Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!ucla-cs!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Unforgiveable Sins Message-ID: Date: 14 Apr 91 05:22:54 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia Lines: 104 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article , KEL111@psuvm.psu.edu (Kurt Ludwick) writes: > No. I've been raised a Christian, and still consider myself to be one, > but I'm a borderline agnostic. I have asked God, pleaded with Him to > somehow help me to make sense of all of the conflicting things I am > supposed to believe, but it STILL doesn't make sense! I am convinced that Christianity is true. However, I think that it is wrong for anyone to try to believe evil of God. No doubt many of you will disagree with what I'm about to do, and say "how could a Christian in this situation suggest anything other than the True Faith?" I'm sorry, but it seems to me that the first step is to assure Kurt Ludwick that he can believe in God without straining his integrity. _Then_ from a base that is not in doubt we can discuss things specific to Christian belief. Here goes: Christianity and agnosticism are not the only alternatives. I think that Kurt Ludwick might be helped by reading Martin Gardner's "The Whys of a Philsophical Scrivener". Martin Gardner (a tireless and formidable champion of Reason) was raised a "fundamentalist" (whatever that means). Now he isn't any kind of Christian. He calls himself a "philosophical theist". He believes -- that God is One -- that God is Creator -- that God is good -- that there is life after death (_not_ reincarnation) and a bunch of other things. In fact, Martin Gardner is the best approximation I've seen of the Jewish concept of a "righteous Gentile". The book "The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener" explains Gardner's philosophical, political, and moral views. If I weren't a Christian, I hope that I would be something like Gardner. Just because you find it hard to believe in Hell doesn't mean that you have to doubt the existence of _God_, only the existence of Hell. Having said that, I have some questions. > But, Jesus preached about Hell a lot! But, Hell *can't* exist! I can't honestly say that I like the idea of Hell myself. If you read some of the pseudepigraphical stuff which wasn't let into the Bible (1 Enoch, Bartholomew, others) you find something approaching glee at the destruction of the wicked (if I remember correctly, `Bartholomew' says that only 1 in 3000 avoids hell), and I find that horrible. There are a lot of ideas about Hell in our culture, not all of which can be justified from Scripture. (For example, I came across one book which argued that Dante's geography of the Inferno came from Islamic sources.) Popular legend has it that Hell is a place where demons torment human souls. That doesn't come from the Bible. Although there is a difference between the OT picture of Hell and the NT picture, it is clear from extra-Biblical sources that the NT picture is not a Christian innovation, nor did Jesus say anything about Hell which came as a real surprise to His hearers. The thing that puzzles me is why you say Hell "*can't* exist". Why "*can't*"? There can be no such thing as a scientific argument against it, because Hell is not a region in or state of the physical universe. The only way that we could be sure that Hell "*can't* exist" is if the concept turns out to be inconsistent. Hell not being a physical place which we can examine with our ordinary senses, what we say about it has to be metaphorical. Are you sure that (whatever Jesus meant by His metaphor) can't exist, or is it just (the interpretation you learned at your mother's knee) which can't exist? > Or maybe God is vengeful... I don't know. It sounds as though you have the idea that Hell is a place or state to which God *chooses* to send people that he *could* have done something else with, and that He sends people there *in order that* they may suffer. Now, it doesn't seem to me that Christians have to believe that. Let's face it, God wanted people to go to Hell so much that He died on a cross (or, not to offend the JWs, a stake) in order to prevent it. There's a book I got recently called "The Paradox of the Wrath of God" that might be helpful, I'll dig out the reference. > The beliefs Christians are supposed to hold just don't fit together. Which beliefs? I think that there is a serious possibility that some of the things which Kurt Ludwick thinks Christians have to believe may be ones where there is a wide range of opinions held in good faith, and that there may be interpretations he can be comfortable with. This forum may not be the best place to discuss particular beliefs, but it's worth a try. Actually, I've got a question I'll post in a few minutes. > But, from my experience, NOT everyone has the chance to *really* know God. I don't know what it means to "*really* know God". I count myself a Christian, and I'm sure that God knows _me_ (which is what counts), but I don't see how a finite (and how!) being can "*really* know God". I don't think subjective certainties have any great merit, and for what it's worth, I think that someone who is struggling not to think evil of God _is_ worshipping Him "in spirit and in truth". -- It is indeed manifest that dead men are formed from living ones; but it does not follow from that, that living men are formed from dead ones. -- Tertullian, on reincarnation.