Heaven and Hell

 

Heaven and Hell – Bart Ehrman

As I am typing this review, a recent news story has been making waves about Christian actor Kirk Cameron and his evolved beliefs of the afterlife.  He states that he no longer believes in a place called Hell, where the wicked and unbelieving suffer for eternity.  What he now believes is that said individuals will instead simply be annihilated. They simply won’t exist anymore.  Obviously, this has caused concern and anger among those who do state that such a dreaded afterlife exists, and Cameron is (-gasp!-) leading people astray.  In case you’re wondering, these two theories of the afterlife in Christian theology are known as Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT) and Annihilationism.  The former may be the prevailing belief, but the latter belief has been around for a while as well.  In fact, in Bart Ehrman’s “Heaven and Hell”, he makes a compelling argument that the latter is much more in tune with what many in the history of Christianity have believed; including Jesus himself.

I guess it needs to be said that although Ehrman is a Biblical scholar, he is not a Christian.  This tidbit alone makes many Christians wary of him.  How can they trust someone who doesn’t hold to the same core beliefs that they, themselves, do? Personally (as a practicing Christian) I find such a revelation rewarding.  If Christianity is true, it needs to be able to hold up under close scrutiny, and those of the faith shouldn’t run from the infidels, they should listen with an open mind. As Ehrman puts forth in this volume, never has the modern Christian church been so wrong about Hell being a place of ‘everlasting torment’.

This book only references the Judeo-Christian beliefs of an afterlife.  You won’t find anything here about Buddhism, Hinuism, Taoism, or any other Eastern thought.   He focuses only on where Judeo-Christians have gotten their beliefs on the afterlife from, and how they’ve been influenced by their circumstances over thousands of years.  Contrary to what most Christians might think, many of the church’s modern day beliefs (not only about Heaven or Hell) come from the Bible.

In fact, this is where Ehrman’s scholarship is welcome.  He picks through the Bible with a fine-tooth comb, and most of his revelations aren’t exactly new, but again, many who attend church every Sunday aren’t very discerning.  If their pastor says something from the pulpit on Sunday morning, then it MUST be true (I was guilty of this thinking for many years).

Without regurgitating too much, Ehrman claims that ‘Hell’ doesn’t even exist in the Old Testament. Even when Jesus ‘spoke’ about such a place, he wasn’t referring to eternal conscious torment, his musings about Heaven and Hell were essentially about the state of mind that people currently reside in; not an afterlife. 

Since he isn’t a believer, Ehrman states that he doesn’t believe in a Heaven nor a Hell, he believes when we die, we basically ‘go to sleep forever’.  Ironic that such a thought is actually welcomed by many, yet others (such as myself) dread such a fact.  He’s open to the fact that there very well could be something much nicer on the other side, but any notion of a Hell of demons and tormentors is pretty far-fetched.

The book was good overall, but I wish the author would have addressed this in other cultures other than Judaism and Christianity.  I also wish he would have discussed the evolution of such beliefs over the past one thousand years or so.   Once he talks about Purgatory that raised its head in the middle-ages, the narrative of this book basically stops.

I’m not sure if I would recommend this book to others, but I do think that Christians should challenge the core beliefs of anything that they have been taught.  My research has led me to the uncomfortable conclusion that there are too many ‘truths’ that the faith clings to that haven’t been around for very long.  It’s perfectly acceptable to have more questions than answers, and I don’t believe God is going to snuff anyone for eternity simply because they have a restless curious spirit who is longing for more truths and understanding.