[Topics]
(Most or many) Church fathers were idiots (and
annihilationism is wishful thinking.)
Beginning with a quote by Irenaeus of Lyons:
“…he who shall preserve the life bestowed upon him, and give thanks
to Him who imparted it, shall receive also length of days for ever and
ever. But he who shall reject it, and prove himself ungrateful to his
Maker, inasmuch as he has been created, and has not recognized Him who
bestowed [the gift upon him], deprives himself of [the privilege of]
continuance forever and ever…those who, in this brief temporal life,
have shown themselves ungrateful to Him who bestowed it, shall justly not
receive from Him length of days for ever and ever.”
[Irenaeus of Lyons, “Against Heresies, Book 2, Chapter 34,” The Ante-Nicene
Fathers: Volume 1, eds. Roberts, Alexander, James Donaldson, and A.
Cleveland Coxe (Christian Literature, 1885), 411-412. Bracketed statements
theirs.]
(Quote from
this
website.)
This is the usual mumbo-jumbo of having to be thankful for one’s earthly
life, which the Bible does not even teach.
In the New Testament, there are three Greek words for life, bios,
psyche and zoe of which the first—physical life—is the
lowest and the last one—life out of God—the highest.
Irenaeus is also misrepresenting salvation, which has nothing to do
with being grateful for a life you may even hate. You have to
repent of your sins. What else? Why would I waste much time
reading the Church Fathers when most of them had little clue, making up
their own Bible even? Theology is opinion and often enough awful awful
awful.
Irenaeus also repeats the life is short
nonsense, which is obviously false. Why else do people commit suicide?
If it’s over in a heartbeat, there is no need to go through all the
trouble of researching and committing suicide. Imbecile.
Did Irenaeus not know the Book of Job? – After all, it’s one of
the oldest books of the Bible. Job cursed his birth, he hated his
existence. If you are born sick and have to live a disgusting life,
then that’s Job.
Further, if I don’t exist at all—the stupid teaching called
annihilation—, then I don’t suffer either. I don’t regret not existing
in Heaven if I simply vanish completely. Where is the suffering? Where
is the punishment? How stupid can people be?
After all, back as an atheist, I hanged myself at age twenty-three and
simply wished to not exist anymore. I rather wanted to become unconscious
forever—the way I saw death back then—than continue to live this
cruddy, awful life I never asked for in the first place and for which
Christians do not need to be thankful.
Holy Scripture does not teach that we ought to thank God for our physical
existence, and neither does Christ call our physical life, bios,
a gift for which we ought to be thankful. The Bible teaches it is best
not to marry as even Vox Day
said and accepts.
Great Christians like Pascal and Kierkegaard only suffered through their
awful lives, I’m sure, because they feared Hell.
I certainly would kill myself immediately if I knew that suicide would
end either in total destruction or salvation. Non-existence cannot be
feared because you will not experience it. Therefore, a Jack the
Ripper could choose to live the life he lived without suffering
any punishment in the end.
One of those still defending nonsense like annihilationism
writes:
“Although I do not believe the unrepentant would ever want God for
God himself, they certainly will not want to die with no hope of ever
coming back. For more on how much people really do fear death, see
Rethinking Hell podcast Episode 50: “Necrophobia! with Glenn Peoples
and Chris Date.” They would still want the accoutrements of life like
they have now on earth, even if they don’t want the giver of life.”
I did not hang myself with the hope of coming back … who can be
this idiotic? They also quote from the Book of Job in one
of their awful, lowbrow articles regarding the word gnashing.
They, though, ignore Job 3:21-22:
Which long for death, but it cometh not; and dig for it more than
for hid treasures; Which rejoice exceedingly, and are glad, when they
can find the grave?
This, at the very least, shows the annihilists’s feelings
regarding how people see death as false. Job longed for the grave and
so do I.
Further, I have read often enough that people reject the death penalty
because this would be too easy or not enough punishment.
As I wrote above, I as well as any other person wanting to commit
suicide does not want life, but wants to end it. These imbeciles
act as if suicide does not exist or is a mistake. Even if we make use
of the rather silly argument that they do want life, only differently,
what does this explain or defend anyway? If someone is born ugly,
deformed, sick and so on, it is impossible to change; or if I reject
the times I am living in, killing myself because I am unable to bear
living in this vulgar, decadent and deranged age. How could that be
“fixed”? By becoming an alcoholic?
It also means that I do not want any of this. Their assumption
that everyone wants to live is just that, an assumption. A false one.
Some people even commit suicide using horrible methods like
self-immolation (setting oneself on fire.)
They are clinging to some vague concept like necrophobia, which
has nothing to do with anything they write about at all, to make
themselves believe that the true punishment really is not existing!
Which would mean that if a child I could have had was not born
because instead of marrying I became a monk, it now suffers in
nothingness …
You can’t be this stupid, can you? If you don’t exist, you cannot suffer.
I did not exist when Bismarck was alive, which also means I did not suffer
back then.
It’s telling that they read all verses that have to do with eternal
damnation with a magnifying glass, while they don’t apply such scrutiny
to other verses, not even those that have to do with salvation.
If non-existence is like not having been born, or being unconscious, we
would have to be afraid of going to bed each night.
Even Hamlet famously said or that God had not fix’d his canon
’gainst self-slaughter! Why fear nothingness if that is what you want?
Did Hamlet, who pondered suicide, fear not to exist?
Even though he obviously was less than happy to be alive? No.
Kierkegaard prayed he may die, and Paul, in Philippians 1:21-23
even wishes himself into Heaven, though he, like all of us, has no
real idea what it would be like. Some idiots even think there will be
tears in Heaven!
Again, I only live because I was born-again and fear eternal damnation,
i.e. eternal suffering. That’s all. Job was a man of God and cursed
his birth. Full stop.
To add to the above, torture seems worse than simply being put to death.
Those making use of the right to die want a death without much pain.
Conscious torment is usually seen as less desirable.
Nothingness is even the goal of many buddhists – Nirvana.
It also does not matter much what Church fathers thought on this or
that matter, since they also disagree among themselves about other
topics and are of different intellectual calibre anyway. Which, in this
case, is not even of any use, since we are talking about matters that
have no ultimate answer in this world.
They always allude to peoples’ apparent love for existence or so, which
doesn’t apply to me, nor does it to others. Well-known cases, even of
Christians, exist that prove them wrong.
Whenever the New Testament speaks of something being a gift, it is
almost always God’s grace that is seen as a gift, or eternal
life. Not our physical, temporal life. Since many of those who believe
in annihilationism call this life already a gift, it goes to show
that they are supposing everyone else sees it that way also.
However, even if Aquinas called it a gift in his writings on suicide,
too, it is and remains a subjective view.
After all, Moses (Numbers 11:13-15), Elijah (1 Kings 19:4),
Job (Job 3:11), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 20:14-18), Jonah
(Jonah 4:8) wished to die or cursed their birth.
Paul wished he were in Heaven already (Philippians 1:21-23).
One of those defending it writes:
[…]
In fact, in my first ten years as a Christian, I never had any moral
or philosophical objections to the doctrine of eternal torment, and I
embraced and defended it as what I thought was clearly taught in God’s
word. I embraced annihilationism—despite desperately wishing not to
wished then, and I still wish now, that I could believe in the doctrine
of eternal torment, because it would make my life a lot easier as a
conservative, Reformed evangelical. It would open doors of opportunity
currently closed to me, for example, in the local church, global ministry,
and Christian higher education. —because I became convinced Scripture
clearly teaches it.
[…]
Now this does not sound like a sensitive individual, rather worldly even.
Obviously eternal torment is a horrible view and doctrine, unlike his
“annihilationism” that he now defends.
That it closes off opportunities to make a quick buck is something
Kierkegaard could only have scoffed at.
I will not link to their site, and their answer to
Matt Slick
did not convince me at all. Many of their arguments consist of
very unorthodox and shaky interpretations of certain verses.
Despite the fact that Slick did upset me with his attempt to
downplay the horror of disability and illnesses – therewith denying
the importance of implementing eugenics – I’d
rather side with
his view
on the matter. As horrible as it is.
Many of these guys seem to be heavily invested in this world,
unlike myself. I hate this place and am glad when I’m dead.
It is therefore a position I do not understand, that does not make sense
logically but also personally: I simply do not see not existing as something
to dread since I hate my life.
To quote Nicolás Gómez Dávila, of whom I also read a critical remark
regarding the Church fathers that I, unfortunately, don’t have at hand
currently:
We live because we do not view ourselves with the same eyes with which
everybody else views us.
It is not primitive cults that discredit religion, but American
sects.
One could object to science that it easily falls into the hands of
imbeciles, if religion’s case were not just as serious.
Christianity, when it abolishes its ancient liturgical languages,
degenerates in to strange, uncouth sects.
Once contact is broken with Greek and Latin antiquity, once its medieval
and patristic inheritance is lost, any simpleton turns into its
exegete.
The evolution of Christian dogma is less evident than the evolution
of Christian theology.
We Catholics with little theology believe, in the end, the same thing
as the first slave who converted in Ephesus or Corinth.
Religion is the only serious thing, but one need not take seriously
every declaration of homo religiosus.
The religious problem grows worse each day because the faithful are not
theologians and the theologians are not faithful.
When the theologian explains the reason for some act of God, the
listener wavers between indignation and laughter.
The modern theologian’s pirouettes have not gained him one conversion
more, nor one apostasy less.
The city imagined by every utopian is always tacky—beginning with that
of the Apocalypse.
The temptation for the churchman is to carry the waters of religion
in the sieve of theology.
We should not believe in the theologian’s God except when He resembles
the God called on in distress.
The heart does not rebel against the will of God, but against the
“reasons” they dare attribute to it.