Heaven, Hell and the Devil.

Aussie Thoughts said:
What do you know, the Pope's been reading his Bible.

Matthew 10:28 And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

I was always taught, hell or more accurately lake of fire, was not a place unrepentant souls would dwell in eternal torment, but rather where they'd be blotted out and that eternal damnation simply meant they'd be gone forevermore, never to return.
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Are unrepentant souls also blotted out from the memories of repentant souls?
 
wil said:
Catholic Pope Francis made a startling revelation Thursday by stating that hell did not exist, in an interview with a leading liberal Italian newspaper.
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I wish!

But did he? Really? The reporting seems in doubt ...

So what did he say? Well Scalfari seems to be back-tracking, the Vatican press office is denying it, Catholic doctrine makes such a statement unlikely, and Pope Francis himself has declared in no uncertain terms a belief in the devil, in angels and demons.

If he is seeking to change Catholic doctrine, then informal conversations with atheists is not the way to do it.

Then again, our contemporary vision of hell is an image formed in the Middle Ages, and has precious little to do with its foundational scriptural references, and more to do with the imagination of Dante Alighieri's Inferno and the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.

I'm with Aussie on this one.

The eschaton sits between two poles. One the one hand we have the apokatastasis, the idea of universal reconciliation (all souls are saved), and on the other anihilationism, that unredeemed souls simply cease to exist. That goes right the way back to Irenaeus, who first formulated the doctrine of salvation. St Augustine seems to allow the same view, although this is rarely presented.

Some more recent major Catholic thinkers have questioned the idea of hell as popularly understood. Hans Urs von Balthasar posed the question in his book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?, while controversial Catholic theologian Hans Kung’s 1984 Eternal Life suggested hell should be understood only as the absence of God, not physical torment.
 
To balance, I do not deny the existence of hell. Rather, I don't accept the medieval landscape and culture, as it were.

My beliefs are founded on scriptural references to hell as 'gehenna' (Matthew and Mark), it's Luke who uses the term 'hades', as gehenna wouldn't mean anything to a gentile audience not from Jerusalem.
 
Ahanu said:
Are unrepentant souls also blotted out from the memories of repentant souls?
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Not sure, but Isaiah 65:17 does say: "For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind."
 
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