{"id":2865,"date":"2010-08-12T23:55:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T23:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/jesus-death-destroys-hell\/"},"modified":"2010-08-12T23:55:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T23:55:00","slug":"jesus-death-destroys-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/jesus-death-destroys-hell.html","title":{"rendered":"Jesus&#8217; Death Destroys Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\">In a recent discussion on Facebook, I\u00a0explained once again that I am not convinced that the penal substitionary theory of the atonement is found in the Bible (which is ironic, given that this is the most popular way of interpreting the death of Jesus among so-called \u201cBible-believing\u201d Christians).<\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/155\/434198626_6d8a1e1106_m.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/farm1.static.flickr.com\/155\/434198626_6d8a1e1106_m.jpg\"><\/a>But I must admit that, if this view of the death of Jesus is correct, it does have a wonderful implication.<\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"border-bottom: medium none;border-left: medium none;border-right: medium none;border-top: medium none\">On the typical\u00a0conservative Christian\u00a0view, <em>Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection surely proves that there will be no eternal punishment<\/em>. <\/div>\n<p>After all, how can someone claim that Jesus\u2019 death (and perhaps a subsequent descent into hell, according to some) was his bearing of the punishment for sin that others ought to have paid, if that punishment is eternal, and yet Jesus did not suffer eternally? <\/p>\n<p>Based on the Biblical accounts of Jesus\u2019 death and the amount of\u00a0time he spent in the grave, punishment will last at most a couple of days. And so if you are a conservative Christian, you can rejoice at this implication of one of your core beliefs: Jesus\u2019 death frees you from the fear of hell \u2013 both for yourself and for others. Hallelujah!<\/p>\n<p>On a related note, <a href=\"http:\/\/jthughes.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/reading-bible-is-like-doing-crystal.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">here is a provocative cartoon<\/a>, which provides another reason to think that eternal punishment is a fundamentally mistaken notion. To suggest that a God who calls us to forgive and to treat others as we would want to be treated does not \u201cpractice what he preaches\u201d is problematic, to say the least:<\/p>\n<div class=\"separator\" style=\"clear: both;text-align: center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_VuuQgOexnWk\/TGNvxhiBulI\/AAAAAAAAA-Q\/-YLBKCaLmu0\/s1600\/golden+rule.bmp\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"221\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_VuuQgOexnWk\/TGNvxhiBulI\/AAAAAAAAA-Q\/-YLBKCaLmu0\/s400\/golden+rule.bmp\" width=\"400\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7622297540113836091-1304514750432405478?l=exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com\" alt=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent discussion on Facebook, I\u00a0explained once again that I am not convinced that the penal substitionary theory of the atonement is found in the Bible (which is ironic, given that this is the most popular way of interpreting the death of Jesus among so-called \u201cBible-believing\u201d Christians). But I must admit that, if this [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Jesus&#039; Death Destroys Hell<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a recent discussion on Facebook, I&nbsp;explained once again that I am not convinced that the penal substitionary theory of the atonement is found in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/jesus-death-destroys-hell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jesus&#039; Death Destroys Hell\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a recent discussion on Facebook, I&nbsp;explained once again that I am not convinced that the penal substitionary theory of the atonement is found in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2010\/08\/jesus-death-destroys-hell.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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