Commentating on this column. I did do a search and couldn’t find any older threads so either its gone (?) or no one made any comments
Cecil said “Still, you have to admit, heaven as Party Central sure beats the Christian idea of angels with harps.”
I just wanted to correct this misconception. The Christian heaven has nothing to do with angels with harps and is a little more sophisticated than “you get X number of big breasted virgins” as a reward. I am not sure where the image of the angel and harps comes from, its not Biblical, I guess its medieval?
Anyway the Christian view of heaven isn’t some airy-fairy place up in the sky somewhere. Heaven is the return of the Earth (and the Universe) to an Edenic state. What’s this mean? The earth will still be around (albeit remade) as will the universe but sin will be banished and the creation will be made perfect again (in a Biblical sense “right with God”). God will also live with us, amongst other changes.
That’s a quick summary. You can go into more details if you are interested by doing some web research to find out what exactly the Edenic (or pre-fall state of man) is. Now I am not arguing this is going to happen or not happen. I am just pointing out that its certainly more sophisticated and rewarding (especially for women!) than the simplistic Koran descriptions of paradise.
I also believe, but I am not 100% sure, that the Jewish version of heaven is very similar (but replace Christ with the stil-waiting-for-messiah).
I agree - Heaven is said by most, if not all?, Christian denominations to be some other place, that exists now, and where traditionally God rules accompanied by angels and the virtuous dead. . I’m not quite sure exactly how this squares with the common idea God is also simultaneously ‘everywhere’. Before modern science it would have generally though Heaven was literally ‘up there’ somewhere, hence the fact Romance languages like French and Italian, derived from Latin, have the same word for Sky and Heaven.These days the idea of another ‘dimension’ seems to be called for
The early Christians, expecting the return of JC at any moment, focussed less on this and more on the idea of a Kingdom of God being established on Earth, including resurrected Christians. This idea is still more of less found in modern versions of Christianity, but has been relegated to some far-off state of affairs after a Final Judgment. In the meantime I think most good Christians still expect their souls to go and live with God in Heaven. I believe the Catholics still claim some people go to Purgatory if they aren;t good enough for Heaven, and that the bad guys go straight to Hell.
By the way, fluffy clouds and harps etc… are probably a fairly recent popular stereotype of Heaven and not to be taken seriously.
Traditionally Heaven is like a king’s court with God surrounded by cherubim and seraphin singing his praises etc…
Jewish heaven? Not so much. Judaism as a religion really places very little if any emphasis on the afterlife. I was raised Jewish, went to Hebrew School as a child, became a Bar Mitzvah, etc. Nowhere was there mention of any afterlife of any kind. Oh, I’m sure if you dug through some really old texts you could find something, but the religion today, as it has been for the past 2000 years, is about being the best person you can be, because it is morally correct to do so.
Actually, many big-O Orthodox Jews do believe in an afterlife. For some reason or other that is not clear to me, Conservative and Reform Jews tend to be in denial about this fact.
Most people, in fact. The Biblical grounds for the concept of Purgatory is a passage which encourages us to pray for the souls of the dead. Well, someone in Hell is presumably beyond help, and someone in Heaven hardly needs our prayers any more. For whom, then, are we praying? The idea is that only completely pure souls can enter Heaven, but almost all of us have some sin in our souls, even if we’re saved. So we go to Purgatory first, where we are purified and made ready to enter Heaven. It’s not exactly clear what Purgatory is like, beyond the fact that Heaven is much preferable, and the notion is that by praying for the dead, we can ease and hasten their passage through Purgatory.
Somewhere or other, C. S. Lewis says (quoting from memory), "When the tooth of Life is pulled, I expect to hear Someone say, “Now rinse out your mouth with this. “This” will be Purgatory.”
Neat little site about jewish ideas on theafterlife . Also on the jewish concept of hell (which I didn’t know existed untill I went looking for the other site, and I was raised jewish.)
Yes I do know cherubim aren’t cute chubby little guys with wings as ‘cherubs’ are usually thought of these days. Cherubim and Seraphim are the top angels, above archangels, and would be rather scary and awe-inspiring to meet I imagine. The other sort are, I believe, known in art as putti or amorini.
My understanding is that in the Old Testament there are some vague references to a place called Sheol, a kind of shadowy underworld where the spirits of the dead lived. If I’m not mistaken Elijah was said to have gone to Heaven in a firey chariot(?) Then there are bits that suggest you die and that’s it, and it New Testament times many Jews were apparently hoping for resurrection in the Messianic age, much like the CHristians came to.
I recently chatted to a Jewish guy about this topic and he said Jews did now believe in a Paradise as well as a Messianic Age to come - so not much different to Christians by the sound of it.
Thanks for that. Didn’t know that one. Although I did suspect it was pretty much just ‘saints’ who got straight into Heaven - not a fact I imagine the RCC talks about much these days.
Anyone know how long you stay in Pyrgatory - I seem to remember reading somewhere it could be extremely long, and possibly not that different to Hell, the main benefit being it eventually ends…
I think one of Martin Luther’s complaints was about rich people buying time off Purgatory, unless I’m mistaken? At the least rich people did, (do?) leave cash for masses for their souls for this purpose.
Exactly. Everyone ends up in Heaven or Hell, but most people aren’t cool enough to get right into Heaven so they have to spend time in Purgatory. I like to think of it as the line outside a popular nightclub with the bouncer (St. Peter) picking who gets in and who has to wait around.
More directly on-point with “Heaven exists now” is the Catholic position that saints are people in Heaven now. Those we have canonized are those we’re absolutely sure are in Heaven, since they’re credited with aiding in miracles and only someone in Heaven can bend God’s ear to say “hey, help a brother out down there”. Still, anyone who’s gotten in is a saint even if we’re not sure about them down here. This shows up in constructions like “my sainted grandmother”, where the speaker assumes his beloved nana has made it in.
Well, obviously once the messiah comes all bets are off. I remember being taught that the Jewish belief is that once the messiah comes, all the dead are resurrected and we all live with god happily ever after. The end.
Sale of indulgences was one of the complaints. BUT this is not the same thing as paying for masses to be said in memory of a late relative – you can still do that, and the Mass for the Dead includes perforce a prayer for the souls of ALL the faithful dead. What did happen was that the practice had become corrupted and memorial masses, indulgences, apostolic blessings and other such were being sold as consumer commodities to the better-off, used a way of letting buyers get off of compliance with their religious obligations, and often being produced w/o going through the proper procedures and even by prelates without the authority for it.
A bit worse, actually. The theory had grown up that, because saints had done more good deeds than necessary (technical term: supererogation), there was a big bank of unused virtue available for crediting to less righteous souls (technical term: Treasury of Merit), and the Pope had the right to sell a share of it to any sinner in need of a goodness transfusion.
The traditional Protestant answer, intended to cut this off at the knees, is stated thus in the XXXIX Articles in the Book of Common Prayer:
Not all would agree that this is quite the right argument, as it still leaves the question answered in terms of accountancy, which a few of us wild-and-crazy Christians think is a quite inadequate model.
Most people? Don’t think so. Purgatory, as far as I was taught, was an exclusively Catholic thing not based on any Biblical proof. Can you quote me the passage and verse you are talking about?
No one I know believes in purgatory for this reason (their is no Biblical basis for it. Its a Catholic construct much like the idea of praying to Saints and such for intervention).
Correction: Episcopalians and Anglicans also seem to have saints, and they are also asked for intercession (not intervention, as you erroneously attribute to the Catholic faith).
No, no, what he meant was that in catholic doctrine, “most people” who are headed for heaven will hit purgatory first; not that most people believe in it.
BTW, it IS Catholic and the details are mostly Magisterium rather than Scripture (but that’s no indictment since for Catholicism, the Bible text is not the only source), BUT it is not totally devoid of biblical reference… for at least half of christendom. It’s an inferred interpretation from a passage in the 2nd Book of Maccabbees (can’t remember the verse) about the effect of praying for the already dead. Though you will NOT find that book in the Masoretic canon of the Jewish Tanakh, nor in the Masoretic-derived canon of the Old Testaments of Western Protestant churches, you WILL find it in the Septuagint-derived canon of the OT of the Catholic and various Eastern Orthodox and “Oriental Christian” churches.
Even so, the concept of “Purgatory” as a specific “place” of the afterworld where the good-but-imperfect do short-time IS mostly an RC interpretation – the Orthodox, if I understand correctly and I may be wrong here, reject the idea of a “temporal” (=taking place in real-time) purification process that happens in a “place” separate from the abode of the saints, but rather say that when the soul of the righteous-but-imperfect is brought into the presence of the divine at the Judgement, there will be a Purging effect that leaves it fully cleansed. (paging yBeaf…)
