By: rstark

I have always found D.P. Walker’s “Decline of Hell” thesis to be iffy at best. Granted, Jane Lead and some other important early modern religious leaders rejected the doctrine of hell and advanced a provocative form of universalism, but such arguments were far outside of the mainstream at the time, and remained so, at least until Darwin… perhaps. I suppose that Darwin’s theory of evolution changed the conversation about hell in some interesting ways. What else had the same impact? I’m not talking about secular culture but rather about Christians who embrace new theories and thus change their understandings of earlier doctrines (e.g., hell).