Was The Pope Misquoted?
By James Donahue
It was during “Holy Week” for the Roman Catholic faith that a story in Italy’s La Repubblica quoted Pope Francis as saying there is no hell. Naturally such a dynamic proclamation flying against established church doctrine resulted in headlines around the Christian world. And the Vatican was quick to claim that the Pope was misquoted.
The official statement was that “no quotations” in the article “should be considered as a faithful transcription” of the Pope’s words. Indeed, church doctrine prefers to frighten humanity into believing the existence of hell and the potential of souls of unrepentant sinners to descent into hell upon mortal death to suffer “eternal fire.”
So how could such a radical thought . . . that hell didn’t really exist . . . ever appear in print in an Italian publication and allegedly based on a private interview between news editor Eugenio Scalfari and Pope Francis?
It is interesting to note that the Pope has not denied making the statement that appeared in Scalfari’s story. What has been published in response appears to be a complex “clarification” by Vatican voices. It seems that Scalfari, a declared atheist, asked the Pope where bad souls go when they are punished. The Pope allegedly answered: “Souls are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell . . . there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
Oh really?
After thousands of years of scaring church followers into following the doctrines of the church out of fear the Pope now claims the thing most feared . . . living for eternity in a lake of fire . . . might not be true. Unrepentant sinners simply vanish into nothingness? And how fearful is that? Since we have no memory of an existence prior to our birth, why should we fear returning to a non-existent state after death? Many modern philosophers, including the late Stephen Hawking, believed this is the fate of us all.
In the clarification story, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, admitted that “there’s nowhere in Catholic teaching that actually says any one person is in hell.” In an interview with the BBC, Cardinal Nichols said he believed the Pope was exploring “the imagery of hell” and nothing more.
So is the Catholic Church beginning to back down on the doctrine of hell?
Such a proclamation doesn’t only affect Catholics. The old “fire and brimstone” sermon has long been a powerful tool for evangelical preachers as well. These guys like to throw fear into their listeners before calling them to the altar to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior. Getting “saved” is considered a surefire way of avoiding the horrors of hell and damnation. And if the preaching is powerful enough, evangelical followers are known to make that trip to the altar many times, just to make sure.
Bible students note that the Scripture has a variety of terms to describe the fate of unbelievers. They include eternal fire, outer darkness, a place of weeping and torment, the second death, and unquenchable fire. In reality the reality of hell is that is a place of complete, unending separation from God. The word Sheol, which translates into “the grave,” “death,” “destruction”and “the pit” is a place where life no longer exists. It is the place where Jesus allegedly descended after his terrors on the cross. The belief is that Jesus then paid the price the sins of all who choose to follow his teachings. After three days of hanging around Sheol, Jesus allegedly escaped, however. This is something the doomed can never do. Thus sayeth the church.
We must note that these references to hell usually flow from the King James version of the Bible. While this is considered by fundamental Christians to be “God’s authoritative word” the KJV is challenged by Bible scholars for a variety of reasons. Even before King James got his hands on it, the Bible was the creation of many writers and translators, flying from the desks of first Hebrew, then Greek and finally Roman theologians, monks and scribes. Some but not all of those early books were finally collected into a single volume . . . the Bible . . . by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the Fourth Century.
Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, wanted a single canon to be agreed upon by religious leaders. Before this, the church leaders were in constant debate over which books were “holy” and consequently the “word of God.” Upon orders by Constantine, the best minds of the church gathered at the Council of Nicaea, voted to agree on which books were to be considered “God”s work,” and then created the first Biblical reference book; the prelude to the contemporary Bible.
These men did not have the modern convenience of a printing press or Internet in those days. Consequently all of the books and writings they drew upon were carefully hand-written by scribes. They were written, copied and interpreted as the text was moved from book to book, from culture to culture, from language to language.
Those church leaders at Nicaea did not vote approval of their work. The work of editing the “holy” scriptures was supposedly completed at the Council of Trent, an ecumenical council of church theologians gathering in northern Italy between 1545 and 1563. The finalized version was published by the church in 1611. This also was the time that the King James version of the Bible was published in England. A total of 47 scholars were involved in the king’s interpretation of this same book. Thus it was that many men had their hands on the creation of this so-called “word of God” over the years.
Several new versions of the Bible have been created since King James. Bible scholars are in general agreement that the KJV has many serious defects because of the haste in which it was compiled.
And all of this brings us to the question; why are all humans left cursed by the blood of our ancestors? Why would a loving God establish this kind of curse on his creation?
Canadian theologian Clark H. Pinnock once stated that the doctrine of eternal torture makes God out to be morally worse than Hitler “who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies whom he does not even allow to die. How can we love a God like that?”
The Scriptures speak of two deaths . . . the physical death of our bodies and the spiritual death that comes on a day of judgment. There is a promise that those who believe on Jesus as the Son of God will be rewarded with a life in glory, but the rest will be condemned to a final death which appears to be a cascade into total destruction of the body and the spirit. Even the Bible does not teach of an eternal punishment in a lake of fire.
If we want to believe the Biblical teachings, we have one of two destinies following the passing of our physical existence. Either our spirit goes off into the light to exist forever in bliss, or we just die and are no more.
This is about the best that our best minds in the fields of medicine and theology can offer even today, in this time of modern research and thought. Since no one, except possibly Jesus and the other alleged prophets of the ancient past, has ever died and returned to tell us about it, no one will really know the truth until we get there.
But eternal damnation is something we really don’t have to worry about. It is a myth that cannot be supported by personal experience, the Scriptures, or anyone else than a few wild preachers who like to thump on their Bibles but have no idea of what they are talking about.
By James Donahue
It was during “Holy Week” for the Roman Catholic faith that a story in Italy’s La Repubblica quoted Pope Francis as saying there is no hell. Naturally such a dynamic proclamation flying against established church doctrine resulted in headlines around the Christian world. And the Vatican was quick to claim that the Pope was misquoted.
The official statement was that “no quotations” in the article “should be considered as a faithful transcription” of the Pope’s words. Indeed, church doctrine prefers to frighten humanity into believing the existence of hell and the potential of souls of unrepentant sinners to descent into hell upon mortal death to suffer “eternal fire.”
So how could such a radical thought . . . that hell didn’t really exist . . . ever appear in print in an Italian publication and allegedly based on a private interview between news editor Eugenio Scalfari and Pope Francis?
It is interesting to note that the Pope has not denied making the statement that appeared in Scalfari’s story. What has been published in response appears to be a complex “clarification” by Vatican voices. It seems that Scalfari, a declared atheist, asked the Pope where bad souls go when they are punished. The Pope allegedly answered: “Souls are not punished. Those who repent obtain God’s forgiveness and go among the ranks of those who contemplate him, but those who do not repent and cannot be forgiven disappear. There is no hell . . . there is the disappearance of sinful souls.”
Oh really?
After thousands of years of scaring church followers into following the doctrines of the church out of fear the Pope now claims the thing most feared . . . living for eternity in a lake of fire . . . might not be true. Unrepentant sinners simply vanish into nothingness? And how fearful is that? Since we have no memory of an existence prior to our birth, why should we fear returning to a non-existent state after death? Many modern philosophers, including the late Stephen Hawking, believed this is the fate of us all.
In the clarification story, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, the most senior Catholic in England and Wales, admitted that “there’s nowhere in Catholic teaching that actually says any one person is in hell.” In an interview with the BBC, Cardinal Nichols said he believed the Pope was exploring “the imagery of hell” and nothing more.
So is the Catholic Church beginning to back down on the doctrine of hell?
Such a proclamation doesn’t only affect Catholics. The old “fire and brimstone” sermon has long been a powerful tool for evangelical preachers as well. These guys like to throw fear into their listeners before calling them to the altar to accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior. Getting “saved” is considered a surefire way of avoiding the horrors of hell and damnation. And if the preaching is powerful enough, evangelical followers are known to make that trip to the altar many times, just to make sure.
Bible students note that the Scripture has a variety of terms to describe the fate of unbelievers. They include eternal fire, outer darkness, a place of weeping and torment, the second death, and unquenchable fire. In reality the reality of hell is that is a place of complete, unending separation from God. The word Sheol, which translates into “the grave,” “death,” “destruction”and “the pit” is a place where life no longer exists. It is the place where Jesus allegedly descended after his terrors on the cross. The belief is that Jesus then paid the price the sins of all who choose to follow his teachings. After three days of hanging around Sheol, Jesus allegedly escaped, however. This is something the doomed can never do. Thus sayeth the church.
We must note that these references to hell usually flow from the King James version of the Bible. While this is considered by fundamental Christians to be “God’s authoritative word” the KJV is challenged by Bible scholars for a variety of reasons. Even before King James got his hands on it, the Bible was the creation of many writers and translators, flying from the desks of first Hebrew, then Greek and finally Roman theologians, monks and scribes. Some but not all of those early books were finally collected into a single volume . . . the Bible . . . by the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great in the Fourth Century.
Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, wanted a single canon to be agreed upon by religious leaders. Before this, the church leaders were in constant debate over which books were “holy” and consequently the “word of God.” Upon orders by Constantine, the best minds of the church gathered at the Council of Nicaea, voted to agree on which books were to be considered “God”s work,” and then created the first Biblical reference book; the prelude to the contemporary Bible.
These men did not have the modern convenience of a printing press or Internet in those days. Consequently all of the books and writings they drew upon were carefully hand-written by scribes. They were written, copied and interpreted as the text was moved from book to book, from culture to culture, from language to language.
Those church leaders at Nicaea did not vote approval of their work. The work of editing the “holy” scriptures was supposedly completed at the Council of Trent, an ecumenical council of church theologians gathering in northern Italy between 1545 and 1563. The finalized version was published by the church in 1611. This also was the time that the King James version of the Bible was published in England. A total of 47 scholars were involved in the king’s interpretation of this same book. Thus it was that many men had their hands on the creation of this so-called “word of God” over the years.
Several new versions of the Bible have been created since King James. Bible scholars are in general agreement that the KJV has many serious defects because of the haste in which it was compiled.
And all of this brings us to the question; why are all humans left cursed by the blood of our ancestors? Why would a loving God establish this kind of curse on his creation?
Canadian theologian Clark H. Pinnock once stated that the doctrine of eternal torture makes God out to be morally worse than Hitler “who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for his enemies whom he does not even allow to die. How can we love a God like that?”
The Scriptures speak of two deaths . . . the physical death of our bodies and the spiritual death that comes on a day of judgment. There is a promise that those who believe on Jesus as the Son of God will be rewarded with a life in glory, but the rest will be condemned to a final death which appears to be a cascade into total destruction of the body and the spirit. Even the Bible does not teach of an eternal punishment in a lake of fire.
If we want to believe the Biblical teachings, we have one of two destinies following the passing of our physical existence. Either our spirit goes off into the light to exist forever in bliss, or we just die and are no more.
This is about the best that our best minds in the fields of medicine and theology can offer even today, in this time of modern research and thought. Since no one, except possibly Jesus and the other alleged prophets of the ancient past, has ever died and returned to tell us about it, no one will really know the truth until we get there.
But eternal damnation is something we really don’t have to worry about. It is a myth that cannot be supported by personal experience, the Scriptures, or anyone else than a few wild preachers who like to thump on their Bibles but have no idea of what they are talking about.