| Summary: | In his approach to the doctrine of Hell Augustine was influenced in part by a desire to address pagan doubts about the scientific possibility (d a body being in a state of everlasting torment. But an even greater concern was prompted by various pleas within the church to tone down the Scriptural evidence for an eternal Hell. Augustine believed that if any of these pleas were accepted, dire pastoral consequences would be involved.
Alongside his response to the various critiques of Hell, Augustine laid much stress on the seriousness of Adam’s original sin. He also rejected the Platonist view, effectively endorsed by Origen, that all divine punishments are essentially corrective. Augustine felt no need to give a detailed rationale for God’s justice, which he saw as a datum of revelation and a matter of faith for the believer. It was, however, a weakness in Augustine (and the patristic period generally) that he was content to work with a model of divine anger which stripped it of any passionate element. This foreclosed the possibility of tying God’s wrath more closely to the outworking of God’s justice.
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Patristic Views on Hell; vol. II 
Hell