Well, Pope Francis has once again done it. Anyone who has even the slightest interest in world events knows that whenever Pope Francis speaks, there is going to be a lot of confusion and commentary. His latest pronouncement has made to smile all of us who believe in Universal Salvation.

Pope Francis: ”What I am going to say is not a dogma of faith but my own personal view: I like to think of hell as empty; I hope it is.”

Well, Golly Gee, so do we! Of course, the more radical of us consider hell to be a thoroughgoing invention of the Roman Catholic Church, [1] the charge to damn people being led first by Augustine and then taken up by Emperor Justinian and the Papal Reformation of the Eleventh Century. The belief in Universal Salvation was predominant in the East for the first 500 years of the Church, but somehow, the virus of eternal conscious torment slowly seeped into the thinking of the East.

This statement of Pope Francis has set off a feverish flurry of blog posts and other indignant writings asking how dare someone in such a position of authority make such a statement? This is a man to whom millions look for spiritual guidance and from whom they expect precision in his pronouncements. The angst is palpable among those who cannot live without fiercely holding to a hope that anyone they don’t like, along with all the other scruffy sinners, get what is coming them, and get it eternally.

One such display of such angst comes from Eric Sammons, Editor-In-Chief of Crisis Magazine. Entitled “The Dangerous Hope for an Empty Hell,” Eric sallies forth in print to make sure that all his readers understand that believing in the salvation of all is a dangerous thing.

The Crisis article misses a couple of things which I think need to be considered. (My commentary in bold)

1. The author states the common concern regarding Universal Restoration – that people will fall into indifference and not pursue the Christian faith with seriousness. Which leads me to ask this (I would really like an answer to this). if this is true, how did so many people become Christians and live holy lives in the first six centuries of the Church? You see, for the first 500 years of the Church, Universal Restoration was widely taught and believed. How then, given the idea that it would make people spiritually lazy, did the Church grow and so many people lived saintly lives? St. Isaac the Syrian taught Universal Restoration and yet, he was a profound ascetic and mystic.

2. From the article: “The common view—and the common teaching heard from the pulpit—is that Catholics should assume that non-Catholics were very likely going to Hell.” Which those of us in the Orthodox faith find utterly repulsive as a belief. With the exception of the OrthoTraddies, we do not say that about those in the Roman Church or Protestantism. The best we can say regarding God and any particular individual’s salvation is “I don’t know.”

3. From the article: “This common assumption had massive implications. The most vital being that Catholics felt a duty to work for the conversion of non-Catholics, whether that be by supporting missionary works or by urging non-Catholics to become Catholic. (Does this include killing them if they won’t convert, as they did with Peter the Aleut? Your church has a rather sordid history of how it has treated those who would not submit to papal authority.) It also meant that Catholics were wary of becoming too culturally close to non-Catholics. “Mixed marriages” were verboten, and Catholics tended to live together in small neighborhoods (the Catholic “ghetto”) in order to protect the faith of their impressionable children. And finally, most Catholics doggedly remained Catholic, knowing the alternative could be unthinkably horrible. (I have said this before, and I repeat it: The Roman Catholic Church invented hell to keep the rebellious in line. If the only reason you are Catholic is to avoid hell, then perhaps you should sit down and really think about your relationship to God!)

4. From the article: “And Catholics left the Church by the millions.” Another proof that the concern of the author regarding not teaching about hell is to keep the numbers up in the Catholic Church. Perhaps, however, there may be more to the decline in the Catholic faith than just removing the fear of hell from people. I don’t know the demographics, so I refuse to speculate, but I have the feeling that a number of things contribute to that decline.

5. From the article: If you don’t believe you need to be Catholic to get to Heaven (See? My point proved!) —or, more radically, you believe everyone is getting to Heaven regardless of how they live here on earth (“Hello, Mr. Hitler! Good to see you here in Heaven!”)—then the importance of both practicing the Faith and sharing it with others collapses. Catholicism is reduced to something that makes you feel good; a social club with some cool-looking ceremonies. (Exactly. You should be a Christian because you love Christ, you see Him as utterly adorable and worthy of your love and obedience, and because you know that sin hurts both you and others. Avoiding hell is a poor excuse for trying to hold onto the Christian faith, and perhaps why so many eventually leave if they don’t love Christ supremely!)

6. From the article: An empty Hell undermines the entire purpose of Catholicism, (Once again, my point is proven. In Orthodoxy, that is not the point of the Christian faith. The telos of man is not just “making heaven.” It is theosis, becoming a god [“God became man so that man might become god – St. Athanasius] and experiencing the love of God here and now.) and makes a mockery out of the words of Jesus, who warned us to avoid Hell (Jesus never spoke of hell. He spoke of Hades [Sheol in the OT] and Gehenna, both of which have been mistranslated by Western translators to mean “hell” when they mean nothing of the sort. The hell of Dante, a place of sadistic torture in which God turns souls over to the very enemy demons that he defeated at the Cross, would be unknown to Christ and those in the first century listening to Him.) and talked of people being thrown into the eternal fire (cf. Mt. 25:41). (Nonsense. It is both sad and frustrating to watch people resort to using wrong translations of the Greek to defend the idea of a sadistic God who gets His revenge on mankind for ticking Him off! That’s NOT what the Greek text says.) Jesus, in fact, talked more about Hell than he did about Heaven. Why bother if no one is going there? In fact, if Hell is in fact empty, that makes Jesus a deceiver, for his words assume people have gone—and will continue to go—there.

Jesus warned about the Judgment of God. So did St. Paul. They both spoke of the fact that all of us will be judged and rewarded according to our deeds. Those who have done evil things shall suffer. Christ made that quite clear in passages such as Matthew 18: 34 And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. 35 So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.

Not forever. Not eternally. Until all that was due should be paid. And not a second more. This is the justice of God, which corresponds with the justice which we were told to have among ourselves – lex talionis – the punishment fits the offense. Thus, you don’t hang a hungry child for stealing a loaf of bread. And you don’t punish people eternally for sin, for there is no sin, no matter how heinous, which deserves eternal, unending punishment. That would be unjust.

I do share one concern with the author of this article. Mankind is very creative in finding ways to excuse and thus practice his sins (“But he made me do it”). The correction of our sins is presented as fire in the Bible. Fire burns and cleanses and being burnt (which is perhaps why God uses that analogy) hurts something terribly. We should warn people that every sin unrepented of will have a painful consequence.

Final thought: For 1,500 years, the Christian faith has preached a warning about going to an eternal hell of torment, yet millions (billions?) of people have ignored the warning and have continued to sin right up to the point of their death. Perhaps the pulpit-pounding threats of an eternal hell aren’t as effective in keeping people from sin as one might surmise. Perhaps indeed all they are good for is scaring Catholics into staying in the Latin church.

This article in Crisis Magazine is just one of many where the authors are having a fit of the vapors over the idea that God actually IS the Savior of all, loves all mankind, and has every intention of saving all. It is strange to see the reactions of people when they are presented with numerous facts that contradict their dearly beloved belief that God is an eternal tormentor. Many times the only response I can get is ad hominem attacks directed at me and towards those scholars whose works I quote.

I have sent a copy of my response to Mr. Sammons. I wonder if he will take the time to respond, and if so, what that response might be.

[1] In Orthodoxy, we do not believe in a place called “hell.” What we do believe is that all souls are brought to Christ. The redeemed experience His presence as bliss and joy, while the unrepentant wicked experience that same presence as pain and torment. This is the “hell” that men such as St. Isaac the Syrian described. It is not that we Universalists deny hell, but rather deny that it is a place where the demons are permitted to torment the wicked with various tortures.