The Christian Doctrine of Hell Part 1

The Christian Doctrine of h.e.l.l.

by Joseph M. Wheeler.

THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF h.e.l.l

I WOULD not willingly quit this world without having said my say upon the most terrible of all its superst.i.tions, the doctrine of eternal torments--which Archdeacon Farrar describes as the "hideous incubus of atrocious conceptions"--and which, in my own experience, is the cause of appalling apprehensions and even insanity in the minds of the sensitive and weak-minded.

If there is a h.e.l.l, that is the most important fact in the universe.

Compared with an eternity of torment, all that this little life has to offer is but as nothing. If there is no h.e.l.l, then, it seems to me, the faith in Jesus is vain, for no such salvation as that offered by orthodox Christianity is necessary. Not only is the doctrine of eternal torments clearly taught in Scripture, but it is, as I shall show, historically bound up with the creed of Christendom.

It may be said, why attack a superst.i.tion confessedly falling into decay? Satan, that once excellent scapegoat for all misdeeds, is superannuated. h.e.l.l is never mentioned to ears polite. Since Freethought came into the world its temperature has considerably decreased. The brimstone business threatens to become obsolete. It is none the less the corner-stone of the whole system, and when it finally collapses it will bring down other doctrines with it. The Salvationist, no less than the Jesuit, knows its power. As the old beadle said, "A kirk without a h.e.l.l is'na worth a d.a.m.n."

Upon the healthy-minded the doctrine of eternal torments will soon have no more effect than water upon a duck's back. But mental health and strength are not the inheritance of all. If the dogma was not taught until minds were mature enough to examine it, it might safely be left; but while it is continually taught to infancy, to seek to eradicate it is the duty of those who regard it as a pernicious error. To me it appears that the best way to do this is to show what the doctrine has actually been in the days when Christianity was unquestioned. Christians are becoming ashamed of their h.e.l.l--which they rarely realise as possibly the fate of themselves or their friends; that way madness lies.

They cannot get rid of the definite statements in the New Testament, but they avoid dwelling on them, or attempt to construe them figuratively.

h.e.l.l was hot enough when religion was powerful. As it declines it is discovered that h.e.l.l is not so terrible after all.

Modern exegesis, striving to explain h.e.l.l away, only steps in when conscience and freethought have declared against it. It is taught in the plainest terms. Take but the pa.s.sage, Matt. xxv. 46, "These shall go away into _everlasting_ punishment, but the righteous into life _eternal_." It is said everlasting does not mean lasting for ever, and in some cases this might be granted, but surely it is a different matter when eternal punishment is, without any limitation, directly compared with eternal life, and the same word is applied to both. Again, exactly the same expression which is used to signify the eternity of G.o.d, that of his being _for ever and ever_, as in Rev. iv. 9, v. 14, x. 6, and xv.

7, is used of the torments of those in h.e.l.l in Rev. xiv. 11.

In the explanation of the parable of the tares, Jesus tells his prosaic disciples: "The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world" (Matt. xiii. 39-40). There we see the simile is used to ill.u.s.trate h.e.l.l; not h.e.l.l used as a simile to ill.u.s.trate something else.

The early Christians undoubtedly believed in a literal Devil, angels, and end of the world, and with equal certainty in a literal h.e.l.l and material fire. Yet we are now asked to believe that when Jesus spoke of h.e.l.l, "where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched" (Mark ix.

46), since there is _no_ fire it cannot require quenching.

Jesus relates, in the most matter-of-fact way (Luke xvi.), that a certain rich man died, and "in h.e.l.l," "being in torments," he lifted up his eyes and beheld Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. He cried for a drop of water to cool his tongue, "for I am tormented in this flame." The man had committed no other recorded offence than faring sumptuously, yet he was met with the stern response, "between us and you there is a great gulf fixed." He then asks that his brethren may be warned of his fate, and this, too, is denied. The voice of humanity cried from h.e.l.l, and heaven answered with inhumanity. If this picture of heaven and h.e.l.l is true, G.o.d and his saints are monsters of infamy. If false, what other "revealed" doctrine can be credited, since this is so devised for the benefit of those who trade in terrorism? If h.e.l.l is a metaphor, of which there is no indication in the narrative, so also is heaven. Give up material fire and brimstone, you must resign the bodily resurrection, the visible coming of Christ, and the New Jerusalem. Allegorise h.e.l.l, you make heaven unreal. A figurative Devil suggests a figment G.o.d.

The Revelation of St. John expressly speaks of the worshippers of the beast, or enemies of G.o.d, being "tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever" (xiv. 10-11).

Nice enjoyment, this, for the elect. Fancy parents regarding the eternal anguish of their children! Converted wives looking on while their unbelieving husbands are tormented and "have no rest day nor night" in "the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone"! Picture it, think of it, Christian, and then offer praises to your G.o.d for having provided this place of eternal torture for some other than yourself.

Who go to h.e.l.l? According to the Bible and the creeds the immense majority of mankind. "Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it" (Matt. vii. 14). Many are called but few chosen; and there is no other name under heaven, save that of Jesus, whereby men can be saved. The proportion of those who lived before Christ must be, even according to Bible chronology, immensely larger than all who have lived since, and of these now, after eighteen centuries of the divine religion, not more than a third of the world's inhabitants are even nominal Christians. When we consider how few Christians are really believers, and how scarcely any of them attempt to carry out the precepts of their Master, it must be allowed that the population of h.e.l.l is out of all proportion to that of heaven.

The doctrine of the church has been "He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be d.a.m.ned." The idea of this text has probably done more harm to humanity than it has benefited from the rest of the gospel, for it has countenanced all the ill-will and persecution that has everywhere followed in the train of Christianity. I know it will be said that this pa.s.sage, indeed the whole of the sixteenth of Mark from the ninth verse to the end, is wanting in some of the ancient ma.n.u.scripts; but while the Authorised version is circulated as the word of G.o.d, it is properly cited. And indeed if this doctrine is discarded there is much else that must go with it.

Freethought having discredited the doctrine of eternal torments as absurd and dishonoring to G.o.d, stress is now laid upon pa.s.sages indicating a more hopeful doctrine. To one who looks at the general tenor of Scripture, these are of no weight in opposition to the clear and emphatic declarations I have cited. There is no express statement that punishment hereafter will be terminable. On the contrary, the evident teaching is that as the tree falls so it must lie. No hope is extended to the rich man in h.e.l.l.

That the current belief in the time of Jesus was in the eternity of punishments, we have the testimony of Josephus, who declares this both of the Pharisees and the Essenes.* We have also the testimony of the Fathers. Clement, the apostolic father, said to be the "fellow laborer"

of Paul, mentioned in Philip iv. 3, says in his Second Epistle, chap.

viii., "Once cast into the furnace of fire there is no longer any help for it. For after we have gone out of the world no further power of confessing or repenting will belong to us." Polycarp, when threatened with martyrdom, is said to have made answer (Ep. to Philippians, xi.), "Thou threatenest me with fire which burneth for an hour, and after a little is extinguished, but art ignorant of the fire of the coming judgment and of eternal punishment reserved for the unG.o.dly." Ignatius too speaks of "the unquenchable fire" (Ep. to Ephesians, 16).

*Antiq. xviii. 1-3; Wars ii, 8, 11-14.

All the early Fathers considered the fire of h.e.l.l as a real material fire. Justin Martyr, who wrote before the collection of the Gospels, said in his first Apology, chap. xxi., "We believe that those who live wickedly and do not repent are punished in everlasting fire." In numerous other pa.s.sages he refers to punishment in eternal fire; and says (First Apol., chap. hi), "then shall they repent, when it profits them not." Athenagoras, too (chap. x.x.xvi.), declares that "the body which has ministered to the irrational impulses of the soul, and to its desires, will be punished along with it."

St. Irenaeus, the first of the Fathers who definitely alludes to the four Gospels, says, in his work against heresies (bk. ii., chap. 28, -- 7), "That eternal fire is prepared for sinners, both the Lord has plainly declared, and the rest of the Scriptures demonstrate. And that G.o.d foreknew that this would happen, the Scriptures do in like manner demonstrate, since He prepared eternal fire from the beginning for those who were afterwards to transgress His commandments." What a blessed thing is Christianity to reveal such a nice loving Father as this!

So Bishop Hippolytus, in his _Refutation of all Heresies_, bk. x. chap.

30, speaks of "the boiling flood of h.e.l.l's eternal lake of fire, and the eye ever fixed in menacing glare of [wicked] angels chained in Tartarus as punishment for their sins."

Tertullian, in his treatise on the Resurrection of the Flesh, chap.

x.x.xv., declares "The fire of h.e.l.l is eternal--expressly announced as an everlasting penalty," and he asks, "whence shall come the weeping and gnashing of teeth if not from _eyes and teeth?_" In his treatise, _De Anima_, chap. vii., he thus alludes to the story of Dives. "Do you suppose that this end of the blessed poor man and the miserable rich man is only imaginary? Then why the name of Lazarus in this narrative, if the circ.u.mstance is not in [the category of] a real occurrence?" This Christian Father absolutely gloats over the prospect of witnessing these torments:--"Which sight gives me Joy? which rouses me to exultation?--as I see so many ill.u.s.trious monarchs, whose reception into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of their exaltation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the Christian name, in fires more fierce than those which in the days of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ!" He exultingly continues: "I shall have a better opportunity then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of viewing the play-actors much more 'dissolute' in the dissolving flame; of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of witnessing the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows."* An echo of this famous pa.s.sage may be traced in Cardinal Newman's sermon "On Neglect of Divine Calls and Warnings."

St. Cyprian, in his address to Demetria.n.u.s, says: "We are rendered patient by our security of a vindication to come. The innocent give place to the guilty; the guileless acquiesce in their punishments and tortures, certain and a.s.sured that anything we suffer will not remain unavenged.... What joy for the believers, what sorrow for the faithless; to have refused to believe here, and now be unable to return in order that they may believe! h.e.l.l ever burning will consume the accursed, and a devouring punishment of lively flames; nor will there be that from whence their torments can ever receive either repose or end. Souls with their bodies will be saved unto suffering in tortures infinite. There that man will be seen by us for ever, who made us his spectacle here for a season; what brief enjoyment those cruel eyes received from the persecutions wrought upon us will be balanced against a spectacle eternal." And the savage saint backs up his pleasant prospect with "Holy Scripture."

* De Spectaculis, c. 30. I have quoted the rendering in the orthodox Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. xi., pp. 34-35.

Gibbon's version is more forcible.

Lactantius, in his Divine Inst.i.tutes, bk. vi., chap. 3, contrasts the immortality promised to the righteous with "everlasting punishment threatened to the unrighteous." In bk. vii. chap. 21, he says, "because they have committed sins in their bodies, they will again be clothed with flesh that they may make atonement in their bodies; and yet it will not be that flesh with which G.o.d clothed man, like this our earthly body, but indestructible and abiding for ever, that it may be able to hold out against tortures and everlasting fire."

St. Chrysostom represents the torments of the d.a.m.ned in a variety of horrid pictures. He says: "But if you are speaking against luxury, and introduce discourse by the way concerning h.e.l.l, the thing will cheer you and beget much pleasure. Let us not then avoid discourses concerning h.e.l.l, that we may avoid h.e.l.l. Let us not banish the remembrance of punishment, that we may escape punishment. If the rich man had reflected upon that fire, he would not have sinned; but because he never was mindful of it, therefore he fell into it."*

* Homily on 2 Thess. i., 1-2.

In Homily on 2 Thess. i., 9-10, "It is not only not milder, but much more terrible than is threatened." Hear the golden-mouthed Father (Homily on Heb. i., 1-2): "Let us then consider how great a misery it must be to be for ever burning, and to be in darkness, and to utter unnumbered groanings, and to gnash the teeth and not even to be heard.... Think what it is when we are burning with all the murderers of the whole world neither seeing, nor being seen.... Wherefore I entreat you," continues the saint, "to be _ever_ revolving these things with yourselves, and to submit to the pain of the words, that we may not have the things to undergo as our punishment." Again he says (Hom. Heb. xi.

37-38), "Why, what are ten thousand years to ages boundless and without end? Not so much as one drop to the boundless ocean.... Were it not well to be cut [by scourging] times out of number, to be slain, to be burned, to undergo ten thousand deaths, to endure everything whatsoever that is dreadful both in word and deed?"*

Origen, for considering that the punishment of the wicked consisted in separation from G.o.d, was condemned as heretical by the Council of Carthage, A.D. 398, and afterwards by other Councils.

St. Augustine (_City of G.o.d_, bk, xxi. chap. 17) censures Origen for his merciful view, and says "the Church, not without reason, condemned him for this and other errors." In the same book (chap. 23) this great father declares that everlasting is used by Jesus (Matt. xxv. 41) as meaning "for ever" and nothing else than "endless duration." He argues, with ingenious varieties of reasoning, to show how the material bodies of the d.a.m.ned may withstand annihilation in everlasting fire. He held that h.e.l.l was in the centre of the earth, and that G.o.d supplied the central fire with earth by a miracle. Jerome and the other orthodox Fathers no less held to a material h.e.l.l.

In the middle ages Christian literature was mainly composed of the legendary visions of saints, in which views across the gulf had a large share.

The Devil was represented bound by red-hot chains, on a burning gridiron in the centre of h.e.l.l. The screams of his never-ending agony made its rafters to resound; but his hands were free, and with these he seized the lost souls, crushed them like grapes against his teeth, and then drew them by his breath down the fiery cavern of his throat. Demons with hooks of red-hot iron plunged souls alternately into fire and sea. Some of the lost were hung up by their tongues, others were sawn asunder, others gnawed by serpents, others beaten together on an anvil and welded into a single ma.s.s, others boiled and then strained through a cloth, others twined in the embrace of demons whose limbs were of flame.**

* Library of the Fathers, pp. 15-16.

* Lecky, History of European Morals, vol. ii., p. 222.

Is it strange that the ages when Christian barbarism overcame Pagan civilisation were known as the Dark Ages? "George Eliot" well says that "where the tremendous alternative of everlasting torments is believed in--believed in so that it becomes a motive determining the life--not only persecution, but every other form of severity and gloom are the legitimate consequences."

Grandly horrible is the reflection in Dante's _Inferno_ of the doctrine of h.e.l.l, held in the palmiest days of Christianity. The gloom of that poem is relieved by a few touches of compunction at the doom of n.o.ble heathen and of tenderness for those who sinned through love; proving the poet superior to his creed. Yet consider the punishment of heretics, buried in burning sepulchres while from their furnace tombs rise endless wails. Think of the terrible inscription, _Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate_. Remember that Dante placed in this h.e.l.l his political opponents, and how he depicts himself as striking the faces and pulling the hair of the tormented; then answer, is not this great poem a lasting monument of Christian barbarity?

St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, treats of the punishment of h.e.l.l under the t.i.tle _Poena d.a.m.natorum_,* and teaches (1) that the d.a.m.ned will suffer other punishments besides that of fire; (2) that the "undying worm" is remorse of conscience; (3) that the darkness of h.e.l.l is physical darkness, only so much light being admitted as will allow the lost to see and apprehend the punishments of the place; (4) that as both body and soul are punished, the fire of h.e.l.l will be a material fire, of the same nature as ordinary fire but with different properties; and the place of punishment, though not certainly known, is probably under the earth.

Hagenbach, in his _History of Doctrines_, 209, note cliv., says of the blessed, "They witness the suffering of the d.a.m.ned without being seen by the latter," and refers to Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas.

Even the mystic Suso expressed himself as follows:--

'Give us a millstone,' say the d.a.m.ned, 'as large as the whole earth, and so wide in circ.u.mference as to touch the sky all around and let a little bird come once in a hundred thousand years and pick off a small particle of the stone, not larger than the tenth part of a grain of millet, and after another hundred thousand years let him come again, so that in ten hundred thousand years he would pick off as much as a grain of millet, we wretched sinners would desire nothing but that the stone might have an end, and thus our pains also; yet even that cannot be.'**

* Summae Suppl. qu 97.

** Quoted in Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, 210, vol.

ii., p. 152

The work of Father Pinamonti, ent.i.tled _h.e.l.l Opened to Christians_, has been for over two hundred years one of the most popular among Catholic Christians. It has also circulated among Protestants. An English version, with horrible pictures of the torments of the d.a.m.ned, has gone through many editions. We recommend its purchase to those who complain of the ill.u.s.trations in the _Freethinker_, or who desire to see how savage the Christian religion is at bottom. The Christian Father of course accepts the literal meaning of h.e.l.l fire. He says (p. 28): "Every one that is d.a.m.ned will be like a lighted furnace, which has its own flames in itself; all the filthy blood will boil in the veins, the brains in the skull, the heart in the breast, the bowels within the unfortunate body, surrounded with an abyss of' fire out of which it cannot escape."

_The Sight of h.e.l.l_, by the Rev. J. Fumiss, C.S.S.R., is another popular work issued "permissu superiorum" among "Books for Children and Young Persons." A more atrocious composition it is difficult to conceive. The agony is piled on as though the imagination of the writer revelled in the description of torture. One specimen, a mild one, will suffice:--