5 What the Hell?- I.
The sermon last week, on the first section of the Sixth Act of Thomas, featured several descriptions of, and reflections on, Hell. Nearing death as I am, no detail of the afterlife is without interest to me; indeed, my mind is hungry for news of the afterlife. So, for me, it was quite necessary to satisfy my curiosity, by taking a closer look at the array of these many different possible Hells, suggested by these many world religions. If I am ever to have any peace of mind, if my FAITH is ever to be formed into the shape of a THOUGHT my mind can apprehend, I must accept, finally and absolutely, the concept of the immortality of the soul.
This sermon will be in two parts:
today we will review some online summaries of different types of Hells, as defined by various world cultures,
and then, next week, we will look at Hell as it is represented in literature, including perspectives by Dante, Milton, Blake, C.S Lewis, and others--culminating in a reprise and amplification of some of the points that I made at the end of the Thomas Act Six sermon. I believe this is not unlike what I did with the Satan sermons, where we first took a worldview of Satan, and then a literary view of Satan.
The obvious point of departure, for a discussion of Hell, is to note that every geographic area on the globe has its own religion, and its own images of the afterlife, including images of Hell. All these Paradisiacal and Infernal representations are constructed out of narrative and visual references to the cultural mythologies from which they spring--thus, these many different depictions of Hell will include a wide variety of culturally-specific visual and formal attributes; however, even though the architecture of one religion's afterlife may present a study in radical contrasts with another's, they all retain a big picture that is remarkably consistent across the board. Mount Olympus is dominated by the architecture of Athens, while the Immortals of the Hindu Heaven ride on Elephants. So many descriptions of the afterlife are reported in different formats, and attribute different qualities to the soul--nevertheless, the idea of Heaven as a place of reward, and Hell as a place of punishment, is universally upheld.
One Infernal attribute, that is NOT consistently upheld, is the notion of Hell as an eternal condition. Some religions maintain that Hell is forever, some don't.
[One semantic point it is important to interject here, in regard to the idea of an "Eternal" Hell, is the distinction between these two different terms: the term "eternal" as opposed to the term "everlasting".
Now, the word "everlasting" implies a sort of material existence that never ends, but which is still handcuffed to the sequential character of Time. On the other hand, the word "eternal" refers to an existence outside time. Hence, an "eternity" might be a second or it might be an unending moment; indeed, to eternity, the word "moment" has no meaning. "Everlasting" is an unending sequence of moments.]
Joseph Campbell makes this statement in the book, The Power of Myth:
"Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking in temporal terms cuts off….the experience of eternity right here and now, in all things, whether thought of as good or as evil, is the function of life."
‘Heaven is not eternal, it’s just everlasting,’
‘Heaven and hell are described as forever. Heaven is of unending time. It is not eternal. Eternal is beyond time. The concept of time shuts out eternity.’
In The Hero with a Thousand Faces he says:
"Those who know, not only that the Everlasting lives in them, but that what they, and all things, really are IS the Everlasting, dwell in the groves of the wish-fulfilling trees, drink the brew of immortality, and listen everywhere to the unheard music of eternal concord. These are the immortals."
Hence, for an "Immortal" an "Eternal" Hell might be a terrible place to be, except that eternity offers many possibilities for transformation. Therefore, an "Eternal" Hell might very well be preferable to an "Everlasting" Hell. An "Everlasting" Hell, linked, as it must be, to material existence, may well be the final resting place (ha ha) of people who cannot transcend the physical; people who are mired in their earthly fixations, who would tend to adhere to Earthbound attitudes, thereby prolonging the suffering of their self-inflicted punishments; whereas, an "Eternal" Hell may deliver the sinner to a zero point of existence, the Non-Being of which may result in a circular process of resurrection.
On the subject of CIRCLES, let us recall that, in the esoteric literature, Hell is often described as turning wheels, unending circles of time. Tolkien's evil empires are visualized, in the movies, as dominated by pits of fire, and vast mechanical machines. A long time ago, in Los Angeles, I wrote music for a production of the Sartre play No Exit. This play takes place in Hell, so the stage director had the actors say their lines constantly circling around this coffee table; as the play went on, this circling became gradually more accelerated, and more hysterical, eventually climaxing at the point where the people realize they are meant to be each other's tormentors; and so they say, "Let's get on with it."
Now, as I have complained many times: when I was a boy, my mother condemned me to Hell just about every day of my life; and that Hell was defined as eternal fire and brimstone--nothing less. The fear of everlasting torment seemed to be the prime motivator of my mother's religion, and the bottom line of her condemnation of me. So, in putting together this review, it was a great comfort to hear about all the different afterlife possibilities suggested by the different world religions. It was quite liberating for me, especially because I have always had trouble with the idea of an "Eternal" Hell, especially an "Eternal" Hell inflicted on the sinner by someone else. I'm much more comfortable with the idea of the sinner condemning himself, because, in that interpretation, the seed of resurrection is always hiding at the outermost realm of possibilities. I'll expand on that a little later:
Now on to our Wikipedia review of Hell:
"In many mythological, folklore and religious traditions, hell is a place of eternal torment in an afterlife, often after resurrection. It is viewed by most Abrahamic traditions as a place of punishment. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as eternal destinations. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations."
[Sidebar: Interesting designations, "linear history" and "cyclic history": both these views of history pledge allegiance to time, and therefore both are less spiritual than materialistic. To be sure, the "Eternal" transcends the doctrine of Hell in either case, and makes the ultimate destination of the soul someplace other than can be demarked by the gates of any Hell.
While we are on the subject of cyclic religions, (basically, religions that believe in reincarnation), it's not exactly fair to put Buddhism and Hinduism into that category because, although they both affirm the process of reincarnation as a spiritual reality, reincarnation is NOT the professed spiritual goal of these religions; the ultimate spiritual goal, of both Buddhists and Hindus, is to free the self from the cycle of reincarnation (the WHEEL of Incarnation), and achieve a transcendent state of being, from which there need be no return. In this sense, they are both just as linear as Christianity.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"Typically these traditions locate hell in another dimension or under the Earth's surface and often include entrances to Hell from the land of the living. Other afterlife destinations include Heaven, Purgatory, Paradise, and Limbo.
Other traditions, which do not conceive of the afterlife as a place of punishment or reward, merely describe hell as an abode of the dead, a neutral place located under the surface of Earth (for example, sheol and Hades). Modern understandings of hells often depict them abstractly, as a state of loss rather than as fiery torture literally underground, but this view of the concept of a hell can, in fact, be traced back into the ancient and medieval periods as well. Hell is sometimes portrayed as populated with demons who torment those dwelling there. Many are ruled by a death god such as Nergal, Hades, Hel, Enma or the Devil.
Punishment in Hell typically corresponds to sins committed during life. Sometimes these distinctions are specific, with damned souls suffering for each sin committed, but sometimes they are general, with condemned sinners relegated to one or more chamber of Hell or to a level of suffering.
In many religious cultures, including Christianity and Islam, Hell is traditionally depicted as fiery and painful, inflicting guilt and suffering. Despite these common depictions of Hell as a place of fire, some other traditions portray Hell as cold. Buddhist - and particularly Tibetan Buddhist - descriptions of hell feature an equal number of hot and cold hells. Among Christian descriptions Dante's Inferno portrays the innermost (9th) circle of Hell as a frozen lake of blood and guilt. But cold also played a part in earlier Christian depictions of hell, beginning with the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Apocalypse of Paul, originally from the early third century; the Vision of Dryhthelm by the Venerable Bede from the seventh century; and The Vision of Tundale, all from the twelfth century; and the Vision of Thurkill a lengthy (c. 8500 words) vision of heaven, purgatory and paradise, dated October 1206."
[Sidebar: A summary of four of these "vision" documents (the Apocalypse of Peter, the Apocalypse of Paul, the Vision of Dryhthelm; and the Visio Tnugdali) is appended below. These visions of hell, and tales of tours of Hell, provide some very interesting insights into the culturally-generated mind. As we have discussed many times, consciousness is, in many ways, the offspring of language.
When we speak of something, anything, we create images and forms which our minds materialize--impose an iconic fixity on, say, a cloud of photons. These images can only be shaped, by the mind, into familiar forms--forms created out of memories of mundane experiences. Thus, descriptions of Hell, from cultures around the world, and from distant time periods, may well include very different pictorial representations of Heavenly or Hellish PHYSICAL environments; but they all prove, consistently, to share many common emotional or, you might say, SYMBOLIC features. These "Symbolic" features are archetypal, and, therefore, enjoy an eternal presence in World Religions, appearing clean throughout Human history, from ancient to modern times. In fact, in much recent parapsychological literature, we encounter many accounts of near-death experiences (NDEs) which include content that is the same or similar to many of the ancient tours of Hell we will hear about, below.
Of these four "Hell Tourists", the first two, Peter and Paul, are familiar to us as Biblical Saints; the second two are from the Northern Europe, ca. 1000 A.D.
"The Apocalypse of Peter (or Revelation of Peter) is an early Christian text of the 2nd century and an example of apocalyptic literature with Hellenistic overtones. It is not in the Bible today, but is mentioned in the Muratorian fragment, the oldest surviving list of New Testament books, as no longer being allowed to be read in church.
The Apocalypse of Peter is framed as a discourse of the Risen Christ to his faithful, offering a vision first of heaven, and then of hell, granted to Peter. In the form of a nekyia it goes into elaborate detail about the punishment in hell for each type of crime, and the pleasures given in heaven for each virtue.
[Sidebar: A brilliant visual representation of this principle of Karmic justice is to be found, famously, in Hieronymus Bosch's great painting, The Garden of Earthly Delights:
Back to Wikipedia and the Apocalypse of Peter, keeping in mind the images in the painting above:
"In heaven, in the vision,
• People have pure milky white skin, curly hair, and are generally beautiful
• The earth blooms with everlasting flowers and spices
• People wear shiny clothes made of light, like the angels
• Everyone sings in choral prayer
The punishments in the vision each closely correspond to the past sinful actions in a version of the Jewish notion of an eye for an eye, that the punishment may fit the crime. Some of the punishments in hell according to the vision include:
• Blasphemers are hanged by the tongue.
• Women who "adorn" themselves for the purpose of adultery, are hung by the hair over a bubbling mire. The men who had adulterous relationships with them are hung by their feet, with their heads in the mire, next to them.
• Murderers and those who give consent to murder are set in a pit of creeping things that torment them.
• Men who take on the role of women in a sexual way, and lesbians, are "driven" up a great cliff by punishing angels, and are "cast off" to the bottom. Then they are forced up it, over and over again, ceaselessly, to their doom.
• Women who have abortions are set in a lake formed from the blood and gore from all the other punishments, up to their necks. They are also tormented by the spirits of their unborn children, who shoot a "flash of fire" into their eyes. (Those unborn children are "delivered to a care-taking" angel by whom they are educated, and "made to grow up.")
• Those who lend money and demand "usury upon usury" stand up to their knees in a lake of foul matter and blood.
[Sidebar: Allow me to remind you that these are the exact same torments we heard the murdered girl describe in the Sixth Act of Thomas.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"The Revelation of Peter shows remarkable kinship in ideas with the Second Epistle of Peter. It also presents notable parallels to the Sibylline Oracles, (books of prophecy and mythology from ca. 100-500 A.D.), while its influence has been conjectured, almost with certainty, in the Acts of Perpetua and the visions narrated in the Acts of Thomas and the History of Barlaam and Josaphat. It certainly was one of the sources from which the writer of the Vision of Paul drew. And directly or indirectly it may be regarded as the parent of all the medieval visions of the other world.
There is also a section which explains that in the end God will save all sinners from their plight in Hell:
"My Father will give unto them all the life, the glory, and the kingdom that passeth not away, ... It is because of them that have believed in me that I am come. It is also because of them that have believed in me, that, at their word, I shall have pity on men..."
Thus, sinners will finally be saved by the prayers of those in heaven."
Next we come to the Apocalypse of Paul:
"The Apocalypse of Paul is a 3rd-century text of the New Testament apocrypha. The text appears to be an elaborate expansion and rearrangement of the Apocalypse of Peter, and is essentially a description of a vision of Heaven, and then of Hell – although it also contains a prologue describing all creation appealing to God against the sin of man, which is not present in the Apocalypse of Peter. At the end of the text, Paul/Mary manages to persuade God to give everyone in Hell a day off every Sunday.
[Sidebar: Notice the slightly Catholic confusion of Paul with Mary; in some sources this book is called the Apocalypse of Mary. Go figure.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"The text extends the Apocalypse of Peter by framing the reasons for the visits to heaven and hell as the witnessing of the death and judgement of one wicked man, and one who is righteous. The text is heavily moralistic, and adds, to the Apocalypse of Peter, features such as:
• Pride is the root of all evil
• Heaven is the land of milk and honey
• Hell has rivers of fire and of ice (for the cold hearted)
• Some angels are evil, the dark angels of hell, including Temeluchus, the tartaruchi."
Next we review the Vision of Dryhthelm:
"Dryhthelm was a monk associated with the monastery of Melrose known from the Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum of Bede. After a battle with illness, that gradually got worse as the days went by, Drythelm temporarily died (c. 700). He came back to life a few hours later, scaring away everyone but his wife. . . .
While temporarily dead, Dryhthelm was apparently given a tour of the afterlife by a celestial guide. In the "vision of Dryhthelm", the future monk of Melrose was shown hell, purgatory, and heaven, along with some of the souls therein, but was denied entry to paradise. Purgatory was a place of extreme heat and cold, Hell a place where souls burned, Heaven a place of intense light, and Paradise a place of even greater light. Drythelm's experience in a valley suggests the temporariness of purgatory, for it was an intermediate stage, straddling Heaven and Hell. As a result, one modern historian has called him "a remote precursor of Dante"."
[Sidebar: Note the reference to Heaven and Paradise as two different places.
On to The Visio Tnugdali:]
"The Visio Tnugdali (The Vision of Tnugdalus) is a 12th-century religious text reporting the otherworldly vision of the Irish knight Tnugdalus. It was "the most popular and elaborate text in the medieval genre of visionary infernal literature" and had been translated from the original Latin forty-three times into fifteen languages by the 15th century, including Icelandic and Belarusian.
The Latin text was written down shortly after 1149 by Brother Marcus, an Irish itinerant monk, in the Scots Monastery, Regensburg. He reports having heard Tnugdalus' account from the knight himself and to have done a translation from the Irish language at the Regensburg abbess' request.
The story is set in Cork, Ireland in 1148.
The visio tells of the proud and easygoing knight falling unconscious for three days, during which time an angel guides his soul through Heaven and Hell, experiencing some of the torments of the damned. This short, colorful excerpt will suffice to give a flavor of this combination Spiritual/Adventure story:
"As the spirit of Tundale stood in great confusion and dread, he saw an awesome collection of foul fiends rampaging towards him with mouths gaping like a pack of wild wolves. He wanted to flee for his life but had no idea how to do so. The fiends arrived and Tundale, understandably terrified, expected to be torn to pieces by them. To look at them was to move beyond fear; their bodies were black and dirty and the ground shook as they growled horribly. Their eyes were wide and sparkled like fire as though they were consumed with rage. Their huge open mouths spat out flames. They were filled with fire. Their lips hung beneath their chins exposing long teeth and wide throats, and their tongues hung out at the side, like a dog's. On their feet and hands they had great claws and horny pads and their tails were sodden and poisonous. Their claws were as keen as sharpened steel – no man could feel any sharper! - and from these creatures came the foulest stink that anyone could imagine. They clawed at each other's faces and inflicted horrific wounds upon one another. Then they grimly cast their eyes upon Tundale and roared in unison: 'Let's set about this wicked ghost who has always given a willing ear to our counsel and done as we have urged! Let's sing him a song of death, for he is one of ours!'
After some other hair-raising events, an Angel comes to rescue the wayward knight. The angel then charges Tnugdalus to well remember what he has seen and to report it to his fellow men."
[Sidebar: Notice that much of the purpose of these hair-raising Hell stories is to "frighten" the people into salvation, in much the same way as the gargoyles seated atop the Notre Dame Cathedral were meant to put the fear of God into the parishioners, and usher them into the church, rushing like the very hounds of Hell were on their heels. This is what is meant by the term "God-fearing." My mother would be very comfortable with this.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"On recovering possession of his body, Tnugdalus converts to a pious life as a result of his experience.
The Visio Tnugdali with its interest in the topography of the afterlife is situated in a broad Irish tradition of fantastical tales about otherworldly voyages, called immram, as well as in a tradition of Christian afterlife visions, itself influenced by pre-Christian notions of the afterlife."
[Sidebar:
"An immram (Irish: iomramh, voyage) is a class of Old Irish tales concerning a hero's sea journey to the Otherworld. Written in the Christian era and essentially Christian in aspect, they preserve elements of Irish mythology."
Notice that these heroic journeys, share parallel constructions with both the Odyssey and the Aeneid--classic Greek travel tales which have achieved, over time, the stature of myths. Many of the great epics of European literature include episodes that occur in Hell. In the Roman poet Virgil's Latin epic, the Aeneid, Aeneas descends into Dis (the underworld) to visit his father's spirit. The underworld is only vaguely described, with one unexplored path leading to the punishments of Tartarus, while the other leads through Erebus and the Elysian Fields. One wonders if Ulysses was as in search of Heaven as this Irish knight was.
The charming use of language and imagery in this excerpt cannot fail to evoke the magic of the Irish culture, and is a potent affirmation of the idea that higher truths are embedded in the written literary tradition.
Going on with the review of world Hells, back to Wikipedia:]
"Ancient Egypt
With the rise of the cult of Osiris during the Middle Kingdom the "democratization of religion" offered to even his humblest followers the prospect of eternal life, with moral fitness becoming the dominant factor in determining a person's suitability.
At death a person faced judgment by a tribunal of forty-two divine judges. If they had led a life in conformance with the precepts of the Goddess Maat, who represented truth and right living, the person was welcomed into the Two Fields. If found guilty the person was thrown to a "devourer" and would be condemned to the lake of fire.
[The person taken by the devourer is subject first to terrifying punishment and then annihilated. These depictions of punishment may have influenced medieval perceptions of the inferno in hell via early Christian and Coptic texts. Purification for those considered justified appears in the descriptions of "Flame Island", where humans experience the triumph over evil and rebirth. For the damned complete destruction into a state of non-being awaits but there is no suggestion of eternal torture; the weighing of the heart in Egyptian Mythology can lead to annihilation. Divine pardon at judgement always remained a central concern for the Ancient Egyptians.]"
Below, we will encounter several more descriptions of Hell as horrible, but finite. There is so much to think about here: when I was young, I kept hearing the statement that the quality of the afterlife was determined by your state of mind. I didn't see how a state of mind could create its own level of existence. I now understand that every level of existence, including the physical, is a state of mind.
I have also recently heard that the only adequate definition of eternity is change--everything there is, is happening at once. Therefore, it is easy to see that a state of mind that will not submit to change--a state of mind that is enthralled by the illusion of material existence and sequential time--is a state of mind that may well lead to ever-lasting self-inflicted torment.
Only recently have I come to accept the idea of everlasting torment; now, I can see how, vis a vis the concept "Everlasting", that there may be a point of no return. And I can now see how, if this state of mind ever bled over into the realm of eternity, that dying a person may indeed bring himself to a place which could ultimately lead to his soul's complete disappearance from existence. A scary thought, but if we think of consciousness as different compressions and rarefactions of energy (consciousness), it is not hard to imagine the soul compressing into a black hole and disintegrating into the zero point.
To clarify, remember that we have come to think of the Christ Consciousness as a focus of the I AM Presence; FOCUS being the operative word: somehow the Infinite Personality of God is COMPRESSED into a form which can address the paltry abilities of literal human consciousness to apprehend and understand. This compression brings the infinite down to a finite material resolution, while somehow retaining its foothold in the Infinite. Hence, if different resolutions of consciousness focus may be interpreted as different levels of existence and nonexistence, then we may say that Infinite existence has no focus, while nonexistence is a completely dense material focus, like a black hole.
And yet, even the disintegrating soul who comes to nothing has, in our cosmology, a real hope of resurrection, Because SOMETHING always comes from NOTHING.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"Middle East
The cultures of Mesopotamia (including Sumeria, the Akkadian Empire, Babylonia and Assyria), the Hittites and the Canaanites/Ugarits reveal some of the earliest evidence for the notion of a Netherworld or Underworld. From among the few texts that survive from these civilizations, this evidence appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Descent of Inanna to the Netherworld, Baal and the Underworld, the Descent of Ishtar and the “Vision of Kummâ.
Asia
The hells of Asia include the Bagobo “Gimokodan” and Ancient Indian mythology's “Kalichi" or "Naraka".
In folklore among the Ainu people, hell is below ground, and is described as an uninviting wet place reserved for sinful people.
Buddhism
In Devaduta Sutta, the 130th discourse of the Majjhima Nikaya, Buddha teaches about hell in vivid detail. Buddhism teaches that there are five (sometimes six) realms of rebirth, which can then be further subdivided into degrees of agony or pleasure. Of these realms, the hell realms, or Naraka, is the lowest realm of rebirth. Of the hell realms, the worst is Avīci or "endless suffering".
However, like all realms of rebirth, rebirth in the Hell realms is not permanent, though suffering can persist for eons before being reborn again.
Hinduism
Early Vedic religion does not have a concept of Hell. In later Hindu literature, especially the law books and Puranas, more realms are mentioned, including a realm similar to Hell, called naraka.
Hells are also described in various Puranas and other scriptures. The Garuda Purana gives a detailed account of Hell and its features; it lists the amount of punishment for most crimes, much like a modern-day penal code.
It is believed that people who commit sins go to Hell and have to go through punishments in accordance with the sins they committed. Detailed accounts of all the sins committed by an individual are kept by Chitragupta, and Yama orders appropriate punishments to be given to individuals. These punishments include dipping in boiling oil, burning in fire, torture using various weapons, etc. in various Hells. Individuals who finish their quota of the punishments are reborn in accordance with their balance of karma.
Islam
In Islam, jahannam (related to the Hebrew word gehinnom) is a place of blazing fire, boiling water, and a variety of torments for those condemned to it in the hereafter. After the Day of Judgement, it is to be occupied by those who do not believe in God, have disobeyed His laws, and/or rejected His messengers. "Enemies of Islam", are sentenced immediately to Hell upon death.
Muslims believe that on Judgement Day all souls will pass over a bridge over hell (Chinvat Bridge in Zorastrianism, As-Sirāt in Islam) which those destined for hell will find too narrow and fall below into their new abode. Jahannam resembles the Christian versions of Hell in being below heaven and full of fire, but is not the home of the devil.
Africa
African hells include Haida Mythology's “Hetgwauge” and the hell of Swahili Mythology (kuzimu). Serer religion rejects the general notion of heaven and hell. In Serer religion, acceptance by the ancestors who have long departed is as close to any heaven as one can get. Rejection and becoming a wandering soul is a sort of hell for one passing over. The souls of the dead must make their way to Jaaniw (the sacred dwelling place of the soul). Only those who have lived their lives on earth in accordance with Serer doctrines will be able to make this necessary journey and thus accepted by the ancestors. Those who can't make the journey become lost and wandering souls, but they do not burn in "hell fire".
[Sidebar: Ancestors figure prominently in more than one cultural scenario of heaven. The Chinese culture puts a lot of attention on revering ancestors. Indeed, many of our own culture's reports of Heavenly visits tend to include scenes of being met by long-lost loved ones--mothers, fathers, husbands, sons, etc. I wonder which dead people from my past will be there to greet me, when I cross over.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"Native American
The hells of the Americas include the Aztec religion's “Mictlan”, Inuit religion's “Adlivun”, and the Yanomami religion's “Shobari Waka”.
In Mayan religion, Xibalbá is the dangerous underworld of nine levels ruled by the demons Vucub Caquix and Hun Came. The road into and out of it is said to be steep, thorny and very forbidding. Metnal is the lowest and most horrible of the nine Hells of the underworld, ruled by Ah Puch.
Greek
In classic Greek mythology, below Heaven, Earth, and Pontus is Tartarus, or Tartaros (Greek, deep place). It is either a deep, gloomy place, a pit or abyss used as a dungeon of torment and suffering that resides within Hades (the entire underworld) with Tartarus being the hellish component. In the Gorgias, Plato (c. 400 BC) wrote that souls were judged after death and those who received punishment were sent to Tartarus. As a place of punishment, it can be considered a hell. The classic Hades, on the other hand, is more similar to Old Testament Sheol.
Judaism
Early Judaism had no concept of Hell, though the concept of an afterlife was introduced during the Hellenic period, apparently from neighboring Hellenistic religions. It occurs for example in Book of Daniel. Daniel 12:2 proclaims "And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, Some to everlasting life, Some to shame and everlasting contempt."
[Sidebar: The idea of "everlasting shame" is very much in agreement with our idea of a self-inflicted hell. We have previously suggested that, at the Final Judgement, when we stand face-to-face with Jesus, our masks will be torn away, and the lies we tell ourselves will be revealed for what they are; and the truth of what we actually did will glare into our eyes; the magnetism of our sins will draw us into a ritual of penance, which may last a short time, or for eons. Or forever.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"Judaism does not have a specific doctrine about the afterlife, but it does have a mystical/Orthodox tradition of describing Gehenna. Gehenna is not Hell, but originally a grave and in later times a sort of Purgatory where one is judged based on one's life's deeds, or rather, where one becomes fully aware of one's own shortcomings and negative actions during one's life. The Kabbalah explains it as a "waiting room" (commonly translated as an "entry way") for all souls (not just the wicked). The overwhelming majority of rabbinic thought maintains that people are not in Gehenna forever; the longest that one can be there is said to be 12 months, however there has been the occasional noted exception. Some consider it a spiritual forge where the soul is purified for its eventual ascent to Olam Habah (heb. "The world to come", often viewed as analogous to Heaven). This is also mentioned in the Kabbalah, where the soul is described as breaking, like the flame of a candle lighting another: the part of the soul that ascends being pure and the "unfinished" piece being reborn.
According to Jewish teachings, hell is not entirely physical; rather, it can be compared to a very intense feeling of shame. People are ashamed of their misdeeds and this constitutes suffering which makes up for the bad deeds. When one has so deviated from the will of God, one is said to be in gehinom. This is not meant to refer to some point in the future, but to the very present moment. The gates of teshuva (return) are said to be always open, and so one can align his will with that of God at any moment. Being out of alignment with God's will is itself a punishment according to the Torah."
[Sidebar: I feel in agreement with much of this, and I have been thinking about the relationship of physical torment to MENTAL torment as described here: if our bodies protect us from the emotional charges that spiritual realities have, by muting the spiritual component, then, in death, uninsulated by the body, feelings and thought forms may be experienced in exponentially more intense degrees. Thus, in the life after death, it is very easy to imagine unendurable torments that the soul might experience, in reviewing its earthly sins--regretting them and re-experiencing them. It's a very, very potent argument in favor of taking care of all loose ends before we die, because if those loose ends follow us into the afterlife, and we experience the pain of those sins without the shielding of the body, it sounds like a really crummy time.
Back to Wikipedia:]
"Christianity
The Roman Catholic Church defines Hell as "a state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed." One finds himself in Hell as the result of dying in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love, becoming eternally separated from Him by one's own free choice immediately after death.
In the Roman Catholic Church, and many other Christian churches, such as the Baptists and Episcopalians, and some Greek Orthodox churches, Hell is taught as the final destiny of those who have not been found worthy after the general resurrection and last judgment, where they will be eternally punished for sin and permanently separated from God.
Some modern Christian theologians subscribe to the doctrines of Conditional Immortality. Conditional Immortality is the belief that the soul dies with the body and does not live again until the resurrection. This is the view held by a few Christian sects such as the Living Church of God, The Church of God International, and Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Universal Reconciliation is the belief that all human souls (even demons and fallen angels) will be eventually reconciled with God and admitted to Heaven. This view is held by some Unitarian-Universalists.
Mormons
Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teach that hell is a state between death and resurrection, in which those spirits who didn't repent while on earth must suffer for their own sins. In this sense, Mormons regard hell as a temporary state that ends for a spirit once they have "paid the uttermost farthing" (Matt 5:26) for the sins they committed. As David wrote, "thou wilt not leave my soul in hell" (Psalms 16:10, 86:13, Acts 2:27). This punishment can be characterized as a mental anguish for sins committed, which Mormons believe Christ took upon himself for all mankind while in the Garden of Gethsemane—"that they may not suffer if they would repent."
Bahá'í Faith
In the Bahá'í Faith, the conventional descriptions of Hell and Heaven are considered to be symbolic representations of spiritual conditions. The Bahá'í writings describe closeness to God to be heaven, and conversely, remoteness from God as hell."
I mentioned, above, that I'm much more comfortable with the idea of the sinner condemning himself, (rather than being condemned by some higher authority), because, in that interpretation, the seed of resurrection is always hiding at the outermost realm of possibilities. This idea is in agreement with many of the religious doctrines mentioned above. But there is another principle that plays into my thinking about this--I hinted at it earlier when I mentioned the "zero-point". I said,
"If we think of consciousness as different compressions and rarefactions of energy (consciousness), it is not hard to imagine the soul compressing into a black hole and disintegrating into the zero point."
I also said:
"An "Eternal" Hell may deliver the sinner to a zero point of existence, the Non-Being of which may result in a circular process of resurrection."
I am suggesting that, on a scale of infinite space to infinite material compression, Non-Being must languish at the bottom. As such it does not cease to be, but, rather, reaches a point of INFINITE POTENTIAL, from which existence MUST spring anew. Or go BANG.
Next week we will mention the ideas of linear and circular religions, including descriptions of Gods who wink our world in and out of existence. We will try to explain what this has to do with resurrection.
For now, let us close with this idea: Jesus made this paradoxical statement:
Matthew 10:34:
"Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."
There are many, many things this can mean, but certainly one of the things it can mean is that: Jesus came not only to bring Heaven to Earth, He also brought Hell to Earth as well, because Man chooses Hell over Heaven, too often. Never let it be said that God did nor offer us a choice.
Let us pray: Father God, thank you for the radiant miracle which is Man. Praise God for the enormous variety of types and modes, infinitely various, and infinitely unique. Let us hear our neighbors near and far as each one sings his tiny bit of the Heavenly Chorale. Amen.
