God the torturer?
J.P. HOLDING RUNS an impressively huge Christian apologetics site called Tektonics. (Christ was a tekton -- an architect.) He has saved my bacon in many an online debate with atheists, skeptics or Eastern mysticalists challenging the truth or authority of the Bible. However, he's not immune from error. Here's my recent email to him.
I have had occasion to visit your site several times in the last several years and I consider it pretty impressive! My latest visit (via a link from CRI) led me, somehow, to your article "The Crucifixion, the Nature of Hell, and Shame." was hoping to find a different answer from the standard defense of the "eternal torment" idea which dissatisfies skeptics, and increasingly, believers such as myself. I'm wondering why you seem not to have considered the unequivocal OT view that human life ends -- i.e., actually ends completely and totally -- at death? And the concomitant emphasis on our total dependence upon future resurrection -- as opposed to the notion that we are inherently "immortal souls" that are somehow entitled to live on forever?
I looked in vain for an indication that you considered the original meanings of the words such as nephesh (often rendered "soul") and sheol and hades (often rendered "hell"). As you know, nephesh does not denote or even connote anything that lives on after death, nor necessarily anything spiritual: it is applied to animals as well as to human and translated variously as "life," "breath," or "being." You also must be aware that sheol and hades denote the grave, where life ceases; not some underworldly or otherworldly place of eternal life in conscious torment! Whereas gehenna was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem, where refuse was tossed -- and completely burned up, as opposed to surviving forever in flaming torment.
Not only the terms, but the scriptures in their context, and OT and NT eschatology, point overwhelmingly to the sequence: individual death; "sleep" in the grave; return of Christ; then (and only then), collective resurrection of the dead from their graves. This leaves no possibility of anyone being either in heaven or hell at present. Note, this sequence is given in apocalyptic passages as well as non-apocalyptic (such as I Cor 15).
God says he will "remember" the work of his hands (us), and quite literally -- from his infinite memory he can reconstitute the mind and personality of each and every one of us, and place them inside new bodies. Therefore, there is no need for "souls" to survive death: our Creator is 100% capable of re-creating us when the time comes.
Seeing that human life is mortal and dependent upon God's sustaining will, if God should withdraw his presence, then life must cease to be altogether. This is precisely what is portrayed as the ultimate fate of the wicked: "the second death." This is the wages of sin: death -- not eternal life in unhappiness. (Eternal life, rather, is a gift from God -- not an inherent quality of being.)
This is my view since it is the plain teaching of scripture, rather than an esoteric and difficult reading based on mistranslations and imported Platonic ideas. Also, it happily allows God to be what he tells us he is: a God of love rather than a cruel torturer. The one who said of his own murder at the hands of hateful schemers, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," could never consign someone to infinite, never-ending torture (whether physical flame or psychological anguish) for the few finite sins committed in just a flash of time passed here on earth. Rather, those whom he cannot save (and I truly doubt that at the end there will be many -- if any at all), he will mercifully put out of their misery or simply leave them as they are -- dead and buried.
I urge you to consider this as it is evident that it has escaped your attention.
I have had occasion to visit your site several times in the last several years and I consider it pretty impressive! My latest visit (via a link from CRI) led me, somehow, to your article "The Crucifixion, the Nature of Hell, and Shame." was hoping to find a different answer from the standard defense of the "eternal torment" idea which dissatisfies skeptics, and increasingly, believers such as myself. I'm wondering why you seem not to have considered the unequivocal OT view that human life ends -- i.e., actually ends completely and totally -- at death? And the concomitant emphasis on our total dependence upon future resurrection -- as opposed to the notion that we are inherently "immortal souls" that are somehow entitled to live on forever?
I looked in vain for an indication that you considered the original meanings of the words such as nephesh (often rendered "soul") and sheol and hades (often rendered "hell"). As you know, nephesh does not denote or even connote anything that lives on after death, nor necessarily anything spiritual: it is applied to animals as well as to human and translated variously as "life," "breath," or "being." You also must be aware that sheol and hades denote the grave, where life ceases; not some underworldly or otherworldly place of eternal life in conscious torment! Whereas gehenna was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem, where refuse was tossed -- and completely burned up, as opposed to surviving forever in flaming torment.
Not only the terms, but the scriptures in their context, and OT and NT eschatology, point overwhelmingly to the sequence: individual death; "sleep" in the grave; return of Christ; then (and only then), collective resurrection of the dead from their graves. This leaves no possibility of anyone being either in heaven or hell at present. Note, this sequence is given in apocalyptic passages as well as non-apocalyptic (such as I Cor 15).
God says he will "remember" the work of his hands (us), and quite literally -- from his infinite memory he can reconstitute the mind and personality of each and every one of us, and place them inside new bodies. Therefore, there is no need for "souls" to survive death: our Creator is 100% capable of re-creating us when the time comes.
Seeing that human life is mortal and dependent upon God's sustaining will, if God should withdraw his presence, then life must cease to be altogether. This is precisely what is portrayed as the ultimate fate of the wicked: "the second death." This is the wages of sin: death -- not eternal life in unhappiness. (Eternal life, rather, is a gift from God -- not an inherent quality of being.)
This is my view since it is the plain teaching of scripture, rather than an esoteric and difficult reading based on mistranslations and imported Platonic ideas. Also, it happily allows God to be what he tells us he is: a God of love rather than a cruel torturer. The one who said of his own murder at the hands of hateful schemers, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do," could never consign someone to infinite, never-ending torture (whether physical flame or psychological anguish) for the few finite sins committed in just a flash of time passed here on earth. Rather, those whom he cannot save (and I truly doubt that at the end there will be many -- if any at all), he will mercifully put out of their misery or simply leave them as they are -- dead and buried.
I urge you to consider this as it is evident that it has escaped your attention.
posted by Church Trek at 10:43 PM
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