I've never heard about Peter judging or the gates etc. in all my religious upbringing and didn't realize this was an actual belief.
I just knew this pearly gates thing as a movie cliché, from Tom and Jerry to modern shows copying that idea.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Nope. Lots of stuff commonly believed by Christians isn't from the Bible. (Though sometimes they'll do a lot of mental gymnastics to assert that what they believe is from "the only reasonable interpretation" of the Bible.)
Just a few other things commonly believed by Christians not (or at least only dubiously) from the Bible:
- The seven deadly sins
- The nine circles of hell
- The seven levels of heaven
- Transubstantiation
- The trinity
my favourite misbelief is that people are already in heaven, and that hell is a 'place'.
What the bible claims will happen: second coming of Jesus happens; believers are resurrected, believers are raptured, and then war breaks out. Jesus fucks off with the angels and everyone left on Earth is "in hell" (permanently separated from God).
Everything about hell being a demonic underworld is from Dante's Divine Comedy.
Oh so we are all already in hell. Got it.
I already suspected as much.
If you're an atheist: we're in hell, literally.
If you're a Christian: we're where hell will be, when Jesus comes back with cigarettes and half a bottle of bourbon.
I love transubstantiation. It's basically mandatory to believe it to be a catholic. A lot don't understand it though. But if you find one that does, ask them to explain why it's not cannibalism.
Well, you see, Jesus is all god, but also all man. And we literally eat his flesh.
But it isn't cannibalism because ... look it just isn't, OK?
What a weird fucking question!
Because shut up, that's why.
Try this - We're humans, but Jesus is an aasimar. Depending on what rule set he's on, he's probably something like a divine soul sorcerer, too.
There's a surprising amount of modern Christian lore that actually comes from The Divine Comedy, the granddaddy of all ascended fanfic.
Don't forget Paradise Lost, also a great hit
The seven heavens is an extension of the seven named heavens of Judaism. Islam also has seven named heavens.
There is a reference to a third heaven in the Bible and a reference of ten heavens in a book that was not included by the Council of Nicaea.
Transubstantiation is kind of in the Bible. Matthew 26:26-28
While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the[a] covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
The discussion of transubstantiation is just how literal "my body/blood" is.
Transubstantiation is the doctrine that it ceases being bread and wine. Which St Paul kind of debunks in his first letter to the Corinthians at Chapter 11, where he refers to it as bread.
"For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes."
What you're talking about is consubstantiation, which is where the body and blood physically coexist in the bread and wine, which can be derived from the Bible.
Is it possible Paul is referring to the accidents, not the substance?
That humans eventually become angels.
Though, there was one human who did, in an apocryphal book. And then was elevated yet again to being a second diety; there were apparently strains of Christianity which were DUOtheistic! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enoch
Want a rabbit hole of apocryphal knowledge, start digging into gnosticism. It's like more internally consistent Christianity. Also depending on which flavor and particular interpretation, you could arrive at such truths as: Satan runs the church. God(old testament) is an asshole and a fool. Jesus (specifically the divine aspect Christ) is on a rescue mission to save God's mom, Sophia, from the prison world that is earth, that God made specifically to trap her. Judas is a tragic hero who has to kill his friend, Jesus, so that Christ can escape the prison world.
It's wild, it's a more interesting story than Christianity, and I can ABSOLUTELY see why most of these books were branded heresy.
Matthew 20:30
"At resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."
I think that's where the sentiment comes from. It's explicit in Mormonism (I think). In mainstream Christianity the saved don't become angels, they become like angels.
... they become like angels.
In the sense that they no longer have sexual or romantic urges, would be my reading of that passage. Angels have no belly buttons!
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This is much more of a list of stuff commonly believed by Catholics, not so much by Christianity as a whole.
Purgatory aswell
https://www.britannica.com/topic/purgatory-Roman-Catholicism
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The Trinity is clearly taught in the Bible. Sure, not in explicit Athanasius creed form, but Jesus even said "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).
Notice how "Name" is singular, implying the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is one thing, or at least equal. Jesus is referred to as God, the Father, and the Holy Spirit are also. And it's made clear that there is one God. The Athanasius Creed is just the Trinity clearly defined in a single text. Clarifying interpretation (like the Nicene Creed).
Seven deadly sins are based off of various sins listed in the Bible, but most of it has kind of been overhyped and overemphasized. It's useful for giving a rough idea of what sin is, but it's been meddled with over time.
Like watching people argue fanfic canon in here. 😅
That's exactly it, and I'm surprised more people don't see it that way. For such fiction, there will almost always be a bigger nerd that eclipses your own knowledge on any particular aspect of canon, and yet someone pays half-attention to a child's curriculum or reads a Dawkins or Hitchens book and it's treated as an insult to their intelligence to politely inform them of something they may have missed.
At least fanfic arguments tend to lean more civil, and are generally seen as an expression of zeal between peers who all enjoy the same thing, albeit with differing opinions on the details.
Minimize it all you like, but no one ever started a bloody war over "Encounter at Hotpoint". Yes, all human culture is alike in some ways. Very clever observation. I think you will find that most of the people engaged in this discussion are not even Christian. It's still significant and meaningful, if not to us personally, to the world we exist in.
This is one of the more interesting, informative and respectful discussions I have seen in a few days. Why shit on it. The age of edgy Internet atheism has passed. It's okay just to BE an atheist now. No one is coming for you. You can stop fighting.
You mean Encounter at Farpoint? Or is that just some reference I'm missing. I'm not gonna rule out starting a war over Encounter at Farpoint at some point in the furture though, if for no other reason than the sheer irony.
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So, Peter at the gates comes from a more or less literal interpretation from the passage where Jesus was making Peter the first pope. “To you I hand the keys to the kingdom of heaven….”
What Jesus was saying is that Peter got to decide who was in the Blood Ritual Cannibal Club,
Keep in mind, the books were written well after Jesus died, and the scriptures weren’t canonized until 300 years later; at the council of Nicaea- which was called specifically to “unify” the church. A lot of the choices about what was canon or not was specifically made to protect the bulk of the bishop’s authority (by drawing a straight lineage of succession from Peter.)
Ah. The Holy Bible. Literal word of God (Edited and abridged by man.)
Because even their perfect God can't write a perfect book.
Honestly, the whole thing becomes a LOT more intriguing when you start adding back in the non-canon books. And I can totally see why the church deemed them heretical in a lot of cases, they pretty well fly in the face of a powerful centralized church, and if you're in power, seeking to maintain it, it only makes sense to destroy them.
Like what?
I heard that in the bible their are other gods.
Back in the day when you were in Norway you worship the Norse gods. If that guy got on a boat and went to Greece he would worship the gods there, not the ones from home.
"You shall have no other gods before me"
What does that mean? Gods don't exist or they do but Yahweh is the most important? The second seems more likely to me.
Jesus was a rebel. He hated the state. Assuming he was a real person, he was a bastion of hope against an authoritative rule.
Considering literacy rates among the lower classes ~2000 years ago, it's not really surprising there was a lot of oral tradition until he was co-opted to control the people. And oral traditions usually lead to exaggerated elements, such as miracles.
Think about what we'd be saying about George Washington or any of the other founding fathers, if reading and writing weren't commonplace, and most of what we knew of him was oral tradition. Hell, even despite the writings, we still have a heavily romanticized view of them.
St Peter doesn't judge you! He's always depicted with a book that already contains the judgements. He has no real authority, he's just the gatekeeper.
I wonder if enough technicians go to heaven could the pearly gates can be automated so St Peter can finally retire.
Imagine being sent to hell over a database error
Going to name my kid [NULL] so he has a fighting chance.
Little Bobby Tables is gonna break the pearly gates
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Imagine being sent to hell to be a database administrator. MySQL and Access, obviously
THE FACTORY MUST GROW
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It comes from Matthew 16
15 “But what about you?” Jesus asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
[end quote]
So, yes, authority given to St Peter to "bind and loose" in heaven and on earth. How that's supposed to work alongside it being Jesus separating the sheep from the goats is anyone's guess.
The reason this takes place at the "pearly gates" is because the new Jerusalem descending from heaven in Revelation is described as having giant pearls for gates.
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Even "the bible" isn't "the bible".
"Protestant Bibles have only 39 books in the Old Testament, however, while Catholic Bibles have 46." source
Every denomination has a different Bible, with different books they consider Canon. For instance, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo church has a staggering 81 books. They consider the book of Enoch canon, which almost every other denomination considers apocryphal. Interestingly, the book of Enoch corroborates a lot of information from other apocryphal texts, such as the origin of nephilim.
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