Hopeful
Universalism
Bryan
R. Cross
It is true that the Church has not declared that
any particular person is in hell, although some early statements could seem to
imply that Judas was not saved. And it is true that we may pray and hope for
the salvation of any particular person, because the state of that person's soul
at the moment of his or her death is hidden to us. Of course I’m not speaking
of those whom the Church has beatified — in those cases we know the state of
their soul at death, not by seeing into their soul, but by way of the authoritative
and divinely protected declaration of the Church.
That we may wish for the salvation of any
particular person, even one who has died, does not mean that we have reason to
hope that hell will have no human population, given the Tradition of the Church
found in the unanimous testimony of the Church Fathers concerning the teaching
of our Lord on this subject, revealed in the New Testament, and especially in
the Gospels. Christianity is a revealed religion, and therefore even if in our
mind it would be better for God to ensure that every person goes to heaven and
no person goes to hell, if by divine revelation we have reason to believe that
not every person goes to heaven and that some people go to hell, then we must
accept God's revelation.
Concerning the interpretation of Scripture on
this question, we should keep in mind the relevant decree in the Fourth Council
of Trent:
Furthermore, to check unbridled spirits, it decrees that no one
relying on his own judgment shall, in matters of faith and morals pertaining to
the edification of Christian doctrine, distorting the Holy Scriptures in
accordance with his own conceptions, presume to interpret them contrary to that
sense which holy mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge of their true sense
and interpretation, has held and holds, or even contrary to the unanimous
teaching of the Fathers, even though such interpretations should never at any
time be published. (Council of Trent, Session 4)
So we may not hold interpretations of Scripture
that are contrary to the unanimous teaching of the Fathers.
There are many relevant passages from Scripture
having to do with both the existence of hell and human persons going there. Jesus
said “the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and
there are many who enter through it.” (Matt 7:13). When the Apostles
asked Jesus, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” He answered “Strive to
enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter
and will not be able.” (Lk. 13:24), and “Many will say to Me on that
day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out
demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ “And then I will declare to
them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.” (Mt
7:22-23) “But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness;
in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Mt 8:12) “These
shall go into everlasting punishment.” (Mt. 25:46) In the context of the
parable of the wedding guest who seeks to enter without the proper garment,
Jesus says, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” (Matt. 22:14) And in
explaining the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus explains that the
tares are the “sons of the evil one,” and then says, “So just as the tares are
gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age.” (Matt.
13:40) The parable wouldn’t make sense if every person goes to heaven,
especially since the “sons of the evil one” cannot be referring to believers
who are in need of purgatorial cleansing.
Jesus says, “The hour is coming when all who are
in the tombs will hear [the Father’s] voice and come forth, those who have done
good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the
resurrection of judgment.” (John 5:28-29) Jesus’ statement wouldn’t be true if
everyone were saved, because there would then be no “resurrection of judgment,”
but only a resurrection of life. The Apostle John writes, “As for the cowardly,
the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers,
idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be the lake that burns with fire and
brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8) And St. Jude writes,
“Likewise, Sodom, Gomorrah, and the surrounding towns, which, in the same
manner as they, indulged in sexual promiscuity and practiced unnatural vice,
serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” (Jude 1:7)
And the moral consensus of the Church Fathers
regarding these passages understands them in the traditional way, as teaching
that some persons do go to hell. On that particular question (whether Christ
taught that some persons go to hell), we have a moral consensus in the Church
Fathers, and that gives it a certain weight of authority. Here is one example,
from the Didache, "And then shall appear the signs of the truth;
first, the sign of an outspreading in heaven; then the sign of the sound of the
trumpet; and the third, the resurrection of the dead; yet not of all, but as it
is said: The Lord shall come and all His saints with Him." (Didache,
16)
I should mention here the notion of universal
restoration (apokatastasis [from ἀποκαταστάσεως πάντων “restoration of
all things” in Acts 3:21]), which was the opinion by some Greek Fathers not
that no one would go to hell, but that eventually those in hell would be
reconciled to God. We see this in Origen (not a Church Father), and in certain
qualified respects in St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. Gregory Nazianzen. Origen’s
proposed universal restoration was not that no one would go to hell, but
that the damned in hell, including the demons, would eventually return to God.
In the sixth century Pope Vigilius condemned the notion that the punishment of
hell is temporary:
Can. 9. If anyone says or holds that the punishment of the demons
and of impious men is temporary, and that it will have an end at some time,
that is to say, there will be a complete restoration of the demons or of
impious men, let him be anathema. (Denz. 211)
If he anathematized those who deny that the
punishment of impious men in hell is everlasting, how could he not also
anathematize the notion that possibly in the end, there are no impious men? It
would seem arbitrary to condemn the notion that eventually every man who goes
to hell gets out of hell, while embracing the notion that possibly no human
ever goes to hell on account of a posited possible efficacious [cannot
ultimately be successfully perpetually resisted] divine work in the soul of
every man in mortal sin, at the moment of death. Practically, the two positions
amount to the same, except the hopeful universalism position actually makes
hell even less of a worry or negative incentive, since if the hope were true,
no man ever even goes to hell, whereas in the Origenistic notion, those who die
in mortal sin suffer greatly in hell before finally being released from hell.
In the sixth century Emperor St. Justinian wrote
that universalism:
Will render men slothful, and discourage them from keeping the
commandments of God. It will encourage them to depart from the narrow way,
leading them by deception into ways that are wide and easy. Moreover, such a
doctrine completely contradicts the words of our Great God and Savior. For in
the Holy Gospel he himself teaches that the impious will be sent away into
eternal punishment, but the righteous will receive life eternal. Thus to those
at his right, he says: “Come, O blessed of my Father, and inherit the kingdom
prepared for you from the foundation of the world” [Mt 25:34]. But to those on
his left, he says: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared
for the devil and his angels” [Mt 25:41]. The Lord clearly teaches that both
heaven and hell are eternal, but the followers of Origen prefer the myths of
their master over and against the judgments of Christ, which plainly refute
them. If the torments of the damned will come to an end, so too will the life
promised to the righteous, for both are said to be “eternal.” And if both the
torments of hell and the pleasures of paradise should cease, what was the point
of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ? What was the purpose of his
crucifixion, his death, burial, and resurrection? And what of all those who
fought the good fight and suffered martyrdom for the sake of Christ? What
benefit will their sufferings have been to them, if in the “final restoration”
they will receive the same reward as sinners and demons? (Against Origen
PG 86.975 BD)
Since the sixth century the question whether
hell is everlasting or only temporary has been settled in the Catholic Church,
and has been treated that way by the universal Church, thereby showing it to
belong to the Tradition. Once a person is in hell, he cannot ever come out of
hell. He has from then on separated himself from God by his free choice during
this life. (See my “The Gospel and the Meaning of Life.”) In fact, the person who dies in mortal sin immediately goes to
hell. In the fourteenth century Pope Benedict XII wrote:
Moreover we define that according to the general disposition of
God, the souls of those who die in actual mortal sin go down into hell immediately
(mox) after death and there suffer the pain of hell. Nevertheless, on
the day of judgment all men will appear with their bodies “before the judgment
seat of Christ” to give an account of their personal deeds, “so that each one
may receive good or evil, according to what he has done in the body” (2 Cor.
5.10). (Benedictus
Deus)
This statement presupposes that there are such
souls who die in mortal sin; it is implicit in the very statement. Pope
Benedict XII does not need to state that some people go to hell, because it was
understood that some people go to hell. Here, he is answering questions
concerning what takes place between the moment of death and the Final Judgment
for those who die in mortal sin.
But it is important to note that the fact that
some fourth century Eastern Fathers held to the notion of apokatastasis
is fully compatible with what I said above about the moral consensus of the
Church Fathers regarding the teaching of our Lord that some people do go to
hell, because the apokatastatis dispute was about whether persons who
are already in hell eventually get out of hell, not whether any human ever goes
to hell. The latter was never in dispute, because it was understood to be part
of the Apostolic teaching and the universal belief of the Church.
Two councils are relevant here as well. They are
not ecumenical councils, but they reveal the mind of the Church in relation to
this question. The first is the Council of Quiercy, held in AD 853, which
taught:
Almighty God wills all men without exception to be saved, even
though not all are saved. That some are saved is the gift of Him who saves;
that certain ones perish, however, is the merit of those who perish. (Denz.
318)(emphases mine)
Two years later, in AD 855, the third Council of
Valence taught:
But also it has seemed right concerning predestination and truly
it is right according to the apostolic authority which says: “Or has not the
potter power over the clay, from the same lump, to make one vessel unto honor,
but another unto dishonor?” [Rom. 9:21] where also he immediately adds: “What
if God willing to show His wrath and to make known His power, endured with much
patience vessels of wrath fitted or prepared for destruction, so that He might
show the riches of His grace on the vessels of mercy, which He has prepared
unto glory” [Rom. 9:22 f.]: faithfully we confess the predestination of the
elect to life, and the predestination of the impious to death; in the
election, moreover, of those who are to be saved, the mercy of God precedes the
merited good. In the condemnation, however, of those who are to be lost,
the evil which they have deserved precedes the just judgment of God. In
predestination, however, (we believe) that God has determined only those things
which He Himself either in His gratuitous mercy or in His just judgment would
do according to Scripture which says: “Who has done the things which are to be
done” [ Is. 4 5:11, LXX]; in regard to evil men, however, we believe that God
foreknew their malice, because it is from them, but that He did not predestine
it, because it is not from Him. (We believe) that God, who sees all things, foreknew
and predestined that their evil deserved the punishment which followed,
because He is just, in whom, as Saint Augustine says, there is concerning all
things everywhere so fixed a decree as a certain predestination. To this indeed
he applies the saying of Wisdom: “Judgments are prepared for scorners, and
striking hammers for the bodies of fools” [Prov. 19:29]. Concerning this
unchangeableness of the foreknowledge of the predestination of God, through
which in Him future things have already taken place, even in Ecclesiastes the
saying is well understood: “I know that all the works which God has made
continue forever. We cannot add anything, nor take away those things which God
has made that He may be feared” [ Eccles. 3:14]. “But we do not only not
believe the saying that some have been predestined to evil by divine power,”
namely as if they could not be different, “but even if there are those who wish
to believe such malice, with all detestation,” as the Synod of Orange, “we say
anathema to them” [see n. 200]. (Denz.
322, emphases mine)
The last statement of that canon refers to the
statement of the Second Council of Orange (AD 529), which anathematizes the
notion that some persons are predestined to evil by divine power. What
was in dispute and being addressed by the Second Council of Orange was not
whether some persons are reprobated, but whether they are so by divine power,
or by their own evil choices. That particular statement by the Council of
Orange would make no sense if no one were reprobate. The Second Council of
Orange was not an ecumenical council, but it was confirmed by Pope Felix II,
and reveals the mind of the Church on this doctrine at this time in Church
history. The Council of Valence in AD 855 is in continuity with the Council of
Orange regarding both the fact of reprobation, and the nature of reprobation.
That some are reprobate, though not by divine power, has been the general
teaching of the universal Church from the beginning of the Church until it
began to be contested in the twentieth century. And that consensus carries a
certain doctrinal weight, because of the authority of Tradition.
This obligation to Tradition is fundamental to
the Catholic theological method, as opposed to typical Protestant approaches to
Scripture, where Tradition is subjected to our own interpretation of Scripture,
and we take from Tradition only what passes that test. That method undermines
the authority of Tradition. But the authority of Tradition is itself part of
the Catholic Tradition, because the book and the community to which Tradition
was entrusted and the spiritual life, practice and understanding of that
diachronic, organic community can never be separated; the community can never
be abstracted from its past, but is always beholden to its past, in order to
understand and develop rightly what it has received from all those who preceded.
(See Verbum Domini.)
Tradition, even in matters that have not been
formally defined, has authoritative weight. Otherwise for any theological
question that had not been formally defined, we would not be able to
distinguish genuine development from corruption and liberalism (i.e. a
departure from Tradition). To make that distinction we not only need to be
steeped in the Tradition but also reverently be subject to that Tradition. It
is crucial especially for anyone who teaches Catholic theology to be able
accurately and in a principled way to distinguish between what is theological
liberalism and what is authentic, orthodox theological development. To approach
Scripture apart from the Tradition is a theological mistake, not only a
methodological or procedural mistake.
Balthasar, in my opinion, incorrectly treats the
authentic developments of Vatican II as a warrant for rejecting the Tradition
regarding hell having a human population. The authentic developments of Vatican
II do not justify or give reason to believe that the Tradition’s teaching that
some humans go to hell is false, or that such teaching was never part of the
Tradition.
Moreover, the consequences of ‘hopeful
universalism’ are, in my opinion, devastating, because it undermines
evangelism, sacrifice for the lost, the gravity of mortal sin, and the
importance of always remaining in a state of grace. It reduces practically to a
kind of monergism, as when Balthasar writes:
And now, can we assume that there are souls that remain
perpetually closed to such love? As a possibility in principle, this cannot be
rejected. In reality, it can become infinitely improbable — precisely
through what preparatory grace is capable of effecting in the soul. (Dare We
Hope, p. 219)
In effect, this is, like Calvinism, a denial of
the genuine resistibility of grace, and thereby a denial of the probationary
nature of our present time on earth and the meaningfulness of our present
choices (again, see “The Gospel and the Meaning of Life“). That is because Balthasar’s claim proposes that before each
person dies, God will find a way to overwhelm that person with [essentially]
irresistible grace, such that it is “infinitely improbable” that any human who
has ever lived or ever will live, ends up in hell. In that respect, this
position is a kind of Calvinism except without limited atonement. It therefore
removes the real possibility of choosing against God definitively, and thereby
eliminates the free choice of choosing definitively to love God. In this way it
removes the very reason for our probationary existence on earth (rather than
being created already in the Beatific Vision). And in doing that, it denies the
great dignity God has given to angels and men, namely, the dignity of
self-determination, out of horror at the consequences of choosing wrongly, and
a desire for a particular theological outcome. Again, however, Christianity is
a revealed religion, not one we construct how we see fit. Given the reasoning
Balthasar lays out in the quotation above, there should be no demons, because
God’s love should have made their rebellion against Him “infinitely
improbable.” But there are demons. Therefore, God’s love does not make
definitive rebellion against Him infinitely improbable.
Another problem with Balthasar’s hopeful
universalism is that it is based on an abstraction. Yes it is possible for me
to be saved, and for you, and if we ask that question for each individual
person who has ever lived, abstracting from all other relevant divine
revelation, the answer in each case is yes. In the same way, it is possible, in
the abstract, that every baptized Catholic could avoid all venial sin for the
rest of their lives. But in the concrete (i.e. when we don’t abstract from the
full context of relevant information), it is not possible for every baptized
Catholic to avoid all venial sin for the rest of their lives. So the truth of a
possibility based on an abstraction, is not equivalent to a possible truth in
reality. For this reason, treating what is a possibility only in the abstract,
as if it is a possibility in the concrete, is to be not rightly related to
reality. And what I see in Balthasar’s hopeful universalism is the treatment of
an abstract possibility as though it is a concrete possibility.
The notion that we have theological grounds for
hoping that all can be saved trades on the ambiguity in the term ‘all,’ because
‘all’ can mean “all without distinction” or “all without exception.” Thus in
the former sense it means that we have theological reason or grounds for hoping
that for any person, that person can be saved. In the latter sense, however, it
thus means that we have theological reason or grounds for hoping that every
person without exception will be saved. But if by the word ‘all’ is meant “all
without distinction,” then we don’t hope it; we know it, since we know that for
any person it is possible for that person to be saved, so long as he or she
remains in this pilgrim way. So in that sense of the term ‘all,’ the statement
is false. That leaves the other sense of the term ‘all’ (i.e. all without
exception). But if the word ‘all’ means all without exception, then it is not
true that we have theological reason or grounds to hope that all without
exception will be saved. In fact we have good reason to believe it is not true,
as I have shown above. Nor is that claim entailed by our knowing that all
without distinction can be saved, because that sort of inference would be
guilty of the fallacy of composition (i.e. what can rightly be said of each
member of a set cannot necessarily be rightly said of the whole set). Hopeful
universalism conflates hope for each person with hope that all
persons will be saved. Divine revelation gives us a basis for the former, but
not a basis for the latter.
Moreover, the supernatural virtue of hope is not
fideistic, because supernatural hope is not based on a fideistic faith. (On the
non-fideistic character of faith, see “Wilson vs. Hitchens: A Catholic Perspective.”) The supernatural virtue of hope is rational because it is the
anticipation of what Christ has revealed [in the deposit of faith] regarding
what is to come. But the “hope” that all persons who ever lived will be saved
is not based on divine revelation. Nowhere has Christ revealed or the Tradition
taught that all will be saved. So this ‘hope’ [in “hopeful universalism”] is
not part of the supernatural virtue of hope. It is a fideistic hope that is
wrongly treated (by its proponents) as though it is part of the “blessed hope.”
It is a mere human wish, treated as though it were part of the Christian hope.
And because it is fideistic, it is not rational. We have no reason in the
deposit of faith to hope that all will be saved. Rather, we have very good
reason to believe that not all will be saved. In fact, the ‘hope’ in “hopeful
universalism” is, as I have just shown, contrary to the Tradition. So this
‘hope’ is not even compatible with the Tradition.
Pius II (1458-1464) condemned the following
error of Zanini de Solcia: "That all Christians are to be saved."
(Denz. 717b) That would not be an error if all universalism were true. So if we
know that universalism is not true, then, so knowing, we cannot rightly hope
that universalism is true, without contradicting the statement by Pope Pius II.
Again, under Pope Innocent XI, the following
error was condemned in 1679: "Even though one sins mortally, we dare not
condemn him who uttered an act of love of God only once in his life."
(Denz. 1155) If hopeful universalism were true, this would not be an error,
since, given hopeful universalism we dare not condemn even one who sins
mortally and has never uttered an act of love of God. A fortiori, the
condemnation of this error is incompatible with the truth of hopeful
universalism.
Likewise, Pope Clement XI condemned the
following Jansenist error: “All whom God wishes to save through Christ, are
infallibly saved.” (Denz. 1380) That would not be an error if universalism were
true, given the Catholic doctrine that God wishes all men without exception to
be saved. (See here.) But that Jansenist
error is an error. Therefore, universalism is false. And therefore we cannot
rightly hope that universalism is true.
In that same century, Pope Benedict XIV wrote,
"We declare that a great number of those who are condemned to eternal
punishment suffer that everlasting calamity because of ignorance of those
mysteries of faith which must be known and believed in order to be numbered
among the elect." (Instit., 27:18, quoted in Acerbo Nimis, by Pope Pius X). How
could he speak of "a great number" if the Tradition left the number
entirely undetermined or possibly at zero?
Similarly, the seventeenth error in the Syllabus of Errors promulgated by Pope
Pius IX is: “Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation
of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.” If it is false
that good hope is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who
are not in the true Church of Christ, then a fortiori it must be false
that good hope is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all persons,
since the latter category contains the former. And once again, if it is false
that good hope is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all persons,
then we cannot rightly hope that universalism is true.
Moreover, the doctrine of the harrowing of hell, as taught by the
Fathers and Doctors, always distinguishes the limbus patrum from the
place of the damned, and the souls therein. If universalism were true, however,
there would be no distinction between the limbus patrum and the hell of
the damned, because all the souls that had died before Christ would have been
in the limbus patrum, and subsequently ascended with Christ. But if as
the Fathers and Doctors taught, not all those who lived before Christ were in
the limbus patrum, then we cannot rightly affirm "hopeful
universalism."
Of course there are some objections to my
argument. For example, Lumen Gentium 16 contains the
following line:
At saepius homines, a Maligno decepti, evanuerunt in
cogitationibus suis, et commutaverunt veritatem Dei in mendacium, servientes
creaturae magis quam Creatori (cf. Rom 1,21 et 25) vel sine Deo viventes ac
morientes in hoc mundo, extremae desperationi exponuntur.
But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their
reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature
rather than the Creator.(129) Or some there are who, living and dying in this
world without God, are exposed to final despair.
The “some there are” is not explicitly stated in
the Latin, but it seems to be implied, and the ‘vel’ makes better sense
translated as “even,” rather than as an exclusive disjunct. Thus in English the
section would read, “But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain
in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the
creature rather than the Creator; among these are even some who, living and
dying without God in this world, are exposed to final despair.” Implied, of
course, is that there are some who die without God, and are exposed to final
despair.
Because Christ’s teaching (recorded in Sacred
Scripture) regarding hell has been understood by the moral consensus of the
Fathers, by the local councils, and by all Catholics until the middle of the
twentieth century to be teaching that some humans will not be saved, therefore
the teaching that some are in hell carries an authoritative weight, the weight
of the Tradition. In my opinion, no good evidence or argument has been provided
by those who reject this teaching (i.e. that some humans are in hell), to show
that it is not part of the Tradition. What is needed (by those advocating
hopeful universalism) is an answer to the following question: If hopeful
universalism were an inauthentic development that in fact contradicted the
Tradition, what would be different?
So even though we cannot now know who is in
hell, it does not follow that we have any reason to hope that hell will have no
human population, or that no one is reprobate. Rather, we have reason to
believe that at least some will be in hell. Likewise, our awareness that God
desires all men to be saved does not justify hoping that all men will be saved,
because the revelation cited above shows that His antecedent will and His
consequent will are not identical, and therefore what is contrary to His
revealed consequent will cannot be treated as an object of hope. Yes there has
never been a single person conceived whom God does not will to be saved, but
that claim in itself does not distinguish between God’s antecedent and
consequent will, and so does not show that we have good reason to hope that all
men [without exception] will be saved.
So statements such as “It is necessary to keep
these two truths together, namely, the real possibility of salvation in Christ
for all mankind and the necessity of the Church for salvation” (Redemptoris
missio, 9), are not support
for “hopeful universalism.” The “real possibility of salvation in Christ for
all mankind” refers to the genuine offer of actual sufficient grace to each
person who has ever lived. Every single person is offered the real possibility
of salvation. But that does not mean, in light of the content of the whole of
Tradition, that universalism is possible. Likewise, the statement in Gaudium
et spes “[T]he Church has a single intention: that God’s kingdom may come,
and that the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass”, (Gaudium
et spes, 45) this too is not an
endorsement of hopeful universalism. The “salvation of the whole human race”
refers to the salvation of all persons living on earth, by way of conversion,
as the gospel is brought to every corner of the earth. It is not implying that
no one goes to hell. Both of these passages are affirming all without
distinction, not all without exception.
Similarly, some people use Pope St. John Paul
II’s statement in a General Audience on July 28, 1999, “Eternal damnation
remains a possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine
revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively
involved in it” as evidence that Pope St. John Paul II supported (or held open)
“hopeful universalism.” But in fact the words “whether or” are not in the
official (Italian) version of the talk, but were inserted by the translator.
The correct English translation (now available on the Vatican site)
reads, “Damnation remains a real possibility, but it is not granted to us,
without special divine revelation, to know which human beings are effectively
involved in it.”
Also the Catechism’s statement, “In hope, the
Church prays for ‘all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4) does not support “hopeful
universalism,” because the prayer of the Church is not (and has never been)
that hell would be empty of humans, but rather that each person who may yet
repent will do so and be saved. Praying that each person who may yet repent
will do so is very different from praying that hell will be empty. The former
prayer is not equivalent to the latter prayer, nor does the former prayer
logically justify the latter prayer or the doctrine implicit in the latter
prayer. Hoping that no particular person goes to hell is not the same thing as
hoping that hell remains permanently devoid of humans. And this is the same way
to understand the prayer of the Rosary “lead all souls to heaven, especially
those most in need of thy mercy.” The prayer is not an endorsement of “hopeful
universalism,” because the persons to whom it refers are only those who may yet
repent, not those who have already died and gone to hell. Again, all without
distinction is not all without without exception.
Except perhaps in the case of Judas, the Church
has never taught that some particular person has gone to hell. (See James
Akin’s “The Reality of Hell.”) So for any
particular person (again, except, perhaps, in the case of Judas) we may pray
and hope that that person goes to heaven. But the longstanding and
authoritative Tradition of the Church in her understanding of the teaching of
our Lord in Sacred Scripture, has been that some persons go to hell. And
therefore, hoping that hell will contain no humans denies what Jesus taught
about hell, as interpreted by the Church for nineteen centuries. We do not have
to adopt hopeful universalism in order without contradiction to pray for the
salvation of every person who may yet repent and the purification of every
person presently in purgatory. Nor does praying for the salvation of each
person who has died provide evidence that hell may be or remain perpetually
devoid of humans. Nor does anything in the teaching of Vatican II entail that
the traditional teaching that some humans will go to hell, is false, or could
be false. Again, all without distinction is not all without exception.
So the Church's teaching that some are
predestined to hell, on the basis of their foreseen sin and free rejection of
God, as just retribution for their sin, is part of the Tradition of the Church
as seen in the evidence above. This doctrine has not been formally defined, but
it has authoritative weight none the less, and Balthasar’s arguments against it
are not good arguments. So for these reasons I think Balthasar was in error on
this point.
UPDATE: See Monsignor Pope’s review of Ralph Martin’s book Will Many Be Saved?: What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its
Implications for the New Evangelization.
See also this
video.
Fr. Barron responded to Martin’s book in “Saving the Hell Out of You,”
also posted as “How Many are Saved?.”
Martin responded to Fr. Barron’s response in “Comments by Dr. Ralph Martin on Fr. Robert Barron’s Review of
Will Many Be Saved?”
Regarding the disputed passage in Spe Salvi, it seems to me too
hasty to assume that Pope Benedict is teaching there in paragraphs 45-47 that
most persons will be saved. When Pope Benedict says “the great majority,” (Spe
Salvi, 46) he seems to be speaking of (1) what we may suppose [i.e. from
the human point of view, based on our experience of others] regarding (2) the
will remaining flexible and open to receiving the love of God. These persons
are to be understood as distinct from those persons who have “totally destroyed
their desire for truth and readiness to love” (Spe Salvi, 45) on the one
hand, and on the other hand from those “utterly pure persons who are completely
permeated by God, … whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what
they already are.” (Spe Salvi, 45) This “great majority” does not
necessarily refer only to those in a state of grace, or only to those in a
state of mortal sin. It may very well refer to the set of persons whose will
remains open and flexible, composed of persons in a state of grace and persons
in a state of mortal sin, whose life choice does not become definitive until
death. (Spe Salvi, 45)
Then, upon encountering Christ at Judgment, Pope
Benedict says that “our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at
least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love.”
(Spe Salvi, 47, my emphasis) The set of persons [i.e. “the great
majority”] whose will remains flexible and open to the love of God in this
present life so far as we can tell through our experience, need not be assumed
to be identical to the set of persons who “continued to reach out towards
Christ, towards truth and towards love.” A person’s being open to receiving the
love of God, to the best of our human judgment, does not necessarily entail
reaching out towards Christ, towards truth, and towards love. The former is a
potentiality; the latter is an actuality. Even a person in a state of mortal
sin may retain flexibility of will, the potential for repentance, at least
until death, which is why we rightly hope for repentance when we reach out to
such persons with the love of Christ. But movement toward Christ, toward truth,
and love is a positive response to actual grace, not merely the potential to do
so. Obviously this needs clarification (as Martin says), but the distinction
between the set of persons in this present life who in our experience remain
open to the love of God [i.e. have not definitively and permanently closed
themselves off to repentance and reconciliation with God], and the set of
persons who in a positive response to grace are reaching out toward Christ,
toward truth and love, is a way of reading this section such that it does not
entail that Pope Benedict is teaching that “the great majority” of persons are
saved. (Update: Boniface addresses the Spe Salvi passage here.)
Also, some people have argued that if God
desires all men to be saved (1 Tim 2:4), then we have good reason to believe
(or hope) that all men will be saved. But this argument fails to distinguish
God’s antecedent will from His consequent will. See “Lawrence Feingold on God’s Universal Salvific Will,” especially footnote 5.
Father Ryan Erlenbush makes a similar case; see
his “Can we hope that all men be saved?.” See also Monsignor Pope’s comments. See also Christopher
Blosser’s Balthasar, Universal Salvation,
and Ralph Martin’s “Will Many Be Saved?”. See also Christopher Malloy’s “Balthasar’s Delirious Hope that
All be Saved.” James Chastek has
laid out the dilemma for the “hopeful universalism” position here.
