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Originally posted by might-be-don

So God is a literal fire? , not Spirit?

How does this fire thing work out if God is omnipresent?

I think that your description of how it works out for the sinner has merit, but only if we realize that the whole fire thing is metaphor.

peace , don

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by Dr. Kalomiros

"The River of Fire" was the keynote address delivered at the Orthodox Youth Conference sponsored by the parish of St. Nectarios American Orthodox Church at Seattle, Washington during July 22-25, 1980.

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Originally posted by GregBoyd

Luther said

Don't have the time or inclination right now to look this all up, but I wonder if its relevant that

a) fire is often used as a metaphor for PURGING and PURIFCATION in scripture.
b) the primary word for punishment in Greek is the word for PRUNING and CORRECTION and teaching.

Could ? Yes yes, I know its a heretical thought. But still.

Greg

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Originally posted by PotOnWheel

The "wrath" of the Lamb... might be better translated the ZEAL... Like a military commander who won't give up.

Judgement and mercy are part of the same thing.

How is it mercy to leave someone on their downward path. Intervention is mercy AND judgement.

Lots of the Scriptures mention of "judgement" is what educators would call "formative." (Tests along the way, and not the 'final.')

No one knows about the 'final.' Some (Origen, and Issac the Syrian) dared wonder, and hope, about whether repentance can take hold after death. Some dessert fathers even felt lead to pray for the redemption of demons (which is not exactly the same as saying they can...).

Spen, I agree that Luther's comment and the other are not exactly the same thing. But we disagree on why that is true.


(BTW -- it has been pointed out that Origen was only condemned for where his false notion of pre-existance of souls led. His notion of ultimate salvation (some long Greek word) of all was never condemned.)

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"Gregory of Nyssa, on the other hand, abandoned Origen's speculations conderning preexistence and the precosmic fall, while holding fast to his belief in an ultimate resoration; and he <I think this means Origen> was never anathemized for this, either in 553 or in more recent times. In expressing his hope that all wil be saved, Gregory of Nyssa is fully condident as Origen."
(p.205)

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Originally posted by lock

Spen-

God's wrath is only relative to sin, but the love of God is absolute. God is love and this will affect God's dealings with mankind. I would agree that a person can support eternal torment from the scriptures, but only when by pulling scripture out of context and mistranslating key Greek and/or Hebrew words.

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Originally posted by lock

Spen-

God's wrath is only relative to sin, but the love of God is absolute. God is love and this will affect God's dealings with mankind. I would agree that a person can support eternal torment from the scriptures, but only when by pulling scripture out of context and mistranslating key Greek and/or Hebrew words.

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47 "'The end of the world' signifies not the annihilation of the world, but its transformation. Everything will be transformed suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye.... And the Lord will appear in glory on the clouds. Trumpets will sound, and loud, with power! They will sound in the soul and conscience! All will become clear to the human conscience. The Prophet Daniel, speaking of the Last Judgment, relates how the Ancient of Days, the Judge, sits on His throne, and before Him is a fiery stream (Dan. 7:9-10). Fire is a purifying element; it burns sins. Woe to a man if sin has become a part of his nature: then the fire will burn the man himself. This fire will be kindled within a man; seeing the Cross, some will rejoice, but others will fall into confusion, terror, and despair. Thus will men be divided instantly. The very state of a man's soul casts him to one side or the other, to right or to left.

"The more consciously and persistently a man strives toward God in his life, the greater will be his joy when he hears: 'Come unto Me, ye blessed.' And conversely: the same words will call the fire of horror and torture on those who did not desire Him, who fled and fought or blasphemed Him during their lifetime!

"The Last Judgment knows of no witnesses or written protocols! Everything is inscribed in the souls of men and these records, these 'books', are opened at the Judgment. Everything becomes clear to all and to oneself.

"And some will go to joy, while others -- to horror.

"When 'the books are opened,' it will become clear that the roots of all vices lie in the human soul. Here is a drunkard or a lecher: when the body has died, some may think that sin is dead too. No! There was an inclination to sin in the soul, and that sin was sweet to the soul, and if the soul has not repented of the sin and has not freed itself from it, it will come to the Last Judgment also with the same desire for sin. It will never satisfy that desire and in that soul there will be the suffering of hatred. It will accuse everyone and everything in its tortured condition, it will hate everyone and everything. 'There will be gnashing of teeth' of powerless malice and the unquenchable fire of hatred.

"A 'fiery gehenna' -- such is the inner fire. 'Here there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.' Such is the state of hell." Archbishop John Maximovitch, "The Last Judgment," Orthodox Word (November- December, 1966): 177-78.

http://www.orthodoxpress.org/parish/river_of_fire.htm

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Originally posted by hand_carved

OooOOOOOoo! A thread on Hell!!! A Hell of a thread!!! I'm in! lol I started a discussion a while back on my theory on hell. You can read about it here:

www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1521

and here:

www.gregboyd.org/gbfront/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1627

I basically propose a synthesis of the annihilationist view and the traditional (eternal torture) view. Your ideas would fit nicely along with what I'm talking about. However, I do believe in an eventual destruction of the person. I don't see support anywhere that the wicked are walking around on fire in heaven for eternity. However they most certainly could be burned in the presence of God, and then consummed. I wouldn't go so far as to say that God has to be a literal fire, but it's certainly possible.

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Originally posted by Al2Si2H4O9

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Al2Si2H4O9 says… “hand_carved, are you interested in views that place hell NOW?”
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A iew of "hell now" that is consonant with C. S. Lewis, and the EO is this, from Paul Evdokimov (Rus. Ortho.):

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IN THE WORLD, OF THE CHURCH, by Paul Evdokimov

Chapter: God's Absurd. Love and the Mystery of His Silence
(pages190-191)


Freedom and hell

To the atheistic formula, "If God exists, then man is not free," the Bible responds, "If man exists, God is no longer free." We are able to say no to God, but God is no longer able to say no to us, for according to St Paul, "there is only yes in God," (2 Cor 1:19) the yes of his Covenant which Christ has given on the Cross. Then, "I am free" means "God exists." It is God himself who guarantees the freedom of doubt, so as to not violate human conscience.

God has created the "second freedom," and he takes the supreme risk of a freedom which is capable of stopping him, of obliging him to descend into death and into hell. He freely allows himself to be assassinated in order to offer pardon and resurrection to the assassins. His omnipotence is to make room for human freedom, to veil his presence in order to be in dialogue with "the other," to love with an infinite patience which waits for the free response, a free creation of a common life of God and his child. A patristic saying states it this way: "God can do everything, except constrain us to love him." The omnipotence of God is to become the life-giving Cross, the unique response to the case of atheism on freedom and evil.

"The Kingdom of God has come among you," means that hell has also come among us. Marcel Johandeau puts it in his own way: "On my own, I am able to set up before God an empire in which he can do nothing, and this is hell...if we do not understand hell it is because we do not know our own hearts...." It is the hell of all those who despair and who explore the depths of Satan and cast towards heaven their empty blasphemies.

Now even the despair of hell is wounded by Christ, who as a person has experienced God's silence: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt 27:46). Here we see the connection of hell with the freedom of loving God. Human freedom can create hell because we are always able to say: "May your will not be done," and not even God can control these words.

The freedom to refuse God is his wish for us, without limits. The suspended power of human choice renders our destiny conditional. And it is hell, therefore, to speak of divine love, the heavenly dimension of hell, the divine vision of humanity immersed in the night of solitude.

It is of the greatest urgency to correct the "terrorist" and "penitentiary" ideas of God. It is no longer possible to believe in a heartless God incapable of suffering. The only message which could reach atheism today is that or Christ descending into hell. As deep as the hell in which we find ourselves, it is even more profound to nnd Christ already there waiting for us. God does not ask of us virtue, moralism, blind obedience but a cry of assurance and of love from the depth of our hell. We ought never to fall into despair. We can only fall into God and it is God who never despairs. St Anthony the Great said that hell surely exists, but only for himself, which is to say that hell is never "for the others," that it is never the object of our discourse.


The powerlessness of an all-powerful God

The idea of an omnipotence blocks every passage to the future. Evil becomes an inevitable corruption of creation that God tolerates, without being responsible for this evil. Darkness, it would seem, is allowed to overshadow the light.

It is the passage from Philippians 2:6-11 which is the key, the one which speaks of the veritable alienation of God himself: "He lowered himself, taking on the form of a servant...making himself obedient even to death on a cross." God's omnipotence is freely annihilated. God renounces all power, above all the will to power. 1 am among you as one who serves expresses a total otherness with respect to our human conceptions of God.

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Originally posted by spenlake

I have a bizarre concept that I want to raise. We are told several times that is God IS a consuming fire. Those that approach Him unprotected are burned and suffer. Those that approach Him according to His terms clothed in Christ, they live and are not comsumed. In this concept, the fires of hell could be God Himself as the unprotected are brought to the consuming fire of God. I pulled up verses on fire and was surprised by what I found.

I wanted to use the story in Daniel 3 as a "type" of what I am saying. 2 groups of men approach the furnace of fire. The fire kills the wicked and the righteous are not harmed, their bonds are burned off and they walk with one like the Son of God. Same fire brought freedom to one group and death to the other - same fire.


Daniel 3:
He commanded certain valiant warriors who were in his army to tie up Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego in order to cast them into the furnace of blazing fire. Then these men were tied up in their trousers, their coats, their caps and their other clothes, and were cast into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire. For this reason, because the king’s command was urgent and the furnace had been made extremely hot, the flame of the fire slew those men who carried up Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. But these three men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego, fell into the midst of the furnace of blazing fire still tied up.
Then Nebuchadnezzar the king was astounded and stood up in haste; he said to his high officials, “Was it not three men we cast bound into the midst of the fire?” They replied to the king, “Certainly, O king.” He said, “Look! I see four men loosed and walking about in the midst of the fire without harm, and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods!”

Moses walked among the fire and was not harmed:
Deut 9:
So I turned and came down from the mountain while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands.

Isaiah states this same concept:Isaiah 33:
Who among us can live with the consuming fire?
Who among us can live with continual burning?”
He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity,

Deut 4:
For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.

Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice to discipline you; and on earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire.

Deut 9:
Know therefore today that it is the LORD your God who is crossing over before you as a consuming fire

Mark 9:
“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life crippled, than, having your two hands, to go into hell, into the unquenchable fire, [where THEIR WORM DOES NOT DIE, AND THE FIRE IS NOT QUENCHED.]

Rev. 20:
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Ex 19:
Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the LORD descended upon it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently.

Numbers 11:
when the LORD heard it, His anger was kindled, and the fire of the LORD burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp.


Psalm 89:
How long, O LORD?
Will You hide Yourself forever?
Will Your wrath burn like fire?

Ez 1:
Then I noticed from the appearance of His loins and upward something like glowing metal that looked like fire all around within it, and from the appearance of His loins and downward I saw something like fire; and there was a radiance around Him. As the appearance of the rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the appearance of the surrounding radiance. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. And when I saw it, I fell on my face and heard a voice speaking.

Daniel 7:
“I kept looking
Until thrones were set up,
And the Ancient of Days took His seat;
His vesture was like white snow
And the hair of His head like pure wool.
His throne was ablaze with flames,
Its wheels were a burning fire.
“A river of fire was flowing
And coming out from before Him;

What if the "end" is where all are brought to God. This is the final judgment. What if the concept of hell is where a sinner brought into God's presence unprotected. The fire of God's presence and and uncovered wrath would cause eternal suffering for those that were unprotected from their sins, exposed by their incurable disease of sin. This same "bringing to God" of those who were clothed with the garment of Christ's righteousness would bring them the eternal enjoyment of fellowship with God who freely provided their wonderful garments at great cost to Himself. These would walk with God even amid the flames as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did in Daniel. The wrath and the blessing was found in the same fire but experienced differently based upon how one was dressed.

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Originally posted by spenlake
God makes the rules and defines the Law and the penalties for His creation, not us. I believe that He has mandated the second death of an eternity in the lake of fire for those who do not believe in the gospel that He died to give us. Even regarding the "first death" we have the notion that the unbelieveing dead are aware of and can experience suffering. Jesus indicated this in His true words regarding the beggar Lazarus in Luke.

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