Yudhishthira, Christianity, and the Mahabharata

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Yudhishthira, Christianity, and the Mahabharata Anonymous Mon Feb 12 04:54:57 2018 No.10682944 [Reply] [Original]

To me the Christian religion seems to be lacking in any basic dignity. To actually believe that there is a Hell where people suffer for all eternity, sometimes for the most inconsequential of reasons, and to accept this fact simply, is just horrid. It seems like the main motivation of Christian (and Muslims, for that matter) life is to avoid the suffering of Hell and attain the delights of Heaven. Can anyone really be decent with such petty motives? In the Hindu epic, the Mahabharata, Yudhishthira, a just king, was travelling with his family and wife in search of a gate to Heaven. By the time he had found it all his family had perished in the journey. All that was left was a dog that had faithfully followed him out of the nearest town. He finally reached the gate and a being descended telling him that the way to Heaven was open to him, only he could not bring the dog with him. He refused and said that he could not abandon this dog who was so faithful to him. Now, that's dignity. Can you imagine a Christian or a Jew in that situation? If one of God's angels comes down with orders they'll do whatever song and dance is asked of them without any critical reflection. Anyway, he was then informed that it was just a test and so he ascended to Heaven. When he got there he saw some wicked people that he had known during his Earthly life. Completely repulsed by this he asked where his friends and family were. He was led to a dark and abysmal place deep in the Earth. He was told that he could return to Heaven if he wished, but he damned the Gods and chose to remain. What would Yudhishthira have done if one of God's angels came down and told him to sacrifice his favorite son? I don't think he would have acted like Abraham.

What accounts for this colossal difference in mentality betwen Abrahamic religion and Dharmic Religion? Has anyone here read the Mahabharata? What did you think of it?

Here's a video of the part of the story I mentioned:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xOOt60XgK5E

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:28:55 2018 No.10683007

Perhaps I'm fundamentally misunderstanding Christianity here, but it seems like they are basically utilitarians like the atheists they always argue against. Only those atheists don't include the variables of heaven and hell into their calculations. Is Abrahamic Religion basically utilitarian? Am I missing something here?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:37:39 2018 No.10683021 >>10682944 >To me the Christian religion seems to be lacking in any basic dignity. Stopped reading there. You're a fool.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:40:09 2018 No.10683024

>>10683021
Ok, anon. We could have had an interesting discussion here, but that's your prerogative. I'm open minded enough to change my mind on this question if provided sufficient reason. Honestly, if you want to take some jabs at Dharmic religion I won't take it personally. Maybe a few poo-in-loo jokes to take off some steam?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:42:50 2018 No.10683032 File: 21 KB, 443x332, images (5).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>10683024 Here's one pearl for you. Learn what dignity actually is.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:45:54 2018 No.10683038 >>10683032 Christ is cool. I'm talking about Christians. Can you enlighten me on their motives? Are they essentially utilitarian? What about Abrahams motives?

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:53:09 2018 No.10683056
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>>10682944
You misunderstand because you're treaty the Bible as a rule book and not as an expression of the spirit of Christ. No one goes to Hell for masturbating or stubbing their toe and using the Lord's name in vain; they go to Hell for LIVING IN CONTEMPT OF GOD. Let me stress the LIVING there. It has nothing to do with one's individual actions and all with the pattern of one's actions. A truly repentent person who can't help but sin every day will enter the Kingdom of God. A person who is not repentent and actively resents the notion of sin (i.e. someone who denies life itself) while having only committed one minor sin in their entire life--this person might not get into the Kingdom of God so easily. That is mercy and justice, and I say that as a Christian with an enormous admiration for the Vedic faiths (Gita is my jam).

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:57:00 2018 No.10683064 >>10683038 I've met plenty of Christlike Christians. You got one pearl. I'm done.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 05:57:02 2018 No.10683065

The Mahabharata sounds cool, but it's so fucking long. I've been thinking about just watching the TV show, but even it's long as fuck. But yeah, Christianity is kind of schizophrenic. It tells you to love everyone, but allows you to think (or fantasize) that your enemies are going to hell and it tells you to be selfless while offering a guaranteed reward. The emphasis on obedience is something inherited from Judaism, which is much simpler. There's a covenant between God and Israel; Israel keeps up their end of the bargain by obeying God's Law and he makes them prosperous and powerful in return. None of this heaven/hell shit.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:02:12 2018 No.10683077

>>10683056
Thank you for the response. I hope you'll excuse my forceful language in the OP, it was not meant as an insult, it was merely an expression of my incomprehension on these matters. I still have a hard time coming to terms with the idea of an eternal punishment for contempt, whatever its degree of intensity. As the earlier person posted >>10683032 in that image "they know not what they do". No one could hate a Just God (if he is truly just) unless he is an ignorant person. How can God punish mortal and limited beings for all eternity due to their ignorance? Even minus the ignorance excuse it seems rather out of proportion.

Secondly, what do you think about the question I posed here >>10683007 . Is Christianity basically utilitarian in the sense of pursuing heavenly delights and avoiding eternal suffering as the main motives?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:04:10 2018 No.10683082 >>10683065 Watch the Peter Brook version. It's 5 hours long, but it's really really good. It's the one I linked in the OP. The whole movie is up on youtube as well. The Chopra version is long as hell and full of corny Bollywood acting.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:06:28 2018 No.10683091
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>>10682944
>Can you imagine a Christian or a Jew in that situation? If one of God's angels comes down with orders they'll do whatever song and dance is asked of them without any critical reflection.
You need faith to obey him, and you need an even bigger faith to question him. There is a difference between private revelation happening to a mortal living in the current year, and the authority of Scripture and the Church founded by Christ.
>What would Yudhishthira have done if one of God's angels came down and told him to sacrifice his favorite son? I don't think he would have acted like Abraham.
Abraham wasn't a Jew, let alone a Christian. Abraham was a Mesopotamian who laughed at God's promise (Gen 17:17), he wouldn't have been surprised if God behaved like any other idol demanding human sacrifice, for example of his child. Abraham is testing God as much as God is testing Abraham, as a faithful servant does what he's told, and an benevolent God would also give a command not to execute the sacrifice. Meanwhile human sacrifice continues as usual in 21st century India, a place notoriously infested with the kind of basic dignity Christianity supposedly lacks:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2892333.stm
>>10683007
Yes, divine command theory.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:07:17 2018 No.10683092

It is basically schizophrenic, as much as they want to conceal it. If Christianity wants to survive in the contemporary world it will have to embrace universalism. Nobody takes this stuff about Hell and suffering seriously, and if they do it's damaging for children to really believe in it - there's enough real world stuff to he terrified about without telling you that masturbating brings the wrath of God upon you.
I firmly believe that no possible crime can warrant eternal suffering. Going through mental gymnastics to account for why a supposedly loving God would be less merciful than the western penitential system is a fruitless exercise.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:11:37 2018 No.10683103 >>10683091 You're post is confusing to me. What point are you making there? I don't see any decisive statements or claims of any kind. For example, perhaps you could clarify why you bring up divine command theory in response to that post?

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:14:18 2018 No.10683107

>>10683092
Universalist sects are imploding. Literally dying. Hardcore Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Traditionalist Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Churches are expanding. Faggy liberalism is going to die soon. Any Church that ties its boat to that dock is going to wake up underwater.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:14:26 2018 No.10683108

>>10683077
Your frustration with Christianity is completely understandable. It's a synthesis of so many different things that it's hard to get a sense of that unity when you only have a partial understanding, and it doesn't help that the tradition of passing that understanding on has really died off over the last 50 years or so.

>Is Christianity basically utilitarian in the sense of pursuing heavenly delights and avoiding eternal suffering as the main motives?

Christianity is not utilitarian at all. The only reason I can think someone would think that is because of Christianity's emphasis on community, which I suppose at a superficial level resembles utilitarianism's concern for hte "greatest good for the greatest number".

The way I understand Christianity is that it is about love that transcends life and death. It is about us loving God, who is barely perceptible, and God loving us, who would burst into flames if he got too near. It's a delicate, distant, patient exercise, and ultimately one that doesn't care about outcome, consequences, prudence, etc. It is only an incidental outcome that God's goodness manifests itself in a prolonged, patterned way, so as to ensure that future generations can have the opportunity to love and be loved, and so that eventually all of creation can be saved.

That's probably rambly but it's late at night where I am so sorry lol

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:15:12 2018 No.10683110 >>10682944 When I read the bible, it had an effect on me the same as reading profound cosmic horror.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:17:12 2018 No.10683117

>>10683092
>It is basically schizophrenic, as much as they want to conceal it
I don't think they try to hide it. My local priest has said to me that if most "Christians" actually took their faith seriously it'd give them a headspin. To quote him again, he once said to me that Christianity is "more Nietzschean than Nietzsche".

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:17:42 2018 No.10683119 >>10682944 It always kills me seeing people preface the most boilerplate, cliched opinions with "To me" or "I think" or "In my opinion".

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:19:36 2018 No.10683124

>>10683103
Divine command theory is a meta-ethical theory that has nothing to do with maximizing utility, thus it is not utilitarian. You are confused because you're not in the position to talk about any of the following topics: meta-ethics, religious ethics, Christian theology, Hindu theology, human sacrifice, eschatology, angelology, biblical hermeneutics, comparative religion, human dignity, among others.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:21:52 2018 No.10683127

>>10683110
You read the Bible properly, then. It's a special kind of otherworldly fear that excites awe. It's called the numinous. It's how you're supposed to feel when you sense the presence of God. CS Lewis:

>Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told "There is a ghost in the next room," and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is "uncanny" rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply "There is a mighty spirit in the room," and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare's words "Under it my genius is rebuked." This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:22:27 2018 No.10683130

>>10683119
>cliched opinions
I'm not trying to have original opinions, I'm trying to understand the motives behind the Christian religion. Anyway you've basically just done that in your own post, prefacing your disdain for "cliched opinions" with how it "kills me". Seems like a pretty cliche opinion.
>>10683108
What you describe almost sounds like bhakti yoga. Intensification of love for God in order to achieve Union with him. Would you say it's a fair comparison?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:26:41 2018 No.10683135 >>10683130 All mysticism is fundamentally the same, at least the ascetic kind, so possibly. I don't know much about yoga desu (apart from the Western commodification of it)

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:27:32 2018 No.10683138

>>10683124
Eh, why am I not "qualified" to discuss them? How do you expect me to learn? Or is it because you consider me to be "swine" like this poster suggested >>10683032 and so you don't want to toss your pearls before me? I can see divine command theory playing a prominent role in Judaism, but in Christianity it seems to play a secondary role. I imagine many Christians would lose hope in their religion if they weren't also offered the incentive of heaven, and if they were told that their purpose was to follow God's commandments without any promise for reward and no matter what those commandments were.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:30:13 2018 No.10683143
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>>10683110
What I don't get is how the Christians still portray Christ as a welcoming, peaceful figure.
Christ is the most terrifying, inhuman creature in the whole Bible. He makes demands that are impossible to meet, he talks about suffering and hell more than anyone else, he wants complete, uncomprising obedience, he wants you to hate your family and friends in favor of following him.
With the Old Testament God, shit was pretty simple - you followed his commandments and he didn't destroy your whole city. Sure it kind of sucks to be wiped out with natural disasters for disobeying, but there was no concept of eternal damnation, and the Jews were just as critical of God's actions and his failing to meet his end of the bargain.

Then you get to Christ, and all bets are off. You don't only have to obey, but LOVE him while obeying. If you don't emotionally menipulate yourself enough to love him, you're screwed.
This was somehow seen as an easier bargain than the old one, and it's hard to fathom why. Even harder to fathom is the secular, hippy version of Jesus, who completely misses the most basic representation of who Christ is biblically. Can you imagine staring into the eyes of God in human form, who has utterly no regard for human agency and wants your complete submission? This is no fucking joke. Either it's a massive lie to promote a fucked up system of ethics, or the entire fabric of western civilization is pointless and cruel joke to distract you from the most loaded wager you can imagine.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:33:45 2018 No.10683156

>>10683143
If you knew that Christianity was absolutely true, as you've outlined it, would you follow that religion or refuse out of principle? That's the really fundamental question. Of course? There is always the possibility that you've just mischaracterized Christianity, but I'll leave it to the Christians to say if that's so. Still, I'm curious how you would answer that question I've posed to you.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:34:55 2018 No.10683161 >>10683156 did not mean to put a question mark after "of course", should be a comma instead.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:44:47 2018 No.10683190

>>10683156
I couldn't make myself love such a God, simple as that. We are told that He knows all of our feelings, and deceiving him is impossible - but how could I do anything but deceive him, since I'm COMMANDED to love him unconditionally without debate? If I tried following such a demand, I'd turn into a bitter, hateful person, stuck in an impossible situation. Or I guess I'd get hooked on drugs that make me susceptible so that I could maybe manipulate myself into feeling a certain way.
I don't really see a way out, except just putting it our of your mind and hoping for the best. I just don't see myself having the mental capacity to not only believe in a set of propositions or following orders, but also ordering my feelings correctly so Christ doesn't eternally punish me.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:46:07 2018 No.10683193

>>10683143
Problem is, Jesus is perfectly human, just as human as you or I. He suffered (tortured to death) and died and went to Hell just like anyone else. And He offers forgiveness for sins. The Law of the Old Testament was just as impossible for us to follow, because it's the same Law. Did you not read the Old Testament? Obedience to the Law won't save you since you can't be obedient to the Law. Only love for the Lawgiver will.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:46:28 2018 No.10683194

>>10683138
>why am I not "qualified" to discuss them?
I know because you yourself tell me, for instance:
>I can see divine command theory playing a prominent role in Judaism, but in Christianity it seems to play a secondary role.
>I imagine many Christians would lose hope in their religion if they weren't also offered the incentive of heaven
See? You see things. You imagine things. You argue from your own imagination, your fantasy. You don't examine your meta-beliefs and speculations about what people believe. You don't research things. It's a completely unreasonable behavior that makes you unqualified for any kind of philosophizing. A renunciation to philosophy, a surrender to prejudice.
>How do you expect me to learn?
You have ghosts in your head. It could help if you would come up with a better method.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:49:04 2018 No.10683204 File: 627 KB, 1019x1590, 1514119813206.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] theravada=judaism mahayana=Islam vajrayana=christian

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:49:44 2018 No.10683206

>>10683194
I'm by no means an expert on these topics but my argument makes sense to me and I've seen other posters so far confirm what I've said. You contradict it but don't provide much in the way of an explantion. I'm curious to see an actual explanation out of you.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 06:52:33 2018 No.10683214 >>10683092 >If Christianity wants to survive in the contemporary world it will have to embrace universalism. They already did, they call it secular humanism/ Their followers are classical or new liberals and their spawns.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 07:07:30 2018 No.10683257

>>10683204
Vajrayana may be better compared to catholicism and mahaya to protestantism. I don't see how you could relate mahayana to islam (specially considering how mahayana is seen as more "progressive", or at least embarks the most "progressive" forms of Buddhism)

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 07:16:49 2018 No.10683284

>>10683206
>other posters
Why are you getting your education from 4chan anyway?
>an actual explanation
- Supposed angels appearing to current year mortals are neither the Scripture nor the Church, and thus their authority can and will be questioned by Christians
- Abraham was still imperfect and ignorant about the monotheism he was founding, Christians follow Jesus instead of Abraham on the topic of sacrifice, or any other really
- Divine command theory is not an utilitarian meta-ethical theory
Since you have such massive problems with understanding the latter point in Christianity, we can add:
- Divine command theory is in the Gospels, the most obvious example in Matthew 28:18-20. At no point does Jesus advocate an utilitarian ethics of maximization of utility, and I challenge you to prove a verse where Jesus tells his disciple something like: "Go forth and maximize utility", since you're so confident and that makes sense so much to you, for reasons that you yourself admit that you wouldn't know

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 07:31:57 2018 No.10683328 >>10683284 Also anti-utilitarian sayings of Jesus: Mark 12:41--3, Mark 14:3-7.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:04:05 2018 No.10683444

You seem to be lacking basic Judeo-Christian concepts. The most fundamental one is that man has been wholly estranged from God ever since he chose autonomy over a loving relationship with the divine being that created him. In his estrangement, this is the decision mankind must make: autonomy, which he chose, or obedience, which he neglected. The philosophical question you must ask is that, has man really done anything good with his autonomy? Is man's progress actually progress? The Christian answer should be obvious and that is why their ultimate goal is to reunite with God and the peace they took for granted in the mystical prelapsarian union. Man's autonomy says "you are free to chose between different ways to fulfill your desires," but the Christian idea is that you are never truly free because you remain bound by the fact that you must satiate your desires. God's freedom is the ability to not be a slave to your desires altogether, to live in actual autonomy, free from necessity, but this comes at one simple cost: submit yourself back into your rightful place in the divine union, to have only one thing necessary, the cross. Make no mistake, God already is necessary, he sustains the sun and the planets. The question is, will you now accept the cross as necessary?

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:11:41 2018 No.10683465
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>>10683444
You can't go back on human autonomy and centuries of revolutionary philosophical development. Traditional Christianity is just a comfy anachronism, it hasn't made a worthwhile contribution to human thought for decades, and most of them are still struggling with Kant. If you can't deal with the banter then you have no excuse to whine about being irrelevant.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:32:06 2018 No.10683547

>>10682944
Damn OP, I really want you to see this.

I, as a christian, have a sufficient answer to this question that no other religion has or could ever understand. I believe in a short Latin phrase known as sola fide. What does sola fide mean you might ask? It means "Faith Alone," and it is the key to salvation. The bible says in Ephesians 2:8-9

> For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We are saved by "faith alone" apart from, as in away from, works. This is so that the saved individual has no room or prospective to boast. This is because if salvation includes any work from man, then he would have a substance to measure his salvation by and be able to attribute that to himself and go to another person, who might do less work, and feel as sense of superiority.

Commonly to demonstrate this the example of Abraham is used who in genesis 15:6 he believes a promise God gives him and then is made righteous.

But then this just leads one to ask. Can a person who has faith go out and stat raping and pillaging all he want but as long as he has faith can go to heaven? No, God forbid. We also believe that after someone has "true" saving faith, work will follow. You see, when we do good works it is not to impress God or get out of hell but rather out of our love for him. We know that our faith saves us but that gift of God IE faith, moves us to do acts of devotion to him out of love.

This is why I became a Christian and think that Christianity is the one true religion.

BTW, I'm at work so quickly typed this and will most likely not be able to respond to any replies soon or at all. but I hope this sparks a charitable discussion.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:36:20 2018 No.10683565 >>10683444 Noice

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:39:59 2018 No.10683581 >>10683547 Protestanta trivialise the concept of belief and fall into incoherency. You can't just make yourself believe something out of the blue if it doesn't convince you. Read some philosophy you fucking mega plebeian.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:42:46 2018 No.10683593 >>10683444 In your post God seems like a boring asshole.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:44:17 2018 No.10683600 When will Christians be good at the jhanas?

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:48:36 2018 No.10683612

>>10683593
>Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating
If you think a union with the creator of the universe is boring, that's on you

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 08:48:47 2018 No.10683615

>>10683547
How would you know if your faith is true or not then is the question. It's interesting how Lutheranism seems to me to have developed into two opposites of a comfortable faith with plenty of love and kindness. And the other madness, anxiety, neurosis. And isn't that Luthers mind in the first place? These two states of counsciousness.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 10:01:38 2018 No.10683850

>>10683143
God is love. Not a separate thing which is loved, but that love which is exercised toward things.

Christ presents a paradox: on the one hand he preaches love, on the other hate - how do these go together? They go together in that he demands a love of others which recognizes their full autonomy, and not a love which holds them to their social role or position. You should love your mother and father as living conscious things, in their universal aspect, and not as representatives of social norms and hierarchy, for example loving them as the heads of family.

Christ essentially proposes a new way of relating to people, which is horizontal rather than vertical.

Obedience to God is sweet: the demand to love others is not only good for them who are loved but also for you that loves; the opposite of love, judgement, holds a person to a particular aspect and reduces them to that fact alone; reducing the other to a fact subordinated to or mastered by oneself in fact diminishes one's experience of reality to nothing other than an egotistical monologue - forgiving the other, absolving them of the fact to which they are held, makes possible the recognition of them as fully other, thereby also at the same time making possible the realization of one's own reality as something properly communal and shared, something created by a plurality and not proceeding from one point only.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 10:48:09 2018 No.10684021
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>>10683850
>>God is love. Not a separate thing which is loved,
why do people need a layer of dubious interpretation on what they experience, instead of sticking to what is experienced before they run wild with their fantasies which is asking to be mocked and ridiculed ?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 12:38:35 2018 No.10684622 >>10684021 ah sense-certainty! what a world to dwell in! here is a table; it is a table - and there the sky, it is a sky, what else could be involved here but the sky being the sky and the table being the table?

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 12:39:29 2018 No.10684625

>>10683581
>You can't just make yourself believe something out of the blue if it doesn't convince you.
True, but I disagree with your use of the word convince. This is where I would like to bring in in 1 Corinthians 2:4

>My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power,

You see, we do not come to believe by our own critical thinking or by weighing the scales to to see where the evidence tips to. It is by the spirit we believe. This is an unmerited gift and work of God that will be lead to completion as we see in Philippians 1:6

>And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

Also, sorry for the late reply. Like I said, I am at work and so wont be able to come back at you with quick replies. Also, your comment was well put and I had to take a time to come up with a good biblical response.
Also, after I'm done with the bible and early church fathers, I'm gonna do the "start with the Greeks" thing. Wanna know what all the buzz is about.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 12:47:48 2018 No.10684664

>>10683615
>How would you know if your faith is true or not then is the question.
That's a really good question and is one I have thought about a lot. I pretty much believe in the typical reformed Calvinist view of salvation that the saints will persevere to the end. The only thing I may disagree on is whether or not we can know if we are the elect. I have pondered on it and have come to the conclusion that you cannot know, at least with 100% certainty, that you are part of the elect until you're on your death bed or at least sometime close to that time. The reason why I say this is because there have been a ton of apostates throughout history who have been good Christians and perhaps even thought they were the elect but in the end fell away. We are not to fool ourselves and say that we are until we have finished the race. You do not celebrate until you have crossed the finishing line. I believe this concept explains a lot if the warning passages you see in the bible, especially in Hebrews.
This does not mean that we should fear and lose the peace we have with God but rather that if you are a christian and believe in the fundamental concepts and are growing in grace and are bearing fruit, as a true reborn, justified and sanctified believer would, then you have nothing to fear. I mean, if you did ever fall away why would you care? You're not even a christian anymore so it's nothing more than fairy tales to you.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 13:00:53 2018 No.10684725 >>10683257 soto zen = islam

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 13:56:03 2018 No.10685045 >>10683547 >sparing me the peril he put me in in the first place by causing me to be is somehow a gift Okay then

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 13:57:44 2018 No.10685052 File: 8 KB, 183x275, images (5).jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>10683612 Do you really think you can continue to exist personally while being fully reconciled with the divine?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 14:00:08 2018 No.10685063 >>10684625 >wait until he finds out Origen was a purgatorial universalist Imma laugh

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 15:09:33 2018 No.10685469 >>10685063 Oh,I know all about origen. He's an example of why you must stick to scripture and once you try to implement worldly knowledge into divine scripture. I still like plato though[\spoiler]

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 15:10:59 2018 No.10685477 >>10685045 The gift is the offer to escape the peril. There's a way out. You just have to find it.

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 15:22:35 2018 No.10685542

>>10682944
first of all its extremely well known that hindu karm is a system of divine justice and punishment for sin. second of all a caste system is not dignified no matter how badly nietzsche wants it to be. giving the poor clean water and the ability to not starve has nothing to do with degeneracy and everything to do with not wanting to look at ugliness. Hindus live in fucking filth, they smell awful, they eat disgusting diets, they constantly slaughter animals for blood sacrifices and they’ve long practiced ritual homosexuality, transsexuality and blood magic, fire magic, all other perversions of ancient Steppe and Drav cultisms. If a man does not live within his Dharma, creates bad karmic conditions say by blaspheming a god like Shiva and neglecting to pay priests to do sacrifices HAHAHAHA weird how that works isn’t it? he goes to hell, and you can stay in hindu hell for a very long time, Buddhists have hell too! and its extremely unpleasant, i assure you, i’ve witness it before. The next thing, Hinduism demands warfare, blood shed and the subjugation of man to idols, idolatry and superstitious attachment to signs rule that faith. Primitive christianity has none of these frivolities whatsoever, if the cross becomes an idol you throw it away. Lastly, Abraham was just doing what the voice told him to do you fucking nerd, he had no choice. It was blatantly obvious a divine being was commanding him to do its bidding, what was he supposed to incur holy retribution by ignoring him? you know what it means when evil people are in heaven? your gods are evil. is that what’s being taught in the Mahabharata? of course not! you lying sack. but logically, if we think for ourselves a moment, how does this man know these people were evil? is he a moral authority? if yes, then obviously the gods are retards and not divine. if no, them his interpetation is false and he’s a blasphemer and belongs in hell. and if it doesn’t matter because its DIVINELY REVEALED that they’re evil, then the gods are evil or this man is a fucking idiot. either way, you’re a pathetic occidentalist coward and again i assure you hindu hell is awful, you don’t want to be there. and Shiva is supposed to come and burn all the humans alive, destroy the entire cosmos in holy flame at the end of the Yuga

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 16:29:56 2018 No.10685889 >>10685469 For my money, Plato's cosmology seems so resonant and intuitive that it must be true.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 16:30:58 2018 No.10685896 >>10685477 Would that be the same peril that came with that other gift of questionable generosity called "life"?

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 16:44:12 2018 No.10685975

>>10682944
>To actually believe that there is a Hell where people suffer for all eternity, sometimes for the most inconsequential of reasons, and to accept this fact simply, is just horrid

People choose to go to Hell. The bar for eternal salvation is unbelievably high. But, do you realize that the bar for forgiveness is just as high?
If someone knows of the Gospels, Christianity(Catholicism), and Christ and still refuses it or does not ask for forgiveness, he will most likely go to Hell. Let's pray he chooses not to do so.

>sometimes for the most inconsequential of reasons
You mean like something along the lines of say?:

you get angry and yell at your dad, ten minutes later you die and you go to Hell.

That sin is more than likely a venial sin. It hinders but does not break the bond between you and God. If you have an unforgiven mortal sin, like genuinely wishing death upon someone, you would go to Hell. That's a serious consequential sin.

It really seems like you lack a deep understanding in Christianity man. There's so much more wrong, that I haven't touched upon. This is just the biggest issue.

Oh,
>What would Yudhishthira have done if one of God's angels came down and told him to sacrifice his favorite son? I don't think he would have acted like Abraham.
Issac was more than likely 18-25 yo man who was willing to be sacrificed (in jewish tradtion) and it is more probable as such. How would a 7 year old kid carry sacrificial wood that was intended to burn an entire human body? a small child couldn't do that...

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 16:49:25 2018 No.10686011

>>10685975
oh about the binding of Issac:

Issac was traveling with that wood for three days, definitely a grown man. And even if he didn't want to be sacrificed, he could've easily escaped a 100+ year old man

here's more on that:

https://www.gotquestions.org/how-old-was-Isaac.html

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 17:55:23 2018 No.10686334 File: 1.51 MB, 879x1037, 04726371-3A28-41CB-B6FF-E9D51A09D26C.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >tfw you realise that Hinduism is the only true purely metaphysical doctrine >tfw western philosophy and science all stem from the Vedas

Anonymous Mon Feb 12 17:58:18 2018 No.10686346
File: 1.97 MB, 359x253, Christian-Natalism.gif [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>10685975
>people choose to be born

It just occurred to me that the religious trolley problem has no switch and comes down to the question of if you put a person on the tracks just to see if they can get off the tracks in time.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 18:08:08 2018 No.10686396 >>10686346 You must be seriously damaged to think like this

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 19:21:41 2018 No.10686801 >>10683091 abraham was a hebrew. the bible labels him such, i just read this in it yesterday, but I'll be damned if I'm looking it up

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 20:39:29 2018 No.10687247 >>10686396 You must be seriously damaged to willingly bring a person into this hell

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 20:41:04 2018 No.10687260 >>10686346 what the hell are you saying?

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 21:11:10 2018 No.10687427 >>10685889 I think you'll like Aquinas

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 21:12:51 2018 No.10687437 >>10685896 Hey, who said life is peril? Just make the most of it and try to being as much happiness as you can into the world. Remember, were sojourners of this planet and soon our end will come.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 23:05:00 2018 No.10687909 >>10683107 >>10683193 The bible says people have obtained righteousness in God's eyes by obedience to the law

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 23:09:41 2018 No.10687930 >>10687247 Despair is your own fault. Sort your shit out.

>>	Anonymous Mon Feb 12 23:10:51 2018 No.10687934 >>10685975 Mortal sin is a bizarre irrational concept not found in the bible.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 01:20:36 2018 No.10688473 jesus is a buddha

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 01:33:21 2018 No.10688518 >>10682944 Read Girard, shit stain https://www.amazon.com/Sacrifice-Breakthroughs-Mimetic-Theory-Girard/dp/0870139924

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 01:34:46 2018 No.10688525 >>10688518 Essentially he says "ya nearly had it, but not quite, champ"

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 01:58:12 2018 No.10688577

>>10683444
>>10688473
I bet you two will find traditionalist literature to be of interest.
>>10682944
>>10683091
Both of you should read Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling since the main focus is on the faith vs. ethics issue of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:25:41 2018 No.10688657 Man I hope the rest wake up

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:29:32 2018 No.10688668

>>10687909
The Bible says a lot of things. That's why you have to take the Bible as a whole, not just a single uncited verse (apparently taken out of context), along with the Church Fathers, the sacred tradition, and the doctrines of the Church, and consider them all together. Otherwise you end up with heretical opinions like yours.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:29:37 2018 No.10688669 >>10687437 >who said life is Peril Well, Jesus and all Christians and Muslims in the sense they've created the impression that life by default is a short means of conveyance to a pit of eternal agony.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:30:46 2018 No.10688672 >>10687934 Mortal sin is literally found in the second chapter of Genesis when God tells Adam and Eve that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil means death.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:31:45 2018 No.10688675 >>10687260 Christians are absolutely blithe, sick, thoughtless individuals for putting people in such jeopardy. >inb4 that one dictate to the only two men who were capable of creating humanity in the first place but I can still eat bacon

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:58:46 2018 No.10688732 >>10686334 Not only (((western))) philosophy. Aryans also moved east. Daoism, jainism, buddhism. Did you know aryans actually came from the moon? (The majority of them; the vaivasvatas came from the sun)

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 02:59:59 2018 No.10688738 >>10688675 No u

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:08:26 2018 No.10688766
File: 7 KB, 155x192, christchan-with-bible.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>10685975
>"venial sin" "mortal sin"

These concepts are found nowhere in the Bible. It does however teach that man is born into sin and is unable to save himself. There is no distinction in severity of sin. All sin is equal in the eyes of a Holy God. What is covered in the Bible is that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cover all sin; not just the "truly evil stuff". A person that truly submits to Christ is washed clean of sin committed in the past and future. There is no sin, confessed or not, that can separate a Christian from the love of God. Do Christians still sin? Absolutely. Look around a church: they're still just people.
Now, just because sin is "covered", does that give Christians the green light to sin all they want, knowing that God will show grace? No. The apostle Paul poses this question rhetorically and answers it with a resounding no. "By no means!" he says.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:12:35 2018 No.10688785 >>10682944 >To me the Christian religion seems to be lacking in any basic dignity Lol

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:14:00 2018 No.10688788 >>10688732 Yeah Europeans are elves from the moon

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:14:22 2018 No.10688789 >>10688785 How is he wrong? There's no reason for humans to feel dignified. The Bible doesn't dignify people and it shouldn't either.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:15:43 2018 No.10688792 >tfw im enlighteneed >tfw i want others to be to >tfw people just want to debate me >but they never want to date me

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:16:15 2018 No.10688794 >>10688788 What are the nordics then dude

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:18:58 2018 No.10688804 >>10688789 Humans are made in the image of God. Desecrating the image of God is blasphemy. Humans have a basic dignity.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:20:26 2018 No.10688808 >>10688804 God has a different face to everyone tho. What is your point? What is the threshold of to much toe stepping?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:20:37 2018 No.10688810 >>10688766 The Bible says a lot of things aren't found in the Bible.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:21:27 2018 No.10688812 >>10688804 as atoms of divinity maybe, not as personal agents.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:23:19 2018 No.10688815 >>10688808 There is only one God. Deal with it. Sin is the threshold. When you sin you desecrate the image of God in yourself and/or in others.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:25:08 2018 No.10688820 >>10688812 Wow hot opinion you have there. Thanks for sharing.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:29:20 2018 No.10688832 >>10688820 >he thought Jesus was a "get out of hell" free card

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:30:59 2018 No.10688838

>>10688668
me: the Bible says X
you: yeah but here in all these other places in says not X
Answer me simple yes or no, was the Evangelist mistaken when he said Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in the eyes of God and blamelessly observing the Law (Luke 1:6)

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:35:05 2018 No.10688848 >>10688766 >There is no sin, confessed or not, that can separate a Christian from the love of God. "Unless your righteousness abounds above that of the Pharisees and teachers of the Law, you will surely not enter the kingdom of heaven."

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:40:32 2018 No.10688863 >>10688672 that's because all sin is mortal. The apostle instructs us that "the wages of sin is death" not "the wages of serious sin is death"

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:41:23 2018 No.10688867 >>10688838 That isn't how systematic exegesis works. What you're really asking is if basing entire doctrines on single verses read in isolation is valid exegesis. I answer no.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:41:37 2018 No.10688869
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>>10688848
Why is it Christians are obsessed with making heaven a sekrit club that literally nobody can get into? Don't they suppose in their view enough people are already going to hell?

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:48:57 2018 No.10688885

>>10688867
You do realize that you simply implicitly admitting that the Bible is full of contradictory statements?
Is your doctrinal exegisis just counting up the number of times it says "X", comparing it to the number of times it says "Not X" and seeing which is larger?
The Word of God should be consistent with itself. Paul himself was the one quoting of context the Scriptures when he said in Romans "There is none righteous".
Psalm 14, from which that statement originated, was talking about a specific generation of people who were wicked, not all of humanity throughout all of time.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:49:59 2018 No.10688887 >>10688869 I'm just quoting the words of Jesus. Choose to believe him or not. But us not liking his words cannot change their content.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:50:41 2018 No.10688891 >>10688863 And the Christ teaches us that there are greater commandments and lesser commandments (Matt. 5:19; Matt. 22:38).

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:51:47 2018 No.10688899 >>10688869 No one deserves to go to heaven.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:52:32 2018 No.10688900 >>10688891 Of course there are, "death" in the scriptures often means not physical death but spiritual death in hell, which unlike the physical variety can have degrees of severity.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:53:34 2018 No.10688902 >>10688899 Is God letting anyone in though?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:53:49 2018 No.10688904 >>10688869 you have this backwards. it's christ that claims salvation requires a radical change in your life whereas the christians have consistently watered this down to "do whatever you were already doing except also give us money"

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:56:56 2018 No.10688915

>>10688904
I'm not wrong though. If they all were congegrationless and said "just do what the Bible says" that would be less of a secret club than "oh, perish the thought that I should have to bump into any catholics or messianic Jews in muh sekrit club".

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 03:59:44 2018 No.10688930

>>10682944
Buddhism and Christianity as per their own scripture can be disregardful towards family but not so much in their actual practice.
>>10683204
Theravada scriptural tradition is more original while their doctrine and organization is more like Catholics.
Mahayanas are more like the Orthodox in their autonomy but can also be very divergent unlike Orthodox but more like Protestants and the Vajrayana practices within it could correspond to the various local customs and superstitions practiced in Cathodox countries.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:03:52 2018 No.10688947

>>10688885
>You do realize that you simply implicitly admitting that the Bible is full of contradictory statements?
Wow, not only am I "admitting" something, but I'm doing it "implicitly" while at the same time "simply." Fascinating. I must have a talent for giving ideas I don't hold away both plainly and obscurely at the same time. I didn't think such a thing was possible, but here we are.

>Is your doctrinal exegisis just counting up the number of times it says "X", comparing it to the number of times it says "Not X" and seeing which is larger?
Obviously not. The verses need to be understood on their multiple levels of meaning, rationally weighed in immediate context and the context of the Bible as a whole, and the Church Fathers, tradition, and doctrine taken as a whole. Paradoxes can thus be resolved. Reducing that process to addition and subtraction of verse numbers would be absurd, which I suppose is why you suggested it rather than I.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:06:22 2018 No.10688955 >>10688902 A few, I hope.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:11:25 2018 No.10688976

>>10683007
No, in Christianity we have the concept of perfect, selfless love. St. Paul expresses his wish even to be damned if it meant his kin could be saved. Many saints also have expressed similar sentiments, of being willing to love God even if they had to be damned eternally. Christian martyrs died often out of love for their enemies, praying for them.

The Hindu concept of Karma is true spiritual utilitarianism.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:15:00 2018 No.10688993
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We have in these parts a class of men among the pagans who are called Brahmins. They keep up the worship of the gods, the superstitious rites of religion, frequenting the temples and taking care of the idols. They are as perverse and wicked a set as can anywhere be found, and I always apply to them the words of holy David, "from an unholy race and a wicked and crafty man deliver me, O Lord." They are liars and cheats to the very backbone. Their whole study is, how to deceive most cunningly the simplicity and ignorance of the people. They give out publicly that the gods command certain offerings to be made to their temples, which offerings are simply the things that the Brahmins themselves wish for, for their own maintenance and that of their wives, children, and servants. Thus they make the poor folk believe that the images of their gods eat and drink, dine and sup like men, and some devout persons are found who really offer to the idol twice a day, before dinner and supper, a certain sum of money. The Brahmins eat sumptuous meals to the sound of drums, and make the ignorant believe that the gods are banqueting. When they are in need of any supplies, and even before, they give out to the people that the gods are angry because the things they have asked for have not been sent, and that if the people do not take care, the gods will punish them by slaughter, disease, and the assaults of the devils. And the poor ignorant creatures, with the fear of the gods before them, obey them implicitly. These Brahmins have barely a tincture of literature, but they make up for their poverty in learning by cunning and malice. Those who belong to these parts are very indignant with me for exposing their tricks. Whenever they talk to me with no one by to hear them they acknowledge that they have no other patrimony but the idols, by their lies about which they procure their support from the people. They say that I, poor creature as I am, know more than all of them put together.

They often send me a civil message and presents, and make a great complaint when I send them all back again. Their object is to bribe me to connive at their evil deeds. So they declare that they are convinced that there is only one God, and that they will pray to Him for me. And I, to return the favor, answer whatever occurs to me, and then lay bare, as far as I can, to the ignorant people whose blind superstitions have made them their slaves, their imposture and tricks, and this has induced many to leave the worship of the false gods, and eagerly become Christians. If it were not for the opposition of the Brahmins, we should have them all embracing the religion of Jesus Christ.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:16:03 2018 No.10688999

>>10688993
The heathen inhabitants of the country are commonly ignorant of letters, but by no means ignorant of wickedness. All the time I have been here in this country I have only converted one Brahmin, a virtuous young man, who has now undertaken to teach the Catechism to children. As I go through the Christian villages, I often pass by the temples of the Brahmins, which they call pagodas. One day lately, I happened to enter a pagoda where there were about two hundred of them, and most of them came to meet me. We had a long conversation, after which I asked them what their gods enjoined them in order to obtain the life of the blessed. There was a long discussion amongst them as to who should answer me. At last, by common consent, the commission was given to one of them, of greater age and experience than the rest, an old man, of more than eighty years. He asked me in return, what commands the God of the Christians laid on them. I saw the old man's perversity, and I refused to speak a word till he had first answered my question. So he was obliged to expose his ignorance, and replied that their gods required two duties of those who desired to go to them hereafter, one of which was to abstain from killing cows, because under that form the gods were adored; the other was to show kindness to the Brahmins, who were the worshippers of the gods. This answer moved my indignation, for I could not but grieve intensely at the thought of the devils being worshipped instead of God by these blind heathen, and I asked them to listen to me in turn. Then I, in a loud voice, repeated the Apostles' Creed and the Ten Commandments. After this I gave in their own language a short explanation, and told them what Paradise is, and what Hell is, and also who they are who go to Heaven to join the company of the blessed, and who are to be sent to the eternal punishments of hell. Upon hearing these things they all rose up and vied with one another in embracing me, and in confessing that the God of the Christians is the true God, as His laws are so agreeable to reason. Then they asked me if the souls of men like those of other animals perished together with the body. God put into my mouth arguments of such a sort, and so suited to their ways of thinking, that to their great joy I was able to prove to them the immortality of the soul. I find, by the way, that the arguments which are to convince these ignorant people must by no means be subtle, such as those which are found in the books of learned schoolmen, but must be such as their minds can understand.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:17:06 2018 No.10689009

>>10688999
They asked me again how the soul of a dying person goes out of the body, how it was, whether it was as happens to us in dreams, when we seem to be conversing with our friends and acquaintance? (Ah, how often this happens to me, dearest brothers, when I am dreaming of you!) Was this because the soul then leaves the body? And again, whether God was black or white? For as there is so great a variety of color among men, and the Indians being black themselves, consider their own color the best, they believe that their gods are black. On this account the great majority of their idols are as black as black can be, and moreover are generally so rubbed over with oil as to smell detestably, and seem to be as dirty as they are ugly and horrible to look at. To all these questions I was able to reply so as to satisfy them entirely. But when I came to the point at last, and urged them to embrace the religion which they felt to be true, they made that same objection which we hear from many Christians when urged to change their life---that they would set men talking about them if they altered their ways and their religion, and besides, they said that they should be afraid that, if they did so, they would have nothing to live on and support themselves by.

I have found just one Brahmin and no more in all this coast who is a man of learning: he is said to have studied in a very famous Academy. Knowing this, I took measures to converse with him alone. He then told me at last, as a great secret, that the students of this Academy are at the outset made by their masters to take an oath not to reveal their mysteries, but that, out of friendship for me, he would disclose them to me. One of these mysteries was that there only exists one God, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, whom men are bound to worship, for the idols are simply images of devils. The Brahmins have certain books of sacred literature which contain, as they say, the laws of God. The masters teach in a learned tongue, as we do in Latin. He also explained to me these divine precepts one by one; but it would be a long business to write out his commentary, and indeed not worth the trouble. Their sages keep as a feast our Sunday. On this day they repeat at different hours this one player: "I adore Thee, O God; and I implore Thy help for ever." They are bound by oath to repeat this prayer frequently, and in a low voice. My friend added, that the law of nature permitted them to have more wives than one, and their sacred books predicted that the time would come when all men should embrace the same religion. After all this he asked me in my turn to explain the principal mysteries of the Christian religion, promising to keep them secret.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:18:08 2018 No.10689017

>>10689009
I replied, that I would not tell him a word about them unless he promised beforehand to publish abroad what I should tell him of the religion of Jesus Christ. He made the promise, and then I carefully explained to him those words of Jesus Christ in which our religion is summed up: "He who believes and is baptized shall be saved." This text, with my commentary on it, which embraced the whole of the Apostles' Creed, he wrote down carefully, as well as the Commandments, on account of their close connection with the Creed.

He told me also that one night he had dreamt that he had been made a Christian to his immense delight, and that he had become my brother and companion. He ended by begging me to make him a Christian secretly. But as he made certain conditions opposed to right and justice, I put off his baptism. I don't doubt but that by God's mercy he will one day be a Christian. I charged him to teach the ignorant and unlearned that there is only one God, Creator of heaven and earth; but he pleaded the obligation of his oath, and said he could not do so, especially as he was much afraid that if he did it he should become possessed by an evil spirit....

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:21:23 2018 No.10689039 >>10688955 >>10688902 What difference does it make?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:22:30 2018 No.10689044 >>10688900 How can burning really be worse than sitting in a chair over the course of eternity?

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:25:39 2018 No.10689054

>>10688947
>Obviously not. The verses need to be understood on their multiple levels of meaning, rationally weighed in immediate context and the context of the Bible as a whole, and the Church Fathers, tradition, and doctrine taken as a whole. Paradoxes can thus be resolved. Reducing that process to addition and subtraction of verse numbers would be absurd, which I suppose is why you suggested it rather than I.
You're taking a mishmash of statements made by different authors, written at times in radically different cultural contexts and centuries apart, you're then simply assuming that they all somehow were teaching the same set of ideas, despite all the evidence in front of your nose to the contrary. Some of the 'paradoxes' as you put it, that salty atheists like to point it I will admit it do have somewhat plausible explanations. But the attempt to iron out this mash of ideas into something coherent runs into more and more brick walls when you see the Bible attributing David's census of Israel to God and Satan simultaneously, Jesus saying that not a single jot or tittle of the Mosaic law shall pass away as long as heaven and earth do not and that his mission was not to abolish it, while Paul says the Law was simply a tutor that can now be set aside *because of Jesus*, the Song of Solomon extolling in frankly erotic terms the beauty and goodness of human sexuality (don't give any bullshit about how it's all a metaphor for how God loves his people, I don't believe God loves the church because the church has great titties) and the Church fathers almost to a man being barely capable of saying a nice word even about marital sex for anything other than passionless mechanical baby-making.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:25:50 2018 No.10689055

I believe that Hinduism is the worst and most disgusting religion. The concept of heaven and hell gives us supreme dignity as human beings, because it means that all our actions have eternal consequences, that our good and evil deeds echo in eternity, that we are ultimately responsible for our actions. The Christian soul is affirmed that his personality is created by God, that God wishes it eternal happiness in heaven, and that it can attain that eternal life and happiness if it accepts God's merciful love. The Hindu idea that if you fuck up this time you can try again 10,000 years later in the next cycle of reincarnation is of utterly no consolation to a man that wants salvation today and with his own personality as he is, not some new personality that he forms in another form eons from now. Whenever Hinduism gets philosophical it tends towards pantheism, which submerges the individual consciousness / personality into everything, the One, the All, the Whole; this is not dignity: to be merged into everything else such that you lose your very identity. Christianity, on the other hand, affirms the immortal value of the individual person and their capacity to be made a child of God, loving the Father forever face-to-face. But the consequence of all this is that Christianity treats human beings as beings worth loving and saving, each and every one for their own sake, whereas Hinduism treats certain human beings as worthless untouchable cretins lower than cows because they were incarnated into the lower caste this time, and have to wait until they are reborn and brahmin so they can be worshipped as gods by the lesser men next time. Brahminism is spiritual narcissism in the highest degree. The Hindu guru is the most intolerable kind of man.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:27:15 2018 No.10689061 >>10688993 >>10688999 >>10689009 >>10689017 Is this somehow supposed to be surprising?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:28:52 2018 No.10689065 >>10689055 >being in hell is dignified I think someone's had a few too many communion wafers

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:29:13 2018 No.10689066 >>10689061 No. Hinduism is so theologically corrupt that you would expect such behaviour to result from it.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:31:11 2018 No.10689075

>>10689065
>implying that suffering the consequence of your crimes does not affirm your moral agency and dignity
The most honourable men in literature all undergo their punishment willingly, because they recognise that they get what they deserve. Only a cretin who thinks the law never applies to him can fail to understand this.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:31:20 2018 No.10689076 >>10682944 Lacking dignity you say. Tell me, where do street shitters live?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:34:44 2018 No.10689084 File: 44 KB, 736x568, I-Will-Remind-Them.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>10689075 >these people deserve the worst comprehensible fate because they lost the salvation lotto

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:36:15 2018 No.10689087

>>10689075
no rational person could prefer the "1 life only and if you fuck up, eternal hell" to "finite punishment for finite evil" given how damn ignorant human beings are of what God expects from us. Taking the training wheels off your kids bike and then just sort of hoping they don't crash and kill themselves is not upholding their dignity.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:41:35 2018 No.10689101 >>10689087 >inb4 its eternal evil because it eternally abides on the eternal God If that were true then the crucifixion couldn't resolve anything.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:46:23 2018 No.10689114 >>10689101 >inb4 the correct answer I don't know what you want exactly, anon.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:51:17 2018 No.10689129

>>10689084
Don't know about China but India has been in the Church's sights for a long, long time. Which is why the only published literature about Hinduism until very recently (apart from Germans who had rejected Christianity) was written with the intent to debase and demonize them. Which is why there was no focus on festivals, yoga, meditation, dharma, ie. the basic tenants of Hinduism were ignored in favor of aghoris, rituals, caste system (a term borrowed from Christian Portugal because they could not define the varna system and could not differentiate it from tribal quibbles) and le evil brahmins. I mean until very recently, encarta was basically doing a hitjob on Hinduism in its encyclopedias
(http://sankrant.org/2002/09/hinduism-encarta-critique/).).

Any western scholarship on Hinduism can be disregarded offhand given what we know about the motives behind it now. The only redeemable scholarship was done by Germans debased the philosophy in another way, by claiming it was ancient Europeans who established it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:51:28 2018 No.10689130 >>10689114 >implying anyone can actually harm God at all

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:52:54 2018 No.10689133 >>10689129 Okay whatever you just said, I didn't even read it because it seems to imply you don't even realize billions of people have been living and dying in those places for thousands of years

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 04:55:53 2018 No.10689138

>>10689129
>The only redeemable scholarship was done by Germans debased the philosophy in another way, by claiming it was ancient Europeans who established it.

Correct. Tocharians. They also introduced the typical white racism, aka what you call "caste system". To prevent mixing aryan and darkie blood.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 05:04:23 2018 No.10689165

>>10689054
Oh ye of little faith. Take your ax off the grinning wheel long enough to recognize that not everyone shares your assumption that Christianity is wrong. Whatever limbs you climb out on in the basis of that assumption, I don't care. Save your breath for when the bough breaks.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 05:55:40 2018 No.10689355 >>10683091 did you even read the book? the precise definition of a heeb is direct legitimate descendant of Abraham.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 05:59:22 2018 No.10689367 >>10689133 >he doesn't know about invincible ignorance Now THAT'S ignorant.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 06:00:23 2018 No.10689375 >>10688669 When there are certain fundamental differences between islam and Christianity especially in the case of sin and the intention of life.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 06:35:28 2018 No.10689501 >>10689375 not in any way that matters to me

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 06:46:39 2018 No.10689523

>>10689501
Ok, fair enough. Got put us here but that wasn't for no reason. It was for a reason. I mean, God as the creator of all things not have the write create lumps of clay like a potter creates vessels for a purpose. You are a vessel made by God and so have a purpose.

And my view is that earthly suffering is a virtue since on earth when we deny sin we are denying all the temptations and hardships around us. But in heaven there will no no temptation so whatever good we do on earth inherently has more value. And when we suffer for Christ it means a lot more.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 06:51:37 2018 No.10689536 >>10689523 I wasn't aware "hell" was now a form of "earthly suffering". Oh this is one of them prerecorded messages. I gotcha

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:02:02 2018 No.10689557

>>10689536
Do you know what hell is? It's the absence of God. You see in this world we experience God's grace in many ways. When you laugh with your friends, when you love your wife or even when you scratch an itch and it goes away. These are all God's graces which have been given to us on earth

>In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.
Matthew 5:45

But in hell you will have non of that. You have denied God in this life and have said you want nothing to do with him and send you will be eternally separated from him. Because of this you will experience non of God's grace and will be in despair for all of eternity. You've probably heard it before. In hell you will burn in a lake of sulfur, but that's not the worst part. The worst part would be that you are separated from God's grace forever. But in heaven you will only experience God's grace. No more pain. No more suffering but pure bliss.

Where do you wanna go? The choice is yours.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:11:48 2018 No.10689594 >>10689557 I was absent from God from the beginning of time up to 25 years ago and yet I wasn't burning in agony. Hmm, there seems to be a third option here. Really penetrates my pistachios.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:15:59 2018 No.10689611 >>10689557 Not to mention this is another prerecorded message. You're not even conversing. I could get more interaction from a chatbot.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:17:00 2018 No.10689619

>>10689594
No, remember Matthew 5:45

>In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.

Even now you are experiencing God's grace. Once you cross over and the gate of repentance have closed then you will realise how much you took God for granted.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:18:19 2018 No.10689624 >>10689611 >this is another prerecorded message. Really? Is that how I come off? Perhaps I'm not understanding your point. If so, my bad. please reiterate 4 me.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:23:35 2018 No.10689638 >>10689619 what was I experiencing for the past millennium after millennium? Oh that's right, the equanimity of nonbeing. Can I ask. Are you planning to have children?

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 07:24:52 2018 No.10689641

>>10689638
>what was I experiencing for the past millennium after millennium? Oh that's right, the equanimity of nonbeing.
You never existed. You was not born yet.

>Can I ask. Are you planning to have children?
No, never will! And this is not me being funny.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 08:19:46 2018 No.10689799 >>10688577 Any recs for traditionalist lit?

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 08:30:09 2018 No.10689825 >>10689355 Abraham is not a descendant of Abraham.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 08:48:27 2018 No.10689870

Amazing that no one has yet to mention that one aspect of every religion that both channels and quantifies its beliefs:Politics. The Word of God has been bent to the whim and will of countless rulers,both clerical and secular, for as long as shamans figured out how to turn a profit on fear. Whether or not there IS a tiger in the next room is immaterial, but the need to unload the Anti Tiger ointment for a monetary consideration is foremost on any priest's mind,and their own belief in its efficiency or even its necessity is equally immaterial. Scripture is the product of Man,and they are notoriously fallible, so keeping the sacred in the hands of a chosen few is a good way to hold onto power and shift the intent of the masses at the Masses. Hell is a tool,as is the Sacrament, and also the withholding of the Sacrament, tainting the enemies of the current administration by Bell Book and Candle with the contagion of ungodliness. In this light,how can any treat any written word on the subject of divine matters to be either True or Right?

I suppose treating all treatises as cultural borders is the only way to work this. Yudhishthira forsaking a heaven full of his martyred enemies is in his mind Just,so I conclude we must weigh all dogma with common sense and interpret truth in the light of our own soul's explorations.

I myself will welcome Hell,and the chance to spend eternity holding my fellow sinners up out of the fire,to spite the unjust Gods who put us there.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 09:18:53 2018 No.10689980 >>10689870 tips fedora

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 09:27:00 2018 No.10690017

>>10689870
>I myself will welcome Hell,and the chance to spend eternity holding my fellow sinners up out of the fire,to spite the unjust Gods who put us there.

Everyone in hell feels utterly alone and all the damned despise one another and make each other's suffering worse. They also all understand that they are there for eternity, without any hope of liberation.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 10:52:06 2018 No.10690299

>>10682944
There's a lot in the thread here, but for a nutshell answer to your initial questions: damnation is a result of willfully turning away from God, not inflicted by him as a punishment. He will not force salvation on us- I find that His honoring our decision speaks to a much greater sense of dignity. (This is tied to a Catholic understanding of sin as well, in which pursuit of the perceived true and good is not sin, even if mistaken, so willful ignorance is still sinful)
Similarly, to reject, in your example, your family's choice to turn away from God and insist on their salvation or your own damnation is misguided- it disallows any free will on their part. (I'm assuming here that that is a proper reading to the parable- by a catholic understanding, at least, it must be. The dog's issue is a bit different- I'd call it an imperfection in that the love is for the man, rather than the good, with the man in a touchingly similar sense feeling the same for his family)
As for the utilitarian point- that justification is specifically noted to be a imperfect basis for morality. We are obliged to act for love of the good, not hope of heaven or fear of damnation. See the text of the act of contrition "because of the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because I love you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love". You can look up perfect vs imperfect contrition for more on that point, applies just as well to justification for morality as for contrition.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 16:44:15 2018 No.10691646

>>10689799
Start with these works by Rene Guenon, and in order:
>Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines
>Man and his Becoming according to the Vêdantâ
>Symbolism of the Cross
For more Christian oriented works, read his Insights on Christian Esoterism, and also look up the works of Meister Eckhart.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 17:24:02 2018 No.10691893

>>10687934
>>10688766

Where in the Bible does it say it has to be in the Bible? The Trinity(3 persons 1 God) isn't in there either; it can easily be interpreted many ways, such as 3 equal gods.
Who do you two know that Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark? It's not in the Bible.
How was the Bible compiled too? Don't bite your tongue when you answer that...

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 18:27:03 2018 No.10692299

Anyone accepting a literal Hell has to accept the literalness of the Biblical Genesis narrative. Theologically they are utterly dependent on each other.

Calvinism has the most logically sensible theology of hell. The problem is they put a lot of stock in following the Bible, and their doctrine is not supported by the Bible. They badly mistread the text to support their positions.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 18:32:17 2018 No.10692344

>>10691893
Oh it's certainly possible for something to be both true and not found in the bible. That alone doesn't render the concept invalid. the fact that it's also bizarre and irrational (like the trinity) in addition to being non-biblical makes it so.
>>10692299
Define literal. Also why?

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 18:33:53 2018 No.10692365

>>10692299
>Anyone accepting a literal Hell has to accept the literalness of the Biblical Genesis narrative. Theologically they are utterly dependent on each other.
You better explain what you mean by literalness, because this thread is gonna go 80 different ways about it.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 18:35:32 2018 No.10692377 >>10692344 >Define literal. Also why? ayee you get it to reply though, I'm not sure how those concepts are bizarre and irrational

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 18:47:26 2018 No.10692473

>>10692365
You have to believe Adam and Eve were the first human beings; you have to believe they were created without any of the physicals lusts, violence, pride, or other moral imperfections native to post-Fall humans; you have to believe Adam and Eve literally ate an actual apple; you have to believe it would have been literally impossible for any organism to physically die before Adam ate this apple.

This is orthodox theology. ALL soteriology is built on top of this. There's no orthodox explanation for the possibility of hell without seriously relying on this framework. ALL Christian theologians, except maybe Origen, believed this entirely before the 1700s.

Like Catholic soteriological doctrine is built all on Aquinas' ethics. Read through Aquinas' ethics some time, it's all teleology based on what would have actually happened in the Garden of Eden without the Fall.

I'm a Christian with heterodox belief, I believe God was incarnate on Earth as Jesus Christ to act as an ultimate moral example for the spiritual betterment of humankind. I believe that this was fulfilled as the long, painful, but truly real process of human moral development occurred thanks to the Christian tradition. But there's no solid doctrine that admits hell without a literal creation account.

Also no doctrine admits that God created humanity with an inherently sinful (as in, lustful, wrathful, prideful, etc) nature that we know humanity has. All orthodox theology asserts that this corrupt nature was introduced by the original sin -- a literal, actually sin done by the first created humans.

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 19:05:51 2018 No.10692611

>>10692299
That's not Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy says the souls reconciled with God will be warmed by his presence and those in rebellion will be burned by it. That's more reasonable than the cosmic torture chamber which seems really petty and absurd for a being of omnibenevolence. Of course this doesn't conflict with biblical doctrine because nobody can say what people's conception of going to hell will be like. If you look at NDE's people are never told they are going to hell or "depart from me" they are just there automatically.

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 19:32:28 2018 No.10692796 >>10691646 Thanks man

>>	Anonymous Tue Feb 13 23:28:38 2018 No.10693913 >>10686334 >tfw this is the truest thing I've read on /lit/

Anonymous Tue Feb 13 23:36:49 2018 No.10693944

>>10682944
Typical notions of heaven and hell are extrabiblical. They are outside the Bible, mainly created by people's interpretations. Dante's Inferno is more the source of the understanding of Christian heaven and hell today than the Bible itself.

Christian monks and mystics throughout history have agreed on the true (based) interpretation that Hell is self-imposed removal from God and remorse for one's sins, whereas Heaven is simply being with God. Hell is created by the negative emotions inside of a person and heaven by the positive emotions inside of a person. A person just becomes more truly what they are after dead, cannot escape their own psychology.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 01:59:22 2018 No.10694399 >>10692473 We have to believe that there were first humans, and that they fell to temptation, which is something foreign to human nature. That it was literally a garden and an apple is not at all implied in the text or all that orthodox.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 02:38:24 2018 No.10694544 >>10693944 Thanks for the laugh. I can't believe there are people who fall for this kind of thing. Have you read the Bible?

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 02:52:17 2018 No.10694580 >>10689619 I will gladly convert if it appeared access to the OPPORTUNITY of salvation was universally granted. Until then I will have to hope you are wrong.

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 02:55:37 2018 No.10694587

>>10692473
All Catholic dogma says you have to believe is that God gave humans immaterial souls and humans were perfect but then committed original sin. Catholics aren't obligated to believe that the Genesis creation narrative is a literal account. This dogma is compatible with evolutionary theory. Strict literalism might have been the common view prior to the 19th century, but it wasn't doctrine, and when the Church finally decided on the issue in an Ecumenical Council, they decided that both literalism and non-literalism are opinions that Catholics can hold. If you deny creation (whether literalists or non-literalist), the existence of the soul, or original sin, you're a heretic according to the Church, tho. Non-literalism was never declared a heresy.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 02:59:10 2018 No.10694597 >>10694580 Welcome to the fold, brother. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fate_of_the_unlearned

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 03:03:46 2018 No.10694601

>God bodily resurrects the dead
>oh hey God says these ones are going to Hell but only metaphorically lol Hell isn't a place man it's a state of being lmao
>uh what about their physical bodies then?
>oh I guess they just like um lmao man loosen up I dunno

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 09:27:41 2018 No.10695525 >>10692377 Are you still on this thread? I typed out a long ass response and lost it twice. Do you still want to hear my thoughts?

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 14:04:09 2018 No.10696662
File: 24 KB, 500x500, image.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

>>10685975
>That sin is more than likely a venial sin. It hinders but does not break the bond between you and God. If you have an unforgiven mortal sin, like genuinely wishing death upon someone, you would go to Hell. That's a serious consequential sin.

Eternal damnation for the crime of thinking something you aren't supposed to. Sounds about right.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 14:24:34 2018 No.10696779 >>10695525 Nah it's okay bud; happy Ash Wednesday though

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 15:18:59 2018 No.10697033

>>10696662
This is far from unbiblical, though. Anyways, eternal damnation is understood as because the person cannot bear being with God, not that God will not accept them. While anger at a parent seems unjust, practically all catholics would consider that venial- not so bad that you could not be with God, even if still an imperfection, which would be burned away in purgatory.

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 15:35:07 2018 No.10697108

>>10682944
>To actually believe that there is a Hell where people suffer for all eternity, sometimes for the most inconsequential of reasons, and to accept this fact simply, is just horrid.
You know, a bully can and will ruin an entire lifetime. Potentially even beyond, with collateral. The effects carry on throughout the ages.
Who are you to say that it is wrong? Who are you to scale them?

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 16:18:25 2018 No.10697347

>>10689138

Indo-Europeans migrating to India massively contributed to the formation of Hinduism but it's silly to dwell on that point and use it to try to insult Indians because the ultimate implication of the central Hindu teaching (justified in early IE Vedic texts no less) that atman=brahman is that fundamentally there is no distinction between the differant races/castes and that caste helps to organize and perpetuate society but that discrimination and ill-treatment of others based on caste is wrong because the atman in every living being is the same. People who try to use the IE migration into Indian as a way to talk shit betray their ignorance of the teachings of the Aryan religion they claim a relation to.

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 17:28:03 2018 No.10697745

>The caste system is a European invention.
Kill yourselves all of you.

The Bhagavad Gita written around 300 BC endorses the caste system and refers to social chaos as Varna Sankara (mixing of castes.) The caste system developed around 2000 years ago and was a native Hindu system. The historical revisionism and refusal to own up to the caste system as a native Hindu invention is despicable and atrocious.

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 21:36:32 2018 No.10698699

>>10682944
you are an idiot. Christians have been tested like this. Angels came to man who was being tortured by Saracens, telling him his reward would be great in heave. He spit on them and saying he knew he was unworthy, and they turned out to be demons

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 22:08:12 2018 No.10698815 >>10685542 conflating the mystic fringe for the core of a religion is both unfair and in bad faith. Using economic and political realities as proof of that religion's failings is doubly so. Interrupting a high level discussion is unforgivable.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 22:15:47 2018 No.10698842 >>10694597 >implying the bible says this and not the exact opposite in Romans 2

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 22:46:21 2018 No.10698955

>>10698842
Rereading romans 2 seems to me to be a hell of a lot of support for the possibility of salvation for non-Christians.
>Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth
>but glory, honor and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile
>All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law
>(Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law
I mean, couldn't've found better support for the possibility of salvation outside the Church without spending ages looking it up. Thanks, I guess.

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 22:48:59 2018 No.10698969

>>10698955
>CCC 846-848

>CCC 847
Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.

>>	Anonymous Wed Feb 14 22:56:50 2018 No.10699010 >>10694544 Sorry anon but you're retarded.

Anonymous Wed Feb 14 23:25:44 2018 No.10699141

>>10693944
>Typical notions of heaven and hell are extrabiblical. They are outside the Bible, mainly created by people's interpretations.
>Christian monks and mystics throughout history have agreed on the true (based) interpretation

>extrabiblical
>true
>interpretation(s)

>implies nothing can be extrabiblical too
extra-biblical =/= contrary to Bible, either

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 00:10:30 2018 No.10699361 >>10698969 Yep, I was agreeing with that. In context, Romans 2 is rather supportive of those paragraphs of the catechism.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 00:20:00 2018 No.10699411 >>10683465 >animepic Didn't read lol fag

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 00:23:47 2018 No.10699425 >>10699361 yeah, I was adding to your point!!!

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 09:07:08 2018 No.10700936 >>10685975 So what if you have a mortal sin and you're on the way to church to confess it but you get in a car crash? Eternal hell?

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 09:14:08 2018 No.10700959 >>10689367 >invincible ignorance unbiblical

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 09:20:04 2018 No.10700975 >>10698955 What was the point of the Crucifixion then? If people who didn't receive the gospel can get salvation then the whole thing is pointless.

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 09:34:46 2018 No.10701007

>>10690017
Anyone saying this is a product of an all loving God is either a lunatic or a liar.
Dharmic hells don't make infinite punishment for finite crimes.

The most interesting thing is that basically in Buddhism and Advaita it is you yourself that punish you for the sins. If people encounter/do some shit, they get nightmares, until the negative imprint on your mind goes away.
Guess what, if you voluntarily put pain and misery on the world (that is, shall we say, not that different from you), you are going to deal with the consequences, until all the negative energy you had spent runs its course back to the source.
You yourself deal by yourself with the shit you yourself did. Not because a stupid woman made a stupid choice in an extremely arbitrary set of values

It is as simple as basic physics. Force applied equals force received and such. Yes, it can be a downer, but Christian hell taken to its logical conclusions is straight up inhumanely evil and severe.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 09:41:00 2018 No.10701020 >>10682944 >To me the Christian religion seems to be lacking in any basic dignity. We'll care about your stupid beliefs when you learn to dispose of human waste properly. Good bye and don't post again, thx.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 10:06:56 2018 No.10701089 >>10700975 >the crucifixion is pointless if people didn't hear about it Your brain on protestantism

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 10:17:14 2018 No.10701131

>>10700936
There's a specific doctrine of baptism by desire, there's no reason for exactly the same principles to not apply for the sacrament of penance.
>>10700975
The crucifixion is God made man dying and being resurrected as one of us. It is the way to salvation, for both those that know about it and those that don't, before and after Christ. It's better to know and recognize it, obviously, but lack of knowledge will not impede God's mercy- only refusal of it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 10:26:00 2018 No.10701164 >>10701131 Exactly. It would be pretty lame if the value of the sacrifice came down to whether it was trending on ancient twitter.

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 10:45:23 2018 No.10701238

>>10701007
It's a different way of looking at what sin is. You're describing it as something you just have to deal with the consequences of- you have your sins meted back to you, and the imprint goes away. The catholic view grants that you change as a person as a result of sin. It's not a matter of "doing your time," if you're flawed enough that you can't bear to be with God, that's not going to change after death. It rather strains credibility that, after entirely rejecting goodness, truth, and love itself, that you'd still be happy with other people as well. To be saved anyways seems to be what robs dignity- we can change ourselves and our fate, for good or ill.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 11:51:48 2018 No.10701493 >>10683038 Lmao Christ probably taught about hell more than anyone else in the Bible.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 13:14:52 2018 No.10701810 >>10701164 Well, you can make anything SOUND stupid but yeah its important people know about the passion.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 13:26:12 2018 No.10701835 >>10701131 That's completely unbiblical dude, they have to HEAR the gospel. Classic Catholic handwaving away of problems

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 13:26:31 2018 No.10701838 >>10701810 Extremely so, because if true, the incarnation, passion, and resurrection are the most important moments of human history. But not because there is no salvation without having heard of it, even if all salvation does indeed derive from it.

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 13:44:08 2018 No.10701884

>>10682944
Of course hell is not a simple issue. You have to differentiate hell described similarly to the Greek Hades, and there are similarities there, and the lake of fire which is at the end of time. The lake of fire could be an actual death of the soul since it is called second death. It's a debated issue.

Christianity is superior to Hinduism because it recognizes evil. I'm not going to merit a religion that has a death goddess and wife burning with any greatness.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 13:58:42 2018 No.10701943 >>10689055 You talk of consciousness but you don't know what that is. Youyou don't know who you are.

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 14:06:10 2018 No.10701964

>>10700959
>>10701835
Where in the Bible does it say a dogma must be in the Bible? Just because it's not in the Bible doesn't mean it is not true. "Not found in the Bible" and "contradicts Bible" are not biconditional.

There are so many things that Christians believe that aren't biblical, but know to be true. How is a Protestant to determine whether the Father, The Son, and the Holy Spirit are "3 persons, 1 God" or "3 distinct Gods"? Where was the Bible to be found during the apostolic age, when men were debating whether Gentiles had to go through the old covenant to receive the new covenant? Is it not also unbiblical to say Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark?

So what are you men to do? You simply cannot answer this question with a correct answer. It's either you reject these truths (that you borrowed from RCC) or you answer the questions, but cannot be 100% certain you are correct.

>>	Anonymous Thu Feb 15 14:16:35 2018 No.10701997 >>10701964 do not add or take away from these words etc...

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 14:35:27 2018 No.10702090

>>10701997
John said "this book," the book of Revelation. And saying the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is "3 persons, 1 God" is not adding words to the Bible anyhow; where in the Bible was that quote added? Nowhere, so no words were added (this assumes that John spoke of all the books of the Bible, but he literally says "book," which is the book of Revelation.) reread Rev. 22

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 14:47:46 2018 No.10702139

>>10701835
Baptism by desire or faith outside of hearing the Gospel? We are saved by faith, I think you'll agree with that, and even Jesus agreed that the centurion who wished his servant healed showed faith, even without hearing of Jesus as anything but a miracle worker.
>>10701997
Again, things must be taken in context. That doesn't mean nothing else can be taught or that there can be no interpretation of it, it means not to add or remove from that prophecy.

This "wasn't in the bible" thing is ridiculous. The books of the bible were compiled by Church figures, usually bishops, and formally defined at an ecumenical council. The primary concern for things like this is whether they were taught by the Church, which has as part of its teaching the bible.

Anonymous Thu Feb 15 19:56:37 2018 No.10703707

>>10682944
>>10682944
The point of Christianity is to properly align the creature towards his Creator via faith, charity and moral virtue. The bible teaches us that all have sinned, we all fall short of God's standards, we're all ignorant and prone to selfishness. God incarnated in the flesh to set an example for us to emulate, to teach us, and to reconcile man with himself.
Hell is not a place of arbitrary suffering, neither is heaven a place of arbitrary bliss. Both are states of being one experiences in the presence of God. Everyone will encounter God after death, but how that meeting will be perceived depends on the state of ones spiritual development, their faith, charity and moral character.
Saying this somehow lacks dignity is absurd and ignorant.

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 16 03:58:19 2018 No.10705409 if you actually understood the vedanta youd convert to Christianity or Islam

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 16 04:01:57 2018 No.10705419 >>10705409 elaborate

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 16 05:13:02 2018 No.10705619 >>10705419 the hindu religions can show you a glimpse of the truth but not how to assimilate it and live it

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 16 05:20:27 2018 No.10705635 >>10703707 Most people conceive of 'hell' as a place of infinite torture (whether or not such a conception is justified). I think such a notion IS rather indignifying.

>>	Anonymous Fri Feb 16 05:27:36 2018 No.10705652 >>10705619 nigga they got the instructions for living it and everything. they probably have more literature on that topic than anyone. we'll probably never even be able to translate it all. the agamas alone are like in the hundreds or something

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/lit/ - Literature