“A glance at the human situation around us reveals war, famine, arbitrary acts of injustice and exploitation, violence, crime, collapse of moral standards, and so on almost indefinitely.  Even in prosperous countries a spiritual barrenness produces innumerable acts of ferocity and despair . How does human life of this kind differ from life in hell?  Hell is often supposed to be an after-death state created by God in which people are eternally tortured for finite offences.  But this doctrine is merely one more example of the depravity of the human mind that thought it up.  Man alone is responsible for hell, and much as he would like to pursue his cruelties beyond the grave, he is blocked from doing so.  God’s interest in this hell is confined to “harrowing” or redeeming those who are in it.  At the same time there are honesty, love, neighbourliness, generosity, and the creative powers in the arts and sciences.  Human life appears to be a mingling of two ultimate realities, which we call heaven and hell.  Hell is the world created by man, and heaven, or at least the way to it, is the world created through man by God.”

Frye, The Double Vision (CW 4, 230)