Did Judas Go To Hell?

[MichaelFilo]

Your brother is a bad example. Your brother MAY stub his toe, he may have ALREADY stubbed his toe, or he may have already done it and may do it again. Weather Judas is saved or not is a one time thing. Any hope we have now is useless, for the sheer fact that if he did get saved, our hope is in vain. If he didn't get saved, our hope is in vain.

I personally never saw a good reason to hope AFTER the fact. Praying after the fact is fine, in that God already knows your going to pray, and so will accept the prayers before the event happens, on the sheer fact he knows you will pray. Hope isn't prayer, and hoping after the fact is pointless.

God bless,

Mikey

[Guest JeffCR07]

MichaelFilo, I truly hope you understand that, before you read this post, which is not only entirely semantical, but also hypothetical, I agree with you. If you have read my above post, you know this.

However, I would argue that it is NOT useless or of little worth to hope. As all have admitted, there is no sure way of knowing whether Judas was saved or not. However, I maintain that hoping, and even praying, for him are still legitimate and would not be inherently useless.

I hold this view because there is the strong possibility that, if he was saved (which I personally doubt), we is in Purgatory, atoning for the temporal affect of his sin, which is great considering he betrayed the Savior of the World unto death. If he is in Purgatory, and it must be maintained that this is a possibility, then hope and prayers for him would be most beneficial.

Again, a semantical argument, but I figured I might as well put it out there.

- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' date='Aug 22 2004, 04:44 PM'] Your brother is a bad example. Your brother MAY stub his toe, he may have ALREADY stubbed his toe, or he may have already done it and may do it again. Weather Judas is saved or not is a one time thing. Any hope we have now is useless, for the sheer fact that if he did get saved, our hope is in vain. If he didn't get saved, our hope is in vain.

I personally never saw a good reason to hope AFTER the fact. Praying after the fact is fine, in that God already knows your going to pray, and so will accept the prayers before the event happens, on the sheer fact he knows you will pray. Hope isn't prayer, and hoping after the fact is pointless.

God bless,

Mikey [/quote]
No. It goes to the difference between faith and hope, which is slight.

Faith is belief in something, hope is staying free from despair. In as far as I hope that Judas is not in hell, I am staying free of despairing over his soul. Hope is that which guards us against despair. We should never despair, and believing that a person is in hell is to despair, because it essentially says that the merits of Christ were not great enough to save a person who may have made perfect penance (and I acknowledge that you believe this is possible). Therefore, since we should never despair, we should always have hope of every good that is possible, even if the event has already occured, if we do not yet know the outcome of that event.

In this case, we do not know the state of Judas' soul and so that we may not despair, we must be hopeful.

[MichaelFilo]

This is fine and good, if you think you should avoid despair. Despair is neccessary so that things may have value. If you despair over the loss of things, then naturally, you give them the value due to them.

No one who doesn't receive salvation is a sign of Christ's mertis being not enough, but are a sign of that person's denial of God and all that he has revealed. So, there is no need to despair over that. The despair is on the lost soul. From that the value of salvation, the soul, and our mortality, all come into clear vision again. So again, despair is neccessary.

Hoping for salvation is useless if it is after the person's death, because they are dead, and they have received their judgement.

By the way, defenition of hope :

The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a [i][b]future[/b][/i] good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God's help.

A persons judgement is not a "future good".

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' date='Aug 22 2004, 05:34 PM'] This is fine and good, if you think you should avoid despair. Despair is neccessary so that things may have value. If you despair over the loss of things, then naturally, you give them the value due to them.

No one who doesn't receive salvation is a sign of Christ's mertis being not enough, but are a sign of that person's denial of God and all that he has revealed. So, there is no need to despair over that. The despair is on the lost soul. From that the value of salvation, the soul, and our mortality, all come into clear vision again. So again, despair is neccessary.

Hoping for salvation is useless if it is after the person's death, because they are dead, and they have received their judgement.

By the way, defenition of hope :

The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a [i][b]future[/b][/i] good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God's help.

A persons judgement is not a "future good". [/quote]
But one should not despair over something that may have happened, if the outcome is still unknown. The knowledge of the outcome is what determines the place of despair, not the time of the event.

Let me specify. I can despair over Judas' death, but that would be foolish because I do not know the judgment on his soul. Therefore, out of despair and hope, between which lies no middle ground, I must choose hope.

[MichaelFilo]

There is a middle-ground, indifference. Although I'm not going to go about preaching indifference (because after all, I'm no taoist).

I'll admit however, you are right, if you must choose between the 2, then better to choose hope, then despair. It was fun having an intellectual debate.

God bless,

Mikey

[Thy Geekdom Come]

[quote name='MichaelFilo' date='Aug 22 2004, 05:49 PM'] There is a middle-ground, indifference. Although I'm not going to go about preaching indifference (because after all, I'm no taoist).

I'll admit however, you are right, if you must choose between the 2, then better to choose hope, then despair. It was fun having an intellectual debate.

God bless,

Mikey [/quote]
Not to continue the debate (although it was fun to stretch the philosophical muscles), but I can't quite agree with indifference in this regard. Apathy exists, but I think it is an intellectual trait, not a spiritual trait. The human spirit always feels something deep down inside, it can never be completely indifferent, even though an intellectual mask of indifference may be worn.

[Maddalena]

But sometimes, it would take hours before someone would die from hanging. Maybe he had been hanging there for hours thinking, "I [i]really[/i] should not have done that."

Edited August 22, 2004 by Maddalena

[VeraMaria]

[quote name='Good Friday' date='Aug 22 2004, 12:01 PM'] and no doubt Our Lady was also praying for Judas. It's entirely possible that just as her intercession has brought even the worst of sinners to conversion, often times last minute, her intercession may also have brought Judas to conversion. [/quote]
I read "The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord" by Emmerich last Lent. Here's something I thought was cool:


[quote]I saw our Lord conversing apart with his Mother, and he told her, among other things, that he had sent Peter, the apostle of faith, and John, the apostle of love, to prepare for the Pasch at Jerusalem. He said, in speaking of Magdalen, whose grief was excessive, that her love was great, but still somewhat human, and that on this account her sorrow made her beside herself. He spoke also of the schemes of the traitor Judas, [i][b]and the Blessed Virgin prayed for him[/b][/i]. [/quote]


Just had to share that randomly. What love, Our Lady praying for her son's betrayer.

[Iacobus]

I have no idea and the Church hasn't said anything about it. I would not put his salvation beyond God's mercy and love.

[Aloysius]

GF, we believe in a hell and we know people go to hell, that's a fact of our faith. we can't know the fate of certain souls, but it is revealed in the book of revelation that there are those who are eternally damned.

[Good Friday]

[quote]He spoke also of the schemes of the traitor Judas, and the Blessed Virgin prayed for him.[/quote]
This is, above all, what gives me hope that Judas was saved.

[quote name='Aloysius']GF, we believe in a hell and we know people go to hell, that's a fact of our faith. we can't know the fate of certain souls, but it is revealed in the book of revelation that there are those who are eternally damned.[/quote]
I'm not denying the doctrine of hell. In fact, I believe it's entirely possible that there are very many people in hell, but I assert that we as Catholics can have hope that hell is empty. This is not universalism, which denies the doctrine of hell altogether.

As usual, Aloysius, it's not as cut and dry as you'd like to think. I didn't come up with this on my own, it's been explained by several theologians, in particular Hans Urs von Balthasar. Here's a quote from Cardinal Avery Dulles' [url="http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0305/articles/dulles.html"]article[/url] on this theology:

[quote name='Cardinal Avery Dulles' date=' The Population of Hell']The most sophisticated theological argument againt the conviction that some human beings in fact go to hell has been proposed by Hans Urs von Balthasar in his book [i]Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved?"[/i]  He rejects the ideas that hell will be emptied at the end of time and that the damned souls and demons will be reconciled with God.  He also avoids asserting as a fact that everyone will be saved.  But he does say that we have a right and even a duty to [i]hope[/i] for the salvation of all, because it is not impossible that even the worst sinners may be moved by God's grace to repent before they die.  He concedes, however, that the opposite is also possible.  Since we are able to resist the grace of God, none of us is safe.  We must therefore leave the question speculatively open, thinking primarily of the danger in which we ourselves stand.

At one point in his book Balthasar incorporates a long quotation from Edith Stein, now Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who defends a position very like Balthasar's.  Since God's all-merciful love, she says, descends upon everyone, it is probable that this love produces transforming effects in their lives.  To the extent that people open themselves to that love, they enter the realm of redemption.  On this ground Stein finds it possible to hope that God's omnipotent love finds ways of, so to speak, outwitting human resistance.  Balthasar says that he agrees with Stein.

This position of Balthasar seems to me to be orthodox.  It does not contradict any ecumenical councils or definitions of the faith.  It can be reconciled with everything in Scripture, at least if the statements of Jesus on hell are taken as minatory rather than predictive.  Balthasar's position, moreover, does not undermine a healthy fear of being lost.  But the position is at least adventurous.  It runs against the obvious interpretation of the words of Jesus in the New Testament and against the dominant theological opinion down through the centuries, which maintains that some, and in fact very many, are lost.[/quote]
Although Cardinal Dulles disagrees with Balthasar's theological opinion, he finds it orthodox. Moreover, by beatifying and canonizing St. Edith Stein, the Church affirmed that all of her writings, including those on hell, were free of heresy. Thus, while we may certainly be wrong about the possibility that everyone is saved (a fact that we admit), the hope that everyone can be saved is not contradictory to Scripture or Tradition -- this is affirmed by Cardinal Dulles and the Church, inasmuch as she canonized St. Edith Stein and deemed her writings free from heresy.

I agree with St. Edith Stein and Hans Urs von Balthasar. If you don't, that's fine, but please don't try to tell me I'm [i]de facto[/i] wrong, especially when you haven't looked into the issue at all and when you're only going on your private interpretation of Scripture. St. Edith Stein and Hans Urs von Balthasar were not morons, and neither am I.

Edited August 23, 2004 by Good Friday

[Aloysius]

okay i was wrong about Church Teaching.

i have headache.

Edited August 23, 2004 by Aloysius

[MichaelFilo]

That is all good and all, but certain marian appiritions have suggested that there are many people in hell. I would not put my hope against Church accepted appiritions, weather they are a matter of faith or not, they are more valid then speculative theology.

God bless,

Mikey


(Rapheal, you got me beat on that. I thought about it, and you are indeed right, again. I'll have to think before I post)

[Good Friday]

[quote name='MichaelFilo']That is all good and all, but certain marian appiritions have suggested that there are many people in hell. I would not put my hope against Church accepted appiritions, weather they are a matter of faith or not, they are more valid then speculative theology.[/quote]
First of all, Marian apparitions are private revelation, so I am not even bound to believe in them. That said, I do believe in the approved apparitions -- Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima, etc.

I'm not sure it's safe to say that they're "more valid" than speculative theology. Neither is necessary for salvation, and Catholics don't have to believe in them, so I'd think that Marian apparitions are on a par with speculative theology. They're nice, but they're not the deposit of faith. Had the Marian apparitions never occurred, the Church's mission would have gone on and the faith that the Church proclaimed would still have been the same -- as is also the case with speculative theology.

But finally, the Marian apparitions don't necessarily contradict Balthasar's theological opinion here. Balthasar theorizes that when Jesus spoke of hell throughout His public ministry, He may have been using those descriptions more as a warning than a prediction: more like "do this and this will happen," rather than, "this is definitely going to happen." The same could be true of the Marian apparitions. At Fatima, for instance: "You have seen hell, where the souls of poor sinners go." This can be taken two ways: either that the souls of poor sinners have gone there and do go there, or that the souls of poor sinners [i]could[/i] go there. Considering that the Marian apparitions have been primarily concerned with warning us about what could happen if we don't alter our course, I think it's safe to say that Our Lady was using these visions more as a warning in her apparitions rather than a definite prediction or statement of fact.

[Aloysius]

what about the Book of Revelations?

[Good Friday]

[quote name='Aloysius']what about the Book of Revelations?[/quote]
I really don't know, I'd recommend reading [i]Dare We Hope[/i] by Hans Urs von Balthasar. I'm sure, as an orthodox theologian, he has addressed any verses from Revelation that would seem to contradict his opinion. I don't have those answers, though.

[Guest JeffCR07]

I would just like to elaborate a little more on the issue of Balthasar's theology.

Personally, I like it very much. It should be noted that it is an appealing outlook on many levels, but, in my opinion, most notably because of its openness. Because it highlights the lack of absolute certitude on the issue, it allows an individual to come to a logical belief without a declaration of fact. I disagree with the Cardinal on the question of Jesus' statements being predictive, because I maintain that such a believe can be reconciled with Balthasar's theology. I hold that one can be certain that hell is not empty yet maintain the uncertainty proposed by Balthasar. I can believe that Jesus's statements were predictive, and believe even that many people are eternally damned. However, as Balthasar and Stein suggest, I profess that it is utterly impossible to know who the damned are (thus being in union with the teaching that only the Father knows who the elect are), and, as a result of this uncertainty I can remain hopeful for any individual soul.

Thus, I can posit that "There must be some souls in Hell, perhaps many, and perhaps even more, however, the soul of Johnny does not need to be among that number, and so I will hope and pray for him."

Again, these are my personal thoughts, and are not in perfect conformity with Balthasar himself, but rather are a blend of his theology and traditional thought.

- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff

[MorphRC]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Aug 23 2004, 12:58 AM'] We can't know and God isn't telling. [/quote]
He knew this was wrong, and against God. And the law says suicide is wrong, Im sure Christ taught that to him as well! So theres a 99.99% change hes with satan.

[Iacobus]

[quote name='MorphRC' date='Aug 22 2004, 08:55 PM'] He knew this was wrong, and against God. And the law says suicide is wrong, Im sure Christ taught that to him as well! So theres a 99.99% change hes with satan. [/quote]
Ah but he could have repented. We weren't there in his mind. So we don't know.