Dictionary

infernalism en · NOUN

Etymology

From infernal + -ism. First attested in 1795, popularised in the theological sense in the 2000s–10s.

Meanings

1. (countable, uncountable) Belief in the existence of hell, especially as a place of eternal and conscious torment after death.
   • Sheltered in my tiny corner of Christendom, like many evangelicals I was unaware of […] alternative prespectives on hell that did not transform God into a wrathful tyrant-judge who consigns the unrepentant to Dante-tesque tortures for eternity. As it turns out, the view of hell with which I grew up—infernalism—is only one of several options […] 2009, Brad Jersak, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem, →ISBN:
   • Embedded within his argument is the view that infernalism is a less severe form of retributive punishment than annihilationism; […] 2022, A. G. Holdier, “Comments on ‘Is Annihilation More Severe than Eternal Conscious Torment?’”, in Southwest Philosophy Review, volume 38, number 2, page 43:
   • To these conceptions Protestant churches will gradually yield, and while still nominally the same in their faith, its infernalism will disappear, and the idea of future punishment will become a rational instead of a diabolical picture of Divine justice. 1853 August, “The Onward Movement”, in Joseph R. Buchanan, editor, Buchanan’s Journal of Man, volume 4, number 8, page 228:
2. (countable, dated, uncountable) Hellishness.
   • If the production of men from a planet is continuous and the inhabitants should turn out to favor infernalism above heavenly things, then the Infinite Grand Universe of the Lord would be in danger of getting too many inhabitants for the hells and too few for the heavens. 1956, R. Newton Mahin, Palewings, page 249:
   • Paternalism has no terrors for me; indeed, I much prefer paternalism any time, in any form, and anywhere to infernalism in the way of bad roads. 1895, M. R. Campbell, “Road Laws”, in Roy Stone, editor, Historical and Technical Papers on Road Building in the United States, page 55:
   • It is because worship has been slavishly bestowed on the personification of the worst of the human qualities magnified to infernalism, that it has been considered a degrading, or at least a pusilanimous thing […] 1860, Calvin Blanchard, The Religion of Science; or The Art of Actualizing Liberty […], page 128:
3. (countable, dated, uncountable) An infernal thing or act.
   • Is not the State an infernal institution? Why expect from it, then, anything but infernalisms? 1886 September 18, Benjamin R. Tucker, “Why Expect Justice from the State?”, in Instead of a Book by a Man Too Busy to Write One: A Fragmentary Exposition of Philosophical Anarchism, published 1893, page 444:
   • To me the long catalogue of matrimonial infernalisms has no significance other than that of congratulation at my escape from such loving woes. 1890, Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the Pacific States of North America, volume 34, Literary Industries, page 456:

Forms

Relateds

infernalist