John S. Spong

In the following viewpoint, John S. Spong takes issue with the traditional Christian concept of life after death. Spong contends that the early institutional church developed the notion of heaven and hell as a means to control human behavior and enforce conformity. After the nineteenth century, however, the idea of a God who metes out eternal reward or punishment for human actions was challenged by psychological and sociological insights into human motivation. Moreover, the conventional understanding of heaven and hell came to be seen as self-centered, as it assumes that good behavior is motivated by a selfish desire for a reward rather than for the sake of goodness itself. Heaven is a transcendent state of being in which one is selflessly open to God, the author maintains, not a place of future reward...