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Heaven, Hell and the Pope
Reverend Brian J. Kiely,
Unitarian Church of Edmonton, February 27, 2000
It seems that Hell ain't what it used to be, even in the Catholic
church, It's not often that I devote a sermon to what is for Unitarians
a fairly remote theological topic. In fact it is seldom that I speak
about academic theology at all. Quite frankly I found those classes
in seminary immensely frustrating as I watched fine minds fritter
away hours on end discussing — arguing — over ideas no more
relevant to everyday living than that medieval conundrum about how
many angels
could dance on the head of a pin.
But today I wish to deviate and look at the changing doctrines about
Hell. Changing doctrines about Hell? But isn't Hell supposed to be
everlasting and unrelieved physical and spiritual torment of the
damned? Apparently not anymore. So I take on Hell, because the doctrine
points out something fundamental about religion that most don't like
to admit — religion changes with the times. And second this topic
illustrates something about the Universalist part of our heritage
— we're always a couple of steps ahead of those changing times.
Well, let's begin with a little historical wander through the firey
pit. It seems that the notion of a land where dead spirits dwell
has always been with us. In fact it predates Christian and Jewish
cultures by centuries. The ancient Babylonians and later the Greeks
spoke of an underworld where the souls of the dead resided. It was
no horrible place - not a fire to be found, actually. It was just
a land of shadows from which the dead never returned, carried away
by the boatman across the river of death.
It seems that in those days, people were pretty philosophical about
life and death. It was a time when both weak and strong understood
that the strong ruled and made the laws. The weak and dispossessed
not only had little hope of justice, they had little expectation
of it either. The powerless did not see justice as their entitlement,
as we do today. This extended to their religious understandings as
well. In the early conceptions of the underworld, there was no great
righting of wrongs in the afterlife. If anything death simply brought
a relief from pain and suffering.
But along came the Hebrews, a race with the ill fortune to be located
in one of the most fought over corridors of land in the world. Several
times they were enslaved as a people, and in those times of exile,
they turned to their faith and their God. A doctrine evolved that
there would be divine justice, perhaps in this life, but if not,
then surely in the next, and so Hell as we know it was born. However
the punishment aspect of Sheol - as it was known was a minor factor
in Jewish theology. It only came to the fore in those times of exile,
and it was subordinate to the belief that YHWH would free the people
in his own time. Whatever notion of divine retribution after death
the Jews ever had has almost completely disappeared from their theology.
But it was in vogue in the time of Jesus, and subsequently it was
picked up and amplified by both Islam and especially Christianity.
And it was in Christianity specifically that Hell heated up, acquiring
its firey nature.
In early church teachings it was simply called the Inferno. It wasn't
until Christianity moved into northern Europe that Hell acquired
its modern name.
You have likely heard how Norse warriors who died in battle sailed
off in their burning ships to Valhalla, but you may not know that
those who died of other causes went to the underworld guarded by
the ill favoured goddess Hel. Hence the name.
Along with the notion of the underworld, early Christians fastened
onto the idea that Hell would provide an element of everlasting justice,
the ultimate righting of wrongs. In something of a parallel to the
exiled Hebrews, the early Christians were persecuted for their faith.
For 300 years after the death of Jesus, they survived derision, legal
sanctions, torture and death for their beliefs.
Not surprisingly this idea of a celestial reckoning, a post-death
evening of the score gleaned from a handful of Jewish scripture passages
appealed. It was logical. Those who died in Christ would be graced
with being in his presence for all time. Conversely it made sense
that those who attacked the teachings of Christ would be punished
in some way. The unending nature of the fiery punishment was, perhaps
a little over the top, but even this was justified by reason.
Our reading was an excellent example of Catholic systematic theology
wherein Joseph Hontheim answered all possible logical questions:
Because he demands morality, God must punish immorality. Since this
justice does not happen in this life, then God must punish after
death. Since God can't be controlled by human affairs, this punishment
must be eternal, otherwise mere human action would dictate the length
of sentence to God, and we can't have that. Finally, if there was
no threat of divine punishment, there would be no incentive to live
well and morally. It is a view of humans that shows us to be flawed
and incapable of aspiring to a good and life without some threat
of punishment.
And boy that punishment is a good one. In fact building from a few
Gospel passages and a few lines from Revelations, early Christian
teachers went on to develop an extensive description of Hell. By
the time Dante wrote the Divine Comedy around 1320, Hell had developed
nine distinct layers with roughly 15 sub groupings as you can see
in your Order of Service, a far more interesting place than heaven
with its mere seven levels.
If I could write in harsh and raucous verses,
As would be suitable to the sad pit
On which all other rocks weigh down,
I could press out the juice of my conception
More fully, but because I have not that skill,
Not without fear I bring myself to speak;
For it is not a matter to take lightly,
Describing the lowest point of the universe,
Not something to be done in baby-talk...
You who are the lowest dregs of all,
Put in this place which it is hard to speak of,
Better if here you had been sheep or goats!
Let there be no doubt. For most of 20 centuries Hell was a very
real physical place for Christians. As Joseph Hotheim argues, "There
is a Hell All those who die in personal sin, as enemies of God, and
unworthy of eternal life, will be severely punished by God after
death.... The pains of Hell are essentially immutable; there are
no temporary intermissions or passing alleviations..."
He goes on to say that there are two essential qualities to Hell,
one is the pain of separation from God (poena damni) the other is
the actual physical torment (poena sensus). These are the traditional
anchors for Christian beliefs about Hell. In a moment or two I'll
come back and show how one of these got demoted to fit modern sensibilities.
But first, a historical note about a different way of thinking.
As most of you will know, Hell has never played much of a part in
Unitarian Universalist thinking. It would be fair to say that in
spite of occasional moments of wishing Hell existed for our enemies,
we don't believe in the firey pit. We never have.
And this is no modern Johnny-come-lately piece of situational ethics.
Nope the Universalist side of our thinking goes all the way back
to Origen, one of the church fathers in the first centuries of Christendom.
He allowed that Hell might exist, but only as a temporary state.
For he believed that if God loved the world so much that he sent
his only son to redeem us, then he clearly loved it too much to damn
any part of his creation to an everlasting punishment. It wasn't
fair and it wasn't God-like. Origen believed we would all be saved
in time, that salvation was universal, hence the Universalist part
of our name.
Well after much to-ing and fro-ing and debate, the church voted
to go with Hell and declared Origen a heretic. Frankly, the threat
of Hell was too useful a tool for supporting church power and prestige
and for ensuring a measure of good order. So Hell stayed and the
theologians set about the task of defending and proving its existence
with the kind of precise and logical, but circular reasoning that
is the particular speciality of the field of apologetics. Hotheim's
13 page encyclopaedia article is the 20th century summation of this
dire art.
In the 18th century, Origen was rediscovered and a number of English
religious folk found the idea of universal salvation to be very attractive
and a welcome antidote to the dreariness of damnation-filled Puritanical
teachings. The Universalist church began.
It was a small sect in England, but it flourished in 19th century
America, a land where personal freedom and individual rights were
slowly eroding the notion of Original Sin - that Augustinian idea
that claimed we were all sinful creatures by nature. As America boomed
and grew into an empire, people began to believe that they could
live good lives without a threat of eternal punishment. Hell began
to lose its firey hold over the popular mind Where once people took
plays like Dr. Faustus with its soul-selling terror very seriously,
by the 20th century Hell and Satan fell more and more into the hands
of cartoonists and comedians. Satan became less a demon and more
a comic caricature.
The culture was changing, and Universalists (of both small and large
U varieties) were leading the way. Influences from Hinduism and Buddhism
began to suggest another way of thinking of things: that the only
Hell was right here in the daily lives we lead. Buddhism teaches
that life is an illusion and it is all suffering. It is only when
a soul becomes free of earthly attachments and desires does it travel
to the nirvana of peace.
For most of us, Hell was no longer a place. For many that meant
sacrificing the old versions of Heaven as well, although we retained
the idea that whatever its form, death brings peace. Today most Canadians
tend to believe that we either go to a better state of existence
or into nothingness. Either way we agree with Socrates that "To
the good can come no ultimate evil, either in life or after death."
But Christianity still had this outdated doctrine hanging over its
head. Many preachers in the 20th century simply stopped talking about
Hell. I was looking through an interfaith information manual the
other day, one where each denomination gets its own self-written
four page description. While many Christian denominations talk about
resurrection of the just, nearly all remained silent on the subject
of punishment for the damned. As a marketing tool, it has lost its
power in all but the most unenlightened circles and so it has been
quietly shelved, the artifact of some earlier age.
And perhaps the culminating moment in the dismantling of Hell came
last July when no less a personage than Pope John Paul II addressed
the subject at three successive audiences.
He said, "God is the infinitely good and merciful Father. But
man, called to respond to him freely, can unfortunately choose to
reject his love and forgiveness once and for all, thus separating
himself forever from joyful communion with him..."
Right there the Pope trashes the doctrinal point of poena census.
Hell is no longer a place of physical pain, just spiritual loss.
One half of Christian tradition, the part that created Dante's lurid
accounts is just gone, vanished in a rethought teaching. But that's
not enough. The Pope then went on to say, "It (Hell) is NOT
punishment imposed externally by God... Rather than a place, hell
indicates the state of those who freely ... separate themselves from
God... The very dimension of unhappiness ... , as is commonly said,
make(s) life "hell"...."
So there it is, with one stroke of the pen, God stops being an active
agent in the punishment equation, and Hell, the address, disappears
... well in a puff of sulfurous smoke.
And what's left? A very old Universalist notion that it is only
our own human remorse that produces any regret or sense of punishment.
It is only our own feeling of brokenness and loss, our own sense
of alienation from another person or from our highest ideals or even
from God if you choose that creates spiritual suffering.
Times change, and culture moves on its evolutionary path. Christianity
is discovering that it must change with the times or be left along
the wayside. In a pontiff whose papacy has in so many ways been judged
conservative and reactionary, it is a pleasure to learn there is
room for enlightened thought in keeping with the dawning century.
The challenge for Unitarian Universalists will be to maintain our
historic place on the cutting edge of religion.
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