The Hell Debate at CUA

A Bilan

I

A reader suggested I compose a debrief of sorts of the “debate” about Hell that occurred a few months back at the Catholic University of America, sponsored by The Lamp Magazine and the Institute for Human Ecology. What follows are somewhat scattered reflections that, for whatever reason, mange to remain in mind three months in the aftermath.

First, a word on the commendable hospitality of my interlocutor, Matthew Walther. When he invited me to participate in the event, my initial reaction was to ask who exactly would play my counterpart on the infernalist side. Many cocksure infernalists would have made the discussion unproductive and likely worse. I was once arraigned during an on-campus interview for my universalist convictions, which wouldn’t have surprised or bothered me were it not for the way this person posed the question: “We are a Catholic institution, and you’re a pretty public universalist. Since we require the mandatum and you hold obviously heterodox views, how will you manage?” Nothing encourages useful theological debate like hammering one’s own theological conclusion into the very framework of the debate, you see. So, after Matthew assured me that he himself was to play the part and that he chose to do so from the same concerns about other infernalist spokespersons, I happily agreed. I don’t regret it.

Matthew makes a sympathetic interlocutor because he once held to a version of universalism. This is evident in the way he references his role in the debate. “Now it’s time for me to put on my Batman villain face,” he wryly quips; it’s time to defend the “less pleasant stuff.” Ever remarkable to me in such asides is their unwitting revelation that the defender himself believes the Christian gospel amounts to less than the most pleasant, the most beautiful, the most wondrous of the things at the end of all things. At least the dissonance sufficiently softens the heart and jars mind for a useful exchange over these matters.

Two things strike me as refreshingly uncommon in Matthew’s critical approach to universalism. First is that he does not, as a Ross Douthat or a Michael McClymond would, regard the “resurgence” and growing popularity of Christian universalism as a relatively modern, unseasonal, and evanescent flower in the wider and more ancient garden of Christian religion—an ode to saccharine sentiment rather than obedience to logic of the gospel itself. For Matthew, the inverse is true: it is the tradition-backed infernalist position which apparently lacks the logical rigor of thinking the God of Jesus Christ as at once the omnibenevolent and omnipotent Father of us all, who is yet either indifferent towards the fate of any of his children or else incompetent to recuperate the last sheep. Second, Matthew openly concedes that universalism is “better for theodicy” than the infernalist alternative. I think this particularly noteworthy because infernalists typically make the opposite point—one that resurfaces in the Q&A—namely that since God permits us to reject him in this life, and apparently for no necessary reason, then this implies that it’s at least possible that God would permit rejection indefinitely, also apparently with no necessary or accessible reason. Theodicy motivates this objection to universalism, I think, in that if all shall eventually freely embrace God by God’s own grace, then we now apparently lack any reason at all why God would permit even provisional rejection of the gospel. Oddly, then, this sort of infernalist anxiety needs “hard” universalism to be wrong in order to save face before the vast and varied rejections of God we know occur on a daily basis, in others and in ourselves. This line of thought suffers many incoherencies (not least of which is equating the quality of the reasons for permitting two absolutely qualitatively different realities). But to his great credit, it isn’t Matthew’s approach.

II

Now I wish to dwell on three main themes or takeaways from the debate, followed by a general reflection at the end. The themes are the weight of the tradition/magisterium, the inevitability of having to judge for oneself even so, and the Catholic commitment to doctrinal development in principle. These confect the same “issue below the issues” that John J. O’Malley detected beneath the fierce debates at Vatican 2. Still, though I do think Catholicism today must be more explicitly committed to doctrinal development than other Christian confessions, I wouldn’t want to imply that the relation between God’s total self-revelation in Christ and the historical unfolding of the church’s apprehension of that self-revelation is somehow an exclusively Catholic problem. It is a Christian problem. The Christian God did not just effect so many theophanic interactions with human beings throughout history. He himself became historical even as he remains eternal and is indeed the living synthesis of the two. Any Christian today who confesses this must either face the drastic implications or else lock themselves in a serene, foolish, ahistorical palace in the land of no-where and no-when. As Rahner once put it: “It makes no sense to choose to be modern.” The very burden of choosing for or against modernity in general is itself an indelible mark of being modern. But enough meta-reflection; to the themes!

1.     The weight of tradition/magisterium

Matthew admits that universalism is logically and theodically (as it were) cogent. His principal worry is that a development towards universalism—note, though, that he doesn’t think “development” would be the right word here—would cast grave doubt on the authority of tradition and the magisterium. “The weight of the tradition matters enormously,” he says, “regardless of where one comes down on another sort of continuum.” “How,” he asks, “could the church have been so wrong, for so long, about something like this?” If universalism is right, “we lose any sense of a competent teaching authority in the church.” Matthew’s concept of the tradition and especially of the magisterium seems to be that any perceptible “reversal” of what the magisterium has taught in most of its relevant teaching documents would prove that it is incompetent in matters of faith and morals, or, as I’d rather say, not divinely inspired (since presumably nothing bears authority in these matters unless God grants it).

Matthew claims that only something like this concept of tradition and the magisterium is characterized by “epistemic humility.” I think that claim is either abstract or wrong, and likely a bit of both. If the point is an abstract or general admonition to display due deference to these authorities in one’s pursuit of the truth, then that is both right and beside the point. True, there exist Catholics of a hazily liberal sort who explicitly reject the magisterium as any authority, or who see it as a “merely” human one. Likewise do many Catholics and Protestants regard scripture or the Fathers or tradition or whatever designated authority you like. But such an unimaginative theological judgment is not the same as the judgment that precisely because of an authority’s divine inspiration, it must contain as yet unplumbed depths. That is something more like the Fathers’ view of both scripture and tradition, the Catholic Tübingen theologians’ view of “living tradition,” Ives Congar’s view of tradition as “ongoing synthesis,” and indeed Vatican 2’s own view of the magisterium (passim, but esp. Dei Verbum 8 and 10—read together). Matthew’s concept of what it means to display due deference to these authorities, so long as it remains an abstract admonition, systematically overlooks the actual character of divine authorities and is thus liable to misjudging what cases are motivated by an unduly “epistemic humility.”

But then Matthew himself seems to have no problem making judgments that implicitly or sometimes explicitly oppose the magisterium itself. Notice first that his position here excludes even so-called “soft” universalism. The ostensibly modest claim is that he simply wishes to yield obsequiously to the traditional consensus and current magisterial teaching. And yet his claim claims much more: “How could the church have been so wrong, for so long?” This objection means that universalism of any sort must be false, that Hell is definitely not empty. If then God ends up saving all in fact—which even the soft universalist sees as a real possibility—then Matthew should object to God on the same basis: “But God, if you make it so in the end, how could the church have been so wrong, for so long?” Thus God will have to answer to Matthew’s concept of magisterial authority and how it apparently must unfold in history. But the magisterium itself teaches us to pray for just what Matthew believes isn’t true (e.g. in the Hours, in Mass, in the Divine Mercy Chaplet). Indeed it teaches that we must believe in the “real possibility of salvation in Christ for all mankind” (St. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris missio 9). Does the current magisterium therefore err, in Matthew’s view, since it teaches the real possibility of an outcome that, if true, would fall under Matthew’s “so wrong, for so long”? If so, where is Matthew’s “epistemic humility” before the magisterium’s authority? If not, then why give credence to Matthew’s objection at all?

Matters worsen on this front as the debate progresses. Venerable Pope Pius XII taught that the Latin Vulgate does not carry the same authority as the original texts of scripture. Matthew agrees with Trent against Pius XII. Vatican 2, along with Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI and Francis, held against Cardinal Ottaviani (leader of the minority “traditionalist” camp at the Council) that doctrinal development must entail “deeper” readings of past magisterial teaching, notably so in cases like the Catholic view of the Jewish people, “no salvation outside of the church,” and religious liberty, and slaveholding, among others. Matthew agrees with Ottaviani against the modern magisterium (in principle; but if he concedes that any or all of the above examples are licit developments, then it’s hard to see that his criteria for development are Ottaviani’s, or that they’re true). But again—where is this “epistemic humility” that was so gravely threatened by a development towards universalism?

2.     The inevitability of having to judge for oneself

I think Matthew’s approach, which is certainly not unique to him, turns out to be a commitment more to the concept of an immutable tradition and authoritative magisterium than it is to the actual life of the church in its tradition and magisterium (and scriptural interpretation and liturgy and laity and so on). Concepts as such are comforting because they don’t change. The immutability of a concept seems to float free of history’s troubled waters. That’s in part why concepts, definitions, essences, forms and the like, have always seemed like conduits to realm of unchanging, eternal truth. More, if our primary motivation is fear of relativism or nihilism or the caprice of finitude, then it is not even this or that concept that we cherish for the sake of our existential stability, but rather the concept of concepts. The concept of concepts is that concepts, though perhaps more or less adequate to reality, at least do not essentially change, since a radical change in concept is simply the exchange of one concept for another. Here we think we hit upon the securest foundation, the bedrock of truth: the concept of concepts, the concept as such, which is so utterly evacuated in itself of content that we need only apply it to this or that source or authority in order to bring our battered ship to safe harbor.

But this is a deceptive and fragile security, and worse than that. As with scripture, the magisterium’s and tradition’s fundamental integrity lies not merely in the letter or conceptually circumscribed, historically intended, literal “sense,” but in the Spirit, who searches the depths of divinity in us, and in the form of our own self-consciousness (1 Cor 2.11). Matthew’s own selective adherence to magisterial teaching confirms this conviction, not because but rather in spite of his concept of the magisterium. He concedes by his very performance that the divine inspiration of these authorities still requires a personal judgment about the contents of their teaching. He picks and chooses just as much as anyone does. For my part, that’s as it should be. It’s never a question of whether one will read an authority figuratively, only of whereone will do so and why. That is the work of theology. Theology names the delicate work of Christians making theological judgments, of the magisterium itself making judgements, all with varying degrees of explicitness and implicitness and of relative innovation and rediscovery.

Hence it is rash to assign a univocal meaning to any feature of theological judgments in general, as if, for instance, innovation always = heterodoxy, or reversal of the literal meaning always = aberration into heresy, and so forth. This would be to elevate one’s concept of tradition over the living tradition. It would also mean deceiving oneself into thinking one is not making personal judgments at every point. The very concept according to which divinely-inspired tradition must be literally inerrant is itself a judgment of one’s own reason, a claim about the nature of divine revelation, of the church, of history, and ultimately of Christ himself as the personal subject and synthesis of his own Body throughout history and cosmos. After all, a concept doesn’t exist in your head at all apart from your judgment upon it. And so Matthew’s concept of tradition and of the magisterium not only neglects the actual history and life of that tradition; it also fails to recognize the very judgment which produced it. It therefore becomes a pernicious rationalism because it lacks self-awareness. And a pernicious rationalism, even if motivated by what it judges to be the most epistemically humble disposition, is just another and subtler species of epistemic arrogance. It cannot see that it has so completely arrogated to its own judgment the status of objective truth that it no longer distinguishes its own judgment from the truth and immutability of the very concept of magisterial authority or of scriptural authority—of whatever other authority one judges for itself to be above itself. Self-deceived, it imagines itself practicing pious humility precisely where it equates its own grasp of the concept with the concept itself.

This is one reason the Immaculate Conception is not the paradigm for doctrinal development. The paradigm is more nearly approximated by the cases mentioned above, and others like them, exactly because they do not conform to our abstract concept of divine authority and thereby reprove us for eliding our judgment with the true concept, even as they also teach us: judge we must. We are not humble. But the Lord is, and indeed his way of being the Way, Truth, and Life is precisely by being all three of these in and as himself, in our midst, incorporating even the partial or misapprehensions of every member and every age into the living synthesis that Matthew avoids but that Christology’s very content demands.

3.     Catholic commitment to doctrinal development in principle

Such considerations mean that Catholics do not merely tolerate but ought to expect doctrinal development. We are committed to it in principle, though no actual development occurs merely according to a principle or theory or set of general criteria. I grant that these can and must help guide us in discernment of what is or is not a legitimate development. But Rahner was correct in insisting that no single factor is determinative enough for any determinate development, in past or present or future. Nor is there any generic theory of development that can adequately explain and thus predict the determinateness of any actual development. There are at least three theological reasons for that (to table for now the many other historical, sociological, and phenomenological ones).

First, the truth of God’s self-revelation is God himself, and God is not a genus. This alone should disabuse us of imagining that his self-revelation could be captured by any general theory.

Second, every development is an event in the church’s life in the form of an act of judgment. The judgment’s a complex one—it includes many factors, of which the magisterium is but one—yet a judgment it remains. The judgment is very often either a negation of some other particular judgment, or it is a determination that is neither merely particular nor universal: as a judgment about divine revelation to us, in history, its content is precisely a unity of both. Thus the great 19^th-century Catholic theologian, Johann Sebastian Drey, once wrote that the main criterion for the Catholic conception of tradition is “the church’s judgment of itself in all its manifestations.” That’s as far as a general criterion can go; for the content itself, which is God with us, one must attend to the living tradition in history rather than one’s own easy if lucid concept of it.

Third and finally, the content of the deposit of faith, thus the true content of tradition and of magisterial teaching, is Jesus Christ. He is the sole mediator between God and human beings (1 Tim 2.5–6), and the way he mediates is by being himself the synthesis (Constantinople II) or the “recapitulation of all things in himself, both things in heaven and on earth” (Eph 1.10), thus achieving through this process that end at which “God is all in all” (1 Cor 15.28) becauseChrist himself “is and is in all” (Col 3.11). If the content of the church’s inspired teaching and tradition and scripture is Jesus himself, and if Jesus is not an idea but the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and if we are becoming his Body such that he himself is the sole and fundamental integrity of the church throughout all its manifestations and ages—then it is a grave mistake to confine Christ within a general theory or a set of criteria. He himself, through the Spirit (as St. Peter learned well in Acts 10 and 15), continues to incarnate “always and in all things” (St. Maximus), and he himself thus determines the development of doctrine in a manner never wholly predictable by any theory whatever. The true sign of “epistemic humility” is not to presume otherwise and instead to attend carefully to the details of each and every potential development as it unfolds in and with the church’s own judgment, members and magisterium alike. Anything else divinizes a mere concept. Catholics are committed in principle to doctrinal development (Dei Verbum 8) both because the history of our tradition demands this and because the principle of development is the person of Christ himself.

III

At any rate, the magisterium has already drastically developed on the very question of Hell. That much is undeniable, despite the Ralph Martins of the world. Matthew worries that Catholics will lose much if we jettison the idea that at least some will or at least might end up suffering damnation in eternal conscious torment. What of the images in scripture and in certain prayers whose meaning we assumed we entirely grasped? What of Milton’s Paradise Lost? I can’t overlook the jarring character of this worry: it is to suffer greater existential anguish at the prospect of losing a familiar culture or the plain sense of some literary relic than at the prospect of losing a child of God to perpetual misery. But the gospel is divine, so it is good. It is not to be made subservient to our preferred aesthetic monuments. And the gospel is divine, so it is infinite (yet determinate, as persons always are). It is not to be laid in the tomb of our favorite era. We ought to have learned by now that no stone can keep the Truth entombed for more than three days or so. Why then could a mere swath of time—and a measly two millennia at that?

The cultural anxiety is really an existential anxiety. But why prioritize this existential anxiety over others? Is it not an existential anxiety whether God is good? Does not my faith, precisely as mine, also demand a judgment from me about whether I perceive God’s goodness or not? And if I can’t, what becomes of faith?

Matthew rightly observes that God as the infinitely good Father of Jesus Christ is, at the Son’s own invitation (Matt 7.9–11), the central “analogy” (I’d claim even more). The Father never does less than what he can to save every last one of his own children, whether that means waiting patiently for the prodigal’s return or setting out from the ninety-nine to recover the one. He never does anything less than what’s necessary to save you; never without you, but also never without knowing how to get to you. “You are yourself the only riddle here,” says Mr. Raven in George MacDonald’s Lilith, “and what you call riddles are really truths; they seem to you riddles because you are not yet true.” God your Father knows how to make you true, which is to say that he knows how to make you. He does so even now. At length I need only believe this to know that no loss of any culture could ever justify the loss of any creature: God calls all to his own love and grace and salvation and sanctity and mercy (Rom 11.32), and “the One who calls you is faithful, and he will do it” (1 Thess 5.24).

If I must choose Milton or mankind, I say to Hell with Milton. And yet—beautiful paradox of the development towards universalism—even the ugliness Milton himself entertained will reveal a hidden beauty in its own depths. Even Milton will be saved.