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Is Hell a literal place, and if so, what’s it like? Is it dark? Is it a place of torment? Does it last forever? Everyone from theologians to thespians to thugs has a theory on Hell. But if we want to move from assumptions to answers, maybe we should turn to the One who is responsible for it.
And famed writer Dorothy Sayers knows exactly who that is.
English-born Dorothy Sayers was a novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, and translator. In other words, she knew a little bit about literature. She lived during the first half of the 20th Century, a time when many thinkers pondered the reality of Hell and questioned the origin of the heavily disputed doctrine. While many of her contemporaries traced the idea of Hell to the Dark Ages, Sayers applied her literary genius to a study of the Bible and came up with a much different Source altogether.
There seems to be a kind of conspiracy, especially among middle-aged writers of vaguely liberal tendency, to forget, or to conceal, where the doctrine of Hell comes from. One finds frequent references to the “cruel and abominable medieval doctrine of Hell,” or “the childish and grotesque medieval imagery of physical fire and worms….”
But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of Hell is not “medieval”: it is Christ’s. It is not a device of “medieval priest craft” for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ’s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from “medieval superstition,” but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it…. It confronts us in the oldest and least “edited” Gospels: it is explicit in many of the most familiar parables and implicit in many more: it bulks far larger in the teaching than one realizes, until one reads the Evangelists through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters. We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.
The idea of Hell doesn’t belong to the church. It’s not a concept that originated with priests. The reality of Hell goes all the way back to Jesus. Perhaps we should listen to what He had to say about it.
Resource’s Origin:
A Matter of Eternity by Dorothy Sayers. Eerdmans, 1973, Page 86.
Topics Illustrated Include:
Bible
Doctrine
Eternity
God’s Word
Hell
Jesus’ Teaching
Judgment
Myth
Preaching
Theology
Truth
(Resource cataloged by David R Smith)
