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 | Conservative Protestants. Those who are "saved" will go to heaven; vast majority of humans will go to Hell for extreme torture. Whether Hell is eternal is a matter of debate. |
| Liberal Christians: Hell does not exist as a place of punishment. All will go to Heaven, if such a place exists. |
| Roman Catholics: A very few will go directly to heaven. Most of those whose sins have been forgiven through church ritual will go to Purgatory for a process of cleansing after death; later, they will be allowed into Heaven. Most of the rest will go directly to Hell, which is considered a place and a state of existence where its inhabitants will suffer forever. |
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Conservative Protestant faith groups
Most conservative Protestants believe that:
| The descriptions of the afterlife throughout the Bible are consistent. | ||||||||
| Every person has eternal life. | ||||||||
| God has created two places (Heaven and Hell) where people will spend eternity after death and judgment. | ||||||||
| Heaven:
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| Hell:
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| How one's destination is determined:
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| Nobody can earn their way to heaven by doing good deeds. Our behavior during our lifetime does not influence in any way God's decision whether we will go to heaven or hell; only our beliefs matter. Hell is, in essence, a punishment for a thought crime; for holding the wrong beliefs about the nature of Jesus. | ||||||||
| Good deeds are a natural consequence of being saved, but have no bearing on our salvation status. | ||||||||
| Even if a person has been saved, they will not have eternal life in heaven if they engage in certain forbidden activities without later sincerely asking for forgiveness. Of the many such forbidden behaviors that are referred to in the Bible, the only one that is commonly mentioned in church is a homosexual act. | ||||||||
| People who have been saved and make it to heaven will not necessarily all be treated equally. There are passages in the Bible which mention that believers can lay up treasures in Heaven during their life on earth. Some conservative Protestants interpret these passages as implying that believers who have done many good deeds will be rewarded more in heaven; believers who have led an evil life will be rewarded less. For example, Mother Theresa and Albert Schweitzer, perhaps the most remarkable Christian humanitarians of the 20th century, would be generously rewarded in Heaven, if they had been saved on earth. A mass-murderer who was saved while living on earth would be welcomed into heaven, but would receive fewer rewards. (Actually, we are aware of no evidence that either Mother Teresa, a Roman Catholic, and Albert Schweitzer, a Unitarian, were saved. Thus their eternal destiny would be Hell, according to many conservative Protestants.) | ||||||||
| Conservative Christians believe that the natural tendency of every human is to reject the Gospel and thus be destined to spend eternity in Hell. However God grants his grace to a small percentage of the human race so that they are receptive to the Christian message. God chooses who will receive this gift using criteria that humans are not aware of. | ||||||||
| Timothy George, dean of the Beeson Divinity School at Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. commented: "Historically, hell has been portrayed in evangelical sermons as fire and brimstone. The most we should say is that hell is a place of unexplainable mystery. The reality is probably far worse than our most vivid imaginations can conjure up. The reality of both heaven and hell are both greater than we can express...While it's very important to teach and preach about the reality of hell, it should be done only with evangelical tears. There is sometimes a kind of gloating that people are broiling in hell. I don't think that honors God or reflects the love of Jesus. We should shed tears over those who are perishing. Sometimes that's been missing...Heavenly happiness offers a better approach to evangelism than how hot it is in hell. We ought to focus on heaven and not lose sight in focusing on what the temperature is in hell. We ought to not lose sight of the alternative, which is eternity with God in heaven." 9 |
Liberal Christian Beliefs
Liberal Christians recognize that the writers of the Bible held a variety of beliefs concerning Heaven and Hell. The earliest books of the Bible described Sheol: an underground cavern where all people, good and bad, spent eternity after death, leading a thirsty, shadowy, energy-less existence isolated from God. Borrowing some ideas from the Zoroastrian religion, some later Jewish writers saw the faithful being resurrected and leading long lives in a purified earth before dying a second time. After the Greek invasion, the Jews picked up the Hellenistic concept that some individuals will go to Heaven for eternal reward, while the rest go to Hell for eternal punishment. The book of Daniel, from the 2nd century BCE, and the Christian Scriptures from the 1st and 2nd century CE describe this Hell. It is pictured as either a place of annihilation, where people simply cease to exist, or of eternal punishment.
Generally speaking, religious liberals:
| Reject the reality of Sheol. |
| Reject the reality of Hell as either a place of annihilation or eternal punishment. |
| Most look upon Hell as a concept, not as a place of punishment. |
| They view the various concepts of Hell in the Bible as myths. Although the writers of the Bible sincerely believed in Sheol and Hell, it has no real existence. |
| The concept of an eternal punishment for a single oversight, error, thought crime or sin during life is unjust. |
| Punishment of an individual because she/he had never heard the Gospel is irrational and unjust. |
| Punishment of a person because they hold different religious beliefs is unjust. Believing that God is capable of behaving in this way is blasphemy. |
| They feel that a loving God would be incapable of creating a Hell. Even if He did, the concept of an infinite sentence is incompatible with elementary justice. They would view such a deity as profoundly immoral, uncaring and intolerant. |
Roman Catholic Beliefs
The teaching of the Roman Catholic church prior to 1999-JUL has been consistent:
| Hell is a location where its inmates will be severely punished without any hope of relief, for eternity. |
| Among those punished will be Satan, the angels that supported him, and persons who have died "with grave and unrepentant sins" which have not been wiped clean by church rituals. 1 |
| The level of torture in Hell will be meted out in accordance with the seriousness of the individual's sin. It will last forever. There is no prospect of relief or mercy. The Roman Catholic church teaches that punishment will be in the form of isolation from God, and some supernatural form of fire which causes endless, unbearable pain, but does not consume the body. Eastern Orthodox churches teach that the precise form of punishment is not known to us. |
| The Church teaches that most individuals who are not destined to Hell first suffer punishment in Purgatory. This is a type of time-limited Hell during which they become fully cleansed and acceptable for admission to heaven. |
| In the special case of newborns who die before being baptized, the church is ambivalent. It has no official stance. However, many Roman Catholics believe that newborns go to a place or state called "Limbo" which is separate from heaven, but where the infants are happy. |
On 1999-JUL-28, at his Wednesday general audience, Pope John Paul II made some statement that made the front pages of some North American newspapers. He said that:
| "Hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God, but the condition resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life...So eternal damnation is not God's work but is actually our own doing." |
| "More than a physical place, hell is the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy." |
| Hell is "the pain, frustration and emptiness of life without God." 2,3 |
Some Christian Fundamentalists in the U.S. object to a non-physical hell. They consider any concept involving an abstract hell to be a dangerous, even blasphemous notion. R.A. Mohler, Jr., president of the Southern Baptist's Theological Seminary in Louisville KY commented: "My concern here is the temptation to make hell a state of mind, to psychologize hell. As attractive as that may be to the modern mind, that is not the hell of the Bible. Jesus himself spoke of hell as a lake of fire where the worms would not die and the fires would not be quenched. It's all very graphic."
One indication of what the Roman Catholic Church does not teach is seen in a comment by Professor Luigi Lombardi Vallauri. He was professor of philosophy of law at the Catholic University at Milan, and was regarded as one of the church's more original theologians. He stated: "Even God does not come out well from his creation [Hell]. He appears as a father who locks up his miscreant sons in a horrible hovel and throws away the key, forever! Hell decrees the total failure of the pedagogy of God...[Hell is a] colossal injustice, contrary to all the principles of modern law and...the Italian constitution." The Vatican ordered him fired.
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References:
- R.C. Broderick, Ed. "The Catholic Encyclopedia," Thomas Nelson Publ., Nashville TN (1987)
- Catholic World News Briefs, 1999-JUL-28.
- John Paul II, "Hell is the state of those who reject God," Osservatore Romano, 1999-AUG-4. Online at: http://www.petersnet.net/research/
- The Adventist Christian Club describes the Seventh-Day Adventist's position on heaven and hell at: http://www.findjesus.com/adventist/Question57.html
- "The three eternal destinies of Man: Proving that God is fair to everyone," at: http://www.twelvetribes.com/
- A.K. Turner, "The History of Hell", Harcourt Brace, New York, NY, (1993), Page 40-45.
- "Contemporary preachers not so hot about Hell?" Charisma News Service, 2000-FEB-25, at: http://www.mcjonline.com/news/00/20000225e.htm
- "What the Hell is Hell?" is a web site that delves into the intricacies of Hell. See: http://what-the-hell-is-hell.com
- Greg Garrison, "Heated debate: Do hell's fires still burn? Theologians argue over nature, definition of Bible's destination for the wicked," The Holland Sentinel Archives, at: http://www.hollandsentinel.com/
Copyright © 1998 to 2006 by Ontario
Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Author: B.A. Robinson
Latest update: 2006-FEB-13
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