Is the doctrine of Eternal Conscious Torment biblical or not?

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
ok doser,
re: " i could consciously choose to reject God"

But can you right now consciously choose to believe that a supreme being doesn't exist?

right now?

no

right now i could start the process to lead to a rejection of my belief in God, but it would be a long process

because my belief in God is rooted in intelligence and reason, i would have to forgo intelligence and reason, surround myself by the unintelligent and unreasonable, immerse myself in the discipline of stupidity, as it were

maybe buy a tv

join the democrat party

declare myself a feminist

smoke lots of pot


retarded stuff like that
 

FineLinen

Well-known member
And that’s the problem, those first 4 words in your post: “I cannot conceive of...”.

You don’t understand God or love or judgment or suffering or anything else. You’re an antichrist cultist.

Dear P.P.S. Thank you for your kindness. Perhaps when I grow up into full stature, the love & glory of Jesus Christ will dominate my poor young life.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has crowned us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ; even as, in His love, He chose us as His own in Christ before the creation of the world, that we might be holy and without blemish in His presence. For He predestined us to be adopted by Himself as sons through Jesus Christ--such being His gracious will and pleasure-- to the praise of the splendour of His grace with which He has enriched us in the beloved One. It is in Him, and through the shedding of His blood, that we have our deliverance--the forgiveness of our offences--so abundant was God's grace, the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it--the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him. And you..."

In Him, through Him, for Him
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
I’d like to very cautiously say this:

Those who reject modern concepts of ECT aren’t entirely wrong, and are often trying to reconcile the misrepresentations of ECT by those I’ll describe as “Westboro-ites”. ECT is often presented by depicting God as a malevolent and malicious sociopath who intentionally chose to eternally torture a huge number of His creation for an indefinite period of time.

So I’m sympathetic with those who have embraced a disdain for such an afterlife with such a God. Because that isn’t what the lake of fire is at all. And hades begins in this life. Ha- and -des are from a- (no/not) and eido (perceptive sight). The outer darkness of this life’s lack of spiritual perception continues into the afterlife following judgment, and this and death are cast into the lake of fire.

It’s the English wording of translations that has partly contributed to thinking that ECT is some malicious eternal preoccupation of God that He takes great pleasure in. But hell hath enlarged itself without measure. The pit was for the serpent and the host of hell; for them to have the only form of mercy they can receive.

The angelic host aren’t compatible with salvation, for they weren’t made of the dust of the ground. They have no human nature that can partake of the divine nature. Theirs was a different estate.

So with Evangelical Fundamentalism perverting “hell” to be scathing fire and brimstone guilt-mongering based on a works soteriological grid, ECT became this radical hyper-punitive thing that many relished for others in their own self-righteousness. It became the default of those who could excuse having no compassion by damning everyone.

What I’ve explicated is the most ancient orthodox understanding of death, hell, and the lake of fire. It’s what the Patristics expounded in the earliest days of the church from Apostolic origins.

The lake of fire has a purgative effect. But the human ontologies there are unconvertable to another state of being. So the purifiER being present (God as the consuming fire) is the sole solace for the torment. But even that solace is torment, for it’s a reminder of their loss amidst them not being able to have the spiritually intuitive revelation of anything else. They have no hope of change. Forever.

wanted to thank you Pneuma, for taking the time to present this (not just this post, all your posts the past couple days) - it's given me a lot to think about (and a lot to research and puzzle over)


good job :)
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. Thank you for your kindness. Perhaps when I grow up into full stature, the love & glory of Jesus Christ will dominate my poor young life.

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has crowned us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ; even as, in His love, He chose us as His own in Christ before the creation of the world, that we might be holy and without blemish in His presence. For He predestined us to be adopted by Himself as sons through Jesus Christ--such being His gracious will and pleasure-- to the praise of the splendour of His grace with which He has enriched us in the beloved One. It is in Him, and through the shedding of His blood, that we have our deliverance--the forgiveness of our offences--so abundant was God's grace, the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it--the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him. And you..."

In Him, through Him, for Him

You forget (or are more likely merely ignorant of the fact) that epistles are instructive and written very specifically to a then-contemporary audience. So the prevailing initial conTEXT for the conTENT is always primarily to be understood via that hermeneutic. TO them; FOR all Believers of the ages.

So the hermeneutic requires “the all” to be just as it is in the above reference. The Apostle and the Holy Spirit are not referring to all in the sense of the whole of mankind. Yours is merely an anthropological focus, whereas redemption is a cosmological impetus.

God redeems the inhabited cosmos, of which those who have been translated into His dear Son are the centerpiece.

You have no need of any gospel, for in your heretical Atonement view all men are saved and need no economy from their ontology to accompany a changed condition of heart and mind. For you, there is no repentance (the noun).

You literally understand less than nothing, for you substitute more nothings for the something that is salvation in Christ.

There is no divine functionality to accomplish that which you attempt to expound. Your belief is in vain.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. This is classified information that will require a hit squad upon your poor life if disclosed.

Typical cultic bloviation, even in “humor”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology

The whole of created life shall be set free from the bondage of corruption...

Whole=πᾶς= the radical all (Romans 8.22)

Exactly. And the only created life is ultimately that which is immediately created by the Word, who is the eternal and uncreated Son. So it requires all who are spiritually dead to be resurrected by hypostatic union to the Son; and that happens via a quite explicit functionality by God’s design according to divine order, just as did the original creation that lapsed.

All unredeemed hypostases have no authentic existence as created life, for they were conceived in spiritual death with attendant sin. They MUST be “created” anew by the Son via hypostatic union with Him, which is the result of an extremely and precisely ordained means of explicit imputed status and functionality.

You are bypassing the means to the end, and declaring the ends AS the means. Your focus, like most others, is merely eschatological and anthropological, not apocalyptic and cosmological. Your focus for salvation is upon man. God’s focus for salvation is upon the cosmos (with man as the original crown jewel and centerpiece; first in the image of God, and then in the image of Seth after Adam).

You have no gospel at all. At least other have a false gospel. For you, there is none.

If you had any clue about Hamartiology (Sin-ology) and what an hypostasis is, you would know that you have been effecitvely exported to Jonestown and have guzzled the Flavor-Aid with a rather unsavory additive.

I’m poison control, and you can’t be bothered to have your life saved. So be it.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. This is classified information that will require a hit squad upon your poor life if disclosed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Christian_theology

The whole of created life shall be set free from the bondage of corruption...

Whole=πᾶς= the radical all (Romans 8.22)

Tell me this, oh youthful novice and cultist...

At what point did you study the vast panorama of Christian doctrine from the Apostolic and Patristic foundations and come to the point of excluding ALL of the history of the Christian faith in favor of your subjective opinions being sculpted by modernist delusions from whatever limited sources you have imbibed to please your flesh with such heterodoxy and heresy?

At what point have you EVER endeavored to have authentic and valid doctrine as the faith once delivered to the saints instead of presupposing to project error upon the divinely inspired text because you began with your own Cognitive Dissonance and Confirmation Bias?

And you won’t dare disclose your affiliation/s.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
At the core of this topic is the consideration of creation, both the “old” (original) and the new.

God immediately created Adam. This is direct creation relative to the Word who created the cosmos and its sole initial inhabitant who was in the image of God (Imago Dei). God also immediately created Eve, though not from the dust of the ground but from the rib of Adam.

Immediate creation is precisely this. The direct creation of God in a specific state of being.

Mediate creation is procreation. The indirect (intended) creation of God, originally to be the means of reproducing the same specific state of being in offspring as life from life (both physical and spiritual life; bios and zoe).

But prior to any procreation by Adam and Eve, they lapsed into spiritual death and sin. (There is a lengthly explication of the ontological and economic facets of that event, but that is for another epic-length post.) The result is that ALL procreation was subsequent to the onset of spiritual death and sin in man, and the cosmological implications are usually lost on those who have an anthropological focus.

The image of Seth after Adam is the state of being for ALL mankind after the Edenic lapse of man, and thus the cosmos itself. All humanity has been procreated as life from life, but without spiritual life while being physically alive. The delusion is that physical life means that the underlying reality of existence for each human makes them an authentic hypostasis (“person”), but this is NOT the case.

With sin in the nature of all mankind because of spiritual death (cessation of constant communion with God) and also in the members (the fleshly propensity unto action according to state of being), mankind is NOT the creation of God according to divine order.

This requires a new creation. A new heavens and a new earth. And for man to be a new creature. Without resurrection unto spiritual life in this physical life, man is not the creation of God as ordained by divine order. So once death took Adam and Eve, the remainder of ALL of humanity is NOT the immediate creation of God. It’s the mediate and indirect procreation of man himself with corruption innate to man’s state of being.

The altered state of being of post-Edenic man is in a condition that corresponds neither to the original creation NOR the new creation. The new creation is only that which is DIRECTLY AND IMMEDIATELY created anew by God; and this is accomplished by the Son as Theanthropos by His Incarnation, life, death, burial, resurrection, appearing, ascension, and seating in heavenly places.

The application of IMMEDIATE creation for mankind is by a specific functionality that God has ordained for this purpose. To insist that all men are universally saved is to not understand that all men since Eden have not existed in a state of being that can be considered the creation of God. It’s an altered condition and state of being.

There’s literally a 300-page thesis to delineate all of this, so this venue won’t allow complete explanation. But the ultimate bottom line is that no individual authentically exists until the Son, by hypostatic union, immediately creates each individual anew as a new creature.

The compound issues here are all the same considerations that are ontological regarding states of being. No man born by mediate procreation has authentic life; only being physically alive while being spiritually dead. So everyone is quite literally a spiritual zombie until they are resurrected in this life. They have no status for their underlying reality of existence. They are not part of creation in this sense.

So when scripture refers to creation, it is NOT including those who have no valid underlying reality of existence. They share the same plight as the cosmos, which has been redeemed in Christ. So the ONLY way for man to have status as created is to be hypostatically joined to Christ by faith and grace. It can be God’s work alone, for man has no foundation of “being” from which to “do” such things. Man cannot create, immediately OR mediately. Even procreation is according to divine order but corrupted; for it is the means of the propagation of human souls who are spiritually dead (with no ability for constant communion with God that is the source of life).

There is much more to this, but this is the basic introduction to the fact that post-Edenic man is not part of creation because of corrupted mediate creation as procreation. Man’s state of being is incompatible with both God and the ultimate new creation of the cosmos. And God, in Christ, is reconciling His creation to Himself. Those who are not redeemed in this life are those who remain in their state of being that is not part of creation. The lake of fire is all they have when the only cosmological consitution they are compatible with is destroyed and gives rise to the new creation.

These lost souls have no place to which they can return, and no place to which they can go. They are in the very void that is their evil and sin. This is their torment, and God didn’t do it to them. They are casualties of the enemy of men’s souls who attempted to set his throne above the most high. They are “lost” because they have no ontology to which they are compatible. And God’s mercy STILL rejoices against judgment on their behalf.

The odd thing is that so many blame God for the lake of fire, but few ever blame the serpent for it being the altered state of existence for so many in both this life and the life to come. Sad.
 

FineLinen

Well-known member
You are bypassing the means to the end, and declaring the ends AS the means. Your focus, like most others, is merely eschatological and anthropological, not apocalyptic and cosmological. Your focus for salvation is upon man. God’s focus for salvation is upon the cosmos (with man as the original crown jewel and centerpiece; first in the image of God, and then in the image of Seth after Adam).

Dear P.P.S. The salvation of the Living God is by, through and for Him. It is based wholly within Himself, not on the created cosmos, wholly within Himself, the Source, Guide, and Goal of ta panta.

"In His love, He chose us as His own in Christ before the creation of the world, that we might be holy and without blemish in His presence. For He predestined us to be adopted by Himself as sons through Jesus Christ--such being His gracious will and pleasure--to the praise of the splendour of His grace with which He has enriched us in the beloved One. It is in Him, and through the shedding of His blood, that we have our deliverance--the forgiveness of our offences--so abundant was God's grace, the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it--the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him."

Salvation by God, thru God, for God the All in all
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. The salvation of the Living God is by, through and for Him. It is based wholly within Himself, not on the created cosmos, wholly within Himself, the Source, Guide, and Goal of ta panta.

"In His love, He chose us as His own in Christ before the creation of the world, that we might be holy and without blemish in His presence. For He predestined us to be adopted by Himself as sons through Jesus Christ--such being His gracious will and pleasure--to the praise of the splendour of His grace with which He has enriched us in the beloved One. It is in Him, and through the shedding of His blood, that we have our deliverance--the forgiveness of our offences--so abundant was God's grace, the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it--the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him."

Salvation by God, thru God, for God the All in all

And you violate every scripture you reference with your heretical eisegetic infusions.

Why do you think you are in the place to declare such absolutes? Especially when they conflict with 2 millennia of Apostolic and Patristic doctrine based on valid lexicography and semantics from the divinely inspired text.

You presume to cast aside the actual Christian faith and declare your cultic replacement ideologies. What makes you think you can do this? THIS is why neophytes are not allowed to have leadership of any kind.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. The salvation of the Living God is by, through and for Him. It is based wholly within Himself, not on the created cosmos, wholly within Himself, the Source, Guide, and Goal of ta panta.

"In His love, He chose us as His own in Christ before the creation of the world, that we might be holy and without blemish in His presence. For He predestined us to be adopted by Himself as sons through Jesus Christ--such being His gracious will and pleasure--to the praise of the splendour of His grace with which He has enriched us in the beloved One. It is in Him, and through the shedding of His blood, that we have our deliverance--the forgiveness of our offences--so abundant was God's grace, the grace which He, the possessor of all wisdom and understanding, lavished upon us, when He made known to us the secret of His will. And this is in harmony with God's merciful purpose for the government of the world when the times are ripe for it--the purpose which He has cherished in His own mind of restoring the whole creation to find its one Head in Christ; yes, things in Heaven and things on earth, to find their one Head in Him."

Salvation by God, thru God, for God the All in all

“US” IS THE AUDIENCE OF BELIEVERS BEING ADDRESSED IN THE EPISTLE, NOT THE ENTIRETY OF MANKIND.

What’s the name of your cult?
 

FineLinen

Well-known member
“US” IS THE AUDIENCE OF BELIEVERS BEING ADDRESSED IN THE EPISTLE, NOT THE ENTIRETY OF MANKIND.

Dear P.P.S. "Us" is indeed the elect of the grace of God, chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Yes indeed, the "especially" of His great love as the Saviour of the whole world are the "us", the malista of His reach.

The whole world are the radical pas who are also His reach.

God is the Saviour of pas mankind, malista those who believe/ trust in Him.

Please Note:

Malista is not monon or monos.
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. "Us" is indeed the elect of the grace of God, chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Yes indeed, the "especially" of His great love as the Saviour of the whole world are the "us", the malista of His reach.

The whole world are the radical pas who are also His reach.

God is the Saviour of pas mankind, malista those who believe/ trust in Him.

Please Note:

Malista is not monon or monos.

What’s the name of your cult?
 

PneumaPsucheSoma

TOL Subscriber
Dear P.P.S. "Us" is indeed the elect of the grace of God, chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. Yes indeed, the "especially" of His great love as the Saviour of the whole world are the "us", the malista of His reach.

The whole world are the radical pas who are also His reach.

God is the Saviour of pas mankind, malista those who believe/ trust in Him.

Please Note:

Malista is not monon or monos.

The “elect” is a pointess reference for you; for all mankind for all ages are the “elect” according to your heresy. There are no “non-elect” in Universalism, which makes there being an “elect” quite superfluous.
 

way 2 go

Well-known member
Your anticipatory glee at the suffering of others who you're in no way qualified to judge anyway was all your own doing.

both of you appear to be fixated on my statement that i will be standing alongside God laughing at the wicked as they earn their just reward

1Co 6:2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
This weird, nonsensical phrasing is the biggest SPAM in religion forums. It is dumb, plain dumb. I have seen this spam for years.

Hell is eternal. That is that. Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but facts don't care about your feelings

Timmy posted that six years ago. About a year in he threatened to "find me and hurt me" :darwinsm:
 
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