The Profound Musings of the World's Cleverest Person. 'Chrisendom' is a blog dedicated to promoting discussion on modern theological/biblical study topics for anyone, from unreasonable-and-anti-intellectual-everything-must-be-black-and-white scary extreme Fundie to if-its-traditional-Church-doctrine-quickly-deny-it-basically-secular-humanist-with-Christian-socks-on Liberal, and anything in-between.
HELL helped convert Hitchens' brother from atheism back to theism:
Peter Hitchens: "No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion, specifically a painting: Rogier van der Weyden's 15th Century Last Judgement, which I saw in Burgundy while on holiday. I had scoffed at its mention in the guidebook, but now I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open, at the naked figures fleeing towards the pit of Hell. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions. On the contrary, their hair and the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me, and people I knew. I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head. I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned. Van der Weyden was still earning his fee, nearly 500 years after his death. At around the same time I rediscovered Christmas, which I had pretended to dislike for many years."
Discussion, in-depth, quotations from various sources, C. S. Lewis, George Macdonald, others:
ReplyDeleteIS HELL EMPTY?
http://corthodoxy.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/is-hell-empty/
HELL helped convert Hitchens' brother from atheism back to theism:
ReplyDeletePeter Hitchens: "No doubt I should be ashamed to confess that fear played a part in my return to religion, specifically a painting: Rogier van der Weyden's 15th Century Last Judgement, which I saw in Burgundy while on holiday.
I had scoffed at its mention in the guidebook, but now I gaped, my mouth actually hanging open, at the naked figures fleeing towards the pit of Hell. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own age by time-bound fashions. On the contrary, their hair and the set of their faces were entirely in the style of my own time. They were me, and people I knew. I had a sudden strong sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time. My large catalogue of misdeeds replayed themselves rapidly in my head. I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if there were any damned. Van der Weyden was still earning his fee, nearly 500 years after his death.
At around the same time I rediscovered Christmas, which I had pretended to dislike for many years."
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/03/how-i-found-god-and-peace-with-my-atheist-brother/comments/page/1/#comments
Just to clarify, Adam and Janowki aren't debating at our forum. {g} Nor are any of us debating them, directly or indirectly. Yet. {g!}
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to your comments on those two books, Chris!
JRP