What is the point of eternal suffering?

@kellyjay said
No, you will be cast into the fire for sins, many will be cast in believing in God, the devil believes and he is going in. Many who say Lord, Lord are going to be cast

many will be cast in [to the fire] believing in God

You'd better do lots of good works then, because your believing in God might not be enough to save you.

@kellyjay said
No, you will be cast into the fire for sins, many will be cast in believing in God, the devil believes and he is going in. Many who say Lord, Lord are going to be cast in, if your evil heart has not be given to God so God can redeem you, you'll stand before Him in your sins and when judgment is done for your evil and wicked deeds someone else will throw you into the fire.

You are not addressing these points.
How is it good and just for God to eternally torment someone for 20 yrs of sins? How is it good and just for God to eternally torment someone for not knowing about Christ?

@kellyjay said
No, you will be cast into the fire for sins, many will be cast in believing in God, the devil believes and he is going in.

I was channeling the claim of Philokalia that people throw themselves into the lake of fire. I notice you didn’t correct him earlier in the thread...

I’m fully aware of what you believe and why you believe it. Repeatedly regurgitating your dogma shrouded in the pseudo-mystic lexicon of god’s holiness, purity, justice, love, righteousness etc...may make you feel better about defending what is fundamentally a brutal terrorist philosophy, but it doesn’t move me in the slightest.

@divegeester said
Here are your alleged replies and my comments:

1) Eternal suffering doesn't move to a goal, but it is the fruit of the choices that people made, and thus is their just ends.

Here you claim there is no point. No point to the eternal torture of billions of souls. ‘It is just their ends’ you say. So pointless torture. Kind of my point actually, but clearly not your ...[text shortened]... inite love, mercy, power and control...that he feels it is logical to torture them for eternity?

It's amazing how long it took to get Dive to participate in his thread.

27 pages before Dive makes a post with actual content in his own thread.

What a world we live in.

1) Eternal suffering doesn't move to a goal, but it is the fruit of the choices that people made, and thus is their just ends.

Here you claim there is no point. No point to the eternal torture of billions of souls. ‘It is just their ends’ you say. So pointless torture. Kind of my point actually, but clearly not your position.

I am not sure if it will be billions of souls. These sorts of additions of color into it serve your position, but I think it is important for us to remember hat we are not God, and you are definitely right that God is merciful. We do not know what hell means for all of the people out there.

But yes, theoretically, there will be many people in hell, and we are told that hell is eternal.

And, moreover, I am making a distinction about what can be meant by point. I am cutting you off at the pass, so to speak, because I know that the ultimate angle is to say that that which does not bring people closer to God is pointless and thus not serving anything and not something which God would do. But the fact of the matter is that we have to make a distinction right off concerning our own language and what is meant by things like 'point.'

You didn't make a point in (2), so I will skip it.

3a) It's actually a matter of people getting their wishes fulfilled.

and you wonder why you are mocked in this forum...

I do not believe that I am mocked on this forum, lol.

I know there are some people here who do not like me, a couple of people in particular, but it doesn't bother me.

But hopefully you'll make a point next.

Another post by you confirming that there is no point to it, no point to the torture of billions of people. And yet you defend your version of God for doing it

There's no point here in number 3b either.

(4b) once again, we are in need of yet more exegesis on the how it has happened. The argument you need to be addressing is that there is no moral, no intellectual, no practical point to torturing billions of people in secret and then relying on the likes of you to tell people about it.

Actually, we touched on this earlier in the thread:

People choose to be separated from God themselves, for one, and for two, the just deserts of their actions is actually hell, like it or not.

5b) If a man clearly has committed a crime and must go to jail, what actually sends him to jail? The judge, or the actions that put him before the judge? Who is responsible for him being in jail -- the criminal who committed the crime, or the judge?

how does this silly and inept analogy in any way explain the point of a supreme being deliberately keeping billions of people supernaturally alive in order to torture them for not believing in him? Indeed, as I asked KellyJay, what “crimes” have these people committed against a super-being of infinite love, mercy, power and control...that he feels it is logical to torture them for eternity?

You made an assumption here that God has to necessarily keep them alive. But the fact of the matter is that their soul was made to be immortal, and they are thus immortal without a sustained effort by God. A byproduct of their immortality is that they their rejection of God has far graver consequences than they have anticipated.

No one is "keeping them alive" to be tortured.

As to the other point you brought up here...

In another thread, as well, I brought up this line from the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 25:

31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the [c]holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: 35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’

37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’

Let's also talk about the Old Testament for a minute...

Was God willing to hurt Egyptians to liberate the Hebrews? Yes.

Was God willing to fight with the Hebrews against their enemies? Yes.

Was God willing to punish the Hebrews with death, disease, famine, etc., when they failed to follow His Word? And had He warned them before hand? Yes.

God is Love, but the Bible even says that our God is a jealous God, and that God metes out vengeance.

... Or, do you reject all that? As you reject much of the New Testament?

Here's the thing, Dive: if you pick & choose the parts of the Bible and the aspects of Christianity that you want to believe, it is impossible to be consistent, and in the end, you just look like someone who has compiled a list of their favorite wisdom verses and red text. The theology is not sensible and becomes so highly diluted.

This is not Christianity as it has been practiced for millennia. Dare I say that it is heretical.

@philokalia said
It's amazing how long it took to get Dive to participate in his thread.

27 pages before Dive makes a post with actual content in his own thread.

What a world we live in.

[quote]1) Eternal suffering doesn't move to a goal, but it is the fruit of the choices that people made, and thus is their just ends.

Here you claim there is no point. No point to the etern ...[text shortened]... is not Christianity as it has been practiced for millennia. Dare I say that it is heretical.

If you can show me where the Bible says this

..their soul was made to be immortal, ..

then I would say you have a valid point in favour of eternal torment. Otherwise the idea of eternal torment is an unbiblical church doctrine.

As for this statement:

Was God willing to hurt Egyptians to liberate the Hebrews? Yes.
Was God willing to fight with the Hebrews against their enemies? Yes.
Was God willing to punish the Hebrews with death, disease, famine, etc., when they failed to follow His Word? And had He warned them before hand? Yes.

This is reasonable punishment. Your doctrine of eternal torment is not reasonable punishment by a just God. Maybe you do not understand what is eternity. Were the Egyptians, Hebrews etc punished eternally? No. Then why the irrelevant analogy.

@philokalia said
It's amazing how long it took to get Dive to participate in his thread.

27 pages before Dive makes a post with actual content in his own thread.

What a world we live in.

[quote]1) Eternal suffering doesn't move to a goal, but it is the fruit of the choices that people made, and thus is their just ends.

Here you claim there is no point. No point to the etern ...[text shortened]... is not Christianity as it has been practiced for millennia. Dare I say that it is heretical.

I’m not interested in any of your tangential rambling into other side topics, I am only interested in:

What is the point of eternal suffering?

So we seem to agree that there is no point...

@divegeester said
I’m not interested in any of your tangential rambling into other side topics, I am only interested in:

What is the point of eternal suffering?

So we agree that there is no point.

Eternal suffering validates God's righteousness.

No, that can't be right...

@ghost-of-a-duke said
Eternal suffering validates God's righteousness.

No, that can't be right...

sonship believes the "woe" of the burning humans hung out on chains "glorifies" his God figure and acts as a deterrent to "other worlds" although he doesn't explain why people in "other worlds" can see it or be deterred by it while people in 'this world' cannot.

@divegeester said
I was channeling the claim of Philokalia that people throw themselves into the lake of fire. I notice you didn’t correct him earlier in the thread...

I’m fully aware of what you believe and why you believe it. Repeatedly regurgitating your dogma shrouded in the pseudo-mystic lexicon of god’s holiness, purity, justice, love, righteousness etc...may make you feel better ...[text shortened]... ending what is fundamentally a brutal terrorist philosophy, but it doesn’t move me in the slightest.

I don’t read every post looking for disagreements

@kellyjay said
I don’t read every post looking for disagreements

I mistakenly thought that you were following the OP topic themes, digesting the theological and moral juxtapositions and considering the implications of your beliefs on eternal suffering...and not merely projecting and promoting your learned dogmas.

@divegeester said
I mistakenly thought that you were following the OP topic themes, digesting the theological and moral juxtapositions and considering the implications of your beliefs on eternal suffering...and not merely projecting and promoting your learned dogmas.

I guess you were mistaken.
Normally I'll look at my last post and from there look if anyone has responded to me. If I look at others posts it is in passing, sometimes I do, more times than not I don't. I don't spend the amount of time here I use to, so your thoughts about me were not without cause, sorry dive.

@proper-knob said
This is pure rose tinted tosh Kelly. God didn't just kill 'evil men', he even says as much in the OT, here's is one quote of many -

Exodus 20:5-6 New International Version (NIV)

You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generatio ...[text shortened]... my commandments.

Punishing children for what their parents did is not 'good'. It's evil.

Sin harms generations, you end up in a cycle of damage from generation to generation, it is a grace that can be stopped. So yes, I think God is good, you think karma is bad, where you are locked into a perpectual unending life of paying for the bad? With the blessings for the love to a thousand generations, that is a great thing, I'd say God is good.

@divegeester said
Yes, your version of God is a terrorist who tries to terrify people with threats of eternal torture for not believing in him. If you took honest stock of this ludicrous ideology you would realise that it cannot be true.

Actually, if God is good what should He do with men who do evil? If God is just, what should God do with wickedness? Can He pretend it didn't happen, will that mean He is okay with evil and wicked deeds? Would He be unjust if He let people off the hook for their crimes against Him and others? What is your honest opinion where your righteous should be looked at as the right thing to do over what scripture says?

@rajk999 said
You are not addressing these points.
How is it good and just for God to eternally torment someone for 20 yrs of sins? How is it good and just for God to eternally torment someone for not knowing about Christ?

You think someone who sinned for 20 years shouldn't be punished for that eternally? Why does 20 years matter? You think someone who is 20 years old but only spent 2 hours murdering someone should be punished differently than someone who spent 4 minutes doing it? The point isn't pay for a crime, the point is we will be coming to God in our sins, we will not be godly people with the redemption of Christ and the Holy Spirit within, instead we will be in our sinful state due to the things we did completely unfit for the Kingdom of God.

If we are not redeemed we are corrupt sinners who are unworthy of the Kingdom of God, and as such for that which we are, and what we did, we will be cast out.

Knowing Christ is all important, without Him we are condemned already.

@rajk999 said
If you can show me where the Bible says this

..their soul was made to be immortal, ..

then I would say you have a valid point in favour of eternal torment. Otherwise the idea of eternal torment is an unbiblical church doctrine.

As for this statement:

[i] Was God willing to hurt Egyptians to liberate the Hebrews? Yes.
Was God willing to fight with the Heb ...[text shortened]... eternity. Were the Egyptians, Hebrews etc punished eternally? No. Then why the irrelevant analogy.

Because of this, I stumbled onto a very interesting topic about whether or not the soul was created absolutely to be immortal, or whether its immortality was conditioned. This is a very lively debate, and it appears that in the Western church it was very much influenced by Greek thought that immortality was a characteristic of the soul. Yet, this is not always the case in Christian thought at all.

An Orthodox Archpriest wrote this:

We may conclude: When we discuss the problem of Immortality from a Christian point of view, we must keep in mind the creaturely nature of the soul. The very existence of the soul is contingent, i.e., as it were, "conditional." It is conditioned by the creative fiat of God. Yet, a given existence, i.e., an existence which is not necessarily implied in the "essence," is not necessarily a transient one. The creative fiat is a free but ultimate act of God. God has created the world simply for existence: ektise gar is to ine ta panda (Wis. 1: 14). There is no provision for revoking this creative decree. The sting of the antinomy is exactly here: the world has a contingent beginning, yet no end. It stands by the immutable will of God.

https://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/2007/01/immortality-of-soul-part-1.html

This is a mighty big discussion.

But, regardless, it says that the punishment of the damned is eternal (Matthew 25:46), and thus I believe that hell is an eternal sentence.