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?