What is Hell and God's relationship with it?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Pathway2
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Pathway2

Guest
Looking at psalm like one on man’s desire of God, he described it finding God also in the depths of Hell which Got me thinking? what specifically is hell? what is the nature. I know it is real. I start having an idea similar to C.s. Lewis’s the Great Divorce. Please help me.
 
You seem to be referencing Psalm 139:8. An approved current Catholic translation of this Psalm is here:


Note that the word used in the verse 8 is not “Hell” but “Sheol”, which was the Jewish term for the place where the dead went, prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Sheol was basically an underworld where all deceased souls went, regardless of whether they had lived good or bad lives. Although some English editions of the Bible use the word “Hell” in this Psalm, it’s referring to this general underworld better known as Sheol, not to the Hell that is the place where the souls of the damned were sent after Jesus died.

When the psalmist is saying “if I lie down in Sheol, there you are” or in some translations, “if I lie down in Hell, there you are”, again he’s referring to this underworld where all the souls went prior to Jesus’ death. Somebody down in Sheol could perhaps still feel a connection to God, since righteous people as well as wicked people went to Sheol after death.

When Jesus died, He “descended into Hell” which means that he went down to Sheol and opened up the gates of Heaven for all the souls of the righteous who had been sitting down there in Sheol, also known then as Hell, and let them go to heaven.

From that point onward, since Heaven was now open to those whom the Lord judged worthy of it, Hell became a place of eternal punishment and complete separation from God, forever. God has no relationship with Hell.
 
Last edited:
Looking at psalm like one on man’s desire of God, he described it finding God also in the depths of Hell which Got me thinking? what specifically is hell? what is the nature. I know it is real. I start having an idea similar to C.s. Lewis’s the Great Divorce. Please help me.
Peter wrote, that to God a day is like 1000 years and 1000 years is like a day. IOW. there is no calendar or clock in the afterlife. No yesterday, today or tomorrow. It’s the eternal now. A trillion years from now in our time is still now in eternity. We want to make sure then, that we don’t blow it in this life. What the Early Church Believed: Hell | Catholic Answers
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top