343. Is Hell “down”?
343. IS HELL “DOWN”?
Where is Hell? We always picture it as “down” and Heaven as “up.” Is this (1) just silly, or is it at least (2) symbolically true? Is it (3) literally true?
Whether the fire of hell is beneath the earth?
Objection 3. After the day of judgment the bodies of all the damned will be tormented in hell. Now those bodies will fill a place. Consequently, since the multitude of the damned will be exceeding great, for the number of fools is infinite (Sir 1:15), the space containing that fire must also be exceeding great. But it would seem unreasonable to say that there is so great a hollow within the earth. . .
Reply to Objection 3. Hell will never lack sufficient room to admit the bodies of the damned. . . . Nor is it unreasonable that God’s power should maintain within the bowels of the earth a hollow great enough to contain all the bodies of the damned.
I answer that, As Augustine says, I am of opinion that no one knows in what part of the world hell is situated . . . Gregory, having been questioned on this point, answers: About this matter I dare not give a rash decision. . . .
Heaviness is to the body what sorrow is to the spirit, and joy (of spirit) is as lightness (of body). Wherefore just as in reference to the body all the heavier things are beneath the others if they be placed in order of gravity, so in reference to the spirit, the lower place is occupied by whatever is more sorrowful. And thus even as the empyrean (highest Heaven) is a fitting place for the joy of the elect, so the lowest part of the earth is a fitting place for the sorrow of the damned (S97,7).
Note how modest and reasonable St. Thomas is, both in his objections and in his replies, despite his knowing very little of what we know about the science of the earth and the physical universe. And most especially in his final judgment (“no one knows”). Sometimes a philosopher’s good habits of mind are revealed most clearly in his errors.
We know today that the center of the earth contains not Hell but molten matter. But St. Thomas’ analogies (“heaviness is to the body what sorrow is to the spirit, and joy of spirit is as lightness of body”) point to at least a necessary symbolic truth to the “down” picture. In Christianity, body and soul, matter and spirit, are not totally separated, as in Descartes. They are two dimensions of the one universe God created, and two dimensions of ourselves. Matter matters! If Christ had physically descended down into the earth instead of ascending up into Heaven, Christianity would have produced a radically different eschatology. To a pre-Cartesian mind “high” meant not just “physically, vertically high” and “low” meant not merely the physical opposite of that. And we still use pre-Cartesian language when we speak of “high ideals”, and we still connect these two meanings, the physical and the spiritual, when we place judges, and kings on physically high seats to symbolize their spiritual authority.
Of course, “lowest” had a different meaning physically for a medieval man than it does for us. Medieval men did not spontaneously see the earth as a ball moving through empty and relative space (though the educated knew it was round and not flat); they saw “up” and “down” as absolute reference points rather than as relative.
But the change in science does not affect the analogical meanings of “high” and “low”. There is a universal human association between sadness, burial, death, darkness, and “down-ness”; and this does not depend on the level of physical science. It is instinctive. So is the association between joy, freedom, life, light, and “up-ness” or rising. We love to dance, to jump, to climb mountains, and to fly. God designed us that way, and designed Heaven for us as something more like the sky than the ground.