First, though,
a comment on terminology. Fr. Gaine uses
the label “infernalism” for the view that at least some human beings will in
fact be damned, and “universalism” for the view that all human beings will ultimately
be saved, or at least may be. There is
nothing necessarily wrong with this usage, but it seems to me that it does not
correspond exactly to the way others have used these labels in recent online discussion
of the topic of hell. My impression is
that “infernalism” is usually used in a broader way today, to include even the
view that some might be damned, and
that “universalism” is often used in a narrower way, for the view that all must be saved. The view that we can reasonably hope that all
human beings are saved but that it is nevertheless possible that some are
damned – commonly associated with Hans Urs von Balthasar – would in that case
count as a (more optimistic) version of infernalism. The way Fr. Gaine uses the terms, though, it
would count instead as a (more pessimistic) version of universalism.
The issue is
perhaps essentially semantic, but the differences in usage are worth calling
attention to so that the listener does not misunderstand what Fr. Gaine is
saying. Hence, when Fr. Gaine suggests
that the scriptural passages he refers to leave the debate between infernalism
and universalism open, this does not entail that scripture is compatible with
the view (put forward by David Bentley Hart and others) that the damnation of
anyone is impossible, so that all must be
saved. Fr. Gaine is claiming only that
these passages are compatible with the weaker thesis that it might be that all are saved, even if
they also teach that at least some might be damned.
Where the
scriptural evidence is concerned, Fr. Gaine’s focus is on Christ’s prophecies
about the Last Judgment, such as his famous statement in Matthew 25:31-46 about
separating the sheep from the goats and consigning the latter to eternal
punishment. Don’t such prophecies show
that some will in fact be damned?
Fr. Gaine notes
that there are two kinds of prophecy in scripture. First, there is what he calls “Mosaic
prophecy,” which flatly and unconditionally foretells that a certain event will
occur. He gives the example of Christ’s
prophecy that Peter will deny him three times.
Second, there is what Fr. Gaine calls “Jeremianic prophecy,” which
states only that a certain event will occur if
certain conditions are met. For example,
in Isaiah 38 it is prophesied that King Hezekiah will die imminently. But Hezekiah repents, and God adds fifteen
years to his life. Another example is
the repentance of the Ninevites in response to Jonah’s prophecy of the
destruction of their city. As Aquinas notes
(in Summa TheologiaeII-II.171.6),
prophecies of this kind are not false even though the predicted event does not
come to pass, precisely because they are conditional. Had Hezekiah not repented, he would have died very soon, and had the
Ninevites not repented, their city would
have been destroyed.
Fr. Gaine
proposes that prophecies like Christ’s statement about the sheep and the goats
can reasonably be read as Jeremianic in character. If that is so, then while they certainly teach
that it might turn out that some are
damned, they do not flatly and unconditionally teach that some will in fact be damned. They teach only that some will be damned if they do not repent – just as the prophecy
about Hezekiah is to be understood as saying only that he would die if he did not repent, and the prophecy
about Nineveh is to be understood as saying that the city would be destroyed if its citizens did not repent. Fr. Gaine also acknowledges that one could
instead argue for reading prophecies like the one about the sheep and the goats
as Mosaic prophecies. But his point is
that either interpretation is compatible with orthodoxy, so that such passages
cannot be said to settle the dispute between infernalism and universalism
(again, as he is using those terms).
What should
we think about this argument? Since Fr.
Gaine does not discuss most of the scriptural passages relevant to the issue, I
am not certain that he is claiming that scripture as a whole is compatible with either infernalism or universalism,
or only that certain specific scriptural passages are. But even if we were to grant for the sake of
argument that a passage like Matthew 25:31-46 might be Jeremianic or
conditional in character, I think that that cannot
plausibly be said of all the relevant
scriptural passages. And thus I think
that, taken as a whole, scripture clearly favors infernalism over universalism.
I have assembled
and discussed the main relevant scriptural passages in another
article. Here I will focus on a few
of them to show how Fr. Gaine’s argument is problematic. First, there are a handful of cases where
scripture seems clearly to teach that certain specific people will in fact be damned, not merely that
among people in general, some might
be damned.
For example,
consider Judas, of whom Christ says: “Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is
betrayed! It would have been better for
that man if he had not been born” (Matthew 26:24). It is hard to see how it could be better for
Judas not to have been born if this were a conditional prophecy. For if Christ knew that Judas would in fact repent
(which, being omniscient, he would have known if that is in fact what Judas
ended up doing) wouldn’t it obviously be good that Judas was born?
But even if
someone were to claim that Christ was here merely trying to prod Judas to
repent by way of an especially frightful conditional prophecy, that cannot be
said of John 17: 11-12, where, praying to the Father, Christ says: “Holy
Father, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me… I have guarded them,
and none of them is lost but the son of
perdition.” Notice that Christ not
only flatly states that Judas is lost, but says this to the Father, and not to Judas or any other human being. Now, the point of conditional prophecies,
like the ones made to Hezekiah and the Ninevites, is to encourage
repentance. And that requires that those
in need of repentance hear the prophecy.
But in this passage, it is the Father alone who is addressed, and
needless to say, he needn’t have been
warned about the need for repentance!
This brings
us to a second problem, which is that a prophecy can plausibly be read as
conditional only when it is addressed to listeners who might benefit from it. And as we’ve just seen, this is not the case
of all the relevant scriptural passages.
For another example, consider Revelation 20:10, which states that the
beast and the false prophet of the end times will, together with the devil, be
tormented day and night forever and ever.
Not only does this name specific people, but it does so in the context
of a book addressed, not to those particular people, but rather to Christians
who are being persecuted by those people, to reassure them in the face of the persecution. Hence it cannot plausibly be said that this
passage is meant as a conditional warning to the persecutors, the way that the
prophecies to Hezekiah and the Ninevites were intended as conditional warnings
to them (and thus were addressed directly to them).
A third
problem is that in at least one case, people who were already dead at the time
the passage was written (unlike the case of Judas or that of the beast and
false prophet) are said to be damned.
Hence it cannot be characterized as a prophecy at all, let alone a
conditional one. Jude 7 states that “Sodom
and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and
indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” It can hardly be said that this was meant to
prod the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah to repentance (as in the cases of
Hezekiah and Nineveh), since those inhabitants were long dead when Jude’s
epistle was written. To be sure, the
larger context of this passage plausibly contains a conditionally prophetic
element, insofar as Jude’s readers are being warned what will happen to them if
they follow the example of Sodom and Gomorrah.
All the same, the statement that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah suffered
“a punishment of eternal fire” is not itself a prophecy but the assertion of a
fait accompli.
A fourth
problem is that even in the case of conditional prophecies concerning hell, we
can reasonably hope that the people in question are not damned only if we can
reasonably hope that they repented (as we know that Hezekiah and the Ninevites repented). That means that we can reasonably hope that
all are saved only if it is reasonable to think that every single person who has died so far in human history repented before
death. But it is not reasonable to think this.
There are simply too many people who have died in what to all
appearances is a state of grave sin unrepented of. True, of any particular person, no matter how
apparently hardened in evil to the bitter end, we cannot be absolutely certain that he did not
somehow find repentance in the nick of time.
It is, considered in the abstract, theoretically possible. But it simply doesn’t follow that it is
remotely plausible that every single
person who seems to have died unrepentant really repented in an unseen way.
Now, if we’re
going to use uncontroversially conditional prophecies as our model for interpreting
prophecies concerning damnation, then we should note, first, that the cases where
the prophecy did not come to pass are cases where the people to whom the
prophecy was directed clearly and
explicitly repented (as with Hezekiah and the Ninevites). Meanwhile, cases where such prophecies did
come to pass (as with predictions about the punishment of the Israelites by way
of foreign aggressors) are cases where the people, to all appearances, did not
repent. Therefore, where conditional prophecies
concerning damnation are concerned, the reasonable interpretation is that, with
people who to all appearances did not
repent before death, it is highly probable that at least some of them are
damned.
All told,
then, Fr. Gaine does not seem to me to have made a plausible case that the view
that all human beings might be saved can be reconciled with the scriptural
evidence. At the very least, the
totality of the scriptural evidence clearly more strongly favors infernalism.
Related
posts:
Scripture
and the Fathers contra universalism