For nearly two thousand years, Christians were told about hell as a place of eternal torture for sinners, unbelievers, etc. The message, though unwelcome, seemed plain: hell was a real place, not just a ‘state of mind’. Then, around 1996, a group of churchmen decided that hell should now be considered, more euphemistically, as “separation from God”. Considering that the Bible is traditionally assumed to have been inspired - though not actually written - by the creator of the universe, I wondered what had happened in the last few years of the 20th century to initiate this theological change of heart. Or was it just a pragmatic decision, taken by a committee of clerics, to bring the church into line with what most people already thought? If that is the case, then church congregations had been misled for nearly two millennia about the nature of the afterlife.
I bought a copy of The Mystery of Salvation, in the hope that it might offer some elucidation (it didn’t! It explained nothing). So I’m left wondering: how, exactly, did the church get from the traditional concept of hell to “separation from God”? What did the process involve? And why has no one in the church ever apologised for frightening children - and credulous adults - with threats of damnation over so many centuries?
Licensed today: Houghton Tower, a fortified manor house in Lancashire...
No comments:
Post a Comment