“There is no place of eternal punishment in any passage of the entire Old Testament. In fact–and this comes as a surprise to many people—nowhere in the entire Hebrew Bible is there any discussion at all of Heaven and Hell as places of rewards and punishments for those who have died.” --Bart Ehrman.
Paul, whose letters comprise most of the New Testament, does not comment on afterlife rewards and punishments. As apostle to the Gentiles, shouldn’t he have let us know about something that important to every living human being?
I was under the misconception that the Catholic Church dogma, following Augustine, was pro ECT. I wonder what the current pope would have to say about this.
I just read that Pope Francis does not believe in ECT. He claims the sinful who do not repent will simply disappear. Annihilation of the unrepentant is a belief going back to the early pre-Augustinian church fathers (Origen, et al).
For God’s will (the kingdom) to be done on earth as it is in heaven, his (Golden) rule must be followed from inside to outside.
“The kingdom of God never comes by watching for it. People cannot say, ‘look, here it is’, or ‘there it is’, for the kingdom of God is inside you.”
And where is hell? One of many great C.S. Lewis quotes: “Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others… but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God “sending us” to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud.” - C.S. Lewis
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”
Here are some verses that indicate we are only held accountable for the revelation (light) we have been given: Acts 17:30 (barring Piper’s interpretation, which is false, though I love him), Luke 23:34/Acts 3:17, 1 Timothy 1:13, Matthew 10:15 & 11:21-24, Luke 12:46-48, John 9:41 & 15:22. Many others throughout.
“In reality, the damned are in the same place as the saved—in reality! But they hate it; it is their Hell. The saved love it, and it is their Heaven. It is like two people sitting side by side at an opera or a rock concert: the very thing that is Heaven to one is Hell to the other. Dostoyevski says, ‘We are all in paradise, but we won’t see it’…Hell is not literally the ‘wrath of God.’ The love of God is an objective fact; the ‘wrath of God’ is a human projection of our own wrath upon God, as the Lady Julian saw—a disastrous misinterpretation of God’s love as wrath. God really says to all His creatures, ‘I know you and I love you’ but they hear Him saying, ‘I never knew you; depart from me.’ It is like angry children misinterpreting their loving parents’ affectionate advances as threats. They project their own hate onto their parents’ love and experience love as an enemy—which it is: an enemy to their egotistic defenses against joy…
“Since God is love, since love is the essence of the divine life, the consequence of loss of this life is loss of love…Though the damned do not love God, God loves them, and this is their torture. The very fires of Hell are made of the love of God! Love received by one who only wants to hate and fight thwarts his deepest want and is therefore torture. If God could stop loving the damned, Hell would cease to be pure torture. If the sun could stop shining, lovers of the dark would no longer be tortured by it. But the sun could sooner cease to shine than God cease to be God…The lovelessness of the damned blinds them to the light of glory in which they stand, the glory of God’s fire. God is in the fire that to them is Hell. God is in Hell (‘If I make my bed in Hell, Thou art there’ [Ps 139:8]) but the damned do not know Him.”
— Peter Kreeft, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Heaven-- But Never Dreamed of Asking
Ichthus77,
Your posts indicate a progressive Christian bias. They are well worth reading. The theme of this thread. however, is about the evangelical belief in ECT.
Do you agree with Pope Francis’ belief that unrepentant sinners simply disappear in the afterlife? Or do they continue to experience the negativity they espoused in life for eons or for eternity? C. S. Lewis is a good read, but his writing is sometimes vague or open to misinterpretation., e.g, are heaven and hell both inside us?
If God is love, God will be involved in reclamation of all souls. None will be lost.
Every time you make a choice the backfires even though you knew it would backfire because you keep making the same stupid choice over and over again, you make yourself a liar.
That “over and over again” is a preview of part of the whirlwind. Jump out of it (into a better part… it’s more about frames heh) and try something different. Something good, beautiful, and true.
And by the way mag… you think I’m a fucking laughing stock. As does Ichthus. I live in hell and you put me there for no reason. I’m not going to use the golden rule back at you and Ichthus …
