Posted on 06/21/2006 8:03:30 AM PDT by Between the Lines
Belief in hell is going to you-know-where. And belief in heaven is in trouble, too.
That's the concern of some Christian thinkers, including Jeffrey Burton Russell, an emeritus professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, and author of the new book “Paradise Mislaid: How We Lost Heaven and How We Can Regain It” (Oxford).
Russell and other fretters aren't impressed by fads like the sudden popularity of the girl's name Naveah (heaven spelled backward) or polls that show most Americans believe in some sort of heaven.
The growing problem, according to Russell and others, is that the way U.S. Christians conceive of both heaven and hell is so feeble and vague that it's almost meaningless — vague “superstition.”
It's “not that heaven is deteriorating,” he says. “But we are.”
Gallup reported in 2004 that 81 percent of Americans believed in heaven and 70 percent in hell. An earlier Gallup Poll said 77 percent of ever-optimistic Americans rated their odds of making heaven as “good” or “excellent.” Few saw themselves as hellbound.
“The percentage who say they believe in heaven has remained pretty constant the past 50 years, but what people mean by it has changed an awful lot,” Russell said in an interview.
Some people are so confused they believe in heaven but not God — “I suppose it's a New Age thing,” Russell said.
But if today's notion of paradise is off base, and sentimental images of clouds, harps and cherubs are the stuff of magazine cartoons, then what's the best way to think of heaven?
“For Christians, basically, heaven underneath all of the decorations means living in harmony with God and the cosmos and your neighbors and being grateful,” said Russell, who studied hell and Satan for 15 years before first turning his attention to heaven in a 1997 book.
To Russell, it's healthiest to see heaven as starting on earth, not an existence that “suddenly happens when you die.”
What about hell and its fire and brimstone? “There is a tendency to over-dramatize hell in order to get (it) across to people,” he said, but it's simply “the absence of God, the absence of heaven.”
“Heaven has gradually been shut away in a closet by the dominant intellectual trends,” Russell writes. Likewise with hell: Russell cannot remember the last time he's heard that unhappy subject treated in church or in religious literature.
What happened? Russell's book is largely a heartfelt appeal against “physicalism,” the modern claim that knowledge comes only through the physical senses and empirical science.
Such an outlook is arrogant and unprovable, Russell believes, because it ignores humans' moral sense and the supernatural— including heaven and hell.
Among Protestants who share Russell's angst, perhaps the most outspoken is the Rev. David F. Wells of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts. He has spent years bemoaning the erosion of Christian teaching, through books like last fall's “Above All Earthly Pow'rs: Christ in a Postmodern World.”
Wells said in an interview that western Christianity is on the defensive against religious skepticism, secularism, materialism and consumerism.
He said that when Christian truth collides with the dominant cultural belief, promoted by psychology, that individuals should choose whatever they want, then “something has to give. And in our world today, in America and much of the West, what is giving is Christianity.” That includes the faith in “ultimate right and wrong” that undergirds heaven and hell.
So, many who say they believe in heaven are “projecting from their very best therapeutic experiences into eternity,” not meeting God “on his own terms,” he thinks.
A related question is who enters heaven.
On that, Americans are predictably expansive. A Newsweek/beliefnet.com poll last year asked, “Can a good person who isn't of your religious faith go to heaven or attain salvation?” Fully 79 percent said yes, with somewhat lower percentages among evangelicals and among non-Christians.
In Catholicism, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) declared that persons who do not know the Christian gospel but sincerely seek God “can attain to everlasting salvation.” The church decided that requiring explicit Christian faith was too pessimistic, said U.S. theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles, writing in First Things magazine.
But now, he cautioned, “thoughtless optimism is the more prevalent error,” with many Christians mistakenly assuming that “everyone, or practically everyone, must be saved.”
Still, the New Testament teaches “the absolute necessity of faith for salvation” and says that each of us faces just two possibilities, either “everlasting happiness in the presence of God” or “everlasting torment in the absence of God.”
God has spoken! Hallelujah!
Oh, well thank goodness at least you're sure. Thank you for putting my feeble mind at ease.
Paul is dead. I am the walrus. :-)
Not only that; I'm sure I'm going to Heaven...Can you say that for yourself???
Everybody seems to want to make all of God's decisions for him. I guess if most on this thread can't feel like they have it all figured out they get nervous. :-)
Trying to figure it all out, seems like such a waste of this great life that we've been given.
I've been able to relax much more since I've ceased with efforts of trying to handle God's job for him. lol.
Got that right, I don't mind at all, just going along for the ride.
I couldn't find the word "Bible", either. That must mean the canon is an arbitrary concoction of man.
What's even funnier, is that God doesn't offer salvation through the Catholic Church, but He chose to offer the Bible through it. That's ironic, don't you think?
Strange. What do you make of this from Paul?
Philllipians 2:12
"Wherefore, my dearly beloved, (as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but much more now in my absence,) with fear and trembling work out your salvation."
Let's see what Jesus thinks...
Matthew 7:21
"Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Seems to me that just telling everyone you're saved isn't going to fly. What you do, however, will matter.
I did too. Couldn't take any more of the ramblings. However, I did not catch the incorrect backwards spelling of Heaven. This so-called prof. emeritus, is just out to make a name for himself. Thinks he's got the whole scenario all wrapped up in a package, and tied with a nice red bow...
"What ever happened to good old biblical truths....
John 14:6 I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the father but by me.
Romans 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved
I'd say it's pretty simple and easy to understand that. Notice there were no references to the Pope or to people who just really love God. I don't know about you but I'll stick with the Bible, thank you very much."
EXACTLY!
It's as clear as the nose on their faces, yet they won't believe God. Again, I take the Word of God over ANY fallible mortal or "church".
Matthew 7:21
"Not every one that saith to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven: but he that doth the will of my Father who is in heaven, he shall enter into the kingdom of heaven."
Yes, indeed!
DO keep that statement in mind when you profess salvation is ONLY through the Catholic church.
When you read the Bible you will see the fallacy of believing the Catholic church is the way to salvation through works.
Eph. 2:8-9
8] For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
[9] Not of works, lest any man should boast.
"God has spoken! Hallelujah!"
Yes, God was quoted here in Bible verses, if ONLY you'd heed what HE says. Perhaps your are of the kind entertained by your own foolish sarcasm? Never mind. I'm really not interested in pursuing that ... .
So I guess we Prots are really not 'separated brethren' after all.
Not if you are Episcopalian. Then you profess Mother, child, womb. ;-)
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