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Is Hell Hot?
“AT SOME point in the nineteen-sixties, Hell disappeared.” So said British author David Lodge in his book Souls and Bodies, and his words reflect the thinking of many Catholics and Protestants during the decades following the second world war. For a time, many of the mainstream churches themselves soft-pedaled their official doctrine of a fiery hell in their efforts to adapt to modern thought patterns.
The idea of punishment after death was especially unacceptable to people because the notion of sin itself had become cloudy in their minds. Interviewed in 1984, Rome’s Cardinal Ratzinger said: “Our civilization . . . focuses on mitigating circumstances and alibis in the attempt to take away people’s sense of guilt, of sin . . . , that very reality with which belief in hell and Purgatory is associated.”
Is it possible today to believe in the reality of sin without accepting the doctrine of punishment after death in purgatory and hell? A recent book, Abrégé de la foi catholique (Summary of the Catholic Faith), prefaced by French Cardinal Decourtray, put the question squarely: “Is it necessary to believe in hell?” The answer: “It is not possible to elude the frightening question of hell.” The work Vatican Council II—More Postconciliar Documents (1982) quotes “The Credo of the People of God” as stating: “We believe . . . [that] those who have responded to the love and compassion of God will go into eternal life. Those who have refused them to the end will be consigned to the fire that is never extinguished.”
So, in spite of all theological efforts to prove the contrary, hellfire is still very much a part of official Catholic dogma. Yet A New Dictionary of Christian Theology (1983) speaks of the “embarrassment” and the “discomfort” that the doctrine of eternal damnation causes many members of Christendom’s churches today. They have trouble reconciling this dogma with the notion of a God of love. They wonder: ‘Is a hot hell really a Christian and Biblical doctrine? If not, where did it originate?’
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Bourges Cathedral, France
