Quote Originally Posted by Philipvs Vallindervs Calicvla View Post
Yes, lots.



On the contrary, the idea of suffering and "paying your dues" was considered incompatable with Christianity by Protestants and that was why they dropped purgatory. I think Tellos was on the right track when he said the focus was on "salvation" but that word still emplies "salvation from hell" which is really a tangental part of Christianity, not a central one.

Central to Christianity is the idea of a broken relationship with God, and fixing that relationship. If you fix the relationship then when you die you go to be with God again (Heaven) and if you don't then you are without God (in Hell). My own view of Hell is not "fire and brimstone" because I think that's as much an allegory as the precious metals and stones that make up the New Jerusalem.

Hell is a total absense of God, which means a total absense of everything, even "suffering" as we are able to understand it, an eternity in the void, and I can imagine nothing worse than that. Of course, for that to conception of Hell to work man needs to choose whether to accept or reject God, he needs Free Will.
True, but according to most protestants God's salvation is still conditional upon accepting Christ by your death. The idea of hell in which I was speaking of is not so much purgatory as it is another chance to make peace with god. Would God truly allow something as simple as death to come in the way of an eventual reunion with one of his children? Remember the prodigal son, it is not the saved who god reaches out to as much as those who can be brought back into the flock. The existence of a permanent hell contradicts to many things to hold any weight.