See you in Hell - one in three clergy believe in damnation

THE Devil's work is far from done. More than a third of Scotland's clergy still believe in the literal existence of Hell as a place, according to a new survey.

Hell has not got any less hellish over the centuries either. The ministers, from a wide range of denominations, are convinced that lost souls will still suffer eternal mental anguish after death.

Hardliners hold out the prospect of eternal physical punishment as an added part of the package for the condemned. Judgment Day, whether it ends in being sent to Hell or not, is also a strong belief, the survey found, with more than half of Scottish ministers in no doubt that humanity is divided into the saved and the damned after they depart the ranks of the mortal.

Your personal chances of being sent to either Heaven or Hell, however, could depend on where you live. Ministers who believe in an eternal mental and physical torment are much thicker on the ground in the Highlands and Islands and on the west coast of the mainland.

Far fewer ministers in the east and south of Scotland are convinced that their parishioners will suffer a fiery fate being lashed by Satanic demons.

The survey, 'Hell in Scotland: A Survey of Where the Nation's Clergy Think Some Might Be Heading', was conducted by Dr Eric Stoddart, a lecturer in practical theology at St Andrews University.

The divinity scholar canvassed the views of 750 clergy from the Church of Scotland, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist and Scottish Episcopalian churches, as well as other Presbyterians and the Salvation Army, to find out what constituted a modern Hell.

Stoddart said: "The fire and brimstone may largely have been extinguished but the beliefs that many Scottish clergy hold concerning the potential horrors that await "the lost" continue to be dark and forbidding. All will not be well, if the majority of Scotland's clergy are to be believed."

Throughout the history of many religions, the concept of a fiery Hell has been used to frighten populations away from sinning. The reward for a morally good life - and those who repented before death - was a place in Heaven alongside your God, while those who sinned without remorse were destined to descend into the Devils's domain.

The concept of Hell as a literal place has declined in an increasingly secular world. But what surprised Stoddart is that "there is a solid number of Scottish ministers who still believe in eternal torment.

"There are those who maintain that Hell is something that should have gone away with the thinking that the Earth was flat, but it clearly hasn't," he said.

"I can understand that after death there might be some who think there are others who won't get into Heaven. They just won't exist. But for others to think there is really mental and physical torment came as a shock to me."

Belief in Hell appears to follow strict geographical boundaries. According to the survey, 37% of ministers in the Highlands, Western Isles, Orkney and Shetland are convinced the "lost" will go to Hell, with Strathclyde not far behind with 33%. This compares with 15% in the Lothians and Central regions, 9% in Grampian, Tayside and Fife, and just 6% in Dumfries and Galloway and the Borders.

"You are going to get more Hell belief in the Western Isles because of the strong presence of Presbyterian groups like the Free Church of Scotland," Stoddart said.

"Also, the west coast has a stronger Catholic presence as well as more conservative Baptist and other Protestant groups. By contrast, the east coast appears to be less Hell-fearing than the west."

Social commentators said the continuing strength of the literal belief among ministers in modern Scotland reflected the rise of religious fundamentalism across the world.

Rev Professor George Newlands, head of the Kirk's School of Divinity in Glasgow, said: "It is no surprise that there remains such a strong belief in Hell, because all over the world, religions are tending to become more fundamentalist and moving towards a kind of literalism. On many religious issues, there is a more literal interpretation of scriptures in the west than in the east, which corresponds to the north-south divide in the US."

Historian Michael Fry said the remaining fundamentalist areas which still believe in Heaven and Hell were a useful mirror image for the rest of modern, materialist Scotland. "It will not alter the fact, however, that most people will make their own moral choices."

A spokesman for the Catholic Church, which last week announced it was to scrap Limbo, the state between Heaven and Hell into which unbaptised babies were dispatched, said: "The Catholic Church affirms the existence of Hell, understood as eternal separation from God. However, the Church has never formally defined who, if anyone, is in Hell."

Stoddart, a former Baptist minister, says he no longer believes in Hell in the sense of a future destination. "But there is still a lot of value in talking about Hell because it allows us to say no to things in a moral sense. It's a way of making a judgment on what is right or wrong."

I am not sure what you mean by a "proxy." if you mean like a "proxy" server where he is a gatway...., yeah you could sorta say that, but it is more than just that.

The standard is a perfect heart which seeks God and loves him and yearns for him. The picture of us in the bible is a bit different. It is not very flattering. In fact, we are pictured as running like hell from the real God, and so intent on NOT discovering him that we will make up any number of religions to avoid contact with the real shebang, as long as we can say "I am ok..., a few glitches here and there, but basically alright." The challenge that we are corrupt to the core and really haters of the true God pisses us off because it is an affront to us, and we don't like the idea of being snivelly beggars who can contribute NOTHING but a track record of perpetual cosmic rebellion. So, when Jesus comes along and says "ONLY thru me, no other way"(which he did....I am not going to throw bible verses at you, but I have em if you want them), it seems very narrow minded and arbitrary, because we are still operating from the "I am basically a good person" viewpoint. It is an interesting point that Jesus said that our response to HIM was the ultimate judge of whether our hearts were good or bad. If we accepted him and his teaching, then that was the ultimate sign that we are good..., because he was from THE GOOD and therefore one could not love good and reject him. That was either unbridled arrogance, insanity, or the simple truth. He also stated that the greatest evil a man could do was to simply reject him and his teachings, because it revealed the true nature of a heart in opposition to God.

If that is the case, I need a record that I don't have. That is the offer of the "good news." Christ died, bearing the punishment for my shitty record, and I get his PERFECT record as a sheer gift, just by trusting in his promise to do so. Best deal I have ever seen.

Being born in sin doesn't mean you committed sin when born.

sure it does. Romans 5 is crystal clear in this. YOU sinned "in Adam" and come into the world bearing the guilt of that first sin. The concept of representation is an integral part of the gospel itself. Adam was your first representative before God. His sin was yours and his punishemnt is yours. Christ is the "second Adam" and also your representative.

Maybe this is a better way to say it. David Price is my Congressman. In D.C. he votes for legislation, and that vote is counted as the sum of all the votes in his district. It is as though I voted THROUGH him. The problem with man made systems of representation is that David Price almost NEVER represents the choice I "would have" made, so that it is not "fair" to count his vote as mine......, but it is the best we can do. However, God can design a system whereby when Adam "CHOSE" he accurately and perfectly represented the choice that every human being WOULD HAVE MADE, and that is exactly what He did in Adam. Therefore, it is just to count Adam's sin as ours. Again, this is the clear teaching of Romans 5. It is what older theologians called "original sin."

You have a very unbiblical view of the standards that one must "choose" in order to please God.

I simply try to do what Jesus asked us all to do "Take up my cross and follow Him each day". That means I have all my faults, insecurities and sinfulness, but I try not to dwell on those. Instead, using the strength given me by Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament I receive at Mass each Sunday, I try to act as Jesus told us to act in the New Testament, and try to keep the Commandments God gave us in the Old Testament. But when I fail, I stand on Jesus's promise that if I repent, I will be forgiven. With that, and trusting in God's Love for me, I believe I will see Him.

Sometimes, we can run ourselves down so much that we don't think we are worthy of God's Love. That is a mistake, in my opinion. We are made in HIS image, and even though Adam and Eve lost Paradise by their choice to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, we are made to find our way to Him. That gives me hope, but I don't presume that I can reach Him by going along my merry way. I have to live in Him and do has He taught us in order to be with Him in Eternity.

If you read my previous posts that was covered. They believed God would send a sacrifice and the reference was Abraham and Isaac, ergo they were save just like today(saved by faith). There were clearly people in Heaven before Jesus as at the Transfiguration, Enoch, etc. The lost people believed in following the Law. That is what Jesus tried to straighten out with the church leaders. Read about Nicodemus( too lazy to look up the spelling) Now, where is purgatory besides in folklore made up by men?

The point I was making to the people I was responding to is nobody reads their Bible. They make it up or listen to people that know even less than they do. Whatever sounds good works. That's not the Gospel.

If you go back and read my other posts, I told you about the culture and traditions of the Jews, of which Jesus was one. The age of accountability was ~13. They still celebrate that today. I can't spell it but it is a Bar Mitzvah.

Try reading here http://www.jewfaq.org/barmitz.htm

This is why the Jews are called the "chosen people". It's not because they won't go to Hell or they are garaunteed Heaven. They were chosen to reveal the oracles of God. Jesus was revealed through the Jews even if they rejected Him. You can increase your Bible knowledge 200% by learning the Jewish culture and Feasts. Read the 1st 5 books, especially Leviticus to learn more about their holidays. The reason God told them to celebrate these Feasts days was to show them the coming of Jesus.

Hi SuziQ. I think you are like many of my Roman Catholic (I assume) brothers and sisters in Christ. Your heart is better than your theology. I rejoice in what God has done in and for you, and I CERTAINLY am not going to try and "convert" you over a bulletin board, nor even to try and sway your thinking particularly.

I will say that thinking yourself "unworthy" of Christ's love is not a bad thing. In fact, the bliss of heaven will come from being able to finally cease resisting that thought, and diving in to the strange but true Christian assertion that the more I grasp my own UNworthiness, it will NOT lead to a morbid fascination with my own rottenness. Heaven is where I will take a good long look at my own putrid, rotten self, with its self deception, self gratification, self absorption, self seeking, and say (truly honestly for the first time) that only HE is worthy. The weird paradox of Christian teaching is that only then do I find my TRUE self, and can rejoice in me as God's beautiful creation as he meant me to be.

In this world, I fear we are like Luther's drunk man falling off one side of the horse and then the other. Either we have too rosy a view of self (and therefore too low a view of sin and of God's holiness), or we go to the other side and wallow in morbid self-introspection, obsessed with our own "unworthiness" (much of it cliche). Only when we are truly free can we be released from our obsession with self in the first place.

On that day, I shall delight in talking to you. Till then, we can just look forward to that delightful time. Thanks for interacting.

I did not ask you for the culture and traditions of the Jews, which are laid out in far more detail in "The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah" by A Edersheim than even the raw structural content of the Torah. (Edersheim was a Jewish Scholar who came to Christ in Israel under the influence of RM McCheyne, a Scotch preacher who died too young in the late 1800s).
The "age of accountability" is NOT the Jewish bar mitzvah, where a young MAN (not a woman) confesses the faith of his father. You have hopelesly mixed up the need for a covenant child to validate the covenant (a "covenant child" doctrine, belonging mostly with those who baptize infants) with the doctrine of modern baptists to explain what happens to children who die before a time of intellectual and moral comprehension is possible. That latter doctrine, which you call "the age of accountability," has no biblical support, My original challenge to you, as you pressed others to conform their thinking to the bible only and not to rest on the traditions of their religious upbringing, was to justify this doctrine from the bible. That challenge still stands.

By the way, I am not a fire breather for the age of baptism, being covenant children OR believing baptism, and my challenge on this issue is not meant to go into the topic.

It is just saying that you have been a bit zealous in encouraging others to biblically justify their doctrines of belief, and I would be interested to see what biblical justification you have for this particular one. I submit that there are none.

Thanks for verifying what I said. There is nothing in those verses that says works are required to receive or maintain salvation, only that Faith and good works go hand in hand.

1 Corinthians 13:13 -
And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Note - It doesn't say that FAITH is the greatest of these - it says CHARITY is the greatest.

(1 John 4:16): "He that abideth in charity, abideth in God, and God in him."
Is this a lie?

(James 2:24) - "You see that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone."

(Matthew 19:1617) - "And behold, one came to Him and said, "Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life?" 17And He said to him, "Why are you asking Me about what is good? There is only One who is good; but if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments."

As you can see, the Bible appears to be contradictory about what it takes to go to Heaven. Some verses say that only faith can save you - but in Matthew we see that Jesus himself says only to "keep the commandments".

Obviously these seemingly contradictory statements are open to interpretation. Who says that YOUR intrepretation is correct? If you believe that one can only go to Heaven by faith alone - do you just disregard the above statements?

We will all find out one day - but then it'll be too late to tell anyone else.

Who says that the Fundamentalists are correct and the Catholic Church is wrong? Both sides have scripture to back up their beliefs.

".....I submit that there are none."....

I gave you the reasoning the Jews have for it. Now what is your "proof that a parent can sprinkle a child and save them when they are born. To be saved, you must believe Jesus died on the cross and took your sins because you are a hopeless sinner. How does a child that has no comprehension of death mak that choice and even an older child, how do you know he made that choice? There are alot of children that are baptized at 5-6-8, that get re baptized later when they realize they had no clue what they were doing at 5 other than momma wanted them to go down front. There are no sprinkled babies that I know of in the Bible.

BTW, a girl Jewish child gets a "Bat" Mitzvah.

Jesus was baptized at ~30 years old. Does that mean He was in danger of Hellfire before then? Jewish law holds Him accountable at 13. Before that a child is encouraged to follow the Law, but not accountable if they don't. Jews, being Jews, follow the Law. What if a child wasn't able to comprehend his/her actions till 15? They were inflexable. Do you believe a child that dies at 3 goes to Hell? I realize it's God's call who goes and who doesn't but I don't believe it.

We won't understand what born in sin means until we understand the "fall."

When we understand what truly happened to the first Mother then we understand how to redeem ourselves. We "see" the way back. This is what Jesus' life was all about.

I am not guilty of rebellion. And neither are others who want to find their way back to perfection. We who want to see the true image of God will see it.

We must understand and know the original lie. Eve was perfectly made in God's image, but Satan made her believe she was imperfect. So, certain religious teachers that love to continually harp on original sin basically perpetuate Satan's big lie. The difference is we have Eve's example to avoid, and she had none.

Born in sin means being born into Satan's lie.

RE: being righteous before a Holy God. I would guess this means knowing ourselves and others for what we truly are.

I will say that thinking yourself "unworthy" of Christ's love is not a bad thing.

It's not a bad thing in itself, but if taken to extremes, it can cause people to lose hope and give up trying, and that would be a sad thing because God truly does want ALL of us with Him. After all, He created Paradise for Adam and Eve and their descendants. I believe that's why we were created; to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him, in this life, and be happy with Him in the next.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.