{"id":40651,"date":"2012-12-13T00:19:09","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T07:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/?p=40651"},"modified":"2014-12-30T09:45:36","modified_gmt":"2014-12-30T16:45:36","slug":"the-hell-you-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2012\/12\/the-hell-you-say.html","title":{"rendered":"The Hell You Say?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

The vagaries of conservative Catholic opinion are hard to chart.\u00a0 The other day, I remarked that I didn\u2019t know what the big deal was about Fr. Barron\u2019s views on hell <\/a>(since then people have clarified for me that I was looking in the wrong place and the controversial remarks are elsewhere<\/a>\u2013of which more anon).\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Anyway, in the video I posted, part of what Fr. Barron noted was the same point that von Balthasar did: that we don\u2019t have any idea who\u2013or if<\/em>\u2013anybody is in hell.\u00a0 A reader responded:<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ridiculous to say that we don\u2019t know if anyone is in hell. All of the saints, the apparitions and let\u2019s not forget JESUS say that there are people in hell. Why would Jesus warn and warn and say flat out that the way is narrow and FEW PEOPLE FIND IT??? It\u2019s things like this that make people indifferent and apathetic, because people like Fr. Barron and you make them think that there isn\u2019t any reason not to be. Jesus knows human nature better than you. And He thought it was for the best to warn and warn and warn people about hell. Not act like it was all gonna be ok. If you want to imitate Jesus you should talk about the great danger of hell A LOT like he did. He was the one who warned about hell the most and you should follow his lead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Saying \u201cwe do not know if anyone is in hell\u201d is not the same as saying \u201cit\u2019s all gonna be okay\u201d.\u00a0 It amazes me the incredibly short memories there are in cyberspace. Some readers may cast their minds waaaaaaaaay back to slightly over a month ago when I was reiterating one of the countless warnings I had given about the dangers of hell.\u00a0 Some folks may recall my refusal to vote for candidates who advocate sin worthy of the everlasting fires of hell, such as abortion, euthanasia, torture, and unjust war.\u00a0 When I did that, I was told (countless times) by \u201cfaithful conservative Catholics\u201d[TM] that I was a fussy perfectionist and that advocacy of mortal sin\u2013-when done by a Republican\u2013-was a minor peccadillo and that people like me were self-regarding narcissists <\/a>and even spiritual masturbators <\/a>for declining to support GOP candidates who advocate grave intrinsic evil any more than Democrats who do so.\u00a0 Indeed, I was told I had a moral *obligation* to support the Right Sort of people when they are advocating mortal sin. A month ago, a mere month ago, this was the very definition of \u201cFaithful Conservative\u201d Catholic[TM] and I was roundly condemned for failing to sign off on it.<\/p>\n

Now, suddenly, we\u2019re worried about hell and Fr. Barron <\/em>is taking hell too lightly while Faithful Conservative[TM} Catholics are bravely holding the line?<\/p>\n

Well, okay. But here\u2019s the thing: It\u2019s perfectly possible to warn against the extremely real possibility that one could choose Hell (because one *can* choose Hell) and yet remain agnostic about whether anyone has done so (for the very good reason that we have no idea if anyone has done so). Can we *guess* that some have chosen Hell? Sure. And my guess plus five bucks will get you a cup of coffee. What do I know? What do you know? Nothing. And despite my reader\u2019s claim, the reality is that the Church has never definitively stated that there is anybody in Hell. That\u2019s why von Balthasar could write as he did and not receive ecclesiastical censure.<\/p>\n

Von Balthasar\u2019s point is not \u201cWe know everybody will be saved\u201d. It is \u201cWe don\u2019t know anything\u201d. The New Testament presents us with two strains of thought in tension (a very typical Catholic habit). It tells us Jesus came to save \u201call\u201d (\u201cI will draw all <\/strong>men to me\u201d) and it warns of the possibility of damnation. No attempt is made to reconcile these strains of revelation just as no attempt is made to reconcile \u201cGod is one\u201d with \u201cJesus is the Son of God\u201d or \u201cGod is absolutely sovereign\u201d with \u201cWe have free will\u201d. It falls to the Church to hold such points of revelation in tension and the Church has always held them both. Von B\u2019s point is that we are under <\/em>judgment, not over it, and we simply do not know the end of the story. We can make guesses, but we can\u2019t *know*. So we are left with neither presumption (that all will be saved), nor with despair (that most, including me and my loved ones) will be damned. Both presumption and despair are sins: the twin enemies of hope.<\/p>\n

It is significant that hope is the subject of the encyclical Fr. Barron is commenting on. Here is what Benedict writes <\/a>that is the subject of Fr. Barron\u2019s commentary:<\/p>\n

45. This early Jewish idea of an intermediate state includes the view that these souls are not simply in a sort of temporary custody but, as the parable of the rich man illustrates, are already being punished or are experiencing a provisional form of bliss. There is also the idea that this state can involve purification and healing which mature the soul for communion with God. The early Church took up these concepts, and in the Western Church they gradually developed into the doctrine of Purgatory. We do not need to examine here the complex historical paths of this development; it is enough to ask what it actually means. With death, our life-choice becomes definitive\u2014our life stands before the judge. Our choice, which in the course of an entire life takes on a certain shape, can have a variety of forms. There can be people who have totally destroyed their desire for truth and readiness to love, people for whom everything has become a lie, people who have lived for hatred and have suppressed all love within themselves. This is a terrifying thought, but alarming profiles of this type can be seen in certain figures of our own history. In such people all would be beyond remedy and the destruction of good would be irrevocable: this is what we mean by the word Hell[37]. On the other hand there can be people who are utterly pure, completely permeated by God, and thus fully open to their neighbours\u2014people for whom communion with God even now gives direction to their entire being and whose journey towards God only brings to fulfilment what they already are[38].<\/p>\n

46. Yet we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life. For the great majority of people\u2014we may suppose\u2014there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God.<\/strong> In the concrete choices of life, however, it is covered over by ever new compromises with evil\u2014much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the Judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? What else might occur? Saint Paul, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, gives us an idea of the differing impact of God\u2019s judgement according to each person\u2019s particular circumstances. He does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible, without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images\u2014simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it. Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation: Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues: \u201cNow if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw\u2014each man\u2019s work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man\u2019s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire\u201d (1 Cor 3:12-15). In this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved we personally have to pass through \u201cfire\u201d so as to become fully open to receiving God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage-feast. <\/p>\n

47. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation \u201cas through fire\u201d. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ\u2019s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the \u201cduration\u201d of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming \u201cmoment\u201d of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning\u2014it is the heart\u2019s time, it is the time of \u201cpassage\u201d to communion with God in the Body of Christ[39]. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace. If it were merely grace, making all earthly things cease to matter, God would still owe us an answer to the question about justice\u2014the crucial question that we ask of history and of God. If it were merely justice, in the end it could bring only fear to us all. The incarnation of God in Christ has so closely linked the two together\u2014judgement and grace\u2014that justice is firmly established: we all work out our salvation \u201cwith fear and trembling\u201d (Phil 2:12). Nevertheless grace allows us all to hope, and to go trustfully to meet the Judge whom we know as our \u201cadvocate\u201d, or parakletos (cf. 1 Jn 2:1).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The highlighted part is the bone of contention. Fr. Barron remarks concerning Ralph Martin\u2019s recent book on the matter, Will Many Be Saved?<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Obviously, there is no easy answer to the question of who or how many will be saved, but one of the most theologically accomplished popes in history, writing at a very high level of authority, has declared that we oughtn\u2019t to hold that Hell is densely populated. To write this off as \u201cremarks\u201d that require \u201cclarification\u201d is precisely analogous to a liberal theologian saying the same thing about Paul VI\u2019s teaching on artificial contraception in the encyclical \u201cHumanae Vitae.\u201d It seems to me that Pope Benedict\u2019s position \u2013 affirming the reality of Hell but seriously questioning whether that the vast majority of human beings end up there \u2013 is the most tenable and actually the most evangelically promising.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m not so convinced that the Pope has \u201cdeclared\u201d that we oughtn\u2019t to hold that Hell is densely populated. \u201cWe may suppose\u201d doesn\u2019t quite have the same ring as \u201cwe declare, pronounce, and define\u201d. But certainly it *does* seem to me that Benedict is putting squarely in the center of the table a certain incredulity at the idea that most will be damned and most definitely lending aid and comfort to Fr. Barron\u2019s basic assumption that the vast majority of human beings will not wind up there. I don\u2019t think\u2013and I suspect Fr. Barron doesn\u2019t think either\u2013that Dr. Martin is really in the same moral category as a theologian who resolutely dissents from Humanae Vitae<\/em>. At the same time, I do think that there is not a whole lot for the Pope to clarify here: He doubts many will be lost and has a higher degree of confidence that the grace of Christ will penetrate hearts and minds than many Catholics in the past have had. Fr. Barron is perfectly right to note that this is the case about what Benedict is expressing in Spe Salvi<\/em>, and perfectly within his rights to both agree with the Pope and think this is helpful for evangelization, since it sacrifices nothing of the core teaching of the Church, retains the truth of the reality of hell, and helps confused post-moderns grasp the point that God has sacrificed all in Christ to save us from hell, not to delectate over sending us there.<\/p>\n

The great fear, of course (expressed, for instance, by my reader above), is that without hell, nobody will be motivated to believe. I would suggest that this is a poor understanding of what it means to be a disciple. A real disciple is one out of love for Jesus, not terror of hell. At the same time, as Sherry Weddell has pointed out, most Catholics are de facto <\/em>universalists, practicing a cheap sort of presumption that does indeed often amount to \u201cI don\u2019t need to tell anybody about the gospel because it\u2019s automatic heaven for all anyway.\u201d I think having a better idea of what Hell is, rather than simply a dreadful terror of somehow accidently going there due to membership in a statistical bloc, is the ticket for catechesis on Hell. And when it comes to catechesis on the nature of Hell, I think Fr. Barron does a bang-up job.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vagaries of conservative Catholic opinion are hard to chart.\u00a0 The other day, I remarked that I didn\u2019t know what the big deal was about Fr. Barron\u2019s views on hell (since then people have clarified for me that I was looking in the wrong place and the controversial remarks are elsewhere\u2013of which more anon).\u00a0 Anyway, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[193],"class_list":["post-40651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-theological-reflections"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Hell You Say?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The vagaries of conservative Catholic opinion are hard to chart.\u00a0 The other day, I remarked that I didn't know what the big deal was about Fr. 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