Hell and conditional prophecy

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Hell and conditional prophecy

In a recenttalk at the Angelicum (which can be viewed at YouTube),Fr. Simon Gaine addresses the question of whether scripture teaches that somewill in fact be damned. He notes thatcertain prophecies of Christ might seem to imply this, but suggests that theymay plausibly be read as conditional prophecies rather than descriptions ofwhat will in fact happen. Let��s take alook at his argument.

First, though,a comment on terminology. Fr. Gaine usesthe label ��infernalism�� for the view that at least some human beings will infact be damned, and ��universalism�� for the view that all human beings will ultimatelybe saved, or at least may be. There isnothing necessarily wrong with this usage, but it seems to me that it does notcorrespond exactly to the way others have used these labels in recent online discussionof the topic of hell. My impression isthat ��infernalism�� is usually used in a broader way today, to include even theview that some might be damned, andthat ��universalism�� is often used in a narrower way, for the view that all must be saved. The view that we can reasonably hope that allhuman beings are saved but that it is nevertheless possible that some aredamned �� commonly associated with Hans Urs von Balthasar �� would in that casecount as a (more optimistic) version of infernalism. The way Fr. Gaine uses the terms, though, itwould count instead as a (more pessimistic) version of universalism.

The issue isperhaps essentially semantic, but the differences in usage are worth callingattention to so that the listener does not misunderstand what Fr. Gaine issaying. Hence, when Fr. Gaine suggeststhat the scriptural passages he refers to leave the debate between infernalismand universalism open, this does not entail that scripture is compatible withthe view (put forward by David Bentley Hart and others) that the damnation ofanyone is impossible, so that all must besaved. Fr. Gaine is claiming only thatthese passages are compatible with the weaker thesis that it might be that all are saved, even ifthey also teach that at least some might be damned.

Where thescriptural evidence is concerned, Fr. Gaine��s focus is on Christ��s propheciesabout the Last Judgment, such as his famous statement in Matthew 25:31-46 aboutseparating the sheep from the goats and consigning the latter to eternalpunishment. Don��t such prophecies showthat some will in fact be damned?

Fr. Gaine notesthat there are two kinds of prophecy in scripture. First, there is what he calls ��Mosaicprophecy,�� which flatly and unconditionally foretells that a certain event willoccur. He gives the example of Christ��sprophecy that Peter will deny him three times. Second, there is what Fr. Gaine calls ��Jeremianic prophecy,�� whichstates only that a certain event will occur ifcertain conditions are met. For example,in Isaiah 38 it is prophesied that King Hezekiah will die imminently. But Hezekiah repents, and God adds fifteenyears to his life. Another example isthe repentance of the Ninevites in response to Jonah��s prophecy of thedestruction of their city. As Aquinas notes(in Summa Theologiae II-II.171.6),prophecies of this kind are not false even though the predicted event does notcome to pass, precisely because they are conditional. Had Hezekiah not repented, he would have died very soon, and had theNinevites not repented, their city wouldhave been destroyed.

Fr. Gaineproposes that prophecies like Christ��s statement about the sheep and the goatscan reasonably be read as Jeremianic in character. If that is so, then while they certainly teachthat it might turn out that some aredamned, 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 prophecyabout Hezekiah is to be understood as saying only that he would die if he did not repent, and the prophecyabout 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 couldinstead argue for reading prophecies like the one about the sheep and the goatsas Mosaic prophecies. But his point isthat either interpretation is compatible with orthodoxy, so that such passagescannot be said to settle the dispute between infernalism and universalism(again, as he is using those terms).

What shouldwe think about this argument? Since Fr.Gaine does not discuss most of the scriptural passages relevant to the issue, Iam 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 ofargument that a passage like Matthew 25:31-46 might be Jeremianic orconditional in character, I think that that cannotplausibly be said of all the relevantscriptural passages. And thus I thinkthat, taken as a whole, scripture clearly favors infernalism over universalism.

I have assembledand discussed the main relevant scriptural passages in anotherarticle. Here I will focus on a fewof them to show how Fr. Gaine��s argument is problematic. First, there are a handful of cases wherescripture seems clearly to teach that certain specific people will in fact be damned, not merely thatamong people in general, some mightbe damned.

For example,consider Judas, of whom Christ says: ��Woe to that man by whom the Son of man isbetrayed! It would have been better forthat man if he had not been born�� (Matthew 26:24). It is hard to see how it could be better forJudas 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 Judasended up doing) wouldn��t it obviously be good that Judas was born?

But even ifsomeone were to claim that Christ was here merely trying to prod Judas torepent by way of an especially frightful conditional prophecy, that cannot besaid of John 17: 11-12, where, praying to the Father, Christ says: ��HolyFather, keep them in thy name, which thou hast given me�� I have guarded them,and none of them is lost but the son ofperdition.�� Notice that Christ notonly 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 encouragerepentance. And that requires that thosein need of repentance hear the prophecy. But in this passage, it is the Father alone who is addressed, andneedless to say, he needn��t have beenwarned about the need for repentance!

This bringsus to a second problem, which is that a prophecy can plausibly be read asconditional only when it is addressed to listeners who might benefit from it. And as we��ve just seen, this is not the caseof all the relevant scriptural passages. For another example, consider Revelation 20:10, which states that thebeast and the false prophet of the end times will, together with the devil, betormented day and night forever and ever. Not only does this name specific people, but it does so in the contextof a book addressed, not to those particular people, but rather to Christianswho are being persecuted by those people, to reassure them in the face of the persecution. Hence it cannot plausibly be said that thispassage is meant as a conditional warning to the persecutors, the way that theprophecies to Hezekiah and the Ninevites were intended as conditional warningsto them (and thus were addressed directly to them).

A thirdproblem is that in at least one case, people who were already dead at the timethe passage was written (unlike the case of Judas or that of the beast andfalse prophet) are said to be damned. Hence it cannot be characterized as a prophecy at all, let alone aconditional one. Jude 7 states that ��Sodomand Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally andindulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.�� It can hardly be said that this was meant toprod the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah to repentance (as in the cases ofHezekiah and Nineveh), since those inhabitants were long dead when Jude��sepistle was written. To be sure, thelarger context of this passage plausibly contains a conditionally propheticelement, insofar as Jude��s readers are being warned what will happen to them ifthey 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 afait accompli.

A fourthproblem is that even in the case of conditional prophecies concerning hell, wecan reasonably hope that the people in question are not damned only if we canreasonably hope that they repented (as we know that Hezekiah and the Ninevites repented). That means that we can reasonably hope thatall are saved only if it is reasonable to think that every single person who has died so far in human history repented beforedeath. But it is not reasonable to think this. There are simply too many people who have died in what to allappearances is a state of grave sin unrepented of. True, of any particular person, no matter howapparently hardened in evil to the bitter end, we cannot be absolutely certain that he did notsomehow find repentance in the nick of time. It is, considered in the abstract, theoretically possible. But it simply doesn��t follow that it isremotely plausible that every singleperson who seems to have died unrepentant really repented in an unseen way.

Now, if we��regoing to use uncontroversially conditional prophecies as our model for interpretingprophecies concerning damnation, then we should note, first, that the cases wherethe prophecy did not come to pass are cases where the people to whom theprophecy was directed clearly andexplicitly repented (as with Hezekiah and the Ninevites). Meanwhile, cases where such prophecies didcome to pass (as with predictions about the punishment of the Israelites by wayof foreign aggressors) are cases where the people, to all appearances, did notrepent. Therefore, where conditional propheciesconcerning damnation are concerned, the reasonable interpretation is that, withpeople who to all appearances did notrepent before death, it is highly probable that at least some of them aredamned.

All told,then, Fr. Gaine does not seem to me to have made a plausible case that the viewthat all human beings might be saved can be reconciled with the scripturalevidence. At the very least, thetotality of the scriptural evidence clearly more strongly favors infernalism.

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