The End of Christianity (32 page)

These misidentifications are not hard to understand once we grasp the way “local heroes” (including saints and popular revolutionists) are venerated in the Near East and have been for millennia. Scott D. Hill says, “Often living men are viewed as incarnations or representatives of a known local hero.”
³⁴

Let us imagine ourselves among the apostolic community in those early days. We hear reports from several of the brethren that they have seen the slain Jesus alive again. Naturally our eyes widen; our ears perk up. And, like Thomas, we ask, “Are you sure? Tell me about it!” One tells us, “Of course I didn't realize it was Jesus at the time. It only dawned on me later” (so Luke 24:13–32). Another says, “It didn't really look like him, I admit, but later on I realized it must have been Jesus” (so Matt. 28:17; John 20:14–15; 21:2–12). And so on. I submit to you that we would be well justified to wonder what might have happened, and not to be convinced that our friends had actually seen Jesus. Their own testimonies would have created doubt instead of faith.

IT ONLY TAKES A SPARK TO GET A FIRE GOING—NOT A MIRACLE

Does it strain the bonds of natural law to envision a new religion beginning? Plenty of them have and have achieved impressive successes, not least numerical ones, and no one is too puzzled. Sociologist Rodney Stark shows how the expansion of Christianity from a circle of sectarian believers to a growing, influential sect that became a credible candidate for the state religion of Rome (as Mithraism and Baal worship
³⁵
had before it) parallels the success of analogous modern sects such as the Mormon Church and the Unification Church over the same timespan.
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No miracle was necessary, though there were certainly on display conspicuous Christian virtues that made it attractive, like Judaism before it, to outsiders and pagans. Christians should be justly proud of their faith's early success, but there is nothing supernatural about it.
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Keep in mind, to appeal to a miracle is simply to admit that we can't yet account for it. (“God only knows how so-and-so works!”) But we can. There are numerous factors not involving supernaturalism that explain Christian success.

But some would narrow the focus to the direct aftermath of the death of Jesus. If he did not at once rise from the dead, how can we account for the sudden expansion of the new faith? Why didn't the circle of disciples call it quits and go back home? It requires no rejection of miracles per se to judge that the rise of Christianity after the disappointing death of Jesus didn't require one. It may be readily explained in terms of cognitive dissonance reduction. Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, in their psychosocial classic
When Prophecy Fails,
³⁸
developed a theory of “cognitive dissonance” to explain the reactions of a UFO cult to the failure of their deadline for an alien invasion.
³⁹
Grossly publicly embarrassed, many nonetheless stayed with the group and in fact redoubled their efforts at recruiting. Why? Apparently, on the one hand, the level of humiliation would have been just too profound to face and accept. No matter how hard one must swallow it,
any
rationalization would be less painful than the reproach from self and others if one were to admit error and face the music. (Some disappointed members of modern Messianic cults have actually committed suicide rather than lose face.) Here think of the disciples of Jesus: they had abandoned all jobs and worldly pursuits, even family, in order to join Jesus and sit at his right and left in his coming glory. Now he is ignominiously dead, and one can only imagine the ribbing in store for example, for the two disciples once they got back home to Emmaus. Maybe they timed it to get home under cover of night!

On the other hand, one might hope to mitigate, even reverse, public scorn of one's faith by redoubling efforts to convert outsiders to it. Every one of them that might be recruited means one more who admitted his share of the public ridicule had been wrong (like the repentant thief on the cross). So one gets busier than ever knocking on doors. “When people are committed to a belief and a course of action, clear disconfirming evidence may simply result in deepened conviction and increased proselyte[iz]ing.”
⁴⁰
The cognitive dissonance theorists showed how the disastrous failure of predictions by the Adventists/Millerites, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the sect of Sabbati Sevi all really got going only subsequent to the seemingly fatal debunking of each movement's promises, the utter collapse of its predicted denouement. They just started again, reasoning that they had misinterpreted this or that the first time around, but that nothing was going to stop the freight train now! There is no miracle involved in any of this. A 180-degree turnabout is not nearly enough to dash the hopes of True Believers.
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In fact, sudden, utter defeat may itself supply the catalyst for igniting the bomb bigger than it was the first time. Far from going against nature, that is precisely the way human nature goes!

But, really, is all this machinery necessary? Isn't it like shooting a mouse with an elephant gun? Is anyone incapable of picturing the smitten disciples, whether of Jesus or of Dr. King, gathering after the initial shock of their leader's assassination, rebuking themselves for their momentary panic, and then covenanting together to redouble their efforts to carry on the master's cause in his name, and concocting what stories they needed to do it? It is the most natural thing in the world; the only “miracle” we need to explain “the transformation of the disciples.”

CONCLUSION: ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON!

The rise of Christianity is remarkable but not mysterious. We should like to know a great deal more than we do about a great number of aspects of Christian origins. But it is just false and absurd to claim that we could not account for the rise of the Christian resurrection faith without factoring in a miracle. We have felt no need to posit special circumstances or to multiply hypotheses. The rise of resurrection faith is just no problem at all. If we put the question in terms preferred by apologists for the faith, we would deny there is any problem at all accounting for the “facts of Easter morning” without recourse to a suspension of natural law. To argue that resurrection faith could not have appeared and hung on unless it had been started by a genuine miracle of resurrection is like saying that space aliens must have built the Pyramids, since we do not know how it might have been accomplished with what resources the ancient Egyptians are known to have had. No, even if we did not know how the ancient Egyptians might have engineered and produced the structures, our ignorance would in no way justify appeal to an “explanation” of which we know even less. But we are not even in such a position. We are not left scratching our heads wondering how the resurrection faith arose. It's just no mystery.

by Dr. Keith Parsons

C
harles Darwin, though he later made something of a name for himself in other fields, was trained as a theologian. He had a divinity degree (second-class honors) from Cambridge University. Perhaps, then, we should not be surprised when his observations on theological subjects are astute. Here is what he has to say in his autobiography about Christianity and the doctrine of hell:

I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother, and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine.
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Darwin, the mildest of men, seldom used such strong language, but in this essay I will argue that the tone and the content of this passage are eminently justified. That is, I argue that the traditional Christian doctrine of hell, as espoused by the historical Protestant, Catholic, andOrthodox creeds, is indeed a damnable doctrine. I contend that insofar as Christianity is bound to the dogma of an eternal, punitive hell, it forfeits any claim to moral authority, and so, like Darwin, we should not wish it to be true. In short, so long as Christianity embraces the doctrine of hell, its claim to be the “light of the world” is thoroughly discredited.

This essay will be divided into two unequal parts. In the first and shorter section, I lay out the horrors of hell in some detail. That is, I examine the depiction of hell offered by the most orthodox theologians and divines of various Christian traditions. Why dwell on these lurid and repugnant fantasies, surely the most misshapen progeny of the human imagination? The point is not to
shock or outrage (though I consider these revolting images both shocking and outrageous), and certainly not to offer a titillating tour of a chamber of horrors. No, the point is that we must be quite clear on what the traditional doctrine of hell really is, so that when we criticize it harshly, it will be clear that we are not attacking a straw man. No, it
really is
that bad.

Second, I will examine at some length the arguments of prominent latterday defenders of the doctrine of hell, including the arguments of some of the most famous Christian apologists such as C. S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft (writing here with Ronald K. Tacelli). I also look at Jerry L. Walls's revision of the traditional doctrine that unbelievers are consigned to perdition. I find both the traditional and the revised arguments severely lacking. I conclude that hell creates an irresolvable dilemma for Christians. On the one hand, they need such a doctrine. It is hard to imagine that there would be approximately two billion Christians in the world today had the Church been deprived of its strongest claim—that is, to save people from hell. On the other hand, the dogma of hell is rationally and morally indefensible, requiring intellectual gerrymandering and ethical contortionism by its would-be defenders. The upshot is that it is time we said goodbye to the horrid doctrine of hell and the creed that encompasses it.

THE NATURE OF HELL

The most famous depiction of hell is, of course, Dante's
Inferno.
The inmates of Dante's hell are punished symbolically. For instance, the wrathful furiously beat and are beaten by each other; gluttons who produced only excrement and garbage in life are forced to wallow in filth. Yet Dante's damned often attain a degree of dignity, and it is clear that Dante frequently pities them. Contrast Dante's attitude with the gloating of the Church father Tertullian, who anticipated his glee in enjoying the torments of the damned:

How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? Which rouses me to exultation? As I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What world's wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their followers that God had no concern in anything that is sublunary, and were wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them! Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or Minos, but of the unexpected Christ! I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors, much more “dissolute” in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows.
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Nor can we dismiss Tertullian as a crank. The ugly idea that the saved will enjoy witnessing the torments of the damned is not unique to him but was often expressed by the soberest, most orthodox theologians among both Protestants and Catholics:

Aquinas…thought that the enjoyment occasioned by witnessing the sufferings of the damned was one of the pleasures of heaven:
“Sancti de peonis impiorum gaudebunt”
(The blessed will rejoice over the pains of the impious). This displeasing notion was advanced and defended with great tenacity over several centuries, and was one of the points orthodox Calvinists and Catholics had in common. Scots preachers, in particular, thought the pains of Hell a matter for satisfaction. Thomas Boston thundered: “God shall not pity them but laugh at their calamity. The righteous company in heaven shall rejoice in the execution of God's judgment, and shall sing while the smoke riseth up for ever.” Some…went so far as to argue that the damned may have been created in the first place to make heavenly bliss complete.
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And what will be those torments of the damned that will so gladden and entertain the elect? For centuries, monks, preachers, and even academic theologians all vied with one another to produce ever more horrific depictions of hell. Here is Christian historian Paul Johnson's summary of some of these accounts:

The general theory was that Hell included any horrible pain that the human imagination could conceive of, plus an infinite variety of others. Hence writers felt at liberty to impress their public by inventing torments. Jerome
said that Hell was like a huge winepress. Augustine said it was peopled by ferocious flesh-eating animals, which tore humans to bits slowly and painfully, and were themselves undamaged by the fires. St. Stephanus Grandinotensis evaded the problem of imagination by saying that the pains of hell were so unspeakable that if a human so much as conceived of them, he would instantly die of terror. Eadmer listed fourteen specific pains endured in Hell. Adam Scotus said that those who practiced usury would be boiled in molten gold. Many writers refer to a continuous beating with red-hot brazen hammers. Richard Rolle, in
Stimulus Conscientiae
, argued that the damned tear and eat their own flesh.
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In
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
, James Joyce's semiautobiographical bildungsroman, the young Stephen Dedalus and his fellow students are subjected to a terrifying sermon about hell. Here is the good father's account of the nature of hellfire:

The torment of fire is the greatest torment to which the tyrant has ever subjected his fellow creatures. Place your finger for a moment in the flame of a candle and you will feel the pain of fire. But our earthly fire was created by God for the benefit of man, to maintain in him the spark of life and to help him in the useful arts whereas the fire of hell is of another quality and was created by God to punish the unrepentant sinner. Our earthly fire also consumes more or less rapidly according as the object which it attacks is more or less combustible…. But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury. Moreover our earthly fire destroys at the same time as it burns so that the more intense it is the shorter is its duration: but the fire of hell has this property that it preserves that which it burns and though it rages with incredible intensity it rages for ever.
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Finally, no set of quotes about hell would be complete without a few nuggets from the inimitable Jonathan Edwards from his masterpiece “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”:

It is everlasting wrath. It would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of Almighty God one moment; but you must suffer it to all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long for ever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts, and amaze your soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all is but a point to what remains. So that your punishment will indeed be infinite. Oh, who can express what the state of a soul in such circumstances is! All that we can possibly say about it, gives but a very feeble, faint representation of it; it is inexpressible and inconceivable: For
who knows the power of God's anger?
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Again, this stuff cannot be dismissed as a morbid phantasmagoria dreamed up by the unhinged or the fanatical. The tortures of hell were soberly proposed by the most distinguished theologians. As Johnson notes, “The three most influential medieval teachers, Augustine, Peter Lombard and Aquinas all insisted that the pains of Hell were physical as well as mental and spiritual, and that real fire played a part in them.”
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Further, scripture itself, though not as detailed as the accounts of later writers, is highly evocative when describing postmortem punishment: “And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:47–48).

“And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:10).

“And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:15).

“And it came to pass that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom: the rich man also died and was buried; and in hell he lift up his eyes being in torments and seeth Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame” (Luke 16:22–24).

The idea of a hell where sinners are tortured eternally is thus not the excrescence of a diseased brain. Such images may appear to be sick men's dreams, as Hume put it, but they are elements of a doctrine thought out with careful deliberation and based upon scriptural authority.

THE DEFENSE OF HELL

Surely, though, such a doctrine creates a heavy burden for those who would defend the tenets of traditional Christianity. How exactly are we to understand that the world created by an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being would be one in which billions of sentient creatures are doomed to eternal torment? God, in creating the world, would know that billions upon billions of human beings will wind up in hell, yet this is the world he chose to create. Indeed, do we not have to say that many billions of people were created so that they might be damned? Were there no alternatives to such a scheme that would involve no or less torture? Was every alternative somehow (and it is hard to see how) even worse? Why would God create hell, and then make the only way to avoid it depend upon acceptance of certain beliefs that, as he knows ahead of time, many billions will not accept? As Eddie Tabash suggests (by personal communication), the very doctrine of hell is so horrific that it probably deters many from believing, and so
condemns
them to hell. Further, doesn't the idea of a punitive hell depend upon a conception of justice as retribution, and are there not problems with such a concept, or, at least, may it not be carried too far? How can even the wickedest of human beings, a Hitler, Stalin, or Cheney, say, deserve
eternal
punishment? We no longer subject even the worst criminals to old-fashioned tortures, so shouldn't we expect God to have made at least as much moral progress as we have? Shouldn't God at least make it absolutely clear to everyone that the consequence of not doing what he says is eternal torture? Christian apologists have addressed these and other such questions, so let's turn to their arguments.

Peter Kreeft and R. K. Tacelli argue that God is not to blame for the pains of hell since those who go to hell freely choose to go there.
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In what sense, though, could anyone be said to choose to go to hell? Surely, nobody has actually weighed the two options: “Hmmm…eternal bliss or eternal torment? Which will it be? I think I'll go for the eternal torment.” We have no room here to pursue what Kreeft and Tacelli
could
mean when they say that hell is freely chosen. Whatever they mean, one thing seems clear: only a lunatic would consciously choose eternal torment over eternal bliss. This suggestion does not faze Kreeft and Tacelli at all, for in their view, sin
is
insanity: