Is there anyone in Hell?

  • Thread starter Thread starter John_W
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
40.png
MrS:
The teaching of the Catholic Church is that God condemns no one.

We sin and bring judgment on ourselves.
Click to expand...
No we don’t necessarily. Look at the historical teaching on the death of the unbaptized infants with no personal sin. They are condemned to exclusion from the kingdom yet they have no personal sin.

All thanks to our great-great-great… grandpappy who was temped by a serpant God created knowling full well that all those poor unborn children would be excluded from the beatific vision through NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN.

I spent the last year at a seminary surrounded by priests and scholars. The scholar priests and nuns were what you would call heretics. I loved it.

Some were reactionaries like people on these boards, others heretics like me. They maintained a cordial open dialogue and never did I hear anyone suggest that anyone was putting their immortal souls in jeopardy by arguing agaist the party line.

That is the Catholicism I love.

Adam
 
I think the cold air of Canada has frozen your last two brain cells. They will thaw out in your after life at the rate you are going.

Pause

You have been prayed for to the Mother of the God you dispise. She would ask you to do as HE asks… if you would only listen.
 
‘And thank you Jeff, you have touched on something that I would agree with very much. As I earlier noted, the notion of heaven, hell, satan, limbo and the resurrection of the dead have not only evolved but risen and fallen like so many empires.’

i appreciate your thanks, but i have to say that i believe that i disagree with every single thing you’ve posted thus far.

just so you know.
 
:Correct. A hell with nothing in it would be a superfluous, irrelevant hell.:

As Jeff pointed out, it seems pretty clear that the demons will be in it. Furthermore, since hell is evil, God clearly did not directly create it but rather allow it to exist. Therefore, the maxim that God creates nothing in vain does not apply here. God is not the cause of evil. God allows His creatures to reject Him and suffer the consequences if they do so. If none finally reject Him then hell is empty, and God rejoices.

In Christ,

Edwin
 
I’ll bet most of Nova Scotia and most of B.C. have warmer winters than anywhere in Michigan.
 
Good night all.:sleep: Tomorrow is another day. Don’t forget to say your prayers.

In a pinch say: Diabolus fecit, ut id facerem! (The devil made me do it.)

Just kidding. Mea culpa, mea culpa!

:blessyou:
Joanna
 
I’ll bet most of Nova Scotia and most of B.C. have warmer winters than anywhere in Michigan.
Click to expand...
That and I am currently teaching in Taiwan. Which I guarantee is warmer than Michigan right now.

And sorry Jeff, I didn’t mean to imply that you and I agee, but rather that the information you supplied is very pertinent to my view that the idea of hell has developed, evolved and changed so significantly that what the reactionaries who condemn the liberal/modernist attitude of getting rid of the teaching of hell fail to realize the actual liberal/modernist/heretic position.

The notion of the possibility of the non-existence of hell does have a historical precedent in that many liberal/heretics (of whom I consider myself one realizing the present ultra-montanist state of the magisterium) view the magisterial pronouncements and (speaking only for myself) the bible itself as presenting, not infallible, but merely expressions of how the church believed the afterlife to be in a particular era.

But what has fueled my interest in this subject? Simply Aquinas’ attempt at proving the immortality of the soul through the use of the Aristotelean nous/intellect as the substantial form of the body.

Adam
 
40.png
jrabs:
40.png
Malachi4U:
I’d rather rob banks and still what I need then work 5 days a week and get up at 5:50 am in the *%$#@ morning! Boy, what a life, sin in the morning sin in the afternoon sin in the evening then followed on by an all night sin feast!
QUOTE]

Oh, YEAH! And forget this difficult chastity stuff! In fact, now I’m gonna rip on my really irritating neighbor and tell him what I really think about him!

Yessssss. I’m feelin good now!
Click to expand...

Except that the view that the graciousness of grace is an excuse to sin, is not mainstream Protestantism at all. It’s antinomian - not evangelical.​

It is because grace is so freely available to sinners, that the very notion of “sinning that grace may abound”, refuted so completely by St. Paul, is such a moral enormity. It perversts the very meaning of grace. It shows that one has no idea what grace is.

This is as fair an accusation against as Protestants, as the accusation that Catholics are given liberty to sin by knowing they can go to Confession.

The two misrepresentations deserve one another. ##
Click to expand...
 
'And sorry Jeff, I didn’t mean to imply that you and I agee, but rather that the information you supplied is very pertinent to my view that the idea of hell has developed, evolved and changed so significantly that what the reactionaries who condemn the liberal/modernist attitude of getting rid of the teaching of hell fail to realize the actual liberal/modernist/heretic position. ’

thanks for the clarification. and i mean no offense in saying i disagree with you.

i would point out that just because we come to understand something, or teach it, more progressively with time doesn’t make the teaching any less true. also, that finding correlations between christian thought and pagan doesn’t make the christian thought pagan. it probably means they are both pointing to the same truth.

if i have a watch that is stopped, it still points to the correct time twice a day. it would be an egregious error to think that my functional watch is wrong just because it shows the same time as the stopped one.
 
40.png
amarischuk:
No we don’t necessarily. Look at the historical teaching on the death of the unbaptized infants with no personal sin. They are condemned to exclusion from the kingdom yet they have no personal sin.

All thanks to our great-great-great… grandpappy who was temped by a serpant God created knowling full well that all those poor unborn children would be excluded from the beatific vision through NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN.

I spent the last year at a seminary surrounded by priests and scholars. The scholar priests and nuns were what you would call heretics. I loved it.

Some were reactionaries like people on these boards, others heretics like me. They maintained a cordial open dialogue and never did I hear anyone suggest that anyone was putting their immortal souls in jeopardy by arguing agaist the party line.

That is the Catholicism I love.

Adam
Click to expand...
You will also love the catholic traditional teachings that tell Catholics not to associate or speak to heretics. Specifically Thomas Aquainas.
 
You will also love the catholic traditional teachings that tell Catholics not to associate or speak to heretics. Specifically Thomas Aquainas.
Click to expand...
Well that would make evangelism rather difficult wouldn’t it. I wonder if St. Dominic would agree with your interpretation of that. And I wonder if St. Thomas would agree with that given that both he and Siger of Brabant had their teachings condemned.

I also love the traditional thomistic position that the unbaptized infants aren’t in heaven also; but rather in limbo. What ever happened to that teaching? You would think that in a thread dedicated to the evolution of the views of hell, limbo would have been brought up. But sadly not because it doesn’t fit the static view of the church that the archconservatives are trying to prove.
it would be an egregious error to think that my functional watch is wrong just because it shows the same time as the stopped one.
Click to expand...
I think you have it backwards. I am the one supporting a living, developing concept of the Church while others are adamently gazing at the broken clock. As for going back to the Patristic writers, Abelard’s Sic et Non showed that their positions were much more diverse than todays. Even in the dreaded Middle Ages (of which I am a student) they were tolerant of ideas much more divergent. It was the reactionary council of Trent which froze Catholicism dead in its tracks.

Adam
 
Just a thought: if we put our our faith, hope and charity into praying for all those who have died, or are dying now, or will ever die (that must cover it), then God who hears from His Eternal stance will have our prayer before Him when He meets each and every soul, even those deserving of condemnation and those hell bent on rejecting Him. To touch God’s heart with a humble prayer at such a moment for a soul can make the difference between heaven, ultimately, or hell, eternally. By a grace, the soul may chose to receive the grace not to eternally reject His Savior or his salvation. Even if the soul still merits the lowest level of purgatorial existence (much resembling hell), our appeal to mercy weighed in God’s court of justice can lift eternal condemnation by moving the hand of God. Through such a prayer a way to heaven is again open while justice satified.

I dont know who said this (maybe brother amarischuk can tell me?): “Without God I can’t, but without me, God won’t”

Just a thought that seems to be in line with the offering of every Eucharistic Sacrifice. ❤️

:gopray:
Joanna
 
40.png
Joanna:
Just a thought: if we put our our faith, hope and charity into praying for all those who have died, or are dying now, or will ever die (that must cover it), then God who hears from His Eternal stance will have our prayer before Him when He meets each and every soul, even those deserving of condemnation and those hell bent on rejecting Him. To touch God’s heart with a humble prayer at such a moment for a soul can make the difference between heaven, ultimately, or hell, eternally. By a grace, the soul may chose to receive the grace not to eternally reject His Savior or his salvation. Even if the soul still merits the lowest level of purgatorial existence (much resembling hell), our appeal to mercy weighed in God’s court of justice can lift eternal condemnation by moving the hand of God. Through such a prayer a way to heaven is again open while justice satified.

I dont know who said this (maybe brother amarischuk can tell me?): “Without God I can’t, but without me, God won’t”

Just a thought that seems to be in line with the offering of every Eucharistic Sacrifice. ❤️

:gopray:
Joanna
Click to expand...
:amen:
 
‘I think you have it backwards. I am the one supporting a living, developing concept of the Church while others are adamently gazing at the broken clock.’

i don’t know if you’ve done it deliberately, or if you really so completely misunderstood what i posted, but you’ve taken what i said entirely sideways from the way it was meant.

saying i have it backwards implies that i was saying that YOU are the broken clock. if you’ll read what i wrote, i was talking about pagan writings, about other sources that are similar to Church teaching. i wasn’t even calling THEM broken clocks, but just making a metaphorical comparison to point out that even skewed sources can have truth in them, and so don’t lessen the validity of other sources by agreeing with them.

you seem to think that those who adhere to the Church’s teaching authority (Tradition, or the Magesterium) are ‘stuck in a rut’, holding to outmoded ways of thinking. i vehemently disagree.

to begin with, the church is continuing to form her doctrines and dogmas on many issues. practices like celibacy of priests can be changed, and might be. teachings on stem cell research and cloning is being formed right now, as we speak.

secondly, i’ve been involved in groups of thought both inside and outside the church. i’ve had discussions and been involved in studies with people who didn’t remotely accept the RCC view on anything. i find everything the church authoritatively teaches to be liberating, healthy, holistic, balanced, wise, charitable, and above all: True.

i would respectfully suggest that humble obedience to the church’s teachings will reap you far greater growth and health of mind than an insistence that the church is stuck in theological mud and that only ‘heretics’ like you appear to claim to be are the ones interested in genuinely knowing the truth.

i don’t mean this in an attacking way. i’ve been outside the church, both theologically and literally. i’ve seen both sides. i find the truth here. and the Truth, too.

may God bless you as you journey.
 
‘You would think that in a thread dedicated to the evolution of the views of hell,’

honestly, amarischuk, i think you are the only one in this thread interested in the evolution of the views of hell. everyone else is interested in discussing whether the church teaches whether there is anyone in hell or not.
 
Well, it’s a dogma that Satan and demons are in hell. As far as people being in hell, one can hold to von Balthasar’s position and I believe he is justified. For more, see:

apolonio.blogspot.com
 
If we are truly free; if God is truly loving; then Hell must exist, and on the balance of probabilities, Hell is bursting at the seams. To argue that the Church has never defined that souls go to Hell is misleading. The Church has never defined that God exists, but we can’t therefore conclude that it’s possible that God doesn’t exist. The Church has never decreed that this individual or that individual has gone to Hell, but it certainly teaches the attitudes and actions which lead to Hell, and those attitudes and actions are in evidence all around us. We can be morally certain that many souls go to Hell. If peole do not choose to be with Christ in this life, then Our Lord will respect that in death. If everyone goes to Heaven, now or later, then we are mere puppets and God the Puppetmaster; if everyone eventually goes to Heaven, then we are incapable of loving God in any real sense, because we would not truly have ourselves in order to give ourselves. St. Teresa of Avila, a doctor of the Church, saw the souls of heretics falling in to Hell “…like leaves in autumn (Fall).”
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top