ABSTRACT
Writers of the Enlightenment used to say that the hold of religion on people's minds depends on fear of hellfire. Today, many Christians think it incompatible with God's goodness to inflict eternal torment on any creature, however wicked, and hellfire sermons have gone out of fashion. The New Testament introduces a completely new idea: that Christ has eternal life from God. That Christ himself has a kind of life which transcends death is shown by his anastasis: he not only came back, but came back with a kind of life superior to that of a mortal organism. Christ is a member of the Church. The roles of priest and king are social roles which he has within a society. Christ's limbs literally shared in his life; and if another human being had given Christ a blood transfusion or a kidney, that blood or kidney would have come to share literally in his life.
