Orthodox Christian Conception of Hell and African Traditional Religion (ATR) Eschatology

Abstract

Hell in orthodox Christian eschatology is presented as a place of eternal punishment for the damned or sinners. Damnation follows from disobedience to God’s will. Hell is contrasted with heaven, a place of eternal reward and benefits for the righteous. In contrast to this eschatology, African Traditional Religion (ATR) broadly denies the existence of hell. ATR rather asserts that violators of God’s moral codes receive their punishment on earth while those who have lived ethically laudable lives transition to a new phase of existence in the ancestral realm, the ideal home. Given that the ancestral realm can be compared with the Christian heaven, more or less, African eschatology paints a less gloomy picture of human destiny than orthodox Christian eschatology. We assert, in this article, that the ATR eschatology that denies the existence of hell is more ethically attractive than the Christian eschatology that punishes temporally bounded wrongdoing with eternal damnation. We argue the attractiveness of the African view from the perspective of the understanding of God as a benevolent being, which both orthodox Christian theism and traditional African theism endorse.

Keywords

• god
• African traditional religion
• Christianity
• hell
• theism
• eschatology