The New Beatitudes

 

Xerxes, my friend the former left-wing columnist (who seems to have decided to clip his wings), wants the Beatitudes revised. He feels they no longer apply in modern times.

Are there indeed new problems or issues to which they should refer, but do not?

Xerxes cites drug overdose deaths. This is indeed currently an epidemic problem, but in principle, not new. Alcohol was a drug, and potentially a deadly drug, available in Jesus’s time. Not to mention hemp or opium, which seem to have been known. We must assume that Jesus did not consider this a moral issue, or an important moral issue.

In fact, he actually seems to have aided and abetted drunkenness at Cana.

Surely the more interesting question is, why did he not? Is it a moral issue? Or is addiction a symptom of something else?

Xerxes then notes that the Saviour would surely have had something to say about fossil fuel emissions. Granted, fossil fuel was probably not known in Jesus’s day; perhaps coal was sometimes used. But why is fossil fuel an issue? Carbon emissions, surely. So the same issue existed when people in his day burned charcoal or wood to get warm or cook their food. Jesus could have mentioned it; apparently he did not see fit to mention it. 

Is it a moral issue? Or is it an engineering problem: what is the best fuel to use?

“Would he have harsh words for those who know their product does harm, and keep doing it?” Xerxes asks.

People have always produced and sold products. Jesus was a carpenter; Paul a tentmaker; Peter a fisherman. Jesus could have mentioned this, but did not.

No question, this is a moral issue; but selling harmful products, a rotten fish or an unsound cabinet, is obviously and self-evidently wrong to the human conscience. There is no need for God to incarnate to tell us so, and no cause to bless anyone simply for not doing so.

“He talked about those who are persecuted. By the Romans. Or by other authorities. But I wonder what he would say about persecution by the social media, where individuals taking unpopular stands are hounded by hate messages and death threats. “ 

Jesus said “blessed are those who are persecuted.” He did not restrict this to persecution by legal authorities. It applies just as well to social media.

Yet he did restrict his blessing in another way: he did not bless simply for being persecuted. It was for being persecuted for righteousness. 

The distinction seems important. If you advocate the extermination of the Jews, raping women, eating children, or kicking puppies, you might indeed be unpopular, even persecuted. But this does not put you on the side of the angels.

So, in sum, there does not seem to be any demonstrated need for new Beatitudes. Why invent some?

Now, take it from the other end. Is there a case for any of Xerxes’s proposed new Beatitudes? For of course, he goes on to propose some.

“Blessed are the agnostics. Blessed are those who doubt, who aren’t entirely sure, who can still be surprised.”

This jumps out as obviously contradicted by the title of C.S. Lewis’s famous spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy. Surely this contradiction needs to be addressed.

If God is a person, with whom we can have an ongoing relationship, if he is not some abstract concept or cosmic watchmaker, he can be full of surprises. Just as a friend or romantic partner is in any vital and living human relationship. The world of faith is one of wonders and miracles, because everything is a conversation with him, and everything has meaning.

An agnostic, on the other hand, is one “who believes that nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of God or of anything beyond material phenomena.” Sounds like a pretty dead and boring life. For the agnostic there are no surprises; he can never be surprised by anything except perhaps what’s for dinner.

And it of course beggars belief that Jesus would bless us for not believing in him.

“Blessed are those who have nothing to offer.”

If this is simply a restatement of “blessed are the poor”—blessed are those who have few material goods to offer—fine; but nothing new. If not, it contradicts what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, immediately after the Beatitudes: “let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” We all have much to offer; if we do not offer it, we are hardly to be blessed.

“Blessed are those who have buried loved ones, whose tears could fill an ocean. Blessed are those who have loved enough to know what loss feels like.

Blessed are the mothers of the miscarried. 

Blessed are those who can’t fall apart because they have to keep it together for everyone else.”

Fine, and it all sounds noble and empathic. But surely these are just specific cases of “Blessed are those who mourn.” Best not to single out specific sorrows; it shouldn’t be a competition. And causes for sorrow are too varied and complex to all be enumerated in this way.

 “Blessed are those whom no one else notices. The kids who sit alone at school lunch tables. The laundry staff at hospitals. The sex workers and the night-shift street sweepers. The homeless guy sleeping in a doorway.”

One of these things is not like the other ones. Five are already covered by “blessed are the meek.” The unnoticed, the lonely kid, the laundry staff, the night sweepers, the homeless. But are soliciting prostitutes meek? Are they trying not to be noticed? And do they generally go unnoticed? Do they generally lack companionship?

There were of course prostitutes in Jesus's place and time, and he might have declared them blessed if he saw fit.

But what happened to our wish to condemn those who sell harmful products?

“Blessed are the unemployed, the unimpressive, the underrepresented.”

Blessing the unemployed contradicts Jesus’s admonition to “let your light shine.” Of course, if unemployment is not a choice, it is a hardship. But why would doing nothing be blessed in itself? 

Similarly, why would being unimpressive be blessed? Jesus says of those he beatifies, “you are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.” That sounds like being impressive. Having no talent is not a sign of holiness; our very term “talent” comes from Jesus’s parable of the talents, reflecting the assumption that our talents are given by God, and are there to be used. To go out and impress.

“Underrepresented” seems simply too vague to be meaningful. Represented where, and in what sense? If the intent is to apply race and sex quotas when putting together any representative body, per “DEI,” why is this meaningful? Why are race and sex so important? As opposed to, say, being left-handed, or bald, or having green eyes?

As the makers of the current series The Chosen insist on pointing out, there were surely black folks passing through Judea from sub-Saharan Africa in Jesus’ time, as well as Greeks, Romans, Persians, Arabs, Phoenicians. pagans, Zoroastrians, and of course many women. Not to mention various classes and social strata. Yet when Jesus chose his twelve apostles, there was no race, sex, ethnic or religious diversity: all “white” Jewish working class men.

Presumably Jesus was not against diversity; but “seeing yourself represented” was not important.

“Blessed are the wrongly accused, the ones who never catch a break, the ones for whom life is hard.”

This is already in the Beatitudes; almost their entire point. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.” 

Xerxes: “Blessed are those without documentation.”

Why is someone blessed simply because they do not have ID? I presume the intent is to bless “illegal immigrants.” Which is a dubious sentiment: bless those who break the law? Unjust laws, perhaps. But Christianity assumes a duty to obey the law in most circumstances. Jesus told his followers to pay their taxes.

“Blessed are those who make damaging business decisions for the sake of people they serve.”

This is difficult to parse. An employee of a business enterprise serves the investors in that firm, and has a fiduciary duty to make business decisions that are not damaging to their interests. That business, of course, also serves its customers. The employee has a duty to serve their interests as well. But if in doing so he damages the business, harming his employers, his position is morally ambiguous.

Jesus actually addresses this problem in the Parable of the Unjust Steward. It is, the parable seems to say, always in the self-interest of a business to be as helpful as possible to their customers. 

“And the lord commended the unjust steward, because he had done wisely: for the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

And it is in the interests of its customers, in turn, for a useful business to remain in business. 

Thus the conflict never actually arises.

Adam Smith pointed out the same thing.

“Blessed are the burned-out social workers and the overworked teachers and the pro-bono case takers”

Why not just “blessed are the overworked”? That Beatitude might have some traction. But the claim here seems to be that some occupations are more blessed than others. If so, teachers and lawyers are not the groups Jesus singles out for praise. “Teachers” and “lawyers,” awkwardly enough, translate in his day to “Pharisees” and “scribes.” He was actually not too keen on them. “Social workers” are probably also subsumed under “Pharisees.”

The proper and more interesting challenge is to understand what the Beatitudes mean. Why are these groups in particular blessed? And what does it mean to be blessed in this sense?

Xerxes actually responded to my dissents from his proposed new Beatitudes. He argued, firstly, that just because Jesus did not mention a thing did not mean he thought it was unimportant. Second, that he might have said many things, in his three years of ministry, not included in the Bible. And finally, that the Beatitudes as preserved by the Catholic Church needed to be amended because they excluded some from feeling blessed; they too should feel part of the flock.

This is a shift in his ground from his original argument, that Jesus would have said these things were he speaking today, but they were simply not present in his time. Apparently that point he concedes.

I do think it is a fair inference, however, that, if Jesus—or anyone else--did not mention something, that thing was not part of his core message. Otherwise, you could impute anything to anyone.

Jesus could have said these things, but they were not recorded? 

But we have four accounts. Assuming the sermon on the plain and the sermon on the mount are the same event, we have only this sermon, which we must therefore assume, by consensus of those who were there, included everything in Jesus’s core message. If there were other sermons, he must have said the same things in them—as is demonstrable if the sermon on the mount and the sermon on the plain were different events.

As with any text, we must go with what the text actually says, and not put words in anyone’s mouth. Once we do that, anyone can make anything say anything. No point in even reading the Bible then; or Shakespeare, or the Constitution, or any text.

Xerxes’s concluding argument seems to be that Jesus should have said these things, because nobody should feel “outside the fold,” that everyone should “feel blessed.”

But this is not Jesus’s message; he was making it clear that not everyone is in the fold, not everyone is blessed. Only these people cited in the Beatitudes. Luke pairs his four Beatitudes with the Four Woes, in which all those not covered by the Beatitudes are called out and excluded from God’s favour. 

“But woe to you who are rich,
   for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
   for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
   for you will mourn and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you, 
for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.”

Elsewhere, of course, Jesus speaks of the sheep and the goats—goats, being goats, are not “in the fold.” Jesus speaks in parables so that those outside the fold will not understand—here he calls them “swine.” Elsewhere, “vipers.” 

He is, in the end, alarmingly judgmental. Of the living and the dead.

That’s the text.

Evil Is Not the Problem; Good Is

 

Here's a clear example of how, to the zombies or goats, the sin is not the sin, but anyone pointing out the sin and insisting on moral behaviour.

This is where our society is headed, and it is the low road to civilizational decline and general poverty, among other worse things.

Fire and Ice

 

Current and recent events make it clear that there really are two kinds of people in the world. It’s not just some cliché. And they are living in two different realities. Their views are so incompatible that it seems they must come to blows.

The first group believes in good and evil, and understands the point of life to be, largely, to do good and avoid evil.

The second group believes in no good but to do and get what they want. Evil is interfering with them in the pursuit of their desires, or criticizing them.

Understand this distinction, and much that is happening now in the news becomes clear. We are in a great battle of good and evil, and what one side calls good, the other calls evil.

It immediately strikes me that this dichotomy is expressed well by the Gospel’s division of mankind into sheep and goats. If you have ever had acquaintance with both sheep and goats, you will see it. Sheep automatically follow “the rules”—keep in mind that the shepherd referred to in the analogy is God, not some political or social movement, and not government. What is meant by the allegory is not social conformity. In dramatic contrast to sheep, although they look similar, goats do and eat whatever they want. You cannot tell a goat what to do.

The difference is also so distinct that it is remarkably easy to classify people as one or the other. This justifies the gospel’s firm division: sheep go to heaven, and goats go to hell, with no parole and no appeal.

Consider Erin O’Toole’s recent editorial concerned with the tone of politics. He objected to all the flags reading “F*** Trudeau.” 

He made no reference to any possible acts of Trudeau that might have prompted such strong emotions.

In other words, O’Toole did not care about acts that might have done harm to others; only being called out for them. The only sin is admitting sin exists. The only sin is judgement.

Pope Francis is also a goat. This is revealed by his recent profanity-filled demand to seminarians that they always give absolution. The problem is not the sin; it is acknowledging sin as something real and important. The only sin is judgement.

The recent "defund the police" drive was of a piece. Insane as it must appear to sheep, the premise was that the problem was not crime, but prosecuting it.

Although, ironically, the goats accuse the sheep of intolerance, the reverse is true. Sheep are constitutionally mild creatures. The sheep will go a long way in tolerating or ignoring the actions of others. But the goats cannot tolerate even a word wrong, or even silence. Ask St. Thomas More. They are therefore especially concerned with “hate speech.”

For example, abortion is free and legal. Protesting abortion, within a certain distance of an abortion clinic, is illegal. 

Apparently even praying silently in the vicinity of an abortion clinic is now illegal; if they can infer what you are praying about.

For example, Benedict or John Paul II, sheep, were reasonably content allowing either the Latin or the Novus Ordo mass to be said. Both were apparently softies when it came to dealing with Vatican corruption. Francis, by contrast, a goat, is eager to crack heads—the heads of those who complain about Vatican corruption. And he is adamant, for no visible reason but promoting disrespect for something holy, that the Latin mass must not be said. 

While the sheep are happy enough to say that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation, and to tolerate homosexual sex or sex outside marriage for others, for the sake of social peace and Christian charity, the goats insist that one must publicly agree that homosexual sex or transsexualism is morally good, and wear an advertisement for homosexual pride in public, or be fined, boycotted, or lose your livelihood. 

The sheep are prepared to forgive any sin with repentance. The goats will hunt down old private tweets from years before, or ancient testimony of drunken sophomore parties, to prove supposed “hypocrisy” in anyone who dares profess the unalterable nature of right and wrong.

This is why, in times when the goats gain dominance, it seems that “the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Sheep are more tolerant and easygoing.

A recent column by regrettably goatish pal Xerxes opines that political positions ought to be judged on what emotions they appeal to: do they appeal to hate or anger? If so, they must be rejected.

So it is okay to do what you want to others, so long as you say the right things. The important thing is that the victims must never be angry about it, or accuse anyone of anything. 

A respondent to Xerxes sharpened the point: political speech must above all not appeal to guilt. 

“[T]hey attempt to make you feel guilty. The sad faces, woeful looks, desperate conditions depicted help us to feel guilty of not caring, not being willing to help, not participating… and can become powerful influencers/manipulators to open our wallets.”

“Making me feel guilty elicits a deletion in my world.”

For the goats, guilt is, in the end, the only evil. That is, their actual enemy is their conscience. And the worse their conscience troubles them, the more extreme their intolerance will become. They will begin smashing icons. They will begin burning churches. And there is nothing the sheep can do, by their own behaviour, to prevent or to moderate this. It is perhaps best for the sheep to realize this. You might as well speak out.

Officially, the Nazi genocide against the Jews was on racial grounds. However, the Nazis were largely influenced by Nietzsche. It seems likely that much of their real, if unstated, motive was that they blamed the Jews for spreading “slave morality” in German and world culture: in other words, the demand to “do unto others” and the Ten Commandments. Morality, in short. How dare they?

To Nazis, the great enemy, according to Himmler, was “pity.” Pity was weakness in the evolutionary struggle. For “pity,” one might as well read the prime Christian virtue of charity, caritas.

In ancient times, this battle of sheep and goats corresponded pretty well with the distinction between polytheists and ethical monotheists. This is why paganism has generally been able to be tolerant of other paganisms, and monotheisms of other monotheisms, but neither has been historically tolerant of the other tendency. They are like fire and ice.

We are in a time of global struggle today, it is a struggle between good and evil, and the battle lines are remarkably clear.

The End

 

It is snowing outside my window; the first snow in Toronto this year. This is also the Solemnity of Christ the King, the end of the liturgical year.

The readings reflect what Christians believe will happen at the end of time. 

They give no support for the common secular “I’m OK, you’re OK” attitude. They see good guys, and bad guys, and a war of good against evil.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory,

and all the angels with him,

he will sit upon his glorious throne,

and all the nations will be assembled before him.

And he will separate them one from another,

as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right,

'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.

Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’

…

Then he will say to those on his left,

'Depart from me, you accursed,

into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’

…

And these will go off to eternal punishment,

but the righteous to eternal life."

And this repeats a motif in the Old Testament reading from Ezekiel:

Thus says the Lord GOD:

I myself will look after and tend my sheep. 

…

The lost I will seek out,

the strayed I will bring back,

the injured I will bind up,

the sick I will heal,

but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,

shepherding them rightly.

As for you, my sheep, says the Lord GOD,

I will judge between one sheep and another,

between rams and goats.”

The middle reading, from the Epistles, says that when Jesus comes again, he will 

“destroy every sovereignty and every authority and power. 

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

You can’t be complacent or play both sides. Everyone can’t be your friend. You are either a sheep or a goat.

Salvation by Suffering

“I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me,
and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you gave me is from you,
because the words you gave to me I have given to them,
and they accepted them and truly understood that I came from you,
and they have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world but for the ones you have given me”

There is a common misconception that Jesus came to save all men. Church thinkers as prominent as von Balthasar and Bishop Barron want to believe all men will be saved. The consecration at the English mass actually used to say that Jesus came “for all,” a mistranslation of the previous Latin. This is of course what everyone wants to believe. It is reassuring.

But in this Sunday’s reading, Jesus plainly says otherwise. He came for a certain subset of mankind, who belong to the Father.

And this is the consistent message of the gospel. For example, at the very outset of the gospel, when some of the Pharisees come to the Jordan to be baptized, John rejects them, saying

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

They were refused as unsuitable for salvation. They were refused Christian initiation.

So on what basis are some saved?

The passage implies good works: “they have kept your word.” Yet it also says this group belonged to God before any such justification by works. Score one for the Lutherans?

The passage indeed implies faith: “they have believed that you sent me.” Yet it also says that they belonged to God before any such justification by faith. So much for the Lutherans. Score one for the Calvinists? Some are simply predestined to be saved, regardless of any justification?

Perhaps, at least based on this passage.

But perhaps there is a further clue in the phrase “out of the world.” Those selected by the Father, those for whom Jesus came, are those who are in some sense separated from or alienated from the world.

And this tallies with Jesus’s own clear enumeration of those who are his people: in the Beatitudes.

The people whom Jesus came to save are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the peacemakers, the merciful, the pure-hearted, the persecuted. Such people do not fit in this world, and suffer in it.

And the rest, Jesus almost as much as says, can go to hell.

How to Spot a Goat in the Wild

Michelangelo's "Last Judgment."

The world is composed of two kinds of people: good and bad.

If you dislike this analysis, your problem is not with me. Take it up with Jesus and the New Testament. Take it up with God.

This being so, it is important to spot the bad guys. Before you find the knife in your back.

Here are a few pointers I have learned from hard experience:

1. Beware anyone who is seriously critical of anyone being “judgmental.” Obviously enough, those who are most opposed to judgment are those conscious of having done wrong—and the more important they consider the issue, the graver their sins must be.

Note too that anyone who condemns another for being “judgmental” is automatically outing themselves as a hypocrite. They are being judgmental of the one being judgmental.

2. Beware anyone highly critical of all religions (or other beliefs) other than their own.

More naturally, bad people are against all religion—it implies judgment. But there is also strategic value for them in pretending to be religious. This is so natural that “Pharisee”—religious authority—becomes almost a synonym for a bad person in the New Testament. The very worst people are liable to be rabbis, Catholic cardinals, Buddhist monks, imams, and so forth. This has been known since New Testament times, and following the news shows it is still so.

Their attitude towards the religions of others is the giveaway. Their base assumption is that, because they profess religion X, they are exempt from moral requirements. It follows that they will hold anyone not professing religion X to be bad and damned. It is the necessary corollary.

A good person will recognize and honour good people of other faiths.

This rule can also be applied to other fields. Anyone who demonizes all those who do not hold the same political beliefs as they do is acting on the same impulse. They are hiding some grave guilt. Anyone who demonizes those who do not adhere to the same psychology as they do—this too seems a growing phenomenon—is again masking some guilt.

In theory, at least, there are limits to this principle—some political ideologies, religions, and potentially psychologies can be objectively immoral. But there is something wrong if it is asserted to be all but one, or one narrow set of beliefs.

3. Beware anti-Semites.

This might sound arbitrary, but I find this most consistent of all. Hating Jews is a sure sign of a bad person.

This makes sense theologically: if God chose the Jews as a light unto the nations, turning against the Jews is rejecting God.

But putting aside theological considerations, it is objective fact that Jews left alone are consistently better educated, more successful, and wealthier than the surrounding populations. Higher IQ alone may explain it.

Accordingly, any anti-Jewish sentiment is most likely to be an expression of envy, a deadly sin.

4. Some will suggest that a love of animals is a clear sign of a good person. It is not. Like religion, it is too convenient as a cover for a bad person. Precisely because everyone thinks it is a clear sign of a good person. Hitler was a vegetarian and a big animal lover.

To the contrary, anyone who is too extravagant and aggressive about asserting their love for animals is probably a bad person. They are covering for something. Beware the aggressive vegans and the ecofascists. The best test is: are they making demands on others?

5. The same logic applies to those who make a big deal of their love for small children. All the worst dictators know enough to pose for propaganda photos surrounded by small children. The best test is whether they advocate things that, while immediately pleasing to children, are not in their long-term interests. All toys and candy, say, and no discipline. Anyone who spoils a child is revealing their own sense of guilt. And their fundamental rejection of morality.

6. Beware anyone who makes a big deal about having read Nietzsche. They are declaring themselves free of all moral constraints.

More blatantly, anyone who asserts that “there is no right or wrong” is doing so. And some these days—postmodernists—do this openly.

7. Beware anyone who seems to be always smiling and friendly. This is especially true of women; far fewer men are always smiling, and they are more readily suspected if they try. Someone who is always smiling is necessarily wearing a mask, and hiding their true feelings. Which can accordingly be assumed to be malicious.

I’m sure there are more. Suggestions welcome.

Pope Francis Abolishes Hell?

War in Heaven: Bosch

Pope Francis has gone and created another flurry of confusion with another off-the-cuff interview. This time he has been paraphrased as denying the existence of Hell.

The Vatican has issued a “correction,” but it is itself oddly ambiguous. It simply points out that the interview was not recorded, and the Pope’s words were not quoted verbatum. Therefore, it cannot be taken as an accurate transcript. This leaves open the possibility that, yes, the pope really did deny the existence of Hell. Indeed, if he did not, you would expect a clearer denial.

Above all else, we need clarity on such matters.

I understand very well that many people do not want to accept the reality of Hell. I was one of them, when I was younger. It is terrifying to contemplate, in the first place. It seems to violate the concept of divine mercy. And why would God create souls only for eternal torture?

But the issue, obvious as it is, came up early in the Church, and was debated and decided, and closed. Origen, the great Church Father, wanted to propose a doctrine of universal salvation: sooner or later, if after an era in purgatory, or perhaps several lifetimes on earth, each soul would eventually find its way to the divine glory. But despite the attractiveness of this proposition, and despite Origen’s considerable personal prestige, he lost the argument and was declared heretical on this point. As Francis would be, if he really said this. There is apparently no wiggle room here.

Like it or lump it, the matter is painfully unambiguous in the Bible. Jesus does not say that all people are basically good, but some become stray lambs. He divides people systematically into good and bad, sheep and goats.

“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.” (Matthew 25-31).

Again, at the beginning of John’s gospel:

“Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

That seems like a pretty clear division. We all sin, no doubt, but some of us are dedicated followers of evil. Some are children of darkness, and some are children of light.

Jesus tells us to love our neighbour as ourself. But then, when asked, “who is our neighbour?” he does not say “everyone.” He tells the story of the Good Samaritan. Our neighbour is the one who does good; and others in the tale are contrasted; they are not our neighbour. They do not stop to help the injured man.

And how many people would, in real life, have done what the Samaritan did? How many, finding a stranger bleeding in a ditch, would put him up at an inn or in hospital at his own expense? Would it be most people? Probably only a minority, actually. In the parable, it is only one of four, or fewer. There was, after all, at least one robber; then both a priest and a Levite pass by without helping.

Awkwardly, the Bible says this plainly as well:

Matthew 7:14:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

So we apparently cannot even use the old dodge that “there may be a Hell, but we cannot know if anyone is actually in there.”

Faust and Mephistopheles.

The Beatitudes are often quoted: “Blessed are the poor.” It is usually overlooked that they are paralleled by a list of condemnations:

24 “But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”

There it is again. There are two kinds of people: the good and the bad. Those who listen to the shepherd, as it were, and those who follow their own wants.

There seems to be a class of people to whom Jesus does not even offer salvation.

Matthew 3: 7:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

Jesus and John the Baptist don’t appear to hold back much in describing the scribes and Pharisees as evil in so many words. They are called “full of hypocrisy and wickedness,” and asked “How will you escape being condemned to hell?” Jesus blames them for “All the righteous blood that has been shed on earth,” and tells them “you do not enter the kingdom of heaven.” They are introduced as “children of hell” (Matthew 23:13).

Matthew 13: 10-15:

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”
He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables: 

“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.”

Given that God is indeed infinite in his mercy, this must mean that some people have taken a basic position that they are never going to repent, no matter what. If so, Hell is necessary as a matter of divine justice. There is no point in making it temporary and corrective.

It is troubling, but nothing is gained by whistling past the graveyard. As St. Paul said, we must “work out our salvation in fear and trembling.”

The Sheep and the Goats

If I were to write that there are fundamentally two kinds of people in the world, good people and bad people, you would probably condemn me for being un-Christian.

There are two kinds of people in the world: good and evil.

What? We are supposed to love the sinner, we say, even if we despise the sin. We are not to judge. The line between good and evil, we often say, runs through the hearts of every one of us. Real life is not about white hats and black hats: there is moral ambiguity everywhere. Most of that is true enough.

But not the moral ambiguity part. Nor any notion that everyone might be saved eventually. Origen, among others, suggested this in the early Church, and it was soon seen to be a heresy.

That is not what Jesus says; that is not what the Gospel says.

He tells us to love our neighbour. But then, when asked, “who is your neighbour?” he does not say “everyone.” He tells the story of the Good Samaritan.

In the consecration at mass, the English version used to say “shed for all.” This has now been corrected. The original Latin of the Vulgate says “for many.” Not for all.

Indeed, it is implicit in the doctrine of hell.

“But when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Before him all the nations will be gathered, and he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.” (Matthew 25-31).

So there it is. There are two kinds of people.

The existence of hell presupposes that, even given an infinite amount of time, some people will never repent. Goats are goats, sheep are sheep.

The same point is pretty clear in Luke’s version of the Beatitudes; and almost as clear in Matthew’s. They are half of a parallel construction, defining the good and the bad people.

Looking at his disciples, he said:

“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
21 Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
22 Blessed are you when people hate you,
when they exclude you and insult you
and reject your name as evil,
because of the Son of Man.

23 “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

24 “But woe to you who are rich,
for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.”

There it is again. There are two kinds of people: the sheep and the goats; the pharisees and the salt of the earth.

John’s Gospel seems to include the same point:

“The gatekeeper opens the gate ..., and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice. But they will never follow a stranger; in fact, they will run away from him because they do not recognize a stranger’s voice.”

Not sheep and goats here, but sheep who belong to the flock of Jesus, and those who simply do not.

In case there is any confusion, John’s Jesus quickly makes the point that this is not a matter of subscribing to this or that doctrine, this or that faith. The parable of the Good Samaritan, of course, makes the same point. Simply saying you are Catholic does nothing at all.

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”

Nominally Catholic or not, nominally Christian or not, some people are of good heart, and some people are not. Those who are of good heart follow the shepherd as soon as they hear his voice. Those of bad heart do not.

But, you will say, what about the need to follow Jesus specifically? Isn’t this religious indifferentism?

No; the need is to follow Christ. Christ is “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” This does not refer to a particular Latinized Hebrew name. This refers to following “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Anyone who makes the pursuit of the good, the truth, and the beautiful above self is following Christ, the Logos, regardless of the word they use. Anyone who does not pursue the good, the truth, and the beautiful above self is not following Christ, the Logos, regardless of the word they use.

Again, in John’s third chapter:

“Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.”

That seems like a pretty clear division. We all sin, but some of us—most of us, if the Bible is to be taken in its plain meaning—are dedicated followers of evil.

To these people, Jesus does not seem even to make the offer of salvation.

Matthew 3: 7:

But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

Matthew 13: 10-15:

The disciples came to him and asked, “Why do you speak to the people in parables?”

He replied, “Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. This is why I speak to them in parables:

“Though seeing, they do not see;
though hearing, they do not hear or understand.

14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:

“‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.
15 For this people’s heart has become calloused;
they hardly hear with their ears,
and they have closed their eyes.
Otherwise they might see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their hearts
and turn, and I would heal them.’”

Given that God is infinite in his mercy, this must mean—and the doctrine of Hell must mean—that some people have taken a basic, foundational position that means they are never going to repent, no matter what. Otherwise it would be a failure of mercy for God/Jesus to withhold the chance of salvation from them.

They are, in a word, evil. Evil to the core.

And they must have chosen to be evil. I see no room here for the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, in which you are born this way, and there is nothing you can do about it. That is a convenient alibi. There is nothing the Bible so clear about as the concept of free will. See the Garden of Eden story in Genesis. Rather, it is that there is some fundamental choice that some people make—that, indeed, Satan too made, in the story of the fallen angels—which then precludes repentance.

What might that be?

Jesus calls these irredeemables “goats.” What then is the apparent difference between goats and sheep?

It is that goats are not herd animals. Sheep stay with the shepherd and the flock, while goats strike out on their own.

This looks, at first glance, like a condemnation of individualism, eccentricity, or of thinking for yourself. But this is not a possible interpretation. We are misled by our metaphoric use of “sheep” to mean conformists. It would not be compatible with Jesus’s saying

Matthew 7:14:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

This suggests that it is precisely conformists, conformists in the eyes of the world, who are going to hell. Jesus himself was anything but obedient and a conformist in this sense. And the same is true of the apostles, or John the Baptist.

Being a sheep and not a goat means being obedient to the voice of the shepherd, and to the needs of all, instead of to egotism and one’s personal desires. Jesus gave the two prime commandments as “love God, and love your neighbour as yourself.” That could be given pictorially as “follow the shepherd and keep with the flock.”

In John’s gospel, Jesus uses the metaphor of darkness and light. Once one has done something wrong, one immediately faces a critical choice: admit it, repent, and get back on the narrow path, or deny it. Everyone stumbles. Everyone sometimes gives in to a selfish urge, or an immediate desire. Make the second choice, and you have turned away from the path itself, and begun down a road from which there is in principle no turning: you then start to shun the light itself. You will soon come to deny the very concept of truth, of God, of right and wrong, of beauty, rather than admit you have done this thing, or that it is wrong to have done this thing. That is the road to hell, and it is fairly clear in daily life that many people are always taking it.

This distinction is the distinction between a mortal and a venial sin. A mortal sin is a turning away from God, and implies the death of the soul.

But, in principle, no sin you repent remains mortal.

All of this means that, while it is true that the struggle between good and evil runs through the heart of each one of us who is still on the path, it is also a real dividing line in human society as a whole. At any time or place, there is a faction on the side of evil, and a faction of the side of God.

This means, in turn, that it is not enough to mind our prayer life in solitude. For some, that might be wise, but everyone cannot. There is a war on. There really are good guys and bad guys, and they are always fighting.

Consider any group or ideology that holds that there is no God, there is no objective truth, there is no such thing as objective beauty, or some obvious sin is good.

There are a lot of them, aren’t there? Postmodernism, Marxism, atheism, abortion, many feminists.

Any group or ideology that holds one of these tenets is, pretty much necessarily, on the side of Satan. They have made their bargain with the devil, and at this point there is probably no turning back.