It’s not misleading, the audience Jesus was speaking to got it, the people to whom it was written likely so, but understanding the situation of that time makes it crucial.
The story of the rich and poor man goes back to ancient egyptian religion dating back 1000-1200 before Christ,
The Pharisees borrowed it and added their own jewish ingredients such as the bosom of Abraham which is nowhere in the OT or NT, further mixed up with elements of the Greek version of Hades.
Crucial is the context of Luke 16 is verse 14 -
14 The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him
Followed by the Rich Man and Lazarus parable.
What Jesus is doing (IMO) is to ridicule the Pharisees in return with their false theology and as lovers of money they were heading to what they had chosen to believe themselves.
4 Likes
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
116
@abstraction, @ProDeo said what I should have. How could Jesus not use the motifs of His culture? What’s immoral about that?
I recognise your response as coming from a very cohesive framework of understanding. Whilst I’m not sure about certain aspects of it, I’m holding it as an open window to consider as I go back through many parts of scripture. Most of our views (and mine is mostly cohesive) don’t sit on a point here or there, but we triangulate all over the place. Rethinking always takes some rethinking through all those stored reference points.
Yes, it’s potentially quite valid that Jesus took the framework of the story to make a point.
Your belief about the limitations Jesus operated under may be valid. I’m not yet convinced, but considering it. The universe is not a closed system, and if Jesus had any divine knowledge, I don’t necessarily see a particular reason he would be constrained to your rule-set for the type of knowledge - the Light of love et al - but precluding any propositional statement of future reality. I still have space for the Ay, and what then?
I think the signs he gave were real - not suggesting you don’t. Why that and not knowing, again given Paul and others’ experiences.
If a man could pass through Paradise in a dream,
and have a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had really been there,
and if he found that flower in his hand when he awoke —
Ay! and what then? (att. to Coleridge)
Having gone through a recent bicycle mishap myself, (even with my helmet on, my mouth took the punishment - emergency trip to dentist involved - this was back in September) I really do sympathize. Was testing an ebike for a friend and ended up doing a face plant on the pavement. Was able to walk away from it, very much humbled about my own reaction time capacities in the face of even moderate bicycle speeds!
Those are good questions (all three), but at the moment I feel led to back up and address one that weighs more heavily on my mind, and in doing so, perhaps these latter ones will be addressed.
This is something to take deadly seriously - especially if something dabbled in turned out to be erroneous, but was welcomed as such by a wavering unbeliever. (Not sure how ‘wavering’ those sorts are that you mention … sounds like they’re already fairly settled in their unbelief and will take whatever devices they find handy to help themselves feel better about it.) But be that as it may, it’s important to get right as there are words from Christ himself that involve millstones around necks and depths of the sea. It is no “toying around” matter.
And regarding the annihilationism they find so exhilarating to posit, I don’t have much to say, since it appears to me to be the fly in the room that already has a standing elephant. Roughly speaking, (at least as some here want to handle it), that elephant is lumped together under something called ‘universalism’. I’m not sure that’s actually the accurate label for what I’ve been going on about here, but let’s just pursue the thing directly, whatever it is.
There is the notion that the most terrifying thing offered up by some forms of traditionally formulated Christianity is unending, active torture in Hell. And a deserving candidate such a thing is! So it is understandable that those casting a more-than-nervous eye in that direction should feel immense relief if they could just feel relieved of that worry … in favor of literally anything else … including such a comparably peaceful-sounding fate as mere non-existence.
What I’m seeing taught by Christ and Paul in scriptures, however, does not involve escape from judgment. In fact, it involves even less escape from judgment than the traditional substitutionary atonement formulation offers up! It involves a God who (far from separating us from the consequences of our sin) separates us from our sin itself as far as the east is from the west. It is a God that will have his children clean and righteous. It is a persistent God that is willing to let his children go through their own hell for eternity if necessary if that’s what it takes for them to come to terms with what they have done … to themselves … and to others because of their sinful selfish obsessions. It’s the difference between a “successful” bank robber newly come into a large stash of ill-gotten wealth being told: “Hey, you know what? As long as you’re really sorry and penitent, you’re good to go! You can even keep the cash - the consequences of your sin have already been atoned for” or instead being told: “You’re going to have to make this right … all those people you hurt … all those unfolding and spreading consequences for what you did … that’s all on you, man! And on judgment day, when all is brought to light, you will be made to know the pain you caused, and you will be face-to-face with those who suffered it because of things you did!” And when we begin to contemplate how much is involved in all this for each of us (for so many things - think of words carelessly hurled from our mouths that, on Christ’s measuring stick are revealed to be us literally murdering people!) …when we begin to realize, suddenly hellfire isn’t the only ominous thing to dominate our attention! It would be so much simpler to go back to me just being able to forget about my sin. Christ paid for it - made it all right; let the consequences just go away now. Since we are humanly unable to trust there could be such a thing as an infinitely loving God that could love even for nothing in return - since that is beyond the pale of our imaginations, we needed our salvation to become transactional. Somebody has to pay for it (whether me or somebody else) - and if Christ was up for the job, then wonderful! All I need is to keep the receipt for that transaction to dangle in front of God’s face on judgment day … “Lord, I confessed the right words, invoked your son’s actions on my behalf … now you are obliged to admit me into heaven” … that is a transaction we can imagine. As long as somebody suffers, we imagine that justice was somehow served, and we are relieved of our duty to face our own sin. What a shock, then, to realize anew (or perhaps for the first time!) that Christ did not come to save us from the consequences of our sin … he came to save us from our sin itself! How attached are you to some desires that are less than righteous? What would it take to bring you, not just to a point where you are maybe willing to loosen your grip on it just a bit, not just to a point where you grudgingly let it go because you realize you can’t serve both that and Christ, but all the way to the point where you loath what you formerly chased, and now see it purely as Christ does? Then, and only then, has your salvation finally been realized with respect to that sin. The consequences … even to the point of hellish fiery experience itself associated with running away from God toward that sin, that fire never goes out. It’s smoke eternally rises, and since Love will have no prisoners, it lets you chase that other … even forever if necessary, if that’s what it takes for you to willingly come back to the doorway that Christ has thrown open. Wide are the ways to perdition and many are those of us busy chasing after our obsessions and baubles. Few are those it would seem that trickle in finally onto the way of life. But forever is a long time. And love is patient, and severe. Our worldly “riches” are the chasm that we cannot cross over to join with Abraham. Our rags that we cling to simply are not proper attire for the banquet feast, and we will be cast out until properly attired as Christ. Our formulaic, transactional dynamics fail us in the end when the judge delivers those words that so shock us: “away from me … I never knew you.”
This is the hard, hard lesson to absorb. The transactional atonement where we imagine that Christ just “makes it all go away on our behalf” is so much easier! I almost wish I could just go back to believing that way again because that is the way that seems to give us so much license for continued sin without worry. And history bears out how much license ostensible “Christians” have taken in the formula. “I’m forgiven … no worries … all the suffering and hell are all for someone else now - I’ve been excused from that since Christ took care of it for me.” The more I read scriptures, however, the more I see nothing but failure and delusion in that way of thinking. The more I read scriptures, the more I see that Christ did not come to save me from suffering … he came to lead the way into (and through) it. I am instructed to pick up my cross and follow him along that way. And as we discover the impossibility of doing this on our own, we also discover that gentle and leading shepherd turning back to where we’ve stumbled, and reassuring us: “I’m right here with you, daughter; you aren’t alone my son … here, I’ll help you carry that burden - and you share mine with me. You’ll find my yoke is gentle and my burden is light.”
And in the end, God’s word will not prove so ineffective as to raise only some paltry trickle or remnant out of the wasted masses. No - the prophecy will not be denied that all nations will come streaming to the City of God, and they will be righteous if and when they finally enter those gates. It is true that the potter makes of the clay some things for venerated purposes, and other for common purposes - but it is all with purpose. And far be it from any of us to think the potter would ever shape any of his clay only for the purpose of torturing it. Some fancy they can find such a god in Scriptures. I cannot any longer. But I do see how we may find reflections of vindictive selves at times as we fancy we are searching for God.
I’m glad that you mentioned the Ephesians verse. When this section in Ephesians is read as a whole, and compared to Psalms 68:18 (which is paraphrased in Eph 4:8), it’s clear that the author is building a case for his christology. He doesn’t have a source that explicitly states Jesus descended to Sheol/Gehenna/Hades after he died (you certainly won’t find it in the Gospels), but he wants to show that Jesus has power over all evil entities. So he borrows a verse from Psalms and, in the fine tradition of theologians throughout time, he stretches the verse to suit his needs: surely somebody who ascended can be also be assumed to have descended! Why, it’s only logical!
Maybe the author of Ephesians includes his carefully worded bit about descent (not stating it as a fact, but allowing the reader to draw the logical inference) because he believed earlier writers had failed in their duty to tell us what really happened (in his opinion, at least).
There seems to be some solid evidence to suggest that by the end of the first century (when Ephesians was likely written), many Christians already accepted the idea that Jesus had descended into the realm of the dead. For good or bad, it became a part of the accepted narrative very early on.
Eventually, the Christian narrative about hell grew darker and darker (as expressed through countless pieces of Christian art over the centuries). The Christian hell of the Middle Ages made the Psalms’ Sheol look like a pretty nice place by comparison.
Annihilation is the belief that unbelievers who die are resurrected on judgement day, stand before God’s throne, are judged, and then die again, this time forever. Above the punishment to non existence the overwhelming experience to have been in the presence of God, Jesus, angels, the unbeliever also becomes aware of what he is going to miss.
What kind of God would threaten to punish someone with annihilation for not following a concept that most of humanity have never had the chance of understanding well?
I don’t see how this improves things in the slightest.
The problem is not the content of the threat but the methodology of threatening people into things in the first place. So the solution is not to change the threat but to change the whole idea about this being a matter of threatening in the first place. But does that mean a good parent tells his children that anything goes? Surely you cannot believe that! With a good parent its not about threatening children to get their obedience merely for obedience sake (that sound exactly what you would expect from those using religion for power and control), instead a good parent is all about preparing their children to live well in a world where their actions have consequences. So the most sensible answer to your question is that God warns us of the natural logical consequences of our actions and it never was about threats of any kind.
But then that is the problem with this suggestion of annihilationism in the first place. It wants an existence without consequences just because they would feel better that way. And in that way it is a lot like universalism, which is also trying to subtract the consequences of our choices. This is frankly our sin speaking – it is our sin that doesn’t want there to be any consequences to our choices and actions.
Good points and I agree with many. I should say I am not an annihilationist. I agree with you that God punishes appropriately. I am more on the order of God ultimately judging us according to what we know. If we do go on existing after death, He teaches us what we need to know. Hell may be the correction area where we get sick of ourselves…similar to “The Great Divorce.” At least, that is where I think it may wind up.
I don’t think the NT is clear about our ultimate destination because that is not its focus…bJesus came as a messiah to the world, and his lordship transformed a previously cultic worship of a human emperor to that of God. In the same way that the OT only hinted at the existence of the afterlife, the NT develops but only anticipated its details.
However, I think annihilation is also rather tough rocks though for just not believing something either.
Thanks. What do you think?
Addendum… I am not saying that is another revelation coming about the afterlife. I just meant that the NT did not tell us about it in detail, perhaps because that was not the most important thing to tell us. Obedience and repentance are more important to what we need to know, maybe, as well.
I have always been an opponent of the Gnostic gospel of salvation by knowledge and works of the mind. I believe in a gospel of salvation by the grace of God, and faith which is the other side of that coin is about loving God and doing good for its own sake and not for some reward as if you could somehow earn such things.
But of course the topic of this thread is this idea of annihilationism taught by the Jehovah Witnesses and the claim of Ehrman that eternal conscious torment is not in the Bible. I notice that the OP now has an edit reporting an update that Ehrman’s case has been refuted. Very good!
It is not that I like the idea eternal conscious torment. Not at all! I am just not willing to rewrite the words of Jesus in the Bible and I don’t see a pragmatic theological advantage. I have in fact supported the idea of an effective annihilation in diminishing awareness. I think a good case can be made for that since there is much in the Bible that suggests that a big part of the problem with sin is how much it destroys free will and consciousness. And perhaps more importantly we can see examples of this in the world as habitual behaviors turn people into mindless unthinking robots with very little free will or awareness of many thing around them (like the feelings of other people for example).
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
128
Only if Jesus’ sayings are literal.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
129
We gots ta deal with those aspects. Together. Here. And like you, I’m walking naked. I have the same space. Again. if I parsed you right on prophecy. Again. I lost it progressively in 25 years deconstruction. But it came back. Recently. Thanks to this site. It never went away really. Thanks to my cultic past. Happy to fill in all gaps. But it hasn’t come back clean. It’s never the same stream twice.
I love the Coleridge. So many have gone before us since the Enlightenment. And centuries before: what timeless genius wrote The Cloud of Unknowing, eh? And we have taken so long to begin to catch up.
I’m trying to understand, but I’m still not getting at the the basic point I’m trying to grasp. This discussion above about atonement I’d prefer not to get into in depth, except to caution (humbly) that I see your take as committing a false dilemma or “either-or” fallacy… as personally, I believe very strongly that Christ’s purpose was to save us from the consequence of our sin andour sin itself. “it can be two things…”, after all.
(And, for what it is worth, what kind of bank robber, who is genuinely “sorry and penitent”, will not return the money insofar as possible… not unlike Zaccheus? Any such thief or robber or swindler who claimed “true sorrow and penitence,” who didn’t return what they stole to the best of their ability… I would seriously doubt how sincere is their sorrow or penitence. Hence to the point of us traditional believers in traditional atonement… the kind of sorrow for sin, or “repentance” that is “saving”, that can expect to effectually receive forgiveness, is nothing less than the kind of repentance that will result in a life defined by a genuine pursuit of holy life. If someone possesses the kind of “faith” that only wants escape from the consequences of sin, but not from the sin itself, you will hear me saying with James, “can such faith save him?”)
But my core question here still is being missed. Jesus used repeated language that, to any fair interpretation, certainly sounds a lot like punishment, and mixes in the word “eternal” with it a lot. These are his words, not Plato’s, not Augustine’s, not Aquinas’s… “Eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” “eternal punishment,” “unquenchable fire,” “place of torment,” “in anguish in this flame,” etc. “fiery furnace”, “outer darkness” etc.
But it sounds like you (and others here) are essentially telling me that if I believe that in the afterlife there is “eternal fire,” “eternal punishment,” a “place of torment,” Or anything even similar, then I have radically misunderstood Jesus, and have imported ideas entirely foreign to Jesus or the New Testament. I have trouble understanding how one can claim this when I’m using his exact words! and I’d like to truly understand the basis by which people are claiming I have so badly misunderstood him, but I’m not getting any traction.
I have tried to understand, and as I wrote to @Randy above, there seem to me only 3 logical alternatives, though I’m More than happy to entertain any other alternative that I’ve missed. But the options seem to be either:
Jesus did not speak about these things using these words. He never spoke about hell, never described the afterlife with the words attributed to him across the gospels. These were erroneous ideas put into his mouth by the early evangelists. Or, related, when his ideas were (presumably) translated from Aramaic to Greek, his actual description and words got so lost in translation and reflect more of the ideas of the early church and the gospel writers than anything he ever would have said.
Jesus spoke these words, and believed them, but he was wrong, having erroneously absorbed wrong and baseless (and godless) ideas from his culture. He did speak these things, but did so out of ignorance and was mistaken in so doing, being misinformed about the character of God and what God would do to the wicked at the end of the age. What he believed and taught about hell must be “overridden” or re-interpreted by the larger teachings he had about God’s love, which are inconsistent with his teachings and beliefs about hell.
Jesus used those words, but did so for their effect, or to motivate people, or used them poetically or metaphorically, and he never would have wanted anyone to take them with anything even remotely in a real or literal sense. He meant nearly the exact opposite, he was trying to communicate that God would never dream of doing any such thing to an unbeliever, that any suffering from sin is entirely the natural consequence of our behavior, and he used parables, illustrations, and words that we wrongly are taking literally.
All three of these options I see very serious issues with, but they are the only alternatives that I can conceive of to the (fourth) option that I embrace… that Jesus said these things, meant them just as they sound, and that they reflect what is true and real because it was the Son of God who spoke them.
For what it is worth, i cannot express how much I respect and appreciate the sentiment there. Your words remind me a bit of that of C.S. Lewis… “There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words.”
Those three alternatives are good if the world is just the pages of a comic book and it’s all black and white what is contained on a particular page. But reality is not that simplistic. So there are other alternatives.
Jesus did speak about these things using these words, but they are only one aspect, one way of looking at how things happen, and it is this way that was particularly important with regards to what He was trying to motivate. It is like describing some aspect of science to grade school children. You want to get some main point across and not get bogged down in a lot of details which will only create confusion. But it would be a huge mistake to equate this description with something perfectly accurate in every detail.
Notice that in this option, you are not free to turn what Jesus said around to the opposite, but it is possible that there are some ways in which other descriptions might nevertheless have some truth to them also.
I think I can join you in having serious problems with your #1 and #2. Your #3 might get closer to where I could start to get on board, though, there too I would first want to strike some phrases … like that “he meant exactly the opposite of what he was saying”, which doesn’t work in any of the categories.
But in any case, perhaps Mitchell began to give some good response to some of this already.
Fair enough and good clarification, but for what it is worth, everyone I know that believes in the traditional Doctrine of hell would essentially agree with that, myself included. Even some of the most staunch defenders of the traditional doctrine that I have read don’t necessarily understand there to be literal flames, for instance. I have no issue with the idea that what he is communicating (like many things God communicates) are “baby-talk” or condescending to our understanding and language. So yes, I happily grant all the above, but I would still categorize it under my “fourth” option… that Jesus essentially and quite meaningfully meant what he said, even if not in a strictly literal sense. But his warnings are real warnings, the torment real torment, the experience of anguish real, etc. what he described about the rich man in hell gives a generally real and true description, communicating the horror, even if not literal in its every detail. And yes, I’d grant there is a place for a seeing his words with enough breadth that I can understand (while I don’t agree for many other reasons), why some could interpret his words with some room or hope for ultimate annhiliation or ultimate universalism even with these descriptions.
But the words must mean something, and “being in anguish in this flame” I don’t think means “Enjoying tea and cookies in the sunshine.” If words mean anything, then it seems inescapable that Jesus expected some people to be seriously suffering in the afterlife, for at least some real period of time, and the repeated use of “eternal” and “unquenchable” and “worm does not die nor their fire quenched” I find should make us very cautious about easily interpreting otherwise for fear of giving false hope. What I don’t see room for is any kind of universalism or instant or immediate annihilationism. Those seem entirely ruled out if his words have any meaning whatsoever.
So if I might take an example… in the rich man and Lazarus parable, you have This little detail…
Now, I grant entirely that I don’t necessarily expect there to be a big chasm, something appearing like the Grand Canyon, or necessarily even that there is regular communication or conversations. I grant entirely that these details are to help the story along And we ought not get bogged in thinking this any kind of exacting portrait., etc. But the words must mean something, the chasm represents something. And whatever it means, I think it safe to say it doesn’t mean there is a big wide bridge that allows people to leave hell and enter paradise whenever they desire. It sure sounds rather like Jesus is underscoring the point that there simply isn’t a path from hell to paradise.
Otherwise, I go back to him being the most inept teacher imaginable. He was trying, so hard, to communicate to us that there is a way or manner in which people leave hell and enter paradise? And this is the detail he includes in his one extended parable about hell? Would he be so inept as to miss what impression that would give to the masses who read it? Would it be so lost on him that he just gave the pretty unmistakable impression that, once someone is in hell, there is no way out?
