Jonathan Edwards Classical Hell

The idea of the Christian Hell has evolved from older beliefs. Originally Jews believed all dead

In the Bible, we understand hell as eternal separation from God and eternal torment. The normal American philosophy of hell means physical pain and suffering with unquenchable thirst; nonetheless, this theory may not stand as the truth.

eternal punishment. These newer books perceive hell as more of a concept than an actual place of punishment.

    Hell is said to be the worst place to ever exist, and it is greatly feared about on earth and in the minds of people. “Hell is gaping for them, the flames gather and flash about them, and would fain lay hold on them and swallow them up,” this illustrates personification in giving the flames of hell the live ability to hold and swallow us. It portrays how we will be consumed by our own sins if we do not act on them to better ourselves. If we let our sins pile up they will weigh us down and we will eventually be brought down to hell to pay for our wrong doings.

Jonathan Edwards, a negative and realistic man, focused on how God is a judgemental god and sinners will be put to a painful death, they should be fearful. He says in the first few lines of his speech, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, “So that, thus it is that natural men are held in the hand of God, over the pit of hell; they have deserved the fiery pit.” (Edwards, Pg. 23) Edwards implies that everyone deserves to be in hell and he goes on to say that God is an angry God and that no one had done anything to try to ease His anger. Edwards also played a large role in the Great Awakening. He wanted people to experience Christianity in an intense and emotional way. In his speech, he said, “O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against many of the damned in hell.” (Edwards, Pg. 26) Edward’s speech was opportunity knocking at everyone’s doors. He influenced people to want to be saved in a way that made many fearful of what could happen to them if they weren’t saved or a child of God. Edwards believed that God set the world in motion, but was not active in everyone’s life. Edwards believed that God created the world and

Throughout his work, Edwards repeats several messages and images. One image he repeated was the image of hell. He described hell multiple times to scare the reader and make them fearful about being thrown into hell. Edwards also repeated wrath of God several times to the reader to make them afraid of God and his power. He even says “who knows the power of God” (129). This seems to be the underlying theme of

hell for entirety. In his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Jonathan Edwards

In Jonathan Edwards sermon he gives a few depictions of Puritan ways, he first starts off to discuss eternal life, “dreadful pit of the glowing flames” (Edwards 111). Edwards is saying that there is a place for you if you sin and also a place for you if you obey and live in God’s light, the glowing flames are illustrating hell. He then progresses on to describe the relationships between God and people, “ It is true that

To illustrate, Edwards elucidates the next destination for the unrepentant Christians, “the world of misery, that lake of burning brimstone, is extended abroad under you. There is the dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open; and you have nothing to stand upon.”

Robert Herrick, an English poet, once said, “Hell is no other but a soundlesse pit, where no one beame of comfort peeps in it.” Picture any type of Hell with relief, happiness, or even the smallest crack of a smile. There is no place. In fact, one can only think of the complete opposite, whether it is a Hell filled with neglect, pain, disgust, or a never-ending life of horror. This is the place created by Dante Alighieri; The Inferno is exactly the type of Hell where no person would want to be. Even those who acted upon the lightest of sins suffered greatly. While each realm contained a different sinner, the punishment that each were forced to face was cruel, repulsive, and sometimes rather disgusting. Through grieving tears without an

On the contrary, this view stems from looking at the punishment from the standpoint of human justice systems. This is not a valid way to view hell as a punishment because God determined what acts deserved what punish meant a great number of years before the creation of any human justice systems. Although you must “die” an earthly to be sent to Hell, you are not “dead” while in Hell because you can not be tormented if you are dead. The unsaved will have everlasting consciousness which enables them to suffer the torment.

In the first place, Christians of the new and old age primarily believe that after death their souls live on in the grace of God's presence. For example, in the Bible it states, “Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies.”’ In Dante’s Inferno, Dante is shunned by God’s grace and is trying to find his way back. In the concluding lines of inferno; “...and beauteous shining of the Heavenly cars. And we walked out once more beneath the Stars” (Alighieri 287). These last words represent Dante climbing out of the nightmare he called Hell and he is gazing upon the beautiful stars of Heaven. Which represents a sense of hope as if his sins are forgiven. Heaven and hell in the Bible have a rather vague description of the details embedded in the experience you will face in the afterlife. All that is very well known and established is Heaven is a place of light and God's love and Hell is the land in which you experience eternal suffering for your sins. These loose interpretations of hell are greatly represented in Inferno because Dante takes these thoughts and roughly based Christian ideology of the after life into his own “Visions of Hell” Henceforth, the Christian faith and ideas are the base to many other religions. Dante’s Inferno a like Christianity has multiple representations of faith including an abundance of Christian Beliefs.

This is an idea that is mentioned several times in the Bible. In Deuteronomy 32:22 it talks about how the “fire is kindled by [God’s] anger” and how the fire “burns to the depths of Sheol”. These scriptures are almost exactly the same as their counterparts from Dante’s Inferno (Canto XIV): “there drifted down huge flakes of fire” (29), “flaming fireballs…floating to earth entire” (32-33), and “everlasting heat” (37). Fire is almost always what comes to mind when you think about hell. It is also a common theme in Dante’s Inferno.

Hell. The four lettered word that trembles in the throats of men and children alike; The images of suffering, flame pits and blood, the smell of burning flesh, the shrieking of those who have fallen from grace. For centuries man has sought out ways to cleanse his soul, to repent for his sins and possibly secure his passage into paradise, all evoked by the fear of eternal damnation and pain. The early 20th century philosopher and existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre saw life as an endless realm of suffering and a complete void of nothingness. His pessimistic ideals of life followed through to his beliefs on death, as death for him was a final nothingness. If death was a final nothingness, Sartre's view of hell was really a final

The idea of making up a "Hell", or inferno, is not an experience in which I, even in my wildest thoughts, had started to imagine. Call me an optimist, but the idea of imagining Hell never appealed to me. However, as I read through the Bible, I have come across many images of hell and will now attempt to create a partial picture.