This is a quote from comment 55 http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2010/12/signs-of-predestination-a-catholic-discusses-election/
Those are both good questions. Your first question is: How could a good and loving God allow a being to suffer in hell forever, with no possibility of reprieve? Ironically, one of the reasons why Origenism was condemned is that it destroys the possibility of true human happiness in heaven. That is because if the human will does not become fixed (i.e. established, set, inflexible, ‘rigid’ with respect to its chosen end) then it would follow that the saints in heaven beholding the face of God could fall away from God, and the whole thing [Eden ... ] start all over again. But the ever-present possibility of losing heaven would not allow the saints to attain the perfect peace and happiness of union with God, a peace and happiness in which they know that they can never ever be separated from Him.
Not only that, but Origenism would undermine the eternal significance of our choices in this present life. Instead of our present choices truly determining our eternal end (i.e. heaven or hell), our present choices would have no eternal significance or meaning, since we could always reverse them in the future, and later reverse those choices, etc. No choice would have any real significance or meaning, if it could always eventually be reversed. Why suffer martyrdom for Christ, if you can just change your mind on the way to hell? Origenism makes fools of martyrs. It sucks out the meaning of this life, by removing from our present choices their eternal significance.
We live in an age that tends not to recognize the great value of the gift of free will. We’re an age in which our ‘choices’ are explained as some combination of nature or nurture. But this is the great delusion which Satan undoubtedly hatched and now perpetuates. Free creatures given the opportunity in this present life to freely choose our eternal destiny either with God in perfect eternal happiness or apart from God in eternal misery, are reduced to a stupor concerning ourselves, a stupor in which the significance of the present moment is lost and the greatness of our existence as creatures who this day and hour freely choose either heaven or hell as our eternal end would be obscured from our eyes, so that in this stupor we live only for the weekend, or at best for retirement, like mere beasts who are here today and gone tomorrow.
What makes it difficult to see how a good and loving God could allow a being to suffer in hell forever, with no possibility of reprieve, is not a deficient understanding of God’s goodness and love, but a deficient understanding of the greatness of the gift of free choice we have been given, and the eternal importance of the choice that has been placed before us presently. We have been given not only a will as a power in our soul; we have also been given, in accord with our nature as creatures endowed with free will, the gift of freely participating in God’s work of creating us, by freely choosing (in this life) whether to love God as our ultimate end and so be with Him eternally, or not to love Him as our ultimate end, and so be separated from Him eternally. God could have made us without this freedom, but that would have withheld from us a great good. The great good is to be made in His image, with free will, and this power of self-determination. This power allows for genuine love, in a definitive and permanent way. That’s why it allows us to enter into the Beatific Vision, the love shared in the Blessed Trinity. Just as a couple can bind themselves in love to each for a lifetime of marriage, so the saints by their faithfulness to Christ even unto death, thereby bind themselves for eternity to the Blessed One.
But this power of free choice also allows persons to reject God, in a definitive and permanent way. The greatness of the gift of free will allows us to choose not only something as great as eternal union with God, but also to choose something as horrific as eternal separation from God, i.e. hell. The possibility of hell comes with the possibility of heaven. The possibility of sin and hell comes with the gift of free will and self-determination. To prevent the possibility of sin and hell, God would have had to not make any creatures with free will — i.e. all angels and humans. But, the great good of the gift of free will outweighs the evil of the use of that free will to separate oneself from God eternally. In other words, it is better that God gives free will to creatures, even if some of them will to separate themselves from Him eternally, than that He withhold free will from creatures.
Your second question is: How could any saint in heaven be truly happy if he or she is aware that others are in hell? Our happiness comes from union with God, who is perfect happiness itself [Himself]. God’s perfect happiness is not diminished or marred by any creature, not even by those creatures who have turned against Him, creatures such as Satan. They have not the power to subtract the smallest bit of happiness from the One who is Happiness; they have only the power to separate themselves from His Happiness. But the saints in heaven have the mind of Christ, and Satan and his minions cannot rob Christ of His happiness.
In the Supplement to St. Thomas’s Summa Theologica we find the following answer to the question “Whether the blessed pity the unhappiness of the damned?”:
Mercy or compassion may be in a person in two ways: first by way of passion, secondly by way of choice. In the blessed there will be no passion in the lower powers except as a result of the reason’s choice. Hence compassion or mercy will not be in them, except by the choice of reason. Now mercy or compassion comes of the reason’s choice when a person wishes another’s evil to be dispelled: wherefore in those things which, in accordance with reason, we do not wish to be dispelled, we have no such compassion. But so long as sinners are in this world they are in such a state that without prejudice to the Divine justice they can be taken away from a state of unhappiness and sin to a state of happiness. Consequently it is possible to have compassion on them both by the choice of the will–in which sense God, the angels and the blessed are said to pity them by desiring their salvation–and by passion, in which way they are pitied by the good men who are in the state of wayfarers. But in the future state it will be impossible for them to be taken away from their unhappiness: and consequently it will not be possible to pity their sufferings according to right reason. Therefore the blessed in glory will have no pity on the damned. (Supp. Q.94 a.2)
To see those in hell, from the God’s-eye point of view, is to see the good of God giving to them (and to all rational creatures) free choice, their use of that free choice to turn themselves away from God eternally even though sufficient grace was given to them by God to turn to Him freely, and the justice of their resulting state of eternal separation from God. That’s not easy for us to conceive, in our present condition. But, for some reason, the eternal suffering of Satan and the other demons does not seem to detract from our conception of the possibility of the happiness of the saints in heaven. And yet, the humans who end up in hell do so for the same reason the fallen angels end up in hell, and are, like the demons, in a state in which their wills are irreversibly ‘fixed’ in opposition to God, their choice against God prior to their dying in a state of mortal sin, being, at the moment of their death, crystallized into their eternal stance of opposition to and repulsion by God and His love. The perfect happiness of God and the saints does not depend on ignoring the damned or sweeping them under the rug of their mind’s eye; rather, the damned are seen by the saints through the Beatific Vision, and thus as God in His perfect happiness sees them.
When I pray for my family and friends who are not Christians, and who do not seem to be seeking Truth, I often find myself overcome to the point of desperation by the prospect of any one of them falling into the darkness, that then expanding to anyone at all.
What is right and true in what you say here is the urgency of evangelism and prayer for those who do not know the gospel of Christ. In Calvinism, if a person is non-elect, you can’t tell him the gospel (that Christ died for him), because Christ didn’t die for him, so there is no gospel for him. But if he is elect, you don’t need to tell him, because all his sins are already paid for, and therefore he can’t possibly go to hell; so he doesn’t need anything from you. Therefore, either way, evangelism is entirely unnecessary. But in the Catholic faith, our prayers and our actions really do matter, and truly make a difference in the spiritual realm. We are not just pawns in God’s determined machine. We are free agents in the middle of a spiritual war for the souls of men, the dragon making war on the rest of Mary’s offspring. (Rev 12:17) As members of Christ we can and do truly bring Christ to those sitting in darkness, filling up in our flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions (Col 1:24). What is needed among the soldiers of Christ is courage, fidelity, determination and perseverance, in true union with our bishops and Christ’s Vicar on earth, and faithful stewardship of the ‘little’ things Christ has entrusted to us. Don’t despair — He who is with and in us is greater than he who is in the world. Our prayers are not unheard, even if sometimes their answer is delayed. (Daniel 10:13) Moreover, we can uphold each other in the Body of Christ and carry each other’s burdens through our prayers for each other, and our mutual encouragement and mutual support. So I encourage you to allow your prayer burdens to be shared by the Body.
end of quote
Also how can God be happy when there are those who are eternally damned? from comment 21 here http://www.calledtocommunion.com/2011/04/lawrence-feingold-on-freedom-of-the-will/#comment-183143
No comments:
Post a Comment