quote:
Originally posted by RedVento:
This might be interesting to you guys
The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment
Deals with the origins of hell, and its origins in the OT (it wasnt just for sinners...)
Seams like Christians really have no originality at all....
Red
now now... the doctrine of hell is troublesome to most christians i know, as it seems to fly in the face of an omnibenevolent God... something c.s. lewis once wrote has always stuck with me... i'll have to paraphrase, since i don't have it here and my memory isn't perfect.. "it's true that the only way to heaven is through Jesus Christ, but it doesn't necessarily follow that one must have heard of him in order to enter God's presence *through* him"
i think what you should do is simply ask individual christians what they believe... maybe even ask *why* they believe it... i personally define heaven as "being in God's presence, eternally" and hell as "being outside God's presence, eternally"...
the ramifications of those two things probably can't be grasped until the one applicable to each of us occurs... to me, it would be miserable living eternally apart from God... even tho i can't quite understand all that would encompass, i understand enough now (being in his presence now, in a sense) to know it's not something i want
the link you provided shows the universalist slant, and having debated many of them i can testify to the strength of their arguments... what to believe? i think (just my opinion) that focusing on eternal damnation is a fear tactic that christians are better off staying away from... we see no evidence in the new testament that those who carried the gospel to the world taught anything but, in paul's words, "Christ and him crucified" for our sins