Reading the Church Fathers' comments on the Bible now and is simultaneously appaled, confused, and disturbed by this shit:
Paul: "…whoever brings back a sinner from his wandering will save his soul from death…" (James 5:20)
Church Fathers: "Here, Paul talks about soul being in the danger of "death" from sin. Clearly, "death" there should be understood as a separation from God and not as destruction…"
Paul again: "…the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ…" (Romans 6:23)
Church Fathers: "Obviously, "death" there means not real death, but an eternal separation from God, and "life in Christ" means eternal submission to Christ!"
Paul again: "…by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly" (2 Peter 2:6)
Church Fathers: "You should very much read this as ungodly being punished by fire, yes, but you shouldn't think they would ever became actual ashes! Instead, they would burn for eternity!"
Jesus: "Do not fear those who can kill the body, but cannot kill the soul, instead fear the one who can kill both body and soul in hell…"
Chruch Fathers: "How can the Lord speak about "killing" the soul in hell if the soul can never die? The answer to that is that "kill" in this context actually means "eternally torture". Praise the perfect mercy of Lord our God!!!"
What the fuck is wrong with these people?! Why were they such deranged, cartoonishly evil monsters?
…Oh, right. This is your brain on Platonism. This is what Platonism actually does to your brain.
>>2488484I think you are reading a lot into things here. I don't think the Church Fathers mean "okay we shouldn't save people and life just means be obedient." by reading 'death' and 'life' allegorically, they are expanding the meaning of both terms to include more things. You could stretch the reading here so that 'death' doesn't just mean saving someone from biological death, but other forms of suffering, alienation, oppression etc. Similarly, by reading 'life in Christ' as submission to Christ, and Christ only, you reject worldly authority, capital, rulers etc. So there are many ways you could look at this beyond a simple narrow reading. If your disturbed by the idea of eternal punishment, fair enough, but its not really an unhinged thing to believe and a pretty straightforward extrapolation from the text. I'm not a Christian so I can't really comment on that.
>>2488645>annihilationism is biblically accurate"All your pet dogs and cats are in heaven! lol….lmao" - Spinoza, probably
>>2488535>you reject worldly authority, capital, rulers etc.The Gnostics and Cathars and others tried to argue that, and found out that no one has burnt more humans than Christians. Their whole thing is erasing all opposition to their death cult. Literally the only surviving texts were hidden in a cave like the Dead Sea Scrolls