Hell Hath No Fury
With fire and brimstone out of fashion, modern thinking says the netherworld isn't so hot after all
Indeed, the 20th century was nearly the death of hell. Lampooned by modern intellectuals and increasingly sidelined by preachers preferring to dwell on more uplifting themes, the threat of post-mortem punishment of the impenitent in an eternal lake of fire all but disappeared from the religious mainstream by the 1960s. Theological discourse on the subject at the nation's divinity schools almost evaporated. And while polls showed that the majority of Americans professed to believe in hell's existence, almost no one thought he would go there. Observing the dearth of fire-and-brimstone rhetoric, Marty of the University of Chicago was moved to remark a few years back that "hell has disappeared and no one noticed."
Image and reality. In outlining his view of hell last summer, John Paul II articulated a long-standing, if little emphasized, Roman Catholic teaching. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which was updated and revised in 1992, proclaims that "the chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God." To die in "mortal sin" without repenting, says the catechism, "means remaining separated from him forever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell.' " And while the catechism cites without comment New Testament passages that refer to the punishment of hell as "eternal fire," the pontiff described these as "images" that are used "figuratively" and that must be "correctly interpreted."
Moreover, the pope declared that hell is "not a punishment imposed externally by God" but is the natural consequence of the unrepentant sinner's choice to live apart from God. "The thought of hell," said the pope, "must not create anxiety or despair" but is a "necessary and healthy reminder of freedom." This modern and more benign view of hell, scholars say, reflects a shift in much of Christian theology during the past 150 years away from literalism and physical imagery toward more psychological metaphors and symbols. In his own lectures and homilies, Happel of Catholic University says he speaks of hell in terms of "the reality of self-isolation and being so completely turned in on yourself that you have no relationships at all." It is an image that the noted Christian apologist C. S. Lewis applied with dramatic effect in his 1946 novella The Great Divorce. "To me, that's a pretty powerful metaphor for separation from God," says Happel. "As a preacher, I find it much more effective than talking about physical fires."
By the same token, scholars say, to people living in early Christian centuries, infernal images of hell no doubt conveyed quite effectively the horrific consequences of rejecting God. "One thing people feared most then was the burning and pillaging of their towns," says the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit journal America. "If you had described hell to them in terms of relationships and psychological experiences like loneliness, they wouldn't have known what you were talking about."
Old and new. To reimagine hell in a modern idiom, say Reese and others, is not as freewheeling a process as it may seem. "It's not as if we are simply saying, 'We don't believe in the fires of hell anymore, so let's make up something new,' " says Happel. Rather, it reflects the same careful process of doctrinal development that has been part of church tradition from the beginning: It took the Christian community 300 years to come up with the doctrine of the Trinity at Nicaea and an additional 125 years to articulate the dual nature of Christ at Chalcedon. "In every generation," Happel says, "the church must interpret and apply the Scriptures in the context of contemporary culture if we are to be faithful to the text as it is meant."
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