u/Embarrassed_Mix_4836

I find it quite ironic, that infernalists basically admit that 99.99 % of mankind will burn in hell eternally, but they always make an exception for themselves, their friends and their family. Every infernalist is a universalist when it comes to their family. But if they were consistent, then they should view themselves, their family and friends as damned, created and predestined for eternal torment as they are not living saints thus won't make it to heaven.

Very interesting.

You guys might appreciate this piece from a Roman Catholic priest:

"Along with many other Christians past and present, I am convinced that God’s love will have the last word for all human beings. One day, this love will have won the final victory and God will be, as the Bible says, “all in all” (cf. 1 Cor 15:28). But what is the basis of this certainty? In the following lines, I would like to present some answers to this question for discussion. First of all, it is necessary to become clear about the basic statements of the Christian message.^(i)

1) What is faith basically about?

The Christian message makes a tremendous claim. It claims to be the “Word of God”. In every transmission of this message, God himself has his say and reveals his self- communication to the creature: In his word, God grants communion with himself. But how can a message be understood as the “Word of God”? It is the content of the Christian message itself that explains and makes understandable its claim to be the “Word of God”. For such a claim is anything but self-evident. However, the problem, which unfortunately is rarely recognized in its full scope and which basically calls all religion into question, is only recognized when one explicitly asks what understanding of God the Christian message presupposes. Who is God and what does the word “God” mean in the Christian message? And how is it possible that this God speaks to us in a human word and gives us fellowship with himself?

The Christian tradition has always maintained that God does not fall under concepts, that he is more perfect than anything we can think of or experience.^(ii)

But how can we then speak of God in a meaningful way? The Christian message answers this question as follows: We can only ever conceive of God that which is different from him, namely the created world, but which refers entirely to him and cannot be without him. The fact that the world is “created out of nothing” means that it is constituted in its entire reality as “completely related to . . . / in complete difference from . . .” We call the terminus ad quem of this unique relationship “God”. We do not first know who God is in order to then say of him that one day he also created the world, but we can only ever start from the world and recognize it as created. The createdness of the world, which must not be limited to the beginning of the world but encompasses everything that exists in every moment and also in its entire temporal continuity, is recognized from the fact that the world as a unity of opposites can only be described without contradiction as “completely related to . . . / in complete difference from . . .”

The being of the world is therefore identical with its being created; nothing can be without God. And being created as such represents a one-sided real relation. The world is completely related to God and ontologically dependent on him. However, God is in no way dependent on the world or related to it in such a way that the world could be the constitutive term for such a relationship. God and the world are not components of a still overarching system within which the laws of interaction would prevail and which would then be even greater than God. The doctrine of the one-sidedness of the real relation of the created to God, which was advocated by Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and many other theologians, but has fallen into oblivion today, is in complete contradiction to our spontaneous way of conceiving things. However, it is necessary in order to be able to preserve the divinity of God in our thinking. God is not a supreme being, but the one without whom nothing exists. In himself he does not fall under concepts. We can only ever speak of him in an indicative and analogous way, due to the fact that the world relates to him completely and yet remains distinct from him.

In view of this understanding of God, however, the claim of the Christian message to be the “Word of God” becomes utterly problematic. Given the one-sidedness of the creaturely relationship, how can there be God’s turning to the world? How can there be communion with God? Paul already teaches that “God dwells in unapproachable light” (1 Tim 6:16). Seen from the world, God is absent and hidden. The creature is as such incapable of communion with God. This is the “sin of the world”. No created quality, and therefore no human achievement whatsoever, can ever be sufficient to enable fellowship with God. This insight is also expressed in Luther’s desperate-sounding question: “How can I get a gracious God?”

Against this dark background, the bright scripture of the Christian message explains how a “Word of God” and communion with God can be conceived without contradiction. The Christian message proclaims the Trinity of God as a truth of faith: the one and indivisible reality of God exists as three persons, namely as three differently mediated relations of God to himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For us, this means that the whole world, and therefore every single person, is created from the outset into God’s love for God, in the love of the Father for the Son, which is the Holy Spirit. God is turning towards the world with the same love that already exists from eternity as the love between Father and Son and that is itself God. In this way, God can relate to the world in a real way without becoming dependent on the world. And we humans can have fellowship with God in this way.

But precisely because this infinite love of God for the world is not constituted by the finite existence of the world, it cannot be read off from the conditions of the world with natural reason. How then can it be recognized? The Christian message answers this question with its Christological understanding of God. The love of God must be specifically told to the world: The Son took on a human nature in Jesus of Nazareth in order to reveal our true reality to us in a simple human word and to be able to bear witness to it even unto death on the cross. The word of Jesus is the “Word of God” and as such can only be recognized as true by faith, namely by accepting it and trusting in it. Believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God therefore means knowing that oneself (and the whole world) is infinitely loved by the Father with him and for his sake because of his word. This sentence is the summary of the entire Christian faith, which does not consist of parts, but only ever unfolds and explains a single basic mystery: our communion with God, which cannot even be destroyed by death. Our eternal life is a participation in God’s own life and begins already here and now with faith in Jesus Christ.

Through the incarnate Son of God, it thus becomes apparent to faith that the whole world is secure in the Father’s love for the Son. The finite human being, every human being, is infinitely loved by God forever. This is the salvation for all. No one is excluded. But doesn’t God’s love have its limit in human freedom? What happens if people reject the offer of grace and do not want to be loved by God?

2) God and the freedom of man

It is often thought that God “respects” human freedom. If man actively refuses to trust in God’s love, then God is powerless. Such a view is very problematic because it ultimately conceives of God as a super-being in competition with the world. Such an understanding of God would be indistinguishable from a human self-projection. If nothing can be without God and he is powerful in everything, then this naturally also applies to all of man’s free decisions. They too are created and therefore dependent on God in an unsurpassable way. The idea that God would have to react to anything in the world, even if only by respecting it, is based on a false concept of creation. For if all reality is a one-sided “completely being related to . . . / in complete difference from . . . ,” then there is simply no room for such a reacting or respecting. God is not in competition or interaction with his creation, but all reality is reduced to not being able to be without him. In this sense, being created is what makes human freedom possible in the first place.

But doesn’t such a view lead into a terrible theological determinism, according to which everything is determined by God and human freedom and responsibility are merely a perhaps useful illusion? This could only be claimed if one understood the world-God relationship causally and not relationally-ontologically. God is not the determinant cause of events in the world, but the terminus ad quem of the creaturely dependency relation that constitutes the being of the world. Due to the one-sidedness of the creaturely relation, it is impossible to derive any facts in the world from God or to deduce them from an alleged concept of God. Such a derivation would lack any ontological basis. It would also violate the recognition of God’s incomprehensibility.

There is no thinking that transcends the world and God because there is no system that transcends the world and God. This fact rules out any theological determinism from the outset. Hence, there is no contradiction between the omnipotence of God and the recognition of our human freedom (regardless of how this freedom may be understood in detail).

Basically, true freedom only comes about by knowing that we are secure in God’s love and therefore no longer have to live under the power of fear for ourselves, which would otherwise make us inhuman again and again. Faith as trust in God represents the redeeming alternative to every form of idolatry of created things, which inevitably turns into despair at some point. In faith, one no longer has to cling to finite goods at any price and gains the freedom to accept the world in its finiteness and to deal with it rationally and sustainably.^(iii) Paul speaks of the “freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21): “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1). In this freedom, we no longer have to idolize earthly experiences of happiness, but can gratefully understand them as parables of God’s love. And we no longer have to repress or despair about the fact that all happiness in this world is very fragile and fleeting. However, faith is not a secure possession in our pocket, as it were, but always subject to challenge (Anfechtung).

Christian existence in this world is a struggle between faith and unbelief that only ends with death.

Incidentally, God’s grace cannot be knowingly rejected. For God’s grace is only recognized as real in the act of faith; but then it is already accepted. “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except in the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3). Although it is possible to reject the Christian message, it is impossible from the outset to do so in the certainty that this message is true, namely that it not only claims to be the “Word of God”, but that it actually is the “Word of God”. This also explains why, according to Luke 23:34, Jesus prayed on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

3) The “purgatory of death” and a universal salvation that can only be recognized within faith

What about people who remain in unbelief all their lives? Do such people even exist?

Unbelief would ultimately consist of having false gods and idolizing created reality. Of course, one can have false gods. Human beings are sinners. Unbelief is widespread.

The only question is for how long. Unbelief has an expiration date because the false gods will be knocked out of our hands at the latest when we die. At the latest at death, all idols prove to be unreliable and void. It is not possible to cling to false gods for all eternity. That is why God does not have to respect man’s unbelief. As the incomprehensible and all-powerful God, God respects nothing at all. Through the “purgatory of death” we stand unsurpassably poor before God and open for him to fill us with his grace. No one goes to heaven with sin. But in death, God separates all human beings from their unbelief and their sins (cf. Ps 103:12-14; Rom 11:25-32).

Coming to faith means letting go of false gods already in this life. There is, however, always a mixture of belief and unbelief even in the most holy believers. Thank God, all unbelief is destroyed in the “purgatory of death” at the latest. Seen from this perspective, death is both judgement and mercy.

The fact that God’s love will have the last word for all people can only be recognized as true within faith. To think outside of faith that everything will be well in the end anyway, so that it doesn’t matter how you live, is a terrible delusion that must be clearly warned against. It could be compared to someone who imagines or is told that he has inherited ten million dollars, but where he is, there is no way he can find out which account the money is. One can’t pay bills with the mere idea of ten million dollars. It is similar when someone thinks that truths of faith are also accessible as true outside of faith. According to the teachings of the First Vatican Council, truths of faith and truths of reason differ both in their content and in the way they are recognized.

True faith can never be against reason. The idea that God has set up the world in such a way that all those who erroneously reject his love must suffer endless torment is against reason. It is also a blasphemous idea.

The meaning of the threats of hell in the New Testament consists in a warning: One can never find ultimate happiness by doing evil. People who are under the power of fear for themselves and are therefore prevented from acting lovingly have no hope in all eternity from their point of view. And they need to be told this again and again. However, this does not exclude that believers have hope for all. This hope, which constitutes the very joy of the Christian faith, is by no means hypothetical. For in faith there is no realm of uncertainty.

Such a doctrine of universal salvation, which is only accessible to faith, has never been explicitly condemned in the tradition. In general, only that which can be understood as God’s self-communication to his creature can be the subject of the faith tradition. All single statements of faith must be traceable back to this basic mystery: Our communion with God through Jesus Christ. In this sense, one cannot believe in hell either, unless one means that communion with God is not possible starting from the creature, but only by pure grace. To conclude by quoting again St. Paul: “God has consigned all to disobedience, that he might have mercy on all” (Rom 11:32)."