An Omniscient God and a Fiery Hell?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Laurence_of_PA
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

Laurence_of_PA

Guest
I’ve been trying to reconcile this for a long time and still can’t think of any satisfying answer:

If God were an omniscient being – all-knowing that is, how could he in all his infinite mercy allow for people to be created who he would know would end up in hell? If he knows everything that will happen, the whole timeline before it is acted out, than he will know which beings will have internal weaknesses preventing them from achieving salvation.

Arrogance, drunkedness, stupidity, foolishness, greed, envy, lust, cruelty, pride, insatiability, inability to believe in Him at all…

These can all be simply the result of mental disorders, brain-damage, bad environments, and a plethora of factors we have no control over, so why must these people burn in the fires of eternal damnation? If some people are “saved”, why do the rest have to spend the whole of eternity suffering when God could simply be merciful and re-arrange their neurons to be good and faithful Catholics?

Please, I don’t want any lame answers about seeking truth and wisdom or carrying your own cross. There are so many people who simply have no access to “the truth.” I’m lucky enough to come on here as often as I wish, both because I have the chemical tendency to enjoy this as well as something people for thousands of years weren’t lucky enough to have (I need not name it as you are looking at one).

I can’t escape from asking these questions, they originate in the chemical pathways of my mind, so did God know a thousand years ago whether I was bound for hell???

As the French Proverb says:

“To know all is to forgive all.”

So how can infinite knowledge and infinite punishment exist?

:dts:
 
I’ve been trying to reconcile this for a long time and still can’t think of any satisfying answer:

If God were an omniscient being – all-knowing that is, how could he in all his infinite mercy allow for people to be created who he would know would end up in hell? If he knows everything that will happen, the whole timeline before it is acted out, than he will know which beings will have internal weaknesses preventing them from achieving salvation.

Arrogance, drunkedness, stupidity, foolishness, greed, envy, lust, cruelty, pride, insatiability, inability to believe in Him at all…

These can all be simply the result of mental disorders, brain-damage, bad environments, and a plethora of factors we have no control over, so why must these people burn in the fires of eternal damnation? If some people are “saved”, why do the rest have to spend the whole of eternity suffering when God could simply be merciful and re-arrange their neurons to be good and faithful Catholics?

Please, I don’t want any lame answers about seeking truth and wisdom or carrying your own cross. There are so many people who simply have no access to “the truth.” I’m lucky enough to come on here as often as I wish, both because I have the chemical tendency to need answers as well as something people for thousands of years weren’t lucky enough to have (I need not name it as you are looking at one).

I can’t escape from asking these questions, it takes place within the chemical pathways of my mind. Does that mean God knew a hundred years ago if – because of this – I was bound for Hell?

As the French Proverb says:

“To know all is to forgive all”

So how can an infinite-knowing God and infinite punishment co-exist?
 
The answer, the true one (whether you like it or not) is that He loves them too much to not create them and give them life, which is His most precious gift even if it is abused.

And He loves them too much to take away their free will, which is His second most precious gift, even if it is abused.

Think of a parent with a problem child. Often, no matter what the child does, the parent keeps loving them and trying to help them, often well beyond the point of reason.

Even so, sometimes the child simply doesn’t want to be helped and ultimately destroy their own lives. Sometimes after a while the parent simply cannot live with them and kicks them out. God would never do that to us.

More often it’s the child who decides they simply can’t live with the parent and moves out on their own. And that’s what we do to God. We abandon him and run away from Him. He won’t lock us up in his house or ground us or take away our free will to damn ourselves and punish OURSELVES for all eternity. Which is precisely how Hell came about.
 
I’ve been trying to reconcile this for a long time and still can’t think of any satisfying answer:

If God were an omniscient being – all-knowing that is, how could he in all his infinite mercy allow for people to be created who he would know would end up in hell? If he knows everything that will happen, the whole timeline before it is acted out, than he will know which beings will have internal weaknesses preventing them from achieving salvation.

Arrogance, drunkedness, stupidity, foolishness, greed, envy, lust, cruelty, pride, insatiability, inability to believe in Him at all…

These can all be simply the result of mental disorders, brain-damage, bad environments, and a plethora of factors we have no control over, so why must these people burn in the fires of eternal damnation? If some people are “saved”, why do the rest have to spend the whole of eternity suffering when God could simply be merciful and re-arrange their neurons to be good and faithful Catholics?

Please, I don’t want any lame answers about seeking truth and wisdom or carrying your own cross. There are so many people who simply have no access to “the truth.” I’m lucky enough to come on here as often as I wish, both because I have the chemical tendency to need answers as well as something people for thousands of years weren’t lucky enough to have (I need not name it as you are looking at one).

I can’t escape from asking these questions, it takes place within the chemical pathways of my mind. Does that mean God knew a hundred years ago if – because of this – I was bound for Hell?

As the French Proverb says:

“To know all is to forgive all”

So how can an infinite-knowing God and infinite punishment co-exist?
C.S. Lewis put this in an interesting fashion, which I’ll paraphrase as I can’t quite remember where he did so (Probably “The Great Divorce”):

God loves us and gives us what we desire.

Some of us do not desire God, but wish to abase themselves eternally.

And thus they get what they want.

Stephen King summed this up nicely once (probably in “The Stand”) — “Life boils down to ‘Take what you want. And pay for it.’”
 
God could have made us all robots and do whatever he wanted but then we were instead given free will. God knows who will use this free will for good or evil but if God were to eliminate anyone who used their free will for evil then eventually that would go back to the concept of robots or eliminating everyone and never creating anyone. Finally, God is merciful and takes everything into consideration. If someone is mentally ill or ignorant they aren’t going to be punished for what they don’t understand.
 
I’ve been trying to reconcile this for a long time and still can’t think of any satisfying answer:

If God were an omniscient being – all-knowing that is, how could he in all his infinite mercy allow for people to be created who he would know would end up in hell? If he knows everything that will happen, the whole timeline before it is acted out, than he will know which beings will have internal weaknesses preventing them from achieving salvation.

…So how can an infinite-knowing God and infinite punishment co-exist?
First, you have a right to seek answers and these are very good questions.

Second, hell is not “infinite” punishment; It’s “eternal” punishment. “Infinite” would imply that it has no beginning and no end, but that is obviously not the case. No soul begins in hell - not even satan himself; There is a moment at which this punishment becomes reality. When something has a beginning, but continues without end, that is “eternal.” That might be splitting hairs, but please forgive me. We’re trained to do that in Philosophy. 😃

Third, since God is defined as “all-knowing,” it would help to reflect on what “knowledge” is. In Epistemology, the study of knowledge and belief, it is theorized that certain criteria must be met in order for something to be “known.” The primay criteria is that it must, in fact, be true. This would rule out predictions or probabilities, such as those made by meteorologists because the *actual *state of the weather is not known until it happens. Predictions and probabilities - no matter how likely - aren’t true in the moment and, therefore, not knowledge.

The real question then becomes: “how does God know what we’re going to do?” As an omniscient, omnipresent Being, God *knows *what you’re going to do in ten minutes. How does God know this? He not only exists in this moment, but He exists outside of time. He knows in this moment what you’re going to do in ten minutes because, simultaneously existing outside of time, God has already seen you make that choice.

Now, to answer your question more directly, human souls are eternal, not infinite; There was a time when you and I did not exist - bodily, spiritual, and otherwise. Thus, prior to our creation, God cannot* know* what we’re going to choose because there haven’t been any choices made by us; we don’t yet exist. Prior to our existence, we are mere probability, not actuality, and probabilities, regardless of how certain and well calculated, aren’t knowledge. Every single human being, prior to their creation, has the possibility of living eternally in the full presence of God in heaven. Every single one. Their failure to achieve this is a product of their own choice, not God’s. God created them with every grace available and with *every possibility *of making it to heaven. But, God does not *know *the end result until we *actually *make that choice, when it becomes a *true *state of affairs. *Only then *can it be known, by definition.

Although, I must qualify this post by saying I don’t know this to be true for certain. When discussing infinity and the nature of God outside of time, no mortal, finite human being can truly comprehend its reality. This is theological speculation, at best.

Hope this helps! 😃
 
The answer, the true one (whether you like it or not) is that He loves them too much to not create them and give them life, which is His most precious gift even if it is abused.

And He loves them too much to take away their free will, which is His second most precious gift, even if it is abused.

Think of a parent with a problem child. Often, no matter what the child does, the parent keeps loving them and trying to help them, often well beyond the point of reason.

Even so, sometimes the child simply doesn’t want to be helped and ultimately destroy their own lives. Sometimes after a while the parent simply cannot live with them and kicks them out. God would never do that to us.

More often it’s the child who decides they simply can’t live with the parent and moves out on their own. And that’s what we do to God. We abandon him and run away from Him. He won’t lock us up in his house or ground us or take away our free will to damn ourselves and punish OURSELVES for all eternity. Which is precisely how Hell came about.
You know, I just love it when people here give me the perfect answer to precisely the question I didn’t ask. So, before this thread is completely ignored and goes extinct, let me redress it in its correct context using your own analogy:

Specifically, there are two things wrong with your comparison. First of all, let’s say that for the child’s entire life, no one has ever told him he has a father, and yet at the same time this child’s father expects his son to completely obey him. The child is taught to share, to play nicely, to be honest, and to follow other good virtues, yet this is taught from people outside the house. Meanwhile, his father also has rules, namely, that the child has to acknowledge he has a father and remember his birthday every year. The child does not obey as he has never had any way of knowing since no one has ever told him, and because of this, as soon as the child turns 18 (meaning death for our intents and purposes) his dad comes out of the attic and whips his child for eternity for not obeying. Was it the child’s fault? Did the child trully turn away as you say?

Now before I get into the second issue you failed to address (and the very subject of this thread), let’s get a few metaphors down. The analogy will be slightly different from the last one and the symbolism different, so…here the lawn mower will symbolize the mental wiring to believe in God; plumbing in the household will symbolize the mental capacity to act morally; the elder son in the analogy will symbolize prophets and moral teachers; and going upstairs to see the father will symbolize dying and being judged before God. Now with all those symbols down…

Let’s say the father is upstairs and tells his older son to go down stairs and tell his brother that he has a bunch of chores to do. Now the father knows that their house has no plumbing nor an available lawn mower, yet still his older son goes down stairs and tells his brother that he must mow the lawn and wash all the dishes (like his father said), even though the father knew ahead of time (he’s omniscient after all) that the younger son wouldn’t be able to obey his commands in the slightest. So later on that day, the younger son goes upstairs and his thrown into the house’s coal furnace for all eternity. Was it the child’s fault? Did he trully turn away from his father?

If God knows ahead of time that a person’s mental wiring or surroundings will prevent them from believing in him (like in the first analogy) or acting morally (like in the second analogy), why must people go to a place called hell where they suffer for eternity?

Omniscient God or fiery Hell: until my actual question is answered I can’t logically believe in both thank you.
 
The child does not obey as he has never had any way of knowing since no one has ever told him, and because of this, as soon as the child turns 18 (meaning death for our intents and purposes) his dad comes out of the attic and whips his child for eternity for not obeying. Was it the child’s fault? Did the child trully turn away as you say?
.
I think the main problem with your reasoning is that you believe God to be some sort of Judge who must conform to some objective Law independent of Him.

Nobody *has *to go to Hell. You forget that God is infinitely merciful. No where does it say that if you are A, B, and C, you will be in Hell. Heck, the Catholic Church won’t even say definitively whether or not *Judas *is in Hell. We just don’t know. Is it probable, yes. Be we just don’t know who is *actually *in Hell. We cannot presume to know the extent of God’s mercy.

God doesn’t judge on the basis of law. God *is *the Law.

Lastly, how about cutting Lily a little slack, eh? She was just trying to help. She didn’t have to reply at all.
 
First of all, no one goes to Hell unless it is of their own free will. It is why we have a Divine judge who can take everything into account.

Hell is necessary because God loves us so much and has given us the greatest gift in the world, to be able to love. But what makes love so special and beautiful is that is given completely freely and received completely freely.

Sin is always a failure to love as we should–and as we know, sin causes suffering even in this world. Those who love and receive God’s love are blissfully transformed and partake of Him Who is love–St. Bernard even calls love God’s substance.

But those who choose not to partake of love, but rather to cling obstinately to sin, are tormented immensely. Imagine what it would be like to have only the torment of your sins and no love? It would literally be Hell. To choose sin over love is to choose Hell.
 
If God knows ahead of time that a person’s mental wiring or surroundings will prevent them from believing in him (like in the first analogy) or acting morally (like in the second analogy), why must people go to a place called hell where they suffer for eternity?
If that is your real argument, it is absurd. Hell is a choice made by a soul to be separated from God, not some arbitrary punishment handed down from God. No credible theologian believes that God demands of someone something they can’t do and then punishes them when they can’t do it. Who ever told you that?
 
These can all be simply the result of mental disorders, brain-damage, bad environments, and a plethora of factors we have no control over, so why must these people burn in the fires of eternal damnation? If some people are “saved”, why do the rest have to spend the whole of eternity suffering when God could simply be merciful and re-arrange their neurons to be good and faithful Catholics?
If someone had a mental or emotional disorder or in any way were not completely responsible for their behavior, God would, in His infinite mercy, forgive them to the extent they were not responsible for their behavior.

But in addition to God’s omniscience and his infinite mercy, He is also infinitely just. And He is all-seeing. He knows the motives of our hearts. Would he be infinitely just if He gave the same eternal reward to both the cruel concentration camp guard AND to the victim?

Think of it as a father with five children. He loves them all completely. But they all have different temperaments and different attitudes. He sends them all to school and on to the world. The first child is brilliant and gets all As in school and gets a wonderful job and works hard and remains devoted to him all his life. The second child isn’t quite as bright, and gets Cs and has a lower-paying job and maybe a run-in with the law once in a while, but stays close and loves his father completely. The third child is absolutely brilliant. He doesn’t work at all in school. Gets Ds, and goes to a life of crime that pays him wonderfully, and never calls the father, and even changes his name and goes through life hurting other people. The fourth child has Downs Syndrome and is unable to go to college and has a low-paying job, but loves his father and stays with him and is a joy to his father. The last child is smart, but he becomes an alcoholic. He gets good enough grades in school, goes through several jobs trying very hard to maintain his family, and loves his father, even though his drinking keeps him from being a complete success in life.

At the end of the father’s life, it is time for him to write His will. Would you suggest he leave everything to his children equally? Maybe he will reward the first child for the devotion shown. And the second child, though he didn’t succeed in life as much as the first is also remembered in the will, and given a nice inheritance. The Downs Syndrome son might even be left more than his brothers because the father in his wisdom knows the son needs to be taken care of more than the others. And the alcoholic son is also remembered, but maybe the father in his prudence puts it in trust so the son can’t blow it all on drink at once.

But the final child, the one who was brilliant, yet squandered his gifts… he is not included in the will. Should he expect it? Never a call on Father’s Day? Never a visit. He cut himself off from the family and shamed the name and then changed it. He has earned plenty of money by doing evil. He doesn’t need his father’s inheritance. He’s been rewarded here and now for his evil.

And the funny thing about all of this, the father knew this when he had the children in his home when they were young. He could predict which children would do what just by their natures and early behavior. But he could not stop it. Children are not like that. You cannot force them to live up to their potentials. When they become adult you cannot control them. Even the knowlege they can be written out of the will is not enough to scare the middle child to live a good life.

But the father still gave all the children the best education and provided equally for them growing up. What they chose to do with that affected their inheritance.

That didn’t mean he didn’t still love all his sons until the end of his life. But he was fair to all of them.

Kind of a poor metaphor for God, but you get the point. He does not hold it against those who through no fault of their own do not know the truth. They are judged by how they live according to the natural law that is put in every man’s heart. (And if you doubt the existence of natural law, take a look around. I personally know some people who were never baptized and raised in no religion who are better and more moral people than some cradle Catholics who ignore church teaching.)

Hope this helps.
 
I think the main problem with your reasoning is that you believe God to be some sort of Judge who must conform to some objective Law independent of Him.
Well the Church claims to understand salvation the best, and yet has the most laws (maybe except for Orthodox Judaism). To say that not everyone has to follow them would be relativistic.
Nobody *has *to go to Hell. You forget that God is infinitely merciful. No where does it say that if you are A, B, and C, you will be in Hell. Heck, the Catholic Church won’t even say definitively whether or not *Judas *is in Hell. We just don’t know. Is it probable, yes. Be we just don’t know who is *actually *in Hell. We cannot presume to know the extent of God’s mercy.
So can atheists/agnostics like say (gasp) Mirdath go to heaven anyway simply cause God didn’t give him the capacity to believe? I highly doubt that even the most masochistic person would wish to suffer in fire and brimstone for eternity. I doubt it would be anyone’s self-concious choice.
God doesn’t judge on the basis of law. God *is *the Law.
If God is the law but doesn’t judge based on the law then he doesn’t judge based on himself? You don’t make *any *sense here. Everything must conform to some sort of principles, but if us humans percieve God as breaking them, that merely would mean we’re not fully aware of the extent of those principles. God must adhere to God’s principles.
Lastly, how about cutting Lily a little slack, eh? She was just trying to help. She didn’t have to reply at all.
I apologize for offending her in anyway, but I will not apologize for disliking her cheap answer.
 
Hell is an absence of God. If someone chooses to go without God all of his/her life–why would he/she expect to be with Him in the afterlife? The punishment, is an eternal life without God. Imagine that for a moment. Life without being able to call upon God. Right now, in the living world…we can call upon Him. But, in Hell, we can’t. If one fails to call upon Him here–refuses His love, and doesn’t want anything to do with God…

…He gives them their wish in the afterlife. Frankly, it would be a natural consequence or extension to the life the person lived here on earth. If someone is given the opportunity to know God, and refuses Him…he/she is accountable in the end. Now, if one never knew God…for whatever reason…validly is ignorant to God…God’s mercy would prevail. It may prevail for even the worst of offenders…we simply can’t even begin to understand God’s mercy.

But, let’s not make the mistake of blaming God for people not loving Him.
 
Well the Church claims to understand salvation the best, and yet has the most laws (maybe except for Orthodox Judaism). To say that not everyone has to follow them would be relativistic.
Let us suppose that I go to pour my friend a drink. But, unbeknownst to me, a criminal had broken into my home earlier that night and poisoned the bottle.

Have I killed my friend by giving him the poisoned drink?

Under your view of God’s justice, I should be executed for murder because I gave fatal poison to my friend and my complete ignorance of what was really in the drink is irrelevant to my defense.

To further complicate matters, your analogies seem to imply that *God Himself *is poisoning people’s drinks, unbeknownst to them, and *framing *them for eternal punishment when they die.

If that’s your view of God, then you’re correct: an omniscient, all-loving God would do no such thing. But, there is absolutely nothing in Church doctrine, theology, Scripture, or otherwise to imply that this is the case.

Assessing the degree of one’s culpability in a crime is not “relativism” by any means.
So can atheists/agnostics like say (gasp) Mirdath go to heaven anyway simply cause God didn’t give him the capacity to believe? I highly doubt that even the most masochistic person would wish to suffer in fire and brimstone for eternity. I doubt it would be anyone’s self-concious choice.
I can’t quite figure out what you mean by “capacity to believe.” In so far as an individual possesses free will, they have the “capacity to believe.” A person using their free will to deny God is by no means evidence that they were not given free will.

I cannot seem to make sense of this argument and it may help me to have some clarification on this point.
If God is the law but doesn’t judge based on the law then he doesn’t judge based on himself? You don’t make *any *sense here. Everything must conform to some sort of principles, but if us humans percieve God as breaking them, that merely would mean we’re not fully aware of the extent of those principles. God must adhere to God’s principles.
I think you misunderstand me. The “law” is not some arbitrary force existing independent of God. God is the Law, therefore, one must understand God’s nature to understand how He exacts justice through the Law.

For example, we know that God is love by His very nature - He exists as a triune communion of persons in love (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and all life exists as an outpouring of this Love. Furthermore, we do not call God “master” but “Father.” He has an intimate, personal, loving relationship with His creation.

Consider then a father ordering his children not to touch the stove. He does not make the “law” in the house to burden the children but out of love - he doesn’t want them to get hurt. Thus, if a child were to touch the stove and burn himself, the father would not banish him from the household in the name of justice and leave the child for dead. Rather, the father would comfort them in their suffering but continue to emphasize the need for them to obey him because the law does not exist for God, the law exists to protect man from harm. God’s law exists for love, not to destroy, and the only way in which someone could separate themselves entirely from this love is if they chose to do so of their own free will.

Secondly, we conform to a *being *(God) - not “principles.” Good, by its very definition, is that which is of God. God is the source of all good. There is not some exterior “principle” that defines God as good; He is by nature the *source *of good. It is not as if God is “good” because He obeys certain principles.

In other words, if God did not exist, “right,” “justice,” “principles,” etc., would not exist - which, incidentally, is the very problem with an atheistic worldview.
I apologize for offending her in anyway, but I will not apologize for disliking her cheap answer.
No one is required to like anyone’s answer. But it is one thing to disagree, and another to be uncharitable in doing so. Derogatory adjectives like “cheap” are unnecessary and your statement would have made the point quite sufficiently without it. Yet, your choice to employ such derogatory words in your disagreement reflects the nature of your character and I find that unacceptable.

I respectfully refuse to respond to any further inquiries until you demonstrate a sincere pursuit of the Truth.
 
Lawurence:

In all honesty I do not think God has given us an answer for this question, but there are some parameters we can keep in mind:
  1. It would be wrong, if not impossible, for God to force free beings into the love relationship that is Heaven.
  2. Non-existance after a lifetime of moral crime is not punishment, it is exemption from punishment
  3. For free beings to exist, as long as they exist, must have the option to rebel against God, even if only in their hearts.
  4. Hell might not be best understood so much as an eternity of punishment as an eternity of existing in a manner that naturally results from one’s choices.
  5. I highly doubt we can comprehend the significance of our freedom in the course of a single day, much less an entire lifetime! We can have a very profound influence on others and therefore carry a very profound responsibility for how we spend this life.
Joe
 
My simple response: God is love.

I’m with you, brother…in your perplexity.
 
I highly doubt that even the most masochistic person would wish to suffer in fire and brimstone for eternity. I doubt it would be anyone’s self-concious choice.
Except that it is. The self-conscious choice is choosing self over God. In fact, it’s being entirely self-conscious, that is, thinking only of self.

To quote Peter Kreeft in his book *Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven, *“The damned hate God because God demands they repent, and that hurts their pride, it is the death of their egotism. They see God as the enemy of what is dearest to them: their own demand to be their own God.”

There also seems to be a misunderstanding of what Hell is.

Now, God is the same eternally–yesterday, today, and forever. What is different is us.

To quote Kreeft again, “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.”

Look at it this way. To those who love God with their whole hearts and mind, God’s love is pure bliss. To those who hate God, God’s love is pure torture.

It’s not like the damned stand outside the gates of Hell, take a peek inside, and say, “Oh goody! I can hardly wait to go there! Yup, that’s my self-conscious choice!” Because, you see, one cannot stand outside the love of God. It is *our reaction *to that love that is heaven or hell.
 
I’ve been trying to reconcile this for a long time and still can’t think of any satisfying answer:

If God were an omniscient being – all-knowing that is, how could he in all his infinite mercy allow for people to be created who he would know would end up in hell? If he knows everything that will happen, the whole timeline before it is acted out, than he will know which beings will have internal weaknesses preventing them from achieving salvation.
Blessings Laurence,

No-one is ‘pre-wired’ to go to hell.

Free will is a gift, but it also comes with responsibilities.

Anger, jealousy and hate etc… are not just in opposition to love, they cannot co-exist with love.

Hence, those who choose hate, anger, jealousy etc… are choosing an absence of love.

Hell is merely the eternal continuation of this choice. Everyone knows the misery sin brings, yet many continue in it, and God has decided to put an end to this life so that those who wish to live with Him in love may do so without the misery that is brought by those continuing in sin.

Peace and God Bless!
 
A priest I know once said that it doesn’t say anywhere that there actually IS anybody in hell. Just that it exists as a possibility.
 
“How can an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God create beings He knows will suffer everlasting damnation?”

Don’t worry.

Be Happy.😉
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top