If all people ended up in heaven, God would not respect free will, says the approached theologian. What do we know about hell?
Illustration photo: Attitude – created by artificial intelligence
“It’s not a dogma of faith, it’s my thing that I like: I like to imagine hell empty. It is a pleasure: I hope it is a fact. But it’s a pleasure.’
These words were announced by Pope Francis in the first half of January in the program Che tempo che fa, which is broadcast by the Italian television Channel 9.
The current Pope is said to have spoken about an empty hell in 2018 during an interview with the Italian journalist and founder of La Repubblica Eugenio Scalfari. The Vatican Press Center subsequently denied these statements, saying that they were misinterpreted.
Hell is already mentioned in the Holy Scriptures
We looked at what Christian teaching says about hell and what theologians think about “empty hell”. While purgatory is a doctrine of the Catholic Church and Protestant churches do not recognize it, all Christian churches agree on the existence of hell.
We already know about the existence of hell from the Holy Scriptures. According to biblical scholar and Catholic priest Peter Olas, the idea of hell is more developed in the New Testament than in the Old Testament.
“In the Old Testament, the idea of the afterlife, and thus of eternal damnation or eternal life with God, developed only gradually. Only in the last centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ did Jews gradually begin to understand the existence of life after death and with it a kind of ‘place’ for the righteous (heaven) and for the wicked (hell), says the priest of the Žilina diocese.
We have the most references to hell in Matthew’s Gospel, for example in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25:31-46). “Well, I tell you: Everyone who is angry with his brother will go to court. Whoever says to his brother: ‘Fool,’ will go before the great council. And whoever says to him: ‘You godless fool,’ will go to hell fire.” (Mt 5,22)
Some Biblical Quotes About Hell
If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away from you, for it is better for you that one of your members should perish than that your whole body should go to hell. (Mt 5:29)
Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is wide leads to damnation, and many enter through it. How straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few are there who find it! (Mt 7:13-14)
The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom all scandals and those who work iniquity, and they will throw them into the fiery furnace. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mt 13:41-42)
So it will be at the end of the world: angels will come out, separate the wicked from the righteous, and throw them into the fiery furnace. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Mt 13,49-50)
Priest Olas adds that the 20th chapter of the Book of Revelation (John’s Apocalypse) also speaks of hell as the “second death” or the “lake of fire” where the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are cast down (Revelation 20:10) and later also death and underworld (Revelation 20:14).
The very formulations of the Catholic Church on eternal damnation have evolved over the centuries.
Hell is eternal
In this context, the Greek Catholic priest Štefan Paločko points out that if we talk about the development of church teaching about hell, it is necessary to distinguish what is meant by this.
“If we mean the content of the treasure of faith, that is, what Christ handed over to the apostles and they in turn to the church, there can be no talk of any development. Christ gave the fullness of truth to the church once and for all. There will be nothing more that is by this treasure of faith, that is true, that that contradicts it is a mistake,” explains the associate professor of Catholic theology at the Greek Catholic Faculty of Theology of the University of Prešov in Prešov.
We can therefore only speak of the development of Catholic teaching in the sense that at various times the clearest means of expression were sought, with which the church wants to express what Christ taught as clearly and comprehensibly as possible.
According to the theologian Paloček, the church proclaims two infallible definitions of hell, which are confirmed as dogma. The first is from the Fourth Lateran Council, which was in 1215.
She says “(Jesus Christ) will come at the end of the ages to judge the living and the dead and repay everyone according to their deeds, both the reprobate and the elect. All of them will be resurrected with their bodies, which they carry here, so that according to their good or bad deeds, rejected with the devil, they will receive eternal punishment, chosen with Christ, eternal glory”.
According to the Greek Catholic priest, this definition confirms with infallible certainty that damnation, or hell, is eternal.
The second definition is from the document of Pope Benedict XII. Benedictus Deus of 1336: “We define: according to the general decree of God, the souls of those who depart in actual grievous sin immediately descend into hell, where they suffer the punishments of hell.”
Hell is also mentioned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) in points 1033-1037.
“We cannot be united with God unless we freely choose to love him. However, we cannot love God if we sin grievously against him, against our neighbor, or ourselves.” (CCC 1033)
The painting of the Last Judgment by Fra Angelico.
The Catechism continues in point 1034:
“Jesus often speaks of ‘hell’ (gehenna), of ‘unquenchable fire’, which is destined for those who until the end of their lives refuse to believe and convert, and where both soul and body can perish at the same time.
Jesus announces in serious words that “he will send his angels and they will gather from his kingdom… those who commit iniquity and throw them into the fiery furnace” (Mt 13:41-42) and that he will announce the condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into of eternal fire’ (Mt 25:41).”
The teaching of the Church defined in the Catechism (1035) further adds that “hell exists and that it is eternal. The souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin descend immediately after death into hell, where they suffer hellish torments, ‘eternal fire’. The main punishment of hell consists in eternal separation from God, because only in it can a man have the life and bliss for which he was created and for which he desires”.
The Catechism also specifies that “God does not predestinate anyone to go to hell; it presupposes a voluntary turning away from God (mortal sin) and remaining in that turning away until the end”.
Hell is no romance, warns the evangelical priest
Hell and devils are romanticized by many people today, we often see it in fairy tales.
In the video, the evangelical pastor in Vrútki, Marián Krivuš, mentions the incident when he came across a discussion about hell on an internet forum.
“When I thought about it later, I realized that many of my acquaintances and friends also have different ideas about hell, mostly unrealistic, humorous, and romantic, meaning that if it exists, he will get there with a bunch of friends and at least it will be cheerful and warm. It’s absurd,” notes the evangelical clergyman.
“You can joke about hell and the last things, make inappropriate jokes, as long as we are not confronted with reality, and it is different. “We should think about spiritual life so that the romantic idea of roasting sausages in hell does not make light of the situation we will all be confronted with one day,” he adds.
Is hell empty?
Some believers have a theory that hell is empty. They claim that God, in His great mercy and love, will certainly not send anyone there and that we will all end up in heaven.
In this context, some also perceived the Pope’s words quoted at the beginning of the text. However, priest Ľubomír Hlad, who teaches dogmatic theology at the Roman Catholic Cyrilo-Method Faculty of Theology of the Comenius University, perceives the Pope’s words as his desire for hell to be empty. “I don’t feel that he holds the thesis about the non-existence of hell,” he stated.
Štefan Paločko does not think that the Pope’s statement in the TV show deserves significant attention. “The mere fact that a person holds the office of pope does not add to his theological education or character in any way. Therefore, in his private statements, the theological significance of his statements does not exceed his natural human dispositions,” said Polačko.
Even the revelation and seeing God’s love face to face does not necessarily mean for the human self (soul) a willingness to bow to God and love him.
Peter Olas perceives the statements of Francis in the sense that the Pope likes to play with the idea that God wants and knows how to save us and that he invents all kinds of ways to get us from the path of sin to the path to him. “It is an expression of great hope in God’s goodness,” thinks the biblical scholar.
So is it possible that hell is empty, or that there are only devils and demons?
The theologian Hlad says that this topic has been discussed since the time of Origen (he lived at the turn of the 2nd and 3rd centuries), who advocated the teaching of the so-called apokatastasis, i.e. about the restoration of everything at the end of time, the reconciliation of everything with God, including the fallen angels.
This theory was revived by the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1985), when he says that the Son descends into “the finality of death, stripped of all power, completely powerless, thus accepting death together with sinners, thereby showing solidarity with people who have rejected communion with God and other people and thus empties hell”.
Ľubomír Hlad views this theory – which has its positives and justifications, but also weak points – as Balthasar’s opinion.
It underlines the universal salvific will of God and the fact that salvation and damnation are not two equal possibilities for man. Thus, eternal salvation represents the will of God, while damnation is a human possibility.
The weakest point of this theory is that it did not allow for the real possibility of human downfall, the will to live and act against God, or to live in separation from him, which is not sufficiently in line with biblical anthropology. However, according to Ľubomír Hlad, God respects the free will of man in all his power.
“In this context, it should be noted that through sin and radical rejection of God’s love, a person destroys himself to such an extent that at the end of his life, he is incapable of loving either God or his neighbor,” the theologian explains.
The Czech Cardinal Špidlík used an example for this, where he says that we know from human experience that if, for example, someone betrays his spouse and he shows love to him despite everything, then the sinner can hate even these expressions of love.
It is similar in the case of God. “Even the revelation and seeing God’s love face to face does not necessarily mean for the human self (soul) a willingness to lean towards God and love him,” said the cardinal.
If there were no hell, God would deny man’s free will
Štefan Paločko from the Greek Catholic Faculty of Theology recalls that Christ taught that hell exists, that it is eternal, and that there are people who leave this world in a state of grave sin.
“These facts cannot be disputed if we want to remain in harmony with what Christ left us. The theory according to which no one is finally in hell would necessarily have to be built on the assumption that no person has left this world in actual grievous sin.”
Being in heaven and at the same time definitively preferring something temporary and ephemeral is an internal contradiction.
According to the Greek Catholic priest, the idea that someone who died in a grave sin, for which he did not confess or at least did not sincerely repent, would be saved from hell, results from a misunderstanding of the nature of sin.
Sin is a state in which a person prefers a created thing over God himself, which can be temporary enjoyment, relationship, possessions, awards, or earthly life.
“Being in heaven, that is, enjoying harmony with God and communion with him, and at the same time definitively preferring something temporary and transitory to God as a source of eternal happiness is internally contradictory. Such a possibility is internally excluded,” explains theologian Paločko.
If we were to accept the theory that everyone will eventually end up in heaven, including people who reject God, according to the theologian, this would mean that God arbitrarily decides who will be in heaven and hell. Although he indeed desires to have all people there.
“But the treasure of faith, as well as common sense confirming the free will of man, teach us that the decision of who ends up in heaven and who in hell depends on the decision of man and not of God. If a person’s free choice is to be real, the alternative of eternal damnation must also be real. Without this alternative, the possibility of free choice would be just a fiction for God,” adds Paločko.
Jesus also spoke about damned people, the saints also saw them
According to Paloček, we cannot even theoretically think that no person left this world with a grave sin or in rebellion against God, because even Jesus speaks of the damned and describes their state of suffering.
This would mean that Jesus’ warning about hell would be just an unrealistic scare, similar to parents scaring disobedient children with non-existent ghosts. “Such an interpretation, however, would be quite undignified, even infantile, and would suggest a very primitive practice to Christ.”
Definitive rejection of God is a real possibility, and many angels who are at a higher level of intelligence than humans have done so, despite knowing that they will be damned.
In this context, biblical scholar Peter Olas adds that the people we would like to send there quickly may not be in hell at all. “It can be an expression that God sees things even more completely differently and more mercifully than we do. Nevertheless, all of Jesus’ words from the Gospel about the existence of hell and the need for our own decisions about where we want to belong forever apply.
Ľubomír Hlad states that even though the church holds the doctrine of the possibility of damnation, it has never said of anyone that they are in hell. On the contrary, the church speaks of those who are glorified in heaven.
Hunger reminds us of a quote by Cardinal Korec, who said that damnation is not the most suitable kerygmatic topic, i.e. the topic for the first proclamation, but it is also necessary to talk about this tragic possibility that a person has, which makes this topic an impetus for responsibility, searching, authentic living human life.
