What the hell?

Fire and brimstone in theology and art

In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote about hell. His tone was as sarcastic as it often was, yet without the light-heartenedness that would have been inappropriate for such a dire subject. “When men came to live in society,” Voltaire said, “they could not but perceive that many evil-doers escaped the severity of the laws. These could affect only open crimes, so that a curb was wanted against clandestine guilt, and religion alone could be such a curb.”

Voltaire cited the Persians, Chaldeans, Egyptians and Greeks as asserting afterlife punishment for earthly wrongdoing. He exonerated the early Jews from contributing to this dark tradition, saying that apparent references to hell in the Old Testament were modern mistranslations. When later Jews—the Pharisees and Essenes—adopted the idea, they were copycats, Voltaire said. “This dogma the Greeks had already disseminated among the Romans, and the Christians made it a capital article of faith.”

But not all Christians. “Several fathers of the church did not hold the eternity of hell torments,” Voltaire said. “They thought it very hard that a poor man should be burning forever, only for stealing a goat.”

Voltaire wasn’t sure even modern Christians truly believed in hell. “Not long since an honest, well-meaning Huguenot minister advanced in his sermons, and even in print, that there would be a day of grace to the damned, that there must be a proportionality between the trespass and the penalty, and that a momentary fault could not deserve an everlasting punishment. This clement judge was deposed by a body of ministers, one of whom said to him, ‘Brother, I as little believe the eternity of hell torments as yourself, but let me tell you, it is very proper that your servant-maid, your tailor, and even your attorney should believe so.’”

Whether hell was an item of faith or one of expedience, it flourished in Christendom as a literary construct. Dante’s Divine Comedy guided readers boringly through heaven and drearily through purgatory but knocked their socks off in hell. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, Satan got the best lines. Hellfire fueled the preaching of American revivalists like Jonathan Edwards, who dangled his congregants above the fiery pit, to their shuddering delight.

As Voltaire’s church fathers noted, hell has a credibility problem. Would a just God, let alone a loving God, really consign mortals to torment forever? Around the time of Voltaire, Western governments stopped torturing people for crimes. Their torture had been limited in duration. Eternal torture?

Christian theologians redefined hell. It wasn’t active punishment but regret for one’s refusal to accept God’s grace. This version made God appear less cruel than the older versions. But hell still suffered from its eternity. Could a human during a finite life do wrong enough to warrant infinite punishment?

For much of history, religious congregations were captive audiences. Religion came with the tribe. But in the modern West, especially in melting-pot countries like the United States, denomination-hopping grew more common. Preachers who terrified their flocks lost out to those who made them feel warm and fuzzy. Hell hit hard times.

In America the positive approach was especially striking. Bruce Barton, an advertising executive turned author, in 1925 published The Man Nobody Knows, which portrayed Jesus as entrepreneur extraordinaire. His lessons were those of career advancement. Aimee Semple McPherson during the same era drew huge crowds to her Angelus Temple in Los Angeles with a message of good news for the modern era. The Good News Bible of the 1960s and 1970s—originally titled Good News for Modern Man—made the message explicit and became the bestselling edition of the scripture in the Age of Aquarius.

By this time not even servant-maids, tailors or attorneys found much to worry about from hell. It still appeared in horror movies, but the fact that these were movies underscored its unpersuasiveness as reality. Often hell was played for laughs. The Devil and Daniel Webster and Bedazzled were two riffs on the theme.

The evidence for hell has always been dubious. It's not getting more persuasive. If it doesn't scare people straight, what the hell is it good for?