Very briefly, let me try to express my views on the issues you brought up Stacy:

1) The question of ‘eternal destination’ is definitely a valid and interesting one. My understanding is simply that it was not a particularly pressing one for the NT authors, and so my views in this realm are necessarily be somewhat tentative. The most concrete thing the NT says is that there will be a final bodily resurrection from the dead and a final judgment.

2) Andrew—do you know of any threads that touch on that old creedal phrase of Jesus ‘descending into hell’? If not, what are your thoughts on the subject?

3) Speaking for myself, I take ‘heaven’ to be God’s realm (in contrast not with hell, but rather, with Earth—the realm of humanity). So I would say that God is ‘in heaven’ right now. I would not say that ‘heaven’ is ‘where we go when we die’—I’m a physicalist, so I believe that when we die, we’re dead. Period. The hope of Christ-followers, as has been said elsewhere, is not some disembodied bliss, but rather embodied, resurrected, existence on the ‘new’ Earth, where the veil separating heaven and earth will have been done away with (‘God’s dwelling will be with humankind’). As for ‘hell’… I tend towards something like annihilationism, or some modified version of it (cf. Lewis or Boyd)—certainly not some kind of ‘eternal conscious torment’. The best we can do Scripturally speaking is extrapolate from Jesus’ parables about outer darkness, or being outside of the city (though this is an extrapolation, I’m sure Andrew will remind us).

4) All I meant by ‘judgment talk’ was that the emerging church movement seems to be informed by scholars who are grappling with the apocalyptic genre, and arguing that cosmic language can be put to use in a very immediate context—rendering obsolete dispensational (read ‘Left Behind’) takes on 2nd Thessalonians or Revelation (for example). For many of us here, this will result is some kind of modified, partial preterism (or partially-fulfilled eschatology in some way). Andrew’s talk of ‘eschatological horizons’ here is quite helpful—I’m sure there’s plenty to be found on eschatology if you just poke around the site for a little bit.

I’m quite new to this as well, so these are tentative views (but just because they’re tentative doesn’t mean that they can’t already be far more satisfying and logical that more traditional views… of course). But anyway, those are my two cents.

Your thoughts?

-Daniel-