Description of hell in Christianity
The theologians' description of hell is set forth in the following sayings, taken from the writings and lives of the holy fathers of the church.
Demons are spirits; and sinners who are currently in hell can also be considered spirits, because only their soul descends there; their bones, turned into dust, are constantly reborn now into plants, now into minerals, into liquids … and, thus, they go through various stages of transformation of matter without their knowledge. But sinners, like saints, must be resurrected on the last day and will be embodied in the material body that they had while living on earth.
They will differ in that the elect will be resurrected and incarnate in shining and pure bodies, and sinners in bodies defiled and disfigured by sin. Thus, not only spirits will dwell in hell, but also people like those living on earth. Consequently, hell is a place, physically determined, material, and will be inhabited by earthly beings, made of flesh and blood, etc., and nerves capable of experiencing suffering.
Where is hell? Some believe that he is inside the earth; others have placed it - on some planets; but none of the councils resolved this question. On this occasion, only assumptions remained. One thing that is claimed is that wherever the location of hell is, it is a region made up of material elements, but which is devoid of sun, moon and stars; the saddest, most homeless place, in which there is not even a hint of good, worse than the most terrible places of the world in which we sin.
Theologians, in their caution, do not dare to describe this hell, and all its horrors, like the Egyptians, Hindus or Greeks. They limited themselves to only pointing out what is said in the holy scripture, such as: to the rivers of fire, to the sulfuric lake of the Apocalypse and to the worms of the prophet Isaiah, to the worms that eternally swarm in the fall, to the demons tormenting people whom they also killed, and people crying and grinding their teeth, as the Gospel says.
St. Augustine does not allow such physical suffering to be only symbols of moral torment. He saw a real burning sulfuric river, real worms and snakes stinging the bodies of sinners. He speaks based on one verse of the Gospel of St. Mark that this amazing fire, although absolutely material and similar to earthly fire, affects bodies like salt, that is, it preserves them; that these sinners, eternally tormented, but eternally living victims, will eternally feel this fire, but not burn out; it penetrates under the skin to the marrow of the bones, to the pupils of the eyes, to the innermost fibers of their being … If they could find themselves in the crater of a volcano, then it would seem to them as a place of joy and peace.
This is what the humblest, most moderate theologians say with complete conviction; although they do not deny that there are other bodily torments in hell; but only add that they do not have enough knowledge about this; knowledge as definite as the above descriptions of fiery torments or torments by means of worms and snakes. However, there are more daring theologians who describe hell in more detail, more varied and fuller, and although no one knows where this hell is located, there are saints who have seen it. They were carried there in the form of a spirit, as, for example, St. Teresa.
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Judging by the stories of this saint, one can assume that there are cities in hell; she saw in hell a series of streets, long and narrow, like in ancient cities. When she got there, she had to step on an eerie, dug and stinking road where disgusting reptiles crawled; but here she was blocked by a wall, in which there was a depression or a niche, where she hid herself, without realizing how. This, in her words, is the place destined for her if she abused the blessings that God sent her to her cell in Avila.
She somehow miraculously entered this niche; but in it it was impossible to turn, neither stand, nor sit, nor lie down, nor, even less, get out of it; this wall embraced her in stone and squeezed her as if she were alive. It seemed to her that she was being strangled, she was being torn to pieces alive, that she was being burned, in other words, she experienced the horrors of various torments. There was nothing to hope for help, everything around was covered with darkness, and at the same time the street along which she was walking clearly stood out from this darkness, with all its disgusting population; the sight is as unbearable to her as the darkness itself.
It was just a small corner of hell. Some of the spiritual travelers saw big cities on fire in hell. For example, Babylon, Nineveh, even Rome; all their palaces and temples, engulfed in fire, and their inhabitants in chains, merchants behind the counters; the priests, together with the courtiers in the festive halls, crying in their chairs, from which they could no longer get off, and bringing bowls to their sore lips, from which flames flew out; servants kneeling in boiling cesspools, and princes throwing gold pouring at them with molten lava.
Others talked about the endless fields cultivated by hungry peasants they saw in hell; nothing grew in these barren fields, and the peasants devoured each other; but as numerous as before, just as hungry and thin, they went into space, trying in vain to find happier places, and were immediately replaced by others, just as hungry and suffering.
Others talked about the mountains they saw in hell, cut by chasms, groaning forests, wells without water, springs filled with tears, rivers of blood, snow whirlwinds in icy deserts, boats overflowing with desperate people rushing across the boundless sea, in general, they saw all that that the pagans also portrayed: it was a deplorable reflection of the earth with immeasurably increased misfortunes, perpetuated by natural suffering and even prisons, gallows and instruments of torture, prepared by people's own hands.
There were also demons who, in order to better torment people, put on bodies themselves. They had bat wings, horns, claws, turtle scales, and sharp teeth; they are shown to us armed with swords, pitchforks, tongs, saws, vices, bellows, clubs, and for whole centuries, without stopping, they tinker with the human body, like cooks or butchers.
Then they, turned into lions or huge snakes, drag their victims into secluded caves; then they turn into ravens to peck out the eyes of the guilty, then into flying dragons, carrying away sinners on their backs, screaming, crying, bloodied, in order to then throw them into burning sulfur lakes. Here are the clouds of locusts, giant scorpions, the sight of them terrifies, the smell makes you sick; here are terrible monsters with an open mouth, shaking their manes, crushing sinners with their jaws, and then spewing them out whole, because they are immortal.
The forms of these demons resemble the gods of Tartarus and the idols depicted by the Phoenicians, Moabites, and other pagans living in the neighborhood of Judah. These demons do not act by accident; each has its own purpose and its own business; the evil that they do in hell, according to the evil that they instilled in people in earthly life.
Sinners experience punishment with all their senses and all organs, because they sinned with all senses and all organs; so, gluttons will punish the demons of gluttony, lazy people - demons of laziness, adulterers - demons of fornication, etc. in as many ways as there are ways to sin. Burning, they will feel cold, freezing - exhausted from the heat; will at the same time crave rest and desire movement; always feel hungry and thirsty; feel more tired than a slave at the end of the day; to be sick more painfully than dying; will be broken, beaten, covered with wounds, like true martyrs - and this never ends.
Never one of the demons will refuse to fulfill their dark mission; they are all well disciplined in this respect and diligently fulfill the duty of revenge assumed by them. There has never been a nation on earth that is more obedient to its rulers, an army more obedient to its chief, a monastery community, more humble before its abbot.
Little are known of the lower ranks, so to speak, plebeians, demons, of which the legions of vampires, toads, scorpions, ravens, hydras, salamanders and other nameless reptiles, which make up the fauna of the hellish regions, are composed. But the names of several princes who rule these legions are known, among them: Belfagor - the demon of lust; Abbadon, or Apollyon, is the demon of murder; Beelzebub is a demon of impure desires and patron of flies that generate corruption; Mamon is a demon of stinginess; Moloch, Belial, Baalgad, Astarod and many others and above them is their universal head, the gloomy archangel, who bore the name of Lucifer in heaven, and Satan in hell.
Here is a brief description of hell, viewed from the point of view of the physical nature and physical torment experienced by sinners there. Discover the writings of the church fathers and ancient scholars; cope with our godly legends; look at the statues and paintings of our churches; listen to what is being said from the pulpits and you will learn even more.
The author accompanies these pictures with such reflections, the importance of which is clear to everyone:
The resurrection of the body is a miracle; but God works a double miracle, giving this dead body, already worn out by the passing trials of life, the ability to resist fire in a furnace without destruction, where even metal would melt. If they said that the soul is its own executioner, that God does not persecute it, but only leaves it in the unfortunate position that it has chosen for itself, this could still be understood (although leaving the forever lost and suffering creature seems incompatible with the goodness of the Creator); but what is said about the soul and spiritual torments can in no way be related to the body and physical torments. To continue these bodily torments indefinitely, it is not enough for God to withdraw His hand; on the contrary, it is necessary for Him to impose it, for Him to act, without which the body will not stand and disintegrate.
We say not without reason that the Christian hell surpasses the pagan hell in horror. In reality, in Tartarus we see the guilty, tormented by conscience, constantly seeing their crimes and their victims, fleeing in vain from the penetrating light and from the views that pursue them everywhere; pride there is humiliated and punishable; everyone bears the stamp of their past; all are punished for their own sins; so that for some it is enough if they are left to their own conscience, and there is no need to add more punishments. But there are shadows, that is, souls in their fluidic envelope, similar to their earthly incarnation; they did not accept their bodily shells again to suffer physically by those refined methods of torment that predominantly constitute the foundation of the Christian hell.
In our time, of course, in the church itself there are many people of common sense who do not allow a literal interpretation of this teaching and who see it as an allegory; but their opinion is single and does not constitute a law. The doctrine of the material hell, with all its consequences, nevertheless, still constitutes the dogma of faith.
They will ask, of course, how people could see all this in ecstasy, if it does not exist. But this is not the place to explain all the cases and sources of fantastic visions that sometimes appear with all the signs of reality. We will only say that ecstasy is the least correct way of revelation, because this extreme agitated state is not always capable of as complete separation of the spirit as it seems, and very often the influence of the previous day is reflected in it.
The thoughts that permeate the mind and whose imprint is stored in the brain or in the perispritic envelope are reproduced in an intensified form, like a mirage, mixed, intertwined and sometimes expressed in extremely strange images. The frenzied of all religions always have visions of what they believe; therefore, there is nothing surprising in the fact that St. Theresa, imbued with the idea of hell as he was portrayed to her, had visions, which in reality are nothing more than simple nightmares.
Allan Kardek