How does Jesus’ journey through Hades encourage, inspire hope, & guide us when we suffer? How should we respond to slander? How should we defend our hope? (post & video)
reforminghell.com/2017/11/27/go … e-can-too/
Very good.
I do NOT want to question that approach, but I’ve had this thought lately: if hell were real, and Jesus was to sacrifice Himself for us, would He not have to spend eternity in hell? To really ‘take our place’ He would have to suffer eternally? Not for a few hours or days, or even for a lifetime, but the whole enchilada?
Would that argument be a worthy one AGAINST ECT?
Pretty much Dave… now apply that exact same logic to the popular universalist idea of the lake of fire; which in evangelical thought is really just Hell MkII 
True.
But I don’t understand the book of Revelation to be a future-oriented book anyway, so the LOF is not anything that has ‘consumed’ my thoughts.
It would be an argument against an ECT that was tied into a common portrayal of penal substitution, yes. It’s the hilarious category mistake of “God is eternal, therefore sin deserves eternal punishment”… as if that a) makes any sense, or b) even works as a maths equation, as you point out; infinity - infinity = zero. Or infinity. Not three days.
DaveB wrote:
That is huge. 
A short story. I was asked to sing at a dear friend’s funeral this last weekend. A pastor called and said that I could ride with them. There were two Southern Baptist pastors officiating over this funeral. Come to find out that we were all riding in the same car 
I love these guys but My beliefs are way way way different from theirs. 
My wife even said “I don’t think you should do it” in reference to my riding with them, her knowing how I tend to mix it up as they say.
So long story short, I went through Hell with these guys. My ideology verses my not wanting to cause problems. So I kept my yap shut.
I agree with Dave, LOF has no effect on me.
Thanks!
I tried that line of reasoning with Chris Date once as Jesus wasn’t annihilated either… can’t remember the counterargument but he had one.
When we suffer for doing & speaking good, Jesus’ journey through hell can encourage us, inspire courage & hope, & help us to know what to do. Is your life hell? WWJD?
Jesus could have experienced infinite pain and suffering in it’s intensity and strength and only suffer for a few hours. The mathematics are the same as Him suffering for eternal duration.
I have a good friend that studies cosmology. According to him, the consensus among mathematicians is that ‘infinity’ does not have any mathematics!
Consensus now is that:
infinity minus infinity = infinity
infinity + infinity = infinity
infinity x infinity = infinity
etc.
But that is just an aside. C.S. Lewis once made the point that there is no such thing as the ‘sum total of all the suffering in the world’, claiming that the greatest amount of suffering is what any human being can personally suffer. Pain does not ‘add up’.
So I THINK that the man Jesus Christ suffered as much as a man possibly can, but is that the point? There have been prisoners of war that are tortured
for literally months, let alone a few hours. They suffered more than Jesus - but is that the point?
He did suffer, his entire life, and in his death - ‘for’ mankind - not as a penal substitute. (UH-oh ) - but for our benefit. I’m not at all certain that he went to Hell and was tortured there in our stead.
Infinity or ∞ is used in modern mathematics for the solution of many practical and theoretical problems, such as in calculus and set theory, and the idea also is used in physics and the other sciences. Christ isn’t bound by our dimensions. He’s trans dimensional. He could have experienced infinite pain and suffering in it’s intensity for only a few hours. It’s the same thing.
You’re off your rocker. Pain is a physical sensation created by pain receptors. Notice the word created. You can’t create anything that is infinite. It’s logically impossible.
There is also emotional and spiritual pain and physical pain can have non-physical causes. In the paradox of the Father separating Himself from the Son “My God, my God why have you forsaken me” Christ experienced the spiritual and emotional pain of eternal separation.
Pain still has to be created physical or spiritual and nothing can be created infinity wise.
“physical pain can have non-physical causes” where in the world did you learn science? Again off the rocker!
No creation can be infinite doesn’t work that way. It’s illogical and impossible.
“My God, my God why have you forsaken me” you do know that came from Psalm 22:1 and He said that in order to fulfill the prophecy of His crucifixion?
S.Michael, there is ZERO evidence in Scripture that God ever forsook His Son or separated from Him in any way.
Jesus’ cry on the cross indicated merely that He FELT as if God had forsaken Him.
On the contrary God HEARD Jesus’ prayers and supplications and saved Him from death!
God didn’t save Jesus from DYING; Jesus truly died. Yet God saved Him from death. How? By raising Him from death so that He lived again!
Paidion,
There was a separation because Jesus said “Why have you forsaken me?” We know this is true because right before Jesus died He said “Father into Your hands I commit my Spirit”. The spirit of Christ was reunited with the Father upon His death.
Dave, it is true that “infinity” does not have any mathematics in the sense that “infinity” is NOT a number. So there is no consensus concerning the “equations” you wrote above since equations require numbers and “infinity” is not a number.
Having said that, infinity still has its place in mathematics. The adjective “infinite” is used to describe some numerical sets. For example, the set of whole numbers is infinite:
… -5,-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,2,3,4,5…
The set of rational numbers is also infinite. They consist of the whole numbers listed above plus all the fractions in between. Yet there are the same number of elements in the whole numbers as in the rationals. That can be proved because it is possible to set up a one-to-one relationship between the wholes and the rationals. That infinite number has been given the name “aleph sub zero,” that is, the Hebrew letter [size=130]ℵ[/size] with a zero subscript.
I cannot make the iota subscript, and so I will rewrite your “infinity” equations using simply “aleph.” Just pretend that it it aleph sub zero:
[size=130]ℵ[/size]-[size=130]ℵ[/size]=[size=130]ℵ[/size] Example: the rationals minus the wholes is an infinite set of numbers.
[size=130]ℵ[/size]+[size=130]ℵ[/size]=[size=130]ℵ[/size] Example: the set of even wholes plus the set of odd wholes= the set of wholes.
[size=130]ℵ[/size]X[size=130]ℵ[/size] is an infinite set. But I cannot give you an example.
But here is the amazing thing. The set of REAL numbers is made up of all the rationals plus many other numbers such as π and the square root of 2 and ALL numbers represented by infinite non-repeating decimal numerals. And it has been proved mathematically that the number of elements in THIS set is GREATER than the number of elements in the whole numbers or the rational numbers. This number is known as “aleph sub one.” Thus there exists a “greater infinity” than infinity itself!
How these two levels of “infinity” can be applied to God or infinite time spent with God in heaven or the supposed infinite time unrepentant sinners spend in hell, I leave with you.
Don’t leave it with me - I don’t know what to do with it!
But thanks for the primer on infinity.
Jesus was fully human throughout His life in this world. He divested Himself of His divine attributes and retained only His identity as the Son of God.
Words in brackets mine.
So as a true human being, Jesus had human feelings. He FELT forsaken, and so He cried out those words to His Father. God would never forsake His beloved Son. Again, God HEARD His cries and saved Him from (or out of) death.
Heb 5:7 In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.