Oh and By the way, Jesus mentions hell more than anyone else in the New Testament. If there was no need for Hell there would have been no need for Christ in the first place. without Hell there would have been no Christ at all.
I was going to mention this.
If there is no Hell, then what are we saved from? From eternal separation from God? I don't think a nonbeliever would care about that. Punishment (or consequences), though, is different. Being saved from that hopelessness and pain matters. Eternally existing or not existing means that accepting Christ is nothing necessarily important, or, more to the point, nothing saving about it. It becomes more like a club than a rescue at that point.
OK, let me see what I can say about this.
The common Christian perspective on salvation is that salvation = an afterlife event; in other words, salvation is salvation from an eternity in Hell. The only thing that can save us from an eternity of pain and suffering is belief in Jesus as the Savior. Achieving this salvation is the main thrust of the Christian religion.
However, for most of the history of the Jewish people, this is a foreign concept. The idea of an existence of any kind after death is extremely late, first appearing in the book of Daniel, written around 165 BCE. Earlier books of the Bible either don't mention an afterlife at all or do so only ambiguously (references to Sheol cannot really be seen as evidence of a continued existence post-death - it is equivalent to the Greek Hades, just the place of the dead. The living are here with us, the dead are in Sheol). There is certainly no expectation of a Heaven full of rewards for believers and a Hell full of punishment of nonbelievers. It simply wasn't part of the Jewish religion. It was this way in 1700 BCE (Abraham), 1300 BCE (the Exodus from Egypt), 1000 BCE (David) or from 750-400 BCE (the main times of the classical prophets).
Therefore, for the vast majority of their history, the religion of the people of Israel was not motivated by a belief in the afterlife. However, they still took their relationship with God very seriously, and they still spoke often of salvation. But what did salvation mean for them?
Well, depending on which part of the Bible you are reading, salvation in God meant many different things. Salvation meant enlightenment. It also meant forgiveness. It also meant material sustenance (food & drink). Well-being. It also meant liberation, both materially (the Exodus) and emotionally/spiritually. It also meant reconciliation, both with others and with God. It also meant healing, again both physically and emotionally/spiritually. But the common theme is that God is our salvation, right here, right now, not later in some nebulous afterlife.
I think that God's grace is very real. However, the very concept of a Hell to which people are doomed unless they are "in the club" doesn't make sense, and doesn't conform to an image of a God who is loving, righteous, and just. Why would a Hell exist? Is entry to an afterlife of rewards granted by God's grace, or is there a requirement of us? If there IS a requirement, then isn't Christianity really a religion of works? If, on the other hand, entry is granted by grace, then does everyone go to Heaven? If not, is that because God predestines some to go to Heaven and the rest to go to Hell? In other words, is God's grace capricious, granted to some undeserving people but not to other undeserving people?
If my entry into Heaven (and avoidance of Hell) is dependent on my free-will choice to respond to God, then my "salvation" is dependent on something I do. But this means that salvation is no longer dependent on grace, but a requirement. So, is salvation achieved by grace or by works?
Do only Christians get to Heaven? Obviously, that has been the viewpoint of most Christians over the last 2,000 years. But is it righteous and just that billions of souls are consigned to an eternity in Hell just because they've never heard of Christianity, or it wasn't presented to them in a convincing fashion, or wasn't presented correctly at all?
So, while I have no doubt that the early Christians who are responsible for the writing of the New Testament believed in the existence of an afterlife of rewards for them and punishments for their persecutors (and there are reasons that they believed in these things, but that is a different post altogether), the evidence of the Scriptures produced before that time and the character of God revealed throughout the entirety of Scripture speak against such an eternity. There may be an afterlife existence of some kind, but if so, there is no way that any of us know anything about what it could be, and it wasn't important enough for us here on this side of eternity for God to tell any of the ancient Israelites about it, or to tell them to evangelize their surrounding countries about it.
Topic: Anyone have any uncommon/weird/controversial/obscure beliefs? (Read 14003 times)