The Ideas of Hell and Purgatory: A Wide Shift from Then to Now.

Authors Avatar

Natalie Lupo                                                                                Lupo 1

Mrs. Ponikvar

Honors/ AP English I, Period 3

November 25, 2003

The Ideas of Hell and Purgatory: A Wide Shift from Then to Now

        “Hell has probably caused more personal anxiety and distress than any other Christian belief. Hell has also motivated many Christians to follow the Great Commission and attempt to convert the world to Christianity” (“Various Views of Hell: As seen by Conservative Christians”).

        The word “hell” derives from the Pagan Norse Queen of the Underworld, Hel. When Christianity first evolved, the church taught that nearly everyone descended to this similar place to earth after dying. Included in this belief were the Pagan Gods and Goddesses from the Middle East, Rome, Greece, and the Germanic and Celtic tribes. Nevertheless, hell was commonly envisioned based on an ancient Jewish perspective, where “the wicked were separated from the righteous, and thrown into a large burning trash dump called Gehenna” (Graham). From the beginning, the church sought to get rid of this Old Testament idea which made the church less appealing. Hence, the once harsh idea of hell and purgatory has lightened with the times.

        Christian views in the second and third centuries suggested that faith in a “Higher God” was the only requirement for getting into heaven (“The Afterlife: Ancient Christian Beliefs”). Most people, however, were sent directly to hell. An idea according to the early church allowed the few individuals admitted into heaven to watch the people being tormented in hell. St Thomas Aquinas wrote, “In order that nothing may be wanting to the felicity of the blessed spirits in heaven, a perfect view is granted to them of the tortures of the damned”(“The Afterlife: Ancient Christian Beliefs”). A balance between all humans going to heaven and all humans going to hell

                                                                                        Lupo 2

was needed, which theologians pondered in the years to follow.                         

        In the third century, when hell was considered an eternal punishment, Tertullian thought of a new place that he called the bosom of Abraham. “The bosom of Abraham, though not in heaven, and yet above hell, offers the souls of the righteous an interim refreshment until the end of all things brings about the general resurrection and the final reward” (Chidester 149).  The idea of this mid-place caught the attention of many theologians of the time. In the fourth century, hell was seen as a place of spiritual suffering by Gregory of Nyssa. At the same time, the Latin theologian Jerome theorized hell as a place of pure physical torture. Augustine of Hippo proposed that “correctional fire” was used to free souls from sin (Chidester 152) in the fifth century. He introduced the thought that suffering in hell was both spiritual and sensory, and that a  purifying fire would cleanse the soul while being agonizingly painful.

        During the next century, Origen argued against the mainstream belief that hell was forever. He suggested that sinners in hell could be rehabilitated and work toward heaven. Church leaders quickly rejected this view at the Council of Constantinople in 543. Instead, Augustine’s cleansing fire idea reigned most believable until the fourteenth century. “Out of this imagery of refining fire, the geography of the Christian afterlife was expanded to include a special location - purgatory - in which Christian souls underwent suffering in preparation for heaven” (Chidester 152). Purgatory was not an official church belief until the sixteenth century, however.

        In the early fourteenth century, a poet named Dante Alighieri presented a vivid vision of hell and its surroundings in Inferno, part one of three in the Divine Comedy.  Virgil, representing human reason, gives Dante a complete tour of hell. The graphic imagery portrayed for each level of punishment is dependent on the crime committed. “He wept out of six eyes; and down three

                                                                                        Lupo 3

chins, tears gushed together with a bloody froth. Within each mouth - he used it like a grinder - with gnashing teeth he tore to bits a sinner, so that he brought much pain to three at once” (Alighieri 313). Here, Dante is describing Satan and the punishment inflicted upon the betrayers of God: Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius..“At the bottom of hell, they found the supreme traitor - the angel Lucifer, the devil Satan - who had betrayed the original divine order. Ultimately, sin was revealed in the depths of hell to be a betrayal of God” (Chidester 234).  Dante’s gruesome approach to hell may have served to scare people into acting good.

         In Purgatorio, the second part of the Divine Comedy, Dante is taken through Purgatory where sinners were both punished and purified. The seven deadly sins - pride, envy, anger, sloth, greed, gluttony, and lust - represent misdirected love, or love toward the world instead of toward God (Chidester 234).   In Dante’s depiction, the purpose of Purgatory was to “correct these deviant forms of love and redirect human desire toward the love of God.” (Chidester 234). In  Paradiso, the final part of the Divine Comedy, Dante ascends into heaven.

Join now!

        “By developing his philosophy through the medium of poetry, Dante opened up new possibilities for Christian rhetoric that combined beauty with sacred truth . . .His poetic accomplishment in the Divine Comedy was widely regarded by Italian scholars as an advance in Christian philosophy” (Chidester 235). Dante’s portrayal of purgatory elaborates on Augustine’s original idea to cleanse while accepting pain, and also takes from Origen’s rejected view. Thus, he ascended into heaven because he had sincerely worked to rehabilitate himself in hell.

         During the seventeenth century, several Christian writers denounced the idea of eternal punishment as incompatible with the love of ...

This is a preview of the whole essay