The bible vs. the traditional conception of hell

With respect to the interpretation of the bible, the term "literal" is often used more or less interchangeably with "traditional". (Or, sometimes, maybe "extreme", or something like that--the "literal" account of the "end times", for example, is (a) not in the bible and (b) a very recent invention.) So people talk about a "literal hell", by which they seem to suggest that they're talking about a doctrine of hell which is right there in the bible, in black and white, and anyone who doesn't think it's in there must be reading the text in some terribly loose and metaphorical way.

But, as it turns out, it's awful hard to find traditional notions about hell in the bible. In fact, I'd say that the more literally you interpret it, the harder it is to support the traditional conception of hell.

A nice friendly run-through is provided by RLP in a new series of videos (plus a nifty .pdf). I agree with the vast majority of what he says.

The traditional doctrine of hell is a problem. It strikes a good many people as morally repulsive. It has caused Christians to leave the faith. But it's not to be found in the bible.

A fairy tale

Once upon a time, God spoke through a prophet, promising the destruction of the city of Jerusalem for such sins as these:

Her princes within her are like wolves tearing the prey, by shedding blood and destroying lives in order to get dishonest gain. Her prophets have smeared whitewash for them, seeing false visions and divining lies for them, saying, 'Thus says the Lord GOD,' when the LORD has not spoken. The people of the land have practiced oppression and committed robbery, and they have wronged the poor and needy and have oppressed the sojourner without justice.

Then, true to his word, God saw to the downfall of Jerusalem. And God's people got the message loud and clear. And from then on, those who claimed to follow God never did any of those terrible things ever again. The end.

The wheel in the sky

I had a dream.

I had a dream that there was a spoked wheel spinning around in the sky. (Coincidentally, I've recently been reading Ezekiel.)

I don't know how many spokes the wheel had, but I'm pretty sure it ought to have had twelve.

Adjacent to the spinning wheel was a Bible. Upon picking out a Bible verse, the wheel would stop spinning, and a spoke on the lower-right side of the wheel would poke out through the wheel's rim, then turn until horizontal, and merge into the Bible verse. Then it would come back out, and take its original position in the wheel.

The wheel would then begin to spin again, until another Bible verse was chosen, and so on.

I'm pretty sure this was a vision that will someday lead me to develop some kick-ass scriptural hermeneutic. As in, if you got this hermeneutic, you would automatically get 10,000 bonus Experience Points in Christianity (and probably in Judaism, too, though I'm not so familiar with the level system in Judaism). I just need to figure out what the spokes represent, and why they have to be arranged in a wheel (for this was crucial) and why the wheel has to be spinning (for this was absolutely crucial).

I am awesome!

You know the Bible 100%!

 

Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!

Ultimate Bible Quiz
Create MySpace Quizzes

Boo yah! Plus 15 God Points for me!

(Dawn points out there's a scriptural reference there: "But be doers of the word, and not hearers only" (James 1:22). Except "reader" has been substituted for "doer" - a questionable adaptation.)

(h/t Scott)

Dream the impossible blaspheme

The Rational Response Squad has issued the following Blasphemy Challenge to all non-believers:

The Rational Response Squad is giving away 1001 DVDs of The God Who Wasn't There, the hit documentary that the Los Angeles Times calls "provocative -- to put it mildly."

Incidentally, I saw that documentary a while back (well before my conversion), and found it pretty underwhelming. Maybe that's partly because I was then part of the choir to which it was preaching, but I also thought that some bits were uncomfortably childish and petty. But, hey, free is free, and this remains a pretty generous giveaway. Back to the Challenge:

There's only one catch: We want your soul.

It's simple. You record a short message damning yourself to Hell, you upload it to YouTube, and then the Rational Response Squad will send you a free The God Who Wasn't There DVD. It's that easy.

...

You may damn yourself to Hell however you would like, but somewhere in your video you must say this phrase: "I deny the Holy Spirit."

Why? Because, according to Mark 3:29 in the Holy Bible, "Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin." Jesus will forgive you for just about anything, but he won't forgive you for denying the existence of the Holy Spirit. Ever. This is a one-way road you're taking here.

Indeed, Mark 3:29 comes from the mouth of Jesus himself. Unfortunately, the claim that he's talking about denying the existence of the holy spirit is textually indefensible.

I don't know if anyone really knows what Jesus is talking about here, but it's clarified a bit by the context. The set-up for Jesus' declaration in v.29 is given in v.22:

And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, "He is possessed by Beelzebub! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons."

It's in response to them that Jesus says (vv.28-29):

"I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."

And, in case the reader has forgotten the context given in v.22, a reminder is given immediately thereafter (v.30):

He said this because they were saying, "He has an evil spirit."

So, blaspheming the holy spirit involves something like accusing the holy spirit of being an evil spirit. I'm not sure what it would mean to do that (it's not clear that Jesus is even accusing the people in v.22 of doing it - this could just be a warning), but, at the very least, it seems that blasphemy of the holy spirit involves having certain spiritual beliefs, which might also involve believing in the Abrahamic God.

This pretty much rules out the possibility that any genuine atheist could truly rise to the Blasphemy Challenge. Merely denying the existence of the holy spirit has nothing to do with blaspheming the holy spirit, and whatever this unforgivable sin really is, atheists can't commit it. Blasphemy Challenge is right that this is a "one-way road", but it seems likely that it's not a road that atheists can take. And one consequence of this is that there's nothing an atheist can do to eliminate the possibility of someday undergoing the terrifying process of Christian salvation.

Dr. Dino gets rendered

Recreational creationism has been dealt a blow by The Man:

Kent Hovind, founder of Creation Science Evangelism and Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, was found guilty of 58 counts, including failure to pay $845,000 in employee-related taxes. He faces a maximum of 288 years in prison.

Jo Hovind was charged and convicted in 44 of the counts involving evading bank-reporting requirements. She faces up to 225 years in prison but was allowed to remain free pending the couple's sentencing on Jan. 9.

The defence:

Kent Hovind, whose life's mission is to debunk evolution, says he and his employees are workers of God and therefore exempt from paying taxes.

Wow. Among other things, one might wonder if Hovind ever bothered actually reading the bible:

Then the Pharisees went and plotted together how they might trap Him in what He said. And they sent their disciples to Him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that You are truthful and teach the way of God in truth, and defer to no one; for You are not partial to any. Tell us then, what do You think? Is it lawful to give a poll-tax to Caesar, or not?"

But Jesus perceived their malice, and said, "Why are you testing Me, you hypocrites? Show Me the coin used for the poll-tax." And they brought Him a denarius. And He said to them, "Whose likeness and inscription is this?"

They said to Him, "Caesar's."

Then He said to them, "Then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's."

It's not exactly an obscure passage.

Then again, it just might be that Hovind rightly perceived this response which Jesus failed to anticipate in his argument. Imagine:

"Kent, show me the bill used for the tax. Whose likeness and inscription is this?"

"Well," Hovind replied, "that's a picture of Ben Franklin, but the inscription says 'God'."

Ha! Take that Jesus!

Richard Dawkins on literalism

Richard Dawkins has an interview in Salon promoting his new anti-religious book. He makes a number of claims against religion (in all its forms). None of them is particularly good, and I've got something to say about them all. But I'll start with a relatively easy one:

Dawkins: [Some people who were raised religious] remember reading their holy book, and they take it literally. They really do believe it. Now, the moderate ones don't really believe it, but they have taught children that faith is a virtue.

So, the first claim I'd like to address:

Believers who don't interpret their religious texts literally don't really believe in those texts.

Regarding the possibility of different ways of really believing in scripture, I'll just repeat this bit from this Real Live Preacher post:

That old man that you brushed aside? The one you called a liberal and a wishy-washy Christian? He spent the last fifty years with his hands and his heart in the pages of that sacred book. He has wept over it and searched for truth in its stories. His unanswered questions have increased every year until finally he knows nothing at all but the love of God and neighbor.

He knows something that you do not know.

So, yes, you can interpret scripture non-literally, and yet truly believe in it.

But there's a deeper problem with Dawkins' claim. Far from believing that only a literalist can really believe in a religious text, I'm actually inclined towards aliteralistism: the belief that literalists don't exist. At least, I believe that this is the case in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

My reasoning here is that there are verses in the Old Testament which cannot be interpreted literally. And by "cannot" I mean it's impossible--not wrong or awkward or silly, but impossible. Consider, for example, Song of Solomon 4:12 (I've chosen the King James translation, which is of course the most literalisty of all translations):

A garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

Interpreted literally, this verse means that there exists a garden, which is also a spring and a fountain, and that this garden/spring/fountain is the author's sister and his wife. It's not just false or silly or awkward, but (literally) impossible to suppose that the author of the verse is saying any such thing. (Just to be perfectly clear, I'll point out the problems here. For one thing, while springs and fountains are kinda similar, gardens aren't much like either of them--although a garden might contain a spring, a garden cannot be identical to a spring. For another thing, neither a garden nor a spring nor a fountain is a person; hence such an entity cannot be a member of a human family as a sister, and cannot enter the bonds of holy matrimony as a spouse. As for the claim that the author of the verse is married to his sister, that's a little weird, but there might be some precedent for that sort of thing in the Old Testament.)

So I can only conclude that, when it is claimed that someone is a literalist, that claim is necessarily false, and also crazy.

Either that, or the term "literalist" isn't meant to be interpreted literally, which would be cute.

(Via Jesus Politics.)

Sam Harris doesn't grok goats

Albert Mohler writes a brief review of Sam Harris' brief new book. I found it interesting mostly for the quotes. Naturally, Harris' new book has some things to say about "religious liberalism/moderation":

I have written elsewhere about the problems I see with religious liberalism and religious moderation. Here, we need only observe that the issue is both simpler and more urgent than the liberals and moderates generally admit. [...] If the basic tenets of Christianity are true, then there are some very grim surprises in store for nonbelievers like myself.

I guess he's talking about hell. I'm not sure why Harris has any interest whatsoever in what any theist thinks his fate in the afterlife will be. In any case, he wants to accuse "liberals" of faithlessness on the grounds that, for example, they think Christian salvation is more universal than the Bible really says it is.

Regarding what he takes the Bible to really say about salvation (and, by implication, where "liberals" get Christianity wrong), he writes:

If Christianity is correct, and I persist in my unbelief, I should expect to suffer the torments of hell. Worse still, I have persuaded others, and many close to me, to reject the very idea of God. They too will languish in "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41).

It's a curious choice of scripture to prove this particular point. I can only assume that Harris came up with it by typing "eternal fire" into the search function of some site like BibleGateway and picking the best looking verse on the search result page:

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

Of course, before using this verse to prove his point, he might want to consider reading the context. In this case, the context is the parable of the sheep and the goats.

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'"

Let's focus on what this parable doesn't talk about: namely, belief. In this parable there is nothing, not even a single word, about accepting Jesus as your saviour, or having any thoughts about Jesus at all, or having any thoughts about God at all. There is nothing here to support the idea that "unbelief" implies damnation. To the contrary, this parable ought to make one wonder whether professing a Christian faith, or being any kind of theist at all, is in any way essential for salvation.

Without presupposing any particular interpretation, it seems clear that you would be hard-pressed to read this passage and think that it makes the positive claim that salvation is the exclusive province of Christians. Either Harris didn't bother to read the rest of the parable, or he read it and decided to ignore the context and cite the verse anyways.

(It is also curious that Albert Mohler implicitly endorses Harris' use of Matthew 25:41, or, at least, doesn't think to comment on it. This might have something to do with his theology.)

(Hat tip to Jesus Politics)