Offshoot discussion of "what religion are you" thread

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
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My younger sister was having some problems with the hell, and I was talking to her about it. There are two passages that I like to refer to about this subject. In one of them, Jesus is upset over the cities Korazin and Bethsaida refusing to believe (At least I think it's those two cities). Anyway, he says that it would be worse for them on the judgment day than for Sodom and Gomorrah, because if the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had seen the miracles that were done in Korazin and Bethsaida, they would have repented.

This implies that there are degrees of punishment; people aren't just all thrown into one tub of fire.

Second, Jesus describes two people committing a crime. One did it knowingly and the other unknowingly, but both sinned. Jesus says that he who did the sin knowingly will be beaten with many blows, but he who did it unknowingly will be beaten with few blows.

As in Dante's Inferno in the First Circle of Hell:

The kindly master said"Do you not ask
who are these spirits whom you see before you?
I'd have you know before you go ahead,
they did not sin; and yet though they have merits,
that's not enough, because they lacked baptism,
the portal of the faith that you embrace.

And if they lived before Christianity,
they did not worship God in fitting ways;
and of such spirits I myself am one.
For these defects and for no other evil,
we now are lost and punished just with this:
we have no hope and yet we live with longing.
(Canto IV lines 31-42)

The 'master' is the Roman poet Virgil, and the other inhabitants of Limbo are the great pagan writers and thinkers (Dante was a good Classicist).

Virgil goes on to name Adam and the other Old Testament figures as having resided in the First Circle until Christ came to bear them to Heaven; I think that in Catholic doctrine it's also the home of babies who die before baptism.

It's not a place of torment- but it's definitely not Heaven either.