[Maimonides] Thanks for the explanation - as usual!
Doesn't Matthew have more of Jesus's birth in it?
Both Matthew and Luke describe the circumstances of Jesus' birth (Mark and John introduce him as an adult). However, the stories they tell are very different and not easy to reconcile.
Did any expressly literary works (e.g. Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy) have a strong influence on serious theology? If so, which works are those and what influences did they have?
Don't include stuff like the Bible or Platonic dialogues in your definition of a literary work for the purpose of this question.
I'm not sure about this. I think that Dante was influential but mainly as a populariser of Thomism. I think that Paradise Lost was also influential, but on popular piety rather than on anything original. I can't really think of any examples of the kind of think you're talking about.
Do Muslims make better Christians?
I don't know what you mean by that.
1st Corinthians (and correct me if I'm wrong) was written about 15-20ish years after Christ's death. Does the fact that the Paul mentions witnesses that the people of the church who are reading this letter could still go and talk to give any extra credence to the factuality of what Paul is saying? By that I mean, if Paul didn't believe what he was saying to be true, do you think that he would have been so forthright in mentioning all of the witnesses...or could Paul have just been saying that hoping no one would go and try to collaborate his story about the witnesses?
I'm sure it lends credence to what he's saying. However, one of the problems with this passage is that the resurrection appearance to five hundred witnesses isn't mentioned in any other source whatsoever, so we know nothing about it. It seems inexplicable that Luke should not see fit to mention it in Acts, for example! This is just part of the notorious problem of getting some kind of consistent story by comparing all the resurrection accounts in the New Testament.
Can you be a christian without believing in the idea of heaven and/or hell?
No. That's a major part of Christian theology (granted, there are many disagreements about the exact details of Heaven and Hell among the denominations and sects) but I would say that to be a Christian you have to believe in Christ's redemptive work on the cross, that he died so that those who believe in him would have eternal life. Christ himself talks about eternal life, so I would think a Christian would be one that follow's Christ's own words.
If you take away Christ's resurrection (and I don't know anyone that believes in Christ's resurrection that doesn't believe that Christ's purpose was as a Savior) you don't have Christianity - you have just another crazy guy.
Granted, Plotinus may disagree with me. But I doubt you will find a Christian that would ever call someone who didn't believe in Heaven and Hell (or at least, Hell as an eternity without God) a fellow Christian.
I'm afraid I must disagree completely with Moss on this one. Let me be clear what "heaven" and "hell" actually are, to start with.
The primitive Christian belief was in the resurrection of the dead. Christians believed that, at the end of time, everyone would be physically raised from the dead, judged, and sent off to their eternal reward. This is the "new heaven and new earth" described at the end of Revelation. It is an idea that comes straight from Pharisaic theology, and this is why it is so important in Paul's writings, since he was a Pharisee and interpreted Jesus' resurrection as a Pharisee would: as a sign that the end of time was nigh.
However, as MagisterCultuum says, many people in antiquity believed that the soul was immaterial and immortal, and that it survives the death of the body. Many Christians also believed this and indeed just took it for granted. There are also some passages of the Bible that seem to support it (mainly the story of Dives and Lazarus). So a complex belief developed which combined these two ideas - the idea of the resurrection of the dead and the idea of the immortality of the soul. Many Christians believed that when you die, your soul goes somewhere nice (or nasty), but only temporarily. When Christ returns, your body is raised and reunited with your soul, and then you go off to your eternal reward (or punishment). We can see hints of this in earlier writers such as Tertullian, but it becomes fully explicit in Augustine.
On this view, "heaven" and "hell" refer
not to the individual's final destination but to the interim state after death but before resurrection. Augustine believed that the soul, in this state, is granted a sort of foretaste of its final destiny, so that the souls of those who will be saved exist in a blissful state and the souls of those who will be damned exist in a painful state.
These ideas became more codified in the Middle Ages, when purgatory was also introduced (this is another temporary state between death and resurrection, but an unpleasant one where the soul is purified to make it ready to be with God for all eternity). It also became official doctrine in the fourteenth century that the souls of the saints, currently in heaven (since saints skip purgatory), are directly united to God (and therefore worth praying to).
At the reformation, many Protestants argued that the whole immortality of the soul thing, complete with the doctrines of heaven, hell, and purgatory, was just paganism that had become unfortunately introduced into Christianity. The doctrine of "soul sleep" therefore became popular, according to which there is no life after death, no heaven, and no hell - until the time when Christ returns and everyone is resurrected. This, it was felt, is a more biblical view of the matter. Martin Luther subscribed to this and so did Matthew Tyndale, who wrote:
Matthew Tyndale said:
The true faith putteth the resurrection, which we be warned to look for every hour. The heathen philosophers, denying that, did put that the souls did ever live. And the pope joineth the spiritual doctrine of Christ and the fleshly doctrine of philosophers together; things so contrary that they cannot agree, no more than the Spirit and the flesh do in a Christian man. And because the fleshly-minded pope consenteth unto heathen doctrine, therefore he corrupteth the Scripture to establish it.
So the answer to Flying Pig's question is, yes, certainly one can be a Christian without believing in heaven and hell - at least if Martin Luther counts as a Christian. Personally I think that the notion that resurrection is biblical and immortality of the soul is pagan is too simplistic, although there is truth to it. However, I also think that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is much harder to defend rationally than the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. It seems to me more probable that God should, through his omnipotence, raise the dead at the end of time in one big miracle than that we should all have an immortal soul, with all the well-known difficulties associated with that view.
Moss seems to have taken the question to be about merely life after death, though. Can one be a Christian without believing in
any kind of life after death? Well, there are certainly people who call themselves Christians who do so - Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith people are the most obvious, but I think there are plenty of others, including many who believe in the objective existence of God and other traditional metaphysical doctrines, who still don't believe in either the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body. I don't see why they shouldn't be called Christians for that. They would, of course, consider the Bible's talk of "eternal life" and "resurrection" to be mythological language which expresses something more immediate and earthly. Most existentialist theologians (which is to say, most theologians of the middle part of the twentieth century) would probably adopt an interpretation along those lines. It's just part of demythologisation.
Finally, as for the fate of the damned, there is of course an ancient tradition in Christianity that divine punishment is temporary and that ultimately everyone will be saved, even those languishing in hell or in the pit of fire described in Revelation. There are plenty of arguments for this from a Christian perspective which I consider to be very good. Famous ancient universalists include Clement of Alexandria (probably), Origen (probably), Titus of Bostra, and St Gregory of Nyssa. Later, this view was largely suppressed, at least in the western church, but obviously in modern times it has become far more popular. I should think the vast majority of theologians in modern times have not subscribed to the doctrine of genuinely eternal damnation. Some of those might subscribe to the doctrines of annihilationism or conditional immortality that MagisterCultuum mentions, but I think that most probably just think that ultimately everyone will be saved - since that is what God wills, and God's will cannot be thwarted.
(Of course, hardline Reformed traditionally deny that God wills the salvation of all - early modern theologians such as Pierre Jurieu argued that God actively wants most people to be damned - but I don't think you'll find many defenders of that view today.)
