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Cruel Doctrines
 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”?
![[Breaker quote for Cruel Doctrines: How Christianity shocks delicate atheists]](2007breakers/070608.gif) 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 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 will be 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!
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2007 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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