Questions for liberal Christians

[Lainey]

1. Do you believe in Hell? If so, what do you think it is like? If not, do you believe in Heaven? For those who say Hell is "eternal separation from God," what does this mean?

2. What do you think happens to unbelievers when they die?

3. Do you believe that Jesus was literally the son of God, and was literally resurrected?

4. Do you believe in sin? If so, where did it come from?

5. Do you believe humans need "saving?" If so, from what?

Thanks!

[MagusYanam]

I tend to look at hell more as a condition of the soul and much less as a 'place of eternal punishment.' I once read a description of hell as a place where a great banquet was being served, but all the utensils were extremely long. The length was such that you could not feed yourself with the utensils. Unfortunately, none of the people there seemed to be willing to feed other people with their long utensils, which would have easily allowed everyone to enjoy the banquet.

I've also heard this description of Hell, but for the life of me I can't remember who came up with it. Do you remember where you read it?

The sacrificial death is an example and a metaphor for us to consider physical life less important than the spiritual, to be willing to sacrifice for others, and to be willing to let others sacrifice for us and acknowledge that sacrifice within our innermost beings.

This comes very close to my own interpretation of the Atonement. I think it was first articulated by the godfather of all liberal theology, Peter Abaelardus - the idea that in the death of Christ there was the perfect moral example of self-sacrificial love out of which one could find oneself.

Yes. To me sin is both a separation from God, either complete but usually partial, and an action or thought that represents us being less than our perfect selves. It comes from, in my view, having the capability to make moral judgments.

Interesting - but how does this play out in the social life of the human being, and what should this nature of sin say about how we interact in community? I have to ask - is sin just 'being naughty', being 'less than our perfect selves', or does it have other aspects?

I keep coming back to Habermas because I find his moral philosophy incredibly powerful, so bear with me on it for a second. Habermas built his moral theory on the ability of human beings to use language in speech acts and to evaluate speech acts by affirming or negating them along several different 'axes' or validity standards. But he also claimed that there had never in the history of humanity ever been a perfect act of communication, because in every human relationship no two people have the mutual ability to fully affirm or negate anything the other party might say, and there is always some exercise of social power which creates an inequality, which hampers communication. I sort of see sin in the same way - as being a need of the socially-privileged to exercise that power over others, or a need of the socially-marginalised to co-opt that power.

What you say here:

I look to the parent-child relationship as a metaphor or a symbol for this. No child will perfectly please their parent. However, in a healthy relationship, the parent and the child acknowledge their imperfections while always trying to express their love more completely and never letting their imperfections get in the way or lead to a separation. If a child (or a parent) allows their imperfections to lead to a self-judgment that is so severe that they deem themselves unworthy of the love of the other, then this would be in some sense a "hell" or "unsaved" condition.

actually made a great deal of sense to me. In God we have the Father, but whenever we see him communicating directly with mankind we can't help but have this very strange and distorted perception of the relationship based on the potential power the Father can wield over us - and we need the Son, who can communicate with us on our level without needing to exercise power over us. Indeed, he rejected the throne of David (as the Zealots conceived of it) and delivered himself up to be executed for his nonviolent protest of the power differentials of empire already in place.

Anyway, I hope that made sense. I'd be interested to know what your further thoughts are on the subject.