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From: [e-mail] (Quinn T. McCord)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Questions from a newbie
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 10 Apr 93 09:31:52 GMT
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Organization: University of Virginia
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	Is life a pass/fail course, and does God grade on a
curve?
	I'm new here, and only vaguely religious, but I want to
know what some of you people think.  Specifically, are there an
infinite number of Heavens, and a person goes to the one that
he/she deserves?  Or is it simply Heaven or nothing (Hell?)
Also, are we "graded" by those around us, or has there always
been some unchanging method?  Is the person's childhood taken
into account?
	I'm sure these must sound like over-simplifications to
most of you, but I figure that you're the experts.

						-Quinn

[Eschatology is an area on which Christians do not agree.  I suspect
that's because our primary source of information is prophets and
visionaries, and their writings tend to be highly symbolic.  However
both Jesus' teachings in the Gospels and books such as the Revelation
to John talk primarily about the difference between eternal life and
eternal death.  On a number of occasions Jesus does say things that
imply some sort of differentiation, e.g. Lk 10:14 and a number of
similar passages where Jesus says things like "even XXX will be better
off than you in the judgement."  Also, I Cor 3 talks about someone who
gets into heaven, but by the skin of his teeth, as it were.  But these
passages are not normally interpreted as suggesting separate heavens,
so much as differing levels of prestige or punishment in heaven or
hell (and not all Christians would even go as far as that).  The only
Christian group I know of that believes in multiple heavens is the
Mormons, and they are very far from mainstream Christianity (far
enough that many of our readers would not call them Christian).  Their
ideas in this area involve specific Mormon revelations, in addition
to the Bible and "Holy Tradition" of a more generic Christian sort.

Note that many Christians will cringe at the very thought of
associating grading with God.  The whole point of Christ was to free
us from the results of a test that we couldn't possibly pass.  If you
like test analogies, God grades on a very strict and unbending scale,
but he also cheats -- he replaces our test papers with an exam that
was prepared by the teacher, before actually doing the grading.
Because some people end up in heaven and others in hell, it's easy to
see why you'd be inclined to think of it as grading.  While there are
differences among branches of Christianity on details, I think we all
agree that in one way or another, God cheats.

I am personally very sceptical about anyone who claims to know exactly
how far God's cheating extends.  Will he accept people who don't
explicitly acknowledge Christ, but somehow still follow him in their
hearts?  Many Christians believe that this is possible, at least in
principle, but certainly not all do.  Jesus provided us with a clear
description of how to be saved, but it's not clear to me that he
provided an exact description of how he's going to place the dividing
line.  Certainly he made it clear that we can't expect to know whether
other individuals are saved or not.

--clh]