Eschatology: New Views of Heaven & Hell

He descended into Hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into Heaven.

In unequivocal terms, the traditional Apostles’ Creed sums up one of the central mysteries of Christianity: God’s promise of eternal paradise or perdition beyond the grave. Millions of Christians recite the Creed as an affirmation of their faith. Yet many theologians are now attempting to redefine heaven and hell in this-worldly terms—not as places where humans somehow survive after death, but as states of mind and modes of being that begin here on earth. As they see it, the world itself is the supreme opportunity for man’s fulfillment and salvation, and the afterlife a “spiritual dimension” that emphasizes the noblest traits and aspirations of this life.

Most Christian theologians readily agree that eschatology—the doctrine of death and the afterlife—owes more to superstition than to supernatural wisdom. “The traditional views of heaven and hell are about 95% mythology,” says Notre Dame’s Jesuit Biblical Scholar John McKenzie. Except among some fundamentalists, the concept of a three-tier universe with heaven above, hell below and mankind in the middle struggling for divine judgment is recognized as a complete distortion of God’s cryptic revelation on eternity.

Consumer Satisfaction. Though the concept of an afterlife is universal among religions. Scriptural scholars note that the Bible has relatively little to say about it. The Old Testament contains no explicit description of heaven; the closest that ancient Biblical seers got to the idea of hell was sheol—a vague limbo after death. Although much of Judaism accepts the notion of an afterlife. Jews have never unduly concerned themselves with it. According to Reform Rabbi Richard Lehrman of Atlanta, “you make it or break it right here.”

The books of the New Testament are considerably more vivid in their portrayal of the hereafter. In Revelation, heaven is described as a city of “pure gold” whose walls are “adorned with every jewel,” and hell is called “the lake that burns with fire and brimstone”; in hell, according to Matthew, sinners “will weep and gnash their teeth.” Though scholars regard such descriptions as being primarily imagery, Christianity at one time accepted them as literally true. In the Middle Ages, Dante confidently limned a topography of the beyond that seemed as convincingly detailed as a map of Italy.

To eras in which life was a cruel trial of disease and despair, there was deep comfort in the dream of heaven as God’s good-conduct reward. Now that man has more and more conquered nature, eternity has become more and more distant. “A certain satisfaction with this world has replaced the aspiration for heaven,” says Italy’s Roman Catholic Philosopher Ettore Albino. “A consumer society gives man happiness even if it is superficial. Nobody wants to hear of hell.”

Rejecting Dualism. Moreover, theologians concede that modern skepticism about eternity is fully justified. Says the University of San Francisco’s Jesuit Philosopher Francis J. Marien: “An afterlife that is viewed as an opiate, a kind of workmen’s compensation for an ugly and painful existence, is bound to be unattractive.” Stanford University’s Protestant Dean of the Chapel B. Davie Napier believes that God and man are cheapened by the idea that good behavior can buy “a good berth in the afterlife.” As for hell, Napier shares the growing consensus that perdition cannot be permanent. To condemn even an unrepentant Hitler to eternal suffering, he says, “makes a demon out of God.”

The new Christian thinking begins by rejecting the Greek dualism of body and soul. The old idea of a soul that departs from the body at death “makes no sense at all,” says Roman Catholic Theologian Peter Riga of California’s St. Mary’s College. “There is just man, man in God’s image and likeness. Man in his totality was created and will be saved.” Such theologians emphasize God’s presence in the world. “God is the source of creativity and change and human selfhood,” says Harvard’s Harvey Cox. In sum, the process of salvation and damnation takes place on earth—not somewhere “out there.”

In the new eschatology, hell is something more believable than a pit of unending fire. To most theologians, the inferno is best expressed as alienation from God’s universal design, and therefore from one’s fellow men. “Hell is estrangement, isolation, despair,” says Acting Dean Lloyd Kalland of Gordon Divinity School in Wenham, Mass.

“Man, a social being, is removed from all that gives meaning and satisfaction.” U.S. Lutheran Theologian Joseph Sittler contends that there is a measure of essential Christian truth in Sartre’s depiction of hell as other people. In his Principles of Christian Theology, Dr. John Macquarrie of Union Theological Seminary describes hell as “not some external or arbitrary punishment that gets assigned for sin, but simply the working out of sin itself, as it destroys the distinctively personal being of the sinner.”

New Instructions. Conversely, heaven is now defined as the triumph of self-giving—not as some celestial leisure village. “Heaven is cordial, honest, loving relationships,” says Gordon’s Kalland. According to Macquarrie, “Heaven is simply the goal of human existence.” Such a view parallels that of Swiss Theologian Karl Barth, who wrote that “resurrection means not the continuation of life, but life’s completion. The Christian hope does not lead us away from this life.”

When heaven and hell are conceived as starting on earth, the demythologizers argue, Christian ethics are bound to be sharply strengthened. Such a concept “imparts a tremendous value to human life here and now,” says Boston University’s Methodist Scholar S. Paul Schilling. The theologians also argue that a this-worldly heaven and hell are quite in keeping with the Biblical message. In Galatians 5:14 Paul says: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ” Scholars point out that the principal message of Matthew 25, which contains one of the New Testament’s few references to heaven and hell, is that man’s salvation is work in this world—work for others.

All the same, man cannot escape death—and the not yet disproved possibility of judgment beyond. On this issue, many theologians retreat into agnosticism. If man is sufficiently fulfilled on earth, says Dr. Albert van den Heuvel of the World Council of Churches, “we can leave it to Jesus to worry about the details.” The Gospel, adds Dr. Edward Craig Hobbs of Berkeley’s Graduate Theological Union, “offers a message for this life. If, by some chance, we should discover ourselves still conscious after death, we will probably receive a new set of instructions.”

“Terrestrial Messianism.” Whatever those instructions, theologians retain faith in a posthumous identity. Insists Catholic Scholar Riga: “An afterlife is simply basic to Christianity. Without it what would you have but a terrestrial messianism interested only in building up the city of man? That surely is not all there is to religion.” Declares Stanford’s Robert McAfee Brown: “If God is a God of love, if he is ultimate, that which he loves and sustains he will not simply discard.” Jesuit Sociologist-Theologian Paul Hilsdale of California’s Loyola University believes that the afterlife, whatever its form, must somehow preserve individual awareness. “Since I conceive of myself as a consciousness which is open to others in love,” says Hilsdale, “I feel fairly certain that I will be able to think and to love in the next life. If this requires space, then there will be space. If it requires time, there will be time. I’m not so sure that it requires either.”

Others see posthumous salvation in terms of some kind of cosmic evolution toward perfection. According to the late Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, man is evolving toward an “Omega point,” or ultimate encounter with God. To Methodist Schilling, the phenomenon involves “the ongoing life of the whole person, not of the body in the physical sense, but of something equivalent to what a body is, a notion of renewal rather than mere survival, in ways that we cannot know. It is a matter of faith, but I think a reasonable and intelligent faith.”

Strength of Reality. Whatever lies beyond, the new eschatology may make it harder for some people to face death. Says the Rev. Kevin Wall, prior of the Dominican House of Studies in Berkeley, Calif.: “Those who hold myth-convictions are better prepared to face death with equanimity. It is more difficult for the rationalist to contemplate death.” German Protestant Theologian Dorothee Solle believes that “emphasis on this world means an intensification of the death experience. The new theology says that life is definite, not indefinite, that our chances are limited.”

Yet a new focus on the importance of living may well ease the fear of dying. The new eschatology, contends Calvinist Scholar Franklyn Josselyn of Los Angeles’ Occidental College, can offer man “a means of looking at death honestly and with courage. It frees man to have faith that is not merely an escape from fear.” Indeed, such freedom might begin to restore faith in an afterlife, especially one in which the spiritual dimensions are composed of such Christian qualities as justice, brotherhood and charity. Says the Rev. William J. Wolf of Episcopal Theological School at Cambridge, Mass.: “There is greater equanimity in facing death’s reality if what you are looking forward to in the next life is an extension of and a deepening of the value you find in this life.”