Beyond its basic meaning as the divine dwelling place, the idea in Christian theology of heaven as the ultimate (or penultimate) destiny of human beings is where most reflection has focused, and where most problems arise. The first part of this entry explores conceptual issues, the second...
In contemporary English, ‘hell’ is almost always used to refer either literally or metaphorically to a place of post-mortem punishment. However, in a longer perspective, the term was once commonly used to allude to the underworld more generally. In the latter sense in the Catholic West it b...