www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Regarding Hell

First off, let me preface by stating that i know that Wikipedia is sometimes a poor source for anything.

I came across a page on Wikipedia about East-West theological differences and there was a section discussion the understanding of hell in the East and West and the distinction between the two.

the sub-section is here:
Wikipedia - Distinctions on hell [en.wikipedia.org]

One of the ideas presented is that hell is the "lowest form of salvation" so that everyone, in eternity, is always in the presence of God. However, hell becomes the self that excludes God's presence. Heaven and Hell exist at the same place, which is with God.

This idea is new to me, and is very challenging to accept.

I wonder if, perhaps, the Apocatastasis that St. Gregory of Nyssa taught approached this understanding.

First of all, is the wikipedia text an accurate representation of Eastern Christainity's theology of hell?

Knowing this, I'm not quite sure what to do with the concept of hell that I have leared as a Latin-Rite Catholic.
This seems to be quite a shift in perspective. It has me wondering what this means.

Thoughts? Comments?

http://aggreen.net/beliefs/heaven_hell.html
I found this article, which looks as if it were quoted in Wikipedia.

This is a fascinating essay.

I think this is a good article in regards to its explanation of heaven and hell; however, I object to its characterization of the Western view. I held to the view of heaven and hell as experiences of God's presence when I was Evangelical and later Reformed. My friends who are mostly Reformed hold this view also. While I would agree that the traditional language and imagery of heaven and hell suggest differing places (how are we as spatial creatures not to picture it as such?)and acknowledge that there are many people not theologically informed who believe that hell is a place, to suggest that it is formally the Western view is incorrect.

Gregg

I'd give a million bucks if the apokatastasis were true, but I have no reason to think it is.

Is it true the Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in hell as much as in the utter, ultimate annihilation of the wicked? Ontologically speaking, that'd be even worse than hell.

https://www.byzcath.org/forums/ubbt...e_Do_You_Believe_In_A_Literal#Post280682

Try this link to a previous thread.

The wikipedia article stated something that I found very shocking. It said:


'God is the savior of all humans, indeed of the faithful' (1 Tim. 4:10). In other words hell is a form of salvation although the lowest form of it(emphasis mine). God loves the Devil and his collaborators but destroys their work."[197][198][199]

If hell is truly the lowest form of salvation, then that could fit into the understanding of apocatastasis (since even the damned are "saved" when looked at from a certain perspective). However, it seems to me that one has to do some gymnastics with the meaning of words in order to get this meaning to fit. It seems quite contrary to intuition that hell could, in any way, be considered salvation. To me, this is a very contraversial statement.

For clarification, references 198 and 199, I have also posted below.



198. ^ "Hell is the torment of the love of God. Besides, as St. Isaac says, the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against the love of God, 'is more poignant than any fear of punishment'. It really is a punishment when we deny and oppose anyone's love. It is terrible when we are loved and we behave inappropriately. If we compare this to the love of God, we can understand the torment of Hell. And it is connected with what St. Isaac says again, that it would be improper for a man to think 'that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God'. So even those being punished will receive the love of God. God will love all men, both righteous and sinners, but they will not all feel this love at the same depth and in the same way. In any case it is absurd for us to maintain that Hell is the absence of God" (Metropolitan Hierotheos, op. cit.).

199. ^ "God himself is both heaven and hell, reward and punishment. All men have been created to see God unceasingly in His uncreated glory. Whether God will be for each man heaven or hell, reward or punishment, depends on man's response to God's love and on man's transformation from the state of selfish and self-centered love, to Godlike love which does not seek its own ends" (John S. Romanides, Empirical Theology versus Speculative Theology).

I think this is in line with the thought that it is better to exist than be destroyed entirely.

is it better to be eternally in hell than to be destroyed entirely?

Me, I'd hate to find out.

The God is our Hell presentation, based on Isaac the Syrian, has become popular in recent decades and is often presented as a morally superior construal of Hell than the more traditional Hell is punishment position. Yet is it?

In both cases the damned sinner is condemned to eternal anguish and agony, a terrible suffering that is both permitted by God, sustained by God, and ordained by God. Does it really matter that the suffering and torments of the damned is caused by their rejection of the divine love rather than by demons with pitchforks? Their sufferings are still terrible, eternal, unceasing, without relief.

And so we are still left with the question: How can a loving God permit and indeed ontologically sustain this kind of ceaeless suffering?

Fr Kimel,

I think that would be a misconstruing of St Isaac's position. St Isaac taught that the punishment of Gehenna was age-long, but not eternal in the absolute sense of the term. (In the Bible, the normal use of the words olam and aionios do not mean eternal in our sense, as is seen in the "everlastingness" of circumcision, the Sabbath, etc.) Hence he could believe that God's will to save all is absolute; that all punitive judgement is subordinate to that universally salvific will; and that the ultimate result of the two-fold judgement would be repentance and salvation to those who are now wicked.

I believe it would be a better representation of St Isaac's teaching that some are being saved now (the first fruits) and some will be saved later (the final fruits).

So many things about God are mysterious and beyond comprehension. We may never know how God, Who is Love, can permit the sufferings of hell. But I also know that God is good, merciful, and that He loves us ever so much more (and so much more perfectly) than we love ouselves or our relatives and friends; that He desires our salvation and eternal beatitude ever so much more than we ourselves do; that He is constantly looking for ways to enter into our souls and bring us all to as much union with Him as possible - well, knowing all that and being totally convinced of it - that rather delivers me from gnawing on the question of how He permits the eternal, punitive sufferings of hell.

"O my Jesus,
forgive us our sins;
save us from the fires of hell;lead all souls to heaven,
especially those in most need of Thy mercy."

The Polish National Catholic Church holds a view of universal salvation. I am not real familiar with it but there position seems to be that there is no hell but there is a purgatory where all those unworth of entry immediately into heaven will atone for their sins.

Father Damick in one of his podcasts from Orthodox and Heterodoxy on Ancient Faith radio says that Orthodoxy does not hold that all people will have eternal life. As I understood him good believers can go to heaven evil ones to hell and others just do not exist after death.

I could have completely missed his point but,anyway his podcasts are really good and I would recommend them to anyone.

And Hell is worse than this? Or this is better than Hell?

The human mind has constructed all sorts of ideas about life after death over millenia and across cultures and civilizations. The idea that one would simply cease to exist is probably the most feared and most repugnant of all to human beings. Talk about the ultimate insult--that this existence, frought with so much injustice, is all there is?!?! That's the very reason people often give in their suicide notes for giving up the earthly struggle.

Bob

This is my personal view on the subject. From a note on my Facebook page. ~Stanford Espedal

I have good hope that all will eventually be saved, reconciled to God in Christ and his Church. In the Catholic Church today it is considered a legitimate theologoumenon (theological opinion) to hold universal salvation as a matter of ultimate hope. I wish in the following paragraphs to demonstrate that the grounds for this hope are considerable.

I begin with three propositions, all of which appear to be scripturally based, but which are not logically consistent with each other, if each is taken absolutely at face value:

1.God, in his love for mankind, wills all people to be saved.
2.God's will, which is omnipotent, cannot fail to achieve it's purpose.
3.Some people (many in fact) will not be saved, but will suffer eternal punishment.

Clearly, there is a logical contradiction here. If propositions 1 & 2 are true, then 3 must be rejected or modified. On the other hand, if proposition 3 is true, then either 1 or 2 must be rejected or modified.

In the history of theology, three distinct systems of thought have resulted from this logical problem: universalism, synergism, and Augustinian predestination.

Universalists hold that God's very nature is love (1 John 4: 8; 16). Love is the absolute simplicity of his triune being. Hence he loves all whom he has created in his own image, and his loving plan for eternity is to include every last one in the perichoresis (circle dance) of the Trinity; all are to eventually attain theosis (sharing in the life of God). Further, being almighty, he “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1: 11); with God “all things are possible” (Matthew 19: 26). Universal salvation is the inescapable conclusion one must come to if the first two propositions above are true. Therefore in this way of thinking #3 is modified. Divine punishment is not denied – it is strongly affirmed – but is seen as redemptive, since all God's ways are love.

On the other hand, synergism maintains propositions 1 & 3, but denies #2. Synergists hold that God wills that all human beings be saved. But they deny that God's will to save all is never defeated. They argue that God has such regard for man's free will that he invites all to be saved, but compels no one. Christ stands at the door and knocks, but each soul must freely open to him. And those who to the end of their life refuse to receive and cooperate with the grace of our Lord will suffer endless torment.

Finally, the Augustinian doctrine of predestination rejects the plain meaning of proposition 1 in order to hold 2 & 3. Augustinians deny that God wills the salvation of all, since then he would have willed something which does not come to pass – a blasphemous notion. They interpret the statement, "God will have all men to be saved" (1 Timothy 2: 4) to mean that God's will is the sole source of salvation for all his elect. In his unconditional mercy God has predestined a certain number of human beings to eternal beatitude, and to them alone he grants the efficacious grace which infallibly brings about their conversion and salvation. But the rest of mankind, which is a massa perditionis (a ruined lump) due to original and actual sin, will suffer in the unquenchable fire of hell, and will do so in perfect justice.

I have embraced the hope of universal salvation because the teachings about the nature and character of God set forth in the first two of our three propositions are of far greater weight and importance in Scripture and Tradition than the proposition about eternal punishment. The latter can and ought to be understood in the light of the first two. When Scripture speaks of “eternal punishment”, it does not mean endless torment. Remember that God declared circumcision, the Sabbath, and the whole of the Old Covenant to be “eternal” or “everlasting” (Hebrew: Olam, Greek: Aionios). Yet these divine ordinances all came to an end, once it pleased God to fulfill their intended purpose. The normal meaning of both these words is age-long. Only in reference to God do they mean eternal in the absolute sense. Only God is eternal. And God is Love. Eternal punishment does not mean burning forever in hell (impossible for an all-loving God to inflict), but rather a chastisement in the age to come, of which the eternal God himself is both the causal source and the final end. God, in perfect love, imposes remedial punishments in order to forever destroy all sin in us, and prepare each soul for the vision of his glory. When these things have been accomplished, God will be "all in all." (1 Corinthians 15: 28)

Opponents of universal restoration like to make a big deal of the parallelism of aionios (everlasting) in Matthew 25: 46: “And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just into everlasting life.” This is a weak argument. The word translated “punishment” which aionios modifies is kolasis, which means corrective punishment (as distinct from timoria, which means vindictive punishment). But if corrective punishment goes on literally forever without end, we have the ultimate failure of both God and man: God fails, despite his omnipotence, to achieve man's correction and salvation; and man fails, despite his his God-given freedom, to be corrected and reconciled to his Creator. This is absurd!

Our Lord Jesus Christ warned us about the terrible pain of punishment in Gehenna, which we should be willing to lose life or limb to escape (Matt. 5: 21 – 30). Yet in this very context he also declared that such punishment will have an end: "Amen I say to thee, thou wilt not come out of it till thou hast paid the last penny" (Matt. 5: 26). Eventually that "last penny" will be paid and the chastened soul will be delivered into the life of the Kingdom of God. For in truth, only God is eternal, and the life which is participation in His divine nature is likewise eternal, but divine chastising punishment must have its end in the sinner's salvation. Then will be the final restoration delineated in 1 Corinthians 15: 20-28.

I give the last word to Saint Clement of Alexandria (c. A.D. 150 – 220): "For either the Lord does not care for all men; and this is the case either because he is unable (which is not to be thought, for it would be a proof of weakness), or because he is unwilling, which is not the attribute of a good being. And he who for our sakes assumed flesh capable of suffering, is far from being luxuriously indolent. Or he does care for all, which is befitting for him who has become Lord of all. For he is Saviour; not [the Saviour] of some, and of others not.

And how is he Saviour and Lord, if not the Saviour and Lord of all? But he is the Saviour of those who have believed, because of their wishing to know; and the Lord of those who have not believed, till, being enabled to confess him, they obtain the peculiar and appropriate boon which comes by him.

And, on the other hand, he is in no respect whatever the cause of evil. For all things are arranged with a view to the salvation of the universe by the Lord of the universe, both generally and particularly. It is then the function of the righteousness of salvation to improve everything as far as practicable. For even minor matters are arranged with a view to the salvation of that which is better, and for an abode suitable for people's character. Now everything that is virtuous changes for the better; having as the proper cause of change the free choice of knowledge, which the soul has in its own power. But necessary corrections, through the goodness of the great overseeing Judge, both by the attendant angels, and by various acts of anticipative judgment, and by the perfect judgment, compel egregious sinners to repent." (From The Stromata, or Miscellanies, Book VII, chapter 2; in Ante Nicene Fathers, Vol. 2.)