Friday, November 8, 2019

Hopeful Universalism - Bryan Cross


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.


Fr. Barron responded to Martin’s book in “Saving the Hell Out of You,” also posted as “How Many are 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.

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