Originally posted by dj2becker
So in other words you don't have a clue whether or not you are going to Heaven ? Where does it say in the Quaran that you don't go to hell forever?
In Orthodox (capital “O,” note) Christianity, there is a very broad stream of interpretation (perhaps the majority one), going back to very early tradition and teaching, that one does not “go to” hell forever—indeed, such parables as the “wheat and the tares” and the “sheep and the goats” are taken to refer to aspects of ourselves, not to whole persons.* It is these aspects of ourselves that are removed by the fire of the spirit, and the original “image of God” person is thus “cured” (the original meaning of the Greek
soterias, translated as salvation). It is this “purging” that is metaphorically referred to as “hell.”
You should also note that, in neither the Hebrew nor the Greek (nor in the original English, for that matter) does the word “sin” equate strictly with moral-evil or wrongdoing, but with illusion, error, etc. In the Orthodox churches, salvation is healing, not juridical pardon, as has become the prominent view in the West.
* This is actually the only reading of the wheat-and-tares parable that makes any sense—unless your theology allows for the “evil one” to create whole human beings.
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“For the highest spirituality (and theology) of the first centuries, God will be ‘all in all.’ Certain fathers granted that God would turn away from those who turned away from him. This is what Western Scholasticism was to term
poena damni, the penalty of damnation. Such a fundamentalist [sic] reading of the Gospels (which leads to speculation on the nature of the ‘worm’ and the ‘fire’ that will torment the damned) was denounced not only as external but as ‘absurd’ by the greatest representatives of early Christianity, for example by St Ambrose of Milan and John Cassian in the West, and in the East, quite apart from strict Origenism, by Gregory of Nyssa, John Climacus, Maximus the Confessor, and Isaac of Nineveh.
“For this last author, whose development of the doctrine of hell is undoubtedly the most important contribution to this subject in the whole of Christian theology, it is unthinkable and contrary to the very spirit of the Christian revelation that God should abandon anyone.”
—Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism
“But God is just, the moralists answer, and he must grant justice and punish transgression. But from what do they derive this ‘must’ to which they subordinate even God? Does there exist, then, some necessity which limits the love of God, limits his freedom? If there is, then God is not God or at least he is not the God that the Church knows.”
—Christos Yanneras, Elements of Faith: An Introduction to Orthodox Theology
One day a soldier asked an elder whether God grants pardon to sinners. The elder answered, “Tell me, my good friend, if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?” The soldier replied, “No, I mend it and continue to use it.” The elder concluded, “If you take good care of your cloak, will not God be merciful to his own image?”
—Thomas Merton, Sayings of the Desert Fathers
“As is a grain of sand weighed against a large amount of gold, so, in God, is the demand for equitable judgment weighed against his compassion. As a handful of sand in the boundless ocean, so are the sins of the flesh in comparison to God’s providence and mercy. As a copious spring could not be stopped up with a handful of dust, so the Creator’s compassion cannot be conquered by the wickedness of creatures.”
—St. Isaac the Syrian (quoted in Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism)
10 Mar '07 14:29
Heaven
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