I realize Hell as commonly understand in recent centuries doesn’t really show up in the Bible, but I suggest reading Psalm 58, and then reading the part of St. Augustine’s Summa Theologiae where he discusses how the blessed will rejoice in the suffering of the wicked.
If hell isn’t as bad as actual torture, then the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 must be both very metaphorical and very exaggerated. I highly doubt a priest would want the faithful to discount other parables so much—we don’t interpret the Good Samaritan’s story to mean “Helping people is great and all, but really is mostly supererogatory.” That kind of thinking is something that St Francis of Assisi railed against, and that the camel/eye of a needle metaphor warns against.
Also, going back to St Augustine, he believed in Purgatory, which I assume would be less bad or at least no worse than Hell in some sense(s) other than just temporal, and said of the cleansing fires of purgatory that “yet will that fire be more grievous than anything that man can suffer in this life whatsoever.”
Hell as the absence of God reads like Limbo from Dante’s inferno, or like the Hell CS Lewis describes. If you know of any premodern account of Hell that aligns with this view, let me know. Otherwise, what you’re discussing is a modern change to Christian doctrine, which if valid means either God lied to the early church, or changed his mind, or he takes Matthew 16:19 very seriously. In the first two cases God proves himself untrustworthy as a lawgiver (though we already knew that from many cases where God deceives people, sometimes to terrible effect), while the latter case would imply God turned the duty of establishing morality over to mankind.
The parable of the tares is obviously a metaphor? I mean, it’s weeds growing in wheat, and burning weeds so they can’t grow in the next season seems pretty logical (I’m not a 0th century farmer, so I wouldn’t know). The parable can easily be read as saying that god allows good christians and deviants to grow in the same “field”, and he will sort them into heaven and not-heaven at the time of “harvest”.
Saying that it implies the deviants will literally burn is reading too much into it, although it seems that there’s a long tradition of people reading too much into the bible.
That’s true, good point, though I have a hard time interpreting “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” as referring to the plants being burned and not people being hurt.
I realize Hell as commonly understand in recent centuries doesn’t really show up in the Bible, but I suggest reading Psalm 58, and then reading the part of St. Augustine’s Summa Theologiae where he discusses how the blessed will rejoice in the suffering of the wicked.
If hell isn’t as bad as actual torture, then the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13 must be both very metaphorical and very exaggerated. I highly doubt a priest would want the faithful to discount other parables so much—we don’t interpret the Good Samaritan’s story to mean “Helping people is great and all, but really is mostly supererogatory.” That kind of thinking is something that St Francis of Assisi railed against, and that the camel/eye of a needle metaphor warns against.
Also, going back to St Augustine, he believed in Purgatory, which I assume would be less bad or at least no worse than Hell in some sense(s) other than just temporal, and said of the cleansing fires of purgatory that “yet will that fire be more grievous than anything that man can suffer in this life whatsoever.”
Hell as the absence of God reads like Limbo from Dante’s inferno, or like the Hell CS Lewis describes. If you know of any premodern account of Hell that aligns with this view, let me know. Otherwise, what you’re discussing is a modern change to Christian doctrine, which if valid means either God lied to the early church, or changed his mind, or he takes Matthew 16:19 very seriously. In the first two cases God proves himself untrustworthy as a lawgiver (though we already knew that from many cases where God deceives people, sometimes to terrible effect), while the latter case would imply God turned the duty of establishing morality over to mankind.
The parable of the tares is obviously a metaphor? I mean, it’s weeds growing in wheat, and burning weeds so they can’t grow in the next season seems pretty logical (I’m not a 0th century farmer, so I wouldn’t know). The parable can easily be read as saying that god allows good christians and deviants to grow in the same “field”, and he will sort them into heaven and not-heaven at the time of “harvest”.
Saying that it implies the deviants will literally burn is reading too much into it, although it seems that there’s a long tradition of people reading too much into the bible.
That’s true, good point, though I have a hard time interpreting “there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” as referring to the plants being burned and not people being hurt.