All the controversy surrounding Rob Bell in the news has got my curiosity as an ignorant non-Christian (atheist actually) going:
Which Christian denominations believe all non-Christians go to hell and which don’t?
To those who believe that accepting the Christ is a necessary or sufficient condition for salvation, what is it about acceptance of the Christ which is so important as to be a prerequisite for Heaven? Does said acceptance automatically improve your the quality of your moral code or is it something else?
Much obliged. If you have citations I’d also be much obliged for those.
It’s something else. I don’t think any mainstream element of Christianity believes that the mechanism of salvation involves the believer being made behaviourally good enough - it’s usually stated as some kind of transaction whereby Christ took upon himself the punishment due to the believer, or that he imbued his own perfect nature upon the believer in a spiritual (rather than behavioural) sense, or both.
Bpelta, you can find differing perspectives on the Christian doctrine of the Atonement, but it boils down to Christ exchanging himself for humanity in some way. I don’t accept a simple substituionary model, because Jesus dying once hardly seems a fitting way to take the punishment for all mankind.
I personally subscribe to a satisfaction model of the atonement. The idea is that Christ becomes the representative head of humanity (see Paul’s description of Christ as the last Adam in 1 Corinthians 15), and by dying in such a representative fashion (offering himself Passover-style) he provides a means by which God can overlook the sins of mankind.
However, just as the Israelites in the Old Testament had to appropriate their faith through ritual observance of sacrificial law, so must people now align themselves with Christ (accept his Lordship, whatever) through belief. Thus Christ becomes the Head of the Church, etc. and is providing propitiation to God the Father while he remains Lord. Ergo, one can back out of this transaction.