What did Christians believe in hell throughout history?
After an introduction to the three main views on hell, we present here the great names in history and what they stood for on the subject. (Go to the introduction to see the index)
Jerome (around 347-420)
Jerome was influenced by Origen in his early writings and would have defended the position that all the baptized in the end would be saved and that only demons and non-Christians would be damned for eternity. This belief was rejected by Augustine and Jerome himself. in his last years, he turned radically against Origen’s positions.
Hippopotamus Augustine (354-430)
Augustine, no doubt the most influential theologian of the Western Church, defended the doctrine of eternal punishment, pitting followers of Origins against others who embraced a more “purgative” hell. (Augustine also believed in some form of purgatory, but to him it was fundamentally different from hell. ) Perhaps most important was his doctrine of original sin and the belief that fallen human beings constitute a cursed mass, all condemned by sin. adam and Eve, which was transmitted to them in the form of corruption of the will. God in his grace chooses human beings from among them?condemned, who in turn share the salvation that was won by Christ at the time he saved humanity from the hands of the devil.
Maximum Confessor (circa 580-662)
Maximus is widely known for defending the doctrine that Jesus has a different human will than his divine will, as well as understanding that Jesus’ humanity has saving implications for the redemption of human beings. The theology of Theximo was deeply shaped by the theology of the Capped Fathers, including Gregory of Nissa, and consequently also by Origins. Maximus used the term apocatastase, but he also made his reservations, declaring that human beings can reject God’s grace and experience rather than ‘welfare’. He seemed to believe that all creation would return to God’s primitive knowledge, but for those who choose to reject it, this knowledge will not be a source of joy, but of sadness. However, the cosmic implications of his Christology are such that, in the end, everyone will return to God. This return process requires purification, and? And sadness will in the end become “welfare”?And joy.
Middle Ages (c 500-1500 A. D. )
Medieval times saw a change of direction: the emphasis placed by the early church on the “last things” presented by the scriptures, the Second Coming of Christ, the general resurrection and the final judgment, has given way to a new concentration. , now in the afterlife. Until the 1940s and even after, Jesus’ return was always expected as imminent, so it was generally understood that those who died in these intermediate generations were sleeping or waiting for the resurrection. written during this first period about the immediate fate of those who died before Christ’s return.
However, as the Second Coming began to seem more distant, Christians increasingly focused on the doctrine of the immediate judgment of each soul after death. The book of Revelation in particular began to serve as a guide for the Christian imagination about the destiny of people. This post-mortem emphasis leads to a new literary genre, grotesque and always with an excess of illustrations: these were the visions of the journey to the other world. Dante’s divine comedy represented the pinnacle of the genre. Did you spend much more time, in general, describing hell than purgatory or even paradise?and among the most common figures were fire that burned forever, snakes, boiling cauldrons, eternal ice fields, boiling sulphurous rivers and torture inflicted by demons.
Often, these imaginary journeys intended to show readers hell from the point of view of someone who had died (recently), had visited the realm of the dead and then returned to report what he had seen. The purpose of these stories was almost always to encourage the reader or listener to lead a morally good life on earth, avoiding sins that can condemn them forever.
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