884heid wrote:

Here are excerpts from an Eleanore Stump book that discusses PST. I decided to copy and paste from a random blog to make it easier to show her points:

[. . .]

Just a note to those that haven't read Stump's Aquinas that she attacks the popular penal substitution theory, (P), to propose Thomas's theory, (T), as a superior alternative in the following sections.

John West wrote:

884heid wrote:

Do you sometimes have trouble accepting this concept of eternal hell? P.S. I apologise in advance if I am incorrect in the assumption that you're a Catholic.

No need to apologize for assuming I'm Catholic! I spent some time in the RCIA, but I have too many doubts about Catholic theology to become one right now.

I'm, however, not troubled by the problem of Hell. I've always suspected that its bite is from questionable suppositions about ethics and divine duties.

Yeah that's true. It's more of an emotional issue for me rather than a logical one. Like Augustine couldn't experience ecstacy from Plotinus' meditations, I can't experience it from Catholic teachings and gospels. And that is a big problem because that's the only way i would ever go beyond philosophical theism. And that's not only relegated to Catholicism but to Avicennan version of Islam and Dvaita Vedanta of Hinduism as well. If Christianity is true, that would essentially qualify me as a reporbated individual who could not accept Jesus' proposal of being united with him, and thus, relegating me "by my choice of will" to spend an eternity in a place that is at worst, an unimaginably awful place. And excluding faith, I still have issues with Original sin, Trinity and Divine Simplicity, and most of the Theology concerning Mary. Sorry for the rant, it didn't really provide incentive for any person to continue the conversation, just simply wanted to write that.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

iwpoe wrote:

Buddhist's are in a strange position, since they think that there is no permanent self (nor permanent anything) in the first place to either reincarnate or "attain" Nirvana.

 ​I think any-thing is the important phrase here. Nirvana is permanent, though it is not individual or manifested thing. In some forms of Buddhism it is a transcendent state above individual things, but in others it all individual things are in some sense of it yet it transcends them (Samsara is Nirvana, as it is said). This is much like Advaita (and, indeed, Platonism).

The emphasis on the negative in Buddhism is such that one could hardly be blamed for thinking that Buddhist nirvana means the personal attainment of nothingness. or, at the very least, the attainment of the cessation of all that is in life that brings about suffering, which is most of life, including one's very self.

884heid wrote:

John West wrote:

884heid wrote:

Do you sometimes have trouble accepting this concept of eternal hell? P.S. I apologise in advance if I am incorrect in the assumption that you're a Catholic.

No need to apologize for assuming I'm Catholic! I spent some time in the RCIA, but I have too many doubts about Catholic theology to become one right now.

I'm, however, not troubled by the problem of Hell. I've always suspected that its bite is from questionable suppositions about ethics and divine duties.

Yeah that's true. It's more of an emotional issue for me rather than a logical one. Like Augustine couldn't experience ecstacy from Plotinus' meditations, I can't experience it from Catholic teachings and gospels. And that is a big problem because that's the only way i would ever go beyond philosophical theism. And that's not only relegated to Catholicism but to Avicennan version of Islam and Dvaita Vedanta of Hinduism as well. If Christianity is true, that would essentially qualify me as a reporbated individual who could not accept Jesus' proposal of being united with him, and thus, relegating me "by my choice of will" to spend an eternity in a place that is at worst, an unimaginably awful place. And excluding faith, I still have issues with Original sin, Trinity and Divine Simplicity, and most of the Theology concerning Mary. Sorry for the rant, it didn't really provide incentive for any person to continue the conversation, just simply wanted to write that.

Will pray for you, may you find that which you seek.

That's true as well, though I don't usually admit that of scripture outside of the context of Aristotelian theology, since it's not at all clear that the kione Greek of scriptures is particularly informed by an Aristotelian understanding of fire. I favor a classic philosophic reading of the New Testament not in the least part because of Paul and the Gospel of John, but many protestants do not.

As for hell, there is a moment in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, where Faustus comes to ask Mephistopheles if hell is so irrevocable how does he, as an especially damned demon, find himself out of it:

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think’st thou that I who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of Heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells,
In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss?

That seems to ring true for the Platonist also. Hell is here in this confusion separated from the highest things. There is an extra ingredient of, from the classical perspective, what Nietzsche calls Christian nihilism and antipathy towards life, but it's not as if the Platonist has any particularly good reason to think life all that much sweeter. He doesn't deeply lament his own depravity, but his entire practice, just as much as the Christian's, is consumed by looking to the transcendent in life. He ends up a kind of ascetic.