- Like
- Digg
- Del
- Tumblr
- VKontakte
- Buffer
- Love This
- Odnoklassniki
- Meneame
- Blogger
- Amazon
- Yahoo Mail
- Gmail
- AOL
- Newsvine
- HackerNews
- Evernote
- MySpace
- Mail.ru
- Viadeo
- Line
- Comments
- Yummly
- SMS
- Viber
- Telegram
- Subscribe
- Skype
- Facebook Messenger
- Kakao
- LiveJournal
- Yammer
- Edgar
- Fintel
- Mix
- Instapaper
- Copy Link
12 Responses
As God is Wise Love, Hell means we must return to learn proper behavior via more strict instruction.
This process is the best we’ve been given — God’s quality control in conflict with human free will.
I think hell is the consciousness of being separated from God. And I also think that we either make it to “heaven” or we don’t. I think Francis is right. The “damned” simply become as though they never were. They do not pass go.
There is no Hell? A week in Grundy, Virginia would dissuade Senor Bergoglio of yet another heresy.
On the subject of Heaven and Hell I commend to readers’ attention the English poet and mystic Charles Williams’ magnificent exposition of the works of Dante, entitled “The Figure of Beatrice”. I would also encourage people to read Williams’ essay “The Forgiveness of Sins”, and his novels “All Hallows’ Eve” and ‘Descent into Hell”. Because both of the latter present, I think, a severely orthodox understanding of what redemption and damnation actually *look* like. The other great modern expositor of the orthodox Christian faith is David Bentley Hart, in “The Beauty of the Infinite”, and “The Doors of the Sea”. Here is Hart, in The Beauty of the Infinite, subsection entitled “Eschaton”. “Hell is the name of that false history against which the true story, in Christ, is told, and it is exposed as the true destination of all our violence, by the light of the resurrection, even as Christ breaks open the the gates of hell and death. Hell is with us at all times, a phantom kingdom propagating itself in the wastes of sinful hearts, but only becomes visible to us as hell because the true kingdom has shed its light upon history. In theological tradition, most particularly in the East, there is that school of thought that wisely makes no distinction, essentially, between the fire of hell and the light of God’s glory, and that interprets damnation as the soul’s resistance to the beauty of God’s glory, its refusal to open itself before divine love, which causes divine love to seem an exterior chastisement…”.
I’ve never seen any evidence of an actual Hell (outside of North Jersey), but I have experienced events which seem to ratify the existence of a divine judge. If that’s so, then His verdicts probably include some form of ultimate punishment.
I’d say eternal oblivion is an apt punishment. Those who embrace evil are winnowed out of the eternal adventure. Only those who develop their eternal souls by seeking God and to do his will have a soul which can survive death. By turning away from God (who is reality), they have turned toward evil (unreality) and eventually have made themselves totally unreal. They have no survival value and do not awaken in heaven. Free will choice has consequences – even eternal consequences.
I think the Father wills that we all should survive death and have eternal life, but it is our own choice to make. That is free will. Scary, ultimate Free Will.
My vote is for continuing rehabilitation and no damnation. Damnation means God is defeated, incompetent, faithless, and a sore-loser. Omar Khayyam’s challenge still stands, “O Thou who with temptation and with gin did beset the road I was to wander in, Thou surely wilt not now with evil me round enmesh — and then impute my fall to sin!”
Forgiveness is open to the very last minute, but the rub is this: one has to want to be forgiven.
2nd Rebecca 9:12: “Forgiveness is open to the very last minute, but….”
If we are all made of God stuff, how can there be a final rejection, damnation? It would mean God is rejecting a part of Itself; our ignorance and turpitude overcoming God’s omniscience and compassion.
And if we are ‘only’ made in the image of God, what does that mean? Are we simply depthless reflections, sub-dimensional puppets subject to the vagaries of life and our owned misunderstandings?
What am I missing and misunderstanding?
Perhaps the NonDualists have it right, that we are all and only That, dreaming a temporary, shallow world.
Howard – you have it backward. The person who rejects God and his forgiveness condemns himself – rejects the eternal adventure with God. It is all a matter of free will choice. God does not force us to love him, does he? If he did, we would not have free will.
‘Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.’ (Matthew 25:41/46).
It’s not a matter of what we think, but of what God says.