We don't have a formal meal on Friday evenings, and there was nothing else going on, so tonight I went to the senior friars' home for supper.
It was quite the scene. Over their standard Friday supper of fish sticks and curly fries--they're real Catholics--the brethren were having an elaborate discussion about the eternal destiny of Judas Iscariot.
The questions at hand:
1. Is it possible that Judas could be saved?
2. Is final impenitence really possible?
3. Is it a pious and fitting thought to imagine that there are perhaps no human souls in hell?
4. Is it likewise pious and fitting to expect to meet Judas in heaven?
5. If someone were to meet Judas in heaven, what would we say to him?
The conversation self-destructed fairly quickly, but was nonetheless entertaining.
I'll put my contentions in the comment box, just to keep the post clean.
11 comments:
1. Yes. Anyone can be saved.
2. Yes. To deny the possibility of final impenitence is to deny human freedom.
3. I think it's a real possibility that there are no human souls in hell. But we shouldn't imagine this in such a way that it absolves us of hell as a possibility for our own destiny. I could be the first!
4. Though I want to say that all thoughts of heaven are fitting and pious, I'm not sure about this one.
5. "Don't kiss me, bro."
Walter likes to talk about that, but because he sort of forgets what he's talking about most of the time, he ends up repeating the same point over and over again.
I'm glad to hear that sometimes there's a point!
I ended up thinking a lot about Judas while in adoration a week or two ago. It's not my place to speculate, but I sincerely hope that Judas is in Heaven, just as I hope everyone repented at death and was saved from the eternal damnation that we all deserve.
I once asked some of those questions on my blog...glad to know that people who know more than I do have the same questions! LOL
Although some of them seem to have been musing along the lines of Origen's theory of..dang, forgot the word. Anyway, it was later declared a heresy. I don't think your conversation went that far, anyway.
I hate to say it, but I DO believe there are souls in Hell, because Hell is not a place, but a state of being. If someone rejected God, well...they made their decision, of their own free will. But it's a sorrowful thought that anyone could ever reject God with such finality.
:-(
I think that's why we have to work so hard to make sure everyone knows Our Lord!
PS : That word is bugging me. I'll get it eventually... apostokinesis? Apostostasis? Apokostasis? Apoco....
bah!
(stop laughing... lol ...)
apocatastasis, or apokatastasis, usually referring to the final restoration of the pristine state of the beginning of things...
Of course we believe in a certain form of this as Christans, e.g. "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end," the welling up of the rivers in Genesis and the river from the New Jerusalem in Revelation, etc.
But other forms of it have been condemned. Eschatology is a touchy subject, and it takes a lot of care to stay within the lines. :)
Similar questions might be: what would have happened if Jesus had not agreed to follow his destiny as foretold in the prophecies of the OT?
What would have happened if Judas had fought the temptation to turn Jesus over to those who wanted to get rid of him and had not done the deed?
Is Jesus had not fulfilled his destiny by his Passion, Judas would have reproached him in his old age, just as Harvey Keitel did playing Judas in The Last Temptation of Christ, Jerusalem burning in the background.
P.s. Before I open a rabbit hole by mentioning Last Temptation, if you really want a trip, read Kazantzakis life of St. Francis.
1&2: Yay, good answers.
3: I don't know. I shy from it because the greater weight of biblical (Christ's words especially) and traditional (besides the Fathers and so on, how many times has a renewal come about because so many souls were being 'led to hell' by the inaction of the Church, according to not only the holy founders of orders but visions?) comes down on the other side of things.
4: I'm with you here, so long as we use the word 'expect'. You simply can't *expect* it, sans any proof of repentance, without implicitly expressing your view that no one is in hell. Not that there are perhaps none, but that there are none.
5: Funny! I'm hoping my word would be 'Alleluia!'
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