 |
| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > General Chat > A Definition of "Hell" | Forum Quick Jump
|
| 
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/7/2012 7:33 AM (GMT -6) |   | | Hell is...the inability to self-transcend oneself in openness, receptivity, and self-sacrificial love to the "other" (God and other creatures)...and all of the the psychological/emotional issues that come with it...due to misrelating self-referential focus in identity/meaning formation and "world composition" (Loder) Hell exists to those degree a sentient creature self-separates themselves (in their minds) from Creation and God.
This is how Hell existed in the heart of Satan in "Heaven", yes?
And this is how Hell is on "Earth" right now.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
 |
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/7/2012 8:02 AM (GMT -6) | | Tom:
I think we can suffer in the ways you describe, and I agree there is a certain continuity between such suffering and the eschatological suffering of hell. But I think there's something unique about eschatologial suffering. It won't be JUST quantitatively more of the same sort of suffering you describe. Some things (creaturely comforts, other human beings, common grace in all these things perhaps) are removed. I mean, consider the metaphors...outer darkness, bottomless pit, lake of fire. Yes, we CAN use this language to describe present suffering. But it looks to me like they point beyond anything we do and CAN experience in this present context.
I agree with you about the uniqueness of eschatological suffering. I suppose I'm pointing to the line of continuity, I guess. Perfect love (breaking that line of continuity in Christ) casts out all fear of judgment. That's how, through our being children of God in Christ by the Spirit (Abba, Father sense), we can experience the suffering of "hell" NOW...while NOT ultimately fearing any eschatological suffering that is to come. We KNOW we are being perfected for the weight of coming glory...that is actually IN us already.
Personally, I'm experiencing the DEPTH of God's love for me in the MIDST of the DEPTH of my hellishness. God is in the midst of "hell" and brightens it's darkness with His presence.
I was telling a person the other day: "I'm beginning to consistently live in the "You are forgiven" part (learning self-acceptance in the midst of my sin)...it's the "Sin no more" part that's catchin' me up!"
Ah, the paradox of the saint-as-ransomed sinner.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/7/2012 8:16 AM (GMT -6) | | It's almost like...
If "Amazing Grace" (God) can save a "lost", "blind", "wretch like me" (insert self)...
then surely...surely...God can save a "wretch" like Satan.
Can I get an Amen up in here?
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 5/7/2012 8:19:25 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Asher
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/7/2012 1:19 PM (GMT -6) | | Tom "It won't be JUST quantitatively more of the same sort of suffering you describe. Some things (creaturely comforts, other human beings, common grace in all these things perhaps) are removed. I mean, consider the metaphors...outer darkness, bottomless pit, lake of fire. Yes, we CAN use this language to describe present suffering. But it looks to me like they point beyond anything we do and CAN experience in this present context.
Yeah, that's the way I best understand it too. Currently, there are any number of distractions (good in themselves sometimes) that might keep someone from dealing with THE PRIMARY issue of existence. In the eschaton, those things are limited. You will no longer be able to use God's good resources as the means to elude God. Sure, you are still free. You can still choose "No". But your "No" won't be as supported by external factors. | | Back to Top | | |
|
Asher
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 477
| Posted 5/8/2012 1:39 PM (GMT -6) | | | The distractions are gone, but every thought they have is still the same internally, so they aren't choosing suffering per se...and keep in mind we're not talking about a torture inflicting hell. Their mind is where the action is! | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/8/2012 4:04 PM (GMT -6) | | Even volitional thought must involve competing natural impulses, to my mind. So I am not clear on what in hell, as you define it, causes a natural impulse UNTO God that one would volitionally deny. Something has to be given (i.e., be natural) before one can volitionally choose it. What is given to them for them to know that calling on God is better than the condition they're in?
Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/8/2012 5:39:27 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/9/2012 12:12 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
Even volitional thought must involve competing natural impulses, to my mind. So I am not clear on what in hell, as you define it, causes a natural impulse UNTO God that one would volitionally deny. Something has to be given (i.e., be natural) before one can volitionally choose it. What is given to them for them to know that calling on God is better than the condition they're in?
The fact that the very ground of the any self is God's continual, gracious "gift" of existence to Creation: the "sensus divinum" or whatever. Definitely related to the Logos/logoi of God in all things. Speaking another way, the natural impulse unto God is the "eschatological self" within oneself, which IS the "grace-gift" (Tom) of God to us. We can choose to self-relate with God as central focus...or with "us" as central focus. Both are "natural" to human animals created in the image of God. It looks like...
"Not my will, but Your Will be done."
Jesus' choice was between two natural goods, right?
Basically, the only way that the "true self" can come to be is by making the ground of that self that "Power" the created it, God.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 5/9/2012 12:18:34 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/9/2012 7:36 AM (GMT -6) | | I wouldn't say Jesus chose anything libertarianly that had to do with benevolently-relating. And by your view, Jesus is a body-animating dream of a person who also can't choose libertarianly with respect to benevolently-relating. We've had this discussion multiple times with JEE, etc. You and Tom have always agreed that the persons of the godhead do not choose libertarianly when it comes to benevolence.
But humans DO have to choose libertarianly to attain their eschatological/teleological purpose. If there's a natural impulse that could conceivably exist in hell UNTO a SOFA of "Not my will, but your Will be done," that mind must prehend certain things:
1) There is a God who is my creator/designer.
2) That God has a will.
3) Doing that will results in my greatest happiness.
However, if we are meaningless to God because He can't feel any different because of our existence/activity, it is not conceivable that He has a will for ME at all. For how can He will/desire what He can't feel. How can He will/desire what is meaningless to Him?
You've rendered choice unto God MEANINGLESS. It has no conceivable value to the human mind. Because it can't make sense out of telelogy/eschatology in terms of a creator that is, to our mind, a-sympathetic. That is precisely the problem with deism. It destroys theodicy by eliminating benevolent, competent teleology/eschatology BY eliminating sympathy/compassion as a motivating divine sensibility. If you're good with an a-sympathetic creator, you should have no problem with deism. And deism is WAY more parsimonious if theodicy is irrelevant to rationality.
Now deism (and your view) would work just fine if the world just WAS what God desired 100% of the time. But that can't be by your view if humans have to libertarianly CHOOSE unto God's preferred SOFA. For that which is meaningless to God can not be preferred by Him, by definition. In short, you've rendered normative, libertarian, human choice meaningless by rendering God's will unintelligible. By implication, a person in hell has nothing knowable by which to choose UNTO God. "UNTO God" has no conceivable meaning to the person. For God couldn't care less what the person chooses if we're meaningless TO Him.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/9/2012 8:29:11 AM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
One Love
Registered Member
Date Joined Jan 2003
Total Posts : 13888
| Posted 5/9/2012 10:28 AM (GMT -6) | | Jeff:
Jesus is a body-animating dream of a person...
I'm assuming you are talking the wake-induced lucid dream analogy with respect to God the Son and his Incarnation as Jesus. It seems like the "dream" aspect makes the whole thing seem less than real to you. Why is that? Jesus would be just as real as you and me. It's just the case that you, me, and everyone else on the Earth are living in HIS "world"...it's NOT the case that He lives in OUR world (or "THE" world, in some naturalistic sense).
*************************************
Jeff:
If there's a natural impulse that could conceivably exist in hell UNTO a SOFA of "Not my will, but your Will be done," that mind must prehend certain things:
1) There is a God who is my creator/designer.
2) That God has a will.
3) Doing that will results in my greatest happiness.
All of those ideas are inherent within the idea of God Himself continually grounding the "eschatogical essence" and "subjective aims" of the persons in hell in the Logos/logoi concept. Particularly when reality is understood fundamentally as aesthetic experience and God is understood to be the Summum Bonum.
***********************************************
Jeff:
However, if we are meaningless to God because He can't feel any different because of our existence/activity, it is not conceivable that He has a will for ME at all. For how can He will/desire what He can't feel. How can He will/desire what is meaningless to Him?
and...
For God couldn't care less what the person chooses if we're meaningless TO Him.
Let's just start over. Forget the meaninglessness stuff. It's screwin' you up.
Just go here...
Creation DOES contribute to God's experience of beauty in toto...but it does NOT contribute to the experience of beauty that aesthetically satisfies God as God. In other words, God DOES "feel" what we do, especially enough to RESPOND to what we do; benevolence and teleology can exist. But nothing that we do can diminish or increase the aesthetically satifying experience of beauty that God experiences in God's own uncreated triune self-relationality. And this aesthetically satisfying experience of beauty IS God's illimitable, immutable love, joy, and peace.
All this means is that God doesn't NEED Creation to 1) be God or 2) increase God's experience of beauty from some sense of lack. Therefore, God was TRULY FREE to create or NOT to create.
Hopefully, this is CRYSTAL CLEAR now.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Post Edited (One Love) : 5/9/2012 12:06:43 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
|
Similitude
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2004
Total Posts : 4968
| Posted 5/9/2012 6:23 PM (GMT -6) | | D: It seems like the "dream" aspect makes the whole thing seem less than real to you. Why is that? Jesus would be just as real as you and me.
J: So human persons aren't beings either? They're dreams? I've never conceived of dreams as having volition
D: All of those ideas are inherent within the idea of God Himself continually grounding the "eschatogical essence" and "subjective aims" of the persons in hell in the Logos/logoi concept. Particularly when reality is understood fundamentally as aesthetic experience and God is understood to be the Summum Bonum.
J: I'm not sure exactly what you mean by a logos/logoi concept. Does that mean human persons aren't beings either? But here's the thing about aesthetic experience. Induction is an aesthetic way of thought. That's why people do it. It's satisfying to them. To believe otherwise is unsatisfying to them. But if hell is just the absence of what Asher calls "distractions," what is left intellectually that, applying deduction and induction, would cause them to understand that God has another "way" for them?
IOW, how does reality become UNDERSTOOD, as you say, by them. What's the thought process that they are aware they could start but choose not to? It seems to me that what you're saying is that one in hell would have to make a lucky "SK" blind leap. But is a blind leap an aesthetic experience?
D: Creation DOES contribute to God's experience of beauty in toto...but it does NOT contribute to the experience of beauty that aesthetically satisfies God as God. In other words, God DOES "feel" what we do, especially enough to RESPOND to what we do; benevolence and teleology can exist. But nothing that we do can diminish or increase the aesthetically satifying experience of beauty that God experiences in God's own uncreated triune self-relationality. And this aesthetically satisfying experience of beauty IS God's illimitable, immutable love, joy, and peace.
All this means is that God doesn't NEED Creation to 1) be God or 2) increase God's experience of beauty from some sense of lack. Therefore, God was TRULY FREE to create or NOT to create.
Hopefully, this is CRYSTAL CLEAR now.
J: I think it is clear now. Creation DOES contribute to God's experience of beauty in toto. It seems you're saying that God can't suffer--He can only experience additional beauty. Otherwise, "contribute" has no intelligible meaning to me.
My questions then become, why would we ever infer that about God? We suffer. And seemingly, nervous systems are designed to cause suffering to teach us what NOT to do. But is it inconceivable that a being could be created that would only experience differential pleasure and make volitional choices on that basis? For unless it is, how do we explain the otherwise gratuitous-seeming creation of pain-causing nervous systems? The only reason why I can imagine God creates us with the capacity of negative motivation (anticipated suffering) is so that God would be conceived of analogously--and THAT because He actually IS analogous to us in that respect. Otherwise, what's the point of the natural human capacity for suffering?
In short, I think I now see what you're saying about God not suffering. But it seems counter-analogical and therefore counter-intuitive--precisely because inductive thought IS aesthetically satisfying to humans. Unless we can't even conceive that God could create beings that libertarianly choose God's will in terms of differential pleasure only, the creation of the natural inevitability of suffering seems gratuitious and, therefore, problematic to our conception of a perfectly benevolent Designer.
Post Edited (Similitude) : 5/9/2012 8:16:55 PM (GMT-5) | | Back to Top | | |
| Forum Information | Currently it is Monday, November 09, 2026 11:00 AM (GMT -6)
There are a total of 97,718 posts in 6,040 threads.
In the last 3 days there were 0 new threads and 0 reply posts. View Active Threads
|
Forum powered by dotNetBB v2.42EC SP3
dotNetBB © 2000-2026 |
|
|