recommend?

[waitinontheLamb]

Can anyone recommend a good book on the history of how we get the modern understanding of hell in the church and how it evolved into such? Also would love to read about early church leaders writings that held to ur. Thanks in advance.

[WhiteWings]

Also would love to read about early church leaders writings that held to ur. Thanks in advance.

Summary
Book

[waitinontheLamb]

Thank you for the response. So if the early church held to ur can someone please recommend some material documenting how we got to this place of believing in an eternal burning Hell? Would love to look further into that. Thanks again

[WhiteWings]

It's also in the same book. But only as a minor topic.
Constantine had deep pagan roots. He worshipped Roman gods before he converted to Christianity.
But the problems really started with Augustine. He also had  pagan roots. He could barely read Greek. He hated it. But still he used it along with Latin translations. From Augustine on it went quickly downhill. But it has to be said although Augustine stronly believed in ET he also said "the great many" will get to heaven. Hard to guess a percentage but I would say 70%. That's far better than current 5% number. He also believed although hell was bad it still was far more favorble than not existing at all.

[thinktank]

It's also in the same book. But only as a minor topic.
Constantine had deep pagan roots. He worshipped Roman gods before he converted to Christianity.
But the problems really started with Augustine. He also had  pagan roots. He could barely read Greek. He hated it. But still he used it along with Latin translations. From Augustine on it went quickly downhill. But it has to be said although Augustine stronly believed in ET he also said "the great many" will get to heaven. Hard to guess a percentage but I would say 70%. That's far better than current 5% number. He also believed although hell was bad it still was far more favorble than not existing at all.

What tye of hell did he believe in though. The grave, or the underworld or torture dungeon?

[WhiteWings]

What tye of hell did he believe in though. The grave, or the underworld or torture dungeon?

Augustine brought his theology with him from Manichæism when he became a Christian, only he
added perpetuity to the dualism that Mani made temporal. "The doctrine of endless punishment
assumed in the writings of Augustine a prominence and rigidity which had no parallel in the earlier
history of theology and which savors of the teaching of Mohammed more than of Christ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism
Just read it. It's to fragmented to quote from. But to summarize Manichaeism is a mix of Buddism, book of giants, book of Enoch, Nephlim, etc etc

Some modern scholars have suggested that Manichaean ways of thinking influenced the development of some of Augustine's ideas, such as the nature of good and evil, the idea of hell, the separation of groups into elect, hearers, and sinners, and the hostility to the flesh and sexual activity

Augustine just blended Manichaeism with Christianity.
Just as Constantine did with his Roman gods. Want to see Roman/Greek gods like Zeus, Apollo, Pluto, Mars etc? Go to a Catholic church and look at statues of the 12...