What did Christians believe in hell throughout history?
After an introduction to the three main views on hell, here we present here the big names of history and what they defended on the subject. (Go to the introduction to view the index)
- La Didache.
- Or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles.
- Is an anonymous text dating from the late 1st or early 1st century.
- Making it one of the oldest non-canonical Christian texts.
- One of its central themes is moral teaching.
- Organized in “two ways”: the “lifestyle”.
- And the “path of death.
- ” In each sense it consists of a list of actions that characterize those who follow it.
The same theme is found in the epistle of Barnabas, another non-canonical text of the early Church. These early Christian writings confirm a close link between moral behavior and eternal destiny, but show little interest in detailing the eternal punishment they warn of.
Other texts, with Peter’s Revelation, go further, providing sensational descriptions of the punishments for certain sins. This quotation, for example, shows how adulterers would be punished: “And there were also women, hanging from their hair on boiling mud; these were the ones who had worshipped adultery. And the men who accompanied them in the corruption of adultery were hung by their feet, their heads sunk in the mud, saying, “We never believe we would get to this place. “This theme often reappears in the medieval conceptions of hell (including Dante’s), but it also finds a striking echo in the manuscripts of Cunr.
Justin Martyr converted from pagan philosophy to Christianity, and his most striking theological contribution was the formulation that the Eternal Logos, the Word of God, was active in “seminal” at all. This allowed Justin to defend the belief that Christians can seize all that is well expressed by the heathen: “Everything that has been well expressed in all men belongs to us Christians [?]. Because all the writers could see the realities darkly, through the word that had been sown and implanted in them. On the one hand seed and shared imitation take power into account, but on the other hand it is the very thing, whose participation and imitation depend on the grace that springs from it?
Although Justino has reservations about the implications of this understanding for the eternal destiny of pagans, his beliefs about the Logos inspired Christian speculation around the “virtuous pagans”, who could access the truth of Christ in one way or another, regardless of conventional means. that made Justin the father of inclusive tradition within Christianity.
Clement of Alexandria was perhaps the first Christian writer to speak of apocatastase, the return to God of all created beings; it was also he who proposed that the flames of judgment be purification, not destruction; however, he did not develop his convictions in a systematic way.
Irene, Bishop of Lyon, is widely known for his rebuttal of gnosticism. Did the Gnostics use the text of 1 Corinthians 15. 50?” Can’t flesh and blood inherit the kingdom of God?, Out of context, to reject Irene’s resurrection argued, declaring that Jesus assumed human nature precisely to redeem all aspects of humanity, including our bodies. Irene described the Fall as a hoax, in the hands of Satan, an innocent and childish Adam and Eve. eternal punishment emphasized the redemption of humanity as a whole through Jesus, believing in condemnation as destiny only for those who chose to reject redemption.
Tertullian, the vehement Christian apologist of North Africa, eloquently represented the most rigorous aspects of paleo-Christian thought, believed that serious sins committed after baptism could not be forgiven and, on the basis of this belief, rejected the baptism of children. In his writings against paganism, he noted that the eternal flames revived by the vestal virgins (aristocratic priestesses of the traditional Roman religion) were the perfect symbol of the destiny that awaited them after death.