Well when you say things like that, it makes me not really want to engage you.

But I will anyway. Tolstoy researched the original texts and made his own translation. He felt that Jesus was talking about states of mind, not actual places. So the kingdom of heaven is on earth. That's what I always intuitively thought when I read the New Testament as well, but I never had the time to learn Aramaic and translate everything. Sorry if I'm not independent enough of a thinker for you.

There is a lot of stuff the church added after Christ's death. Whether that was intentionally designed for power, or just an honest mistake, I don't know. To my thinking, the vast majority of Christians misinterpret what Jesus meant. Which is the church's fault, not theirs.

You're not even engaged in the content. I gave you a very strong hint of something to do that literally takes seconds, and you didn't even do it.

So what you're really saying that Jesus talks about hell, but Tolstoy came along after Christ's death and said that Jesus meant to be talking about a state of mind. That's convincing.

Here is the same verse in several different translations:

http://biblehub.com/matthew/5-22.htm

To say that "there's no mention of hell by Jesus" is clearly wrong. To say that Tolstoy says that Jesus never talked about it might be true (though I'd like to see a citation). To say that Jesus never meant hell to be understood a physical location is a totally different claim all together.

Are labels really useful here? If so, then yes I do consider myself a Christian. I also have no doubt that you could find a Christian who would emphatically assert that I am not a Christian. Does that make me less a Christian?

Let me ask you this? What makes a person a Christian? There certainly is not universal agreement as to what constitutes Christianity. I am a Christian because I accept the core concepts of Christianity as embodied by the teachings of Jesus Christ. As I have said before that is best summarized by the following imo:

No mention of Hell there, so I consider the concept not core to Christianity.

I stand corrected. I guess I'm not up on my bible or I'm guilty of selective reading. That said, I still don't buy it. The core of his teaching was non-violence. It's inherently inconsistent that a nonviolent god would punish people in hell. It also doesn't jibe with my understanding of who Jesus was historically

As for the citation, I'd love to find it but I don't have the book and I don't feel like searching for a citation. Here's a link to one of his books which probably has the answer in it.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/My_Religion


some quotes from chapter 8 on eternal life:

That's fine. At least you were willing to look it up and deal in the reality.

There are a couple things here.

1) Jesus' message was not the God was a non-violent God. In fact, such a God would be in significant contradiction with the God of the Old Testament (which is Jesus' God). I think you can make a meaningful claim along the lines of "the core of his teaching was non-violence" but the teaching was directed towards humans. This makes this particular element of your position very weak.

2) What do you understand about "who Jesus was historically" that says anything about hell?

3) Given that you've missed a very plain fact about the Bible, I would like to suggest that you also be careful with other claims that you're making, such as "the church did X." I think you should be wary of making claims like that which appear to be purely speculative.

4) I'm not arguing with you that I believe one thing or the other. I'm focused on highlighting the assumptions and errors in what you're presenting. So whether you buy the idea the hell is a real place or not a real place isn't really an outcome that I'm driving at. Instead, I want you to understand your own argument better.

What are your beliefs and why do you believe them?

I've got thousands of beliefs. I believe them based on life experiences, which includes knowledge gained personal experiences, knowledge gained from study, knowledge accepted from authorities. Just like everyone believing anything.

But I suspect you mean more specific to the concept of "hell." I don't have extremely strong positions on the matter, nor many specifics. But I will say is that reading Jesus' and Paul's concept of "eternal life" I find it hard to believe that they were only referring to a state of mind. You have to deny a lot of ideas to get there.

OK, I wasn't sure I was talking to a christian or an atheist, but I figured christian. Now, if you look at RLK's post just above about core beliefs, you'll see pretty much my fundamental belief as well. Love your God, love your neighbor. Do you agree this is the foundation of Christianity, or do you think there is another tenet that is the foundation of Christianity?

May I ask your views on Conditionalism?

I've been studying it for a little while now and I find it appealing, although it's definitely not without it's problems.

Those are certainly the first and second most important commands. But what do you mean by "another tenet"?

It sounds like you're boiling things down to a very reductive Christianity. This is not too dissimilar to RLK, if I remember correctly. But you need to be very careful about trying to make the jump of some statement about the two most important commands to some sort of theology of hell. (I'm assuming that this is where you're trying to get to because that's where you came from.)

Hunh? The bible makes no secret of the fact that god was not only violent, but to the point of being sadistically violent as well. Causing a catostrophic flood that wipes out all life on earth and most of humanity, including innocents like babies. Killing the first born of every first born, it goes no and on and on.

This can't be overlooked. Or at least I don't see how one could overlook it.

Not in the Book of Book of Revelation.



Course that book is kind of fubar.


You would probably like The Gospel of Thomas. Kind of has the Heaven on earth thing going. crazy Gnostics

I have always thought that there was a certain logic to it. If you reject the concept of God and celebrate a physical mortality then that is what you get. It is not cruel or unfair imo. I guess I would consider it a possibility. I would not go so far as to say that I embrace it as a belief though.

My views are a little different than most so I don't find the concept of hell unreconcilable with a loving God. I also see Conditionalism as plausible, but I'm unlikely to ever commit to any view with a great deal of certainty.

I've been studying the subject also.

While I don't find myself 100% in the conditionalist/annihilationist camp,
I lean that way... Maybe 70/30 at this point.

Find the way to redemption before is too late!

Just to be clear, I was not arguing that these statements indicate anything about the existence of Hell. I was only saying that based on these I would argue that a belief in Hell is not a requirement to be a Christian.

I'm not either. I don't know RLK's stance on Christianity. For me, I'll try to explain it this way. When a person reads say the words of Jesus, he can read them in one of several different ways. He can read them as part of a broader religion called "Christianity" which has xyz tenets. Or he can read them on their own, and form his own opinion about them. Since Jesus is the center of "Christ"ianity, I think the latter makes more sense. I don't particularly trust St. Paul or anyone who wrote about Jesus. Personally, I find like in the movie Multiplicity that copies of copies are usually bad.

When a person reads a text, they have to try to read in between the lines, and get an idea of the author of the text. A guy like Jesus isn't the kind of guy who sends people down to hell to be raped by the devil for all eternity. Just my feeling on it. And Jesus is God, and also the Son of God (which doesn't' make much sense to me). When Jesus is saying he is the son of God, he means we are all sons of God, in my opinion.

Judaism and the old testament is an older religion with lots of elements of old religions. To try to conflate Jesus's amazingly humanistic thoughts with an ancient religion with strict anti-humanist codes doesn't make any sense.

The problem with Christians is they don't really listen to what Jesus was saying. To be a Christian you have to literally leave your family, leave your home, and give up everything you have. (It's not entirely literal, but a little figurative, but it is very radical). He says this, but nobody follows it. You can't keep up with the Jones's and be a Christian. You have to live by the spirit, not by material. That's what's important, not the stuff about believing in him as a God and getting a free pass to heaven. You have to live your life in a different way, and the reward is true freedom. You can't get involved in violence, and Tolstoy pointed out that you can't fight in a war if you're a Christian. Yet the church sanctioned many wars. Anyway, I"m ranting but the point I'm trying to make is that what matters most in Christianity is the message and the core of what he said, and not beliefs about hell, heaven, or angels or anything like that, because then you're denying the real work of being a christian and just living in a fantasy land of the hereafter.

Gospel of Thomas... very nice

When Jesus says to love everyone, but condemns a person to eternity in hell, is he loving them? That doesn't seem like an act consistent with love. Or do the same laws simply not apply to God?

I'm not sharing heaven with any psychopathic serial killers like John Gacy or Ted Bundy or with any murderous tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, or Vlad the Impaler. Forget it. Put them somewhere else, thank you. If "hell" is the only alternative for them, so be it.

You are if they asked for forgiveness and truly repented...

Perhaps there was a misunderstanding?

My comment that you quoted was in response to a question about Conditionalism, ie. the concept that those who fail in God's eyes simply cease to exist at death. That is, they do not receive the gift of immortality. My comments had nothing whatsoever to do with the concept of eternal punishment in Hell.

Ahh, ok. I quickly looked up conditionalism, but didn't realize that hell isn't part of the deal.

I doubt that any psychopathic killers and bloody tyrants would genuinely ask for forgiveness. I expect that they are so obstinate and crazy and vile that they would reject being subject to any authority figure like a Supreme Being. No need to take time to condemn them. They would simply self-select themselves out of heaven.

For the sake of argument, if God/Jesus said that one of them did genuinely repent, then I suppose you have to accept it because of omniscience. Still, put them somewhere away from me in the basement of heaven. We twoplustwo posters have our standards.