Hell, Yes!

Michelangelo's Last Judgement.

Hans von Balthasar and Bishop Robert Barron argue the possibility that there are no souls in hell. Yes, there is a hell, and going to hell must be a real possibility, so long as there is free will, but maybe not ever an actuality.

Reportedly, Pope Francis himself told one interviewer that nobody actually goes to hell, that failed souls instead face annihilation at death.

There are reasons to suppose this is so, to, beyond wishful thinking. Why, after all, would a good God create a soul only for eternal suffering? Surely extended times in purgatory ought to be enough? What about God’s infinite love and infinite mercy?

But a view close to this one was ruled out as heresy very early on in Church history. The assertion that all souls eventually made heaven got Origen declared heretical.

The New Testament seems to say not only that some will go to hell, but that many will go there. This is the “broad gate”; “few are chosen.” Jesus tells the story of Lazarus, in which a rich man is in hell, and he seems to emphasize here that there is no exit, no way out.

The Rich Man and Lazarus.

“Then he will say also to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry, and you didn’t give me food to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; I was a stranger, and you didn’t take me in; naked, and you didn’t clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn’t visit me.’
… These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

It may be possible to tease a different interpretation out of such passages, but the literal meaning seems plain.

In the visions of Our Lady of Fatima, the child seers reported seeing a great number of souls descending to hell.

“As Our Lady spoke these last words, she opened her hands once more, as she had done during the two previous months. The rays of light seemed to penetrate the earth, and we saw as it were a sea of fire. Plunged in this fire were demons and souls in human form, like transparent burning embers, all blackened or burnished bronze, floating about in the conflagration, now raised into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves together with great clouds of smoke now falling back on every side like sparks in huge fires, without weight or equilibrium, amid shrieks and groans of pain and despair, which horrified us and made us tremble with fear…. Terrified and as if to plead for succour, we looked up at Our Lady, who said to us, so kindly and so sadly: You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.”

Fatima comes with some impressive miracles to attest to its authenticity, and is endorsed as genuine by the Church.

How can we reconcile this severity with a good and merciful creator?

According to Catholic doctrine, God sends no one to hell. Nevertheless, free will necessarily means that it is possible for some to choose to go to hell. Milton saw this when he had his Satan say “I would sooner rule in hell than serve in heaven.”

One can choose to turn away from God in a systematic, definitive way. All of us probably know someone who has. In a word, narcissists: we call people “narcissists” who choose systematically to put self above God, to think of themselves as godlike. This is the same pride we see in Milton’s Satan.

Heaven is the presence of God; hell is his absence. If they do this, they are choosing hell. And a hardened pride may indeed make this choice irrevocable.

Muhammed Visits Hell.

What about atheists? You may ask. Is belief in God all that is needed? And are all atheists then condemned?

No; nominal allegiance to God, or to the person of Jesus, is not the issue. The New Testament makes this clear enough. Jesus condemns, and seems to assign to hell, the religious authorities of his day: these are the Pharisees. Conversely, even the demons he casts out acknowledge him as the son of God.

Remove, if you like, as atheists do, the notion of a personal God. The Logos remains: that is, the transcendentals, the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. These are God himself, as he manifests in creation.

A good atheist is an atheist because he believes this is the truth. If so, he is a true worshipper of Christ, the Logos. A good atheist is adamant that he is obliged to act morally. If so, he is a true worshipper of Christ, the Logos. Conversely, someone who declares himself a true worshipper of Jesus Christ, yet who is not genuinely convinced this is the truth, is a Pharisee, a hypocrite. He is a worshipper of Satan. Someone who declares himself a worshipper of Jesus Christ, yet who does not consider himself bound to act morally, is a Pharisee, a hypocrite. He is a worshipper of Satan.
And the same, perhaps less obviously, is true of beauty. One who genuinely values and seeks to preserve beauty is a follower of Christ; one who does not worships Satan.

Anyone, nominally Christian or atheist or Hindu, chooses hell if they deliberately turn away from truth, good, and beauty.

We all do, of course, some times. Having sinned does not send you to hell. Repentance, not sinlessness, is what separates the sheep from the goats. 2 Peter 3:9 speaks of God “. . . not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” A good person sins, even again and again, like Peter himself. But he admits he has sinned, and repents. A narcissist will instead insist he never has. He or she will, if necessary, deny the very possibility of good, or truth, in order to preserve the godlike delusion of self.

Sisyphus, Ixion, and Tantalus in the Pagan Greek Conception of Hell.

Now, surely it is plain to anyone that a great many people are currently doing exactly this. It is the dominant doctrine among our educated elite. When a postmodernist says “there is no truth,” they are deliberately choosing hell in just this way. When they say that morality is culturally determined, purely a matter of group consensus, they have turned away from good. They have chosen hell.
Hitler, for one, barring some sort of last-second private repentance, is plainly in hell on these grounds.

It is also a commonplace among academics and others commenting on art today to reject the beautiful and seek the ugly. Much contemporary art is deliberately ugly. I hesitate to say this view is common among artists—I find in my own experience of practicing artists that it is not. It comes from elsewhere, from art criticism. And I expect it is not definitionally possible to be an artist without seeking beauty. Not the pretty or cute; beauty is something other than this, and must include the sublime. But if you simply set up a urinal on its side, and call it art, you are of the devil’s party.
Given all this, it seems obvious that a large number of people are indeed bound for hell.
Is it an absolute majority?

I think there are hopeful reasons to believe it is not. While the educated elite may be officially committed to postmodernism, the average person, having it explained, probably sees it as madness. These are the “little ones” Jesus praised in the Beatitudes. Even many of the “elite” are probably, like Nicodemus, in private dissent.

A Buddhist Conception of Hell.

When the Book of Revelations describes the cosmic war between the loyal and the fallen angels, it says that one third of the stars are torn from the sky: “Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.” This may be a reference to how far evil can extend in cosmic terms. Beyond about that proportion, it tends to be self-defeating. If everybody lies, for example, lying is no longer of advantage. If everybody is out to kill everybody, there is no longer any crime of murder; killing is self-defense. If everybody steals at will, in effect, nobody has any property. And so there is nothing to steal. And so on: moral evil needs good, and good to predominate, in order to exist.
By this rule, which seems at least as solid as the law of gravity, up to one third of souls probably end up in hell.