Tag Archives: Leo the Great

Why We Shouldn’t Dare to Hope

Apologetics, Church, Church Authority, Church Fathers, Devils, End Times, Last Things, Magisterium, , , , , , , ,

In a previous post, a theological and anthropological defense of the permanence of hell was offered.  A brief mention was made of the need to avoid hell in the right way—not by means of an infernal gymnastics, one that stretches the imagination and explains it away.  But the denial of hell’s everlastingness is only one of its manifestations.  There is another, perhaps more popular, strategy that could be called the “Dare We Hope” approach.  First put forward by Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar in the 1980s, Bishop Robert Barron has taken the baton and run with.  According to the Bishop, this approach posits two things:

  1. Given what God has accomplished in Christ through the power of the cross, we may reasonably hope that all people will be saved.
  2. The Church has never claimed to know if any humans are in hell, which leaves open the theoretical possibility of universal salvation.

We will deal with each of the two points and then discuss why, ultimately, to adopt does great harm to the Church’s salvific mission.

Hope or Optimism?

At first glance, there is nothing objectionable to the first point.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t exactly pass the Catholic smell test, especially when it is combined with the second.  That is because it suffers, like most modern theological statements, under the veil of ambiguity.  By using the theologically charged word “hope” it lends itself to being easily misunderstood and therefore misapplied.  Theological hope is something that is virtually certain based upon the merits of Christ and is not conditional in any way upon human response.  In his book, Balthasar says that there are only two responses to the question of whether there will be some men who refuse God’s gift of salvation. 

“To this there are two possible answers: the first says simply ‘Yes.’  It is the answer of the infernalists.  The second says: I do not know, But I think it is permissible to hope (on the basis of the first series of statements from Scripture) that the light of divine love will ultimately be able to penetrate every human darkness and refusal.” 

Dare We Hope, p.178

Notice that the hope that Balthasar is describing is dependent in no way upon human actions, but instead upon the power of God.  Under this viewpoint any soul that is lost is a failure on God’s part and so it must be certain rather than a mere desire for all men to be saved.

To be fair, Bishop Barron does take the time to define how he is using the term hope in the FAQs on his website: “we should recognize hope to mean a deep desire and longing, tied to love, for the salvation of all people, but without knowing all will be saved, thinking all will be saved, or even expecting all will be saved.”  Bishop Barron says he is using the term in the human sense meaning merely as desire.  It is puzzling why, if the Bishop simply means that out of love for God and neighbor he desires that all individual men be saved then why he doesn’t just say that.  It seems that he brings a whole lot of extra baggage into the discussion by uniting it with von Balthasar.  Because Balthasar appears to be using the term in the deep theological sense, Bishop Barron is wedding himself to the Balthasarian position.  He is indissolubility united to Balthasarian hope.  He says as much later on in the FAQs when he says that von Balthasar’s position reflects his own (“he does agree with Balthasar’s main thesis, affirmed by the Catechism, that we can pray and hope hell is empty of people.”). 

Part of the reason why Balthasar muddies the waters of salvation is because he rejects the classic distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will.  He reads 1 Tim 2:4, “God our savior who wills everyone to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” as an absolute statement that does not depend upon a human response.  The Church has long made the distinction between the fact that God wills all men be saved (called His antecedent will) and His consequent will which comes about because He also willed men to have free will that could choose something other than saving grace.  This viewpoint is based upon Scripture (c.f. Sirach 15:14-17, “God in the beginning created human beings and made them subject to their own free choice.  If you choose, you can keep the commandments; loyalty is doing the will of God.  Set before you are fire and water; to whatever you choose, stretch out your hand.  Before everyone are life and death, whichever they choose will be given them.”) and leads directly to the Church’s belief that, despite the objective power of the Cross to save all men, not all men will receive it.  A summary view was presented by the Council of Trent:

“But, though He died for all, yet do not all receive the benefit of His death, but those only unto whom the merit of His passion is communicated. For as in truth men, if they were not born propagated of the seed of Adam, would not be born unjust,-seeing that, by that propagation, they contract through him, when they are conceived, injustice as their own,-so, if they were not born again in Christ, they never would be justified; seeing that, in that new birth, there is bestowed upon them, through the merit of His passion, the grace whereby they are made just.” 

Session 6, Ch. III

The Theoretical Possibility of an Empty Hell

This leads naturally to the second proposition, namely that, because the Church has never claimed to know if any humans are in hell, universal salvation remains a theoretical possibility.  The problem is that the Church has consistently believed that there will be at least two human beings in hell.  The first is the Antichrist who is described in Revelation 20:10 as being “tormented day and night forever and ever.”  One could also reasonably assume, given the principle of biblical typology, that all of the Antichrists described by St. John in his first letter as well as those who have been historically considered types of the Antichrist also suffered a similar fate.   

The other example is Judas.  Although the Church is not in the habit of declaring reverse canonizations, the witness of Scripture offers no other interpretation than that Judas ended up in hell.  In Matthew 26:24, Our Lord declares that “would be better for that man[that betrayed Him] if he had never been born.”  In John 6:70 he calls Judas “a devil” and in 17:2 He says that “none of them was lost except the son of destruction.”  None of these could be true if Judas was counted among the Blessed.    

In his FAQs, Bishop Barron says that “The Church has made no authoritative declaration, based on this passage or any other, that any person whatsoever is in hell.”  This statement again is highly misleading.  The Church may never have solemnly declared that Judas is in hell, but solemn declarations are not the only way in which Catholics determine whether something is to be definitively held.  There is a consensus among the Fathers of the Church that Judas is in hell.  In a 5th Century homily, Leo the Great placed the “Son of Perdition” in hell saying,

“The traitor Judas did not attain to this mercy, for the son of perdition (Jn. 17:12), at whose right hand the devil had stood (Ps. 108:6), had before this died in despair; even while Christ was fulfilling the mystery of the general redemption… The godless betrayer, shutting his mind to all these things, turned upon himself, not with a mind to repent, but in the madness of self-destruction: so that this man who had sold the Author of life to the executioners of His death, even in the act of dying sinned unto the increase of his own eternal punishment.” Sermon 62, On the Passion of the Lord

St. Ephrem (4th Century) and St. Augustine (5th Century) say the same thing.  St. Thomas, writing 8 centuries later also sees Judas in hell as well as St. Catherine of Siena.  

As a side note both Balthasar and Barron claim that St. Catherine of Siena share their position.  This is very difficult to reconcile with her Dialogue where the Father tells her that Judas was “punished with the devils, and eternally tortured with them” (Dialogue, 37).  This would call into question the authenticity of her entire Dialogue, something I am not sure they would be willing to do.

Adding to the witness of Scripture and to Tradition is the law of the liturgy, ­lex orandi.  In the liturgy for Good Friday the Church’s Collect traditionally portrayed Judas as receiving eternal punishment.

“O God, from whom Judas received the punishment of his guilt, and the thief the reward of his confession: grant unto us the full fruit of Thy clemency; that even as in His Passion our Lord Jesus Christ gave to each retribution according to his merits, so having cleared away our former guilt, he may bestow on us the grace of His resurrection: Who with Thee liveth and reigneth.” 

Traditional Roman Missal

Why We Must Get this Right

Beliefs, like the ideas underlying them, always have consequences.  Balthasar (and presumably Bishop Barron) was concerned that the traditional view of hell as heavily populated ultimately drove people away from God.  He said that, “One really has to ask oneself how, given an eternally valid bifurcation of mankind like this, simple human love of one’s neighbor, or even love of one’s enemy in Christ’s sense could still be possible.”  This reeks of the false spirit of Vatican II in which a pastoral concern, namely a zeal for souls such that we truly desire that each person we meet be saved, demands a obfuscation of doctrine.  Clarity especially about the Last Things is a vital necessity for true zeal.  The fact that hell remains a real and likely possibility for each and every one of us ought to spur each one of us to work not just for our own salvation but the salvation of everyone we meet.  The Dare We Hope approach destroys zeal for souls by making evangelization seem completely unnecessary.

Praying to the Lord of the Harvest

Advent, Church, Church Fathers, Fasting, Holy Orders, Women's Ordination, , , , , ,

On the first Saturday of Advent, the Church chooses as the gospel Matthew’s account of the commissioning of the Apostles.  After taking to heart the lost souls around Him, He demands that His disciples beg God to send more laborers into the fields.  He then empowers the Apostles and commands them to go out into the world to continue His mission of redemption (c.f. Mt 8:35-10:3).  The implications are obvious.  There are many lost souls that can only be saved through the continuing authoritative mission of the Apostles.  But this mission only continues through the prayers of all Christ’s disciples for more Bishops and Priests.

This interpretation is by no means novel.  The Church has always understood what Our Lord was telling us to do.  Nevertheless, in times of vocational crisis, there is a tendency, rather than trusting in God’s way of doing things, to look for human solutions.  Thus, we find ourselves discussing doing away with celibacy or adding women to the ranks of the ordained as human solutions to the problem.  But ultimately the “vocations crisis” is a crisis of faith in that we do not trust in God’s promise to send faithful Bishops and Priests.  We do not have them because we do not ask.

One might immediately object to what I just said.  There are plenty of people who pray for vocations.  While it is true that I have no idea how many people pray for vocations regularly, I do know that the Church has official periods of supplication for Priests that practically go unnoticed.  I am, of course, speaking of Ember Days. Ember Days are the ways in which the Church fulfills Our Lord’s command to pray for more harvesters.

The Ember Days

The Quatuor Tempora or Ember Days, are four periods of prayer and fasting (if you want to know how to fast, read this previous entry) that the Church has set aside for each of the four Ecclesiastical seasons.  Ember Days begin are marked by three days (Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday) of penance by which the Church, especially through fasting, consecrates to God each of the Seasons of the Year.  The practice sprung out of the habit of Israel to fast in the fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth month (c.f. Zech 8:18-19).  The practice, at least according to Pope St. Leo the Great, has been a part of the Church’s year since the times of the Apostles.

The Advent Ember Days, like each of the other three, have as their object gratitude and supplication for the harvest.  According to Leo the Great, the Advent Ember Days, falling in the time of the year where all the fruits of the earth had been collected, would mark a time of “joyful fasting” (Zech 9:19) in thanksgiving for the harvest. 

The connection to the earthly harvest also has a further meaning connected to Our Lord’s mention of the great harvest of souls.  The Church through an act of penance would pray the Lord of the harvest to send worthy Ministers who are holy and true Shepherds during the Ember Days.  The faithful would join the Church in her intention by offering their own acts fasting.  In short then the Ember Days are special days in which the Church as a whole fasts and prays together for vocations. 

The fall into disuse of the Ember Days and the current vocation crisis are hardly coincidental.  The prayer of the Church is always far more pleasing and efficacious than individual prayer.  As the Ember Days of Advent come upon us tomorrow, let us join the Church in this act of gratitude for the faithful Shepherds among us and beg the Lord to send us more.  As Dom Prosper Gueranger exhorts us, the Ember Days are a great way to “keep within ourselves the zeal of our forefathers for this holy season of Advent.  We must never forget, that although the interior preparation is what is absolutely essential for our profiting by the Coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ, yet this preparation could scarcely be real, unless it manifested itself by exterior practices of religion and penance.”  Individually chastened by our fasts, let us then join the Church in these Ember Days and implore the Lord of the Harvest to send out more laborers.