Heaven and hell
Saw a new question at On Faith - Do you believe in heaven or hell? If not, why not? If so, who's going there and how do you know? - and thought I'd post the answers of two interesting guys ... Tom Reese SJ of the Woodstock Theological Center, and Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham.
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My Father's House - Tom Reese SJ
I believe in heaven because I believe that God loves us so much that he would not let us simply disappear. I believe in hell because I believe we are free to reject God.
Meditating on our place in the universe as taught to us by science should make us humble. We live for a brief time on a small planet spinning around a sun that is one star in a galaxy that is only one of the millions of galaxies in the universe. How insignificant we are. As a result, I sometimes think that the hardest act of faith for a modern person is believing that God cares about us.
Believing that God loves us—that we are not just a blink of an eye in the history of the universe—is at the core of religious faith. For Christians, that is what the incarnation and the resurrection are all about—God loves us so much he became one of us and raised Jesus up as a sign of our everlasting life. Heaven is everlasting life with God.
Who goes to heaven? Those who choose love, those who love.
Matthew 25 makes this explicit: “Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.”
But we are free not to choose God; we are free not to love. God does not condemn us to hell; we go there freely. Hell is not a place of fire. Hell is the absence of love, the absence of God who is love.
Do only Christians go to heaven? No, anyone who loves can go to heaven.
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Neither is The Final Destination - NT Wright
(a) Heaven is important but it's not the end of the world: in the mainstream Christian tradition until the Platonists corrupted it, the ultimate destination is THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH, which will involve an ultimate resurrection (bodily, of course) for God's people (in some versions, for all people).
The way the phrase 'heaven and hell' are used today implies you go straight to one or the other, ignoring the solid biblical testimony to an ultimate new creation in which heaven and earth are brought together in a great act of renewal (for those who want it, check out Ephesians 1.10, Revelation 21 and 22, Romans 8.18-27 and 1 Corinthians 15.20-28 -- though once you see this theme it's there everywhere). When Paul says 'my desire is to depart and be with Christ which is far better', and when Jesus says 'today you will be with me in Paradise', the wider context of both indicates that this will be a TEMPORARY state prior to the eventual resurrection into the new creation. This means (by the way) that the 'second coming' is NOT Jesus 'coming back to take us home', but Jesus coming -- or 'reappearing', as 1 John 3 and Colossians 3 put it -- to heal, judge and rescue this present creation and us with it.
(b) The word 'hell' is a shorthand for several biblical themes which converge at the point where (i) God has promised to put the entire world right at last, showing up evil as what it is, the corruption and destruction of what is good, and the distortion of the good humanness which God made and loves, and therefore judging it so that it no longer has the power to infect his good creation; (ii) God will finally say to those who have persisted in their deliberate collusion with the powers of corruption, destruction and dehumanization (i.e. 'sin') that there can be no place for them in the glorious new world that he is making, so that (iii) God's new world will not have in it 'a concentration camp in the midst of a beautiful landscape', as some earlier visions of 'hell' have supposed, but rather the celebration (1 Corinthians 20.28) that 'God will be all in all'.
(c) There is a constant danger for contemporary western Christians of making a similar mistake at this point to first-century Jews. It appears that many Jews of, say, Jesus' and Paul's day supposed that when God acted to put the world right it would be the Jewish people who would be automatically OK.
The great breakthrough in Paul's thinking is that no, the one God of Abraham wants to reach out and welcome ALL people on the basis of faith alone. Similarly today many Christians think God is only interested in rescuing them, as saved humans, FROM the world, whereas the Bible is full of hints that those who know God and receive his salvation here and now are to be his agents in bringing that salvation to the wider world. Note how, even when Revelation 21 and 22 speaks of those who are in the holy city, the new Jerusalem, and those who are excluded from it, it also speaks of the river of the water of life flowing out to the world around, and of the tree of life growing on the banks of the river, with 'the leaves of the tree being for the healing of the nations'. What does that mean?
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They both seem to be universalists :-) but Fr. Reese appears to believe in hell (as did Ignatius, the founder of his order), while Fr. Wright, if I understood him correctly, does not, though I'm not sure if he means all the bad guys get forgiven at the end, or if they get disappeared. As for heaven, I'm still not clear on it ... is it a place, a state of mind, a renewed earth, a beatific vision, and do we experience it when we die or at some future point in time when the world ends (yikes!) and if that's the case, where are we hanging out in the time between death and resurrection?
***************************
My Father's House - Tom Reese SJ
I believe in heaven because I believe that God loves us so much that he would not let us simply disappear. I believe in hell because I believe we are free to reject God.
Meditating on our place in the universe as taught to us by science should make us humble. We live for a brief time on a small planet spinning around a sun that is one star in a galaxy that is only one of the millions of galaxies in the universe. How insignificant we are. As a result, I sometimes think that the hardest act of faith for a modern person is believing that God cares about us.
Believing that God loves us—that we are not just a blink of an eye in the history of the universe—is at the core of religious faith. For Christians, that is what the incarnation and the resurrection are all about—God loves us so much he became one of us and raised Jesus up as a sign of our everlasting life. Heaven is everlasting life with God.
Who goes to heaven? Those who choose love, those who love.
Matthew 25 makes this explicit: “Come, blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you took me in. I was naked, and you clothed me. I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison, and you came to me.”
But we are free not to choose God; we are free not to love. God does not condemn us to hell; we go there freely. Hell is not a place of fire. Hell is the absence of love, the absence of God who is love.
Do only Christians go to heaven? No, anyone who loves can go to heaven.
******************************
Neither is The Final Destination - NT Wright
(a) Heaven is important but it's not the end of the world: in the mainstream Christian tradition until the Platonists corrupted it, the ultimate destination is THE NEW HEAVENS AND THE NEW EARTH, which will involve an ultimate resurrection (bodily, of course) for God's people (in some versions, for all people).
The way the phrase 'heaven and hell' are used today implies you go straight to one or the other, ignoring the solid biblical testimony to an ultimate new creation in which heaven and earth are brought together in a great act of renewal (for those who want it, check out Ephesians 1.10, Revelation 21 and 22, Romans 8.18-27 and 1 Corinthians 15.20-28 -- though once you see this theme it's there everywhere). When Paul says 'my desire is to depart and be with Christ which is far better', and when Jesus says 'today you will be with me in Paradise', the wider context of both indicates that this will be a TEMPORARY state prior to the eventual resurrection into the new creation. This means (by the way) that the 'second coming' is NOT Jesus 'coming back to take us home', but Jesus coming -- or 'reappearing', as 1 John 3 and Colossians 3 put it -- to heal, judge and rescue this present creation and us with it.
(b) The word 'hell' is a shorthand for several biblical themes which converge at the point where (i) God has promised to put the entire world right at last, showing up evil as what it is, the corruption and destruction of what is good, and the distortion of the good humanness which God made and loves, and therefore judging it so that it no longer has the power to infect his good creation; (ii) God will finally say to those who have persisted in their deliberate collusion with the powers of corruption, destruction and dehumanization (i.e. 'sin') that there can be no place for them in the glorious new world that he is making, so that (iii) God's new world will not have in it 'a concentration camp in the midst of a beautiful landscape', as some earlier visions of 'hell' have supposed, but rather the celebration (1 Corinthians 20.28) that 'God will be all in all'.
(c) There is a constant danger for contemporary western Christians of making a similar mistake at this point to first-century Jews. It appears that many Jews of, say, Jesus' and Paul's day supposed that when God acted to put the world right it would be the Jewish people who would be automatically OK.
The great breakthrough in Paul's thinking is that no, the one God of Abraham wants to reach out and welcome ALL people on the basis of faith alone. Similarly today many Christians think God is only interested in rescuing them, as saved humans, FROM the world, whereas the Bible is full of hints that those who know God and receive his salvation here and now are to be his agents in bringing that salvation to the wider world. Note how, even when Revelation 21 and 22 speaks of those who are in the holy city, the new Jerusalem, and those who are excluded from it, it also speaks of the river of the water of life flowing out to the world around, and of the tree of life growing on the banks of the river, with 'the leaves of the tree being for the healing of the nations'. What does that mean?
************************************
They both seem to be universalists :-) but Fr. Reese appears to believe in hell (as did Ignatius, the founder of his order), while Fr. Wright, if I understood him correctly, does not, though I'm not sure if he means all the bad guys get forgiven at the end, or if they get disappeared. As for heaven, I'm still not clear on it ... is it a place, a state of mind, a renewed earth, a beatific vision, and do we experience it when we die or at some future point in time when the world ends (yikes!) and if that's the case, where are we hanging out in the time between death and resurrection?
posted by crystal | 3:54 PM
12 Comments:
I wonder to what extent these ideas have been successfully articulated and grasped - if the ultimate model of all-reality as a kind of gigantic cosmological system chugging along for the sake of rewarding and punishing human individuals might not reflect more on human inclinations and limitations of perspective than on the actual nature of The Big Picture, so to speak.
These are interesting comments. I think ideas of heaven and hell tend to be culturally-bound ideas of transcendent beatitude and the rejection of the same. Jesus certainly talks about the difficulty of salvation. In Matthew 19, he talks about the rich, the camel, and the needle, but he also says that for man all things are possible, whereas for God all things are possible.
I believe in heaven and hell, but I'm not sure what they are. Something tells me that sometime, everything will be reconciled to God.
Hi Paul,
all-reality as a kind of gigantic cosmological system chugging along for the sake of rewarding and punishing human individuals
... I'd guess they'd say it wasn't for the sake of rewarding and punishing, but for the sake of being one or together with God, and the rewarding/punishing is part of the process?
But, yes, I agree with you. It seems like there has to be so much more to things than this limited perspective.
Liam,
so you do believe in hell? I'm really resisting that, though as you point out, there are places where Jesus mentions that posssibility.
Something tells me that sometime, everything will be reconciled to God.
I'm hoping for this too - I think Origen believed that at the very end, even Satan would be reconciled to God ... the restoration of all things ... but wasn't he deemed a heretic? :-)
Heretic, schmeretic.
I believe in hell, but once again, I don't know what it is -- and I don't know if it's a "place" where souls go forever.
Happy Ramon Llull Week!
Crystal and Liam, the whole "heretic" thing that you jocularly bring up is actually kind of interesing. If I remember correctly, Martin Luther was in considerable danger at one point of being executed for heresy by the church. Christian mystics were also sometimes in danger - and sometimes actually burned to death.
So the church sometimes makes very emphatic assertions that it later decides were incorrect. Yesterday's heresy can become acceptable or even doctrinal.
To me it suggests that our understanding of religous terms and symbolism is still... "evolving" may be just the right word...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paul,
you're right, it's not really a joking matter. I was making light of it because sometimes some of the more conservative catholic bloogers have been known to characterize liberal catholics as such. Not so long ago, someone in my comments section called the former general of the Jesuits, Pedro Arrupe, a heretic!
CRYSTAL: That's so strange. It reminds me of something that's come up on my blog - the way that some right wing Christians seem, to me so oddly, somehow threatened by contemplative prayer.
To me the far right appears basically arbitrary about what it deems "traditional." If it's contemporary American fundamentalism, then it's "traditional." If it's anything else, no matter how deeply rooted in the history of Christianity, then it's "secular" or "Satanic" or "liberal."
If you ask me, that's just... weird!
I just did spell check. Another weird thing: whatever happened to "i before e except after c?" Now that's weirder than wierd.
I never noticed that about weird - maybe that's why weird is weird :-)
If it were a german word it would be even weirder, because it would be pronounced wired ... when 2 vowels go a walking, the second one does all the talking.
And thankfully, that's all the grammar I know.
I like the visions outlined in both opinions (Reese and Wright).
I find Wright's especially interesting. Other than the thief on the cross, where in scripture does it indicate that your soul immediately ascends to heaven or immediately descends to hell upon death (or that you go through purification in purgatory) From what I can see, St. Paul and the Gospels say nothing of such things. There's a lot about what will occur at the Eschaton, Parousia, Last Judgment and so forth. ..How much of that popular vision we have nowadays do we owe to Greek and Stoic influence?
Origen is still considered one of the Church Fathers, even with the Universalist ideas. A Hell forever... Is God's heart really one that never relents?
Hi Jeff,
The passage of Jesus on the cross with the criminal is interesting ... he says tyhey will be together in paradise that day. But Jesus - was he not next in hell (?) and then resurrected and then after some length of time ascended to heaven (and is heaven paradise)?
My head hurts :-)
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