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Hellfire and Damnation: Four Ancient and Modern Views

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

George Hunsinger
George Hunsinger
Affiliation:
Princeton Theological Seminary, CN821, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
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Extract

Hell is a doctrine that has always had its uses. The range of those uses can be conveniently traced by examining a passage from Cold Comfort Farm, the comic novel by Stella Gibbons, first published in 1932. The novel is set in rural England during the third decade of the twentieth century, a time when automobiles were not entirely unknown but not yet widely in use. The scene to be examined involves Flora Poste and Amos Starkadder. Flora is a young, sophisticated woman who has gone to visit her relatives in the country, and Amos is her gray-haired, grizzled cousin, a Scotsman who lives on the farm with other kinfolk and who serves as a lay preacher in town at the Church of the Quivering Brethren. Flora accompanies Amos to a preaching service one evening. They arrive by horse and buggy, enter the hall, and take their seats. Flora sits in the back near the exit, Amos by the platform up front.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 51 , Issue 4 , November 1998 , pp. 406 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1998

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References

1 Gibbons, Stella, Cold Comfort Farm (London: Penguin Books, 1938)Google Scholar.

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9 For a different definition of this term, see Kvanvig, The Problem of Hell, Ch. 1.

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33 Barth, , Church Dogmatics, Vol. II, Part 1 (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1957), p. 373Google Scholar.