Catholic apologist Karlo Broussard joins Cy Kellett to tackle a challenging question from caller Ariel about the Catholic doctrine of hell. Is it possible for hell to be empty? Could annihilationism be true? Drawing on Scripture and the nature of the immortal soul, Karlo explains why the Church rejects annihilationism and what this means for our understanding of sin, judgment, and eternal life.
Transcript:
Cy: Which Catholic doctrine troubles you? Let me put it that way.
Caller: Basically, the doctrine that, you know, there’s an eternal hell, right? And that everyone’s going to go to this hell and it’s going to suffer forever. Because historically, there were a lot of early church fathers who disagreed with that idea. I chanced upon a book written by a priest. His position on it was basically that it’s possible, it’s not necessarily a heresy to believe in a thing called annihilationism. And so it’s possible that it is in fact not the case that when this person is sent to hell, they’re going to be eternally tormented. They may actually just cease to exist. Which I think anybody could agree that that’d be kind of nice if that was the case. Right? So I guess that’s what bothers me. I’ve looked it up and nobody can really point to anything particular that I can see to the real, actual doctrine that would make that impossible.
Karlo: Okay. Okay, Ariel, it’s a great question. So here’s my first statement. It is true, according to my knowledge, I cannot. Let me just make the claim and then I’ll make my comments afterward. The Church does not infallibly teach that hell will be factually populated at the end of time after the final judgment. And notice I emphasize infallibly. Now, that’s presupposing or assuming distinct levels of Church teaching. The reason why I say that is because I can, at least currently, according to my current knowledge, would not be able to defend the thesis. And I know many theologians who would agree that we would not be able to defend the thesis that the Church has infallibly taught that hell will be factually populated.
Okay? Now, that does not mean that the Church has no teaching on the factual population of hell. And in fact, I just had an episode of my local radio show called the Catholic Reason here in the Diocese of Tulsa, and the episode is on what the Church teaches about factual damnation. You can go to my website, carlaverssart.com, look under the Catholic Reason tab, and it’ll be the latest episode of my radio show where I document for you, Ariel, where I argue that the Church, in her magisterial teaching, which is official Church teaching, but within the non-infallible category, but nevertheless authoritative, that the Church envisions hell to be a reality and factually populated, which for us, as a Catholic, at least, Ariel, would not permit us to assent to the idea that hell will not be factually populated, or in this case, annihilationism.
So, as a Catholic, we would have to at least give religious submission of intellect and will and defer to this ordinary teaching of the Church in the non-infallible category concerning the factual population of hell. So that’s what I argue in that episode and I document the magisterial references for you there.
Now, with regard to annihilationism itself, I think we can conclude that it is false based upon certain lines of evidence. So for example, if we look to the biblical evidence, I think our Lord is very clear in Luke 13:23-24, when he’s given us the teaching about the way that leads to hell is wide and the door through which you pass to get on that path to hell and the way that leads to heaven is narrow. And Jesus says that some will seek to enter the gate that leads to that path, but will not do so. They will not enter the door, which the implication is to salvation.
So I think we can provide a strong argument that Jesus teaches that some in fact will not be saved and thus will not enter heaven. Now, of course, that raises that. That at least eliminates the idea that all will be restored, but it does leave open the possibility of annihilationism. And so we would have to look at evidence from Sacred Scripture that would indicate contrary to that. And I think the Book of Revelation is key there. It talks about the demons along with other human souls that will be in the lake of fire, indicating that there you have some who will be forever punished and not annihilated.
And then also I do think we can also appeal to Luke 13:23-24 where Jesus says some will not enter the door, but the implication is that they will remain outside of not entering the door. The further implication being that they’re not annihilated. Jesus says nothing there to indicate that they would be annihilated.
But also I think we can employ a line of evidence from reason itself based upon the revealed data that we have. Ariel, we can think about annihilationism and we can think about the nature of the soul and conclude that it would be contrary to God’s divine wisdom to annihilate a soul. So consider this. God creates the soul as the kind of thing that is immortal by nature. That’s just its nature, that once the soul exists, it belongs to its nature to always exist.
Now, is it theoretically possible, subject to God’s all-powerful nature, to annihilate a soul? I agree with St. Thomas Aquinas in saying yes, that’s at least possible given his omnipotence, but he would not do so because it would be contrary to his wisdom to create a soul that of its nature is immortal only to make it not immortal. That doesn’t fit divine wisdom. And so I think that’s a line of evidence from reason that we can construct an argument and say and conclude annihilation would not be true.
And then further, I do think that annihilation would take away from the gravity of a mortal sin, which is a definitive rejection of God. For someone to definitively reject themselves from God but yet be annihilated, it would in some way seem to undermine the gravity of the sin.
And I address this issue of annihilationism in one of the chapters in my book *Prepare the Way*, where I give different lines of reasons why I think annihilationism is false. So you might want to check out that book *Prepare the Way*.
Cy: And I’m going to leave it there because we’re going to take a quick break.
Ariel, thank you very much for the call.