41 – Hell and Damnation

Editorial

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IF YOU CAN'T FIND ANYTHING TO INTEREST YOU, WE'LL REFUND YOUR SUBSCRIPTION! hell and damnation Family breakfasts across the country were enlivened on Monday April 3 when the BBC radio Today programme, which famously gives politicians hell, brought together two experts to discuss hell and damnation. Both were fresh from our own “Honest to Jesus” conference that same weekend. One was David Hilborn of the Evangelical Alliance, the other Stephen Mitchell, chair of the Sea of Faith Network. The peg was a report on the Bible’s teaching on hell newly published by the Alliance.

Poor David Hilborn was soon struggling. He had made a significant contribution to our conference, refusing to play the raving fundie which some had expected of an Evangelical spokesperson. Unsympathetic as he was to SoF and the Jesus Seminar, he had tempered his criticisms with disarming liberalism. But on Today he had a problem. David Hilborn and the Evangelical Alliance believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, and therefore that what it says about Hell If we want to make the twenty-first century a time of radical reformation, we have to begin by disowning the Bible’s Hell.

Whatever sense it arguably once had in pre-modern times it has no more. ever? Well, struggled David, Evangelicals were debating whether “eternity” meant for ever or... something else (rather as the judiciary struggles over whether “life” means life, or ten years?).

Stephen Mitchell was admirably restrained. No mockery, no point-scoring. Didn’t this all show how religious language, religious meanings, changed?

Didn't it demonstrate what difficulties we get into if we tie ourselves to the language and meanings of the past? But David, mired in his hole, was digging furiously. Hell is real. Look at Auschwitz! Look at the Holocaust!

Well, look at Auschwitz, look at the Holocaust, look at the abject misery and poverty and sickness of half the world today. This is hell: one we humans have made for ourselves. But the Bible’s Hell, the Hell described in Revelation, the Hell Jesus himself threatened his enemies with (though he taught us to love ours), is not of our making. The Bible is clear: God Himself made Hell as a place of unbearable punishment for unrepentant sinners.

The medieval churches knew that, and they painted it all over their walls to make sure the faithful knew what was coming to them if they turned faithless.

Hell has probably caused more confusion, terror, misery, bafflement and righteous revolt against Christianity than any other a a (with a capital H) is God’s Truth (with a capital T), yesterday, today and for ever. And what the Bible says about Hell is that you'll go there, to this lake of fire, this bottomless pit, if you are not “saved” - and you are not saved unless you are a true believer.

David’s problem is that most people today think that’s quite daft, if not downright wicked. Even the mainstream churches don’t preach hell-fire any longer. The’ve gone nonrealist on the Devil if not on God. The Church of England tends to teach that hell is “a state of separation from God”, and the Pope too now speaks of Hell as a state of mind rather than a place. Only the Paisleyites, Plymouth Brethren and most Americans still believe in the Bible’s Hell, God’s place of punishment reserved for the Devil and his angels and stubborn unbelievers and Christ-resisters.

David struggled. The fire and brimstone stuff was metaphorical. Hell, he conceded, had no “geographical” location, and was indeed separation from God. But it is real. It says so in the Bible. It is God’s way of punishing sinners. For doctrine. If it were true, God would be a devil, a tyrant whose words of mercy, pity, peace and love would condemn him as the Ultimate Hypocrite. That is why, if we want to make the twentyfirst century a time of radical reformation, we have to begin by disowning the Bible’s Hell. Whatever sense it arguably once had in pre-modern times it has no more.

Sea of Faith itself needs to be far more thorough, far more radical, far more courageous than it has been so far in subjecting the old religious language to new, intelligent and compassionate scrutiny.

What place is there today for “Lord”, for “kingdom”, for “heaven”, for “hell”? What do we mean when we say “God”, “Saviour”, “grace”, “redemption”? How long can we go on pretending that it’s all right to say the old words provided we give them new meanings, just because that’s less demanding than finding new words?

Let’s leave hell and damnation to those who choose to live in the past. Our faith is in the future. And the future is a world of new words and new meanings, which it our task and our adventure and our joy to discover! 3 SOF 41 / May 2000 editorial Hobsons Farm, Dent, Cumbria LA10 5RF Ee] ® = ro = r © ® SOF 41 / May 2000 by Alison Webster in search of startlement The day was April Fools’ Day; the context was an Anglican cathedral; the occasion: a Sea of Faithorganised conference entitled “Honest to Jesus”, starring the founder of the Jesus Seminar in the USA, Robert Funk. That all sounds weird enough, but the oddest thing of all, for me, was to find myself in agreement with a panellist representing the Evangelical Alliance. We were united in questioning Funk’s assertion that it is possible, indeed desirable, to “set Jesus free” to speak for himself; to strip the “Jesus of history” from the interpretative overlay which has turned him into the “Christ of Faith”.