Hell

[~Anastasia~]

How will these tormented bodies be separated from those who are resurrected to the joys of God?

Your question is about whether the ones enjoying God will be standing next to a person in torment?

I asked that too, and was told we won't be. My thinking was that it would be impossible to enjoy the life of the age to come if we have to look on such torment.

 

[Hermit76]

Your question is about whether the ones enjoying God will be standing next to a person in torment?

I asked that too, and was told we won't be. My thinking was that it would be impossible to enjoy the life of the age to come if we have to look on such torment.

Yes, I was thinking in spacial terms.

Processing this makes me aware that the West has super simplified its heresies so that the mind of its adherents will have difficulty in understanding.

I'm reading the River of Fire and the entire framework is different. I guess this goes to show that converting requires a lifelong commitment to learning.

 

[ArmyMatt]

yes, it's not that we say there won't be some kind of physical separation, but just not according to our fallen understanding of temporality and space, which is why it's best not to use that understanding as your starting point when it comes to heaven or hell

 

[Lily76_]

Thank you so much for posting this thread i have always believed that i was going to hell after a priest abused me he said i was going to hell and that i am evil since then i have been looking at faiths and other denominations of Christianity i have been searching for so long and i think i have found the answer i needed to read or hear i feel more at peace with myself now but i cant become Orthodox Christian as i am a voting member of another church and my husband refuses to go to any other church apart from mine ( home church ) i cant take myself to an Orthodox church due to my mental health because at the moment am a danger to myself if am on my own also i have friends at my home church
if this wasn't the case i would happily become Orthodox but i want to also believe in what the Orthodox church believes

thank you so much for this post i feel very calm now the first time in a long time

 

[YCGP]

Yes, it is God who shows himself, though depending on our destiny (heaven or hell) we will actually experience him differently. The ones who go to hell will feel tormented (like a worm that never dies). The ones who go to heaven will feel bliss.

 

[SeraTaru]

I am not sure what the traditional Orthodox view is, but I don't believe in hell.

What do you believe is the alternative and how do you explain the fact that scripture is full of descriptions and warnings? Jesus believed in hell and taught on hell more than anyone else in the Bible.

 

[1am3laine]

I'm noticing a variety of positions regarding the existence of hell as a literal place. Which position is the traditional Orthodox view?

I don't know the traditional Orthodox view but I know hell is a literal place.
( Luke 16:23-26 ) the word "torments" is used so they're unexplained torments there.

(Luke 12:46-48) Explains they're levels to torments. The ones that knew to do good and didn't got beat with many stripes (torments). The one's who did NOT few stripes.

Also you can look up on youtube people who died and went to hell and MOSTLY they say.
1. It smells like the WORST SEWER ( pee/doo )
2. rape
3. fire
4. noise
5. hopelessness
6. insomnia (revelation 14:9-11)
7. maggots/worms ( mark 9:48 )

 

[Hermit76]

I don't know the traditional Orthodox view but I know hell is a literal place.
( Luke 16:23-26 ) the word "torments" is used so they're unexplained torments there.

(Luke 12:46-48) Explains they're levels to torments. The ones that knew to do good and didn't got beat with many stripes (torments). The one's who did NOT few stripes.

Also you can look up on youtube people who died and went to hell and MOSTLY they say.
1. It smells like the WORST SEWER ( pee/doo )
2. rape
3. fire
4. noise
5. hopelessness
6. insomnia (revelation 14:9-11)
7. maggots/worms ( mark 9:48 )

If you don't know the traditional Orthodox view why would you even comment on a post that asks for such?

 

[Petros2015]

Why do they think God is "located" somewhere, absent elsewhere, and the "sinners" banished from God's presence somehow, to suffer His absense?

(I'm speaking 'off the cuff here' and not from traditional references)
Well, there are many verses about being 'cast out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth'.

Outer darkness - Wikipedia

No matter how far you get from a source of Light, it is still there, but some of them can be very far away indeed, too far to do any good. The same for a source of Love. I personally think that the closer we come to God the closer we can get into that, the more we will experience joy and what we might call Heaven. Some might come 'this far and no further', others, the saints, might go deeper in, much deeper. I feel like it may work in both directions though and that the absence of God (Light, Love, Holiness, Sanity) will be experienced as Hell. He can and never will be *completely* absent from anywhere, but just as His presence may be experienced more fully by degrees, so can His absence.

I don't really know though if the 'outer darkness' is that same as what we might consider Hell? Or a sort of pre-judgement state?

What I do know is that even the physical Creation consists of *an awful lot* of outer darkness. And other interesting physical anamolies like Black Holes which distort the passage of Time and Light and actually could 'fit the bill' of a kind of Hell, certainly a burning bottomless (yet still dark) eternal pit

From St. Syrian, Hell is more described as the presence of God for creatures who have rejected Love, just as Heaven is described as the presence of God for those who have become part of it.

St Isaac the Syrian: Hell and the Scourge of Divine Love

I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is sharper than any torment that can be. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability. (I.28, p. 266)

 

[SeraTaru]

I don't know the traditional Orthodox view but I know hell is a literal place.
( Luke 16:23-26 ) the word "torments" is used so they're unexplained torments there.

(Luke 12:46-48) Explains they're levels to torments. The ones that knew to do good and didn't got beat with many stripes (torments). The one's who did NOT few stripes.

Also you can look up on youtube people who died and went to hell and MOSTLY they say.
1. It smells like the WORST SEWER ( pee/doo )
2. rape
3. fire
4. noise
5. hopelessness
6. insomnia (revelation 14:9-11)
7. maggots/worms ( mark 9:48 )

If there is no eternal, conscious punishment then God's character is in question and there is indeed no consequence for actions in this life.

God is both equally loving and forgiving but also must punish sin and wickedness.

To say there's no hell, is to make God in the image we want him to be instead of who he is as revealed in scripture.

Without getting into pointless debate I would like to make one point though -

There's a lot of talk generally today in wishy washy language about hell being "separation from God". Listen, if I've lived like the devil the last place I'd want to be is in the presence of God. The thought would repulse me - the very thing I'd want would be as far away from God as possible.

The most frightening aspect of the second death is that the full force of God's presence is there with the wicked, because it is HE that torments and punishes in hell.

(PS hell is a misnomer anyway...death and hell are cast into the lake of fire in Revelation so the everlasting destiny of the unrepentant is a lake of fire - hell is just a temporary waiting room).

Anyone that wants to explain away hell / eternal punishment has to go through devious and deliberate twisting of every reference in scripture and willfully deny the plain teaching of our loving Saviour.

One final point : I don't believe for one moment any sermon or experience from anyone that says they have been to hell - for the simple reason that they all over-dramatise it and ALWAYS (at least that I have heard) make it so that "demons are there tormenting the wicked". The lake of fire is NOT prepared for the devil and his angels so that they can "let their hair down and have a good time". It's prepared as their prison - they will be in torment along with everyone else.

 

[Hermit76]

If there is no eternal, conscious punishment then God's character is in question and there is indeed no consequence for actions in this life.

God is both equally loving and forgiving but also must punish sin and wickedness.

To say there's no hell, is to make God in the image we want him to be instead of who he is as revealed in scripture.

Without getting into pointless debate I would like to make one point though -

There's a lot of talk generally today in wishy washy language about hell being "separation from God". Listen, if I've lived like the devil the last place I'd want to be is in the presence of God. The thought would repulse me - the very thing I'd want would be as far away from God as possible.

The most frightening aspect of the second death is that the full force of God's presence is there with the wicked, because it is HE that torments and punishes in hell.

(PS hell is a misnomer anyway...death and hell are cast into the lake of fire in Revelation so the everlasting destiny of the unrepentant is a lake of fire - hell is just a temporary waiting room).

Anyone that wants to explain away hell / eternal punishment has to go through devious and deliberate twisting of every reference in scripture and willfully deny the plain teaching of our loving Saviour.

One final point : I don't believe for one moment any sermon or experience from anyone that says they have been to hell - for the simple reason that they all over-dramatise it and ALWAYS (at least that I have heard) make it so that "demons are there tormenting the wicked". The lake of fire is NOT prepared for the devil and his angels so that they can "let their hair down and have a good time". It's prepared as their prison - they will be in torment along with everyone else.

Obviously since I started the thread I do not have a perfect understanding of the Orthodox theology of hell. What I have discovered as fact is that the Western Evangelical idea of hell is not the same as held by the ancient church.
Orthodoxy does not mesh well with making a list of "what I believe" and checking off where the Church matches. Instead we must decide if Orthodoxy is true and then come sit at the feet of the Fathers and learn as little children.
So, I encourage you to hear what Orthodoxy has to say about hell and consider it. It may not mesh with what you believe, but it is truth.

 

[SeraTaru]

Obviously since I started the thread I do not have a perfect understanding of the Orthodox theology of hell. What I have discovered as fact is that the Western Evangelical idea of hell is not the same as held by the ancient church.
Orthodoxy does not mesh well with making a list of "what I believe" and checking off where the Church matches. Instead we must decide if Orthodoxy is true and then come sit at the feet of the Fathers and learn as little children.
So, I encourage you to hear what Orthodoxy has to say about hell and consider it. It may not mesh with what you believe, but it is truth.

Does the Orthodox understanding line up with scripture? If it does then it's always going to be right.

 

[Hermit76]

Does the Orthodox understanding line up with scripture? If it does then it's always going to be right.

Scripture must be read in the context of Church tradition.

 

[SeraTaru]

Scripture must be read in the context of Church tradition.

I don't recall that teaching from the Bible, could you point me to the passage that teaches that? I was always under the impression that God is the same yesterday, today and forever,

Thanks

 

[Almost there]

hell is more of a spiritual condition, and it's better to think of it that way. it is a place in a sense, but it exists beyond the temporal limitations this side of Judgment Day. so it's best to think of hell as a spiritual condition

Jesus mentioned "hell" a few times. He used the word "Gehenna", which was a real place. And the message to anyone listening at the time was pretty clear - they will be exterminated.

 

[Almost there]

Hell and heaven stand side by side.

Where does it say that in the bible?

As Matt said, it is a condition.

With that I agree. I like to say that your condition based on your acceptance of God's grace is not "heaven vs Hell". It is about eternal life vs death". It is not about geography. It is about condition - alive or dead.

In Scripture the rich man and Lazarus shows us this.

I don't think that parable is about hell. It's about people not accepting Christ even if he dies and comes back from the dead.

And according to Orthodoxy there is NO PLACE where God is not present. He is everywhere.

I agree. That is why I find it interesting that when the bible says that the lost will be outside of God's presence, it is the same thing as saying they will not exist.

 

[Hermit76]

I don't recall that teaching from the Bible, could you point me to the passage that teaches that? I was always under the impression that God is the same yesterday, today and forever,

Thanks

Well... The Orthodox Church gave the Bible to the world. You're espousing Sola Scriptura, which has given 30,000 denominations to the world. Scripture tells us that we need teachers, bishops, etc. to understand. Sola Scriptura was never a teaching of the church until the Reformers wanted to throw away the authority of the old and begin their new theology.

 

[SeraTaru]

Well... The Orthodox Church gave the Bible to the world. You're espousing Sola Scriptura, which has given 30,000 denominations to the world. Scripture tells us that we need teachers, bishops, etc. to understand. Sola Scriptura was never a teaching of the church until the Reformers wanted to throw away the authority of the old and begin their new theology.

Thanks for your reply....no point in me continuing to contribute to this thread,

Have a good day

 

[Almost there]

I don't recall that teaching from the Bible, could you point me to the passage that teaches that? I was always under the impression that God is the same yesterday, today and forever,

Thanks

The bible doesn't have much nice to say about the traditions of man.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Jesus mentioned "hell" a few times. He used the word "Gehenna", which was a real place. And the message to anyone listening at the time was pretty clear - they will be exterminated.

well, yeah, it's an eternal extermination but not annihilation. they are tormented eternally, but not to nothingness