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.

Same as it ever was: This present age, full of tongue and weak of brain

 And of discerning goodness there are but these two ways: the one the knowledge of the causes by which goodness is made good; the other the observation of those signs and tokens, which being annexed always to goodness, argue that where they are found, there also goodness is, although we know not the cause by force of which it is there. The former of these is the most sure and infallible way, but so hard that all shun it, and would rather walk as men do in the dark by haphazard, than tread such long and intricate mazes for knowledge’s sake. As therefore physicians are many times forced to leave such methods of curing as themselves know to be the fittest, and being overruled by their patients’ impatience are obliged to try the best they can, in taking that way of cure which the cured will yield to; in like sort, considering how the case does stand with this present age full of tongue and weak of brain, behold we yield to the stream thereof; into the causes of goodness we will not make any careful or deep inquiry; to touch them now and then it shall be sufficient, when they are so near at hand that easily they may be conceived without any far-removed discourse: that way we are contented to prove, which being the worse in itself, is notwithstanding now by reason of common imbecility the fitter and likelier to be brooked.

-- Richard Hooker, The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity I.8.2 (1594) 

The mouth of fools poureth out foolishness. 

-- Proverbs 15:2

Like brute beasts we travel with the herd

 Like brute beasts we travel with the herd, and are never so solicitous for the rightness of the way, as for the number or figure of our company.

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

The way of the many is identitarian collectivism, a primitive instinct of herd-following

 Like brute beasts we travel with the herd, and are never so solicitous for the rightness of the way, as for the number or figure of our company.

 

-- John Rogers (1679-1729)

The way of truth is strewn with many errors, which must be censored

Wise men know, that arts and learning want expurgation; and if the course of truth be permitted to itself, it cannot escape many errours.

-- Thomas Browne

The well worn way

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nature, that rude, and in her first essay,

Stood boggling at the roughness of the way;

Us'd to the road, unknowing to return,

Goes boldly on, and loves the path when worn.

-- John Dryden, 13th Satire of Juvenal

For the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.

 

-- Matthew 7:13

Which is the good way?

Thus says the LORD: Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk in it.

-- Jeremiah 6:16 

 

 

 

But my people have forgotten me, they burn incense to false gods; they have stumbled in their ways, in the ancient roads, and have gone into bypaths, not the highway ...

-- Jeremiah 18:15

On the incoherence of Matthew's Gospel on forgiveness by the Son of Man

The triple tradition contains the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum at Matthew 9:1ff. (Mark 2:1ff., Luke 5:17ff.).

And at Matthew 9:6 we have 

But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power ["authority"] on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

Jesus performs the healing, it is said, to demonstrate his authority to forgive sins in answer to the charge of blasphemy, since only God can forgive sins it is believed. But this explanation of blasphemy is unstated in Matthew, unlike Mark 2:7 and Luke 5:21.

Matthew, or his editor, has trimmed the content just this little bit, doubtlessly because he feels the difficulty involved because of what he has Jesus say on the subject just previously in the Sermon on the Mount. This "solution" is clumsy and incomplete, and still hands us here a Jesus with authority to forgive sins, as if forgiveness were only God's prerogative.

But Matthew's Jesus doesn't really believe that. He believes it is every man's prerogative, nay, obligation. Matthew's Jesus believes forgiveness is the sine qua non of discipleship. And if the obligation, then it must be effectual.

After this manner therefore pray ye ... forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. ...
For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

-- Matthew 6:9ff.  

One need hardly mention here how this is consistent with the keys of the kingdom duties of the "church" in Matthew 16 and 18 in binding and loosing sins and trespasses, on which see on those passages.

Clearly the triple tradition introduces a foreign conception at this point in Matthew. It is concerned with the Christ of faith, not with the Jesus of history, with the divine Jesus who was a sacrifice for sins, not with the eschatological prophet of repentance. Hence the introduction of miracles to validate the new narrative.

As such the triple tradition's understanding of Son of Man is also suspect, suffering as it is from reinterpretation in conformity with the post-resurrection rationalization of Jesus' death. The title has already lost touch with what its owner meant by it and is starting to signify something else. The Son of Man in Jesus' mind is a military figure who is suddenly coming with the divine armies of God for judgment, at which time it will be too late for forgiveness. Hence the urgency of forgiveness now. One cannot wait for someone else to win it and bestow it. The disciple must bestow it himself, or be lost with the many following the broad path to destruction.

Jesus believed only a few in Israel would be saved, Paul believed all Israel would be, along with many Gentiles

For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in. And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob: For this is my covenant unto them, when I shall take away their sins. ... For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.

-- Romans 11:25ff., 32

Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. ... 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. 

-- Matthew 7:6, 13f.

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 ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. ... But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

-- Matthew 10:5f., 18, 23

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

-- Matthew 15:24, 26

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:16

For many are called, but few are chosen.

-- Matthew 22:14

Both things cannot be true.

Learn of me . . . my burden is light

Engraving by Jan Luyken of the narrow gate which leads to life

In days of poverty his heart was light;

He sung his hymns at morning, noon, and night.

-- Walter Harte

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.

N.T. Wright's problem is that he can't imagine that Jesus' Judaism wasn't normative and had long since been "paganized"

For example, by the ideas of the Two Ways, resurrection from the dead, and an elaborate angelology adapted from Greek mythology and other beliefs over long centuries after the dispersion and Babylonian Captivity, to name but three. 

Here:

We would have to suppose that, within the first fifty years of Christianity, a double move took place: from an early, very Jewish, high Christology, to a sudden paganization, and back to a very Jewish storytelling again. The evangelists would then have thoroughly deconstructed their own deep intentions, suggesting that the climax of YHWH's purpose for Israel took place through a pagan-style miraculous birth.

The simplest explanation for the birth narratives in Matthew and Luke sees them as defenses of Jesus' divinity against the charge that he was a bastard. Wright does not consider that it was the Pharisees who were obsessed with the sexual, while Jesus wasn't.

Minos, the final arbiter of the two ways in the afterlife

On Minos' right hand Rhadamanthys, and on his left Aeacus

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears,

And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears;

Round in his urn the blended balls he rowls,

Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls.

-- John Dryden's Aeneid 

 

Then spake Zeus: ... 'Now I, knowing all this before you, have appointed sons of my own to be judges; two from Asia, Minos and Rhadamanthys, and one from Europe, Aiakos (Aeacus). These, when their life is ended, shall give judgement in the meadow at the dividing of the road, whence are the two ways leading, one to the Isles of the Blest (Nesoi Makaron), and the other to Tartaros. And those who come from Asia shall Rhadamanthys try, and those from Europe, Aiakos; and to Minos I will give the privilege of the final decision, if the other two be in any doubt; that the judgement upon this journey of mankind may be supremely just . . .’

-- Plato, Gorgias 523ff.

 

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.

-- Matthew 7:13f.

 

There are two Ways, one of Life and one of Death; but there is a great difference between the two Ways.

-- Didache I.1

 

But if he will not hear [thee, then] take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.

-- Matthew 18:16

N. T. Wright tells an existential whopper about Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem

 

 

 Here's N. T. Wrong telling us Jesus was weeping as he entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, for all manner of reasons except for what the text says:

The crowd went wild as they got nearer. This was the moment they had been waiting for. All the old songs came flooding back, and they were singing, chanting, cheering and laughing. At last, their dreams were going to come true. But in the middle of it all, their leader wasn't singing. He was in tears. Yes, their dreams were indeed coming true. But not in the way they had imagined. He was not the king they expected. Not like the monarchs of old, who sat on their jewelled and ivory thrones, dispensing their justice and wisdom. Nor was he the great warrior-king some had wanted. He didn't raise an army and ride to battle at its head. He was riding on a donkey. And he was weeping - weeping for the dream that had to die, weeping for the sword that would pierce his supporters to the soul. Weeping for the kingdom that wasn't coming as well as the kingdom that was. What was it all about? What did Jesus think he was doing?

What a gooey mess this is, which is fitting I suppose for a part of the tradition which is itself utterly confused and self-contradictory.

The weeping is only Luke's. Matthew, Mark and John do not know it in the triumphal entry.

Luke for his part nevertheless explains quite clearly that Jesus wept for a good and sober reason, namely the coming judgment of Jerusalem, which he believed was the consequence of the imminent coming of the kingdom:

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.

-- Luke 19:41ff.

This is no dream dying. This is a nightmare being expressed, the bad news part of the good news. It's Luke's Jesus at his eschatological best.

This is what Jesus expected, that many would be called, but only few chosen. Not even his father's house would survive in its current form.

And he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem. Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved? And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: Then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.

-- Luke 13:22ff.

Luke says Jesus believed this bad dream to the bitter end, even while being led to crucifixion:

And there followed him a great company of people, and of women, which also bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning unto them said, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children.

-- Luke 23:27f.

Peter Leithart wrings his hands over the divisions caused by the Reformation, uttering complete rubbish

Here in First Things:

The catastrophic effects of these divisions rippled out into European culture, society, and politics. They’re rippling still. Worse, the fragmentation of the Church undermined the evangelical aims of the Reformers. By its sibling feuds, the Reformation quenched the very Spirit it had unleashed.

Protestants were not solely responsible for the division of the Church. Catholic intransigence and treachery silenced prophetic voices and delayed and prevented the deep self-examination the Church needed. Yet Protestants were responsible, especially for the divisions within the Reformation’s own ranks.

Quenched the Spirit, eh? Which spirit? Peter Leithart, like most Christians of the contemporary period, doesn't grasp the essentially divisive nature of the coming of the Spirit, as if the prophets were put to death for preaching the unity of the faith in the bond of peace. The prophets critiqued the household of God, calling it to repentance and revealing its sins, often at the cost of their lives.

It is a fetish of our utopian age to exclude this point of view in favor of a preoccupation with unity. But it's still disturbing that churchmen seem caught up in it, even at this late hour in the ridiculous history of ecumenism. They'll do anything it seems not to face the fact that in the Bible the idea is a development of its later literature, emphasized in the Fourth Gospel (especially John 10 and 17) and the Pauline Ephesian letter (chapter 4), neither of which can be reconciled with the Synoptic tradition nor the early genuine letters of Paul without doing a little violence to reason. Even the Passion narratives have been reworked from this point of view of the later "church", which is the first concrete expression of Christianity's decadence. Robust preoccupation with "the Other" from the original period of the Spirit gave way to the crabbed self-reflection and identity "politics" of Christian, Jew, church, synagogue, Greek, barbarian, male, female, slave, free, and Roman citizen.  

Jesus the eschatological prophet, on the other hand, never imagined a "church", let alone this long, drawn out history betwixt heaven and hell. He did not imagine "identities". Those who do the will of God are my mother, sisters and brothers, he said. Many are called. Few are chosen. Narrow is the gate and difficult the way that leads to life. Few are they who find it. Repent while you still can. The reign of God is nigh. Come follow me.

What a polarizing fellow.

"All his ways are judgment" (Deut. 32:4).

 

Protestants shouldn't apologize for it.

Paul imagines many brethren, but Jesus only a chosen few

For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

-- Romans 5:19

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

-- Romans 8:29

Even as I please all men in all things, not seeking mine own profit, but the [profit] of many, that they may be saved.

-- 1 Corinthians 10:33

And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.

-- Mark 13:20

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

-- Matthew 7:14

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

-- Matthew 20:16

The way of life: It's your choice

[T]here is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of Ten Bears carry the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life ... or death. It shall be life. So will it be.

 

-- Ten Bears in The Outlaw Josey Wales

And unto this people thou shalt say, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death.

 

-- Jeremiah 21:8

The Way of God

And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. -- Matthew 22:16

And when they were come, they say unto him, Master, we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men, but teachest the way of God in truth: Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar, or not? -- Mark 12:14

And they asked him, saying, Master, we know that thou sayest and teachest rightly, neither acceptest thou the person of any, but teachest the way of God truly: -- Luke 20:21

And [Apollos] began to speak boldly in the synagogue: whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly. -- Acts 18:26

Rob Bell defender John Pavlovitz imagines the confines of the Sermon on the Mount are "cozy"

Here:

"This [Rob Bell] wasn’t someone who preached from the cozy confines of the Creation story, or the Psalms, or the Sermon on the Mount."

Apparently Pavlovitz has never read the Sermon on the Mount:

"If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell."

-- Matthew 5:29f.

"Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few."

-- Matthew 7:13f.

Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life and few there be that find it . . .

. . . or I will draw all men unto me?

You decide:

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.

-- Matthew 7:13f.

And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.

-- John 12:32