Theology Final Exam

God never created hell - it's just the separation point for souls that absolutely refuse to be good and choose to worship the devil.

Also the damned souls are not allowed to interact with each other because that would be evil - evil souls interacting with evil souls would make each other suffer even more - so there's eternal darkness and separation from one another.

y'all fail the course
see you next semester

see you in hell

Nice try Jesus

The question is stupid, and prenecessitates a different question: Does God, the abrahamic God, exist? If yes, he is the absolute standard of morality and thus, yes, he is just, yes the punishment befits the crime.

If God exists, it is not only stupid to question him, it's also irrelevant since he is the objective standard of truth and good. If you don't agree, you're wrong. Done.

...

Hell aka the second death is annihilation of the soul

>Divine Command Theory
Trash.

It's not immoral to ask questions.

F for faithful?

>rational Christian.

Doesn't seem like OP wants an actual answer

>666
I guess you would say that, Satan.

>If yes, he is the absolute standard of morality
How so?

If god created everything he would at least have the most authoritative opinion on morality.

>666

>does God, the abrahamic God, exist? If yes, he is the absolute standard of morality
I've seen that assertion repeated here a few times and it seems absurd.
Whether or not god exists, the facts remain : humans create their own morals. The problem of hell might be to reconcile the human ideas of good and justice with that of god, but it is still a problem.

And if we are to trust the Bible, we're supposed to be able to tell what is good and what is evil. So the fact that most of us would say that eternal torment is evil and that god is okay with it is a big contradiction.

because the very definition of the Christian God necessitates him being all good. By their own theology his existence would make no sense otherwise

It's possible God would forgive people even after they've been damned, but we can't know since Christ never said. However, one thing we can know is that you would actually have to ask for it, and even for those who are ashamed and sorry, that is their suffering, and that means it would be difficult to ask. Imagine if you had wronged someone unspeakably to the point that you were ashamed to even look at them, you might find it rather difficult to ask them to forgive you.

Consider Satan in Paradise lost. He is stuck in ice, caused by the flapping of his wings trying to break free.
If ever Satan accepted his punishment and stopped trying to escape, the ice would thaw and he'd be free.

>rational Christian

So Hell is where Tsunderes end up?

Constantine baka >__

If God is omnipotent and decides something is right and something is wrong, than it is objectively correct because it has been made objectively correct.

That's ironic, and sadistic.
Reminds me of a book I read about military penitentiaries in the twenties. Most people sent there were conscripts who didn't respond well to the army discipline.
So they sentenced them to stay some months or one or two years in these work camps. There they would be constantly mistreated by the sergeants in charge, until they rebelled or trid to escape, which would earn them some more years in there, and so on until they died, or cut off their fingers to be unable to work, or go mad and kill someone and end up in civilian prisons, or abandon their dignity and accept the abuse.

But I would imagine that most souls sent to hell would not be so ashamed of their sins.
Or would you say that all shameless souls deserve hell ? While the ashamed ones don't dare escape it ?
It's awful.

>But I would imagine that most souls sent to hell would not be so ashamed of their sins.
All of them that didn't hate God would be.

you go to hell all on your own
consciously rejecting the gospel means going to hell
and by rejecting I mean rejecting all of it, not just disbelieving in God or in Jesus' divinity, but also rejecting loving the neighbor, remaining nonviolent, giving to charity and being self-giving, avoiding sodomy, masturbation and contraception, etc.

Can God decide that an act that he committed is wrong ?
Cause the bible seems to support a certain proportionality of the punishment to the crime.

There are a great many people that think sin and god do not exist.

They cannot hate or be ashamed of something they don't think exists.

In fact given that Christianity and sin are recent ideas in human history and a great deal of the population today even is not Christian. More than half of all humans would fall into this category. Hell will have far far more people than heaven.

Maybe the cross was God's way of punishing himself.

They can't be ashamed now, but they can once they become acutely aware of God.

Hell is a metaphorical explanation of the feeling of rejecting God's love.

Hell is the absence of God and rejection of him. Heaven is to be in God's presence for all eternity, having accepted him

Due to free will, God can't do shit if you choose to reject him

No.
To be so terribly ashamed that you prefer to endure eternal torment rather than ask for pardon, you need some sort of equally terrible reverence for god.
All the rest who can ask forgiveness are less devout certainly; but between hate for god and extreme devotion there's a lot of room.

There is no such thing as "an absence of God". How could there be when God is without limit? How could there be when it is God's grace that sustains the existence of every and any thing?

The sum of the torment is the shame.

Because God can't be apart of the existence that rejects him. Christianity revolves around the idea that God can forgive all but he can't forgive you if you refuse to acknowledge him
Hence, hell is the rejection of God's forgiveness and your choice to go without him in life

God defines what is just so if He sends people to Hell, it must be just.

t. Euthyphro's second horn

>due to free will, God can't do shit if you choose to reject him
Sure he can.
As demonstrated by the fact that in spite of being an atheist, I don't feel like I'm currently swimming in a lake of fire.
So if God exists he's providing me comfort and some of his presence despite my rejection of him.

>Because God can't be apart of the existence that rejects him
Please explain what is sustaining that existence then.

Oh, so hell is a comfy place for the unrepentant ?

I'm just giving the answer I was told by some priest as a teen (atheist btw)
But I'll try
I guess because God lays down the rules for this world and those still affect everything (gravity, energy, etc). But God himself is absent from that person. After all, animals don't believe in religion but all the natural laws still apply to them. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's an absence of god from the soul of those who reject him

zozzle

So if God decides that Mary pegging you in the ass with a pink dildo was "just" would it be?

This makes it sound like hell is just Christians little fantasy about having the last laugh "You'll see I'm right and than be ashamed!"

I remember you had a quote you loved to pass around saying that if God didn't exist you would still be a Christian. What would you think of non-Christians having the same beleifs.

If God existed I would deny his divinity and still be an atheist. If (insert Pagan God) didn't existed I would still be a pagan.

Or imagine the reverse situation. Suppose you died and you saw a Hindu deity, or that Simon Magnus showed you that Gnostism was right? Would you be "ashamed"?

God makes the rules so yes!

I know what you're reaching for here, but it's true, though, so I don't know why you're trying to get him to say it

Considering the shame is acute, not really.

You don't have to be ashamed to be hellbound. You can hate God (like Satan, who isn't at all ashamed), or you could even, despite direct sensation, deny his existence. See Dostoevsky's anecdote about the atheist in hell in the Brothers Karamazov, which ties into the 2 x 2 discussion of Notes from Underground).

It's not true, it's nonsense. God is the sustainer of all things, to say things can exist without God sustaining them is deism.

Does God sustain sin?

Sin is the negation of goodness; it is not a thing in itself.

Sin isn't a thing, it's a ontological state. Sin isn't made out of anything, any atoms or of any material matter.

Goodness can't be negated. Sin is just "missing the mark" (literally what the term means in Hebrew and Greek and Latin).

It seems that we go in circles here.
The torment is equal to the shame, which is acute, but you can have none ?
If you can have no shame, then you can have varying amounts of it too. And thus you can ask for forgiveness. And most souls would.

Orthodox don't believe in purgatory right ?

Where does it say that in the Bible?

Like I said if you do not beleive in sin or God you cannot feel shame nor hate God.

I think if the Christian God was real he wouldn't be the highest power. He'd be something to ignore and move on with your life. I honestly think being in hell would be awesome, all the cool people in history would be there. I'd think of heaven as a sort of containment zone for people that lost their spirit, the Demiurge's prison.

Also Satan doesn't hate God. He just represents free-will, which is something the Demiurge has trouble understanding, he feels insecure and wants people to admire him to make up for it.

If you have no shame, it is because you don't love God, so you'd probably disinclined to ask for forgiveness. You might come around, but we can't say because that's all speculation.

No, we don't believe in purgatory.

Hell is empty. The first inhabitant of Hell will be Satan.

>If I don't believe in fire, I can't be burned!!!1!1 xD

> upholds all things by the word of His power
Hebrews 1:3

>by him all things consist
Colossians 1:17

Does God sustain ontological states? If so he is the master of sin. If not than God is severly nerfed.

Hell isn't a place, it's the same thing as heaven, only the experience is negative for you.

You will feel God's grace acutely, overwhelmingly more powerful than anything you can imagine. Your feelings won't be neutral, they will be either very positive or very negative.

Thank you user, that was explained quickly and without anything incendiary being added

Sin, as an ontological state, is being without sight or confused by illusion. We are already in heaven, but sin blinds us to it. Sin is not sustained by God, rather it is shutting one's eyes to what is sustained by God.

So 'hell' isn't a state of mind. It's torture room? Sounds to me like it's just a scare tactic to get people to convert.

>incendiary
Well played

Does God sustain my own mind?
If he does not he truely is the Demiurge, domination over material but not mental. In addition your claim to him being the sustainer of all is denied.

If he does sustain my mind than he is sustaining the thoughts that make me "close my eyes", in which case yes God is the master of sin.

Hell is a separation from God caused by the actions of the individual

He sustains your nous, yeah.

Your nous, in Christianity, is not the sum of your thoughts. Your thoughts are projections of your mind, but they are not your mind itself.

Right, I would be disinclined, but the alternative, if it's half that has been said about it, would incline me right back.
And as I said before, one could also love him somewhat and be somewhat ashamed, not too much tho.
These two situations would be the most common.
The souls with enough pride and determination to match that of satan would be rare.

No, you would feel very strongly one way or the other, not lukewarm. The sensation of his grace is far more potent than any feeling you can imagine, it won't provoke a lukewarm response. The veil is lifted and you come face-to-face with God.

Sounds to me like you're the type of person who dismisses warnings as 'scare tactics.'

So what you are saying is God is not the sustainer of all things? Does this mean that if one can concieve of a thing that does sustain all than it is greater than God?

What does God sustain? If he sustains each individual thought he indeed does sustain the full mind, which just brings us back to God sustaining sinful thoughts.

This is a very suspicious scenario. You have a being that seems to possess everything except a persons' mind, and it's what he wants more than anything else, in fact he has been planning how to capture for thousands of years. This sounds like an antagonist to me.

There are plenty of religions, cults, and claims of magic that all use the exact same tactic. You arn't doing a very good job of "warning" when it sounds like something out of Scientology.

He doesn't sustain your thoughts, because your thoughts are not things.

He does sustain the full mind, but the mind in Christianity is not the sum of thoughts, the mind is a faculty. It would be like saying the tongue is the sum of all tastes.

God created everything, therefore he defines what concepts mean. So if God sais that being just and loving means sending people to eternal torment, then being just and loving does mean sending people to eternal torment. Same with the punishment being fit or not for the crime: only the Creator can define what punishment do crimes deserve.

Also, the same rules don't apply for people and God, because they are completely different. So while a man torturing someone for whatever sins is evil, God torturing people is fine. Basically, God created the game, so he makes the rules. Morals, fairness etc. all originate from God, so whatever he states is moral is moral. You cannot judge God morally, his actions and words are the scource of the very concept of morality.

At least that's the apoligists' answer. The sane answer, of course, would be that this is an unsolvable contradiction, which means either God is not loving or just, or Hell doesn't exist.

The music can be very loud, but that won't make my opinion about the song stronger.

And you talk about it as if God's grace provoked feelings of visceral and unaltered love and hate.
Does that mean that souls go to hell because they instinctively feel repulsed by God, and can't do anything about it ?
What would be the origin of that deep incompatibility ?

How you respond to the warning is your prerogative.

>it would be like saying the tongue is the sum of all tastes.
If you are materialistic than yes the tongue+certain parts of the brain really are the sum of all tastes. However if you consider thoughts to be immaterial than there is something different.

>He doesn't sustain your thoughts, because your thoughts are not things.

There are two answers to this. The material answer is that no, thoughts are not things just bodily sensations. If this is true and the Christian God sustains the body than he does control the sin impulses and there is no free will.

The idealogical answer is that thoughts are immaterial. If you accept this, as I do than we arrive at the conclusion God is a half-sustainer. He sustains the material but not the immaterial. However I believe my thoughts are my identity, I also beleive there is no item that is truely the collective of them. I am a cluster of thousands of thoughts.

If the Christian God did not create the thoughts, sustain the thoughts, nor destroys him than he is no God at all! In fact it would make me above his power and the only way he could gain power over me is to spook me. Now if there were Gods that sustained only the immaterial thoughts, these Gods would be the supreme ones. Of course this means they would be sustaining "sinful" thoughts.

So if to conclude
if thoughts=material
than free will=false
& God sustains sin impulses=true

if thoughts=immaterial
than God sustains humans=false
&
God sustainer of what matters=false
&
if thoughts>material=true
than me>God

Why do people think gods actions have to be "good and just" by human standards
Things are good and just because God does them. God could care less what you think is good or just.

>It's possible God would forgive people even after they've been damned, but we can't know since Christ never said.
Read Matthew 25:46.

I recommend reading St. Alphonsus Liguori's Preparation for Death: Or, Considerations on the Eternal Maxims.

Knowing that God is infinitely good, an offense against God is infinitely evil. There must be a punishment that is equitable for this.

Moreover, hell must be eternal because the only condition that matters to man is the current condition. Consider this: if you lived comfortably through the winter with heat and amenities for 10 years and on the 11th year you suddenly had to go without heat you would suffer. Would those previous 10 years of experiencing warmth matter while you are currently suffering in the cold? No. It can be said that all that matters is man's current state.

If the pains of hell did end at some point then at that point the condition of the person would be free of punishment. The final condition of man would be that he would not be punished at all.

On a side note, purgatory is different from hell in that it is a loving discipline meant for God's friends, not his enemies or those that are condemned souls in the final analysis.

It sounds like God is infinity petty and infinity offended.

If you're in Hell for all eternity won't you simply get used to getting tortured and eventually you wouldn't think of it as punishment anymore?

How do we know that our reality isn't Hell?

I got a box of chocolates today.

Ok asshole then give us the answer.

All men are born with original sin because they can defy God. Only those who overcome their original sin, through Christ, become 'good' enough to be spared Hell. Those who fail to overcome their original sin deserve Hell because there is a lack of inherent goodness in them.

God creates people. Some of these people are good and get to heaven. And some of these people are bad and go to hell. But we shouldn't be shocked that bad people go to hell because God allowed for bad people in the first place.

Therefore, since there is no inherent 'goodness' in the property of man, the problem of hell is an impossible and nonsensical problem,

I contradicted the Bible exactly once. Then again, it's all probably metaphorical BS anyway.

The problem with the 'problem of hell' is that it assumes goodness is an intrinsic property of man. When Christian doctrine accounts for this, the problem of hell disappears. There is a reason why Adam and Eve is the origin story, even though it's a figurative conception.

The problem of 'evil' however, is the real unsolvable one that is beyond even my intellect. At this point, I hate to abandon the BIble, but it's required.

You're conflating German idealism with Christian dualism. Christianity has two substances (three, if you count God). The mind is one, but thoughts aren't. If you have a thought, that thought does not come into being as a noetic object. Thoughts, in Christianity, have no being, ideal or material.

God's grace provokes spiritual feelings. This is "instinctual" in a spiritual sense, but not in any animalistic sense, since animals have not spiritual faculty.

They might be able to repent from this eternity (or not, but they might). What this passage is saying is that hell is not purgatory, with some set punishment you do and then get out.

...

The just is that which pleases God. The extent to which our consideration of the just deviates from that which pleases God is not a measure of the justness of God, but of our own imperfection.

That takes care of it all, but I'll be expecting extra credit for pointing out that even on the faulty assumptions presented, God cannot "be just" in assigning a punishment which doesn't fit the crime. That's not how "being just" works.

> God's grace provokes spiritual feelings. This is "instinctual" in a spiritual sense, but not in any animalistic sense, since animals have not spiritual faculty.
You avoid the point.