(April 5, 2014 at 10:04 pm)Chad32 Wrote: A loving god would not punish a murderer the same as he would punish a thief, though, and certainly not forever. Depending on what you think hell is, certain versions can violate what most people see as love, mercy, or justice. If you believe in hell at all, which mainstream christians do.
I do believe in hell. I think the bible is very clear about the existence of hell. It's also not a pleasant place since Jesus said it would be better to gouge yor eye out or cutoff your arm than to go there, but it seems the bible is not completely clear concerning the length of time spent there. I've been looking more deeply into what the bible says about the duration of hell and I'm not sure that it's forever. I'm more convinced that the time there is more proportionate to the severity of sinfulness. The dominant belief in the church today is that it's eternal, but the early church fathers were more likely to support punishment in hell followed by either total destruction of the individual or the person coming to faith and then gong to heaven. The latter would seem to make a hell a place of correction as well as punishment.
