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Hellfire and Damnation: An Approach to Religion and Literature1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Mary Jo Weaver
Mary Jo Weaver*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Abstract

Teaching religion in a state university setting challenges one to find non-confessional ways to discuss theological problems. While “Theology” itself is not the proper concern of a “Religious Studies” department, one can raise some significant theological issues in courses like Religion and Literature. The purpose of this course was to examine the presuppositions about damnation brought to the course by the professor and the students. A “Damnation Game” and a variety of literary texts were used to test the range of ideas we had about damnation, and to draw us into an experiential approach to religion and literature.

Type
Creative Teaching
Information
Horizons , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Fall 1979 , pp. 241 - 255
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1979

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Footnotes

1

The course also used some films and should technically be called a course in religion, literature and film. The films, however, are not essential to the concept under discussion here and for the most part, religion and literature courses are taught here without the use of films, so I prefer to restrict the title to “religion and literature.”

References

2 Rahner, Karl and Vorgrimler, Herbert, Theological Dictionary (New York. Herder & Herder, 1965), p. 201.Google Scholar

3 Ibid.

4 Introductory Papers on Dante (New York: Harper & Bros., reprint, 1954), p. 67.Google Scholar

5 “On Telling You a Story…” in Essays Presented to Charles Williams, edited by Lewis, C. S. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1966), pp. 1–31.Google Scholar

6 Williams, Charles, The Figure of Beatrice (New York: Octagon Bks., Div. of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, reprint 1972), p. 118.Google Scholar

7 Hawthorne, Nathanial, Selected Tales and Sketches, introduced by Waggoner, Hyatt H. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc., 1950), p. 166.Google Scholar

8 Seven Storey Mountain (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. Inc., Image edition, 1970), pp. 34–36.Google Scholar The rejection of gratuitous love also relates to the definition of damnation as personal alienation from God.

9 I have listed the bibliography in the order used in the course and have suggested some secondary literature that was helpful to me.