Strictly theologically speaking, is hell hot or cold?
I know when I was in RC grade school, they used to say the heat of hell was just a metaphor. We got punished there, cut off from God. And that basically is what that meant. I’ve also heard some people say heaven and hell are just a ‘state’.
Anyways, as I once read in a book on philosophy, both assertions are wrong. If heaven/hell really exist, they must be a place. And places have space and dimensions. And therefore they would have to have things like temperature too.
This is a theological question as I said. But atheists and agnostics are invited in the conversation too.
Read Inferno — you get the full tour. Not sure how much of it might be based on the Bible as a primary source. But, it doesn’t matter: everybody’s read that poem, so that’s how people picture Hell now.
Still on the Dante subject, another dimension would be too good for the sinners because Hell is buried deep within the bowels of the Earth. Which does suggest a bit of surrounding heat from the earth’s core, except for the aforementioned frozen lakes and similar bits.
Strictly theologically speaking it depends on the theologian. Some say hell is “the absence of God”, in which case you could possibly derive its temperature by knowing whether God is hot or cold.
I read the scientific answer to this many years ago. There are several versions of this essay being circulated, so I’ve chosen to give the line to the Snopes version, because they provide so much background and source material about the author.
In the story Jesus tells about hell an occupant describes it as “agony in flame.” The story also makes it clear the person suffering is both conscious and able to think/reason. Interestingly, the person never claims they are innocent or the punishment is unjust.
What a peculiar assertion. Happiness surely exists, does it not? Would one say that if happiness exists, it must be a place? Or that happiness must have a temperature?
