hellfire
adjEtymology From Middle English helle fire, helever, from Old English hellefȳr, equivalent to hell + fire. Cognate with West Frisian helfjoer (“hellfire”), Dutch hellevuur (“hellfire”), German Höllenfeuer (“hellfire”).
1
Of or relating to a violent, apocalyptic and ultimate day of reckoning and judgment; usually characterizing a form of Christian preaching.
- The advance of liberalism, so-called, in Christianity, during the past fifty years, may fairly be called a victory of healthy-mindedness within the church over the morbidness with which the old hell-fire theology was more harmoniously related.1902, William James, “Lectures 4 & 5”, in The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature […] , New York, N.Y.; London: Longmans, Green, and Co. […], →OCLC:
- Sermons such as The Eternity of Hell Torments and The Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable, as well as several manuscript examples, serve to mark the distinction between a true hellfire sermon and the proto-eschatological concerns of Sinners [in the Hands of an Angry God], consumed as it is with the here and now.2005, Sang Hyun Lee, The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards, University of Princeton Press, page 253:
- Related terms
- fire and brimstone, inferno, purgatory