Tag Archives: Hell

Anglican Hell hath no fury at all

Posted on by
5

I would be interested to know how many Anglican Church of Canada clergy believe in the reality of Hell. I suspect the number is very small.

When Hell is expunged from Christianity, there is no longer any need for a Saviour since there is nothing to save us from; sins are neither judged nor punished, so Jesus didn’t need to take them upon himself and die for them. Since Jesus didn’t die for our sins, he wouldn’t need to be God incarnate, physically resurrected, born of a virgin or sinless. Perhaps, as Anglican priest manqué, Tom Harpur suggests, Jesus never actually existed. As you can see, without Hell, the whole thing falls apart – just like the ACoC. Not to worry, though, there is still social justice.

Here is an interview with a clergyman who isn’t at all interested in being saved from Hell:

I came to be passionate about justice through Jesus, as I was introduced to him by figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Desmond Tutu. They introduced me to a Jesus that I wanted to give my life too – not because if I didn’t I would go to hell, but because he was showing a way of life that was life, that was truth! When I hang out with my homeless friends, when I engage in social action, to me it is like a spiritual practice, I feel closer to Jesus.

I trust everyone has noticed my restraint in not making any cheap jokes about how the ACoC has invented – or “reimagined”, to use the in vogue non-word – its own particularly torturous version of hell: sitting through an ACoC sermon.

An inclusive Hell

Posted on by
3

Jean-Paul Sartre reckoned that hell is other people. In The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis’s Episcopal Ghost, who delights in conversation as long as we are free to interpret words in our own way, is eager to return to the hell in which he doesn’t believe in order to present a paper to Hell’s Theological Society. Dante’s understanding of Hell, even though it precedes the former interpretations, is quite in tune with our zeitgeist: it is diverse and inclusive. Today’s clerics would feel quite at home there.

From, of all places, the BBC:

Hell is diverse
The modern cartoon image of Hell, with flames and pitchforks for everyone, is tragically bland compared with medieval depictions. This modern version is probably the legacy of Milton, who in Paradise Lost describes hell as “one great furnace” whose flames offer “no light, but rather darkness visible”. Then again, he is setting it in the time of Adam and Eve when its only population is demons, so even his Hell might have livened up a bit later. In the medieval hell explored by Dante and painted by Hieronymus Bosch, punishments are as varied as sin itself, each one shaped to fit the sin punished. In Dante, sewers of discord are cut to pieces, those who take their own lives are condemned to live as mere trees, flatterers swim in a stream of excrement, and a traitor spends eternity having his head eaten by the man he betrayed. In Bosch, one man has a harp strung through his flesh while another is forced to marry a pig in a nun’s wimple, and other people are excreted by monsters. This Hell is not a fixed penalty, but the fruition of bad choices made during our lives

Hell Pizza

Posted on by
Reply

Hell Pizza is running a silly advertisement:

This has upset the  Anglican Church:

Hell Pizza, a chain in New Zealand, has angered the Anglican Church over its new ad comparing its limited time offer of hot cross buns, which is decorated with a Satanist symbol, to Jesus.

But St. Matthews Anglican church is not in the least perturbed and is displaying its own version:

Auckland Anglican church, St Matthews in the City, has put up a new billboard similar to the pizza outlets, advertising a hot cross bun with a pentagram symbol.

It says “Hell no, we’re not giving up pizza for lent”.

Priest in charge Clay Nelson says it’s about taking the mickey out of those Christians who complain about Hell Pizza’s “clever” ads.

He says people shouldn’t take things so seriously and go to war with secular society which doesn’t do Christianity any good.

If St. Matthews doesn’t take Hell seriously, what, I wonder, does it take seriously? Progressive Christianity, apparently, and the only thing it takes seriously is the act of not taking Christianity seriously.

A Bell of a blunder

Posted on by
Reply

It’s not often that Christian speculation on the reality and nature of Hell merits a spot in the secular press, but Rob Bell, pastor of the extremely successful Mars Hill church, has managed just that. He seems to be shocked by all the attention his ruminations are receiving.

Here is the CBC’s coverage. Rob Bell seems increasingly more interested in building a temporal kingdom of heaven than in occupying an eternal one, a malaise that is more commonly associated with liberal mainline churches.

Evangelical megachurch pastor Rob Bell told a Nashville audience he did not anticipate the firestorm he would stir with his book that questions the traditional Christian belief that a select number of believers will spend eternity in heaven while everyone else is tormented in hell.

Bell said that he not only didn’t set out to be controversial, he had no idea his bestseller, Love Wins, would bring condemnation from people like Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler, who claims Bell is leading people astray.

“The last couple of weeks have been the most painful in my life,” the Michigan pastor told a crowd of about 1,600 at Belmont University in Nashville Tuesday after an audience member asked him about the criticism he has faced.

“It has taken me to a place of profound brokenness,” he said…..

He said that what he called “evacuation theology,” or the idea that “Jesus is your ticket to somewhere else,” is dangerous because it can cause people to miss Christ’s message about how to live in such harmony with God that you are creating a heaven on Earth.

“Jesus taught his disciples to pray, not ‘God, beam me up,’ but ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven,”‘ Bell said.

He says hell is something freely chosen that already exists on Earth.

Mars Hill has attempted damage control by publishing a Love Wins FAQ, but seeing Rob Bell giving evasive answers to direct questions in this interview hasn’t helped:

An Anglican priest denies the existence of Hell

Posted on by
5

This seems to be an odd career limiting assertion for a priest: if there is no hell, we don’t need saving; if we don’t need saving, we don’t need a Saviour; if we don’t need a Saviour, we certainly don’t need church or priests. Perhaps that explains why the Anglican Church in Canada is losing thousands of people every year.

From here:

The idea of hell as a place of punishment for the wicked was widespread in the world long before the Christian era. However it became assimilated into the official teaching of the Church very early on, in spite of the fact it conflicts with both Bible teaching and the inherited liturgies; and this contradiction has continued over the centuries……

The time has come for all denominations to think again about anomalies and inconsistencies in the inherited faith, which have led many people to come to disregard the Christian religion altogether, without realizing that what they are rejecting is not the faith itself but distortions of it that should indeed rightly be challenged.

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity has been misunderstood as being belief in three gods, but it is belief in One God, who has been described as being made up of three entities, between whom love flows, The Lover, the Beloved, and Love itself [and I always thought there were three Persons in the Trinity – silly me].

Thinking about the true nature of God, accepting that God is Love, and putting the demands of that Love first and our ideas about “religion” second, would surely have huge ramifications for the future peace of the world.

A God of Love does not send people to hell!

Of course, anyone who has had to sit through an average Anglican sermon has irrefutable evidence that Hell exists.