Won’t the presence of the damned rotting in Hell spoil Heaven for the
saints? To this, legendary Calvinist preacher and theologian Jonathan
Edwards answers emphatically, No! Taking
his cue from Revelation 18:20 (“Rejoice over her thou heaven, and ye holy
apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.”), Edwards argues that the
suffering of the hellish majority will not subtract from the pleasure of the
heavenly minority; rather, it will—indeed it must—add to it. And so, with demonic relish, he paints the scene: monoemotive
saints—capable of feeling only orgiastic joy—sing praises as they witness the judgment
of Hell’s new tenants, those objects of God’s insatiable wrath. Devils rend
flesh; Jesus mocks; the saints sing on. To children Edwards issues this
terrible threat: “How will you bear to see your parents, who in this life had
so dear an affection for you, now without any love for you, approving the
sentence of condemnation, when Christ shall with indignation bid you depart,
wretched, cursed creatures, into eternal burnings?” Quite simply, the choice is
this: watch a never-ending snuff movie or act in it. It’s a dark vision from
the mind of America’s premier purveyor of Puritan torture porn.
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