What Jesus Did Not Say About Hell, by Michael Pakaluk
President Trump’s Norman Rockwell Address, by John Zmirak
February 5, 2020
President Trump Calls on Congress to Ban Late-Term Abortions: “Every Child is a Gift From God”, by Steven Ertelt
February 5, 2020
*Image: Last Judgment by Stephan Lochner, c. 1435 [Wallraf–Richartz Museum, Cologne]
By Michael Pakaluk, The Catholic Thing, Feb. 4, 2020
Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book, on the Gospel of Mark, The Memoirs of St Peter, is now available from Regnery Gateway. He is currently at work on a new book on Mary’s voice in the gospel of John.
Hell is on my mind, and it is not even November. Presumably, any one of the Four Last Things can serve as matter for reflection any time of year. But after my last column, which was on David Bentley Hart’s denial of the traditional notion of eternal punishment, some readers said that they wished I had spent more time on what Jesus said on Hell. So this time I want to oblige them by discussing, paradoxically, what Jesus did not say.
From many years spent interpreting texts, especially Aristotle, I find that people commonly make a certain mistake. They think the only evidence for or against a theory are words or sentences that can be identified in advance.
Here’s what I mean: Suppose the view in question is whether Jesus taught that we’re at risk of being judged worthy of eternal punishment – Hell. Someone bent on denying Hell might go through the New Testament, pick out the twenty or so verses that seem to imply the existence of Hell, and taking these verses to be the only evidence, argue that they don’t really imply that. ….
Read more here https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2020/02/04/what-jesus-did-not-say-about-hell/
