Chapter 10: Our Otherworldly Bible
We are longing for a place without evil. What does the Bible say about evil?
Resurrection and the Elysian Fields. Paul and his message to the Greeks of resurrection was at odds with the standard Platonic view of life.
Finding a Christian Elysium As time went on, Christian theologians morphed the early message of Paul into one that incorporated the prevailing Greek view of the afterlife and begin to emphasize heaven and hell more.
The Scriptures Reclining in Elysian Fields. Over time the Bible was read to accommodate the heaven and hell idea. But, when you deeply read the text, it doesn’t hang together.
Rejecting the Rejection of the World. This escape to heaven reading of the bb has been a disaster. Four ways the “Otherworldly Bible” fails us.
- It doesn’t take Israel and its place seriously.
- Jesus never presents a case for people going to heaven when they die.
- The Bible doesn’t talk about here and there (especially down here and up there). It takes about the distinction between then and now.
- Revelation has been interpreted wrongly because the genre of the book is ignored and it is interpreted literally.