Anti-Christ
What always struck me is the way in which Satan all the other supposedly "dark" beings are excluded and persecuted by the Bible and God. Who's to say the Anti-Christ and his followers are any less vlaid than Christ and his apostles? Who decides who is a false prophet and who is not and why? The Bible has a strange dualism that seems to say there is only one right way of doing things, God's way. In Revelation, God does not come across as the Chrisitan God you generally hear about. Revelation God seems to be angry, spitelful and generally wanton with his punishments. Perhaps that's how God is usually protrayed in the Bible, I'm not that knowledgeable with the text. I know I'm playing Devil's advocate (pun intended) but maybe Hell is just another point of view just as valid as Heaven. In any case, like I said in class, Hell seems to be a lot more interesting and at the very least, less gaudy than Heaven.
- Login to post comments
Might hell be just as valid as heaven? This is an interesting question that demonstrates how different the world we inhabit is from the one of "John." Such a question would be unthinkable to him. So why can we think it? What has happened over the last two millennia to make such a relativist point of view possible?
The dualism of dark versus light (and correspondingly evil versus good) might be contrasted to concepts of dark and light that mingle to create grey areas of ambiguity about right and wrong, goodness, badness, evil, etc. I think what you are getting at is a sense that the starkness of the dualism doesn't reflect the way circumstances can and do make a difference in how one construes right and wrong. This is part of the shift I mentioned in class from a moral system of clearcut categories that are in stark opposition to an ethics that takes into account situations, relative harm done in comparison to a good result for many, and so on. An avenue to consider in this regard is what kind of governmental power structure is in place when dualistic systems prevail. There is a correspondence between rigid hierarachies of power (most often patriarchal in form) and dualistic systems. So too, the more democratic a system is, the more situationalist the ethical systems tend to be.
As Jeff pointed out in his discussion of Acts, there was greater emphasis on good works and women's roles, in keeping also with the more nurturing principles espoused in most of the New Testament. Revelation is far more in keeping with the Old Testament depiction of a wrathful deity, a warrior whose vengeance is justified in absolutistic terms.
But the question of hell as valid, or simply more interesting, takes on a more strident relativism. What would this hell look like? How would it function? Is this just a way of saying that we shouldn't assume that the heaven depicted in Revelation is regarded as a great reward by everyone? Or does it go on to suggest that rewards and punishments for deeds are themselves problematic?