The following excerpt is from the Jesuit theologian, Gustave Martelet, in his article on 'Hell' in The Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, Vol. 1 (ed. Jean-Yves Lacoste).
Our creation in Christ has made us, by vocation, into beings to whom the Father is as essential as he is, by paternity, to the Son himself. But we should not forget the other face of this mystery, whereby we appear, in Christ, as eternally irreplaceable to the Father as the Son is to him. Confronted with the suicidal decision to reverse into hatred the love for which we have all been created and which makes us, in the Father’s eyes, inseparable from the person of his Son, could God, even out of respect for our freedom, abandon forever the person who destroys himself in the self-torture of his aberration? How could he do so, this God who, in Christ wishes to raise us by pure grace to his likeness, and promises to share with us the life of his uncreated Son? Such is the choice of the unfathomable depth of his love for us. Henceforth there is no human rule, no safeguard of morality that can prohibit God from loving madly the madman who believes that in order to exist he must refrain from loving him who is love itself!God’s remedy for madness consists then in bringing into play all the resources of his love to help the rebel overcome his insane refusal to love. For what kind of God would he be who, despite being declared all-powerful, was forever incapable of releasing from his mortal spell a freedom that was received without being requested, and that could become a snare of pain and hatred to its recipient, for all eternity?
Faced with the lights of the Kingdom of heaven in the night (in itself hopeless) of hell, we are therefore empowered by faith to throw ourselves naked into the love of God. As worthy descendants of Abraham—“In hope he believed against hope” (Rom 4:18)—we hope that the bottomless depths of God’s fatherhood, of Christ’s Passion, and of the resources of the Holy Spirit will allow us to escape from the fiery prison that is hell. We can say nothing of how this might be; but we must trust absolutely in the reserves of love, grace, and glory, whose only measure is God’s love for the Son in the Holy Spirit, a love in which we are forever included. Moreover, since God has revealed to us in his Son that we are saved and saveable by pure grace, and never by our works (Rom 1–4), how could it be otherwise when the eschatology of every creature is decided, at the crowning moment when the mystery of grace, in which we have been established for all time by God himself, will be fulfilled? In this light, hell becomes, with regard to a boundless faith, the location of choice for God’s victory over the most incomprehensible rejection—victory that could be called humanly unexpected and that is for the prayer of the spiritual and for the thought of the theologian “able to be hoped for.”[1]
[1] Gustave Martelet “Hell,” Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, Vol. 1, edited by Jean-Yves Lacoste, (New York: Routledge, 2005), 693.
I still don't understand what is being said here. Is the writer merely stating that we as finite humans cannot comprehend the grace of God? (If so I agree.) Is he stating that we have no ability to determine the eternal course of another soul on the basis of what we see through our finite eyes? If so, I agree. If he is stating that, based on the goodness and grace of God, we can hope for every person to enjoy salvation regardless of what we know of that person's life, I can agree. But I am confused by what seems to be the suggestion that there is no eternal consequence for rejection of that grace and love, and the seeming suggestion that it is impossible for someone to actually make a choice to reject it. The one idea denies the justice of God and the other the reality of our free will. When I read Revelation 20:13-15 it seems plainly stated that all those whose names are not in the Book of Life are thrown into the lake of fire with death and Hades. I take that to mean that they then cease to exist, and are not with God in heaven, but likewise are longer in torment--that they are just gone. But I think that may be different from what is being said by the writer. What I am reading sounds more to me like a vaguely defined denial of eternal separation. I wonder if too much focus is being placed on love, love being defined as being emotionally bonded, rather than Love being the expression of perfect Goodness through relationship.
Posted by: Catherine Young | February 03, 2015 at 07:36 PM