Even if the scriptural revelation of Hell is obscure, Christians can respond by arguing that Jesus Christ promised to send the Holy Spirit to believers as a divine guide to His truth, and so the Holy Spirit can direct the church's tradition of interpreting scripture so that the truly revealed meaning of scripture becomes clear (for Christ's promise to send the Holy Spirit, see John 14:15-27, 15:26-16:15). For example, many Christians believe the Holy Spirit inspired the Church Fathers in their reading of the Bible.
This idea is beautifully conveyed in the pictures above from St. Peter's Basilica. These images are from the apse at the end of the central nave. There is an online virtual reality tour of the apse.
In the center of the apse is the Altar of the Chair of St. Peter. Peter is the "rock" of the Church through whom has passed the apostolic succession linking the popes to Christ. Beneath the Chair are four huge statues (over 16 feet tall). The two outer statues are figures of the Latin Church: St. Ambrose and St. Augustine (in the bottom picture above). The two inner statues are of two Doctors of the Greek Church: St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom. Thus, it is suggested that these theologians from both the Latin and Greek churches have a consistent teaching that is descended from the Apostles through Peter.
Above the Chair of Peter is a brilliant dove that is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, who guides the Church through Peter and the theologians to the truth of revelation.
But this suggests a question: Has the Holy Spirit succeeded in conveying the revealed truth of Christian doctrines such as Heaven and Hell, so that all Christians can agree on one orthodoxy?
On the issue of Hell as eternal torment, the answer seems to be No. But even if all Christians cannot agree on this, perhaps most of them can agree. Would this be enough to show the success of revelation through the Holy Spirit?
Actually, it is not clear that the majority of Christians throughout the two-thousand year history of the Christian tradition have believed that the torment of Hell is eternal. There is some evidence that in the first five centuries of Christianity, the universalist Christians--who believed that those condemned to Hell would eventually be saved--were a large faction, and perhaps even the majority, of the Christians, particularly in the Greek Eastern Christian world. Christian theologians like Origen (c. 185-c. 253) and Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-c. 394) advocated Christian universalism. But then by the fifth century, theologians like Augustine (c. 354-c. 430) tried to refute the universalists and argued for eternal torment in Hell. And as indicated by the prominence of Augustine's statue in St. Peter's Basilica, the Catholic Church has assumed that the Holy Spirit spoke through Augustine as representing the orthodox tradition of the Church. And yet, how can we know that this is true?
Hart begins his book That All Shall Be Saved by stating: "The great fourth-century church father Basil of Caesarea (c. 329-379) once observed that, in his time, a large majority of his fellow Christians (at least, in the Greek-speaking Eastern Christian world that he knew) believed that hell was not everlasting, and that all in the end would attain salvation" (1-2).
Writing for First Things, Michael Pakaluk argued that Hart was committing "theological fraud" in this assertion about what Basil had said. But Hart replied to Pakaluk by showing that this is exactly what Basil had said. Basil was not endorsing universalism because he was trying to show that it contradicted a clear scriptural teaching of eternal torment, but he was observing that "the great multitude of men" (hoi polloi ton anthropon) among his fellow Christians had made the mistake of being universalists. When polloi is given with the definite article, it means not just "many" but "the many" as opposed to "the few," and thus the majority as opposed to the minority.
Once the Catholic Church and other Christian churches adopted Augustine's position favoring eternal torment in Hell, that became the dominant majority tradition for most Christians for the next 1500 years. But Hart's argument is that this was a mistake because of Gregory of Nyssa's defense of universalism is far more cogent--a more coherent and morally logical interpretation of scripture--than Augustine's position.
In The City of God, Augustine entered a "friendly-spirited" with those "merciful-hearted" (misericordes) Christians who deny the human beings condemned to Hell will suffer eternal punishment and never be saved (book 21, ch. 17). Hart observes that "the merciful-hearted" is "an epithet that for him apparently had something of a censorious ring to it (one, I confess, that is quite inaudible to me)."
Augustine's main argument against these Christians who suffer from excessive mercy is that they fail to see how scripture--particularly, Matthew 25:41 and Revelation 20:10--teaches that the torment of Hell must be eternal. This must be so, he asserts, because Jesus clearly indicates the parallelism of "eternal life" in Heaven and "eternal punishment" in Hell. To say that eternal life shall be without end, while eternal punishment will have an end, is "utterly absurd" (book 21, ch. 24).
Hart has pointed out, however, that Augustine could not read Greek, and so he had to rely on the Latin translation of the New Testament. Augustine did not know, therefore, that the Latin word aeterna is a translation of the Greek word aionios, which can mean "eternal" or "everlasting," but can also mean an "age" or "extended period of time." He did not study how the Greek New Testament uses this Greek world aionios, and so he did not notice that Jude 7 speaks of the puros aioniou ("eternal fire") that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, although this fire lasted for only one day!
Did the Holy Spirit fail to explain to Augustine the lexicography of New Testament Greek words like aionios?
Why didn't that Dove of the Holy Spirit flying over the head of Augustine do a better job of guiding his reading of the New Testament?
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