The Problem of Hell Redux (2)

Con's elaboration of the "biblical case" for a traditional conception of hell (by citing Matt. 25:41) relies on a dubious use of the word "eternal". In Greek the word translated as eternal is aionios. "Aion, transliterated aeon, is a period of longer or shorter duration, having a beginning and an end, and complete in itself. Aristotle (peri ouravou, i. 9, 15) said, “The period which includes the whole time of one’s life is called the aeon of each one.” Hence, it often means the life of a man, as in Homer, where one’s life (aion) is said to leave him or to consume away (Il v.685; Od v.160). It is not, however, limited to human life. It signifies any period in the course of the millennium, the mythological period before the beginnings of history. The word has not “a stationary and mechanical value” (De Quincey). It does not mean a period of a fixed length for all cases. There are as many aeons as entities, the respective durations of which are fixed by the normal conditions of the several entities. There is one aeon of a human life, another of the life of a nation, another of a crow’s life, another of an oak’s life. The length of the aeon depends on the subject to which it is attached.…The adjective aionious in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective, in themselves, carry the sense of endless or everlasting. They may acquire that sense by their connotation….Aionios means “enduring through” or “pertaining to a period of time.” Both the noun and the adjective are applied to limited periods….Out of the 150 instances in LXX, [Greek Old Testament] four-fifths imply limited duration. For a few instances, see Gen. xlviii. 4; Num. x. 8; xv. 15; Prov. xxii. 28; Jonah ii.6; Hab. iii. 6; Isa lxi. 17.4" [1] God Cannot Stand SinCon says I present a false dilemma and says that his third option solves it. Hell is complete separation from God. Not only is this very awkward to say in light of traditional Christian claims about God - isn't God supposed to be omnipresent? - this is very awkward to say in light of the bible. Presuming Con's hermeneutic we have this text: "A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: "If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand,10 they, too, will drink the wine of God’s fury,which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb." (Rev 14:9-10) One could make a good case for it involving a lot of metaphor and symbolism - it is Jewish apocalyptic literature after all - but one thing is clear: God is an active presence and facilitator here in the "torment". I don't see any "separation" here. Con says that God shows that He doesn't tolerate sin by sending them to hell ("complete separation from God") but what Con's claim have him committed to is by the act of sending them to hell God guaranteeing that the sinners will sin in perpetuity because God is the only one who could break that cycle of sin. If person A sets up a situation wherein they punish person B for continuing to do something bad C(because it's intolerable to them) even though A has rigged the game to where B literally has no other option than to C it makes no sense to say that A finds C intolerable. They can't really find C that intolerable if they don't let B have an option to do something other than C. And therein lies the problem. Con has it that God tolerates the intolerable. Or that God stands the thing that can't be standed.God Is Justicei) Con's response here is largely irrelevant to this debate and largely has to do with other issues in Christian theology.ii) Con never SAID that all sin was deserving of the same punishment but that's what his arguments imply. Con quotes Jonathan Edwards who also argues elsewhere that every sin is worth "infinite demerit". This is what the whole argument presupposes. But if that is the case; If EVERY sin is deserving of eternal or infinite punishment ("infinite demerit") then there's seems to be no coherent way to dole out "degrees" of punishment. It doesn't get any worse than infinite demerit, which all sins supposedly equally deserve. If that is the case there is no principled way to distinguish lesser from greater crimes (following the logic of the argument).Free Willi) Con misses the point of the analogy when directly responding to it but in another part seems to "get it" which is curious. Here we have a normal boy - meaning he has normal pain receptors and a normal aversion to pain and every thing else - who has every reason not to stick his hand in the fire and no reason to put his hand in the fire (he literally has no motive) who, nonetheless, put his his hand in the fire. Can even be coherently said that this boy "freely chose" to stick his hand in the fire? No, because that level of irrationality is incompatible with freely chosen acts as Con implicitly sees when he says, "The problem with the analogies of irrationality is that an irrational person is not responsible for his actions. He doesn't know what he is doing." Exactly! That's the entire point I was driving at. Unrepentant sinners couldn't possibly know what exactly they are doing because they have no idea what they are choosing in the long run. It's hard to see how any human can truly grasp that. It'd be like leaving it up to a two-year old to decide to whether or not doctors should operate on a life threatening brain tumor they are developing. They clearly can't grasp the magnitude of the decision nor the complexities.This segues directly into the dilemma I posed for Con which he failed to address adequately. A human being would be like that boy in which if they knew the actual nature of hell they'd have the strongest inclinations possible not to choose it and no inclinations to choose it. If they chose it regardless of this it'd be in such an irrational state that itself it would be be a "free choice" (if its is one at all) they couldn't held morally responsible for. That's one horn.The other horn: Con himself says he knows people that have "deluded" themselves into thinking choosing hell is in their best interests. The key word is "delusion". And again with Dawkins when says something like, "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction..." (everybody knows the rest) it's clear we aren't even talking about the same God anymore. He's no more freely rejecting the true God than he is rejecting a morally odious caricature of the true God (rightly, I might add). ii) Again Con fails to adequately address the point. Nowhere did I argue that free will isn't valuable. It is. I'm asking why is it that it is supposedly so sacrosanct when we come the choice of choosing eternal destinies? The choice the unrepentant sinner would be making would be to harm themselves in the worst way possible over the longest period of time possible. Why, per my analogy given earlier, wouldn't a good God step in and override their decision if they were about to make (literally) the biggest mistake they ever could make, ever? The Bliss of the Savedi) I'm not seeing how my previous objection still doesn't apply. The exact issue is whether such a doctrine of hell is compatible with other claims Christians make. To just say that he is eternally happy doesn't do much.ii) Geisler's claims fail for multiple reasons but the biggest one is this: ) His claim that ..."if we have tried to feed them but they have refused the food..." presumes a free choice in rejecting God and/or choosing hell which I have strenuously argued against and Con has failed to negate. Con's objection to this argument rests in large part on his objection to my other argument about free will. If he can't defeat that one (and I've shown why he can't) then he can't defeat this one.Sources[1] http://www.hopebeyondhell.net...