January 20, 2010

An Edwardsian Definition of Hell

Hell is a spiritual and material furnace of fire where its victims are exquisitely tortured in their minds and in the bodies eternally, according to their various capacities, by God, the devils, and damned humans including themselves, in their memories and consciences as well as in their raging, unsatisfied lusts, from which place of death God's saving grace, mercy, and pity are gone forever, never for a moment to return. Edwards nowhere gives such a comprehensive definition, but this is the way we put his message together as his overall view of hell, to which he gave so much reflection in his study and in his pulpit.
John H. Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell (Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1998), 53.

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