"The body will be full of torment as full as it can hold, and every part of it shall be full of torment. They shall be in extreme pain, every joint of them, every nerve shall be full of inexpressible torment. They shall be tormented even to their fingers’ ends. The whole body shall be full of the wrath of God. Their hearts and bowels and their heads, their eyes and their tongues, their hands and their feet will be filled with the fierceness of God’s wrath. This is taught us in many Scriptures. . . ."Jonathan Edwards. Hell, it is the place or state of punishment of the wicked after death. This paper is concerning hell and the different theories on it. Specifically unending torment vs. annihilationism. Unending torment being the the idea that hell is a place infinite suffering. Whereas annihilationism is the belief that condemned unbelievers will be annihilated, or destroyed after death, instead of spending an eternity …show more content…
But then there is the argument for annihilationism, a theory that until I began researching for my paper I was completely unfamiliar with. But know that I know about it I am fascinated. It is a more pleasant theory than unending torment, instead of a disembodied soul suffering for all of eternity it is just destroyed. In a sense it is like putting it out of its misery, a mercy killing. When you think about the people you know and love who do not have a relationship with God I think it is natural to wish for annihilationism rather than the alternative. But once again this is me approaching this with my emotions rather than rational. While examining the scripture used to back up this theory I had a tough time, it did not line up quite as easy. Personally it felt like you had to do a dance through scripture to make it work. I would read one verse then have to flip to a different book and use another verse to be able to conclude it was annihilationism. While it is possible that this theory is correct I do not think it is. But it is worthy of
I agree with Jonathan because being a religious person, I believe Hell is a place that is hard to comprehend, I believe that the
One of the things that was said in the ‘From Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’ by Jonathan Edwards said, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to
Recalling the key images of: wickedness heavy as lead, earth ready to spew out the sinner, the black clouds of God wrath, the dammed waters of God’s wrath, the bent bow of God’s wrath, and the sinner-as-spider held by God over the fire (p.107). All six of these separate metaphors have coherence and become explicated tied to the congregation with the following and applied physical principle. Overall the passage of fire and brimstone alludes to God’s wrath and to persuade those into repentance. The achievement of this passage, commands to visualize the world and lake of sulfur, leading into images of suffering. In his blunt manner, this concept of hell and suffering recalls of Edwards’ style of writing, illustrating Lockean use of language.
In the opening of the sermon an analogy is stated between the ability of a person to crush a worm with the ability of God to cast his enemies to hell (First Paragraph). This supports the main idea of how God is a superior being, able to freely decide people’s fate. The author’s persistent imagery of Gods abhorrence towards sinners is continually mentioned as a form of repetition, to cause a vivid depiction of Gods wrath in the audience’s perspective of him. This is illustrated when it’s stated how unconverted men walk over the pit of hell and how God has unsearchable ways of taking wicked men out of the world (Paragraph 3). He also introduces a metaphor where he associates Gods wrath as a bent bow with an arrow aiming towards your heart; this again typifies Gods supremacy to take away sinners existence unless they convert (Paragraph 6).
According to C.S. Lewis heaven and hell are very different because from the way that we see the world. In the book he talks to different people who all have different views of what they think heaven and hell are like. For example, the tousle headed poet who says that society has vulgarized intellect. He says that they don’t want new geniuses because intellectuals aren’t appreciated anymore. He also goes into detail about how his parents never appreciated him and how a former girlfriend hurt him.
He continued to talk to the sinners in a degrading way to provide them with the ability to feel the fear of what God will do to them upon their arrival to death. “They deserve to be cast into hell…it makes no objection against God using his power at any moment to destroy them…justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins.” This describes how the sinners deserve the wrath of God with constant accusations, using their sins against them, adding how god would not hesitate to use his power to destroy them. This tone is also pointed out in “The Great Awakener.” “The perfect orthodoxy…
Edwards discusses the wrath of God and the “dreadful pit of the glowing flames of the wrath of God; there is hell's wide gaping mouth open”. (Edwards) The dreadful
Rhetorical Analysis: Sinners A Puritan pastor in the early 1700s and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, in his sermon, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God”, describes how angry God is towards sinners. Edward’s purpose was to scare sinners and unconverted men with the realities of hell so that they would seek a relationship with God. He adopts an aggravated tone to express to the sinners in his congregation that they should seek redemption because God can send them down to hell at any moment, but instead He gives them another chance. The metaphors and imagery that Edwards use in his sermon for the Great Awakening helps him to describe God’s wrath against sinners to make unsaved people convert back to the original ways of Puritans.
William Rowe addresses the problem of evil through an examination of the relationship between the existence of evil with an omnibenevolent, omniscient creator. His argument stems from the notion that because human and animal suffering is so intense, an atheist is rational in their belief and that the co-existence of evil and God is unlikely.
Except there would be no explanation for the death of millions of jew since they did die before becoming stronger. Evil is a problem as it compromises the freedom of all individual if it is erased because there would no longer be free will. There is no concrete answer for the neglection of god light during the holocaust and most importantly in the concentration
He says that God looks at people as if they were loathsome insects and in fact hates us more than we would hate such an insect. He firstly compares the wrath of God to damned waters, with God holding back "the fiery floods".
He achieves this by expressing the wrath of God. One way is by comparing their plight and God’s rage to many unstoppable and destructive works of nature, such as floods and storms. He also compares his contempt to holding an insect over a fire, as well as the image of a taught bow and arrow. These images clearly convey the hopelessness of their situation, the ineffectiveness of pleading, the anger of God, and the terror accompanied by suffering of hell. He also shows how terrible this wrath and suffering is with much expressive language, as well as comparing the joy of Heaven to the misery of Hell with the gloating and watching of those in Heaven.
The story also compares hell to a furnace which is pretty much the same thing as a pit. “The pit is prepared; ready to receive them; hell is ready to burn them” Edwards appeal for this quote is pathos. He wants to make people see that you will burn and be in excruciating pain forever.
In the Inferno, Dante describes the different levels of hell and the punishment which corresponds to the sin. Dante categorize hell into three major sins consisting of incontinence, violence, and fraudulent. Fraudulent is portrayed as the worse sin in the Inferno while incontinence is seen as a less serious sin. Each category has sinners which have all been punished for their wrong doings in life. The three major sins consist of circles where Dante separates the different sinners.
Thayer states that the word “hell” actually comes from the hebrew word sheol meaning “The place or state of the dead” (44) Not only is the word hell used for the