Is Hell a Physical Reality?
- Thread starter Lawdog
- Start date
Oh yes. You can provide some verses and I'll provide some verses in order to test your criteria.
Before we continue anyway, are you Protestant or Catholic? If Protestant, what denomination?
We could have been pals in my earlier life on this forum I see..
Before we continue anyway, are you Protestant or Catholic? If Protestant, what denomination?
We could have been pals in my earlier life on this forum I see..
My goal is not to provide proof through scripture, and by examples show you the so-called 'correct way" of interpretation.
since I am just a man and I have much susceptibility to error, I can only describe to you my approach to scrpiture, since there are many levels of meaning.
I am Catholic, and my Church professes four methods of scrptural interpretation.
The literal sense and the spiritual sense. St. Thomas Aquinas defines the four senses of Sacred Scripture in his Summa Theologiae (part I, quest. 1, art. 10). First he distinguishes between the literal sense and the spiritual sense in general, where he says that "the first meaning, according to which the words signify things, pertains to the first sense, which is the historical or literal sense, while (the other) meaning, according to which the things signified by the words again signify other things, is called the spiritual sense, which is based upon the literal sense and presupposes it." Thus, he points out, the Bible is a special kind of book like no other book, inasmuch as it has two senses expressed in the very same words. Here the most obvious aspect of the spiritual sense is the typical sense, which pertains to the allegorical sense. Msgr. John E. Steinmueller, in his well-known Companion to Scripture Studies (vol. 1, pp. 256-257) remarks: "Hence, the literal sense would be the meaning expressed immediately and directly by the words of the sacred writers," while the typical sense "is based only indirectly upon the words and directly upon things, events, or persons (either individually or collectively) used to express something else on a higher level and to foreshadow some great truth." And Msgr. Steinmueller gives as an example the expression in Osee (Hosea) 11:1: "I called my son out of Egypt," which refers literally to the descendants of Jacob brought out of Egypt under Moses, and which refers typically to the Infant Jesus returning to Palestine from Egypt. In this study we are going to seek to identify clearly the literal sense and to distinguish it from possible spiritual senses contained under the same words. We are going to look for three different kinds of spiritual sense, namely, the allegorical sense, the tropological, or moral, sense, and the anagogical, or final, sense. The typical sense will be considered as an expression of the allegorical sense.
An example of the four senses: the treasure hidden in a field. In Matt 13:44 we read: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, a man having found which, he hid it and, for joy thereof, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." The literal sense is contained in the bare meaning of the words. It is clear what a kingdom is and what a treasure is. One can think of gold or silver buried in an open field. But there are two ways literally to read this simile, or comparison. One way is "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field ...." The other way is "The kingdom of heaven is like this. There is a treasure hidden in a field ...." The second way is probably more accurate, for reasons that will be given. The spiritual sense of this simile is taken up in the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church. The search for the spiritual meaning begins when we ask ourselves what the "treasure" stands for in the comparison. As compiled by Thomas Aquinas in his Catena aurea and in his own Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew at Matt 13:44, we find as follows. According to St. Gregory the Great, the treasure is "heavenly desire" (Isa 33:6), hidden in the field of "the discipline of zeal for Heaven" (Prov 24:27); according to St. John Chrysostom, the treasure is the teaching of the Gospel (2 Cor 4:7), hidden from the eyes of the unclean people of this world (Matt 11:15); according to St. Jerome, the treasure is the divine Word of God (Col 2:3), hidden in the field of his Body (Col 2:9), or Sacred Scripture, hidden in the field of the Church (Wisd 7:14); according to St. Augustine the treasure is the two Testaments. We should note that St. Thomas Aquinas, when he brings out a spiritual meaning of a word or passage in Sacred Scripture, also when he is quoting from the Fathers of the Church, as he has done here, usually associates it with a literal expression of the same word elsewhere in the Scriptures. Such cross references are very useful, but they require a vast knowledge of the Scriptures in order to be found consistently. The use of a concordance can be very helpful in this regard.
The anagogical sense of Matt 13:44. The neo-Patristic approach tries to make explicit the framework of the four senses which is usually only implicit in the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church. The anagogical sense regards the higher allegory of the Most Blessed Trinity and the "four last things," namely, death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Where Gregory the Great sees the treasure hidden in a field as representing "heavenly desire" in general, the neo-Patristic exegete will locate this insight objectively as the anagogy of Heaven itself, the place where God in Three Persons dwells and where the blessed abide. Subjectively, on the anagogical level, the treasure may be seen as eternal happiness in Heaven. A person finds this treasure now through the supernatural virtue of faith, he rejoices through supernatural hope, and he goes and buys that field through the exercise of the supernatural virtue of charity.
The allegorical sense of Matt 13:44. An allegory is "a sustained metaphor." Allegory is also "a technique of creating or interpreting works of literature, art, and music so that they will convey more than one level of meaning simultaneously" (Encyclopedia Americana, "Allegory"). We speak of the allegorical sense of the Scriptures inasmuch as objects of faith are presented by the metaphorical use of words that literally represent natural things, and this usage is repeated over and over again in a recognizable pattern. Allegory in the miraculous text of the Bible does not mean fancy or unreal depiction, except where it deliberately uses a genre of fiction. The literal sense of the Bible carries a higher level of meaning centered around the allegory of Christ and his Church. Thus, following St. Jerome, we may be able to see that the treasure in Matt 13:44 is the divine Word of God, present hypostatically in the human nature of Christ and hidden within the "field" of his Body and Soul. To come to know who Jesus really is means to discover the He is God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, made man for our salvation. Secondly, we learn who Jesus is through hearing the Gospel as it is preached or through reading the Gospels as they have been written down. We learn who Jesus really is by listening to his words and by reviewing his deeds, recounted in the "field" of the Gospels. Thirdly, the treasure is the Person of Jesus, hidden prophetically in the figurative expressions of the Old Testament. Fourthly, the treasure is Jesus, hidden within the Church, which is his Mystical Body. People come to Jesus through the Church. And so we have the allegory of the Divine Word, the allegory of the written word, the allegory of the two Testaments, and the allegory of the Church.
The tropological sense of Matt 13:44. The tropological sense is the objective pattern which represents the impact of the objective truth upon the believing subject, and it is structured chiefly in terms of the virtues of the soul of the believer. We have seen above, in relation to the anagogical sense, that the three theological virtues are the "field" in which the desire for heaven lies. To "sell all that one has" in order to buy that field means to repent of one's sins, to submit our minds to the truth of the Gospel, to focus our minds and our hearts upon supernatural realities, to give up all of our attachments to the world, the flesh, and the Devil, to be wholly converted to love for God and for our neighbor, and other things of this kind. Tropologically, the kingdom of Heaven is the reign of God's grace in the heart of the believer. Cornelius a Lapide, whose commentaries provide abundant help for neo-Patristic research, sees here as tropological Gregory the Great's teaching that the treasure in point is the desire of Heaven, which the finder must hide from the praise of men. "In this present life we are on a road by which we are proceeding to our homeland, but evil spirits are like robbers besetting our path. Whoever, therefore, openly carries his treasure on the way is asking to be robbed" (Gregory, Homily 11 on the Gospels).
since I am just a man and I have much susceptibility to error, I can only describe to you my approach to scrpiture, since there are many levels of meaning.
I am Catholic, and my Church professes four methods of scrptural interpretation.
The literal sense and the spiritual sense. St. Thomas Aquinas defines the four senses of Sacred Scripture in his Summa Theologiae (part I, quest. 1, art. 10). First he distinguishes between the literal sense and the spiritual sense in general, where he says that "the first meaning, according to which the words signify things, pertains to the first sense, which is the historical or literal sense, while (the other) meaning, according to which the things signified by the words again signify other things, is called the spiritual sense, which is based upon the literal sense and presupposes it." Thus, he points out, the Bible is a special kind of book like no other book, inasmuch as it has two senses expressed in the very same words. Here the most obvious aspect of the spiritual sense is the typical sense, which pertains to the allegorical sense. Msgr. John E. Steinmueller, in his well-known Companion to Scripture Studies (vol. 1, pp. 256-257) remarks: "Hence, the literal sense would be the meaning expressed immediately and directly by the words of the sacred writers," while the typical sense "is based only indirectly upon the words and directly upon things, events, or persons (either individually or collectively) used to express something else on a higher level and to foreshadow some great truth." And Msgr. Steinmueller gives as an example the expression in Osee (Hosea) 11:1: "I called my son out of Egypt," which refers literally to the descendants of Jacob brought out of Egypt under Moses, and which refers typically to the Infant Jesus returning to Palestine from Egypt. In this study we are going to seek to identify clearly the literal sense and to distinguish it from possible spiritual senses contained under the same words. We are going to look for three different kinds of spiritual sense, namely, the allegorical sense, the tropological, or moral, sense, and the anagogical, or final, sense. The typical sense will be considered as an expression of the allegorical sense.
An example of the four senses: the treasure hidden in a field. In Matt 13:44 we read: "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field, a man having found which, he hid it and, for joy thereof, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." The literal sense is contained in the bare meaning of the words. It is clear what a kingdom is and what a treasure is. One can think of gold or silver buried in an open field. But there are two ways literally to read this simile, or comparison. One way is "The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field ...." The other way is "The kingdom of heaven is like this. There is a treasure hidden in a field ...." The second way is probably more accurate, for reasons that will be given. The spiritual sense of this simile is taken up in the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church. The search for the spiritual meaning begins when we ask ourselves what the "treasure" stands for in the comparison. As compiled by Thomas Aquinas in his Catena aurea and in his own Commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew at Matt 13:44, we find as follows. According to St. Gregory the Great, the treasure is "heavenly desire" (Isa 33:6), hidden in the field of "the discipline of zeal for Heaven" (Prov 24:27); according to St. John Chrysostom, the treasure is the teaching of the Gospel (2 Cor 4:7), hidden from the eyes of the unclean people of this world (Matt 11:15); according to St. Jerome, the treasure is the divine Word of God (Col 2:3), hidden in the field of his Body (Col 2:9), or Sacred Scripture, hidden in the field of the Church (Wisd 7:14); according to St. Augustine the treasure is the two Testaments. We should note that St. Thomas Aquinas, when he brings out a spiritual meaning of a word or passage in Sacred Scripture, also when he is quoting from the Fathers of the Church, as he has done here, usually associates it with a literal expression of the same word elsewhere in the Scriptures. Such cross references are very useful, but they require a vast knowledge of the Scriptures in order to be found consistently. The use of a concordance can be very helpful in this regard.
The anagogical sense of Matt 13:44. The neo-Patristic approach tries to make explicit the framework of the four senses which is usually only implicit in the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church. The anagogical sense regards the higher allegory of the Most Blessed Trinity and the "four last things," namely, death, judgment, Heaven, and Hell. Where Gregory the Great sees the treasure hidden in a field as representing "heavenly desire" in general, the neo-Patristic exegete will locate this insight objectively as the anagogy of Heaven itself, the place where God in Three Persons dwells and where the blessed abide. Subjectively, on the anagogical level, the treasure may be seen as eternal happiness in Heaven. A person finds this treasure now through the supernatural virtue of faith, he rejoices through supernatural hope, and he goes and buys that field through the exercise of the supernatural virtue of charity.
The allegorical sense of Matt 13:44. An allegory is "a sustained metaphor." Allegory is also "a technique of creating or interpreting works of literature, art, and music so that they will convey more than one level of meaning simultaneously" (Encyclopedia Americana, "Allegory"). We speak of the allegorical sense of the Scriptures inasmuch as objects of faith are presented by the metaphorical use of words that literally represent natural things, and this usage is repeated over and over again in a recognizable pattern. Allegory in the miraculous text of the Bible does not mean fancy or unreal depiction, except where it deliberately uses a genre of fiction. The literal sense of the Bible carries a higher level of meaning centered around the allegory of Christ and his Church. Thus, following St. Jerome, we may be able to see that the treasure in Matt 13:44 is the divine Word of God, present hypostatically in the human nature of Christ and hidden within the "field" of his Body and Soul. To come to know who Jesus really is means to discover the He is God, the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity, made man for our salvation. Secondly, we learn who Jesus is through hearing the Gospel as it is preached or through reading the Gospels as they have been written down. We learn who Jesus really is by listening to his words and by reviewing his deeds, recounted in the "field" of the Gospels. Thirdly, the treasure is the Person of Jesus, hidden prophetically in the figurative expressions of the Old Testament. Fourthly, the treasure is Jesus, hidden within the Church, which is his Mystical Body. People come to Jesus through the Church. And so we have the allegory of the Divine Word, the allegory of the written word, the allegory of the two Testaments, and the allegory of the Church.
The tropological sense of Matt 13:44. The tropological sense is the objective pattern which represents the impact of the objective truth upon the believing subject, and it is structured chiefly in terms of the virtues of the soul of the believer. We have seen above, in relation to the anagogical sense, that the three theological virtues are the "field" in which the desire for heaven lies. To "sell all that one has" in order to buy that field means to repent of one's sins, to submit our minds to the truth of the Gospel, to focus our minds and our hearts upon supernatural realities, to give up all of our attachments to the world, the flesh, and the Devil, to be wholly converted to love for God and for our neighbor, and other things of this kind. Tropologically, the kingdom of Heaven is the reign of God's grace in the heart of the believer. Cornelius a Lapide, whose commentaries provide abundant help for neo-Patristic research, sees here as tropological Gregory the Great's teaching that the treasure in point is the desire of Heaven, which the finder must hide from the praise of men. "In this present life we are on a road by which we are proceeding to our homeland, but evil spirits are like robbers besetting our path. Whoever, therefore, openly carries his treasure on the way is asking to be robbed" (Gregory, Homily 11 on the Gospels).
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Lawdog,
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! My brain has literally been fried. Tell me why the Bible, and our study and interpretation of it, has to be so damned complicated? Could it be to cover all possible bases? To make it almost impossible to refute, unless of course, you do have half a brain and use a little logic? I'm not getting personal here; it just drives me absolutely bonkers. Ah, what the hell, let's get physical. Step outside; I need to vent. On the other hand, can't we all just get along? I'm going to go to the Cesspool forum for a while and play some meaningless, yet distracting, word games. Maybe.
AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! My brain has literally been fried. Tell me why the Bible, and our study and interpretation of it, has to be so damned complicated? Could it be to cover all possible bases? To make it almost impossible to refute, unless of course, you do have half a brain and use a little logic? I'm not getting personal here; it just drives me absolutely bonkers. Ah, what the hell, let's get physical. Step outside; I need to vent. On the other hand, can't we all just get along? I'm going to go to the Cesspool forum for a while and play some meaningless, yet distracting, word games. Maybe.
M*W: You people make me laugh so hard that I puked up my breakfast! Eyewitness-schmeyewitness -- you're a fool!
Woody says: I'm glad you could laugh 'til it hurts. But I don't want you to choke on your food.
Since it's all cut and dry about Christ and the crucifiction, then tell me why the history wasn't settled two thousand years ago? What new information do you have that they didn't have two thousand years ago? Can you perform time travel?
First you tell me that you actually saw real witches flying in the sky in Germany, then you tell me there is no supernatural and you are an atheist. Tell me Medicine Woman, how do you deal with the cognitive dissonance without going insane?
Woody says: I'm glad you could laugh 'til it hurts. But I don't want you to choke on your food.
Since it's all cut and dry about Christ and the crucifiction, then tell me why the history wasn't settled two thousand years ago? What new information do you have that they didn't have two thousand years ago? Can you perform time travel?
First you tell me that you actually saw real witches flying in the sky in Germany, then you tell me there is no supernatural and you are an atheist. Tell me Medicine Woman, how do you deal with the cognitive dissonance without going insane?
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Lawdog said: Would you elaborate on Hell as being replaced by the lake of fire?
Woody says: The book of Revelation has plenty to say about the Lake of Fire. It says satan will be cast in alive where the beast and the false prophet are and they will be tormented forever. All people that are not written in the book of life get to join them there and everyone that's in hell gets thrown in there too. Death and Hell get thrown into the lake of fire, and everything offensive that is found on the face of the earth is going in.
Revelation 19:20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Revelation 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Matthew 13:41,42 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
It's literally going to be one Hell of an eternal roast. It's the only thing that will appease God's anger with them. He'll never stop being pissed off with them because of the way they slighted His forgiveness and dismissed His own personal sacrifice -- like he'll be real pissed. Nobody is going to say a thing when he pours out His wrath. And just think about it -- He's been stewing on this thing for thousands of years.
Woody says: The book of Revelation has plenty to say about the Lake of Fire. It says satan will be cast in alive where the beast and the false prophet are and they will be tormented forever. All people that are not written in the book of life get to join them there and everyone that's in hell gets thrown in there too. Death and Hell get thrown into the lake of fire, and everything offensive that is found on the face of the earth is going in.
Revelation 19:20 And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.
Revelation 20:10 And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.
Revelation 20:14 And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 20:15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
Matthew 13:41,42 The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
It's literally going to be one Hell of an eternal roast. It's the only thing that will appease God's anger with them. He'll never stop being pissed off with them because of the way they slighted His forgiveness and dismissed His own personal sacrifice -- like he'll be real pissed. Nobody is going to say a thing when he pours out His wrath. And just think about it -- He's been stewing on this thing for thousands of years.
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I fail even remotely to see how the verse implicitly tells of the Infant Jesus returning to Palestine from Egypt. Does the context at all lend concrete to such a claim? In remembering that there were neither verse nor chapter numbers in the old texts, I fail to see how such an extrapolation can be derived from the text.
Firstly, it is important to note that at the time during which Jesus spake these things (if indeed he did at all), there was no 'Divine Word' or 'two Testaments' as St. Augustine puts it. These claims are therefore obviously ex post considerations, for the Lord could not have spoken of treasures to peoples who would never within their lifetimes have known of the Canon which we have. Not even Paul would have been privy to interpretation by this so-called 'spiritual sense'. (If you are to claim that Jesus did not yet intend for this parable to be comprehended, then you beg the question)
For the anagogical sense, the exegeses concerned with the hereafter only serve to complicate matters. (Is Occam's razor of any concern to you in interpretating the Bible?)
It is not clear how a man is able to 'hide' heavenly desire (much less heaven!) after having once found it. I notice that in your own explanation, you fail to account for this difficulty - either in the anagogical or allegorical readings - instead flitting over it for the (admittedly) loftier salvific meaning. I notice that you do include, in conclusion, a parallel to robbers on the wayside from Gregory to account for the man's hiding of the treasure. But by this, the entire meaning is further obscured! For in Matthew 5:14-16 , Luke 8:16, and 1 Peter 2:12, believers receive admonishments to let our lights "shine before men". Followers of Jesus are instructed explicitly in the Great Commission and elsewhere to bear fruit. It is not clear how such an unwarranted reading is in accordance with such an order, or why at all the believer is to distrust in God's sovereignty and providence in order to haughtily hide "the desire of heaven" from men, as if it is man who gives and takes! Does the context (or Scripture as a whole) provide any grounds for Gregory the Great's teaching? I think not.
Lawdog said:
YOU make me laugh and cry at the same time, Lawdog. I don't know what else to say to you, other than have a great day!
Woody said:
Of course it is. What's not to worry about? Poor, misguided atheists are going to burn forever, and all you can say is that "it's literally going to be one Hell of a roast." Where's the compassion man? Or have you, like Bush, decided that in order to beat evil, you have to become evil? Like I said, some Christians need to either practice what they preach, or not.
CT said: Where's the compassion man?
Woody says: When you get to the lake of fire, it's too late for compassion. That will be over, and God's patience will literally run out. Those that didn't want His love will get the full force of His wrath and they will deserve it. I can't say I am sorry for them -- they made their choice, and God will make His. Needless to say, he doesn't feel compassion when He is real angry, and even God has a limit to His patience.
Woody says: When you get to the lake of fire, it's too late for compassion. That will be over, and God's patience will literally run out. Those that didn't want His love will get the full force of His wrath and they will deserve it. I can't say I am sorry for them -- they made their choice, and God will make His. Needless to say, he doesn't feel compassion when He is real angry, and even God has a limit to His patience.
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Cottontop3000
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I noticed that you like to read fantasy. I am an author of Fantasy books. You can download one of my books:
www.lulu.com/MythicTome
Southstar says: News Headline: An infinite God with boundless patience has finally been worn out.
Woody says: Do you expect Him to wait forever? He could, but why should He? In the final judgement, everyone has already made their decision. What more is there to wait for. God is not a procrastenator that sits there wringing His hands. One of the "No's" you say to him will be your eternal last "No." He won't keep you living forever until you finally say yes. Is that what you expect instead?
Rev 22:11
Woody says: Do you expect Him to wait forever? He could, but why should He? In the final judgement, everyone has already made their decision. What more is there to wait for. God is not a procrastenator that sits there wringing His hands. One of the "No's" you say to him will be your eternal last "No." He won't keep you living forever until you finally say yes. Is that what you expect instead?
Rev 22:11
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Lawdog said:
I choose it, lawdog, I choose it. It's better than spending an eternity in Heaven with the likes of some Christians I know (present company excluded of course). I think I would fit in better in Hell. Can we leave it at that, and get back to the business of trying to figure out what really might happen?