Pints With Aquinas - 182: Dare We Hope That All Men Be saved? W/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

Today I sit down with Fr. Gregory Pine to discuss Balthasar's theological opinion that we may hope that all will be saved. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform  

G'day, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today we are joined around the bar table by our good friend, Father Gregory Pine, to discuss Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was, as it turns out, a Swiss theologian and Catholic priest, and his notion of dare we hope that in the end all will be saved. We will, of course, be touching upon some of the things Bishop Robert Barron has said, especially as it pertains to Augustine and Aquinas. We'll see what Aquinas has to say and share our thoughts with you as well. This will be a very fascinating conversation. So buckle up. All right. Thank you very much for being here at Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy.

And today, as I already said, we're joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine. Pretty pumped about this episode, I think you will be too. It was a fascinating discussion. I learned a lot, actually, because I didn't know hardly anything about this Balthazar character. Never read him. I studied philosophy, not theology, so never got to kind of read him. So yeah, I learned a lot, and I think that you will too. Hey, if you enjoy Pints with Aquinas and all that we're doing, can you help us out by going to patreon.com slash mattfradd and becoming a patron? When you do, we'll send you a free beer stein if you give it $20 a month, a signed copy of my book and stickers if you give it $10 a month. You'll get access to all this

online free bonus content that we keep cranking out. We're hoping to be releasing a short course on Augustine's Confessions, about a five or seven-week course. It'll be a video lecture course just for patrons, and it'll be given by a top Augustine scholar at a prominent Catholic university. More to come on that topic. But again, you get all this stuff for free just by supporting us at patreon.com slash mattfrad. It would mean a ton. Thank you very much.

Here is the episode. G'day, g'day, g'day. What's going on, man? It's, well, what's going on? I'm excited to chat with you. I like talking at night a lot more than I do during the day. It sort of just has a different vibe, especially when I'm drinking mezcal and lime and ice. Am I right?

Exactly. My thoughts exactly. I am drinking. No, I'm not drinking the same thing. I was about to lie, but then I realized that that was a sin. So, per se, melon. Well done avoiding that. What are you drinking?

You told me to have things to drink, but here's the tragic story. I have chronic laryngitis from gastric reflux. Oh, my gosh. So, when I drink alcohol, it makes my throat just even worse than before. Well, let's give tonight a miss. I'm drinking water, but it's a kind of heady water, you know, like... We don't have to do this. No, no, no.

I've had chronic laryngitis for the last 15 months. Okay, well... My life is a veil of tears. Oh, man. Chronic. Not just laryngitis. Chronic laryngitis. I know.

Not to be confused with the chronic, which is like a kind of rap phenomenon. Or laryngitis, chronic laryngitis. I know, not to be confused with the chronic, which is like a kind of rap phenomenon. Or laryngitis, which is nothing compared to what you have. No, my friend, no. No, I just abide in sadness, but it's okay. You just push on. Well, glory to God. Hey, thank you for sending me a 10-page document about von Balthasar and Dare We Hope. I just started going and then I didn't stop going.

So it's okay. The need for reading any of that document is 0%. Well, it's here in front of me and we can touch upon stuff as we go along. How is – by the way, this is the interview. Is that okay? Oh, yeah, sure. Cool. How is your Godsplaining podcast going

hey it's going groovily there's like a big uptick of traffic good for you on on tuesday so cheers thanks so much oh is that right because we talk about it yeah we did talk about it and then people were like party on if he said it maybe it's true and then they all looked and then they're like there's something here and then timon and puba were like i can see what's happening but they don't have a clue and then yeah who are those people timon and pumba yeah you know from the lion king oh yeah yeah yeah it was an introduction to the song can you feel the love tonight can you feel right nailed it yeah i thought that it was seamless but on account of the fact that you didn't pick up on it kind of flopped butped, but that's okay. Hey, do you know that William Lane Craig just agreed to have me interview him on The Matt Fritz Show?

No way. That's sweet, man. Isn't that amazing? That is amazing. I really need to nail down my questions for him. I'm afraid that he's been interviewed a thousand times before and has, you know. Yeah. Well, you could go with like the standard,

if the moon were made of spare ribs would you eat it um those i think those would be very probing i think those would provoke actually conversation have you ever heard of the kalam argument yeah i want to ask him because i don't know if i will ask him this because i don't want to be combative or anything but i want to ask him because i know he wants to uh teach mia christianity sure but i want to ask him because i know he wants to uh teach mere christianity sure but i want to ask him like do you think that i shouldn't be catholic i presume he would say yes you know like i don't i mean i want to ask him a bit about that but well like i mean mere christianity taken from c.s lewis and he says that this will just get you into

the ante room and that you have to pass through a door so i've never heard mere christianity advanced as a kind of that's true thing so i know he doesn't debate who he considers brethren so like not that i would ever be stupid enough to debate him but suppose i you know laid down the gauntlet he wouldn't do it because he sees his mission to help people believe in God and accept Christianity, which is really cool when people know their lane, I think. Yeah, no, that's great. That's encouraging because I think sometimes that like debates can be scandalous in the sense that they can confuse people more than help them. So yeah, I think that's great. I'm all for that.

more than help them. So, yeah, I think that's great. I am all for that. Very good, very good, very good. So what else is new other than chronic laryngitis and God's planning doing well on Tuesdays? Well, we just really summed it all up. I mean, what else is there? Let's see.

I'm gearing up for some more Thomistic Institute hustle and flow. Travel Rama. We have, let's see, a conference in New York I'm gearing up for some more Thomistic Institute hustle and flow. Travel Rama. We have a, let's see, a conference in New York on the burning of Notre Dame, which would be great. Wow. And then. Making analogies to Western civilization or something or what? Yeah.

So there's, I mean, there's like a philosopher. There's an architect. There's, you know, people who are going to weigh in on the aesthetics. Your life is so cool. I know it is. It's like like what about this was tragic and why did everyone recognize it as such and why was there such a groundswell of popular support just kind of probing those questions you're giving a presentation i am not i'm just hanging out okay i am aggressively hanging out i'll be giving some high fives maybe shaking some hands looking super intense in the back oh yeah yep yep yep yep like a kind of deliberate countenance you know with my face set like flint giving some high fives, maybe shaking some hands. Looking super intense in the back. Oh yeah. Yep,

yep, yep, yep. Like a kind of deliberate countenance, you know, with my face set like Flint. And then I'm going to do some, so there's a speaker who speaks for us. His name is Dr. Daniel DeHaan. He does neuroscience and philosophy stuff, and he's going to be given a few talks in Texas, where all my exes live. That's a joke. And so I'm going to accompany him to his talks at Trinity in San Antonio and then UT Austin and then Baylor in Waco, that bustling metropolis of Waco, Texas. So that'll be great to see. You get a house for like 10 grand. Yeah, until Chip and Joanna flip them all. Ah, yes.

Designer. I passed by, the last time I was there, I passed by Magnolia them all. Ah, yes. Designer. I passed by, the last time I was there, I passed by Magnolia, their big silo thing. And apparently it gets more visitors per annum than the Alamo. So it's a kind of like monument of Texas excellence now. Which is sweet. I was just in Texas, Houston. I spoke to 1,200 teenage boys about pornography. All right. I just want to take a moment here to say a huge thanks to Halo for sponsoring this

episode. Halo is an app you need to know about it if you are somebody who wants to take your prayer life to the next level. There are a lot of apps out there today like Calm and Headspace, which are really well-developed, but they can lead to new age ways of thinking. What's great about Halo is that it is no less sophisticated than those other apps, but it is 100% Catholic. Halo offers a permanently free version of their app, which includes content that is updated every day, as well as a paid subscription option with premium content. But by using the promo code Matt Fradd, one word, Matt Fradd, you can try out all of the sessions in the app for a full month. That's ridiculous. And it's totally for free. So how do you take advantage of this? Do me a favor. Go to hallo.app, that's H-A-L-L-O-W.A-P-P slash Matt

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hallo.app slash Matt Fradd. hallo.app slash Matt Fradd. Holy hell. How was that? It was fantastic. Cool. Were these Christian, Catholic? Yeah, it was. Well, I don't know if they're Jesuits. I'm not sure. But no, it's not a great joke.

Yeah, strike. Yeah. Nice. I got to know one of the priests there, Father Michael Wagenka. Okay. Who's great. He's awesome. He's a gem.

We were at a focus summer projects over the summer in Estes Park, just kicking it with some sweet students. And yeah, we hiked a mountain together, Longs Peak. It was sweet. Yeah, I know that the Jesuits get a bad rap, but the priests I met there seemed really solid. And it was neat. So I'm giving this talk to 1,200 students. And one of the things I wish they didn't do at this school is hand out iPads to every student.

It seems like a terrible idea, and they don't lock them down even either, which makes me want to cry and slap people both at the same time. But one thing they can do is they can put apps on those 1,200 devices with a click of a button and make it so that you can't delete it. So while I'm giving a talk about my app, Victory, which I helped create with Life Team that helps people break free of porn. Don't know if you know about it.

Thevictoryapp.com. Check it out. They put this app on like 1200 devices. That's awesome. Instant downloading. Yeah. It was powerful, actually.

I reached out to my patrons and said, hey, I'm giving some talks like parents, faculty, and teachers over the next two days. Would you please pray a rosary for me? And I was legitimately moved. I had over 80 comments in a couple of hours from people who were all saying, I'm going to pray with my wife tonight. I'm going to pray the rosary. I'm going to pray with my family. They were sending photos of themselves praying the rosary. I was nearly

in tears. I just couldn't believe that people were that awesome. Yeah, that's super encouraging. Because for the most part, people look at stuff and they're like, wow, stuff is happening. Now on to my next episode. Yeah, exactly. I think people recognize this is such a serious issue that's just killing us. I think teens realize that as well, which is why I've never had a talk go bad.

Like I've never had a talk to teenagers about pornography be rejected or not, or even not well-received, you know, they've all been, I think well-received. I mean, I'm no doubt there's some people who look at me and think I'm an idiot up there, but I don't, you know, as, as a audience, the audience has never kind of turned against me in any way as I've given these talks. Nice. Yeah. I don't know if there's like a kind of popular movement for, you know, like, um, pornography rights. It's, it's kind of like the industry is advancing it. And then people are like, this may as well happen. And they're kind of more, yeah, passive with respect to it than they are, you know, agents in the advance. So yeah, when you, when you propose something that's, yeah, this is bad, you know, it to be bad because you feel crippled by it and you

can break free and they're like, wow, cheers. And I also said to them, I'm not here to tell you what something that's yeah this is bad you know it to be bad because you feel crippled by it and you can break free and they're like wow cheers party on and i also said to them i'm not here to tell you what to do i actually looked at them looked at 1200 kids and went you can do whatever the hell you want like i just think that it's prudent that you have the most information at your disposal before you go on engaging in a behavior that could have serious negative consequences so i think giving the soft sell like that's not relativism what i just said there like i didn't say you can look at porn and that can be morally neutral i i said a real thing i i i'm not telling you what to do but i i don't know if that is right to say or if it just rhetorically is helpful to say because i'm not really in a position to

make them do anything they don't want to do anyway so it's sort of like you can do what you want before you like blame me for whatever i was recently at a talk and the presenter described the literary work of a particular author and said that he counseled us not to read it. And then I had a conversation with somebody after who was also present at the talk and they're like, yeah, he said that, but it kind of made me want to read it. It's fascinating that the law comes that sin be multiplied. So sometimes the strongest incentive to doing the opposite is for somebody to tell you to do the thing. So that's what I'm going to do from now on. Y'all should just go home and look at porn.

No. Well, it's like sometimes parents will come up and they're like, oh my gosh, like you're a priest and a Dominican that is so awesome. I want my son to be a priest and a Dominican. And they'll say like, what is the one thing I should do? And the first thing I say is fast. And then the second thing I say is discourage them from becoming a priest and a Dominican because then they'll want to do it. But if you're like really like sco, like, hey, we want you to do this but if you like really like go like hey we want

you to do this you should think about this go for it's going to be awesome oftentimes that produces the opposite effect which is heartbreaking but true what's funny is my 12 year old son is in this kind of almost state of rebellion and he's because we go to an eastern church right he said when i grow up i'm gonna go to a to a Roman Catholic church. Okay, awesome. How transgressive. Yeah, right? Stepping out. So, look, I'm really glad that you wanted to discuss this issue today, dare we hope that all should be saved.

Because this has, of course, got a lot of attention recently with Bishop Robert Barron's comments. Other people have been commenting on those comments. Sure. I think it would be helpful for me and my audience to know a little bit more about von Balthasar and what he had to say on this topic. Because I've never read it and I don't know much about it at all. Yeah. So I just – I was reading the Summa like a nerd, and I'm just kind of like plugging away, and I'll read a treatise. And then when I finish a treatise, like the treatise on faith, then I'll read some – what like 20th century Thomists have to say about the matter. And I just come up to the treatise on hope, and I was thinking, you know, people talk about this thing, and I've never read this thing.

I wonder what this thing is like. The only thing that I've read from von Balthasar previously was like whatever I read from him. I read the one on anxiety. I read the one on raising the bastions and I read the one on the Christian state of life. That was in the context of like a course on religious vocation, which is interesting. So I figured, you know, pick it up. And then given the fact that I'd read it, I thought it'd be helpful to chat through. figured, you know, pick it up. And then given the fact that I'd read it, I thought it'd be helpful to chat through. But yes, it's fascinating because it's a proposal about the nature of Christian hope. And I thought, you know, in this setting, it'd be cool to zoom out, see what St.

Thomas has to say about it. Maybe how von Balthasar's proposal is different or in what way is he being controversial and what way is he being traditional? So that way, you know, it's, I think some people have a notion as to what he's saying, and then maybe we could do a little bit to make that more concrete and clear. Yeah, that's cool. And when I say I know nothing about him, I mean, I literally just looked him up on Wikipedia to get any information. That's how little I know. So if you're out there listening and you're sort of like me, don't want to admit it. Hans Urs von Balthasar died in 1988. He was a Swiss theologian, Catholic priest

who was considered an important Catholic theologian of the 20th century. Well, there you go. I didn't know he was Swiss. There you go. Good. All right. That's a bit.

Anything else we should know about him or is that it? That pretty much sums it up. I think a lot of people have the association that he's the beauty guy, which is true enough. So I think he's most famous for this collection of many books. I don't know exactly how many. It's called the Theodrama. And he takes the traditional enumeration of truth, goodness, and beauty, and he reverses the order.

So he starts with beauty. versus the order. So he starts with beauty. And I think that a lot of people find this very attractive because there's a kind of immediate, intuitive, evangelical power to appealing with beauty. And I think that this very much informs Bishop Robert Barron's approach to things, namely that he starts with the aesthetic or he starts with the cultural. He starts with the beauty of the saints, the richness of their testimony, he starts with like the art and the architecture, the archaeological, you know, like the Catholicism series does this beautifully, as a way by which to engage people at the outset and then lead them into what is good and then ultimately into what is true. Because if you start with propositional truth claims, that can often put people off and they'll find it somewhat, you know, bleak or

otherwise uninviting. So, I think that's, I mean, in a lot of circles, that's what he's known best for. He's also, another interesting thing is that he's very much bound up with a woman mystic named Adrienne von Speyer, and a lot of what he has to say is informed by mystical revelations that she is said to have received. So there have been some people who've done some work on that relationship and how his theology is dependent upon her. I know there's a theologian in Freiburg named Michelle Schumacher who does a lot of work on this particular topic. So yeah, those are some things. I'm just learning too that he was a Jesuit, but in 1950 left the Jesuits

to, I guess, start or run his institute. Right, about which I know very little. Yeah. He wasn't invited to take part in any capacity in the Second Vatican Council, but in later years his reputation as a theologian grew. And then my understanding is that Pope Benedict's a fan. Yeah, I think he's generally associated with this movement called La Nouvelle Théologie, like withry de lubac and jean danielu

and certainly which is a dirty word in some circles online today nouvelle theologie is yeah so explain that to us um okay i'll do what i can so there is this uh i think the things that i'm about to say are true there is a jesuit school of theology called la fourvier in France, and this was in like 30s and 40s. It was a time of especially prominent or especially efficacious literary output, so there were a lot of guys working there that had a lot of things to say. Sometimes they're arguing with Dominicans, sometimes they're arguing with other folks, but they were weighing in on a lot of questions of fundamental theology, one of which, the one that's most famous, I think, is the Nature of Grace debate.

So de Lubac is going back and forth with some Dominicans about that. One Dominican who's especially critical of him is Marie-Michelle Labourdette, who taught from 1940 to 1990 in the province of Toulouse. And so, yeah, there's like, there's whatever. They're also associated with the Résource Mont movement. So right about the time of the Second World War, they thought that it would be advantageous to recover a lot of texts from fathers of the church that had kind of fallen by the wayside and to recover those texts. The first one that they published in this series called Les Sources Chrétiennes was The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa. They also have a big penchant for origin studies.

And another guy whom they love is Maximus the Confessor. So Hans-Urgen Balthasar wrote a whole book on Maximus. Very Eastern, these – Yeah, yeah, yeah. So oftentimes they're picking – okay, and this is like – this is me doing hack interpretation. I don't really know this stuff too terribly well, but I've heard people talk about it at table because i live at the house of studies well sounds lovely at my table today i have four kids and my son said where does rain go when like where does the water from a puddle go another question he asked was like where does the blood from my nose come from? Anyway, continue.

So like a criticism that's sometimes leveled against this project of Résourcement is that it skips over the tradition. So for instance, like Origen is a very dynamic interpreter of scripture. He has a lot of things to say. He's very much indebted to Plato. to say. He's very much indebted to Plato, and some of the things that he says don't—they kind of rub up against traditional Christianity, and there the word traditional is controversial, I suppose. Okay. So, originism is condemned, and then one of the things that it's most famous for is this idea of apocatastasis panton, basically the recovery of all, so that there's this notion that hell is not a permanent state and that all can be saved in the end. And then Gregory of Nyssa has some interesting things to

say. Like, in The Christian State of Life, von Balthasar highlights the fact that Gregory of Nyssa thought that before the fall, procreation in the garden would have been by other than sexual means, which is like kind of a weird thought experiment, where St. Thomas would be like, what? Wait, what are you talking about? He what happened yeah exactly um so they're they're going back to certain texts in the tradition that have been uh maybe sidelined or trivialized and they're saying like we need to get these things back but sometimes they can end up being critical of the tradition namely um specifically like saint augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas that these great systematizers or polemical writers they lose the full

richness or full breadth of Eastern Syriac Western Christianity and so they're going back but some people will say that they're going back with a kind of axe to grind that they want to recover some of the things that have fallen by the wayside precisely because they want to advance those as a kind of cause. Now, as they're going, maybe you just mentioned this, but as they're going back, looking to these things that have supposedly fallen by the wayside, are they also going back to Thomas Aquinas? Or are they jumping over him?

They're reading St. Thomas Aquinas, certainly. And like de Lubac, for instance, he writes this famous book, Sir Naturel, and it's a criticism of the Thomistic commentatorial traditions teaching on nature grace. So he's reading like Cajetan, he's reading Sylvester Ferrara. I mean, some people are going to be wildly bored by these names, whatever. He's reading St. Thomas. And like von Balthasar has a chapter on Thomas Aquinas in his book dare we hope which is laudatory because he thinks that he gets something right that Augustine gets wrong so they're not they're not they're not missing these guys they're men of incredible erudition

von Balthasar knew I mean was was especially well cultured I don't remember who it was it was either Bach or Mozart but he had the collected works of Mozart memorized um which is saying something like what does that mean the collective works of a composer memorized? This is a secondhand story, which is true of all of my things, so don't repeat them. Don't tell tales out of school. So yeah, he was a man of great learning. There's also this famous picture of him at Disney World next to Mickey Mouse. I'm looking it up right now.

Exactly. Yeah, that's a keeper. Maybe make that into a holy card. I don't know if it merits that kind of attention. Yeah. Ah, there he is. Look at him. Just killing it.

Yeah. Beautiful. Swiss theologians experience the magic of Magic Kingdom as well. Okay. Well, that helps. Thank you. Thanks for that little kind of rundown. Sure, yeah.

Details. So can you tell us a bit about what he had to say about this dare we hope business? Sure, yeah. I think – so his basic proposal on the one hand is pretty modest. He just wants to say that we can't rule anyone out and that it's a legitimate object of hope to effectively hope for the salvation of all. And in order to advance that claim, he's going to revisit, well, he's going to talk a little bit about contemporary literature, but then he's going to revisit the scriptures. He's going to revisit certain persons in the tradition and their interpretation of the matter. And then he's going to do some kind of point-by-point recounting of like, what about Satan? And what about the eternity of hell? And I would say that the purpose of the whole book is just to problematize the question. It's just to make you

take a closer look at the tradition so that way you don't, I don't know, assume a position of kind of dogmatic certainty for something that doesn't warrant that kind of certainty. And correct me if I'm wrong, but Origen suggested that perhaps that not only we would all be saved, but even the demons would eventually repent and Satan himself would. I'm going to claim ignorance. I don't actually know, but that sounds right.

I mean, yeah, it goes by the name of apocatastasis, like recovery of all. Okay, well, even if I'm off on that, that's kind of the basic idea, is it? Like asking these questions, if all will eventually be reconciled to God? Yes, that's the question. Yeah, effectively. Whether or not there can be permanent choices against God or whether we are all somehow like whether all of that is overcome by God's saving mercy. I think that's the big thing. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So in saying, dare we hope, he's not making a probability judgment. I mean, again, I have no idea because I haven't read it. So I'm actually asking you. So if someone were to say, are you saying it's probable that all are in heaven, is that what he's saying? Or is he just saying, no, it's not a matter of are there people in hell, but can we even hope? Yeah, so it does not strike me as a probabilistic argument.

He's not saying that – he's not doing percentages. He's not making like a kind of statistical analysis as to people he's known. But he's just saying whether or not it's an appropriate object of the virtue of hope. So in that regard, I think it is helpful just to talk a little bit about hope because he has that in the background, though he himself doesn't necessarily define it. Gosh, hope is something we desperately need right now. Yeah. So hope is one of these virtues where, like in St. Thomas' Secunda Secunda, it gets scantest treatment. So the treatise on hope is a mere six questions long. There's only two questions on hope and then a question on fear of the Lord, which is the accompanying – what do you call those things? Gifts of the Holy Spirit. And then two sins against hope, despair and presumption.

And then he talks about the commandments that pertain. then two sins against hope, despair and presumption, and then he talks about the commandments that pertain. So it's just, I mean, by comparison to like the treatise on faith, which is 16 questions long, or the treatise on charity, which is, I don't know, like 24 questions long, or the treatise on justice, which is like a mile and a half long, hope gets next to no treatment. And I think that part of what he's doing is drawing our attention to this virtue, so that way we can give it a little bit of a closer scrutiny. And effectively, St. Thomas describes the virtue of hope as premised on the passion of hope. So hope considers a good that is arduous and possible. So it's a future good,

something that you have not yet obtained. It's arduous, it's difficult, but it's possible. And then when we talk about it... Oh, go ahead. We talked about this recently. I think it was in our discussion on marijuana, this idea Aquinas said that hope comes more easily to the young and to the drunk. It does indeed. Yeah, because they have little experience and they're not well, well, they're not tuned into their weakness, which gives you all kinds of hope. I just want to pause for a second. I hope I'm not taking us too far afield, but this is something, this need for hope is something I'm experiencing in my own life and that I see in the lives of others.

It feels like as one grows older, the problems of life sort of kind of mount up and can seem very overwhelming for people. I look in my circles of friends and I see somebody who has cancer, somebody whose son is in a same-sex so-called marriage. I have a lady last night who hit a deer and broke her car and can't really kind of afford to fix it. I look at my own life and see problems in my own life,

and it can feel very bloody overwhelming. And there can be this tendency to despair over the whole thing i mean what do you think do you see that in in with the people that you're dialoguing with yes uh no certainly it's almost like it's almost like all of the problems at life rear their head at once it's like if i could deal with one at a time like taxes and the dishes and you know that awkward conversation i had with my wife that i should probably circle back to and the fact that you know my child and i aren't getting along and i'm not sure if that's my fault or his like if i could deal with them one at a time maybe i'd be okay but i think for some of us it feels like they're all rearing their head at once and it's it's

overwhelming um i think that like oftentimes when people well i think this is nested within a bigger But I think for some of us, it feels like they're all rearing their head at once, and it's overwhelming. I think that like – well, I think this is nested within a bigger conversation about happiness and a question about what you can expect from life. And I think a lot of us expect to be happy in this worldly sense. But I think that a lot of people come to discover that such is not the case. It's brutal. Yeah, that doesn't need to be a dour revelation, but that life can still be rich. It can still be beautiful. It can still be noble. It can still be worthwhile and worthy. But it doesn't necessarily, it doesn't necessarily appear happy, which is a strange thing to say because St. Thomas, you know, starts his conversation

about the moral life with happiness. You know, we choose all things for the sake of happiness. So if it's just one extended exercise and delayed gratification, it seems like maybe it is, you know, maybe it is all a kind of subtle farce, which is scary, which is certainly scary. But I think that like what we hope for is the Lord, and not just to say that as a kind of pious sentiment and to move on and to trivialize all your very, you know, like your very serious difficulties in life. What we hope for is the Lord. And that's the only thing that we're really promised. Um, that's true of heaven, you know, like the principal joy of heaven is the vision of God.

But that's also true of earth, uh, because grace and glory are of a peace. Like, what we experience now is continuous with what we hope to experience then, but without the things that kind of hound it with sadness and sickness and sorrow. So, what is it that we hope for? We hope for the Lord. We hope that the Lord gives us himself. And here you get right at the heart of the theological virtue of hope. What is it that we hope to obtain by God's power, who is omnipotent and merciful? We hope to obtain him. You know, we hope to obtain eternal beatitude, the vision of God, our ultimate good. So, it's like you look to the Lord to give you himself, and by hope, you kind of consent or you will that what he has promised to all, you know, God desires that all be saved and come to knowledge of the truth, he will afford to you, provided that you make use of the means he has appointed, which is to say,

you know, you consent to the grace that he gives. So hope has this very kind of interpersonal, tenacious character to it. It's a matter of clinging to the Lord. Now, what you come to discover, even though life is, yeah, exceedingly sad at times, is that he gives you more and more of himself, not in a way that has instant emotional payoff, but in a way that solidifies you and that expands your capacity to feel and to experience reality so that when it comes time to behold him forever in heaven, we are more so capacious, right? We've been grown in our desire, grown in our anticipation, grown in our expectation so that we can receive a fulfillment of an entirely more rarefied order. Have you ever read the scriptures and you think to yourself, gosh, I didn't even know that was in there? I was reading 2 Corinthians to my wife last night on this topic of hope. I just started reading it. I'm like, oh, my gosh, like nobody told me this was in the Bible. I keep doing that. It's like the Lord is speaking to me through the text that I've no

doubt heard numerous times. But I just wanted to read this because it speaks to what you're saying here. Paul is talking about this incredible lack of hope he was tempted to, or him and some others were tempted to. This is in the first chapter of 2 Corinthians. He says, Indeed, we felt that we had received the... Oh, here, I'll back up a little bit here. He says, For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on

God who raises the dead. Beautiful. I won't keep reading it, but my wife and I, we just started reading that. That one thing just stuck out to us, and we just couldn't stop reading. It's powerful that these experiences that we have of temptation towards despair is something that the apostles felt as well it's it's interesting too that like everyone regardless of how much sadness there is in your life it has a way of filling your whole person right um which is why it's it's basically impossible to compare sorrows. Like when somebody tells you,

like, oh man, I'm so busy. And you know for a fact that you may have more responsibilities than they do. It's not even worthwhile to say, like, busy by comparison to me, not a chance, sucker. Because that's a kind of insensitive thing that doesn't take into account the fact of this concrete person and how they experience life. And that's not a condescending sentiment. It's just to say that like whatever you have in your life, it tends to fill your whole life. Yeah. And hope, you know, like has to be asserted even in the midst of a life filled with sad things. And that's I mean, that's not even just like a kind of poetic notion. That's just it's just the fact like a lot of people experience life as sad. But yet, in the midst of that, in and through that, not over and around it, but like, or under and above

it, but like in and through that, that you can come to experience the Lord. And I believe that the Lord's not sick in this regard, but that he affords us all a share in his passion, death, and resurrection, precisely because it's there that we meet him at his most vulnerable, and it's there that we can hope to enjoy with him the most intimate and perfect of friendship. So if the Lord were to spare us of sadness, it would be, I don't know, like disingenuous almost, like he promises to give us himself, and he promises to give us his whole humanity and all that he, you know, did and suffered, so that in that we have a privileged way to the Father, in that we have the very instruments of our salvation. And so if he were to give us everything except for

the cup of sorrows, it would be an incomplete meal. Now, mind you, most of us would have it on those terms, but then we come to discover that our life was very much deprived of what makes it so textured and ultimately glorious. Yeah, we want to be grown up too, which is something that suffering often brings about. I remember I was working as a lab technician in a copper mine in the outback of South Australia. And I don't know what happened, but a grace was given to me and I just desired salvation, ultimate salvation in the end. And where I was, there was nobody around and I fell to my me and I just desired salvation, right? Ultimate salvation in the end.

And where I was, there was nobody around and I fell to my knees and I said, Lord, like whatever you have to do to me so that I will continue to say yes to you and so that I can eventually be saved, like let it be done to me. You know, in those moments of grace where you say like whatever, like whatever hardship I have to face, even if I don't understand in the future like let it happen right okay that sounds like a very holy and pious thing but just like last week i was complaining and bitching and moaning about how difficult life is and how upset i am about everything but still the point is that these these sufferings that we endure whether that be through sickness like what you're going through

right now or the messy house i'm experiencing that i can never seem to get on top of, or my taxes, or all this sort of thing, are given to us for our good, presumably. Are we speaking about the same thing? Am I going too personal in your... No, no, that's fine. I in no wise feel, put out, that we are talking about the same thing. And I think that like – I think here I've read this little book by Jacques Philippe that a lot of people – Oh, me too. What are you reading? Interior Freedom. I was just reading Finding and Maintaining Peace before I got on the call with you. It's incredible.

That is my favorite. It's so beautiful. Holy Hannah. But Interior Freedom, the whole point of which is just consent. I think that a lot of us look beyond our lives. We have it in our minds that I'll begin to live when, you know, like I'll begin to live when I graduate or I'll begin to live when I have a job or I'll begin to live when I'm ordained. My vocation. Exactly. But what he says is that like your vocation, you know, is to be in heaven. And the Lord makes heaven present now

through the offer of grace. And that's something to which you need to consent. So instead of trying to get, you know, around the present circumstances or to transform what is vexatious, you just get into it, you know, like you get into it, you just show up and then the Lord blesses it. And I think that that is the sentiment of hope, that hope is not reality denying. It doesn't put on rose-colored glasses. It's not Pollyanna-ish about the true and abiding difficulties of life. But it simply says that the Lord has promised, and he will fulfill it. And provided that I make use of the appointed means that he affords, what he has begun in me will come to completion. Not

because I myself am good, but because he is good, and because he keeps his promises, and I can consent to that. So there's a kind of just like realism about hope, which disabuses you of this, you know, like spirit of a kind of feckless spirit whereby you try to flee present difficulties. It's just like, let's get into it, you know, get into it because this is where the grace is given. Yeah, powerful stuff. All right, so let's bring this around to Balthazar and whether we can hope that all will be saved. Dig. Yeah, so I think what von Balthazar is doing is that he's trying to broaden our horizons. And I think what he's addressing a legitimate problem, namely that some people are overly reconciled to the fact that most people

will be damned. So he's highlighting this vein in the tradition that comes from Augustine, you know, this notion of the massa damnata or the massa luti. What does that mean? That the majority of men will perish. Okay. And why is it that they say these things? It's from a reading of scripture. So they're going to look at these texts from the New Testament when we hear about hellfire and the outer darkness, eternal punishment. The way is narrow. Exactly, yep. Or like Divas and Lazarus, or the way that like the parable with the unjust steward. You know, it's like there are just a variety of texts which suggest that there is ultimate failure and that people head that direction, right?

The way is narrow, and those are few who pass through it. But the way is wide, and that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter thereby. So these texts read in this way seem to suggest that most people go to hell and fewer people go to heaven. And it's at this point that I find von Balthasar's read of the situation a little bit—it's a little bit problematic, because what he asserts, he does so in a kind of demagogic fashion. He just says, this is the case. He kind of like wields his authority as a theologian, but he doesn't necessarily back it up in the footnotes. He doesn't teach you how to read the scriptures. He doesn't give you the tools to actually do the work yourself. He says things like,

okay, all of these things are, they're meant to be read in a particular way. So like he'll say, for instance, that the threatening remarks are brought out predominantly by the pre-Easter Jesus, and then these more universalist statements like Christ gives himself'll say, for instance, that the threatening remarks are brought out predominantly by the pre-Easter Jesus. And then these more universalist statements like Christ gives himself as a ransom for all or he has power over all flesh or he will draw all men to himself, that these are like the things that come up in Paul and John. They're the ones that are looking to the redemption that has occurred on the cross. So he's trying to say, like, maybe there's a variation in Scripture, okay? But at the very least, he'll say something like this. This is from page 32 of the book. Even if this scene is described in line with Old Testament images, it is not to be read as an anticipatory report about something that will someday come into being, but rather as a

disclosure of the situation in which the person addressed now truly exists. So, what he's saying is like when you hear the way is narrow, and those are few, and the way is wide, and those are many, what's not being described for us is an eschatological end state. What's being described for us is a kind of theology of the two ways, like the way that you would encounter it in wisdom literature, like Psalm 1. So, happy the man or, you know, wicked the man. And it's when he does this that I get most nervous, because he's not showing you how to read the text. He's not giving you what scholars will call hermeneutics. He's not giving you principles of interpretation. He's just asserting so as to problematize. And then he's pulling in these voices from the tradition like Origen, like Gregory of Nyssa, like Maximus the Confessor. And so he's kind of stirring up

the pot and some would say muddying the waters. So I think that the way that he reads in the tradition is sometimes anti-traditional. So the reason that we think what we think is because we operate in a tradition. We were in a stream, and the things that come to us in the church, the riches of the patristic tradition, the medieval tradition, they're things that come down to us, and we have to have a disposition of welcoming them before we criticize them. That's not to say that we're naive or overly cred credulous, but that like tradition is a handing on and you need to have a receptive stance. Also, you've put here this idea that God doesn't create hell. People say things like this, and I'd love your take on this. God doesn't create hell, sinners create hell. God desires all men to be saved. If hell exists, it's because we rebel from him.

Yeah. So, like, this is a thing that—and here he's really indebted to an early 20th century theologian, Maurice Blondel. And he's like— I mean, that makes sense to me, though, that line of reasoning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, undoubtedly. That makes sense on account of the fact that we don't want to say that God creates anything evil. And what is hell but a state of separation from God? Now, mind you, nothing can be wholly separated from God because God is giving it being, and so he's present to it innermostly. But that things can choose, so like rational beings, men and angels, can choose to not be from God and for God in the way that God intends. Which is to say, like, you're always from God and for God in the way that God intends, which is to say, like, you're always from

God and for God. He's always going to be your efficient cause. He's always going to be your final cause. He's always going to be your exemplar formal cause. But that we can rebel against the terms of that, and we can abide in a state of rebellion. So he's saying, basically, that hell is something that man creates by his free choice, or that an angel creates by its free choice. It's not something that God creates, as if he makes a cavernous pit and then awaits the day when he can begin to relegate fell souls to its infernal depths, which I think is a good point, and it shows the non-parallelism between predestination and perdition. And this is something that's defined in the church, namely that if someone goes to heaven, it's by God's gift. And if someone goes to hell,

it's by his free choice. So what we're describing here isn't like double predestination. It's not like God is relishing the opportunity to consign people to hell. Rather, St. Therese says that he punishes as if turned away, which is kind of anthropomorphic, but, you know, whatever, it makes sense to us. So, yeah, I mean, he certainly brings up good points, and he highlights a lot of things which can be really illuminating. And I think the task that he is undertaking of problematizing a kind of reading of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, which is kind of overly smug and self-satisfied, not something that I think that is proper to those authors, but can be proper to some person's reception of those authors.

I think it's a laudable task, but I think that he does it in a way that can sometimes be anti-traditional and difficult. Can you explain, you've said it a few times, problematize? When you say he's trying to problematize, what do you mean by that? Sure, yeah. Like stir the pot? Exactly, yeah. Something that people take to be settled, he wants to raise it again as something unsettled.

Or he wants to unsettle you with respect to this difficulty so that it appears again as a difficulty. So that way it'll inspire inquiry and kind of like theological discussion. That's what he's trying to do. I think it'd be – I'd be speaking out of school if I were to say that he's a provocateur, but he's doing something like that. And he can write very polemically, and you'll find it even in his footnotes. He's taking jabs at the people who are critical of him, and perhaps they merited those jabs. They themselves may have been uncharitable in their interpretation of his text, but he can be really punchy. So this is all part of the plan.

So could you help us understand what Augustine, you've alluded to this, but what Augustine and then what Aquinas have to say about souls going to hell and the probability that most people will be there? Sure, yeah. So there is this fact around which we cannot navigate, namely original sin. So there's a kind of sinful solidarity in Adam. Man was created in original justice, with grace, with the kind of integral nature that ordered his passions, and with these associated privileges of impassibility and immortality. But that man chose against God, you know, our first parents chose against God. immortality, but that man chose against God, you know, our first parents chose against God, and that now, whereas formerly we existed in a state of supernatural health, now we are born into a state of supernatural sickness. So, original sin is just, as it exists in the heart of man,

is just a privation of what formerly obtained. So, whereas formerly we were born with grace, with integral nature, with these associated privileges, now we are not. And so everyone merits damnation is the kind of typical Augustinian teaching. And this comes – this certainly comes up with respect to the fate of unbaptized children and how the tradition kind of works with that and the introduction of limbo as a concept. So what Augustine is trying to hold for is that you need Christ to be saved. OK, so there's no salvation outside of the church and all Christ. I mean, all grace is Christ's grace and one is only ever saved by by grace. So belief in the triune God and belief in his Christ who is incarnate of the, you know, incarnate of the father.

who is incarnate of the Father. So he is reconciled to the fact that more men will perish than will prosper. And this for him is based off a reading of Scripture. It's also based on that, like, there's a kind of non-parallelism. So we were born in this abundance, but then we chose against it. And so now every man starts, you know, in the, I guess, credit column or the debit column of the ledger. So like St. Thomas will say things in the Summa Theologiae which are kind of alarming. Like when he reads the passage about Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, a lot of people will try to explain that away in a way that's allegorical or in a way that's, this couldn't have been meant literally. St. Thomas will say, God would have been justified in commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac because all men, by nature, by fallen nature, merit death. And it's like, whoa, that is stark. There are other things that come up in the context of St. Thomas's writings which cause von Balthasar to, you know, cause him discomfort and causes many modern readers discomfort, and perhaps with good cause. Like St. Thomas will say, it sounds like he's

saying that the souls of the just, when they look on the torments of the punished, will derive from it a kind of peace or happiness. And some people think, like, that's disgusting and macabre, like that can't possibly be part of the gospel truth. I think what St. Thomas is saying is that they will delight in the justice of God, so they St. Thomas is saying is that they will delight in the justice of God, so they won't sorrow at the fact that men are lost, because that would represent a kind of imperfection in their beatitude. Rather, they'll be able to reconcile the place of the damned in light of God's providence as a way in which, you know, like this particular cause that departs in one way from the Lord returns to him in another.

So it's not going to cause them sorrow, because that would be an imperfection of their beatitude, but it's not like they're rejoicing in the torments of them. Rather, they're seeing the justice and mercy of God reconciled in their vision, in their beatific vision, and they can appreciate the reason for which in a way that formerly they would not have been able to. So this, I mean, I'm kind of rambling at this point, pardon me, but. No, this is very helpful because it's a, it's an honest question. Like, okay, if I'm in heaven and my daughter who I love is burning in hell, the idea that I can still be happy seems insane.

Yeah. You know, like if, if my daughter was abducted and I knew that she was being tortured by a psychopath somewhere, I would live the rest of my days in complete and utter misery because of my love for her. The idea that when I'm in heaven, she's now experiencing something much worse and I'm not just cool with it, but like rejoicing in it seems just so desperately immoral. Yeah. So I think what St. Thomas wants to direct our attention to is the fact that God is enough, right? And here, I mean, you can even bring in the consideration of whether your dog goes to heaven. I think a lot of people's fear is that God is not enough,

right? Because we have him in our minds as something wild and woolly, vague, kind of aloof, ill-defined. But St. Thomas is trying to say that God is terribly real, and that God is his justice, and that God is his mercy, and that God in his simple and perfect, radiant being is enough to satisfy all the longings of the human heart. And so even like the recognition that others have not come to experience this joy and rather have distanced themselves from it intentionally, deliberately, consciously, and as a result of which are punished, that this does not represent for us something disquieting or something that distracts us from the fullness of his radiant glory, because he is enough, because we'll be able to see in him

why that is the case and how that does not impugn his dignity or somehow undermine his justice and mercy. We'll be able to see that, and that for us will be a source of joy, namely that God is who he says he is, that he is sovereign, that he is generous, that he is merciful, that he is just, and that we can take delight in that. It's not to say that we're looking on the torturing of ants, like we have a magnifying glass out in our front yard and we're using the sun to burn things or distend them. It almost sounds like what we're saying is that we, the blessed in heaven, will not be manipulated by the sulking ones in hell. have children may have one or more children who tend to have that disposition in which they seek to almost perhaps unintentionally cause the rest of the family harm by sulking you know as if their sulking will produce a cloud over the rest of the family and i remember there's been times of that

in my own family where i'm like no no you will not have that sort of power so you will go to your room and you're welcome to sulk in there. But we're not going to be up here feeling bad for you. We're going to be having a beautiful family time, to change the analogy a bit. What do you think about that? No, that's a good analogy. If it is true that the damned in hell are there by their own decision and that they choose it still, hell are there by their own decision and that they choose it still right i think it was lewis who said that the the gates of hell are locked from the inside yeah yeah from yeah from the

inside that it's they who choose not to be with us that changes it a little yeah no because because like you said if if they are given the capacity to undermine our happiness then they hold the trumps right then they can poison theumps, right? Then they can poison the well and make it such that beatitude is not sufficient for, you know, the fullness of joy, which would seem a very, you know, bizarre. What do you think about that, though? I mean, we've said a couple of different kind of ways of expressing hell, right? That, you know, like Lewis again says, at the end, there'll be those who say to God, thy will be done, and those to whom God says, thy will be done, and this idea that the door is locked from the inside, and the idea that man creates hell. You know, sometimes I hear this, and it

always makes sense to me, but then I think, well, I don't read that in the writings of the earlier Christians. Should that be a cause of concern? So, I'm not as familiar with particular texts on this. I mean, I suppose i'm just kind of familiar with saint thomas and how he interprets them or how he receives them yeah um i think that like i mean von balthasar loves c.s lewis um so he's he's using him a lot in the context of his argument and so especially you know the great divorce comes up in this regard um but but lewis himself you know lew Lewis himself is a scholar of, um, like medieval and late Renaissance literature, but he's, he's also very conscious

of the ancient and medieval worldview. You know, he wrote this book, um, what's it called? The disfigured image or something like that, or I forgot the name. Um, he's got, he's got these more scholarly works that, um, you know, like most people don't come across, but, uh, that shows he has, you know, he's reading deeply in come across, but that shows he has, you know, he's reading deeply in the tradition. And so he's appropriating concepts that are, you know, that have roots. He's not just making this stuff up. So I don't think I would be surprised to encounter those types of things, namely that it's a matter of one's own creation. And that one, like, for instance, in the parable of Divus and Lazarus, you have this, you know, like Divus is appealing to Lazarus who's in the bosom of Abraham, and he says, you know, dip your finger in water so as to cool my tongue.

There's a great chasm between us, no chance. Well, send some, you know, Lazarus should go to my five brothers to warn them against their certain fate lest they repent. Should they not repent? And they say, you know, like he has Moses and the prophets. He has a law and the prophets. If that's not sufficient for him, even if someone were to rise from the dead, they would not repent? And they say, you know, like, he has Moses and the prophets, he has a law on the prophets, if that's not sufficient for him, even if someone were to rise from the dead, they would not repent. So there's a sense that, like, there's an obduracy of those in hell, like, they've chosen to be such, they've been shaped in their character, and nothing will sway them. It's not, like, there's

no real regret, like, he doesn't wish that he had lived a better life, he wishes that his tongue were cooled, and perhaps that his brothers not have to experience the same torment. But it's not like he's thinking, I will undo everything that I once did so I can enjoy, you know, the relative peace and delight that you have there. And that's like, that's something that Lewis brings out really well, I think, with, you know, like these characters who are trying to convince each other to go this or that or the other way, kind of at their final judgment, which he portrays in a really beautiful fashion. But they just can't abide the terms of receiving beatitude. They can't abide the terms of grace as gratuitous, of living in a dispensation over which they have not control, which they are called to enter into as recipients, right, as beggars

before the divine mercy. So, yeah, that's a long way of saying. I think that we would, you know, we can encounter those texts in the scriptures and in the early church's reception of those scriptures. So, yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. So Augustine says that the majority will be damned because, as you say, we're born, you

know, deprived of sanctifying grace. It's Christ who saves us. If we're not sort of brought into relationship with him, we'll die, and this is the case with most people. Thomas Aquinas, what does he say? So St. Thomas is, I mean, he's an Augustinian in this regard, but one thing that he adds to the Augustinian tradition on which von Balthasar is very keen, is that you can hope for other people. So St. Thomas has this understanding of the order of charity. Well, he inherits it from St. Augustine, the order of Amoris, that insofar as you are bound up with people in love, that

you're kind of responsible for them, right? So you're responsible to the Lord, you're responsible to yourself, you're responsible to your family and friends, and you kind of draw them to God with you by tethers of love. And he thinks, St. Thomas thinks, that in as much as these people are knit together in love, that we are responsible, in a sense, for hoping for their beatitude. Now, here we can think about an analogy with indulgences. So, you recall that indulgences can be obtained, plenary indulgences can be obtained for the souls in purgatory or for yourself, but you can't actually obtain them for another living person. And a lot of people are like, that's crazy. Why would the church encourage selfishness?

Well, the presumption is that when you are seeking to obtain an indulgence for yourself, that you are well disposed to receive it because you're praying for it. But you can't presume the same type of openness in another because they're not necessarily praying for it. You're praying for it for them. So the same thing obtains with eternal salvation. St. Thomas thinks that we can merit our salvation in a way that is, he calls it, condign with an equal dignity. That is to say, we have a kind of claim on salvation in a justice that the Lord himself gives. That's a kind of confused way of describing it, but that we can merit our eternal salvation. Now, he says, we can kind of merit the salvation of others, or we can hope for the salvation of others, but in a less so in a sense of strict justice, more in a sense of friendship, that we can merit graces that dispose them to conversion, or we can merit graces that dispose them to turn to God. So because we're bound up with these people in love, that we have a kind of responsibility for exercising a spiritual generosity on their regard. And so, von Balthasar likes this in as much as it shows

a kind of moving towards his notion of universalist aspirations. Again, he's not saying that everyone is saved. He's saying, though, that for our kind of upbuilding as Christians, for our living in integral human existence, we should hope for the salvation of others. Whereas, I think what St. Thomas is saying is that we should hope for the salvation of those whom we love, those with whom we are bound up in some way, and that those connections get more and more tenuous the less and less there is a real connection. Okay, so we can hope, but Aquinas, like Augustine, thinks that the majority of mankind will be damned? He does, yeah. Okay. He still thinks that yeah obviously

bishop baron has sought to explain this a great deal it seems like he's on the side of balthazar and if you go to wordonfire.org hope um they had to establish this page i was talking to brandon vought he said they get dozens of phone calls a day and emails a day from people who are trying to figure out what's Bishop Robert Barron's position on this. And it's quite clear, I think, to his credit. But I want to just read one response that he gives. Let's see here. So he kind of sort of states the objection, then responds to it in good Thomistic fashion. So here's the objection. Like someone might say, look, most of the greatest saints, theologians, and doctors of the church, including St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, believed there were many people in hell, likely the majority. Are you saying they're wrong, that you know better than them?

And Bishop Robert Barron responds by saying, no. And I want to get your opinion on this. I don't want to put you into a fight with Bishop Robert Barron,, and I want to get your opinion on this. I don't want to put you into a fight with Bishop Robert Barron, but I do want to get your take on this. He says, no, we don't know if they were wrong, and we also don't know if they are right. We're simply not in an epistemic position to make any sort of estimate or probability calculus

about how many, if any, people are saved, and thus the position of hope. Among figures who disagree with the majority are in hell view is Pope Benedict XVI. In his encyclical, Space Salve, the Pope wrote that, quote, for the great majority of people, we may suppose, there remains in the depth of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. This encounter with him as it burns us, transforms us, and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. I think he was referring to purgatory

in that, but maybe I'm wrong. So anyway, I'll just conclude here. He says, you know, his implication, says Barron, seems to be that the great majority of people are not damned. Two short more paragraphs. What is also often overlooked in light of these great saints and doctors in the Latin West is the prominent speculations

of the Eastern Church. The conviction that hell may be empty has been advocated by the likes of Origen of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St conviction that hell may be empty, has been advocated by the likes of Origen of Alexandria, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor, and Isaac the Syrian. Some people suggest that disagreeing with Augustine and Aquinas on this issue means you are against them. This isn't true. Bishop Barron has proved to be one of today's most enthusiastic advocates of Augustine and Aquinas, yada yada. So thoughts on that way of thinking? Because I suppose if you want to say that the majority will not be damned,

you have to say something like that. So is that problematic? So here are just some initial thoughts. This is actually taken from Ratzinger's book, Eschatology. So he gives a space to discuss this particular issue. And he says that at the end of the day, we always come back to the scriptural texts. He says that if we just meditate upon the divine attributes, if we kind of do it as an intellectualist or rationalist enterprise, then it's easy to arrive at universalism. And that's not being argued here, but I'm just saying universalism as a settled doctrine that everyone is saved. But he says we always have to contend with the scriptural texts themselves, which seem to suggest kind of in their most patent reading that people go to hell.

And mind you, the notion of hell is still kind of like nascent in the Jewish community in this intertestamental period. And so it's coalescing. But that's like it would be like modernist to explain it away in a developmentalist way. So I mean, I don't know that I've ever actually like made a decided theological judgment. I'm kind of a—my disposition on the matter is that when you come to a fence in the woods—this is a Chesterton point—when you come to a fence in the woods, you determine first what it's keeping out or what it's keeping in before you tear it down. And so I don't disagree with Aquinas on things unless the church has decided otherwise, like in the case of the Immaculate Conception. I just tend to think that, like,

I am judged by him before, you know, like, I will ever judge him, you know, before he is ever judged by me, I suppose. And so because Augustine and Aquinas, you know, they're the two people cited most often in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. They're referred to as the doctor of grace and the common doctor or angelic doctor. They are these giants in the Western, you know, Catholic tradition, the likes of which have never been seen, you know, really before or since. And because they argued in this way, I don't think that there's a kind of progressive evolution of human knowledge whereby we come to more and more clear explication of things. I think that in the church, in the meditation of the church, that some, you know, development of

doctrine does happen and that we can have greater and greater certainty. But I don't think that our 20th century enlightened notions about how all people are good people is a legitimate theological datum. So I'm just very, very skeptical to differ with Augustine and Aquinas. I'm very leery of differing with them. So I would say that my kind of provisional judgment is that they're right, which I guess, you know, is to say that I've just kind of sided in that way without being tribalistic. And I'm still entertaining the arguments. I'm still reading the things from von von Balthasar. And I guess I'll read these things from Bishop Robert Barron. I don't read a lot of contemporary stuff. So that's perhaps informs my decision on the matter. Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. So I just think I think

that's kind of where I stand. No, but I like what you said a moment ago, that when you contemplate the divine attributes, when you think about this as theologically accurate as you can about who God is and who we are in relationship to him, yeah, it can be easy to kind of come up with universalism, you know. But as you say, like you read the scriptures and it's like a splash of cold water into the face.

I'm thinking of Matthew 25. Yeah. Here it is here. Yeah, I mean, now, and I know that all scripture can be explained away, but just prima facie, when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne and all the nations will be gathered before him and separated as he says into sheep and goats and it's a like it just sounds like this is what will happen yeah yeah and i think i think a reason that

many people are afraid or or perhaps uncomfortable making this claim is because the tacit assumption of people who make this claim is that they are going to heaven. So, like, that's how von Balthasar portrays Augustine in his text. He, you know, like, whenever you make a judgment that many people are damned and fewer people are saved, usually the person making that judgment, you know, assumes that they are among the saved. But like Augustine, for instance, when he died, you know, in 430, he died weeping with a text of the penitential psalms arranged around his bed so that he could read them easily. So he's a man who doesn't speak of himself as among the elect in an overly facile way, and I think that that's a good spiritual discipline. And it's part of the epistemic humility, which Bishop Barron is getting to.

And St. Thomas will say himself, Prima Secundae, question 109, you know, whether one can even know if he's in a state of grace. He just says, no, you can't. You can't even know if you're in a state of grace. Why? Because it's immaterial. It's an invisible thing. How are you going to verify? He says, we can kind of have like an evidential knowledge. Like, do you enjoy prayer? Do you enjoy the sacraments? Do your friendships grow? Are you faithful to your penances that you adopt? You know, do you have a habit of study? Do you, you know, worship in a way that's upright? Do you love the Blessed Virgin? You know, these things seem to indicate well, they pretend well, but you just can't know. So there has to be hope, you know, like hope cannot give way before certainty, whether of presumption, whereby you are certain that you are saved regardless of what happens, or despair, whereby you are certain that

you are not saved and that God's promises do not pertain to you. That's the locus of hope. But yeah, I just... Yeah, in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, Ludwig Ott, in regard to this question, says that we can't have an absolute certainty as to whether or not we're in the state of grace. He says, though, we can have a moral certainty. And I think that is kind of what you're saying there, kind of based on the fruits in our life, our desire for the sacraments and so on. Yeah. Because that can drive people into a real scrupulosity, can't it? I guess what's so difficult when we discuss these topics, right, is we're trying to avoid two pitfalls. Like on one side, you've got people who are like, I'm going to heaven and I'm fantastic and like I'm not Hitler.

and like I'm not Hitler. And then on the other side, like you have people who like hate themselves and just assume God hates them too. And any talk of hell is like a scourge to them because it sort of reaffirms what the accuser has been saying to them all along, which is like you're unlovable, God doesn't want you. If people knew who you really are, God doesn't want you. If people knew who you really are, they wouldn't want you, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, like, I think the certainty for which we are seeking is the certainty of hope. Just like faith is a

certainty based on witness, right? It's not knowledge, which is a certainty based on experience or based on the actual demonstration itself. It's a certainty based on experience or based on the actual demonstration itself. It's a certainty based on testimony, based on witness. So to hope, it's a certainty based on God's generosity, you know, God's omnipotence, God's mercifulness. So it's something that hinges on another. So it implicates you in this relationship. That's the whole point. It's supposed to draw you further into God so that in that, yeah, you encounter your sufficiency and stay, that the very dynamism of the virtue itself kind of ushers you into the life of God. So we can't settle for a lesser certainty, a kind of – yeah, a certainty of despair or a certainty of presumption. It has to be the certainty of hope, which is a kind of tenuous thing, just as faith is a kind of tenuous thing. Faith is not vision, so too hope is not possession, but it's real. It's real.

That's a good way to put it. Well, this has been really a terrific discussion. Why don't you sort of kind of wrap us up here with maybe some final thoughts on Hans Urs von Balthasar, who it turns out is a Swiss theologian who died in the 1980s, and give us some maybe final thoughts on him and his work and what we should take maybe from this discussion. Yeah, so I don't know enough about him to give an authoritative judgment, but I can say that what he is doing is in some wise praiseworthy. He wants to have us take a deeper look at the tradition or have us take a closer look at the tradition so that we don't just adopt its teachings in an uncritical way that would, yeah, sweep us along, yeah, just kind of blithely. But on the other

hand, I think that the stance that he adopts with respect to the tradition isn't—it's just not especially traditional at times. It can be polemical. It can be hypercritical. It can be hermeneutically problematic. He doesn't tell you how he's reading the Scripture or how you should read the Scripture. He's not necessarily telling you how you receive theologians and whether there's a kind of hierarchy or order to be observed among their teachings and how we ourselves are to furnish judgments.

order to be observed among their teachings and how we ourselves are to furnish judgments. So I think that it's a lot of strong drink, right? But it doesn't necessarily give you the tools or help you forge the tools to interpret what is on offer. So in that regard, again, St. Thomas presents himself both as content-rich but also as pedagogically sound. St. Thomas gives you a way of reading the scriptures, of reading the tradition, of reading his contemporaries that I find very open-handed. And that's, you know, it can be done poorly, like there's a bunch of punks out there in the wild just saying, well, St. Thomas says, you know, without necessarily interpreting it in accord with the tradition. So we don't want to be that. We don't want to be pains in the butt. But yeah, I think that we sit at the feet of the master. And at a certain time, we'll make our own

theological judgments. But I just seem to think that that time is farther off. All right. Well, that was super helpful. Thanks very much for being on the show. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Okay. That was fantastic. I hope you agree and got a lot out of it if you did maybe you would consider sharing this post on your social media help us spread the word again if you could review us on itunes that helps get the word out about pints with a why nurse lots of cool things coming up stay in touch with all of it by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash matt fratt patreon.com slash matt Fratt, patreon.com slash Matt Fratt.

My whole life to carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life.