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Wislawa
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83

Posted 8/16/2001 10:21 AM (GMT -6)

This is a two part question.

I’ve been trying to find this quote from Nietzsche in “The Anti-Christ” where he talks about the three highest Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love and shows how they don’t operate how we want them or wish them to. Faith, hope, and love, far from making things easier, makes life almost unbearable according to Nietzsche. Within the context of what he was trying to say I think he was right. For example as open theist often point out love carries with it the possibly for evil. We don’t want love to operate in this way but it does. Evil is, in a way, a direct functioning of love for open theists as it is also for Calvinists although in saying so we are saying two very different things. Open theists need not say that evil is love, only that evil results from love. In any rate without love we would save ourselves a lot of heartache and I think that’s what Nietzsche is getting at here, the pain of unrequited love would go away if we could simply stop loving.

Hope also is one of the cruelest tools available. Part of the cruelty of Auschwitz was the hope of freedom promised by the sing above the entrance which promised that “work will set you free”. And indeed this hope was not false but real since many were freed by working themselves to death. Even the Bible testifies to this, “hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Proverbs 13:12). One could infer here that the sickness could be avoided if one would give up hope.

Faith two is not as Hallmark-esh as we would like it to be. A quick survey of Heb. 11 will show that what we commonly call “faith” and get fuzzy feelings about is quite different than the faith of the Scriptures which resulted in people being sawed in two or the faith that asks you to murder your only son.

I am not saying, nor do I believe Nietzsche is saying, that faith hope and love are not indeed virtues (although Nietzsche might say that they are not as long as they remain “Christian virtues”), rather we should have the courage to have faith hope and love in spite of what faith hope and love really are. What I am saying is that often times we think we know what these three virtues are when in reality we are deceiving ourselves about them.

So here is question number one:

We often assume that in Hell there will be none of these virtues, that Hell will be a hopeless, loveless place for those who are faithless. But might these three virtues exists there PRIMARILY to make Hell more painful? Might all in Hell have a powerful love, which painfully is never returned? Or perhaps the other way around; might the damned be forced to endure the powerful (so powerful it hurts) beams a love which repulses them? Might they exist in a consent false hope that Hell will get better? Or worse a real hope which when fulfilled makes it worse? Might they constantly live in the sickness of deferred hope? And faith, what of faith? Perhaps there will be many gods in Hell and many powerful, deep, searching faiths involved. Perhaps even a faith in the true God that he will still redeem them? C.S. Lewis in “Screwtape” writes that Hell will offer a type of clarity to the damned. Might they, in this newfound clarity, repent yet repent in vain; worship yet worship in vain; humble themselves yet humble themselves in vain…etc., etc.?

Here is question number two:

If so, how is the here and now any different than Hell? Might we already be in Hell without knowing it? Might the hope of salvation be part of its cruelty? Might the loves we love be but a trick mirror? Might the faith we have be an impotent shell that only mercilessly haunts us? Did not Paul say that if Christianity is false we Christians are the most to be pitied? Might it be part of Satan’s strategy to torture us by tricking us into believing that we are not already in Hell to begin with?

-Wislawa

Mephi2K
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 713

Posted 8/16/2001 10:26 AM (GMT -6)

Dang, man! I forgot how much I missed your stuff. Simply delightful. A great one has returned.

Mad love,

Wislawa
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83

Posted 8/16/2001 10:33 AM (GMT -6)

aw shucks meph, you've made my day.

grining[

]

-Wislawa

look below i cant' even make short posts without having to edit them any more. i'm way rusty from the internet fasting

Edited by - Wislawa on 08/16/2001 3:35:40 PM

Edited by - Wislawa on 08/17/2001 11:52:26 PM

Edited by - Wislawa on 08/18/2001 4:37:37 PM

Pseudo-Intellectual
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58

Posted 8/18/2001 2:48 PM (GMT -6)

Man I definetly think we are already in hell. Just look around us. Everything is just beautiful enough to make us think that all the horror is worth it, but in reality all the bueaty is just cruel enough to keep us striving in cruelity.

What was purgatory like that sent us here?

dude

child

"Logic is overrated...it is only a tool to serve a relevant personal search for Absolute truth...nevertheless you will be assimilated. resistence is futile...just ask Mephi."--the neotheistic borg

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 8/18/2001 6:10 PM (GMT -6)

Try these on for size:

PotOnWheel

Wislawa
Registered Member

Date Joined Jun 2001
Total Posts : 83

Posted 8/19/2001 11:20 PM (GMT -6)

POW, i don't get it?

You posted a lot of stuff and i tried to get thru it all but maybe i missed something.

The guy seems to be trying to show how the existance of hell doesn't threaten God's goodness. I don't see how this question puts God's goodness at stake. All i'm asking is if we are already in hell should it really suprize us that we think God will save us from our current state? it would be a cruel trick of Satan, not of God.

-Wislawa

for love is strong as death,
passion fierce as the grave.
Its flashes are flashes of fire,
a raging flame [shalhevet-Yah = the very fire of Yah(weh)].

Canticles 8:6

PotOnWheel
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 9890

Posted 8/20/2001 2:32 AM (GMT -6)

quote:
POW, i don't get it?
You posted a lot of stuff and i tried to get thru it all but maybe i missed something.
The guy seems to be trying to show how the existance of hell doesn't threaten God's goodness. I don't see how this question puts God's goodness at stake. All i'm asking is if we are already in hell should it really suprize us that we think God will save us from our current state? it would be a cruel trick of Satan, not of God.
-Wislawa

]Wislawa says: I don't see how this question puts God's goodness at stake.
POW: This Greek theologian can't possibly know about this website, so he isn't "trying to show how the existance of hell doesn't threaten God's goodness." It is the nature of PUNITIVE RETRIBUTION that he would find incompatible with his liturgical confession that God is "a good God and loves mankind." And it is THAT image that he says contributes to atheism, such as he saw in Europe.

Wislawa: "All i'm asking is if we are already in hell should it really suprize us that we think God will save us from our current state? it would be a cruel trick of Satan, not of God."

POW: I've heard it expressed like that--and so more "hell" after judgement would be a continuation of the same, with intensification due to God's presence being closer.

Wislawa, I'll bet many have never read something like that before, though. So my guess was that it waas worth posting.

PotOnWheel

Edited by - PotOnWheel on 08/20/2001 07:34:58 AM

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