Creation and Hell?

A small query that popped into my head today..
Where does hell fit into creation as far as the christian and/or other religions are concerned? The reason i ask this is because if "God" created everything then why did he create hell? what reason would he have for giving his greatest enemy a home?
I know the wording sounds a bit strange but you guys know what im getting at!
Any ideas/Explanations?

Thank you D

Hmm I'm guessing he probalby didn't want all of the bad people that die on Earth to go to heaven, so send them to Hell as a punishment.. But thats coming from an atheist, so I'm really of no help.

Hell was created as a result of the rebellion of the angles in pre-history. God demands perfection and total allegiance. The rebellious angles who did not desire to belong to God, get tossed into eternal separation from God in hell, at the final judgment. As a result of the creation of hell, the same fate awaits us as well if we choose not to be with God.

That's my understanding after much study on the subject.

Hell doesn't fit quite properly in the biblical understanding of hte universe, becuase its not really part of the biblical understanding of the universe. Hell and "fallen angels" and "the devil" are ideas that, to some degree, are nascent in the early biblical texts, and the semitic society that created those texts. Those ideas develop along lots of different lines, both inside and outside of the 'orthodox' religious traditions, long before the new testament is compiled. Even in the new testament, we don't exactly have a 'hell'. The devil is in the world, and he is a tempter and liar. At the end of hte world, the bodies of the dead are resurrected, like jesus's body after crucifixtion, some ascend to 'heaven', physically, others are thrown into a 'lake of fire'. A 'beast' arises, he is defeated and thrown into 'the pit' (I think leviathan, the great animal from the old testament, is also destroyed here), the pit is 'locked up', then, after jesus rules as king on earth for a 1,000 years, the universe is destroyed.

We now say 'the pit, its hell, the lake of fire, its hell'. Is that what the original authors intended? Is that what their audeiences understood it to mean? Who knows.

As far as the angels rebelling, even that is questionable. Amoung the jews, there are traditions that there are 'angels' that are sort of like guardian angels, but for entire countries. THe angels are the ones that protect the nations during war, if the angel for Persia and the angel for Israel fight, there is war, and when the angel for israel defeats the persia angel, israel wins the war, or suffers defeats as their angels conflict.
Above all this, is an angel called Samma-el (just like there is an angel called Gabri-el, Micha-el, etc). Samma-el has a special job, he is supposed to yearly accuse Israel of its crimes against god, just as not keeping the proper religious practices, etc. From this, we get, in part, the idea of the devil. The name 'satan' is supposed to be derived from these 'accusing' angels, or in some traditions the accusing angel (who is, in a sense, God's prosecuting attorney in his heavenly court), is called Satan-El.

Along with this, the israelis used to take a goat, and offer it as a sacrifice to an angel nammed Azza-El, in order to keep that powerful angel, who was given teh job by god to punish the nation of the jews when they were in error or sin, from punishing them. That too adds to the idea of the devil, and, also, notice the association with a 'goat', which is often the form of the devil.

In some traditions, the 'fallen angels' weren't rebelling agianst god, that idea, ofa war in heaven, is popularized in europe amoung christians, and especially made famous by milton. The fallen angels had been critical of mankind, saying that they so easily fall into sin. They are rebuked, told that angels are made different from men, they're more pure, have less free will, and have different stresses on them. The angels scoff, say that they're better. So they take human form, and instantly lust after human women, and fall victim to all the problems that men have. They become 'heavy', and can't ascend phsyically back to heaven. In some traditions, there are lots of angels that this happens to, and they are the 'sons of god' that reproduce with women and produce teh 'nefilim', the giants. The word 'nefilim' is supposedly related to the word for 'to fall', interstingly.

In the muslim traditions, there is a reworking of this. Two angels take human form, they use a magic word to change back and ascend to the heavens. They fall in love with a woman/lust after her, she steals their magic word, they can't re-ascend, and she uses it so ascend and becomes a star (this is perhaps noteworthy because in the middle east, astarte is a powerful female goddess, the name itself suggests 'star', like in the word 'asterix, *, a star).


So yes, the idea of hell and fallen angels and the devil, it looks confusing, because it is confusing.

Nygdan your posts never cease to amaze me.

My big questions as a Christian, and I'm sure many struggle with it as well. Is how does an infinitely loving god allow the damnation of a soul. I realize the fact that the "Old Testament God," was not exactly a benevolent God. But because of His omniscience, and leading from there knowing He would be forever loving....why would an omniscient God create hell then?

I do not want to get into bible-beating, and I apologize if I strayed a little off your main topic, just my thoughts.

“God” created hell because when the first missionaries turned up they needed something really scary to convince people to join their religion. So they thought “what could be worse than being on fire forever?” I know lets tell these pagan people this will happen unless they join-follow our religion?
Jews and Muslims also found this concept pretty hard to beat so they also adopted.

My Question…
How can you put every person into one of two categories? I know there’s Purgatory but it a place full of torture might be a good way of making someone wish they had read the Bible more often, but I fail to see how its going to do much to change most people as a person.

Could Reincarnation More Rational than Just Punishing and Rewarding?
Doesn’t the concepts of reincarnation followed in both Buddhism, and ancient British-European paganism make far more sense? In British paganism all dimensions of life where like a tree. The trunk was where we are, the roots where the underworlds and the branches where the heavens. Similarly in Buddhism not is their seven heaven (everyone gets reincarnated again at some time unless you make it to the 7th) but reincarnation is also based on what will help your soul learn in life, rather than what will make you happy. Therefore an “evil person” could be born into luxury and a good one into poverty; because its not about material rewards, but enlightenment instead.

Reincarnation makes no more sense than punishment in hell. Indeed, it was against the fear of reincarnation that buddhism arose.

As far as jews having hell, do they?

Muslims too, they don't have a permanent hell, the sinners are purified in the afterlife, they are perfected, and then they too go to heaven. Their hell is more like the christian purgatory, where people are 'purged' of their sins.

The idea is tricky. You have god, and he's perfect and purely good (nevrminding the contradiction of having an all powerful being, in a universe where evil occurs, and saying that he's also all good). Thus, evil, sin, can't be in heaven. But, if a person is evil, or 'has' evil, and has sin, they can't enter the perfectly good heaven. You can't have hitler strutting around heaven AND being evil to people.
So you have salvation through christ with the christians. They came up with prugatory because of their rituals, you have christ as the path torwards heaven, but if you sin even after accepting christ, how can you go to heaven? So purgatory existed, and anyone that accepted christ, but sinned, and didn't have their sins absolved by a preist of christ, there had to be some category to where they'd go to have their sins removed, so as to not contaminate heaven with sin.

This is all similar to the dualist systems. The universe starts are two halves, one pure goodness, the other purely made up of phsyical matter and evil. The two mix to a large degree. Humans are lumps of evil matter with a portion of the goodness mixed in. History and existence are the slow winnowing out of the bits of goodness out of the evil matter, and the restoration of that orignal state of good completely seperated and free from matter.

But, again, there are complications. For some of the jews, the dead don't have their spirits released into heaven or hell. They stay dead, in the grave. At teh end of the universe, they are physically resurrected, because they are the chosen ones, and rest of the material universe is destroyed, but they, phsyically, remain, along with god and the angels, and that makes up 'heaven'. So the messiah myths are like a prototype for the whole of the people, both in some types of judaism and amoung the christians. ALong the way though the christians have brought in this business of hell and heave, or that once you die, you are immediately judged, and go to heaven or hell.

Thanks for everyones post's on this subject, ive found it all fascinating =)
Thank you Nygdan for your informative replies, i find it interesting how you also agree that there are many contradictions when it comes to hell vs. the bible which sway me towards the con side of christianity that maybe it is built on a series of mis-truths and deceptions.
D

MWAHAAHHAHA ANOTHER SOUL STOLEN FROM TEH JESUS

MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

That's sad. Truly.



At any rate, someone stated that Hell was created for the rebellious angels. This is true. It can be assumed that Hell was not created at the same time as the rest of the universe, or even the Earth. Depending on interpretation of the Scriptures, the rebellion of the angels occurred sometime after the creation of man, for they chose to go down to the Daughters of Cain and mingle with them. This resulted in the Nephilim, a topic that rages all the time in other areas of the site.

To punish the angels, God created Hell. The Greeks have a myth in which Zeus, king of the gods, imprisons the Titans in a special part of Hades known as Tartarus. St. Peter actually references Tartarus at one point in the New Testament; I apologize for not having the reference. However, the King James Version translates it as 'hell'.

The Jews believed in Sheol, which is much like the New Testament Hades. Essentially, it is a place that everyone went when they died, regardless of their merit. This is supposedly a hellish place for humans, but nothing like the actual "Hell" created for the purpose of tormenting angels. After Christ rose, he faced Satan and took the Keys -- of Life and Death I believe -- and took the righteous with him to Paradise.

Hell has been somewhat altered by many descriptions of it to the point that many Christians do not realize its origin or distinguish between the "Land of Death" and the "Lake of Fire". The average Christian believes that when a sinner dies, he or she immediately lands in Hell. I do not believe this to be the case; I believe that no one will be cast into Hell until the Final Judgment. The Book of Revelation gives me this idea.

As far as its location, I don't necessarily believe that Hell exists in the literal, physical universe anymore than Heaven does. I don't believe that either is a place you can get to by any physical means of travel. Call it another dimension if you like.

It's a difficult subject and there's no one that has all the answers, but those are some of my thoughts on the matter.

[edit on 12/5/2006 by southern_cross3]

someone said
"God didn't imagined entirely the world and only through the man, now, he could obtain it"

Please rip me the shreds if I'm wrong. It's been a while since I was taught by Nuns.
I thought the main downside of Hell was that you were cut off from God. Unable to view His Face, or some such thing.

The story of Flames and Torture were more added incentive devised by mere mortals. The fertile and kinky imaginations of people like painter Hieronymus Bosch, and Dante with his Inferno.

I would have thought that if God wanted you to repent your sinful ways, he'd put you somewhere Rather Unhappy, instead of being preoccupied with Eternal Agony.

I've addressed this question in depth on 2 different BTS threads; one entitled I can't accept hell and the other, What are heaven and hell to you?
In those previous posts you'll find Greek and/or Hebrew translations (depending on original language in which verses were written), scripture references, source (s) of doctrinal distortion throughout the ages, etc. Too much to do tonight to go into it all in depth again. Hope you're motivated enough to look into it- it's too important a topic to not have a clear understanding. Best to you in your quest for knowledge/understanding.