Hell Hath No Fury
With fire and brimstone out of fashion, modern thinking says the netherworld isn't so hot after all
Meanwhile, despite the efforts of the pope and others to revitalize the doctrine for the 21st century, many theological thinkers continue to reject any notion of hell that smacks of the supernatural. For them, hell's frightful imagery is paled by the flames of Hiroshima and the Holocaust. The only real hell, they say, is in the here and now. "Once we discovered we could create hell on Earth," says John Dominic Crossan, professor emeritus at DePaul University in Chicago, "it became silly to talk about it in a literal sense." Rather than looking to a hellish inferno in the afterlife, says Barry Kogan, professor of philosophy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, "the main concern is retribution in this life. The hottest fires of hell probably burn in the human heart, in the harmful ways we treat each other." And while some modern thinkers, like Alice K. Turner, author of The History of Hell, expect the traditional doctrine to keep fading from religious teaching, "as a flexible metaphor" for human evil, says Turner, hell "is far too valuable to lose."
In no small measure, hell's future and form in modern religious life are likely to hinge on its efficacy in influencing moral behavior. Can the threat of hell prod people toward piety and virtue? In seeking to retrieve the doctrine from the trash heap of modern skepticism, both the pope and his more conservative Protestant co-religionists seem convinced that it can. "If there is no God, no heaven, no hell," says Prof. Jerry L. Walls of Asbury Theological Seminary, writing in Christianity Today, "there simply is no persuasive reason to be moral." Modern theories of moral development and classical Greek philosophy, however, would seem to argue in another direction. At a primitive level of development--with children, for example--punishment and reward can elicit good moral choices, observes Reese. "The threat of hell basically appeals to people at that level." With teenagers and mature adults, however, says Reese, it is seldom effective. Nonetheless, he says, "there are times when we fall back into primitive behavior, when we want to kill somebody. If hell keeps us from doing it, I say, 'Bless hell.' "
Yet whether it is a help or a hindrance, and whether it has a ZIP code or is merely an ephemeral state of mind, hell undeniably has left a lasting imprint on the religious imagination. And whether one clings to frightful visions of fire and brimstone, searches for new, more-cerebral interpretations, or dismisses it all as imaginative folklore, hell's powerful images will no doubt continue to loom over humanity, as they have for more than 2,000 years, as a grim and ominous reminder of the reality of evil and its consequences.
See how your views about hell compare to other Americans' at www.usnews.com.
Do you think there is a hell?
Yes 64 pct.
No 25 pct.
Don't know 9 pct.
What comes closest to your idea of hell?
1997 NOW
Hell is a real place where people
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