Philosophy/Theology: Dare We Hope That All Be Saved?

[Pax]

The fact is not all “translators and scholars” are on your side. Many scholars are on my side. You can read some of their works in some of the links I posted above in the thread.

As for this interpretation in this commentary, it seems to be “ad hoc.” No one would have believed that the unfallen angels were at war with man before the birth of Christ were it not for this verse and the necessity of reconciling it with an Eternal Torment view. Also, it would seem to suggest that the good angels were at war with the Blessed Virgin Mary prior to the birth of Christ, which doesn’t seem to square with Catholicism, nor with the scriptures, nor with good religious sense. It also seems to run contrary to the book of Tobit (included in the Catholic OT) where the angel Raphael is very much the friend of man in that passage. It also seems to contradict the general theological teaching that every man from birth has a guardian angel – how are these guardian angels at “war” with the very men they are charged with protecting?

A world with an eternal Hell is a world where evil has an enduring, everlasting sway where God never achieves total and complete victory over evil. That is philosophically as well as scripturally unacceptable.

I disagree with your contention concerning scriptural translators. The bulk of scriptural translations simply do not support your view. Few well known/respected translations go your way.

Your views concerning Haydock’s commentary are at best deceptive in approach. Angels did many things to man in the way of executing punishments and God’s wrath. Likewise, guardian angels are necessary because of man’s broken relationship with God which is one of enmity. Not all angels are guardian angels. Not all angels are simple messengers. The angel of death did a job on the Egyptians when Pharoah would not listen to Moses. I could go on and on with scripture to show where and how the Haydock commentary makes great sense. You have one way of looking at things and I have another. I suspect that we could go on and on with this discussion without making much headway.

Personally, I think your view is untenable because of the use of anion in the Greek. If you wish to question the eternal nature of hell because of the range of meaning in the Greek word anion, then you must also allow for the lack of an eternal dimension to heaven. Scripture uses anion in reference to the eternal nature of man’s soul, the eternal nature of God, the eternal aspects of heaven, and the eternal aspects of hell. If you argue against the use of this Greek word as it pertains to hell then you are shackled with the same conclusion in reference to heaven.

Your claim that God does not achieve complete victory over evil, if hell is eternal, makes no sense. Hell exists because God values the gift he has given man in the way of free will. Men can choose God and men are free to reject God. Hell is for those that reject God and have no desire to be with him. They choose themselves rather than God. Likewise, hell is necessary in order for God’s perfect justice to be realized. The perfection in God includes his perfect justice and many other things that we do not fully appreciate or understand. Your conclusion seems to ignore these things.

 

[cor]

lack of an eternal dimension to heaven.

Just because the everlastingness of heaven is not affirmed in a particular passage does not mean it is not true, nor that it is not affirmed in other passages which do not have that issue.

free will.

You seem to be claiming that there are some that God’s grace cannot reach. You are thereby denying God’s omnipotence. St. Edith Stein seems to disagree with both of us:
St. Edith Stein:

All-merciful love can thus descend to everyone. We believe that it does so. And now, can we assume that there are souls that remain perpetually closed to such love? As a possibility in principle, this cannot be rejected.** In reality**, it can become infinitely improbable–precisely through what prepartory grace is capable of effecting in the soul. It can do no more than knock at the door, and there are souls that already open themselves to it upon hearing this unobtrusive call. Others allow it to go unheeded. Then it can steal its way into souls and begin to spread itself out there more and more. The greater the area becomes that grace thus occupies in an illegitimate way, the more improbable it becomes that the soul will remain closed to it. For now the soul already sees the world in the light of grace. It perceives the holy whenever it encounters this and feels itself attracted by it. Likewise, it notices the unholy and is repulsed by it; and everything else pales before these qualities. To this corresponds a tendency within itself to behave according to its own reason and no longer to that of nature or the evil one. If it follows this inner prompting, then it subjects itself implicitly to the rule of grace. It is possible that it will not do this. Then it has need of an activity of its own that is directed against the influence of grace. And this engaging of freedom implies a tension that increases proportionately the more the preparatory grace has spread itself through the soul. This defensive activity is based–like all free acts–on a foundation that differs in nature from itself, such as natural impulses that are still effective in the soul alongside of grace.

The more that grace wins ground from the things that had filled the soul before it, the more it repels the effects of the acts directed against it. And to this process of displacement there are, in principle, no limits. If all the impulses opposed to the spirit of light have been expelled from the soul, then any free decision against this has become infinitely improbable. Then faith in the unboundedness of divine love and grace also justifies hope for the universalisty of redemption, although, through the possibility of resistance to grace that remains open in principle, the possibility of eternal damnation also persists. Seen in this way, what were described earlier as limits to divine omnipotence are also canceled out again. They exist only as long as we oppose divine and human freedom to each other and fail to consider the sphere that forms the basis of human freedom. Human freedom can be neither broken nor neutralized by divine freedom, but it may well be, so to speak **outwitted. **(pp 219-221 of Dare We Hope… by von Balthasar, quoting St. Edith Stein)

justice

“Justice” doesn’t mean punishing the bad guys. This is what River of Fire (which, I should not contains some anti-Western polemicism; I should also note that the author is not a univeralist), recently linked to by Fr. Ambrose says about it:

“The word DIKAIWSUNH, “justice”, is a translation of the Hebraic word tsedaka. This word means “the divine energy which accomplishes man’s salvation”. It is parallel and almost synonymous to the other Hebraic word, hesed which means “mercy”, “compassion”, “love”, and to the word, emeth which means “fidelity”, “truth”. This, as you see, gives a completely other dimension to what we usually conceive as justice.”

The perfection in God includes his perfect justice and many other things.

Only of Love does it say in scripture that God “is” Love. You seem to be suggesting that to focuse on God as Love Itself somehow gives an incomplete picture of God. I say on the contrary that Love is God’s very Essence. Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa (preacher to the Papal Household) preached:

“Yes, God is love! It has been said that, if all the Bibles of the world were to be destroyed by some cataclysm or iconoclastic rage and only one copy remained; and if this copy was also so damaged that only one page was still whole, and likewise if this page was so wrinkled that only one line could still be read: if that line was the line of the First Letter of John where it is written that “God is love!” the whole Bible would have been saved, because the whole content is there.”

cantalamessa.org/en/predicheView.php?id=76

 

[cor]

I’m just a baby here…but is not God all that is good while Satan is all that is not good? Is not Satan also a being? Evil is a lack of goodness because it cannot exist in the same place, it is still very real in my understanding.

Satan is not all that is not good. If something were wholly lacking in goodness, it could not exist, because we only exist insofar as our existence is sustained by God who is Goodness Itself. Satan has an intellect and having an intellect is a good thing.

 

[Greg27]

I think another useful way of looking at this is the ideas of some of the Eastern Fathers. St Gregory of Nyssa states that God’s Being has the property of infinity. Because God is totally and actually infinite, God’s goodness is unbounded and infinite and unqualified. Outside of this goodness is nothing. Every choice for evil (including that of the fall and of Satan) is for nothing, even if it ‘appears’ real and good. Hell in a way is an unending descent into the perdition of nothingness and infinite emptiness, away from the goodness of unconditioned Being. This can be seen in Satan’s change from being one of God’s most beautiful angels into something hideously ruined and bankrupted and stripped of its beauty. Any true goodness is likeness to God, but it is also always a gift and a grace; the fall consisted not so much in Adam and Eve wanting to be like gods in terms of legitimate divinisation, but they tried to be God without God, without God’s grace and without following God’s will. As St Maximus puts it, trying to be God without God, around God and against God.

When Christ as the logos took on human nature and ‘deified it’ so to speak in the incarnation, all of human nature was made to participate in the divine, so the incarnation was effective to redeeming all. Nevertheless salvation also requires a choice for Christ in each individual person because of God’s unconditional respect for human free will. All humans can have the chance to be restored to glory as was intended with Adam and Eve, but only through Christ and in Christ, requring a choice for Christ. Since tradition affirms Christ descended also into hell/hades we can think that Jesus also offered salvation to those who died without baptism and the righteous of the Old Testament, and for those who accepted, were glorified with him. I think it is also legitimate to hope that at death, each human being, even one in horrible sin, is offered at least one last chance to repent and be saved, though if that person continues to refuse grace then God will allow that grace to be refused, forever.

 

[cpayne]

Satan is not all that is not good. If something were wholly lacking in goodness, it could not exist, because we only exist insofar as our existence is sustained by God who is Goodness Itself. Satan has an intellect and having an intellect is a good thing.

When I realized this from Aquinas (not all that long ago–maybe a few years), it was a real step for me spiritually. Just think: Everything that exists has at least some quality of the goodness of God to it, even if it is only the goodness of existing. What a lovely way to view the universe and all of existence.

(Sorry–I’m not trying to derail my own thread. Actually, I am reading and learning from you all.)

 

[Zooey]

I don’t believe that all will be saved, but I am more and more attracted to the idea that although hell involves suffering, that suffering is less than what the souls in hell would suffer if they were forced into the presence of God.
Because they reject Him, He allows them what they want: separation from Him. To us, this seems horrible, but I keep thinking of what C S Lewis wrote somewhere: that the doors to hell are only locked from the inside. The damned are free to leave. They remain in hell because that is where they choose to be there.
Free will, it would seem, is a 2-edged sword…