Tuesday, November 15, 2005

A 1,000,000,000 x 1,000,000,000 years ... ?

I recall how, as a young man I joined with a good friend of mine in rejecting Christianity.Our reasons were diverse, but involved the proliferation of materialistic and literalistic ‘Christian’ concepts, which - as I hope to address in time - I now feel are especially prevalent in the secular countries of Protestant heritage. (And somewhat less strong elsewhere, where a more mysterious, less literal heritage - mainly Eastern Orthodox or Catholic - has prevailed).

Be that as it may, one phrase my friend used has remained etched in mind for two decades. He rejected the idea of eternal hell, inasmuch as it postulated that ‘a billion times a billion years’ would not even be the first instant of hell – hell that is, conceived of as an infinity of units of time.

Now the anonymous Catholic author of Meditations of the Tarot rejects such a notion as ‘absurd, because time does not exist in eternity.’ Whatever the precise nature of the meaning of eternal hell however, the fact is that both Catholicism and Protestantism have been dominated by the idea of endless time, according to which ‘a billion times a billion years’ would not even equate to the first nanosecond of one’s eternal agony.

This undoubtedly serves to render the Christian God as a monstrous tyrant to many sensitive souls. As an uncle of mine once said: “I refuse to believe in a God less merciful than I am”.

Nonetheless, the problem of hell is a serious one for Christians. The teaching around it goes back to the Gospels, and its nature has been attested to by the profound reflection of countless mystics, visionaries, theologians and hermeticists ever since. I have come to believe it is to the glory of the traditional Church (Orthodox and Catholic) that she does not abandon overnight the thought of her greatest thinkers and mystics.

In light of all of this, the great John Paul could hardly be traditional and renounce previous work on this serious problem. However it appears he may have made a statement that could yet prove to have **epochal** repercussions in the history of Christianity. It appears, I say, because there is some controversy over the exact wording that he used. Nonetheless this is the wording in the English text:

'Eternal damnation remains a real possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of ***whether*** or which human beings are effectively involved in it (Emphasis mine).'

Thus while preserving the teaching of the tradition, John Paul perhaps called into question, whether human beings are necessarily involved at all in eternal hell. We need, as I say, to know more about John Paul’s late thinking on this point. For it must be said that it at least stands in tension to other statements he made.

At the same time, it echoes a chorus of traditional thinkers – both Orthodox and Catholic - that John Paul evidently respected, who repudiated an everlasting hell. I have in mind here Origen, John Henry Newman, Bulgakov, Berdyaev and Hans urs von Balthasar, to cite only the well known names.

As much as these thinkers have earned deep respect within the Christian world, nothing could compare in significance to their thinking being integrated and expressed by the Pope, particularly a Pope so revered as the late Holy Father, that he is already deservedly known as John Paul the Great.

Whatever the case, it remains certain, as I reported yesterday, that John Paul has decisively disentangled salvation from belief. The event of Christ transcends all systems of belief and as John Paul says, works through all the great faiths. This is not to say however, that beliefs are irrelevant and that the Christian faith has not, to its immeasurable credit, preserved the faith in the cosmos-transfiguring Mystery of Calvary over two millennia …

I report these things, for several reasons. Among them is the fact that many sensitive people cannot accept the Church, even though they feel the call of Christ. I hope at very least, that they may not feel they would be alone in the bosom of the traditional Church, but be joined by great thinkers, even in the highest reaches of that Church. Profound things are indeed at work in this Church. Be of good cheer!

1 comment:

Fred said...

Charles Peguy wrestled with the same issue (see the Portal of the Mystery of Hope), especially since his wife would not permit him to baptize their children. I see it as a mystery beyond my competence.

Fred