ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book demonstrates ones need to keep talking and imagining not only because we are uncomfortable with the fixity of any one position but because no one position represents the full panoply of our human experiences and desires. To encounter hell's existence in the modern world is to encounter a place where justice is subverted, as seen in the cosmos of modern popular discourse. The book focuses on fire and brimstone images of hell as one might imagine, and discusses 'Catholic and Protestant Hells'. Early Christian thinkers were by no means certain that hell was closed off to recourse from divine mercy of the living to help their deceased loved ones. The closed gate is somehow always visible in the Christian imagination; at the same time, the mouth and the gate also imply that the opening to hell has been left somewhat ajar.
