By David Futrelle
As No-Nut November nears its climax, one reactionary Catholic tweeter is asking those who’ve given up nutting to porn whether or not their intentions are pure.
Avoiding the lake of fire, if such a thing exists, might seem to be a perfectly valid reason to give up any number of sins, but not everyone seems to agree. Indeed, some of the most contentious challenges to Classical Theist come from fellow reactionary Christians raising thorny theological questions.
I’ll leave the finer points of this discussion to those who have a better understanding of God’s feelings about people wanking it than I do. But I will point out that Classical Theist not only disagrees with these commenters, but also himself, or at least the earlier version of himself that tweeted a somewhat different, and rather less dramatic, version of his argument back in September.
In case you’re wondering, yes, Mr. CT has opinions about all sorts of other things. Like contraception.
The ordination of women:
And the proper storage of female intellectuals:
Well, that’s enough theology for today. Please return to whatever you were doing, or not doing, as the case may be.
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Wait, so not doing things that make you go to hell because they’ll make you go to hell is not right? I’m confused. I thought the whole idea of hell was a punishment to make people not do certain things.
Did anyone else notice that the last tweet was in response to neo-Nazi Nicholas Fuentes?
Also, I looked at his Twitter and he also has some thoughts about Jews. In one, he thinks that since Jesus was a Jew, criticism of Christianity is antisemitism but that modern Jews are not real Jews because they don’t worship Jesus. Reminds me a bit of the Jews for Jesus.
You’re not a real Christian if you’re not telling other Christians that they’re Christianing wrong.
This guy seems super tense and aggressive. Maybe he should give himself some self-care time.
@Naglfar:
I think the idea is that if you’re doing (or not doing) something solely to avoid Hell, then you’re doing (or not doing) it out of fear of Hell, not out of love of Christ, and thus it’s still wrong.
As for ‘the whole idea of Hell’, really, it’s almost entirely ‘biblical fanfic’ and accrued tradition anyway, with some of the earliest references probably describing a trash heap. (Meaning ‘going to Hell’ would have been less ‘being punished for sins’ and more ‘being forgotten for wasting your life’.) It’s barely mentioned in the Bible at all.
@Weasel-Rah
Or he should just stay off the internet indefinitely. I feel like no amount of “self care” can help this asshole.
@Jenora Feuer
Is hell in any way a syncretic creation based on the beliefs of other cultures Christians encountered? Like how Christmas is based off of Saturnalia?
“If you think sex is a good enough reason to have sex, then you’re equating yourself to God” is the weirdest take I’ve heard on any topic in my life.
@naglfar “biblical fanfic” i love it and will definitely use it ASAP! THANKS
@FlyByKiwi
You might want to thank Jenora Feuer, as they are the person who originally called it that. But, you’re welcome, I guess.
@Naglfar
Ooh, ooh, I know that!
(Sorry for being so excited, but it’s rare to actually be able to answer something here based on my university knowledge.)
There is some good likelihood that the origin of the idea of Hell as it appears in late Jewish apocripha and early Christian writings (which of course are quite related) is in Zoroastrian beliefs. It’s hard to know this 100%, because as always in culture stories and ideas move around, but if you look up texts such as the story of Arda Viraz, there are descriptions of afterlife punishments for sinners that are very similar to those which would later appear in Jewish and Christian thought (and later on, Mslim thought), so it makes a lot if sense that this was the source. Because, yes, the original Bible (OT) has nothing like that, or really not much in terms of referring to the afterlife at all. If you check, most of the biblical promises of reward and punishment refer to things that hapoen in this world, either in the person’s lifetime or in that if their descendants.
I could go on but should really go to bed.
Gah, all those typos and no edit option because my browser is acting up!
Oh well, good night.
Don’t think this mental midget realizes this may be the world’s longest oxymoron.
As for me, the quote above is my definition of Hell–ugh. No theocracies for me, thank you kindly.
@Penny Psmith
Thank you for the information. As a Jew, I’m not very familiar with Christian and Zoroastrian texts, so thank you for filling me in on that.
In Jewish discourse (or at least that which I’ve participated in) the concept of hell doesn’t really ever come up and so I don’t know too much about it as an idea, so thank you for telling me more about the concept.
*Squints at picture of Office Jesus*
That’s not a mouse. That’s a sperm.
@Definitely not Steve
Well, every sperm is sacred…
So, Devin Nunes may be (fingers crossed) about to go down.
https://twitter.com/weareoversight/status/1198082758926651392
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1198063986819895296
Two stories in one night. Ouch!
I hate that I have to share my religion with these people
I hope I didn’t do a stupid thing. I wanted to take Ibuprofen because it brings down the inflammation in my sinuses and I need to sleep and dry up the nasal passages. So I took an Ibuprofen PM. But I’ve also had three beers and three glasses of wine. It was over the course of 8 – 9 hours, so I’m more buzzed than drunk even though that sounds like a lot of drinks, but still, it is drug mixing.
I did some Googling and it doesn’t appear that the Benadryl and alcohol combo is dangerous from an OD perspective, it can just cause dizziness and enhance the drowsiness. But still, I feel a little nervous.
Oh, well. I’ll check back in tomorrow after a coffee I’m sure I’ll need. Right now? I’m feeling an interesting combo of a little bit Millie and a little bit Lindsay.
I hope some people get Freaks and Geeks references.
‘As No-Nut November nears its climax…,’ comedy gold, David.
Two quite amusing sources for the ‘do the right thing for the right reason’ idea are C S Lewis’ book The Screwtape Letters and the film Bedazzled.
@Naglfar
I’m Jewish too! 🙂 And yeah, a lot of these concepts are pretty alien to Judaism (although it’s been catching up, slowly but surely, through the influence of Christian/Muslim ideas). Like I said, in the Tanakh you don’t even get promises of reward/punishment in the afterlife; even when the promises are far into the future, it’s always in this world, not in the next.
But in the apocrypha (which start at around the same time as the latest books of the Tanakh, such as Job or Daniel – and that’s also close to the time Christianity starts) you do have apocalypses[*] that include descriptions of an afterlife, and in some of them (I want to say the Apocalypse of Baruch as an example? I’m not sure, though, I’ll need to look it up in my old coursework) you get descriptions of a Hell with all sorts of fiery punishments for sinners. Few, but they’re there.
And if you look at these descriptions and look at similar Zoroastrian texts (there might be others besides Arda Viraz, but that’s the only one I know; some years ago I took a fascinating course on Arda Viraz and Dante), there are definitely a lot of things that are quite alike.
So, seeing as how the Zoroastrian texts are earlier, and how the (largely Zoroastrian) Persian Sassanid empire was a major force in the area both politically and culturally, and considering the way that stories tend to travel between places, it does make sense to trace the idea of Hell as we currently see it in the Abrahamic religions (especially Christianity and Islam, but as I said, Judaism has been catching up) back to Zoroastrianism. I’m not sure if I’d call it a syncretic creation per se, but that depends a lot on definitions.
[*] In the original sense of “divine vision”; many apocalypses do talk about the eschaton, the endtimes, which is probably what led to the confusion in modern terminology (plus, “post-apocalyptic” just sounds somehow better than “post-eschatonic”, you know?), but others have different kinds of visions.
@ penny
As I’m sure you know, the literal meaning of apocalypse is just ‘to uncover’ and it was used metaphorically to mean ‘drawing back the veil’. It’s the literal opposite to ‘occult’.
So the whole point of a ‘revelation’ was just to let people know what had previously have been hidden from them; and that of course could include the eschaton.
Speaking of where the idea of Hell came from, one of the guys at the Patheos set of blogs had a piece that explored where the idea for eternal punishment in the afterlife came from. His conclusion was…not from the Bible itself. Interesting read, in my opinion.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/keithgiles/2019/10/where-the-hell-did-hell-come-from/
WWTH: I’m a doctor, but not the kind that helps people.
Nevertheless I’m on the Internet so I can say that my understanding is that Benadryl + alcohol means it would be dangerous to operate heavy machinery in your dreams.
Penny Psmith: picking a nit, the Sassanids only took over in the 3rd century CE, so the period you’re talking about would have been Parthians, or before that the Seleucid (who were Greek but didn’t care that much about the state religion), and before *that* the Achaemenid.
@WWTH:
Nunes! With each passing day, John Oliver’s term “Stupid Watergate” seems more apt. Nunes has the intellect of a banana: I wouldn’t send him out for groceries, much less get into a criminal conspiracy with him.
@numerobis:
You’re right, I should have looked that up (or just written “Persian empire” like I was going to before I decided to expand that). I usually deal with the immediately pre-Islamic to early Islamic periods, so obviously have learned to connect Persian to “Sassanid”, but should have known that makes no sense in earlier centuries.
The part about them being a major force still stands, though!