It is one of the great paradoxes of a uniquely Christian form of hope that David Bentley Hart can have such a clear-eyed and prophetic view of the deep corruption of American Christianity and culture (which are virtually the same thing and so all-penetrating–like a mold or fungus–that even non-Christians bear its imprint.) And yet seeing all this, he hopes, like St. Gregory of Nyssa, for the salvation of all. I think that is commendable in him. To doggedly insist on two apparently irreconcilable realities is one of the marks of Christian thinking. Similarly, Christians hold that God is one yet three, that he is sovereign and that we have free will, and that Christ is fully God and fully man.
To be sure, I do not share Hart’s, or Gregory’s, absolute confidence in the salvation of all, nor does the Magisterium.
1033 We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. But we cannot love God if we sin gravely against him, against our neighbor or against ourselves: “He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” Our Lord warns us that we shall be separated from him if we fail to meet the serious needs of the poor and the little ones who are his brethren. To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called “hell.”
1034 Jesus often speaks of “Gehenna” of “the unquenchable fire” reserved for those who to the end of their lives refuse to believe and be converted, where both soul and body can be lost. Jesus solemnly proclaims that he “will send his angels, and they will gather . . . all evil doers, and throw them into the furnace of fire,” and that he will pronounce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire!”
1035 The teaching of the Church affirms the existence of hell and its eternity. Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell, “eternal fire.” The chief punishment of hell is eternal separation from God, in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs.
1036 The affirmations of Sacred Scripture and the teachings of the Church on the subject of hell are a call to the responsibility incumbent upon man to make use of his freedom in view of his eternal destiny. They are at the same time an urgent call to conversion: “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”
Since we know neither the day nor the hour, we should follow the advice of the Lord and watch constantly so that, when the single course of our earthly life is completed, we may merit to enter with him into the marriage feast and be numbered among the blessed, and not, like the wicked and slothful servants, be ordered to depart into the eternal fire, into the outer darkness where “men will weep and gnash their teeth.”
1037 God predestines no one to go to hell; for this, a willful turning away from God (a mortal sin) is necessary, and persistence in it until the end. In the Eucharistic liturgy and in the daily prayers of her faithful, the Church implores the mercy of God, who does not want “any to perish, but all to come to repentance”:
Father, accept this offering
from your whole family.
Grant us your peace in this life,
save us from final damnation,
and count us among those you have chosen.
But I also recognize that Gregory is a saint and I am not and nor does the Church demand we believe in the certain damnation of anybody. It’s a warning, not a prophecy and Gregory’s gung ho version of Hope in Jesus is a perfectly legit position, as is my conviction that, while we know (because the Church canonized a few of them) that some people are certainly in Heaven, we won’t know anything about the damned (assuming there are some) till the End.
Hart’s position is somewhat more problematic, at least for me as a Catholic. Unlike Gregory, who holds his position as an opinion (and well before the Magisterium has offered more refine views), Hart is a) not a Catholic but Orthodox, b) openly contemptuous of Catholic magisterial teaching on Hell, and c) openly contemptuous even of those who hope, without absolute certitude, that nobody will be damned.
This last category is where I live. I hope that nobody makes the choice to be damned, but I have no confidence at all that this must certainly be so. Both the Church’s warnings of the possibility and, what is more, the spectacle of watching people doggedly commit to clear and obvious sin even at the cost of incredible suffering for themselves for the past ten years in front of my very eyes has greatly shaken any certitude I might have had that damnation is impossible and only contemptible morons believe in it.
So while I enjoyed Hart’s THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED, I found it less than persuasive, which is too bad because I’d very much like to be as convinced as he is that he is right. But Hart hectoring me for being a fool if I can’t muster the conviction he is right is not, unfortunately, a substitute for persuading me he is right. So here I remain–hoping he is right but by no means certain he is right.
Meantime, universal salvation at least has to wait till we have cleaned up the mess Hart so accurately analyzes here. First things first! At the end of the day, I think Hart’s deeply Christian response to the present moment is far more important than his (or my) speculations about damnation.
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The US Defense Budget is about $1 Trillion. This is more than the next six nations after us combined. But the Trump Administration wants to increase it by another 40%. It is never enough.
Meanwhile, Medicaid, SNAP and other programs are cut to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The rich pay much less now, percentage wise than they did in the 1950’s. Some billionaires pay nothing due to various dedications and other tax scams.
The US is something like 55th in life expectancy, behind nations like Costa Rica. Republicans tell us that this is a good thing, as we have all this “freedom.” So, are we great again yet?
Will Hell be empty? Myself? I am doubtful. I have met people who cannot be swayed from their course to damnation just for the sheer pleasure of “doing it MY way!” If that isn’t Hell, I don’t what is.
But dare we hope?
We can hope. When the Blessed Mother appeared to the children at Fatima, did she not teach them to pray? “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead ALL souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy mercy.”
So there is hope.
But just because Jesus leads us does not necessarily mean we all follow. And that is truly frightening.
One of the best summaries and descriptions of our current moment that I’ve read. Hard for me not to believe that so much of our dysfunction – repeatedly chosen – doesn’t have its deep roots in the particular cultural/philosophical/religious/developmental period of our national founding. It’s as though we are fated to live out forever the arguments of the 1700s, even when the realities around us cry out for a different set of arguments. The developed democracies of places like Western Europe and Japan suffered the physical shock of WWII on their soil and that paroxysm seems to have shifted those societies at the level of the collective unconscious to a newer set of questions. Other than Pearl Harbor – on land that had only been “ours” for a scant half a century or so – the US did not suffer that same physical shock to the system. 9/11 could have been the shock we needed to move forward, but it seems we missed that opportunity and chose instead to double-down on fear, on the military industrial complex, on rampant consumerism, on flailing colonialism. We keep choosing it. Choices have consequences.
A year or two ago, I often joked: “The US does not need an election. We need an exorcism.”
These days, I’m not so sure I’m joking anymore. There is something truly dark and wicked infecting large swaths of this country.