Questions about hell

Magical Realist

Magical Realist

Valued Senior Member
The Bible says there will be ALOT of people in hell, among them many Christians who didn't expect to be there at all:

Matthew 7:

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.

14 But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ 23 Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers."

So who all is going to hell? I want to know if I'm on that list. And what must I do to stay out of hell?

Hell-is-a-massive-furnace.jpg
 
Magical Realist said:
So who all is going to hell? I want to know if I'm on that list. And what must I do to stay out of hell?
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In my view, Jesus intended that hell and heaven are metaphors for the product of certain kinds of thought and behavior. When people are good, we create heaven here on Earth. When people are bad, they make existence bad for everyone.
 
It would be interesting to find out what the concept of Hell corresponds to in Nancey Murphy's back-to-roots interpretation of scripture, since she and her scholarly affiliates consider dualism to have been an erroneous detour resulting from conflation with Platonic thought and later approaches for assimilating pagan cultures into Christianity. I assume that minus the "poor translations", what often wound up as "Hell" would have at least sometimes been rendered as death, grave / pit, an interval of dreamless nonconsciousness ["the dead know not anything"], etc. Apparently Murphy's view of the resurrection relies upon memory information being re-instantiated in a new, decay-resistant body (like software in a computer, a physicalist afterlife, no active soul independent of body).

- - - - - - - - -

In Chapter One, Murphy convincingly shows that there is no such thing as "the" anthropology of the Bible or of the Christian tradition. Murphy argues that the fact that the Bible seems to teach dualism is largely a result of poor translations. Once the translations are repaired, "it is hard to find any clear teaching on the metaphysical make-up of the person" in the Bible at all. (p. 37) The Biblical authors were "interested in the various dimensions of human life, in relationships [to God], not in the philosophical question of how many parts are essential components of a human being." (p. 39) Thus, the door is open to physicalism.
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25082-bodies-and-souls-or-spirited-bodies/

"Most scholars now agree that the New Testament generally supports a holistic and nonreductive physicalist account of the person."
http://www.counterbalance.org/neuro/neuro-print.html

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QUESTION: Some would say the dualistic view was never a biblical view to begin with, though it has long been part of Christian tradition. Do you agree?

NANCEY MURPHY: I follow New Testament scholar James Dunn in holding that the biblical authors were not interested in cataloguing the metaphysical parts of a human being -- body, soul, spirit, mind. Their interest was in relationships. The words that later Christians have translated with Greek philosophical terms and then understood as referring to parts of the self originally were used to designate aspects of human life. For example, spirit refers not to an immaterial something but to our capacity to be in relationship with God, to be moved by God’s Spirit. It is widely agreed that the Hebrew Bible presents a holistic account of human nature, somewhat akin to contemporary physicalism. The New Testament authors certainly knew various theories of human nature, including dualism, but it was not their purpose to teach about this issue.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3310

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NANCEY MURPHY: Well this is a very interesting point of contact between science and Christianity. It may look to the outsider as though Christians have been dualists throughout their history, continue to be dualists…

ROBERT KUHN: Dualists meaning…

NANCEY MURPHY: Believing in not just a body, but some other component, generally called the soul, but the concept of soul at certain points in history is equivalent to the concept of mind. So a dualist is a person has been thought to be essential to Christianity. Now it looks as though the neuroscientists are coming along and they’re saying, ah, there is no soul, in fact there is no substantial mind. It’s actually the brain or the nervous system that does all of the things that were once attributed to soul or mind. So it looks like yet another place where science encroaches and religion has to step back. But in the, in the liberal half of Christianity, those who have a higher degree in theology are almost all phsyicalists.

MICHAEL SCHERMER: Really?

ROBERT KUHN: Physicalist meaning that there is no…

NANCEY MURPHY: We’re just bodies.

ROBERT KUHN: There is no non-physical element required to make us human beings.

NANCEY MURPHY: We’re just bodies. That’s right.

[...]

NANCEY MURPHY: . . . I am committed to saying that both are mental capacities and also are spiritual capacities, I don't talk about spirit as an entity or substance, but spiritual capacities emerge from our complex neural equipment, in a social/cultural context.

ROBERT KUHN: Back to Michael’s question about resurrection, which you do believe in. How does that occur?

NANCEY MURPHY: That is the part of Christian theology that we could say the least about. Our only reason to believe it is going to happen is first, a moral argument that there seems to need to be some life after death if there is going to be justice in the universe. That has led to the invention both of the concept of resurrection of the body and also the concept of an immortal soul that lives on after death. But the only reason Christians have for believing that resurrection is going to happen is the model of Jesus been raised from the dead, and the only clue we've got about what that’s supposed to be like is a set of strangely conflicting stories about what the resurrected person of Jesus was like.

MICHAEL SCHERMER: What if he was, you know, in sort of a comatose state for three days due to an epileptic seizure or some such thing?

NANCEY MURPHY: That would be comparable to the resuscitation of a corpse, and the resurrection body is not material in the same way, it’s not material of the same kind of material that we know.

ROBERT KUHN: But you certainly believe that people who have died, as Christians at this point are dead, they’re unconscious, they’re non-conscious, they don't exist until they may or may not be resurrected in the future.

NANCEY MURPHY: Right, there is no part of us that continues to exist after death.

ROBERT KUHN: And that God would have to resurrect the body and recreate your thought patterns.

NANCEY MURPHY: Basically, yes, re-create us in a different form, a whole different world, because otherwise we would be equally subject to corruption and decay as we are in this life.

www.pbs.org/kcet/closertotruth/transcripts/302_sciencereligion.pdf
 
Having once been a Seventh Day Adventist I'm familiar with all the ways to scripturally support the nonexistence of a soul or spirit in humans. The returning to the Hebrew "sheol" for the grave and to the Greek "gehenna" for the trash burning lot outside of Jerusalem. Since then I have reconsidered. The tale of the witch of Endor stands out for example:

11 Then the woman said, “Whom shall I bring up for you?” And he said, “Bring up Samuel for me.” 12 When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice. And the woman spoke to Saul, saying, “Why have you deceived me? For you are Saul!” 13 And the king said to her, “Do not be afraid. What did you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I saw a spirit ascending out of the earth.” 14 So he said to her, “What is his form?” And she said, “An old man is coming up, and he is covered with a mantle.” And Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he stooped with his face to the ground and bowed down. 15 Now Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?” And Saul answered, “I am deeply distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God has departed from me and does not answer me anymore, neither by prophets nor by dreams. Therefore I have called you, that you may reveal to me what I should do.” 16 Then Samuel said: “So why do you ask me, seeing the LORD has departed from you and has become your enemy? 17 And the LORD has done for Himself as He spoke by me. For the LORD has torn the kingdom out of your hand and given it to your neighbor, David. 18 Because you did not obey the voice of the LORD nor execute His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore the LORD has done this thing to you this day. 19 Moreover the LORD will also deliver Israel with you into the hand of the Philistines. And tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. The LORD will also deliver the army of Israel into the hand of the Philistines.” 20 Immediately Saul fell full length on the ground, and was dreadfully afraid because of the words of Samuel."--1 Samuel 23

Then there were two occasions in the gospels where Jesus was mistaken for a ghost. Once when he was walking on the sea and the disciples were afraid he might be one. And another time when he appeared to them after the resurrection indoors and had Thomas thrust his hand in his side wound to prove he wasn't a ghost. Then there's the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in which both are depicted going into heavenly and hellish afterlife states. So while the official doctrines of christianity may not explicitly lay out anything like an immortal soul, there's certainly grounds for thinking it was still a popular folk belief back then among the Jewish people. In fact there's not a culture on earth that doesn't believe in spirits in one form or another. As for hell, many interpret it as just the land of the dead, much like Hades in Greek mythology. But Jesus definitely believed in hell as a place of burning and torment(see below). That's what probably lead to the later Christian doctrine of eternal hell, especially as described as a lake of fire and brimstone in Revelation.

Matthew 25:30,41 - "And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [...] 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
 
Magical Realist said:
Matthew 25:30,41 - "And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. [...] 41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
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Speaking of those 7th-DA, Jehovah's Witnesses, Herbert Armstrong camps that deviated from convention.... I vaguely recollect the latter making the claim that the "everlasting fire" was intended primarily for Satan and the fallen angels as stated, while resurrected humans which received the short end of Judgment simply died again and burned up as normally expected (dead for good). Though they got to linger beforehand on the border of inferno territory for some minutes or hours, suffering from the wafting heat and undesired knowledge of falling into it eventually, as conflation with another passage in a different book of the Bible, and its particular spin, supposedly indicated.

Sometimes it was construed that the Devil and his angels, because of their immortality, were indeed tortured forever; and other times that the "everlasting" part of the flame was symbolic for the perpetual, internal mental torment they experienced from that point on after a merely finite chastising. Curious consequences fall out of the scenario, though: That despite being spiritual / supernatural beings, they can feel pain from fire. And contrary to Nancey Murphy's physicalist interpretation of a "new body that never decays" for the resurrected humans, the bodies of these condemned folk would nevertheless disintegrate in the fire like their former ones. Of course, she adds that the resurrected chosen would also reside in "a new world" with different laws or somesuch; basically sounds like the equivalent of 20th century virtual reality injected into the post-Revelation era. Though I'm sure she avoids narrowly specifying what is meant.
 
I've always like the parable of the sheeps and goats.


Matthew 25:31-46

New International Version (NIV)
The Sheep and the Goats

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
 
turk said:
I've always like the parable of the sheeps and goats.


Matthew 25:31-46

New International Version (NIV)
The Sheep and the Goats

31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

34 “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”
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I like that one too. You can drop all the beliefs and doctrines and rituals of religion and still find the essence of spirituality distilled right here. Compassion and service for your fellowman. It doesn't get any better than this.
 
Magical Realist said:
The Bible says there will be ALOT of people in hell, among them many Christians who didn't expect to be there at all:
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The hellish part will be the overcrowding - and having to explain to the Christians what Christianity is all about. I'm not looking forward to that.
 
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