The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part VIII

Next week I will make some conclusions, but this week I want to make one final observation about the attempt to derive the evangelical hell doctrine (EHD) from the Bible. There are a few passages in the New Testament that use the words ‘death,’ ‘destruction,’ or ‘perish’ to describe the fate of unbelievers. For instance, 2 Thessalonians 1:9 says that “[t]hey will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord…” John 3:16 famously says that unbelievers will ‘perish,’ and Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The one who holds the EHD has to believe that these are euphemisms; that is, Paul and John talk about mere death, but what they really mean is that these people will be alive forever while being consciously tortured.

These are two reasons that this is an irresponsible reading. First, if it is true that most people who have ever lived will suffer eternal, conscious torment, then such a truth would be the most important thing that we could ever discover. Therefore, we should expect the writers of the Bible to talk about this at every turn! But Paul never does, and John only does in Revelation when talking about worshippers of the beast and the devil. So are John and Paul holding out on us? Do they actually know that the fate of most people will be eternal conscious torment and yet do not tell us because it would be impolite? This seems absurd.

The second reason has to do with the Greek words being used. Those three passages I reference use three different Greek words for death, and when those words are used in other passages, they really just mean death – as in a complete end to life. For instance, the word translated ‘destruction’ in the 2 Thessalonians passage also shows up in I Corinthians 5:5, where Paul talks about “the destruction of the flesh,” which he contrasts with the “spirit [being] saved in the day of the Lord.” Or in John 3:16, the Greek word translated as ‘perish’ shows up in Matthew 5:29, when Jesus says that you should take out your right eye, because “it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (NKJV). In Jesus’ teaching in Matthew, then, perishing is the opposite of going to hell. So why would he use it in a radically different way in John without explaining himself? Did he just assume that we would get the message? In both of these passages, then, death is contrasted with ‘going to hell’; that is, perishing, or dying, or being destroyed is the opposite of living forever.

And so we have a handful or passages that mention hell or something like it. There are a few (mostly from Matthew, one from Luke) that mention hell as a place that you go for doing immoral works, and not for what you do or do not believe. Therefore, these passages cannot support the EHD. Then there are a few passages, all from Revelation, that describe literal, conscious torment. These, however, do not refer to regular unbelievers, but to the devil, worshippers of the beast, etc. Therefore, these passages cannot support the EHD. Then there are the passages I talked about today. They do (unlike the other two kinds of passages) talk about those who do not believe in the Gospel. However, they do not talk about hell as a destination for unbelievers; rather, they say that they will die, instead of having to endure some sort of everlasting torture. We can see that the Evangelical Hell Doctrine is unraveling fast. I want to make some concluding remarks next week.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part VII

Last week I addressed one of the verses that the idea of eternal, conscious, punishment may come from. This week, I address the other two (or maybe three). One is Revelation 20, where John envisions a great and final judgment: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life…And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was throw into the lake of fire” (vv. 12, 15).

The Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD), we may remember, says that those who do not believe in the Gospel will suffer eternal, conscious, torment, and apparently, this text is supposed to offer support. There are two important reasons that it does not. The first is that only a few verses later, John mentions which individuals are not in the book of life: “…the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable,…murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars…” (21:8). This list does not refer (at least exclusively) to those who have prayed the sinner’s prayer, as the EHD would have us expect (I have blogged about the relevance of character in another series, ‘A Theology of Love’). Thus, Revelations 20 and 21 cannot be used to support the EHD.

The second is that the result of being thrown in the lake of fire is frequently and simply referred to as “death” (v. 14). And since the text nowhere says or implies that those thrown in the lake of fire suffer eternal, conscious, torment, it would be quite a leap to believe that John meant to say that they experience eternal, conscious, torment, but just never got around to saying it. Such a detail is too important to leave out.

John actually does mention some who will experience eternal, conscious, torment, namely, the worshippers of the beast: “And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshippers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name” (14:11). There are three others mentioned in chapter 20: “the devil…was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (v. 10). Thus, John specifically mentions that the devil, the beast, the worshippers of the beast, and the false prophet will suffer eternal, conscious, torment. And so are we to believe that John forgot to mention that detail just 5 verses later when describing the fate of those not in the book of life?

I want to emphasize that there are several other passages (in addition to Rev. 20) that imply that those who are not reconciled to God die, or perish, or are destroyed, in contrast to being tormented. I will consider those passages next week.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part VI

In part III of this series, I pointed out that the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD) does not actually come from any passage of Scripture. But let’s focus mainly on the origin of the idea of eternal, conscious, torment. It seems that it comes from two passages. The first is Luke 16: 19-31, where Jesus tells the parable of an unnamed rich man and Lazarus, an extremely poor man. As the passage goes, after they both die, Lazarus goes to heaven, and the rich man goes to Hades, where he is “in anguish in this flame” (v. 24). To be sure, this passage is haunting, but two observations will show that this passage does not support the EHD.

First, we need to ask why the rich man ended up in torment, while Lazarus ended up ‘in Abraham’s bosom.’ The passage does not say, but it is obvious that we are meant to reflect on the contrast between Lazarus’ poverty and the rich man’s lack of sympathy for him (vv. 19-22). Then in v. 25, Abraham says to the rich man “remember that you in your life received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.”

The passage ends by Abraham explaining that the rich man’s relatives may avoid the place of torment by listening to ‘Moses and the prophets’ and repenting. So what, exactly, do Moses and the prophets say that would cause someone to repent? Well certainly there is much in the Jewish scriptures about taking care of the poor, and since that is the relevant transgression here, it is possible to believe that this is the important thing that Moses and the prophets would have said. But while the passage never says explicitly, we can be sure that Abraham wasn’t referring to the Gospel, because Moses and the prophets don’t talk about that. That means that Luke 16 cannot be used to support the EHD.

Second, it is very difficult to believe that this passage is supposed to be taken literally, for in the passage, the rich man is in the fire, looks up, sees Abraham, and starts a dialogue with him. Furthermore, he asks that Abraham send Lazarus down to put his wet finger on this tongue – a request that seems reasonable to him. It is odd to believe that any after-life really works that way (on anybody’s theology), leading us to the more reasonable belief that this passage was simply meant as a vivid reminder of how much God cares about our attitude toward the poor.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part V

Last week, I argued that ignorance is actually often a good thing, because knowledge – when that knowledge is useless – can do nothing but make us arrogant. For my money, this makes sense of why the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD) is not actually in the Bible even once. I sometimes have this same conversation with Creationists. They say that Gen 1 (or Gen 2) must be a science lesson, because if it wasn’t a science lesson, it must be a waste of time, and God wouldn’t include anything in the Bible that was a waste of time.

This reasoning is not very good, because the first three chapters of Genesis tell us many, many important things that help us live godly lives. So even if there is no science there (as I believe), it is still certainly valuable. It is useful practical information for us to know, for example, that we humans have a responsibility to care for the earth, or that not trusting God leads to pain, etc, etc. The point is, a deep knowledge of Genesis 1-3 helps us order our lives. But how exactly would it make a difference in your life if the universe is 6000 years old or if it is 13 billion? What does that change? What are you going to do differently if one is true and the other is false? And since it is useless practical information, we should not expect God to tell us how old the universe is. As I said last week, I believe that God puts us on a need-to-know plan, and there are many things we do not need to know.

But some argue that knowledge of the EHD is actually important, because without such knowledge, there would be no evangelism. That is, it is helpful to know that some people might experience eternal, conscience torment, because that motivates us to share the Gospel. Honestly, I feel sorry for people like that. It seems clear from nearly any passage of Scripture that God intends to improve our earthly lives. I am not saying that there are no plans for an eternal life, but it is not possible to believe that the goodness of this life is unimportant to God.

Thus, it would be incredible for someone to say something like, “Well, I’m not going to share the gospel with that person unless I can be certain that she is going to experience eternal, conscious, torment if I do not.” When the matter is put that way, we may even wonder if that person even understands what it means to be a Christian.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part IV

The last two weeks, I have been criticizing the picture of the afterlife that conservative Protestants try to sell, but you may remember that I started this series more as a response to Rob Bell’s liberal book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. What Bell’s position and the conservative one have in common, despite their incompatible conclusions, is their certainty in what they believe. They both are sure that they know what will happen ‘to every person who ever lived.’ I think this is wrong, because this is a matter about which we do not have certainty. But isn’t that a bad thing? Wouldn’t it be better if God clued us in on this important matter?

I want to focus this week on the virtue of ignorance. You may recall Jesus’ words to his disciples in Acts 1:8: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses…to the end of the earth” (ESV). My favorite word is that verse is ‘but,’ which indicates a contrast. So what is contrasted? In verse 6, the disciples ask Jesus when he will restore the kingdom to Israel. Then in verse 7, Jesus informs them that this is not information that is “for you to know.” Then the contrast word – ‘but’ – and then, “you will receive power” from the Holy Spirit.

What Jesus is implying is that when the disciples asked for that information, they were also asking for power. I believe that the old adage – ‘knowledge is power’ – is true. That means, at least partly, that when one has knowledge that another does not have yet want, the knower has power over the ignorant. This leads to another feature of knowledge: it “puffs up” (I Corinthians 8:1).

Now, there are some things we need to know if we are to live as Christians, but there are also a lot of things we do not need to know. One example, as discussed in Acts 1:8, is when the world will end. I think knowing ‘the fate of every person who ever lived’ is also an example. What these two pieces of information have in common is that they do not help us live as Christians. Thus, all they can do is to make us prideful.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part III

Last week I began addressing what I called the Evangelical Hell Doctrine (EHD): “All people who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was resurrected and accept this sacrifice will go to heaven, and all people who don’t believe and accept it will go to a place of eternal, conscious, torment.” This week I want to offer another criticism of the EHD.

You may have noticed that the EHD I gave was something that I constructed based on my own observation of most evangelical church doctrines, instead of a quotation from a passage of Scripture. Why? It is because there are no passages or verses in Scriptures in which this doctrine is articulated. There are passages that extol the virtues of belief in the Gospel, of course, but none of those passages mention anything like a disagreeable afterlife for non-believers, let alone a place of eternal conscious torment. There are also a handful of passages that mention hell or something like hell, and two or three that talk about a place of conscious torment, but in all cases, these passages talk about hell as a place for morally evil people, not for those who do not believe in the Gospel.

This absence of mention of the EHD in Scripture is problematic for at least two reasons. First, Protestants in general (and therefore evangelicals) distinguish themselves from both Orthodox and Catholic Christians in part because they emphasize Scripture and de-emphasize tradition. Thus, for evangelicals, it matters less what tradition says and quite a lot what Scripture says.

Let me illustrate my point by talking about it from the other way around. There are certain Catholics who believe you go to heaven if you have taken the sacraments, and going to hell if you have not. Not in the Bible? No problem, they will say, this is what our tradition has believed for 2,000 years, and therefore we must accept it as true. This sounds a little suspicious to me, but at least it’s consistent. Evangelicals, however, can’t make this move. We should not let them say, “Well, we know the EHD is not actually in any passage of Scripture, but these are our traditional beliefs.” By their own admission, when Scripture and tradition are in tension, Scripture wins, every time.

Second, if there really were a way to know for sure who was going to experience eternal bliss and who was going to experience eternal conscious torment, such a thing would be the most important thing that anyone has ever discovered. And, if as the evangelicals believe, God wants this to be obvious to us, we should expect there to be a plethora of verses which unambiguously articulate the EHD. Or at least one. But none? It strikes me as very strange that a belief of such dramatic importance that is supposed to be obvious is nowhere to be found in Scripture.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part II

Last week, I identified the evangelical hell doctrine (EHD): “All people who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was resurrected and accept this sacrifice will go to heaven, and all people who don’t believe and accept it will go to a place of eternal, conscious, torment.” The next few weeks, I am going to introduce good reasons to believe that this doctrine is simply not Scriptural.

I’ll start with this teaching of Jesus: “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10:14-16, ESV)

So there is an original flock. If you are a Christian in my tradition, you believe with me that this flock is made up of those who believe and accept the Gospel. But who are the members of the 'other' fold? I have heard speculation that these people may be the Jews, or at least some of the Jews. The Mormons claim that Jesus is talking about them, while still others say that this group must be those who live in unreached, remote parts of the world.

Perhaps one of these answers is right, perhaps all are, and perhaps none is. Perhaps there are two people in the other fold, perhaps there are billions. But here is an important thing to notice: Jesus does not tell us or even indicate who these ‘others’ may be. So for a reason unknown to us, Jesus felt that it was important to indicate that there were ‘others,’ but he also felt it unimportant to tell us who those ‘others’ may be.

But while it is impossible to be clear on the specifics, we do know some general things about the other flock. First, they were not members of the original fold. And, since the members of the original fold are those who believe and accept the Gospel, these ‘others’ must be people either who do not believe the Gospel (and hence do not accept the Gospel), or do not accept the Gospel (even though they believe it).

Second, these ‘others’ have exactly the same destiny as the original flock, for the two flocks will become ‘one flock’ in the end.

Third, although the other flock may not know or accept Jesus now, they “will listen to [Jesus’] voice.” Jesus is here continuing his metaphor of himself as the shepherd and us as sheep, for a shepherd’s voice is very intimate for the sheep. In fact (at least, this used to be true in ancient cultures), if a shepherd died, the herd of sheep that he was in charge of would be slaughtered. This is because the sheep recognize only one voice, and in the absence of that shepherd with whom they have been familiar their whole lives, there is no hope of getting the sheep to do anything. What this image suggests are people without a real, explicit recognition of the Gospel who nevertheless recognize Jesus’ voice (whatever that may mean non-metaphorically).

It is important to recognize that this verse alone shows that the second part of the EHD is false, because John 10:16 explicitly states that there are some who do not believe/accept to Gospel who will share a destiny with the original fold.

The After-Life: An Argument for Ignorance, Part I

I just finished Rob Bell’s controversial new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His central idea is that hell -- understood as a destination for people of eternal, conscious, torment -- is incompatible with God’s character; hence, such a place cannot exist. None of his arguments are new (and he readily admits this), as they are arguments that we sometimes hear about salvation from mainline Protestants and liberal Catholics. Bell, however, already has a significant following within the evangelical community, and so when those arguments came from his pen, they become newly controversial.

I am starting a blog series that is not so much a direct, point by point response to any of Bell’s arguments, but rather a broader response to the kinds of conclusions he comes up with. We don’t have to go any farther than the subtitle to realize that Bell is making some spectacular knowledge claims here – about ‘the fate of every person who ever lived.’ Now of course the subtitle is intentionally obnoxious (that’s what gets people to pick up the book while they perusing Barnes and Noble), but it is not false to say that Bell is making these kinds of bold claims.

What I am sympathetic with is Bell’s attack on the traditional fundamentalist/evangelical understanding of salvation and hell. For clarity, let me summarize what I will call the evangelical hell doctrine (EHD): “All people who believe that Jesus died for their sins and was resurrected and accept this sacrifice will go to heaven, and all people who don’t believe and accept it will go to a place of eternal, conscious, torment.”

Bell’s doctrine is obviously opposed to the EHD, but what the two doctrines have in common is that they make confident assertions about how God will handle things in the afterlife. What I will argue in the coming weeks is that such claims can never be supported by Scripture; they are based on wishful thinking (or you could call it ‘hope’ if you want a fancier word), but not much more.

Explaining Religious Belief, Part Four

[Editor’s Note: I ran out of steam on this one, due to a newborn and a dissertation due date. This blog will be my last in this series before moving on to the global warming controversy (hint: both sides really annoy me) and then tax policy].

There have been several attempts by the skeptic to explain religious belief - two that I have addressed in some detail (seeking comfort, regulating ethical behavior) and some I haven’t (evolutionary by-product, seeking meaning in life, seeking power, etc). I have only a final observation: we may observe that it is unlikely that all of those theories could be true. For example, if religious belief were a by-product of evolutionary development as some claim, that would seem to undermine that claim that religion was invented as a way to regulate ethical behavior. Or if religion was invented merely as an attempt to gain power and control people’s minds (think Gary Oldman’s character in The Book of Eli), then it doesn’t seem possible that religion was invented for the sake of comfort.

I say this because atheists and agnostics seem to think that they are on the same page, and congratulate each other on ‘exposing’ religion. You may over-hear this sentence in coffee shops: “Well, I just think religion is….” And then everyone at the table fills in the blank differently: “…an attempt to control people’s minds, ….an evolutionary development, ….a futile quest for meaning in a meaningless world.” I’m all for dialogue and disagreement, of course, but in this case, those in the dialogue seem to be content to know that they have the same opinion (i.e. that religion belief is misguided). But they simply seem to gloss over the fact that their various justifications for their common opinion are incompatible.

And I’m not just thinking of the undereducated agnostics in coffee shops, but also of highly educated anthropologists and sociologists who write important books on the subject. What we have to keep in mind is that scholarship on the origin of religion is constantly contradicting previous scholarship. I think that this should make us skeptical of any attempt to ‘sum it up,’ – that is, to present some grand narrative that claims to explain the origins of religious belief in general. It seems that every direction I turn, I hear someone offering a new and better theory about the origin of religion, which in turn is undermined by a newer and even better theory. Perhaps this tells us something about this ubiquitous human phenomenon.

Explaining Religious Belief, Part Three

Another attempt to explain the origin of religious belief appeals to ethics; essentially, the theory says that God was invented in order to encourage us to behave. This theory begins with the observation that a certain amount of fear is often necessary to ensure ethical conduct. Prison is partly justified because we want to lock up people we are afraid of, but prison is also meant to strike fear into potential law-breakers. That is, we want potential law-breakers to think “Gee, if I steal this car stereo, I might be caught and then have to go to jail. I don’t want to go to jail. Therefore I will not steal this car stereo.”

Even though this system works fairly well, it is certainly not perfect. The obvious shortcoming is that the law is not omniscient, and so if law-breakers believe that they can outsmart the law, then they will not hesitate to commit the illegal action. With children, we have solved this problem with Santa Claus. Parents discipline their children when they catch them being bad, but we can’t always catch them. So we teach the song “he knows when you are sleeping/ he knows when you’re awake/ he knows when you’ve been bad or good/ so be good for goodness sake.” This leads some to infer that God is to adults what Santa Claus is to children.

Last week, I dismissed the theory that religion was introduced for the sake of comfort as implausible on the face of it. This time, I cannot be so dismissive, because we can indeed observe instances in the Scriptures when God is introduced in order to ensure ethical conduct. For example, if a Hebrew caught his friend doing something immoral, he might ask, “Do you not fear God?” This kind of fear is greater on two levels: first, God is omniscient, so unlike the law, God sees all. And second, God has the power over life and death, unlike any human power.

Do you believe that religion was invented for the sake of giving us orderly societies? Why? And if you (like me) do not share this belief, how would you respond to this kind of skeptic?

Explaining Religious Belief, Part Two

[Note: I am mostly finished with job applications and my dissertation, so I am going to pick up a blog series that I started some time ago.]

Here is the general topic:

[If someone is an atheist, then he or she owes us an explanation about why nearly everyone who has ever lived has held to some kind of religious belief. There are, of course, several such attempts (five, as I count them) that I will review one by one over the next several weeks.]

Perhaps the most common way to explain religious belief is as a quest for psychological comfort. After all, it is common to hear people saying that their faith has helped them through hard times, or parents telling their children about heavenly bliss when they confront the death of a loved one or a pet. The mere existence of those Precious Moments dolls in a child’s room seems to emphasize this. Undoubtedly, then, there are many people who are religious believers today because religion makes them feel good.

There are continual cultural references to this idea, but the most sustained critique I can think of comes from The Invention of Lying. In that movie, Ricky Gervais’ character is the only member of the human race who has the capacity to lie. And, since everyone else only tells the truth all of the time (they don’t know any different), they believe everything that Gervais says. In an effort to comfort his dying mother during her last moments, he describes her after-life in heaven. He intends this as a white lie to make her last few moments bearable, but others overhear his story and ask him to describe this ‘heaven’ in more detail. So, he is forced to give a systematic account of the after-life, which he has made up entirely. And since no one is aware that he is lying, his story about heaven becomes dogma.

This is obviously meant as a reconstruction of the process of inventing religion; 1) some guys just made it up in an effort to comfort the masses, 2) it got written down, and 3) it came to be considered the word of God.

What is undoubtedly true is that some – perhaps many or most – religious people have accepted much religious dogma because it makes them feel good. But whether this explains the religious belief of some people is not the question I want to ask. I am asking a deeper question, namely, “Why is there religious belief at all?”

It seems to me unbelievable that religion was merely invented in order to make people feel good about their afterlife prospects. I say this because many religious people (pantheists) do not even believe that your personal identity survives death. The rest, the monotheists, rely on books that are absolutely unsettling. How do you read Revelation and feel comforted? Pick a passage from the Jewish Scriptures and read it – feel good yet? My point is that if the Bible were written in order to offer people comfort, the authors did a very, very, poor job. If I were in Gervais’ position and got to completely make up a religion for the sake of comfort, the religion that I would make up would have nothing but love, angels, smiles, and hugs. That is not even close to what we find in the Bible.

Explaining Religious Belief, Part One

If someone is an atheist, then he or she owes us an explanation about why nearly everyone who has ever lived has held to some kind of religious belief. There are, of course, several such attempts (five, as I count them) that I will review one by one.

My interest in this issue was renewed recently when I heard about an interesting scientific study attempting to explain the human tendency for religious belief as an effect of natural selection. I will get more into this issue in a few weeks. Obviously, such a claim would be significant for the religious believer; however, if true, it would also pose problems for those who want to explain away religious belief as somehow disingenuous. I will begin next week by addressing the attempt to explain religious belief as a desire for comfort.