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Nessie_Niseag
Guest
So, you like junk food, eh? … (please click here to proceed to torment
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christianlove
Guest
Ultimately, no one knows the answer, but we will all find out one day. Hell is the creation of the fallen angels and not God. God did not will that angels or man would fall. He created us perfectly, but we chose to “be like gods.” As our creation, we chose for ourselves our destiny; both in how we live our lives and whether we will or will not accept God’s love when we die.
Tim, I agree with you. You get what you love the most. If you love anything more than God, then welcome to Hell. After all, Mother Church tells us the hell is the eternal loss of God. God loves us to much not to give us what we freely chose to love. If we love Him, then we get Him forever. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these other things will be ours. He made it all, He is Lord of all and by loving Him, and we get Him and EVERYTHING else. What are we holding on to so much that we cannot take the hand of the Lord?
I have also been wondering a lot about the notion of whether we chose Heaven or hell at the moment of our death. Yes, the way we live our lives now will be judged, and maybe by living pious lives and striving to be good people, choosing God will be a no brainer. Most people in these forums are here because they love God. It should be easy for us to say, “Yes Lord” when the time comes. Then we can all get some purgatory, pretty ourselves up for the wedding feast, and bask in the Glory of God forever! For those who live lives without God in them, it will be a harder decision to make. Perhaps their doubt will continue to blind them and even in His almighty presence they will deny him their love. They will be damned forever.
We have free choice, given to us out of God’s eternal love for us and His desire to create us in His image. Ultimately it boils down to a choice: Heaven or hell.
Sirach 15: 14-17
God in the beginning created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of God. Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand. Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them.
Chose life!
Tim, I agree with you. You get what you love the most. If you love anything more than God, then welcome to Hell. After all, Mother Church tells us the hell is the eternal loss of God. God loves us to much not to give us what we freely chose to love. If we love Him, then we get Him forever. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and all these other things will be ours. He made it all, He is Lord of all and by loving Him, and we get Him and EVERYTHING else. What are we holding on to so much that we cannot take the hand of the Lord?
I have also been wondering a lot about the notion of whether we chose Heaven or hell at the moment of our death. Yes, the way we live our lives now will be judged, and maybe by living pious lives and striving to be good people, choosing God will be a no brainer. Most people in these forums are here because they love God. It should be easy for us to say, “Yes Lord” when the time comes. Then we can all get some purgatory, pretty ourselves up for the wedding feast, and bask in the Glory of God forever! For those who live lives without God in them, it will be a harder decision to make. Perhaps their doubt will continue to blind them and even in His almighty presence they will deny him their love. They will be damned forever.
We have free choice, given to us out of God’s eternal love for us and His desire to create us in His image. Ultimately it boils down to a choice: Heaven or hell.
Sirach 15: 14-17
God in the beginning created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice. If you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of God. Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand. Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them.
Chose life!
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Michael19682
Guest
Official position of the Catholic Church on Hell: No one goes to Hell unless he wants to.Thank you, Christianlove, for your merciful understanding.
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ConstantineTG
Guest
The Fallen Angels have no power to create. Only God can create. Hell is not a created place, but rather a state of the soul when it rejects God totally.
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Matthew_Holford
Guest
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.622
Foot notes
612 1 Jn. 3.14-15
613 Mt. 25.31-46
614 Mt. 5.22,29; 10.28; 13.42,50; Mk. 9.43-48
615 Mt. 13.41-42
616 Mt. 25.41
617 DS 76; 409; 411; 801; 858; 1002; 1351; Paul VI CPG §12
618 Mt. 7.13-14
619 LG 48 §3; Mt. 22.13; Heb. 9.27; Mt. 25.13,26,30,31-46
620 Council of Orange II (529): DS 397; Council of Trent (1547): 1567
621 2 Pet. 3.9
622 Roman Missal, EP I (Roman Canon) 88
- We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbour or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.”612 Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren.613 To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
- Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost.614 Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,”615 and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”616
- The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.”617 The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
- The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”618
- God predestines no one to go to hell;620 for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:621
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.622
Foot notes
612 1 Jn. 3.14-15
613 Mt. 25.31-46
614 Mt. 5.22,29; 10.28; 13.42,50; Mk. 9.43-48
615 Mt. 13.41-42
616 Mt. 25.41
617 DS 76; 409; 411; 801; 858; 1002; 1351; Paul VI CPG §12
618 Mt. 7.13-14
619 LG 48 §3; Mt. 22.13; Heb. 9.27; Mt. 25.13,26,30,31-46
620 Council of Orange II (529): DS 397; Council of Trent (1547): 1567
621 2 Pet. 3.9
622 Roman Missal, EP I (Roman Canon) 88
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grandfather
Guest
Zaida,
You wonder what Catholic doctrines are on x or y. The Anglican/Episcopalian denominations claim to be Catholic. Your minister/priest should be able to tell you.
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grandfather
Guest
I did not mean to be sarcastic.
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severus68
Guest
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Ubenedictus
Guest
be carefull when u say something like this hell is talked about in d cc as a state/place, most saints explain it as a place the church does not exclude the place notion. I guess the usual thing to say is thatit was created for the falling angels
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christianlove
Guest
Indeed, I stand corrected. It is not created in that sense. However, God cannot create anything that is evil, therefore Hell is not a created by God and not “place” per se. Most of us understand that. Semantics demands that we articulate clearly our thoughts as to not lead astray those who may be inclined to create such images in their head. However, my point is that Hell is more than just an imagined state, or a temporary state, but an eternal state of being that comes from the fallen angel’s and human’s free choice to reject God and His love. While it is may not be a physical place, it is indeed an eternal state that exist. Created?
I would correct you in this, Consantine: Man can create. We create architectural wonders, art, even life! However, what makes God special is that he created it all first out of nothing! He put those parts into existence; from which man, who has been endowed by the Creator with creativity and desire to express His imagine, builds up the world to create new things. It is God’s plan.
God willed us to have free choice, we constructed hell from that choice…thats my point. God never willed for man to fall. He made us perfect. If I were a carpenter, would I build a chair that was designed to break? No! Neither did God create us to fall, but we did by our own design and choice.
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austenbosten
Guest
Hell is separation from God which is worse than fire or torture.
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MysticMansion
Guest
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MysticMansion
Guest
Actually if you check the church officially teaches that the pain of fire is one of the sufferings that the damned must endure but that their chief suffering is the knowledge of their eternal loss of God.
This I believe is felt on several levels first being that their punishment is eternal and that they will live forever suffering without anyone feeling pity for them. This leads them to suffer the loss of the Good that they have rejected, Unfortunately their final realization of their loss does not permit them repentance, which they are incapable because it also leads them to absolute hatred for everyoine who helped get them there relatives, friends, lovers etc.
This is very similar to those people who begin to worship God out of fear of Hell who in the end understand that God is so Good He is infinitely worthy of all our love and service, which is what was pointed out to us at the beginning.
This I believe is felt on several levels first being that their punishment is eternal and that they will live forever suffering without anyone feeling pity for them. This leads them to suffer the loss of the Good that they have rejected, Unfortunately their final realization of their loss does not permit them repentance, which they are incapable because it also leads them to absolute hatred for everyoine who helped get them there relatives, friends, lovers etc.
This is very similar to those people who begin to worship God out of fear of Hell who in the end understand that God is so Good He is infinitely worthy of all our love and service, which is what was pointed out to us at the beginning.
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ConstantineTG
Guest
None of those sayings are ever defined theology of the Church on what Hell is. It doesn’t make sense for an all-loving God to create a place of despair.
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Warrenton
Guest
God created the place, as he created the world. Man and the devils make the world a place of suffering, the vale of tears. Likewise, Satan and his minions make Hell a place of torment.
Their ability to do this is a function of their freedom. A person’s ability to go to Hell is function of freedom.
Freedom exists because of God’s love for us. The existence of Hell is connected to the love with which we were created. It is part of the mystery of our personhood, through which we have a real existence, and are not simply the projection, or dream, of God.
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ConstantineTG
Guest
This makes sense except that hell is said to be eternally separated from God. The world is a place of pain, suffering and death, yet we are not separated from God. Hell is. How can the devil turn God’s creation into something that’s separated from Him?
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Warrenton
Guest
I think we need to ask in what sense we understand “separate” in this context. Hell is not separated from God in the sense that it does not depend on God for existence. Everything that exists does so because God sustains it.
Satan creates the “great gulf fixed” through his own free will. God permits Satan, and humans, to cross that gulf by free will.
All humanity is in the act of becoming either holy or evil. At the end of time, that process will be complete. The humans who succeed in becoming evil will be the same people who fail to become holy. They will go to hell as the consummation of their will, which God gave them.
Satan has already completed his act of becoming evil. Throughout human history, he has become progressively more evil than evil, so to speak, with every new act of evil he has done.
In modern society, which is highly romantic (generally a good thing), we tend to link happiness with love as a single, absolute good. In practical thinking, we subordinate the good of freedom to this conflated concept. The difficulty of maintaining all three concepts perfectly in focus leads to the difficulty in reconciling hell with heaven.
Satan, being infinitely more intelligent than we are, subordinated love to freedom. Though this did not make him “happy,” it is reasonable to infer that he and the devils derive a value from it that stands next to happiness in the intellect. If I could create a neologism, I would suggest “para, or meta-happiness.” I think we approach the reality in the common phrase “guilty pleasure.”
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creedseebas
Guest
- I have an issue with a BIG point that everyone seems to be missing here. A “God” is supposed to be perfect, is he not? And “perfect” implies that all things are contained within it, an this being is all things. Nothing can exist outside of a perfect being, otherwise the being would no longer be defined as perfect, given that something exists which that being is not. So, it follows that God, being described as the only perfect being, contains all things in existence within himself. Where is the flaw in this logic?
- If he contains all things within himself, then it is impossible for anything to be separate from God, and therefore Hell is no exception. Also, people are no exception. In a sense, one could say that if someone ceased to exist, he could be separated from God by virtue of that fact that god is all that exists. it would make no sense to say that God is also the things which don’t exist, simply because those things DON’T EXIST. So it follows to say that nothing can be separated from God.
- hell is defined as eternal. the damned are said to suffer eternal fire and to suffer for eternity. to descend into an eternity of hell. for those of you who do not know this, eternity is not the same as infinity. you should learn that there is something called sempiternity. here is why this term is important:
1- eternity is outside of time
2- sempiternity is an infinite amount of time
3- something eternal is something that is outside of time
4- something sempiternal is something that is in time for eternity
no where does it say that we are in hell for sempiternity. it says that we are in hell for eternity. eternity does not have time so it cannot be measured or described by any words that are dependent on the concept of time. this alone debunks (or at LEAST puts to trial) any explanations of or descriptions of hell that require the use of words whose meanings depend on the concept of time. Hell, then, is not “a place of infinite torture that goes on and on and never ends” because infinity and the idea of going on and on and never ending are all concept that depend on the concept of time. Hell is simply an eternal place. - i have yet to see anything in Catholic dogma that says that a soul cannot be put into an eternal state and then taken back out. all catholic dogma says is that a soul will be placed in hell for eternity, or in an eternal hell. what i’m implying, at the risk of being called a heretic, is that it stand to reason that it is possible that God, by no act of the human but by his own mercy, may choose to pull a human back out of eternity and thus back out of hell. Nothing i have found states a contradiction to this theory, when taking into consideration the meanings of eternity and sempiternity.
- if we are to believe that since God only creates good things, and hell is evil, then God did not create hell, then the only logical conclusion is that hell is the creation of angels and humans. but we also know that angels and humans are temporal beings, inside the confines of time, and so if hell is eternal and outside the confines of time, then angels and humans have created something eternal (outside of time).
this is where stuff begins to get very bizzare. paradoxes begin to spring up. in fact, point 5 i just made seems weird, but i did make it as a natural step that would follow what someone said in a previous post that we create Hell.
Any comments on any of this???
I am merely a catholic seeking truth and if i can be corrected here with sound logic, i would appreciate it and welcome it happily. I only seek truth.
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odile53
Guest
@ creedseebas: One thing you missed–fallen angels and the souls of humans are eternal beings, not temporal beings. Human beings live in the time-space continuum while they are biologically alive, but once created, their souls go on forever.
If hell is eternal deprivation and separation from God, as well as all of the good things He created and sustains, and the knowledge that one put oneself there as a consequence of freely made choices, any of the various more colorful tortures described are pretty much just frosting on the cake, it would seem to me. Think of a time when you did something that resulted in so much self-loathing that you couldn’t even look at yourself in the mirror. Remember the misery and disgust you felt. Then multiply that by a magnitude of about ten thousand, and maybe that’s just a sampling of what hell is.
If hell is eternal deprivation and separation from God, as well as all of the good things He created and sustains, and the knowledge that one put oneself there as a consequence of freely made choices, any of the various more colorful tortures described are pretty much just frosting on the cake, it would seem to me. Think of a time when you did something that resulted in so much self-loathing that you couldn’t even look at yourself in the mirror. Remember the misery and disgust you felt. Then multiply that by a magnitude of about ten thousand, and maybe that’s just a sampling of what hell is.
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couponfit
Guest
To answer your question YES! Simply put we don’t really know, but we think Heaven is the absence of spiritual union with God. Some suggest from the bible there is a spirit world before Jesus and that’s where Adam and Moses and everyone was in death when Jesus descended to “hell” and proclaimed his message. We think that death and hell were very much the same concept, as simply ceasing to exist in body.
I guess to answer your question we have to answer a more simple question: Is heaven now or to come? The Catholic Answer is YES. If we are waiting for judgement to come then how can we go to heaven? Where do Catholics, even good catholics go when they die? The answer is Heaven! What could life after be like with no body or physical world in a eternal existence? To answer this you must consider that eternal does not mean forever like a clock that never stops, no, it means in the catholic understanding a word that our church founders did not have—non-linear. It is impossible for us to imagine a non-linear and non-corporal existence.
We can see Dante put his imagination to work to describe a physical heaven and hell made up of physical beings living physical life’s. As such they could be tortured in death in Dante’s inferno.
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