Regarding the above, I stand corrected and several examples came to mind as I thought about it a bit more. Matthew 19:24, for example: "...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."Steve7150 said: If Christ never used hyperbole are you prepared to cut off your hand or gauge your eye out if they cause you to sin? I think he often used hyperbole as his audience was familiar with this literary technique.
However, I would submit that just because Christ used hyperbole on occassion, the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus cannot readily be dismissed as hyperbole simply because it does not fit with a particular theology. If true, then every single time Christ speaks about hell as being "eternal" or "torment" or any other attribute assigned to it by the verbiage of scripture, it is merely symbolic or hyperbole. I am simply not prepared to accept this without further personal study and very compelling scriptural evidence.
Arguments (such as Todd's) that appeal simply to God's character without corresponding scriptural support will not do much to sway my throughts in this matter. This type of reasoning can lead people grossly astray. I would go so far as to say that the assertion that God would never torture someone does not seem to have any basis in scripture. In fact, if one considers the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament and the extreme care that was taken by the priests to kill the animals swiftly and painlessly, one has to wonder why Christ had to endure such punishment? Could God not have found some way for Christ to offer His life blood as an atonment through a swift, painless death as well? Why the brutality of the flogging? The beatings with soldiers' fists? The crown of thorns? The death by slow asphyxiation on the cross? The humiliation of it all?
Something to ponder. If this was simply a legal transaction of Christ's life for our lives, then how do you explain the seemingly punitive aspect of what transpired at Calvary?
I will have more to write later, but am currently studying the greek "aeon" and the phrases using this word and its derivatives in the New Testament. One thing that immediately comes to mind is that, although the word can indeed be translated as "ages" and the idiom "ages upon ages" is often translated "forever and ever" or "everlasting" or "eternally"...it strikes me as rather inconsistent that one would interpret the phrase as referring to an infinite duration in certain passages that refer to things like the believer's reward or the rule and reign of Christ, but then refer to only a finite duration when used in passages describing hell and punishment.
I have more study yet to do, but would like to understand better if many of the New Testament passages that refer to the duration of hell actually use the same greek phrasing and idioms as passages that refer to heaven, the believer's reward, Christ's reign, etc. If "ages upon ages" is conveniently taken to mean "forever and ever" whenever it refers to the "positives" of the next life, but "a very long but ultimately finite time" whenever it refers to the "negatives" of the next life, then there will clearly be a problem.
I might add that I joined this forum specifically to explore the ideas of CI and UR, which were new concepts to me, and was very much prepared to question my own "traditional" views. However, the more study I have done over the last several months, the more it has tended to support the traditional view of hell.