Adios Limbo
Vatican theologians are about to recommend getting rid of the hypothesis of limbo. The theory (not ever a dogma) was that perhaps anabaptized babies spend eternity in a state of natural happiness but not in the presence of God (heaven). I never subscribed, and say good riddance. As does our pope. According to Catholic News Service, "In the 1985 book-length interview, 'The Ratzinger Report,' the future Pope Benedict said, 'Limbo was never a defined truth of faith. Personally -- and here I am speaking more as a theologian and not as prefect of the congregation -- I would abandon it, since it was only a theological hypothesis.'"
posted by Ernesto at 8:36 PM
7 Comments:
Does not the question, then, go back to its original hypothetical roots?...What do you do with all those unbaptized babies?
The Catholic Church allows it is possible that unbaptized babies, along with unbaptized, non-Christian adults, can get into heaven. According to the Cathecism, quoting Lumen gentium, "Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience--those too may achieve eternal salvation."
While there is no salvation outside of Christ, how Christ chooses to effect that salvation in the world must be up to Him ...
Well, I could gloat a bit at this point, since this position differs little from the one that I posited in the earlier Purgatory thread, but I'm happy to simply say Amen to your Adios.
The difference is in the details, perhaps, but they are important details. Besides, the concept of limbo and that of purgatory; miles apart, no?
Excuse my boundless ignorance of the Catholic Guide to the Afterlife, but it seems to me that the foundation of purgatory is made of the same stuff as the rafters of Limbo, i.e. speculation. If you can apply the Pope-to-be's logic to one hypothetical post-life station, what protects the other?
Purgatory seems a vastly different sort of speculation -- the sort that is firstly based on scripture and secondarily based on logical assumptions. If I meet someone on a train, I will assume that the person got on the train when it stopped at a station. It's possible that the person parachuted onto the moving train and climbed in through an open window, but a lot less likely. Seems to me in terms of likelihood, believing in purgatory is akin to believing that passengers get on trains at stations. (I'm not at all drawing any sort of analogous relationship between the operation of trains and purgatory.)
I should really try some reading on these topics before I just blunder in with my opinions in a bag, but here I go again.
There is no dispute between Catholics and evangelicals that there is a journey or passage or conversion of some kind between earthly life and heaven. It's the speculation about the nature of that "translation" that divides us. Evangelicals are free to speculate, but not to encode their speculations beyond preaching and scholarship. I assume that there were some kinds of Biblical citations or inferences used to support the church's views on Limbo (Baptism as essential for salvation was pretty much assumed in the Catholic Church for most of it's history, I believe). Limbo was a speculative place fabricated by the church to accommodate this interpretation of scripture. Purgatory can certainly be inferred from scripture, but, to my knowledge, is not mentioned in any way. However the concept of Purgatory was very useful to a church which held tremendous authority and power. If entry to Heaven was merely a yes/no proposition, then the church was left with only unsubtle means of control. Threatening damnation for every transgression would soon sound overly severe. Offering Heaven for each act of charity would seem frivolous. Purgatory as a broad concept for the mystery of how God deals with souls of differing purity is not unbibilical and could be accepted by most Christians. Purgatory as a "buffer zone" wherein the church holds some kind of sway empowered the church in it's ministrations, but in doing so, gave it control over human lives that it was not entitled to have. Abuses naturally resulted. As I said before, Purgatory reminds me a bit of issue of the separation of powers regarding the Constitution. Now that the canon is established, the church can interpret scripture, but not write scripture. It's another one of my cheap shots, but the church concept of Purgatory reminds me of a mirror image of the Supreme Court's penumbra around the Constitution which protects privacy and then abortion and then sodomy. Some of the early church's excesses were indeed brutal and so maybe these comparisons are not as odious as they sound now. Do I fear such excesses again? No. But in my mind, the principle stands.
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