The Journey Church: THEOLOGY ON TAP - May 15, 2023, TONIGHT’S TOPIC: What do you think about Hell? 1. Were you raised with a belief in any kind of afterlife? If so, what were you taught? Was there a Good Place and a Bad Place? What kinds of behavior would result in you going to one place or the other? 2. What would be some benefits of an afterlife where violent, destructive, bad people are separated from everybody else? Would there be any downsides to it? 3. Hypothetical: You’re a nasty hateful person. Right before you die, you decide to put your faith in Jesus. It’s a genuine conversion, but you really don’t have time to go through the process of growth needed to stop being a jerk. When you show up in heaven, are you automatically a nice person all of a sudden? Or do you still have to go through the process of learning to love God and love others? 4. Ancient Israelite religion had no concept of “hell” until Israel was conquered by the Babylonian Empire (at the end of the Old Testament). Babylonian religion believed in a good god in the sky and a bad god under the earth. And they believed that when you die, you go to be with one or the other. Some Israelites incorporated this idea into their Jewish faith, as a useful way to encourage people to obey their religious rules. Babylonians spoke a language called Farsi, so these Jews who borrowed their culture became known as “Pharisees.” They taught that rule-breakers would suffer an afterlife of aidios timoria – “endless torment.” When Jesus spoke to the Pharisees about hell: 1). He always turned their expectations upside-down about who might go to such a place, and 2). He described hell differently than they did, calling it aionian kolasin – “a time of discipline.” 5. Some people believe hell is unpleasant because it’s a place for punishing bad people. Others believe hell is unpleasant because it’s a hospital for healing sick people, and hospitals are just by their nature kind of unpleasant. What do you think? Theology on Tap @The Journey Church www.facebook.com/groups/theologyontapjourney Single? Divorced? Married? We are all family together. Liberal? Conservative? We are all giving together. Doubt? Believe? Ignore? We are all learning together. Straight? Gay? We are all equal together. Female? Male? We are all one flesh together. Any race. Any culture. Any background. We are together. COME AND BE A PART OF SOMETHING DIFFERENT. https://TheJourneyChurch.com EXTRA CREDIT READING: In the early centuries of Christianity, certain teachers were universally known and respected as being the wisest of the wise. Known as “the eight doctors of the church,” their opinions were always sought on theological matters. Five of them taught that a person’s experience of hell is intended to be temporary. This difference of opinion was considered okay. Athanasius (360 AD) - “The devil saw all prisoners led forth [out of hell] by the courage of the Saviour.” Basil (370 AD) - “It is the sins which are consumed [by hell fire], not the very persons to whom the sins have befallen.” “The mass of men say there is to be an end to punishment and to those who are punished.” Gregory Nazianzus (380 AD) - “They shall be baptized with fire…which eats up, as if it were hay, all defiled matter, and consumes all vanity and vice.” Ambrose (380 AD) - Those in hell “shall be disciplined until their appointed times.” John Chysostom (390 AD) - “Christ declares that [hell fire] hath no end. Well I know that a chill comes over you on hearing these things, but what am I to do? For this is God's own command, that it hath no end Christ hath declared.” Jerome (390 AD) - “The wrath of the fury of the Lord [comes] in pity and with a design to heal.” “All God's enemies shall perish, not that they cease to exist, but cease to be enemies.” “The Lord descended to hell in order to liberate the prisoners.” Augustine (420 AD) - “Deserved and supreme misery shall be the portion of the wicked.” The wicked will be “connected with the bodily filres as to receive pain without imparting life.” “But there are very many in our day, who though not denying the Holy Scriptures, do not believe in endless torments.” Gregory the Great (580 AD) - “The spirit is held by fire, to the end that, in the torment thereof, it may both by seeing and feeling be punished. The soul is tormented with a spiritual and incorporal flame.” NOTE: In 544 AD, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, “Endless conscious torment” became the official catholic teaching about hell, and all rival theories were condemned as heresy.
