Heaven & Hell noted

Paul Johnson gives us a short but informative review of a book "After Lives: A Guide to Heaven, Hell and Purgatory". Lonely Planet mustn't have gotten around to those regions yet.

Apart from telling us about the hellfire sermons of the Redemptorists (an order which specialised in that service), Johnson reminds us that:

Belief in hell began to decline in the eighteenth century. Boswell relates that when Dr Johnson dined with Dr Adams, head of Pembroke College, Oxford, in 1784, Johnson said, 'looking dismally', that he was afraid he would be damned. Dr Adams: 'What do you mean by damned?' Johnson, 'passionately and loudly': 'Sent to Hell, Sir, and punished everlastingly.' Dr Adams: 'I don't believe that doctrine.' A discussion followed, in which Johnson appeared to be in a minority of one, until he said, 'in gloomy agitation', 'I'll have no more on't.' The decline of hell was the reason why the Redemptorists were founded, and in Britain, why Parliament replaced fear of damnation by a huge increase in capital punishment.

Interesting. But was Dr Adam's problem with Hell the idea that it is permanent? The idea that purgatory is just Hell that any soul can leave (at least until the Final Judgement) is one that has more appeal to the modern mind, and if the idea of a permanent, immediate judgement leading to Hell leads people to disbelieve in it entirely, I would rather the Catholic church did go back to talking about other possible understandings of Hell, rather than just ignoring it.

Certainly, Hell is given very light weight in Catholic sermons these days compared to my youth, despite its prominent mentions in the New Testament. I don't care much for the idea of constant fear as being an incentive for moral behaviour; but on the other hand, never talking about it tends to downplay the reality of the supernatural and importance of personal responsibility, which are aspects of Catholic teaching which are now somewhat lacking.

Apart from Hell, the concept of Heaven, and the issue of what a resurrected body is meant to be like, gets covered in a book extract appearing recently in Newsweek.

Lisa Miller, the author of "Heaven", seems to suggest that the more commonly believed existence of a mere soul in an afterlife doesn't actually give us the idea of a solid Heavenly experience:

...a disembodied soul attaching itself to God in heaven offers no more comfort or inspiration than an escaped balloon. Consolation was not the goal of Plato's afterlife. Without sight or hearing, taste or touch, a soul in heaven can no more enjoy the "green, green pastures" of the Muslim paradise, or the God light of Dante's cantos, than it can play a Bach cello suite or hit a home run. Rationalistic visions of heaven fail to satisfy.

The post at First Things about Millar's book agrees.

I'm not sure that it really is a problem, especially with the advent of cyberspace as a concept that soon every adult who spent a childhood playing computer games will understand. And you also get scientists seriously speculating on the entire universe being a simulation. It's easier than ever to believe that a disembodied mind could be made to feel embodied, surely. I think this was the point made by Margaret Wertheim's book "The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace", and it sounds as if Millar may not have read it.

But if one expects that Heaven is just a simulated version of life with better ground rules, I guess you could also argue that a bodily resurrection of Jesus would not have been necessary to prove that type of reality. Yet it seems clear from the New Testament that the writers wanted to be sure that people understood the post resurrection experiences as something different from a ghostly presence. Who knows; maybe a bodily resurrection of Jesus was really necessary to prove his special status. A mere claimed appearance of a ghost a couple of times might be considered unremarkable.

Anyhow, this is all just speculation. The fact that Christianity is a kind of unexpected religion, with mystery at its heart, is one of the reasons it makes a fascinating life long study and interest, even if you don't fully have faith.

Finally, I have also been meaning to mention Daniel Dennett's small scale study of clergy who no longer believe in God, but still don't give up their positions. I think I have noted here before that this is not a new concern, as CS Lewis in one of his essays from (I think) the 1940's to a group of Anglican priests said that congregations often had a firmer belief in some fundamental Christian doctrines than the priests leading them. Still, the problem may be even worse now, for all I know.