I am one of those Christians who underwent a true “born again” experience. Surely the absolute worst kind of Christian. I had a life-changing experience that fundamentally changed the sort of person I was. You’re not going to de-convert me so please stop trying.
I could just jump right in and state my view on hell, but first I’d like to make some remarks that I think have a bearing on my view. I don’t know that it’s particularly possible to change someone’s mind about hell by just talking about hell in isolation.
I think the framework from which one views scripture plays a significant role in interpretation and my framework comes from a lengthy study of bible prophecy. It involved my transition from a belief in a “pre-tribulation rapture” where Jesus is going to return any day now (Dispensationalism) to a position known as Preterism, in which Jesus has already returned. This involved the abandonment of “literal” interpretations of certain key texts (e.g., the moon turning to blood). Not Literal. Jesus returning on a white horse with clothes soaked in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth. Not literal. The New Jerusalem. Not literal. And of course, there’s that (in)famous “lake of fire.” Also not literal.
So in a nutshell. That’s my take on hell.
It’s not a literal physical place with a literal physical flaming lake of fire that people will be tossed into to endure eternal agony.
Of course, the actual reasoning was not that simple. There were other passages that needed to be considered. But those are details.
So. I am not here to rescue you from hell.
You’re welcome! I have my rare uses 😉
Mung,
Yes. I’m arguing that you and the Bible cannot both be right:
Before I go back to ignoring keiths until he has something interesting to say, perhaps by giving some indication he actually wants to talk about hell, I will make a couple comments on the book of Revelation.
The book consists of a vision, or perhaps a number of visions. John was told to write what he saw. John, in his vision, saw a lake of fire. I believe he saw a lake of fire and I am not claiming that he did not see a lake of fire.
Sometimes the images/signs in the book are given an interpretation in the book and some times they are not.
For example:
And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks … And he had in his right hand seven stars
Now I would claim the seven stars were not seven literal stars. But keiths would be quick to ask who was wrong, me or the bible (or both), because it’s obvious these are seven literal stars.
But John is given the interpretation of the seven stars.
20 The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.
From the outset it’s clear that the images need to be interpreted and are not meant to be taken literally.
So asking me who is wrong — me, the Bible, or both, is just immature silliness bordering on intellectual dishonesty.
Hmm, so because Jesus was a mean judgmental asshole, and christians follow his supposed example – often to the point of torturing and burning people they judge for “heresy” and other strictly religious “crimes” – then there’s something wrong with us if WE point out that Y’ALL are hypocrites?
Okay, got it. Y’all are not hypocrites for pretending to be better, more moral people, while breaking a direct order from your savior, while telling us that’s exactly how y’all should be expected to behave because you’re just following his example of being a judgmental asshole.
Fine, I can go along with that. Y’all aren’t hypocrites, no sirree. Y’all are only judgmental assholes, just like you say. Happy now?
Well, the problem I have is, you have a completely different response upon seeing an asshole than does keiths. What’s an asshole to do?
Poor Mung.
He was happy to quote Revelation when he (mistakenly) thought it supported his position:
Now I’ve shown him that a mere four verses earlier, the Bible contradicts him:
Now he’s babbling about candlesticks and stars. Anything but address the actual verse I quoted.
Keep squirming, Mr. “I don’t just read the Bible, I study it.”.
Simple. IDiots can’t go to hell.
And now outright intellectual dishonest.
Thank you for your post. I’m not quite sure how I fit in with what other Christians believe about hell because most of the commonly accepted views seem to agree that hell is real. You might say they disagree on the purpose of hell.
Given that I do not believe in the immortality of the soul, I see no purpose whatsoever for hell.
I’m not a universalist, but that doesn’t mean that I might not get there. What greater evidence of the grace of God than that the absolute worst sinner should be saved.
Spend an eternity with Hitler?
oops, meant to include in the previous post.
The belief in eternal conscious torment seems to have arisen during the period between the two testaments. So I’m not quite willing to fob it off on a later addition. Not sure if I’ve read the Boyd book yet. But knowing Boyd I’d probably be interested.
Thanks
Will keiths redeem himself?
Will he admit that John saw seven stars and seven candlesticks?
Will he insist that the seven stars were literal stars and the seven candlesticks were literal candlesticks?
Will he admit that they were symbols, or images, not meant to be interpreted literally? Isn’t that what the text indicates?
keiths, have you ever read a book about hell?
keiths, have you ever read a book about the book of Revelation?
Or is the bible the only book you ever read?
Wouldn’t that be ironic. The bible is the only book I (keiths) need to read.
Now that Mung has revealed some of his beliefs regarding hell to us, I’ll answer his questions about mine, from the “Angry at God” thread:
My abandonment of Christianity (and later of theism) unfolded over time. At the zenith of my belief, right after being confirmed into the LCMS (Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod), I bought the Church line, which was that the souls of unbelievers were tormented forever, starting immediately upon death. Bodies were united with souls later, on the Day of Judgment, and the bodies were subsequently tormented along with the souls.
I had a hard time reconciling this with the idea of a perfectly loving God, and it upset me greatly to think that friends and family might suffer for eternity. I also worried about my own salvation. Did I really, fully believe? Would I have the misfortune of dying during a brief period of doubt, paying an eternal price?
Nevertheless, hell wasn’t much of a factor in my apostasy. Hell scared me, but it didn’t scare me out of Christianity. My rejection of Christianity was intellectual, not emotional, and it would have been irrational to reject Christianity merely because I didn’t like one of its dogmas.
My emotions actually pulled in the other direction; I was quite happy to be a Christian. Ironically, it was my vigorous defense of my Lutheranism against a friend’s Mormonism that planted the seeds of doubt in me. I realized, uncomfortably, that the arguments I was using against his beliefs were also pretty effective against mine.
They didn’t factor into my decision, and yes, I realized that Christians disagreed about hell. I abandoned Christianity in stages, becoming more liberal over time, and my beliefs about hell became more liberal as the rest of my Christianity did.
3. How much time did you actually spend researching the subject before making up your mind about it?
For me, the issue was whether Christianity was true, not whether any particular doctrine on hell was true. I spent a lot of time researching and thinking about Christianity and religion generally.
It isn’t either-or. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was focused exclusively on hell, but I’ve read lots of books, articles, blog entries, etc., that dealt with the subject. And the Bible too, of course.
I’d like to thank keiths for his post. It’s pretty amazing how we can reach back into our past and talk about what we used to believe and why we held those beliefs.
I’m not familiar with the teachings on hell by the LCMS or the scriptural support they claim for their position. I’ll try to check that out. I do not deny that this version of hell is taught by certain (many?) Christian denominations.
Implicit in this view are the following:
Hell is a real place of eternal conscious torment.
The immortality of the soul.
The resurrection of the body (reunited with the soul).
I reject all three of these. I would not make for a good Lutheran. 😉
Mung,
Here’s a brief summary, along with scriptural references:
http://www.lcms.org/faqs/doctrine#heaven
Still not ready to go there? I understand, I’d be embarrassed too.
Is this the view you are promoting, Mung?
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm
(Nice idea to bring up apophatic/kataphatic with Elizabeth.)
Added, something from the ‘east’ that garbed in western language might be translatable for your main question of this thread.
Not so rare 🙂
But your contention was that WE are asked to judge.
In that Sermon on the Mount passage we are specifically exhorted not to.
Moreover, it doesn’t tell us that we won’t be judged. It simply tells us not to do precisely what you say we are told to do.
So I think you are wrong here.
I reject all three too. So what makes me an “atheist” (not my preferred label, but I’m happy to wear it) and you a theist?
Elizabeth,
For a woman who has herself ‘judged’ the Church she grew up in and even God as being not-God (spurred by reading an atheist ‘oracle’ in Daniel Dennett!), the irony runs rather thick with Lizzie’s ‘innocent’ usage of Scripture here.
Yes, that’s exactly what Lizzie used it for. I don’t think even Lizzie would deny that. (Well, she might just do, but for a woman who regularly demonstrates that she doesn’t know what she believes and is searching for that new ABC ‘home’, e.g. quasi-Buddhism, post-Quakerism, wanna-be pan[en]theism, etc., it wouldn’t be a surprise.)
IDist fantasies aside, do you make a good orthodox anything else?
Gregory, please don’t lie about me. It’s very tiresome.
I reject the first two outright and accept the other with qualifications. I guess I would not be a good Lutheran either.
peace
What’s the lie, Lizzie? Please be specific. These are things that YOU have written on TAZ. Sorry, but you don’t get monopoly control over interpreting what you’ve written (try: “looking glass self”). Have the courage to try to defend this woolly apostasy if that’s what you actually embrace, for the hell of it.
Well, you are stating as fact assertions that are not things I have said, but things you have inferred to be true from what I have said. As they concern my own beliefs I am in a position to know they are false. You can choose to disbelieve me or not, but it is a lie to state them as facts.
Specifically:
The church “I grew up in” was the Episcopal Church of Scotland. I certainly criticised it, so if that’s what you mean by “judging” I guess I did. So it’s not a lie. it is however completely irrelevant, because my point was not that I think we should not make judgements (obviously I think we should) about institutions, or even about people, but simply that Mung’s statement that Christians are “required to judge” others is contradicted by Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. That would seem to me an internal contradiction in Mung’s position.
I did not “judge” God as being not-God in any normal sense of the term “judge”, and I did not read any “oracle”. I read a book, by Dennett, about free will, not about atheism.
I know exactly what I believe, Gregory.
I don’t know what an “ABC ‘home'” is but I’m not especially searching for a ‘home’, spiritual or otherwise. I am quite content with my current philosophical/spiritual position, although I am always open to new thoughts.
I am not a wannabe, Gregory, of any kind. I might still be trying to find a label that succinctly describes to others what my position is, but I am not unsure of what it is, merely of how to describe it briefly.
Coincidentally, I was just reading from Raymond Tallis’ “Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity” and the following was posted. Might be interesting for you, and not too far, Lizzie: http://faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/Short_course.php?Type=New&CourseID=68 Tallis is an atheist and still invited.
Duncan Astle is a friend of mine, in fact. We both had the same PhD supervisor.
Gregory,
You would feel a great sense of relief if Lizzie returned to the Christian fold, wouldn’t you?
Without an immortal soul, who is in heaven?
I’m getting that impression 🙂
Elizabeth,
All he has to do is make a compelling argument. Start with a radical paradigm shift in high jumping changing science…
Gregory says he is a “man trained in philosophy.” All I see is an unpleasant nag.
Elizabeth,
It is surely true, Lizzie, that if you were now an Abrahamic theist challenging IDism, we’d have much more in common. As it is, you’ve become a welcome homie to skeptics, cynics, atheists and aggressive anti-theists. That’s TAZ!
Did it ever dawn on you that Lizzie, like almost everybody else in the world, might not really be that interested in having “much more in common” with you? FWIW, I actually wish I were LESS like you, and am seriously thinking of legally removing the “e” and “r” from my first name as a first step.
“Walto” has a lot going for it!
So much confusion in so few words
God is the only immortal being. Humans exist or not purely at his pleasure.
“Heaven” is simply where God’s sovereignty is undisputed .
Since God is not a physical being “heaven” is not a physical place. The Gospel is the story of the earth slowly but inevitably becoming heaven.
quote:
Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
(Mat 6:9-10)
end quote:
peace
Do you mean this part?
quote:
You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
(Mat 7:16-21)
end quote:
peace
No, I simply meant:
Judge not, that you be not judged.
Mung claimed that Christians were required to judge. My response was that they are also commanded not to.
(For reference)
(c) Sophisticated Theology from bible STUDY!
Actually when read in context I think the text means that Christ followers are supposed to judge themselves before they judge others and with the same standards. I would say Jesus does not condemn all judging just hypocritical judging.
check it out
quote:
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
(Mat 7:1-5)
end quote:
It’s been my experience that often when I do judge I am reminded that I am guilty of the same offense.
quote:
Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.
(Rom 2:1)
end quote:
It’s our own shortcomings that make judgement problematic that goes for judgement of ourselves as well as others.
This is one of the reasons that we need Christ.
end of sermon
peace
What is TAZ anyway?
Elizabeth,
heh
fifthmonarchyman,
That’s why I suggest that theists should not continue to rely on authority and accept that a truly secular society will guarantee their right to free thought and expression along with everyone else’s.
If it weren’t for the insistence on mind control – the creeds – organised religion could be repackaged as social bonding. We could all enjoy the ambiance of the ancient buildings, the art, the music, the emotion, without any pressure to succumb to the particular beliefs. Might be an avenue for church organisations to explore. Throw open the doors to the agnostic, the unconvinced, the atheist. Don’t judge, just socialise!
Some groups already do.
Elizabeth,
I know
Accept on whose authority?
We all rely on authority.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC3cvaZV6mI
The only question is is the authority we rely on the legitimate rightful authority or just another wannabe
peace
fifthmonarchyman,
Well, give a thought to being less exclusive.
As far as cultural and ethnic divisions go it is the least exclusive club on earth. The only exclusivity we have is in the area of authority. We don’t accept petty wannabe tyrants having authority over us. It’s pretty much the only rule
quote:
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
(Rev 7:9-10)
end quote:
peace
M’kay. So accept the authority or remain the outgroup?