Posted on 03/27/2007 10:53:30 AM PDT by Mount Athos
Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope has said.
Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, Benedict XVI said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to “admit blame and promise to sin no more”, they risked “eternal damnation — the Inferno”.
Hell “really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more”, he said.
The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of Catholic doctrine, noted that “forgiveness of sins” for those who repent was a cornerstone of Christian belief. He recalled that Jesus had forgiven the “woman taken in adultery” and prevented her from being stoned to death, observing: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”
God had given men and women free will to choose whether “spontaneously to accept salvation . . . the Christian faith is not imposed on anyone, it is a gift, an offer to mankind”.
Vatican officials said that the Pope — who is also the Bishop of Rome — had been speaking in “straightfoward” language “like a parish priest”. He had wanted to reinforce the new Catholic catechism, which holds that Hell is a “state of eternal separation from God”, to be understood “symbolically rather than physically”.
Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, a Church historian, said that the Pope was “right to remind us that Hell is not something to be put on one side” as an inconvenient or embarrassing aspect of belief.
It had been misused in the Middle Ages to scare the impressionable with “horrific visions” of damnation, as described in Dante’s Inferno.
It had a pedigree, however, that went back to Ancient Egypt and the Greek idea of Hades, and was described by St Matthew as a place of “everlasting fire” (Matthew xxv, 41).
“The problem is not only that our sense of sin has declined, but also that the world wars and totalitarianisms of the 20th century created a Hell on Earth as bad as anything we can imagine in the afterlife,” Professor Bagliani said.
In 1999 Pope John Paul II declared that Heaven was “neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but that fullness of communion with God which is the goal of human life.” Hell, by contrast, was “the ultimate consequence of sin itself . . . Rather than a place, Hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy”.
In October the Pope indicated that limbo, supposed since medieval times to be a “halfway house” between Heaven and Hell, inhabited by unbaptised infants and holy men and women who lived before Christ, was “only a theological hypothesis” and not a “definitive truth of the faith”.
Timely visions
— “Outer darkness . . . there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” St Matthew
There is plenty of evidence that Christ existed. A good place to start is with the book "The Case for Christ" by Lee Strobel.
Oops, that post above was supposed to go to mugs.
Heh heh. I guess it is kinda hard to have a "good" picture of hell, now that you say it that way.
Are you saying that once in Hell, you could, in theory, accept Salvation and leave? Or once in, there is no escape?
Look, the answer is: I really don't know. Some of the church fathers (Origen, for one) postulated something like the emptying of hell due to the final rescue of all men. I don't buy it, and there are verses that seem to me to militate against it, but it isn't like he had not read the same verses. We can say this... THERE WILL NEVER BE A TIME, NOW OR IN ETERNITY WHEN A MAN IN FAITH LOOKS TO CHRIST FOR HIS FORGIVENESS AND IT IS DENIED. That answer begs a few questions, but as far as the justice and mercy of God goes, that is enough for now.
That answer is unbiblical. Sorry, but it just is. You can no more "atone for your sin" than you can sprout wings and fly to Mars for the weekend. Salvation is from God alone, and he doesn't need you or me screwing it all up with our "atoning."
Your point about it not being "fair" is very true. However, when you and I get to the judgment seat of God, I guarantee you we don't want "FAIR" we want mercy. "FAIR" means we all go straight to hell, with not a word to say in our defense (unlike here on earth, where men argue from moral ignorance of their own condition). We leave "fair" at the cross of Christ. It is mercy, grace and unearned favor. Nothing else.
So you are saying the non-Christian victims of the Khmer, who you believe are doomed to eternal suffering, are being treated in a loving and merciful way?
No worries.
I could go with that. Look, I don't mind a little barbequeing of such lights as Pol Pot, Adolph, etc. for a reasonable length of time - a century, tops. But FOREVER?? Not merciful and loving.
So your answer was "yes" to the first part, but not the bolded part.
As for whether I believe they, the victims, are doomed to eternal suffering...that is not for me to decide...it is between them and God..
It IS for you to decide what you believe. That's free will, right? So what is YOUR BELIEF on the eternal fate of the massacred Cambodians- the vast majority of whom were non-Christian?
Of course. But that does not address my question about your belief. What do you think happens to the Khmer victims, based on reading your Bible?
What I think they deserve is incosequetial...
That's true, but I didn't ask what you thought they deserved - I asked what you believed their eternal fate would be. You had no trouble saying what you believed would happen to repentant Khmer murderers. Why the reticence about their victims?
But we are told over and over that unless we are baptized and unless we accept JC as our Lord and Saviour, that we cannot enter the gates of heaven.
Is this true or not?
I hope you are right. The trouble is that by the time we find out for sure, it will be too late to change anything.
I'm not sure why you would hope I'm right. Doesn't your Bible say that that is what happens? If God tortures non-Christian people forever, then I would think it would be the right thing to do - at least from a Bible-believing Christian's point of view.
In this case God has an advantage over man in enforcing their respective laws.
Man can only enforce activities that are detected.
God can peer into the heart and see the intentions and internal struggles, and give due credit where the struggle was unsuccessful, but honestly fought.
Did I get it right?
It was. We didn't get an order, but I think we developed a key business relationship.
Sweet dreams, and thanks for the clearest explanation I've gotten of that in my 54 years.
You DID tell us your belief, but you are not owning up to it.
How God will judge them I can only speculate upon....I do not, and will not, pretend to know the answer to their fate..
Once again, yes you do. You do so in the next paragraph:
...other than accepting Christ as one's saviour... I believe we are all condemned....
Now, if you believe we are all condemned as our default setting, and the Khmer victims were not Christian - then you must believe they're condemned. How can you maintain otherwise?
You appear to believe that actions can save your soul...or destroy it....Or you may be an atheist and you are attempting to goad me....
I don't know where you got either one of those from. I was asked earlier by another poster: "What do YOU think happens to babies who die before the age of reason?"
My reply in post #379 was:
"Same thing that happens to anyone who dies after the age of reason - whatever that is. My best guess is that there is a God, and a continuation of our consciousness."
These are unbiblical pictures of men, God, and hell, and until you are willing to give them up, you will go on consoling yourself that you have the moral high ground and will retreat from this thread and other interactions having lied to yourself until you can self righteously announce (again?) that "I could never believe in such an awful God."
I say this, because you persist in niggling over the same points which have been addressed (some in posts directly to you), refuting the false premises you keep relying on, specifically the idea that the eternal state of damned people resides in the unwillingness of God to accept repentance, rather than the eternal unwillingness of men to repent. Men go to hell because they CHOOSE to do so, and they CHOOSE to do such a horrible and stupid thing because it appears better (or more desireable) than to surrender their pride, acknowledge the justice of God, and ask for His mercy, which He freely offers in Christ. Their choice throughout eternity is simply an affirmation of the same choice they make now. You seem to be flabbergasted by the idea that men would knowingly do such a thing for eternity in hell, which (again) shows that you have a very naive view of the state of the human heart in its sin.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.