Eternal suffering in hell isn't in the Bible

Faith & Science Conversation
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Mitchell, you are reading things into my words. If Jesus meant “eternal correction,” then it is by definition not temporary. The question would be can anyone in it be corrected, that is, purified, such that they can be saved and enter Heaven? I don’t know. I don’t find anything to suggest that this is the case. Yet, the Bible is clearly not intended to answer every question we could have about the afterlife, Heaven, etc.

Buddha claimed that when one has released all of ones attachments, then upon physical death, one can resist reincarnation and merge into the field of consciousness, which is the Buddhist version of God; consciousness without identity, which is quite a difficult concept to grasp. If one is not working on releasing ones attachments, then one is simply reincarnated endlessly, into worse and worse conditions. Additionally, as human civilizations are built by people who are not working on that and shaped according to their delusions, it becomes more and more difficult to work such release.

This concept meshes with the concept of sin and separation from God pretty well, although it is not identical. Where Buddhism and the Eastern traditions—the concept of enlightenment, the mind-training/attachment releasing practices, the Upanishads—fit into God’s plan is big open question for me. My personal experience and how I cam to Christ suggests they have a role, and that the role may be to answer some of the questions the Bible doesn’t address. But I would declare that is the case, at this point. Yet, if we are reincarnated as Buddha believed we are, Jesus’ statement that “no human being would be saved” would make more sense. I say that, because when he made that statement, there were presumably a lot of human beings who were already saved; that is, MoseS, Elijah, David, etc.

And if we are reincarnated, it would mean that Hell is not something God created so that he could punish all those insolent people (and angels, for whom Jesus said the fire had been prepared) forever and ever and ever, but rather the consequence(s) of choosing to reject God.

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Whatever you may be imagining I am reading into your words doesn’t change the point I am making. Eternal punishment/correction is nonsensical and therefore eternal torment/consequences makes much more sense as well as being consistent with other things Jesus said.

I am not interested in reincarnation which sounds to me like demonic possession or close enough to make no difference.

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Regarding Hebrews 5:9, that’s a good point. The sticking point for me, as I said in another reply, is that Jesus used the word “kolasin.” Eternal life would mean life is constantly being generated forever. This constant generation is essential. It’s why eternal life is a meaningful statement. Eternal death is kind of meaningless, though, because death is the absence of life. It could only mean life is never again generated. There’s no difference, really, between saying “death” and saying “eternal death,” when it’s contrasted with “eternal life.”

Punishment/correction, however, is something that must be generated. So eternal punishment/correction is meaningful.

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I don’t know, Mitchell, you seem to be only interested in your own ideas. I mean, you are rejecting Jesus’ own choice of words (Kolasin) for a concept that you like better. I hope I’m wrong about that.

I cannot avoid reincarnation, because the path by which I came to Jesus went through considerable investigation in and practicing of Buddhism. It was essential, I think, to prepare me for accepting Jesus, so I have to believe that God meant for it to happen, and that it was not a wasted experience. It was too deep and profound and meaningful for me, and I have drawn upon it too often to help other people, including a woman who I may very well be bringing to Jesus very soon. I will not underestimate God by believing that he put things in this world that have no use for his purposes, and certainly not something as deep and profound as Buddha’s teachings.

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The pharisees could not recognize Jesus for who he was because they had essentially made an idol of their interpretation of the law. I think we are all very susceptible to that.

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I’m not seeing how a final death isn’t an eternal punishment. If the punishment is death, when does it end?

If the punishment is something other than death/destruction/perishing, such as torment or pain of some kind, then for it to be eternal that pain must be felt eternally. But if the punishment is death, for it to be eternal the person must not ever live again.

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203

I would say what he said is extremely clear. If you look back up I cover several of these phrases and show how it’s common war language throughout the Old Testament.

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Also punishment simply denotes a punishment. Even nowadays we use the term capital punishment yo denote execution.

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Both life and death are actions. We remain alive because the actions required for that continue to take place; within our bodies the heart beating, the lungs breathing and so on (but much outside our bodies is required, as well). If any of those required things stops, we stop living and—the act of maintaining life is replaced by the act of death. But death only happens once, like darkness. Dark is the absence of light and dead is the absence of life. Nothing must happen to remain dead. That’s where there is a crucial difference between eternal death and eternal life—but this difference does not exist between eternal punishment and eternal life. See my point?

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Thank you for all the Biblical quotes. I think you are making a great point, and I have found what you are saying to be the case, also.

Yet, Jesus gave many things new meaning. For example, his teaching on divorce and the reason he gave for Moses’ allowing of divorce.

And here, in what is one of the most essential issues, the judgement day, he doesn’t say death at all, and he says very clearly, eternal. In light of what you have said, “death” all by itself would have been the perfectly symmetrical thing to contrast with “eternal life,” for eternal life is life without death—the death of death. But he didn’t say that. That’s my difficulty.

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No. I don’t see you point. I see the complete opposite meaning in those verses. Especially when you calculate in all the other verses about the second death. In my opinion it’s one of the clearest things in scripture. It’s more clear than the trinity.

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Except the first death is not eternal. It’s the second death that is eternal.

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In my opinion and that of many others it is not clear. We’ll have to disagree about this.

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The first thing to begin with is to see all the phrases like all consuming fire, maggot that won’t die, and endless smoke that is the actual driving force for the concept of eternal torment.

Then trace those passages back throughout the Torah.

Then look at the phrases spread throughout the epistles and gospels like gnashing of teeth, forever held in contempt and so on and see how those phrases were interpreted by the Jewish community.

Then study things out like God is able to destroy the body and soul, and the wages of sin is death and so on.

I feel like the subject is to big for one thread. So I want to pick various phrases like all consuming fire and do a thread just on that topic.

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Yeah, I’ve been working my way through doing those things, it may just be that you are further (probably much further) along than I am in doing that. As I’ve said, eternal torment makes no sense, but I’m not quite where I can see for myself how Jesus is actually not saying that at all.

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There are two free resources that are great.

  1. The Podcast , Rethinking Hell. Well over a hundred hours of content.

  2. The Rethinking Hell Facebook group. It’s very focused and has a few hundred people who can answer questions. They also have a website.

The book “The Fire that Consumes” by the late Edward Fudge. The 2011 edition is great.

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why?

You believe that we cannot make choices with any significant impact on our eternal happiness?

why?

You think our choices and actions now should be care-free and without consequences than cannot be paid for later? Perhaps you like the idea of indulgences where you pay for such things in advance? And in any case the gospel of grace taught by Jesus and Paul is that our sins are forgiven if we are only willing to change. Is it possible that there is some other premise here you are not mentioning like eternal torment for making a wrong decision about what to believe? Because I don’t think that is correct.

Eternal punishment/correction make no sense – that is correction which never succeeds in correcting anything. But why does eternal consequences/torment make no sense? I don’t get it.

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I don’t think eternal torment or punishment makes sense in the context of justice, love or God’s desire for us to be reconciled to him. Eternal correction makes some sense if the aim is reconciling with God. It would only be eternal if there will be some who will never be corrected, but then that means for them it’s really just eternal torment or punishment. The only way for me that eternal torment or punishment makes sense is if we are reincarnated and our spirits/souls cannot be destroyed. Yet, that’s fishy in the context of some other things said in the Bible, such as “he who can destroy both body and soul in hell,” and with the implication that God created something that he can’t destroy.

Why doesn’t eternal punishment/torment make sense in the context of justice or love? Well, suppose your daughter betrayed you. Suppose she did something unbelievably horrible, like killing your other children and your wife and cutting their bodies up and—well, let’s say it got worse than that. You’d be horrified and angry, no doubt, in response to what happened to your family, the fact that your daughter is responsible and what she’d become that would lead her to do such a thing. Wouldn’t you? Suppose you had eternity to deal with this. In time, your negative feelings would weaken, your anger AT your daughter would be countered somewhat by sadness over the loss of your daughter to whatever evil had possessed her. There would be a hole in you where your family was taken away, by her murdering them and also by that evil. Eventually, wouldn’t you get to a point where nothing could be better than for both them and her to be returned to you? And if you could not bring them back, but she still lived, wouldn’t her reconciling to you be what you would want? Remember we’re talking about the span of eternity for this to take place. If not 100 years, then 1,000 or a billion or a trillion. Eventually, you’d want her back if there could be a way for that to happen, wouldn’t you? There would have to be reconciliation. She’d have to face what she did. She’d have to go through some sort of punishment for it, and would not be small, given her crimes.

Now imagine that you COULD bring your family back to life and make their bodies whole.

How could you be the height of justice and love and NOT want all of you to be reconciled? How could you WANT your own daughter to suffer for eternity?

I could never want that. If it was necessary, I could allow it, but I could not want it. And surely my sense of justice and my love are less than God’s.

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When someone jumps off a building is it unjust for them to die splattered on the ground below? When someone straps a bomb to themselves, is it unjust for them to get blown to bits? When something is the natural logical consequence of what they are doing, then I don’t see how it is unjust that they suffer the consequences. So if you are talking about eternal torment as a punitive measure then I quite agree that it makes no sense whatsoever. I don’t believe in any such thing.

But I see no reason why our choices cannot make any significant impact on our eternal happiness, or that our choices and actions should be care-free and without consequences. So I see the following options:

  1. God is a mafia boss with a protection racket requiring you to do things in order to protect you from his own wrath and threats to torture you for eternity.
  2. The Bible is lot of antiquated nonsense and there are no consequence in a life after death because there is no life after death.
  3. God is a parent who loves us and therefore seeks to prepare us for a life that extends beyond our physical existence and thus warns of real dangers in the effects our choices and actions can have on our eternal happiness.

I reject the first option completely. Such a “god” sounds more like a devil and will have nothing but my middle finger. The second option is much more acceptable, and I don’t see anything particularly wrong with that option. But the one I believe in is number 3. I certainly have no interest in imitation life where our actions have no meaning because they don’t affect anything. And I think H.G. Wells was completely right in his portrayal of the results of such a consequence free life is the eloi who behaved more like sheep than people.

But how about the options proposed by others here? Shall we sum it up in a number 4?
4. God is a parent who “loves” us and therefore will one way or another will insure that nobody suffers the consequences of their choices and actions for eternity whether He has to remove them from existence or force them to be as He demands “for their own good” even if He has to send them to reform schools and re-education camps called “hell.”

What do I think about that option? That isn’t even remotely resembling love at all. It is not only selfish and self-centered through and through, but intolerant of the very essence of life. This is not a god who would ever create living things. This is a god who would create only tools, always choosing power and control over love and freedom.

So… I do not believe God has constructed a torture chamber to punish people who dare to disbelieve what some church says. But I do believe that people habitually torment themselves and create a hell for themselves and everyone around them wherever they go. It because I see this on the earth that I believe hell exists and I don’t think death changes things as if it were some solution to people’s problems. I believe it is the logical consequence of the choices people make and the self destructive habits they have fallen into.

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Mitchell, you are completely dismissing death as a consequence. Death is indeed a consequence. And a just one. Eternal torment is not a just consequence for anything. The only way I could want someone to be tormented at all is if it could make them grow in a positive way and if there was no other way to make that growth happen. Otherwise, wanting someone to be tormented is taking pleasures in their suffering.

You seem to be avoiding this issue: If God has created hell as a place of eternal torment from which there is no escape then this is what he wants. That means he wants those who reject him to be tormented eternally. That means he takes pleasures in that. What other explanation is there when he can destroy their souls?

That is a monster I cannot believe in, and that I see no signs of anywhere in the Bible. That is a monster incapable of saying about those who have rejected him, who have scourged and are murdering his being incarnate in the form of Jesus, “Forgive them… for they know not what they do.”

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