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Tyrel
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Are you suggesting that the pains of hell do not vary in degree? Surely they must (it is dogmatically defined!). However, if they differ in degree, then we can speak about them in terms of proportion and quantity.
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ProdglArchitect
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Ohhh. That’s what you mean could be done. Yeah, definitely. My point was to illustrate that you’re using a tool that is improperly suited to the task at hand. You figured out how many grains of sand it would take to get there. I’m saying that what you’re doing is like trying to determine the distance by placing individual grains of sand end to end, and counting them up one by one.
I’m saying that you can’t apply mathematics to something which is non-quantitative.
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ProdglArchitect
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I guess by your definition, B-Theory is more accurate, but again, God is outside of Time, and not governed by either A or B theory. Time is not essential to God’s existence, but is merely a portion of His creation.
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ProdglArchitect
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The pain varies in degree, but the soul’s experience is subjective, so I don’t think you can rightly quantify it. Each person in Hell is experiencing the maximum pain possible for them. We can talk about them being proportional to one another from our perspective, but you cannot assign any actual values to them. You can’t say “this person’s pain is twice as bad as that person’s.” The objective suffering might be greater, but again, it’s not something you can actually quantify. It’s simply a state of being, any attempts at quantification are subjective and meaningless. You might look at the soul that’s being burned by hot coals and say “This is the greatest suffering,” while I might see a soul being drowned over and over and say that “that is the greatest suffering.”
… I really need to go… but this is an interesting topic to me… blah
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Tyrel
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If God’s omniscience is propositional, and some propositions are tensed, then the ontology of tense matters for the nature of God’s apprehension of truths. If there is an objective fact about what time it is now, then God must know what time it is now. To know what time it is now, however, just literally is to be so aware of time as to be ‘in time.’ On the other hand, if there is no objective fact about nowness or presentness, if facts of this kind are as subjective and experiential as facts about hereness/whereness, then there’s no need for God to know what time it is, for there is no such thing in objective reality.
Time need not be essential for God’s existence for God to be, in some sense, within time after the moment of creation, a position now made increasingly popular by the Evangelical philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. Duns Scotus, however, also maintained that God was in time (and tried to reconcile it to the doctrine of simplicity). (See John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio 1. 38-39. 9-10). Bonaventure seems to have maintained something similar (don’t have a reference offhand, unfortunately). Boethius, Augustine and Aquinas, however, seem to strongly indicate that God is wholly outside of time… Well, Aquinas indicates this almost all the time. In any case, this has never been dogmatically defined, so what view one adopts should depend, I think, on the logical implications, insofar as we can make them out, of either view of time for the attributes of God.
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ProdglArchitect
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God’s omniscient isn’t propositional, it’s absolute. God knows what time it is now at every given instance. To Him, all of time exists as an eternal now. He does not need to be within time to know what time it is at any given point. It sounds like you’re trying to place limitations on His omniscience.
I believe that God’s eternal existence outside of time has been defined domgatically.
Patheos - God Immutable and Outside Time
God is eternal, that has definitely been dogmatically defined, as has His immutability and unchanging nature. Something that is eternal has no beginning, nor an end. Similarly, something that is immutable and unchangeable cannot be subject to something which is variable, such as time.
When we discuss God and how He interacts with time, we are discussing a mystery. It’s something we can talk about, but it’s not something we’ll ever be able to comprehend this side of eternity.
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Tyrel
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Does God know what it feels like to sin? In one sense, yes (propositionally). In another sense, say experientially, no. The point is that if there is an objective propositional absolute truth about what time it is, (that is, what moment of all moments is the objective present), then God cannot propositionally know that that time is the objective present without being, in the relevant sense, in time.
To the best of my knowledge, the fourth Lateran council and the first Vatican council both affirm God’s immutability and divine simplicity, along with God’s eternity. At no point is it decided what definition of God’s eternity is to be preferred, leaving open the positions of Boethius, Duns Scotus, et alia, so long as divine simplicity, immutability, and God’s eternity are affirmed. In fact, one difficulty here is that the particulars of divine simplicity are never even really defined. However, your source from Ludwig Ott has two particularly fascinating passages.
from Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (edited in English by James Canon Bastible; translated by Patrick Lynch, Rockford, Illinois: TAN Books and Publishers, 1974, from the fourth edition of May 1960; first published in German in 1952):
“The dogma asserts that God possesses the Divine Being without beginning and without end, and without succession in a constant undivided now…
(pp. 36-37)”
This actually comes very close, because it affirms that there is no succession, but it is unclear about whether there is no succession of the relevant kind (clearly there must be some succession of logical moments, like that logically prior to God’s free election to create a world, and that logically posterior to God’s free election to create a world. He must, according to a careful reading of this dogma, have the fullness of the divine being without succession (in a constant simple now). This is arguably compatible with Duns Scotus’ view (or, at least, the inconsistency would have to be proved by some derivation - the statement does not directly settle the matter).
“. . . The difference between past, present and future does not exist for the Divine Knowledge, since for God all is present.” (p. 41).
This comes significantly closer, but God’s omniscience has to be very carefully defined, and the correspondence between God’s knowledge and the world has to be clearly laid out.
I’ll have to think about this one.
Yup, that’s my argument. It is not agreed to by everyone, however.
With all due respect, that’s the kind of cop-out which just spurs me on to continue studying philosophical theology. It irritates me slightly to see the faithful shy away from the touch questions of theology, as though they have bled the childlike playful curiosity with which these theological issues should be approached dry, for do you not know that even Angels long to look into these things? (1 Peter 1:12). Moreover, we are closer now than we have ever been to concrete answers in systematic theology on this question; we have made real progress since the 13th century (see, for contrast, Richard C. Dales, “Time and Eternity in the Thirteenth Century,” in Journal of the History of Ideas 49, no. 1 (1988): 27-45.). Why would we throw our hands up and declare the mystery too hard now? This defeatism seems inimical to our edification through systematic theology. I’m not saying it won’t remain a mystery (it will remain a mystery in the same sense as the incarnation and the trinity remain mysteries even after as complete a human comprehension of them as is possible is attained - but there is, for most of us, still plenty to learn about these mysteries (ultimately redounding to our edification).
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Bradski
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‘Inimical to our edification’?
I always find it helps to discuss things as you would propping a bar somewhere with a couple of mates. You are not writing a thesis and there is no-one to impress (I think that some are actually less than impressed).
Incidentally, I’ve never seen the word redound used as a present participle and I do a lot of reading.
Crank it back a little, Tyrol.
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ProdglArchitect
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It’s not a cop-out, merely a recognition that finite minds can never truly comprehend the infinite, and that created minds can never fully comprehend the uncreated. It wasn’t intended to shut down discussion, merely to reinforce the fact that no matter how much theological study we do, no matter how deeply we delve into these thing, we will only ever be scratching at the surface of what truly is, like digging in the sand on a beach in an attempt to reach the center of the Earth. Recognizing this fact doesn’t shut down the search for Truth, but does help put that search in perspective. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, upon seeing a vision of God on his deathbed, said “I can write no more. All that I have written seems like straw.”
I’m sorry but I can’t really start this debate up again today. I spent way too much time on it yesterday and need to make up some of the work I didn’t do as a result. I wish you the best of luck in your search though!
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Tyrel
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Thank you - I will practice some restraint and not respond in a way sure to pull you back in again. I know what it’s like to waste time arguing with people on the internet when there’s work to be done, even if the argument is extremely interesting.
I’ll just say that we do agree about the nature of mystery and the limitations of human cognitive faculties.
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Tyrel
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I have many flaws. I’ve been told this is one of them. I’m not sure I can help it. If we were sitting at a bar, this is basically how I would speak.
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ProdglArchitect
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Yeah, I have the same issue. In fact, the more I drink, the more “like that” I speak. I think it comes from growing up almost exclusively reading older literature where that type of speech was common. (Sherlock Holmes basically convinced me that reading was fun.)
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truetofaith
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I’m glad Jesus spoke to the crowds in the Bible much clearer than you guys…otherwise He would have lost all of His followers! 
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Tyrel
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Yeah, I knew it was probably a bad idea to bring this question here - most people don’t have the background or patience for this kind of question, and there’s no way I know how to ask about or discuss it without being overly technical (etc.).I’m glad Jesus spoke to the crowds in the Bible much clearer than you guys…otherwise He would have lost all of His followers!
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truetofaith
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That’s why politicians don’t get much done. They talk so long in confusing language and it causes everyone to drop the subject.
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Tyrel
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That’s often true, especially when talking about infinities and infinitesimals (partly because evolution hasn’t selected for optimally performing cognitive faculties when talking about these concepts largely irrelevant to survival and reproduction). So there’s no question that the issue is hard to understand, hard to clearly express, and most of us spend most of our time feeling as though we’re wandering cautiously around in the dark when discussing the issue. That’s entirely natural, and rather to be expected in philosophy.
Still, it seems worth trying to understand, don’t you think?
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Tyrel
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Think for a moment about the differences between police officers, doctors, lawyers - different professions attract people with generally different personality types and psychological profiles. Lawyers are generally very high on conscientiousness and low on empathy, police officers are often type-A personalities, et cetera. Politicians, in general, do not have especially high IQ’s, they don’t generally have an impressive command of the English language (or any other), so I just find it hard to accept that politicians speak with so much complexity that it “causes everyone to drop the subject.”
This sounds, to me, like an easy insult aimed at politicians who are already so disliked that most people are liable to accept the accusation unthinkingly, but the accusation you’re making is just plainly false. The only people who ‘drop the subject’ because politicians use confusing language are people with significantly lower IQ’s and/or significantly worse commands of the language.
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ericc
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Hell is everlasting. Those who end up there fallen angels, as well as homo sapiens, suffer eternal separation from God. I do not know what kinds of torment the beings there go through, however it is clear from Scriptures the punishment is proportionate to the sins. I would suppose the suffering at t=o and t=infinity would be the same because the separation from God remains the same “distance” throughout, guilt and punishment being fixed at point of death. Hence there could be no reduction at any point in time. Satan at the time of being ejected from Heaven would suffer the same at t=0 as at t= infinity. There should be no diminishing effects. If there are, it implies that separation from God has reduced effects as time goes by. Since God is unchanging, then it implies that somehow those in hell are able to reduce the intensity of their punishment merely by the passage of time or that their guilt has some how lessen through no merit of theirs. Since no one can do good in hell, it is unlikely that can be so. Since devils have been there longer than any humans, and they could still roam about the earth today, a diminished suffering environment would present a very tricky situation. They could entice humans by merely saying “hell isn’t too bad now. The longer you stay, the better it is”.With respect, I’m afraid I’m pretty dissatisfied (nay, perhaps even disappointed) with the responses here thus far. Look, it is obviously true that, as the Catholic Encyclopedia notes: “Not long ago Mivart (The Nineteenth Century, Dec., 1892, Febr. and Apr., 1893) advocated the opinion that the pains of the damned would decrease with time and that in the end their lot would not be so extremely sad; that they would finally reach a certain kind of happiness and would prefer existence to annihilation; and although they would still continue to suffer a punishment symbolically described as a fire by the Bible, yet they would hate God no longer, and the most unfortunate among them be happier than many a pauper in this life. It is quite obvious that all this is opposed to Scripture and the teaching of the Church. The articles cited were condemned by the Congregation of the Index and the Holy Office on 14 and 19 July, 1893 (cf. “Civiltà Cattolica”, I, 1893, 672).” However, the view I am now proposing has, to the best of my knowledge, nothing relevantly in common with the elements of that theory which were condemned. The view I hold maintains that hell is eternal, that the poena damni and the poena sensus are both everlasting afflictions with no temporary alleviations, that the torments of those in hell are experienced at all times with intensity, but that the torments are finitely bounded over an infinite amount of time.
Frankly, all of you seem to have eagerly rushed to answer the question without actually really thinking about the question.
Nowhere did I say or insinuate that the subjective experience of suffering ever decreases in intensity. In no way am I suggesting that the damned grow accustomed to the torments of hell. The view I’m proposing is much more subtle than that!
Actually, in one sense it is, or it seems to be; for, consider that any finite quantity multiplied by an infinite quantity yields an infinite quantity. Even if sufferings are at all times finite, but there are infinitely many times at which the suffering continues, then there is an infinite quantity of suffering in the end. If two different planets each have moons, the first rotating around its planet at twice the rate of the second rotating around its planet, but you allow for them to continue to rotate around their respective planets for an actually infinite amount of measurable times, then each of them will have rotated around their respective planets an equal number of times (namely, because they have rotated an infinite number of times - and although there are different sizes of infinity, it is not hard to prove that the set of rotations in each case could be bijected with the other, implying their equivalence). Similarly, then, even if the torments of one denizen of hell are, at any time, more intense than another denizen of hell, if hell consists in an everlasting eternity of times at which the damned experience suffering, and their suffering isn’t finitely bounded in the way I’m proposing, then the sufferings accrued ultimately will be equivalent by being quantitatively infinite (and, again, we can prove by analogy that these infinite quantities would be strictly equivalent infinities).
The issue I’m raising requires a little more attention than I think you’re giving it based on your comments. Hopefully you can now see why I feel that way, and, hopefully, you can offer a more engaging rejoinder as this discussion progresses.
If the offense towards God is infinite, and since offense and punishment are proportional, it is difficult to argue for any change in punishment which may reflect negatively on the Divine Judge who is unchangeable, Just, and all-knowing. Any adjustment for the punishment would be immediate from a merciful God, and not as time goes by. In a timeless/eternal environment, time has no meaning. There is no clock in hell. Aquinas explains it this way:
Still another reason may be given why the punishment of mortal sin is eternal: because thereby one offends God Who is infinite. Wherefore since punishment cannot be infinite in intensity, because the creature is incapable of an infinite quality, it must needs be infinite at least in duration. And again there is a fourth reason for the same: because guilt remains for ever, since it cannot be remitted without grace, and men cannot receive grace after death; nor should punishment cease so long as guilt remains.
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