Yes, in hell, but why forever

[oliver109]

The priest in my scenario could still be alive and so could still have the opportunity to ask for forgiveness, or would you rather God forces the priest to die?

 

[Fauken]

or would you rather God forces the priest to die?

I don’t want anything in this scenario. If the plane fell on the priest, God at least passively willed it. If God wants a plane to fall and kill someone, it’ll be very sad, but it is His will, and far be it from me to tell God what to do.

 

[oliver109]

Just because a plane destroys a body does not mean the body has to die, the soul can remain in ways known to God alone with the body, death does not have to occur. Would you not pray that a soul is still alive after it has “died”? Padre Pio prayed that his great grandfather would have a happy death decades after he died, he said “Maybe you don’t know that I can pray even now for the happy death of even my great-grandfather. For the Lord, the past doesn’t exist, the future doesn’t exist. Everything is an eternal present. Those prayers had already been taken into account. And so, I repeat that even now I can pray for the happy death of my great-grandfather.”

 

[Fauken]

destroys a body does not mean the body has to die, the soul can remain in ways known to God alone with the body, death does not have to occur.

If a body is destroyed, the body is destroyed. That person is dead.

Would you not pray that a soul is still alive after it has “died”?

No, because a soul is immortal and thus still “alive”. My request would be nonsensical.

Padre Pio prayed that his great grandfather would have a happy death decades after he died, he said “Maybe you don’t know that I can pray even now for the happy death of even my great-grandfather. For the Lord, the past doesn’t exist, the future doesn’t exist. Everything is an eternal present. Those prayers had already been taken into account. And so, I repeat that even now I can pray for the happy death of my great-grandfather.”

That’s praying for a happy death, as in praying that he died in a state of grace. Not praying for his great-grandfather’s salvation despite whatever his grandfather did, not that his body would still be alive despite whatever happened to it.

 

[oliver109]

A body can be alive even if it looks dead, God can work wonders, he could make a piece of bread his own body, his own living body, he could also ensure that someone does not die even if they are reduced to bone splinters.

 

[Fauken]

A body can be alive even if it looks dead

There’s being alive despite looking like one’s dead, and then there’s ones body being obliterated where there is nothing to see.

God can work wonders, he could make a piece of bread his own body, his own living body

The host is not both bread and Christ, which would be what you’re advocating for in your example, it is completely Christ body with the accidents of bread.

he could also ensure that someone does not die even if they are reduced to bone splinters.

Humans are a union of soul and body. If there is no body, then there is no soul to keep us alive. Your bones are a part of your body, they are not the fullness of your body.

 

[oliver109]

The body could be somewhere else, God does not have to separate the soul does he? Was Padre Pio’s soul split in two when he bilocated?

 

[Magnanimity]

God loves all, and never ceases doing so. When He gives people what they’ve demonstrated by their actions what they want

So, following Saint Thomas Aquinas, I agree that God alone is a necessary being. All other beings in the universe are contingent. They are not contingent in the watch relative to the watchmaker way. Rather, the five ways entails that God continuously causes to exist all beings outside of himself for every moment of their existence .

Let’s do a little thought experiment meant with a woman named Sarah. God will hold Sarah in existence for the duration of her existence indefinitely into the future. However, let’s say that Sarah is a Matthew 25 “goat.” So she is bound for hell. Hell, according to typical, Catholic understanding, entails neverending suffering and torment for Sarah. This means that God will hold Sarah in existence to perpetually suffer for all time.

I would like to see an argument for how It could be that God loves Sarah after her death. Love is, again following Saint Thomas Aquinas, to will and work for the good of the other, as other. So when holding Sarah in existence perpetually into the future in a state of torment and suffering, how exactly is it that God is willing and working for her good? Since Sarah was created for beatitude, also Aquinas, then the only good that I can see In this scenario is her existing. Sarah will indefinitely into the future never exist in a state of her final end, she will never know The happiness that she was created for. She will, presumably, never even be in the presence of the good. So lay out the argument for how it is that God is loving Sarah. What precisely do you mean by that? He has left her to a state of inescapable, neverending misery, suffering and torment. Yet he “loves “Sarah?

 

[Fauken]

The body could be somewhere else, God does not have to separate the soul does he?

If you’re dead, your soul is not in your body.

Was Padre Pio’s soul split in two when he bilocated?

I don’t claim to know how bilocation works. What I do claim is that you are relying on an increasingly ridiculous hypothetical to make your point. If that doesn’t make you pause to consider that what you’re advocating does not make sense, I don’t know what else to tell you.

 

[Aquinas11]

I believe Mary is only human whose body and soul remained in tact and went straight to Heaven.

 

[Fauken]

I believe Mary is only human whose body and soul remained in tact and went straight to Heaven.

Elijah, Moses, and one other(?) were also assumed into Heaven, right?

 

[oliver109]

That is because the priest is not necessarily dead, look at a body that has been destroyed by a crash(sorry I sound so morbid tonight) now you may say that body is dead but in reality it is up to God whether the body is dead or not, all we can do is call the authorities to gather up the remnants and arrange a funeral. God is the one who decides when a soul is separated from the body, not biology.

 

[Gorgias]

The body and soul are just somewhere else, they have not been separated!

No… the body is a corpse. We know exactly where it is. It’s the “location” of the soul that’s in question. (Except for the fact that, since it’s spiritual and not physical, it doesn’t have the property of having “location”.)

could it not confess to a saint that was a priest?

Nope. Priest saints are only souls now, too (until the eschaton). So, no ears to hear or mouths to pray the prayer of absolution.

Moreover, the Church teaches that the sacraments are for the living, so a disembodied soul (or an unensouled corpse) doesn’t receive the sacraments, by definition.

 

[oliver109]

Could the person confess to Christ himself? after all Christ forgived sins of individuals himself. Also the soul is not disembodied! it is simply with the body, just moved somewhere else, God has the full power to take a soul and body anywhere he wants, without forcing the person to do anything they don’t want to do.

 

[Gorgias]

Could the person confess to Christ himself? after all Christ forgived sins of individuals himself.

Certainly, prior to death. However, that’s not the case you’re making here. You’re making the case that the person doesn’t confess to Christ, but that Christ imposes himself on the person prior to death, in order to coerce a confession. Apples and oranges.

 

[oliver109]

Christ is not imposing himself on the person, he is just talking to them, trying to reason with them, that’s a nice thought is it not? there is no coercion, just asking the sinner if they would like to discuss and confess their sin.

 

[oliver109]

Christ can speak to him in human form no? i am not referring to the Beatific vision but just a meeting with Christ as he was when he wandered on earth. The soul will not feel compelled to do anything though it would probably feel shame for the terrible things he did in life.

 

[Magnanimity]

Yes. You might be unaware of it, but the Church teaches that the primary ‘torment’ of hell isn’t fire or torture – it’s the knowledge that one is eternally separated from God. In other words, it’s the knowledge that you got what you demonstrated you wanted. And yes… that is love, since the opposite would be tyrannical.

No, a court-order or a family intervention for the substance-abuser is not tyranny. The taking of the car keys for the elderly or the controlling of their spending when they won’t do it themselves is not tyranny. The refusing to allow your child to spend untold hours “gaming” is not tyranny. All of these acts are love toward the one who does not see what is in their own best interest in the moment and who (perhaps) by force of habit find it near impossible to cease doing that which is not in their own best interest.

Hell is, plainly, in no one’s interest, unless you would like to present an argument for how it could be in the interest of a human. Feel free. We humans routinely spare our loves ones from suffering when we are in a position to do so. That’s what love is and does–it ever seeks and works for the good of the other.

but we do have the freedom to choose our actions.

You plainly do not always have such freedom. That is precisely what St Paul was after in Romans 7. He couldn’t have said it any plainer. “What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate…For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want… Who will save me from this body of death?”

Your defense of Hell (as bizarre as it is that anyone would try to defend Hell) hinges on an incredibly strong sense of freewill, a Sartrian expression of freewill. But, such a sense of freewill is not borne out by reality. I gave example after example of the ways in which your freedom is limited and conditioned. If you wish to ignore them, there’s nothing I can say to that.

Blame God for your very existence.

God, not you, is the cause of your existence. And how about your race, gender, IQ, personality-traits, socioeconomic status of your family…did you determine all these things for yourself? And you did this prior to yourself?

 

[oliver109]

While i agree with many of the things you say i am still firmly on the free will camp, if there is a soul that keeps on sinning, never asks for forgiveness, never stops sinning and just simply loves their sin and goes as far as to meet Jesus person to person and encounter him and when Jesus asks him if he wants to stop sinning he says no and says that Heaven would be boring because he cannot murder and cause havoc there, what is God to do? force that soul into Heaven?

 

[Magnanimity]

It’s a good question @oliver109. It’s not that I would attempt to deny freewill. Such a thing is experientially difficult. It’s also philosophically difficult to try to argue that every single thing is determined, that there is no agency in the universe. I don’t believe that at all. All I’m trying to do above is to check the overblown presentation of free will that defenders of Hell promote. It’s the tabula rasa, Sartrian freedom of will that I reject. It’s philosophically problematic to claim that one is always entirely free to do x or not-x. That isn’t the case. Habit enters in, weakness of will enters in, etc, etc. That’s all I was pointing out above.

Although I don’t believe in an inescapable, neverending state of torment, I nevertheless do accept that there will not be equality in heaven. Christ plainly taught that the “first will be last, and the last, first” in heaven. He encouraged his listeners to “store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” Our freedom and what we do with it here and now will entail our status vis-a-vis the Good in the hereafter. So some saints even thought that, even though there is no such thing as an everlasting, inescapable Hell, there is nevertheless a Hell. And folks can be sent there, and they can suffer. But, in the end, all creatures return to their Source. However, that return may not include a beatific vision of God, as will be held by those who have loved God and others here on Earth. Those “wicked” may have only a knowledge of God, rather than a full experience of him.

Anyway, I’m not rejecting freedom of will, just trying to keeping in in its proper context–highly conditioned and limited by all sorts of influences…