Hell: A Guide

In this disappointing study, DeStefano (A Travel Guide to Heaven), host of TV show A Travel Guide to Life, aims to report “what hell is actually like.” Hell, DeStafano explains, has been famously depicted by C.S. Lewis and Dante Alighieri and furiously debated by theologians and philosophers across time. DeStefano contends that once a person dies, their soul leaves their body, “falling” into a hell of immense pain filled with “spritualized hellfire” that one’s material body cannot comprehend, before finally meeting God for the Last Judgment. He sidesteps some of the thorniest issues about the afterlife by not addressing purgatory and offering only superficial treatment of alternative theories on hell and what comes after death within the Christian tradition. Opting instead to preach to his own conservative-leaning choir and declare those who disagree with him “traitors,” DeStefano draws on traditionalist readings of classical Christian philosophy, morality, and a supplement of biblical texts that offers little rigor. Instead, DeStefano is left to speculate about many details of hell and closes with an evangelistic call: “the words of Christ and the clear thinking of the church... testify to the real existence of hell, but so does common sense.” This flimsy analysis will only find an audience with devoted Christian readers. (June)