Posted on 12/03/2005 11:41:20 PM PST by WKB
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."
Suicide to escape consequence of conduct kinda nullifies penitence, doesn't it?
I saw that, but it wasn't clear that Limbo and Purgatory are the same concept and I'm not certain they are.
Limbo and Purgatory are not the same thing. Limbo was the place referred to when someone was not baptised but had no chance of baptism. Purgatory is a condition in which we suffer temporal punishment for our sins that are unconfessed. This is how I have viewed them from my Catholic experience, and these are but quick summations on my part.
Just curious. It's thrown about so much and never defined, exactly.
Statements about Hell in the Bible, including numerous clear saying of Jesus, are unmistakable. It is impossible to be a real Catholic or a Bible-believing Protestant and not believe in Hell.
Purgatory is much more controversial for Protestants, but as a Catholic I find it very comforting. If you die in a state of sin, but not of deliberate, mortal sin, then you will go to Purgatory until these sins have burned away. It's hard to believe that most of us are likely to head straight for heaven, and Purgatory is certainly preferable to Hell.
It is a place of what is usually portrayed as refining fire, a theme found in numerous places in the Old Testament and the New, and it explains why early Christians universally prayed for the dead. There is no point praying for those in Heaven, and no use praying for those in Hell, as Augustine points out. But the souls in Purgatory, or whose fate is in doubt, deserve our prayers.
Is Purgatory biblical? Not so directly as Hell, but numerous passages which talk about refining fire and the like can be read as pointing to it. Maccabees calls on the faithful to pray for the dead, but of course Maccabees is considered apocryphal by Protestants (and canonical by Catholics).
There is no logical reason to believe Christ about one's salvation, if he is not believed in relation to Hell. Or did He lie about some things but not others?
From the body of article: "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."
Bear in mind that the author refers to all Scottish clergy (including Catholic) as "ministers" in this article: "The ministers, from a wide range of denominations, are convinced that lost souls will still suffer eternal mental anguish after death."
Only a third?
Hebrews 9:27
Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment,
The Judgement Day is clear in Revalations, those who are written out of The Book of Life will not be saved and will not enter The Kingdom of Heaven.
What Hell is will be found out by those who are written off, by thier own actions.
I for one do not want to find out what hell is. The fact of not being in Heaven with Jesus Christ for eternity is Hell enough.
Ops4 God Bless America!
Yup, exact verse I was thinking of.
MM
Personally, I cannot think of a worse fate than this. Some choose to separate themselves from God during their mortal lives, and think they get along pretty well notwithstanding. Yet aons of forever in the state of separation -- which separation from divine goodness, truth, and beauty if it persists is made absolute on the second death -- constitutes absolute nonbeing and nothingness to which those who separate themselves from God are condemned to participate, in a state of unremitting, eternal conscious awareness. This to me constitutes Hell. And it's already bad enough, regardless of whether Satan's legions are there to physically torment us or not. The worst torments are those of the mind anyway, not those of the body.
To be abandoned by God because of the choices we make in life is to me the definition of perfect desolation. That it is unending and unremitting and unpardonable is its horrific sting. This is what Christians mean by Hell.
Capice?
Uh,... no.
It depends on whether you trust Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, or not. That has nothing whatsoever to do with where in Scotland (or the world) you live.
It is also irrelevant whether you "believe" in the existence of Hell as to whether you end up there or not.
"A careful reading of the article reveals that it does not square with the claim in the title."
"more than half"
So it's actually worse than the title indicates
Thanks for pointing that out.
All this talk about "afterlife" creates a barrier of FEAR for living now.
What about God's "grand design" for each of us?
Where is the vaunted "Design for Living" in the here and now?
When, and if asked, will you say you spent your life reading book,chapter and verse about the the "life after death" and transfixed in mortal fear over the consequences of daily venal life?
I prefer to live this time celebrating 21st Century Faith, Hope and Gratitude for the gift that life truly is.
My God is a God of Love.
I must say this is rather stupid, since the people in hell would be those who made life hell for those around them when they are on earth.
Vacation with the cruellest person you ever knew? And as Sartre said, "No exit"?
You're welcome. But I'm not sure what you mean by "worse." The title says only 1/3 believe in damnation, ie. agree with scripture on this point. The article says more than 1/2 believe in damnation.
Well, maybe you should ponder the poet's meaning a bit longer: the more interesting people [i.e those forming the society he would like to be in] were, in his estimation, not going to Heaven, rather the opposite. At least that's how his meaning looks to me. And I would not call this interpretation "rather stupid".
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