Sinners in The Hands of an Angry God: Questioning The Existence of Hell

Throughout all of humankind, there have always been different stories regarding the afterlife. From Christianity to ancient greeks. Today however I will be writing about hell and the many instances in which it has shown up throughout history. While hell as existed for a long time, we can still trace back to its origins.

Where did hell come from? To answer this we must look back into Greek mythology. Here we see that what we know today as hell originated from the underworld in Greek mythology. How the underworld works is that all of man is sent to one of the many levels of the underworld. No matter how kind or evil you were, everyone was sent there. Of course, people were furious that those who were kind and good, had to end up in the same place as killers and evil humans. So as a result of this, hell was invented for the Christian religion. How do you end up in hell? A common idea that many people have is that God will send people into hell. This is not true, while god doesn’t send you you can in a way send yourself into hell. Either through your actions or your beliefs.

Now there has been many instances were hell as been either described, referenced or told about. Not just in the bible. Sinners in the hands of an angry god is a speech by Jonathan Edwards. It was written in 1741 on July 8th. In this speech, Jonathan says to the sinners that God would judge them for their sins. And that the punishment for these sins would be harsher than they could ever imagine. He follows this by directly addressing the sinners in the longes part of his sermon. He describes hell and the pits of fire. Then finishing that until they all changed their ways they were sinners in the hands of an angry god.

In the bible, there has also been descriptions of hell. Often times hell has been associated with darkness. Like in Nahum 1:8 “realm of darkness”, or “Thrown outside into the darkness” in Matthew 8:12, 22:13 and 25:30. In most instances, hell is related to darkness. But there has been different descriptions, like gnashing teeth in Matthew 8:12, 13:50 and others. Were Jesus used this phrase to describe the very intense suffering that sinners would go through. In the old testament, fire is also used as a description of hell. In Isaiah 66:24 it is said that “ the fire that burns them will not be quenched”. And there is many more instances that could be named. Throughout the many books of the bible, there are many different descriptions.

One of if not the most famous descriptions of hell is Dantes inferno the divine comedy. It was written in 1320, by Dante Alighieri In this book, we follow Dante and Virgil as they travel throughout the many circles of hell. The book starts out with Dante attempting to travel up a mountain that is usually considered to symbolize heaven. And he is stoped by a panther and a lion. So Virgil is sent by Dantes passed girlfriend to help prepare Dante to be able to enter heaven. Dante gets on a boat to cross the Acheron. He sees that he is the only person who is alive on that boat so he falls asleep. When he wakes up He and Vigle make their way to the first circle of hell, Limbo.