Hope vs justice IV: On the ‘final limbo’

 

Hope vs justice IV: On the ‘final limbo’

“Then I will grant to my called and elect ones whomsoever they request from me, out of the punishment. And I will give them [i.e. those for whom the elect pray] a fine baptism in salvation from the Acherousian lake which is, they say, in the Elysian field, a portion of righteousness with my holy ones” (Apocalypse of Peter, Rainer Fragment, source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_of_Peter#Prayers_for_those_in_hell )

“In like manner, the souls which are punished by being deprived of happiness immediately after death become unchangeable in their will. It has been proved that, for mortal sin, the soul is condemned to eternal punishment. But this punishment of the soul would not be everlasting if its will could be changed for the better, since it would be unjust if its punishment continued after its will is good. Therefore, the will of a lost soul cannot turn towards the good.” (Summa contra Gentiles, 4.93, source: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~SCG4.C93 )

According to the majority of Christian theologians in history, there will be (at least the possibility of) a final, irreversible division between the blessed in the Kingdom of God and the (unrepentant) sinners in Gehenna. This is generally explained as due to the inability of the wicked to repent after death: the will becomes fixed and becomes impossible for them to orient their will to the Good, i.e. God.

At the same time, however, it is also a traditional, practical teaching of Christianity that Christians should love their enemies and in doing so they imitate God[1].  Clearly, loving others entails the desire for their good and, ultimately, the full realization of those others, i.e. their salvation and entrance in the Kingdom.

It is quite clear to me that this creates a deep tension if one wants to accept both doctrines: that one should love others, wills the good for them and, at the same time, accept the possibility or the reality of the final perdition of some they love.

It is not surprising that even in ancient times ‘many’ people actually objected the supposed endlessness of torments[2]. Indeed, the idea of seeing oneself and others suffering forever is hard to reconcile with the desire for the good of each human being. This is especially true if one also believes that God Himself wants the salvation of all human beings.

Nonetheless, the great majority of Christians in Christian history did believe in a ‘hell’ that is a state of endless conscious torment (now usually abbreviated as ‘ECT’).

As it happens, it should be noted that the state of ‘hell’ as ‘traditionally’ conceived has two characteristics:

1.       unending duration

2.       the actual intensity of the torments.

The ‘fixity’ of the will, however, by itself would only explain the former characteristic. Since the will can’t be oriented to the Good, the duration is infinite. The other, however, raises some concerns. If immortality is granted to the damned, it is hard to understand how for them it would be better to exist in a state of literal endless torment than simply cease to exist[3]. Is it consistent to believe that God would prepare a state of immortality that is actually worse than non-existence?

If one answers ‘no’, I believe that the supporter of the ‘traditional’ doctrine of ‘hell’ has one possible move. If Gehenna must be endless, this doesn’t imply that the same goes for the intensity of torments, i.e. that the intensity of torments can be gradually reduced over time. Thomas Aquinas himself allowed this possibility:

“We may also reply that they refer to mercy as granting a relaxation, but not setting free altogether, if it be referred also to the damned. Hence the Psalm does not say: ‘will he from his anger shut up his mercies? but in his anger’ (Ps 77:9), because the punishment will not be done away with entirely; but his mercy will have effect by diminishing the punishment while it continues.” (Summa Theologiae, Supplementum, reply to objection 4 of article 3, question 99, https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.IIISup.Q99.A3.Rep4 )

So, the intensity is lessened but the punishment remains endless.

It should be noted, however, that being excluded from the Kingdom is already an infinite loss on the part of the sinners in Gehenna. They lose the possibility of realizing their nature fully in the communion with God. This, of course, means that any state of true perpetual exclusion from God’s Kingdom is a state of infinite loss. Even the ‘limbo’, the state that various Catholic theologians allowed for those who die only with ‘original sin’ (that is, without personal sin that aggravate their condition), is still a state in which an infinite loss happened. And losing an infinite good can already be a punishment. So, given this why a loving God would forever impose an additional punishment?

In recent times, Jacques Maritain, a noted Catholic theologian, speculated that all the damned will, indeed, reach, after a certain interval of actual torments (according to their sins) a state of ‘final limbo’, i.e. a state of ‘natural happiness’ excluded from the Kingdom but without torments. And according to Maritain[4], the prayers of the saints will have a role. This interestingly parallels the ‘Rainer fragment’ quoted at the beginning of this post. The ‘damned’ in the fragment are depicted to partake into a ‘portion of righteousness’, rather than a full experience of it. And this will happen thanks to the prayers of the saints. Perhaps the difference is that the author(s?) of the passage in the ‘Rainer fragment’ thought that the damned will enter the Kingdom (even if a ‘lower’ region of it) but this can’t be established by the fragment alone.

I suppose that this still means that God’s and the saint’s desire of salvation of each human being will be frustrated if some will forever be excluded from the Kingdom. But, to be honest, this view at least doesn’t posit that God will allow or inflict an immortality that is worse than non-existence.

 


[2] We know this also by critical testimonies. Augustine of Hyppo wrote: “It is quite in vain, then, that some--indeed very many--yield to merely human feelings and deplore the notion of the eternal punishment of the damned and their interminable and perpetual misery. They do not believe that such things will be. Not that they would go counter to divine Scripture--but, yielding to their own human feelings, they soften what seems harsh and give a milder emphasis to statements they believe are meant more to terrify than to express the literal truth.”  (Enchiridion 112, source: https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/augustine_enchiridion_02_trans.htm ); John Chrysostom: “There are many men, who form good hopes not by abstaining from their sins, but by thinking that hell is not so terrible as it is said to be, but milder than what is threatened, and temporary, not eternal; and about this they philosophize much.” (Homily 3 in 2 Thessalonians 1:9-10, source: https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/23053.htm ); Basil of Caesarea: “But, for a deception of the devil, many people, as though they forgot these and similar statements of the Lord, adhere to the conception of the end of punishment, out of an audacity that is even superior to their sin.” (Rules for Monks, source: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/02/07/committing-theological-fraud-st-basil-the-great-and-david-bentley-hart/ )

[3]A fragment attributed to Theodore of Mopsuestia makes this point explicit: “Who is so mad that he would believe to be so great a good that material of endless torment is being prepared for those who arise, for whom it would be more useful not to rise at all, than to endure, after the resurrection, the experience of such great evils of such kind, in endless pains?”(source: https://www.academia.edu/35123005/The_Involvement_of_Theodore_of_Mopsuestia_in_the_Pelagian_Controversy_A_Study_of_Theodore_s_Treatise_Against_Those_who_Say_that_Men_Sin_by_Nature_and_not_by_Will ) . A similar observation was made by his teacher Diodore of Tarsus in a fragment provided by Isaac of Nineveh in homily 39 of the Second Part: “…but stripes for the wicked are not for eternity. Thus, not even in their case is the future condition of immortality of no profit”.  

[4] See: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/maritain-beginning-with-a-reverie.pdf . Here is how Cardinal Avery Dulles summarised Maritain’s views: “In response to the prayers of the saints, he imagines, God may miraculously convert their wills, so that from hating Him they come to love Him. After being pardoned, they will then be delivered from the pain of sense and placed in a kind of limbo. They will still be technically in hell, since they will lack the beatific vision, but they will enjoy a kind of natural felicity, like that of infants who die without baptism. At the end, he speculates, even Satan will be converted, and the fiery inferno, while it continues to exist, will have no spirits to afflict.” (“The Population of Hell,” First Things (May 2003)" (source: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2025/01/20/st-george-mivart-and-the-happy-damned/ )”

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