'tormented day and night forever and ever', in English or Greek, is as strong as it gets, contrary to your view...
Is the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment biblical or not?
- Thread starter Timotheos
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'tormented day and night forever and ever', in English or Greek, is as strong as it gets, contrary to your view...
Okay that ONE verse overrules every other verse that describes the fate of the wicked as death, destruction, and perishing. Lucky that ONE verse was put in, and that it isn't misunderstood or symbolic in any way.
It is very literal, not figurative. If you don't take it literally, there would be no way on earth or heaven to convey a concept of torment day and night forever and ever. What is this statement figurative of if not face value?!
You still cannot see how words have a semantical range of meaning and that death, destruction, perishing, etc. does not have to preclude existence, but must be cessation (nope).
Lk. 16 makes Jesus a conveyor of false teaching if you are right.
freelight
Eclectic Theosophist
language is 'figurative', not absolute.......
language is 'figurative', not absolute.......
This 'concept' still violates 'justice', 'mercy', 'wisdom' and 'reason',....and fails to glorify 'God' in any way whatsoever, so obsessing over this heinous belief because one passage uses such 'figurative' language is a gross misrepresentation of reality, let alone 'God'. Traditional ECT is an infantile belief fraught with problems on many levels. The sad thing is the audacity of someone taken this 'literally', without seeing the insanity of it.
Since 'God' is the one universal absolute reality behind all that is,...and is 'Love'.....the highest most eternal principle ultimately prevails. Only if an individual soul has the power to reject 'God' (reality) for ever, being unable to repent or return to that reality, or could choose a final eternal 'death'(disintegration of being), could we say a soul is forever 'seperated' from 'God' (or expunged altogether) but it remains for the claimer to prove this is possible. The reality that gives life and consciousness to all sentient beings, is the primal reality that is Life ('God') itself. To assume various conditions or qualifications on this 'life' and 'consciousness' is the gesture of religious assumptions or beliefs. Beyond 'assumptions' or claims to know, there is the recognition (if seen) that one really doesnt know, but chooses what 'view' is most reasonable to him, given his own criteria or qualifications.
pj
language is 'figurative', not absolute.......
This 'concept' still violates 'justice', 'mercy', 'wisdom' and 'reason',....and fails to glorify 'God' in any way whatsoever, so obsessing over this heinous belief because one passage uses such 'figurative' language is a gross misrepresentation of reality, let alone 'God'. Traditional ECT is an infantile belief fraught with problems on many levels. The sad thing is the audacity of someone taken this 'literally', without seeing the insanity of it.
Since 'God' is the one universal absolute reality behind all that is,...and is 'Love'.....the highest most eternal principle ultimately prevails. Only if an individual soul has the power to reject 'God' (reality) for ever, being unable to repent or return to that reality, or could choose a final eternal 'death'(disintegration of being), could we say a soul is forever 'seperated' from 'God' (or expunged altogether) but it remains for the claimer to prove this is possible. The reality that gives life and consciousness to all sentient beings, is the primal reality that is Life ('God') itself. To assume various conditions or qualifications on this 'life' and 'consciousness' is the gesture of religious assumptions or beliefs. Beyond 'assumptions' or claims to know, there is the recognition (if seen) that one really doesnt know, but chooses what 'view' is most reasonable to him, given his own criteria or qualifications.
pj
God's Truth
New member
Lk 12:5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after the killing of the body, has power to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
It is hell to be apart from God, whether only in spirit after the physical body dies, or whether it is the lake of fire, where the spirit with the new, resurrected body, the spiritual body goes.
Punishment is in the lake of fire. Punishment is not disappearing forever.
John 17:5 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Mark 9:48 where "'the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.'
Did you read that? In Mark, we are told the fire is not quenched, surely, the fire is the punishment, and disappearing forever is not.
It is hell to be apart from God, whether only in spirit after the physical body dies, or whether it is the lake of fire, where the spirit with the new, resurrected body, the spiritual body goes.
Punishment is in the lake of fire. Punishment is not disappearing forever.
John 17:5 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Mark 9:48 where "'the worms that eat them do not die, and the fire is not quenched.'
Did you read that? In Mark, we are told the fire is not quenched, surely, the fire is the punishment, and disappearing forever is not.
freelight
Eclectic Theosophist
la la land
la la land
Is a punishment inflicted upon a criminal eternally?
Yes, 'death' can mean the total disintegration and termination of a functioning conscious being. 'Death' can mean the negation of conscious existence.
Again, as I've brought up this is speculative and subjective. One can be 'dead' or 'alive' to varying degrees, or however one chooses to 'assume' these various 'conditions' of existence or non-existence. All these are....are points of view.
pj
la la land
Is a punishment inflicted upon a criminal eternally?
Yes, 'death' can mean the total disintegration and termination of a functioning conscious being. 'Death' can mean the negation of conscious existence.
Again, as I've brought up this is speculative and subjective. One can be 'dead' or 'alive' to varying degrees, or however one chooses to 'assume' these various 'conditions' of existence or non-existence. All these are....are points of view.
pj
You say "it is literal", yet you also say "words have a semantic range of meanings. Why do you not assume that verse also has a wide semantic range of meaning? Or you could look at how that phrase is used on the OT.
The normative approach is to take things at face value/literally unless context demands a figurative approach. It is a matter of cumulative evidence vs one proof text.
When we execute criminals they do not remain alive in torment.
When the function of an object is destroyed, the function no longer exists. You swapped the function for the object itself in your analogy. Think about it.
The wages of sin is death. Why don't you accept this at literal face value? It's literal when You Say it is and not when you say it's not. Who named you the boss?
If death is only separation then why are those that enter the second death the ones already separated from God??
It makes no sense now does it.
LA
I didn't read the whole thread, (it's a pretty long thread) but I don't believe in eternal torment. Even in the case of Hitler, does a million times a million years of torment (being the first drop in an endless ocean time-wise) sound like just punishment? I do intend to study it more though.
(edited, part of my post could have been taken as disrespectful to God, and that is something I strongly hope to avoid)
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You do not believe in eternal death.
You believe in eternal separation while alive forever.
LA
If death is separation, then eternal death is everlasting separation of the extant person from the Living God.
godrulz wants you to suffer
but
God does not
but
God does not
Death and Separation are not the same thing! The Bible never ever, not once says that death is separation.
Death is the condition of not being alive, Separation is the condition of being set apart from something else. These are 2 different things and they are not the same thing. You might as well say "Death is an chair".