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TechnoratiSo, many who say they believe in heaven are "projecting from their very best therapeutic experiences into eternity," not meeting God "on his own terms," he thinks.
A related question is who enters heaven.
On that, Americans are predictably expansive. A Newsweek/beliefnet.com poll last year asked, "Can a good person who isn't of your religious faith go to heaven or attain salvation?" Fully 79 percent said yes, with somewhat lower percentages among evangelicals and among non-Christians.
In Catholicism, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) declared that persons who do not know the Christian gospel but sincerely seek God "can attain to everlasting salvation." The church decided that requiring explicit Christian faith was too pessimistic, said U.S. theologian Cardinal Avery Dulles, writing in First Things magazine.
But now, he cautioned, "thoughtless optimism is the more prevalent error," with many Christians mistakenly assuming that "everyone, or practically everyone, must be saved."
Christians are permitted to "hope that very many, if not all, will be saved," Dulles said. Still, the New Testament teaches "the absolute necessity of faith for salvation" and says that each of us faces just two possibilities, either "everlasting happiness in the presence of God" or "everlasting torment in the absence of God."
