Tell how learning shoots

 Tell like a tall old oak how learning shoots

To heav'n her branches, to hell her roots.

 

-- John Denham 

He likes to think of hell as empty

 And all the devils are here.

-- William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2

Catholic biblical scholar just coincidentally concludes that the history of hell pretty much confirms the Roman Catholic dogma of purgatory

 Candida Moss, here for the Jesuits, thinks that the biblical hell begins as a relatively late product of Greek influence from the time of Alexander the Great, and that in keeping with later Catholic reflection is a temporary place of punishment and purgation, not of eternal damnation.

Evidently Hitler does go to heaven, but he will be the very last one out of hell, on that you may rely.

Her essay does a better job of explaining how the later Catholic idea of purgatory reflects the actual awful material conditions of Roman penal and slave experience in late antiquity than it does of explaining the gospels' language. In the end the pope's hope that hell one day will be empty is "surely right", according to Moss.

In the middle of those Greek and Roman historical bookends, however, lies the New Testament language about hell. And it is just weird how Moss is so perfunctorily dismissive of that language. She hardly treats of it at all. For her it is simply "obscure" because it is usually parabolic or "evasively symbolic", a point of view which is oddly reminiscent of long-standing Protestant dismissiveness of "the hard sayings of Jesus". The Protestants find the hard sayings problematic in the main because they contradict the universal gospel to the Gentiles. In this case, a Catholic finds them problematic because they contradict the universalism implied by purgatory. For neither could it be possible that those sayings reflect an actual historical message, being so stern and radical as to be unthinkable. They must be an anomaly: "eschatology straight up, without the diluting effects of divine mercy and forgiveness."

Just so.

Candida Moss stumbles over the Albert Schweitzer hard truth. The ameliorating of the hard sayings was the anomaly. The hard sayings did not arise from Lake Placid. Lectio difficilior potior, interpretatio item.

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.  

-- Matthew 7:14

For Moss the gospels are contradictory and run "hot and cold" on hell. The gospels give us only a "faint sense" of hell at best. After all there was a time when hell was not in the Bible, before the Greeks, and it shouldn't surprise us that the parables of Jesus really don't describe any "actual eternal punishment" dontcha know. It's a foreign idea, whose time came and went.

Oh dear.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff. 

Moss would like us to think, simply ignoring this passage, not only that there is no eternal fire according to Jesus, but that all such worm talk actually came from a later period, from the horrible fact of the parasites in human shit found everywhere and on everything in ancient prison cells, the literal analogues of an imaginary storied hell as in Dante, rather than from the actual message of Jesus about the eternal decay of death in the grave. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, they do a dance upon your snout. This is . . . completely unconvincing.

That last point needs to be emphasized. The eternal decay of death in the grave flies in the face of Jesus' supposed belief in and preaching of resurrection of the body. The eternal grave which confronts us here is an offense to that.

But there it is. Eternal fire. Eternal worm. Straight up.

Replace "Catholics" with "Lutherans" and the same was true

 Until the middle of the 20th century, it was assumed by most Catholics that most (if not all) non-Catholics were destined for eternal hellfire. ... Catholics felt a duty to work for the conversion of non-Catholics ... Catholics were wary of becoming too culturally close to non-Catholics. “Mixed marriages” were verboten, and Catholics tended to live together in small neighborhoods (the Catholic “ghetto”) in order to protect the faith of their impressionable children.

More.

The Pharisees would not have agreed with Krister Stendahl . . . at all

 

For Judaism has never thought that God's hottest dream was that everyone become a Jew.

-- Krister Stendahl, here

 

 

 

 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. 

-- Matthew 23:15

For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh:  But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God. 

-- Romans 2:28f.

Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham.

-- Galatians 3:7

Existence of hell finally proven, captured in remarkable photograph

 

Hell is the disciple of death

 

καὶ εἶδον καὶ ἰδού, ἵππος χλωρός καὶ ὁ καθήμενος ἐπάνω αὐτοῦ ὄνομα αὐτῷ ὁ θάνατος καὶ ὁ ᾅδης ἀκολούθει μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ

And I saw, and behold, a pale horse: and he that sat upon him, his name was Death; and Hades followed with him.

Revelation 6:8

David Bentley Hart translated the New Testament recently, but neglects its Jesus and his belief in hell

How predictable: See, I'm a translator. I know what it really says.

David Bentley Hart is this season's Rob Bell. Everybody who wants to be $omebody in Christianity lately tries to make it off of hell, faggotry, the prosperity gospel or intentional Christian "community".

If the guy were honest, he'd reject the Jesus of the gospels instead of posing as one of his theologians. Some would say he already has, he just doesn't know it yet.

One thing's for sure: There's a place for him . . . somewhere, preferably that airport in the US Upper Midwest with Fox on, not CNN, for all eternity.

First remove the hell from your own potty mouth, Rod Dreher, then you may address the f-bomb in your brother's

The jetting-around-for-Jesus of the Little Big Man of Christianity has gone straight to his head:

What does an elite tribe do when it runs out of its own tribes to exploit?

It invents more tribes, expanding the number and morphing from Judaism for Jews into Judaism for the whole world by way of Pauline Christianity.

And, behold, I have given the children of Levi all the tenth in Israel for an inheritance, for their service which they serve, even the service of the tabernacle of the congregation. -- Numbers 18:21

If any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh, I more: Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, an Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee; -- Philippians 3:4f.

For it hath pleased them of Macedonia and Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at Jerusalem. It hath pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. -- Romans 15:26f.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. -- Matthew 23:15

To find diversity go to hell, where there's plenty of it

A broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise

First form of confession for all lost and condemned creatures:

"O almighty God, merciful Father, I, a poor, miserable sinner, confess unto Thee all my sins and iniquities with which I have ever offended Thee, and justly deserved Thy temporal and eternal punishment. But I am heartily sorry for them, and sincerely repent of them, and I pray Thee, of Thy boundless mercy and for the sake of the holy, innocent, bitter sufferings and death of Thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being. Amen."

So-called conservative and Methodist Rush Limbaugh doubts the existence of hell

Terrible Budget Bill Will Be Used Against Trump in 2020:

There’s also — the Republican Party, elected Republican Party is more afraid of government shutdowns than they are of going to hell, if there is one.

An eternity of extremes of fire and ice in hell

Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd,

At certain revolutions, all the damn'd

Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change

Of fierce extremes,—extremes by change more fierce;

From beds of raging fire to starve in ice

Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine

Immoveable, infix'd, and frozen round

Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire.

-- John Milton

Protestantism's missionary gospel of inclusive brotherhood has been self-annulling

From the review of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America, here:

As Hollinger notes, by the end of World War II, commentators such as Congregationalist leader Buell Gallagher were observing that the “gospel of inclusive brotherhood” that missionaries preached abroad had begun to return home like a boomerang to “smite the imperialism of white nations, as well as to confound the churches.” Many missionaries and their families who had been assigned a key role in converting the benighted darker races to Western ways had instead gained abroad an appreciation for cultural diversity and had come back to the United States to challenge “cultural imperialism and arrogant paternalism” and play a leading role in contesting white Protestant hegemony. Hollinger charts the intriguing flight of this boomerang. ... As he sees it, their greatest importance in the 20th century is to be found in the effects of a contradictory, potentially self-annulling belief system. 

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. -- Matthew 10:5ff.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. -- Matthew 23:15

The good news is the bad news: "It is FIRE which I came to throw upon the earth!"

πῦρ ἦλθον βαλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν -- Luke 12:49

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. -- Matthew 3:12

His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor, and to gather the wheat into his granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. -- Luke 3:17

Anthropocentric twaddle on hell from the Jesuit priest Thomas Reese of the Religion News Service

 

 

 

God did not create hell; we did. On the other hand, some theologians think that hell is empty because once we meet God, we will choose him.

Here.

The unspoken corollary is that we also created heaven.

Which is fine if you're an atheist, who typically maintains that religion is not the stuff of revelation but is a human creation. But such talk is hardly compatible with the teaching and perspective of Jesus, who was anything but sanguine about human nature, or its fate.

"For many are called, but few are chosen."

"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

It's no surprise that the many would disagree with this. The offense of the gospel is not the cross, it's the exclusiveness of the club. St. Paul tried to ameliorate this by opening the club to the Gentiles, and the universalists among us carry it a step further, opening the club to the denizens of hell, but at which point nothing Jesus has to say matters much anymore.

And yet they claim to be his worshipers, or at least his followers.

They are neither.

Pope Francis call your office, Jesus believed in eternal punishment

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff.

An alt-right Jesus, but for Jews only: The rest of us are dogs, whites included

Contra Connor Grubaugh, assistant editor of First Things, here:

Christianity in its original and most animating form is fundamentally incompatible with the Faustian ethic and race-based mythos of the alt-right, just as it is incompatible with the equivocations of liberalism. Orthodoxy is its own mythos—a true one.

These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

-- Matthew 10:5f.

I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ... It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

The vignette in Acts 10 and 11 proves that the earliest church had assumed on the basis of this original message of Jesus that repentance unto life had not been granted "also to the Gentiles" (Acts 11:18).

Moreover Jesus himself had criticized the missionary zeal of the Pharisees in the outside world:

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

-- Matthew 23:15

Rather than speak of the impossibility of "alt-right Christianity", it seems more like an absolute necessity, however much that makes the faith an anachronism which has precious little to say to our time. The original message of Jesus is thoroughly "race-based", for Jews only.

Or is all this "scripture" to be relegated to the junk heap of history as nothing more than the evil work of Paul's opponents, the Circumcision, tampering with the Word of God?

Quelle surprise: Rob Bell speaks up for a version of progressive revelation

Quoted here:

'See? It completely contradicts itself.' And it does, unless you read it as an unfolding story and you realize that these two different passages were written at two different times, and they reflect a growing sophistication in thinking. Now we have something very interesting. We see that people were growing and evolving in their thinking about the divine. That’s a story that we are much more likely to find ourselves in. 

Well, why shouldn't Rob Bell go for progressive revelation?

After all, it's a convenient justification for jettisoning things in the Bible he objects to . . . like hell. To Rob Bell, hell isn't an example of our current state of evolved, sophisticated thinking, so the interpretive principle permits him to relegate it to an earlier, now obsolete stage of God's revelation to man.

But progressive revelation is also basic to the dispensational theology of Bell's former Evangelical faith.

You can take the man out of the Evangelicalism, but you can't take the Evangelicalism out of the man.

The modernist prejudice behind the theory of progressive revelation here is obvious, if little noticed by its critics, implying that the Biblical ancients weren't as enlightened as we are.

This is the sort of dismissive attitude toward the past which makes it impossible to understand them on their own terms, meaning there is a predisposition to misunderstand them.

But Evangelicals, former or otherwise, are particulary vulnerable to this lurch because of the degree to which their own heritage struggled with and assimilated modernism.

Rob Bell is only late heir of an age which long before us was already digesting modernism from the Christian point of view, for example in Thomas Dehany Bernard's The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, the Bampton Lecture from 1864.

More specifically, however, progressive revelation was the essential modernist presupposition of J. N. Darby's dispensationalist theology, without which we wouldn't have Evangelicalism in the first place, with its easy compartmentalization of features of God's revelation which are an effront to post-Enlightenment reason: food laws, animal sacrifice, capital punishment, just war, etc.

Apart from the obvious, that there is a development of ideas in the Bible which can be demonstrated historically, the very idea of progress itself remains, however, an unquestioned value of our time which we've inherited from modernity, which overthrew the ancient world's agriculturally inspired ideas of cyclicality, birth and death, and eternal return.

And Christians and secularists alike share it . . . in droves.

But it must be asked: Is it really progress in divine thinking to travel from the age of faith under the Patriarchs, to the slaughter of animals under Moses, to the human sacrifice of the Son of God under Paul, to the mass murdering of tens of millions of the age of the Enlightenment?

The more I look at the ceaseless ages run the more the pattern looks like degeneracy to me.

Over 7 billion people inhabit the planet today. But by 1 AD over 40 billion were already dead. What do we know that they did not? Only that Princess Leia is dead, too.

The prophets of the Old Testament, whose heirs John the Baptist and Jesus were, dreamed by contrast with our Christian world of the interminable Sacrifice of the Mass of a world finally founded by God eternally upon justice, without violence, without tears and without death, however mediated that must be through judgment. Appropriately, they were tortured and killed.

I fancy that we have been fooled into thinking that we have made progress at all by the times in which we have been living, that is, by the Holocene, which began approximately 11,700 years ago.

We don't grasp that we bask in the glow of a dying interglacial, and cannot bear that The Ice Man returneth.

The next round is on me!