Hell is Always Changing

I’m continuing to slog thought Foucault and finding him more and more fascinating. Yesterday I read his selection from Discipline and Punish, “The Body Condemned.” In this work Foucault is looking at the forms and types of penal and judicial punishment in Western civilization throughout the centuries. In doing so he makes the point that, “different systems of punishment … (occur) with the systems of production within which they operate” (Reader, 172). He also states that, “the systems of punishment are to be situated in a certain ‘political economy’ of the body…” As I understand it, Foucault is stating that the punishment of the day fit the political economy of the day, for example in a mercantile economy a prison factory and forced labor was the punishment.

This is all very interesting, but what has it to do with the church or anything else? Consider this from a theological perspective – does the punishment that Christianity suggests align or is influenced by the political economy or the socio-historical context of the day?

For some time hell was the soup de jour. If you weren’t a Christian and especially the right kind of Christian you would end up in the terrors and pain and torture of hell. The horror, the horror. As society progressed, or at least plodded along hell continued to be in the mix but other ideas emerged. The existentialists suggested that the end may be nothing and that would be the hell. The warm and friendly liberals suggested that everyone would go to heaven and there would be no hell. Others would say that there is a hell but no one is going there. The focus on punishment shifted.

If you have time to kill and want to see a great contrast, read Dante’s Divine Comedy and then read C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Both deal with the same topic. Lewis is deeply influenced by Dante, yet the terror is very different. Gone is the man eating the brains of another man. Gone are the skins of people hanging on trees. Gone are the traitors being eternally chewed in the very bottom of hell. Instead people are in a hell which is very much like life, a Purgatory which is like a bus stop, and heaven, which is finding one’s true life.

Some may say that Lewis is just modernizing Dante’s work, but considering Foucault’s theory, perhaps Lewis is influenced by the socio-historical, political, and economic context of the day.

In the end the lesson is still, be good or go to hell. Hell may not be that bad or it may be awful or it may just be a room with two other people and there is no exit. Sure, we may make it up, but it still sucks.