Are there different levels of Hell?

[DoxieMama]

Is there anything in Scripture or otherwise about different levels of Hell? I’ve heard of this before. For example, would an unrepentant murderer receive a different punishment than say, an unrepentant user of contraception?

 

[thistle]

Is there anything in Scripture or otherwise about different levels of Hell? I’ve heard of this before. For example, would an unrepentant murderer receive a different punishment than say, an unrepentant user of contraception?

Such an idea doesn’t matter.
The Church clearly teaches the chief punishment of Hell (which applies to everyone there) is eternal separation from God so what would it matter if an additional minor punishment is thrown in for some.

 

[Shin]

Is there anything in Scripture or otherwise about different levels of Hell? I’ve heard of this before. For example, would an unrepentant murderer receive a different punishment than say, an unrepentant user of contraception?

‘A fire is kindled in my wrath, and shall burn even to the lowest hell… I will heap evils upon the transgressors of my law, and will spend my arrows among them;’

Deut. 32:22-23

'As for sinners, the Lord, referring to the Day of Judgment, says: “I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them.”

The reapers, that is, the Angels, bind up those sinners who have committed the same sins, so that they can be sent to Hell together, and thus the proud are tortured together with the proud, the immoral with the immoral, the greedy with the greedy, liars with those who be, murderers together with murderers, and unbelievers together with unbelievers. All of these, joined together according to their types of sins, will burn in the various places of torture into which the Angels throw them.’

Pope St. Gregory the Great

 

[drfye]

sounds like Dante, unfortunately I am unfamiliar with Dante’s Inferno or his other works of literature but my assumption is that He was being figurative in his writings as a way of expressing the torments of hell, I suppose kind of like how the Sistine Chapel represents God, whether I’m correct or not someone more scholarly then myself could probably give you a better answer.

 

[Godfollower]

Such an idea doesn’t matter.
The Church clearly teaches the chief punishment of Hell (which applies to everyone there) is eternal separation from God so what would it matter if an additional minor punishment is thrown in for some.

I’m with you on this. It’s sort of like asking, “If I don’t get accepted into any colleges, will they also make me write a 500-word essay?” Next to the major result, I don’t see how anything else will matter.

 

[Marc_Anthony]

Yes, there are different levels, but I imagine that once we’re there we really wouldn’t care…

 

[Robert_Sock]

Is there anything in Scripture or otherwise about different levels of Hell? I’ve heard of this before. For example, would an unrepentant murderer receive a different punishment than say, an unrepentant user of contraception?

According to Jewish mysticism there are different grades of Hell, with each successive decent a forty-fold increase in the heat.

 

[fred_conty]

St. Faustina mentions in her Diary about this.

"There are special tortures destined for particular souls. These are the torments of the senses. Each soul undergoes terrible and indescribable sufferings related in the manner in which it has sinned. There are caverns and pits of torture where one form of agony differs from another. I would have died at the very sight of these tortures if the omnipotence of God had not supported me. Let the sinner know that he will be tortured throughout all eternity in those senses which he made use of to sin. I am writing this at the command of God so that no soul may find an excuse by saying there is no hell or that nobody has ever been there, and so noone can say what it is like. "

Further on she made another observation.

“But I noticed one thing: that most of the souls there are those who disbelieved that there is a hell.”

A few thoughts from St. Faustine.