In the third century C.E. the heretical Greek Father, Origen, proposed a scheme for the eventual salvation of humankind. But no more overt attacks on the eternity of hell appeared until the seventeenth century. This book, originally published in 1985, explores the reasons for the long survival of the doctrine and for its hold beginning to weaken about 300 years ago. The chief reason for its breakdown, the author suggests, was a gradual change in the attitude to other people’s suffering, and, connected with this, a weakening of the principle of vindictive justice, and an evolution of the attributes of God, in whom Love slowly gained ground over Justice. The thinkers discussed range from members of heretical sects, such as the Socinians or the English and German Philadelphians, through several groups of English Platonists, including Henry More and Peter Sterry, to figures such as Pierre Bayle and Leibniz.
Table of Contents:
1.Introduction 2. Strengths of the Doctrine of Hell 3. Weaknesses of the Doctrine of Hel 4. The Merciful Doctors 5. Socinians 6. English Arians 7. English Platonists 1: Sterry and White 8. English Platonists 2: Henry More and Some Friends 9. English Platonists 3: Thomas Burnet 10. English Platonists 4: Shaftesbury 11. Pierre Bayle and Some Friends 12. Theodicy: Malebranche and Leibniz 13. English Philadelphians 1: Mrs Lead 14. German Philadelphians: The Petersens 15. English Philadelphians 2: Roach and the Camisards.
About the Author :
D. P. Walker (1914–1985) was an English historian and author of several notable works on the Occult.
Review :
Original Reviews of The Decline of Hell:
‘An excellently documented piece of the history of ideas. The work as a whole not only widens our understanding of a whole section of sixteenth and seventeenth-century thought, but is fascinating in its own right as a picture of some extremes in religious thinking.’ New Blackfriars
‘Few problems can have given rise to more logic-chopping than that of Hell, and Dr. Walker performs a prodigy of scholarship in weaving his way firmly and sure through the web of arguments – philological, philosophical, theological and sociological – which has been spun around it.’ French Studies
