For over a thousand years (c. AD 400–1530), the Vulgate was the definitive edition of the most influential text in Western European society. Indeed, for most Western Christians, it was the only version of the Bible ever encountered. The Vulgate’s influence throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance into the Early Modern Period is even greater than that of the King James Version in English; for Christians during these times the phraseology and wording of the Vulgate permeated all areas of the culture. What was the problem with Jerome’s Bible? It was heavily influenced by Latin hell-inventing theologians like Tertullian and Augustine. Many of the words used in the Vulgate, such as eternal, redemption, justification, sanctification, sacrament, perdition, punish, torment, damnation, etc., were coined by Tertullian and his contemporaries and came to be associated with concepts foreign to the original Greek. The Latin Church’s emphasis on fear-based dualism was reserved for three great Carthaginians, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine, so to influence the Latin Church it deflected and declined into a system of dogmatic hierarchy and spiritual despotism. But Tertullian was the individual who set this current in motion. This, then, is the man in the hollow of whose hands lay the clay which was to be molded into concrete Latin dogma. This is the man in whose hands reclined the fate of the word eternal. Augustine, who later outdid Tertullian and his doctrines, maintained that the whole human race was “one damned batch and mass of perdition” (conspersis damnata, massa perditionis), out of which a few are elected to salvation, while all the remainder are lost for ever. (Literally one hell of a way to begin a new Gospel and save the world)! He beheld evil as a force integral in a universe apart from God, while Origen believed that all is out from God, even evil, which God must undo and banish. God is now responsible for necessarily banishing at least half of Himself.
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A self-righteous pride (no other kind) that desires lust be a condition meriting eternal punishment is itself a self-annihilating dualistic condition. A Self-perpetuating indecision machine. But, love unconditional is capable and only possible when it suspends judgement eternally which means judgement never existed. In the low level consciousness of humanity, yes. But as Creator of loving relationship? Unworkable. It is consciousness caught in finite conclusion which isn’t consciousness at all. It’s not even human. It’s hatred on life support. One who has no place for eons to come must look on the future as a shoreless eternity. Having failed to grasp what God had revealed concerning the eons, Tertullian had no alternative but to impart to the Latin word eternal that sense which it now bears. *Since no such concept or expression of eternity was ever included in Scripture by the original writers, periods of time called eons or ages are crucial in understanding God’s plan for mankind. When you realize that the hell doctrine was so late in being adopted by the Church and Scriptures, not to mention the introduction of a host of other vague “churchy” words and concepts, the poorly constructed walls of orthodoxy begin to crumble. It was several hundred years after Jesus and the apostles that men began formulating many new Church doctrines and creeds, many still a part of Evangelical Christian orthodoxy to this day. Had our old English Bibles been translated directly out of the Greek instead of Latin, it’s very probable that the doctrine of eternal torment would never have found its way into our modern Bibles and theology at all. Many of these doctrines were strong-armed into the Church through major dissention and even bloodshed, with intolerant, oppressive Church leaders insisting that they were “led by the Spirit” on such matters. In a sense, how is the Church adopting such major theological shifts so many years after Christ any different than, say, the Mormons or the Jehovah’s Witnesses adopting their objectionable doctrines in more recent times? As the centuries went by, the Bible was translated and retranslated into Latin (mainly from Greek), and more than twelve centuries later translated into English (from Greek and Hebrew) with the advent of the original King James in the 1600s. It’s not hard to see how morphing Church beliefs and language changes influenced each Bible version that came along. It’s important to note that when King James gave the translators instructions for working on his King James Authorized Version in 1604 (a seven-year project), he intended to make sure that the new version would “conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy.” (SAY WHAT?) Since then, it has undergone over 400 more years of translator interventions and theological interpretations. When you think of how many people, opinions, doctrines, misunderstandings, language barriers, as well as political and THEOLOGICAL agendas may have worked into the mix in 2,000 years, it’s hard to believe (and shouldn’t be believed) that the Bible has maintained inerrancy or complete adhesion to the original intent. This is the total disregard for internal authority and witness that Christ gave ALL people known as the Holy Spirit. A mind based and money manipulated theological society made the gospel appear superstitious. Why? Fear is known by superstition and will kill and exclude anyone who threatens its SELF-preservation. Very few have been willing to step out of the HOLY bible blind spot because they desired the avoidance of hell more than the “finding of life” within all people — especially themselves.
Schadenfreude is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction created by Martin Luther and John Calvin. Both loved to see others in pain and hated Jews and other Christins. Schadenfreude comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, or humiliation of another. Martin Luther is a halfwit.
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