Who gets in, and who is kept out

[rug]

31 January 2013, Review by Gavin D’Costa

The Salvation of Atheists and Catholic Dogmatic Theology
Stephen Bullivant
Oxford University Press, £65
Tablet bookshop price £58.50 Tel [phone]

For most of history, Christians thought that the vast majority of people would go to hell. The gate of Heaven is narrow. In the twentieth century, hell fell into disrepute. Christians, including many Catholics, began to think that most people will be saved. God is merciful and loving. Dante would have turned in his grave. He knew who was going to hell and even to which region in hell.

Vatican II does not contain a single reference to hell even when speaking of eschatology. Karl Rahner claimed that the most significant teaching of the council was its “salvation optimism”. Lumen Gentium (LG), the council’s decree on the Church, was the key. It overturned centuries of salvation pessimism: all non-Catholics (which included other Christians, religious non-Christians and non-religious groups such as atheists) could be saved if they were ignorant of the Gospel and they sought God, or the truth, in their conscience. This was a dramatic development of doctrine. Some protested that it was actually discontinuous with previous teachings – and a minority claimed the council invalid. Others have sought to balance this emphasis with what critics have called a neo-Augustinian theology, foreign to the council. The debate continues.

Since the close of the council, some have blamed this salvation optimism as the cause of the death of the missionary movement. In truth, that death had already started with the colonial critique: mission and empire building were interrelated and mission was the export of European Christian cultural forms. Both Paul VI and John Paul II wrote on the necessity of mission, given the deepening crisis.

Ralph Martin’s book seeks to redress the balance against salvation optimism. Stephen Bullivant is suspicious of the “how” of salvation optimism. Both these books are important contributions to an assessment of what the council taught in Lumen Gentium.

http://www.thetablet.co.uk/issue/1000346/booksandart

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/vc2/lumen_gentium.html

Buck up, comrades.

[dimbear]

1. The promise of heaven and the threat of hell are just as useful for control as the actual places,

and the rent on promises is much lower.

[rug]

2. And a cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.