Not only is no one (besides the fallen angels) in Hell but, when Jesus returns and the dead rise, those who are cast into the eternal flames are to be consumed, not exist there forever.
Not only is it a Catholic thing, it is the very thing that resulted in the schisms which resulted in protestantisms. The idea of purgatory evolved to allow for bargaining - particularly that you could, for instance, literally buy your way out of purgatory and into the pikepass track to heaven with a sufficient donation to the church, what were appropriately called indulgences. While there were other important doctrines included in the 95 Theses that Luther nailed to the door of the church, one of the most important, if not THE most important issue was concerning the existence, or lack thereof, of purgatory and therefore the legitimacy of indulgences. It was perhaps one of the most irreconcilable differences and thus carries a lot of the weight for the necessity of schism vs theological legislation.
Yeah, i just couldn't remember what parts of catholicism lutherens kept around and what they didn't. I was raised evangelical/southern baptist, (agnostic/atheist now), so most denominations were treated like heathens.
As I was reading this comment chain you guys all debating and disagreeing over how the lore of religion should be interpreted reminded me of the exact conversations I see over in the WoW sub on the lore lol
ALL HAIL THRALL, Son of Durotan, First of the Frostwolves, Savior of the Horde, The Earthfury, Liberator of the Orcs, Wielder of the Doomhammer, Champion of the Ring of Earth, and the World-Shaman.
it's because most religions have about the same amount of consistency in their lore as WoW. It also holds true that the more story they add the more ridiculous and inconsistent it all becomes. See: Mormons.
Well, theoretically, if it was all made up at once you could keep it pretty consistent. Problem is when you keep adding on and retconing over thousands of years.
Nah.. I could make up a 5 minute story right now and within a chain of 10 people telling the story to each other 1 by 1 without ever hearing it before I guarantee it would be completely different by the end. I'd even bet if they had the ability to take notes, it still would be drastically different by the 10th iteration.
The Christian bible itself has parts written hundreds of years before Jesus, ~100 years after Jesus and then edited and put into a different order about 300 years after that.
The entire bible is believed to be in whole over 40 authors (highly disputed from 5 to over 50) spanning 1500 years of knowledge across 3 continents (Africa, Asia, Europe).
So we're talking numerous authors, numerous word of mouths, numerous different interpretations rewritten in numerous different languages... there's absolutely zero way the bible is was intended from the start. It's also continued to get molested in interpretation by many powerful civilizations who used it for control and power.
Hell, humans couldn't even keep Star Wars consistent for three sequel movies over four years. We had no chance at keeping an entire religion consistent over thousands of years. I'm surprised they are as barely coherent as they are.
well, the closer you look the less coherent it becomes. Most believers don't even read the bible, let alone study it. The preacher makes sure there are no questions introduced.
Actually this is why Islam is much more coherent than Christianity. One very smart person thinking in a cave on how to keep people from being complete shits. And then presenting the whole thing as coming from God as he was just a “messenger”.
Islam adds on to Judaism and Christianity, and adopts all the incoherence.
That's at the root of the issue, they need the previous religions for credibility but they want to add their own spin. That's what creates the problems.
The same issue happens at a narrower scale even within a single religion, that's why divisions exist.
That’s the beauty of Islam. It is, at its base, an Abrahamic religion, but the prophet says anything that is in contradiction to his message is wrong. And he is the “seal of the prophets” so anything after him is blasphemy. Very elegant.
Obviously you weren’t around the Arabian peninsula circa 6th century. Drunk men slaughtering little girls, zero social safety net, and constant civil strife among the competing tribes. Islam creates a degree of order that isn’t really eclipsed until Europe industrializes and enters the modern era. For a pre-modern religion it is pretty effective.
You misunderstand, I'm not saying there is nothing to interpret. I'm saying they strip words of their meaning entirely to make things fit in with the rest of the book.
For example, when Jesus says "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them."
You can argue about the interpretation of "fulfilling the law," but it can not mean "abolish" and pretending that "fulfill" means something like abolish is not interpretation, it's spin. However, Christians must do so to justify Peters changes in theology.
I'm not really religious anymore, but the one that always made me assume this was the line about Jesus returning to judge the "quick and the dead". To me, that seems to indicate the dead haven't been judged yet, so they must be in some sort of purgatory waiting for the final judgement.
Your assumption is probably based on the idea that everyone has an immortal soul. Modern Christianity is really set on that idea but the modern concept doesn't have a strong scriptural basis. The Old testament word for soul is "nephesh" which basically means "living being" and is mortal. The Old Testament refers to corpses as "dead nephesh" in several passages and also refers to living animals as nephesh. The New testament word is psuche which aligns with the idea of personhood/life.
If you remove the concept of an inherent undying soul from the passage you mentioned then the passage does not necessitate some holding area or purgatory. They could just be dead.
Again you're imbuing the passage with a concept of soul that doesn't exist in the bible. "Soul" in the bible is essentially "life". The question "If the dead don't have a soul" doesn't make sense if you use the biblical definition of soul.
My interpretation is that if the dead is judged worthy of eternal life then life is breathed back into that person. Eternal life is a gift, not something inherent. The ones judged to be not worthy just stay dead.
Take this passage from hebrews:
27 And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,
28 so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many. To those who eagerly wait for Him He will appear a second time, apart from sin, for salvation.
He's only appearing to "those who eagerly wait for Him", not those who aren't worthy of salvation. You could certainly read this that these people are literally waiting in purgatory, but you could also interpret this as more figurative.
There's a lot of disagreement about interpretations of these things so don't take my interpretation as anything definitive.
If there's no soul, then there's no continuity of self beyond death.
Sure, you can look at the history of actions this dead body took while it was still alive, but if there's no soul to bring back then breathing new life into it will be birthing a new being, not resurrecting the original one.
And thus, why would I care how my corpse is judged, a positive assessment isn't going to bring me back, just a new life in my old flesh.
just from reading your conversation “new life” is something you added that the other user didn’t necessarily say. they just said “breathed life back into”. i think the idea that they’d be birthing a new being as opposed to resurrecting the original one is entirely your device that you’ve created.
if a dead person is legally (edit: CLINICALLY) dead for 3 minutes and is revived through cpr they aren’t having a “new life” or “new soul” as you call it put into them because their brain and personality are still in tact, ruling out any kind of brain damage. the continuity of self still continues in this instance so why wouldn’t it continue in the way the user you’re replying to describes even outside of the concept of a soul that you’re hung up on?
if the dead is worthy of eternal life and has life breathed back into them there’s no reason to think it would be a “new life” or “different soul”. you’re doing what the other user said you’re doing by still being so hung up on the concept of a soul as it pertains to self that doesn’t exist in the bible.
just from reading your conversation “new life” is something you added that the other user didn’t necessarily say. they just said “breathed life back into”. i think the idea that they’d be birthing a new being as opposed to resurrecting the original one is entirely your device that you’ve created.
No, there has to be something to bring back, right? That's implied in the statement "bring life back into"
if a dead person is legally dead for 3 minutes and is revived through cpr they aren’t having a “new life” or “new soul” as you call it put into them because their brain and personality are still in tact, ruling out any kind of brain damage.
You can't be "legally dead" for 3 minutes. The definition of death in a medical/legal sense requires it be irreversible. This is one thing I am absolutely equipped to speak to, as I work in healthcare and have been present for peoples' passings and declaration of death.
the continuity of self still continues in this instance so why wouldn’t it continue in the way the user you’re replying to describes even outside of the concept of a soul that you’re hung up on?
Again, because in your statement they are not dead. If you believe there is an afterlife (I personally do not), I cannot parse a way in which you go from present life to afterlife without something other than a physical form involved, since we know the physical body does not go anywhere.
if the dead is worthy of eternal life and has life breathed back into them there’s no reason to think it would be a “new life” or “different soul”. you’re doing what the other user said you’re doing by still being so hung up on the concept of a soul as it pertains to self that doesn’t exist in the bible.
I never said "different soul". I said new life. If you have a computer that only has volatile memory - the data is only present when the power is on - then when you turn the PC off then on again, the memory is blank.
That's the only way I can parse a life without a soul being "brought back". In this analogy, a soul would be non-volatile storage. Sentience and experience persist even when the "power is off" and is restored when power is restored.
You can't just say "bible says no soul but you come back anyway" and then get snarky when someone analyzes that.
Resurrection without a soul isn't even internally consistent with its own established eschatology, let alone actual external logic.
Let me make it clear that I'm an atheist so I'm only trying to present my interpretation of the Bible, not what I actually believe. That said, this question of continuity of self is more philosophical than biblical and answering it would be way beyond the scope of a reddit comment.
Some of the ideas that we'd need to explore to answer this question:
What is 'self'? Is our idea of self linked to our bodily self? Does the self reside in our brain? If our cells regenerate over time does bodily continuity affect continuity of self? Is self unchanging? Do we have continuity of self from one day to the next? Do we lose continuity when we're unconscious?
I have a hard time believing that we have some kind of static "self" outside of our physiology. There's pretty clear evidence that our personalities are shaped by external conditions, bacteria that lives in our gut biome, the health of our brain tissue, etc. To me the idea of 'self' is intrinsic to the concept of personality. If our personality is affected by our gut biome then our gut biome is part of our self. Since our gut biome is constantly turning over we are constantly becoming something new.
If I replace the tires on my car does the car become new? The car will behave slightly differently (it has better traction) but it is still, fundamentally, the same car. This is your gut biome. Now downgrade the engine, put in a manual transmission, rework the electrical, chop the top and turn it into a convertible, take out the brakes and put bald tires on it. You could technically call it the same car but it will drive much differently. This is you after a stroke.
Not even limbo. The Bible describes the soul as a mortal thing that can die. The idea that the soul is alive in some other place until judgement comes is not in the Bible
The dead exist only in our memory and memory of God. They are not "ghosts" or "spirits", they cannot communicate. They don't think, feel and time doesn't flow for them.
IMO you can't override biblical definitions of things like souls because of the implications of other passages. Some of the Bible is meant to be figurative. Deciding what is figurative and what is literal is probably where most of the biggest disagreements about interpretation come from, but the biblical definition of soul is much closer to "living creature" than "immortal ghost".
I agree it's not what Catholics think. Closest thing to purgatory was Abraham's Bosom (also known as Paradise) which existed below ground prior to Christ's resurrection. Jesus said to the thief on the cross 'Today you will be with me in Paradise', that He would be taking the thief down to the location where every righteous soul went... going back to the generation of Adam who were all 'in prison' ('purgatory') up until that point.
Jesus's stated mission was to free the captives in Isaiah 61:1. This same verse is what Jesus read aloud to begin His ministry in Luke 4:18-21. Christ's resurrection made it possible to open the prison doors and 'reverse the curse' of Adam.
In the story of the rich man asking for water in Sheol, Luke 16:19-31, he could actually see Lazarus over in Abraham's Bosom, but was separated by a 'great gulf'.
Abraham's Bosom/Paradise was just the first pit stop Jesus made before going down even further into Hades, another part of His mission was to take back the keys of 'death hell and the grave', while making a 'show of it openly', spoiling principalities and powers, Colossians 2:15.
Interesting too how many early cultures prior to Christ's resurrection believed their souls went down into the Earth after death, and not up.
Iirc in Revelation all dead are essentially in purgatory until Jesus returns. When he does, the dead are risen for final judgement. Those deemed worthy enter Heaven, those not are destroyed.
But another remember is that Revelations was written decades after Jesus died and most likely has nothing to do with the gospel he preached.
Catholicism is the largest form of Christianity but there are several different types. There are 800-900 million Protestants vs 1.4 billion Catholics. So 500 million more. That doesn’t make Catholics the definition of Christianity at all.
I understand it the way that when your body dies your soul kinda gets "time skip" to whatever God decides, like you go to purgatory first for appropriate duration or you just wake up on Judgement Day. In other words, both purgatory and Judgement Day are something outside of time on earth and are happening with no regard to time as we understand it.
"Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarchDavid died and was buried, and his tomb is here with us today... For David did not ascend to heaven..." — Acts 2:29, 34
Dead people are simply asleep and unaware, they'll be brought back and judged and then brought to heaven or cast into the flame to be consumed and cease to exist. This is what a lot of people believe it is usually referred to as annihilationism.
Okay so how do modern interpretations of this belief account for things like decomposition? If they are just asleep and unaware, but their bones have turned to dust, what exactly is going to "wake up?"
Why are you applying science to a religious question like that?
It spiritual. Whether or not your spirit is asleep or aware in some other realm doesn't change the equation at all, neither falls into the realm of science at all, in both cases your body is dust.
In the resurrection did you think you'd be FedEx'd down from heaven or UPS'd up from hell to your grave stone? Did you think that your body is duplicated and sent to a physical place?
Its annihilation vs eternal conscious punishment debate. I lean towards annihilation heavily. You just dont get to rise. If we are being fully honest, I lean towards preterism which is that the second coming was God coming in judgement on the Jewish age during the destruction of the second temple in 70 AD and that the new world is what we have now: everyone has access to God if they want it.
Why are the flames eternal, if they’re going to consume a limited number of people?
Have the flames always been there? What were they for originally? Are they just being temporarily repurposed to consume the unbelievers, then they go back to… whatever it is they were doing?
Huh, seems a bit harsh, although I guess it depends on why the angels rebelled and what they were hoping to achieve. Did they try to add their own themes to the Music of the Ainur or something?
Bible doesn't say (it was written as pro-god propaganda, of course, so it's not gonna admit fault), just that Heaven was so unbearable that a third of all the angels (again; no details) begged God to make things better. Questioning his authority required punishment.
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u/Last-Kaleidoscope871 6h ago
Not only is no one (besides the fallen angels) in Hell but, when Jesus returns and the dead rise, those who are cast into the eternal flames are to be consumed, not exist there forever.