Does Hell Mean the Absence of God?

[makesends]

@Arial and @John Bauer
By use of "for example"-style parallels—even hyperbole, for the sake of getting a point across—and no doubt by many mis-statements, I have been trying to say that we should not absolutely trust our understanding, our use, of the language of scripture.

All I have been trying to propose is that, for all we know, concerning the after-life, it is "neither-nor", and possibly there is another way to put it, perhaps even closer to how God sees it. We don't even know how to think outside of temporal minds. We don't know enough about extra-temporal language to recognize it if it occurs in what we take to be temporal language. But, as I've said, I think I can guarantee —(yes, I have no authority nor ability to guarantee such a thing. It is a figure of speech, but)— I can guarantee that we don't know the way God sees these things, even if it is described temporally. But, I've had enough. I give up—at least for now. Carry on. This little back-and-forth shouldn't dominate the threads concerning hell and the afterlife.

 

[Arial]

That's not what I said, nor do I think that is what it reduces to. I'm saying:
1) our view, our takeaways, our interpretations, our use of whatever God has shown us, is irrelevant to the truth of what he has shown us;
2) when he speaks to us in temporal language about temporal things, and we interpret/apply it temporally, that is all well and good, but when he speaks to us in temporal language about the afterlife, he is speaking about out temporal view of those things. Eg, we do die from this temporal world, and in the way of temporal things the resurrection is future.
3) We don't know enough about the afterlife to certainly declare that, from his POV, (which is necessarily THE TRUTH), there is for the dead a passage of time before they are raised. Again, from THIS point-of-view, yes, there is a time between death and resurrection, because WE experience that time passage.

You are still collapsing categories.

If temporal language about the afterlife only reflects our perspective and not reality, then revelation stops giving us knowledge and becomes non-informative. But then you can't also claim "we don't know enough" or suggest there may be no duration---you've already under cut the basis for making any claim.

So, you need to choose:
Either God's temporal descriptions correspond (truly, though limitedly) to actual post-death reality---in which case they tell us something real about the intermediate state.

Or they are merely perspective----in which case you have no grounds to say anything about it at all. You can't have both.

You weaken interpretation so much that your own claims lose grounding. You blend perspective vs reality, language vs ontology, human vs divine knowledge. Your posts feel confusing to me and not only me, because they are not just complex, they are structurally inconsistent.

 

[Arial]

Who said the truth being conveyed by those temporal words is irrelevant to how God sees the afterlife? I didn't. Have I not said that our use of them is necessarily short of eternal facts?

You have said they are irrelevant to eternal facts. If they are irrelevant to eternal facts then they have no relevancy at all.

Exactly how I see it, too.

And yet you also say that it is possible that there is no intermediate state between death and resurrection. In essence, that what we perceive temporally is possibly an illusion but one we nevertheless experience in reality. Your structure is unsound because it keeps confusing and collapsing categories both.

I insist the same. Not only do we not need to know, but we necessarily do not know.

And yet you also claim that because we don't know what it looks like our temporal view is irrelevant to the reality which would mean no real knowledge is being given by Scripture.

Have I said different?

Yes. Every time you say that the Bible does not teach an intermediate state, we are just interpreting it that way because temporally that is how it is expressed to temporal people using temporal words. And continue that since God is outside of the temporal there may be no passage of what we temporally see as time at all. So now, by that reasoning, no actual truth is being conveyed by temporal words. Even though you are constantly affirming a position using nothing but temporal words.

NOT YET in our temporal frame. But we don't know enough about their afterlife either, to judge it as necessarily so, that they remain in some intermediate state. What I read from scripture, and particularly from the story of the Good Samaritan, does not teach that. You may be right. But I am not convinced that that is what scripture teaches

In which case, if that were so, then those scriptures that portray a passage of time by "not yet" are conveying no truth at all. You cannot have it both ways!

 

[Arial]

HE is the core of fact, and his ways are not our ways. Sorry for being hard-headed, but I must insist that, particularly, when get into the afterlife, we don't know enough to say one way or the other, just what is going on there, except the facts given us.

Nobody has gone beyond the facts given us---specificlly those that indicate an intermediate state between death and resurrection.

That you and others see the afterlife for the dead reprobate undergoing some kind of conscious passage of time, because of the temporal language used to describe some things, that to me are, variously, anthropomorphisms of a sort—that is, saying things in a way we can put a handle on to be able to continue our understanding and learning, not to mention to give us ways to wonder about such things

That is not the only example used. There are also the passages that refer to the dead believers and the resurrected believers, and the resurrected non-believers for judgment. Temporal language is not given as a way to put a handle on things. And temporal language and anthropomorphisms are not the same thing.

If those passages such as of Lazurus and the rich man were only meant to describe something, but it was not the same time not conveying a truth, what exactly was it helping us to understand and learn? The fact that that passage was not specifically dealing with the afterlife but with the fact that even someone coming back from the dead would not convince the Pharisees and Sadducees because they did not believe Moses or the prophets; even though that is what it is teaching, would it contain within it something that was a lie?

And what of the passages of the resurrection of the dead when Jesus returns. and the those that say the believer goes to be with Jesus at death. They are obviously conscious but not resurrected. Are the dead reprobate then in soul sleep? Or are they like the rich man in Sheol?

Look at the broad disagreement as to what it means, that Jesus preached to the souls in hell! How can anyone say for sure what happened there? That it was an event does not surely designate passage of time. It may have been and it may not have been.

I am not qualified to put forth any interpretation of that passage. That is beside the point. An event always involves the passage of time or there would be no event. That is a confusion of categories.

This I am pretty sure of, that when we get there we will all see how amazing he is, and how little we understood. We will also understand the reasons why we did not understand, that we were presumptive, ignorant, and stuck in temporal language with our minds in this world.

In other words, the word he sent out wasn't very successful in accomplishing what he sent it to do?

 

[John Bauer]

I hope you mean that Scripture says nothing about it epistemically …

No, I mean that Scripture says literally nothing about God’s point of view—at all. How could it? Human categories and forms of communication are inescapably creaturely, and God is not. The Creator–creature distinction is real and vivid. The best we can hope for, and only through illuminated divine revelation, is ectypal and analogical understanding or knowledge, wherein our concepts correspond to reality but in a creaturely mode that is limited and at best approximate. Our knowledge is ectypal, analogical, finite, and accommodated to creaturely capacity; God’s knowledge is archetypal, original, infinite, and complete in himself (exhaustive and non-discursive).

Let’s look at your biblical references.

Isaiah 55:8 says, “My plans are not like your plans, and my deeds are not like your deeds.” What does this tell us about God’s point of view? Nothing. Whatever things look like for God, it differs radically from a creaturely perspective. The text functions apophatically, telling us that God is not x or that he is not like y. There is no positive account of the divine standpoint from which one could draw speculative implications.

And 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 says that “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined” the things which God has prepared for those who love him, except that he has made them known to us by the Spirit. In other words, what human beings could never discover by their own powers, God has revealed by the Spirit. What does this tell us about God’s point of view? Again, nothing. This is about God having to reveal what he has in store for us, not about what things look like for him. If anything, this is reaffirming the inaccessibility of divine things by human powers, that such things must be revealed (to creatures in creaturely terms).

John 1:1-5 establishes the preexistence of the Word, his deity, and his agency in creation; it also distinguishes the Word from the created order. But none of that yields a positive account of God’s point of view. It only tells us who the Word is in relation to God and creation. This, too, is apophatic theology, telling us that the Word, as to his divine nature, is not a creature but the Creator (thus he is not temporally conditioned). That being said, as to his assumed human nature, the incarnate Son is temporally conditioned.

As for John 8:58, that is communicating the same message, that the pre-incarnate Son is not creaturely (and thus not temporally conditioned). It asserts not only that he existed eternally but that his pre-incarnate mode of existence is not like our creaturely mode. (Again, a careful distinction must be made regarding his incarnate state.)

Yes, the cryptic nature of statements about God do indicate an enormous difference between what we can see and [what we can] know about him, and how he sees things. I don't disagree. In fact, I insist on it, and that is my point.

The problem is the “how he sees things” part of your statement. Remove that and we are in full agreement. Scripture tells us what God is not like (i.e., creaturely); it doesn’t tell us how he sees things. It can’t, for it is communicated in creaturely terms. It is almost as if God is revealing to us, “You cannot even begin to fathom things from my end, so just trust me.” Let me repeat that: You can’t even begin to fathom things from God’s perspective.

So stop trying. Take possession of what he has revealed, and entrust everything to him. Don’t be skeptical, don’t second-guess, and don’t doubt what he has said in Scripture; trust it and believe it. Leave his point of view to him, and fully trust his words—and his temporally conditioned Word, the incarnate Son.

I don't know if you think Annihilationism is Tier 2 or Tier 3. I can't imagine you think it is Tier 1.

It depends on what we are talking about, for there are some aspects of this doctrine that belong to Tier 1, some to Tier 2, and still others that are Tier 3. For example, that the wicked perish, are destroyed, are consumed, and are burned up belongs to Tier 1, for these are what Scripture states. That the wicked are neither immortal nor imperishable belongs to Tier 2, for Scripture says that such belong to the redeemed. That wrath is not an eternal attribute of God belongs to Tier 3, for it is neither a statement of Scripture nor an inference from it.

Although proponents of eternal conscious torment think that aspects of their doctrine belong to Tier 1, I have yet to see them step outside of Revelation 14:11 to make that case. (They believe there are more supportive texts than that, but as each of those get refuted they keep retreating to Revelation 14:11.)

I think [the idea that God is not temporally conditioned] very much is a grid/lens/filter through which you read/think on Scripture.

Okay, then show me where you have observed that happening. (I am assuming, of course, that your statement was based on something.)

Again, I agree that God is not temporally conditioned, but thinking that’s true and using it to second-guess the statements of Scripture are two very different things. We both think it’s true, but only you do the latter. For me, it’s just something fun to think about when I am bored.

I do indeed subject all the statements made in Scripture concerning the eternal from a non-temporal "grid."

I certainly appreciate the explicit confirmation of the very point I was making: you do, in fact, allow a metaphysical framework to govern your reading of Scripture.

But the irony cannot go unnoticed. You subject scriptural statements about the eternal to a non-temporal grid, but you also concede that you don’t even know what that grid actually looks like.

That is precisely the problem. Once an unknown metaphysical framework is allowed to govern interpretation, the text is no longer functioning as the controlling authority. But worse than that, you are not only using a grid, but you’re subordinating Scripture to a grid you cannot even positively describe.

Amazing.

I do think he spoke the finished product into existence, but I can't know just how that applies. I do insist that this temporal reality is a tool in God's hands, by means of which that finished product is built. And yes, I am left with a LOT of questions I can't answer, but they have to do with my temporal thinking, and do not oppose my grid, but only my ignorance on the subject.

You are effectively saying that no unanswered question is permitted to count against the grid itself. The grid is insulated in advance from falsification. This is incredible. Any tension, opacity, or explanatory difficulty is assigned not to the framework but to your own temporal limitation.

That is methodologically fatal. Whatever cannot be explained is treated as a limitation in the interpreter, never as a possible defect in the interpretive model. The model has ceased to be corrigible by Scripture.

Here I am, in agreement with you that hell does not mean the absence of God,

I don’t think we are in agreement, for I think you’re talking about gehenna (hellfire), whereas I was talking about hadēs (the grave). These distinctions are crucial to the discussion.

… except that I insist we don't know enough to be sure about it.

You don’t know enough to be sure about it. Please do not speak for me, nor impose on me your second-guessing of scriptural statements. Let me be the judge of my confidence, which is not adjudicated by your skepticism.

Again, you do agree that God doesn't see how we do. That alone should be enough to make you think twice before defining the afterlife according to a temporal viewpoint.

I am defining the afterlife according to scriptural statements. If you have a problem with those being expressed in creaturely terms, then your quarrel is with the Author.

We do know about what happens during this life.

Not from God’s point of view.

Listen, if appeal to God’s unknowable point of view blocks ordinary scriptural conclusions, then it blocks them here as well.

(I am just pointing out that your principle, if applied consistently, tends toward global skepticism.)

But what boggles my mind is how you can take temporal statements —I will use this one, "eye has not seen...etc (temporal fact)....what God has prepared....(temporal language as past tense, finished product implied (tentatively assessed)). Now, if God has prepared it, and yet Jesus goes to prepare, if IT IS FINISHED, yet we don't see it as finished, what am I supposed to do with that?

There is a straightforward answer to this.

NOTE: I am working on a response to your other post to me, but it won't be posted until tomorrow morning.

 

[JesusFan]

That depends on what you mean by his presence I suppose. It certainly would not be in the way that we speak of his presence as a good thing.

Here are Sproul's words:​

"When we use the imagery of the Old Testament in an attempt to understand the forsakenness of the lost, we are not speaking of the idea of the departure of God or the absence of God in the sense that he ceases to be omnipresent. Rather, it's a way of describing the withdrawal of God in terms of his redemptive blessing. It is the absence of the light of his countenance. It is the presence of the frown of his countenance. It is the absence of the blessedness of his unveiled glory that is a delight to the souls of those who love him, but it is the presence of the darkness of judgement, in his exercise of wrath, and that's what everyone would like to escape."​

​

I would add, would it also be the complete absence of his general mercy, provision, and the restraining influence of the Holy Spirit that are in our fallen world today? That is a question up for discussion as I don't know.

Is the above impossible because would that remove "mercy" say, from his attributes or violate the simplicity of his nature?

I would take it as meaning that their remains for the lost forever absence of any things that would derive from God in a positive sense, no light, warmth, love jut gloom and doom

 

[JesusFan]

I agree David is or is not "teaching that God is in Hell in the same way as God is everywhere. But I do believe he is exclaiming it as literal. There is no way of escaping God.

In that same way to say fallen and unregenerate man is separated from God is not wholly accurate. No one is separated from God or out from under his law. It is more accurate that the familiar relationship is severed.

Chapter and verse don't come to mind and it is really a full biblical doctrine of God that the issue rests on, not specific verses. The question also introduces a related but different focus---that of eternal torment. But if his presence is like that as described in the blessing and curse of the covenant Law it would be the opposite of the command God gave the OT priests to speak over the people.

Numbers 6: 24-26
The Lord bless you and keep you;
The Lord make his face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up his countanance upon you,
And give you peace.

That is the blessing. The curse takes all those things away. Jesus became a curse for us who believe.

Those in Hell are living the curse and that is (probably and I would imagine) when they realize all that God had been doing for them while they were alive and that they denied was his doing with every breath they took. They gave themselves the glory instead. So, God's presence torments them but it is not God tormenting them.

They have the awful certainty of an eternity of darkness and nothing positive in any sense, just existing without any blessing or good thing period, and living forever with their own sins magnified, never to be satisfied, a worse hell them just getting roasted

 

[JesusFan]

Normally, I love the late and beloved R. C. Sproul. Nearly everything that I believe, from soteriology to eschatology, has been shaped or in some way influenced by him. In fact, he was instrumental in pulling me out of Particular Baptist theology into fully Reformed covenant theology. But on this point I think he is mistaken, or at least imprecise.

The problem is that Sproul’s formulation presupposes the traditional doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment, so in this statement he is blurring the distinction between the intermediate state and final state. Did anyone else notice that he is importing into the present intermediate state features belonging properly to final punishment?

For example, he says the wicked “are” in hell, using the present tense for hell as divine judgment and punitive wrath. But Scripture nowhere says that the wicked are presently experiencing final hell (γέεννα, géenna or gehenna). If they are anywhere, it is the intermediate state (ᾅδης, hadēs), corresponding broadly to Sheol (שְׁאוֹל, šeʾôl) in the Old Testament, the realm of the dead, which the LXX translates as hadēs.

That is where Psalm 139:8 comes in. Although the realm of the dead is not outside God’s sovereign presence or jurisdiction (e.g., Job 26:6), that’s not the same thing as saying the dead either enjoy or despise communion with him there. The Old Testament commonly portrays the realm of the dead in terms of darkness, silence, and deprivation, a “land of oblivion” cut off from the embodied praise and historical covenant life of the land of the living (Ps. 88:10-12; Job 14:21; Eccl 9:5, 10). Yet the OT does not leave God’s people there without hope. Precisely because šeʾôl / hadēs is not beyond his reach, Scripture begins to voice the hope that God will redeem his people from its power (Ps. 49:15; Hos. 13:14), a hope that comes to fuller expression in the NT doctrine of resurrection.

So I cannot follow Sproul here. His statement imports into the present intermediate state features that belong properly to the final state. No matter how one resolves all the details, Scripture does not teach that the wicked are presently experiencing final hell.

except jesus always stated that Hell would be everlasting and would be a terrible eternal state

 

[John Bauer]

By being convinced.

How? For example, how would someone convince you that there is an intermediate state between physical death and the resurrection at judgment? Not with Scripture, evidently. You simply dismiss that for using temporal language. This is why I said your view appears to be insulated against falsification: “Whatever cannot be explained is treated as a limitation in the interpreter, never as a possible defect in the interpretive model. The model has ceased to be corrigible by Scripture.”

“By being convinced” is empty at this point unless you can say what would do the convincing.

In fact, after a manner of speaking, I insist that I am wrong. My statement of my view is only 'a way to think of it'.

That doesn’t resolve the issue. A model doesn’t become harmless by saying it is just “a way to think of it” when it’s being used to govern the meaning of biblical texts. That is the point. The issue is not whether you speak tentatively (you do). The issue is whether the metaphysical speculation is functionally controlling exegesis (it is). In practice, you are using a Tier 3 heuristic to adjudicate Tier 1 statements.

And that is precisely the problem, sir. You are tasking an admittedly tentative and inaccurate model with bearing the weight of a controlling interpretive framework. But it can’t. A Tier 3 model one already concedes to be wrong, or at least knowingly inaccurate, should never be used to override, qualify, or filter the plain force of Tier 1 textual statements.

If you want to treat your model as just one way to think of it and insist that it’s wrong, then fine—but then you must stop using it as a controlling hermeneutical grid. It must remain subordinate, corrigible, and downstream.

But what is getting me, here, is your refusal to admit to some reasonable level of self-skepticism in this interchange.

That is a grossly unfair characterization of my position. I have repeatedly made it clear, both here and elsewhere, that I can be corrected. And I have done more than say that in the abstract, for I’ve also given concrete examples of views on which I have been corrected—and I have no hesitation in acknowledging that. So the issue here is not any refusal of self-skepticism.

What I am resisting is something else entirely. I am refusing to let an undefined, tentative, and inaccurate metaphysical speculation be given interpretive priority over Scripture. I am open to correction but my views are subordinate to Scripture, not Tier 3 conjecture. My position remains that exegesis must govern inference, and inference must govern speculation—not the reverse.

WHY should eternal conscious torment and annihilationism be the only "options," as though God says nothing more about it?

First, the fact that we’re examining these two views does not mean these two are the only options.

Second, if God has said something about it that I haven’t considered, please bring it to my attention.

What the biblical text says is not only temporally expressed. But even if it was, you would submit God's ways and deeds to temporal governance?

No, I insist that God’s deeds and ways are what God says they are.

Let’s also not lose sight of the incarnate Son who, according to his human nature, is indeed temporally conditioned.

Only what happens in time is necessarily temporally governed.

First, that is tautological. You essentially said, “What occurs temporally is temporal.”

Second, physical death and the resurrection happen in time, and are temporally separated. For example, my beloved aunt died, but the resurrection has not yet happened.

The temporal terms (such as "not yet") and the future resurrection are necessarily, to him, not quite how we see it.

How God sees things may be an interesting subject of speculation, but it’s not the point. The fact that God beholds the end from the beginning in a single divine act of knowledge doesn’t nullify the historical order he ordained, created, and governs. The beginning is followed by the end and unfolding between them is a vast temporally ordered tapestry of redemptive history.

Those statements in Scripture you take to falsify my view—no matter how inconsequential and ill-expressed or ill-defined my view may be—only do so by our human use of them.

False. It is not human use of Scripture that falsifies your view, but the content of Scripture itself. The authority of Scripture lies in the fact that God is its Author. Of course we use the text humanly. That is so obvious as to be trivial. The question is whether the text, as divine revelation, has the authority to correct our speculations.

But here is another question: Why does your “human use” of an admittedly ill-defined and inaccurate Tier 3 speculation have more weight than my “human use” of inerrant and infallible Tier 1 divine revelation? And why do you seem so untroubled by how backwards that is?

If the problem is human use, then your speculative grid is in far greater trouble than the text, because the text is God-breathed, whereas your heuristic is your own tentative and vague approximation—which you insist is wrong, after a manner of speaking.

You tell me, brother: In Revelation where there was silence in Heaven for the space of half an hour, what is it talking about? You don't know, and I don't know.

That is a deflection. Is every text equally transparent in all its details? Of course not. Revelation contains symbolic material, and “silence in heaven for about half an hour” in Revelation 8:1 is a good example of a text whose precise significance may be debated.

But that doesn’t help your case. The existence of some exegetically difficult passages doesn’t justify using an ill-defined metaphysical heuristic to govern clearer texts—which are not even governed by those difficult texts, although both are divine revelation. Rather, clearer texts govern opaque texts, and our metaphysical speculations are subordinate to both.

Where is the implication, that if one is utterly destroyed, the substance of his atomic particles removed, and he is no more, that there had to have been a timeframe before it during which he endured that process of destruction? … I would venture to say that there are no two annihilationists that have quite the same concept as to what happens there.

I am less worried about the anthropological implications of a doctrinal stance, and more about the Christological implications of what the biblical texts say. We need to get our gaze off the horizontal and look more vertical. The issue is not what annihilationism looks like unpacked but what Scripture says happens to the wicked reprobate in the end, how that relates to the cross, and how it plays into the consummation of redemptive history in Christ.

Do we really even know the nature of substance in the afterlife?

No.

Now, ask me how I know that. It’s because Scripture plainly states it. My speculation is governed by Scripture, not the reverse.

I can follow the arguments for either side of the debate, but I don't think that either side is the whole story.

A point of clarification: Those in either camp likewise don’t think their side is the whole story. But one side thinks the other side is wrong. I can make a solid case for one of them; I have never heard a solid case for the other. You appear to think both sides are wrong, but pay attention to what you are basing that on—not Scripture, but rather your controlling hermeneutical grid.

 

[Arial]

Jesus spoke as a temporal human to temporal humans existing in this temporal realm. I do not see the afterlife as subject to time. When Jesus tells stories and parables, he is using common thinking, common terms, common notions, as a backdrop for the point of the story/parable. I don't think he was teaching that there is a place of the dead between death and resurrection.

Again, a parable is a story, and when Jesus was not speaking in a parable he was not telling a story. He was teaching.

And I disagree that a parable, especially as Jesus was using them, has the definition of common notions, common thinking. A parable uses things from everyday life to illustrate a point. True it was something the hearers could relate to within their culture. That is why many of Jesus' parables used agricultural references. Wheat, tares, field, sheep, shepherd. And it wasn't a backdrop but a setting. The truth being presented was conveyed through analogies the hearers were familiar with. Take John 10 for example. Today's readers are likely to not get the full impact because they know nothing about sheep or shepherds or how the flocks of various shepherds at the end of the day were mingled in one pen for the night to protect them from predators. Or that it was something that could be done because it was actually true, that the sheep would only follow the voice of their shepherd. The hearers did know that and so the impact of the analogy was powerful (even though many rejected it and still to this day do not understand that impact). "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me."

That is why there is a debate about whether or not the account of Lazurus and the rich man is a parable. It is not organized or presented as his other parables are. But whether or not it is a parable is beside the point in this discussion. It makes no difference. Ther "chasm" may be illustrative to stress the point that the dead cannot pass from one place to the other. And the details may be illustrative of one place being pleasant and the other torment. But if it were not also showing that there are two places of the dead and in both places the residents are conscious; and that since their actual bodies are still in the grave, not resurrected (an inference made from later statements in Scripture that have already been provided by two people in the discussion); if what was being illustrated was not based on reality (truthful in other words) the entire account was nothing more than an idle comment serving no purpose.

 

[Arial]

Of course no further redemptive action, but I am curious what is the purpose for this 'intermediate state'. I don't see how it is necessary. I do see how people might need to think that way, because of their temporal experience of l

It is necessary because Jesus will not return until he has gathered all of his sheep. I can understand a non-Reformed not understanding that but not a Calvinist, Calvinistic or Reformed.

 

[makesends]

It is necessary because Jesus will not return until he has gathered all of his sheep. I can understand a non-Reformed not understanding that but not a Calvinist, Calvinistic or Reformed.

See? THIS (that you just said above) shows how you are not getting me. OBVIOUSLY Jesus will not return until he has gathered all his sheep. I get that. Nothing that I have been trying to get across contradicts that. BUT that is from OUR (human) perspective.

The FACT that he gathers his sheep, The FACT that he gathers his sheep throughout time, The FACT that they are raised from the dead, and all the other FACTS concerning redemption, and, indeed, concerning God's decree(s) for all time, are accomplished in TIME, but they are not necessarily experienced AS TIME (or so I suppose) from within eternity. They are wonderful fact that God accomplished during this vapor we call time.

Maybe this (I really don't know) can finally show @John Bauer why I have a problem with lapsarianism. You can't order God's decree(s). You can order what he decreed, but not his decreeing them. I can order the creation, the fall, the sacrifice, the regeneration, the gathering, the resurrection. But I can't order God's decree. I think —i.e. I like to think, I prefer to think— that he sees these as all one decree, the Gospel*, all one FACT.

*(I call it the Gospel, (and I think of God's decree, and all temporal fact, plus Heaven, as the Gospel), but, that is not part of my argument and if you disagree that it is the Gospel, that's fine. I just included it to try to get my point across—not as proof of my point. Sorry if it tangles your brain; please don't argue the question and tangle mine! )

 

[makesends]

Again, a parable is a story, and when Jesus was not speaking in a parable he was not telling a story. He was teaching.

And I disagree that a parable, especially as Jesus was using them, has the definition of common notions, common thinking.

I thought that is what I was saying — they are concepts common to most people. Not necessarily instructive of fact, but a story or a parable.

A parable uses things from everyday life to illustrate a point. True it was something the hearers could relate to within their culture. That is why many of Jesus' parables used agricultural references. Wheat, tares, field, sheep, shepherd. And it wasn't a backdrop but a setting. The truth being presented was conveyed through analogies the hearers were familiar with. Take John 10 for example. Today's readers are likely to not get the full impact because they know nothing about sheep or shepherds or how the flocks of various shepherds at the end of the day were mingled in one pen for the night to protect them from predators. Or that it was something that could be done because it was actually true, that the sheep would only follow the voice of their shepherd. The hearers did know that and so the impact of the analogy was powerful (even though many rejected it and still to this day do not understand that impact). "My sheep hear my voice and they follow me."

So what's the problem. You don't like my term, "common notions", "common thinking", yet to my mind, you turn right around and describe exactly what I meant.

That is why there is a debate about whether or not the account of Lazurus and the rich man is a parable. It is not organized or presented as his other parables are. But whether or not it is a parable is beside the point in this discussion. It makes no difference.

Thank you. I thought I said as much.

Ther "chasm" may be illustrative to stress the point that the dead cannot pass from one place to the other. And the details may be illustrative of one place being pleasant and the other torment. But if it were not also showing that there are two places of the dead and in both places the residents are conscious; and that since their actual bodies are still in the grave, not resurrected (an inference made from later statements in Scripture that have already been provided by two people in the discussion); if what was being illustrated was not based on reality (truthful in other words) the entire account was nothing more than an idle comment serving no purpose.

That doesn't make sense to me. That it might illustrate reality in some ways is beside the point of the "account" (shall I call it). The point(s) of the account is that of justice, and of pride vs humility, of the stubborn rebellion of heart of those who think they are good enough, and a pretty obvious prediction ('even if one were to come back'), and of the misuse of "Moses and the prophets". It is teaching those things—not that there is a gulf across which communication can be made, not that Abraham is the one to whom one petitions, nor even that categorically miserable people will be comforted, nor that rich people will not be in Heaven. It is not teaching that there are intermediate states with conscious people undergoing high temperatures and comfort. It is USING that notion to make the point. It may, or it may not, be so.

For that matter, even if there IS an intermediate state —even if there is an intermediate conscious state—it can be unrelated to time from the POV of the dead and from God's POV, but only related to FACT, and sequence of fact, from God's POV, just as I like to suppose, and makes sense to me, that happens to the reprobate in the end—INTENSITY of God's purity met upon them and done.

 

[Arial]

I thought that is what I was saying — they are concepts common to most people. Not necessarily instructive of fact, but a story or a parable.

You may have thought that is what your wording was conveying but it was not. You only now just added the word "concepts" and its absence makes a world of difference in the meaning.

he is using common thinking, common terms, common notions, as a backdrop for the point of the story/parable.

If they are not instructive of fact (truth) then what are they there for? It is somewhat beside the point that it wasn't a particular teaching on the details of the afterlife. He would not misrepresent the mode of the afterlife entirely. Now one could debate that statement until and if they consider the inspired words of the apostles that verify that when people die that is not the end of their existence, those that tell us where the dead saints are now but their bodies not yet resurrected, therefore still in the grave, and those that tell us the unsaved dead have yet to be resurrected to face the final judgment.

So what's the problem. You don't like my term, "common notions", "common thinking", yet to my mind, you turn right around and describe exactly what I meant.

Notions and thinking aren't "things". Analogies contain things. "The kingdom of heaven (a thing) is like a seed (a thing)".

Thank you. I thought I said as much.

I would like to see where you said as much. But as I said regarding the debate of whether or not Lazurus/the rich man was a parable or not, either way it does not make a difference in this discussion. Or in anything that is being said about it. Let's not go off on a different tangent.

That doesn't make sense to me. That it might illustrate reality in some ways is beside the point of the "account" (shall I call it). The point(s) of the account is that of justice, and of pride vs humility, of the stubborn rebellion of heart of those who think they are good enough, and a pretty obvious prediction ('even if one were to come back'), and of the misuse of "Moses and the prophets". It is teaching those things—not that there is a gulf across which communication can be made, not that Abraham is the one to whom one petitions, nor even that categorically miserable people will be comforted, nor that rich people will not be in Heaven. It is not teaching that there are intermediate states with conscious people undergoing high temperatures and comfort. It is USING that notion to make the point. It may, or it may not, be so.

Let me repeat what I said elsewhere and expand it. It does not matter that he was not teaching specifically about the afterlife but was teaching the things you say. Everything in that account is representative and the representation would be clear to the hearers even if it is not so clear to us. The gulf is a separation of heaven and Sheol that cannot be crossed etc. I agree it is not teaching specifically that there are intermediate states and cannot be used by itself to do so. But no one posting here has used it as the only indication of an intermediate state but you---and you are just using it to say that there isn't one or not definitively because that isn't what Jesus was teaching. And as far as I can remember you have never addressed the other scriptures that have been used to support an intermediate state.

For that matter, even if there IS an intermediate state —even if there is an intermediate conscious state—it can be unrelated to time from the POV of the dead and from God's POV, but only related to FACT, and sequence of fact, from God's POV

What is the relevance of that? Why smash categories together and remove all relevance from both categories?

 

[Arial]

See? THIS (that you just said above) shows how you are not getting me. OBVIOUSLY Jesus will not return until he has gathered all his sheep. I get that. Nothing that I have been trying to get across contradicts that. BUT that is from OUR (human) perspective.

It is a pointless point as far as this discussion goes. It has been introduced into the conversation (and nearly all of your conversations) apropos of nothing. It is a whole other subject that belongs perhaps in Doctrines of God or Doctrinal Explorations. And yet you insist on inserting it here in all the exchanges instead of dealing with what is actually being said.

What has the conversation come to be about (and I don't know how or when, but it did)? It is about whether there is any scriptural evidence that there is an intermediate state between death and resurrection. What is Scripture? It is God revealing to us in temporal language for temporal people about temporal events. Your answer is you don't know but you believe that there is not because it is temporal language and therefore it may not actually involve time from God's pov or that of the dead. That is not using scripture to arrive at an interpretation of the scriptures. Which is what the conversation is asking. Does Scripture---.

All that is category confusion. And it is essentially saying that all scripture aside, no scripture can indicate the passage of time between death and resurrection because the unseen, God's pov is what is real and what is temporal is an illusion. (And no, you don't call it an illusion but what else would it be if it is as yu say irrelevant to the eternal? Now, by extension apply that to all Scripture. In order to be consistent with yourself, you would have to. And instead of recognizing that is what you are doing even though you have been told many times and in many ways, you keep crying, "You don't understand me!" Of course we don't. It makes nonsense out of the subject being discussed when you keep inserting what doesn't belong in the conversation as the solution to the conversation.

The FACT that he gathers his sheep, The FACT that he gathers his sheep throughout time, The FACT that they are raised from the dead, and all the other FACTS concerning redemption, and, indeed, concerning God's decree(s) for all time, are accomplished in TIME, but they are not necessarily experienced AS TIME (or so I suppose) from within eternity. They are wonderful fact that God accomplished during this vapor we call time.

So what?! That is not what is being debated. Just answer this question. Is there any place in Scripture that presents an intermediate state between death and resurrection? Keep in mind that whether the dead experience it as time the same way we do from here on earth or not is irrelevant.

 

[makesends]

You may have thought that is what your wording was conveying but it was not. You only now just added the word "concepts" and its absence makes a world of difference in the meaning.

If they are not instructive of fact (truth) then what are they there for? It is somewhat beside the point that it wasn't a particular teaching on the details of the afterlife. He would not misrepresent the mode of the afterlife entirely. Now one could debate that statement until and if they consider the inspired words of the apostles that verify that when people die that is not the end of their existence, those that tell us where the dead saints are now but their bodies not yet resurrected, therefore still in the grave, and those that tell us the unsaved dead have yet to be resurrected to face the final judgment.

Notions and thinking aren't "things". Analogies contain things. "The kingdom of heaven (a thing) is like a seed (a thing)".

I would like to see where you said as much. But as I said regarding the debate of whether or not Lazurus/the rich man was a parable or not, either way it does not make a difference in this discussion. Or in anything that is being said about it. Let's not go off on a different tangent.

Let me repeat what I said elsewhere and expand it. It does not matter that he was not teaching specifically about the afterlife but was teaching the things you say. Everything in that account is representative and the representation would be clear to the hearers even if it is not so clear to us. The gulf is a separation of heaven and Sheol that cannot be crossed etc. I agree it is not teaching specifically that there are intermediate states and cannot be used by itself to do so. But no one posting here has used it as the only indication of an intermediate state but you---and you are just using it to say that there isn't one or not definitively because that isn't what Jesus was teaching. And as far as I can remember you have never addressed the other scriptures that have been used to support an intermediate state.

What is the relevance of that? Why smash categories together and remove all relevance from both categories?

To avoid escalating, I'll back away again.

 

[John Bauer]

Without answering me?

 

[JesusFan]

Without answering me?

He has answered, but you are just rejecting his views

 

[makesends]

The problem is that Sproul’s formulation presupposes the traditional doctrine of hell as eternal conscious torment, so in this statement he is blurring the distinction between the intermediate state and final state. Did anyone else notice that he is importing into the present intermediate state features belonging properly to final punishment?

If the supposedly present (to them) intermediate state is the accurate way to frame this, you are correct. If, however, and as I have been trying to say may be the case, what we consider described as an ongoing intermediate state is not (to them) ongoing, but one and done with the resurrection... That it may not seem so to your use of the mode of expression does not make it so. God is not like us. His ways are not our ways.

So I cannot follow Sproul here. His statement imports into the present intermediate state features that belong properly to the final state. No matter how one resolves all the details, Scripture does not teach that the wicked are presently experiencing final hell.

The language is of the temporal frame, which, concerning the afterlife, does not necessarily translate to the same frame we experience. That we (I) don't know the nature of the afterlife frame does not incapacitate the prevailing fact of a very possible other-frame. Logical sequence of fact, may rule the day, there. To accept a temporal-only use of the temporal language, as though it necessarily defeats any other use, to me is not justified.

I have no problem with continuing to think in temporal terms concerning them—that is justified. My problem is in being sure that is the very nature of THEIR experience.

But I am repeating myself.

 

[makesends]

As you say, that account may be a parable. There is much debate about that and all I can say is "I don't know." (Ouch that hurt.)

In any case as a parable it serves as a direct condemnation of the Pharisees who had the law and the prophets and did not see that the fulfillment stood right in front of them. And if they did not see that, even when he rose from the dead and walked among them, they would not believe. And it also may be an actual indication of an intermediate state between death and judgement---the righteous in one place and the wicked in another and an uncrossable chasm. If so, the place of the unrighteous dead is not the wrath of judgement, but it is a type of torment. And the place of those in Christ is with him---peace and joy and no torment but the full consummation of the resurrection not yet.

I gave this post a 100%, which may puzzle you because I have also said,

I see no intermediate state implied there [in the Rich Man and Lazarus account]. We don't know the progression of fact between death and resurrection.

By, "I see no intermediate state implied", I don't mean that the account does not outright describe an intermediate state, but that of a temporal existence in the two sides of a temporal chasm—'temporal' according to our experience of time. That, plus, as I have said elsewhere, my use of the account is that it does not teach those particulars as fact, but as what you termed, "backdrop", for the points Jesus had in mind to demonstrate against the Pharisees.

But I repeat myself, again.