THE LAST JUDGEMENT, Part 2

Who is in Heaven? Who is in Hell?

The Ascent to Heaven - not always easy!

Thinking further on the Last Judgement, I remember a moment of doubt prior to my baptism. The Orthodox Church, like all human institutions, is not free of zealots and fundamentalists and I read in one booklet a very worrying statement. In essence it consigned to Hell all who did not accept the Orthodox Church in its totality. The Roman Catholic Church (and, by implication, the Anglicans and all Protestants) are heretical and thus cannot expect to be saved. Now, although on strictly self-preservation grounds, this might be seen as an overriding reason for joining the Orthodox Church, it had the opposite effect on me. The great Marx (Groucho not Karl) once said that he wouldn’t want to join any club that was prepared to accept him as a member and I, in a sort of mirror image, would find it very hard to become a member of a Church that condemned me to Hell if I wasn’t a member! I could not accept that the sincere Christian beliefs I had held for fifty odd years would deprive me automatically of salvation, not to mention all the truly good Christians I have met in all denominations. Can I really believe that my mum is in hell?

THE LAST JUDGEMENT, Part 1

Justice and Love

On the west wall of many Orthodox churches, a fresco of the Last Judgement can often be found – a graphic reminder as we leave church to continue to be good. While not as terrifying as the images in Hieronymous Bosch's paintings, the icon certainly points to a clear division between the saved and the damned. Now, this is a tricky one for me. I regularly recite the Creed, saying that I believe “He shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead.” But what exactly does that mean? Throughout my Christian life to date, I’ve never had a problem with the limitless love and compassion of God. Like many other modern Christians, however, I am much less comfortable with the idea of a wrathful, vengeful God, casting unrepentant sinners into everlasting torment.

The Last Judgement

I have, of course, always accepted that, if the ultimate glorification of the world is to be accomplished, there must be a reckoning of some sort at some time. However, there has always seemed to me something a touch hysterical and unhealthy in the relish with which some clerics describe in all their gory detail the tortures awaiting the damned and an all too human delight in the unjust getting their come-uppance. For a terrifying and dramatic example of this kind of sermon and its effect on young minds I recommend you read James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.’ Strangely, the person preaching such sermons always seems to assume that he is not among the unjust! This is in sharp contrast to our own lovely parish priest who, passing us when we were looking at an icon of 'The Last Judgement', pointed at one of the sinners at the bottom and said, “That's me.” Moreover, the thought, implicit in ‘damnation theology’, that people only refrain from sin through fear of the fires of Hell is reminiscent of the theory that men don’t murder their wives only because they might go to prison!