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In this episode Trent rebuts the one heresy doing to most damage to the Church’s mission.
The REAL PROBLEM with Hoping HELL is EMPTY
Transcription:
Trent:
It’s no secret that since the mid 20th century Christianity has been in a state of global decline, and while there are signs this may be reversing, we need to ask what caused this collapse so we can better respond to it. While there are many modern theological and moral errors that have weakened the church in the past 80 years, there’s one heresy that turned to church which fearlessly preached Christ to the nations into one that barely raises a peep about saving people from sin, and that is the heresy of universalism. In today’s episode, we’ll take a closer look at universalism and how to respond to it, but first, we need to be careful when using this term because it has a lot of different meanings. Some universalists believe that after death every single human being immediately goes to heaven and so hell doesn’t really exist or it’s completely empty.
Others believe that every human being will eventually spend eternity in heaven, but some will go to hell temporarily, and so under this view, hell gets reduced to a kind of purgatory. Finally, a common belief among some laypeople is that only a few truly evil people will go to hell, but regular good people will all go to heaven. However, this view is unworkable because it’s impossible to adopt a non arbitrary standard for who is a good person that deserves heaven and who isn’t. As I know it in my previous episode on this fallacy, heaven is not something we can earn through good works. It is a gracious gift of God. We receive by faith, working through love, but universalism turns heaven into something. A good God must give his creatures, which contradicts what the church believed for 2000 years. According to New Testament’s scholar Richard Baum, until the 19th century, almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell.
Here and there. Outside the theological mainstream were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated. Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation. Though these few included some major theologians of the early church, one of these figures was the third century writer origin who is recognized as an ecclesial writer but not a church father or saint because he embraced heresies like the preexistence of souls that were condemned at the second Council of Constantinople. In 5 53, that same counsel condemned origins belief in Hypostasis, which was a kind of universalism that said All creatures including the devil would eventually be saved. The council said If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary and will one day have an end and that a restoration Apo hypostasis will take place of demons and of impious men let him be anathema.
There is some debate about whether this canon applies to universalism itself or just to origin’s formulation of it, but what is clear is that opposition universalism was the mainstream view of all faithful Christians until about 80 years ago. This is documented in Michael McClymonds massive scholarly work, the Devil’s Redemption, a new history and interpretation of Christian Universalism. Ralph Martin writes the following in his review of the book. McCleon concludes from his study of the first eight centuries that 68 of the authors clearly teach a twofold outcome to human lives heaven and hell. Seven authors are unclear. Two, teach something like eschatological pantheism and four authors appear to be universalists. In an orian sense, this is an important fact. As often the impression is given that a wider number of fathers embrace universalism or that in some way the Orthodox Church does. And Cardinal Avery Dulles said The doctrine of the eternity of hell has been firmly in place at least since the seventh century and is not subject to debate in the Catholic church about the middle of the 20th century.
There seems to be a break in the tradition since then. A number of influential theologians have favored the view that all human beings may or do eventually attain salvation. We see this change in views on hell in the mid 20th century through the work of Protestant scholars like Carl Barth and Jurgen Moltmann Catholic scholars like Carl Ronner and Hanser von Balthazar, and even East Orthodox bishops like Calisto Ware. These figures though tended to be ambiguous and they defended more of a hopeful universalism. For example, Carl Barth said of universalism, I do not teach it, but I do not teach it either. Von Baltazar’s view has come to be known as the dare we hope view and is endorsed by fairly orthodox thinkers like Bishop Robert Barron. This view says that while universalism is not guaranteed, we can still pray and hope everyone will be saved. Check out my episode link below where I discuss the problems with this view, which is not a heresy, but it isn’t helpful either.
Even if an empty hell were possible. The odds of this happening are so low that it’s like hoping you can retire by winning the lottery. It’s possible, but you shouldn’t bet your life on it. In 2011, time Magazine ran a cover story on evangelical author Rob Bell’s ambiguous defensive universalism called love wins. Paul Jones said in Christian century of the response to Bell that little more than a bored smug shrug emanated from mainstream academics and mainline Protestants so bored it hardly amounted to a shrug so smug. It implied that those still opposing universalism were no more than reactionary Neanderthals. This non-reaction barely registered, but that’s all the more telling in certain circles. Universalism is no longer the preserve of theological radicals. It’s gone mainstream. While some evangelicals like Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle have given a solid response to this and their book Erasing Hell, the Barer research group has shown that 25% of born again Christians believe all people will be saved when it comes to Catholicism.
Some people misinterpret papal writings to support universalism like when Pope Francis said in Morris Tia that no one can be condemned forever because that is not the logic of the gospel. But in this passage, the Pope was talking about the church reaching out to sinners rather than perpetually condemning them. He was not talking about God’s punishment, the afterlife. In the preceding paragraph, the Pope says, the way of the church is not to condemn anyone forever. It is to pour out the bomb of God’s mercy on all those who ask for it with a sincere heart. The Pope has even warned the Italian mafia to repent lest they end up in hell. Indeed, the catechism of the Catholic church says 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, but from the hierarchy to the laity and beyond the Catholic church, many Christians don’t seem to act like non-Christians are in danger of damnation.
Eric Salmon’s, the editor of Crisis magazine, published a book called Deadly Indifference, how the Church Lost Her Mission and How We Can Reclaim It That shows how the sin of religious indifference has infected the modern church and compromised their mission to save souls. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how universalism leads to religious indifference. Sharing the faith often involves the risk of having negative encounters with people that range from mildly awkward to extremely angry. Most people don’t like conflict, so they’ll look for any excuse to avoid it as a result, instead of taking a risk and sharing their faith with someone, the person who is averse to conflict might just say, well, I’m sure they’ll go to heaven anyways, so I’m not going to raise a fuss about it. What ends up happening to Christians who hold this view is that they see the church no longer as the bark of St.
Peter that saves people from being forever lost, but as a kind of NGO, a non-governmental organization that only exists to do acts of charity or to address suffering in this life rather than the afterlife, consider this 2009 intelligence square debate on the resolution that Catholic church is a force for good in the world. Atheist Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens attacked the resolution and British politician and Whitcombe and African archbishop. John o Aiken defended it. It was a slaughter for the Catholics as Hitchens and Fry are masters at rhetorical jabs, but what made it worse was Whi comb and annoy Ken’s overemphasis on the material charity the church provides, which doesn’t stand in compelling contrast in light of some of the sins on the part of the hierarchy that Fry and Hitchens kept bringing up. Whi comb came close at one point to focusing on the spiritual good the church provides for the world.
CLIP:
It isn’t only about the work it does on earth, but it is the message that it preaches and that message is one of hope. That message is one of salvation and it is all very well for some people in an intellectual ance to say we can do without that, but actually billions of people across the world live by that message of hope and of salvation. They try to live by the commandments and also by the interpretation of those commandments by Christ. Yeah, sometimes they fail. Sometimes their leaders fail. Human beings do fail, but overwhelmingly I say to you tonight with no apology or whatever, that a world without the Catholic church would be poorer, would be more hopeless and would be a worse place in which to live.
Trent:
I appreciate that. At one point, whi Comb brought up the message of salvation, but it came off pretty hollow almost as if the church is good for teaching people to have hope for the sake of hope itself. This borders on fluffy liberal nonsense like having faith in faith. The Catholic church is obviously a force for good in the world because it is through the church that we are saved from suffering an endless life apart from God. Who is the Summa Bonum the greatest good? Christopher Hitchens passed away in 20 11 2 years after that debate, and he now knows this though one prays that through God’s mysterious mercy, he knows this from the heavenly side of things. Hey, real fast at this point, a lot of people would say in a video, here’s the word from our sponsor, but I love that our supporters are so generous.
We don’t need sponsorships. We can just focus on sharing and defending the Catholic faith, and if you want to help us to keep doing that, please hit the subscribe button and support us@trenthornpodcast.com, where for as little as $5 a month, you get access to bonus content and you make all of this possible without any sponsorships. And now back to the episode. So how should we refute universalism? First, we should not allow universalists to shift the burden of proof and use the fallacy of the false dilemma. Many of them will say that hell is incompatible with a loving God, and so if hell does not exist, then universalism is true by default. This ends up putting Orthodox Christians on the defensive and forcing them to defend the doctrine of hell in order to refute universalism. But Christians should point out that universalists make a specific claim and so they bear the burden of proving that claim.
Even if the classical doctrine of hell were false, everyone going to heaven would not be the only alternative. Hell might be eternal in its effects, but not its suffering through something like the annihilationist position, which says that the damned are destroyed at the final judgment. John Stackhouse Jr, who defends Annihilationism says, the following universalism has always impressed me as the triumph of hope over Jesus. The pressing of theological conclusions from lovely presuppositions, most of which to be sure any Christian should hold to conclusions that simply cannot stand in the light of scripture’s frequent and stark opposition. Now, I don’t believe annihilationism is true and I’ve argued against it in the past. Gavin Orland also has a recent episode on the subject that’s worth checking out, but Annihilationism might at least be a helpful waypoint or a place of respite for a person who’s on the verge of abandoning his faith over the traditional doctrine of hell.
Annihilationism however is helpful in pointing out that hell is not a temporary purgatory, it is a final fate for the damned. If it were not, then Jesus’s words in Matthew 25 46 make no sense. Like when he says of the wicked, they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. St. Augustine says some deceive themselves saying that the fire indeed is called everlasting but not the punishment. This the Lord foreseeing sums up his sentence in these words from Matthew’s gospel. One way to refute universalism would be to present rebutting evidence that shows hell is real and everlasting in its effects. For example, popular Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr says Hell and Christ cannot coexist. We must see Jesus as triumphing over hell and emptying it out, and he writes, Paul never once talks about our notion of hell, but Jesus frequently warned about eternal hell and in two Thessalonians one, nine, Paul writes of those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, these will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.
Another response involves asking the universalist to defend his position since God could also give sinners natural happiness after death in something like limbo rather than heavenly glory. Remember, the universalist has the burden of proving that God revealed all people will eventually go to heaven in his book that all shall be saved, heaven, hell and universal salvation. David Bentley Hart defends universalism, though he primarily does so by attacking the doctrine of hell. Hart does address some of the positive evidence for universalism by citing passages in favor of it. Though he asks how odd it is that for at least 15 centuries such passages have been all but lost behind a veil as thin as the one that can be woven from those three or four deeply ambiguous verses that seem and only seem to threaten eternal torments for the wicked. But perhaps that’s because these passages about universalism allegedly do not teach everyone will be saved.
Instead, they express the hope that anyone can be saved. In one Timothy two, four, for example, St. Paul says that God desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, but God also desires that we not sin and yet we still sin. God’s antecedent will or his general desire is that we always choose good over evil and that all people will choose him, but God’s consequent will differs because it reflects God allowing human beings to sin and even to remain in their sin. To make an analogy, I might antecedently will that every student pass a theology class that I teach, but I may not consequently will that because I choose to accurately grade students who have freely chosen to fail the course. God desires the good for all his creatures, but because God has also given human beings and angels the gift of free will, it follows that God will allow us to enjoy or suffer the consequence of this good gift even if it means eternal separation from him.
For example, in one Corinthians 1522, Paul says, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but this does not mean that through Christ, all people shall be brought to eternal life. What it means is that all who are in Christ, a phrase Paul often uses for the saved of the elect, they shall be brought to eternal life. This logic also explains Romans five 18 where Paul says, as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. This refers to life for all believers, those who are in Christ. We know this because in the previous verse, Paul says, if because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
This is talking about the salvation of all believers, not the salvation of all people. Jesus himself says that he will draw all men to himself in John 1232, but that doesn’t mean that people cannot reject Jesus. Even after being drawn in this passage, Jesus foreshadows his own crucifixion, which may mean that all people will have their sins atoned for on the cross, but the grace that Christ accrues for them may not be applied to their souls if they choose to reject it. In other words, Christ draws all men to himself because he died for every single person offering each of them the gift of eternal life. But each person still has a choice and some people will tragically refuse to accept Christ’s mercy and salvation. This is why the catechism says the church prays for all men to be saved and the church prays that no one should be lost.
That’s because the two Peter three, nine says, God is not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance, and the only thing keeping all people from being saved are the individual choices of the damned. Finally, I want to make some clarifications that are bound to come up first in critiquing universalism, we should not reduce salvation to fire insurance. Getting saved isn’t just about avoiding hell. The catechism says this perfect life with the most holy trinity. This communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed is called heaven. Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings. The state of supreme definitive happiness, the goodness of life with God instead of apart from God, even temporarily does have a motivating factor to share the faith. So we don’t want to overstate the case that universalism makes it pointless to preach the gospel.
That’s like saying the doctrine of purgatory makes it pointless to be holy in this life. There’s still good reason to be completely united to God in this life to avoid the purging and punishment of sin in the next life. Mormons believe that very few people will go to hell or what they call the outer darkness, but they’re well known for their vigorous missionary work. Although Mormons differ from most universalists because Mormons think that many non-Mormons will go to a dollar store version of heaven called the Tial kingdom where God and Christ don’t dwell. So while we don’t want to overstate the danger of universalism, it seems pretty obvious that universalism and even forms of hopeful universalism can become an excuse for people who don’t want to accept the discomfort associated with evangelism. Even Mormonism has been on the decline in recent years. Second, in critiquing universalism, we shouldn’t say a person must believe that most human beings are damned what was called the Masa dam Nada.
In older theological sources. Cardinal Avery Dulles says, the theologians who believed in massa D did not claim that their opinion was revealed or that to take the opposite view was heretical, nor is the opinion that most people attain salvation contradicted by authoritative church teaching. The magisterium doesn’t teach on what percentage of people will be saved and the eminent pre Vatican, two theologian, Gugu LaGrange said, of all who have been baptized Catholic, schmo Protestant, it is more probable. Theologians generally say that the great number is saved. He notes that many Protestants being today in good faith can be reconciled to God by an act of contrition, particularly in danger of death. Though he says, if the question is of the entire human race, the answer must remain uncertain. Third, we shouldn’t treat though the possibility of salvation as a probability thinking everyone is damned and thinking everyone is saved can both lead to laxity.
Cardinal DLL is sums it up well. He writes all told, it is good that God has left us without exact information. If we knew that virtually everybody would be damned, we would be tempted to despair. If we knew that all or nearly all are saved, we might become presumptuous. If we knew that some fixed percent say 50 would be saved, we would be caught in an unholy rivalry. We would rejoice in every sign that others were among the lost since our own chances of election would thereby be increased. Such a competitive spirit would hardly be compatible with the gospel. Instead, we should follow the Second Vatican Council, which said that while it is possible for any person to be saved, even if they never knew Christ or his church, it’s not a guarantee. The council said in lumen Genium, God enlightens all men so that they may finally have life.
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 or some there are who living and dying in this world without God are exposed to final despair, wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these and mindful of the command of the Lord to preach the gospel to every creature. The church fosters the missions with care and attention. In my book, why We’re Catholic, I use the image of a frozen river shrouded in fog to underscore this teaching. Maybe you’ll make it across on your own and not fall through the ice, but if I know a bridge where you can safely pass over, then why wouldn’t I tell you about it? Likewise, while Christ can save anyone in spite of their theological ignorance, why would I deprive someone of the certain means of salvation through Christ in his church if they thought about it? They should see that sharing the gospel is the opposite of being hateful. The atheistic magician pen Gillette says this about people evangelizing him.
CLIP:
I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize. I don’t respect that at all. If you believe that there’s a heaven in hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever, and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling ’em this because it would make it socially awkward and atheists who think that people shouldn’t proselytize, just leave me alone. Keep your religion to yourself. How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed to be beyond a shadow of a doubt that a truck was coming at you and you didn’t believe it, that truck was buried down on you. There’s a certain point where I tackle you and this is more important than that.
Trent:
So that’s the one heresy undermining the church today, and if you want more resources on the nature of eschatology or the last things, I recommend the articles and booklets@catholic.com. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.