HELL — DOCTRINAL TRUTHS
I. Truths of divine and catholic faith:
(1) Revelation of an eternal punishment;
(2) Eternity in Hell the punishment in store for sinners who die impenitent;
(3) The two pains of Hell:
(a) Pain of loss;
(b) Pain of sense;
(4) These truths are taught by the authority of the Church.
II. Truths theologically certain:
(1) Sufferings proportional to the gravity of sins;
(2) The pains of Hell constant; their mitigation according to:
(a) St. Thomas and St. Francis de Sales;
(b) Duns Scotus;
(c) Those who admit the utility of prayers for the dead;
(d) Those who hold a progressive and indefinite diminution.
III. A truth commonly accepted; the reality of hell-fire;
(1) What is meant;
(2) Proof from:
(a) Scripture;
(b) Tradition;
(c) Teaching of theologians.
The concluding observation of the preceding chapter must guide us also in the exposition of Catholic belief regarding Hell and its eternity. To this subject we will devote three chapters.
- in the first we shall expound the truths of doctrine;
- in the second we shall give a theological explanation of them,
- and in the third we shall treat them from the point of view of apologetic.
As regards the truths of doctrine, we have pointed out elsewhere, (L’Enfer et la règle de la Foi, Paris, 1921) that the Church’s teaching on Hell includes three kinds of truths, namely:
- truths of divine and Catholic faith, to deny which involves the sin of heresy;
- truths theologically certain which cannot be denied without a grave sin of error;
- and a commonly accepted truth which cannot be denied without a grave sin of temerity.
I. TRUTHS OF DIVINE AND CATHOLIC FAITH
Explicit divine revelation and the authoritative teaching of the Church comprise the following points:
- Hell’s existence and eternity;
- the damnation of sinners who die unrepentant;
- their subjection to a twofold punishment, namely, the loss of the beatific vision, and some kind of positive torment (pain of the senses).
(1) Eternal punishment according to Revelation
The New Testament clearly teaches the dogma of eternal punishment.
1. Our Saviour Jesus Christ proclaims this truth.
The sentence of the Judge at the last judgment, as recorded by St. Matthew (25:31-46) makes express mention of an eternal Hell: “Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire, which was prepared for the devil and his angels” (v. 41), and “these shall go into everlasting punishment” (v. 46). In this text, which recalls Daniel 12:2, the word “everlasting,” marking the duration of the punishment inflicted, must be taken literally. It means, not some undefined period of time, but a duration which, though having a beginning, will have no end. The Judge, in passing sentence, sets up a parallel between the destiny of the elect and that of the damned; as the reward is to be eternal, so is the punishment to be.
In combating the upholders of Origenism, St. Augustine truly remarked that, if a motive of misplaced tenderness leads to a limitation of the full meaning of the sentence of damnation, logic will compel us also to deny the eternity of the reward (Ad Orosium, ch. 8).
Moreover, Christ Himself, elsewhere in the Gospels, so strongly emphasizes the eternity of Hell that no room is left for doubt. He indicates the torments of the damned by such expressions as:
- “the fire that is not extinguished,” and “the worm that dieth not.” It would not be easy to find anything stronger or more terrifying even than His warning threat:
- “If thy hand scandalise thee, cut it off; it is better for thee to enter into life maimed than having two hands to go into Hell, into unquenchable fire; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not extinguished” (Mark 9:42-43). Thrice does He utter this warning; wherefore such insistence upon the unending pains of Hell if the reality falls short of the threat?
2. The Apostles are as explicit as their Master.
- St. Peter (II Peter 2:9) recalls the punishment inflicted upon the rebel angels; so likewise shall the wicked be chastised in the day of Judgment. According to the literal meaning of the Greek words he says that the unjust are reserved to the end of the world unto a Judgment, which will not put an end to their torments, but will rather put a seal upon them and give them permanence.
- St. Jude threatens the wicked, who deny Jesus Christ with eternal chains and darkness, and twice repeats this threat of eternal punishment (v. 6-7 & 13).
- According to St. Paul, eternal punishment will be meted out:
● to the persecutors of the Church (2 Thess. 1:5-9);
● and the loss of the kingdom of God will be the punishment of sinners (1 Cor. 6:9; Gal. 5:19-21; Eph. 5:5).
The Apostle preaches also the existence of two camps forever irreconcilable (2 Cor. 6:14-16), of two eternal alternatives (Rom. 2:2-12), one of which is judgment and eternal reprobation (Heb. 6:2-7; 9:27; 10:27-31).
- Finally, St. John in the Apocalypse often refers to Hell and its torments, which he describes in a material but impressive fashion. Hell is depicted as an abyss of fire, a furnace giving forth clouds of sulphurous smoke; and the everlasting duration of these punishments is explicitly asserted; “And the smoke of their torments shall ascend up for ever and ever” (14:11), and they “shall be tormented day and night, for ever and ever” (20:10).
(2) Eternal punishment the lot of unrepentant sinners
According to the law of God, sinners who die in a state of unforgiven mortal sin will be condemned to Hell forever.
In the passage quoted just now from St. Mark’s gospel (and in the parallel text in St. Matthew, 18:8-9) our Lord warns us to beware of scandals; if hand, foot or eye be an occasion of sin, it must be cut off or plucked out to save us from Hell. Is not this as much as saying that every grave sin leads to Hell?
And not only the sin that is committed outwardly, but also the hidden sin of desire will be punished by Gehenna (Matt. 5:28).
The sins capable of being forgiven in the next life (Matt. 12:32; Mark. 3:29) are not grave sins, but lighter faults that a purifying fire will wash away in Purgatory (1 Cor. 3:11-15).
On the other hand, the words of our Lord and Judge at the Last Judgment cannot be alleged as proving that those alone will be damned who do not practise works of mercy (Matt. 25:41). As Maldonatus well shows in his commentary on these words, our Saviour mentions the works of mercy simply as examples; and what is true of one sin is true of all without exception.
Should there remain any doubt on this point, two quotations from St. Paul would effectively dissipate it. “Know you not,” he writes (1 Cor. 6:9-10), “that the unjust shall not possess the kingdom of God? Do not err; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor the effeminate, nor hers with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor railers, nor extortioners shall possess the kingdom of God.” This list of all sorts of crimes and deadly sins shows that no exception is to be made.
Writing to the Galatians (5:19-21) he says the same thing and gives a similar list, adding the more general warning: “Of the which I foretell you ... that they who do such things shall not obtain the kingdom of God.”
Certainly, as long as life lasts, the sinner may obtain from God’s mercy the forgiveness of his sins. But this is granted only to those who do penance: “Except you do penance you shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5).
Whenever, then, Scripture speaks of works of beneficence and charity (Tobias 4:11; Daniel 4:24; 1 Pet. 4:8; James 5:20) and of the forgiveness of injuries (Matt. 6:12; 14-15; Luke 11:4) as meriting from God the pardon of our sins, we must always understand that sincere repentance is pre-supposed as a necessary condition, and consequently, whatever good works a man may have done, if he dies with an unforgiven mortal sin on his soul, he will go to Hell.
(3) The twofold punishment of Hell
One further truth is included in the Catholic dogma of Hell, namely, the existence of a twofold penalty, known as the pain of loss, and the pain of sense.
(a) The pain of loss, which is the essential pain of Hell, consists in the loss of the beatific vision.
The revelation by God of this punishment is necessarily included in the revelation of an eternal Hell.
But it is also mentioned explicitly in the New Testament: “Depart from me you cursed” (Matt. 25:41) is the sentence that will by spoken by the Judge at the last day, and which will cast the wicked into exile far from Heaven.
In our Lord’s parables wherein He draws for His hearers the eternal perspectives of Heaven and Hell, He expresses this exile from God under many forms.
The master of the house will not allow the workers of iniquity to come in; while Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets will be welcomed into the kingdom of God, sinners will be shut out (Luke 13:27-28; Matt. 7:23; 25:12); between the saved and the damned there is put a great chaos so that none can pass from Hell to Heaven, or from Heaven to Hell (Luke 16:25).
The pain of loss is indicated also by “the exterior darkness” into which are cast the guests who are not clothed with the marriage garment, that is, sinners bereft of sanctifying grace, and the unprofitable servant who is the type of the unfaithful Christian (Matt. 25:30), and, finally, the children of the kingdom, the Jews who, though the first to be called, were, through their blindness of heart, for ever cast out (Matt. 8:12).
Christ’s words are echoed by the Apostles.
- We have already noticed how St. Paul shuts out from the heavenly kingdom all sorts of sinners.
- The Apocalypse likewise bears witness to the eternal separation of the damned from God. All whose names are not written in the Book of Life will be delivered to damnation, which is indeed a second death (2:11; 3:5; 20:6, 12-15; 21:8, 27), entailing the loss of divine life, but not involving annihilation (21:8, 27; 22:x~). On the other hand Heaven is a place of glorious brightness; “the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof,” but “there shall not enter in anything defiled, or that worketh abomination or maketh a lie,” and “without are dogs and sorcerers, and unchaste, and murderers, and servers of idols, and every one that maketh and loveth a lie” (21:23, 27; 22:15).
(b) Most of the scriptural references to Hell contain an allusion to another sort of punishment.
Christ and the Apostles speak of “unquenchable fire, the gnawing worm, of torments and flames, of the bottomless pit whence arises the smoke of fire and brimstone”, etc.
We are not dealing here with the theological question of the nature of the pains thus indicated, but simply wish to point out that, besides the loss of eternal happiness, Hell involves the infliction of some positive punishment, which is traditionally known as the pain of sense. This name does not necessarily mean that the pain is felt in the organs of sense, for the devils (and men’s souls also until the resurrection) have no sense faculties, but yet suffer this pain.
From the dogmatic point of view then, this pain is simply a positive punishment inflicted upon the damned by God, additional to the pain of loss, by means of some instrument called, in Scripture, fire. For the moment we say nothing of the nature of this instrument; the only thing that appertains strictly to faith is the existence of some positive torment distinct from the pain of loss.
Already in the Old Testament we are given a clear vision of the pain of sense. The prophet Isaias (66:24) speaks of “the fire that shall not be quenched,” and the phrase is repeated in the book of Judith, 16:21 (Cfr. Ecclesiasticus 7:19).
Our Blessed Lord borrows the expression from Isaias in the passage quoted above, where
- He tells us that, if the eye be an occasion of sin it is better to pluck it out, or if hand or foot scandalize us, it is better to cut it off than to go into Hell where the fire is not extinguished. The parable of the cockle ends with an allusion to Hell-fire (Matt. 13:40-42);
- the rich man cries out that he is tormented in the flame (Luke 16:24);
- the Judge at the last day utters the same terrifying sentence: “Depart from me . . . into everlasting fire.”
We find the same teaching in the epistles: St. Jude (5:7, 23), St. Peter (2 Pet. 3:7), St. James (3:6), St. Paul (2 Thess. 1:8; Heb. 10:27). The Apocalypse, as we have seen, is full of realistic descriptions.
It is true that the meaning of these revelations is not so clear and evident that the existence of a real fire in Hell must be held as a dogma of faith, but they leave us in no doubt whatever as to the existence of some positive punishment distinct from the pain of loss.
(4) These three truths are taught by the Church’s infallible authority
1. We have already seen that the Church always taught as a dogma of faith that death finally fixes man's free moral choice of his last end, and that she, therefore, rejected the contrary heresy of Origenism.
But this dogma necessarily includes that of the eternity of Hell, as appears from the wording of Justinian’s ninth anathema, approved and subscribed by Pope Vigilius and the whole episcopate:
“If anyone shall say or think that the punishment of the devils and the wicked will not be eternal, but that it will have an end, and that then there will be an “apocatastasis” of the devils and the wicked, let him be anathema.”
In the face of this public proclamation of the Church’s teaching, little notice need be taken of some occasional passages, obscure in meaning or of doubtful authenticity, taken from the works of St. Ambrose, St. Gregory of Nazianzum and St. Gregory of Nyssa, especially as, in other places, these Fathers teach quite clearly the doctrine held by the whole of Catholic Tradition
2. On this second point of Catholic teaching the fifth century saw the rise of a school of thought which attempted to mitigate the traditional doctrine.
According to these writers, who were nicknamed the misericordes or merciful, only infidels, unbelievers and obstinate heretics would suffer in Hell for ever, while unrepentant sinners who were numbered among the faithful would be saved after doing penance for a time.
It would seem that even St. Jerome adopted this opinion; but the authentic teaching of the Church is not involved in the erroneous opinions of any individual Father or Doctor.
The distinction between unbelievers and believers drawn by these writers has no justification in Scripture and is without authority in Catholic tradition.
Against this heretical aberration St. Augustine was the great champion of orthodoxy and is the faithful witness of Catholic thought.
The Church’s true doctrine has been more than once authoritatively proclaimed; in the second Council of Lyons (1274) the confession of faith submitted to and subscribed by Michael Paleologus lays down that: “the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin, or in original sin only, go down at once into Hell, there to suffer diverse pains.”
The Council of Florence (1439) repeats this decree, adding only the word “actual” to the phrase “mortal sin.”
The adverb mox (at once) inserted in these two decrees, appears likewise in the “Benedict us Deus” of Benedict XII already quoted by us when speaking of the particular judgment. In this document he defines that the “souls of those who die in a state of actual mortal sin go down immediately (mox) after death into Hell,”thus condemning the opinion that judgment is deferred, and at the same time proclaiming the Catholic teaching on the matter now under consideration.
3. Lastly the Church has always believed in a twofold punishment in Hell.
Although the teaching of the Gospels is, of itself, enough to establish this as an article of faith, official pronouncements are not wanting.
Thus Pope Innocent III in a letter to the Archbishop of Arles (1201), inserted in the third book of the Decretals, draws the distinction between the deprivation of the beatific vision, which is the penalty of original sin, and the torment of eternal Hell, which is the punishment of actual sin. Moreover, whenever in ecclesiastical documents mention is made of the pains, punishments and torments of Hell, this is equivalent to an assertion of the two pains, of loss and of sense, for the latter is explicitly indicated by the use of such terms, while the former is necessarily involved in every punishment that is eternal.
II. TRUTHS THEOLOGICALLY CERTAIN
A truth is said to be theologically certain when it is deduced from a dogma of faith by a process of reasoning. The certitude thus produced in the mind is not that of faith, though dependent upon it, and the denial of such a truth constitutes the sin, not of heresy, but of error.
With reference to Hell there are two of these theologically certain truths to be considered:
- first, the proportion between the sufferings to be endured and the sins committed,
- and secondly, the fixity or constancy of the essential sufferings of Hell.
(1) Proportion between sins and sufferings
God will render to every man, good and bad, according to his works.
So declares St. Paul writing to the Romans, 2:6. The Council of Florence gave an authoritative interpretation to this revealed truth, in so far as the blessed are concerned, when it declared that “according to the diversity of their merits, some will see God more perfectly than others.”
With regard to the sufferings of the damned the Council defined nothing as to their diversity, but by analogy and deduction we are bound to hold that they will be regulated by the same standard of distributive justice.
Sacred Scripture, indeed, indicates this clearly enough: Matt. 10:15; 11:21-24; Luke 10:12-15; 12:47-48; Apoc. 18:6-7. This doctrine then, so far as the damned are concerned, is not a dogma of faith, since it is not formally proposed by the Church’s teaching authority; but it is accepted by all as theologically certain, that is, in theological language, proximate to faith.
(2) Constancy of the pains of Hell
The eternity of Hell implies, as a deduction, that its sufferings remain constant.
The theory of a progressive and indefinite mitigation of the sufferings of the damned must be rejected as gravely erroneous.
These two assertions need some explanation.
(a) There is a certain mitigation of the pains of Hell that a Catholic may allow.
First there is the so-called mitigation taught by St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Sales.
St Thomas says: “In the damnation of the lost, there is evidence of mercy, not indeed by way of total relaxation, but by way of partial alleviation, in so far as the punishment is less than is deserved” (Sum. Theol. Ia. q. 21, art. 4, ad. 1).
According to St. Francis de Sales: “these sufferings are much less than the sins and crimes for which they are inflicted” (Treatise of the Love of God, bk. IX, ch. I).
St. Thomas is of opinion that God will accord this alleviation of their torments to those especially who during life were themselves merciful to others (Suppl. q. 99, art. 5, ad. 1).
(b) Some theologians, following Duns Scotus, hold that venial sins, and mortal sins of which the guilt has been forgiven, will not be punished in Hell forever, because of themselves they are not deserving of eternal punishment.
Hence a day will come when, the temporal punishment due to be undergone for these sins having been completed, the damned will experience a mitigation of their sufferings, proportionate to the gravity of those sins for which they were condemned to suffer for a time. However improbable this opinion may seem to be, it may be held without offence to the faith, for it does not imply any mitigation of the sufferings inflicted for those sins which, of themselves, are deserving of eternal punishment.
(c) A few early scholastic theologians, whose opinions St. Thomas records in the Supplement of his Summa Theologica, thought that the sufferings of the damned were alleviated by God on account of the prayers of the faithful.
The basis of this theory is but very slight; certain legendary stories, of which the theologian can take no account; some prayers inserted without authority in old missals used by some local churches, a thing of no doctrinal significance; the authority of the second book of the Machabees, (12:40) wherein it is related how prayers were offered even for those who had been slain after stealing the votive-offerings from the idols of Jamnia (which does not necessarily mean that they had died impenitent), and lastly some doubtful passages from St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom and St. John of Damascus.
Prayer for the souls of the lost is contrary to the practice of the Roman Church and condemned by all her theologians.
In the Supplement of the Summa Theologica this theory of the efficacy of prayer for the lost is described as a “presumptuous and vain opinion, without any solid foundation, and moreover not acceptable to reason” (q. 79, art. 5).
Seeing that this theory proposes only a restricted mitigation, strictly limited to the life of the Church on earth, since the alleviation of the sufferings of the lost would come to an end with the cessation of the prayers of the faithful, this condemnation of it may seem unduly severe. Yet, in truth, the theory is a very dangerous one. It attacks the very principle of the substantial inalterability of eternal punishment. It implies as admissible, even though exceptional, the hypothesis that prayer for some particular lost soul might be so ardent and so long sustained as to obtain from God “the progressive diminution” and finally “the total remission” of punishment. It leads, in fact, to the conception of a more or less tolerable Hell, an idea wholly unknown to Catholic tradition and opposed to the most solidly established theological principles.
(d) Certain modern authors, Protestants for the most part, have adopted this theory under a more extravagant and, theologically, more erroneous form.
According to them the sufferings of the lost may undergo “a progressive diminution”, according to a fixed and universal law. To avoid the heresy of Origenism they try to make out that this diminution, though going on indefinitely, will never lead to the total abolition of punishment, just as, theoretically, the division and subdivision of a line may go on indefinitely without ever leading to the absolute negation of all quantitative extension.
Without troubling about the value of this comparison, in which imagination plays a greater part than reason, and considering only the requirements of Catholic doctrine, we have no hesitation in endorsing Cardinal Billot’s condemnation of this theory as temerarious, scandalous and erroneous.
- Temerarious, since it goes against the doctrine generally held and is backed by no good authority;
- scandalous, since it opens out an unwonted view of eternal punishment becoming progressively less severe until it becomes bearable, and thus gives rein to our evil passions by weakening our fear of God’s judgment;
- erroneous, since it positively contradicts a truth that is theologically certain.
For it is a logical deduction from the dogma of eternal life that the misery of the lost corresponds with the glory of the blessed (Matt. 25:46); the saved, as regards the substance of their happiness, are in a condition that is fixed and unalterable, as are the damned with regard to their misery.
Otherwise the verdict of divine justice would not be irrevocable, and eternity would not last forever.
Besides, the pain of loss, the deprivation of the vision of God, which is the most terrible of all the torments of Hell, admits of no mitigation; either it simply is, or is not.
As for the pain of sense, the solemn words of Christ are not to be gainsaid: “vermis non moritur, ignis non extinguitur.”
In the hypothesis of indefinite mitigation, what becomes of this “worm” which, though never dying, grows ever weaker, and of this fire which, though never quenched, is for ever losing its heat?
We need not discuss certain passages from the Fathers alleged by the upholders of the theory of mitigation, notably Petavius and M. Emery, in support of a relative alleviation of the sufferings of the damned through the prayers of the Church. On this point we refer our readers to our book, L’Enfer et la règle de la foi, and to the article Mitigation des peines in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique.
III. A COMMONLY ACCEPTED TRUTH: THE REALITY OF HELL FIRE
An opinion is said to be temerarious when, without denying or casting doubt upon a dogma of faith, without even contradicting a truth that is theologically certain, it rejects without good reason, a doctrine commonly taught by theologians which, though not revealed, at any rate with certainty, yet concerns the religious beliefs or pious practices of the faithful.
(1) The reality of Hell-fire
This is a commonly accepted truth which it would be temerarious to doubt or deny.
But first it must be noted that to say that Hell-fire is real, is quite a different thing from saying what it actually is. When we say that it is real we do not assert that it is a corporeal or material thing like our earthly fire. Even when helped by revelation we have only an analogical knowledge of otherworldly things, since our concepts can rightly express only the proper object of our intellectual cognition, that is the material things of this world. A priori then, it may be said that Hell-fire, having an analogy with our earthly fire, both resembles it and differs from it; but how and to what degree we cannot say. Our present question, therefore, does not concern the nature of Hell-fire, but the simple fact of its objective reality.
We say, then, that the fire of Hell is a thing distinct from the lost soul itself, or, with greater accuracy, that it implies the existence of an objective cause really distinct from the pain of sense which is its effect, and in the infliction of which it is the instrument of divine justice.
Understood in this sense, real fire is opposed to metaphorical fire, just as the objective cause of suffering is opposed to the merely subjective feeling or affliction of the soul.
(2) Theological proof of the reality of Hell-fire
This is drawn from Scripture, tradition and the unanimous teaching of theologians.
(a) As we have already seen, the Scriptures, in speaking of Hell, use such terms as “eternal fire, unquenchable fire, gehenna” (the very word recalls the fire kept burning in the valley of Ghinnom), “a furnace of fire, tormenting flame, smoke of their torments, a lake of brimstone and fire”, etc.
It seems impossible to take these expressions otherwise than in a realistic sense. Any metaphorical interpretation, which takes the fire to be merely the soul’s anguish or remorse, even “an ever gnawing paroxysm of remorse,” does violence to the obvious meaning of the words, especially when taken together and read in the light of the beliefs that were universally held by the contemporaries of Christ.
The hypothesis of a real but simply spiritual fire, put forward by some modern theologians, might indeed be reconciled with the words of Scripture, but is in itself acontradiction, a spiritual fire being metaphysically inconceivable.
(b) The traditional teaching of the Fathers, taken as a whole, provides a weighty argument.
Nearly always they speak of Hell-fire in terms that even accentuate the realism of Scripture. For them it is a “hard and bitter” fire, “cruel, unquenchable, unbearable” in which the sinner will burn and be tortured ceaselessly and forever. They liken it to the fire of this world, or to the fires kindled by God for the destruction of sinners.
Minutius Felix and Tertullian compare it with lightning and volcanic fires.
According to St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine the fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah is an image of Hell.
From the fifth century we find it described as “corporeal,” and by the time of St. Gregory the Great its reality and materiality were accepted by all.
It must, however, be noted, that there were some contradictory opinions, especially in the earlier centuries.
Origen, for example, maintained definitely a purely metaphorical fire, and Theophylactus followed him.
But certain passages from St. Gregory of Nyssa, Victor of Antioch, St. John of Damascus, Lactantius and St. Ambrose are either but doubtfully in favour of a metaphorical fire or are orthodox when read in the light of other assertions by the same writers.
The theological explanation of the action of Hell-fire had not yet been worked out, and the prevailing conception was a very simple one; the pain of loss, being wholly spiritual, was referred to the soul, the pain of sense was attributed to the body.
True, the Fathers did not always express themselves so clearly, but that was their underlying idea, as is proved by the fact that sometimes they teach that even those guilty of original sin alone will suffer positive torments.
Some of them are explicit, as for example, St. Methodius, who thinks that the soul, even before the resurrection, must have some kind of a body, for otherwise Hell-fire could not afflict it; whereas, St. Gregory of Nyssa declares that the human soul, being spiritual, can never be tormented by fire.
St. Augustin, summing up the different theories then current on the subject of the “worm” and “fire,” finds the difficulty to lie in explaining the action of material fire upon spiritual beings. (The City of God, bk. XX, ch. 22; bk. XXI, ch. 9). It would disappear, he thinks, if the hypothesis of the corporeity of the demons could be upheld, but, given their spiritual nature, we are brought up against a mystery.
The conclusion to be drawn from this brief examination of the Fathers’ teaching is that, when they are simply setting forth the traditional belief of the Church, they speak, without hesitation, of the fire of Hell, but when they try to explain the action of fire upon spiritual beings, both thought and language betray uncertainty. Only a few of them dealt directly with this aspect of the problem of Hell-fire, which was to be the subject of theological discussion in later days, but it is precisely those few, apart from Origen and Theophylactus who definitely went astray, whose names are quoted as our adversaries.
(c) But even when these errors and uncertainties are duly discounted, it remains true that the teaching of the Church touching the reality of Hell-fire has undergone a certain progress. Today the moral unanimity of theologians is a fact.
The theory of a metaphorical fire has been altogether given up. In the sixteenth century, the Dominican theologian Ambrose Catharinus, a somewhat daring speculator in matters theological, tried, unsuccessfully, to revive this theory. His opinion was immediately subjected to severe criticism and, by most theologians, rejected as, at least temerarious, if not erroneous. It runs counter, indeed, to the authority of all the great theologians and of all theological schools. The mediaeval theologians, especially, always understand the Scriptural word ignis in a strictly realistic way. The possibility of a metaphorical interpretation is so remote from their minds, that they rather prefer to give a literal meaning to other words, such as ice, water and the gnawing worm, which are sometimes coupled with fire in the inspired descriptions of the torments of Hell.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a certain number of “theologians” tried to reinstate the metaphorical interpretation, but their theological authority was not high enough to win for it a standing in the schools.
Finally, in 1890, an ecclesiastical decision was given on this point, which, though purely disciplinary, indicates what is the only authorized teaching. A parish priest of the diocese of Mantua put the following case before the Sacred Penitentiary: “A penitent makes known to his confessor that, in his opinion, the expression ‘the fire of Hell’ is only a metaphor for the intense sufferings of the damned, and asks whether penitents may be allowed to persist in this opinion and be absolved.” The answer was that they were to be carefully instructed, and if they showed themselves pertinacious, were not to be absolved. This indication, together with the unanimous agreement of the great theologians, obliges us to conclude that the reality of the fire of Hell is, at least, a commonly accepted truth, which may not be denied without committing the grave sin of temerity.
