Some theologians, indeed the
majority since Abelard (1079-1142), limit the proposition of the universality
of the redemption by denying that it extends as such to unbaptized infants who
have died without coming to the use of their mental and spiritual faculties.
How do they come to impose this unexpected limitation> Their reasons can be
summarized as follows.
Baptism, either of water or
desire, is absolutely necessary to salvation. But the children in question are
incapable of eliciting the mental act of desire for baptism. Therefore, they
can be saved only by baptism of water. The salient point in this argument is
the assertion that children cannot be saved by the baptism of desire because
they are incapable of any mental act. How can on be certain of this? If we can
demonstrate that in their death children too awaken to the full possession of
their mental and spiritual powers, the argument breaks down.
These
theologians work on three clearly defined data: (1) the proposition affirming
the universality of the redemption; (2) the principle of the impossibility of
sharing in the redemption otherwise than by a free decision (this is equivalent
to requiring baptism at least in voto); (3) the supposition that there are
in fact unbaptized infants who die without eliciting any act of decision from
their will. Since these three data are absolutely irreconcilable, and as these theologians
are not prepared to consign these little creatures to hell like their rivals
the so-called tortores parvulorum, they elaborate an hypothesis which
enables them to hold all three data at the same time. This is the limbo
hypothesis. “Limbo”—in Latin, limbus—originally means a border, hem
or fringe, and was thought of as a place bordering on hell. Essentially limbo
would form a part of hell and would, therefore, not be an intermediate place;
its inmates, however, would not suffer the pains of hell. They would indeed be
excluded for ever from the vision of God, but would not really have any consciousness
of this exclusion, and would even enjoy a so-called “natural beatitude.”
This
line of thought can make no claim to the authority either of Scripture or of
Tradition. It has never been adopted as the Church’s dogmatic teaching. When,
however, the Jansenists tried to have the defenders of the limbo hypothesis
branded as heretics, the Church condemned the Jansenists. She really cannot
accept that her scholars, engaged in serious research and attempting to save as
many poor little creatures as possible, at any rate from the pains of hell,
should be the objects of ecclesiastical censure on the part of fanatics eager
to condemn as many as possible to eternal damnation. We see at work here a
deep-lying intention of the Church: a preference of the “more lenient
solution”. The limbo hypothesis itself did not receive any greater degree of
certainty through this measure. If we can find another hypothesis which, while
showing the same leniency, can give us a better solution of the problem, there
is nothing to prohibit our abandoning the limbo hypothesis.
For
some time now the criticisms of the hypothesis of a limbo parvulorum have
been multiplying on all sides. This hypothesis appears to introduce into
theology a concept full of contradictions which makes of it a most
inappropriate cement for the joining of different data of faith. It is by no
means clear how a man could be eternally separated from God and even enjoy a
“natural beatitude” without suffering the pains of hell. Christ’s redemption
and God’s will that all men should be saved—which it includes—produce
ontological effects in the order of realty. One of these is the total ordering
of each man in his concrete historical destiny towards his supernatural end;
and this is a condition a priori, an ontological prerequisite for his
existence as a spiritual essence. What then does a “natural beatitude” signify
in this context? Theology, of course, does know the concept of natura pura,
or, to be more precise, it forms this concept in order to be able to embrace in
thought without contradiction God’s twofold liberty in both creating man and
elevating him to his supernatural dignity. That does not mean, though, that man
as he is and has become in the course of his history, is not, with every ounce
of his being, supernaturally ordained to God as to his last end long before any
stirring of his spirit takes place. Any reasonably penetrating analysis of our
concrete spiritual dynamism shows that the area we call supernatural is
something “given” and present in the de facto composition of the human
being. Our historical existence is already so profoundly affected by the
supernatural that it is simply impossible to extract the “natural” dynamism
from our existence as it is, and display it in its “pure state.” Through
Christ’s work of redemption there has been formed in man a permanent
disposition not due to his nature as such and ordaining his whole existence
towards a supernatural fulfilment, a disposition which provides the ontological
basis for his activity as a person and is not merely the product of his free
act as a person. This efficacious and ontological ordering of man to his
supernatural end which must, of course, be distinguished from the justifying
possession of sanctifying grace, is one of the most real of all the facts of
human existence. The task God lays on us is a call to our existence and a call
that is creative of reality.
If
that is true, how can one assert that a human creature whose whole being longs
for God in all its part could bear, without suffering, the situation of
internal conflict that would be produced by an everlasting separation from God?
Unless, of course, one were to maintain that limbo is a kind of incubator for
human chrysalids destined never to awaken to their spirituality. That, however,
would be an equivalent affirmation of the defeat of creation running dead
counter to the very essence of what spirituality is.
If,
on the other hand, a creature endowed with spirituality, attains after death
the consciousness called for by its nature, it will be absolutely incapable of
excluding from the realm of its experience its state of separation and
remoteness from God. Hell is estrangement from God experienced as a state of
being. The other torments of hell only become intelligible inasmuch as they
flow from this central pain. The separation from God determines a cleavage that
penetrates right to the heart of man, and also an ontological state of
hostility to the rest of the universe as it presses on towards Christ, the
selfsame universe in which man himself is immersed by reason of his nature.
These
three cleavages enable us to explain all the pains of hell grouped under the
headings of poena demni (pain of loss) and poena sensus (pain of
sense). It follows, therefore, that any idea of an eternal separation from God
that did not necessarily include in its content all the sum of the pains of
hell is quite unthinkable. Yet that is precisely what the advocates of the
limbo hypothesis, as distinguished from those of the old Augustinian school,
were trying to avoid.
If
now we substitute the hypothesis of a final decision for the limbo hypothesis,
the whole problem is solved immediately. The quite arbitrary assumption that
there are human beings who during their earthly pilgrimage never had the
possibility of making a decision for or against God and thus of receiving
baptism at least in voto, is shown to have no object. The whole
conceptual construction which produces limbo is needless. In the hypothesis of
a final decision even infants would be able to make their decision in full
liberty and knowledge at the moment of death. It must not be forgotten that
infants who die before they come to the use of their mental and spiritual
faculties are nevertheless creatures endowed with spirit, and they, like all
other human beings, awake in death to their full liberty and complete
knowledge. In death they too are brought face to face with the essential
dynamism of their spirit and also with the basis of the world, and in this confrontation
meet their Redeemer. The supernatural light that mysteriously surrounds the
spirit of man and without which, if he is not to be destroyed in his very
essence, he cannot be conceived as a concrete, historical existent thing,
because in death a consciously perceived realty to children also, even quite
apart from any “special illumination.” At the same time they too are planted
firmly in the basis of the world where the whole cosmos waits expectantly for
God, in order to be received into the glory of the sons of God. Strictly
speaking, if the word “infant” is to retain any meaning at all, we can no
longer use it to describe a spirit which in death awakes to the fullness of its
spiritualty. We do not, after all, call the angels who were put to the test in
the first moment of their existence “infants.”
In
death the infant enters into the full possession of its spiritualty, i.e. into
a state of adulthood that many adults themselves never reach during their
lifetime. The rest of this is that no one dies as an infant, though he may
leave us in infancy. The decision of these “infants,” if we consider its
structure, must be very like that of the angels: their state of pilgrimage too
was concentrated into one single moment and their decision developed at once
into an eternal state. (Ladislaus Boros, The Mystery of Death: Awakening to
Eternal Life [Rhinebeck, N.Y.: Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2020],
102-7; tortores parvulorum is the theory which taught that unbaptised
persons would never see God)
We
must, of course, admit that the interpretation here proposed of the fate of
unbaptized infants cannot claim for itself the authority of a long theological
tradition. This, however, is no motive for rejecting a theological hypothesis.
When Abelard proposed his limbo hypothesis, he would not take refute in any
really important tradition of the Schools either, in order to support his
theology against the dominant theological ideas of his time. Compared with him,
we have a considerable advantage in that we come after him, for in the limbo
hypothesis we have the really decisive and successful challenge made to the
zealots of damnation. Seen correctly the position is not one of our
disqualifying the idea of limbo, but of developing it further along the lines
of its original intuition. What it was really trying to say is freed of its
faulty expression, maintained, and carried on still further. (Ibid., 107-8)
