Hell in Christianity, or the Burden of Clarity on Ambiguous Things [ed.]

Great Debates
1

So as not to further digress from the main topic of this thread, I’m opening up this topic.

The question is, is it proper to say that Christianity as a generic descriptor can be said to believe in a place called Hell, in which place the souls of people who have sinned will be punished?

Personally I would say, “Yes”.

  1. This has been the common stance of the majority of Christian sects since Christianity began and is still the majority stance by a significant margin. (Somewhere between 70-95% within the US, and probably significantly higher in places which are more religious.)

  2. Jesus said so, and theoretically Jesus’ word supersedes anything anyone else says or believes given that it’s his religion. The religion is named after him and any truth it may or might not have is dependent on whether you trust that Jesus was speaking the truth.

For instance here’s some official Jesus quotes from Matthew:

5:22 But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

13:47-50 Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind:
Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away.
So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

While it’s certainly possible that Jesus was just pulling everyone’s leg, you would generally think that he would choose for his apostles people who would correctly understand and preach his word. And it’s those apostles who started the Christian religion, which as said believed in Hell all the way up until modern day. Generally, I would find it more plausible that the people who were closer in time and proximity to Jesus would have a better understanding of what was intended. I would find it more plausible that people would drift away from the true meaning of what was taught than come closer to it. The only case in which that wouldn’t be true is if new documentation was believed to be more direct quotes from the man himself. That hasn’t happened, the Bible is still largely the same book it has been for over a millennium.

I fully admit that anything Jesus said could just as well been taken as some sort of hyperbole or symbolism that wasn’t intended to be taken at face value–though like I said, I would presume that the earliest guys would have had a better idea of how to interpret the meanings thereof. But notice up in in that second quote that Hell (or the “furnace of fire”) is placed right alongside Heaven. If you believe Jesus to mean Heaven as a real, non-metaphoric place doesn’t that seem very peculiar to list as its opposite something which is merely meant symbolically?

2

First, let’s note that this isn’t exactly what you said before. Your quote from the earlier thread, the one that I believe is blatantly false, was this:

I have two problems with this:

  1. Plenty of Christians believe that a good person who isn’t a Christian (i.e., who doesn’t “obey” the Bible) can avoid hell. Even those who believe in hell often believe it takes some serious awfulness to end up there.
  2. Although a significant majority of Christians believe in Hell, it’s not part of the typical creeds; moreover, only the most fundamentalist Christians and atheists seem to consider a belief in Hell to be a definitive feature of the religion.

There are also a significant number of Christians (including, possibly, the Pope, although there is some question as to the translation of his remarks–I’ll try to dig up some cites tomorrow if nobody beats me to the punch) who consider Hell not to be a place, but rather to be a condition, specifically, the condition of a separation from God; and that God doesn’t send you there to be punished, but rather souls who separate themselves from God experience this state because they’ve chosen the separation.

It sounds as though you’re confusing the American fundamentalist tradition with all of Christianity.

3

I would say that historical Christianity would say that hell is real and that people deserve to go there because of their sin.

4

No. “Christianity as a generic descriptor” is a confusing and meaningless phrase. Certainly I’ve never seen any belief attributed to a generic descriptor. I assume you mean to ask whether it is correct to say without further qualification “Christians believe in a place called Hell” etc. I would argue that such a statement is meaningless except as rhetoric. Like such jingoisms as “Americans believe in freedom” it a statement without factual content unless you clarify it. For example, you might mean to refer to all Christians (in which case it is false) or the majority of Christians or certain Christians. If you mean any of these things, you would be much better off simply saying so than making statements simply about “Christians” (much less “Christianity as a generic descriptor.”) In any event, statements referring to all or the majority of or certain Christians are true or false as an empirical question and can’t be reasoned from first principles such as what Jesus said. You might be able to make a valid case on such points as to what Christians should believe. Plenty of hard-shell preachers and streetside evangelists have tried to convince Christians that they should believe in Hell. You are welcome to their company.

To return to the factual matter at hand, however, there are lots of surveys that try to determine which and how many Christians believe in Hell. You might try googling the Barna Group or the Pew Forum for more details. In my rather limited experience, the majority of white middle- and upper-class members of “mainline” Protestant denominations in the United States disbelieve in or are agnostic about Hell. I believe the Catholic church has taught that Hell is a spiritual state, not a physical place, but I don’t know what any Catholics actually believe, nor do I have sufficient experience with other groups to speculate on whether and in what proportions they might hold specific beliefs about Hell.

5

This doesn’t counter what I said, so I’m not seeing why this is an objection.

Atheists are impartial observers. If it’s straight from the main guy, has been a key feature of the religion since the beginning, and is still the majority position, I’m not seeing how one can reasonably object that it’s unfair to classify it in any other way.

Thomas Jefferson, for example, took Jesus to be nothing more than a philosopher and he stripped out everything in the New Testament that smacked of magic. He thought Jesus was the wisest philosopher in all of history and he tried to live according to his understanding of Jesus’ word. But that’s not Christianity. Christianity is a religion, not a philosophy.

You can say that the book doesn’t condone homosexuality. But an impartial reader who hasn’t been conditioned to mentally blank out various sections is going to pick up on the idea pretty easily that homosexuality is a disallowed thing, according to God.

You can say that the book doesn’t present itself as God’s law. But, the book says otherwise; it presents itself as God’s law. True, Jesus said that actual rules are less important than general behavior but at no point does he hint to anything other than that good behavior isn’t optional.

Ultimately you can strip out, ignore, or make up whatever you want and call Christianity. And if a time comes where a particular reinterpretation comes into being the majority stance, I’ll shrug and accept that that’s what we’re talking about. But it isn’t the majority stance, and especially when it is clear hypocrisy compared to what is actually written in the Bible, I have better things to do than pretend like I have to justify the assumption of accepted doctrine in a debate. Otherwise, it’s all just a meaningless debate. It’s like pretending that Jefferson’s beliefs are what we all mean when we talk about “Christianity”. That’s just wasting time, because by no stretch is that true.

I agree that that is the Catholic church’s presentation of Hell. That doesn’t particularly negate anything since a) the title “Hell” will still let people know what you are referring to, and b) sinners end up in Hell.

If there’s some sort of sorting system, even if it’s a gravitational pull towards one side, and even if you assume that this isn’t a system that was set up by God but rather just happened to be the way things are in the place that He is, then for all practical intents, not listening to the people who know how to keep you from going to the wrong end of the spectrum is more than advice. It’s informing you of the steps (or Rules) that are Necessary and if you don’t listen to, you suffer for. That may not be the minister’s fault. But at the same time, it’s not the policeman’s fault that the law is what it is. You’re still going to take his word for more than advice.

6

If I read those passages without knowing about the concept of hell from other sources, I’d interpret it as meaning that people who don’t go to heaven get burned to death in a literal fire. Presumably they then cease to exist, unlike all the lucky dudes that go up to heaven. Does Jesus ever say that bad people go to an actual afterlife of pain and suffering, as opposed to just being burned to death?

7

FWIW, here’s what Catholics believe about hell, according the the Catecism:

And actually, that “eternal fire” quote appears to be what I was looking for in the last post. Here’s the whole bit from Matthew:

Can’t get much more explicit then that, I guess.

8

Well so how do you propose that one debate “Christian belief” when the guy on the left tells you that God is Love, the guy on the right says that Jesus’ miracles were real but we shouldn’t take his quotes literally, and the guy in the middle says that God told him to shoot the President?

A moving target is one thing, and I can appreciate trying to keep up with advances. But Christianity is a tree that has 3 billion unique leaves; it’s not a moving target. If you’re not going to discuss it according to the most popularly held beliefs at their simplest, then you just can’t achieve anything. I have better things to do with my life than acquaint myself with the person-to-person individual beliefs of half the human race.

9

I would propose that you speak clearly and explicate whose beliefs you are referring to. I don’t really see the value in debating a generic Christianity that no one actually holds, any more than I see the value in discussing the names and the behavior of the 2.3 children in the average family. On the other hand, if you want to reference the beliefs of the majority of Christians (and are clear about what that means: in the US? In the world?) I have no problem with it. Alternatively, you could refer to the beliefs espoused by Rev. Robert Schuller, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, or the Doctrine and Standards of the United Methodist Church with interpretive material from The Book of Discipline. (Just don’t assume that all persons attending the Crystal Cathedral, Our Lady of Perpetual Remonstrance, or First Methodist Church of Ogdenville actually agree, without some evidence that they do.)

In other words, be clear. Be precise. Avoid building straw men.

First of all, everyone knows that the guy in the rear . . . was a Methodist.[/Johnny Cash]

10

Bwahahahahahahahahaha!

The rest of your point bears on this discussion in a way favorable to your position, but this comment is simply risible.

11

We’re not all Der Trihs.

12

I would generally assume that the most generic presentation is the one to be assumed. If you’re discussing a fringe belief, it’s your job to state that you are doing so.

If someone says “minister” and I go to the Wikipedia or a dictionary and it says that “a minister is someone who teaches religious doctrine”, I’m better to assume that that’s what is meant. If the person says “Wackalackan minister” and I look that up and it says, “a person who lightly cups the genitals of bamboos during the Oongalonga ceremony” then I’ll presume that something other than the generic descriptor of “minister” is intended.

If they say “minister” and then get mad at me for presuming that the supposed person we are talking about does something other than teach religious doctrine and I’m a nasty person for saying so, that just doesn’t make sense.

13

Fair enough. When in doubt as to someone’s meaning, you will continue referring to Wikipedia, and I will continue asking the speaker for clarification. What’s the point of this thread, then?

14

Whether anyone can make a reasonable claim when confronted with an unqualified use of “Christianity” that the default visual should not include Hell.

15

Yes. My claim is that when confronted with an unqualified use of “Christianity” the default visual should be of great diversity of belief, just as with “American” or “black” or “politician.” (Of course, there is no reason not to have a greater level of detail in that visual. White middle- and upper-class members of “mainline” Protestant denominations in the United States are more likely to believe some things, members of native charismatic denominations in Nigeria are more likely to believe other things.)

My claim is also that in speaking and writing, one should avoid the unqualified use of “Christianity” in favor of more clear and specific terms.

16

So I should specify God-believin Christianity, Hell-believin Christianity, President-shootin Christianity, God n’ Hell-believin Christianity, God n’ Hell n’ President-shootin-believin Christianity, anti-God Christianity, God-is-love-Christianity, anti-Hell Christianity, anti-Hell n’ President-shootin Christianity…?

I’d still have to argue that this should be the onus of the person talking about a fringe belief, not the person using the dictionary definition. It will get a bit old to have to say “God n’ Hell n’ Satan n’ Miracles but ambiguous Saints and no Pope Christianity”.

17

I try to avoid making moral arguments. I will say merely that in my many conversations about Christian beliefs I have always found that precision and clarity served me well.

18

If I have a dictionary definition, what is imprecise?

19

Dictionaries can be imprecise. Words themselves can be imprecise. Dictionaries can even be wrong.

Besides, show me a dictionary that includes “hell” as part of the definition of “Christianity.”

The fact is that Christianity encompasses a wide variety of beliefs. My experience is that being explicit about which Christians or which sources of Christian teaching one is referring to in conversation facilitates understanding and clarity. Your experience may be different. Have I answered the question in the OP?

20

Sage, I tried to get an answer to this one too. In this thread here.

The fact that Christians don’t believe in an eternal burning hell was news to me. I had been raised being taught that in church, by friends and family, books and movies, tv shows and just everywhere.

A couple years here at the dope, and a few intellectuals set me straight.