For Catholic scholars and historians: Has the Christian (Catholic) Church always taught eternal torment?

Question

I have trouble believing that hell is a place of torment; the New Testament seems to indicate it at times; other times, it seems to indicate otherwise. I'm looking for comments made by EARLY Christian writers - preferaby those who who can be linked back to the apostles, or soon after, on the subject. I know Christians believed hell was a place of torment before the end of the 2nd century; I'm just wondering about the 1st century.

Answer 1

Good question! You're in luck, I have my copy of "The Teachings of the Church Fathers" edited by J. Willis with me at school today!

Ignatius of Antioch is among the earliest sources, having been martyred between 107 and 115 a.d. and was likely discipled by the Apostle John.

Ignatius' Letter to the Ephesisans (16:1) preaches eternal damnation for heresy:
"How much worse if, with bad doctrine, one should corrupt the faith of God for which Jesus Christ was crucified. Such a man, for becoming contaminated, will depart into unquencable fire; and will any one who listens to him."

Early second-century writers such as Justin Martyr and Polycarp also preached eternal torment for the damned:

From the Martyrdom of St. Polycarp (2:3)
"And the fire of [the martyrs'] savage torturers was cool to them; for they kept before their eyes the escape from eternal and unquenchable fire"

While Clement of Rome, martyred before the end of the 1st century, did not mention punishment in his first epistle, the 2nd epistle of St. Clement of Rome, which is considered by some to be apocryphal and dates around the mid-2nd century, does take portions of the Gospel to indicate eternal punishment (see 5:4 and 7:6).

There are few other first-century writings remaining that are considered representative of tradition. The Didache does not mention eternal punishment, in particular because it was used as a liturgical instruction, a sort of early Catechism, and saw the Second Coming as being imminent. It does mention that the world will be judged by fire, but not what will happen to those who fail in the final judgment (Ch. 16).

The Epistle of Barnabas, whose validity is also doubted because it has been dated linguistically to after the death of Barnabas in Acts, indicates eternal punishment for a list of offenses, and seems to parrallel in language Revelation 21:6-10. It is believed to have been written in 130 (Barnabas is believed to have been martyred around 60 a.d.), and if it adheres to a previous teaching of Barnabus on Cyprus (see the letters to Timothy), then it may represent the earliest such understanding (20:1-2):
"But the way of the Black One is crooked and full of a curse. For it is a way of eternal death with punishment wherein are the things that destroy men's souls"

Note that the first-century Gnostic movement did not adhere to an eternal torment eschatology, while the Monatist movement did (and actually held that grace, once lost, was forever lost, so that there was no reconciliation for sins after baptism). Both of these movements were considered heretical, in part because of these disparate eschatologies.

If you're looking for any clearer interpretation of Scripture from the time that Scripture was being written, it will be difficult. Fragments scarcely exist anymore from that period. Note also that many scholars date the Gospels to, the earliest, 50 or 60 a.d., and at the latest around 100 a.d.

I hope this helps. It can be edifying to observe the early writings outside of Scripture to help us understand the context of Scripture, and how early Christianity worked.

Answer 2

Ignatius of Antioch
Corrupters of families will not inherit the kingdom of God. And if they who do these things according to the flesh suffer death, how much more if a man corrupt by evil reaching the faith of God for the sake of which Jesus Christ was crucified? A man become so foul will depart into unquenchable fire, and so will anyone who listens to him. (Letter to the Ephesians 16:1–2 [A.D. 110])

Second Clement
If we do the will of Christ, we shall obtain rest; but if not, if we neglect his commandments, nothing will rescue us from eternal punishment. (Second Clement 5:5 [A.D. 150])

Justin Martyr
No more is it possible for the evildoer, the avaricious, and the treacherous to hide from God than it is for the virtuous. Every man will receive the eternal punishment or reward which his actions deserve. Indeed, if all men recognized this, no one would choose evil even for a short time, knowing that he would incur the eternal sentence of fire. On the contrary, he would take every means to control himself and to adorn himself in virtue, so that he might obtain the good gifts of God and escape the punishments. (First Apology 12 [A.D. 151])

Just to name a few.

Answer 3

each and every person seems to think of that Catholics are all murderous, toddler molesting perverts that replaced what they wanted in the Bible. it particularly is all thoroughly AND completely fake!! The Catholic Church with the help of no potential shape or form condones the abuse of infants, the homicide of everybody, and it grew to become into the PROTESTANTS that replaced the Bible to healthful them because of the fact they did no longer like what the seven books THEY skipped over had to declare!! As for the monks that did abuse infants are you able to teach that NO PROTESTANT MINISTER ever abused a toddler??? NO you will no longer be able to because of the fact they ought to! no person is nice and you will no longer come across a unmarried member of the Catholic Church declare that they are. it is likewise an uncomplicated certainty that majority of pedophiles are MARRIED adult men!! So monks no longer being allowed to get married has no longer something to do with those few that went against God! For all you so referred to as "Christians" at right here bashing others that do no longer believe as you do, why do no longer you attempt interpreting your Bible, working in the direction of what it says, and as JESUS stated " choose no longer much less ye be judged!" Jesus CREATED the Catholic Church, He placed Peter has the top of the Church (AKA The Pope). And Jesus additionally stated that many could attack and attempt to wreck his Church even though it may in no way ensue! it particularly is the reason such countless attack the Catholic Church, Jesus stated they could and such countless in this website and others, on television, radio, and different clever are showing basically how suitable He grew to become into while He stated it! i think of it particularly is time we get returned to serving God and following Jesus' occasion and stop being hypocrites!!!

Answer 4

No one really knows what hell is like. It has been described by people who have not been there as everything from flames to a frozen lake (Dante).

Hell is the state of complete and final self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed, reserved for those who refuse by their own free choice to believe and be converted from sin, even to the end of their lives

I like to think of it this way. The only way a person will go to hell is if they want to.

God in His (or Her) unlimited love has given us free will to choose. Our most important choice is to freely decide to accept or reject God's constant offer of spending eternity with Him in heaven. God will respect the choice to reject Him.

For more information, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, sections 1033-1037: http://www.usccb.org/catechism/text/pt1sect2chpt3art12.htm#1033

With love in Christ.

Answer 5

I was under the impression that hell (according to catholics) was just the absence of God.

Answer 6

once the money started rolling in is probably when they started screaming about eternal damnation, fear of eternal damnation is how they have $600 million dollars to pay molestation victims while taking vows of poverty.

Answer 7

Tradition / Church Fathers
"If any one confesses Christ Jesus the Lord, but denies the God of the law and of the prophets, saying that the Father of Christ is not the Maker of heaven and earth, he has not continued in the truth any more than his father the devil, and is a disciple of Simon Magus, not of the Holy Spirit." Ignatius of Antioch, To the Philadelphians, 5 (A.D. 110).

"…Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, 'every knee should bow, of things in heaven,, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess' to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all; that He may send 'spiritual wickednesses,' and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, together with the ungodly, and unrighteous, and wicked, and profane among men, into everlasting fire; but may, in the exercise of His grace, confer immortality on the righteous, and holy, and those who have kept His commandments, and have persevered in His love, some from the beginning of their Christian course, and others from the date of their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory." Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 1,10,10 (A.D. 180).

"…thus also the punishment of those who do not believe the Word of God, and despise His advent, and are turned away backwards, is increased; being not merely temporal, but rendered also eternal. For to whomsoever the Lord shall say, 'Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire,' these shall be damned for ever; and to whomsoever He shall say, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you for eternity,' these do receive the kingdom for ever, and make constant advance in it; since there is one and the same God the Father, and His Word, who has been always present with the human race, by means indeed of various dispensations, and has wrought out many things, and saved from the beginning those who are saved, (for these are they who love God, and follow the Word of God according to the class to which they belong,) and has judged those who are judged, that is, those who forget God, and are blasphemous, and transgressors of His word." Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4,28,2 (A.D. 180).

"But do you also, if you please, give reverential attention to the prophetic Scriptures, and they will make your way plainer for escaping the eternal punishments, and obtaining the eternal prizes of God." Theophilus of Antioch, To Autolycus, 1:14 (A.D. 181).

"[T]hese have further set before us the proofs He has given of His majesty in judgments by floods and fires, the rules appointed by Him for securing His favour, as well as the retribution in store for the ignoring, forsaking and keeping them, as being about at the end of all to adjudge His worshippers to everlasting life, and the wicked to the doom of fire at once without ending and without break, raising up again all the dead from the beginning, reforming and renewing them with the object of awarding either recompense." Tertullian, Apology, 18:3 (A.D. 197).

"Therefore after this there is neither death nor repeated resurrections, but we shall be the same that we are now, and still unchanged--the servants of God, ever with God, clothed upon with the proper substance of eternity; but the profane, and all who are not true worshippers of God, in like manner shall be consigned to the punishment of everlasting fire--that fire which, from its very nature indeed, directly ministers to their incorruptibility." Tertullian, Apology, 48:12 (A.D. 197).

"[T]he world when thou shall know what it is to live truly in heaven, when thou shalt despise that which is here esteemed to be death, when thou shalt fear what is truly death, which is reserved for those who shall be condemned to the eternal fire, which shall afflict those even to the end that are committed to it." Letter to Diognetus 10:7 (A.D. 200).

"Of which voice the justification will be seen in the awarding to each that which is just; since to those who have done well shall be assigned righteously eternal bliss, and to the lovers of iniquity shall be given eternal punishment." Hippolytus, Against the Greeks, 3 (ante A.D. 225).

"Oh,what and how great will that day be at its coming, beloved brethren, when the Lord shall begin to count up His people, and to recognize the deservings of each one by the inspection of His divine knowledge, to send the guilty to Gehenna, and to set on fire our persecutors with the perpetual burning of a penal fire, but to pay to us the reward of our faith and devotion!" Cyprian, To Thibaris, Epistle 55 (58):10 (A.D. 253).

"But, however, the sacred writings inform us in what manner the wicked are to undergo punishment. For because they have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh, that they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it will not be that flesh with which God clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible, and abiding for ever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and everlasting fire...The same divine fire, therefore, with one and the same force and power, will both burn the wicked and will form them again, and will replace as much as it shall consume of their bodies, and will supply itself with eternal nourishment ...Then they whose piety shall have been approved of will receive the reward of immortality; but they whose sins and crimes shall have been brought to light will not rise again, but will be hidden in the same darkness with the wicked, being destined to certain punishment." Lactantius, Divine Institutes, 7:21 (A.D 310).

"The real and true life then is the Father, who through the Son in the Holy Spirit pours forth as from a fountain His heavenly gifts to all; and through His love to man, the blessings of the life eternal are promised without fail to us men also. We must not disbelieve the possibility of this, but having an eye not to our own weakness but to His power, we must believe; for with God all things are possible. And that this is possible, and that we may look for eternal life, Daniel declares, And of the many righteous shall they shine as the stars for ever and ever. And Paul says, And so shall we be ever with the Lord(1): for the being for ever with the lord implies the life eternal. But most plainly of all the Saviour Himself says in the Gospel, And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 18:28 (A.D. 350).

"[I]nto eternal punishment; the just, however, into eternal life." Basil, Rules brieflyTreated, 267 (A.D. 370).

"We believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church, and in One baptism of repenetance, and in the resurrection of the dead and the just judgment of souls and bodies, and in the kingdom of heaven, and in eternal life." Epiphanius, The Man Well Anchored, 120 (A.D. 374).

"[T]o judge the living and dead, of Whose kingdom there will be no end...look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen." Creed of Constantinople (A.D. 381).

"When you hear the word fire, you have been taught to think of a fire other than the fire we see, owing to something being added to that fire which in this there is not; for that fire is never quenched, whereas experience has discovered many ways of quenching this; and there is a great difference between a fire which can be extinguished, and one that does not admit of extinction. That fire, therefore, is something other than this. If, again, a person hears the word 'worm,' let not his thoughts, from the similarity of the term, be carried to the creature here that crawls upon the ground; for the addition that it 'dieth not' suggests the thought of another reptile than that known here. Since, then, these things are set before us as to be expected in the life that follows this, being the natural outgrowth according to the righteous judgment of God, in the life of each, of his particular disposition, it must be the part of the wise not to regard the present, but that which follows after, and to lay down the foundations for that unspeakable blessedness during this short and fleeting life, and by a good choice to wean themselves from all experience of evil, now in their lifetime here, hereafter in their eternal recompense." Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechism, 40 (A.D. 383).