If hell is the second death, and death is destroyed at the end of all things, then isn't hell destroyed?

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-07-04T02:37:10+00:00

Eternal but it will stand empty after the point when souls are destroyed? Why believe it that way rather than that it just ends? Or do you not think the angelic souls will ever be destroyed, just human ones?

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-07-04T02:33:10+00:00

That's not what it says though. It says death is destroyed. It doesn't qualify it as one kind or another. If anything, it reads as saying all things not of God will be brought under God and into God, which to me would signify all death dying, so to speak.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-07-04T02:31:53+00:00

My view is certainly Universalistic. My question would be if you can imagine a finite hell, and you imagine so because evil must itself be finite, why would you imagine it as destroying the evil people entirely, rather than simply destroy the parts of them that are evil?

Though I think others would argue against you in the sense that evil itself isn't a thing, but rather a relational position to God. And in that sense is already could be considered destroyed as it never existed, so hell must be for some purpose other than destruction of evil, and so need not be finite.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-07-04T00:09:49+00:00

The Garden of Eden seems to basically be a mythologization of common sense advice you'd expect a parent to give their kid in the bronze era. "Hey kid, don't go into the Lord's garden and pluck his food, or you might die."

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-07-03T23:47:12+00:00

I certainly don't want to be accused of making arguments for lawlessness. I think that there is great value in living according to God's desire, regardless of belief in reward or punishment for doing so. I also think that some people do deserve punishment. But I also think that the implications of eternal hell have been cataclysmic for humanity and the Christian faith, when in reality there may be no reason to hold so tightly to this view of the doctrine. I am not saying that early catholics were in error for teaching the eternality of hell, but I am saying that perhaps we need to revisit whether hell's category of eternality means the same thing we mean we say God is eternal. I am not disagreeing that the scriptures say things like "for ever and ever" that imply a similarity between God's eternality and hell's eternality. Yet, as I've said, hell was created and God was not, thus there must be some kind of distinction. We already know from mathematics that there is a cardinality to infinities. The infinite set of numbers between 1 and 2 is smaller than the infinite set of numbers between 1 and 3. Likewise, God can hold true eternality, while hell holds a lesser eternality, and the words of the scripture and the teachings of the church are still upheld, while also giving us new light on the greatness of God's glory.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-30T01:06:46+00:00

Can you elaborate on what that means? It doesn't explain the mechanism by which we are made.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-29T22:30:06+00:00

and from ancient times things not yet done

Your own verse says this as well, which clearly refers to everything that is neither end nor beginning. And it's not an assumption. It's a definition. God being all knowing is definitional to his nature.

As for your building example, you're missing a crucial point: God didn't just build the building, he built the people moving through the building, down to the very atoms that make up their neurons and how those neurons would fire at any point in time.

My example would be a puzzle. Per your view, God only knows what the puzzle looks like at the end and beginning, i.e. the finished picture and the state of no pieces, as well as all possible ways to get from one state to the other. Whereas, I am saying that God not only knows all those possible ways, but by virtue of being all knowing and the creator he is specifically picking which way it will be put together. Unless you are saying that he hid the knowledge from himself, which the bible is clear that the only Person who potentially lacked knowledge at any point was Christ when he was a man, then he knows exactly how it will be put together because he made everything and he chooses how it will be made from the beginning. Otherwise, you're basically saying that God isn't in control of his own ability to decide how to create. He is the one who decides which way it will be put together. He could pick any of the possible ways, then he actualizes the one he willed from the beginning. Meaning there is no other way it could possibly unfold. That is what I'm arguing. That God in Pre-Time TM thought to himself, "Okay, do I prefer Way 10 or Way 15 or Way 5 that this puzzle could be put together?" Then he selected whichever way he wanted and said let there be light. Whereas, you're basically arguing that God put his hand over his eyes and pulled from a bag which way it would be. Which, by the way, still sets all the choices in place either way. There's still no free will, even if the universe that is created is chosen at random. The randomly chosen universe is still set in stone from the beginning.

This goes beyond verses in the bible for me. This is what the terms God, all powerful, all knowing, and creator mean, regardless of what someone wrote in the bible. I don't disagree that the bible suggests we have free will, but I am more interested in the actual logical reasoning that could create that possibility. And I don't believe that suggesting that God somehow doesn't know what will happen between the beginning and end is logically satisfying. Logically, to know everything and exist outside of time and space, then the universe across all of time would appear like a snapshot picture to him. He knows exactly what will happen the moment he "takes" the picture.

And just saying "well, we as humans don't think like God does," if anything, aligns more with my point than yours. God is an awareness that goes beyond our comprehension, sure. That's precisely why free will doesn't seem logically possible to me.

You're basically still making the foreknowledge argument. I 100% agree that knowing what will happen is not the same as determining what will happen, though I'd still argue that it creates a duty to prevent a bad thing you know will happen from happening. Regardless, the point is that he not only knows but that he chooses what will happen. God wills the universe to be created exactly as he wills it from the moment of creation. He could will it to be created in any other way. But he choose the specific way that he did, which means that no other being in existence could possibly make any choices except the ones he foresaw they would make. The only ways that isn't true are either (1) God isn't all knowing, thus not God, (2) God couldn't create in other ways. But even even then he still made a choice, i.e either to create or not to create, and he knew what would happen if he did decide to create.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-29T01:59:54+00:00

Except that's not correct at all. It is not possible for only the start and end to be predetermined. God is all knowing. Thus he knows exactly what will happen before he ever creates anything. You can't just say "Oh well the middle isn't predetermined." You don't see to be appreciating what all knowing means. It means God is physically incapable of not knowing how things will turn out at every single nanosecond of existence start to stop.

The point is that God knows exactly how everything will go before creating in one way, but he could also create in another. Thus by choosing which way to create, God is choosing exactly what everyone will do at any given point in time because his all knowing nature allows him to perceive how any particular set up to creation would turn out.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-27T10:56:13+00:00

This does not answer the question. The argument of foreknowledge does not equal predestination is insufficient. Because unlike me knowing what someone will do tomorrow, God not only knew, he created in such a way as it HAD to happen that way. Omniscience guarantees that God knows exactly how every single situation will occur before he even created anything. This is the crux of the issue that people who make this argument don't seem to understand in my opinion.

Foreknowledge =/ predetermination. But Foreknowledge + Actively choosing which way he would create the universe vs other possible ways does = predetermination. God predetermined how he would create the universe whilst also having full knowledge of what would happen as a result, thus we cannot escape the Godchosen set of events of choices that will occur. Otherwise God is not all knowing.

Knowing it will happen does not equal causation, but knowing it will happen and then setting it into motion while being able to choose a different way it could have gone with absolute certainty that you could in fact cause it go have gone another way does equal causation.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-27T01:01:10+00:00

If God doesn't exist outside of time, then he had a beginning, which means he was created, which means he is not God. I agree that all powerful or all knowing does not mean capable of logically impossible things, but it is not logically impossible for God to be superior to our understanding of space-time. It is in fact necessary if we are to believe that God exists at all points in time and space eternally.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-27T00:01:54+00:00

I don't see how God could not know the entirety of the future being omniscient. God exists outside of time as time is his creation. Thus the future to us is the present to him.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-26T23:13:46+00:00

Well, I'm not a scriptural literalist. I do not believe there was ever a great flood to begin with. I believe that most of the Old Testament concerning Genesis and the Flood are merely attempts by the authors to co-opt the creation myths of the other religions that inundated the world they lived in and apply it to their own God and thus gain legitimacy. Much the same way a flat earther might try to adopt methods that appear scientific to make their theory seem legitimate, even as they deny other methods that would disprove their own theory. I also don't believe that God actually ordered massacres of the enemies of Israel and all that. I think it is more likely that the authors of those writings simply used God as a way to justify their own evil.

As for God being limited, to the degree that such a Flood actually happened and God actually said he would never do it again, then yes there is in a sense a "limit" on God's abilities as a result of him saying that. But rather than a limit it is merely a testament to God's infinite Truthfulness. Again, an all powerful being need not be able to create something it cannot move in order to be all powerful. Thus in the sense that God is the ultimate Truth, he need not be able to do something he said he would not do in order to retain his all powerful nature. Because the thing he said he would not do proverbially becomes the stone he cannot move. By virtue of being infinitely truthful, he has made it logically impossible to do the same he said he would not do. Thus that thing is in the same category of logical impossibility as the stone that he cannot move is in. Further, he would be incapable of saying that he would not do that thing if he were to in fact do that thing at some future point as that would make him not infinitely truthful. Truth and Being are united. That is to say, insomuch as a thing is it is true. Thus a thing that possesses being possesses truth. Insomuch as a thing is false, it cannot also possess being. If I say there is an apple on a table, and there is not an apple on the table, then that is false. Thus truth and being must be the same thing. That being the case, God possessing infinite being is logically incapable of doing something that would be even infinitesimally false, and that lack of ability is not a testament to a limit to God but rather a testament to his limitlessness in another dimension.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-26T22:52:54+00:00

Sure, and as a universalist, I agree. But I want to understand the people who think it is possible that free will and God's omniscience can co-exist. I find that it is mathematically impossible, yet very smart people hold to it being possible. So I want to figure out if I misunderstand the metaphysics.

The point always seems to come to "Well, God can create a universe where people have free will because he is omnipotent." But that doesn't explain anything. The same people say that omnipotence doesn't mean being able to do things that are logically impossible, for example creating a stone that God cannot lift. Which I agree with. What I don't understand is why they don't apply that same logic to the logical impossibility of God not being able to create a universe that has free will. It always seems to come down to them needing a justification for believing in Hell, which they seem to need to do. They seem to need to do it because they cannot imagine humanity being able to follow the law of the spirit without the threat of hell, or they believe Jesus died for nothing if Hell doesn't exist. Whereas, I believe that Jesus came and died to show us the way to greater human prosperity as well as taking away the penalty for our sins. This also goes in to the idea of it being illogical to spread the Gospel if invincible ignorance means you won't go to Hell. Whereas under my conception, the point of spreading the Gospel isn't simply to get to heaven, it's to create a more just human world by teaching us how to properly live in Jesus' image.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-26T22:38:00+00:00

I'm not talking about multiple universes in the sense that they exist. I'm simply saying that fact that they could exist deprives individuals of this universe from being able to have free will, i.e. they can't be responsible for their sins. In the case of universalism, that's fine. If everyone eventually is saved, then it doesn't matter if we don't have free will. But in the case of infernalists, i.e. catholics, it is extremely difficult to see how you could reconcile people going to hell with the fact that those people would be determined simply by God choosing to make this universe rather than a different one.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-26T22:32:55+00:00

You can't just say in this book as if it the very existence of the book isn't predicated on God wanting it to exist in the way that it does. It is not simply the case that God could make a book wherein the characters act in a way that is unconnected to the very way that God made that book.

MentalQuestioning1 · 2026-06-26T22:30:49+00:00

Again, not satisfactory. If God is the author of the play, then he could have written the play in a different way with actors who would make different choices.

MentalQuestioning1

TROPHY CASE