In Our Own Image: The Anthropocentric Design

While more recent trends seem to be moving away from constructing the topology of Hell (maybe Dante was too good an act to follow), humans spent centuries creating detailed designs of the underworld, imagining its inhabitants, and envisioning the brave souls who challenged its master. But minding that no one’s ever really seen it, it’s interesting how much Hell resembles the planet Earth, the souls of the damned resemble rotting corpses, and Satan is just a really mean King or some animal that people don’t like very much (i.e. a snake or a goat).

Hell is usually imagined as a physical place that exists under the ground. It has deserts, rivers, mountains, entry gates (like a fancy estate) and guards to watch them. It has a fiery furnace (or sometimes is a fiery furnace) and icy cold lakes. It has rainstorms and hailstorms and bridges and mansions (some speculate that these belong to the souls of Limbo). And that sounds a lot like Earth. The difference is that everyone there is in a state of eternal suffering (maybe it isn’t all that different), but that suffering is also pretty mundane (albeit sometimes extreme): hunger, thirst, worms, terrible smells, whipping, teeth gnashing, severe heat or cold, severe dryness (from the heat), being gnawed by violent beasts. It sounds remarkably like being poor in the Middle Ages (except maybe the gnawing part?), which is a perfect punishment for the rich, indulgent sinners of the era! Jesus did say “it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” (Matthew 19: 24). Those who spend life on Earth suffering can spend eternity in the riches of Heaven, and those who enjoy the pleasure of wealth on Earth can spend eternity suffering like those to whom they refused help in their lifetime. This exact sentiment is expressed in the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus: the rich man refuses to help Lazarus, and when he dies and goes to Hell, he asks Abraham to send down Lazarus from his bosom with a drop of water to cool his tongue, but Abraham reminds him, “you have received what was good during your lifetime while Lazarus likewise received what was bad; but now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented,” (Luke 16: 25).

By the same token, Heaven has been less often described in such detail (at least by Christians). Heaven is some unidentifiable place in the clouds where God lives and angels dance on the head of a pin (and other things we can’t do here). Some historians believe that our affinity for Hell, as opposed to Heaven, is an issue of relatability. It’s a lot easier to imagine eternal suffering than eternal paradise, and it’s a lot easier to understand a sinner than a saint. Basically, we’ve all been in Lucifer’s shoes, but God is inaccessible. We know what it’s like to be hungry and cold, to be angry and envious, but human euphoria is pretty limited.

Hell has overtime retained its primal aspects. It makes sense that the afterlife of the ancients was built on nature (especially since most early religions were born from nature), but a modern construction of Hell could theoretically include a whole array of new tortures and technologies that weren’t available to the ancient imagination. However, I think the primitive nature of Hell plays an interesting role for the modern believer, in that its primitiveness would seem more frightening and mystical (in its unfamiliarity) now than it did to the old world. As I’ve stated in an earlier post, some Gnostic Christians literally and intentionally conflated Hell with Earth. A long time ago, Hellish suffering could be found in the streets; now, to your average first world believer, such suffering seems unfathomable. This may be why so many modern believers reject the physical existence of Hell in favor of a transcendental one. The underworld has gone from a place that could be physically accessed through an opening in the Earth to a place that mystics can only access in their dreams…