Guest list: at the divine banquet

Christian Century, Dec 28, 2004 by Rodney Clapp

Yet other orthodox Christians, looking to such texts as 1 Peter 3:18-20, have wondered if there may be a postmortem evangelization or after-death revelation of Christ, with the dead meeting Christ perhaps for the first time and in any event more clearly and truly than during their earthly sojourn, and with the chance to choose for or against communion with him.

Again, these are not newfangled or modern ideas: they arise from deep within the tradition and its commitment to a gracious God and, secondarily, to human freedom. As theologian George Lindbeck recently observed, Christians in the first centuries appear to have had an extraordinary combination of relaxation and urgency in their attitude toward those outside the church. On the one hand, they do not appear to have worried about the ultimate fate of the vast majority of the non-Christians among whom they lived. We hear of no crises of conscience resulting from the necessity they were often under to conceal the fact that they were believers even from close friends or kindred. The ordinary Christian, at any rate, does not seem to have viewed himself as a watchman who would be held guilty of the blood of those he failed to warn (Ezek. 3:18).

Yet, on the other hand, missionary proclamation was urgent and faith and baptism were to them life from death, the passage from the old age to the new. So it is at least plausible to suppose that early Christians had certain unrecorded convictions about how God saves unbelievers and how this is related to belief in Christ and membership in the community of faith.

Theologians speculate that such "unrecorded convictions" may include the sort I have just mentioned, general revelation and postmortem evangelization. In any event, we may rest assured that the early Christians looked first to the love and grace of God and to God's creation and sustenance of human freedom. Unlike some later Christians, they were not ready to assume they knew all the details of salvation and its extent. It is clear that in terms of assuming God's judgment on anyone, they worried first and foremost about their own shortcomings.

Nor does classical Christian spirituality assume that there are for the dead only two options: heaven and eternal bliss or a hell of great agony and pain. The doctrine of purgatory demonstrates as much. Dante's rendering of purgatory is especially instructive, allowing as it does a place for the pagan Virgil. Not only does Virgil fail to suffer great punishment, but he reliably guides the (Christian) pilgrim Dante on his spiritual path, leading him to the threshold of paradise.

More recently the Anglican C. S. Lewis, who like Dante drank deeply at the well of Christian orthodoxy rendered hell not as an undifferentiated expanse of fiery torture but at least in its outer environs as a lonely place for those who want nothing to do with God or others. Lewis's picture retains both the love and mercy of a gracious God and the enduring reality of human freedom. Those who insist on separating themselves from God live in isolation. It is hell, but hell as freely chosen isolation rather than hell as torture chamber.