{"id":141951,"date":"2025-12-17T08:58:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T13:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=141951"},"modified":"2025-12-17T18:27:39","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T23:27:39","slug":"still-more-dorothy-sayers-this-time-on-hell-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=141951","title":{"rendered":"Still More Dorothy Sayers, this time on Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u2018There 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 \u201ccruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of hell,\u201d or \u201cthe childish and grotesque medieval imagery of physical fire and worms.\u201d\u2026But the case is quite otherwise; let us face the facts. The doctrine of hell is not \u201d medieval\u201d: it is Christ\u2019s. It is not a device of \u201cmediaeval priestcraft\u201d for frightening people into giving money to the church: it is Christ\u2019s deliberate judgment on sin. The imagery of the undying worm and the unquenchable fire derives, not from \u201cmediaeval superstition,\u201d but originally from the Prophet Isaiah, and it was Christ who emphatically used it. . . . It confronts us in the oldest and least \u201cedited\u201d of the 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 [gospels] through instead of picking out the most comfortable texts: one cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters.&nbsp;<strong>We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ.<\/strong>\u2018&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2013Dorothy Leigh Sayers,&nbsp;<strong>Introductory Papers on Dante<\/strong>&nbsp;(Harper: London, 1954), pp. 44-45<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018There 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 \u201ccruel and abominable mediaeval doctrine of<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=141951\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186,178],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-history","category-eschatology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=141951"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":141954,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141951\/revisions\/141954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=141951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=141951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=141951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}