The problem is that the various "paths" don't really work unless you actually believe in the path you are on, and are not just behaving instrumentally (ie, "I go to church because it's good for community, but I don't believe any of it" type of thing). And the beliefs of all of them differ quite a bit, and many of them have uncharitable things to say (or have done in the not distant past) about other religions, generally or specifically, which makes it hard to actually be a perennialist and a believer, in the full sense, in any one of the "paths". This is why I think many people who have that kind of perspective end up as UUs, because that is a form of religion in which they are not actually within a "path" (at least not one of the historical ones, which is what perennialism is about) but are trying to straddle them ... perennialists generally took a dim view of that kind of synthetic spirituality, but it seems to me that you can't really be both a perennialist and a true believer in one of the paths -- it's contradictory.
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On universalism, it's an interesting argument. I have been troubled about this at times as well, but it has never been my main trouble.
My main trouble has always been the knot of theodicy coupled with omniscience and omnipotence, and the way the Book of Job "handles" this. Hart deals with this, in typical fashion for him, as an aside in the text you quote:
"No refuge is offered here by some specious distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent wills—between, that is, his universal will for creation apart from the fall and his particular will regarding each creature in consequence of the fall. Under the canopy of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, the consequent is already wholly virtually present in the antecedent."
Yes. Hart here is talking about how you can't separate God's generally benevolent will from his will for a specific person. A similar issue arises regarding theodicy itself, namely: an omniscient God would, when deciding to create creatures with free will and moral agency, at the very least know all of the potential outcomes of that, and the probabilities for them. One of the most common rejoinders to the problem of theodicy is that God granted wide moral agency in order to permit the possibility of choosing love, but this raises similar questions to what Hart is doing with respect to hell, namely what conception of morality could ever justify knowingly creating the possibility of Auschwitz (and knowing that it was a possibility, as well as the probability of it coming to pass) as a necessary potentiality to permit the choice to love? Certainly no conception of morality that I am aware of. As we know, the Book of Job's response to this problem is "the answer is above your paygrade, because you don't have the entire picture, only I, God, do" ... but is that really a satisfactory answer?
It seems to me that this kind of question has never really been satisfactorily answered -- answers have been given, but they all have a lot of problems.
Does that mean it's impossible to believe in God? No, I don't think so. I do think it means that there is much more mystery than cut-and-dried when it comes to God than we may prefer to think, or at least than many religious believers, of any of the various Christian denominations at least, would prefer to think most of the time. There's a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense, and that's where the faith part comes in.
Like Jeremy, I have more issues believing the universe is solely material and just spontaneously came into existence, or is itself eternal, than I do believing that there is a force behind it all. The extent to which any religion actually understands what that is, is an open question, it seems to me. But, even so, many of us can still benefit from belonging to a faith tradition, not instrumentally, but believing as we are able, despite seeing the problems and contradictions. It very much depends on one's own experiences and makeup. I do relate to your own struggles here quite a bit, as someone who grew up Catholic (12 years of Catholic school), even though my family, while practicing, was never particularly pious outside of obligations -- I still get the culture and the challenges it raises for many people.
To your first paragraph, yes, perennialism is necessarily an esoteric teaching. It's meant to be discovered individually, and it's adherents should not say anything to undermine their own religious traditions except to those who are ready to hear and to be similarly discreet.
This, by the way, is what's so egregious about Pope Francis' conduct- if a perennialist ascended to the papacy he would know not to say these kinds of things. On the contrary he would be zealous about building up the faith and the strength of his own tradition! A perennialist would like to avoid causing people the kind of distress that Steve has suffered, because what matters to him is that they persevere in their traditio, whatever that tradition might be.
My other take, because I thought about this a lot a few years ago, is that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor is properly understood not at all as a hypocrite but rather as a really splendid perennialist, who holds to a personal esoteric reassurance even as he practices his tradition scrupulously.
Brendan, it sounds as if you have been reading Alistair McFadden's enthralling monograph on the totally weird stuff going on among "traditional" Catholics. Perennialism gets a prominent mention there. Along with Hermeticism, Kabbala, magic, Gnosticism, reincarnation and much more. Trad Catholics seem particularly vulnerable to these esoteric movements. It suggests an inner fading of faith, with a readiness to study unCatholic spiritualities. I have an interest because Valentin Tomberg and his key tome "Meditations on the Tarot" are extensively mentioned. And Tomberg wrote this fat book in a very ordinary house about 15 minutes walk from my home in Reading, about 40 miles west of London.
I never understood why almost all of the pressure or responsibility is on the lost, broken, blind sheep to find the True loving Shepherd. That seems backwards to me.
Well written and luminously clear, as always. You raise some excellent questions that cannot be answered with apologetic clichés. I'll be wrestling with these thoughts for awhile.
Hello, Steve. I finally worked out how to comment on your wonderful articles.
As a Catholic, you do not have to believe most people go to hell. I do not know what God presents to a person before his death. Perhaps a vision of truth and a choice?
Regarding the Vatican 2 popes, a solution to the dilemma is Sedevacantism. I am on the fence with this.I wish I had all the answers.
I wish you and your family all the best. I was delighted to read about your beautiful new home.
"Don’t you see that your entire faith is predicated on fear? Fear of hell, fear of losing the state of grace, fear of God’s implacable wrath against you or your loved ones? Don’t you see that you are not so much driven by “zeal” to save souls from the devil, but from God, whom you fear far more?..."
WOW! Spot on, Steve. Who you were during your 1P5 days, is basically me from my homeschooling days until early college. Then the last decade or so has been a very, VERY gradual reevaluation of everything. My questions started in a different place but I wound up with the same idea that universalism is the only way to fully accept the idea of an omnibenevolent God. I struggle very much with the underlying fear in Catholicism. Even the post Vatican II Church, with its relatively softer language, is still built on a foundation of fearing and eternal hell.
To share a bit more personal context, I fell in love with and married someone outside the faith. She's always been respectful, and even on vacation overseas, she helps me find Churches for Sundays. Once, even her parents caught me walking to Church and they volunteered to drive me the rest of the way. We share pretty much all the same values, with the exception of the specific theological commitments, and some particularities of the Catholic sexual ethic (which despite my misgivings, I consider as being THE ideal, but I don't believe deviations warrant an eternal hell). I don't see how she and her lovely family are excluded from salvation because they don't have the same theological baggage Roman Catholics do.
In my heart, I cannot accept Extra Ecclessiam Nulla Salus...and whatever part of me clings to that teaching does so out of fear.
Very well expressed, as per usual. I follow you almost solely for your catholic commentary. I can understand why you'd rather leave that stuff in the rear view mirror, but I hope you don't completely stop.
Great post! These are the type of posts that keep me frequenting your substack! Not saying I don't enjoy reading other things you have to say, but your philosophical and theological questioning and journey is what initially drew me. I'm in a similar place in life so this helps me immensely. I guess you could say I'm deconstructing or maybe just putting things on hold, but whatever the label, I appreciate this discussion coming from a well-formed catholic (or ex-catholic).
It's funny how my thinking has progressed along a similar vein. I was set off by a personal event that happened to my family and the reaction by some in our trad community was appalling. This shook me out of a stupor of sorts, and I was suddenly aware of the pharisaical rigorist LARPing goofiness into which I had led my family. I was strangely aware of the neuroses I had cultivated in myself by living a life of fearful rule keeping in order to avoid hell. Simply put, that lifestyle no longer seemed livable in a practical or existential way. I was becoming neurotic and was surrounded by neurotics which I believe is the logical conclusion of trad catholicism.
I tried to live the normie catholic thing, but as I was still aware that my entire faith was based on fear and not love of God, I realized that unless universalism is true, I could no longer believe in the God of Christianity. I began questioning the existence of God and realized that functionally, God does not exist. Life goes on as if there were no God. Good things happen to bad people and vice-versa. The supernatural, at least in my life and the life of every single individual I have ever met, is completely absent. I read a framed inscription at a public place the other day that said something to the effect of: "God answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is wait." What a load of crap! A meaningless statement if there ever was one. It says absolutely nothing, but that is exactly what we're expected to believe and how we're expected to function. Divine Hidenness, in other words, has become a real issue for me.
The only thing keeping me from atheism, is the fact that I cannot let go of the aristotelian-thomistic notion of the God of Pure Actuality. Clearly a God who is in any way a being among beings, even the greatest of beings is absurd, yet everyone seems to be arguing against a really big Zeus. But in my mind a God who is Existence Itself seems necessary for there to be anything existing at all. So a God who is being-itself yet does not meddle in affairs, basically like Tillich describes, is where I'm settled for now. How do you deal with this Steve, if you don't mind discussing it? You're more familiar with this thomistic view of God than I am so I'm curious if you've wrested with this.
Thank you for the great post and for letting me borrow your substack for this ridiculously long comment! I won't make a habit of it, but this post just really resonates with me.
Such a great comment, thank you. To answer your question...I honestly don't know. 3 years out from the bomb, I'm just at the point where I'm starting to not be angry about it all the time. I can think more objectively. A lot of the residual guilt over not doing the Catholic thing, which was incredibly strong in the beginning, has faded into near silence.
I think now, finally, I can start to evaluate things with more clarity.
For me, the philosophical arguments don't carry as much weight. I just seem unable to engage with ideas like "the God of pure Actuality" in a meaningful way. IDK what it is, but the way philosophers try to spin realities out of semantics just never sits right with me.
OTOH, I've been witness to the effects of supernatural phenomena on several people, and while I don't know the full dataset on what I saw (especially since I didn't experience it directly), I feel fairly confident that there are intelligent forces at work in the universe that lie outside of our range of standard physical perception. This alone keeps me open to what it may be. That, and the fact that the universe is a kind of cold and lonely place without anyone up there to talk to.
"And don’t even start with “it isn’t ex cathedra.” If it has to be ex cathedra — which most theologians agree has almost never been used — then it’s utterly worthless."
Can you elaborate this statement of yours and why “it isn’t ex cathedra” isn't a cogent argument? What is "utterly worthless", what he said the other day, or something else?
" Multiple world religions (and some offshoots) claim exclusivity of membership as necessary for salvation, but none can prove that they are the True Path™."
I often hear this cited, but I've had trouble coming up with examples. Do you have any specific examples? Judaism doesn't teach this. While some Islamic theologians teach this, there is not a consensus. I asked ChatGPT and everything it came up with was similar in that there *were* strict interpretations, but they were not universal among each world religion. I think it is expected that there would be a least some people in every religion that were exclusivist. Do you think this disproves that everyone has an opportunity to be saved?
You raise some very valid points and are struggling with admittedly difficult issues. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I agree that a servile fear-based and rule-based approach to God is virtually worthless, and Catholics often fall into that trap. In my experience, the key out of this was a personal encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ through humbling myself before him and surrendering everything into his hands, acknowledging my own powerlessness and trusting in Him. This is not incompatible with Catholicism. One can look to Benedict XVI's teachings on this.
If infallibility only applies to the pope when he's speaking ex cathedra -- IOW, saying something that the Church has always believed but not formally defined, and doing so only with extreme rarity like the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption -- then it's really just a tautological power, not a supernatural charism. It's like saying, "Well, he's only infallible when he says something like '2 + 2= 4'." If that's the case, everyone is infallible some of the time.
If the charism doesn't actively guard against a pope spreading error on faith and morals, what good is it? It certainly seems Vatican I viewed it that way. Here's the last bit of Pastor Aeternus. Infallibility is supposed to be part of the "never-failing faith" associated with the Petrine office, and a guardian against the spreading of error. That's clearly false. On top of it, it's defined as "divine assistance" not "every dude with a funny hat agrees."
6. For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles. Indeed, their apostolic teaching was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Savior to the prince of his disciples: "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren."[60]
7. This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this See so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine. Thus the tendency to schism is removed and the whole Church is preserved in unity, and, resting on its foundation, can stand firm against the gates of hell.
8. But since in this very age when the salutary effectiveness of the apostolic office is most especially needed, not a few are to be found who disparage its authority, we judge it absolutely necessary to affirm solemnly the prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God was pleased to attach to the supreme pastoral office.
9. Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the christian faith, to the glory of God our savior, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion and for the salvation of the christian people, with the approval of the Sacred Council, we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.
While awaiting Steve's response, let me just say that I don't find "it isn't ex cathedra" a cogent argument either, because if it is true (according to the strictest view) that the pope has only spoken ex cathedra once or twice in history, that's awfully little to base my religious practice on. So basically, I wouldn't have to believe anything in any of the 20th century encyclicals etc.?
I recommend reading the works of Fr. Dumitru Staniloae. In the Orthodox Christian understanding, God is good, but not in the same way humans are good. He is more like the Shishigami who spreads life and new frameworks of existence wherever he goes.
Through reason we know God as the creative source of all that exists and the fulfillment of the human quest for ultimate meaning - meaning found not through understanding, but new ways of being. Our journey with God is not, primarily, a moral or intellectual pursuit. That's why we do not try to understand or explain realities like the Incarnation or the Trinity as much as we simply strive to live by them. After all, a physicist may know the wavelength of green light and the velocity of its photons, but he cannot express the ineffable experience of actually seeing green. Meanwhile, the painter knows colors directly and can harmonize with the sadness of blue, the urgency of red, or the joy of yellow. In fact, not only in theology, but in every domain of human activity, our human experience transcends rationality.
This means that reason is the lowest, most basic kind of knowing. It's all about counting without any comprehension of the nature of what's being counted. Mathematical formulas are its most honest expression, because the symbols make no pretension of being anything other than empty placeholders. If you want to balance your accounting books, detect a scam, forecast quantities, or build a house, reason will serve you well. On the other hand, if you want to be fulfilled, or truly understand yourself and humanity, or find your place in life - that's not amenable to a calculation, which is all reason is, in the final analysis.
“Revelation consists,” Staniloae writes, “not so much in a disclosure of a sum of theoretical information about a God enclosed within his own transcendence, as it consists in God’s act of descending to man and of raising man up to himself so that there might be achieved, in Christ, the deepest possible union” (I:34). Our religion doesn't center on a set of statements in a "deposit of faith." Rather, people have told us about how God became man in Jesus Christ and conquered death. They have passed on to us sacred rituals, through which we may encounter and unite ourselves to that same enfleshed God. We are surrounded in worship by sights and smells that support and invite that encounter and union.
And so when it comes to questions about the uniqueness and truth of our religion, Christ's declaration, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me", is not a dry fact or a line in a dusty catechism we recite from memory. It is a reality encountered, an admission of our own firsthand experience, similar to the love I receive from my wife. Many Orthodox Christians agree with Christ's statement precisely because they've walked other ways - and they led in circles, or to destruction.
Likewise, although there are some people who are currently troubling our Church by their uncritical embrace of western modes of speculative theology (including David Bentley Hart), the common faithful know the reality of Hell through our shared experiences. We may not be able to understand or to process intellectually how someone could freely choose Hell, much less choose evil at all, but it's happened to the people we know, including some of our loved ones. We ourselves have chosen to do evil to others, and we often cannot understand why. If we cannot always understand ourselves, how can we understand others? Or God?
It's kind of like how Ryan Wesley Routh's son is going around right now saying that his dad isn't a violent man and he can't believe his dad would target the former president - the limitations of his reason and limited experience do not invalidate what his father did. That's why David Bentley Hart's incomprehension of how evils committed in time can have eternal effects doesn't impact the reality of Hell one bit.
The reality, which many of us have seen and touched, is that God's love is like a river of fire that flows from his throne and irrigates paradise. However, for those with hate in their hearts, the river of love will burn and suffocate them. Returning to my opening analogy, for those who embrace life and harmony, the Shishigami is the source of abundance. For those who do not, the Shishigami is destruction, and its curse is unending. Debating methods of harvesting lumber or the motives and justice of the Shishigami are ultimately irrelevant to its reality.
The world, and its maker, doesn't center around us or align with our conceptions. Therefore, we would do well to plunge ourselves into the experience of the world and its maker and expand our conceptions rather than to talk idly within the confines of the prison of the mind.
I love the Shishigame concept but didn't know it was a word until you posted this. I've often thought of Mononoke in my conception of God as an implacable creative force, indifferent, spreading life with every movement.
I bristle at the idea that deeply intellectualized concepts like the Trinity or the Incarnation, should not be attempted to be understood by human reason. These things are entirely unknowable outside of theology, which is reason-driven, so reason seems like the only heuristic that would work in trying even in a partial way to understand them.
To my mind, anything that is essential to understand about God should be self-evident. Otherwise, what is there to distinguish it from any other myth?
"We may not be able to understand or to process intellectually how someone could freely choose Hell, much less choose evil at all, but it's happened to the people we know, including some of our loved ones. We ourselves have chosen to do evil to others, and we often cannot understand why. If we cannot always understand ourselves, how can we understand others? Or God?"
This is precisely the problem: we don't understand hell, and we don't understand why we choose evil, which indicates we can't ever be fully culpable for it. We do things we do not mean or wish to do, or we confuse lesser goods with greater, or we are simply seeking to numb some pain that drowns out a rightly-ordered hierarchy of good and evil in the abstract.
I cannot see myself ever accepting the idea that evils committed in time, by intellectually-limited people who are warped and stunted by the traumas of our deeply corrupted existence can merit an eternal torment that could only justly be visited on a being with perfect knowledge and a perfected will.
And even then, eternity is too much.
Personally, I'd be happy to "plunge myself into the experience of the world and its maker" but he's too busy hiding for that to happen.
"I can't in complete honesty exclude the possibility that this is all an elaborate autohypnosis of sorts. People develop all manner of beliefs, enthusiasms, and coping mechanisms; what makes mine true in terms that reason finds compelling?"
If Francis' words from 2017 mean anything at all, he is plainly a Universalist. It would be fully consistent with his pre-2017 saturation emphasis on Mercy. And it would be fully consistent with the April 2018 headline "Pope Francis 'abolishes Hell'". And it would be fully consistent with the Feb 2019 Document on Human Fraternity which proclaims that all religions are willed by God. But he obviously cannot (yet) call himself a Universalist and keep the day job.
Naturally, the Popesplainers are eager to explain that his words mean something else. But they really need to go all the way to our old friend Humpty Dumpty who honestly (or dishonestly) declared that when he used a word it meant anything he wanted it to mean. And they cannot (yet) call themselves friends of Humpty.
I believe Jesus when He said: No one comes to the Father except through Me. I also believe Him when He said "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it." So, does that mean I have to believe nonbelievers/other believers go to Hell? Ah, I think they go to Purgatory. Purgatory in my mind's eye is "custom" reform school." For some, like a pious Jew, it might be just getting to know and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (on the other side). Now why didn't God tell us that "there's another way" when He was on earth? Because everyone would say "Great, I'll take the long way home." But the long way home is not fun. And there's no guarantee of Heaven when one "games it." Many people have a huge tragic flaw (like addiction or adultery) that will risk Hell for them if they think "fun and frolick now, Purgatory, yeah, I'll opt for Purgatory." That's sort of putting God to the test.
Did Jesus hint at Purgatory? Yes He did. He hinted at it when He said "For men, it is not possible, but for God, all things are possible," when his Apostles said "then who can be saved?" (They were astonished that Jesus said the rich can hardly get into Heaven.) Second, Jesus said that if you sin and knew better, you're going to get a much more severe beating.
So is it safe to stay outside the RCC? No, I don't think so. Why? The Vatican is built on the bones of St. Peter, so that's the "indicator" (St. Peter's bones have been found buried below the altar in St. Peter's basillica." Two, Jesus said, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have no life in you." That seems to be the case in my life--the time I spent away from the RCC was just one big period of confusion and error. Oh, yeah, I worked and studied, but I could not figure out what to do much of the time and made bad choices. Do I make bad choices now that I've been baptised in the HS (in a RC confessional)? Yeah, I make mistakes, but they're minor. God will not let me make a FATAL spiritual mistake, He will direct me away from it. I'd have to be overtaken by a perverse spirit to make a fatal mistake now, and He'd (HS) fight me tooth and nail. And it's really unpleasant to fight God, really bad news.
As far as Pope Francis goes, Pope Francis is just wrong. He is speaking heredically frequently or in such a confused manner that no one can figure out what he really is saying. Does he believe in blessing gay unions? It seems he does. So right there, anathema. I hope there are no such blessings taking place in the Vatican.
Anne, I'm sure you're aware that there are millions of evangelicals, fundamentalists, and 5 point Calvinists who adamantly believe that Catholics like you and me are going straight to hell, and we deserve it. And to prove their point they will proof text, cherry pick and rap on that Bible all day long with certainty that they are infallible. They will "talk to God" and get private revelations to reaffirm and "prove" what they already desperately want to believe. No matter what one chooses to believe (or not believe) they are going to someone's version of hell anyway. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to anyone of faith, but this doctrine of hell is so obscene, so grim, it's no wonder Christianity has caused so much estrangement amongst families and friends.
I know. I've had Prot friends tell me I am not a Christian and also others who don't want to associate with me unless I join their church. These are crosses. I just shrug.
Interestingly, the Pope's articulation has a name: perennialism. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy
The problem is that the various "paths" don't really work unless you actually believe in the path you are on, and are not just behaving instrumentally (ie, "I go to church because it's good for community, but I don't believe any of it" type of thing). And the beliefs of all of them differ quite a bit, and many of them have uncharitable things to say (or have done in the not distant past) about other religions, generally or specifically, which makes it hard to actually be a perennialist and a believer, in the full sense, in any one of the "paths". This is why I think many people who have that kind of perspective end up as UUs, because that is a form of religion in which they are not actually within a "path" (at least not one of the historical ones, which is what perennialism is about) but are trying to straddle them ... perennialists generally took a dim view of that kind of synthetic spirituality, but it seems to me that you can't really be both a perennialist and a true believer in one of the paths -- it's contradictory.
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On universalism, it's an interesting argument. I have been troubled about this at times as well, but it has never been my main trouble.
My main trouble has always been the knot of theodicy coupled with omniscience and omnipotence, and the way the Book of Job "handles" this. Hart deals with this, in typical fashion for him, as an aside in the text you quote:
"No refuge is offered here by some specious distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent wills—between, that is, his universal will for creation apart from the fall and his particular will regarding each creature in consequence of the fall. Under the canopy of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, the consequent is already wholly virtually present in the antecedent."
Yes. Hart here is talking about how you can't separate God's generally benevolent will from his will for a specific person. A similar issue arises regarding theodicy itself, namely: an omniscient God would, when deciding to create creatures with free will and moral agency, at the very least know all of the potential outcomes of that, and the probabilities for them. One of the most common rejoinders to the problem of theodicy is that God granted wide moral agency in order to permit the possibility of choosing love, but this raises similar questions to what Hart is doing with respect to hell, namely what conception of morality could ever justify knowingly creating the possibility of Auschwitz (and knowing that it was a possibility, as well as the probability of it coming to pass) as a necessary potentiality to permit the choice to love? Certainly no conception of morality that I am aware of. As we know, the Book of Job's response to this problem is "the answer is above your paygrade, because you don't have the entire picture, only I, God, do" ... but is that really a satisfactory answer?
It seems to me that this kind of question has never really been satisfactorily answered -- answers have been given, but they all have a lot of problems.
Does that mean it's impossible to believe in God? No, I don't think so. I do think it means that there is much more mystery than cut-and-dried when it comes to God than we may prefer to think, or at least than many religious believers, of any of the various Christian denominations at least, would prefer to think most of the time. There's a lot of things that don't make a lot of sense, and that's where the faith part comes in.
Like Jeremy, I have more issues believing the universe is solely material and just spontaneously came into existence, or is itself eternal, than I do believing that there is a force behind it all. The extent to which any religion actually understands what that is, is an open question, it seems to me. But, even so, many of us can still benefit from belonging to a faith tradition, not instrumentally, but believing as we are able, despite seeing the problems and contradictions. It very much depends on one's own experiences and makeup. I do relate to your own struggles here quite a bit, as someone who grew up Catholic (12 years of Catholic school), even though my family, while practicing, was never particularly pious outside of obligations -- I still get the culture and the challenges it raises for many people.
Fantastic comment, Brendan, thank you for weighing in. Lots to chew on here.
To your first paragraph, yes, perennialism is necessarily an esoteric teaching. It's meant to be discovered individually, and it's adherents should not say anything to undermine their own religious traditions except to those who are ready to hear and to be similarly discreet.
This, by the way, is what's so egregious about Pope Francis' conduct- if a perennialist ascended to the papacy he would know not to say these kinds of things. On the contrary he would be zealous about building up the faith and the strength of his own tradition! A perennialist would like to avoid causing people the kind of distress that Steve has suffered, because what matters to him is that they persevere in their traditio, whatever that tradition might be.
My other take, because I thought about this a lot a few years ago, is that Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor is properly understood not at all as a hypocrite but rather as a really splendid perennialist, who holds to a personal esoteric reassurance even as he practices his tradition scrupulously.
Brendan, it sounds as if you have been reading Alistair McFadden's enthralling monograph on the totally weird stuff going on among "traditional" Catholics. Perennialism gets a prominent mention there. Along with Hermeticism, Kabbala, magic, Gnosticism, reincarnation and much more. Trad Catholics seem particularly vulnerable to these esoteric movements. It suggests an inner fading of faith, with a readiness to study unCatholic spiritualities. I have an interest because Valentin Tomberg and his key tome "Meditations on the Tarot" are extensively mentioned. And Tomberg wrote this fat book in a very ordinary house about 15 minutes walk from my home in Reading, about 40 miles west of London.
https://justacatholic.medium.com/observations-on-the-influence-of-the-occult-in-traditional-catholic-discourse-2d798e5ba51c
I never understood why almost all of the pressure or responsibility is on the lost, broken, blind sheep to find the True loving Shepherd. That seems backwards to me.
Well written and luminously clear, as always. You raise some excellent questions that cannot be answered with apologetic clichés. I'll be wrestling with these thoughts for awhile.
Thank you!
Hello, Steve. I finally worked out how to comment on your wonderful articles.
As a Catholic, you do not have to believe most people go to hell. I do not know what God presents to a person before his death. Perhaps a vision of truth and a choice?
Regarding the Vatican 2 popes, a solution to the dilemma is Sedevacantism. I am on the fence with this.I wish I had all the answers.
I wish you and your family all the best. I was delighted to read about your beautiful new home.
"Don’t you see that your entire faith is predicated on fear? Fear of hell, fear of losing the state of grace, fear of God’s implacable wrath against you or your loved ones? Don’t you see that you are not so much driven by “zeal” to save souls from the devil, but from God, whom you fear far more?..."
WOW! Spot on, Steve. Who you were during your 1P5 days, is basically me from my homeschooling days until early college. Then the last decade or so has been a very, VERY gradual reevaluation of everything. My questions started in a different place but I wound up with the same idea that universalism is the only way to fully accept the idea of an omnibenevolent God. I struggle very much with the underlying fear in Catholicism. Even the post Vatican II Church, with its relatively softer language, is still built on a foundation of fearing and eternal hell.
To share a bit more personal context, I fell in love with and married someone outside the faith. She's always been respectful, and even on vacation overseas, she helps me find Churches for Sundays. Once, even her parents caught me walking to Church and they volunteered to drive me the rest of the way. We share pretty much all the same values, with the exception of the specific theological commitments, and some particularities of the Catholic sexual ethic (which despite my misgivings, I consider as being THE ideal, but I don't believe deviations warrant an eternal hell). I don't see how she and her lovely family are excluded from salvation because they don't have the same theological baggage Roman Catholics do.
In my heart, I cannot accept Extra Ecclessiam Nulla Salus...and whatever part of me clings to that teaching does so out of fear.
Very well expressed, as per usual. I follow you almost solely for your catholic commentary. I can understand why you'd rather leave that stuff in the rear view mirror, but I hope you don't completely stop.
Great post! These are the type of posts that keep me frequenting your substack! Not saying I don't enjoy reading other things you have to say, but your philosophical and theological questioning and journey is what initially drew me. I'm in a similar place in life so this helps me immensely. I guess you could say I'm deconstructing or maybe just putting things on hold, but whatever the label, I appreciate this discussion coming from a well-formed catholic (or ex-catholic).
It's funny how my thinking has progressed along a similar vein. I was set off by a personal event that happened to my family and the reaction by some in our trad community was appalling. This shook me out of a stupor of sorts, and I was suddenly aware of the pharisaical rigorist LARPing goofiness into which I had led my family. I was strangely aware of the neuroses I had cultivated in myself by living a life of fearful rule keeping in order to avoid hell. Simply put, that lifestyle no longer seemed livable in a practical or existential way. I was becoming neurotic and was surrounded by neurotics which I believe is the logical conclusion of trad catholicism.
I tried to live the normie catholic thing, but as I was still aware that my entire faith was based on fear and not love of God, I realized that unless universalism is true, I could no longer believe in the God of Christianity. I began questioning the existence of God and realized that functionally, God does not exist. Life goes on as if there were no God. Good things happen to bad people and vice-versa. The supernatural, at least in my life and the life of every single individual I have ever met, is completely absent. I read a framed inscription at a public place the other day that said something to the effect of: "God answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes the answer is wait." What a load of crap! A meaningless statement if there ever was one. It says absolutely nothing, but that is exactly what we're expected to believe and how we're expected to function. Divine Hidenness, in other words, has become a real issue for me.
The only thing keeping me from atheism, is the fact that I cannot let go of the aristotelian-thomistic notion of the God of Pure Actuality. Clearly a God who is in any way a being among beings, even the greatest of beings is absurd, yet everyone seems to be arguing against a really big Zeus. But in my mind a God who is Existence Itself seems necessary for there to be anything existing at all. So a God who is being-itself yet does not meddle in affairs, basically like Tillich describes, is where I'm settled for now. How do you deal with this Steve, if you don't mind discussing it? You're more familiar with this thomistic view of God than I am so I'm curious if you've wrested with this.
Thank you for the great post and for letting me borrow your substack for this ridiculously long comment! I won't make a habit of it, but this post just really resonates with me.
Such a great comment, thank you. To answer your question...I honestly don't know. 3 years out from the bomb, I'm just at the point where I'm starting to not be angry about it all the time. I can think more objectively. A lot of the residual guilt over not doing the Catholic thing, which was incredibly strong in the beginning, has faded into near silence.
I think now, finally, I can start to evaluate things with more clarity.
For me, the philosophical arguments don't carry as much weight. I just seem unable to engage with ideas like "the God of pure Actuality" in a meaningful way. IDK what it is, but the way philosophers try to spin realities out of semantics just never sits right with me.
OTOH, I've been witness to the effects of supernatural phenomena on several people, and while I don't know the full dataset on what I saw (especially since I didn't experience it directly), I feel fairly confident that there are intelligent forces at work in the universe that lie outside of our range of standard physical perception. This alone keeps me open to what it may be. That, and the fact that the universe is a kind of cold and lonely place without anyone up there to talk to.
"And don’t even start with “it isn’t ex cathedra.” If it has to be ex cathedra — which most theologians agree has almost never been used — then it’s utterly worthless."
Can you elaborate this statement of yours and why “it isn’t ex cathedra” isn't a cogent argument? What is "utterly worthless", what he said the other day, or something else?
" Multiple world religions (and some offshoots) claim exclusivity of membership as necessary for salvation, but none can prove that they are the True Path™."
I often hear this cited, but I've had trouble coming up with examples. Do you have any specific examples? Judaism doesn't teach this. While some Islamic theologians teach this, there is not a consensus. I asked ChatGPT and everything it came up with was similar in that there *were* strict interpretations, but they were not universal among each world religion. I think it is expected that there would be a least some people in every religion that were exclusivist. Do you think this disproves that everyone has an opportunity to be saved?
You raise some very valid points and are struggling with admittedly difficult issues. I don't pretend to have all the answers. I agree that a servile fear-based and rule-based approach to God is virtually worthless, and Catholics often fall into that trap. In my experience, the key out of this was a personal encounter with the Person of Jesus Christ through humbling myself before him and surrendering everything into his hands, acknowledging my own powerlessness and trusting in Him. This is not incompatible with Catholicism. One can look to Benedict XVI's teachings on this.
If infallibility only applies to the pope when he's speaking ex cathedra -- IOW, saying something that the Church has always believed but not formally defined, and doing so only with extreme rarity like the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption -- then it's really just a tautological power, not a supernatural charism. It's like saying, "Well, he's only infallible when he says something like '2 + 2= 4'." If that's the case, everyone is infallible some of the time.
If the charism doesn't actively guard against a pope spreading error on faith and morals, what good is it? It certainly seems Vatican I viewed it that way. Here's the last bit of Pastor Aeternus. Infallibility is supposed to be part of the "never-failing faith" associated with the Petrine office, and a guardian against the spreading of error. That's clearly false. On top of it, it's defined as "divine assistance" not "every dude with a funny hat agrees."
6. For the Holy Spirit was promised to the successors of Peter not so that they might, by his revelation, make known some new doctrine, but that, by his assistance, they might religiously guard and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith transmitted by the apostles. Indeed, their apostolic teaching was embraced by all the venerable fathers and reverenced and followed by all the holy orthodox doctors, for they knew very well that this See of St. Peter always remains unblemished by any error, in accordance with the divine promise of our Lord and Savior to the prince of his disciples: "I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren."[60]
7. This gift of truth and never-failing faith was therefore divinely conferred on Peter and his successors in this See so that they might discharge their exalted office for the salvation of all, and so that the whole flock of Christ might be kept away by them from the poisonous food of error and be nourished with the sustenance of heavenly doctrine. Thus the tendency to schism is removed and the whole Church is preserved in unity, and, resting on its foundation, can stand firm against the gates of hell.
8. But since in this very age when the salutary effectiveness of the apostolic office is most especially needed, not a few are to be found who disparage its authority, we judge it absolutely necessary to affirm solemnly the prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God was pleased to attach to the supreme pastoral office.
9. Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the christian faith, to the glory of God our savior, for the exaltation of the Catholic religion and for the salvation of the christian people, with the approval of the Sacred Council, we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that when the Roman Pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA, that is, when, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church, he possesses, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his Church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the Church, irreformable.
While awaiting Steve's response, let me just say that I don't find "it isn't ex cathedra" a cogent argument either, because if it is true (according to the strictest view) that the pope has only spoken ex cathedra once or twice in history, that's awfully little to base my religious practice on. So basically, I wouldn't have to believe anything in any of the 20th century encyclicals etc.?
I recommend reading the works of Fr. Dumitru Staniloae. In the Orthodox Christian understanding, God is good, but not in the same way humans are good. He is more like the Shishigami who spreads life and new frameworks of existence wherever he goes.
Through reason we know God as the creative source of all that exists and the fulfillment of the human quest for ultimate meaning - meaning found not through understanding, but new ways of being. Our journey with God is not, primarily, a moral or intellectual pursuit. That's why we do not try to understand or explain realities like the Incarnation or the Trinity as much as we simply strive to live by them. After all, a physicist may know the wavelength of green light and the velocity of its photons, but he cannot express the ineffable experience of actually seeing green. Meanwhile, the painter knows colors directly and can harmonize with the sadness of blue, the urgency of red, or the joy of yellow. In fact, not only in theology, but in every domain of human activity, our human experience transcends rationality.
This means that reason is the lowest, most basic kind of knowing. It's all about counting without any comprehension of the nature of what's being counted. Mathematical formulas are its most honest expression, because the symbols make no pretension of being anything other than empty placeholders. If you want to balance your accounting books, detect a scam, forecast quantities, or build a house, reason will serve you well. On the other hand, if you want to be fulfilled, or truly understand yourself and humanity, or find your place in life - that's not amenable to a calculation, which is all reason is, in the final analysis.
“Revelation consists,” Staniloae writes, “not so much in a disclosure of a sum of theoretical information about a God enclosed within his own transcendence, as it consists in God’s act of descending to man and of raising man up to himself so that there might be achieved, in Christ, the deepest possible union” (I:34). Our religion doesn't center on a set of statements in a "deposit of faith." Rather, people have told us about how God became man in Jesus Christ and conquered death. They have passed on to us sacred rituals, through which we may encounter and unite ourselves to that same enfleshed God. We are surrounded in worship by sights and smells that support and invite that encounter and union.
And so when it comes to questions about the uniqueness and truth of our religion, Christ's declaration, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me", is not a dry fact or a line in a dusty catechism we recite from memory. It is a reality encountered, an admission of our own firsthand experience, similar to the love I receive from my wife. Many Orthodox Christians agree with Christ's statement precisely because they've walked other ways - and they led in circles, or to destruction.
Likewise, although there are some people who are currently troubling our Church by their uncritical embrace of western modes of speculative theology (including David Bentley Hart), the common faithful know the reality of Hell through our shared experiences. We may not be able to understand or to process intellectually how someone could freely choose Hell, much less choose evil at all, but it's happened to the people we know, including some of our loved ones. We ourselves have chosen to do evil to others, and we often cannot understand why. If we cannot always understand ourselves, how can we understand others? Or God?
It's kind of like how Ryan Wesley Routh's son is going around right now saying that his dad isn't a violent man and he can't believe his dad would target the former president - the limitations of his reason and limited experience do not invalidate what his father did. That's why David Bentley Hart's incomprehension of how evils committed in time can have eternal effects doesn't impact the reality of Hell one bit.
The reality, which many of us have seen and touched, is that God's love is like a river of fire that flows from his throne and irrigates paradise. However, for those with hate in their hearts, the river of love will burn and suffocate them. Returning to my opening analogy, for those who embrace life and harmony, the Shishigami is the source of abundance. For those who do not, the Shishigami is destruction, and its curse is unending. Debating methods of harvesting lumber or the motives and justice of the Shishigami are ultimately irrelevant to its reality.
The world, and its maker, doesn't center around us or align with our conceptions. Therefore, we would do well to plunge ourselves into the experience of the world and its maker and expand our conceptions rather than to talk idly within the confines of the prison of the mind.
I love the Shishigame concept but didn't know it was a word until you posted this. I've often thought of Mononoke in my conception of God as an implacable creative force, indifferent, spreading life with every movement.
I bristle at the idea that deeply intellectualized concepts like the Trinity or the Incarnation, should not be attempted to be understood by human reason. These things are entirely unknowable outside of theology, which is reason-driven, so reason seems like the only heuristic that would work in trying even in a partial way to understand them.
To my mind, anything that is essential to understand about God should be self-evident. Otherwise, what is there to distinguish it from any other myth?
"We may not be able to understand or to process intellectually how someone could freely choose Hell, much less choose evil at all, but it's happened to the people we know, including some of our loved ones. We ourselves have chosen to do evil to others, and we often cannot understand why. If we cannot always understand ourselves, how can we understand others? Or God?"
This is precisely the problem: we don't understand hell, and we don't understand why we choose evil, which indicates we can't ever be fully culpable for it. We do things we do not mean or wish to do, or we confuse lesser goods with greater, or we are simply seeking to numb some pain that drowns out a rightly-ordered hierarchy of good and evil in the abstract.
I cannot see myself ever accepting the idea that evils committed in time, by intellectually-limited people who are warped and stunted by the traumas of our deeply corrupted existence can merit an eternal torment that could only justly be visited on a being with perfect knowledge and a perfected will.
And even then, eternity is too much.
Personally, I'd be happy to "plunge myself into the experience of the world and its maker" but he's too busy hiding for that to happen.
I found this particularly insightful:
"I can't in complete honesty exclude the possibility that this is all an elaborate autohypnosis of sorts. People develop all manner of beliefs, enthusiasms, and coping mechanisms; what makes mine true in terms that reason finds compelling?"
I cannot begin to answer this question.
Great article, Steve. Sandro Magister wrote an article in 2017 which summarises the main bombshells of Francis' pontificate in a small space.
https://onepeterfive.com/worlds-end-update-last-things-according-francis/
If Francis' words from 2017 mean anything at all, he is plainly a Universalist. It would be fully consistent with his pre-2017 saturation emphasis on Mercy. And it would be fully consistent with the April 2018 headline "Pope Francis 'abolishes Hell'". And it would be fully consistent with the Feb 2019 Document on Human Fraternity which proclaims that all religions are willed by God. But he obviously cannot (yet) call himself a Universalist and keep the day job.
Naturally, the Popesplainers are eager to explain that his words mean something else. But they really need to go all the way to our old friend Humpty Dumpty who honestly (or dishonestly) declared that when he used a word it meant anything he wanted it to mean. And they cannot (yet) call themselves friends of Humpty.
It's funny to see you cite something I edited and published. Back in the "old days." ;)
I think he may be an annihilationist, but he seems to only let his freak flag fly with Scalfari.
I believe Jesus when He said: No one comes to the Father except through Me. I also believe Him when He said "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it." So, does that mean I have to believe nonbelievers/other believers go to Hell? Ah, I think they go to Purgatory. Purgatory in my mind's eye is "custom" reform school." For some, like a pious Jew, it might be just getting to know and accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior (on the other side). Now why didn't God tell us that "there's another way" when He was on earth? Because everyone would say "Great, I'll take the long way home." But the long way home is not fun. And there's no guarantee of Heaven when one "games it." Many people have a huge tragic flaw (like addiction or adultery) that will risk Hell for them if they think "fun and frolick now, Purgatory, yeah, I'll opt for Purgatory." That's sort of putting God to the test.
Did Jesus hint at Purgatory? Yes He did. He hinted at it when He said "For men, it is not possible, but for God, all things are possible," when his Apostles said "then who can be saved?" (They were astonished that Jesus said the rich can hardly get into Heaven.) Second, Jesus said that if you sin and knew better, you're going to get a much more severe beating.
So is it safe to stay outside the RCC? No, I don't think so. Why? The Vatican is built on the bones of St. Peter, so that's the "indicator" (St. Peter's bones have been found buried below the altar in St. Peter's basillica." Two, Jesus said, "Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you will have no life in you." That seems to be the case in my life--the time I spent away from the RCC was just one big period of confusion and error. Oh, yeah, I worked and studied, but I could not figure out what to do much of the time and made bad choices. Do I make bad choices now that I've been baptised in the HS (in a RC confessional)? Yeah, I make mistakes, but they're minor. God will not let me make a FATAL spiritual mistake, He will direct me away from it. I'd have to be overtaken by a perverse spirit to make a fatal mistake now, and He'd (HS) fight me tooth and nail. And it's really unpleasant to fight God, really bad news.
As far as Pope Francis goes, Pope Francis is just wrong. He is speaking heredically frequently or in such a confused manner that no one can figure out what he really is saying. Does he believe in blessing gay unions? It seems he does. So right there, anathema. I hope there are no such blessings taking place in the Vatican.
Sorry so long.
Anne, I'm sure you're aware that there are millions of evangelicals, fundamentalists, and 5 point Calvinists who adamantly believe that Catholics like you and me are going straight to hell, and we deserve it. And to prove their point they will proof text, cherry pick and rap on that Bible all day long with certainty that they are infallible. They will "talk to God" and get private revelations to reaffirm and "prove" what they already desperately want to believe. No matter what one chooses to believe (or not believe) they are going to someone's version of hell anyway. I'm not trying to be disrespectful to anyone of faith, but this doctrine of hell is so obscene, so grim, it's no wonder Christianity has caused so much estrangement amongst families and friends.
I know. I've had Prot friends tell me I am not a Christian and also others who don't want to associate with me unless I join their church. These are crosses. I just shrug.