(July 15, 2023 at 11:18 am)emjay Wrote: You mean roughly similar to what I think it was Drich used to say, ie that 'love thy neighbour' only really meant 'love thy Christian neighbour'? In other words love your Christian brother but everyone else can go to hell, literally and figuratively in this sense.
There's been debate about this among Christians, right from the beginning.
A lot of early Christians assumed that Hell would be a temporary place of cleansing, similar to Dante's Purgatory. It's not pleasant, but nobody goes there forever.
Augustine settled the issue for most, by arguing for eternal punishment, but there has always been dissension. Contrary to what some here think about the church, they don't burn everybody who argues theological points.
Currently the debate is active on line, since David Bentley Hart, who is a popular East Orthodox translator and theologian, published a book saying that in the end everyone will go to heaven. Edward Feser, who is his conservative Catholic counterpart, of course disagrees.
I thought it was interesting that Lewis Carroll spent a great deal of time on the issue. The idea that hell is eternal depends largely on the translation of a single Greek word in the New Testament. But like a lot of Ancient Greek, the translation is not 100% certain, and reasonable people may disagree. Lewis Carroll, being a well-educated guy, knew Greek and wrote his interpretations of it.
It is also important that many Christians do believe in an eternal hell, but are strict about remembering that only God decides who goes there.
On the old Amazon forums there was a conservative Catholic guy who thought that gay sex was bad, but whenever it came up also emphasized that each and every one of us is full of sin, and so it's not our place to judge others' sins. He said that we are to forgive (as we hope to be forgiven), no matter what God does.
So Grand Nudnik's experience of Christianity is far from universal.
