Skip to main content

Jimmy Akin. JPII, and Hell


As a long time fan of Jimmy's, I wish to share (as he requests) his recent piece in which he offers an "interview" in which he poses questions that are answered in the writings of Bl. John Paul II:


Description: http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/shim.gif
Description: http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/shim.gif
Description: http://jimmyakin.typepad.com/shim.gif

Thank you, Your Holiness, for joining us for this "interview." Please allow me to begin with a very direct question: Why should anyone go to hell? Isn't God an infinitely good and merciful Father to all of us? Why would he impose such a punishment on his children?
God is the infinitely good and merciful Father. But man, called to respond to him freely, can unfortunately choose to reject his love and forgiveness once and for all, thus separating himself for ever from joyful communion with him.
It is precisely this tragic situation that Christian doctrine explains when it speaks of eternal damnation or hell.
It is not a punishment imposed externally by God but a development of premises already set by people in this life.
The very dimension of unhappiness which this obscure condition brings can in a certain way be sensed in the light of some of the terrible experiences we have suffered which, as is commonly said, make life "hell."
In a theological sense however, hell is something else: It is the ultimate consequence of sin itself, which turns against the person who committed it.
It is the state of those who definitively reject the Father's mercy, even at the last moment of their life.

How is hell described in the Old Testament?
To describe this reality Sacred Scripture uses a symbolical language which will gradually be explained.
In the Old Testament the condition of the dead had not yet been fully disclosed by Revelation.
Moreover it was thought that the dead were amassed in Sheol, a land of darkness (cf. Ez 28:8; 31:14; Jb 10:21f.; 38:17; Ps  30:10; 88:7, 13), a pit from which one cannot reascend  (cf. Jb 7:9), a place in which it is impossible to praise God (cf. Is 38:18; Ps6:6).

What does the New Testament add to our understanding of hell?
The New Testament sheds new light on the condition of the dead, proclaiming above all that Christ by his Resurrection conquered death and extended his liberating power to the kingdom of the dead.
Redemption nevertheless remains an offer of salvation which it is up to people to accept freely.
This is why they will all be judged "by what they [have done]" (Rv 20:13).
By using images, the New Testament presents the place destined for evildoers as a fiery furnace, where people will "weep and gnash their teeth" (Mt 13:42; cf. 25:30, 41), or like Gehenna with its "unquenchable fire"  (Mk 9:43).
The Book of Revelation also figuratively portrays in a "pool of fire" those who exclude themselves from the book of life, thus meeting with a "second death" (Rv 20:13f.).
Whoever continues to be closed to the Gospel is therefore preparing for "eternal destruction and exclusion from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might" (2 Thes 1:9).

One passage that has often been interpreted as referring to hell is the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. Recently, some have thought that the Rich Man is merely in purgatory. Does his example show us purgatory or does it depict hell?
All this . . . narrated in the parable of the Rich Man . . . explains that hell is a place of eternal suffering, with no possibility of return, nor of the alleviation of pain (cf. Lk 16:19-31).

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament images of hell are very concrete. Are we to understand them literally, seeing that they pertain to a reality that lies beyond this life?
The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted.
They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God.
Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.
This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject:
"To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God's merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called 'hell'" (CCC 1033).
"Eternal damnation", therefore, is not attributed to God's initiative because in his merciful love he can only desire the salvation of the beings he created.
In  reality, it is the creature who closes himself to his love.
Damnation consists precisely in definitive separation from God, freely chosen by the human person and confirmed with death that seals his choice for ever.
God's judgment ratifies this state.

But can any creature of God really go to hell? Can anyone say "no" to God to definitively that he is ultimately lost?
Christian faith teaches that in taking the risk of saying "yes" or "no", which marks the human creature's freedom, some have already said no.
They are the spiritual creatures that rebelled against God's love and are called demons (cf. Fourth Lateran Council, DS 800-801).
What happened to them is a warning to us: it is a continuous call to avoid the tragedy which leads to sin and to conform our life to that of Jesus who lived his life with a "yes" to God.
What about the people we see around us who seem to die without God? Can we affirm that they are in hell, or must we be more cautious in our assessment?
Damnation remains a real possibility, but it is not granted to us, without special divine revelation, to know which human beings are effectively involved in it.
The idea of hell-and especially some of the biblical images associated with it-seem very frightening. Should we be alarmed by this teaching?
The thought of hell--and even less the improper use of biblical images--must not create anxiety or despair, but is a necessary and healthy reminder of freedom within the proclamation that the risen Jesus has conquered Satan, giving us the Spirit of God who makes us cry "Abba, Father!" (Rm 8:15;Gal 4:6).
This prospect, rich in hope, prevails in Christian proclamation.
It is effectively reflected in the liturgical tradition of the Church, as the words of the Roman Canon attest: "Father, accept this offering from your whole family ... save us from final damnation, and count us among those you have chosen."
Thank you, Your Holiness.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dancing With Mr. D: Grooming the Little Children

A former pro-transgender activist said she regretted her previous work in pro-transgender activism, adding she felt she was "indoctrinated" on gender ideology in an interview with  Fox News Digital.  "I started to realize that what I had been doing at my job at the LGBT Center, it was grooming," Kay Yang, a former employee of a location in New York, said. Grooming in this context means "to get into readiness for a specific objective." Kay works as a 'deprogrammer' to help parents and children who have been 'indoctrinated' by the 'cult-like' transgender agenda. Yang herself previously went by they/them and worked as a 'trans educator' in schools for years.  Listen to her testimony.    

This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News

DANCING WITH MR. D:   This video of a young boy twerking at Pride has homophobes outraged | Gay Star News : 'via Blog this'

Homosexual Marriage

The urgency of the issue of gay marriage at this time and the compelling arguments raised against it here, make this paper an important resource: Answering Advocates of Gay Marriage KATHERINE YOUNG AND PAUL NATHANSON Claim 1 : Marriage is an institution designed to foster the love between two people. Gay people can love each other just as straight people can. Ergo, marriage should be open to gay people. Claim 2 : Not all straight couples have children, but no one argues that their marriages are unacceptable Claim 3 : Some gay couples do have children and therefore need marriage to provide the appropriate context. Claim 4 : Marriage and the family are always changing anyway, so why not allow this change? Claim 5 : Marriage and the family have already changed, so why not acknowledge the reality? Claim 6 : Children would be no worse off with happily married gay parents than they are with unhappily married straight ones. Claim 7 : Given global overpopulation, why w...

Oremus

Catholic World News  - October 23, 2015  The Synod of Bishops spent Friday, October 23, discussing a proposed final statement, which will come up for a vote, paragraph by paragraph, on Saturday. The statement was presented to the bishops on Thursday evening, with Cardinal Peter Erdo, the relator general of the Synod, introducing the text. Because the statement was available only in Italian, some Synod participant were unable to read it, and there was an angry outcry when they were told-- by Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary-general of the Synod-- that no copies of the sensitive document could be taken out of the Synod Hall. Eventually Cardinal Baldiserri relented, and allowed bishops to take the text home, but insisted that they could not show the document to outside translators. For a summary:

The Body of Christ and the City of Men

      The “Statement of Principles” issued by select Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives on June 18, disapproving of Bishops in the United States for allegedly “politicizing the Eucharist” is an example of deceitful equivocation. Essentially, the Statement maintains that the Bishops should not “politicize” the Eucharist. On this the insight of Flannery O’Connor proves enlightening: Those whose lives are not ordered by, around, and toward the Eucharist, therefore, are those whose lives are defined by some love other than love of the Christ who is present there. Rather, their lives are ordered by the earthly city, manifest in this case, by, variously, partisan political identity or individual, radially sovereign conscience. This applies across the American political spectrum, to those who deny human dignity of the unborn, the immigrant, and the person on death row. In Catholic teaching the Eucharist creates St. Augustine’s City of God, the definit...

Enlightenment thinking and "the Spirit of Vatican II"

Present in an analysis of the Enlightenment are the three themes which played an integral part in the disintegration of the liturgy: the denial of the transcendent, the resulting apostasy, and the exaltation of the community. That the movement was hostile to revealed Christianity is beyond debate. At bottom, the Enlightenment was hostile to Christian revelation for its teaching that salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone. In its stead, the Philosophes substituted a rational religion which emphasized the universal moral law shared by all men by virtue of their reason, not what they regarded as the untrustworthy historicity of the life message of Jesus. They saw this rational religion as a refining of, not a repudiation of Christian moral teaching. For example, the Mass, which celebrates the revelation that Christ’s sacrificial death reconciles us to the Father and each other, making present to the believer the same sacrifice of the Cross, was reduced to the mere celebration ...

Bishop Barron on Martin Luther

Bishop Robert Barron, in his June 13   article   titled "Looking at Luther With Fresh Eyes," describes Martin Luther as "a mystic of grace, someone who had fallen completely in love." Fr. describes Luther as the "undisputed father of the Reformation" and as "cantankerous, pious, very funny, shockingly anti-Semitic, deeply insightful and utterly exasperating." While admiring of Luther, Fr. adds: "I disagree with lots and lots of his ideas," without clarifications. Barron summarizes: "For at the core of Luther's life and theology was an overwhelming experience of grace. After years of trying in vain to please God through heroic moral and spiritual effort, Luther realized that, despite his unworthiness, he was loved by a God who had died to save him," adding, "Luther was an ecstatic, and the religious movement he launched [Protestantism] was 'a love affair.'" Was Dr. Luther in love with God...

Libido Redux: The Pill Circa 2014

If I were a female, and I am not, but if I were, and were Catholic, I would take seriously this read  concerning what happens when the rights of God are violated. I have written of these violations before, here . Let us pray that this snare of the prince of this world may not celebrate the 60th birthday of "the pill."

On the Contemporary U.S. Scene

M ichael Flynn made a lot of enemies inside the government during his career. When he exposed himself as vulnerable these pounced. How?? Anonymous and possibly illegal leaks of private conversations with a foreign national. Now, we aren't supposed to spy on Americans without probable cause, nor disclose the results of our spying in the pages of the  Washington Post   because it suits a partisan or personal agenda (overturning the results of an election). Current and former national security officials used their position, their sources, and their methods to destroy a political enemy. Why aren’t all Americans upset by this? Mr. Flynn is not the only recent occurrence of such. The  New York Times reports that civil servants at the EPA lobbied Congress to reject Donald Trump's nominee to run the agency because Pruitt was critical of the way the EPA was run during the Obama years.  Traditionally, civil servants follow the direction of the political ap...

Be Not Lukewarm

Is it possible that Church leaders and Catholic institutions in the U.S. are assisting the furtherance of central tenets of the secularist political and cultural plot? Have you ever read of a prominent Catholic who contends that the Bible instructs us not to judge people ? How often have you heard this phrase in the social media? I think there is the phenomena of an unsuspecting acceptance in some Catholic circles of a secularist understanding of important cultural issues. If a Catholic supports the notion that men who have sex with men, or women who have sex with women “come out,” he or she assists the Gay agenda in achieving its dream of getting an imprimatur from society for grave sin. Many Catholics, woefully ignorant of Catholic moral teaching, by default seem to be accepting of secularist identity politics and the groundless idea that same-sex attraction is innate, and the defining characteristic for those aggrieved by it. Often such Catholics cite the homosexual pries...