Every culture and civilization embraces a certain set of assumptions about life, truth, significance, and what it means to be human.  Without these shared assumptions, common life would be impossible.  Individuals within these societies may not give much active thought to these common assumptions, but their decisions, expectations, and general dispositions reflect the presence of these assumptions as what some philosophers call background ideas.

Is belief in hell disappearing? “Absolutely,” says Barnard College professor Alan Segal, author of Life After Death: A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion. Segal’s remark is found within a news story released by Religion News Service. In “Belief in Hell Dips, But Some Say They’ve Already Been There,” Charles Honey traces the transformation of hell in contemporary America.

The photographs and images are now seared into our consciousness. One of the most troubling aspects of the disaster in South Asia is the death of infants and young children. Moving at the speed of a jetliner, the walls of water fell on the young and the old alike–and so many of the youngest were simply swept away.

The doctrine of hell has recently come under vicious attack, both from secularists and even from some evangelicals. In many ways, the assault has been a covert one. Like a slowly encroaching tide, a whole complex of inter-related cultural, theological, and philosophical changes have conspired to undermine the traditional understanding of hell. Yesterday, we considered the first and perhaps most important of those changes–a radically altered view of God. But other issues have played a part as well.

After reviewing the rise of the modern age, the Italian literary critic Piero Camporesi commented, “We can now confirm that hell is finished, that the great theatre of torments is closed for an indeterminate period, and that after 2000 years of horrifying performances the play will not be repeated. The long triumphal season has come to an end.” Like a play with a good run, the curtain has finally come down, and for millions around the world, the biblical doctrine of hell is but a distant memory. For so many persons in this postmodern world, the biblical doctrine of hell has become simply unthinkable.