Go to Hell - Stay there forever

[Erundil]

Okay, you clearly misunderstood Milton then. Not only Paradise Lost is deeply Christian epic poem, but it have great take on how malicious devil was and how he always will be the enemy of human.
There’s an invocation to the Holy Spirit in the first book and later on many hymns glorifying God, His great Plan of our salvation and of course explanation that as a matter of fact Jesus Christ IS THAT PLAN and that human is not a lost cause despite of our fall. (There’s also second poem called Paradise Regained, which tells the story of salvation through Jesus when he was on Earth). Maybe romantic poems are not your story, but wow, really?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

The use of Christian trappings doesn’t actually make the work an accurate depiction of Christian thought.

Sympathy for a Lesser Devil: It is grievously erroneous to see John Milton’s Paradise Lost as a Christian work.

From the article:

The problem with Milton’s Lucifer is that he is not synonymous with the Lucifer of the Bible or the Lucifer of Christian tradition. He is a figment of Milton’s heterodox imagination. Milton’s God is not the Trinitarian God of the Christians but a Unitarian God, who creates Lucifer and the other angelic beings before he creates his Son, the latter of whom enters the scene as a sort of afterthought. Lucifer is, therefore, rebelling against a new creature, the Son, seeing him as a usurper. Considering Milton’s theological break with orthodoxy, his denial of the Trinity and, in consequence, his denial of the Incarnation also, it is grievously erroneous to see Paradise Lost as a Christian work. Except for its biblical trappings, it is no more Christian than the earlier epics of Homer and Virgil, and perhaps less so.

 

[Magnanimity]

I don’t recall interacting with you on this issue, so I’m not sure who you think you’re repeating yourself to…maybe you just mean that you have repeated yourself to others many times over. Believe me, I’ve done the same. But, in the event that you are directing your post to me, I’ll bite.

At death, the sum choices of a person’s life are made known, and they are either saved or they are damned.

This is, what I like to call, question-begging (ba-dum-chee)! The state of humans in the afterlife is the very thing being argued here. You, like all of us, don’t get the settle an argument from the beginning by simply stating your position on the matter. Whether it is rational and scriptural to believe that any humans are damned at all is the very question under discussion.

After all, I could simply begin my response to you by positing the opposite. For example, I could say, we all know that since humans bear the divine image and likeness that they are destined for the new heavens and the new earth… But that wouldn’t be an argument. That would just be stating a position and would equally be begging the question.

there is no new influx of information that could change it,

I don’t know how you could know this to be true. But, even if it were true, I’ve argued above that there are at least five sources and grounds for knowledge, as we all know from epistemology. They are: perception, testimony, introspection, memory and reason. Even if I were to grant you that the first two are cut off for the disembodied spirit (the dead human), it doesn’t follow that introspection, memory and reason are not possible for minds without bodies. It certainly seems to me that those intellectual powers would be accessible to a human, neverendingly into the future. You would need to provide an argument to the contrary. Here, you’ve merely stated a position.

they are cut off from the source of all Goodness and knowledge.

I’m not sure about this one either. As we learn from Aquinas’ five ways, no contingent beings exist (at any moment of their existence) apart from the necessary being always causing them to exist. So, strictly speaking, there is no way for a contingent being (which includes all things that are not God) to be cut off from the divine. Damned humans do not become necessary beings with aseity upon their death–they still only endure by the divine Being causing them to exist for the entire duration of their existence. (This is a point that is probably a further problem for infernalists, but I’ll leave it alone for now.)

And, you haven’t addressed my central concern about the nature of human wills and the compatibility of those wills with a state of unending, conscious torment and suffering.

It has been granted that the good is the proper object of a human will. What is the good toward which a human will unendingly tends in a place like hell?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

I don’t recall interacting with you on this issue, so I’m not sure who you think you’re repeating yourself to…

We were talking roughly 18-19 days ago, discussing how God’s active or passive will plays a role in the question.

This is, what I like to call, question-begging (ba-dum-chee)!

No… begging the question is when you include the conclusion as part of your premise. IE:

God is real.
How do you know?
How do you know the Bible is right?
Because God inspired it.

I’m not begging the question, I’m stating the Catholic position. There are only two outcomes of life. Salvation or damnation.

This was the preface to the reasoning, not an argument in and of itself.

After all, I could simply begin my response to you by positing the opposite…

Once again, not begging the question, but you seem to have misinterpreted when my argument began. No biggy.

I don’t know how you could know this to be true. But, even if it were true, I’ve argued above that there are at least five sources and grounds for knowledge, as we all know from epistemology.

Once a soul is damned, they are cut off from God. Since God is the source of all that is good, and repentance is itself a good act, the damned soul is no longer capable of receiving the graces necessary to repent, and therefore will not be able to repent of their sins and attain Heaven.

The entire drive to repent and receive absolution is itself a grace from God. Without access to God’s grace, we would not repent. Since those in Hell are categorically incapable of accepting God’s grace, they cannot repent.

Knowledge was probably the wrong word to use in my earlier formulation. Sorry.

I’m not sure about this one either. As we learn from Aquinas’ five ways, no contingent beings exist (at any moment of their existence) apart from the necessary being always causing them to exist.

I agree. The souls in Hell receive a single thing from God, and that is their continued existence. That itself could be seen as an aspect of their eternal punishment though.

Nothing in existence can be completely cut off from God in that all things which exist draw their existence from God, but they can be cut off from all the Good of God, all the Grace, all the Love, Joy, Happiness, Relationship, etc.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

And, you haven’t addressed my central concern about the nature of human wills and the compatibility of those wills with a state of unending, conscious torment and suffering.

The nature of human will isn’t what’s at issue. What’s at issue is the nature of the sins a human will commits. Our sins are sins against and infinitely-Good God, and so are deserving of punishment in proportion to their severity. As severity is, at least in part, dictated by the nature of the one against whom an offense is made, any sin against infinite goodness is deserving of infinite punishment, regardless of the temporal duration of that sin.

A murder may only take a second to commit, but we punish people with a lifetime of imprisonment.

Hell is as much the choice of the damned soul as it is the justice due for our sins. It is as much choice as punishment. The two things are not incompatible. As I have repeated multiple times in this thread, God’s Justice and Mercy are both perfect. If we accept His mercy then its perfection dictates that we be spared the judgment. If we reject His mercy then the perfection of His Justice dictates that we receive the full punishment due for our sins. It is our choice which we embrace.

 

[laylow]

The nature of human will isn’t what’s at issue. What’s at issue is the nature of the sins a human will commits. Our sins are sins against and infinitely-Good God, and so are deserving of punishment in proportion to their severity. As severity is, at least in part, dictated by the nature of the one against whom an offense is made, any sin against infinite goodness is deserving of infinite punishment, regardless of the temporal duration of that sin.

Annihilation would be the only logical punishment. No one asks to be born. Where is the free will to that? True free will would come with an opt-out policy.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

Annihilation would be the only logical punishment. No one asks to be born. Where is the free will to that? True free will would come with an opt-out policy.

That would be a contradiction of God’s creative act.

If God wasn’t actively trying to save people, I’d agree, but He is. Everyone will be given every opportunity to embrace God, and judged appropriately by their knowledge.

I agree, no one asks to be born, but that doesn’t make us immune from the consequences of our choices once we are born.

 

[laylow]

That would be a contradiction of God’s creative act.

If God wasn’t actively trying to save people, I’d agree, but He is. Everyone will be given every opportunity to embrace God, and judged appropriately by their knowledge.

I agree, no one asks to be born, but that doesn’t make us immune from the consequences of our choices once we are born.

My logical brain cannot resolve eternal life in any form to be intriguing. Of course you can counter with the undefeatable comment that with God, life will be so infinitely great that you can’t fathom it. Again, fair enough, but how does that advance the idea? I could use that response to literally any concept contrived, so where does it get us?

So I stick to my statement, true free will cannot exist without the option to opt-out. Without it, you merely have a bait-and-switch tactic akin to a shrewd salesman.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

My logical brain cannot resolve eternal life in any form to be intriguing. Of course you can counter with the undefeatable comment that with God, life will be so infinitely great that you can’t fathom it. Again, fair enough, but how does that advance the idea?

It doesn’t really, and I know that. I also have trouble with the notion of infinite life. However, I also look at what He has created, the innumerable wonders we’ve seen on just this planet, and it comforts me.

So I stick to my statement, true free will cannot exist without the option to opt-out. Without it, you merely have a bait-and-switch tactic akin to a shrewd salesman.

So, true free will can only exist if you can destroy your will? That is certainly in keeping with modern ideologies, I’ll give you that. Complete dominion over ourselves, the modernist ideal. Sorry, but we reject that ideal. We are not our own creations, and so we do not have control over our own existence. It is not our right to demand to be unmade.

I already know you reject that position. I believe our world views are just too different to reach a common end here. In the end, if God exists, we are not the sovereign of our existence. If He doesn’t, then we will cease to exist at death and none of this will natter.

 

[Pattylt]

I have a question! If God knows all and sees our end as well as our beginning, would He not also know at our time of death (that He determines, right?) whether we would have asked and received absolution given time?

I assume God picks the time of our death…or at least sees it…and would know if a person who just committed a mortal sin that the person sincerely regrets would take that into consideration. Or is our time of death completely random?

I just can’t understand how a God that sees our life and knows our heart could judge someone yet not know if he was repentant…or would have been repentant had he lived… yet determine to send him to Hell because the person didn’t have enough time to confess. It seems a contradiction in His all knowing nature and goodness.

Am I wrong or we just really don’t know?

 

[Magnanimity]

I’m not begging the question, I’m stating the Catholic position. There are only two outcomes of life. Salvation or damnation.

This was the preface to the reasoning, not an argument in and of itself.

OK, I’ll state it a different way. To claim that some will be damned is to already resolve the issue. But that is the very thing at issue. Is that any clearer? I, along with a great many others (the patristics, the church of the East, the greatest theologians of the last 100 years, East or West) have wondered whether any are damned at all. Neverending, conscious torment and suffering seems incommensurate with a God who IS love, as well as with the nature of humanity itself.

So, since many individuals do not grant your premise above (that damnation is what awaits various humans in the afterlife), then to merely assert the premise as if it is a given is to question-beg. That position itself is in need of argument/support. It is not a given and not granted (except by Augustinian Catholics).

Once a soul is damned, they are cut off from God.

This is an assertion in need of support (in numerous ways). First, you assert that damnation will occur. This is not a given. Second, you assert that it is possible to be “cut off” from God. At the very least, this is not possible. Metaphysically, contingent beings derive their existence from the one Necessary being. He holds you in existence for every moment of your existence, this is a conclusion of the Five Ways, as you agree. So, you would have it that the loving God intentionally holds in existence the beings whom he loves in a neverending state of torment and suffering because they are not in the presence of the Good? This is their “punishment,” as you say?

As I’ve stated many times above, I don’t know of any humans who would do this. It would be regarded as cruel, unusual and repulsive to perpetually allow another to suffer and persist in torment with no hope of escape. The god of St Augustine is an interesting character. He is wrathful, he is vengeful. I fail to see how he is love or merciful though.

Since those in Hell are categorically incapable of accepting God’s grace,

This is also an assertion in need of support. I have no idea how you could know this to be true.

 

[ProdglArchitect]

To claim that some will be damned is to already resolve the issue.

Read closely. I never made that assertion. There ARE only two outcomes, salvation or damnation. I made no reference to numbers.

I do believe that people are damned, but it is not implied in that statement.

Also, the number of individuals who reject a premise doesn’t impact the validity of that premise.

Metaphysically, contingent beings derive their existence from the one Necessary being.

I devoted an entire paragraph acknowledging this fact and discussing how it could be reconciled with the notion that they are cut off from God’s goodness. Please be sure to read my entire post.

So, you would have it that the loving God intentionally holds in existence the beings whom he loves in a neverending state of torment and suffering because they are not in the presence of the Good? This is their “punishment,” as you say?

Yes, that is their punishment, and their choice. They chose to reject God through sin, and so they become subject to the effects of that sin. Granting justice is not an unloving act. Overriding a person’s free will to force them to be with you when they don’t want to is an unloving act. If God essentially forces someone they’ve taken to love Him, that’s what we call Stockholm Syndrome. It is not a genuine love.

As I’ve stated many times above, I don’t know of any humans who would do this.

God isn’t some big human, so what a human would or would not do is inconsequential. Just because we are made in His image doesn’t mean we have full access to His attributes.

It would be regarded as cruel, unusual and repulsive to perpetually allow another to suffer and persist in torment with no hope of escape.

We literally have thousands and thousands of people we have done just that to in prison.

The god of St Augustine is an interesting character. He is wrathful, he is vengeful. I fail to see how he is love or merciful though.

You clearly have never read Aquinas’s Suma or his Confessions, because if you had you’d never make a statement as absurd as this. God is Just, and that Justice isn’t always pleasant, especially not the person on the receiving end.

This is also an assertion in need of support. I have no idea how you could know this to be true.

We know it is true because that is the nature of Hell. Without access to God’s grace, you can’t accept God’s grace. Hell is the definitive self-exclusion from the Beatific Vision, that is basic Catholic teaching, clearly outlined in the CCC.

I gtg for the day. As always, it’s been fun.

 

[Magnanimity]

The nature of human will isn’t what’s at issue.

Yes, it’s actually the issue here. To be human, is, as Aristotle and St Thomas both agree, to be oriented toward the good. All acts, even sinful ones, are aimed at some good. Vico above has already granted this. Arisotle, in the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics states it pithily, “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” What it is to be a human is to aim at goods. Human wills have the Good (God) as their final cause–that towards which they incline and aim. But, that is a theological point. Even kept within the realm of the secular, the good is that at which all things aim. To be a human is to aim at some good(s).

So, the question does remain and needs an answer, “What is the good toward which a human will unendingly tends in a place like hell?”

any sin against infinite goodness is deserving of infinite punishment

Yeah, I do remember covering this ground with you above. The point wasn’t granted. The disanalogy between good acts towards the infinite being and sins against the infinite being still exists. Just as your right acts towards God do not have infinite implications for the acts themselves, so too your disordered acts towards God do not have infinite implications. God is infinite, no doubt. But, when you love him as a finite creature, that act of love does not magically become an infinite act because God is infinite. The converse is true regarding sins.

we punish people with a lifetime of imprisonment.

We Americans with our love for the prison-industrial complex definitely do that, granted. But that is a temporal punishment, normally carrying a finite duration along with it (e.g., “life” sentence is, say, 35 years in some states). Again, humans do not dream of unending punishments. I said above, “I don’t know of any humans who would do this. It would be regarded as cruel, unusual and repulsive to perpetually allow another to suffer and persist in torment with no hope of escape.”

Hell is as much the choice of the damned soul as it is the justice due for our sins. It is as much choice as punishment.

This is not coherent. Neverending punishment is not a good, not an end that a human will would incline towards or choose.

1. God IS love.
2. God wills the good for all humans.
3. Human wills are inclined toward the good.

Hell, at least as you formulate it, is starkly incompatible with these three truths.

 

[Magnanimity]

I just can’t understand how a God that sees our life and knows our heart could judge someone yet not know if he was repentant…or would have been repentant had he lived… yet determine to send him to Hell because the person didn’t have enough time to confess. It seems a contradiction in His all knowing nature and goodness.

Your suspicions are well-founded. Always erring on the belief that God is love itself, whose mercy endures forever, is the right path forward. That belief is the backdrop in front of which our minds should ponder all these questions. All conclusions regarding heaven and hell have an infinitely loving God who made us for himself as the proper undercurrent. Stick with that and you won’t go wrong.

 

[TrueRomanCatholic]

Yes absolutely!

Whoever doesn’t follow the rules our holy lady, Mother Church, is in charge of enforcing does go to hell forever.

There’s absolutely no salvation outside of the Churchs purview and believe me, if someone is in hell, they deserve to be there forever.

To be honest though, forever has no concept for us once dead anyway. We’re outside time with the embodiment of Mother Church, our Lord.

 

[Magnanimity]

Please be sure to read my entire post.

Ha! You must have been in a hurry!

this is a conclusion of the Five Ways, as you agree.

so what a human would or would not do is inconsequential.

This is for sure incorrect. Our consciences are derived from our bearing the image and likeness–we have them, and they are guides in life, because the conscience comes from the Divine. As John Henry Newman pointed out, there is a certain primacy to conscience. In fact, my conscience is what helped me to become Catholic in the first place. As in, I recognized the many true claims of the church as being true and as a consequence decided to unite myself to this “body” that we call the church. Conscience is always a guide. And from the many individuals in this thread who oppose infernalism, you are seeing their very consciences at work. They are, quite literally, repulsed by the idea of a loving God punishing forever (with no hope of reconciliation) the beings that he loves and that he created for himself.

We literally have thousands and thousands of people we have done just that to in prison.

The two things are not even approximate. (1) The 35 year prison sentence and (2) the unending, torment and suffering of Hell with no hope of reconciliation - these things could not be any farther apart from each other, considered as punishments.

You clearly have never read Aquinas’s Suma or his Confessions,

I have read the Confessions. I’ve read a lot of Aquinas’ ST, but not all of it certainly. It’s a massive body of work for my modest brain. It is true that Augustine speaks of the inscrutable mercy of God. Some of what he has to say regarding divine mercy is truly lovely. But, his basic premise of the entire human race as massa damnata since we all inherit the guilt of Adam and Eve (errant translation of Rom 5:12) and so we all are deserving of Hell, and God through Christ has to rescue us from the Father–yeah, I definitely find that to be some fairly bizarre theology.

God is our creator who loves us. Nobody needs to rescue us from Him. He always wills our good, and his mercy endures forever. These are the ever-abiding currents that must shore up all our theology. The patristics knew this to their very core. So has the Orthodox church (in the main). And contemporary Catholic scholarship has finally come around on this too (De Lubac, Rahner and Von Balthasar).

The church was beholden to this bizarre aspect of Augustinian theology for many, many centuries. All his scholastic devotees (Aquinas included) generally followed his views on Hell. It’s past time for a fundamental reconsideration in the minds and hearts of the Catholic faithful.

 

[laylow]

So, true free will can only exist if you can destroy your will?

It’s not free to never been given the choice.

We are not our own creations, and so we do not have control over our own existence. It is not our right to demand to be unmade.

That is the ultimate dictator position, one in which I would deem as evil. Free will is given huge importance by apologetics, but it reality in fails at the very core of the concept in this case.

 

[laylow]

I have a question! If God knows all and sees our end as well as our beginning, would He not also know at our time of death (that He determines, right?) whether we would have asked and received absolution given time?

Apparently time is only important on earth, where it is of utmost importance (don’t repent in time, too bad, so sad) but then it apparently disappears completely once you die.

 

[halogirl]

This is not correct @TrueRomanCatholic It is possible to be saved outside the church according to the knowledge one has

 

[LawyersGunsAndMoney]

Whoever doesn’t follow the rules our holy lady, Mother Church, is in charge of enforcing does go to hell forever.

You know the term “mother Church” is just an expression, right? Like, the Church isn’t literally a mother (or a woman for that matter…)

I only ask because you seem very particular about always saying “Mother Church.”