What is Your View on Hell?

A painting in the Sanctuary Notre-Dame des Fontaines, La Brigue called the "Last Judgment : the damned souls".

In light of the recent controversy surrounding the doctrine of hell and the idea of universalism, prompted by the recent release of Rob Bell's (Pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grandville, MI) book, Love Wins, here are a couple of lectures on the different ideas of hell that have had prominence in the church over the past 2000 years. Many people think that the traditional eternal torment view, as espoused by many evangelicals today, is the only view held by the church over the centuries. This is not true. In these two lectures, Steven Gregg does a great job of presenting and explaining three main views that have been prominent throughout church history in different places, as espoused by certain respected church fathers. If you've never studied this, I recommend you listen to these lectures and then come back and let's discuss it. What is your view? Why do you believe this?

Three Views of Hell- 1

Three views of Hell -2  

Living with Questions: the Virtues of Not Knowing

Wow! It has been allot longer than I had planned since my last update to this site. I've got a few other blogs and I've decided to migrate most of them over to this one and use this blog entirely for all of my interest. But, man, I have sure been lazy in getting this effort up and off the ground. Thankfully, there are not many of you that know of this site, so I've not left many readers disappointed. 

It is time, however, to go ahead and get the ball rolling. So, here's the first installment of what I hope will be many post relating to matters of faith, scripture, politics, as well as many other intellectual pursuits that I have. 

My early faith tradition did not assign any real value, beyond a mere historical one, to the portion of the Catholic bible known as the Apocrypha. Obviously, there are many many Christians today who put as much value on these scriptures as they do to any other portion of the Hebrew bible. But, the tradition that I was raised in, to their own detriment, in my opinion, did not see the apocryphal scriptures as being equal to or even a valid part of a Christian canon. 


As a result, I came to these scriptures much later in life and it has only been recently that I've spent any quality time perusing these texts. This mission of discovery, or recovery mission, if you will, has led me to some valuable finds and I am sorry it has taken me this long to realize that these scriptures are there and that they have much to say, in tandem with, the scriptures that have come to mean allot to me over the years.

I've recently picked up the late James Agee's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, A Death in the Family. Early on in this novel, there is comical exchange around the breakfast table between Mary Follet and her young children, Rufus and little Catherine. Mommy is trying to explain to her children that their paternal grandfather is very sick and might die, and the kids are wrestling with the big ideas of heaven and what death means. This little mundane exchange of ideas captures the essence of the multitude of questions that children have asked over time, and the many ways that adults have answered these questions in an ongoing effort to help them understand these very complex ideas:

"Mama," Rufus said, "when Oliver went to sleep did he wake up in heaven too?"
"I don't know. I imagine he woke up in a part of heaven God keeps specially for cats."
"Did the rabbits wake up?"
"I'm sure they did if Oliver did."
"All bloody like they were?"
"No, Rufus, that was only their poor little bodies. God wouldn't let them wake up all hurt and bloody, poor things."
"Why did God let the dogs in?" [evidently, the dogs were guilty of hurting the rabbits]
"We don't know, Rufus, but it must be part of His plan we will understand someday."
"What good would it do Him?"[...]"What good would it do Him, Mama, to let the dogs in?"
"I don't know, but someday we'll understand, Rufus. If we're very patient. We mustn't trouble ourselves with these things we can't understand. We just have to be sure that God knows best."
"I bet they sneaked in when He wasn't looking," Rufus said eagerly. "Cause He sure wouldn't have let them if He'd been there. Didn't they, Mama? Didn't they?" [p. 60]

The Bible and Sexual Oppression?

Religion Dispatches published an article this morning entitled Sex and Civilization: The Body as Battleground, written by Jay Michaelson. In this article, Michaelson defends sexual liberation in effort to promote homosexuality and to debunk homophobia. 

I do not consider myself homophobic (I am sure after this, some will deem me as such, regardless), but I am really getting weary of people like Michaelson either making sport of the Bible and its prohibitions, reducing the text to nothing more than the senseless ramblings of a patriarchal and repressive regime, or trying to rewrite scripture altogether, making it more homo-friendly than it really is. Both these arguments do harm, in my opinion. 


For one, the Bible is our sacred text, for better or worse. Obviously, most Christians believe that God has spoken through this medium. The world needs to see us wrestling positively with these texts in order to find God's voice in the midst of our culture. If there is any tension, it is here. And, I don't see this as a negative thing at all. 


Secondly, denying what the Bible says explicitly refuses to acknowledge where we come from and the changes that have taken place over time. It devalues our faith's ability to adapt and change, remaining relevant in any context. Trying to rewrite it seems like wasted effort to me.

What is wrong with simply acknowledging that the Bible clearly prohibits homosexuality, but its regulations are cultural and not meant to have a universal application? What's wrong with saying that given today's culture and context, these scriptures are not relevant, without having to trash the entire text and make it all about sexual repression, etc?

Lastly, I find this declaration by Michaelson to be incredible: 

Liberated sexuality is the first step toward liberated consciousness, for if we remove the yoke of oppression from our genitals, literally and figuratively, and we lighten it from our backs.

What? Where in the heck does he get this from? Didn't we try this in the sixties?