The front page of my New York Post this morning, following the news that foreign terrorists are to be brought to New York to be tried in civilian courts, showed a mock-up of a New York City postcard featuring the Twin Towers, over-written with the message: “Welcome to New York … NOW DIE!” The subhead is: “9/11 fiends coming here for trial — next stop is hell.” [Note: This is the print edition. They don’t seem to reproduce the print front page on their website.] [Note also: The wording there follows that on a popular T-shirt you can buy in NYC tourist shops: WELCOME TO NEW YORK. NOW GO HOME.] One of the headlines inside (pages 4-5) reads: “Now send these fiends to hell!”
Similarly, President Obama, memorializing those who were killed at Fort Hood, said: “We know that the killer will be met with justice — in this world, and the next.”
“In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath,” observed Dr. Johnson. I suppose the same is true of tabloid headlines and presidents speaking in the diction of “ceremonial deism.” I always find myself wondering, though, how many people, and to what degree, really take comfort in these references to cosmic justice. I vaguely recall that most Protestant theologians, and some Catholic ones, have long since concluded that hell is probably empty. The very conservative and orthodox RC Paul Johnson, in his Quest for God is careful to qualify his remarks about hell accordingly (see the Johnson quote on p. 175 of We Are Doomed: “Those who find themselves in Hell — if anyone does …” etc.)
In popular belief — below the level of academic theology and argumentative log-rolling, I mean — is belief in hell still widespread? Is even belief in an afterlife? I mean real belief, real gut behavior-moulding conviction.
Speaking of lapidary inscriptions, here is George Orwell, writing 62 years ago:
Skelton is not an easy poet to get hold of, and I have never yet possessed a complete edition of his works. Recently, in a selection I had picked up, I looked for and failed to find a poem which I remember reading years ago. It was what is called a macaronic poem — part English, part Latin — and was an elegy on the death of somebody or other. The only passage I can recall runs:
Sepultus est among the weeds,
God forgive him his misdeeds,
With hey ho, rumbelo,
Rumpopulorum,
Per omnia saecula,
Saecula saeculorum.It has stuck in my mind because it expresses an outlook totally impossible in our own age. Today there is literally no one who could write of death in that light-hearted manner. Since the decay of the belief in personal immortality, death has never seemed funny, and it will be a long time before it does so again. Hence the disappearance of the facetious epitaph, once a common feature of country churchyards. I should be astonished to see a comic epitaph dated later than 1850.
The kinds of intellectual convolutions Dinesh D’Souza goes through in the book I posted about last week, are interesting to those who are interested, no doubt. I think Orwell is right, though. The widespread, bone-deep conviction of an afterlife, the conviction that could generate those comic epitaphs, died out among European Christians sometime in the 19th century. You’ll get an affirmative answer from big majorities if you poll Americans (or even Europeans) on belief in the afterlife, but actual behavior suggests this belief is a pale shadow of its former self.
And of course, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his pals don’t think they are going to hell at all. Last year they all offered to plead guilty before a military tribunal and accept execution. They think they did meritorious acts, for which they will be rewarded in heaven. Likewise with the suicide pilots and bombers. Now that is belief in an afterlife.
For what it’s worth, if you ask knowledgeable clerics of either the Orthodox Jewish faith or Catholic faith, you get a far less literal definition of heaven and hell. To wit: The soul derives pleasure from proximity to the Godhead, and feels pain when it is distant from it. The souls of those who live honorable lives are brought close to the Godhead; the souls of the less honorable are kept progressively distant, the less worthy the lives they lead. I heard this in Jewish studies when I was a boy, thought it was strictly a Jewish viewpoint, and was surprised to read in the NY Times several years ago precisely this definition of heaven and hell articulated by no less than Pope John Paul II.
As a Catholic school grad, I don’t remember much talk of heaven and even less of hell during my time there. We spent 98% of our time talking about how to live to make this world better, not the next one. I distictly remember one of my teachers talking about the vision of heaven and hell that Sheldon discussed above. We never got a talk about fire and brimstone. It didn’t occur to me then but merely being separated from God doesn’t sound like a particularly scary version of hell. If I get 42 virgins, I’m willing to live in the far exurbs away from God.
Fundamentalist Protestants still seem to believe in a fire and brimstone hell (the concept was an invention of the medieval period).
Beyond that…the U.S. was an extremely religious country up until the Civil War. I wonder if that conflict–the first modern war, with carnage on a scale never before witnessed–had to do with a decline in the belief in heaven and hell. Maybe hell was Gettysburg, and it was here and now on earth.
One of my concerns regarding the conflict in which we currently find ourselves, is that the enemy’s totally irrational beliefs may give him (oh…sorry…or her…) a psychological advantage.
People willing to die (but who don’t necessarily do it in large enough numbers to destroy the group to which they belong) have an advantage over those who are afraid to die.
@Susan, good point about the Civil War. It brought to mind an interview I heard a while back with Drew Gilpin Faust on Fresh Air. She claims the Civil War brought a change in the way Americans perceive death, and it seems natural that would also change how we view the afterlife.
There was another “As I Please” column that was even more to the point. It must have been written during the war. Orwell said that no one really believes in Hell any more. As proof, he quoted jokes about Hell and damnation (I think some humorous verse about some character dying and going to Hell) that were told by religious Christians. Orwell noted that no one would tell a joke about an RAF fighter being shot down and horribly burned all over his body. That’s because the image is real to them. The fact that people tell jokes about hellfire and damnation is proof that they don’t really believe in Hell.
@Derek Scruggs
Thanks for the link to the Faust interview; I wasn’t aware of it or her book on the subject. (Boy, “Faust” is a loaded name when you’re talking about hell, isn’t ? :D)
Lincoln, I think, once said something to the effect that both sides read the same Bible, both sides prayed to the same God, and both sides prayed for the same thing, but only one side was going to win.
I do think that anyone who saw hell on earth might be a little less inclined to believe in a beneficent God and a pretty afterlife.
Susan,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s experiences in the Civil War certainly shaped his own views regarding religion and the nature of law (essentially that essence of law is a form of ritualized violence by the strong against the weak).
Mr. Derbyshire,
I can’t speak of other religions, but Catholicism’s view of a (possibly)empty hell does not run counter to the idea of divine justice. Catholicism’s view of the afterlife, as any good reader of Johnson should know because he spoke so highly of the idea, includes Purgatory. An orthodox Catholic might believe that hell might be empty of human souls, all the while affirming that stern punishment awaits criminals and sinners in Purgatory. So, perhaps hell is empty. Purgatory for KSM and his ilk will be horrific enough…
My mother would always say to me remember eternity is a very long time. My mother believed she would go to hell if she missed mass and didn’t have her sin forgiven in time. It’s nuts. This affected my life greatly. It made me depressed and neurotic.
Wasn’t Purgatory invented to get more money out of people?
Asking academic (i.e. modern) theologians about Christian doctine is always a dangerous game. It is easy getting rid of heaven/hell or almost anything when you’ve given up the divinity of Christ. Who, if you read the gospels, doesn’t seem to think that hell is imaginary or empty. Something about wide is path to destruction.
But none of that refutes the real point that yes, Western Man is a wimp in regards to his beliefs. He’d rather hold onto this life which is already passing away, than risk it (not in a suicide bomber sense, but in a clear estimation of its worth). Maybe something about the relative value/comfort of the current life. Once again there seems to be a saying that is it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man. It goes back to those early Roman catacombs with the sarcophogi with the gorgons vs. those with the lamb. Death is either the horror, or the final revelation. Place your bets.