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Originally posted by Jay Francis
Thanks for the insight on Augustine (ach du lieber!). I didn't know that Augustine proposed that babies went to hell.
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Yup. Worked for the people of his time, but that idea is rejected by a lot of contemporary Christianity/Catholicism
Quote:
Originally posted by Chingal0
Do post-christ humans go to 'hell'?
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This is a very loaded question which I won't bother getting into too much, but there are many different conceptions of Hell in Christianity today. Simply, the answer to your question is yes. It requires a little clarification I think though. To be very general I'll sum it up into two schools of thought....one, the more fundamental, says, basically, that Hell is a punishment from God for rejecting Him, etc etc etc. I'm not going to expound much more on that because I really reject the concept and am not concerned with it. The other is that Hell is not something done to man by God but done to man by himself. Thinking of Hell as a state of being in the absence of God, and of God as someone who is freely available to anyone, Hell is what someone does to themself by choosing not to allow God into their life and remain attached to themselves. Extremely simply put, the state of "Hell" is for the selfish and the state of "Heaven" is for the selfless. One can be selfless, and thus accepting God into their life, without believing in the words "God" or "Jesus" - at least, that's my belief as a Catholic - but that's not to say it's not more difficult to become selfless without an understanding of what's guiding you in it.