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If we turn to the Scriptures, under the guidance of the teaching Church, for enlightenment concerning the doctrine of everlasting punishment, we shall find two things stated in them with painful clarity by our Lord himself. There is a final punishment for the unrepentant; it is eternal and it is fire. If thy hand scandalize thee, cut it off. It is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into unquenchable fire; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished (Mark ix, 42). And again: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt. xxv, 41-42). In the moving passage too, in St John's gospel, where our Lord sets out his teaching about himself as the way, the truth and the life, under the image of the vine and the branches, the same warning is contained; that burning by fire is the inevitable result of complete separation from him.
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- Copyright © 1957 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The Greek word translated destroy(apostroy)in Matthew 10, 28 and its Vulgate equivalent perdere, have this as their primary meaning. They are however both used to mean tolose utterly without being destroyed, notably in this same chapter of Matthew, v. 39. In its context therefore the Greek will not bear the meaning that this view seeks to place upon it.
2 This is only one of several speculations current among theologians as to the nature of the poena sensus of hell, which the church, interpreting the ipsissima verba of Christ, insists upon as extrinsically caused, eternal and comparable with material fire.
3 Death and Life (Longmans, 1942) page 128.