50 Key Concepts in Theology

Heaven and Hell
Heaven and hell are the mythical afterlife destinations for the saved and the
damned respectively.
In the Old Testament, heaven and hell are only depicted sketchily. Hell
was conceived of as ‘Sheol’ or ‘a pit’ of darkness; heaven was either thought
of as the sky and the stars in the firmament, or in metaphors of celestial
dwelling: a tent, or a pillared mansion. But the idea of heaven as future
salvation only entered Jewish thought following the first exile (597 bc) and
the destruction of the Temple. In captivity in Babylon, Jewish writers such as
Isaiah started to dream of a ‘New Jerusalem’ and a restoration of the city and
its people.
The concepts of ‘heaven’ and ‘eternal punishment’ (or hell) are firmly
embedded in the New Testament. Jesus refers to ‘heaven’ as the place where
God resides, and to ‘the kingdom of heaven’ as the arrival of heavenly rule
upon the earth. Early Christian ideas of heaven were tied up with the
apocalypse: the kingdom of heaven would arrive with Christ’s second
coming. The early Church, and probably Jesus himself, believed that the
world would end imminently and that all humanity would be consigned to
their final afterlife destinations.
According to New Testament mythology, heaven is also inhabited by
angelic creatures and houses God’s throne of judgement. The book of
Revelation adds numerous other details, such as the ‘pearly gates’ of popular
folklore.
Biblical ideas of heaven and hell depended upon a triple-decker
cosmology with heaven above (the firmament), hell below (the underworld)
and earth in between. God looks down, and speaks down, from heaven; and
we are said to ‘lift our eyes’ to heaven to pray. Hell is an abyss beneath us and
it is to it that Christ is said to have ‘descended’ before the resurrection. At the
end of his ministry, Jesus ascended into the sky, where heaven was thought to
be.
Later Christian ideas of heaven became more mystical as the influences
of abstract neo-Platonic ideas of paradise came to bear on theology. Heaven
became more ethereal and spiritual.
Modern Christians know that there is no heaven above or hell below, and
do not believe in the triple-decker cosmos that was so real for Jesus and the
first disciples. At best, the biblical schemes of heaven and hell must be
understood mythologically. Heaven may be thought of as the after-effect of

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our life on those who are left behind, or as a hope for the transformation of
the earth, or as a dimension of present experience. But the ‘pie in the sky
when you die’ version of heaven is now only believable by naïve
sentimentalists and hard-line biblical literalists.
For most Christians the idea of eternal punishment sits uneasily with the
vision of a loving and merciful God. The most satisfactory ideas of hell are
anthropological. As Oscar Wilde put it: ‘We are each our own devil and we
make this world our hell.’
The best that a modern person can, in good conscience, say about the
idea that heaven and hell are real places, is to be agnostic like Shakespeare,
who said that the afterlife is ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourn no
traveller returns’ (Hamlet). Perhaps there is more in heaven and earth than is
dreamed of in our modern scientific cosmology – but we cannot know what it
is.
THINKERS
Rudolf Bultmann (1884–1976) argued that ‘there is no longer any heaven
in the traditional sense of the word’. Heaven and hell are part of a mythology
that must be understood existentially as ‘the permanent futurity of God which
is always there before man arrives’ (from Kerygma). ‘The real purpose of
myth is not to present an objective picture of the world as it is but to express
man’s understanding of himself and the world in which he lives. Myth should
be interpreted not cosmologically, but anthropologically, or better still
existentially’ (from The New Testament and Mythology).
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–88): in Dostoyevsky’s novel The Brothers
Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov tells the twelfth-century parable of ‘The
Wanderings of Our Lady through Hell’. The Virgin Mary is so traumatised by
a visit to hell that she begs God for mercy for the damned. ‘How can I forgive
his tormentors?’ asks God, pointing to Jesus’ wounds. Eventually she
negotiates an annual amnesty from suffering in hell from Good Friday till
Trinity Sunday.
Karl Marx (1818–83) criticised the Christian concept of heaven as an
illusion of future reward which encourages the people to endure their
oppression and serves the interests of the ruling classes.
Plato (427–347 bc) thought of heaven or ‘the Isles of the Blessed’ as ‘a
region of purity, eternity, immortality and unchangeableness’ (Phaedo). He is
sometimes credited with inventing the idea of hell in his dialogue The
Gorgias, where he speaks of a place of eternal punishment.

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Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) suggested in his play Huis Clos (‘No Exit’)
that hell comes about through the sado-masochistic experience of being with
others: ‘garcin: So this is hell. I’d never have believed it. You remember all
we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone … Old wives’
tales! There’s no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is other people.’
IDEAS
Elysium: in ancient Greek thought, the resting-place of the virtuous.
Hades: the ancient Greek underworld.
Limbo: the nicest part of hell, where the unbaptised and virtuous non-
believers go. The Roman Catholic Church has recently abolished the idea of
limbo, saying that it was never official doctrine, although it was believed by
St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.
Predestination: the idea that God has already sorted out in advance who
will be going to heaven and who to hell.
Purgatory: a place where the saved go in order to be purified for heaven.
Sheol: the Jewish concept of hell as an underworld.
Tartarus: the lowermost part of hell, beneath Hades.
BOOKS
Peter Stanford, Heaven (HarperCollins, 2002)
Alice Turner, The History of Hell (Harvest Books,1995)

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Heresy
Traditionally, any Christian teaching that is contrary to the orthodox doctrines
of the Church.
Because the Church has traditionally believed itself to be in possession of
absolute truths handed directly down from God himself, heresy (or deviation
from Church teaching) has been regarded as an act of defiance against God.
As promulgators of false teaching, heretics have been regarded as dangerous
and corrupting. Consequently the Church has shunned those whom it regards
as heretics, and on many occasions heretics have been executed. Indeed, St
Thomas Aquinas argued that death should be the standard punishment for
heresy.
The word ‘heresy’ comes from a Greek word that means ‘to choose’,
implying that the heretic merely makes up his own teachings rather than
accepting the official truths of the Church. In our own modern and pluralistic
age, most people would now agree with Graham Greene that being a heretic
implies an admirable independence of mind: ‘heresy is another word for
freedom of thought’. The heretic is one who stands up against doctrinaire
attitudes, religious intolerance, the repression of individual freedoms and
theological arrogance.
Compared with the later history of Christianity, the early Church was
liberal in its attitude to heresy. Heretical sects (some of which are listed
below) were argued against vociferously, but it was not thought necessary to
put them to death. Indeed, the more liberal Church Fathers like Justyn Martyr
recognised that truth was possible outside the Church. The punishment for
heresy in the early Church was excommunication, which may not have been
very pleasant, but much preferable to the punishments that would become
common treatment in the medieval and early modern periods.
From the fourth century, the Church became entwined with the secular
power of the Roman Empire, and the treatment of heresy became an official
crime that required judicial procedures and punishment. This culminated in
the establishment of the Inquisition in the thirteenth century. The Inquisition
actively sought out heretics, put them on trial and handed out punishment.
One of its most celebrated victims was Giordano Bruno, the Renaissance
philosopher and Dominican monk. The charges against Bruno are not known,
but he was imprisoned for eight years and burnt at the stake in 1600.
The persecution of heretics was not only a Roman Catholic phenomenon.
For example, in 1553 Michael Servetus, a distinguished scientist, was burnt at

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the stake at the personal insistence of John Calvin for not affirming the
doctrine of the Trinity. An argument offered in mitigation for this shameful
aspect of Church history is that the Church was merely acting by the
standards of the day, and that extreme physical punishment was acceptable
practice in medieval Europe. This argument probably has some merit. But we
must surely question an organisation that for 600 years was prepared to
commit and sanction torture and murder in the name of a God of love.
THINKERS
Tertullian (155–230) wrote a short essay against heresies, saying that the
Christian truth is not something ‘chosen’ by us, but an indisputable teaching
handed down from the apostles: ‘We … are not permitted to cherish any
object after our own will, nor yet to make choice of that which another has
introduced of his private fancy. In the Lord’s apostles we possess our
authority; for even they … faithfully delivered … the doctrine which they had
received from Christ’ (The Prescription against Heretics).
St Thomas Aquinas (1226–74). In his Summa Theologica Aquinas
j