I was talking with my friend Grant Howell today about Dante's Inferno when we got caught up in conversation about the actual characteristics of Hell. He told me about the discussion that he had in bible study last night: where does a man go (to Heaven or Hell) if he has never even heard the Gospel before. So as our discussion progressed, I really had to put more and more thought into it, but I ended up basing a lot of my assumptions off Inferno (I know, bad idea). Anyways, it got to the point that I decided that there may in fact be certain levels of Hell, and your sins are your punishment, like we said in class. This may in fact be wrong but my assumption helps provide the basis for my question: how much of Inferno can we consider truth? I know that we have been exploring that partly these past couple of weeks but the question Grant and I thought about earlier just got me thinking again. I like to think that the virtuous man who never heard of God receives a punishment that was "lesser" than those of Aristotle and the other virtuous pagans. However, if the virtuous man who has never heard of Jesus actually makes it to Heaven, do us Christians and missionaries run a risk of telling them the Gospel and giving them a chance to reject it?
P.S. I commented on Rebekah Dye's "Ulysses in Hell"
I have always wondered that same question about someone who has not heard the gospel! It's so sad, right? Until reading the Inferno, I never thought about the layers of Hell and the individual punishments involved.
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