Friday 31 August 2007

Archbishop of Dublin: Doesn't know about heaven, but doubts anyone goes to hell

(Ed: Just a thought, but didn't anyone in the Church of Ireland actually think to ask him these sorts of questions before he was offered the job?)

[...] On Heaven
I find it very hard to picture what heaven is like because, always for me, talking about the future we resort to picture language, the poetic. All I can say is that I feel that there is something very real after this life. That future is tied up in God as revealed to us in Jesus Christ. So for me, I see that future as more personal than in terms of pearly gates and rivers and things like this (laughs).

On Hell
I have great difficulty with the idea that, in the end, God’s love and God’s mercy will not have the opportunity of changing people and changing situations. In a way, hell itself is a state of separation from God, but I do have within my faith the idea that in the end God’s love is triumphant. I am certainly not one who gloats over the idea that sinners perish in hell, or that we banish people to hell. I see evil as something to be conquered and overcome by those who have fallen prey to evil. Read more
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