Hey Dave:
Since it is foolish to deny the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, my only concern at this point is the Religionislies webmaster’s arguments against the doctrine of everlasting Hell. I was hoping that, given your experience, apologetic skill, and excellent track record of answering opponents, you could refute the following excerpts:
1. Dying in sin doesn't mean you should be damned because:
a. A choice can be reversed.
b. The rude idea that God can do as he pleases with us is wrong.
c. The idea that the souls in Hell are better off there is plainly wrong.
d. God can stop the Hell-deserving choice.
e. If any venial sin exists all should be venial.
f. If God exists and any are saved then God ignores the Hell choice for all deserve Hell so the choice is not the reason for damnation.
g. God should not kill people in mortal sin.
2. It is better for God to force repentance on the damned in such a way that they don’t know it happened than to punish them. By stating the opposite as fact, Christianity is exposed as cruel. If the forcibly converted damned go to Heaven God can remove the compulsion so that they will freely accept his then.
3. If Hell is very painful then surely the time must come when the souls there will think that they have had enough and repent and go back to God. If there is free will in Hell then the souls there would repent and go back to God.
4. Punishment actually makes the sin more malicious because I desire to unnecessarily hurt myself (I had no need to do wrong in the first place) as well as hurting others by my sin - which is why retribution, the idea that Hell is based on, is immoral even if it is right in theory for it cannot work in practice. It serves only to attack the criminal and make him compound his evil so the result is people making the criminal pay for evil that they have compounded. It is people seeking the high moral ground. It is therefore revenge. That is the motive. Hell contradicts the Christian ban on revenge.
5. God should've made souls conditionally mortal.
6. It is argued that if God did not let you send yourself to Hell then he would be guilty of ignoring your free will and giving you further chances of repentance that you do not want or will. If that is true then we have no free will now. It is a strange kind of free will that gives you the power to lose free will. It denigrates the alleged value of free will. Hell destroys the love of God by saying he gave us evil free will. If that is true the mortal sinner will go to Hell the second he sins. It is better to let souls sin forever than to force them to sin forever by withholding grace from them.
7. God after administering infinite punishment in a single instant could wait until the person repents and take her or him to Heaven where nobody sins ever again. The fact that the damned deserve everlasting punishment does not imply that they have to abide in a state of corruption, hatred of God and misery fore
Here is the second part of the above post:
8. Hell implies that God and the saints cannot want you to be released from Hell for God keeps you there for you would leave eventually if you were there of your own free will which glorifies hatred. They don’t want you to leave then they either do not care about you or they hate you but since they are happy they must simply not care for hate is painful. But indifference is worse than hate and is the real opposite of love. Also, they have to decide to be indifferent and that is an act of easy hate so hate and indifference are connected. If you should hate the damned you should hate the living sinners as much because many of the damned are people who committed relatively harmless sins.
9. The Church explains that it is indeed the ultimate in insanity to choose Hell but the damned choose to be insane. But then if you are insane you need treatment not punishment and certainly not everlasting punishing from which there is no escape.
10. If God really hated sin and suffering he would give us a second chance to repent after death.
11. You cannot help what you believe. Belief is caused by your thoughts. You have one thought every moment in which you are not aware of anything else. The next thought comes even though you did not summon it. God can stop a person deserving everlasting damnation by changing their belief. Belief influences what you do. If a person makes immoral choices it is because of their beliefs. God manipulates our beliefs all the time but he won’t do it the right way so he really does send people into Hell and Christians should not be blaming the damned. God prolongs the sin of the damned by arranging their fall. The doctrine of Hell teaches that God is a partner in the sins that happen there. The doctrine of the fire of Hell tells us that Hell is more than losing God and being lonely. There is pain of a torturing kind there as well like something exterior to you tormenting you. It could be literal fire and when it can be literal fire it is. There would be no need for the word fire to symbolise agonising loneliness. This additional torment suggests that God hates the damned because he thinks what they endure is not bad enough and puts them in fire to make it worse. When God does that it shows that the damned are not in Hell against the will of God as some contend. If they burn themselves then why does he give them the power to do it?
12. God does not need to damn anybody because he did not even need to make us. He would not be God if he needed to make us for he would not even be perfect. So, if damnation is necessary it is not because of him but it somehow benefits the saints. Then he could make the saints believe there is a Hell though there is not and save everybody.
Thank you very much for your time and effort and God bless you.
WRH
Are you troubled by this stuff, Will?
*Sheepish grin* Yes. 
Not sure where this come from Will. It seems many of the points are phrased in a way that makes them sound false. Are these the words of the person who hold these views or would he express the ideas in a differant way? If so, it might be better to respond to this guy's actual words.
Still the essence needs to be that God is beyond our understanding and logic. God is who he reveals Himself to be. God is not defined by what we feel is nice. If hell is inconsistent whith what we feel a nice God would do that just makes God more complex. It does not make hell impossible. Jesus talked about hell. If you feel God could not logically send anyone to hell then you are claimng to understand God better than Jesus.
These are the actual words of the webmaster of http://religionislies.com. I agree with what you said--God is infinitely wise and no one is morally superior to God--but I suppose the guy making these complaints would simply call your response a "cop-out."
Hell is more a state than a place. The reason that the choices made at death are locked in is because at that point the choice becomes so clear that there will never be any new information to change it. A person who is damned sees the choice, knows the full consequence and chooses it anyway. The pain is in the lack of fullfillment. Man is created with an infinite desire that only God can fullfill. To choose to live with this is truly hell.
Hi Will,
Please tell me which ones trouble you and why, and then I'll try to provide some sort of answer, rather than tackling all of these.
And there is no shame in feeling difficulties. It comes from being a thinking, conscientious person.
dave, something that has been recently troubling me is the difference--in intent--between natural family planning and contraceptives. aren't they *intentionally* one and the same: to prevent conception at a given time (for reasons financial or whatever)? besides, didn't st paul say obstain from the marital act *only* if you are deeply in prayer over some thing, but that you should enjoy it otherwise? i've been, in good faith, trying to reconcile the position of the church and that of the world on this issue, and it seems to me to be going nowhere.
Jon,
We just had a big discussion about this a few posts back. The short answer is the intent is separate from the means. You must have good reasons for avoiding children but you must also use morally acceptable means. Abortion would be one means that would be rejected by protestants even when the intent is good. In fact, prochoice advocates often focus on intent when talking about the morality of abortion. Same with contraception. When you can't justify the act you focus on the intent. It is a red herring.
One analogy that I like. Suppose you had a friend who was married but you wanted to talk him without his wife around. There could be valid reasons for this or not. Still you might do this in several ways. You could lock her in a closet. That would be a barrier method. You could give her drugs and visit while she is unconscious. That would be a chemical method. You could just shoot her dead and visit anytime. That would be sterilization. Or you could just visit while she was not home. That would be NFP. The intent is always the same. The method does matter to the question of morality.
can you point me to the postings from 'a while back?' was it in an open forum like this one or under its own heading?
found it--never mind--thanks...
Just FYI, Dave, a nice article on the founder of Operation Rescue's conversion to Catholicism:
http://www.ncregister.com/articu...php?
artkod=NDY1
I’m glad that I continue to refine my concerns. Now my trouble only lies with 3, 8, and 10. Does no one repenting in Hell mean there is no free will there? How would God love the damned?
Thanks Jonathan! Terry always seemed very Catholic to me, even before I converted. I met him briefly once. His conversion doesn't surprise me in the least. Rescues played a key role in my conversion, and it apparently did for him, too.
Will:
I'll write something on those tomorrow. It's too late tonight to start doing that. Thanks for your honesty.
DaVinci partly true? Isaiah 53:10 [the prophecied messiah] "...he shall see his seed..." Per this the true messiah was to have had a child. And would he have had a child without marrying the mother, and still be sinless as claimed?
Was Isaiah wrong therefore a false prophet? This isn't opinion, its in the original Hebrew. The same words are translated the same way 39 other times per Bible concordances. With consistency of grammar and voice, it is there. To change grammar pattern and voice mid sentence and back to avoid the strightforward meaning is bad translation.
And, the name of Jesus and other references to the people and places around Jesus are coded in Isaiah 53 with equal letter spacing. Read it for yourself, check several different translations. The King James Version is the one I'm quoting, some translations read offspring instead of seed. In the Latin Vulgate the word semen is used for seed, obviously referencing sexual conception of a child not a broad reference to a vast societal generation. In fact read Isaiah 53:8-10 and notice verse 8 presupposes a personal generation of a specific personal messiah. The question makes no sense unless the messiah has a child or children. If you doubt me use a concordance and check for the consistency of translation of the Hebrew words throughout that translation. And verse 10 frames the seed reference between alluding to the crucifixion and alluding to the resurrection - so its not out of context either...
Hi Mac,
Nice try, but no cigar.
The word for "seed" in Is. 53:10 (RSV: "offspring") is the Hebrew zera. As so often with Hebrew and Greek words, it can have a wide range of meanings, including "the royal race" (2 Ki. 11:1; 1 Ki 11:14), and (as seen in the same book), " a race of men" (in an evil or a bad sense: Is. 1:4; 6:13; 57:4; 65:23). This is according to Gesenius' Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979, 254; Strong's Concordance: word #2233).
Also, one must take into account the often-metaphorical application of words in the Bible. The context of the great messianic passage Isaaih 53 makes this clear; e.g., 53:5: "with his stripes we are healed" is meant in the sense of "we are saved"; not of physical healing (as some in the "hyper-faith" movement falsely claim.
Jesus is compared to a lamb in 53:7. "Offspring" in 53:10 is easily seen to refer to his spiritual offspring; not literal. How do we know this? Well, by the very next verse: "he shall see the fruit of the travail of his soul . . . many to be accounted righteous." it is the spiritual fruit. We see the same dytnamic in, e.g., the parable of the sower (Mt. 13:24-30,36-40), which uses the metaphor of seed and planting and watering, to describe spiritual descendants (not physical).
Hence Jesus says, in giving the proper interpretation: "He who sows the good seed is the Son of man [i.e., Himself]; the field is the world, and the good seed means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil . . ." (13:37-39).
Note then that Jesus had seed, but it was spiritual seed ("sons of the kingdom"); likewise, the devil has seed or offspring ("sons of the evil one"). And this is the Greek sperma. So even though the word that can mean literal offspring is used, this proves nothing in and of itself, it because can also have a metaphorical application. That is exactly what is going on in Is. 53:10, as shown by context, the latitude of word meanings for zera, and related usages in the NT taught by Jesus Himself.
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