One of the best popular theologians today, Father Robert Barron, wrote a highly useful piece at Catholic News Agency last week on a topic most rarely think about: The number of the saved. Father Barron’s column reviews a new book by Ralph Martin: Will Many Be Saved?
This issue percolates in the back of my mind as I write apologetics. When you’re trying to win people over to the teachings of the Church or help shore up their faith, one of the trickiest questions is hell. We preach a perfectly loving, gracious God, who came down to earth to suffer horribly at the hands of men because he wants the salvation of all. The obvious, comforting way to interpret this is to say that God gets what he wants, so all will be saved. This reading saves answering painful questions.
Of course we have all heard horror stories of catechists and priests who really do treat salvation as trivial, who lazily guess that a loving God would never sentence a soul to eternal punishment for merely temporal sins. Such talk, as Martin points out, undercuts most of the reasons for evangelizing anyone. Why bother preaching the Gospel if everybody is saved anyway?
On this reading, missionaries are doctors who spend and risk their lives to hand out not a vaccine but a placebo. And barring a rightly vivid fear of purgatory, why bother shunning sin?
The New Testament itself should be enough to dispose of this error. If Jesus’ words mean what they seem to, not all are saved. In fact, as Martin notes, in some places he seems to suggest that the number is small. Some dour acquaintances of mine like to forward around a bleak old sermon by St. Leonard of St. Maurice that announces the “fewness of the saved.” I got my copy from a devout New England Catholic who has become convinced not only that no non-Catholics are saved, but that very few Catholics are — and that he will not be one of them. Still, he trudges off to Mass, homeschools 10 kids and fiercely argues theology, all in service of a God in whom he has lost hope. When this fellow tries to evangelize, I wonder what on earth he has to say.
The God who blindly saves everybody does indeed seem like C.S. Lewis’ “senile grandfather in heaven.” It’s hard to believe that such a God exists, or if so, to take him seriously. Eternity with him is just another inexorable stage in the cosmic process, as out of our hands as other things that we’ve endured without our consent — like conception and birth.
But a God who saves very few raises other issues: It is hard to believe that he is good. And we begin to doubt his competence: First he creates a mankind prone to a sin that will damn the whole race; then he sends a Redeemer who can only manage to pull a tiny remnant from the pit of eternal fire toward which the teeming billions of souls slide on a conveyor belt.
Is this the all-powerful, all-loving God with whom we would even want to spend eternity? Why? (Perhaps because the alternative is so gruesome.) But why buy into such a system in the first place — when instead you could dare to hope that God does not exist?
The monstrousness of the Calvinist God (who saves whomever he chooses via irresistible grace, and damns the rest) drove most of New England down just this path in the 18th and 19th centuries — though some rescued God’s goodness and his power by asserting that all are predestined to be saved. The Yankees who decided this put the “Universalist” into “Universalist-Unitarianism.”
In preaching the faith, we must avoid the old salesman’s trick, the “bait-and-switch.” As apologists, we make hell understandable, and even perhaps acceptable, by pointing up the overwhelming mercy of God, the ocean of graces offered any soul, the relentlessness of a Love that hunts each sinner like a real-life Hound of Heaven.
Despite this mighty divine initiative to rescue every soul, God insists each soul accept his mercy. In this divine romance, no soul is raped. Those who really want to reject God are free to do so; His grace will take “No” for an answer.
The danger comes once someone has taken the “bait,” accepted the whole Catholic system, and granted that certain sinners may (and some surely have) rejected God’s offer. Then we are tempted to “switch” what we’re asking him to believe. We give him brochures on the fewness of the saved, we read him the very long list of mortal sins — with little talk of diminished culpability or purgatory — and show him the text of apparitions that suggest that hell is full and groaning at the seams. If he thinks things through, they completely undermine the arguments that convinced him that hell was reasonable in the first place.
Apologetics often do drive theology, since a theory that’s so repulsive that it keeps people from accepting the Faith is probably not true. Such arguments helped the Church reject Augustine’s belief that unbaptized babies were damned. Apologetical pressure also helped drive the Church’s development of the doctrine called “baptism of desire.” It simply became impossible to convince people that a just (much less a loving) God would be so sloppy as to create billions of souls whose eternal destiny depended on water baptism — centuries before anyone would actually show up and offer to baptize them. If every human being who reached the age of reason in, say, Burma, before the first missionary appeared, faced not purgatory or limbo but hell …
Such a God is hard to believe in, much less to fall in love with. It’s much easier to say, with Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, “I respectfully return my ticket.”
But as Christians we are called to freely distribute such saving tickets, not cash them in for refunds. And people rightly see through a bait and switch. So I am glad that Pope Benedict’s own Spe Salvi (On Christian Hope) — as Father Barron points out — offers a much more hopeful account of the number of those who will after purgation be saved, one that is consistent with the arguments for hell that can make sense to unbelievers, or believers who have not silenced their skeptical intellect.
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I’m not sure why anyone would feel he should ask the question, “Will many be saved?” How many is “many,” anyway? We’ll never know—not in this life, anyway—and it is presumptuous to offer an answer either way. The fact is, we should be asking, “Will *I* be saved?” and the answer to that is ours to determine (our free will). In the end, life is a pass/fail course: by the end of our lives, will we (each one of us) have learned to love God and our neighbor? Or, at least, have we striven to do so, and repented when we failed? Only God knows our hearts—we don’t even know that—so only He can answer these questions. If we love Him and trust Him, we won’t go far wrong.
That said, God Himself has said, “Many are called, but few are chosen.” He also said, “Not everyone who says ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” And then again, “How narrow is the gate, and strait is the way that leadeth to life: and few there are that find it!” How many is “many” and how many is “few”? Only God knows. It’s really none of our business.
“Oh, how I want to be in that number, when the Saints go marching in!”
Amen to Lisa’s comments and I think the danger comes from trying to negotiate terms of surrender when evangelizing, that is trying to find words that will give them the God they want. We simply have to tell the truth. We don’t know how many are in hell, some sincere Christians have offered speculation.
Being willing to walk away from God’s love and grace because Justice was done and you are upset with the truth of it one way or the other is problematic not God. I would then hand them a crucifix and tell them they will find the answer there in the sacrifice if the mass.
I am not convinced that I will not be saved, but I reject the self - assurance of so many fundamentalists “I am saved.” I live a life that attempts to imitate Christ, yet I fall short. I don’t write saying that I am miserable or hopeless; in fact, I am happy with much of my life. I am very blessed. But if I arrive in Heaven, no one will be molre surprised than I, and it will not be because of my merits or good works, though I try to do them. It will be because of Christ’s mercy.
“Only God knows. It’s really none of our business.” Lisa, so very right. Scripture condemns those who quibble over words (Romans 16:17-18) because they confuse “the simple minded.” We all must know people who so fully “trust” in God’s goodness that they refuse to correct their life practices. Such tendency towards the sin of presumption could be eternally fatal. The simple believer may be saved despite full practice of the faith, but those who actually understand that many/few is a serious issue are too culpable to be free of the guilt of the sin of presumption.
IMPORTANT NOTE OF CLARIFICATION: Prof. Martin has posted a cogent commentary on Fr. Barron’s column, which anyone interested in this subject should read:
http://www.renewalministries.net/wordpress/?p=348
It seems that Prof. Martin is not necessarily arguing for the “fewness of the saved,” but rather emphasizing the importance of evangelization, and warning of how a blithe confidence bordering on Universalism can undermine the impetus to preach the Gospel. I agree, and I think Fr. Barron would, too.
I am amazed that we focus on hell so much. My conviction is that there is no place of eternal torment for the average joe who is just trying to get through life but missing the mark. But, that is certainly up for debate.
I have heard numerous people say that christ talked about hell more than he did heaven. That is a farce. He mentions “hell” (both gehenna, and sheol were translated into the word hell in modern translations) maybe 20 times throughout all of the gospels, but the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven hundreds of times. that being the case, I don’t think hell was high on Jesus’ priority list.
Even the one who would prepare the way for Christ came saying “Repent (not grovel and beg forgiveness, but reform or change your thinking) because the kingdom of God is within your reach.” So it seems to me our message should be as Paul said, one of reconciliation, and not one of love God or die a torturous death, forever. Just my humble opinion.
Who said this?
“We Catholics generally believe that there is a hell. I hope nobody is there. I certainly believe in a place of purification. I think it will be like getting up in the morning and you throw the curtains back and the light is just too much. God’s light would be too much for us. But I believe on behalf of the innocent victims in history that the scales of justice should work out. And if they don’t, life is radically unjust, the law of the jungle prevails.”
Answer: Cardinal George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney Australia. Why do you suppose he hope’s nobody is in hell?
Also, could someone answer the following dichotomy for me?
Assuming people are suffering forever in hell after the judgment, how are their family members who achieved salvation supposed to live in the perfect happiness of heaven? Does God make them forget about the people they bore and loved on earth? What does that say about what happens to compassion after the judgment? Will people no longer have it, and, therefore, be indifferent to the suffering of others in the afterlife?
For a long time, I’ve been comfortable with the thought that those who “go to hell” are the ones who basically see God and say “no thank you” (and for whom forced salvation would just be cruel), but now I wonder about those who really do think they are saved but make no attempt to repent or change their lives in any way to avoid sin. Could it be something like Adam and Eve, where upon death, we gain full understanding of our sins and some are so ashamed, they hide from God, thereby condemning themselves? Interesting to think on.
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Tom, when I was very young the issue of family and loved ones going to hell use to trouble me a lot. I would imagine myself standing at the gates of heaven, demanding that my loved one be fetched to enter with me, or offering to trade my place for their salvation. I’m not entirely sure when that image faded or why, but somehow I’m not troubled by those thoughts anymore. I’m not really sure if it’s just confidence that those I love will somehow be saved, or peace with the idea that those who are condemned wouldn’t want me to be “bartering” for their salvation.
@Colleen
Just because it doesn’t bother you doesn’t mean the questions are not valid to others. It’s not just like Adam and Eve - they temporarily hid. Interestingly, though, God came calling on them. It’s more comforting for me to think about that. I can’t believe, for a second, that people would be so ashamed of their sins that they wouldn’t choose to leave eternal suffering if the could, but they can’t, according to doctrine, so the problem of lack of compassion still remains. What happens? Do people just go about being “perfectly happy with Him forever in heaven” when some of their family members are enduring eternal torture? I’m glad it doesn’t trouble you anymore, but it certainly troubles me, and I’m getting on in years, as they say.
There a long list of people I would wish in hell, if I believed in hell. Unfortunately they will go unpunished into oblivion like the rest of us.
John Zmirak,
I just wanted to thank for this article, as I’ve been thinking about this precise question recently. As you stated, as Christians we know that many are saved as the Gospel truly is “Good News”, but not so many are saved that the Gosepl is trivial. Also, thanks for linking to Pope Bendict’s encyclical “Spe Salvi” which I hadn’t realized existed just to address this question. I’m always grateful for the institutions that were put in place to guide us. :)
Best, Robert
Tom R asks how are the saints supposed to live in the perfect happiness of heaven with loved ones in hell? Answer, the same way that God is in perfect happiness all the while knowing those who abide in hell much more intimately that any of us.
The dilemma that the author labors to create is a false dilemma. It is developed by applying human judgement to the result of the actions of a holy God who is love, justice, and mercy.
Dan’s post is the biggest problem I have with the Church. God is God of the living when its convenient, beyond understanding when it’s not. Since mercy is a human term, to say that God is all merciful is only meaningful in human terms, or our understanding level. If we don’t understand it, then its meaningless to say that he’s merciful. It’s only meaningful if our definitions are human. If they are not, then all we can say is “God is Something, we don’t know what that is, but he is Something.”
“The dilemma that the author labors to create is a false dilemma. It is developed by applying human judgement to the result of the actions of a holy God who is love, justice, and mercy.”
That is meaningless mumbo jumbo on its face. If humans can’t apply their judgment to that, then they can’t apply it to an understanding of either heaven or hell, or what perfection is. They can only say it’s “Something - we don’t know what, but it’s Something.” If that’s the case, what’s the point of believing anything.
If ‘by believing in anything at all’ you actually mean, ‘everything accessible to natural reason alone without the a priori tutelage of divine revelation’, then you are quite correct to disbelieve ‘anything at all’. There is no point believing in such a cognitive construct because it is a false idea. The existence of hell is a dogma whose warrant is not a set of reasonable propositions but an article of de fide revelation. The relation of the revelatory term and idea ‘hell’ to such natural terms and ideas as ‘mercy’ is therefore at best an analogous one. You cannot use the term mercy to judge hell any moreso than to judge God.
Fr. Darryl,
Thank you for your comment. I think the truth is that I’m leaving the Church, because of my scientific background. I’ve struggled since my early 20s, to believe in the Church. For the last 20 years of my life, I’ve said a rosary every day, and attended daily mass in an effort to increase my faith, but these stumbling blocks are just too great, and unbelievable to me. I’m 60 years old, and have identified as a Catholic my whole life, but I’m not, and it’s time for me to accept that.
Hell and Heaven? I can’t even fathom the idea of the milky way galaxy, light years, or the idea that the sun can heat the entire earth. I read about it, I get how it can be, but it is still amazing. If those things are amazing, how much more amazing is God? I will never understand Him in this life. I can’t. And I don’t think that I am supposed to. Because if I did-if I really understood what God did for me, that he willingly gave over His own Child, I think that I would crawl away in shame.
If what we believe is true-the death and redemption-if it is real, then we are the most ungratefull lot of created beings that has ever been made.
I think redemption comes down to one thing-love. And this is why I am so scared of this Jesus. I am called to love as He loved. Praying and church are important-but it is still about love. I have to be willing to die to myself. To pour myself out. To give up everything that makes me me. I struggle with this, the end of self. If I was truly a Christian, everyone would know because of how I loved; and that I viewed everyone else as more important then myself.
So, is there a heaven and a hell? Personally, I don’t think that we should worry about hell very much. Should we not want to go there? Sure! But we should be more worried about how we are living. Do we live every day in thanksgiving and love? I sure don’t. Do I want to? Ah-there’s the rub! If I do that, I have to give everything over to Jesus. And He asks for something very precious to me, my desire to have things MY way. So I struggle and wonder-and I hope.
There might be hope for someone like me after all:
Wait a minute. This is also posted on Mark Shea’s blog.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2012/12/things-i-dont-get.html
Here, the priest (Fr. Barron) specifically says we are not required to believe that anyone is in hell.
@Tom R, I apologize if I made you feel like I was saying your questions aren’t valid - that’s actually the opposite of my intent! I meant to say that I can understand the questions because I went through that myself, and quite vividly. It looks like some others have offered comments that may be more helpful to you, and I’m grateful for that. I hope you find what you are looking for.
Two points:
(1) Everyone is condemned to hell who dies unrepentantly in a state of mortal sin.
First Council of Lyons (1245) = Ecumenical Council XIII
cf., http://denzinger.patristica.net/ and search for the string ‘457’
However, no one but God, who is the only judge on matters of eternal destiny, can know on whom that sentence shall rest. Guilt is both objective and subjective. For although we may know certain acts are objectively and mortally sinful, we cannot know whether any person is subjectively culpable in committing those acts. For a person to be mortally sinful in both the objective and subjective senses,
a) he or she must know their sin is mortal, deserving of hell, and commit the sin anyway; and
b) he or she must commit such mortal sin with neither intrinsic or extrinsic compulsion.
(2) Some of Jesus’ followers were so upset with him for saying that eating his flesh was necessary to gain eternal life they left him.
Jesus said to the twelve, Do you also wish to go away?
Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.
http://biblia.com/bible/rsv/john6.67-69
Always go with the Pope.
Fr. Darryl,
Thanks. I believe
1) Evil is real.
2) Purgation of sin is necessary.
3) There is a possibility that no one is in hell.
4) Relying on (3) to assure your salvation is a good way to open the door to the possibility that hell exists, and you’re in it.
Thanks, Tom. I could not agree more wholeheartedly!
Or should I say, wholemindedly? I am somewhat sceptical these days of anything that is claimed to be true tout court because it is ‘heartfelt’.
If you catholics read your bibles you would know Jesus answered this exact question. Why does that answer not satisfy you?
Hi Phil. That’s Catholic with a capital C. If you read your dictionary, you would know Webster entered this exact spelling. Unless of course, you are acknowledging the preeminence of Catholicism. I am rather convinced that the Bible does not read like instructions to install a basketball hoop because He want us to think about Him and actually talk to one another, especially about the salvation of souls. The wisdom of the Church is the collected family recipes of generations. Tried, true, and not nearly completed yet. There’s always something new to say, new to taste, new to discuss.
CH- Why do you suppose you have to give everything up that makes you YOU? Isn’t the you-ness of you a collection of gifts of God? Your affection for baseball, blue skies and yellow tulips do not sound like a something to overcome, but something to enjoy, be thankful for, and sometimes give up! If you were not fond of anything, could you really love a person—so much more complex! Could you make little sacrifices? Big ones? Jesus tells us to deny our very selves in the context of following him, and its surrounded by discourses about sacrificing (a lot) to follow Him. It seems to me Jesus is addressing self-interest, not the nature God gave you.
I find that following what Jesus wants for me to do and trying, however imperfectly, to achieve that on a daily basis precludes a whole lot of pondering on who’s in Hell and how many. I think, no in fact I know, like Fr. Benedict, I’ll be happy to end up in Purgatory. It’s a lot more reassuring being there than it is being here.
Very nice article. Well done J. Z.
January 3, 2013
Archbishop, numerous priests and lay Catholic apologist contradict CDF Prefects- baptism of desire cases are not visible to us
The Prefects of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Vatican since the 1940’s have assumed that we know cases saved with the baptism of desire and in invincible ignorance.(1) They wrongly assumed that these cases are exceptions to the literal interpretation of the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. The baptism of desire is not visible to us says an Archbishop, many priests and the lay apologist John Martigioni.(2)
It was the Italian cardinal, Francesco Marchetti Selvagianni, the Secretary of the Holy Office and Vicar General of Rome who issued the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 to the Archbishop of Boston regarding Fr.Leonard Feeney.(Wikipedia lists him as the Prefect of the CDF(Holy Office) or a pro-Prefect.April 30, 1939-January 13, 1951).
If he assumed that the baptism of desire was an exception to the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus he made a factual error. It is a fact that we cannot see the dead.We cannot see any case on earth saved with the baptism of desire. This would be an objective error from the Holy Office if the cardinal assumed that the dead are visible and so this contradicts Fr.Leonard Feeney and the St.Benedict Center. The Letter however mentions ‘the dogma’ and so supports Fr.Leonard Feeney. The text of the dogma does not mention any exceptions.
Since Selvagiani, Prefects and Secretaries of the Holy Office (CDF), have never corrected the secular media and now just about every body assumes that Fr.Leonard Feeney was excommunicated for heresy. The Letter mentions it was for disobedience and not heresy.
The CDF Prefects allowed the error to be extended to Vatican Council II.It was assumed in the media that Lumen Gentium 16(invincible ignorance and a good conscience) contradicted the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Since invincible cases were assumed to be real and explicit, Vatican Council II would be contradicting itself (LG 16 vs AG 7).No clarification was issued by the CDF.
Yet the Council nor the Letter of the Holy Office states that these cases are explicit or that they contradict the literal interpretation of the dogma on salvation.
Even Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founder of the Society of St.Pius X (SSPX) seemed to imply that these cases were exceptions to the dogma on exclusive salvation in the Catholic Church. The SSPX has followed through with this error.The error is there in a book by Fr.Francois Laisney being sold by the SSPX. It is also there on the SSPX U.S website.
The SSPX was excommunicated for rejecting a Vatican Council II with this false interpretation of being able to see the dead alive and saved on earth. Without this false premise Vatican Council II is traditional and in agreement with the SSPX position on other religions and ecumenism. Since Ad Gentes 7 says all need faith and baptism for salvation. Protestants, Jews and Muslims do not have Catholic Faith.
A CDF clarification is still needed.Since the premise of the dead man walking influences theology and the interpretation of Vatican Council II. The SSPX is not obliged to accept an interpretation of the Council using an irrational theory.The premise also decides how we interpret the Catechism of the Catholic Church- rationally or irrationally.
-Lionel Andrades
1.
THE PREFECTS OF THE CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH WHO OVERLOOKED THE CLAIM OF THERE BEING KNOWN EXCEPTIONS TO THE DOGMA
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2013/01/the-prefects-of-congregation-for.html
2.
ARCHBISHOP,CATHOLIC PRIESTS AND LAY APOLOGIST SAY VATICAN COUNCIL II DOES NOT CONTRADICT THE DOGMA EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS AND THE SYLLABUS OF ERRORS : “We don’t know any case of the baptism of desire or invincible ignorance.Only Jesus can judge”
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2012/11/archbishopcatholic-priests-and-lay.html
REDEMPTORIST PRIEST SAYS VATICAN COUNCIL II DOES NOT CONTRADICT ITSELF NOR THE DOGMA EXTRA ECCLESIAM NULLA SALUS
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2012/10/redemptorist-priest-says-vatican.html#links
Implicit intention, invincible ignorance and a good conscience (LG 16) in Vatican Council II do not contradict extra ecclesiam nulla salus –John Martigioni
http://eucharistandmission.blogspot.it/2012/11/implicit-intention-invincible-ignorance.html#links
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