Just as there is non-alcoholic beer, decaffeinated coffee, sodium-free salt, glucose-free sugar, nicotine-free tobacco, men without substance and without humanity — that is, “without foundation, without mission, without ultimate end” 1 — and all these are “light” products, so too there are “light” Christians who favor a “light” hell.
We may ask ourselves: what is a “light” hell? It is a deficient “hell.” It is a “lightweight” hell: without the pain of loss, without the pain of sense, without eternity and/or without inhabitants. On the basis of these four deficiencies there are many variants, and there is something for every taste. Some are fully “light” and uphold all four negations; others are more measured and accept only some “light” variants, or add attenuations to them.
The revealed truths concerning hell are grounded in many texts of Sacred Scripture. But, for my purpose, two halves of two verses are enough. The pain of loss, that is, the privation of the sight of God, is taught in “Depart from me, you cursed,…” (Mt 25:41); the pain of sense, that is, the suffering that comes from sensible things, in “…go into the fire…” (ibid.); the eternity of the punishments, which will never end, in “…eternal.” (ibid.); and concerning its inhabitants: “These will go away into eternal punishment…” (Mt 25:46). For those of us who are convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, no further texts are necessary. These will be the four points of the first part of this article.
FIRST PART
1. The privation of the sight of God, or the pain of loss.
This is the essential punishment of hell. If, with the most tropical imagination and the most fevered heart, we were to imagine the most refined and incredible tortures, the most dreadful pains of sense ever conceived; and if we were even to make the baroque imagery about hell, Chinese torture, and modern torturers with their refined techniques look like nursing infants; if hell had all those sensible torments, even raised to the nth power, but there were no pain of loss, hell would not be hell but rather paradise, since God would be seen. Conversely, if in hell there were no pain of sense, but there were privation of the sight of God, hell would be hell and as unbearable as one that had the most frightful and horrible punishments inflicted by creatures.
The most dramatic thing about hell is not what most frightens most people, namely, the sensible punishments. What is terrifying about hell is not seeing God: “…that God will not know them, whom they did not wish to know in life” 2. For this reason Saint Alphonsus, Doctor of the Church, wisely said: “all the other punishments are scarcely punishments in comparison with this punishment” 3. Neither the “unquenchable fire”4, nor the pestilential stench, nor the unbearable company of the demons and of the other damned, nor the dreadful place 5, nor the torment of the internal and external bodily senses, nor the “worm that does not die”6 gnawing at the conscience, nor “the weeping and gnashing of teeth” 7, nor “the outer darkness” 8, nor any other of these things, nor all of them together, make up hell, but rather having lost God.
Put another way: what is the good that the damned person loses? He loses God, who is an infinite Good. The sorrow and the punishment are, therefore, infinite 9. What formally constitutes the punishment is being separated from God. Just as the substantial pain of the Lord’s Passion is the interior sufferings and not the sensible ones; just as in the fear of God filial fear is more important and servile fear must lead us to it 10; just as in penance the essential thing is interior sorrow for sins committed, and external penance is only the fruit of, and a spur toward, the internal one — and if it were not so, it would serve for nothing and could even be sin —11, so, in a similar way, is the pain of loss in relation to the pain of sense.
Of course this does not strike a worldly person, since in fact on this earth he lives as if God did not exist, and that future distance from God does not worry him, because he imagines it as a prolongation of his present pleasant distance from God. Of course this does not worry the sinner who lives wallowing in the whirlwind of innumerable sins, since in fact he is always offending God, and it seems to him that those offenses bring him no punishment now, so in his imagination he extends that — apparent — absence of punishment into the future. Of course the person who lives in the darkness of his almost invincible stupidity does not see this, and by his very stupidity is incapable of opening his eyes. Of course those who live submerged in the fleetingness of passing time, in the thousands of supermarket products they crave, and in the self-absorption of their permissive will, do not see this. Time prevents them from seeing eternity; having obstructs their grasp of the primacy of being; and believing themselves to be the authors of their freedom prevents them from noticing their present slavery or fearing the future, inexorable one. Their materialism prevents them from considering the possibility of an essentially spiritual punishment. In the last analysis, the loss of the sense of God leads them to the loss of the sense of sin, and this leads them not to perceive the reality of the just punishment for sin.
Those who deny hell have first deformed or denied God in some of His characteristics: as personal being, pure spirit, free, provident, and transcendent. When there is no God, there is no way to transcend the horizon of this world, and man remains enclosed within the concreteness of immanence. The reality of hell is too glaring for one who does not know that he has a true Father in heaven. In his book “Discussion,” Jorge Luis Borges maintains “the blasphemy of saying that everyone who believes in hell ‘is irreligious,’ by which almost all Humanity falls into Irreligion, except Borges; and even Jesus Christ…”12. Some, apparently, never found the way out of their tortuous inner labyrinths.
The dreadful character of the pain of loss is understood here on earth only by holy and fervent souls. The worldly, those who live in sin, will understand it late; their eyes will be opened only when they understand that, through their own fault, they have lost an infinite Good.
Not only is the existence and eternity of hell a dogma of defined faith, as declared by the Fourth Lateran Council: “…that they may receive according to their works, whether these have been good or evil, the former perpetual punishment with the devil, and the latter everlasting glory with Christ”13; it is also of defined faith that the damned suffer the pain of loss, as taught in the constitution “Benedictus Deus:” “…according to God’s general ordinance, the souls of those who die in actual mortal sin immediately after their death descend into hell, where they are tormented with infernal punishments”14; it is also of defined faith that the pain of sense exists and is eternal, as taught in the “Quicumque” Creed: “…and those who have done good shall go into eternal life; those who have done evil, into eternal fire. This is the Catholic faith: unless each one believes it faithfully and firmly, he cannot be saved”15.
In the Second Vatican Council, in the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, 48, the need for constant vigilance is taught, lest “as wicked and slothful servants (cf. Mt 25:26) we be ordered to depart into the eternal fire (cf. Mt 25:41), into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 22:13 and 25:30).” These words were introduced into the text in order to affirm “the eternal punishment of hell.” Indeed, the Theological Commission says: “The words of our Lord concerning the eternal punishment of hell were introduced into the text, as was explicitly requested by many Fathers”16. (Further on we shall indicate why the explanations of the Theological Commission constitute the official explanation of the text.) Likewise, where “the resurrection of life” and “the resurrection of condemnation” are spoken of in the same number, these words are conceived as a complement to the other words about hell cited above. The Theological Commission says: “taking account of the preceding amendment, because of the internal logic of the exposition and in order to satisfy more fully the wishes of the Fathers, the words concerning the resurrection of life or of judgment were introduced” 17.
The principal pain of sense is fire; hence the rich man says: “I am tormented in these flames” (Lk 16:24). As the Holy Fathers and Doctors, and ancient ecclesiastical authors, affirm, for example:
* Saint Ignatius of Antioch: “Do not be deceived, my brethren: those who corrupt families shall not inherit the kingdom of God. If, then, those who have done these things according to the flesh are dead, how much more if anyone corrupts, by evil doctrine, the faith of God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified? Such a one, being defiled, shall go into the unquenchable fire; and likewise the one who listens to him”18.
* The author of the “Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp”: “And attending to the grace of Christ, [the martyrs] despised worldly torments, freeing themselves, by the endurance of one hour, from eternal punishment. The fire of the cruel executioners seemed cold to them. For they had before their eyes the escape from that fire which is eternal and will never be quenched”19.
* The author of the so-called Second Letter to the Corinthians: “And the unbelievers shall see his glory and his power, and they shall marvel when they see the dominion of the world in Jesus, saying: Woe to us, because you were, and we neither knew nor believed it, nor obeyed the presbyters who preached to us concerning our salvation; and their worm shall not die and their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be a spectacle to all flesh… [the just] shall see how those who erred and denied Jesus by words and deeds are punished with terrible torments and unquenchable fire, and they shall give glory to their God”20.
* Saint Justin: “…it can in no way happen that the wicked man, or the greedy man, or the treacherous man, or the man endowed with virtue, should be hidden from God, and that each one goes either to eternal punishment or to eternal salvation according to the merits of his actions. For if these things were known by all men, no one would choose vice even for a short time, knowing that he would go to the eternal condemnation of fire; rather, he would restrain himself entirely and adorn himself with virtue, both to obtain the goods promised by God and to flee the punishments”21.
* Saint Irenaeus: “the punishment of those who do not believe the Word of God, despise His coming, and turn back has been increased, becoming not only temporal but eternal. For all those to whom the Lord shall say: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, these shall be forever condemned”22.
* The Discourse to Diognetus: the martyrs will marvel when they see the punishment of “the true death, which is reserved for those who shall be condemned to the eternal fire, which will be torment until the end for those handed over to it”23.
* Tertullian speaks of: “continuous fire”24, “eternal fire”25, “perpetual fire”26, “the eternal fire of Gehenna for eternal punishment”27.
* Saint Cyprian: “The ever-burning Gehenna shall burn those handed over to it, and a devouring punishment with living flames; nor is there any possibility that the torments should ever have rest or end. Souls with their bodies will be preserved for infinite torments of pain… They will believe late in eternal punishment who refused to believe in eternal life”28.
* Saint Augustine: “it will be a corporeal fire”29.
* Saint John Chrysostom says that all the sufferings of this life, however great they may be supposed, are a pale image of the tortures of hell and do not even amount to a shadow of those torments30.
* Saint Gregory the Great: “I do not hesitate to affirm… it is corporeal”31.
* Saint Thomas Aquinas: “It must be said that the fire which will torment the bodies of the damned is corporeal”32.
* Saint Catherine of Siena: “Daughter, the tongue is not capable of speaking about these unhappy souls and their punishments… The first is to see themselves deprived of me, which is so painful to them that, if it were possible, rather than be free of the punishments and not see me, they would choose fire and atrocious torments in order to see me… The fourth torment is fire, which burns and never ends. The soul, by its own being, cannot be consumed, since it is not something material but incorporeal. But I, by divine justice, have permitted it to burn it by suffering, to afflict it and not consume it. It burns and causes suffering with very great punishments, in different ways according to the diversity of sins, some more and others less in conformity with the gravity of the guilt”33.
* Saint Teresa of Jesus: “…as a drawing is to the reality, so being burned here is very little in comparison with that fire there”34.
* Saint Alphonsus Liguori: “As the fish in the water is surrounded by water on every side, so the damned person is completely immersed in fire”35.
* Saint John Bosco recounts a dream he had of hell, where he was forced to place his hand on the wall, and says that the next day “I observed that my hand was in fact swollen; and the imaginary impression of that fire had such force that shortly afterward the skin of the palm of my hand came off and changed”36.
* The Virgin of Fatima, on July 13, 1917, in her third apparition, according to Lucia’s account: “…opened her hands once more. The beam of light that came from them seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire, and immersed in that fire the demons and the souls as if they were transparent black or bronze-colored embers, in human form, moving about in the fire, carried by the flames that came out of themselves together with clouds of smoke, falling on every side, just as sparks fall in fires, without weight or balance, amid groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear… Terrified, we raised our eyes to Our Lady, who said to us with kindness and sadness: —You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go. When you pray the Rosary, say after each mystery: —O my Jesus! forgive us our sins, save us from the fire of hell, lead all souls to heaven, and help especially those most in need of your mercy”37.
Paul VI, in the “Credo of the People of God,” affirms that those who have rejected the love and mercy of God to the end “will be destined for the fire that will never cease”38.
Finally, by the manner of speaking of the documents and of the ordinary Magisterium, which has expressed itself thus for so many centuries, it is of faith that the pain of loss and the pain of sense are really distinct, and that the pain of sense cannot be reduced to the mere psychological affliction produced by the privation of the sight of God39.
Faced with this cloud of witnesses, can one sanely doubt the reality of this “place of punishment” (cf. Lk 16:28)? Would it not be saner to live in such a way as not to go there?
Therefore, taking into account the morally unanimous judgment of the Holy Fathers and theologians, the ordinary Magisterium of the Church, etc., we affirm with them that the fire of hell is not metaphorical (it does not exist only in the minds of the damned 40), but true, real, corporeal (insofar as it is a material agent, existing in its objective reality and tormenting the reprobate). Just as we affirm its corporeality, we affirm that we do not know its materiality, because it is a special fire, sui generis, since it has properties different from earthly fire. It is not extinguishable, but unquenchable (it needs no fuel to be fed); not temporal, but eternal; not for the comfort of bodies, but for the punishment of souls and bodies; and it torments the reprobate without destroying them. It is a fire that, without killing, scorches; without consuming, burns; without giving light, blazes; and that, despite its flames, envelops the damned in opaque darkness and everlasting nights.
Not even the most lurid and outlandish description of the pains of sense, not even the most truculent and grotesque, will be able faithfully to show what those punishments are. Those who are horrified by such paintings or descriptions should rather turn away from their sins, which prevent them from seeing, in all its depth, the end toward which they are heading by their own fault.
For this reason, taking into account the importance of the pain of loss over the pain of sense, Saint John Chrysostom said: “There are many men who, judging absurdly, desire above all to avoid the fire of hell; but I believe that incomparably greater than the punishment of fire will be the punishment of having lost forever that glory; nor do I believe that the torments of hell are more worthy of tears than the loss of the kingdom of heaven; for this torment is the bitterest of all”41. Elsewhere he says: “The punishment of the fire of hell is certainly intolerable. But even if we imagine a thousand hells of fire, we would have made no progress in understanding what it means to have lost eternal beatitude, to be rejected by Christ, to hear from him those words: I do not know you”42.
The pain of sense, however great it may be, is finite, whereas the pain of loss is infinite. Saint Thomas teaches: “Punishment is proportioned to sin. In sin two aspects must be distinguished. The first is aversion from the imperishable good, which is infinite; and for this reason sin too is infinite. The second is disordered conversion to a perishable good; and in this respect sin is finite, both on the part of the object to which it turns, which is finite, and on the part of the sinful act itself, since the acts of the creature cannot be infinite. Consequently, on the part of aversion, there corresponds to sin the pain of loss, which is infinite, since it is the loss of an infinite good, namely God Himself. And on the part of the disordered conversion to the creature, there corresponds to it the pain of sense, which is finite” 43.
However difficult it may be for the sensitivity of modern man, what has been revealed has been revealed. And there is no sane way to evade that reality. One author, after affirming the existence of material and corporeal fire — though not like ours — goes so far as to identify it with the Holy Spirit!: “The fire of hell is, in some way, God Himself! It is the same living flame of love — which is the Holy Spirit — that purifies in this life and in purgatory and eternally torments in hell”44.
The third element that configures the reality of hell is that its punishments are eternal. If its punishments were temporal, we would be dealing with a false purgatory. In this regard it is curious that many Protestants who deny the reality of purgatory practically accept it when they maintain that the punishments of hell are temporary.
For what reason are the punishments of hell eternal? Saint Thomas says: “The punishment of mortal sin is eternal, because through it one sins against God, who is infinite. And since the punishment cannot be infinite in intensity, because the creature is not capable of any infinite quality, it is required that, at least, it be infinite in duration”45.
Those who deny the eternity of hell usually do so on the basis of one of the following hypotheses:
– Either because the sinner makes reparation for his faults and is rehabilitated, a hypothesis condemned by the Church46 and wholly absurd since, outside time, change in relation to the last end is impossible.
– Or because God forgives him without the damned person repenting, which contradicts the justice of God, His infinite wisdom, and the very love of God.
– Or because God annihilates him, returning him to nothingness, which also contradicts the wisdom of God and His justice.
This last hypothesis seems to be the one held by the progressive theologian Eduardo Schillebeeckx, OP. He literally maintains that: “It is not known whether there are men who do evil with definitive will, rejecting God’s grace and forgiveness; but if there are men — it is a hypothesis — who have no theological relationship with God, these do not even have the foundation of eternal life. Hell is the end of those who do evil definitively. Their physical death is also their absolute end. Therefore, from the eschatological point of view, only heaven exists.
This is something entirely different from the apocatastasis or general recapitulation of Origen and others. I repeat: I do not know whether there will be men so perverse as to reject God’s grace and forgiveness. It is possible that all men are destined for heaven; but, in any case, if eventually there are wicked men, in the sense of definitively wicked, their physical death would be the end of their existence. Only heaven exists, and not alongside a hell where men suffer fire and punishments for all eternity. It goes against the nature of God, who is Love, for men to be punished eternally. For me, as a man of faith, it is unthinkable that, while joy floods heaven, there should be people two steps away47, amid infernal and eternal sufferings. There cannot exist a hell that is the reverse side of the eternal joy of the Kingdom of God. There is nothing but the Kingdom of God”48.
One of the greatest misfortunes of Christian progressives is that they think themselves better than God. They maintain that what the Incarnate Love Himself has revealed goes against the nature of God, who “is Love” (1 Jn 4:16)! They presume to teach Infinite Wisdom what belongs or does not belong to His nature. They tell Subsistent Love how His Love ought to be. One gets the impression that they consider us so stupid that we are going to listen to them against Jesus Christ.
He continues hypothesizing: “Heaven and hell are anthropological possibilities because man is finite, his freedom is finite, he can choose good or evil in a definitive way. It is an anthropological datum. Whether these men exist who opt for evil, I do not know. But even admitting that they exist, hell does not exist49. There is no infernal life”50. It is called eternal death for a reason. But that does not mean that hell does not exist. Much to the chagrin of the Flemish-speaking Belgian Dominican, it is a dogma of defined faith that the demons are already condemned in hell, and therefore that hell exists; and likewise, it is a dogma of defined faith that “the man who dies in grave sin must live eternally in the state of hell”51, and therefore that hell exists.
Next, this “Catholic” theologian, very blithely, affirms the old Gnostic doctrine of annihilation: “If there is someone who in his life is capable of separating himself totally and definitively from communion with the God of life, he is destined for the annihilation of his own being”52. Schillebeeckx is worse than the Nazis who killed the body but could not kill the soul; he not only disintegrates bodies, but wants God to disintegrate souls. What little respect for the human person! What becomes of man’s immortality? In his obstinacy he wants to force God to do what God will never do. Schillebeeckx is ignorant that Saint Thomas, who ought to be his teacher, teaches: “Although by the fact that one sins against God, who is the Author of being, he deserves to lose being itself; nevertheless, considering the disorder of his act itself, he ought not lose it: because being is presupposed for merit or demerit, nor is being removed or corrupted by the disorder of sin. And therefore, the privation of being itself cannot be an adequate punishment for any fault”53.
The Angelic Doctor maintains that nothing is annihilated, and demonstrates it even from the natural point of view: “The natures of creatures show that none of them is annihilated: for either they are immaterial, where there is no potency not to exist; or they are material, and these always subsist, at least as regards matter, which is incorruptible as the existing subject of generation and corruption. Nor does it belong to the manifestation of grace to reduce something to nothing, because the omnipotence and goodness of God are more shown in the preservation of things in their being. Therefore, we must say simply [simpliciter] that no thing is annihilated”54.
The “happy theologian” continues with expressions similar to those we used earlier and to which I have already referred: “Some theologians say to me: ‘Then there is no punishment for the evil that is committed.’ I answer: one does not understand what it means to be with God for all eternity. For men there would be no life of communion with God… It is terrible. God has no feelings of vengeance. For me this coexistence of eternal heaven for the good and hell for the wicked, who receive eternal punishment, is impossible. The ‘eschaton’ or ultimate fulfillment is exclusively positive: there is no negative ‘eschaton.’ It is good, not evil, that has the last word. This is the message and this is the praxis of the life of Jesus of Nazareth”55. The Dominican of Nijmegen is ignorant that God triumphs by His mercy with those who are saved and triumphs by His justice with those who are condemned, and that even toward these He has mercy “insofar as they are punished less than they deserve”56. Or as Saint Catherine of Siena said in a prayer addressed to the heavenly Father: “In hell your glory shines forth through the justice that is verified in the damned; but mercy also works with them, since they do not have as great a punishment as they had deserved”57.
Schillebeeckx is ignorant that the message and life of Jesus of Nazareth include the clearest teaching that hell exists, with its pain of loss: “Depart from me, you cursed…”, with its pain of sense: “…go into the fire…”, with its eternity: “…eternal…”, and with its inhabitants: “And these will go away into eternal punishment.” Those who deny truth, authority, and usefulness to all His words must not believe that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 Jn 4:2). Those of us who believe that He is “the Word [who] became flesh” (cf. Jn 1:14) confess Christ — and for this we are ready to give our life if necessary — saying: “You have the words of eternal life” (Jn 6:68). And His words about hell are also words of eternal life.
Schillebeeckx maintains that there is no symmetry between the notion of heaven and that of hell, and therefore the notion of hell cannot serve as a counterpoint to that of heaven; but he does not realize that the most perfect counterpoint to heaven is the “hell” he proposes, since he opposes to Subsistent Being itself — who is the object of the vision and fruition of heaven — the nihil, the nothingness, in which the damned end, in his theory. For Saint Thomas there is no counterpoint between predestination and reprobation. The first is entirely the work of God, corresponded to by man; the second begins with the deviation of the creature who prefers deficiency to the fullness of being. In Schillebeeckx’s annihilation there is no room for God; in the revealed hell there is room for God who, naturally, is there by essence, presence, and power, and in the conscience of the damned, who there do know what they lost through their own fault. Perhaps in no other point of doctrine is the asymmetry between the Catholic faith and the progressive faith as visible as in this matter of hell.
On the contrary, the Catholic Church teaches, as recently as May 1979, with complete clarity, that “She believes in the eternal punishment awaiting the sinner, who will be deprived of the vision of God, and in the repercussion of this punishment in his whole being… This is what the Church means when she speaks of hell…”58. We must heed the Church, to which Jesus Christ promised indefectibility, and not the theologians of dissent.
It seems to me that the principal difficulty against the Catholic doctrine of hell springs precisely from not knowing what love is: “who can guarantee, without destroying love itself, that the love truly offered cannot become love freely refused?”59. With genius, Dante placed at the entrance of hell: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here”; and added:
“Justice moved my high Maker; Divine Power made me, Supreme Wisdom, and Primal Love.”
Father Lacordaire comments: “If it were only justice that had opened the abyss, there would still be a remedy; but it is also love, the First Love, that has done it: this is what removes all hope. When one is condemned by justice, one can appeal to love; but when one is condemned by love, to whom will he appeal? … Love is not a game. One is not loved with impunity by a God; one is not loved with impunity unto death on a cross. It is not justice that lacks mercy; it is love itself that condemns the sinner. Love — we have experienced it too much — is life or death; and if it is the love of God, it is eternal life or eternal death”60.
For this reason Cornelio Fabro wisely affirms: “without the eternity of the punishments of hell and without hell, existence becomes a country outing”61, a picnic. He quotes Kierkegaard: “Once the horror of eternity (either eternal happiness or eternal damnation) has been eliminated, wanting to imitate Jesus becomes, at bottom, a fantasy. For only the seriousness of eternity can compel, but also move, a man to carry out and justify his steps.” The progressives have eliminated the horror of eternity, and their preaching, their pastoral actions, their evangelization … are a fantasy! Without eternity, the following of Christ … is a fantasy! They do not want the seriousness of eternity, and therefore they are incapable of obliging themselves, being moved, acting, and justifying their actions. Without the concrete possibility of eternal condemnation, the eternity of heaven is futile, puerile, insignificant. The loss of the seriousness of eternity, and not the supposed lack of vocation, lies at the root of the capitulation of so many priests and religious62.
Whoever is not convinced of the seriousness of eternity convinces no one; his words are air carried off by the wind and his works weigh as much as a spider’s web. Whom can the frivolity of the Gnostic hell, product of the culture of trivialization, convince?
Still more must be said. Those who want to extend mercy excessively, at bottom, shorten it. So it is. Some think themselves very merciful, but at bottom they are cruel, because if the punishment for the evil angels and the damned were to end, one does not see why beatitude for the angels and the saints would not also end. Saint Thomas teaches: “Just as the good angels are blessed by their conversion to God, so the evil angels are reprobated by their aversion from God. Therefore, if the misery of the evil angels were ever to end, the beatitude of the good would also have an end, which is inadmissible”63. And elsewhere he explains why this error of Origen was reproved by the Church: “because, on the one hand, he extended the mercy of God too much, and on the other he restricted it too much. For the same reason seems to exist for the good angels to remain in eternal beatitude and for the evil angels to be punished forever. Hence, just as he affirmed that the demons and the souls of the damned would in time be delivered from punishments, so he said that the good angels and the souls of the blessed would return from beatitude to the miseries of life”64. And again: “It is wholly irrational [to think that the punishment of the damned will end at some time]. Just as the demons are obstinate in their malice, and therefore will be eternally punished, so also are the souls of men who die without charity, since ‘death is for men what the fall was for the angels’65, as Saint John Damascene says”66.
Today some presume that hell is uninhabited. They think that there are in fact no damned. The texts that speak of hell would be nothing more than threats that will never be carried out. Origen admitted temporary damned persons; now the very existence of damned persons is denied.
At the Second Vatican Council a Father asked that it be declared that there were, in fact, damned persons in hell, because otherwise hell would be a mere hypothesis67. The Theological Commission judged that it was not necessary to introduce that declaration because the New Testament texts cited in the conciliar document have a future grammatical form68; they are not verbs in a hypothetical or conditional form, but in the future form. “They will go” supposes, as is obvious, that someone will go69.
The explanations of the Theological Commission are the presupposition of the votes and constitute the official interpretation of the text. If any Father had not agreed with the interpretation, he would have voted “non placet.” Thus we are facing the official interpretation of how the Second Vatican Council understands those biblical passages, and it understands them in the sense that there are and will be damned persons in fact, excluding the merely hypothetical interpretation of hell.
Once again we verify that some who think themselves the champions of the Second Vatican Council are the ones who most ignore its texts and their correct interpretation.
The Catholic faith affirms without ambiguity that there are damned persons in hell and that it was not destroyed by Jesus Christ. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, citing earlier teachings of the Church’s Magisterium: “Jesus did not descend into hell to deliver the damned70, nor to destroy the hell of damnation71, but to free the just who had gone before him”72. For this reason Bishop José Capmany Casamitjana, National Director Bishop of the Pontifical Mission Societies of Spain, teaches: “What is certain is that hell exists and that there are and will be damned persons there”73, and those who have a minimum of common sense deduce: “And I may be one of them. I will use every means to avoid it.”
Certainly the Church has no power to declare who are the ones who have been condemned. There is no sort of canonization in reverse. Moreover, the Church’s inability to point out who is in hell is salvific. In the Church, no one has power to destroy, but only to build up: “…according to the authority which the Lord gave me for building up and not for destruction” (cf. 2 Cor. 13:10).
It is told of Saint Vincent Pallotti that one day the holy priest accompanied to execution a murderer of the worst sort, who obstinately refused to repent, mocked God, and blasphemed even on the scaffold. Father Pallotti had already exhausted every means of conversion: he was on the platform beside that wretched man; his face bathed in tears, he had thrown himself at his feet, begging him to accept forgiveness for his crimes, showing him the wide abyss into which he was about to fall. To all this, the criminal had responded with an insult and a blasphemy, and his head had just fallen at the stroke of the fatal blade. In the exaltation of his faith, of his sorrow and indignation, and also so that that horrible scandal might be changed for the crowd of bystanders into a salutary lesson, the pious ecclesiastic rises, takes the bloody head of the executed man by the hair and, presenting it to the crowd, says: “Look! he exclaimed in a thunderous voice; look well! Here is the face of a damned man!” It is said that this single act sufficed to delay the process of beatification. To such an extent is the Church merciful!74.
Of the holy Curé of Ars only one case is cited in which he seemed to fear for the eternal fate of a deceased person. “A person recently arrived from Paris or its surroundings — Hyppolyte Pagés reports — asked him where the soul of one of his recently deceased relatives was. He received this reply, without any comment: ‘He did not want to go to confession at the hour of death.’ Unfortunately, it was quite true: the dying man had rejected the priest. The Curé of Ars could not have known it beforehand”75.
Not even of Judas can one affirm with certainty, despite the fact that there are several biblical texts that would seem to support the hypothesis of his condemnation. In fact, Saint Vincent Ferrer affirmed that he had been saved76.
In the name of divine mercy.
Around the year 420 Saint Augustine77 indicates various theories about hell current at that time:
1- Some believed that all sins were expiated in life or after death;
2- Others maintained that God would condemn no one because of the intercession of the saints;
3- Others maintained that no baptized person, not even heretics, would be condemned;
4- There were those who limited salvation to all those baptized in the Catholic Church, who, even if they fell into idolatry and atheism, would not be condemned forever;
5- Others said that those who persevered in the faith, even if they fell into grave sins, would be saved;
6- Some affirmed that only the merciless would be condemned.
All these ideas were defended in the name of divine mercy, as happens now as well. All men and women would be confirmed in grace.
Saint Augustine refuted all these theories: “After the final judgment some will not wish, and others will not be able, to sin… The former live in eternal life a truly happy life; the latter will remain wretched in eternal death, without being able to die: neither the one nor the other will have an end… The eternal death of the damned will have no end, and the punishment common to all will consist in their not being able to think of the end, nor of respite, nor of the lessening of their punishments”78.
We have already seen how Schillebeeckx, in the name of divine mercy, denies hell. But there are other Catholic theologians, not “infernalists” as one of them says, who seem in fact to believe that hell is empty, such as Teilhard de Chardin, Rahner, and von Balthasar79, who consider hell as a real possibility of final disaster but, at the same time, insist on the duty to “hope for all,” according to R. Gibelli80. At first sight it would seem that Schillebeeckx’s position is more serious; nevertheless, this latter position is a more dangerous deception.
An eternity without anyone who, in fact, has been condemned or is going to be condemned is a frivolous, unserious eternity; it is a “light” hell. It is not worth fighting to avoid it, if in fact it is avoided; therefore neither is it worth striving to win the other eternity, which is given to us without effort. The proposal of the progressive hell is an authoritarian and demagogic proposal. Authoritarian, because everyone is saved whether they want to be or not; demagogic, because like today’s politicians they make easy promises of eternal salvation which they will not later fulfill, and many will find out when it is already too late — and to whom will they complain?
An empty hell is not a salvific hell; on the contrary, an inhabited hell is salvific. That is why it is revealed: “…they will go…”, and like all supernatural revelation, it is salvific revelation.
To deny hell — in one or all of its elements — is a way of univocating being, of homogenizing it, which is typical of every Gnostic system. The “light” hell is, at bottom, a Hegelian hell, that is, an idea of hell, not a real, concrete, factual hell; it is a “flatus vocis,” not an event. Let us say that to the pastoral care of “flatus vocis” there corresponds a hell that is a “flatus vocis.” Those who affirm that there are no damned persons in hell are situated in the same ideological line as those who deny the transmission of original sin by generation, or deny the true and real Incarnation of Our Lord, or His bodily resurrection 81, or the biological integrity of the Virgin Mary, or the physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Some do not brazenly deny hell, nor original sin, nor the Incarnation of the Word, nor the resurrection, nor Mary’s virginity, nor the Eucharist; but they do deny that which verifies and sustains, as preambula fidei, the reality of hell, of original sin, of the Incarnation, of the resurrection, of virginity, of the Real Presence in the Eucharist. That is, they imitate the unconscious attitude of someone sawing off the branch on which he is sitting. This fictional hell is one more piece of nonsense from progressivism. It is a vain and paltry hell, like the crimped edge of an empanada.
What a difference! Formerly it was said that there was a sign at the entrance of hell: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here”; now they have changed the wording of the sign to: “No Entry.” Formerly: “Here there is no salvation”; now: “For rent. Vacant.” Formerly the wicked went to hell; now, if there is a hell, God is wicked.
Long ago Saint Alphonsus Maria de Liguori, Doctor of the Church, was already warning about the mercy-mongers: “But God is so merciful! Yes; He is merciful, but He is not so stupid that He would act irrationally; to be merciful to those who wish to continue offending Him would not be goodness, but stupidity in God. The Lord says: Is your eye evil because I am good? (Mt 20:15) And because I am good, do you wish to be evil? God is good, but He is also just, and therefore He exhorts us to observe His holy law if we wish to be saved: If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments (Mt 19:17). If God were merciful to all men, good and bad; if He granted to all the grace of conversion before death, He would be an occasion of sin even for the good; but no, when the term of His mercies arrives He punishes and forgives no more. And my eyes will not spare you nor will I have pity (Ez 7:4); wherefore He warns us: Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on the sabbath (Mt 24:20). In winter one cannot act because of the cold, nor on the sabbath because of the law; which means that for impenitent sinners there will come a time when they would wish to give themselves to God and will find themselves prevented from doing so by their bad habits”82.
Wise words that must be weighed carefully:
– God is merciful, but not stupid;
– God is merciful, but His mercy is regulated by His wisdom83;
– God is Love, but He does not act irrationally;
– God is good, but not so that we may be wicked; if God were good so that we might be wicked, God would not be good;
– God is good, but He is just84;
– If God saved everyone, if He willed with efficacious will the salvation of all men, whether good or bad, God would be an occasion of sin even for the good — that is, if He did not punish the wicked, He would induce the good to become wicked, since it would be all the same. That absurdity, which does not occur in God, does occur in preachers, catechists, or formators who deny hell for whatever reason — denying the pain of loss, or the pain of sense, or eternity, or emptying it: they, in fact, are an occasion of sin even for the good. God wills with antecedent will the salvation of all men, but with consequent will, after unrepented sin, He wills to punish some. I suggest that in our religious Congregations those who deny any aspect of hell be in due time invited to leave our religious family. Let what has happened with so many others not happen to us. Stop your ears when someone speaks denying the terrible reality of hell; these are shoots of the Evil One who work for him. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing.
If God willed with efficacious will the salvation of all men, what would be the purpose of the Incarnation of His Son? What the death on the cross? What the Church? What the Pope, the bishops, priests, and deacons? What the new evangelization? What the Episcopal Conferences, the Curias, CELAM, and all the other organizations? What the sacraments? What the liturgy? What the Word of God, the Bible? What preaching? What evangelizing culture? What the mission ad gentes? What treating “the Church in the modern world”? What dialogue with other Christians, with those who believe in God, with those who believe in nothing? What working in the Areopagus of the communications media? What for…?
Hell is populated more by “mercy” than by justice. Progressivism is antiphrastic — like calling the fat man skinny: they want an empty hell, and the only thing they achieve is to populate it more. They are the colonizers of hell. An uninhabited hell is a fatal hell for men.
It is also Saint Alphonsus who teaches: “A certain author indicated that hell is populated more by mercy than by divine justice; and so it is, because, recklessly counting on mercy, they go on sinning and are condemned. God is merciful. But who denies it? And, nevertheless, how many does mercy send to hell today! God is merciful, but also just, and therefore He is obliged to punish whoever offends Him. He uses mercy with sinners, but only with those who, after offending Him, lament it and fear offending Him again: His mercy is from generation to generation upon those who fear Him85, sang the Mother of God. With those who abuse His mercy in order to despise Him, He uses justice. The Lord forgives sins, but He cannot forgive the will to sin. Saint Augustine writes that whoever sins with the hope of repenting after sinning is not penitent, but mocks God86. The Apostle warns us that God is not mocked in vain: God is not mocked87. It would be mocking God to offend Him as and as much as one wishes and afterward go to heaven”88.
I read a very ambiguous article: “Tell me what your hell is like and I will tell you who your God is”89, which also serves to know what the person who gives an opinion about hell is like. If your hell is empty, your god is stupid and so are you. If your hell is “light,” your god is “light,” and you are a “light” man.
The hell-vacantists have left empty only the convents, the seminaries, and the novitiates. Many complain that they have no vocations, but if they do not believe in eternity, how will they be able to convince young people that it is worth giving everything for Christ? In every vocational decision to consecrated life the eschatological dimension is present. When this is lacking, the motivation to do something worthwhile is lacking. Without eternity it is impossible for there to be vocations to consecrated life: “…the doctrine which presents it as an anticipation of the future Kingdom is constant. The Second Vatican Council proposes this teaching anew when it states that consecration ‘foretells the future resurrection and the glory of the heavenly kingdom’90. It does this above all through the choice of virginity, always understood by tradition as an anticipation of the definitive world, which even now acts upon and transforms man in his entirety”91.
The hell-vacantists diminish the greatness of the paschal mystery and transform the need and urgency of the new evangelization into a kind of new proselytism. They are the prophets of doom against “the new heavens and the new earth” prophesied and promised (Is 65:17 and cf. 66:22; 2 Pet 3:13).
SECOND PART
1. Pastoral care concerning hell.
We see three main positions on this matter:
1º There are non-progressives who preach a hell in which it would seem that the most important thing is the pains of sense — which is an error; or they “send” to hell those they find unpleasant; or they take pleasure in preaching, as a habit, about the eternal punishment to which their hearers will inexorably go.
2º Progressives who conceal or deny the reality of hell, who are ashamed to preach it or hide it with subterfuges. Not only for pseudo-merciful reasons, but above all because they are immersed in the temporal and genuflect before what the world thinks. In this way they lower the dignity of Christ by removing value from His words. The terrible truth of the real fact of men who have been condemned and who will be condemned has on them the effect of “vinegar to the teeth, [and] smoke to the eyes” (cf. Pr 10:26).
3º There is an evangelical way of preaching about the reality of hell, and that is to do it in God’s manner.
a) There is an obligation to preach about hell:
Pius XII taught: “There is, then, no time to lose in counteracting with all our strength this slide of our own ranks into irreligion, and in awakening the spirit of prayer and penance. The preaching of the first truths of the faith and of the last ends has not only not lost its timeliness in our day, but has become more necessary and urgent than ever. Even preaching about hell. Without doubt, this subject must be treated with dignity and wisdom. But as to the very substance of that truth, the Church has, before God and before men, the sacred duty to announce it, to teach it without any attenuation, as Christ has revealed it, and there exists no condition of times that can lessen the rigor of this obligation. It binds in conscience every priest to whom, in the ordinary or extraordinary ministry, the care of instructing, warning, and guiding the faithful has been entrusted. It is true that the desire for heaven is in itself a more perfect motive than the fear of eternal punishment; but it does not follow from this that for all men it is also the most effective motive for keeping them away from sin and converting them to God”92.
In this respect Garrigou-Lagrange maintained: “Today little is preached on this subject, and so salutary a truth is allowed to fall into oblivion; it is not sufficiently reflected upon that the fear of hell is the beginning of prudence and leads to conversion. In this sense, one can say that hell has saved many souls. Moreover, many overly superficial objections circulate against the existence of hell, which to some believers seem to answer to the truth with better claim to truth than the traditional answers. Why? Because they have not gone deeply into those answers nor wished to get to the bottom of them”93.
And John Paul II, in the post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation “Reconciliatio et paenitentia”: “The Church also cannot omit, without serious mutilation of her essential message, a constant catechesis on what traditional Christian language designates as the four last things of man: death, judgment (particular and universal), hell and glory. In a culture which tends to imprison man in his more or less successful earthly vicissitude, the pastors of the Church are asked for a catechesis which opens and illuminates with the certainty of faith what lies beyond the present life; beyond the mysterious gates of death there is outlined an eternity of joy in communion with God or of punishment far from him. Only in this eschatological vision can one have an exact measure of sin and feel oneself decisively impelled to penance and reconciliation”94.
b) One must preach convinced of the revealed truth:
When preaching on these themes Saint Augustine said: “Do I terrify you, brethren? It is because I am terrified”95. Of Saint Paul of the Cross it is affirmed that when he preached about hell he gave the impression of recounting what he himself had seen — as in fact had happened: “At times he trembled from head to foot, making all who heard him tremble as well”96.
c) One must preach in such a way that the hearers perceive that the preacher does not want his hearers to go to hell, but that he does so as one compelled by the duty of his office and by reason of his priestly love:
As God does: God does not threaten us with hell because He wants to condemn us, but so that we may be delivered from it, as Saint John Chrysostom taught97.
Saint Bernard said: “Let us descend into hell while living [that is, through meditation], so that we may not descend there after death”98. And Saint Thomas Aquinas advised the same: “Precisely because Christ descended into hell for our salvation, we ought to be concerned to descend there frequently, considering those punishments, as the holy king Hezekiah did when he said: I said: In the midst of my days I shall go to the gates of Sheol (Is. 38:10). For whoever, during his life, frequently descends there in thought will not easily descend there when he dies, since such consideration turns him away from sin”99.
The one who preaches hell must have the intentions that Saint Alphonsus had in like circumstances: “Be convinced, then, dearly beloved brethren, that God is going to make you hear today the sermon on hell in order to deliver you from it; He is going to make you hear it so that you may abandon sin, which is the only thing that can condemn you to hell”100.
It is the spiritual attitude of so many saints, for example, Saint Catherine, Saint Anthony Mary Claret, Blessed Don Luigi Orione. In his “Autobiography” Saint Claret says101: “Charity urges me, impels me, makes me run from one town to another, obliges me to cry out: My son, sinner, see that you are about to fall into hell! Stop, go no farther! Ah, how many times I ask God for what Saint Catherine of Siena asked: Grant me, Lord, to place myself at the gates of hell and be able to stop all those who are going to enter there and say to each one: Where are you going, unfortunate one? Back, go, make a good confession and save your soul, and do not come here to lose yourself for all eternity!102. And Don Orione cries: “Place me, O Lord, at the mouth of hell so that I, with your mercy, may close it!”103.
In case what has been said should seem little to anyone, John Paul II, in his book “Crossing the Threshold of Hope”104, he refers to this subject in chapter 28: Eternal Life: does it still exist? We shall cite it in part, but at length.
“Question. […] some believe that this Church, so talkative, is silent about what is essential: eternal life.[…]
Answer. […] Your question… refers… to the connection between eschatology and the Church on earth. In this respect you point out that in pastoral practice this approach has in some way been lost, and I must acknowledge that in this you are somewhat right.
Let us remember that, in times not so far distant, in the preaching of retreats or missions, the Last Things — death, judgment, hell, glory and purgatory — always constituted a fixed theme of the program of meditation, and preachers knew how to speak of them in an effective and suggestive way. How many persons were led to conversion and confession by these sermons and reflections on the last things!
Moreover, it must be acknowledged that this pastoral style was profoundly personal: “Remember that at the end you will present yourself before God with your whole life, that before His tribunal you will be responsible for all your acts, that you will be judged not only for your deeds and words, but also for your thoughts, even the most secret ones.” It can be said that such sermons, perfectly suited to the content of the Revelation of the Old and New Testaments, penetrated deeply into man’s inner world. They shook his conscience, brought him to his knees, led him to the confessional, and produced in him a profound salvific action.
Man is free, and therefore responsible. His is a personal and social responsibility; it is a responsibility before God. A responsibility in which his greatness lies. I understand what is feared by one who calls attention to the importance of that for which you are the spokesman: he fears that the loss of these catechetical and homiletic contents constitutes a danger to that fundamental greatness of man105. We may indeed ask whether, without this message, the Church would be capable of awakening heroism, of generating saints. I am not speaking so much of those “great” saints who are raised to the honor of the altars, but of “everyday” saints, according to the meaning of the term in early Christian literature.
It is significant that the Council also reminds us of the universal call to holiness in the Church. This universal vocation refers to every baptized person, to every Christian. And it is always very personal, connected with work, with one’s profession. It is a rendering of accounts for the use of one’s own talents, for whether man has made good or bad use of them. And we know that the words of the Lord Jesus, addressed to the man who had buried the talent, are very harsh, threatening (cf. Mt 25:25-30).
It can be said that even in the recent catechetical and kerygmatic tradition of the Church there dominated an eschatology which we could call individual, in accordance with a dimension, though deeply rooted in divine Revelation. The perspective the Council wishes to propose is that of an eschatology of the Church and of the world.
[…] It must be admitted that this vision of eschatology was only very weakly present in traditional preaching. And it is an original, biblical vision. The entire conciliar passage cited above is in fact composed of texts taken from the Gospel, from the apostolic Letters, and from the Acts of the Apostles. Traditional eschatology, which revolved around the so-called Last Things, is inscribed by the Council within this essential biblical vision. Eschatology, as I have already shown, is profoundly anthropological, but in the light of the New Testament it is above all centered on Christ and on the Holy Spirit, and is also, in a certain sense, cosmic.
We may ask whether man, with his individual life, with his responsibility, his destiny, with his personal eschatological future, his paradise or his hell or purgatory, will not end up being lost in that cosmic dimension. Acknowledging the good reasons for your question, we must answer honestly: man is to a certain extent lost; the preachers, catechists, educators have also been lost, because they have lost the courage to “threaten with hell.” And perhaps even those who listen to them have ceased to fear it.
In fact, the man of present-day civilization has become little sensitive to the “last things.” On the one hand, secularization and secularism act in favor of such insensitivity, with the consequent consumerist attitude oriented toward the enjoyment of earthly goods. On the other hand, the temporal hells occasioned in this century now ending have contributed to it to some extent. After the experiences of the concentration camps, the gulags, the bombings, not to mention natural catastrophes, can man expect anything worse than the world, an even greater accumulation of humiliations and contempt? In a word, can he expect a hell?
Thus, eschatology has become, in a certain way, something foreign to contemporary man, especially in our civilization. This, however, does not mean that faith in God as Supreme Justice has become completely foreign: the expectation of Someone who, in the end, will tell the truth about the good and evil of human acts, and will reward good and punish evil. No one else, only He, will be able to do it. Men continue to have this conviction. The horrors of our century have not been able to eliminate it: “It is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment” (cf. Heb 9:27).
This conviction also constitutes, in a certain sense, a common denominator of all monotheistic religions, together with others. If the Council speaks of the eschatological character of the pilgrim Church, it is also based on this knowledge. God, who is the just Judge, the Judge who rewards good and punishes evil, is truly the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Moses, and also of Christ, who is His Son. This God is first of all Love. Not only Mercy, but Love. Not only the father of the prodigal son; He is also the Father who “gives His Son so that man may not die but have eternal life” (cf. Jn 3:16)106.
The Pope continues: […] “In Christ, God has revealed to the world that He wants ‘all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth’ (1 Tim 2:4). This phrase from the First Letter to Timothy has fundamental importance for the vision and the proclamation of the last things. If God desires this, if God for this cause gives His Son, who in turn works in the Church through the Holy Spirit, can man be condemned, can he be rejected by God?
The problem of hell has always troubled the great thinkers of the Church from the beginning, from Origen to our own day, to Mikhail Bulgakov and Hans Urs von Balthasar. It is true that the ancient councils rejected the theory of the so-called final apocatastasis, according to which the world would be regenerated after destruction and every creature would be saved; a theory which indirectly abolished hell. But the problem remains. Can God, who has loved man so much, allow man to reject Him to the point of wishing to be condemned to everlasting torments? And yet the words of Christ are unequivocal. In Matthew He speaks clearly of those who will go to eternal punishment (cf. 25:46). Who will these be? The Church has never pronounced herself in this regard. It is a truly inscrutable mystery between the holiness of God and the conscience of man. The silence of the Church is therefore the only appropriate position for the Christian. Even when Jesus says of Judas, the traitor, that “it would be better for that man if he had not been born” (Mt 26:24), the statement cannot be understood with certainty as eternal condemnation.
At the same time, however, there is something in man’s moral conscience itself that reacts before the loss of such a perspective: Is the God who is Love not also definitive Justice? Can He admit these terrible crimes; can they remain unpunished? Is definitive punishment not in a certain sense necessary in order to obtain moral equilibrium in the so intricate history of humanity? Is hell not in a certain sense “the last plank of salvation” for man’s moral conscience? […]
Perhaps this is enough. Many theologians, in East and West, including contemporary theologians, have devoted their studies to eschatology, to the Last Things. The Church has not ceased to maintain her eschatological consciousness. If she ceased to be eschatological, she would cease to be faithful to her own vocation, to the New Covenant, sealed with her by God in Jesus Christ”107.
EPILOGUE
In the end, the present life will not suffice for us — nor even eternity — to give thanks to Jesus Christ, who “from being Creator has come to become man, and from eternal life to temporal death, and thus to die for my sins”108.
We will never sufficiently thank God for his patience with us, since, being still alive, we still have the hope of conversion. We could have ended our existence on this earth while in sin, and He did not permit it.
We must continue asking, every day of our lives, for the grace of graces, the grace of final perseverance, as we do in every Hail Mary: “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.”
And far more intelligent than raising doubts about hell — doubts which, besides, were resolved centuries ago by the Holy Fathers and Doctors — is to live in such a way that we do not go there. For it will always be true: “At the end of the journey / the one who is saved knows / and the one who is not, knows nothing.”
May the Virgin Mary guard and protect us.
Author: Fr. Carlos Buela
Source: Diálogo Magazine, no. 15.
NOTES
1 Cf. Dr. Mario Caponetto, La Kábala y el gnosticismo, AICA, no. 2063, July 3, 1996, p. 21. We used to call them “tilingos.”
2 Saint Augustine, Serm. 251, E.B. app.: “Ultra nescientur a Deo, qui Deum scire noluerunt”.
3 Obras ascéticas, B.A.C., Madrid, vol. II, p. 669.
4 Cf. Mk 9:42; Lk 3:17; etc.
5 Called abyss (Lk 8:31; Rev 9:11; 20:1-3), furnace of fire (Mt 13:42 and 50), lake of fire and sulfur (Rev 19:20; 20:9,15; 21:8), eternal fire (Mt 18:8; 25:41), perdition, destruction (Mt 7:13; Phil 3:19; 1 Tim 6:9; 2 Thess 1:9), second death (Rom 6:21; Rev 20:6, 14; 21:8), Tartarus (2 Pet 2:4), unquenchable fire, outer darkness, etc.
6 Cf. Is 66:24; Jdt 16:21; Sir. 7:19 and Mk 9:43ff.
7 Cf. Mt 13:50; etc.
8 Cf. Mt 8:12; 22:13; 25:30; etc.
9 Saint Thomas, S.Th., I-II, 87, 4: “Poena damni est infinita, quia est amissio boni infiniti”.
10 Cf. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, [370].
11 Ibid., [82].
12 Leonardo Castellani, El Evangelio de Jesucristo, Dictio, Buenos Aires, 1977, p. 489.
13 Dz. 429 [801].
14 Dz. 51 [1002].
15 Dz. 40 [76].
16 “Introducta sunt in texto verba Domini nostri circa poenam aeterna inferni, sicut explicite a multis Patribus petitum est (E/2639 2675 2676 et 11 alii, E/ 2682 2695 2716 2720”. Textus emendatus Capitis VII Schematis Constitutionis de Ecclesia, Relatio de no. 48, p. 181, line 22 (Romae 1964), p. 13.
17 “Ratione habita praecedentis emendationis, ob internam logicam expositionis et ut amplius desideriis Patrum satisfieret, introducta sunt verba de resurrectione vitae vel iudicii (E/ 2788 2838 cum 13 aliis)”. Ibid., note 5, line 26.
18 Ephesians 16, 1f. (Ignatius of Antioch)
19 Martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, 2, 3; cf. Saint Irenaeus, Adv. haer., 4, 39; Saint Ambrose, Commentary on Saint Luke, 7, 20.
20 2 Clem. 17, 5ff.
21 Apology, 1, 12.
22 Adversus haereses, 4, 28, 2.
23 10, 7f.; Funk, 1, 408-410.
24 Apologeticus, 48; PL 1, 527.
25 Ibidem, PL 1, 528; and in De poenitentia, 12; PL 1, 1247.
26 De praescriptione haereticorum, 13; PL 2, 845.
27 De resurrectione, 35.
28 Ad Demetrianum, 24; ML 4, 561f.
29 The City of God, 21,10.
30 Ad Pop. Ant., Hom.49: “Haec omnia ludicra sunt et risus ad illa supplicia. Pone ignem, pone ferrum, quid nisi umbra sunt ad illa tormenta?”. (All this is sport and laughter in comparison with those torments. Consider the torments of fire and iron: what are they but shadows in comparison with those torments?).
31 Dial. IV, 29; PL 77, 368.
32 S. Th., Suppl. 97, 5.
33 The Dialogue, ch. XVIII, B.A.C., 1950, p. 256.
34 Life, ch. 32, 4. The holy Doctor describes a vision of hell that she had and says that “it was one of the greatest favors the Lord has granted me” (ibid., 5).
35 Op. cit. p. 662.
36 Biografía y escritos, B.A.C., Madrid, 1955, p. 647.
37 Fr. Julio Triviño, Teología, espiritualidad y profetismo del Mensaje de Fátima, in Universitas, no. 41, September 1976, p. 17.
38 Solemn Profession of Faith on June 30, 1968, no. 12; theological commentary by Cándido Pozo, S.J., 2nd edition, B.A.C., Madrid, 1975, p. 21.
39 Cándido Pozo, S.J., Teología del más allá, B.A.C., Madrid, 1968, p. 197.
40 As Origen maintained in antiquity and, today, for example, Rahner’s Theological Dictionary (Herder, Barcelona, 1967, p. 514).
41 Ad Theodorum lapsum, I, 12; MG 47, 292.
42 In Mt., hom. 23, 8.
43 S.Th., I-II, 87,4.
44 Palabra de Comunión, 71 (mimeographed text); I understand that the Author falls into the logical error of the suppositio terminorum which leads him to a fallacia equivocationis, because from real and corporeal fire he passes to signify the fire of God’s love — the Holy Spirit! — which is a fallacy by taking the same term equivocally in the same syllogism; it also seems to me that he is confused by identifying the fire of hell with that of purgatory, understanding the fire of purgatory according to the conception of the Greek Fathers. (On one occasion, taking as the title of an Eschatology examination, the oral examiner maintained that “the fire of hell could be a cancer”; as can be seen, if one handles exegesis arbitrarily, words can be made to say anything. Thus “fire” could be water, wind, cloud, dulce de leche, candy, puff pastry, bleach, or anything else, which is absurd).
45 S.Th., Suppl. 99, 1.
46 Dz. 211.
47 “…two steps away…,” this is nothing but the Author’s imagination. If he paid more attention to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, he would realize that “between us and you a great chasm has been fixed” (Lk 16:26). Hell is not two steps away from heaven as Schillebeeckx claims.
48 Soy un teólogo feliz, Interview with Francesco Strazzari, Soc. Educación Atenas, Madrid, 1994, pp. 100-101.
49 It is clear that Schillebeeckx denies hell. For him the logic of good, as expressed in the praxis of the kingdom, leads, on the basis of promise and grace, to the final fulfillment of eternal happiness; the logic of evil, by contrast, leads nowhere; and if there is someone who is capable, in his life, of separating himself totally and definitively from communion with the God of life, he is destined for the annihilation of his own being: “but there is no infernal shadow-realm alongside the kingdom of God of eternal happiness.[…] The eschaton, that is, what is ultimate, is exclusively positive. There is no negative eschaton. Good, not evil, has the last word. This is the message and the characteristic of the human praxis of Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians therefore confess as the Christ” (E. Schillebeeckx, El hombre, imagen de Dios).
50 Ibid., note 48.
51 Michael Schmaus, Teología Dogmática, Ed. RIALP, Madrid, 1965, vol. VII, p. 429.
52 Ibid., note 48.
53 S. Th., Suppl., 99, 1, ad 6.
54 S. Th., I, q. 104, a. 4, c.
55 Ibid., note 48.
56 S.Th., Suppl.,99, 2, ad 1.
57 Taurisano, Preghiere ed elevazioni de S. Caterina, Rome, 1932, p. 105.
58 Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter on Certain Questions Concerning Eschatology, May 17, 1979, published in Mundo Mejor, August 4, 1979.
59 Cf. Martelet, G., L’audelà retrouvé, Paris, 1975, p. 182; cited by Juan L. Ruiz de la Peña, La otra dimensión. Escatología cristiana, Ed. Sal Terrae, Santander, 1986, p. 265.
60 Conferences of Notre-Dame of Paris, conf. 72 (year 1851). Cf. Obras completas, translation by Fr. Castaño, Madrid, 1926, vol. 7, pp. 186-187. (Cited by Antonio Royo Marín, O.P., Teología de la Salvación, B.A.C., Madrid, 1965, p. 328).
61 La aventura de la teología progresista, Eunsa, Pamplona, 1976, p. 230.
62 Hans Küng states: “…It is not strange that nowadays not even bishops themselves find it easy to answer convincingly the question of why remain in the Church or simply in the ministry, when one can no longer threaten with hell…” (Mantener la esperanza. Escritos para la reforma de la Iglesia, Ed. Trotta, 1993, p. 18). At present more than 900 priests abandon the ministry (cf. L’Osservatore Romano, May 27, 1994, p. 7); and according to CELAM, in Latin America every 30 minutes 200 Catholics leave the Catholic Church to join the sects (AICA, no. 2066, July 24, 1996, p. 157).
63 IV Sent. d. 46, q. 2, a. 3 sc. praet.
64 IV Sent. d. 46, q. 2, a. 3, sol.1; cf. Suppl. 99, 2, c.
65 De fide orth. book 2, ch. 4.
66 IV Sent. d. 46, q. 4, sol. 2; cf. Suppl. 99, 3.
67 “Unus Pater vult aliquam sententiam introduci ex que appareat reprobos de facto haberi (ne damnatio ut mera hypotesis maneat”. Schema Constitutionis dogmaticae de Ecclesia, Modi VI, cap. 7, no. 40, p. 10.
68 “Ceterum in n. 48 Schematis citantur verba evangélica quibus Dominus ipse in forma grammaticaliter futura de reprobis loquitur” (ibid., previous note).
69 In this work we set aside the question whether many or few are saved. It is not within our purpose to deal with that question.
70 Cf. Council of Rome, year 745: DS, 587: “…Clemens, qui per suam stultitiam sanctorum Patrum statuta [scripta] respuit vel omnia synodalia acta [parvipendit], /…/ insuper et dominum Iesum Christum descendentem ad inferos omnes [!] pios et impios exinde praedicat [simul inde] abstraxisse…” (“…Clement, who by his foolishness rejected the writings of the Holy Fathers or held the synodal acts in little esteem, /…/ also said that the Lord Jesus Christ, descending into the lower regions, drew out from there all the pious and the impious”).
71 Cf. Benedict XII, libellus Cum dudum: DS, 1011: (“ …sed dicunt, quod Christus propter salutem hominum est incarnatus et passus, quia per suam passionem filii Adam, qui dictam passionem praecesserunt, fuerunt liberati ab inferno, in quo erant non ratione originalis peccati quod in eis esset, sed ratione gravitatis peccati personalis primerum parentum. Credunt etiam, quod Christus propter salutem puerorum qui nati fuerunt post eius passionem, incarnatus fuit et passus, quia per suam passionem destruxit totaliter infernum…”. (“But [the Armenians] say that Christ was incarnate and suffered for the salvation of men, because through His passion the children of Adam who preceded that passion were liberated from hell, in which they were not by reason of original sin that was in them but by reason of the gravity of the personal sin of the first parents. They also believe that Christ was incarnate and suffered for the salvation of the children born after His passion, because through His passion He totally destroyed hell”.); Clement VI, c. Super quibusdam: DS, 1077: “Quod Christus non destruxit descendendo ad inferos inferiorem infernum” (“Christ, descending into the lower regions, did not destroy the lower hell”).
72 No. 633.
73 Gran Enciclopedia Rialp (GER), vol. 12, p. 710.
74 Cf. Msgr. de Segur, El Infierno, Iction, Buenos Aires, 1980, pp. 150-151
75 The declaration appears in the Ordinary Process, p. 449.
76 Cf. Henri Gheón, Vicente Ferrer y su tiempo.
77 The City of God, ch. 21, sec. 17, 22.
78 Enchiridion, ch. 29, sec. 111 and 113.
79 For example, he states: “Il Crocifisso non soffre semplicemente l’inferno meritato dai peccatori; egli soffre qualcosa che é al di lá e al di sotto de essi: un abbandono da parte di Dio in pura obbedienza de amore, cui egli soltanto é capace in quanto é il Figlio, e che abbraccia da sotto qualitativamente ogni possibile inferno. Ció elimina in un modo ancora piú radicale la simmetria giudiziaria veterotestamentaria” (TeoDrammatica. L’Ultimo Atto, V. 5, ed. Jaca Book, 1986, p. 237 ).
“Previamente si deve avvertire che tutte le parole del Signore indicanti la possibilitá di una eterna dannazione sono prepasquali” (idem, p.238).
“Il Signore non é morto soltanto per i buoni che subito si aprono a lui, ma anche por i cattivi e gli si negano. Egli ha tempo di aspettare fino a che anche i dispersi figli de Dio siano raggiunti dalla sua luce. Giacché anche il cattivo non é fuori dalla zona del suo potere, e la dispersione del Signore abbraccia e supera anche la dispersione dei peccatori” (idem, p. 239).
“Nella passione egli deve soffrire per tutti coloro che senza di lui avrebbero meritato l’inferno. Cosí la tenebra dei peccati rimane recinta dalla tenebra dell’ amore, come la patisce il Figlio nell’abbandono di Dio” (idem, p. 241).
“Nell’inferno rimarrebbe, come realtá dannata difinitiva il peccato staccato dal peccatore mediante l’opera della croce, una realtá non assolutamente nulla a causa della forza in essa investita dall’uomo. I peccati vengono rimessi, divisi da noi, da noi distolti. Vengono rinciati lá dove é tutto ció che Dio non vuole a che condanna: nell’inferno. Questo é il loro luogo. Che un luogo simile ci sia é, nella storia che va dal peccato originale alla redenzione, molto piú importante che se non ci fosse, perché é la permanente testimonianza della remissione dei peccati. In questo censo l’inferno é addirittura un regalo della grazia divina” (idem, p.269).
80 La teología de XX secolo, Queriniana, Brescia 1992, p. 368: “…lo stesso Von Balthasar, che prospettano l’inferno come una reale possibilita del fallimento finale, ma insieme insistono sul dovere di ‘sperare per tutti’”.
81 Cf. my article La resurrección, ¿mito o realidad?, Mikael, year 2, no. 6.
82 Obras Ascéticas, Sermon 34, De la impenitencia, vol. II, B.A.C., 1954, p. 749.
83 Cf. S. Th., Suppl., 99, 2, ad 1.
84 That God is good gives us hope, which avoids despair; that God is just instills fear in us, which avoids presumption (cf. Saint Thomas, Ad Rom. 11, 22).
85 Lk 1:50.
86 “Irrisor est, non poenitens” (Ad. Fr. in er., s. ), cited in Saint Alphonsus, see note 87.
87 Gal 6:7.
88 Sermon 32, Ilusiones del pecador, op. cit., pp. 731-732.
89 Boletín salesiano, August 1993, no. 510, p.10 ff.
90 Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium, 42.
91 Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita consecrata, no. 26.
92 Pius XII, Exhortation to parish priests and preachers in Lent 1949, AAS 41,5 (April 25, 1949), p. 185.
93 Garrigou-Lagrange, La vida eterna y la profundidad del alma, Madrid, p. 133.
94 John Paul II, Post-synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia, 26.
95 Cited by Ubillos, Ejercicios Espirituales.
96 Carlos Almeras, San Pablo de la Cruz, Ed. Descleé, Bilbao, 1960, p. 135.
97 “Minatur Deus gehennam, ut a gehenna liberet, et ut firmi ac stabiles evitemus minas” (De poenit., hom. 3).
98 Cited by Ubillos, Ejercicios Espirituales.
99 Expos. symb. no. 932: “Nam Christus descendit ad inferus pro salute nostra, et nos frecuenter debemus solliciti esse illuc descendere…”.
100 Op. cit., p. 660.
101 Escritos autobiográficos y espirituales, B.A.C., Madrid, 1959, no. 212, p. 251.
102 B. Raimondo di Capua, La vita di S. Caterina da Siena, Volgarizzata da Bernardino Pecci, Rome, 1866, First Prologue XV, p. 10: “Se, salva l’unione della tua caritá, io fosse posta sopra la bocca dell’inferno, per chiuderlo, talmente che niuno mai piú v’entrasse, mi sarebbe gratissimo, affinché in tal maniera tutti i mei prossimi si salvassero”.
103 Cartas selectas, Ed. Pío XII, Mar del Plata, 1952, p. 189 (Text cited in our first Constitutions [356] in the version En Camino con Don Orione, Ed. Pcia. Nuestra Señora de la Guardia, Argentina, vol. II, p. 227).
104 Edited by Vittorio Messori, Ed. Plaza & Janés, Barcelona, 1994, pp. 181-186.
105 Nicolas Berdyaev said: “By systematically affirming personality and freedom, one arrives at the possibility of hell. It is not difficult to overcome the idea of hell, but the concepts of personality and freedom automatically lose force” (Esprit e liberté, Essai de philosophie chrétienne, Paris, Ed. Jesers 1933, p. 341; cited by Charles Journet, El Mal, Ediciones RIALP, Madrid, 1965, p. 176).
106 Crossing the Threshold of Hope, idem.
107 Ibidem, p. 188.
108 Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, [53].
