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Reclaiming heaven: what can we say about the afterlife?
From:
The Christian Century
| Date:
December 14, 2004| Author:
Ralls, Mark
| COPYRIGHT 2004 The Christian Century Foundation. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information
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WHEN RUDOLF BULTMANN observed in 1941 that "there is no longer any heaven in the traditional sense of the word," he was speaking accurately about the spirit of his age. For much of the 20th century, heaven has been treated as the theological equivalent of Timbuktu. With the phrase "from here to Timbuktu," popular speech reduced an actual city in Mali to a synonym for the impossibly far away, the totally foreign. Something similar has happened to heaven in mainline churches. We no l...
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