N. T. Wright on Hell
An interesting short discussion.
Similar Posts
Link: Herman Bavinck on Scripture and Errors
ByhenryFound on PostBarthian. I like!
Working in your Call
ByhenryAnd YHWH spoke to the fish, and it spit Jonah up on dry land. Then YHWH’s word came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up! Go to Nineveh! . . . ” — Jonah 2:11-3:2a I knew a man who almost got a law degree, but dropped out during the last year of law…
Tee-Ball and Perspective
ByhenryI rarely post something just to point to another entry, but this one is so good, I can’t resist: Adam Roberts posts a bit about Tee-Ball and the perspective of parents and kids at SOTHBLOG, in a post titled Little. I found it via Wesley Daily, to which I give thanks! I was particularly touched…
Teaching about Tithing (or Stewardship)
ByhenryKris again asks an excellent question, and I’m making my answer into a new post rather than extending the previous discussion. Can I just see what your answer would be to the specific question of how should a pastor/ lead presbyter teach disciples of his to tithe? I’m assuming the question really applies to stewardship…
Having Trouble Giving?
ByhenryI found this pretty funny! CVC Church – Tithe Phobia – The best home videos are here HT: Church Tithes and Offerings.
Can the Bible Be Alone?
ByhenryClayboy asks whether “the Bible alone” is an oxymoron. Now I sympathize with the question, because I have been dealing in another forum (the issue arises in the last 100 messages or so) with someone who seems to think that a text can have meaning with no context at all, or more precisely that the…
That is an interesting video/discussion. But that leads me to the question — if God does not really mean literally what He said about His description of hell, we’re in a whole heap of trouble in trying to figure out what really is factual and what is not.
p.s. I would love this guy to be right — I just don’t think he is.
I would make two points. First, I’m not sure exactly what he is saying that hell is, though I have an idea. I would need to hear more to be certain. Second, if what I think he is saying is correct, then I don’t think it’s any more pleasant of an idea than a fiery hell.
But while I have read a great deal of what N. T. Wright has written, I haven’t paid any great attention to his views of hell before this, so I’m not certain.
Yeah, I too was not quite what he was saying as to what hell is. And to be honest, it’s not something that I’m comfortable thinking about so I try not to but it’s real. But I got to say, salvation is — well, to come to salvation, we have to know what we’re being saved from. Jesus died to save us from something and the price He paid was unbelievable. If he’s saying it is something different that what we understand it to be, I would like to see his reasoning. But I have no reason to think it’s other than what Jesus described. Even if the story of Lazarus is a story but not a factual event that Jesus is relaying, it still lines up with the rest of scripture’s description of the unsaved.
oops on my typos! 🙁
Briefly, Wright is well intentioned. Considered in the light of Jesus and the witness of the New Testament, he is wrong.
Once again, N.T. Wright gets it right.
Scripture is vague on hell, with only a few references, each referring to places or conditions that are not clearly identical. It might feel good to proclaim certainty as to whether Wright is correct or not, but such certainty is a condition of the mind. The text offers us no such clarity.
And why should we expect to understand hell any better than we understand the notion of heaven? As Wright has pointed out, scripture gives us little indication that there is a heaven in the sense that it is typically imagined.
If clarity and understanding of these constructs mattered, one would expect that they would have been far more prominent in scripture, with far less left to fantasy. Maybe that’s the point. Except when speaking in the broadest sense, why would we even assume that condition after death is identical from one person to the next, any more than we would assume that the joys and the sufferings of any two human beings must be identical.