So, this is something I've written about before, and these thoughts are what gave me the courage, back in junior high, to begin the dogma in which I had been raised. A note here: none of the below applies to universalists or annihilationists. Universalists (and, yes, there is a biblical case for this) believe that Hell is temporary and that, eventually, God will succeed in his mission to reconcile all unto himself. Annihilationists (there's a biblical case for this as well) argue that, when you die, it's lights out . . . no afterlife at all unless you are saved, in which case you will be resurrected from the grave. What I talk about here is specifically about the more traditional view among Christians that there is an eternal heaven and an eternal hell. When you die, there's no changing that. You go where you go and that's where you will stay for eternity. (Though I never understood how Satan could fall from heaven if that were the case . . . how can it be possible for an angel to fall from heaven, but no human soul can fall from heaven and no human soul in hell can rise?) My argument is that, if this is how the afterlife works, then there is no heaven. There are only two separate hells. And I can't even tell which one is worse. If I go to "heaven," I will still experience eternal torture because I will have the knowledge that others, including my loved ones, are being tortured for eternity due to the rules that the being I'm now praising for eternity set up. The only way to make this if there is some sort of spiritual lobotomy, removing my knowledge of hell or my compassion and rending everyone in heaven functionally a psychopath lacking all empathy/agape. I've had a lot of really disturbing responses to this dilemma in the past. One campus evangelist even told me that one of the greatest joys in heaven will be that we will be able to constantly WITNESS the torture of those in hell. Of course, this guy also said he wasn't sure whether or not we should start executing homosexuals again . . . that he was torn on the subject. The most well-meaning Christians tell me that, well, just try to save everyone you can! . . . that doesn't solve my dilemma. Even if I managed to convince every single person I spoke with to be saved, I'm still faced with my dilemma. Anyway, I'm curious to hear peoples' thoughts.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but this isn't your dilemma, is it? It's the dilemma that confronts those who believe in Hell, eternal damnation and perhaps eternal suffering. You mentioned the various "schools" of thought about this - universalist, annihilationist and traditionalist - so I would submit that traditionalists need to revisit where their tradition came from, and I think they would be relieved to find out: All of this might come as a shock to some, but it shouldn't. The mistranslation of scripture has been a feature of the scripture Westerners have been reading since the publication of Jerome's sloppy translation of the Bible into the Latin Vulgate in the early 5th Century AD. Since then, even more errors occurred and liberties taken as Biblical scripture was translated by the likes of William Tyndale into English, etc.. And then you have the corruption of Christian doctrine by prominent Church authorities such as Augustine of Hippo, whose own beliefs, interpretations and blatant disregard for language became, over time, the traditional beliefs and doctrines we are familiar with today. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps traditionalists need to revisit where their tradition came from, and while that might sound like a radical proposition Christians have been doing it for over 500 years.
Many good points. Also, if I'm not mistaken, I believe the ORIGINAL KJV actually had footnotes regarding the fact that "eternal" could mean something more similar to "lasting for an age."
There are a lot of possibilities to entertain but covering them all would allude to the fact God's ways are higher than our ways. Scripture says "we will be like Him because we will see him as He is". For now, we only see Him as through a "smokey glass". My thoughts are , yardmeat, that when Jesus reveals Himself to us in all His Glory, sin will become so abhorrent we will understand the Justice it deserves. I don't concern myself much with hell. I just concern myself with a God that loves us. He forgives as He sees fit. One way He forgives is through His Son Jesus and whoever believes is forgiven.
I can live with that. I was raised to believe that only those who convert and seek repentance can be forgiven. But I do think there are parts of the Bible that contradict that, showing God forgiving people who HAVEN'T converted or sought forgiveness ("Forgive them, for they know not what they do"). So that's another solution that isn't so bad.
My Mother committed suicide when I was about 28 and a "new believer". Had a Catholic friend tell me "well she's in hell". This is very familiar to me. She had been recovering from a brain tumor removal. I knew how confused she was.....I know God knew. It is way above my pay grade to know if any single individual will be in hell. I do know Jesus said "if anyone trifles with any of these little ones, it would be better for him if a millstone was tied around his neck and thrown into the sea!" There is Grace and we don't all understand it. Sometimes we look at sin in degrees and I don't think God does that. All sin is sin. But there is Grace and that is God's territory. I don't however shy away from the precept we need to accept the provision that Jesus supplied or we will not see heaven when we die. God deals with that not me.
Interesting. I've never read the KJV (much less the original) but I know the translators strived for accuracy and I'm sure James did, as well. Nevertheless, despite their best efforts one can find many cases where the translators erred, thus depriving the reader of an accurate interpretation of Scripture: Ages or Eternity and the King James Version https://tentmaker.org/books/Aion.html Then there is the problematic matter of Tyndale's Bible being a primary source of the KJV, and his translation was riddled with errors, innovations and personal interpretations of the text. The Bibles we read in English are a minefield of mistranslations and misinterpretations that no ordinary reader is going to be able to navigate.
I've got to add more later, but I just realized you were citing Tentmaker! Those folks are awesome! Completely changed my life several years ago with stuff like this.
I must confess that was a happy accident on my part, and I’m glad you mentioned what a positive influence Gary Amirault & Co. had on you because he gets it, and he gets it not only because he understands what Jesus was trying to tell people, he gets it because he did his homework. He studied the texts, he studied what happened to the translations and he studied how Church doctrine was corrupted by men like Augustine of Hippo. Great website, very uplifting, and I had a chance to glance at some of the scholarly work posted there and its excellent. I wish all Christians would read it. Speaking of which, I scanned over one of the books linked to the site, J.W. Hanson’s Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During its First Five Hundred Years, and despite the respect I have for the Ancient Greeks and Romans and their enormous contributions to Western Civilization, I was reminded of how nothing good ever came out of the attempts by the early Church fathers who were enamored with Plato and the Medieval Scholastics who were enamored with Aristotle, to synthesize Greek thought with Christian thought. Look what Augustine did, and I think William of Ockham - the man I consider the Godfather of Libertarianism - did not only Christianity but the West an enormous service when he put an end to the effort to reconcile Greek Rationalism and all its assumptions and acceptance of natural inequality with Jesus’ teachings about individual freedom and equality.
