I thoroughly enjoyed watching and listening to this lively dialogue between Bart Ehrman and Kevin Grant on Jesus and hell:
https://youtu.be/ktIcDQ23rgM?feature=shared
Some key points emerging from Bart’s discourse stimulated the beginnings of this essay. Paraphrasing Bart Ehrman, an eminent New Testament scholar of early Christianity, the Christian religion had developed away from what Jesus and his disciples actually taught to become a dogmatic religion of belief rather than remaining as an apocalyptic spirituality that emphasised a righteous way of being and acting in the world — one that pleases God.
Jesus was not into propositions and doctrines but was intently focused on one’s way of living and acting in the world. In the gospel of Mark, historically the earliest of the four gospels, Jesus was emphatic about his message:
Mark 1:15 —
“The time has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news.”
This is the central thrust of Jesus’ apocalyptic message. It is not about belief in him as saviour or lord but about turning away from sin and evil in one’s conduct to embrace the soon and coming kingdom of God — a new world order with a new way of being and acting.
The term that later Christians have come to interpret as “hell” replete with fire and eternity is the Hebrew word “gehenna.” This word refers to the burial valley located at the south and west of Jerusalem where pagan child sacrificial rituals had been performed and the children’s bodies were burnt as sacrifices to the Ammonite god Moloch. This was the place that Jesus said — in a metaphorical way — that those who persisted in disobeying God would finally end up to be destroyed. For Jesus, gehenna was not a place or physical destination of eternal hell fire but a metaphorical destiny of destruction for unrepentant sinners. In other words, Jesus was not into the threat of eternal torment in a cosmic spatial address — hell — but more concerned about the spiritual condition of a person in the here and now. An ungodly condition was thus bound for destruction. Exactly what constitutes this “destruction” or in what form such “destruction” takes is anyone’s guess.
Hence, it can be argued that Jesus taught from an apocalyptic context which saw the world as evil and proclaimed the soon and coming kingdom of God that would destroy all evil and usher in a new creation of peace, joy, love, justice, and mercy, a world where life would flourish. In that light, he passionately warned against complacency and carnality while turning people’s attention towards righteous living concordant with the ethos of God’s kingdom — a new way of being and acting in the world as an antithesis to the pre-existing old order of harsh legalism and severe moral corruption.
Contra Jesus, Paul flipped the apocalyptic praxis of Jesus into a theology of faith-based salvation by means of belief in the crucified and risen Christ. Rather than living and acting in a new righteous way as a means to salvation, Paul exhorted a salvation by grace through faith that has formed the essence of Protestant Christian faith thereafter through its formula of the five solas. In later Christian dogma, faith involves personal assent to a set of beliefs around Jesus, his atoning death on the cross, and his divinely-powered resurrection. And the power that saves rests solely in the grace or unmerited favour of God in Christ, not in human efforts at righteous and holy living. This paradigm is in stark contrast to the message of Jesus as described earlier.
Be that as it may, can we re-examine the Christian dogma of salvation by grace through faith with fresh eyes illumined by contemplative practice and experience? I think so. And I see this endeavour as imperative if we are to come to know Christ for ourselves in a spirit of inquiry that Jesus himself encourages us to have. For has he not asked of us the question: who do you say that I am? Following Jesus in that spirit of inquiry, salvation by grace through faith can be understood not as mere cognitive assent to the standard Christian proposition of Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection or even personal relational love stemming from such assent, but as sincere genuine participation in the deep spiritual reality and hidden mystical dimension represented by these propositions, regardless of whether one accepts these propositions of the Christian narrative themselves or not.
Such spiritual reality and mystical dimension pertain to the inward journey of the bodymind where egoic self and its attendant defilements and obscurations are being erased and from which the mind is liberated, whether fully or gradually. At that point, primordial consciousness that is the mind of Christ or Buddha-nature or Paramatman is perfectly unveiled. Salvation is thus the total liberation of the mind from its limitations concomitant with the perfect shining forth of pure consciousness replete with love, wisdom, compassion, peace, joy, bliss, energy, and all good qualities. This is a radically revolutionary way of being, knowing, and acting in the world, while stainlessly merged in the Beyond.
Faith is not belief but participation. Grace is not personal gratuitous gift but the magnetic power and attraction of pure consciousness enacted on each limited and bound egoic entity, pulling it to return to its true home by shedding all false attachments and identities along the way. Salvation is thus available to all who embark upon and participate in this inner journey of awakening and liberation — the last frontier of sentient evolution towards infinite alpha and omega consciousness.
In the final analysis, salvation is not a matter of believing in a set of dogmas about Jesus but a matter of total unconditional freedom. This is a process in which one participates and by which is symbolically and narratively represented as the gospel story of Jesus’s cross and resurrection. For belief is but a thought-form accompanied by emotion, and emotive thought-form does not and cannot “save” or liberate anyone. If it was possible to do so, we would have been liberated long ago given the infinite number of thought-forms we have entertained in the mind since the emergence of human consciousness.
By nature, thought cannot liberate whatever its shape or colour. Neither can emotion. If anything, they bind us to our cravings and distort our perception. Only liberation itself is liberating. This is not a dogma but a verifiable experience open to all. We only need to be still and silent enough to see clearly the way things really are. Such seeing activates our wisdom and wisdom liberates by virtue of its liberating nature. This is salvation (liberation) by grace (attraction of consciousness) through faith (participation in reality through wholesome living, deep stilling, and clear seeing).
For these reasons and more, sincere practice of the noble eightfold path of the Buddha would be highly beneficial for one who seeks to follow Jesus and live by his message. The richness and depth, clarity and comprehensiveness of the Buddha’s instructions on ethical living, mental cultivation, meditation processes and practice, and wisdom realizing the nature of reality are simply unparalleled, truly unsurpassed. I have found this to be so in my own life journey and can testify to the potency and efficacy of the Dhamma in liberating the mind from its fetters. I have no doubt that Jesus would be pleased to see his disciples fully engaged in authentic practice of the Dhamma, which is well transmitted, timeless and immediately apparent, open and accessible, progressive and leading to freedom, and to be seen and verified by the wise each in their own experience. This is liberating indeed.
As the Buddha confidently proclaimed: “Open are the doors to the Deathless to those with ears. Let them show their conviction.” (MN 26; M i 160). And does this not echo the words of Jesus when he said: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15). These parallel passages are consonant in tone and intentionality.
On this Vesak Day commemorating the birth, enlightenment, and parinibbana of the Buddha, let us be mindful of these words of wisdom and arouse our enthusiasm for making an end of self-grasping and cyclical suffering — let our hearts tend towards liberation, nibbana, the kingdom of God. The time is now.
