The Nature Of Hell

[VanHooty]

Hey y'all.

I have a very brief question that has to deal with the properties of God and of Hell. I figured the Debate Phorum would be a better then the Open-Mic Phorum because... uh... well... uh...

Anyway, here's the question. When I was a little boy, I remember learning that God has the spiffy characteristic of being omnipresent. Hell, if I remember CCD classes well enough, is the complete separation from God, or the love of God, or some such thing.

So... uh... then is God present in Hell (or the state of Hell, assuming it isn't a place)? Or is hell something that we do, like if I was to deny the existence of the noise my little brother is making on his electric guitar upstairs?

[cmotherofpirl]

Hell is when we have so turned in on ourselves there is no room for God.

A great story about hell is CS Lewis's The Great Divorce.

[Adam]

I don't understand why people sya u can't love in hell, I mean, if a person who loves his family, even loves God one day trips out, gets so angry where he shots someone, or commits am ortal sin before he gets hit by a incoming train, and he goes to hell, why can't he still love his family and God from hell?

Does going to hell turn a soul into pure evil?

[cmotherofpirl]

CS Lewis explains it this way.

A person goes to hell when he say "MY will be done" instead of "THY will be done".

Remember nobody has come back from his final judgement to give us the details.

[Thomas Michael]

That Dante dude gave a pretty intense description of hell in his Inferno book. The many levels and stuff make it just about believable.

Who was the guy that said "Hell is other people"...?

[mulls]

the nature of hell?

it naturally smells of elderberries.

[gopherball33]

LOL :lol:

[Chrysologus]

Adam, you make it sound like going to hell is just a random occurance--like, "Oops! I'm in hell." I disagree...if someone is in hell, he was in hell on earth, too. But I'm no theologian.

Good answer, mulls.

The love of God is the fire of hell to those who hate him. So yes, God and his love are even in hell, as it says in the Bible:

"If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths [hebrew Sheol, i.e. hell], you are there."

- Psalm 139:8 NIV

[Adam]

No im just saying why can't a person who goes to hell keep his love, does he transform into pure evil all sudden? Everyone has love somewhere in them, therfore, when u go to hell do you lose any love you had for your family, etc?

[Good Friday]

The love of God is the fire of hell to those who hate him. So yes, God and his love are even in hell

I disagree with this. The Church teaches that, in hell, we are completely separated from God and God's love, because we have freely rejected it and do not desire it. The Church teaches that in hell there is the pain of loss and the pain of sense. The pain of loss is the pain that comes with having lost God and God's love. The pain of sense is pain like you would feel right now if you cut your hand on a piece of glass.

"If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

if I make my bed in the depths [hebrew Sheol, i.e. hell], you are there."

Sheol was not hell as it exists today. Today, hell exists solely as the realm for Satan and his demons, and for those who have rejected God completely. Prior to Jesus' Sacrifice on the Cross, Sheol (a "compartment" of hell) was the realm of all the dead, even the righteous, since they couldn't enter Heaven because of Original Sin. The only people in the Bible that we know of who went to Heaven before Jesus' Death and Resurrection were Enoch and Elijah, because God assumed them into Heaven.

[cmotherofpirl]

I would disagree. Enoch and Elijah probably had to wait just like everybody else from the OT in the bosum of Abraham, as it was called. THe gates of heaven were not opened until Jesus opened them.

[mulls]

i think good friday's got it right

[cmotherofpirl]

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA

Hell (infernus) in theological usage is a place of punishment after death. Theologians distinguish four meanings of the term hell:

hell in the strict sense, or the place of punishment for the damned, be they demons or men;

the limbo of infants (limbus parvulorum), where those who die in original sin alone, and without personal mortal sin, are confined and undergo some kind of punishment;

the limbo of the Fathers (limbus patrum), in which the souls of the just who died before Christ awaited their admission to heaven; for in the meantime heaven was closed against them in punishment for the sin of Adam;

purgatory, where the just, who die in venial sin or who still owe a debt of temporal punishment for sin, are cleansed by suffering before their admission to heaven.

[cmotherofpirl]

In the Holy Bible the term heaven denotes, in the first place, the blue firmament, or the region of the clouds that pass along the sky. Gen., i, 20, speaks of the birds "under the firmament of heaven". In other passages it denotes the region of the stars that shine in the sky. Furthermore heaven is spoken of as the dwelling of God; for, although God is omnipresent, He manifests Himself in a special manner in the light and grandeur of the firmament. Heaven also is the abode of the angels; for they are constantly with God and see His face. With God in heaven are likewise the souls of the just (II Cor. 5:1; Matt., v, 3, 12). In Eph., iv, 8 sq., we are told that Christ conducted to heaven the patriarchs who had been in limbo (limbus patrum). Thus the term heaven has come to designate both the happiness and the abode of just in the next life.

[cmotherofpirl]

Q: Lately, it has been a point of contention on a popular Protestant radio program that Jesus did not descend into hell. The host points out that Jesus said to the thief on the cross, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). Why then does the creed say that Jesus descended into hell?

A: Because that's where paradise was at the time. Paradise -- the place of the God's righteous ones -- was not at that time located in heaven. It was a the Ascension of Christ that paradise was relocated to heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church records,

"[T]he souls of all the saints . . . since the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven -- have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature" (CCC 1023).

Prior to this time, paradise was located in hell.

What's that you say? Hell is the place of the damned. How could paradise possibly be there? Ah, you reveal that you are a child of the twentieth century. In our day, the English word "hell" has come to take on the idea of being the place of the damned, but in prior eras, the word merely indicated the place of the dead in general, not a place of torment in particular. The original German term from which we get "hell" simply meant where the dead are.

It has only been very recently in the history of English that the term has taken on the exclusive meaning of the place of the damned. In fact, when the King James Version was being translated, it was still used in its broader sense of the place of the dead. Thus we read the King James Bible discussing Jesus' soul being in hell:

"[David,] seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his [Christ's] soul was not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses" (Acts 2:31-32).

Twentieth-century translations have the problem of how to deal with the fact that now the word "hell" means to most people "the place of the damned" and so to avoid implying Jesus went there, they use a different term when rendering this verse.

The Revised Standard Version transliterates the Greek word used here and speaks of "hades." This Greek term, like the original meaning of the word "hell," simply meant the place of the dead. Unfortunately, also like the word "hell," the word "hades" has also taken on the connotation (but not quite as strongly) of being the place of the damned.

To sidestep this, the New International Version says Jesus was not abandoned to "the grave," but this isn't very satisfactory either because the Greek word "hades" meant more than "the grave." It meant the netherworld.

This problem of references to the netherworld taking on connotations of the place of the damned has happened elsewhere, too. Originally, the Latin word infernum simply meant "the lower region" and was also used as a reference to the place of the dead. It, too, or rather its English derivative -- inferno -- has also acquired the firey connotations of the place of the damned, though these were lacking in its original use.

The only ancient language term I know of that this hasn't happened to is the Hebrew word sheol, which (since it hasn't been known to most English speakers) still simply means the place of the dead. The Revised Standard Version took the bold step of using this word when it appears in the Old Testament, but even though it is the Hebrew word that the Greek New Testament renders using hades, the RSV translators did not see fit to use it in the New Testament. If they had, it would have cut through the negative connotations associated with hell, hades, and inferno, but at the price of confronting the English-speaking reader with a totally unfamiliar word used in familiar New Testament passages.

In any event, the reason that we say in the Apostles Creed that Jesus descended into hell is because he did. He descended to the place of the dead. Whether one is most comfortable calling it sheol, hades, infernum, or hell, it doesn't matter. That's where he went, and the New Testament says so, not only in places like the Acts passage we quoted, but in places like this:

"For Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which he went and preached to the spirits in prison, 20 who formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark" (1 Peter 3:18-20a).

"For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, that though judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God" (1 Peter 4:6).

The Apostles' Creed was simply translated at a time when the word "hell" had a broader meaning in English than it does now, but it doesn't say anything different than the Bible. Jesus went to the place of the dead when he died.