Hans von Balthasar on the problem of the reaction of the blessed at the sight of the damned (assuming that damnation is without end)

Hans von Balthasar on the problem of the reaction of the blessed at the sight of the damned (assuming that damnation is without end)

 "Joy over damnation

That the Parable of the Rich Glutton and the Poor Lazarus is not meant as anything more than an earnest warning to the living to have mercy on the beggar at their door is clear. Even if it is described in such drastic terms how the one tormented in the flames of Hades pleads for a drop of water from the fingertips of Lazarus, who is in the “bosom of Abraham”, the allegory should not evoke questions about the mental state experienced by Abraham and Lazarus at the sight of the tormented man: Do they feel compassion, indifference, or. . .? In the context of the allegory, such a question is absurd. For its “intention is directed toward man’s salvation, not toward giving purely concrete information as such”; it “aims at saying something kerygmatic for his present life, something relevant here and now”. All New Testament and theological talk about hell has but one point: “To bring man to come to grips with his life in view of the real possibility of eternal ruin and to understand revelation as a demand of the utmost seriousness. The fundamental reference to this redemptive meaning of the dogma must therefore serve as both a boundary marker and an internal guideline for all speculation in this area” (J. Ratzinger).

 Assuming, however, that there might really be such a vantage point from which to survey the abyss between heaven and hell, would not a conscientious theologian still have to ask himself the question of how the blessed feel when they see certain of their brothers and sisters roasting in hell? The question arises, of course, only if, first, there are such people in hell and, second, one can see them from within heaven, or at least miss them there. 

At the end of the Book of Isaiah, there is a description of how those who were saved in the apocalyptic, magnificent (earthly) Jerusalem walk out through the city gates; they “look on the dead bodies of the men that have rebelled against me; for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh” (Is 66:24). In place of “abhorrence”, the Septuagint has “sight [to see]”, and the Latin translation by Jerome reads: “et erunt usque ad satietatem visionis omni carni” (PL 28:848), which translates literally as: “and they shall be a sight for all flesh to look upon till satiated”—a rather dark passage. Be that as it may, there are comparable passages in the Old Testament, for instance, Psalm 58:6, 10: “O God, break the teeth in their mouths;. . . The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.”

Now, the author of the theological textbook for the Middle Ages, Peter Lombard, concluded his work with the question of whether the inhabitants of the heavenly Jerusalem, too, will someday stand before the gates of the city and “look upon” those languishing in fire, and what impression this “satiating sight” (the author refers specifically to Jerome) will have on them. “In the end, we ask”, Peter Lombard concludes, “whether the sight of the punishment of the damned tarnishes [decoloret] the glory of the blessed or enhances their blessedness.” Like Gregory the Great, he observes that, in heaven, “there will no longer be any compassion for misery”, and thus the joy of the heavenly cannot be dampened. “And although their joys are sufficient to them, it contributes to their heightened glory to see all the punishments of the evildoers that they have escaped through grace.” “They give thanks for their salvation when they perceive the unutterable misery of the godless. For ‘The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance’ (Ps 58:10)” (4 Sent. 50). 

The seraphic teacher Bonaventure, who otherwise can speak quite bluntly about hell, avoids commentary on this last observation by the Lombard. He declares only (again with a quotation from Psalm 58) that the blessed see hell while the damned do not see heaven, at least not after the Last Judgment, since that would distract them from their torment. He, too, agrees with Gregory that compassion is something earthly and does not belong to “the goodness of nature in general” (4, d. 50, p. 2, a. 1, q. 3). 

Thomas, by contrast, does not draw back from even the thorniest of questions. He poses for himself the objection that compassion is, after all, a mode of love, and love is consummate in the blessed. God, too, takes pity on our misery, as do the angels. To be sure: “Whoever has compassion for another participates in a way in his suffering, but the blessed cannot participate any more in anyone’s misery.” But do they really rejoice at the punishments of the damned? That would be hate or spite. Again, there is the evidence of the aforementioned biblical passages against this. What, then, can be said? God, angels and men can have compassion for sinners as long as they are on earth by wishing to help them find salvation. “In the next world, however, their misery can no longer be changed, and thus there can also no longer be any proper compassion.” But what about joy over this? Not per se, but still per accidens, insofar as the righteous, with a view to divine justice, rejoice at their own liberation and merely “along with this at the torments of the damned” (4, d. 50, q. 2, a. 3 and 4). 

It may be left to the more diligent to plow through the hundreds upon hundreds of commentaries on the Sentences (published and unpublished) and to investigate the positions of countless theologians on this embarrassing—I would rather say instead shameful—problem. But can it be completely avoided under the assumption of a hell that we know with certainty to be full—for instance, if I were to see, from my position in heaven, my mother or my best friend undergoing eternal torture? The point is not to paint a pathetic picture of such situations but rather to pose the absolutely sober, unavoidable question: Under the aforementioned hypothesis, is every human, every Christian, bond—designated as communio sanctorum—simply annulled? And more profoundly, as seen from the viewpoint of God himself: Does God no longer love the damned, for whom, after all, his Son has died? Or—if I may revert to the hypothesis that I developed earlier—do the absolute naysayers burn in the fire of the absolute divine love that also embraces them, and what sort of effect does such a situation have on God?"(Hans Urs von Balthasar, ‘Dare We Hope That All Men Shall be Saved? With a Short Discourse on Hell’, pp. 126-9 ; 'A Short Discourse on Hell', chapter 5)

P.S. For a different perspective on the reaction to the prospect of eternal damnation within the Catholic tradition, see also (especially the quotes of Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena): https://ancientafterlifebelifs.blogspot.com/2026/06/quotes-of-mechtilde-of-hackeborn-and.html 

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