Ancient afterlife beliefs

  Hope vs justice IV: On the ‘final limbo’ “ Then I will grant to my called and elect ones whomsoever they request from me, out of the punishment. And I will give them [i.e. those for whom the elect pray] a fine baptism in salvation from the Acherousian lake which is, they say, in the Elysian field, a portion of righteousness with my holy ones ” (Apocalypse of Peter, Rainer Fragment, source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_of_Peter#Prayers_for_those_in_hell ) “ In like manner, the souls which are punished by being deprived of happiness immediately after death become unchangeable in their will. It has been proved that, for mortal sin, the soul is condemned to eternal punishment. But this punishment of the soul would not be everlasting if its will could be changed for the better, since it would be unjust if its punishment continued after its will is good. Therefore, the will of a lost soul cannot turn towards the good.” (Summa contra Gentiles, 4.93, source: https://aqu...

  The blessed and the konwledge of the fate of damned: how some supporters of endless conscious torments defended the endlessness of hell It is a standard Christian teaching that Christians should love and pray for their ‘enemies’ [1] . At the same time, most Christians also believed and believe that hell is an eternal and irrevocable state. In this post, I’ll provide some quotes of ancient and medieval theologians who supported endless conscious torment (ECT) in order to see how they tried to reconcile this view and the teaching of ‘loving enemies’. While nowadays few supporters of an endless hell [2] would agree, various theologians suggested that, paradoxically, the sight of punishments will increase the blessedness of saints [3] . Also, these theologians seem to argue that one can’t pray for the damned precisely because the damned are beyond hope of any kind of conversion – so it would be a fruitless prayer. The aim of this post is to present the views and they do not reflec...

'The book of Memorials' and its parallelism between the last breat and the last farthing In the 'book of the Bee', the 13th century East-Syrian bishop Solomon of Basra quotes Isaac of Nineveh, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia and a 'book of Memorials' (I never find it mentioned elsewhere). Of this book it provides two quotes. The second seems, prima facie, to be supportive of 'hell' (Gehenna) being a state of endless conscious torment. The first, however, reads as follows: " This world is the world of repentance, but the world which is to come is the world of retribution. As in this world repentance saves until the last breath, so in the world to come justice exacts to the uttermost farthing. And as it is impossible to see here strict justice unmingled with mercy, so it is impossible to find there strict justice mingled with mercy ." (Book of the Bee ch. 60, source:  https://sacred-texts.com/chr/bb/bb60.htm  ) I was struck by the paral...