12 Purification,PurgationandPenalty:Christian .
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Page 29812 Purification, Purgation and Penalty: ChristianConcepts of Water and Fire in Heaven and HellTerje OestigaardINTRODUCTIONIn Christian tradition, ‘The landscape of Hell is the largest sharedconstruction project in imaginative history [and] if Heaven isspiritual, Hell is oddly fleshly’ (Turner 1995: 3). The images of Hellare, however, rather few in the Bible and not as vividly depicted asthey become later in the Christian tradition. In the Old Testamentthere is a development in the Otherworldly eschatology with regardsto damnation and penalty, and in the New Testament there are only12 references to Hell. Nevertheless, the beliefs and images of Hellhave had a pervasive impact in Christianity, but, although they havereferences in the Bible, these religious thoughts are invented beliefsystems which have formed the Christian tradition and religion.Thus, Christian concepts of water and fire for purification, purgationand penalty developed through time and reached in the late MiddleAges and the European Renaissance the most elaborate and coherentsystem of metaphors defining the Otherworldly spheres. In all worldreligions, water and fire are used to define and expressunderstandings of Heaven and Hell, but it is possible to argue thatthe thoughts and images of Hell in the Christian tradition are moreextreme than in other religions. Hence, it is of interest to analysewhat characterises the eschatological thoughts and metaphoricalqualities of water and fire in Christianity, which may enable one tograsp and identify some structuring roles and properties ofmetaphors at work in the creation of tradition and belief systems insociety and religion.Hell is more elaborate than Heaven and is traditionally andcommonly understood as an abyss of fire, but the torturing role offire is often coupled with various types of malevolent water. Life inHeaven, on the other hand, is more difficult to grasp and less
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Page 299Purification, Purgation and Penalty299elaborated in tradition, but it is quite different from anything onearth: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceivedwhat God has prepared for those who love him’ (1 Corinthians 2:9).According to parts of the Christian beliefs, water and fire are bothused by God and Satan in defining Heaven and Hell respectively, andhumans imagine the divine realms with these elements as metaphorsbecause they enable beliefs and ideas grasping the content of Heavenand Hell which no other metaphors or elements are capable of.Thus, water and fire both define, and are entrances to, theOtherworldly realms, whether Heaven or Hell. Crucial in theseprocesses is the question of how water and fire, on the one hand, areused for purification and purgation and, on the other hand, aremedia for penalty and torture. Thus, the aim of this article is toanalyse the qualities and capacities of water and fire in Christianity by1) presenting a brief history of the development of Hell, 2)discussing the Deluge and Doomsday, 3) analysing God and Satan asopponents, and finally 4) synthesising the different ways water andfire have been used throughout parts of the history of Christianity.QUALITIES OF FIRE AND WATERWater and fire, particularly when used in combination, have a uniquecapability to define and express symbolically human and divinematters (e.g. Oestigaard 2005). Although theoretical approaches tometaphors have emphasised the role of metaphors in theconstitution of language and mind (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), theflesh and the embodied mind (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) andmateriality (Tilley 1999), fewer studies have focussed on theelements, and in particular water and fire and their interchangeabilityof qualities. In Hinduism, water and fire are used to expressdifferences and sameness and at the same time transcend and unitedichotomies (e.g. O’Flaherty 1981a, 1981b). The changing characterof water enables expressions of both the unique and the particular,and hence it has been forcefully used in cultural constructions andreligious metaphors throughout time in most societies (Tvedt andOestigaard 2006, 2008). In Western thought, the elements – water,fire, air and earth – have played an intrinsic part in philosophy andreligion since before Socrates (Stroud 1994), with implications forthe development of Christianity. Gaston Bachelard, who workedfrom a philosophical point of view, is one of the few writers who hasextensively analysed the qualities of water and fire in his books ThePsychoanalysis of Fire (1968), The Flame of a Candle (1988),Fragments of A Poetics of Fire (1990), and Water and Dreams. An
12c Idea of Water 298-3223004/8/0911:32Page 300A History of WaterEssay on the Imagination of Matter (1994). Bachelard is concernedwith images of matter or images that stem directly from matterbecause in aesthetic philosophy there has been a neglect of thematerial causes for imagination (Bachelard 1994: 1–2). He describesthe specific qualities of water and fire, which have also shapedWestern thought and beliefs with direct relevance for Christianconcepts, in this way:Fire is thus a privileged phenomenon which can explain anything [ ]Among all phenomena, it is really the only one to which there can beso definitely attributed the opposing values of good and evil. It shinesin Paradise. It burns in Hell. It is gentle and torture It is a tutelaryand a terrible divinity, both good and bad. It can contradict itself; thusit is one of the principles of universal explanation. (Bachelard 1968: 7)[Water] can be cursed evil can put it in active form what is evil inone aspect, in one of its characteristics, becomes evil as the whole.Evil is no longer a quality but a substance [ ] Clear water is aconstant temptation for a facile symbolism of purity [ ] it is the onethat constantly breathes new life into certain old mythological forms.It gives life back to forms by transforming them, for a form cannottransform itself. It is contrary to its nature for a form to transform itself[ but] water is the most perfect liquid, it is the one from which allother solutions get their fluidity. (Bachelard 1994: 93, 134, 139)In order to understand how and why water and fire have been usedand understood in parts of the Christian tradition, one must look at abasic concept in religion: sin. Humans are not only ‘less than God’,they are also ‘guilty before God’ (Hayes 1992: 95). The possibility ofcommitting sins, which deviates from God’s will, is a sign of free will(Hertz 1996). Ever since the fall, when humanity was expelled fromParadise, humans have been born with sin. This original sin can beinterpreted merely as mortality, since humans do not live eternallyon earth, and any impermanence is incompleteness (Oestigaard2004).Nevertheless, original sin has traditionally been interpreted as theguilt that we are born with, and baptism is then a means whereby thewater cleanses humans and is mandatory for reaching the Kingdomof Heaven: ‘The inward and spiritual grace in Baptism is union withChrist in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family thechurch, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit’ (The Bookof Common Prayer 1990: 858). Baptism signifies the entry of anewborn baby into the church, and this act has been necessary forturning the infant into a full human being (Figure 1). According to
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Page 301Purification, Purgation and PenaltyFigure 1. Baptismal font, Aberdeen. Photo: Rune Oestigaard.301
12c Idea of Water 298-3223024/8/0911:32Page 302A History of Waterthe common custom of the church, baptism is administered tonewborn babies because they are actually born in sin passed on bytheir origin. However, it is possible to argue that baptism is not givento cleanse them from sin, but rather to initiate and admit them intothe Kingdom of God, to which there is no admission except withbaptism. This has its scriptural evidence in the Bible, where the Lordsays: ‘Except a man be born of water, and of the Spirit, he cannotenter into the kingdom of God’ (John 3:5). Therefore, if unbaptisedchildren cannot reach the Kingdom of God, there must be some sinin them (Aquinas 1975: 214):Regarding the spiritual generation which takes place in baptism, onemust consider that the generation of a living thing is a kind of changefrom non-living to life. But man in his origin was deprived of spirituallife by original sin and still every single sin whatever which is addeddraws him away from life. Baptism, therefore, which is spiritualgeneration, had to have the power to take away both the original sinand all the actual, committed sins because the sensible sign of asacrament must be harmonious with the representation of its spiritualeffect, and since washing away filth in bodily things is done moreeasily and more commonly by water, baptism is, therefore, suitablyconferred in water made holy by the Word of God. (Aquinas 1975:250)Baptism constitutes necessary but not sufficient conditions forsalvation, because after baptism humans inevitably will sin again, andmost likely more gravely. Thus, it seems that water has only limitedcapacities to purify human sins, and since the character of thecommitted sins are worse and more sincere, one way to cleanseoneself from committed sins has been through a medium whichinvolves torments: fire. Water and fire may have the same capacitiesto purify, but most often fire has been seen as a more powerfulremedy, with some notable exceptions. Purgatory has generally beenseen as the means by which the elected has reached perfectionbefore entering the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Catechism of theCatholic Church, the final purification or purgatory is defined assuch:All who die in God’s grace and friendship, but still imperfectlypurified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after deaththey undergo purification, so as to achieve the holiness necessary toenter the joy of heaven The Church gives the name Purgatoryto this final purification of the elect, which is entirely different fromthe punishment of the damned The tradition of the Church, by
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Page 303Purification, Purgation and Penalty303reference to certain texts of Scripture, speaks of a cleansing fire Asfor certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the FinalJudgment, there is a purifying fire [ ].1With regards to both water and fire as purifying media, following thephilosophy of the flesh (Lakoff and Johnson 1999), the rationale forPurgatory and indeed Hell is that sin is embodied. The flesh is anintellectual matter, or the flesh mirrors at least the state ofintellectual purity or impurity a person has achieved. The humanflesh is therefore an approach to an understanding of Christianeschatological concepts, particularly Hell and Purgatory, and howwater and fire have been employed to achieve spiritual purity andHeaven (Oestigaard 2003). Seen from this approach, however,purgatory is an incomplete purging method because it cannot enablepurification from all kinds of sins. Or, in other words, denying Godand rejecting his grace is such a heinous sin that a separate locale isneeded, Hell, and here the fire changes its function from purificationthrough purging to penalty. This change is, however, the outcome ofover 3,000 years of religious history.3,000 YEARS WITH A CHANGING HELLHell is traditionally understood as a gloomy furnace where thesinners are tortured to eternity, but this image is a late construction.The history and development of Hell goes through at least fivephases: 1) God penalises humanity with the Deluge, 2) Sheol, 3)Gehenna, 4) the medieval everlasting, torture chamber of fire, and 5)Hell as the absence of God.With the fall from grace whereby Adam and Eve and subsequentlyhumanity were expelled from Paradise, the history and developmentof Heaven and Hell started. During the First Commonwealth (until c.539 BCE), the belief in an individual life after death had almost noreligious importance. Although there are some references which mayindicate an afterlife, there was a development of the ideas regardinga separate place or system of personal punishments for sinsconducted by humans. Originally, it seems that God punished humandisobedience collectively with plagues, fevers, conquests, famine andexile rather than with individual repentance. A collective system ofrewards and punishments in this life rather than in an Otherworldlyrealm cannot imply a Heaven or Hell. Moreover, particular destinywhich awaits a person at the moment he or she dies is notmentioned. Following the early scriptures, immortality therefore hasto be seen more as the succession of future generations than a belief
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Page 304304A History of Waterin a supernatural and personal afterlife. The death of an individualwould not bring him closer to God, and there were no places forOtherworldly rewards or punishments. The righteous man protectedhis progeny through righteous deeds, whereas evil-doers harmed hisposterity and the descendants were punished in future generations.Hence, there was no life after death as such, immortality wasprogeny through one’s children, and God’s wrath extended beyondthe individual and harmed his family and society (Segal 1997; Hachlili2001).The Deluge has to be seen in this light. God’s divine wrathharmed everyone and erased all humans from earth, with oneexception; Noah and his progeny. In Genesis 6:13, Yahweh warnedNoah: ‘The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filledwith violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them withthe earth.’ Erasing all life on earth but one pair of each species is away of harming society in general, and only Noah’s progenycontinued to live after the Flood (Figure 2). Thus, there were noFigure 2. The Deluge. From Doré 1884.
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Purification, Purgation and PenaltyPage 305305needs for other penalties for the rest of humanity because they weredead and could never be immortal. The importance is that God’swrath was solely upon this world, and there were no Otherworldlypenalties. After the Flood, God repented and promised that hewould never curse the earth again, and if human beings were wickedand disobedient in the future, he would only annihilate the sinners.This promise might be the origin of Heaven and Hell, and theeschatology of punishment turned from this world to an Otherworldbecoming personal rather than collective (Oestigaard 2004).Nevertheless, in the Old Testament the condition and state of thedead were not fully resolved. The term Sheol has been used todesignate Hell, and a common biblical expression is that thedeparted ‘goes down to Sheol’. The term occurs 65 times in the OldTestament and the etymology is uncertain, and there have beendifferent interpretations according to the context in which the termoccurs. It was thought of as a land of darkness and has beentranslated as ‘grave’ 31 times, ‘hell’ 31 times, and ‘pit’ three times(Walvoord 1992: 14). Ezekiel associates Sheol with the pit and thedeep waters (Bernstein 1993: 146): ‘For they are all given over todeath, to the netherworld among mortal men, with those who godown to the Pit. Thus says the Lord God: When it goes down to theSheol I will make the deep morn for it, and restrain its rivers, andmany waters shall be stopped’ (Ezekiel 32:14–15). The mostcommon understanding and interpretation have nevertheless beenthat the words stands for ‘grave’ and that there was some judgementafter death. The character of the punishment and retribution is,however, more uncertain (Walvoord 1992: 16–17).In the New Testament there are more elaborate images of theplace destined for evildoers, but there are not more than 12references to Hell or Gehenna (Matthew 5:22, 5:29 and 30, 10:28,18:9, 23:15, 23:33; Mark 9:43–4, 9:45, 9:47–8 Luke 12:5; and Jacob3:6). Gehenna was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem where bodiesof criminals were also burnt (Forsyth 2003: 201). It is presented as afiery furnace where people will ‘weep and gnash their teeth’(Matthew 13:42; cf. 25:30, 41) or be thrown in an ‘unquenchable fire’(Mark 9:43). All this is narrated in the parable of the rich man, whichexplains that Hell is a place of eternal suffering, with no possibility ofreturn, nor of the alleviation of pain (cf. Luke 16:19–31). The Book ofRevelation also portrays a ‘pool of fire’ where those who haveexcluded themselves from the book of life face a ‘second death’(Revelation 20:13f.), where the unsaved stay ‘in the fiery lake ofburning sulphur’ (Revelation 21:7–8). Hell was an ‘eternaldestruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and fromthe glory of his might’ (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Nevertheless, although
12c Idea of Water 298-3223064/8/0911:32Page 306A History of Waterthe belief in Hell has a scriptural basis with a dozen references in theNew Testament, in the early development of Christianity it wasperceived more as a metaphor than real, physical place with eternalsuffering (Le Goff 1984).In medieval Europe, Hell acquired certain particular and newcharacteristics. Hell, Purgatory and the Devil played a minor role inChristian religion until the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but atthat time Christianity developed the most dogmatic and gruesomesystem of eternal suffering and damnation through fire that perhapsever have been invented in the history of religions. Purgatory is aHell of limited time and suffering, and the idea of purgation startedat a level of popular piety and moved eventually into the theologicalelaboration where it became officially recognised. This was amovement from symbolism of purgation to the concrete idea of aphysical place where the purging took place. In order for Purgatoryto be created, the notion of a place of ‘intermediary’ had to bedeveloped where it was possible to suffer (Le Goff 1984: 3–10).Based on textual analyses, Le Goff suggests that the real Purgatorydid not exist before 1170 at the earliest. Before 1170 Peter Comestorused the then current expression of a ‘purgatorial fire’, and as hisideas developed between 1170 and his death in 1178 or 1179, theterm ‘purgatorium’ which he later used must have been introducedin the decade 1170–80. This was the place for purgation (Le Goff1984: 157).The church made the formal promulgation of the doctrine ofpurgatory in a papal letter in 1253, but before this event there wereno real advances in the intellectual thought of Hell (Turner 1995: 89,127). In the process of developing a proper Hell, the problem ofwhat kind of fire existed in Hell had to be figured out. The problemwas that if it was ordinary fire, which consumes, then Hell wouldnot be eternal because everything would burn up. Thethirteenth-century bishop of Paris (1228–49), William of Auvergne,solved this problem. Hellfire was different from the kind of fire wewere familiar with on Earth. Since the damned should be torturedunto eternity, Hellfire burned without consuming. Thus, fire wasdesignated to expiatory and purification processes in Purgatory (LeGoff 1984: 245), but not in Hell. Nevertheless, Hell as a constructionwas not fully developed before the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,where there was only a torturing abyss of fire in Hell. In earlierversions of purgatory during the Medieval period, for instanceDante’s Inferno and Purgatory (Dante 1990), fire was coupled withwater. The symbolic pair of water and fire for Hell and Purgatory wasrepresented in the different locales where the penalties took place:one fiery, the other damp; one hot, the other cold; one in flames, the
12c Idea of Water 298-3224/8/0911:32Purification, Purgation and PenaltyPage 307307other frozen. The trial where the deceased were subjected topurgatory was not a simple passing through fire, but involved passingin succession through fire and then through water (Le Goff 1984: 9).This seems to have been a general
In Christian tradition, ‘The landscape of Hell is the largest shared construction project in imaginative history [and] if Heaven is spiritual, Hell is oddly fleshly’ (Turner 1995: 3). The images of Hell are, however, rather few in the Bible and not as vividly depicted as they beco
3 Christian - Anglican 25.06 Christian - Anglican 15.48 4 Christian - Uniting 5.44 Christian - Other Protestant 6.79 5 Christian - Other Protestant 2.55 Christian - Uniting 2.88 6 Christian - Presbyterian/Reformed 2.53 Christian - Presbyterian/Reformed 1.35 7 Christian - Other 1.83 Christian - Lutheran 0.87
1 Lab meeting and introduction to qualitative analysis 2 Anion analysis (demonstration) 3 Anion analysis 4 5. group cation anion analysis 5 4. group cation (demonstration) 6 4. group cation anion analysis 7 3. group cation (demonstration) 8 3. group cation anion analysis 9 Mid-term exam 10 2. group cation (demonstration)
Pan-African Baha’i Muslim Interfaith Zoroastrian Taoist Scientologist Catholic Christian Swedenborgian Christian Christian Orthodox Christian Mormon Protestant Christian Jehovah’s Witnesses Hispanic Christian Anglican Christian Ethiopian Orthodox Christian . Founding of the first Church of Scientology in the U.S., the Church of .
Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Buddhist Confucian Christian Catholic Christian Jain Interfaith Hispanic Christian Hindu Mormon Jewish Jehovah’s Witnesses Muslim Scientologist Orthodox Christian Rastafarian Protestant Christian Pan-African Taoist Swedenborgian Christian Sikh Shinto Zoroastrian Wiccan/Pagan. 4 . Founding of the first Church of .
Simple articular, simple metaphyseal Simple articular, complex metaphyseal Complex articular, complex metaphyseal Fig 2.2-4 Classifi cation of fractures of the diaphysis into the three fracture groups according to Müller AO/OTA Classifi cation. 2 Principles of trauma care 2.2 Fracture classifi cation
based on the US MIL-HDBK-516 — Airworthiness Certifi cation Criteria, to address the objective of common certifi cation and design codes. The new European Military Aircraft Certifi cation Criteria (EMACC) handbook contains harmonised certifi cation criteria developed to addres
is degraded during the aerobic nitri cation phase and the residual carbon is used up during the anoxic denitri cation phase [ ]. However, such systems are prone to operational hindrances due to reduced rate of nitri cation and the di cultytoseparatenitri cationanddenitri cationreaction processes.Meyeretal.[] noted that nitri cation and
CIE IGCSE Business Studies Paper 1 Summer & Winter 2012 to 2015 . UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE INTERNATIONAL EXAMINATIONS International General Certificate of Secondary Education MARK SCHEME for the May/June 2012 question paper for the guidance of teachers 0450 BUSINESS STUDIES 0450/11 Paper 1 (Short Answer/Structured Response), maximum raw mark 100 This mark scheme is published as an aid to .