Confessing Evangelical

Another day, another unhelpful remark from Dr Rowan Williams, another superb response... This time, Christopher Howse devotes his regular "Sacred Space" column in the Daily Telegraph to Dr Williams' recent comments that unrepentant Muslims can go to heaven ("I say this as someone who is quite happy to say that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except by Jesus. But how God leads people through Jesus to heaven, that can be quite varied, I think" - ah, the joys of forced interpretations of out-of-context Bible verses).

In his article, entitled "Getting out of hell isn't easy", Howse writes:

I suppose it would have caused more controversy if [Williams] had said they were all going to hell, the only alternative destination. It is funny how quite secular people, while placid about the idea of heaven and not much feeling the need to do what God asks, nevertheless become quite indignant at the idea that they of all people should go to hell.

Howse goes on to quote Eamon Duffy's new book, Faith of our Fathers:

"The thought of losing God should make our flesh crawl, our souls turn sour. It mostly doesn't, however, and that is why the tradition has piled on the agony, why the flames and flesh-hooks have been imagined, just to get across to us how devastating, how agonising, such a loss would be."

Howse continues:

I used to assume, as perhaps most people do, that in the Middle Ages everyone went in great fear of hell, painted as it was on their church walls or by their parsons' sermons. Dr Duffy's extraordinary book, The Stripping of the Altars, convinced me that the ordinary Englishman of the 15th century lived in confident hope of heaven, as long as he pursued his religious duties and avoided deadly sins. He remained anxious to avoid the pains of purgatory, through prayers and good works.

Howse goes on to refer to Christ's "hellish experience" on the cross, expressed in the cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?", and how this affects our view both of hell and of how to escape it:

...when the sinless one takes the effects of sin upon himself, and the immortal one undergoes death, then the Psalm (22) that begins "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" can be finished with its: "All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord." The transition is not made easily or comfortably, nor merely by saying a word.

If God does not let any particular person go to hell, it is not because he is too feeble to allow it, rather that he has gone to hell and back to prevent it.