Does hell exist?

 In times of religious intolerance, addressing certain topics causes controversy. This is what American theologian David Bentley Hart, of the Orthodox Church, author of "That All Shall Be Saved," raises. In his work, he argues that there is no eternal punishment on the other side of life. God, in his merciful love, will grant all sinners broad, general, and unrestricted amnesty. Regarding biblical passages that speak of the punishment that the wicked will suffer, Hart affirms that it is a metaphorical approach.

This thesis is unsettling to fundamentalist Christians who, in the name of Jesus, condemn to the depths of hell all those who do not
They agree with their ideas. They don't even realize that, by
In doing so, they become so inflamed with arrogance that they pretend to be
To put in God's place.

It also bothers those who need to continually invoke the devil to instill in the faithful the most subtle and efficient weapon of subjugation – fear. If there is no hell, there are no demons, except those who, here in this world, torment those who do not follow their rules by throwing bombs where there is freedom of expression, setting fire to Candomblé temples, kicking Catholic images, and vainly taking the Holy Name of God to engage in political maneuvering.

The belief that after this life there would be a place of suffering for some also appears in Hindu, Babylonian, Egyptian, Germanic, Finnish, and Japanese religious traditions. In the Old Testament, that place is called Sheol, "region of the dead." In Greek mythology, this region is ruled by Hades who, fascinated by Orpheus' lyre, allowed him to rescue Eurydice from the underworld.

Until the early Middle Ages, "underworld" meant the realm of all the dead. Only from the scholastic period, in the 13th century, was the territory of the dead divided into heaven, purgatory, and hell. And also a fourth place, limbo, for those who died without baptism. But limbo was abolished by Pope Benedict XVI.

The Catholic Creed, in my childhood, professed that Jesus, on the third day, "descended into hell." The Second Vatican Council modified the formula to "descended into the abode of the dead."

Mere linguistic adaptation? In fact, there was a change in meaning. Now the Creed does not emphasize that Jesus went to hell, a place where sinners would suffer eternally, but rather that he actually died, left this life for the realm of the dead, and from there, resurrected.

Another theological explanation is that Jesus, before resurrecting, went "to the abode of the dead" to close it, so that all who were there could enjoy God's infinite love for all eternity.

In the New Testament, only in the "First Letter of Peter" (3:18-20) does it say that, after the resurrection, Christ "proclaimed victory even to the imprisoned spirits who were formerly disobedient."

Hart criticizes theologians who defend the idea of ​​eternal hell, such as Augustine (354-430), Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), and the Protestant reformer John Calvin (1509-1564), and recovers theologies such as those of Basil of Caesarea (330-379), Gregory of Nyssa (335-395), and Isaac of Nineveh (613-700), who defend the idea of ​​universal reconciliation with God.

Dostoevsky, in "The Brothers Karamazov," defines hell as "the suffering of no longer being able to love." This is well portrayed in this Chinese parable: there were thousands of starving people surrounding a...
A mountain of steaming rice. They all carried meter-long bamboo chopsticks. They were hungry, they had the utensils, but not
They were able to get the food to their mouths. That's hell. But it could be.
Unlike thousands of hungry Chinese people gathered around a steaming mountain of rice, they all carried meter-long bamboo chopsticks. They were hungry, they had the utensils, and one fed the food to the other. That is heaven.