by Br. Alexis Bugnolo
Some laymen on the internet know their faith well, others, well, judge for yourself:
Anyone who has studied the basic 101 course in Theology at any Catholic University should know the answer to Maddox’s Brother’s Question.
It’s not a mystery. It has been taught by Jesus Christ and explained by the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church — if you care to read them!
First, there is the teaching of Jesus Christ our God, Himself: No one is good but God alone.(Mark 10:18)
Second of His servant Moses, speaking of God, after He had created mankind, who wrote: And God saw that all He had made and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)
Then there is the faithful Apostle of Christ, Saint Paul who explains: For every creation of God is good, and nothing that is received with thanksgiving should be rejected (1 Timothy 4:4)
And we are warned in Scripture about judging God’s ways of doing things: He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom the work God has done from beginning to end. (Ecclesiates 3:11)
And God speaking, again, through his prophet Ezechiel declares explicitly: Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live? (Chapter 18:23)
So, then, if God does not desire the death of sinners, He desires even less their annihilation. Why? Because God is Goodness Itself and He has made every creature good according to what it is, so even when man fails God ultimately and eternally, nevertheless, there is goodness still in his existence and being, even if there is none left in his will as a moral habit. Therefore, God cannot destroy souls. But since justice is good, He can punish them eternally, while keeping them in existence. Keeping them in existence confirms that He is good. Punishing them eternally testifies that they have chosen to be unjust, and that God being Just punishes that injustice.
To claim that no one knows the answer to Maddox’s Brother’s question denies Sacred Scripture itself as the source of knowledge, Christ as the Master, the Prophets as inspired and infallible teachers.
What more can I say? But Steve, if you learned your opinion in this matter at Steubenville, I would ask them for my money back!
If they did not teach your opinion, I would humbly suggest you shut down One Peter Five until you go back and read the whole Bible from the beginning and check to see if you believe all that it teaches. Because, it does no one any good to market religion, if you have no idea what religion is about.
But as far as reason is considered, reason can see that existence is better than non-existence, and that therefore the good agent must prefer existence to non existence. On which account, given that God is a good agent, He must prefer punishment to annihilation. The rational argument is even quicker to arrive at than the theological.
And if your reason cannot see that, well….
___________
CREDITS: The Featured Image is of God the Father, by Cima de Conegliano (Source and credits here)
+ + +
[simple-payment id=”5295″]
That comment by Schiz Maddox’s brother is much like Bergoglio (who is Skojec’s pope) telling the journal “La Repubblica” on March 29, 2018 (Holy Thursday), “No.. souls are not castigated, those who repent are pardoned by God and are united to those who contemplate, but those who do not or because they cannot be forgiven simply dissappear! Hell does not exist. What exists is the disappearance of sinful souls”. Then, of course, the Vatican came out to deny that Bergoglio would ever say such a thing…
WONDERFUL! In other words, God cannot possibly destroy anything He created because all He created is GOOD, and CAN ONLY BE GOOD. And because God is not willing that ANY MAN perish (proven by Our Lord, by the Holy Spirit, praying for the forgiveness of His Hell bound crucifiers) we could follow up with the absolute certainty that IF GOD COULD save anyone in Hell HE WOULD! But the fact of the matter is that if all God’s Grace UNDESERVEDLY GIVEN to sinners in this life does not move one to true sorrow and repentance from well known MORTAL sin and move one to a real desire to be as selfless, loving and truthful as Christ, seeing the just attitude of God the Father toward this callous rejection of love and truth at the Judgment could only drive one into outer darkness away from the light exposing this rejection of Christ.
A further factor revealing the impossibility of God annihilating the wicked is in the stunning truth that we were created in God’s very image. This means at least two things. First, that God created within us the moral capacity to acquire actual real virtue, which He Himself could justly attribute to us. (That is true Biblical / Catholic teaching contrary to Protestant Lutheran or Evangelical Calvinism that claims human virtue is not just primarily but ENTIRELY the work of God in man.) That ability for true human virtue of necessity requires its opposite, the ability to actually acquire evil and likewise “earn” its own reward. Additionally, since God in eternity past determined to have a human family He could live in intimate union with for eternity he had to decree immortality for all man just as He has for the angelic beings. He could not annihilate one segment of humanity without also the other without a violation of justice and the reality of true human virtue and evil.. Our being created in the image of God raises the “GOOD” of the human soul/spirit, regardless of his choice, to an even higher level.
While divine justice requires Hell (existence without God) for the irredeemable, divine love also requires Hell for them as the ultimate or final manifestation of love towards anyone is respecting the choices they freely make. For those who irredeemably hate you that choice could only be to abandon them.
David, you know way more than Skojec, who has a degree in theology.