God: Did He create us or did we create Him?

Is God the product of man’s creative imagination?

Karen Armstrong, in the introduction to her well written book “A History of God"  asks: Is God the projection of human needs and drives? According to her, God was and is still a product of creative imagination, like poetry and music. Karen Armstrong was Catholic born, joined a religious order and became a dedicated nun but was unable to glimpse ‘the God described by the prophets and mystics’. So, she left the convent and became a commentator of religious affairs. 

In her book, Armstrong traces the historical development of the 

concept of God. She talks about the Christian God, the God of Islam, the God of Philosophers, the God of reformers, the Jewish concept of Yahweh and discusses the death of God and the rise of Atheism. The human idea of God has a history since its meaning is different to different groups of people. For her, the statement, ‘I believe in God’ has no objective meaning; it only means something in context. Each generation must create a concept of God that works for it. She concludes with a provocative question: ‘Does God have a future?’ 

So how old is the concept of God?

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.” – Voltaire.

“If triangles had a God, He’d have three sides.” - Old Yiddish Proverb.

In nomadic pastoral civilizations, God was found not on Earth, but

up above in the Sky. This was a Male God whose voice was thunder and whose anger was expressed through lightning. He was the Sky God who made rain for grass to grow for the cattle. The main sky gods were the Sun and the Moon. It is interesting to note that although very many different types of religions existed in ancient times, they can all be reduced to possess some distinctive core elements: a belief in the Great Goddess, the Bull, the Sky Gods, the need for sacrifices, in an afterlife, and in a soul that survives death and goes either to a place of suffering or to a place of joy depending on how one lived life here on earth. 

The situation changed during the period 750 – 350 BCE. According

to Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher, most of the world's great faiths came into being during this period. Let us briefly examine the God/gods of the different religions at this time.

Judaism ‘evolved’ the idea of a monotheistic God, Yahweh. Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The God Hypothesis’ describes Yahweh's character as follows:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant 

a character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror.”

The above description bears witness to Karen Armstrong’s 

assertion that God is a creation of man’s fertile imagination fed by the cultural, social and intellectual milieu of the time.

Zoroastrianism introduced gods as abstract concepts.  Zarathustra taught a challenging view of the world as a struggle between good and evil. He is said to have received a direct revelation from the one true god Ahura Mazda. Soul, life after death, resurrection, judgment, paradise, hell, and the devil were all Zoroastrian ideas first, later borrowed by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Buddhism may be thought more as a way of life than as a religion in its narrow sense. It developed as a reaction to the greed and materialism of the newly emerging merchant class at the time of Siddhartha Gautama who left the comforts of a life of luxury as well as his family and wandered the world as a mendicant in search of enlightenment.  All life, for him, was suffering. Only Dharma, the truth about right living, brought one to nirvana, the ultimate reality - freedom from pain. The state of nirvana has nothing to do with the gods; in fact, it is beyond them. By living a life of compassion for all living beings, speaking and behaving gently, kindly and correctly and by refraining from drugs and intoxicants that cloud the mind, one can attain nirvana. 

Hinduism has many parallels to Greek religious practices. Both are steeped in myths with numerous gods and goddesses who have many human characteristics. However, traditional Hinduism is a way of living rather than a way of thinking.

Islam has borrowed heavily from both Judaism and Christianity. Mohammed, considered God’s prophet by the faithful, was resting in a cave outside Mecca, called Hira, in 620 C.E. when he heard voices which he wrote down and collected into the book Qur’an. The message was clear: God is one and there is no other. There is a Judgment day with eternal paradise for the good and everlasting hell for those who go against His will.

Now we come to the God of Christianity. Chapter 4 of Karen 

Armstrong’s book  'A History of God' is titled 'Trinity: The Christian God'. There is a reason for this. Though Christians claim they believe in monotheism, their God is not exactly one; He is three in One or One in Three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 3=1. 1=3. For ordinary mortals, this is a mystery and that is how the Catholic Church wants it regarded. Do not try to understand it, rather, just believe it! Jesus was a Jew and his initial followers were all Jews who believed in the one God, Yahweh. How and why did the later followers of Christ change to a ‘kind’ of polytheist mode of thinking? 

Apostle Paul, who claimed to hear disembodied ‘voices’ that he identified as the words of Jesus, could come to our aid here. He was instrumental in spreading the gospel to the gentiles who were used to a variety of gods. It was he who realized that the good news of the gospel would have greater acceptance if Christ, the Messiah, was projected as divine rather than human.  Hence, he claimed that Jesus was a pre-existent ‘heavenly’ being; that he was created as the ‘firstborn’ of all creation; that he existed in the form of God and that he was equal to God.

Not everyone agreed. Around 320 C.E. Arius, a presbyter from 

Alexandria, asked: how could Jesus Christ have been God in the same way as God the Father? According to Armstrong: “He (Arius) knew his scriptures well, and he produced an armory of texts to support his claim that Christ the Word (logos) could only be a creature like ourselves.”

This caused such a controversy that Emperor Constantine convened the first ecumenical council of Nicaea in 320 C.E. Here it was declared that the Creator God and Redeemer Christ were one and the Nicaean Creed came into existence.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things, visible and invisible, and in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of God,…begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

So, now we have Jesus as having the same substance as God the 

Father: hence He is God.  However, the inclusion of the Holy Spirit as the third in the Trinity sounds a bit sneaky. Who is He? What is His role?

Hans Kung, a brilliant Catholic theologian, whose honesty and 

forthrightness regarding some of the Church’s doctrines have antagonized the hierarchy, comes to our aid here. His book "The Catholic Church: A Short History", is closer to the truth than most other books on the subject. According to him, the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople, convened by Theodosius the Great in 381 C.E., defined the identity of the Substance of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son.  He further enlightens us on the interpretation of St. Augustine (354-430), one of the best Catholic theologians of the era. Augustine did not agree with the interpretation of the Greek Church Fathers. For them, God the Father was ‘the God’. They defined the relationship of God the Father to the Son and Spirit in terms of this one God and Father. Think of a star giving light to a second star and finally to a third star.  To the human eye, though, all three stars appear as one. 

But for Augustine:

The Father knows and begets in the Son his own word and image. But the Spirit “proceeds” from the Father (as the lover) and the Son (as the beloved) “according to the will.”  The Spirit is the love between Father and Son become person: it has proceeded from both the Father and the Son. (Kung)

One cannot but help notice a comparison (albeit a sacred one) to 

human sexual reproduction.

Let us now look at the Apostolic Creed:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,

and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by 

the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under …

The Holy Spirit, the third in the Triad, played an active role in the conception of Jesus. Jesus had a virgin birth – in other words, a miraculous non-sexual conception.

Finally, I would like to point out something common to many 

religions: the claim of God’s direct revelations to His chosen ones. E.g. Moses at the time of receiving the ten commandments; Zarathustra’s direct revelation from the one true god Ahura Mazda; St. Paul hearing ‘voices’ which he identified as those of Jesus; Mohammed hearing voices in the cave; there are many others found in the religious holy books. I suppose it is a very clever and unquestionable way of convincing the naïve of selective belief systems!

DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY - Part 2: PURGUTORIO AND PARADISO

PURGATORIO (PURGATORY)

Purgatory comes from the Latin word ‘purgare’ meaning ‘to make clean’ or ‘to purity’. Found here are souls who committed venial sins and did not repent as well as those guilty of mortal sins. This latter repented before death but are not sufficiently pure to enter Heaven. They must do penance to atone for their sins committed on earth. Mount Purgatory is an island, the only land in the Southern Hemisphere, created with the soil excavated from Hell. On the lower slopes is found ‘ante-purgatory’ which houses the excommunicate, the lethargic, the unabsolved and the negligent rulers. They must wait for a time to enter purgatory to start their penance. Purgatory itself is divided into seven terraces ending with the gate to Heaven. Souls can only move upward from terrace to terrace and never backward because at each terrace they spend enough time to do the required penance and are purified of that sin. The lowest three terraces are reserved for souls with perverted love, the next terrace for those with defective love and the uppermost three for excessive love. For easier understanding, I am using the following table:

GARDEN OF EDEN

Main Category	Specific sins	Terrace	Punishment
Love excessive	The lustful	seventh	They continuously burn in a wall of flame.
	The gluttonous	sixth	They are forced to abstain from food and drink.
	The avaricious	fifth	They lie face down unable to move.
Love Defective	The slothful	fourth	They are made to run continuously
Love Perverted	The wrathful	third	They walk around in acrid smoke.
	The envious	second	They have their eyes sewn shut.
	The proud	first	They carry large stones on their backs, unable to stand up straight.

 

                                               Ante-purgatory: The excommunicate

                                                           The lethargic

                                                            The unabsolved

                                                             Negligent rulers

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PARADISO (PARADISE)

Paradise is made up of 9 concentric spheres. Souls are allotted to the point of heaven that fits with their ability to love God.

The first sphere: Sphere of Mars.          

Souls of those who abandoned their vows.

The second sphere: Sphere of Mercury.    

Souls who did good out of a desire for fame.

The third sphere: Sphere of Venus.         

Souls who did good out of love.

The fourth sphere: Sphere of Sun.       

Souls of the wise.

The fifth sphere: Sphere of Mars.          

Souls who fought for Christianity.

The sixth sphere: Sphere of Jupiter.       

Souls who personified justice.

The seventh sphere: Sphere of Saturn.        

Souls of the contemplative.

The eighth sphere: Sphere of Fixed Stars. 

Souls of all the blessed.

The ninth sphere: The Primum Mobile. 

The abode of angels.

Dante then ascends to a region beyond physical existence, called the Empyrean. Here he comes face to face with God Himself and is granted understanding of the Divine and of Human nature. God appears as three equally large circles within each other representing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

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There is no mention, as far as I can see, about choirs of angels continuously singing and playing the harp and the souls of the saved joining them. Those images must have come from some very fertile Catholic imagination in course of time. 

DANTE'S DIVINE COMEDY - Part 1: INFERNO

To get a better idea of the joys of heaven and the horrors of hell, let me now introduce Dante.

DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY

Dante Alighieri wrote ‘The Divine Comedy’, an epic poem in Italian, between 1306 and his death in 1321. It is an accurate, though imaginary, portrait of the medieval world-view regarding Christian afterlife. It is divided into 3 parts: Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory) and Paradiso (Heaven). Dante goes on a three-day trip through Hell and up Mount Purgatory on the other side of the world and finally to Heaven in the sky. He is lost in the beginning; so, he asks Virgil (author of Aeneid) to guide him through Hell, Beatrice (the woman he loved) to show him around Purgatory and Saint Bernard to take him to God.

INFERNO (HELL)

As Dante and his guide Virgil come to the gate of Hell, they see inscribed on it the phrase ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here’. Just outside the gate are the ‘Opportunists’, souls of people who in life did nothing, neither good nor evil. Also found among them are the outcasts who remained neutral in the 'Rebellion of Angels'. These souls reside on the shores of Acheron; their punishment is to eternally pursue a banner and be pursued by wasps and hornets that continually sting them, while maggots and other insects drink their blood and tears. Acheron (meaning river of woe, according to Greek mythology) was believed to be a tributary of the underworld river Styx over which souls of the newly dead were ferried across to Hades, the abode of the Greek mythological god of death by the same name.

Dante and Virgil then reach the ferry that will take them across the river Acheron to Hell proper. Hell is divided into 9 circles. The circles are concentric, representing the gradual increase in wickedness, and culminating in the center of the earth where Satan is held in bondage. Each circle’s sinners are punished in ways befitting their crimes for all eternity. People who prayed before death for the forgiveness of their sins are to be found in Purgatory. Those in Hell are sinners who want to justify their sins and are unrepentant. They have knowledge of the past and future but not of the present. So, after the final judgment, when time ends, those in Hell would know nothing. The following are brief descriptions of the type of sins for which people are put in each circle, the appropriate punishment, some of the well-known figures therein and my personal comments where appropriate.

Circle 1 (Limbo)

The un-baptized and virtuous pagans are found in this circle. Their punishment is to remain separate from God for all eternity without hope of reconciliation.

Virgil, Homer, Horace, Socrates, and Plato are seen here.

Circle 2

Lust. (Any intense desire or craving for self-gratification. For the Catholic Church, lust mostly means sexual lust.) They are punished by being blown about by a violent storm without hope of rest.

This is symbolic of the power of lust to blow one about needlessly and aimlessly.

Circle 3

Gluttony. (An over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink or intoxicants.)

The souls are forced to lie in a vile mush made by freezing rain, black snow, and hail. It is symbolic of the garbage they made of their lives on earth.

Circle 4

Greed. (Avaricious and miserly.)

The avaricious and misers form two groups running towards each other along opposite sides of a circle. After they run into each other with a crash, they turn about and run back along the circle, only to crash again on the other side of it, and they continue this for eternity. Heads of clergymen are prominent in this scene:

Here Popes and prelates butt their tonsured pates,

Mastered by avarice that nothing sates.             (Inferno 7. 46-48)

[Avarice continues to plague the present clergy in this era and age, but they have made it into a virtue. How else can one explain the lack of financial accountability by the hierarchy, especially those controlling the rich dioceses of Kerala? Traditionally, each parish used to be managed by the parish priest and members of the parish community. From the time of the arrival of the Portuguese in India, their bishops managed to wrest control over the Indian Catholic Church. Canon laws were also suitably changed to leave all wealth in the hands of the bishops with no one to answer to. The present hierarchy has taken full advantage and refuses to involve laymen (except the yes men) in administrative matters, especially those concerning finances. 

Circle 5

Wrath.

The wrathful fight each other submerged in the swampy river Styx.

Circle 6

Heresy.

These souls are trapped in flaming tombs.

The followers of Epicurus are found here.

Circle 7

Violence.

The souls of the violent are housed in three rings.

The outer ring houses the violent against people and property. They are immersed in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood, to a level commensurate with their sins. Alexander the Great is found here immersed to eyebrow level.

The middle ring houses the suicides. They are turned into thorny bushes and trees with their corpses hanging from the branches. Others found here are profligates, those who destroyed their

lives by destroying what sustains lives, namely money, and property. They are continuously chased by ferocious dogs through the thorny undergrowth.

The inner ring houses the violent against God (blasphemers), the violent against nature (sodomites) and the violent against art (usurers). They reside in a desert of hot sand with flakes of fire continually falling from the sky. The blasphemers lie on the sand, the usurers sit while the sodomites wander about in groups.

Circle 8

Fraud.

The fraudulent are housed in ten bolgie (ditches of stone).

• Bolgia 1. Panderers and seducers: they march in separate lines in opposite directions. They are continuously whipped by the demons.
• Bolgia 2. Flatterers: they are steeped in human excrement since in life their flattery was nothing but a load of crap.
• Bolgia 3. Those who committed simony (the ecclesiastical crime of paying for offices or positions in the hierarchy of the Church): they are placed with their heads in holes in the rock, while soles of their feet are burned with a flame. Pope Nicholas III, Pope Boniface VIII, and Pope Clement V are seen in this group. 
• Bolgia 4. Sorcerers and false prophets: they have their heads twisted around their bodies facing permanently backward. In addition, they are continuously shedding tears, so that they cannot see. This is because in life they tried to see the future by forbidden means, so in Hell, they can only see what is behind them.
• Bolgia 5. Corrupt politicians: they are immersed in a lake of boiling pitch.
• Bolgia 6. Hypocrites: they aimlessly walk around.
• Bolgia 7. Thieves: they are continuously chased and bitten by snakes. The snake bites turn them into reptiles and snakes which in turn chase other thieves and bite them.
• Bolgia 8. Fraudulent advisers: they are individually encased in flames.
• Bolgia 9. Sowers of discord: demons go round hacking their limbs. By the time they return, the wounds are healed and their limbs are hacked again. Mohammed is described as one of the ‘sowers of discord’.
• Bolgia 10. Falsifiers (impersonators, perjurers, alchemists, counterfeiters): they are afflicted by different diseases.

 Circle 9

Treachery.

The traitors are placed in four concentric zones in the circle.

• Zone 1. Caina (named after Cain): traitors to their kindred. The souls are immersed up to their necks in ice.
• Zone 2. Antenora (named after Antenor of Troy who betrayed his city to the Greeks): traitors to political entities. The souls are immersed to the same level as those of Caina but they cannot bend their necks.
• Zone 3. Ptolomaea (named after Ptolemy, the captain of Jericho, who invited Simon Maccabaeus and his sons to a banquet and killed them): traitors to their guests. The souls are punished by immersing them up to half their face in ice so that even their tears freeze shutting their eyes close.
• Zone 4. Judecca (named after Judas the Iscariot, traitor of Christ): traitors of their lords and benefactors. The souls are completely encapsulated in ice and remain grotesquely twisted.

From here Dante and Virgil move to the center of Hell. Here they find Satan who has committed the ultimate sin: treachery against God. Satan has three faces: one red, another black and the third pale yellow. Each face has a mouth that chews on a prominent traitor. The left and right mouths have Brutus and Cassius, who betrayed Julius Caesar and Judas Iscariot in the central mouth. Judas is administered the worst torture: his head is in Satan’s mouth while his back is forever skinned by the claws of Lucifer.

P.S. For a pictorial view, please go to:

https://www2.bc.edu/michelle-principi-2/dante2.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/coolguides/comments/6mfk30/dantes_inferno_map_of_hell_xpost_from_reurope/

For an interesting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE5ihycCq54

Afterlife, Soul, and the Invention of the Torments of Hell

Early man, right from Stone Age (from around 3 million years ago), had some rudimentary notions about the 'afterlife'. The dead were buried with provisions which, so the thinking went, were needed for the life after death. Even today, this practice continues among some groups of people. While working in South Africa, the Chief of the area where I lived, died. He was buried with blankets and provisions, along with a man to serve him in the afterlife. Unluckily for this man, he was buried alive with the Chief!

Early man saw many happenings in nature that made him think about the afterlife or death and rebirth. Sun and moon appeared and disappeared. Trees shed leaves in one season only to regrow in the next. An afterlife clearly implies some sort of post-mortem existence. Hence came the idea of a soul. Different people thought differently about the various aspects of the soul. For some, it occupied different parts of the body: the eye, the liver, the heart and so on. Others believed that at death, the soul left the body via the top of the head [hence the trepanning (drilling a hole in the skull) ceremony] and so on.

To the Greeks, who believed in the afterlife, the dead went straight to the underworld called Hades (Hades is also the name of the god of the underworld). This place was guarded by a dog, called Cerberus. The soul had to cross the river Styx to reach this joyless place. The ferryman was Charon who was paid an obol, a small sum of money, to take the soul across. The dead were buried with an obol for this purpose. 

Thomas Thayer, in his book The Origin and History of the Doctrine of Endless Punishment, explains that some Jews had borrowed the concept of Hades from the pagans and embellished it with fires, demons, and torments and turned it into the hell myth. But ancient historians knew the hell myth to be a fabrication created to keep the common man on the path of righteousness. Since the hoi poloi is full of evil desires, irrational passions and violence, it is impossible to govern them by philosophical reasoning and lead them to piety, holiness, and virtue. This can only be done by means of myths like eternal fire. These can be used to terrify the naive multitudes. 

The word hell is the translation of the Hebrew word Sheol meaning The place or state of the dead. It has no reference to a place of endless torment after death. The idea of hell as a place of eternal torment is not found in Jesus' teachings or in the writings of Paul or in the earliest days of the Church. The idea of hell as a place of torment developed in the second and third centuries by which time Church leaders adopted it to frighten their flocks into obedience. It does not have any basis in scripture.

Under the influence of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), the concept of endless conscious torment gained acceptance in the Catholic Church. He taught that all souls were deathless and consequently the lost would experience endless fires of punishment after death. [Augustine is the inventor of the perverse notion of Original Sin - more on this later].

Some types of tortures in hell:

To those who have done well, everlasting enjoyment shall be given; while to the lovers of evil shall be given eternal punishment. "The unquenchable and unending fire awaits the latter and a certain fiery worm which does not die and which does not waste the body but continually bursts forth from the body with unceasing pain. No sleep will give them rest; no night will soothe them; no death will deliver them from punishment; no appeal of interceding friends will profit them. Clever fire burns the limbs and restores them, wears them away and yet sustains them, just as fiery thunderbolts strike bodies but do not consume  them."

In the middle ages, Catholic thinkers developed a series of levels in hell, all with no basis in the bible. 

Inferno (hell) - the place of torment for the damned and the demons;
Purgatory - the place for saved souls go to be purged of the temporal effects of their sins;
Limbo of the Infants - a place of perfect, natural happiness to which those who died before baptism with no sins on their conscience (e.g unbaptized babies);
Limbo of the Patriarchs -  a place where the righteous went before the time of Jesus; it is this part of 'hell' that Jesus descended into. It no longer exists.

Today, the Church is slowly giving up on the 'hell myth' since it has no biblical support, and is incompatible with a loving God. According to a statement by Pope John Paul II, hell is not a place of fire and eternal suffering. He describes the suffering as a separation from God due to sin. 

In this context, two poets come to mind. The images of hell we have today, come from poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In his epic poem Divine Comedy, Dante takes the reader through the three regions of the dead: Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. In the process, he creates vivid scenes of these places which have become our conceptions of hell with demons, torments, and fire. The other poet is John Milton (1608-1674) who also deals with these areas in his poem Paradise Lost. 

If the Church created hell, Dante and Milton furnished, decorated and, populated it. The Church used these horrific images to frighten the faithful into submission and so it adopted them in toto. 

Indulgence: A brilliant idea to make money by selling 'grace'

The Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation is commonly known as 'Confession'. It has four elements: three on the part of the penitent (sinner) which are contrition, confession, and penance and one on the part of the priest (confessor), absolution. 

The penitent is sorry for his sins (contrition), he confesses them to the priest and does penance, which is reparation for damages his sins have caused. Penance is a kind of temporal punishment for having committed the sins. This punishment consists of earthly sufferings and/or prayers; in the case of a person who dies before he can do penance, the punishment is the time spent, after death, in purgatory.  

To enter heaven, contrition alone is not enough; penance also must be done. In serious cases, absolution will only be given after penance has been completed. Penance can be in the form of prayers, fast, pilgrimages, mass offerings etc. In the case of sins like theft or murder, the penance can also include returning the stolen property or maintaining the murdered man's family. 

An indulgence is the remission of a temporal punishment brought about by sin. Indulgences can be applied to oneself or to the soul of a deceased person. This is similar to the situation when a criminal jailed for ten years has his sentence reduced by one year for good behavior - he gets a year of remission of his punishment. 

The Catholic Church believes that the living can help those whose purification from their sins is not yet completed not only by praying for them but also by gaining indulgences for them. 

In the Catholic tradition, there are two types of indulgences: partial indulgences and plenary indulgences. Partial indulgence (e.g., saying the creed, visiting the cemetery, visiting the blessed sacrament, making the sign of the cross etc.) removes part of one's punishment while plenary indulgences (e.g., going to confession, receiving communion, and saying a prayer for the pope,  reading the scripture, saying the rosary etc.) removes all.

Historically, it was Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484) who declared that indulgences also applied to souls suffering in purgatory. For example, children of a dead parent can earn indulgences to get him or her released early from purgatory.

The latter part of the middle ages (5th to 15th century) saw the growth of considerable abuse of indulgences. Popes of this period allowed the unrestricted sale of indulgences by professional 'pardoners' sent to collect contributions to projects such as the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Peter Watson, in his book Ideas, has some very interesting details about the abuse of indulgences.

In Rome, there was a special office of the quaestiorarii or pardoners, who had the pope's authority to issue indulgences. One such 'pardoner' was Johann Tetzel, a Dominican priest, who traveled from village to village selling indulgences. Setting himself in the local church, he would declare that he had the 'passports to lead the human souls to the celestial joys of paradise.' The fees were dirt-cheap, he claimed. "As soon as the coin rings in the bowl, the soul for whom it is paid will fly out of purgatory and straight to heaven". He also wrote letters which promised the credulous that a sin a person was intending to commit would be forgiven. 


The abuse of indulgences was a primary cause of the Protestant Reformation in the early 16th century. Martin Luther attacked the theology supporting indulgences. According to Catholic theology, indulgences exist because of the "surplus grace" that are available in the world. Jesus and the saints who came after him did so much good that there is a surplus of grace on earth. Purchase of an indulgence is done from this surplus. To Luther, it was like trading potatoes! Moreover, for him, purchase of an indulgence only freed the buyer from penance for a sin, but not from the sin itself.


Please check my future blogs for more 'inventions' by the Church!

Purgatory: A Great Invention by Pope Gregory the Great

Purgatory

The idea of purgatory has roots that date back to antiquity. A primitive version called the 'celestial Hades' appears in the writings of Plato. The celestial Hades was understood as an intermediary place where the souls spent an undetermined time after death before either moving on to a higher level of existence or being reincarnated back on earth. Its exact location varied from author to author. Haraclides of Pontus thought it was in the Milky Way. Others situated it between the moon and the earth. 

Pope Gregory the Great (590-604) established a connection between earthly penance and purification after death. He was concerned about what should happen when a sinner received absolution from a priest but died before penance (satisfaction) was completed. To him, it would be unfair to send such a person to the eternal fires of hell, but at the same time, he should not be sent to heaven along with those who had completed their program of penance. His solution was a new, although temporary, destination called purgatory. Here, souls of the dead could complete their penance and move on to the sin-free-zone of heaven. All Soul's day (commemorated on 2nd November) established in the 10th century, turned popular attention to the condition of the departed souls.

The idea of purgatory as a physical place (like heaven and hell) was 'born' in the late11th century. Medieval theologians concluded that purgatorial punishments consisted of material fire. These days, Catholic theologians regard 'fire' metaphorically and call it 'spiritual fire'.

In Dante's 14th century work The Divine Comedy, Purgatory is depicted as a mountain in the Southern Hemisphere. It is apparently the only land there. Souls who half-heartedly loved God and man find themselves at Mount Purgatory, where there are seven levels representing the Seven Deadly Sins (Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lust) with ironic punishments. For example, on the first level for Pride, the penitents are weighted down by huge stones. This forces them to look down in humility at the pavement. When they reach the top, souls will find themselves at the Garden of Eden itself. Thus, cleansed of all sins and made perfect, they will wait in this Earthly paradise before ascending to Heaven.

In 1999, Pope John Paul II referred to purgatory as 'a condition of existence', implying that it is most likely not an actual physical location or place, but is a state wherein 'those, after death exist in a state of purification, are already in the love of Christ who removes from them the remnants of imperfection.'