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Monday, November 11, 2013

Jerry Walls: music in hell? can the damned fiddle?

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Okay, we will all have our laughs about which musical artists might soundtrack hell---Ken and I share possibilities in the "Gaithers on Crack" video):
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But..... Jerry Walls, philosopher extraordinaire/seminary prof of mine, has raised the serious question:

Things like music and beauty are likewise difficult to assess.  Must these be entirely absent from hell, since God is the source of all beauty?  It would seem so.  But on the other hand, if Nero could fiddle while Rome burned--whether or not he actually did--perhaps the damned can also fiddle.  Surely, however, they could not derive any real joy from their fiddling, anymore than someone tormented as Nero could truly enjoy aesthetic pleasures.  --Walls, Hell: The Logic of Damnation, p. 153

P.S. The book, based on his dissertation, eventually became part of a  trilogy:

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