This scenario of the rich man in "hell" (hades, the grave) has always moved people to dread, and perhaps it ought to!

The rich man was in torment. "Send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water." Just a couple of drops -- that's all the water he requested! Doesn't that strike you as strange?
Why did he call for water? To put out the fires of all "hell"? -- the kind of hell people would have you believe he was in? No. He only wanted a mere couple of drops of water on Lazarus' finger -- why? -- "TO COOL MY TONGUE!"

That's what the rich man said! (Luke 16:24).

The flame, he said, was "tormenting" him. This word "tormented", used in verses 24 and 24 of Luke 16, is translated from the Greek word Odunao http://bible.crosswalk.com/InterlinearBible/ . This is defined in any Greek-English lexicon as "to cause pain, to pain, distress; pain of body, but also, pain of mind; grief, distress".

This rich man opens his eyes in his grave ("hell", hades) in a resurrection. He is resurrected mortal, just as he was before he died -- not immortal like Lazarus. He sees this lake of fire. Now he knows the frightful, the awful doom he is to be thurst into --to be burned up --destroyed! He is suffering mental anguish such as he never experienced in his lifetime. His tongue is dry. He breaks out in a cold sweat. He cries for a little water on the tip of Lazarus' finger to cool his tongue! He is in a condition of weeping and gnashing of teeth!

Hell: Eternal torment or annihilation?

The final annihilation of impenitent sinners is indicated, first of all, by the fundamental biblical principle that the final punishment of sin is death: �The soul that sins shall die� (Ezekiel 18:4, 20); �The wages of sin is death� (Romans 6:23).


The punishment of sin, of course, comprises not only the first death, which all experience as a result of Adam�s sin, but also what the Bible calls the second death (Revelation 20:14; 21:8), which is the final, irreversible death experienced by impenitent sinners. This means that the ultimate wages of sin is not eternal torment, but permanent death.

The Bible teaches death to be the cessation of life. Were it not for the assurance of resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:18), the death that we experience would be the termination of our existence. It is the resurrection that turns death from being the final end of life into being a temporary sleep. But there is no resurrection from the second death, because those who experience it are consumed in �the lake of fire� (Revelation 20:14). That will be the final annihilation.

Sounds like you're saying that you understand hell to be not a place of eternal torment, but a complete annihilation of the creature. I guess that's a kind of act of mercy on God's part, don't you think?

exactly and since God is merciful , he never intended to torment the man remember he was infuriated because the idolaters burn the children on the tophets, he said tha he never intendet to do that

Right, Phil and directo ---

Many churches teach that those who reject Christ will spend eternity in a never ending fire! An eternal fire that will never be quenched. This teaching is based on the belief that the soul cannot die, but is this true?

The word "soul" is translated from the Hebrew word nephesh (Strong's #5315). It is defined as "A breathing creature." The word nephesh is translated from the primary root word naphash which means to breathe.

This is why the Bible explains in Gen. 2:7: "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (nephesh). The KJV translates living being as "living soul."

By definition, a soul is a breathing creature.

Therefore, when the body quits breathing it cannot exist.

Man does not have a soul within himself. He is a soul. Jesus said not to fear man but rather to "Fear Him [God] who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell" (Mt. 10:28).


Again in Luke 12:5 Jesus informs us to, "Fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into hell..." These two verses as well as others that speak of hell fire are translated from the word geenna - referring to the Valley of Hinnom where the citizens of Jerusalem burned their trash.

Jesus said that God is able to destroy both soul and body in this fire.

If He can destroy the soul in this fire, it cannot be immortal!

wopik, there is also an understanding of the human soul as immortal spiritual form, which is why we believe that it survives the body after death. Whether or not it breathes is doubtful, as it has no need to oxygenate a body in the afterlife. Perhaps there is a subtle breath of some kind that continues, but maybe not. We really don't know much about what spirits require in the afterlife.

quote:

there is also an understanding of the human soul as immortal spiritual form...

That's an extra-biblical idea, isn't it ?

From Plato ?

Hellenistic Jews believed this, and so, yes, they were indebted to Greek philosophers for the idea. But they were nontheless Jews and their ideas contributed to the hope for the resurrection and eventually informed the views of the Pharisees and to the Apostles as well. The teaching on Jesus' descent to Sheol after his death, for example, presupposes the continuing existence of those who lived before. As 1 Pt. 3: 19 notes, Jesus preached to these "spirits in prison." Obviously, there is no point to preaching to them if they do not still possess intelligence and an ability to respond. So the idea of the soul as an immortal spiritual form is not a completely exta-biblical idea, although its origins might have derived from such sources. Here, as in so many other instances, we see Judaism adopting some of the beliefs and customs of the peoples they encountered--not in a way that watered down their key religious beliefs, however. Nothing wrong with that, imo. We Catholics do it all the time!

Phil

quote:

we see Judaism adopting some of the beliefs and customs of the peoples they encountered--not in a way that watered down their key religious beliefs, however. Nothing wrong with that, imo. We Catholics do it all the time!

From the sources I've read, you appear to be correct.

Toward the close of the second century, a school of professing Christians in Alexandria, Egypt, adopted Platonism plus the Bible as their creed.

One of their chief teachers, Origen, wrote: "Souls are immortal." He continues to speak of "The Platonist, who believes in the immortality of the soul" (The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. IV, pp. 314, 402).

This teaching came from Plato, not the Bible.

Tertullian, at the close of the second century, wrote: "For some things are known, even by nature: the immortality of the soul, for instance, is held by many.....I may use, therefore, the opinion of a Plato, when he declares: 'Every soul is immortal' " (vol. III, P. 547).


However, even as late as the fourth century, some Catholic writers and teachers, such as Arnobius, said of those who were "carried away with an extravagant opinion of themselves that souls are immortal....Will you lay aside your habitual ignorance, O men, who claim God as your Father, and maintain that you are immortal just as He is?" (Vol. VI, p. 440).


But, the truth was gradually submerged under the flood tide of paganism and actually condemned. Just before the Protestant Reformation, the Lateran Council of 1513 decreed the following:

"In these our days...the sower of tares, the ancient enemy of the human race, has dared to sow and foster in the field of the Lord certain very pernicious errors, always rejected by the faithful, especially as to the nature of the reasonable soul (anima rationalis), that it is mortal; or one and the same in all men; and some, rashly philosophizing, declare this to be true, at least according to philosophy.

"Desiring to employ remedies appropriate to such a plague, we, with the approbation of the sacred council, condemn and reprobate all those who assert that the intellectual soul (anima intellectiva) is mortal" (Mansi Concilia, XXXII, Coll. 842, from The Radical Reformation by G. H. Williams).

During the Reformation, instead of returning to the "faith once delivered," most continued in the same pagan errors that had been perpetuate by the ideas of men.

wopik, I'm aware of the way Greek philosophers influenced Christian theologians and, quite frankly, I don't have a problem with it. In the present discussion on whether human beings have an immortal soul, I don't see a problem as Hellenistic Judaism had integrated the idea with Judasim, and 1 Pt. 3: 19 takes it for granted that the spirits of the deceased exist in such a state that they can respond to Jesus' preaching.

If you're going to start purging from the Bible all non-Hebrew influences on the customs and thinking of the Jews, you'd have precious little left of the Holy Scriptures.

The fashionable view amongst many who profess
themselves to be wise while becoming foolish runs something like this;

You are God (capital "G") if you do not realize
this, you are not yet "enlightened" as we are.

If you disagree with this, then we feel sorry for you, for you are still in your fears and bound
by creeds, religion, dogma and cultural conditioning.

All you need is the Gospel of "The Kingdom of God is within you and you will see that you are
God and everything will be clear to you.

--------------------------------------------------

The problem with this view and what makes it particularly dangerous and insidious is that while false, it is not entirely so and mingles truth with error. It mimics Mystical Realization through Christ and higher functions which may be tapped into.

Thus they are clinging to their fear of accepting the Doorway to Truth and the Key to true
"enlightenment," the humility required to accept a free gift from the Author of Life and the Living Word that spoke us into existence.

This is the source of the Spirit of Antichrist which takes root in human pride of the moral, philisophical, spiritual or intellectual variety and the first cause of all spiritual warfare.

The saddest thing about the rich man is he was lulled into believing that there was no war at all.

caritas,

michael <*))))><

quote:

wopik, I'm aware of the way Greek philosophers influenced Christian theologians and, quite frankly, I don't have a problem with it.

To all, how times change!


Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, wrote: "The Egyptians were also the first that asserted that the soul of man is immortal....This opinion some among the Greeks have at different periods of time adopted as their own" (Euterpe, chapter 123).

Gibbon says the Sadducees "rejected the immortality of the soul as an opinion that received no countenance from the divine book" (The Modern Library Series, NY, Random House, I, 15, 2, pp. 398-402). He then adds that "the immortality of the soul became the prevailing sentiment of the synagogue under the reign of the Asmonaean princes and pontiffs."


Around AD 150, a founder of Catholicism warned: "Moreover, I pointed out to you that some who are called Christians, but are godless, impious heretics, teach doctrines that are in every way blasphemous, atheistic and foolish....For...some who are called Christians...say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians" (Justin Martyr, [i]Apologies I, ch. LXXX).

http://www.northforest.org/cla...el/h002h000d010.html

wopik, I note that you are ignoring my point about the mention in 1 Pt. 3: 19 of Jesus preaching to the spirits in Sheol. I realize it's an inconvenient passage for your thesis, but . . . there it is!

I think it was like FDR's "New Deal" or Gengrich's "Contract With America," to use a rather
cheap and shoddy analogy.
Perhaps Jesus was filling in the old testament saints in on the "New Covenant" and "proclaiming liberty to the captives," the fortunate ones who made the same happy choice as the man on the cross to the left to be "this day with me in paradise."
If some declined the offer, I suppose their right to choose to decline was respected. (With a heavy hearted sigh and a tear in his eye.)

caritas,

<*))))>< mm

Phil

quote:

wopik, I note that you are ignoring my point about the mention in 1 Pt. 3: 19 of Jesus preaching to the spirits in Sheol. I realize it's an inconvenient passage for your thesis, but . . . there it is!

I Peter 3:19,20 and I Peter 4:6 ---

It seems to me that the most natural and obvious interpretation is to refer it to those who were then dead, to whom the gospel had been preached when living, and who had become true Christians.


Were they spirits then, or were they people like others?

Peter speaks of them as they were when he wrote; not as they had been, or were at the time when the message was preached to them.

The idea is, that to those spirits who were then in prison who had formerly lived in the days of Noah, the message had been in fact delivered. It was not necessary to speak of them precisely as they were at the time when it was delivered, but only in such a way as to identify them.

1 Pt. 4: 4-6. "So people cannot understand why you no longer hurry off with them to join in this flood which is rushing down to ruin, and then they begin to spread libels about you. They will have to answer for it in front of the judge who is ready to judge the living and the dead. And because he is their Judge, too, tyhe dead had to be told the Good News as well, so that though, in their life on earth, they had been through the judgment that comes to all humanity, they might come to God's live in the spirit." (NJB)

It's obvious that Peter is speaking about all who had died before Christ and not to those who had had the Gospel preached to them while living (why would Christ need to preach to them anyway?).

This little exchange demonstrates, however, why Scripture cannot be properly understood outside of the religious traditions from which it came and which have authority to interpret it.

. . . all this because you have to prove that a soul ceases to exist when it stops breathing! Sheesh!

Phil,

Thanks for your excellent comment. It is much appreciated.

Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man absolutely proves man is not conscious after he dies.

As the story progresses, Notice what the rich man then acknowledges. He says, ". . . No, father Abraham: but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent" (Lk 16:30).

The rich man now realizes that Abraham has been DEAD. He realizes he, the rich man, has also been dead for an indeterminate number of years. Suddenly, he is aware that he has been completely OBLIVIOUS to the passage of time; in his own mind, his brothers, living in his father's house, are still there.


In his vision of the Kingdom of God, the rich man hears Abraham finally say, ". . . If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, THOUGH ONE ROSE FROM THE DEAD". (Lk 16:31).

We are dealing with a resurrection, here.

The rich man has been resurrected. The rich man is talking face to face with a resurrected Abraham. Centuries have gone by since the rich man died, yet, in his own mind, his brothers, living in his father's house, are still there.


The rich man "lift up his EYES... and SEES Abraham. . ."
even as Jesus warned the Pharisees, "You shall SEE Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom, and you yourselves cast out".

That is the "great gulf" that exists between the rich man and Abraham.

wopik, I don't know that I buy your interpretation of the rich man and Lazarus, nor that it's meant to have metaphysical implications. As you probably know, we have a body of teaching on this topic in Catholicism: see "The Soul in Christian Thought" a little ways down at this link: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm It's rather lengthy, but worth reading.

Note the following, in the first pgh.: The Sadducees were Materialists, denying immortality and all spiritual existence. The Pharisees maintained these doctrines, adding belief in pre-existence and transmigration. The psychology of the Rabbins is founded on the Sacred Books, particularly the account of the creation of man in Genesis. Three terms are used for the soul: nephesh, nuah, and neshamah; the first was taken to refer to the animal and vegetative nature, the second to the ethical principle, the third to the purely spiritual intelligence. At all events, it is evident that the Old Testament throughout either asserts or implies the distinct reality of the soul. An important contribution to later Jewish thought was the infusion of Platonism into it by Philo of Alexandria. He taught the immediately Divine origin of the soul, its pre-existence and transmigration; he contrasts the pneuma, or spiritual essence, with the soul proper, the source of vital phenomena, whose seat is the blood; finally he revived the old Platonic Dualism, attributing the origin of sin and evil to the union of spirit with matter.

As you can see, Judaism--even branches thereof which contributed to the Hebrew Canon--was far from uniform in its doctrine.

One more point, here, wopik, and that is the experience of countless men and women through the ages attesting to contact with the deceased: whether it be apparitions of Saints, dying people seeing family members waiting to greet them, spiritualism, ghosts, and the like. You have to discount an awful lot of evidence to make your narrow definition of soul work out, not to mention the ongoing reflection on the meaning of soul--a process that the Holy Spirit could very well have inspired.

Thank you for the link, Phil. I would like to
make a habit out of checking that encyclopedia.
Perhaps the living energy which constitutes my soul existed all the way back to the big bang. Mind boggling that whatever it was that knew how to expand the universe with a precision (not so fast that it would fly apart and not so slow that it would collapse inward on itself) of a one in 95,000,000,000,000,000 margin of error (I have that on good authority since my calculator does not go that high ) wanted to have a relationship with you and I and Lazarus too. caritas mm <*))))><

Daniel speaks of the resurrection of the just, and of the unjust: "And many of them that sleep [their eyes closed] in the dust of the earth [their graves�buried�in hades] shall awake [lift up their eyes], some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan. 12:2).


The rich man died and then saw Lazarus by Abraham's side. CORRECT!
In death, there is no knowledge of passing time (Eccl. 9: 5,6,10; Ps. 146: 4). THE NEXT MOMENT IS THE RESURRECTION !

wopik,

I went to a Seventh Day Adventist congregation
for a time and this is what they believe and the scriptures which you mention are used to justify this doctrine of "soul sleep." Obviously, it is a point of view that sensible and sincere persons can believe and not an absolutely essential doctrine.
Personally, I cannot understand the idea of an
"off" switch for something like a soul.
-caritas mm <*))))><

michael, I'm glad you found that encyclopedia link helpful. The series posted is scanned from the 1908 edition, which is now public domain. There is a new edition from the 1970s and maybe even a later one. Nevertheless, the 1908 edition is still very relevant regarding almost every topic, if for no other reason than presenting the way things were understood back then.

Phil,

I used to hang out in the Christian chat rooms on AOL. In the evangelical rooms they would sometimes get into heated arguements and hurl brickbats at each other over points of doctrine and
this is perhaps a PROTESTant trait going back 500
years.

When I hung out in the Archangel rooms with the
RCC people, they seemed to have a little more fun and could laugh at themselves a little easier. They would sometimes complain about the "fundies" and all the theological wrangling.

A cradle Catholic might operate in an unconscious manner in regard to attitudes I am beginning to learn. I am in part hanging around here to learn more about the first 1500 years and perhaps to learn some manners and have something rub off in the way of things you take quite for granted. I have to hang out with freinds who have it in their "DNA" and get a sense of what it's like for them. Some call themselves "recovering" catholics and I'm not sure what that means, since some of them still believe and others are not sure. Perhaps they are in a dormant state or "soul sleep." They teach me most when they are unaware of doing so and I am grateful to be learning all the time.

wopic

I do have a high view of scripture, and there is a reason for those sciptures being there, and thank you for bringing them to my attention.

caritas,

<*))))>< mm

mysticalmichael9

quote:

Personally, I cannot understand the idea of an "off" switch for something like a soul.

If people think the soul is immortal, they will have one kind of biblical understanding. If others think the soul is the mortal self, they will understand the Bible yet differently.

The word "soul" - in Matt. 10:28 - comes from the Greek word psuche. In other NT verses, psuche is also translated into English as "life", "heart", "mind", "you", "us".


Other men can kill our body and take our life [soul], but God can restore both, if He chooses.

Only God can destroy our body and our soul [life] in gehenna fire, if He so decides.

http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/nephesh.html

==========================================

Genesis 7:21,22:

"And all flesh that moved on the earth expired, fowl as well as cattle, and beasts, and all crawling things which crawl on the earth, and all mankind: everything which had in its nostrils the breath of life [neshamah], of all that was on the dry [land], died."

Here we find that neshamah is applied to lower animals, so that if neshamah is an immortal entity that continues to live after death, we would have to believe that the lower animals also possess such immortality.