Hell is not mentioned at all in the Old Testament. As I understand Genesis 3, the punishments for our original transgression, some stated, some implied, are these: (1) Shame; (2) Death (along with disease and pain); (3) pain in childbirth; (4) Inequity between the sexes in marriage; (5) Toil instead of rewarding work; (6) and a fallen nature that produces "thorns and thistles". I confess that these punishments strike me as terribly thorough and sufficient. (I smile when I recall that my Reformed tradition informs us that we ought to be grateful for the mercy God demonstrated on that same day.) So why the need for Hell, that is, everlasting pain and anguish on top of these originally-stated punishments? Virtually no person in the New Testament writes or speaks of Hell at any length save one: Jesus. That our Lord speaks so frequently of Hell is reason enough for me to believe in it, but everything else in Scripture prompts me to believe that we can trust that Hell's role is for justice and not cruelty, and the language Jesus employed to describe Hell was designed for us to take it seriously, not because it is a literal description of the "place."
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6 comments:
The more important a person you sin against, the worse the punishment. If I threaten a regular person, I may just get yelled at or ignored completely. If I threaten the president, I will definitely get more than a scolding. Thus if we sin against the greatest and most important being of all, our punishment will be great. Thus another reason for Hell.
Technoprarie,
God is certainly as "important" to the Jews as the Christians; why not introduce Hell into the original set of punishments? I'm not confident that the analogy you use works here. The greater punishment for threatening the President is employed as a deterrent, not for retribution. And yet I don't know any theology that suggests Hell is a deterrent from sinning, for, according to Reformed theology (at least), we are literally born for Hell until we are saved.
It also strikes me as almost always worse to harm a defenseless person than, say, a strapping full-grown man. God is utterly self-sufficient; surely His well-being cannot rise and fall on one's behavior, so in a genuine sense we literally cannot do Him any real harm. True, God is Holy and we are exceedingly less Holy, but does it follow from that fact that the less Holy being deserves an eternal punishment? I have yet to see an actual argument (as opposed to an assertion) that comes close to being convincing on this point.
More, isn't is odd that persons--whose very Being is contingent upon the sustaining force of God and who have no "right" to be brought into the universe--can somehow be powerful enough to do anything--for good or bad--the impact of which can last through eternity?
So, Hell is a true Christian doctrine, but it doesn't make sense in any ordinary sense of punishment theory. I accept it on authority--altogether on authority--and not on reason. Easily the best explanation of Hell I've seen is C.S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," and that argument is, if one were to take it literally, arguably heretical.
If I may add my two cents...
When God punishes sinners, He generally does not punish according to a retributive theory, but according to a rehabilitative theory. The intended effect of cursing man to toil and to inequity in marriage is to bring him to repentance and to deepen his capacity for love. It is not to counter-balance his sin in some way. The reason for this is that -- as you say -- God is not literally harmed by our sins. We are. Most of His punishments are on the level of a spanking a father gives his child to keep the kid from going after the stove eye again.
Hell is obviously different since it doesn't lead anywhere. For this reason, it doesn't make sense to speak of Hell being "added" to these other "original" punishments. Hell is a different animal entirely.
I think the best explanation I've heard of Hell is basically that we are all either in communion with God according to His covenant or we are not. If, when we die, we are in communion, we continue in communion. If we aren't, then we continue in our separation from God. Eternal separation from God is Hell. Hell is a physical place because all will be restored to their physical bodies at the Second Coming, and it is a wasteland because it does not benefit from God's Providence. Bada bing.
As the C.S. Lewis example illustrates, however, there remains the question of why the possibility of repentance and return to God is foreclosed. I have some thoughts on that as well, but no time to develop them right now.
three thoughts.
1. thanks for your insight here. very nice.
2. good use of Bada bing .
3. you better get back to me on those thoughts you didn't have time here to share with me!
So, I’m getting back with you about those thoughts.
The basic problem is this: Conversion is possible at any time during life, but not after death.
I don’t have an answer, but here are some things to think about.
Thought #1: Time is a thing we deal with in life, but after death, we exist as God exists – in eternity. Time is a prerequisite for change, and if you can’t change, you can’t be converted. (If you accept this argument and also purgatory, then you’ve got to go with the theory of purgatory that says it’s simply a cleansing at the moment of death rather than an actual place like Heaven or Hell.)
Thought #2: Let’s say that, upon death all see God. If you see God and continue to reject Him, what else is there that could work unto your conversion? It’s like in a movie where you drop thirty hydrogen bombs on the giant monster eating your capital city and he keeps on noshing. Everyone looks at each other like “Uh-oh,” and we the audience know that Detroit is doomed (as if it wasn’t already). But this presumes that all see God upon death, and we don’t know that. (Is… is that example blasphemous?)
Thought #3: Here’s a bit of good, old-fashioned Calvinism for you… Christ tells the parable of the wheat and the tares. At harvest, the tares get burned and the wheat gets gathered in. So we’re all predestined one way or another, and death just happens to be harvest time. Yet another way Calvinism makes things much more simple (to make up for all the ways it makes things so much more complicated).
So there you go… my two cents.
i like your two cents. nice.
two comments and a question.
* i like your throwaways. nice. i like that kind of writing.
* poor detroit.
* how is it that you know so much about god? (that's 40% gentle ribbing and 60% sincere.)
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