While I believe that hell is everlasting, I also believe there are different degrees of punishment in hell. Hell is not a torture chamber of literal fire in my view. But when we sin we belittle the infinite worth of God’s glory and the consequences are likewise infinite.
When we belittle the infinite worth of God’s glory we sin and deserve infinite justice from God. This is how Christ could have paid the price for my sins. Being the God-man, He is infinite in value and worth. By faith I am united to Him as the old sinful self is crucified and God’s wrath is removed. As He dies my old self dies and I am raised to new life as Christ’s righteousness is imputed to me. Given the imagery of the temple veil (there were cherubim woven into it, like the cherub set as guard over the entrance to Eden after Adam and Eve were cast out) as a symbol of the barrier between the Holy God and sinful men, the rending of the veil indicates a propitiation of God’s wrath. The veil has been torn in two and God’s wrath removed from my vision. I can now behold the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
No doubt there are differing degrees of punishment. Jesus Himself said that some will be beaten with few stripes and others with many, depending on degree of knowledge and responsibility. Note however, that the stripes are “many” and “few,” both of which are terms indicating a finite count. Why didn’t He fess up and admit that all would be beaten with never-ending stripes, though some would be hit harder than others?
I think He did say it. One of the scriptures is the one you provided and the one’s I provided above. The scripture you gave was God’s way of telling us.
Nope – I checked, as you see. He definitely didn’t say unending stripes. But in fact, beyond this, I find it interesting (and frightening), that He was speaking directly to His disciples. This parable followed a question by Peter regarding the parable He had just given:
Thus Jesus answered Peter’s question with the parable excerpted above. So is hell for the twelve disciples? Because that’s who He was talking to.
As for the verses you quoted in your post, it would be good to look them up in a more literal translation. You’ll see that “eternal” is not in the equation except in the more figurative translations. Rendering it “eternal” and “forever” is a matter of someone’s opinion, and as ECT had been preached and lived since Augustine, and dissenters had been punished by having their “just punishments” begun early (sometimes over slow fires of green wood), it’s hardly to be wondered at that the translations given agreed and still do usually agree with the prevailing theology. Nevertheless, there’s no particular reason to translate “aionios” this way beyond tradition and of course, fear.
I see your point about the disciples. But if you read the above passages in the literal versions it means what it says. I agree that the word doesn’t always mean that. But the context of the above passages shows that it must. It’s not based on fear. You have just judged my heart. This is something only God can do. I assure you I’m just trying to be faithful to the text here.
No, brother – when I said “fear,” I wasn’t thinking of you. I was thinking of a translator understandably afraid to render “aionios” other than the accepted norm. I don’t know if any of them did do this out of fear or not, but if I were in their position, I can imagine myself being afraid.
As to context, this is not a word that needs to be so translated because of the context in your verses. It seems to me there isn’t much reason to translate it “eternal” above “age-during” or other unless it is attached to God or His life. The context demands it only because the translator reads his own theology back into the bible.
Going to bed now – sorry for the misunderstanding, but I hope this clarifies. It didn’t even occur to me you were acting in fear.
In the appendix of Rotherham’s Literal Translation he explains what he means by “AGE-ABIDING”
AGE-ABIDING
Age-abiding: that is, lasting for an indefinite or perpetual age: or abiding from age to age…It is true that aion does not itself mean absolute eternity…But with all this, it is most important to remember that “age” is not the primary meaning of aion: rather, “duration indefinitely extended.” Upon the “aionian correction” no arbitrary limit can be laid - unless the essential nature of “correction” implies it.
I wouldn’t disagree with what Mr. Rutherford has to say (though I have an e-sword version and haven’t gone looking for the notes you’ve apparently found.) I also don’t think that what he’s saying is in any way a refutation of what I’ve said. I’m honestly puzzled why you would consider it so; I must be missing something.
I could write a book here, but many good ones have already been written. Perhaps you’ve said elsewhere (and perhaps I’ve even read it and forgotten), but as you appear to have read Piper’s latest, you might find the time to read one of the serious apologetic books regarding the Blessed Hope. As I’m always into free and fast (so long as you can get very, very good along with it) I urge you to download and read and/or listen to Gerry Beauchemin’s work: Hope Beyond Hell. You can find it at hopebeyondhell.net , or if you prefer a Kindle version, that’s available at Amazon, and I believe that one is also free – or very inexpensive. The reason I’m bringing this up is that you’re posing objections which I would have expected you’d already read discussions on, and it might help you to understand my pov if you had read a bit more on the “pro” side. Reading Rob Bell’s book is a great intro, but it doesn’t count as a scholarly, or even popular/serious treatment of the subject.
But as to the parallel passages you list – you are right to bring them up. I think the first question to ask is whether we are to interpret these passages in the light of other scriptures in which the salvation of all is so clearly taught – or whether those multitudinous passages must be interpreted in the light of the few passages of this sort you will be able to find (as there aren’t many available). You and everyone else trying to make sense of scripture do have to make this choice, as there are many passages which otherwise contradict one another.
The word olam or aionios is interpreted relative to the sort of word it modifies. It does denote an age in the sense of an age being an indeterminate period of time. (I’m not sure how you believe that I would define “age,” but that’s my working def here.) Hence Johah was inside the giant fish for an age – which lasted three days. Everyone lives for an age, but this “age” for a tortoise is typically much longer than would be an “age” for a mosquito. An age when applied to the life of God could be considered everlasting. But it isn’t necessary to do so. The Jews were looking for age-abiding life. They were looking for the victorious messianic age during which Jerusalem would be the ruling hub of the world. And I don’t know what Daniel had in his mind specifically when he wrote this, but either way you take it, it’s good. Here’s the verse in Rotherham, since you appear to approve of that translation:
The life of God is never ending. I think we can all agree on that. But is God’s abhorrence never ending? You will have a difficult time making a straight case for that. You can’t use verses like Dan 12:2, because you would have to read your own theology back into the text to make that work. You can do that legitimately if you have primary proofs from elsewhere in scripture, but I don’t think you’re going to find them. Conversely, there are many, many passages that tell us that God’s mercy endures forever (or for the age, if you prefer), that His displeasure lasts for a moment, but His loving kindness never ends. I can look them up for you, if you need to see them, but I’ll bet you already know about them.
So God’s abhorrence being described as “olam” can’t primarily prove that it never ends. The abhorrence does not confer never-ending status on the adjective “olam.”
As for Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats, I would truly enjoy expounding on that, but this is getting way too long already, and I believe that Jason has talked about it at length in another thread. You might ask him – he probably knows where that is.
The last one you’ve already quoted. You know, it just doesn’t work unless you, once again, insist on translating “aionios” as forever. Here it is in Rotherham:
So now you have the Adversary (Satan), the wild beast, and the false prophet in the lake of fire burning to the ages of the ages. Death and hell are cast into the lake of fire next, then those whose names aren’t found in the Lamb’s book of life are finally cast in.
But then you have:
So I want to know: who are these nations? These kings of the earth? The city itself is the bride – that would be the beloved – so it can’t be talking about the elect. Why are the gates open? Who is using them? Where did all these people come from?
Why do these nations need healing? I thought sickness and death were already done away, and every tear wiped from every eye. Who are these people who need to be healed? And the curse shall be no more? Isn’t having a swirling caldron of never-ending filth and torment in the presence of the Lamb and everyone else a curse?
I should make clear here, that I do believe there is an elect people; the first fruits; the barley harvest. There is much profit in being among the elect, and it is certainly better to be of the elect than not to be. And that we cannot boast because of it, because it is God who has done it; not we ourselves. If you want to know more about my take on this (if you haven’t read til your eyes are falling out already!) You can find a short series at my blog. It starts with this post: wp.me/p1bhiA-tu.
So . . . yeah. I got carried away. My goal, Michael, is to believe the truth. It doesn’t matter if I don’t like what I see, though of course I prefer to like what I see. I believed ECT for many years, Anni for one year, and now I am persuaded that, having been reluctantly dragged into even considering it by the Holy Spirit, God really DOES intend to have it all. He loves all people; scripture is crystal clear on that. Having the choice (since He IS all-powerful), He chooses to have His stated will accomplished. How did I miss that for so long?
In one bucket, I put an infinite number of dollars. In another bucket, an infinite number of cents. In the end, both buckets will contain the same (infinite) amount of money.
If hell is never-ending, the punishment received is infinite. The severity of the punishment is irrelevant.
I’ve always found the “levels of punishment” argument to be interesting. The basic logic of eternal torment–that God’s justice demands an infinite amount of punishment on every sinner because an infinite amount of dishonor has been done against the infinitely good God by every sinner–seems to preclude any differentiation between sinners. The man who has told a lie is infinitely guilty; the man who has committed genocide is also infinitely guilty. They have both caused equal offense to God–that is, infinite–and must, thus, be punished equally (that is, eternally). All sins and sinners being equally condemned, how are these “levels” of Hell justified? If one man has committed less offense against God than another man (and is, thus, deserving of a lesser level of punishment), then how can both of them be infinitely guilty?
Thee duration is the same but the intensity of the torment is different. Just as the duration of heaven is the same with different rewards. What we see at the cross is infinite justice and infinite grace since Christ is the God-man.
Yoking infinite punishment with God’s infinite glory is an example of what is known colloquially as the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. The truth is that there is *zero *Biblical evidence, and I might add no sound logical or philosophical argument, that says because God is infinite and eternal, he requires infinite and eternal punishment for sin.
You can equally argue: Because God is infinitely big, any offense we cause will be infinitely small, and being infinitely small will attract no punishment whatsoever.
If I steal a grain of sand from a man who owns a whole beach, will he throw me in jail for life? Yes indeed. If he’s mentally deranged.
I think Allan’s analogy shows that it adds up to the same sum of torment, if both are infinite.
Allan wrote:
In the first bucket, each coin is worth 100 times as much as each coin in the second bucket. But will the sum of the money in the first bucket be worth 100 times the value as the sum in the second bucket? NO. The sum will be the same. The sum will be an infinite amount of money in each case. This is Allan’s point. The sum of all suffering in hell, if infinite, will be the same in all cases.
Sorry, but I just can’t let this pass. As a mathematician I must tell you that two ‘infinities’ can be of very different magnitude. If you wish to know more then Cantor’s Theorem is a suitable place to start but sufficient to say, it is completely wrong to suggest that two souls must suffer equally purely because the duration of suffering is eternal.
Michael is perfectly correct in thinking that sufferings of an eternal duration may be of different magnitude.
Let’s break pain down into tiny bits, and call each bit of pain a twinge.
Let’s say Fred in deep hell suffers a gigatwinge per second, and George in shallow hell suffers a twinge a day. After an infinite length of time, both will have suffered the same number of twinges, since Fred’s twinges can be perfectly mapped onto George’s. (The set of whole numbers is as big as the set of odd numbers.)
Yes, of course, there is nothing inherently illogical about the proposition; my issue is how it can be justified within the model of justice that requires infinite punishment in the first place. I would argue that it cannot be because the very model of divine justice that requires that sinners be subjected to irrevocably eternal misery also makes all sinners fundamentally equal in their sinfulness, and that theological move precludes differentiation between punishments (or, at least, between the magnitude of their punishments).
As was noted earlier, the concept of “Hell” being “eternal” precludes there being any “degrees” in punishment. Mathematically speaking, let’s say that the degrees go from 1 to 100, with 100 being the most severe punishment possible (whatever that is). Mathematically (the numeric language of logic) then with “00” = eternal, infinity the you’d end up with the equation:
(1 x 00) = 00 = (100 x 00)
Infinity times any number equals infinity, just like zero times any number equals zero.
And of course the other issue that I disagree with in the OP is the assumption that there is a Hell. If there was a Hell it seems to me that it would be warned of specifically, clearly, and repeatedly in scripture, especially in the OT. But of course, it is not. In fact, not once is Hell even named in scripture. Sheol and Hades do not mean Hell or imply ECT, but they mean grave or realm of the dead. And Gehenna does not mean Hell or imply ECT, but correctly translated is the valley of Hinnom, Hinnom Valley, just outside Jerusalem. It was a real place with a real historical and cultural context.
For me, it was studying what scripture actually warns of concerning the punishment of sin that freed me to accept in faith that Jesus truly is the savior of all humanity, the reconciler of all creation! The wages of sin is death, not ECT! Yes there is a judgment to come that now is. And this judgment is based on how we actually live, what we do with what God gives us. To whom much is given much is expected. So to me the ones who are to fear judgment the most are we believers for we have been given the greatest gift of all, the present reality of the kingdom of God that comes through faith in Christ today! In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we are the rich man!
Alan and Sherman
I have already stated that as a mathematician I can assure you that your attempts to consider ‘infinity’ are flawed - and yet you persist.
It is obvious that you didn’t look up Cantor’s Theorem did you? (or if you did you completely ignored the conclusion).
Alan:
Agreed -but what does that prove? What would you prefer -a certain number of tiny twinges or an equal number of searing agonizing pains?
The set of integers is smaller than the set of real numbers even though they are both infinitely large.
Sherman:
No it doesn’t, just as an eternity in heaven doesn’t mean we all experience equal amounts of … bliss or anything else.
So what?
May I suggest you read this:
There are infinitely-many natural numbers- 1, 2, 3, etc (excluding 0 and negative numbers). There are also infinitely-many integers (including 0 and negative numbers). Are there more integers than natural numbers? It seems like there should be-- after all, the natural numbers are just a subset of the integers.
Can we compare the size of sets that are infinitely large? Are some infinite sets larger than others? Mathematically, the answer is yes and yes. But we have to do it in a different way than the way we compare finite sets.
For example, if A and B are finite sets, B is a subset of A, and the size of B is the same as the size of A, we can conclude that A and B are actually the same set.
But the natural numbers, N, are a subset of the integers, Z, and we know both are infinite. In fact, Z - N, the set of integers that are not natural numbers, is also infinite. It seems like the set of integers should be larger, doesn’t it? Well, they’re actually both the same. Why? Because we can find functions that map between the two sets that take every element of one set and assign it to exactly one element in the other.
For example, a function from Z to N might map 0 to 1, and then all negative integers to the even natural numbers and all positive integers to the odd natural numbers greater than one. Like this:
0 —> 1
-1 --> 2
1 —> 3
-2—> 4
2 —> 5, etc.
This function doesn’t leave out any integers, and it maps each one to only one natural number. If this doesn’t convince you that they have the same size (you might believe that sets are more fundamental than functions), I can’t really offer you anything else. This is how mathematicians define comparison of different orders of infinity; by using functions.
The first order of infinity is the size of the natural numbers. This is what the usual “infinity” symbol stands for. But mathematicians also call this “countable infinity,” since a machine could list out all the elements of the set if it kept running forever (the machine is essentially a function from the set to the natural numbers, since a list has the order: 1st entry, 2nd entry, etc).
Here’s another counterintuitive tidbit: between any two consecutive integers, there are infinitely-many rational numbers (fractions with integers in the numerator and denominator). Yet, the size of the set of rational numbers, Q, is also countable, the same as the integers. This is typical of the mind-blowing shit that can happen when you’re considering orders of infinity. But this picture shows how a function might map Q into N (by listing the elements of Q).
The next level of infinity after the size of N, is the size of the real numbers, R. R is uncountable, there’s no way to list out its elements. You could start with 0 --> 1, but then what’s the next step? No matter how small a step you take, you are forced to skip over infinitely-many (in fact, uncountably-many) other real numbers. Each level of infinity is essentially 2^{previous level of infinity}. (I won’t explain why, unless someone asks- I don’t think it’s very interesting).
Another mind-blowing tidbit: between any two real numbers, there are infinitely-many rational numbers. And between any two rational numbers, there are uncountably-many real numbers.
So, here’s the way mathematicians compare orders of infinity: Say A and B are two infinite sets. If you can find a function that maps every element of A to only one element of B, then you know the size of B is at least as large as the size of A. If you can find a function that maps at least one element of A onto every element of B, then you know the size of A is at least as large as the size of B. Such functions are respectively called “one-to-one” (or injective) and “onto” (or surjective). If you can find both types of functions from A to B (it could be the same single function that satisfies both properties), then you know A and B have the same size.
Here’s an example to illustrate this. Suppose X is the set of all finite-subsets of real numbers, and Y is the set of all polynomials with real number coefficients (a + bx + cx^2 + …, where a, b, etc are real numbers, and x is just a variable). Is one set larger than the other? Are they the same? Well, we can show that Y is at least as large as X by finding a function that maps every element of X to one element of Y. We can do that as follows:
Suppose {a, b, c, …, r} is some finite subset of real numbers; i.e., it is an element of X. Then we can map this element to the polynomial (a + bx + cx^2 + … + rx^p). A function that does this to every element of X is one-to-one, it maps X into Y. So Y is at least as large as X.
So here’s a question for you: is Y larger than X, or are they the same?
cliffs (for mathematicians) :
|N| = |Z| = |Q| < |R| (2^|N|) < powerset® (2^|R|) < powerset(powerset®) (2^2^|R|) < …
(powerset(X) is the set of all subsets of X)
You can find a short series at my blog. It starts with this post: 