The evolution of the Hell concept

[cornbread_r2]

They had the Laws of Moses and before that, they had revelations from God. And no one truly knows the state of their soul, we as Catholics have confidence that when we follow Church teaching, and confess our sins to receive forgiveness, that we are doing alright, but if our confession wasn’t done with sincere contrition and repentance, then the confession was invalid because we wouldn’t have really had remorse for what we’d done or had the intention of trying to never do it again.

I read this article from the Jewish Encyclopedia referenced by another user and I didn’t see a consistent, authoritative teaching on Hell from the Jewish perspective. I’ll likely be accused of trying to tell God how to run his shop, but I would think that when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden he would have also told them: “Oh, by the way, if you or your descendents die without repenting your sins, you’ll be punished for eternity in Hell”. * We don’t get that kind of exposition until millenia later. It seems to me then that a lot of humans lived and died without ever knowing that there were eternal consequences for their Earthly actions.

• It’s possible he did tell them, but it would still be a major oversight in his inspired book not to reference that warning.

 

[Ion]

I read this article from the Jewish Encyclopedia referenced by another user and I didn’t see a consistent, authoritative teaching on Hell from the Jewish perspective. I’ll likely be accused of trying to tell God how to run his shop, but I would think that when God kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden he would have also told them: “Oh, by the way, if you or your descendents die without repenting your sins, you’ll be punished for eternity in Hell”. * We don’t get that kind of exposition until millenia later. It seems to me then that a lot of humans lived and died without ever knowing that there were eternal consequences for their Earthly actions.

• It’s possible he did tell them, but it would still be a major oversight in his inspired book not to reference that warning.

Well, let see for yourself: now you know abot the hell, why aren’t you a catholic?

 

[ReapReason]

I think many Christians fail to distinguish between an analogy of hell and what hell actually is.

That’s why you have Christians walking around thinking that God is literally going to burn sinners in a never ending lake of fire. How sad.

I could never believe in such a God, because it does not correspond to the metaphysical nature of God. I do however believe in Hell.

 

[ReapReason]

What does human meat taste like? mmmmmmm yum yum.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Yeah, sometimes I think people get too caught up in analogies-the “Would you want to go to Heaven?” thread is another good example.

I think many times it’s really useful to just boil down to the essentials. Hell is horrible. Really horrible. And Heaven is wonderful and glorious. Those are the important points. Everything else we learn is filler.