What is Reddit's opinion of A Larger Hope?, Volume 1?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Hey there, I hope you’re doing well. It is not a mortal sin to be a Catholic universalist. I am a Catholic Universalist and while it is certainly a minority opinion among those interested in being Orthodox Catholics, it is certainly not impossible to hold to the position. Let me outline how I argue for the compatibility of universalism and Catholicism.

A good resource for an overview of Catholic dogma is Ludwig Ott's "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma." In it, he goes over the basics of each dogma, its basis in Scripture and Tradition, and the Councils or documents that dogmatized it. If we go to the section on heel, the key components of the doctrine is that it is eternal, conscious torment. Now, my way to affirm universalism is to get into the philology of the "eternal" part, as it has been used in councils and dogmatic declarations. If we go to the councils which talk about hell's eternity, like the Fourth Lateran Council, the word used to describe this kind of eternity is aveternity. This is where it gets interesting, for aveternity has many different usages in the Middle Ages and meant different things to different theologians. "Duns Scotus believed aeternitas an incommunicable attribute of God that could not be predicated of creatures at all. Theodoric of Freiberg, defining aeternitas as the measure of divine intelligences, held God to possess not aeternitas, but superaeternitas. Interpretations of aevum were similarly varied. Bonaventure understood aevum to be a particularly exotic form of space-time in which the future arrives, but the past is never lost. This little bit of scholastic trivia is actually quite important for limning the possibilities of Latin universalism. If each aevum is nested in other, higher aeva, then the inhabitants of lower aeva, be they angels or human beings, cannot of their own power comprehend higher aeva. Human beings, submerged in our own peculiar space-time, cannot understand the aeviternal space-time of the lowest angel without supernatural assistance, just as that angel cannot conceive higher angels’ aeva without being illuminated by a superior, super-celestial light. From our own little corner of immensity, the aevum of an angel, or the purifying fire through which we might have to pass for our sins to be purged, while finite, is yet incalculable. It is perfectly in keeping with the Latin to say that hell’s poenae aeternae last an aevum—or in Greek an aiōn—that is to say, they last a finite eschatological measure that we cannot calculate ourselves. We may rest assured—and tremble—that God, being infinitely just, has determined their duration accordingly. We may also pray that in dying to sin in faith, we may be saved from this terrifying eschatological trial." This is a quote from an email exchange I has with a theologian with Trent Pomplun who makes the same point to affirm universalism. Given this variety among the theologians of the time, it is reasonable to assume that there was a variety of opinion among the fathers of the council, and this is important for Catholics are not allowed to interpret dogma contrary to the way that it was understood by the fathers of the council. With all of this in place, we can interpret aveternity to be closer to the original Greek anion, which simply means age, rather eternity. Given this, we can affirm that people go to her for aveternity, an age that of torment that is, as Aquinas affirms, medicinal and not punitive, and has a length that is incalculable, and yet finite. This also fits with some passages from the universalist Church fathers, who thought that Judas' torment would be incalcuable, and yet finite. I hope that helps and I think this is similar to your view that hell is finite.

In terms of Catholic saints who were universalists, there are quiet a few. Certainly, most of these saints are also saints in the East, like Gregory of Nyssa and St. Issac the Syrian, as many of the Fathers were universalists. For a good overview of universalists in both the East and West prior to the Reformation Illaria Ramelli has a great volume, in case you haven't already seen it: https://www.amazon.com/Larger-Hope-Christian-Beginnings-Norwich/dp/1498287980. Ramelli is a Catholic, by the way, and teaches at the Angelicum in Rome so I doubt many think she is hetrodox. There are even statement from recent saints and popes which, at the very least, lend themselves towards universalism.

"All merciful love can thus descend to everyone - we believe that it does so. And now, can we assume that there are souls that remain perpetually closed to such love? As a possibility in principle, this cannot be rejected. In reality, it becomes infinitely improbable. Grace can steal its way into souls and spread itself more and more. Human freedom can be neither broken nor neutralized by divine freedom, but it can be 'outwitted'." - St. Edith Stein

"Eternal damnation remains a possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it." (General Audience of July 28, 1999) "Christ, Redeemer of man, now for ever ‘clad in a robe dipped in blood’ (Apoc, 19,13), the everlasting, invincible guarantee of universal salvation." (Message of John Paul II to the Abbess General of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of St Bridget) "If the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is to convince the world precisely of this ‘judgment,’ undoubtedly he does so to continue Christ’s work aimed at universal salvation. We can therefore conclude that in bearing witness to Christ, the Paraclete is an assiduous (though invisible) advocate and defender of the work of salvation, and of all those engaged in this work. He is also the guarantor of the definitive triumph over sin and over the world subjected to sin, in order to free it from sin and introduce it into the way of salvation." (General Audience of May 24, 1989) ^ These are all quotes of Pope St. John Paul II

“For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God...the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love" -Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi 46-47

https://philpapers.org/rec/HRYBTP - from a Catholic priest who defended the Orthodoxy of universalism.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions on Catholicism and universalism, I'd be happy to help. God Bless :)

Hey there, I'm happy to hear you are thinking about entering the Church. I am a Catholic Universalist and while it is certainly a minority opinion among those interested in being Orthodox Catholics, it is certainly not impossible to hold to the position. Let me outline how I argue for the compatibility of universalism and Catholicism.

A good resource for an overview of Catholic dogma is Ludwig Ott's "Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma." In it, he goes over the basics of each dogma, its basis in Scripture and Tradition, and the Councils or documents that dogmatized it. If we go to the section on heel, the key components of the doctrine is that it is eternal, conscious torment. Now, my way to affirm universalism is to get into the philology of the "eternal" part, as it has been used in councils and dogmatic declarations. If we go to the councils which talk about hell's eternity, like the Fourth Lateran Council, the word used to describe this kind of eternity is aveternity. This is where it gets interesting, for aveternity has many different usages in the Middle Ages and meant different things to different theologians. "Duns Scotus believed aeternitas an incommunicable attribute of God that could not be predicated of creatures at all. Theodoric of Freiberg, defining aeternitas as the measure of divine intelligences, held God to possess not aeternitas, but superaeternitas. Interpretations of aevum were similarly varied. Bonaventure understood aevum to be a particularly exotic form of space-time in which the future arrives, but the past is never lost. This little bit of scholastic trivia is actually quite important for limning the possibilities of Latin universalism. If each aevum is nested in other, higher aeva, then the inhabitants of lower aeva, be they angels or human beings, cannot of their own power comprehend higher aeva. Human beings, submerged in our own peculiar space-time, cannot understand the aeviternal space-time of the lowest angel without supernatural assistance, just as that angel cannot conceive higher angels’ aeva without being illuminated by a superior, super-celestial light. From our own little corner of immensity, the aevum of an angel, or the purifying fire through which we might have to pass for our sins to be purged, while finite, is yet incalculable. It is perfectly in keeping with the Latin to say that hell’s poenae aeternae last an aevum—or in Greek an aiōn—that is to say, they last a finite eschatological measure that we cannot calculate ourselves. We may rest assured—and tremble—that God, being infinitely just, has determined their duration accordingly. We may also pray that in dying to sin in faith, we may be saved from this terrifying eschatological trial." This is a quote from an email exchange I has with a theologian with Trent Pomplun who makes the same point to affirm universalism. Given this variety among the theologians of the time, it is reasonable to assume that there was a variety of opinion among the fathers of the council, and this is important for Catholics are not allowed to interpret dogma contrary to the way that it was understood by the fathers of the council. With all of this in place, we can interpret aveternity to be closer to the original Greek anion, which simply means age, rather eternity. Given this, we can affirm that people go to her for aveternity, an age that of torment that is, as Aquinas affirms, medicinal and not punitive, and has a length that is incalculable, and yet finite. This also fits with some passages from the universalist Church fathers, who thought that Judas' torment would be incalcuable, and yet finite. I hope that helps and I think this is similar to your view that hell is finite.

In terms of Catholic saints who were universalists, there are quiet a few. Certainly, most of these saints are also saints in the East, like Gregory of Nyssa and St. Issac the Syrian, as many of the Fathers were universalists. For a good overview of universalists in both the East and West prior to the Reformation Illaria Ramelli has a great volume, in case you haven't already seen it: https://www.amazon.com/Larger-Hope-Christian-Beginnings-Norwich/dp/1498287980. Ramelli is a Catholic, by the way, and teaches at the Angelicum in Rome so I doubt many think she is hetrodox. There are even statement from recent saints and popes which, at the very least, lend themselves towards universalism.

"All merciful love can thus descend to everyone - we believe that it does so. And now, can we assume that there are souls that remain perpetually closed to such love? As a possibility in principle, this cannot be rejected. In reality, it becomes infinitely improbable. Grace can steal its way into souls and spread itself more and more. Human freedom can be neither broken nor neutralized by divine freedom, but it can be 'outwitted'." - St. Edith Stein

"Eternal damnation remains a possibility, but we are not granted, without special divine revelation, the knowledge of whether or which human beings are effectively involved in it." (General Audience of July 28, 1999)
"Christ, Redeemer of man, now for ever ‘clad in a robe dipped in blood’ (Apoc, 19,13), the everlasting, invincible guarantee of universal salvation." (Message of John Paul II to the Abbess General of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour of St Bridget)
"If the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is to convince the world precisely of this ‘judgment,’ undoubtedly he does so to continue Christ’s work aimed at universal salvation. We can therefore conclude that in bearing witness to Christ, the Paraclete is an assiduous (though invisible) advocate and defender of the work of salvation, and of all those engaged in this work. He is also the guarantor of the definitive triumph over sin and over the world subjected to sin, in order to free it from sin and introduce it into the way of salvation." (General Audience of May 24, 1989)
^ These are all quotes of Pope St. John Paul II

“For the great majority of people—we may suppose—there remains in the depths of their being an ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God...the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love" -Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi 46-47

https://philpapers.org/rec/HRYBTP - from a Catholic priest who defended the Orthodoxy of universalism.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions on Catholicism and universalism, I'd be happy to help. God Bless :)

Hey there. It's a complicated and, in many ways, unfortunate story, but to put it succinctly there is no doctrine of hell as a place of eternal conscious torment for at least the first two to three centuries of the Church. Very early one many simply did not think about hell because early Christians believed that Christ would return very quickly. When more through discussion about afterlife occurred, the majority position was actually universalism for a good portion of the first 500 years, with annihilationism as a close second. The contemporary notion of hell was actually the minority view for a while and only became very popular, and essentially the dominant teaching, because of Augustine. The history is very complicated, but this is a summary. If you are interested in reading further, I'll share a great scholarly book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Larger-Hope-Christian-Beginnings-Norwich/dp/1498287980. I'm a universalist, by the way, as I think it follows from Christian metaphysics, so I hope you don't worry about hell. I don't your experience with the Church but if it was poor, I'm sorry about that. If you ever rejoin the Church or simply consider being religious again, do so out of love not fear for there is nothing to fear. God Bless :)