Tag Archives: Salvation

The problem with religion?

12 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by in Blogging, Faith, Salvation

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‘Religion’ sometimes gets a bad name – even from those atheists would consider religious – and sometimes it’s not hard to see why. In response to my post on God being love, our friend ginny responded with a list of the ‘attributes of God’, as though in some way something theologians from her church had written could in any way qualify what the Beloved Disciple had written. He did not write ‘love is one of the many attributes of God’, he told us God is love. He knew that as humans that word meant something to us, as Jesus knew the word ‘Father’ meant something to us. So, to suggest that in fact, you need a 553 page book to understand the ‘Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma’ is no doubt true, but to suppose that has anything to do with knowing Jesus as Saviour is just the place where ‘religion’ gets a bad name. For those of us (and I am one of them as readers will know) who enjoy a good theological tome, such things are interesting to read, but we make the sort of mistake of which Christ accused the Pharisees, if we place such things in the way of the spirit of God’s laws. I doubt not that the Rabbi and the Levite had good reasons in terms of ritual uncleanness for not stopping to help the man who had fallen among thieves, and anyone familiar with Jewish purity laws will know that is the case; but God is love, and love meant not telling the poor injured man that there was a higher good than tending to him, it meant tending to him. It did not mean not healing a blind man because it was the Sabbath, love meant healing him when the opportunity presented itself.

As far as I can understand it, the distrust of love evinced by ginny and others who have left here stands on the ground that those of us who will insist on it, are saying that there is no Judgment. This is simply wrong. There is  Judgment. It will be Christ who judges us. Some have an understanding of Christ which seems to me to be taken from analogies with medieval monarchs, and they see what we would think of as cruel punishments, and they say this is the just reward of sin. Some of us have a less anthropomorphic understanding of God’s justice. We know that the thoughts of God are too high for us. We cannot begin to think that if we had an only son we would hand him over to cruel punishments and a terrible death and to suffer for sinners, yet we know God did just that. So we stand back in awe. Those claiming to know how the Infinite God who did that will judge us all, are, of course, welcome to the claim, but I do wish that they would recognise that their own Church is a great deal more sophisticated in answering questions about hell than they seem to be.

Section 1033 states that hell is “[the] state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed.” Note that – ‘self-exclusion’. Yes, Revelation talks of a lake of fire, but it is a figure of speech, not a literal reality, it describes, in all probability, how it feels to exclude oneself from God’s love. We have the free will to do that, and no doubt many will do just that, they know better than God himself. For my own part, I know God loves me, and I love him, all else follows from that. Those who need a Father who will punish them unless they behave, have an understandable human need, coming from very obvious places. But they should not mistake their vengeful father for the God who is love; nor should they be frightened of love, for it is in love that the whole world is redeemed. Christ’s message is one of hope for us all. I simply fail to get to first base with the idea that somehow we can be terrified into being good Christians by the prospect of burning in hell for all time. What sort of conversion is that? It seems to be a vision of God as a sadistic headmaster watching all we do and deciding at the end how long we need to spend in detention. I’m not sure who would even like such a being, let alone love it – neither am I clear why such a being would sacrifice its son for us.

The first Christians did not need 553 pages of dry theology to get the Good News is that we are saved if we believe in Christ – nor do we. Too often, alas, religion in the form of rules and regulations, becomes a substitute for a loving and living relationship with the God who desires us all to come to him, because he loves us. Perhaps the saddest thing for me of some of the reactions to this sort of statement, is the realisation that that sort of love seems foreign to my critics. In meeting God, I know His love. I had assumed it true of all Christians; is it not?

Bethany: a meditation

24 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by in Easter, Faith, fiction

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There was an unusual tenseness in the air as Martha lit the candles. There were rumours coming from Jerusalem that the Pharisees wanted to act against him; those rumours disturbed us all. He was stopping in Bethany on his way to Jerusalem, and Simon the leper, whose house was big enough to accommodate us all, was putting on a feast – with Martha’s help. As ever, she was bossing us all about, making sure everything would be perfect for Jesus – her love for him had, like mine, grown to immense proportions since he saved Lazarus, our brother. But I could see that her hustle and bustle masked the tension she felt – what if the authorities did seize him?

I lit the candles (always in the light, Martha commented tartly). They flickered and cast shadows on the walls – and when he and the others came in, it was as though the walls were inhabited by a cast of characters – black shadows, distorted – and the candles flickered – one went out, and I relit it. They ate – they were hungry. But there was something else which drove that hunger – the same anxiety I had felt coming into the house. The men were fearful of what the next few days would bring, but they made light of it, as men will when there are women present; but I knew, I sensed it.

I went to where I like to sit when Jesus is with us, at his feet. My sister thinks this is scandalous; I don’t know if that’s because it means I get out of taking the dishes away, or because she thinks a single woman should not sit in that position with a man. I saw his poor feet. No one had bothered to wash them, and they were dirty, and I could see that the heels looked sore. On an impulse, I took the alabaster jar of spikenard which I had received as a gift, and I broke it open and rubbed it into his feet, cleaning and smoothing them. The air was filled with the sweet perfume, which attracted the attention of others to what I was doing. Martha shot me such a look, which turn to anger when I let my hair down and used it to dry his feet – was that because she thought I ought to have had a towel with me – or because women did not let their hair down in public – maybe, as usual, I’d failed on both the practical and the moral fronts. I didn’t care. Jesus looked so careworn and almost sad, and he relaxed so much as I began my ministrations: love comes in many forms. In this place, at this time, this seemed the thing to do – so much so that I poured the rest of it onto his hair and massaged his shoulders. I do believe if looks could kill, the one Martha shot me at that point would have been the last thing I would have seen in this world.

It wasn’t only Martha who looked and acted as though I’d done something awful. Our host, Simon made a nasty comment to the effect that if Jesus really were a prophet, he’d know what sort of woman I was – a dreadful sinner. Jesus was unworried – he knew me well enough, and he told one of his wonderful stories, asking whether a man who owed a lot of money and was forgiven his debt would be more or less grateful than a man who owed a little and was forgiven it? That brought tears to my eyes – they fell onto Jesus’ feet, and I dried them with my hair, and kissed them. There was a noise from Martha that sounded like an explosion. I didn’t care, I was lost in the moment. I suddenly knew this was the last time I would do this for him – alive.

I like most of his followers, but Judas is an exception. He’s a nasty, grasping fellow – as my backside attests, it isn’t just money he grabs; he says all the right things – most of the time, but I’m not the only one who finds him creepy; Martha can’t stand him either. So it would have been him who opened up his big mouth to complain about my extravagance in using all that ointment on one man – it could, he complained loudly, have fed a family for a year if we’d sold it. I didn’t like to mention it was my ointment – but then I didn’t want to say how it had come to me, either – no one would ever give Martha such a gift.

But Jesus responded with words burnt into my memory. He tasked them quietly but firmly with not understanding – and then with what he said, showed me the full understanding of what I had just done. I had, he said, done it out of love for him, and to prepare his body for burial – and wherever the story was told, I would be remembered in it. That last I only understood when I saw what brother Luke and brother John Mark wrote in their books – I am told that Levi-Matthew also wrote about me, but I have not seen it, and unlike Luke, he never asked me for my version of what happened that night.I wonder if young John will mention it – I should like to see him again, but I am told he is in the far north somewhere with mother Mary; he was a sweet young man, so kind and gentle; I miss him.

What happened, what really happened, I can tell no one, because I do not have the words to describe how my heart was opened when he said that my sins were forgiven. I had not dared to ask – how could I? Simon the leper was right, I was a bad girl who did bad things. But Jesus, Jesus had known, and he had seen into my heart. My last memory will be of how he turned to me and said “Your sins are forgiven.” That caused a bit of a fuss, and I heard Simon, I think, ask who Jesus thought he was that he could forgive sins. But I recall those words now, all these years later: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” It had, I did.

 

Gospel, 4th Sunday in Lent, Year C

06 Sunday Mar 2016

Posted by in Atonement, Commentaries, Faith, Lent, Reading the BIble, St Luke's Gospel

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Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

St Cyril of Alexandria notes the way in which the Pharisees fail to understand the nature of Jesus and of his mission; he came to save all, and the Pharisees sought to close the gates of heaven to all but those like them. They were outraged at his gentleness with and love for sinners; they looked for sharp rebukes and scolding – but in the story of the son that was lost and was found, Christ gives a true picture of what the love of God means; sinful, prideful men like the Pharisees found this a scandal – their God was of their own hearts, not the God who sent His Son to save sinners. When a sinner repents, that is all that is needed – and we are to rejoice and without reservation.

The Fathers saw several interpretations attaching to the two sons. St Cyril thought that the elder son represented the holy angels, and the prodigal the human race; but he notes that others thought the elder son the Jews, and the younger the Gentiles.

St Ambrose notes that the Father is full of generosity, and lets the son have his request – but it is the son who squanders what he was given, wastes a fine inheritance on the tawdry rewards of this world which, when the times become hard, will not sustain him. Augustine notes that to be in the realms of lustful passion is the same as to be in the realm of darkness – far, far away from the face of God. Ambrose notes that the famine is a famine also of goodness, of good deeds and of the wisdom of God. The younger son attaches himself to a patron of this world, but his reward is that of this world – barren and without nourishment.

Peter Chrysologus comments that the fate of the son is that of all who desert God’s grace for the rewards of this earthly life – fleeing from a generous provider, he ends by wallowing in dirt and endures a severe judgment.

Philoxenus of Mabbug noted that in spite of all his sin, he did not lose the honourable title of son – and though he felt unworthy and a sinner, he still called God his father – so the Grace of the Spirit had not departed from him. We, too, call God Father through the Grace of the Spirit.

St Ambrose commented that the son acknowledged he had sinned against heaven and the Father; that confession brings Christ to intercede for the sinner, and that intercession produces pardon. He acknowledges his manifold sins and wickedness and confesses he is not fit to be called son – he will be content to be a servant. But those who humble themselves before God will be raised – and the Father sees him a long way off and has always loved him and now rejoices that he was lost is found, he who was sunk in sin is now risen from the dirt – and the son is freed from the yoke of sin. The Father kisses and welcomes him, he imposes no penances, demands no restitution – the love of God to the repentant sinner is absolute and without qualification. Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. (Romans 4:7).

What love is this, St Athananius asks? It is the divine love beyond all expression, which rings out a pean of praise in heaven over the one sinner saved. The sinner is restored through the love of Christ, love that endured the pains of the Cross for our sake – the robe (everlasting life) is restored, and the ring, the symbol of fidelity to the Spirit, is placed again on his finger. Corruption is replaced by incorruption – and joy is unconfined because the beloved who was lost, has been found.

But the elder son, the representative of those who believe the Law saves, cannot rejoice. He knows the letter of what the Law prescribes for such a sinner before his repentance can be accepted, and he is scandalised that, as he sees it, his unworthy brother is so easily restored. But God, who alone knows all things, is the only Just Judge, and his reasoning is as high above ours as the angels are above our earthly lives. The elder brother is proud, and in his pride, honours the letter but fails to understand the Spirit. It is a hard saying for those who think they are righteous, that the love of God forgives all who repent – like the Pharisees at the beginning of the reading, they are scandalised at the company Jesus keeps.

Thoughts on the Epiphany

03 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Bible, Catholic Tradition, Faith

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The liturgical season is a marvellous resource for reflecting on our faith and some of its major moments. The original purpose of the feast of the Epiphany, which began as an Eastern Church celebration, was to celebrate the Baptism of Christ. Yet the Western habit of attaching the feast to the visit of the Magi reminds us of perhaps the most important and yet unremarked thing about Our Lord’s Ministry – its extension to the Gentiles.

There are many signs that the Gospel writers initially thought that Christ’s mission was only to the Jews: Matthew 10:5; Matthew 15:26 and Mark 7:27, and some of the problems which Paul had with the Judaisers stemmed from this sense possessed by some of the earliest converts that Jesus’ mission was only to the Chosen People. Paul hammers away at this in his great Epistle to the Romans, and of course his whole mission was testimony to the fact that it was not ancestry and the law which saved, but faith in the Lord Jesus.

It is interesting that it should be Matthew alone amongst the Synoptic Gospels who mentions the Magi – as scholars are agreed that the community to which he wrote was a Jewish one.  The parallels between the story of Moses in Exodus and of this part of Christ’s life would have been very clear to the Jewish audience. But if parts of his Gospel look backwards to Jewish tradition, the story of the Magi looks forward to the final words of his Gospel:

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.

‘All the nations’ are to be evangelised, not just the Jews. The Magi, who sincerely wish to pay homage to the real ‘King of the Jews’ is contrasted with the behaviour of the actual ‘king of the Jews’; the message is plain – from the beginning Gentiles worshipped the Christ. Their acceptance prefigures the conversion of the Gentiles.  As Paul told the Galatians: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’

That was, as it remains, a truly radical message. We are all one in Christ. The things which divide us, indeed the things we use to define ourselves, are naught to Him or to those who are in Him.

It is hard  for us to recapture how radical it was to those first Jewish followers to be told that the Samaritans could be ‘saved’: the Good Samaritan and the Samaritan woman at the well both serve, as do the Magi and the Roman Centurion at the crucifixion, of the faith that would be found in the Gentiles. There have always been, and always will be, those who feel that the Gospel message is just for them and their kind, but the coming of the Magi reminds us that it is for all who will follow His star and heed the Epiphany that Jesus is Lord.

That message would get the early Christians thrown out of the Temple, it would make them outcasts in their own land – but it would pave the way for the conversion of the whole world. At this Epiphany-tide it is good to remember those Wise Men – because they prefigure us. Christ came into the world to save all who will turn to Him, so let us turn and give thanks at this Epiphany-tide.

Hell: a synopsis of Catholic teaching

01 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in Bible, Blogging, Catholic Tradition, Faith, St. Isaac

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St John Paul II’s ‘Crossing the threshold of hope’ informs much of this post.

The subject of hell has somewhat dominated our blog of late, and it might be time to outline what the Catholic Church has to say on the subject. As so often, it is necessary to draw a distinction between what the pious believe in a general way, and what the Church teaches officially. To give one example, many ordinary Catholics (and non-Catholics) would, if asked about hell, respond in terms of pitchforks, devils and real fire burning people, and if asked why they believe that would say ‘it is in the Bible’. But as our friend Bosco here so often shows, it is not enough to read everything in Scripture literally. The Church teaches from Scripture and Tradition, and does not neglect reason either. It knows that much of what will happen after death is a mystery, and, contrary to the charges of some of its critics, it does not try to make cut and dried what is mysterious. Those caveats entered, let me offer a synopsis of what I understand Catholic teaching in this area to be saying.

At death the soul is judged – this is known as the particular judgment. There are, the Church teaches, three outcomes to this judgment immediately after death: immediate unification with Christ; conditional unification, which is commonly called Purgatory; and immediate rejection which is eternal damnation – as the catechism puts it:

To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”

The chief punishment of hell is separation from God. The careful reader of the link will see that the Church puts inverted commas around ‘eternal fire’, and this is because it is not pronouncing on the literal presence of fire. St Thomas Aquinas says it is a real fire, but with all respect to the Angelic doctor, that is his opinion, one we should take seriously, but not an article of faith. But it must be emphasised that in its official teaching the Church relies, as it always does, on the words of Jesus, who, according to St Matthew, said that at death people would be separated into two groups – everlasting punishment or eternal life. I can quite understand the Apologetics which then queries the existence of Purgatory on the ground this does not fit with the twofold division here (although, since the Church teaches that eternally there are only two destinations for us, there is no contradiction); what I find more puzzling is the notion that the idea of everlasting hell is not to be derived from this.

I quite understand the impatience of some thinkers with the assumption that, for example, when Paul speaks of people being unworthy of eternal life, that means they are going to hell, or that when he says the wages of sin are death that means sinners go to hell. If you do not believe in hell, or you do not believe in the Catholic teaching, you could not extrapolate it from such passages. However, we read Scripture as a whole, and once you take the sense of the Matthean passage just quoted, then it is natural to talk of hell in relation to the Pauline passages. I would entirely take Jessica’s point that Paul does not major on this theme, and would add to it that the Catholic Church follows suit – in a catechism of 2865 paragraphs only 5 of them deal with hell. As ever, the Church follows in the path of the first evangelists. This has the huge advantage that it can be secure in its teaching; it has the eternal disadvantage that there will be things it teaches which every age will find difficult. Our own age finds the idea of eternal torment one of those things. But let us examine the nature of that torment as far as we can.

Balthasar, whose Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved?” (1986) is more often criticised than read, did not teach universalism (indeed, it seems rather doubtful as to whether Origen did so either, but that’s another matter). He acknowledged that we all stand under judgment, and that, despite the distastefulness of the idea, eternal torment was not to be dismissed:

If we take our faith seriously and respect the words of Scripture, we must resign ourselves to admitting such an ultimate possibility, our feelings of revulsion notwithstanding. We may not simply ignore such a threat; we may not easily dismiss it, neither for ourselves nor for any of our brothers and sisters in Christ” (p. 237).

In this he was at one with St John Paul II, whose book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope (1994), also spoke of the hope that we might legitimately have that all men might yet be saved, but added (as Balthasar did) that sinful, prideful man might reject the love of God and choose not to be in his presence. To quote St John Paul directly:

“… yet the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew’s Gospel he speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. Matthew 25:46).”

Speaking in a General Audience on 28 July 1999, St John Paul said:

The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.

God grants us free-will and we can reject him – in which case, as St John Paul II put it:

Damnation remains a real possibility, but it is not granted to us, without special divine revelation, to know which human beings are effectively involved in it. The thought of hell — and even less the improper use of biblical images — must not create anxiety or despair, but is a necessary and healthy reminder of freedom within the proclamation that the risen Jesus has conquered Satan, giving us the Spirit of God who makes us cry “Abba, Father!” (Rm 8:15; Gal 4:6).

The Church prays that all men may be saved (CCC 1821) and that no one will be lost (CCC 1058), and since Christ came to save all, again, and as usual, it does no more than its founder taught it. But Saint John Paul is right, it is not given to us to know who is in hell. Nor, in speaking of the latter, is it necessary to postulate literal flames. St Isaac the Syrian, in speaking of hell, expressed it best:

Those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful. That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse.

This is very far away from pitchforks and devils and torture chambers. It is also, I would suggest, more accessible for us all. Which of us, having done something very wrong and come to repentance has not been tortured by the remembrance of our sin? As the old Anglican General Confession put it: ‘The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.’ These are the things which drive us to confess and to repentance. They are healthy for us because they encourage us to turn aside from our sins.

None of this is to say that ‘fear’ in its common sense, is what drives us to God. If we love Him, we will feel remorse, and the remembrance of our sins is intolerable. If we do not, then hell is most likely the state of coming to that realisation too late. That is our choice. There is no eternal torture chamber created by God – just the one we construct for ourselves.

I hope that this helps set forth what the Church teaches in a form which is of assistance. The traditional caricatures are not, in my own view, very helpful, and, as we have seen here recently, can create confusion and anxiety. That is not what the Church wishes to do – it wishes as its founder wished, that all men might turn from their sins in repentance and come to Christ. Might we hope for that? Of course we can, the Church does; can we say it is so? No, for the Church has not said so. St Isaac said this life is for repentance, and, as the thief at the right hand of the Saviour found, whilst there is life there is hope – and whilst there is hope, then there is prayer we can all offer that all who have not yet repented and turned to Christ, might yet do so.

Reflections on hell

23 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by in Bible, End times, Faith, Reading the BIble, Salvation

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gehenna1We have been discussing hell a lot here, and I have been doing a bit of reading on the subject. Dave Smith and I (and Ginny) have had something of a back and forth on this (300 comments and rising!) and rather than leave everything in the comboxes, I thought I’d share some thoughts. Right up front, let me say I am not denying the reality of hell, but what I am doing is interrogating the view that it is a place where souls, or souls and bodies, burn for eternity.

So, let us have a little look at that four-letter word – hell. It is not used in the Greek or the Septuagint – so we do not find it anywhere in the original Bible. What do we find? We get four words (the links are to Strong’s concordance so you can check I am not making this up as I go along):

  1. Sheol (Hebrew)
  2. Hades (Greek)
  3. Tartarus (Greek)
  4. Gehenna (Greek)

It depends, of course, on which English translation you use. The most common one, the King James Version, has the most uses of the word ‘hell’ – some 54 occurrences – you can see from the link that others have far fewer. To put it into perspective, the Bible uses the word ‘heaven’ 664 times – in whatever version you choose. It may mean nothing that in most versions heaven is mentioned more times, but in most modern versions ‘hell’ gets 14 mentions, and the original word is one of those used above. So where does this get us?

Let’s deal with ‘Tartarus’ first and its one mention in 2 Peter 2:4. This, we are told, is a holding place for fallen angels before they are judged – so I think we can say with some confidence it isn’t any place anyone is going to spend eternity. That leaves us with the other three words which the older English translations call ‘hell’.

In the Old Testament, every translation is from the Hebrew ‘Sheol’. It means the abode of the dead. I cannot trace any mention in the Jewish sources to which I have access of anyone burning there for eternity. In English, ‘Sheol’ is translated variously as ‘hell’, ‘the pit’ and ‘the grave’ – and it is a place people can go into when they are alive, but in which they then perish. It is a place of the dead – there is no mention of anyone in it having any consciousness – or of them burning. Hades is mentioned 11 times in the NT, mostly as hell, but once as grave. But what sort of place is it? If we look at Acts we see a place which looks like Sheol – a place where the dead go and their bodies rot.

The only word used in the NT which has any connotation of burning is Gehenna. It is used 12 times in the NASB: Matthew 5:22; Matthew 5:29; Matthew 5:30; Matthew 10:28; Matthew 18:9; Matthew 23:15; Matthew 23:33; Mark 9:43; Mark 9:45; Mark 9:47; Luke 12:5; James 3:6. Gehenna was a real place – it is the Hinnom valley just outside Jerusalem. It was the place where the Pagan Jews erected their altar to Moloch. As a result, later generations used it as a rubbish pit into which all the refuse of the city was thrown, and where the bodies of those crucified were also thrown – and fires would burn perpetually to burn the remains and stop germs spreading. So, when Jesus refers to it in Mark 9 as the place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched he is speaking literally – those hearing him knew the place. There is no reference here to it being a place where any conscious being would dwell in eternal torment. Of course, for a Jew, the defilement of the corpse in such a place was a dreadful thing, and Christ is saying that even that would be better than sinning – but the idea that he is saying that those who sin are going to spend eternity suffering there is not in the text. If we look at the Lukan reference, where Jesus talks about ‘Him’ who destroys the body and soul in Gehenna, then that is a reference to God destroying us – not letting us live forever in torment.

Paul tells us the wages of sin is death, which he contrasts with the eternal life to those who believe. He does not say ‘the wages of sin is to burn in hell forever. Paul was steeped in Jewish teaching, and what he inherited was the idea of Sheol as a place of death and extinction. Psalm 1:6 told Paul and his fellow Jews that the Lord would know the righteous, but the ungodly would perish; it did not say they would burn in Gehenna. Psalm 37:20 made the same point – the wicked would perish, they would vanish away, and Psalm 69:28 underlines that – they will be ‘blotted out’ – not burnt in any lake of fire. They will be (Psalm 92:7) ‘destroyed forever’. This was standard Jewish teaching as we see not only from the Psalmists, but from Isaiah too. Malachai certainly mentions fire, but does so to say that the wicked will be burnt up and no trace of them will be left.

This was what the Jews believed, so if Jesus was telling them something new, one might expect much to have been made of this by Paul and the others – after all, if, as disobedience to God actually means spending eternity in a lake of fire, then that’s a message to get out there urgently, not least to the People of the Covenant who had no such concept. Yet we find St John, who certainly combatted heretical ideas in his Gospel and letters, telling us that those who do not believe in Jesus will perish, whilst those who do will have everlasting life; he does not say those who do not believe will burn in Gehenna. Paul makes the same point to the Philippians that the evil will be destroyed. The same message was sent to the Thessalonians (unless one takes the view that everlasting destruction does not mean that you are destroyed for evermore, but are subject to being destroyed for ever, and I can’t see why Paul would have meant that when there was no Jewish teaching to that effect) the Corinthians and, as I have already mentioned, to the Romans.

Paul seems to have known nothing of this Gehenna where the wicked would burn eternally, and neither he, nor James nor Jude nor Peter mention it. It would have been a big departure from what they had been taught, and one might reasonably have expected it to be emphasised. Instead there is a continuity with the Jewish teaching on Sheol. We shall be raised at the last and judged, and then, death and hell (Sheol) are cast into the lake of fire. They cease to exist, that is the second death.

How we read Revelation is always a moot point, and is one of the reasons the early Church fathers hesitated before accepting it into the Canon. ‘As late as 633, the Spanish Council of Toledo remarked how many people still opposed the use of John’s Revelation, and commanded that it must be read in church liturgies, under heavy penalty’, whilst to this day the Greeks do not use it in their liturgical worship. But it is there (although Luther had his doubts) and it tells us that hell and death are to be cast into the lake, as are those whose name is not written in the book of life, but only ‘the devil’ ‘the Beast’ and the ‘false prophet’ are condemned to eternal torment. One could certainly insist that everyone else in the lake would also suffer, but that would be a lot of weight to place on a notoriously difficult text.

Well, there it is, ‘heresy corner’ as Chalcedon has called it. I shall don my helmet and retire to my trenches with just one note. I am not denying the resurrection (pace ginny), neither am I saying hell is not real. I am simply trying to see how what the Scriptures say aligns with the Western belief that hell is a place of eternal torment. Yes, I am happier to think that God has so arranged things so that no one suffers for eternity; the faithless go down to the pit and are known no more; the faithful rise to life eternal.

 

 

 

The saved

17 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by in Faith, Salvation

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Jesus risen

I can’t imagine being able to be happy in heaven knowing that people I loved here on earth are in hell – or, in fact, any people, though I daresay Mr Hitler in hell wouldn’t worry me terribly – although maybe in my perfected state, it would. Any which way, the problem of hell haunts me, as it does many. We had a good discussion of it last week, and cleverer men and women than me have been foxed by it, so I’m going to follow up on Geoffrey instead of getting out of my depth on hell, I’ll do it elsewhere instead – so feel free to pull me out of the deep hole I am about to enter.

I’m glad Geoffrey agrees that only God knows who is going to heaven. I have a bias here, as many will. My later father was a wonderful man who I loved more than anyone. He was not a Christian, in fact he was, if anything, anti-Christian. But he promised my mother on her death-bed that he would make sure I was brought up in her Christian faith, and, bless him, that he did. Not all that waiting outside of churches and village halls ever brought him into the church, not even physically. He had his reasons for his views, but the one time I tried engaging him in it, he simply shut down the conversation with “I promised your late mother, and I’m doing nothing that would run counter to her wish. You’re a young lass and I could out argue you, and I’m not doing it so drop it.” I was indignant at the time. I was pretty sure (as you are when you’re 14) that I could out argue him, but later on I realised what he was doing, and how much it reflected his love for my mother and his respect for his pledged word. But he died as he had lived, outside any church and refusing to countenance any priest at his death bed. He never once said a word to deter me from my preferences, he drove me wherever I needed to go. Yet he should, by a strict reading, be unsaved. I can’t imagine being happy in heaven knowing he was in hell. So if sometimes I worry at this one like a dog at a bone, that’s the main reason – that and a soft heart (and no doubt head).

We are told , of course, that Heaven is beyond our imaginings, and that we shall be changed. Can we be so utterly changed that it would not matter to us if someone we once loved was suffering? If we are changed into a better likeness of God I can’t see how that could be, because we know God so loved us that He sent Jesus to live and die and be resurrected for us, and if our love is to be conformed to his love, isn’t it likely that we’d feel the same way? Such a puzzle, for sure – and I am thankful that we are told we must trust utterly in God.

The difficulty of hell

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Bible, Faith, Salvation, St. Isaac

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Harrowing-of-Hell-1-edit

Hell is problematic. It is clear from Scripture that it exists. No one wants to go there. But if it exists there are people in it. That means that forever they are in some form of torment. It is easy to see why pastors used to major heavily on it – frightened people are more easily convinced to do what they might otherwise not do. Want to commit adultery? Is a few moment’s pleasure worth Eternity burning? It was not an accident that the mediaeval state used burning as a punishment – it was a very literal reminder of what awaited the heretic. I’m not getting into the argument about the Church not burning anyone, it encouraged the State to do so, and back then things were like that. All very scary. All very open to modern atheists arguing that God is a moral monster. God is our Father, God is a Father who is happy to see his child suffer for ever; and Christians ask atheists to believe God is love and wonder why they don’t? The arguments are familiar enough.

In my leisure time I have been reading a small book by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope that all men be saved? In it he makes a point which rings true but which I had not seen others make, which is compare the sayings about hell with post-resurrection sayings, and then point out that the former are mostly pre-resurrection, aimed, he thinks, at meeting his hearers where they were with concepts they would understand. He suggests that if we take all of them in the light of the post-resurrection experience, we get a different view, once in which it is men and their stiff-necks which confine them to hell, rather than it being God who condemns them.

St Isaac the Syrian reminds us that “There is no sin that cannot be forgiven except the one without repentance”. We are not God, we cannot judge as He does. But we can see what Christ says and we can try to follow His example. Even a convicted thief could be saved at the last – and why, because he repented of his sins, he confessed his belief in Christ and he did his best to witness to his Lord. As he goes on to say elsewhere:

Just because (the terms) wrath, anger, hatred, and the rest are used of the Creator, we should not imagine that He (actually) does anything in anger or hatred or zeal. Many figurative terms are employed in the Scriptures of God, terms which are far removed from His (true) nature. And just as (our) rational nature has (already) become gradually more illuminated and wise in a holy understanding of the mysteries which are hidden in (Scripture’s) discourse about God – that we should not understand everything (literally) as it is written, but rather that we should see, (concealed) inside the bodily exterior of the narratives, the hidden providence and eternal knowledge which guides all – so too we shall in the future come to know and be aware of many things for which our present understanding will be seen as contrary to what it will be then; and the whole ordering of things yonder will undo any precise opinion we possess now in (our) supposition about Truth. ’ [‘The Second Part’ XXXIX, 19]

We should recall what St Isaac wrote about God being love, and about his mercy:

“In love did God bring the world into existence; in love is God going to bring it to that wondrous transformed state, and in love will the world be swallowed up in the great mystery of the One who has performed all these things; in love will the whole course of the governance of creation be finally comprised.”

‘As a handful of sand thrown into the ocean, so are the sins of all flesh as compared with the mercy of God’.

Now I can see that from the pastoral point of view this might cause problems – what is the sanction for evil? But then, from the pastoral point of view, traditional concepts of hell-fire cause problems. Is anyone ever brought to love by fear? It is love which God offers. If we cannot access that, and if we cannot be good without fear of sanction, then have we really come to God at all?

God is love, and perfect love casts out fear, so why would we fear God? I an ashamed of myself when I do not not follow his ways, and conscious that my sins are often more omission – stuff I never did and should have done. I always feel better after confession, but that’s because I’ve said sorry to my Father, and I am sorry, not because I am scared of him, but because it hurts me to hurt him. That, I think is what true love does.

Honest doubt

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Atonement, Bible, Faith

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 jesus-on-the-cross
There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds
So wrote old Tennyson in In Memoriam, a poem I doubt many now read. When they did, it was the fashion of some to quote these lines as though Tennyson himself approved of such a position, but no honest reading of it can support that line, as it goes on to describe the way in which the poet overcame his doubts. But it is natural that from time to time men should have their doubts – and so when the Archbishop of Canterbury confesses that he had his doubts about the presence of God after the Paris massacres, that should occasion neither surprise nor criticism – though it has done both. His own view in his own words can be found here, and should be read before anyone casts aspersions.
What is called ‘theodicy’ – the question of why bad things happen to good people, has perplexed us all from time to time, I should guess. Chalcedon passed this on to me from one of his sons, who is a Pastor in Stoke, and it seems to me to answer the question of how we should react pretty well:
So what do we say? We go to the cross, first of all, where God is most present IN the suffering and dying one. And we go to the empty tomb, where we see the victory of God. Then we go to the end of this story, to the Second Advent, and the day of God’s Judgement of the world. Yes, there are times when this world’s evil causes doubts, and our response must be to fight those doubts, and overcome them by the Cross.
Hard to beat that, I think.
Christ knew this world’s keenest woes, and he took them upon himself that our sins should be remitted. But he could not drive out of this world the stain or original sin, nor could he save us, in this world, from its consequences. So, bad things will happen, not because of God, but because of sin – our sin and the sinfulness of others. There is one remedy only, and that is in the Cross of Christ. If you doubt it, then ask where else a remedy is to be had? Save for Christ, there is none. There can be the dulling of it all by indulgence in sin which will soon take our minds off what ails us – only to leave us with a spiritual hangover of immense proportions. Sin is sin and it means to destroy us. The evil deeds of ISIS come from where all evil originates – the devil who encompassed our fall. Salvation comes from where it has always come from – the name of Jesus. In him alone are we made righteous, and in him alone do we have eternal life. As Paul tells us:
3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; 4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

The end is nigh?

20 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bible, End times

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End times

Sunday’s Gospel focussed on the end times. It is natural that we should take an interest in the subject, for the one thing we all have in common is that we shall all die – and I think most men and women would like it if it were otherwise; there is, in most of us, a longing for immortality: but there is also a fascination with end times and disasters – as any review of popular culture shows. Jesus reminds us today that only the Father knows ‘the time’. This has not stopped fallen man from trying to draw aside the curtain and take a peek, and the Bible has been misued many times by numerologists anxious to crack some ‘code’ they claim to find therein. How typical of mankind: on the one hand a definite Biblical statement – God alone knows the time – and on the other an attempt to use the inspired book for a purpose of our own; how often do we seek to put there what we want to find, whilst ignoring that which is there and from which we flinch because it cuts across our sinful urges?

For each of us the end time is within our own life time – indeed it will coincide with the end of our mortal life. That we know for sure; it is all we need to know, as well as all we can know. That being so, then everything Christ talks about will come to pass for each of us. We are assured of mercy – which pleases us; but we are also assured of judgment – which does not. It does not because we know in our hearts that we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. God forgives us if we repent and embrace Him, and that actually requires a huge leap of faith. This is not least because we know how hard we can find it to forgive those who have sinned against us, jusr as we know how hard it can be for us to find such forgiveness. Measuring things, as we do, by human standards, we are, nonetheless, invited by God into the huge mystery of His judgment of us.

At his homily this morning, our parish priest said that it is a core part of his own faith that unless we are truly evil, then God will not reject us. That seemed to some present a kind of universalism – but was not so. It was an expression of the belief that God has made each of us for salvation, to live with Him for eternity, and that if we come to Him through the Son, and if we follow the teachings of the Church, then whatever our failing – which will always be many in the eyes of God – then we shall come, at last, to the Beatific Vision at the end of all mortal things.

We do not need to search the oracles of time and space, or seek to know what not even the Son knows, because we know our end is nigh. If we act on that, and if we respnd to His love with love, then, in the words of Mother Julian of Norwich, ‘all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.’