Unquenchable Fire
November 10th, 2021 by G.
the tares shall be bound in bundles, and their bands made strong, that they may be
burned with unquenchable fire.
No fire fueled by straw is unquenchable.
The flame that burns the tares is not a flame from the tares.
Left to themselves and their own fire, tares would burn out and turn to ash.
Left to themselves, the wicked would become colder and smaller and darker and ever more nothing.
But the flame goes on. So . . .
The flame is either the flame of reality itself, the burning light of God that cannot be turned off.
Or is something actively provided by God, in which case we must assume it is a kind of a mercy. That being ever colder and darker and smaller is worse.
Bookslinger
November 10, 2021
The experience of the fire might be a reaction, not an applied action.
—
As to quenching, that is an externally applied action. When a fire burns itself out, we don’t properly say it was “quenched”, it just ran its course.
Perhaps that is the kind of fire in question — no one _puts_ it out, it has to run its course, making the subject fit for the Telestial Kingdom.
sute
November 11, 2021
Brings some extra meaning to the stanza, The spirit of God, like a fire is burning.
Agellius
November 12, 2021
But if God actively maintains the fire in existence, then he must also maintain the tares in existence, lest there be nothing for the fire to burn.
G.
November 13, 2021
A reasonable enough conclusion
Zen
November 13, 2021
That fire is the suffering resulting from people’s agency. God supports our agency even when we would give it up.
Once we are in the next world, we have made the choices that determine our direction, but that hardly means our choices are over. And for many people, they have only begun to struggle against God… and only begun to realize exactly what that really entails.
And if, to borrow a term from the Catholics, Purgatory, will all its hellish sufferings, will do them some good, God will allow it. If it is for their good, I think he is willing to be far more harsh than we would ever conceive.
Fire is the result of agency and sin and pure and simple stubbornness.