I see no problem with Christ saying that God throws people in hell. After all, hell is not irrevocable damnation.
Yes. NTWright identifies (John’s) Babylon as Jerusalem.
This Babylon connection is why I understand Jerusalem’s Ad70 conflagration, aka “the lake of fire” as “the second death” – her first death if you will was her exile in Babylon; “exile” being covenantal or spiritual death. It was from this exile/death that Israel was promised resurrection, i.e., covenant restoration/renewal, and that came in the form or person of Jesus Christ.
Again yes indeed Allan, which is why these texts from John likewise fit in with the reversion scenario… 1Jn 2:19; 4:1; 2Jn 1:7 – these were they who had “turned back” Heb 10:26-27, 29, 39] now to be “twice dead” Jude 1:12], those “having escaped” the OC world of works-righteousness only to be “overcome” again 2Pet 2:1, 20-22], whose end was to be a rather fiery one Heb 6:4-8].
That’s all I was trying to say, yep. 
It’s like when a loving parent says, “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it!” That reflects a real point on which we ought to respect our parents, but that doesn’t mean our mother or father is going to annihilate us or torment us in punishment forever with no hope.
Being cast into Hinnom Valley was the most graphic, emotional, painful personal and corporaate Judgment God had ever inflicted upon the Jews, forever scaring their collective racial memories. It was judgment rooted in the love of God for His people; though terribly painful it was necessary to bring about God’s good plans for them.
Very good point! – I hadn’t even thought of it that way, but Jesus (and the evangelists in commentary) talks about that, too, elsewhere.
Probably because no prophet arose to warn about it and interpret it that way. It’s an interesting question whether God expects His people to think of it that way, though. Jews don’t like to call it the Holocaust (a cleansing sacrifice to God), they prefer to call it the Shoah, but I think that has connection to the binding of Isaac, which hardly seems a good parallel! It’s been a while since I read about that, though, and I may be way off… 
As for who has the power to kill body and soul in Gehenna – just because Matthew adds ‘soul’ here I don’t see why this should refer to God’s annihilating prerogative. ‘Soul’ is used in the OT before there was any concept of Resurrection. It refers to our mental and emotional life. It is God’s sprit that gives life and life in the resurrection and only this is eternal. As for ‘fear’ what does this mean – does it mean be very wary of indeed – does it mean the fear of adoration (I understand the word can mean many different things according to context). Does the Satan have authority - well he has been given authority (whatever this means) an the earth and Gehenna are seen in the NT and in early tradition are seen in a sense begin his kingdoms. But his kingdom is coming to an end – Jesus saw Satan fall like lighting from heaven - the metaphor for the seat of his authority. Jesus unlocks or even batters down the doors of Satan’s’ kingdom by his ascent into Hades.
There’s been a lot of jiggling about with texts on this thread – and I sympathise. In the end I’ve got a reasonable hypothesis here I think – and it chimes with N.T. Wright and Richard who posed the question then left it up in the air).
But my real reason for rejecting outright the idea that God actually sends foreign armies to punish his unfaithful people – no matter that the faithful and the unfaithful, the guilty and the innocent are mixed up together in this, is that of course it leads me to reflections on the Shoah.
I think the answer as to whether God expects his people to see the holocaust this way has to be a resounding No – it has to be for me anyway. Obviously we can find much in the Christian tradition from both Luther and Calvin obviously – that could lead to this interpretation sadly.
Shoah means ‘destruction’ in Hebrew. If it has any connection to the binding of Isaac I know why. There is a minority Jewish tradition from the middle ages which has it that Isaac was actually killed. This tradition dates from liturgies in use at the time when Crusaders massacred Jews in the Rhineland on the way to the Holy Land and because of the terrible deaths that awaited them and their children at the hands of the crusaders Jewish communities would commit suicide and kill their children too after a liturgy about the binding of Isaac.
I know that there was plenty of anti-Semitism amongst conservative Christians prior to the Shoah. I know there is a whole genre grown up in America of the heroic conservative Christians who resisted the Shoah – although the majority of conservative Christians did not and likewise this downplays the heroic efforts by non conservative Christians in resisting the holocaust (and Bonheoffer has even had to be re-baptised as a hellfire believing conservative Christina to make the myth fit together). The cold embrace of Christian Zionism –that still envisages/ looks forwards to two thirds of Jews who do not convert to Christ being slighted at Armaggedon – again is to me a strategy of denial.
As for the God of avenging armies – this God was no help in the Shoah. As Bonheoffer said – only a vulnerable and suffering God who allows himself to be pushed out to the margins can help us now. I think the Shoah should teach both Christians and Jews about the hidden nature of God. God allows evil – and armies plundering and raping and torturing indiscriminately are evil. But God is with us . I cannot believe in the Lord of Armies.
I weep over the belief that God zorches as much as over nay notional belief about God torturing people in eternity. I’m sorry if that sounds intolerant of me but I do.
Dick
G’day Dick…
Under the Old Covenant, and I stress “OLD” covenant, divine judgement/retribution at the hand of “foreign nations” was in deed a reality in accord with stipulated covenant sanctions, as per Deuteronomy and also later ‘the prophets’. For example, the OT testifies to the destructive Assyrian and Babylonian hordes; both these a direct result of covenant disobedience.
You also have in Jesus’ very own “this generation” period the devastation and destruction wrought throughout Palestine and in particular Jerusalem by Rome, AD66-70. So there IS biblical credence for said reckonings. But that said, I must qualify… as a pantelist it is my understanding that with Christ came the end of the old covenant age or “world” and since the AD30-70 “this generation” God’s new age or “world” of GRACE applies humanity-wide, i.e., I give NO PLACE to any thoughts of God judging any nation or peoples, and in particular horrid incidents as the Holocaust etc… such atrocities are man’s doing alone.
That God did deal harshly with many in Israel of old and with those whom Israel wiped out with sanction I can only accept as is, but take solace in the belief that there really is more to LIFE than the temporal years of existence here on Terra firma, as has always been the case.
G’day Davo -
I appreciate you point here. So pantelism is a toe if dispensationalism- only unlike many other forms of dispensationalism where God’s dread violence is still imagined to be coming against GOd’s/our ‘enemies’ (however we conceive of them) pantelism sees the dispensation of violence as a thing of the past, and is basically Lutheran in seeing two dispensations of Law and then Grace/Love, rather than the Scofield multiple ages within three dispensations ? Well apart from all the definitional guff I’ve just spouted 
- you’ll get my drift. If so and if the notion of a the dispensation of violence being in the past mode informs your understanding of Christ, I haven’t got any argument with you in spirit certainly
This passage gives me no terror fear. Nor does it make me question my universalism. It could only do this if your presuppositions coming to this are that hell is eternal and that hell is torture, fire or annhilation. I see Gehenna as the metaphor for God’s Spirit’s fire. God’s judgement that prunes and refines us all. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of God, needing to be judged and refined. Much better to work with Jesus towards what he wants you to be now. But we need not fear ultimately. We are worth more than many sparrows. That is precisely why our Father doesn’t let even the worst of His children continue devolving, but rather refines them in Gehenna.
I’m with you Dick in that I’ve never seen God behind armies that are wiping out the innocent along with the guilty. But then I find some of the OT is written as saga. Not an untrue story, but a story told as saga for the people it was written to, in their time with their understanding. Rather like the laws regarding raped virgins, which sound horrific to us now. But back then likely the women themselves were asking for those marriages, like in the case of Amnon and Tamar. Such was the shame and destitute fate inflicted on women who were no longer virgins.
We will never understand these ancient writings unless we look at them through the cultural lens and understanding of the people they were written for. I don’t see scriptures as the perfect manual to run our lives by, but rather the sacred text of God’s interaction with various peoples, filled with wisdom but also mystery. Great care needs to be taken when applying it concretely to anything, lest we make big mistakes due to either our lack of understanding or the manipulations of unscrupulous leaders. The bible has been used to justify slavery and the abolition of slavery. It can be a two edged sword in our hands.
If I read a scripture that appears to indicate God is unjust, cruel or evil, by His own standards and by the virtues Christ espoused, I assume I’ve misunderstood it and seek to understand how, rather than try to find loopholes around a good, loving god tossing people into eternal fire
The point is that Jesus is contrasting the ones who can only kill the body and do nothing more, to the one who can kill the body and also kill the soul. Apart from resurrection and/or the continuing existence of the spirit, those who kill the body must also be killing the mental and emotional life so far as that naturally goes! There would be no point to making the contrast at all, if the soul here only meant the mental/emotional life of the spirit-inhabited body. Whoever it is Jesus says we’re supposed to fear, it’s someone who can do more than the people whom He says not to fear who can only kill the body – and who cannot throw both body and soul into Gehenna. So Gehenna here also means something more than an earthly grave for bodies.
I fully acknowledge that Jesus might very well mean two different things by the same term for ‘fear’ here.
But obviously Jesus cannot be saying that we ought to adore with numinous ‘fear’ (for want of a better term) Satan or sin! – much less that we ought to numinously adore Satan and/or sin instead of not being safety-wary of those who can only kill the body and after that can do nothing more (like kill/destroy the soul as well as the body, including by throwing both into Gehenna). So to bring up the possibility of distinctive contrasting term usage here only makes sense if God/the Father is the One Whom Jesus means we ought to (numinously) fear instead of those other persons.
Also, I’m somewhat dubious that even early tradition talked about Gehenna being in any sense the beginning of Satan’s kingdom (though that did start showing up later); but I defy anyone to argue from the NT (or even from the OT) that Gehenna is the beginning of Satan’s kingdom. Or that it refers to Satan’s kingdom at all (end or middle or whatever).
As I mentioned earlier upthread, NTW thinks this is referring to annihilation or at least to the preteristic fall of Jerusalem (he certainly doesn’t think the two ideas are mutually exclusive); but he elsewhere acknowledges and insists that God is the one Who annihilates, and I’m pretty sure he acknowledges God to be the authority behind the fall of Jerusalem.
I will also note that if these two parallel sayings (at somewhat different times and circumstances) are not meant to be prophetic of the fall of Jerusalem (and I don’t think they are), then of course they aren’t referring to God sending armies to destroy Jerusalem; so concluding that God is the one Jesus expects us to fear wouldn’t involve an example of that (in this case. I have to agree that God is treated elsewhere as the authority for the coming fall of Jerusalem.)
That is certainly a problem, but the texts do talk about God being the authority for that (even if not these particular texts).
I don’t think it sounds intolerant of you; and I’m pretty sure it’s better to weep over that belief than otherwise.
But as I was discussing over in another related thread, there are good theological reasons for God to insist on being authoritatively responsible even for allowing such things to happen.
And even then, the Shoah can only be baptized as a ‘Holocaust’ if God Himself is suffering with His people; and completely aside from whether what happened to the Nazi victims was sent as a specific punishment from God (for which we have no prophetic reason), God must suffer with those who fell in Jerusalem, too.
That’s also part of the point of Jesus applying the phoenix/mother-hen-in-fire imagery.