@CE: Re hell: There are as many ideas about what hell is as there are minds to interpret the doctrine. Some theologians believe that hell is only a temporary state (something akin to purgatory). Others (Balthasarians) claim that Christ emptied hell after his death and broke its power, so there are no more people in hell at all. The Bible itself is unclear on the issue. If you read the Old Testament wisdom literature, there is a teaching that "the wicked" will be
destroyed. That originally meant destroyed in
this world. Later there is an idea that there will eventually be a resurrection of the dead -- in body. There is no such thing in the Bible as the soul existing seperately from the body. That is a Greek, not a Semitic, idea; and the only place it is found in the Bible is in the book of Wisdom, which is only found in Catholic, not Protestant, bibles. St. Paul also speaks of a resurrection of the dead but he too speaks of the soul and body as one entity. The idea of the soul as being somehow seperate and self-sufficient would have been incomprehensible to him. What I'm trying to say is, all the Bible says on the subject is that all people will be judged on the deeds they did in their earthly lives; and the good will live in peace and the wicked will be "destroyed."
Why do people have such a problem with this? Personally I like the idea of some kind of hell. Because if everyone around here had their way and there was only a heaven with some kind of marsmallow hearts-and-flowers bleeding heart guy running it, Hitler would be there too. You all mean to tell me that you wouldn't like to see guys like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and all the rest of them destroyed or punished for a million years?
Give me a break.
"God sets the conditions." Well, yes. This is his planet, damnit, and he has set some ground rules for it. The point is when you break one of those rules, you ought to own up to it, realize the wrongness of your action, take responsibility like an adult and be sorry. If a person lives their life outside the universal law of love, they are in no condition to stand before Love itself. By their own hatred, their actions of violence and injustice, they close themselves off from the embrace of their Creator.
they are the ones who don't want it. In this way they send themselves to "hell" -- whatever it is.
Re crap: I see your point. But even with outdated cultural things, I would never call that stuff crap. Those seemingly useless or offensive things are invaluable for understanding the context in which things were written. They are the only thing that saves us from calling the entire thing crap. For example, you can look at the treatment of women in the Old Testament and get outraged, and call that crap; but based only on that you can then say the entire work, every verse in every book, is crap. Just because that one thing is. That's wrong. When I say that someone who calls him/herself Catholic or Christian in general must believe in the Bible, I'm talking about the basic moral and theological truths it presents. In order to get to those you have to learn
how and why the books were written. You have to learn how to "weed out," as it were. So none of it is "crap". It all helps with understanding. To use the word "crap" to describe a book that has been pored over and researched by the some of the world's most brilliant minds for thousands of years, debates on which are still raging and will likely never be settled, is egotistical, arrogant, ignorant, and boorish, to put it most kindly.
Maybe it's just a personal quirk I have; but I'm about to spend a fortune getting my Ph.D. in the study of the Bible, and I just don't like to think that I'm leaving home, moving even further away from my boyfriend than I am already, going to a strange place, and spending money I could be saving for my not-getting-any-younger parents, and wracking my brain over ancient languages like Syriac, all for the sake of "crap".
[ 08-17-2001: Message edited by: loner72 ]
