieve a just society.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
A society built on punishment that exceeds the crime is not a just society.
A society where the perpetrators get to choose their punishment is not a just society.
Individuals are always to be treated as ends in themselves and never solely as means to an end. Thus Kant.
Likewise, a just society considered without regard to the well-being or suffering of its members, is an empty abstraction.
Absolutely. A society flourishes when its members flourish. Members of society can't flourish when they are suffering, which is why the perpetrators of suffering are punished.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
The number of people on these forums experiencing a strong, enduring emotional reaction and resistance to the idea of hell suggests this is simply not the case. People's fears are oft rooted in their beliefs. 2000 years of Church history illustrates what a fear of hell can achieve.
A society built on punishment that exceeds the crime is not a just society.
A society where the perpetrators get to choose their punishment is not a just society.
Individuals are always to be treated as ends in themselves and never solely as means to an end. Thus Kant.
Likewise, a just society considered without regard to the well-being or suffering of its members, is an empty abstraction.
Absolutely. A society flourishes when its members flourish. Members of society can't flourish when they are suffering, which is why the perpetrators of suffering are punished.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
The number of people on these forums experiencing a strong, enduring emotional reaction and resistance to the idea of hell suggests this is simply not the case. People's fears are oft rooted in their beliefs. 2000 years of Church history illustrates what a fear of hell can achieve.
Living in fear is hardly flourishing either.
I can't get my head around how anyone can "flourish" in a meaningful way knowing many others are suffering a completely out of proportion punishment. Put it another way, I cannot be in a meaningful heaven while knowing others are in hell. Hell creates a situation where I have no hope, and that hopelessness cannot even be ended by my own death. It's a hopelessness worse than chronic extreme depression. That situation cannot be the Creation of a God who isn't a sociopath.
Returning to an earlier point, one way of coping with the thought of hell as individuals, might be to keep in mind that the punishment of specific individuals isn't an end in itself, it's a means to an end. The purpose of the threat of punishment of individuals is to achieve a just society.
I think we will have to disagree on this. If justice is not involved in punishment in general, then it is intrinsically unjust and wrong.
A society built on punishment that exceeds the crime is not a just society.
Individuals are always to be treated as ends in themselves and never solely as means to an end. Thus Kant.
Likewise, a just society considered without regard to the well-being or suffering of its members, is an empty abstraction.
One thing that I would say is that infinite punishment for infinite sin, i.e. the person clinging to their sin forever and ever (which technically I would argue is hell itself) is very different than the idea of someone having committed an array of finite sins, and being punished infinitely for them.
To me, the perpetrators of evil getting to choose their own punishment, which in the case of Hell would be permanent exile, because they don’t want to embrace goodness and love and God and their neighbors, fits very well with the concept of Hell. As Lewis puts it, there are two kinds of people in the end – those who say to God, Thy will be done, and those to whom God says, thy will be done. But I’d also add the Orthodox-described notion of the fire of Hell being the fiery love of God, just experienced by those who are eternally rejecting it. I suspect these are all facets of the same thing, though.
A society built on punishment that exceeds the crime is not a just society.
A society where the perpetrators get to choose their punishment is not a just society.
That is not actually addressing anything anyone has said nor is it rebutting a position anyone has advocated.
(Also, I think it's an accidental truth rather than a substantial truth if I may appropriate Aristotelian term. Punishments chosen by the perpetrators are as a matter of empirical fact unlikely to be proportional to the crimes. But in theory they could be. IIRC in classical Athens wrongdoers were invited to choose their punishment with the citizen body being able to override it if they chose something too light - Socrates was executed because he suggested that he be rewarded instead.)
Individuals are always to be treated as ends in themselves and never solely as means to an end. Thus Kant.
Likewise, a just society considered without regard to the well-being or suffering of its members, is an empty abstraction.
Absolutely. A society flourishes when its members flourish. Members of society can't flourish when they are suffering, which is why the perpetrators of suffering are punished.
Again, this isn't addressing the point at issue, which is not the principle of punishment but the principle of indefinite punishment.
I don't think hell is a particularly effective deterrent. There's only so long most people can be afraid of something they've never seen or experienced. That's partly why I tend to think of it as a containment zone--fear of hell isn't a great motivator IMHO, and God would know that.
The number of people on these forums experiencing a strong, enduring emotional reaction and resistance to the idea of hell suggests this is simply not the case. People's fears are oft rooted in their beliefs. 2000 years of Church history illustrates what a fear of hell can achieve.
It seems it's important to you to believe that other people's responses are "emotional reaction and resistance" rather than rational or moral judgements. The term 'resistance' in particular has pejorative overtones. It makes your responses appear self-protective rather than respectful.
I suspect very few people find hell an effective motivator in their daily lives. We have visible, visit-able prisons filled with people in America, and yet they don't seem to be particularly effective deterrents against crime in others; how much less so hell! Yes, we have people talking about how they hate the concept, or even how they've left the faith as a result. But where are the people claiming that fear of hell made a difference in their moral choices, and now they are living lives filled with kindness and decency as a result? You may find a few, but I doubt you'll find many. Human beings just don't seem to work that way, in my experience.
I also think the whole "finite sin/infinite punishment" idea is wrongheaded, probably as a result of thinking too narrowly. Not all punishments are inflicted by the courts, much less courts in countries with sentencing guidelines! There are other punishments in life--consider job losses, divorces, abandonment/estrangement, exile, deportation, and so forth. (Yes, I know a lot of those are unjust. It does not follow that ALL of them are unjust.)
And those losses are infinite, because the effects of them are permanent, or intended to be so. Yet nobody argues that an abused person ought to remain in a marriage or family relationship to avoid inflicting an infinite punishment on the abuser. Nor do we say that to bosses who fire embezzlers, or countries who exile violent criminals. We may regret the permanent, infinite nature of the person's suffering, but we put up with it as a byproduct of keeping others safe.
Because in all of those cases what is going on is more than simply a punishment--in fact, punishment is usually not the main purpose of the action taken. The abused person ends the relationship for personal safety reasons, not primarily as a punishment (though that can happen). The boss is looking mainly to prevent further losses. The country (when led and administered properly) is trying to lower the chance of future violent crimes it will have to deal with.
Is it possible that hell is something of the same nature?
I think so. I think hell is an answer to the question, "What should God do with creatures that have become so corrupted by evil that they refuse, forever, to be redeemed and uncorrupted?"
There is no evidence to suggest that it is possible for God to simply annihilate anyone. Nothing in Scripture or science gives us an example of a person or object simply ceasing to exist without leaving any, uh, remains behind. It may be that it is logically impossible to un-create something--we don't know. God would know, but not us, not yet. And if this is logically impossible, that means it's a thing that even God cannot do. Which would leave God looking for another solution.
Some want him to force such corrupted beings to become good whether they like it or not by taking their free will away from them. That is something we know to be inconsistent with God's character as shown in the Scriptures. He simply never does it. He may beg, plead, threaten, argue, but he doesn't force. And I think we can understand why, with the modern emphasis on consent. So this idea is also out of court, as it would involve God acting against his nature--another logical impossibility.
So then, what remains? God will not allow evil to run rampant over his creation forever. He has already come into this world to redeem it through his life, death, and resurrection. The day is coming when the victory will be completed, and all the remaining evil gets mopped up. Where will he put it? Logically, the answer is some kind of containment area. He'll put it somewhere where it can no longer cause suffering to the rest of creation.
And really, can you imagine a containment area that would NOT be hell, given the inhabitants? It doesn't matter how comfortable and luxurious the surroundings might be, if the inhabitants are severely and unrepentantly corrupted, they will make life hell for themselves and the people in there with them. Even if they were kept apart from one another, they would still be experiencing a self-created hell. That's what unrepented evil turns into if you wait long enough.
So call it a punishment if you like, but I think the primary motivation here is to put an end to the damage such creatures cause to the rest of the universe. And if so, the primary considerations will be that they be in a place / situation / environment where they can never escape, and where they can never again harm others. If that means they stay there forever, so be it. It's better than setting them free to do more harm.
I suspect very few people find hell an effective motivator in their daily lives. We have visible, visit-able prisons filled with people in America, and yet they don't seem to be particularly effective deterrents against crime in others; how much less so hell! Yes, we have people talking about how they hate the concept, or even how they've left the faith as a result. But where are the people claiming that fear of hell made a difference in their moral choices, and now they are living lives filled with kindness and decency as a result? You may find a few, but I doubt you'll find many. Human beings just don't seem to work that way, in my experience.
I also think the whole "finite sin/infinite punishment" idea is wrongheaded, probably as a result of thinking too narrowly. Not all punishments are inflicted by the courts, much less courts in countries with sentencing guidelines! There are other punishments in life--consider job losses, divorces, abandonment/estrangement, exile, deportation, and so forth. (Yes, I know a lot of those are unjust. It does not follow that ALL of them are unjust.)
And those losses are infinite, because the effects of them are permanent, or intended to be so. Yet nobody argues that an abused person ought to remain in a marriage or family relationship to avoid inflicting an infinite punishment on the abuser. Nor do we say that to bosses who fire embezzlers, or countries who exile violent criminals. We may regret the permanent, infinite nature of the person's suffering, but we put up with it as a byproduct of keeping others safe.
Because in all of those cases what is going on is more than simply a punishment--in fact, punishment is usually not the main purpose of the action taken. The abused person ends the relationship for personal safety reasons, not primarily as a punishment (though that can happen). The boss is looking mainly to prevent further losses. The country (when led and administered properly) is trying to lower the chance of future violent crimes it will have to deal with.
Is it possible that hell is something of the same nature?
I think so. I think hell is an answer to the question, "What should God do with creatures that have become so corrupted by evil that they refuse, forever, to be redeemed and uncorrupted?"
There is no evidence to suggest that it is possible for God to simply annihilate anyone. Nothing in Scripture or science gives us an example of a person or object simply ceasing to exist without leaving any, uh, remains behind. It may be that it is logically impossible to un-create something--we don't know. God would know, but not us, not yet. And if this is logically impossible, that means it's a thing that even God cannot do. Which would leave God looking for another solution.
Some want him to force such corrupted beings to become good whether they like it or not by taking their free will away from them. That is something we know to be inconsistent with God's character as shown in the Scriptures. He simply never does it. He may beg, plead, threaten, argue, but he doesn't force. And I think we can understand why, with the modern emphasis on consent. So this idea is also out of court, as it would involve God acting against his nature--another logical impossibility.
So then, what remains? God will not allow evil to run rampant over his creation forever. He has already come into this world to redeem it through his life, death, and resurrection. The day is coming when the victory will be completed, and all the remaining evil gets mopped up. Where will he put it? Logically, the answer is some kind of containment area. He'll put it somewhere where it can no longer cause suffering to the rest of creation.
And really, can you imagine a containment area that would NOT be hell, given the inhabitants? It doesn't matter how comfortable and luxurious the surroundings might be, if the inhabitants are severely and unrepentantly corrupted, they will make life hell for themselves and the people in there with them. Even if they were kept apart from one another, they would still be experiencing a self-created hell. That's what unrepented evil turns into if you wait long enough.
So call it a punishment if you like, but I think the primary motivation here is to put an end to the damage such creatures cause to the rest of the universe. And if so, the primary considerations will be that they be in a place / situation / environment where they can never escape, and where they can never again harm others. If that means they stay there forever, so be it. It's better than setting them free to do more harm.
Amen.
I’m inclined to add that I’m not sure if God can simply take away someone’s free will and leave them anything like a person anymore. Or even if He can take it away at all—we might be made such that it’s simply not possible.
C. S. Lewis imagines a Hell which, given your “self-created Hell” description above, makes me think you’d really like The Great Divorce, which is excellent.
He also wrote a poem about Hell called “Divine Justice,” and he talks elsewhere about the idea that spiritual corruption might just keep going on getting worse forever without God putting a stop to it:
God in His mercy made
The fixéd pains of Hell.
That misery might be stayed,
God in His mercy made
Eternal bounds and bade
Its waves no further swell.
God in His mercy made
The fixéd pains of Hell.
Can we also talk about the negative effects of teaching about Hell?
Case in point - Smyth. The Inquisitors. Burning Heretics. Crusades. Forced conversions.
There is a catalogue of cruelty down the ages which has been justified in the minds of those inflicting it that they were saving their victims, or at least others who might listen to their victims' "heresy", from a worse fate - eternal torment in Hell.
I don't think it's reasonable to talk about potential benefits of Hell as a deterrent without talking about its other, more questionable, social effects.
There are two aspects to this discussion that are hard for us to fathom, because they're not scaleable to human experience: time and healing.
God's sense of time seems to be very unlike the human sense of time. For God, it seems time runs forward, backward, loops, splits into multiverses and comes back together again, and otherwise does not behave as we understand time to behave.
Healing is one way in which we can understand divine mercy. God's will to heal and transform creation is how I understand what is meant by "the reign of Christ." A couple of Lutheran scholars (Daniel Erlander and Michael Poellet) have written about this as cosmic koinonia - the mending, healing, transformation of creation and all the relationships within it.
While I am not convinced there is a location called Purgatory, I can believe from scripture that being in the presence of God is transformative and healing. I don't know how long that may take; Jesus seems to have healed people instantaneously, but I dunno, maybe for some that healing might take longer.
I think a person can decline the offer of healing. To paraphrase the Blessed Clive, the doors of the hospital of heaven are not locked from the outside. A person is free to depart the presence and choose the certainty of their own misery.
Put together God's time and God's healing, and what I see is God's plan to unwind the harms and bitterness in creation. The suffering that people have caused, and the punishment they deserve, are expressions of our justifiable anger and grief at the way we experience time and creation. Murdered children can't live again. All our love can't bring them back. Hell is too good for those who kill children. But God can and will and does and is changing the nature of creation, such that time and healing will overcome death and rage at injury and injustice.
However, after seven pages, I'm not sure I can improve on this from the first page:
I remember that our Lord loves human beings so much that he lay down his life to prevent them from being lost. And if he loves us that much, he will certainly do everything else possible to prevent anyone winding up in hell.
I suspect very few people find hell an effective motivator in their daily lives. We have visible, visit-able prisons filled with people in America, and yet they don't seem to be particularly effective deterrents against crime in others; how much less so hell!
As far as a lot of people are concerned, America (in particular) and the UK (in comparison to the rest of Europe) lock up a lot of people up who have committed no crime deserving of incarceration, as well as people who have committed no crime other than being poor, oppressed, marginalised and discriminated against. I'm not convinced that either of our systems are the best adverts for justice out there. If anything, what they illustrate is that injustice is a terrible deterrent.
Yes, we have people talking about how they hate the concept, or even how they've left the faith as a result. But where are the people claiming that fear of hell made a difference in their moral choices, and now they are living lives filled with kindness and decency as a result? You may find a few, but I doubt you'll find many. Human beings just don't seem to work that way, in my experience.
What I wrote was “The purpose of the threat of punishment of individuals is to achieve a just society.” And this still forms one of the bases of many countries' systems for deterring crime. But you're right about there being a big question about how effective this is in either case.
I also think the whole "finite sin/infinite punishment" idea is wrongheaded, probably as a result of thinking too narrowly. Not all punishments are inflicted by the courts, much less courts in countries with sentencing guidelines! There are other punishments in life--consider job losses, divorces, abandonment/estrangement, exile, deportation, and so forth. (Yes, I know a lot of those are unjust. It does not follow that ALL of them are unjust.)
And those losses are infinite, because the effects of them are permanent, or intended to be so. Yet nobody argues that an abused person ought to remain in a marriage or family relationship to avoid inflicting an infinite punishment on the abuser.…
Because in all of those cases what is going on is more than simply a punishment--in fact, punishment is usually not the main purpose of the action taken. The abused person ends the relationship for personal safety reasons, not primarily as a punishment (though that can happen). …
This is an interesting conception of punishment. I think I can see where you're coming from, but it's not something I find it easy to relate to. In particular, I find the idea that someone being abused would leave a relationship to inflict punishment on their abuser a bit disturbing.
I do know that there are people in this world who do not consider someone leaving them to be a punishment in any sense of the word, or suffer as a consequence, so I suggest that this kind of punishment often makes more sense to the punisher, rather than the person they want to punish. For any of the things you describe, for the person to experience it as punishment, they have to be losing something they desperately want to hold onto.
Is it possible that hell is something of the same nature?
I think so. I think hell is an answer to the question, "What should God do with creatures that have become so corrupted by evil that they refuse, forever, to be redeemed and uncorrupted?"
…
And really, can you imagine a containment area that would NOT be hell, given the inhabitants? It doesn't matter how comfortable and luxurious the surroundings might be, if the inhabitants are severely and unrepentantly corrupted, they will make life hell for themselves and the people in there with them. Even if they were kept apart from one another, they would still be experiencing a self-created hell. That's what unrepented evil turns into if you wait long enough.
It strikes me that what you describe here as hell resembles rather closely the life that these people have already chosen for themselves here on earth. If told that hell would be a continuation of this life, except without the people they'd oppressed up to that point, I think most of them would just shrug. When you get to where you are by oppressing others, it's hard to see how this holds many fears. And what would the oppressed think about this, that the people who oppressed them aren't held to account in any way other than to be eternally separated from them? (Which is great as far as it goes, but falls short of what I think of as accountability.)
There are two aspects to this discussion that are hard for us to fathom, because they're not scaleable to human experience: time and healing.
God's sense of time seems to be very unlike the human sense of time. For God, it seems time runs forward, backward, loops, splits into multiverses and comes back together again, and otherwise does not behave as we understand time to behave.
Healing is one way in which we can understand divine mercy. God's will to heal and transform creation is how I understand what is meant by "the reign of Christ." A couple of Lutheran scholars (Daniel Erlander and Michael Poellet) have written about this as cosmic koinonia - the mending, healing, transformation of creation and all the relationships within it.
While I am not convinced there is a location called Purgatory, I can believe from scripture that being in the presence of God is transformative and healing. I don't know how long that may take; Jesus seems to have healed people instantaneously, but I dunno, maybe for some that healing might take longer.
I think a person can decline the offer of healing. To paraphrase the Blessed Clive, the doors of the hospital of heaven are not locked from the outside. A person is free to depart the presence and choose the certainty of their own misery.
Put together God's time and God's healing, and what I see is God's plan to unwind the harms and bitterness in creation. The suffering that people have caused, and the punishment they deserve, are expressions of our justifiable anger and grief at the way we experience time and creation. Murdered children can't live again. All our love can't bring them back. Hell is too good for those who kill children. But God can and will and does and is changing the nature of creation, such that time and healing will overcome death and rage at injury and injustice.
However, after seven pages, I'm not sure I can improve on this from the first page:
I remember that our Lord loves human beings so much that he lay down his life to prevent them from being lost. And if he loves us that much, he will certainly do everything else possible to prevent anyone winding up in hell.
I'm not sure what you mean by "scalable" here. We are all familiar with both time and healing. Do big numbers change this? Or do you mean it's hard to fathom the divine? Which is true of many other things than just time and healing.
If human free will led to sin, what is the guarantee it won't do so again in heaven?
I would very much like to know this myself.
Jesus doesn't seem to see it as a possible problem, so clearly he knows something I do not. No doubt I'll find out some day, but I'd like to know now.
Well, @Lamb Chopped and @ChastMastr, I suppose one way of looking at this is to consider that if ultimate redemption means being conformed to the likeness of Christ (a mind-boggling prospect) then presumably we will be like him in Heaven.
Christ was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sinning.
As I've said upthread, I think, it's all in 1 Corinthians 15.
'And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, (human) so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.'
1 Corinthians 15:49
Then there's the thing about us all being changed, 'in the twinkling of an eye' at the 'last trumpet.'
We Orthodox call this process and final fulfilment theosis.
Other Christian traditions may call it something else or understand it in a different way but that's where we're headed, by God's grace. Lord have mercy!
There are two aspects to this discussion that are hard for us to fathom, because they're not scaleable to human experience: time and healing.
God's sense of time seems to be very unlike the human sense of time. For God, it seems time runs forward, backward, loops, splits into multiverses and comes back together again, and otherwise does not behave as we understand time to behave.
Healing is one way in which we can understand divine mercy. God's will to heal and transform creation is how I understand what is meant by "the reign of Christ." A couple of Lutheran scholars (Daniel Erlander and Michael Poellet) have written about this as cosmic koinonia - the mending, healing, transformation of creation and all the relationships within it.
While I am not convinced there is a location called Purgatory, I can believe from scripture that being in the presence of God is transformative and healing. I don't know how long that may take; Jesus seems to have healed people instantaneously, but I dunno, maybe for some that healing might take longer.
I think a person can decline the offer of healing. To paraphrase the Blessed Clive, the doors of the hospital of heaven are not locked from the outside. A person is free to depart the presence and choose the certainty of their own misery.
Put together God's time and God's healing, and what I see is God's plan to unwind the harms and bitterness in creation. The suffering that people have caused, and the punishment they deserve, are expressions of our justifiable anger and grief at the way we experience time and creation. Murdered children can't live again. All our love can't bring them back. Hell is too good for those who kill children. But God can and will and does and is changing the nature of creation, such that time and healing will overcome death and rage at injury and injustice.
However, after seven pages, I'm not sure I can improve on this from the first page:
I remember that our Lord loves human beings so much that he lay down his life to prevent them from being lost. And if he loves us that much, he will certainly do everything else possible to prevent anyone winding up in hell.
I suspect very few people find hell an effective motivator in their daily lives. We have visible, visit-able prisons filled with people in America, and yet they don't seem to be particularly effective deterrents against crime in others; how much less so hell!
As far as a lot of people are concerned, America (in particular) and the UK (in comparison to the rest of Europe) lock up a lot of people up who have committed no crime deserving of incarceration, as well as people who have committed no crime other than being poor, oppressed, marginalised and discriminated against. I'm not convinced that either of our systems are the best adverts for justice out there. If anything, what they illustrate is that injustice is a terrible deterrent.
Yes, we have people talking about how they hate the concept, or even how they've left the faith as a result. But where are the people claiming that fear of hell made a difference in their moral choices, and now they are living lives filled with kindness and decency as a result? You may find a few, but I doubt you'll find many. Human beings just don't seem to work that way, in my experience.
What I wrote was “The purpose of the threat of punishment of individuals is to achieve a just society.” And this still forms one of the bases of many countries' systems for deterring crime. But you're right about there being a big question about how effective this is in either case.
I also think the whole "finite sin/infinite punishment" idea is wrongheaded, probably as a result of thinking too narrowly. Not all punishments are inflicted by the courts, much less courts in countries with sentencing guidelines! There are other punishments in life--consider job losses, divorces, abandonment/estrangement, exile, deportation, and so forth. (Yes, I know a lot of those are unjust. It does not follow that ALL of them are unjust.)
And those losses are infinite, because the effects of them are permanent, or intended to be so. Yet nobody argues that an abused person ought to remain in a marriage or family relationship to avoid inflicting an infinite punishment on the abuser.…
Because in all of those cases what is going on is more than simply a punishment--in fact, punishment is usually not the main purpose of the action taken. The abused person ends the relationship for personal safety reasons, not primarily as a punishment (though that can happen). …
This is an interesting conception of punishment. I think I can see where you're coming from, but it's not something I find it easy to relate to. In particular, I find the idea that someone being abused would leave a relationship to inflict punishment on their abuser a bit disturbing.
I do know that there are people in this world who do not consider someone leaving them to be a punishment in any sense of the word, or suffer as a consequence, so I suggest that this kind of punishment often makes more sense to the punisher, rather than the person they want to punish. For any of the things you describe, for the person to experience it as punishment, they have to be losing something they desperately want to hold onto.
Is it possible that hell is something of the same nature?
I think so. I think hell is an answer to the question, "What should God do with creatures that have become so corrupted by evil that they refuse, forever, to be redeemed and uncorrupted?"
…
And really, can you imagine a containment area that would NOT be hell, given the inhabitants? It doesn't matter how comfortable and luxurious the surroundings might be, if the inhabitants are severely and unrepentantly corrupted, they will make life hell for themselves and the people in there with them. Even if they were kept apart from one another, they would still be experiencing a self-created hell. That's what unrepented evil turns into if you wait long enough.
It strikes me that what you describe here as hell resembles rather closely the life that these people have already chosen for themselves here on earth. If told that hell would be a continuation of this life, except without the people they'd oppressed up to that point, I think most of them would just shrug. When you get to where you are by oppressing others, it's hard to see how this holds many fears. And what would the oppressed think about this, that the people who oppressed them aren't held to account in any way other than to be eternally separated from them? (Which is great as far as it goes, but falls short of what I think of as accountability.)
It’s being separated, not only from them, but from God and goodness and love, forever. Even if it’s by the offender’s own choice, that’s horrible. It makes any imagery of fire and worms and such minuscule by comparison. I’d rather have fire and the love of Jesus and others rather than luxury and isolation.
Someone (Lewis?) said that Hell is only Hell from the point of view of those outside it. I can see that.
If human free will led to sin, what is the guarantee it won't do so again in heaven?
I would suggest that free will can manifest in two ways. In this life, where good and bad exist beside each other in close proximity, both in our minds and in the world around us, free will naturally manifests as the freedom to make a choice between the two. But in the next life, where good and bad are separated to avoid conflict, free will naturally manifests as the freedom to experience whatever comes from fully embracing what we have chosen, unencumbered by all the obstacles and conflict we encounter in this life.
That free will allowed for sin in this world doesn't necessarily mean it allows for the same possibility in the next.
Free will is a tricky thing to understand. There's a Star Trek episode where Spock says he is completely confident that Kirk would not murder someone. Free will is presumably compatible with saying Kirk would never not decide to murder someone just to demonstrate his free will.
Comments
No apologies necessary. It may come as a surprise to you that reincarnation was not a rare concept in first century Mediterranean thought. Plato got it from his mystery school in Alexandria and the Hebrews have long held the concept of the gilgul or transmigrational soul.
Not every gnostic school of thought held the same concept, but it was far from unusual.
AFF
Not nonexistence. The spirits there existed; it was just a very static existence.
Given the chronology involved (Plato died in the mid-fourth century BCE) wouldn't it be more accurate to say that Christianity adopted a Platonist narrative than the other way around? You can't adopt a Christian narrative if Christianity doesn't exist.
Do you think that everyone who incorporated Plato's work into their educational systems and world views lived and died only in Plato's lifetime? Greek schools of thought survived long past the founding philosophers' lifetimes. How do you suppose the Greeks educated themselves?
Christianity came along after Plato. It was a narrative that appealed to Greek people who were educated in Greece in Greek schools of thought that included thinkers like Pythagoras and Plato.
AFF
True, but the Myth of Er is right there in The Republic. That seems to be the source of Plato's adherents' idea of "promot[ing] the development of wisdom through successive incarnations", so it demonstrably dates back to Plato's own lifetime. It's not a later addition to Platonic thought.
No it isn't a later addition. What it seems to me that we're doing is putting the philosophical cart before the horse chronologically.
First Plato. Then his wisdom school which survived him. Then the problems and cognitive dissonances arising from the narrative of Er, as I described earlier, within the surviving school, which persisted for a long time. Then Christianity coming along with the resolution of this cognitive dissonance. For a time.
That thread of early Christian conversation that included reincarnation was driven out of common parlance pretty early. Paul was pretty adamant about the "it is appointed to a man to live once and then the judgment" thing. But I think in general, leaving reincarnation out of the equation was a much more attractive and simpler way of viewing reality.
Neo-Platonism is something that I think came up later.
AFF
I think you're assuming that any non-Christian school of thought must be cognitively dissonant (i.e. containing some inherent self-contradiction).
The idea that eternal recurrence is a problem to be solved seems like it requires an implicit assumption that some kind of Christian salvation is the ultimate goal of human existence. If you make a different assumption, like the idea that the pursuit of wisdom and/or virtue is a goal in itself (as opposed to being a means to an end), the dissonance does not exist.
The more likely cognitive dissonance that would be noted by various pre-Christian Greeks would be something like this.
Not at all. I think it's perfectly ordinary for narrative models of the mechanics of reality to come under scrutiny as time passes and for questions to arise from the observation of those mechanics.
I don't think eternal recurrence as a problem requires a Christian salvation as a solution. It's perfectly possible for it to exist as a problem without a solution. But I think that it is solved by Christ's passage through and into this reality.
This is true. But Plato didn't present it as something to pursue for its own sake. He presented it as a means to an end. A just society (though he never could tell us what justice was) a life between lives that was easy and pleasant, and a future incarnation that minimized suffering for oneself and others.
AFF
Meanwhile, one reason for continuing to believe in an eternal hell is the possibility of unforgivable sin (aka eternal sin). Interpretations tend towards this being sin from which the sinner is no longer able to repent (albeit for a variety of reasons). Any such sinners need somewhere to hang out.
An unforgivable sin is one for which punishment cannot be avoided. That doesn't mean the punishment has to be everlasting. It needs to be proportional.
The context is the Pharisees ascribing an exorcism performed by Christ to demonic powers.
So I've always understood the 'blasphemy against the Holy Spirit' as the ascribing to evil forces things that properly belong to God.
There were controversies in the early centuries as to whether apostates could be received back into communion based on some tricky passages in Hebrews.
This was particularly acute after the Donatist heresy.
I'm not sure why we should expect Christ to have referenced this and the Gospels don't 'stand alone' over against the rest of the NT of course, although it's been argued that RCs and Orthodox regard the Gospels as a kind of 'canon within a canon' as it were, whilst Protestants do the same with the Epistles.
I can see why that's said but I think the case is overstated and I can't say that I've noticed it particularly on either side ... apart from among some unbalanced types.
There have been instances of course where individuals have suffered terribly fearing that they may have committed the 'unforgivable sin.'
Pastoral wisdom is required in such circumstances.
Whether it is or isn't the context is as I outlined above and it's part of canonical scripture and therefore Tradition / tradition ... *
Whatever else we might say about it I imagine it reflects some kind of tension between Christ and the Pharisees using the often heightened and hyperbolic language that features in these debates.
Beyond that, I'm not prepared to speculate.
* which doesn't mean we shouldn't question and debate it of course.
I’m inclined to think that if someone is terrified they’ve committed the unforgivable sin, then they haven’t, and they should just confess it and trust Jesus to forgive them.
(OCD feels like you've committed a sin even though logic and reason tell you it's a temptation and you're not really guilty. I still couldn't get free of it without help.)
Is OCD related to scrupulosity (or vice versa)?
@Lamb Chopped is I could gift this to you, I would. It's Danielle Shoyer's book: Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Proper Place. She actually begins her book about how the doctrine of Original Sin has driven many people to even suicide. I know my mother once told me what she learned about original sin fed into her depression.
Micheal Fox also wrote a book with the same title, but I think Danielle's book is much easier to read.
Sending hugs and gratitude for that pastor's help!
I agree with @ChastMastr that if we feel we've committed the unforgivable sin the chances are we probably haven't.
Careful pastoral practice helps, as @Lamb Chopped reminds us.
The sin against the Holy Spirit (aka the unforgivable sin) is the mysterious sin discussed in Matthew 12 and possibly elsewhere. Fear of having somehow committed it plagues a lot of young Christians as it did me. It appears to have something to do with a firm, deliberate insistence on seeing good as evil, to the point that the person refuses the Spirit's help toward faith in Christ lifelong. Generally pastors will tell you that, if you are at all concerned about having committed it, that's a sure sign you haven't.
Re Scrupulosity and the kind of OCD I mentioned--yes, I think they are often the same thing, though named differently depending on whether one is working in the field of psychology or pastoral care. There is possibly this difference--I suspect it's possible for people without OCD but with poor teaching or simply a faulty understanding of God's attitude toward them to work themselves into a state of scrupulosity without any psychopathology underlying things. I don't know if that would make it easier or harder to treat.
I don't really have the energy or inclination to start a new one on that topic but might make observations if someone else were to do so.
It's all above my pay grade though.
Individuals are always to be treated as ends in themselves and never solely as means to an end. Thus Kant.
Likewise, a just society considered without regard to the well-being or suffering of its members, is an empty abstraction.
Absolutely. A society flourishes when its members flourish. Members of society can't flourish when they are suffering, which is why the perpetrators of suffering are punished.
The number of people on these forums experiencing a strong, enduring emotional reaction and resistance to the idea of hell suggests this is simply not the case. People's fears are oft rooted in their beliefs. 2000 years of Church history illustrates what a fear of hell can achieve.
Living in fear is hardly flourishing either.
I can't get my head around how anyone can "flourish" in a meaningful way knowing many others are suffering a completely out of proportion punishment. Put it another way, I cannot be in a meaningful heaven while knowing others are in hell. Hell creates a situation where I have no hope, and that hopelessness cannot even be ended by my own death. It's a hopelessness worse than chronic extreme depression. That situation cannot be the Creation of a God who isn't a sociopath.
I think we will have to disagree on this. If justice is not involved in punishment in general, then it is intrinsically unjust and wrong.
One thing that I would say is that infinite punishment for infinite sin, i.e. the person clinging to their sin forever and ever (which technically I would argue is hell itself) is very different than the idea of someone having committed an array of finite sins, and being punished infinitely for them.
And I completely agree with what you say here.
(Also, I think it's an accidental truth rather than a substantial truth if I may appropriate Aristotelian term. Punishments chosen by the perpetrators are as a matter of empirical fact unlikely to be proportional to the crimes. But in theory they could be. IIRC in classical Athens wrongdoers were invited to choose their punishment with the citizen body being able to override it if they chose something too light - Socrates was executed because he suggested that he be rewarded instead.)
Again, this isn't addressing the point at issue, which is not the principle of punishment but the principle of indefinite punishment.
It seems it's important to you to believe that other people's responses are "emotional reaction and resistance" rather than rational or moral judgements. The term 'resistance' in particular has pejorative overtones. It makes your responses appear self-protective rather than respectful.
I suspect very few people find hell an effective motivator in their daily lives. We have visible, visit-able prisons filled with people in America, and yet they don't seem to be particularly effective deterrents against crime in others; how much less so hell! Yes, we have people talking about how they hate the concept, or even how they've left the faith as a result. But where are the people claiming that fear of hell made a difference in their moral choices, and now they are living lives filled with kindness and decency as a result? You may find a few, but I doubt you'll find many. Human beings just don't seem to work that way, in my experience.
I also think the whole "finite sin/infinite punishment" idea is wrongheaded, probably as a result of thinking too narrowly. Not all punishments are inflicted by the courts, much less courts in countries with sentencing guidelines! There are other punishments in life--consider job losses, divorces, abandonment/estrangement, exile, deportation, and so forth. (Yes, I know a lot of those are unjust. It does not follow that ALL of them are unjust.)
And those losses are infinite, because the effects of them are permanent, or intended to be so. Yet nobody argues that an abused person ought to remain in a marriage or family relationship to avoid inflicting an infinite punishment on the abuser. Nor do we say that to bosses who fire embezzlers, or countries who exile violent criminals. We may regret the permanent, infinite nature of the person's suffering, but we put up with it as a byproduct of keeping others safe.
Because in all of those cases what is going on is more than simply a punishment--in fact, punishment is usually not the main purpose of the action taken. The abused person ends the relationship for personal safety reasons, not primarily as a punishment (though that can happen). The boss is looking mainly to prevent further losses. The country (when led and administered properly) is trying to lower the chance of future violent crimes it will have to deal with.
Is it possible that hell is something of the same nature?
I think so. I think hell is an answer to the question, "What should God do with creatures that have become so corrupted by evil that they refuse, forever, to be redeemed and uncorrupted?"
There is no evidence to suggest that it is possible for God to simply annihilate anyone. Nothing in Scripture or science gives us an example of a person or object simply ceasing to exist without leaving any, uh, remains behind. It may be that it is logically impossible to un-create something--we don't know. God would know, but not us, not yet. And if this is logically impossible, that means it's a thing that even God cannot do. Which would leave God looking for another solution.
Some want him to force such corrupted beings to become good whether they like it or not by taking their free will away from them. That is something we know to be inconsistent with God's character as shown in the Scriptures. He simply never does it. He may beg, plead, threaten, argue, but he doesn't force. And I think we can understand why, with the modern emphasis on consent. So this idea is also out of court, as it would involve God acting against his nature--another logical impossibility.
So then, what remains? God will not allow evil to run rampant over his creation forever. He has already come into this world to redeem it through his life, death, and resurrection. The day is coming when the victory will be completed, and all the remaining evil gets mopped up. Where will he put it? Logically, the answer is some kind of containment area. He'll put it somewhere where it can no longer cause suffering to the rest of creation.
And really, can you imagine a containment area that would NOT be hell, given the inhabitants? It doesn't matter how comfortable and luxurious the surroundings might be, if the inhabitants are severely and unrepentantly corrupted, they will make life hell for themselves and the people in there with them. Even if they were kept apart from one another, they would still be experiencing a self-created hell. That's what unrepented evil turns into if you wait long enough.
So call it a punishment if you like, but I think the primary motivation here is to put an end to the damage such creatures cause to the rest of the universe. And if so, the primary considerations will be that they be in a place / situation / environment where they can never escape, and where they can never again harm others. If that means they stay there forever, so be it. It's better than setting them free to do more harm.
Amen.
I’m inclined to add that I’m not sure if God can simply take away someone’s free will and leave them anything like a person anymore. Or even if He can take it away at all—we might be made such that it’s simply not possible.
C. S. Lewis imagines a Hell which, given your “self-created Hell” description above, makes me think you’d really like The Great Divorce, which is excellent.
He also wrote a poem about Hell called “Divine Justice,” and he talks elsewhere about the idea that spiritual corruption might just keep going on getting worse forever without God putting a stop to it:
God in His mercy made
The fixéd pains of Hell.
That misery might be stayed,
God in His mercy made
Eternal bounds and bade
Its waves no further swell.
God in His mercy made
The fixéd pains of Hell.
Case in point - Smyth. The Inquisitors. Burning Heretics. Crusades. Forced conversions.
There is a catalogue of cruelty down the ages which has been justified in the minds of those inflicting it that they were saving their victims, or at least others who might listen to their victims' "heresy", from a worse fate - eternal torment in Hell.
I don't think it's reasonable to talk about potential benefits of Hell as a deterrent without talking about its other, more questionable, social effects.
I would very much like to know this myself.
Jesus doesn't seem to see it as a possible problem, so clearly he knows something I do not. No doubt I'll find out some day, but I'd like to know now.
It seems to have to do with final redemption being complete in some way, but how that works, I don’t know either.
God's sense of time seems to be very unlike the human sense of time. For God, it seems time runs forward, backward, loops, splits into multiverses and comes back together again, and otherwise does not behave as we understand time to behave.
Healing is one way in which we can understand divine mercy. God's will to heal and transform creation is how I understand what is meant by "the reign of Christ." A couple of Lutheran scholars (Daniel Erlander and Michael Poellet) have written about this as cosmic koinonia - the mending, healing, transformation of creation and all the relationships within it.
While I am not convinced there is a location called Purgatory, I can believe from scripture that being in the presence of God is transformative and healing. I don't know how long that may take; Jesus seems to have healed people instantaneously, but I dunno, maybe for some that healing might take longer.
I think a person can decline the offer of healing. To paraphrase the Blessed Clive, the doors of the hospital of heaven are not locked from the outside. A person is free to depart the presence and choose the certainty of their own misery.
Put together God's time and God's healing, and what I see is God's plan to unwind the harms and bitterness in creation. The suffering that people have caused, and the punishment they deserve, are expressions of our justifiable anger and grief at the way we experience time and creation. Murdered children can't live again. All our love can't bring them back. Hell is too good for those who kill children. But God can and will and does and is changing the nature of creation, such that time and healing will overcome death and rage at injury and injustice.
However, after seven pages, I'm not sure I can improve on this from the first page:
As far as a lot of people are concerned, America (in particular) and the UK (in comparison to the rest of Europe) lock up a lot of people up who have committed no crime deserving of incarceration, as well as people who have committed no crime other than being poor, oppressed, marginalised and discriminated against. I'm not convinced that either of our systems are the best adverts for justice out there. If anything, what they illustrate is that injustice is a terrible deterrent.
What I wrote was “The purpose of the threat of punishment of individuals is to achieve a just society.” And this still forms one of the bases of many countries' systems for deterring crime. But you're right about there being a big question about how effective this is in either case.
This is an interesting conception of punishment. I think I can see where you're coming from, but it's not something I find it easy to relate to. In particular, I find the idea that someone being abused would leave a relationship to inflict punishment on their abuser a bit disturbing.
I do know that there are people in this world who do not consider someone leaving them to be a punishment in any sense of the word, or suffer as a consequence, so I suggest that this kind of punishment often makes more sense to the punisher, rather than the person they want to punish. For any of the things you describe, for the person to experience it as punishment, they have to be losing something they desperately want to hold onto.
It strikes me that what you describe here as hell resembles rather closely the life that these people have already chosen for themselves here on earth. If told that hell would be a continuation of this life, except without the people they'd oppressed up to that point, I think most of them would just shrug. When you get to where you are by oppressing others, it's hard to see how this holds many fears. And what would the oppressed think about this, that the people who oppressed them aren't held to account in any way other than to be eternally separated from them? (Which is great as far as it goes, but falls short of what I think of as accountability.)
I'm not sure what you mean by "scalable" here. We are all familiar with both time and healing. Do big numbers change this? Or do you mean it's hard to fathom the divine? Which is true of many other things than just time and healing.
Well, @Lamb Chopped and @ChastMastr, I suppose one way of looking at this is to consider that if ultimate redemption means being conformed to the likeness of Christ (a mind-boggling prospect) then presumably we will be like him in Heaven.
Christ was tempted in every way that we are, yet without sinning.
As I've said upthread, I think, it's all in 1 Corinthians 15.
'And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, (human) so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.'
1 Corinthians 15:49
Then there's the thing about us all being changed, 'in the twinkling of an eye' at the 'last trumpet.'
We Orthodox call this process and final fulfilment theosis.
Other Christian traditions may call it something else or understand it in a different way but that's where we're headed, by God's grace. Lord have mercy!
Amen.
It’s being separated, not only from them, but from God and goodness and love, forever. Even if it’s by the offender’s own choice, that’s horrible. It makes any imagery of fire and worms and such minuscule by comparison. I’d rather have fire and the love of Jesus and others rather than luxury and isolation.
Someone (Lewis?) said that Hell is only Hell from the point of view of those outside it. I can see that.
I would suggest that free will can manifest in two ways. In this life, where good and bad exist beside each other in close proximity, both in our minds and in the world around us, free will naturally manifests as the freedom to make a choice between the two. But in the next life, where good and bad are separated to avoid conflict, free will naturally manifests as the freedom to experience whatever comes from fully embracing what we have chosen, unencumbered by all the obstacles and conflict we encounter in this life.
That free will allowed for sin in this world doesn't necessarily mean it allows for the same possibility in the next.