The Reactionary Utopian
                      June 8, 2007


CRUEL DOCTRINES
by Joe Sobran

     John Henry Newman, the most famous Catholic convert 
of the nineteenth century, once shocked many readers by 
writing that it would be better that the whole world 
perish, in the most extreme agony, than that a single sin 
-- even a very minor sin -- should be committed. Newman 
was renowned for his personal moderation, but he followed 
the logic of his beliefs wherever it led. When attacked 
for saying this, he calmly repeated the assertion and 
explained that he could not retract a word of it.

     From time to time I get taunting messages demanding 
to know (for example) what kind of a cruel God would 
demand that Abraham sacrifice his only son, preventing 
the deed just a moment before it was executed. I received 
another one in this vein the other day.

     This point has been made hundreds of thousands of 
times, but everyone who uses it yet again -- the tone is 
invariably triumphant -- thinks he has come up with a 
real stumper. "So this is the sort of depraved deity you 
believe in, is it?"

     As it happens, I heard the answer, by chance, a long 
time ago. During a boring drive down the East Coast, I 
happened to catch a radio sermon on Abraham and Isaac by 
some hillbilly preacher I'd never heard of. He told the 
old story with a passion that brought tears to my eyes. 
Poor Abraham! Yes, it must have seemed to him that the 
Lord was cutting his heart out.

     But, the homespun homilist went on, the Lord 
rewarded Abraham's faith many centuries later, by 
sacrificing his own Son, from the seed of Abraham! This 
put the whole story in an entirely different light for 
me. What had seemed grim became glorious.

     Unbelievers often call doctrines they dislike 
"cruel." I've never understood this. A doctrine may be 
unpleasant; but then, so are many facts of life. The 
question is what is true. Do you refuse to buy life 
insurance because the idea that you are mortal is 
"cruel"?

     C.S. Lewis quips somewhere that to hear people talk, 
you'd think St. Augustine actually wanted unbaptized 
infants to be damned! The truth, of course, is the 
reverse: he thought infants should be baptized because he 
wanted them to be saved. Right or wrong, Augustine 
differed from his detractors in one respect: he resisted 
wishful thinking about Original Sin.

      Another idea that some have is that one of the joys
of heaven will be beholding the torments of the damned in 
hell. At first this may seem the ultimate in gloating 
schadenfreude: watching our enemies writhing in deserved 
agony. How can you square that with Christian charity? It 
seems, on the contrary, the extreme of unholy 
vindictiveness.

      But maybe it means something very different. 
According to St. Thomas Aquinas, "the saints will rejoice 
in the punishmentof the wicked by considering the order of 
Divine justice and their own deliverance, which will fill 
them with joy. And thus the Divine justice and their own 
deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the 
blessed; while the punishment of the damned will cause it 
indirectly˛ (Supplement to SUMMA THEOLOGICA, Question 94, 
Article 3).

      Thus those in heaven will be fully reconciled to,
and rejoicing in, God's perfect justice. Let's suppose 
that we ourselves, by his mercy, are saved, forgiven, 
brought to spiritual perfection as Christians. If so, we 
will rejoice when our enemies are saved too. We'll no 
longer regard them as enemies!

      And if God's justice condemns our best friends,
our spouses, and even our favorite children, then we may
take joy in their eternal damnation as well -- but it 
willbe anything but the kind of vengeful pleasure we know 
in this life.

     Such complete submission to the Divine Will is so 
hard to imagine that it feels strange, almost monstrous, 
even to discuss it. I can only suggest remote analogies, 
as when we laugh ruefully at ourselves as we endure some 
minor suffering or mild rebuke we know we deserve and 
could have avoided: "I guess I asked for that, didn't I?" 
"I had it coming." "I should have expected it -- what on 
earth was I thinking?"

     That's rather how I think of Purgatory; as a place, 
or a state of being, where we regret and rejoice at the 
same time. Our deserved pain purges us, but it also 
prepares us: the pain of justice is also the promise of 
mercy.

     If our conception of God is so "cruel," by the way, 
how is it that we put so much stress on his mercy and 
loving kindness? Especially if our belief not only 
springs from our own cruelty, but also makes it worse? 
Ah, the unfathomable mysteries of atheism!

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