Eschatology – Page 5

New Bible Evidence that Obama Is the Antichrist!

Just, y’know, not good evidence.

Consider the following video, which has been going around the Internet, with over a million hits on YouTube between different versions.

Okay. So that kind of settles it.

NOT.

I don’t know who is behind the video, but whoever it is clearly has only the most rudimentary understanding of the things he’s talking about, and he makes mistakes left and right. (Put another way: He’s totally out of his depth.) This is made clear by the annotations that start popping up in the video (you can shut them off with the controller in the lower right hand corner) that, among other things, advertise an updated version of the video, in which he tries to eliminate some of the most blatant errors that critics have pointed out.

The new one doesn’t work any better. It’s just got a few of the worst mistakes cut out.

Like this one: The claim that Jesus spoke Aramaic, which is the most ancient form of Hebrew.

NOT.

While Jesus did speak Aramaic, Aramaic is not an ancient form of Hebrew. It’s a related language, but neither is an ancestor of the other.

What he’s done is the equivalent of saying that English is the most ancient form of Dutch.

It reveals how utterly devoid of basic competence in the biblical languages this person is.

His overall strategy then becomes clear: He knows that the New Testament is recorded in Greek, but he wants to get back behind that to Aramaic so he can jump (quickly!) back to Hebrew. This is where his real interest is: Talking about Hebrew, because he’s got access to a rudimentary Hebrew dictionary. He doesn’t really know or care about Aramaic. It’s just a way of getting quickly to the Hebrew dictionary he’s discovered.

And by the way, it is evident that this man has no training in biblical Hebrew or he never would have made the mistake of saying that Aramaic was a form of it. You can’t take a class (or even read a whole book) on biblical Hebrew without learning how the two languages are related, since they’re both used in the Old Testament. He’s just some guy (possibly a minister, possibly not) who has access to a Hebrew dictionary.

A particularly, old, problematic Hebrew dictionary.

In fact, what he really has is a copy of Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. As its name suggests, it’s not really a dictionary; it’s a concordance—a book that allows you to look up where words occur in the Bible. For example, if you looked up “faith,” you’d find a list of all the verses in which the word “faith” occurs in the King James Bible.

Strong’s happened to assign numbers to the words, and it offers a numbered word list to give a basic idea of what the original Greek or Hebrew word meant.

The problem is that Strong’s definitions are (a) more than a hundred years old, (b) extremely brief and lacking in detail, and (c) very, very prone to misuse.

Whenever I hear anyone starting to use Strong’s numbers when making an argument, I cringe because I know that misuse of the original languages is almost certain to occur.

The problem is so common that the Wikipedia entry on Strong’s Concordance devotes two paragraphs to warning people not to misuse the numbers:

Strong’s Concordance is not a translation of the Bible nor is it intended as a translation tool. The use of Strong’s numbers is not a substitute for professional translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English by those with formal training in ancient languages and the literature of the cultures in which the Bible was written.

Since Strong’s Concordance identifies the original words in Hebrew and Greek, Strong’s Numbers are sometimes misinterpreted by those without adequate training to change the Bible from its accurate meaning simply by taking the words out of cultural context. The use of Strong’s numbers does not consider figures of speech, metaphors, idioms, common phrases, cultural references, references to historical events, or alternate meanings used by those of the time period to express their thoughts in their own language at the time. As such, professionals and amateurs alike must consult a number of contextual tools to reconstruct these cultural backgrounds.

I don’t know who wrote that in Wikipedia, but whoever it was, God bless him (or them)!

So let’s see how the video manages to botch things with Strong’s numbers.

First, it cites Hebrew words number 1299 and 1300, which Strong’s lists respectively as meaning “to lighten (lightning)—cast forth” and “lightning; by analogy, a gleam; concretely, a flashing sword—bright, glitter(-ing sword), lightning.”

Okay, fine. Fair enough. But here is where not knowing what you’re doing comes in. It’s true that the Hebrew word(s) for lightning come from the root BRQ, but that is not where Barack Obama’s name comes from. It comes from a different root: BRK.

We don’t distinguish the sounds of K and Q in English very well, but in the Semitic languages, they do. K is pronounced towards the front or the middle of the mouth, while Q is pronounced toward the back of the mouth, on the soft palette. In other words, these are two different sounds in Hebrew and Aramaic, and you can’t count on a word derived from BRQ to have the same meaning as a word derived from BRK any more than you can count on the meaning of the word “cab” to have a meaning similar to the word “cap” (B and P being similar sounds that English speakers use and distinguish but that some, such as Arabic-speakers, don’t).

(There are also other variants on the K sound in these languages, but we won’t go into them for simplicity’s sake.)

So what is the real meaning of Barack Obama’s first name?

It has nothing to do with lightning. But if Mr. Video Maker hadn’t been so fascinated by Strong’s numbers 1299 and 1300, he might have looked up at 1288 which is the real source of the name: barak, which can mean a variety of things, but the relevant one is this: blessing. People see their children as blessings, and they want them to be blessed by God, and so variants on the root BRK have been used in Semitic and Semitic-influenced languages for thousands of years. Which is why lots of people from Bible days down to ours have had names based on this root, even in other languages than Hebrew.

EVEN THE PEOPLE AT BABYNAMES.COM HAVE FIGURED THIS OUT.

So much for the Barack = baraq business. President Obama’s first name has nothing to do with lightning, and a native speaker of Aramaic or Hebrew would have distinguished the two words as easily as we distinguish “cab” from “cap.”

We already have plenty of evidence that the vid is a load of hooey, but let’s keep going.

To get the word “Obama” into the picture, Mr. Video Maker seems to reason like this: Jesus said something about the devil falling light lightning from a high place, so let’s find somewhere in the Old Testament (so it’ll be in Hebrew) where the devil falls in connection with a high place.

He settles on Isaiah, which he says is the source of the Christian concept of Satan (???), and specifically on Isaiah 14.

Now the thing is, Isaiah 14 is not about the devil. Certainly not in the literal sense of the text. It involves a series of prophesies against neighboring kingdoms that have been persecuting Israel: the Babylonians, the Assyrians, and the Philistines—all of whom the text explicitly names, so we don’t have to be confused about it. The verses that Mr. Video Maker applies to the devil are, in fact, part of a taunt song directed toward the king of Babylon, telling him that although he is high and might now, he’s going to die and end up rotting, with all his pomp and glory coming to nothing.

Over time, Christians have lifted some of the imagery from this passage and applied it to the devil, but that is not what the text is literally talking about. It’s talking about the death of a Babylonian king.

So: More problems for Mr. Video’s thesis.

Now, it’s true that the word bamah can mean height or high place. It’s also a term referring to pagan shrines, which were built on elevated platforms (that’s the kind of high place the prophets often rail against). But it’s not the normal word for “heaven,” in Hebrew, which is shamayim. If you took Jesus statement that he saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven (Greek, ouranos) and you translated this back into Aramaic or Hebrew, the word you’d use for “heaven” would be shmaya (Aramaic) or shamayim (Hebrew). Bamah would not be the expected word.

So: Another problem.

Then there is the bizarre things that Mr. Video Maker does with the conjunction waw- (or vav-). This functions as the equivalent of the word “and,” and it is prefixed to words in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Video Guy tells us that this is often transliterated “U” or “O” by some scholars.

Uh . . . no. Not when it’s used as a conjunction. (The same letter can be used as an O in the middle of a word, when it’s functioning as a vowel, but not when it’s on the front of a word functioning as a conjunction.)

When it’s used as a conjunction, it’s pronounced “veh-” in modern Hebrew, and it’s pronounced “u-” (as in “tube”) in Aramaic (and Arabic).

So this is just wrong. waw as a conjunction is not pronounced O.

Mr. Video then strings it all together: baraq + o- + bamah and suggests that this would be used “in Hebrew poetry” to mean “lighting from heaven” or “lightning from the heights.”

GAH!

Okay: Here is something Mr. Video should understand just from his days in grammar school. Just from English. Conjunctions are words like “and,” “but,” and “or.” “From” is not a conjunction. It is a preposition.

PLEASE REVIEW THE RELEVANT EPISODES OF SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THIS DISTINCTION: CONJUNCTION JUNCTION, BUSY PREPOSITIONS.

So in Hebrew and Aramaic, U- is a conjunction. It means “and,” not “from.”

What you want for “from” is min. “Lightning *from* heaven” would be something like baraq min ha-shamayim (Hebrew) or barqa min shmaya (Aramaic) or similar variants.

So things aren’t going well for this thesis.

But now let’s pull the rug out from under it entirely.

Consider the context. Read Luke 10, where the quotation in the video comes from. Jesus has sent out the Seventy-Two on an evangelization mission and when they come back . . .

17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

So what is the context of “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven”? Is it a prophecy referring to the 21st century? No! It’s a remark about the evangelization mission that the Seventy-Two have just completed!

The disciples went out, preached, worked miracles, and struck a blow against the kingdom of Satan. So Jesus congratulates them telling them that before their evangelistic effort, King Satan fell from his throne like lightning from the sky (which is where lighting falls from; “sky,” “heaven,” same word in all these languages).

He’s not prophesying the future. He’s congratulating them on the past and how effective they were by God’s grace.

So, Mr. Video Maker is just wrong on all kinds of fronts. There is no prophecy of the Antichrist here. His video is all bunkum.

What do you think?

Apocalypse Soon?

The date of the Last Day may be unknown, but some religious groups are seeking to speed up its arrival. The twist is that its not just some Christians who are working out plans for welcoming the End Times, but some Muslims and Jews as well:

“With that goal in mind, mega-church [Christian] pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus’ message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

“In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

[…]

“Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

“Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam’s holiest shrines.”

GET THE STORY.

If the Jewish groups mentioned in the story actually are trying to displace the Dome of the Rock, I can well see how such a plan might culminate in Apocalypse Now.

For more information on apocalyptic questions, see Jimmy Akin’s “Apocalypse Not,” which ran in the January 2000 issue of This Rock.

GET THE ARTICLE.

Heaven, Hell, And . . . Anti-Purgatory?

Catholic sci-fi/fantasy author Tim Powers (who gave permission to use his name) writes:

What if there’s a sort of Anti-Purgatory at the entry to Hell? I know I always reflexively feel that I couldn’t ever really be in danger of damnation just because I’m … such a nice guy. In terms of Hell as Lewis fictionally described it in The Great Divorce, for instance, I wouldn’t fit into it. There’s just too much of good in me — amiability, mild generosity, occasional unstressful moral stands — for me to be able to picture myself damned. But —

Purgatory burns out all the last bits of sin and self-love and inclination-toward-evil in saved souls before they enter Heaven, so that what enters is a streamlined, sanctified soul that can sustain the Beatific Vision. What if there’s an Anti-Purgatory before entry into Hell, that strips away all the (never securely attached) bits of sanctity that might cling to a definitively lost soul? — so that what enters Hell is a strripped-down soul that simply no longer has the "nice guy" qualities which the living person had randomly and ad-hoc-ly accumulated?

This may already have been proposed by Origen or Augustine or somebody, or even be dogma, but it never occurred to me before, and I find it a usefully-scary idea!

It’s not a dogma, nor is it a speculation that I recall reading in a theologian’s writings before, but there may be something to this idea. Certainly there’s enough to it that one might want to base a scary story on it (and, apropos of that, I hereby grant Tim Powers license to use anything at all that he wants from this post or based on it, just to clear up any potential copyright concerns in advance).

Lemme talk about hell for a minute, since it’s the state that an anti-purgatory would configure you for.

Folks who haven’t read The Great Divorce should be aware that in this book C. S. Lewis depicts hell as a grey town in which the inhabitants view themselves as good people (certainly not damned people) who are better than the unpleasant environment in which they find themselves. Since they don’t really "fit in" with each other, they keep moving farther apart.

Frankly, unlike Tim, that actually sounds a little appealling to me. I mean, who wouldn’t want a chance to get away from it all after the hustle and bustle of life and have a chance to really relax? Didn’t God say something about "entering into his rest"? Maybe that’s what he had in mind. It’s a hopeful thought, anyway. Perhaps the city might even have a bus line or something to help people get even further away. I’m sure that there would be demand for a public transit system. Every major metropolitan area needs one of those.

This depiction of hell by Lewis is notable for how different it is from the biblical and traditional images of hell. Those images go like this:

Hell is like being excluded from a party that you really wanted to go to and left outside in the darkness.
Hell is like being burned alive.
Hell is like being sentenced to torture by a king or judge.

These images have been developed in different ways by subsequent Catholic thought.

The first of them, in conjunction with other passages that talk about what heaven is like, has been understood as the mirror image of the Beatific Vision. Those who get into heaven get to be with and behold God (the Beatific Vision), being transformed to be like him. Those who go to hell are deprived of this vision, which is like being shut out of a party that you really, really wanted to go to bad. Theologians have called this the poena damni or "pain of loss."

The second two images (burning and torturing) correspond to what theologians have called the poena sensus or "pain of sense." The precise nature of the poena sensus has been disputed, with many theologians (especially in former days) holding that hell contained fire that was in some sense literal and somehow able to afflict the immaterial souls of the damned even before they reacquire their bodies at the Resurrection.

One thing that all of these images have in common is that they depict the punishments–both the poena damni and the poena sensus–as being inflicted on a person against his will by God, who is represented in parabolic form as a powerful person (a king, a judge, the rich head of a household) with the right to do these things.

Something else that they all have in common is that there is a tension between them and the idea that Deus caritas est. I mean, how do you square the idea that God is love with the idea that he’s going to torture people forever against their will? Many of the sins we commit on earth don’t seem to us to deserve eternal punishment, and many people have such an impoverished knowledge of God through no fault of their own that it seems really hard to imagine that it would be just to burn them alive for all eternity.

Corresponding to this, some have speculated that perhaps only a very tiny, tiny number of people go to hell, but then why are the biblical warnings against hell so strong?

Perhaps just to warn us against it in the strongest possible terms. But perhaps there is another possibility. After all, Jesus tells us that "many" go the road that leads to destruction, while "few" (adults, at least in his pre-Christian day) find the way to life. Maybe there’s another explanation.

Some have said, "Y’know: Scripture is a set of Middle Eastern documents that often use vivid imagery to gesture at spiritual realities. These images don’t necessarily correspond to the spiritual realities in a one-to-one manner. They contain elements that aren’t literal, and they correspond to the spiritual realities in a more general way that operates on a deeper-than-the-surface-of-the-imagery level."

This has led a lot of folks to try and offer an account of hell that retains the underlying principles of the biblical images but that makes it easier to square hell with the idea of a God who is infinitely loving.

The fulcrum of this new interpretation consists in saying that the image of God imposing hell on people against their will is non-literal.

The Middle Eastern environment in which Scripture was written was one in which justice was dispensed by kings and judges who imposed harsh penalties on offenders at the drop of a hat (or turban, as the case may be). In that context, it was natural when thinking of the divine administration of justice, to picture God in a similar manner.

But on some level–these theologians would argue–isn’t hell really a matter of our own choice? I mean, we chose to sin, right? God wouldn’t be sending us to hell if we hadn’t made that choice. So perhaps the images of God imposing punishments from without is really just part of the Middle Eastern framework in which these images were developed. The essential thing is that we have made a choice not to go to heaven, not to be with God–to reject him fundamentally.

Hell thus gets reconceptualized as just the natural outworking of our own choice. We have chosen not to be with God, and he lets us make that choice, though it is not a pleasant one for those who make it.

The poena damni, which everyone already regarded as the essential pain of hell, is thus further accentuated, and the poena sensus gets re-interpreted as the natural consequences of the choice to abandon God (perhaps as some kind of inner, psychic torment the damned impose on themselves)–as some in Church history have always interpreted it. (For example, some historically have interpreted the image of burning as being the torments of a guilty conscience, though this has not been the majority position.)

There is considerable room for speculation on hell and what it is like. The Church really hasn’t determined much in this area. But it has in recent times emphasized hell as self-exclusion from heaven. The Catechism states: "To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s
merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free
choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the
blessed is called ‘hell’" (CCC 1033).

Now let’s talk about anti-purgatory.

The Church has also determined that hell begins immediately upon death in mortal sin. The Catechism states: "Immediately after death the souls of those who die in a state of mortal sin
descend into hell" (CCC 1035).

At first glance, this might seem to preclude the possibility of an anti-purgatory, but not necessarily. The point is that people who die in mortal sin begin suffering the consequences of separation from God immediately, not that they reach their final state of punishment in an instant. In other words, they don’t get a respite from suffering until the Last Day. They start experiencing the consequences of being excluded from God’s presence immediately, but there could be a process involved in what happens to them.

Those in purgatory are already linked to God by dying in his friendship, and many have held that they already experience tremendous joy through their union with God, even though there is a process that must take place for them to enter the full glory of heaven.

If this is true of those rising into heaven, it might be true of those sinking into hell: Though they already suffer from the loss of God’s presence, there is a process that must take place before they experience the full consequences of their sins.

And just as those who are heaven-bound are losing the last bits of evil clinging to their souls, those who are hell-bent may be losing the last bits of good clinging to them.

The difference might be that the Church–with its focus on heaven and how to get there–has devoted more attention to fleshing out the theology of the former rather than the latter.

In talks on purgatory, I’ve sometimes said that purgatory is the cloak room of heaven–the place where you get spiffed up before you’re ushered into the throne room. Anti-purgatory might then be conceived of as the cloak room of hell–the place where all that nasty good is brushed or scrubbed (or amputated) off of you before you’re brought in to meet the Lord of the Pit.

I’d like to mention another possibility here as well: Suppose that the re-conceptualization of hell in terms of self-exclusion isn’t the only way of looking at the matter. Suppose that there is an element by which God is active rather than passive in bringing about the state of damnation for those who have chosen it. It seems to me that an anti-purgatorial process could play a useful role here.

One of the things that we’re given to understand is that, when we get our just deserts, it will be obvious that the deserts are just (at least if we’re among the right-thinking at that point). This is something about which we might be confused in this life since everyone we meet seems to be a mixture of good and evil and it’s hard to tell under all that mixture what fundamental choice a person has made.

There are people who outwardly seem to have made a fundamental choice to sin, but they have really inwardly chosen redemption. (A number of such folks showed up at Jesus’ dinner parties.) Similarly, there are folks who outwardly seem to have chosen holiness but who are inwardly evil. (Jesus had a few things to say about them, too.)

Part of God’s judgment will be publicly clarifying where everyone stands, and purgatory and anti-purgatory may play a role in that. Purgatory burns away all the schmutz on a person who has a heart of gold, while anti-purgatory burns away all the glitter on a person with a heart of obsidian.

Once all the masks and all of the clutter have been cleared away from someone so that we can see what he really is on the inside–a being of gold or a being of obsidian–it will be a lot clearer why the person deserves the fate he does, and why it’s fair for the person to experience that fate permanently. Golden beings remain golden beings and so deserve eternal light. Obsidian beings remain obsidian beings and so deserve eternal darkness. These two kinds of beings deserve to experience what they fundamentally are (or, rather, what they fundamentally chose to make themselves), and the great purification has made that obvious.

A question that remains is, if there is an anti-purgatory, specifically what is the nature of the good that it removes from one?

There are two kinds of good: supernatural good and natural good. The first consists of good that is oriented toward God in some way–specifically things like faith, hope, and charity. The second consists of every other kind of good–not just justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence, but also things like being strong, being smart, and being beautiful.

The one thing that anti-purgatory can’t burn out of you is true charity (supernatural love of God). If you had that when you died then you would have died in a state of grace (charity is biconditional with the state of grace) and so you would have gone to heaven (or at least to true purgatory). Charity is the one thing that anti-purgatory couldn’t remove from you.

But any other form of good it could remove. If you died with faith (but not charity) then anti-purgatory could remove faith (belief in what God says because God says it) from you. If you died with hope (but not charity) then anti-purgatory could remove hope (trust in God for the means of salvation) from you. If you died with some measure of the cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance, fortitude), then anti-purgatory could remove those from you. If you died with other good qualities (intelligence, strength, beauty) then anti-purgatory could remove them.

This is not to say that anti-purgatory might not perversely strengthen certain aspects of you. For example, suppose that you were intelligent and strong but also gentle and compassionate. If you die in mortal sin then anti-purgatory might strip you of the gentlenesss and compassion and leave you wicked smart and wicked strong–a better machine of evil than you ever were in life.

Or it might just strip you of the compassion, leaving you smart and strong and able to be gentle when the situation calls for it (so as better to hoodwink others). That’d make you an even better servant of evil.

The more good you have in you (the more virtues you have except charity) the more potentially destructive you can be.

You might even have a form of natural love that just isn’t the supernatural love of God. For example, in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (which has classically been understood such that the Rich Man is in hell; and if I remember correctly the Catechism understands it this way also), the Rich Man has natural love for his brothers who are on earth and not yet in a state of damnation; he just doesn’t have the supernatural love of God that would have saved him. He wants his brothers on earth to be saved for some natural reason–because he doesn’t want them to suffer, for example.

St. Thomas also envisions a kind of preparatory love that proceeds true charity. One thus might have a kind of natural love for God that hasn’t been elevated by grace into the concern for pleasing God for his own sake (e.g. just a desire to please God to get goodies from him).

Any or all of these might hypothetically be present in the damned, and thus might be left in one experiencing anti-purgatory, leading to all kinds of dramatic possibilities for stories.

Perhaps under the right circumstances people at different stages in the loss-of-good process might be allowed to act externally, leading to interesting dramatic complications in situations involving people who have experienced different good-ectomy surgeries. Some might still have relatively high amounts of good in them, while others have been configured more closely to His Satanic Majesty’s image.

A person with relatively more good left in them might even betray–for a non-true-charity reason–someone with less good in them.

Fascinating stuff!

Incidentally, if you’re looking for a nice, Latin-sounding name for anti-purgatory, you might consider perditory or perditorium (from perditor = that which destroys or ruins), though if that’s too close to "perdition" (a standard reference to hell) then you might consider putresory or putresorium (from putor = rot) or putrefactory or putrefactorium (from putrefactor = that which causes rot/putresence).

BTW, for those not familiar with Tim Powers,

CHECK OUT THIS INTERVIEW WITH HIM ON IGNATIUS INSIGHT and

CHECK OUT HIS BOOKS.

And While We're On The Subject Of The Millennium . . .

Another reader writes:

My question is: In our parish men’s group the question of the 1000 year reign mentioned in the Book of Revelations was brought up. The question of it’s literalness was the focus. While it was discussed that it is only figurative I wanted to get your response to this and any materials, articles and resources you can recommend.

I’d recommend this article on the Catholic Answers website.

And While We’re On The Subject Of The Millennium . . .

Another reader writes:

I’d recommend this article on the Catholic Answers website.

Days of Wine and Vengeance

A reader writes:

Are you familiar with a book by David Chilton called Days of Vengence: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation? If you have heard of it I was wondering if you had an opinion on it.

For those who may not be aware of it, Days of Vengeance is a book written in the postmillennialist Protestant tradition. In particular, it’s part of the neo-postmillennialism that has gained popularity in theonomic circles. It is probably the most popular commentary on Revelation from this perspective.

Catholic theology doesn’t infallibly reject postmillennialism (the belief that Christ will return at the conclusion of a future golden age of Christianity on earth), but it does strongly resist the idea (see CCC 673-677). The Catholic position is what in Protestant terms would be described as “amillennialism” (the belief that the present Church age is the millennium in which Christ and the saints reign from heaven and, thorugh the Church, on earth).

Days of Vengeance, when it comes down to the crunch-chapter of Revelation 20 (which deals with the millennium) suddenly starts extending olive branches to the amillennialist position, but most of the book is informed by the kind of arrogant postmillennialism that makes many theonomic writings simply insufferable. It also has loads of WAY speculative stuff in it that I can’t recommend.

That being said, the book can be useful if you’re willing to take it with several teaspoons of salt. It can provide help in seeing Revelation through a different set of eyes than Dispensationalists (the Left Behind crowd) see it through. If you’re willing to hold your nose when dealing with the theonomic attitude problem (Gary North’s intro to the book is particularly noxious in this regard) and exercise the critical thinking needed to cross-examine the book’s interpretations, then it can be helpful. You can download it here.

A few notes:

1) The author of the book–David Chilton–apparently later went nuts and embraced a view known as pantelism, which holds that ALL biblical prophecy (including the Second Coming of Christ) has already been fulfilled.

2) Days of Vengeance was written before Chilton became a pantelist, when he was only a preterist (a position that holds that most of the book of Revelation has already been fulfilled, but not the Second Coming).

3) One should NOT suppose, however, that Days of Vengeance is representative of preterism in general. There are other (and, in my view, better) preterist interpretations on many points than what Chilton presents, so I’d advise you to read more broadly in preterism rather than concluding that Chilton has said all that needs to be said.

4) Also, be aware that not everything that goes under the preterist name should do so. Many pantelists wish to be called preterists and so have been calling themselves this, though there is a marked difference between the two positions (pantelism, by relegating the Second Coming to the past, is heresy that is in conflict with the Nicene Creed, while preterism may well be true).

Hope this helps!

Canonization of the Damned: Part II

A number of folks didn’t seem to cotton to the idea of canonizing anti-saints, as can be seen from the comments to the prior post and the original post.

I provided some responses here, but I thought one person’s response struck close to the mark of what many people are likely to feel on the subject, and I thought I’d respond to it here.

A reader writes:

What possible purpose could there be for us to know in this life who is damned? The purpose of knowing who is in heaven is not merely to satisfy curiosity but to give us certain knowledge that particular individuals can intercede for us in a special way because they are in God’s presence.

I also think “canonizing the damned” would create too big a temptation to “write off” people who haven’t yet been “canonized as damned” but seem –to us — to qualify. Those people then, who may have achieved salvation through final repentance, would be deprived of our prayers if they are in purgatory.

I know that there is a huge temptation to unofficially canonize saints (i.e., “I just know Mom went straight to heaven”), and that is a temptation that must be fought; but I can’t help but think that it would be an even worse temptation to unofficially canonize “anti-saints,” and that may be one reason why the Church has never done so. Not even with Judas, whose salvation just might be the ultimate “Surprise!” awaiting us in heaven.

It’s certainly true that if my interpretation of what Jesus says about Judas is wrong then he could be in heaven. I would be very surprised, but also glad, as I desire not the loss of any soul.

I also agree that it is problematic to unofficially canonize anti-saints. We may legitimately form the impression intellectually that, given what we know about an individual, it does not look likely that they made it (i.e., because they appeared to be a person with the faculty of reason who nevertheless lived a life of apparently knowing and deliberate grave sin right up to the end), but we can never know what happened in the privacy of their own mind in the last few seconds of their life, and God can work miracles even then.

But the case of Judas is different. In his case we aren’t simply guestimating based on the person’s observed manner of life. We have a statement by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself that appears to pertain directly to the fate of Judas. Our Lord obviously meant something by it and meant people (at least some people) to understand it. That changes matters. It is therefore legitimate to us to treat the damnation of Judas differently than we treat that of anybody else.

As far as what might motivate the Church to define the damnation of certain souls and whether it would be prudent for it to do so, it doesn’t strike me as a particular risk that defining Judas and potentially a few others as damned would discourage people from praying for those in purgatory. In fact, it seems to me that, if anything, it would do the opposite. Here’s why:

We live in an age in which the great majority of people take their own salvation for granted. By defining that Judas is in hell, the Church could hold him up as an example (which is what Jesus was doing, after all) of how hell is a real possibility.

This would force people to take a new look at the salvation of their own souls, and the souls of others. It could lead to renewed attention to what happens after we die, renewed evangelization, renewed praying for those who have died (though this would not benefit the damned, obviously), renewed attention to the need for confession, and renewed attention in general to our own need for grace. In short, in a society like ours, defining the damnation of a few individuals could do a world of good . . . and result in fewer people actually going to hell.

There would, of course, be costs as well (e.g., the media would have a violently negative reaction), but there would also be plusses, like those mentioned above. Whether the plusses outweigh the minuses in making such a definition . . . is for a wiser head than mine. 🙂

Canonization Of The Damned

A non-Catholic reader writes:

“…the Church’s official position is still that there are definitely people in hell, it just doesn’t claim to know which individuals are.”

Considering the church’s official position, wouldn’t this conflict with those the church declared “saints”? I mean, if they don’t know who is in hell, which is a fair assumption, how can they claim to know who is in heaven? We can assume that we know some are and, like you, I can safely believe that Peter, Paul, and the rest of the gang are there, but past that—I don’t know who’s there.

If the “infallible” church can say with certainty that Mother Teresa, Bernadette Soubirous, John Bosco, Vincent de Paul, etc. are in heaven, why can’t it say with just as much certainty the names of those whom they believe are in hell (Hitler, Stalin, Ivan the Terrible, Pol Pot, et al)?

Later, when it was pointed out that the Church utilizes miracles performed through the intercession of the saints as evidence that they are in heaven, the reader wrote:

First of all, we would have to assume that the church is correct in saying these “saints” are truly in heaven, regardless of miracles and personal testimonies (which again we would have to trust the church on). Secondly, miracles and personal testimonies aren’t truly indicators of salvation. Other pagan religions have their “holy men” who have mimicked the same. Mr. Akin stated that Judas and Nero could be said to be in hell, which, IMO, is a fair estimation. Yet, when the church claims to know with certainty who “made it”, but cannot say for sure who didn’t; well, it’s pretty presumptuous.

Since you’re non-Catholic, it’s understandable that you would not share the epistemology needed to have confidence in the Church’s canonization of saints. However, since the discussion was an intramural one among Catholics, you kind of need to be willing to “go with” that epistemology for purposes of this discussion. We could have a discussion of why the Church has the epistemology it does (it isn’t just making assumptions), but that is a different discussion than this one. (Discussions on blogs need to be fairly narrow in scope because of limitations of format. If we were writing chapter- or book-length entries in the discussion, we could try dealing with both at once, but blog entries are too short, so we need to stick to one issue at a time.)

Regarding the discussion at hand, I think it is possible for the Church to use its gift of infallibility to “canonize the damned,” or “anti-saints” as we might call them:

1) I think this is clearly possible in the case of select individuals like Judas and Nero, for whom we have special revelation regarding their fates. Since the Church has the power to infallibly define the meaning of the revelation given to the Church, it would be possible for the Church to use that infallibility regarding the meaning of the revelation connected with the fate of Judas and a few other individuals. Thus the Church could define that they are in hell; it simply hasn’t done so to this point.

2) I also suspect that the Church might be able to use its infallibility to define the damnation of other individuals. If it can define the dogmatic fact that a particular person is in heaven, this would seem to be prima facie evidence that the Church would also be able to use its infallibility to define that a particular person isn’t in heaven.

3) We could speculate on the evidential basis that could be offered for particular anti-saint definitions. There is an assymetry regarding the evidence we have for the fates of saints and anti-saints (i.e., we have intercessory miracles as evidence for the salvation of saints, but we don’t have the same for the damnation of anti-saints), but this is not an ultimately insuperable problem. Unfortunately, spelling out a detailed rationale would make this entry unduly long and so will have to wait for another time.

4) In any event, the matter is speculative since, as there has been no motivating factor for the Church to define the damnation of anti-saints, it has never done so.

Hope this helps!

The Population of Hell

A reader writes:

Do you think we can know for sure that there are people in hell (not that we know which particular people are there)?

The current Roman Catholic teaching seems to be that we don’t know if there are people in Hell (a la Hans Urs von Balthasar).

I wouldn’t say that Catholic teaching is that we don’t know. The situation has been muddied a bit recently, but as far as I can tell the Church’s official position is still that there are definitely people in hell, it just doesn’t claim to know which individuals are. The most recent, highly authoritative statement is still that of the Catechism, and it gives no hint of the “maybe everybody gets saved” position.

To clarify matters, consider the following positions:

1. Nobody is in hell.

2. *Maybe* nobody is in hell.

3. Some people are in hell.

4. Some people are in hell and we know who some of them are.

5. Boatloads of people are in hell.

6. Everybody is in hell except for the tiny remnant that *I* belong to.

7. Everybody without exception is in hell; Jesus died for nothing.

From what I can tell, the Church is willing to sign off on position #3, though not precluding the other positions listed, except for #s 1 and 7, which are right out. Positions #s 2-6 seem to be permitted (or at least tolerated), as evidenced by the fact that the pope named von Balthasar (a holder of position #2) as a cardinal and the CDF has allowed the Feeneyites (holders of position #6) to remain as Catholics without being subject to theological discipline and even (in the case of one group) being allowed to raise money as a Catholic organization.

As far as what *I* think, I’m an exponent of position #4. I think that we know at least two people who are in hell: Judas and one of the early Roman emperors, most likely Nero. This is because Jesus says that it would have been better for Judas if he had not been born (and if he ended up in heaven then that clearly wouldn’t be the case) and because Revelation speaks of the Beast (most plausibly identified as the Emperor Nero) being thrown into the lake of fire. The fact that these two gents are in hell means that *some* people are in hell, and thus position #2 is wrong.

In fact, I think that the von Balthasar position is hopelessly wrong for a number of reasons, and if I were pope it would be swiftly ejected from the permitted opinion list. If you like, I’d be hapy to explain why, but at the moment it’s getting late. 🙂

End-Time Theories

A reader writes:

Is there an official position of the Church regarding the temple being rebuilt in Jerusalem?

No, there is not.

If not, what is your opinion?

My opinion is that it will be. St. Paul writes:

Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God (2 Thess 2:3-4).

Here Paul seems to be speaking about a future event, and he refers to "the temple of God" (which, to a Jew of Paul’s kind, would only mean the Jerusalem temple). Yet since the temple is currently in ruins, this suggests that it will be rebuilt before the end.

The reader continues:

The article on Catholic.com about "The Antichrist" seems to suggest that it’s a given.

Yeah, that’s because I’m the author of that tract.

Also, could you recommend a good Catholic interpretation (book or website) of the Book of Revelations? I need de-programming from my previous pre-trib exegesis.

Understood. Like so many former Evangelicals, it took me a while to learn to see Bible prophecy through non-dispensationalist eyes, though I did that before becoming Catholic.

I wish that I had a good Catholic book to recommend to you on the subject, but I don’t. There aren’t any ones (a) that are in print, and (b) that I am aware of, and (c) that would be likely to give you what you are looking for. So let me recommend some articles:

The Rapture: Are You Pre, Mid, or Post? This is a basic look at Catholic teaching on the end times. I am not the author of this, though I did revise it.
Apocalypse Not
The Structure of Revelation
The Flow of Time in Revelation
Hunt-ing the Whore of Babylon
The Earthquake Generation (This Rock, Feb. 1998)

UPDATE: A reader points out to me that Carl Olson’s book Will Catholics Be Left Behind? is also a good resource for ex-dispensationalists. This is true. I can recommend this book as well.

Hope this helps!