Why would god send people to hell?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ja3712
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
40.png
ahimsaman72:
The Christian concept of hell is a carryover from every other religion before it - except Judaism. It was part and parcel of cosmology from previous Paganism

Peace…
Click to expand...
What forms of Paganism? Zoroastrianism, quite possibly, but not other pagan religions (of the Middle East) as far as I know. And it emphatically is a part of Jewish tradition–it just developed after the writing of the Hebrew Scriptures (I don’t think it gets much mention in the deuterocanonicals either).

Edwin
 
A good starting point on the arguments for the existence of God and other topics can be found in Handbook of Christian Apologetics by Peter Kreeft. It’s available here. I’ve found this book very compelling. I read any Peter Kreeft books I can get my hands on.
 
Oops! I just realized you can buy this book at Catholic Answers - a much better place! Link is here. Sorry, CA!
 
40.png
Contarini:
What forms of Paganism? Zoroastrianism, quite possibly, but not other pagan religions (of the Middle East) as far as I know. And it emphatically is a part of Jewish tradition–it just developed after the writing of the Hebrew Scriptures (I don’t think it gets much mention in the deuterocanonicals either).

Edwin
Click to expand...
Greek, Roman and Egyptian cosmologies include concepts of hell (hades). You’ll not find one reference to a burning, eternal torturous hell in the Old Testament and especially in the Torah. Jews do not believe in the hell espoused by Christians. I’m glad you realize that it was not an original Jewish idea. It is part of some modern Jewish tradition, but not Orthodox Jewish belief.

Peace…
 
40.png
ahimsaman72:
Greek, Roman and Egyptian cosmologies include concepts of hell (hades). You’ll not find one reference to a burning, eternal torturous hell in the Old Testament and especially in the Torah. Jews do not believe in the hell espoused by Christians. I’m glad you realize that it was not an original Jewish idea. It is part of some modern Jewish tradition, but not Orthodox Jewish belief.
Click to expand...
i’m not sure what the historicity of the doctrine of hell has got to do with its truth.

i mean, no one before 1905 believed in relativity theory…
 
40.png
Monarchy:
However, you cannot physically prove the non-existance of anything.
Click to expand...
i’m not sure i understand what you mean here. i have never heard this claim (or some variant of it) trumpeted more loudly or more often than in this forum.

what does it mean “physically” to prove something?

what does it mean to “prove” something, period?

do you think it’s impossible to demonstrate the truth of negative singular existential propositions? for example, can i prove the proposition “there is no rhino sitting on my desk”?

thanks for the help.
He does the dooming, and chooses to send us there. he doesn’t HAVE to do anything if he is God. He can choose. Or does he not have free will?
Click to expand...
sure, god has free will. but he is free only to what is logically possible (i.e. god cannot choose to perform that which is logically contradictory). so. god is powerless to make us freely choose anything in particular (because then it wouldn’t be freely chosen).
 
From Saint Faustina’s Diary - Red print are Jesus’ words:

** On a certain occasion. The Lord said to me, I am more deeply wounded by the small imperfections of chosen souls than by the sins of those living in the world. It made me very sad that chosen souls make Jesus suffer, and Jesus told me, these little imperfections are not all. I will reveal to you a secret of My Heart: what I suffer from chosen souls. Ingratitude in return for so many graces is My Heart’s constant food, on the part of [such] a chosen soul. Their love is lukewarm, and My Heart cannot bear it; these souls force Me to reject them. Others distrust My goodness and have no desire to experience that sweet intimacy in their own hearts, but go in search of Me, off in the distance, and do not find Me. This distrust of My goodness hurts Me very much. If My death has not convinced you of My love, what will? Often a soul wounds Me mortally, and then no one can comfort Me. They use My graces to offend Me. There are souls who despise My graces as well as all the proofs of My love. They do not wish to hear My call, but proceed into the abyss of hell. The loss of these souls plunges Me into deadly sorrow. God though I am, I cannot help such a soul because it scorns Me; having a free will, it can spurn Me or love Me. You, who are the dispenser of My mercy, tell all the world about My goodness, and thus you will comfort My Heart. It will tell you when you converse with Me in the depths of your heart. Here, no one can disturb My actions. Here, I rest as in a garden enclosed.

Notebook III

**** Seventh Day.

“Today bring to Me the souls who especially venerate and glorify My mercy, and immerse them in My mercy. These souls sorrowed most over My Passion and entered most deeply into My Spirit. They are living images of My Compassionate Heart. These souls will shine with a special brightness in the next life. Not one of them will go into the fire of hell. I shall particularly defend each one of them at the hour of death.” **
 
Notebook 6

I often attend upon the dying and through entreaties obtain for them trust in God’s mercy, and I implore God for an abundance of divine grace, which is always victorious. God’s mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illuminated by a ray of God’s powerful final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sin and punishment, while outwardly it shows no sign either of repentance or of contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God’s mercy! But – horror! – There are also souls who voluntarily and consciously reject and scorn this grace! Although a person is at the point of death, the merciful God gives the soul that interior vivid moment, so that if the soul is willing, it has the possibility of returning to God. But sometimes, the obduracy in souls is so great that consciously they choose hell; they thus make useless all the prayers that other souls offer to God for them and even the efforts of God himself…
 
john doran:
i’m not sure what the historicity of the doctrine of hell has got to do with its truth.

i mean, no one before 1905 believed in relativity theory…
Click to expand...
It has everything to do with it. The Catholic Church uses historicity to bolster its position as being the church that Christ founded, so I imagine it has much to do with it!

It came from pagan sources - doesn’t that mean anything? If you were given tainted meat wouldn’t you want to know where it came from so you wouldn’t buy it from there anymore??!?!??

Peace…
 
40.png
ahimsaman72:
It has everything to do with it. The Catholic Church uses historicity to bolster its position as being the church that Christ founded, so I imagine it has much to do with it!
Click to expand...
right. the church uses the historicity of its traditions to demonstrate that it is the church founded by christ as opposed to other churches who make the same, but mistaken claim.

but what has that got to do with the origins of the concept of a punitive hell?

even if the church had ever said anything like “X is true because we are the first to have proposed anything like X as the truth” (and it hasn’t), that would just show that the church was wrong about being the first to make a certain pronouncement - it most emphatically wouldn’t be at all relevant to whether that pronouncement was true or false.
40.png
ahimsaman72:
It came from pagan sources - doesn’t that mean anything? If you were given tainted meat wouldn’t you want to know where it came from so you wouldn’t buy it from there anymore??!?!??
Click to expand...
but your initial point is precisely that the church is the first organization to propose a hell of eternal punishment…right?

at any rate, you beg the question: what difference does it make who else said it? i mean, there were pagans who believed in one god, too. does that make monotheism false?

in short, the meat isn’t tainted. it just means that someone else stumbled across good, fresh, nourishing food even before there was good spiritual refrigeration, so to speak, to guarantee the freshness. what of it?

look, lots of people and religions have some of the truth - it’s part of express catholic doctrine that god has made at least part of himself and some of his truths accessible to humanity via the light of natural reason, so it’s to be expected that some people would stumble onto some of the truths some of the time in the long history of humanity…

more abstractly, you are making the logical error known as the genetic fallacy, which makes the truth of a proposition a function of who says it. in fact, propositions are true or false depending on whether what they say about the world is actually that way…
 
40.png
ahimsaman72:
It has everything to do with it. The Catholic Church uses historicity to bolster its position as being the church that Christ founded, so I imagine it has much to do with it!

It came from pagan sources - doesn’t that mean anything? If you were given tainted meat wouldn’t you want to know where it came from so you wouldn’t buy it from there anymore??!?!??

Peace…
Click to expand...
**The Hell There Is!

and

Hell
**
 
Participants:

Please start a new thread discussing the Theological/Philosophical and Historical origins of Hell in the Apologetics thread.

This wandering thread about why would God allow his people to Hell is now closed.

God Bless,
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top