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Last year, an interviewer asked Francis how he envisages hell. His response stayed with me: “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of fa
by fleabitdev 1y ago
Last year, an interviewer asked Francis how he envisages hell. His response stayed with me: “It’s difficult to imagine it. What I would say is not a dogma of faith, but my personal thought: I like to think hell is empty; I hope it is.”
- eqmvii 1y agoA much more hopeful version than “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here”!
- code_for_monkey 1y agoLOL Ill say! Far more positive
- fastball 1y agoNothing from the Bible indicates that hell is empty, so that is indeed an interesting response from the Pope.
- fleabitdev 1y agoYes - I think it caught my attention because it was such a mystery. It was a welcome thing to hear from one of the most powerful people in the world, but it came like a bolt from the blue. As far as I know, he never revisited the topic.
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- code_for_monkey 1y agoits not biblical but its very catholic, its optimistic. I've heard it from other catholics, its just a hope that at the end of everyones life they accepted jesus and made it into heaven.
- Trasmatta 1y agoThe Bible has very little to say about hell in general.
- fastball 1y agoGonna disagree with you there. https://www.openbible.info/topics/hell https://www.openbible.info/topics/hell
- Trasmatta 1y agoIt's not that simple, because there are multiple concepts and Hebrew and Greek words that were translated as "hell". And many of those passages don't mention hell at all, but are just interpreted as such by readers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_in_Christianity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell_in_Christianity
- andybak 1y agoModern academic scholarship paints a very complex picture: https://www.bartehrman.com/hell-in-the-bible/ https://www.bartehrman.com/hell-in-the-bible/ I would argue that reading random quotes without context can be misleading. Unless of course you believe in a univocal, consistent and divinely inspired bible - which is a fairly extreme position to take.
- Ajedi32 1y ago> I would argue that reading random quotes without context can be misleading. Unless of course you believe in a univocal, consistent and divinely inspired bible - which is a fairly extreme position to take. Those two statements don't follow. You can believe in a univocal, consistent and divinely inspired Bible and still think taking random quotes out of context is bad exegesis.
- andybak 1y agoI see what you mean but I wasn't making a formal logical argument. Rather I meant something like "These particular quotes are more likely to be regarded as inherently meaningful on their own by someone who believes in a univocal, consistent and divinely inspired Bible" Not my best-crafted piece of self-expression I will admit.
- kergonath 1y agoWhy would that be? There is a rich tradition of theology outside the Bible. Most popes are able to have a thought on a subject without quoting it.
- andybak 1y agoThe bible only has sparse and often contradictory references to hell - so it's very difficult to state "what the Bible says about hell" as if there's a unified picture laid out.
- hylaride 1y agoI've heard descriptions of hell of everything from the classic "fire and torture" we all know, to it being a total and complete detachment from god (in a disappointed and kicked out of the house by your parents kind of way). It's similar to descriptions of Satin. Everything from the horns and pitchfork all the way down to a "beautiful fallen angel" that he technically was explained to be in the bible. I've always just assumed the descriptions that work to keep people fearful of leaving the religion as whatever is used at the time (saying this as somebody who is agnostic).
- packetlost 1y agoThe modern concept of hell came from Dante's The Devine Comedy which was, ironically, a criticism of the contemporary church.
- o11c 1y agoThat's not exactly true. The main thing that is popularized by Dante is "demons are performing the punishment" (rather than being punished as in scripture ... but the general idea goes back to Gnosticism) ... and I guess "hell has circles" if we count those as significant. "Hell is a place of fire and torment" is explicitly Biblical (Luke 16), even if there are also mentions of Hell without that (and some mentions of fire and torment without calling it "Hell"). Annihilationism vs Eternal Conscious Torment is the main point that isn't given a perfectly clear answer in scripture; there are verses that hint toward each. Limbo and Purgatory are not in the Bible, but predate Dante. "Deal with the Devil" predates Dante and is only weakly founded in scripture. "Devils" (plural, as opposed to "the Devil") being distinct from "Demons" is a translation artifact, popularized by Dungeons & Dragons. There being various types of demons long precedes Dante. Variants of Universalism (including "Nobody goes to Hell" and "it's possible to escape Hell") are explicitly rejected in scripture. Those are all the aspects of "modern concept of hell" that I can think of (let me know if you can think of more), and the connection to Dante seems pretty weak.
- MisterBastahrd 1y agoNothing from the Bible indicates that hell exists in the way that Westerners perceive it.
- baxtr 1y agoInteresting. Is this a way of saying I don’t believe there is a place like hell?
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- johannes1234321 1y agoThe "threat" is there, but the hope is that everybody finds the "right" path at the very end.
- russfink 1y ago“I like to think Hell is empty” might be a hopeful statement, as in he hopes nobody ever actually goes to Hell but that everyone, no matter how evil, repents in their dying moments and accepts the path of truth.
- noisy_boy 1y agoOr that it is empty for eternity for each and all who are there. Endless solitude would be a hellish punishment.
- boroboro4 1y agoThat’s how I’ve read it firstly. Hard to imagine worse hell than this to me. And then I realized the real meaning of the quote. Made me cry a little.
- deadbabe 1y agoI like to think hell is empty because the people who would have been sent there for being foul and wicked are actually people with no souls: they are just p-zombies wandering the world inflicting harm. Thus, when they die, there is no actual soul being released, their matter just ceases to function. This could also explain why some simple creatures, with no real conscious experience, don’t overpopulate heaven or Hell: they have no souls with which to populate it with. They are just matter, temporarily constructed into some form resembling a living thing. So hell is empty, and evil is the result of soulless automatons created by accident in our world. So if you die and nothing else happens for you after, then you were a p-zombie, with no soul.
- sneak 1y agoIt is impossible to reconcile the idea of an omnipotent god that is simultaneously good and permits people to be tortured for eternity. Perhaps he chose the “god is good” over the “god, despite being able, will not prevent billions of reasonable and decent people from suffering eternally” fork in the road. You can’t logically choose both, and if you’re the pope, you probably had better have a belief in the goodness of god.
- giraffe_lady 1y agoI've mentioned this before on HN but I find it interesting and valuable. There is an older stream of christian thought on heaven and hell, still somewhat present in eastern christianity, that they are not separate places people are sent to. In this view they are the same thing, simply the direct experience of the unattenuated light of god. A repentant person will experience this as mercy and all encompassing love, an unrepentant one will experience it as excruciating shame and terror. But they are both getting the same "treatment" so to speak.
- arkey 1y agoPeople often think of hell as an active punishment form God, but for us humans it's not. Hell, whatever it is, is where people end up when they'd rather be there than be with Christ. God will never force you to love Him and accept Him. He gives you the choice, the rest is up to you.
- charonn0 1y agoUnless you live(d) in a time and place where Christian teachings were unavailable to you. Which accounts for a large majority of the humans who have ever lived.
- skissane 1y agoWhich is a problem for some Protestants who insist that only Christians can be saved... but not necessarily for Catholics. The belief that only Christians can be saved has actually been condemned by the Catholic Church as a heresy (Feeneyism, after the 20th century American priest, Leonard Feeney, who most famously espoused it) According to Catholic teaching, non-Christians can be saved if (1) they are "invincibly ignorant" (i.e. their ignorance of the truth of Christianity is not their own fault), and (2) they have an "implicit desire" for the Christian God