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For viggorlijah

viggorlijah demurred at my previous post on the grounds that "Eternal torment doesn't exist in the pop culture sense in orthodox theology because (afaik! I am a rude beginner) because hell is the separation or refusal of God's presence, not an actual poke-you-with-sticks place. Well, there are two short answers to that, the first of which is that, just as being forced to stand against a wall without sleep for forty hours is still torture, being made to spend eternity not only without the God you have issues with, but without (presumably) many of the people you care about is still eternal torment, just a classier kind.

The second response is that most believers throughout history have entirely endorsed the 'poke-with-sticks' version of eternal torment, from Tertullian claiming that one of the pleasures of Heaven was watching sinners fry, to Jonathan Edwards ("The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you and is dreadfully provoked.") to the sort of Catholic preaching that James Joyce describes so eloquently in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Now, here's the thing. I have known one or two fairly wicked people - they were also a bit mad, but not that mad. Not wicked on an Adolf Hitler/Pol Pot sort of level, but pretty nasty. One of them, Linda, was a friend of friends and while I was mostly scared of her, I remember occasions when I enjoyed her company in small doses, because she had charisma. I also remember a sense of relief when I heard she was dead, because she had probably killed one of our joint acquaintance - and got away with it mostly because the police don't care much about dead transwomen junkies - and was always liable to hurt other people badly. She is someone whom I did not wish well - but the thought experiment is, would I want her to be in eternal pain? No, not even twenty years of Purgatory. Probably. If there were an afterlife, would I enjoy it more if a less messed-up, less crazy, less dangerous version of her were around in it? Probably.

All of this is setting aside the large body of Christian thought which states that I myself will burn eternally for who I sleep with and who I choose to be. I suspect that to a more intellectual kind of believer. I am in any case in more danger over the arrogance that makes me demand of the Creator a different set of rules to those he allegedly supplies, not merely in respect of my sex life, but in respect of the eternal destiny of Linda, whom I disliked. I stand with Eugene Debs, kinda - 'while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.'

If I ever finish the blasted book, this is an important part of what it is about, BTW.

As for Original Sin, I regard it as one of the brilliant but also dangerously stupid ideas you would expect an intelligent man like St. Augustine to come up with. Human beings have a multitude of drives, and some of them are perverse and aggressive - 'I see the best, and I approve of it' says Ovid ' but I follow a worse course'. Augustine made the determination that humans had an innate tendency to evil and that this was one of the consequences of the sin of Adam and Eve, who bound their descendants to a faulty nature, and to punishment for that sin, and all subsequent sins, and to the guilt of that sin.

The redemption of Christ's sacrifice - Augustine argued, as I understand it - removed the guilt of Adam's sin. It also created the possibility for each human soul, though not the probability, that a gift of divine grace might enable that soul to avoid enough of the consequences of fallen and innately sinful human nature to find their way to God, and away from eternal torment.

As a result of Augustine, and earlier thinkers who did not formulate all of this nearly as elegantly, most believers have always thought of themselves as the only group with any hope at all of salvation from torment, and with the odds against them even so. We could get into predestination here, but let's not.

Augustine specifically rejected the idea that human effort or will or actions could make up for the absence of grace; that possibility - as preached by his rival Pelagius - was one he ruled out. Of course, you could argue that a tendency to perform good works would be evidence of grace in action, but Augustine rejected that possibility as discounting the inherent corruption of human nature. He did not want anyone to think that they could charm their way into Heaven by being nice, or thinking well of themselves; he wanted everyone to be a self-hating neurotic, for starters.

What any of this has to do with the Sermon on the Mount is a good question. Belief in original sin has led to the emotional torture of children, the denigration of women (who by bearing children pass on Eve cooties) and being horrible to other people as a matter of course. Belief in Augustine's doctrine has, objectively, been throughout history what I was brought up to think of as an occasion of sin at least as much - I would say more - as it has been a prompter to heroic virtue.

And those are two important areas in which I could never adhere to most Christian churches. Sorry 'bout that.

I am no expert on any of this - I have been away from the Church for a long time - and will regard correction by the better informed as a good place from which to start dialogue.

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FWIW, the Jews believe that any Gentile who follows and honours the Ten Commandments through belief in God is a Righteous Gentile who is destined for Heaven, even though not born Jewish - thus it is possible to attain salvation even when birth is against you. They are quite firmly of the opinion that the Mosaic Law is for Jews and no-one else.

Given that the vast majority of Biblical evidence for the condemnation of homosexuality and transgender comes from Deuteronomy and Leviticus (i.e. the OT Mosaic Law), that pretty much indicates to me that sexual orientation and gender - trans or otherwise - is no bar to salvation for a Christian, particularly when you take into account the baptism of the Eunuch by Philip in Acts.

Interestingly, my friend Anne Ogbourn was discussing this issue with a friend in one of the richer, older hijra houses in Mumbai. And the keeper of the chronicles - those few hijra that were not entirely dispossessed of their wealth and establishment under the homophobic, transphobic British Raj have chronicles that go back quite a long way - said 'oh that's what happened to her!" In those days, the hijra were rich and powerful, and supplied high-grade bureaucrats to eg the Nubian kingdom of Meroe.

My own view of "Original Sin" is thoroughly heterodox, probably to the point that it's not really the same doctrine at all. But I do think there is at the very least a tendency to evil in the human soul, an ugliness which marks us out from our fellow animals as much as the use of tools. My current account of this is simple: we are never truly separate from God, because God sustains us; if we were to be separated from him, we would cease to exist. But we are seldom truly aware of our oneness with God. We are subject to the illusion of separation, and this illusion is the Original Sin that makes acts of evil possible.

There is something Taoist about this belief, and I'm okay with that. I don't think any one religion or philosophy has the complete picture of the nature of God or reality; the universe is too vast and complex for us to understand, and how much vaster and farther beyond us must be the mind of God?

Your post also raises, for me, the question: is it necessary to assent to all the professed beliefs of a church in order to be a member? I have been struggling with this. Many of the faithful of the Catholic Church believe that homosexual sex and the use of contraception are not sinful; many don't believe in Transubstantiation; many have technically unorthodox ideas about the Trinity; and yet they go to Mass and receive Communion on Sundays, and don't think themselves hypocrites for it. The Anglican church is notorious for harbouring people with vastly different beliefs about pretty fundamental aspects of Christianity -- I'm thinking of that episode of Yes, Prime Minister where Hacker has to select an archbishop, and the consensus is that it would be a plus if the candidate believed in God, but it's not strictly necessary.

There are so many aspects that go together to make a church: creeds and community and ethics and history and aesthetics (which might sound trivial by comparison, but if I'm worshipping God, I want to be moved by the beauty of my surroundings; if my surroundings are a concrete box, I'm just going to be depressed). If they don't come together in a way that nourishes and sustains me, I just feel alienated. So far, I haven't found a church in my city that I could attend whole-heartedly. I'd rather not be half-hearted about something as important as this, so I remain a solitary Christian.

"being made to spend eternity"

FWIW, in C.S. Lewis's theology nobody is made to do anything. People separate from God purely by their own self-righteousness. It's a little like children deciding to punish their parents by refusing to eat dinner. The parent doesn't suffer, and the child is only punishing herself.

I'm drawn to some of this - I certainly think that human beings are drawn to both evil and good, and are often confused about which is which. I believe in neither innate depravity nor innate virtue but in the fact that we are all of us a mixture of frailties.

I think that my feeling is that the power that sustains may be god, in some sense, but is not the personal god of most religion. I hope that that power is in some sense benevolent,that there is providence, but I have no particular reason for faith to go along with that hope. I remember what faith felt like, and I don't have it.

I take your point about heterodoxy within churches - my problem is less with being a cafeteria Christian, because that is a compromise many of my friends have made - but with that central issue of faith. Doctrines and the behaviour of the actually existing church were my stumbling blocks, but the disappearance of faith was and is crucial, and also the source of my spiritual dryness...

My love of and admiration for the historical figure of Jesus is a significant part of my background - but not hugely greater than my love of and admiration for Socrates and Mozart, who were also deeply flawed human beings who improved the human race just by being part of it. I do not believe in the particular divinity of Jeus - I can consider believing in the contribution of all good men and women and other sentient beings to a 'church' of mind and progress that drives existence irrespective of our posthumous fate.

My spiritual life, such as it is, takes place partly in disputation with friends, but mostly through sudden rushes of joy, and the exploration of great cathedrals of sound like Haydn's Masses.

None of this makes me feel at all regretful that my theology can be boiled down to an anti-Pascal's wager, where any god worth worshipping would not in any circumstances punish humans for not worshipping her/him given that her/his existence is actively unlikely in the material universe we inhabit and that that worship is a stumbling block to true ethical behavior, for if without God, "everything is permitted" (patent nonsense, but what can you do?) it is only then when you see the true ethics and goodness of a person, when there is no fear of hell nor hope of reward.

As for isolation not being real punishment, there's been some recent research to the effect that ostracism is processed by the same part of the brain as handles physical pain.

On the cynical side, there's Original Sin as protection racket. "Nice soul you've got there-- pity if something happened to it."

When you started about Linda, I thought you heading towards saying that she wasn't nearly as bad as a God who condemns people to eternal torment.

Further noodling here: I don't think we're built for eternity. Part of the hell in hell is that there's no input to shake you out of a bad mood. I recently heard of the ancient Celtic idea that there's only reincarnation. Life after life with no karma determining what you'll get. No justice (or at least no more than the rather modest amount we get here), but at least atrocities end.

I find that the more I read about the history of religions (well, okay, and science),the more I shift from agnostic to atheist. And, I confess, I have ABSOLUTELY no truck with Christianity as a model of the universe whatsoever; as a social model, well, it has its pros and cons - but as a model of reality...not so much.

I'm not sure how much of this is due to living 3 years in a Muslim country and 2 years in a Buddhist country, how much is due to my reading and thinking, and how much is due to my upbringing. Hmm.

Not that this is terribly helpful of me - but I do hope that you don't suffer any qualms or concerns about your integrity or your future because of Christianity? I mean, intellectual arguments and games of 'what if' are all well and good, and I'm all for them - I just don't want it to cause you any smidgen of distress, and I hope and trust it isn't.

...I really, REALLY don't like Christianity. Or any of the Monotheistic faiths, for that matter: I'm not saying they're lacking in any good points, but on the whole I think they're pretty dreadful institutions.

Having long since rejected the Christian cult in which I was raised, it has become my habit to view Eve's sacrifice as every bit as puissant and pertinent as Christ's.

Accepting doctrine as written, her first bite was disobedience, and whether she was lured to it or not, it still stands as such just as any two year old's theft of a denied biscuit is disobedience. However that fruit was meant to be knowledge of good and evil, and by offering the fruit to Adam, she was making a choice that her own get should likewise be able to improve themselves over the ignorant state of animals, by CHOOSING which they would do. At that point, she would have known that all the comforts of slavery were lost to her -- the unchallenging nature of obedience, of never having to wonder about the future, of never having to concern yourself with responsibility -- but she saw the benefits of freedom, just as Christ saw the benefits of freedom from the hidebound strictures of the chassist Pharisees.

But then again, it's theological discussions like that one which make the traveling preachers froth at the mouth when they come to my door, so I try not to upset the online Christians with views like these unless invited to it.

To which end, thanks for the invitation!

Churches like any institution have evolved in such a way that they bear little resemblance to the original Christian church.And their teachings have changed too to fit into modern society The main function of the church is to offer support to communities or to act as an instrument of the government to control the masses Depends on where you are coming from .
There has been writings about how the creation is very similar to the nativity They are both a description of paradise And paradise is a state without sin. Original sin is where you leave paradise which we must all do simply because we have to live in the world .Living in the world is with sin Most of the Bible is about the mystical or altered states in modern language.Hesychastic prayer is still practised by the monks in Mount Athos This prayer is a meditative prayer which although does not go as deep as Buddhist prayer does journey towards light in a similar way (The light on Mount Tabor)The difference is that it aims to reconnect to the heart instead of to the Buddhist place of the abdomen and oneness. The side side of the Bible that I am interested in I think relates to the inner self which is the most important and what I think Jesus was mostly talking about. But many of the teachings of the church have been adapted to fit into society all through the ages and have become distorted which mirror the distortions of that society at the time.

If your ever bored enuf at NOVACON look me up.
This seems to be a combination of Humpty -Dumpty of of Alice in Wonderland and the problem that damages Dawkimnndsd #otherwise brilliant THE GOD DELUSION.
What is the REAL Christian Faith ad clerkium ot ad populliam. That which is taught in the minds of refined thinkers or the modal the belief of most all Mere Christians. There is a lot of dishonesty here by just about all believers Modernists and hard-Shell Orthodox. If one is right then a largew part bof yjr rest of the Church is in a state of Mortal Sin.
Come on did Christ say 'Bleesed are the Obscuratistsd. Because they can never be Proved Wrong;

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