1/ I firmly believe only Baptized Christians will be Saved. As Saint Augustine wrote: "Perish the thought that the Man Predestined to Eternal Life should be permitted to end his life without the Sacrament of the Mediator". Yet I also believe that 50%+ of Humanity will be Saved. That means 50%+ of the World will become Baptized Christians one day. There are 8.2 Billion People, so if this viewpoint is true, there will be 4.1+ Billion Christians one day, the Majority of them Catholic Christians. I cited the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia saying 50%+ of Christians, especially of Catholics will finally be saved, as safe and probable. Some believed also that 50%+ of HUMANITY would be saved, a view that could be called Hopeful Semi-Universalism.
But let's study Saint Augustine on Compassionate Christians and Saint Gregory of Nyssa the Universalist, one of said Compassionate Christians Saint Augustine is talking about.
2/ In City of God Book XXI, chapters 17–24, St. Augustine turns from pagans to fellow Christians. He calls them misericordes nostri “our own compassionate ones” or “tender-hearted Christians.”
He writes that he must enter “amicable controversy” with those who “decline to believe that any, or that all of those whom the infallibly just Judge may pronounce worthy of the punishment of hell, shall suffer eternally, and who suppose that they shall be delivered after a fixed term of punishment, longer or shorter according to the amount of each man’s sins.”
afkimel.wordpress.com
3/ Augustine lists several positions then current in the Church:
- Temporary (purgative) punishment for the damned, then release.
- The prayers and intercessions of the saints after the Judgment will obtain mercy for the condemned.
- All the baptized, even heretics and the wicked, will eventually be saved because they partook of Christ’s Body.
- Some extend mercy even to the devil (this he attributes especially to Origen and rejects as condemned).
He treats most of these as errors of misplaced compassion, not as formal heresy — except the salvation of the devil. His tone is firm but not uniformly hostile. He insists Scripture teaches eternal punishment for the reprobate (Matt. 25:46, the undying worm, etc.).
4/ Augustine’s own position is clear and severe: the predestined elect will certainly be saved; God will not permit one of them to die without the sacrament of the Mediator (Baptism, or martyrdom in its place). The rest of the massa damnata justly perish. Hell is everlasting. Compassion must not rewrite the words of Christ.
This is why the opening quotation matters. For Augustine, baptism is not optional for the elect. Predestination includes the means.
5/ Enter St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335–395), Cappadocian Father, brother of St. Basil, defender of Nicaea, called “Father of Fathers” in the East. He is the most prominent orthodox Father associated with apokatastasis — the restoration of all things.
Gregory taught that God’s end is one: when the whole of our race is perfected from the first man to the last — some cleansed in this life, others healed afterwards by the Fire — all will participate in the blessings of God. He wrote that “no being will remain outside the number of the saved” and “no being created by God will fall outside the Kingdom of God.” Christ’s victory means the eventual disappearance of evil, since evil has no substance of its own.
en.wikipedia.org
6/ Gregory’s vision is Christological and ontological: human nature is one in Adam and one in Christ. The Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection heal the whole of that nature. Punishment after death is medicinal and finite for those who need it. He usually does not extend this as explicitly to the devil as Origen did, which is one reason the Church never condemned him.
He was never anathematized. Later councils condemned certain Origenist propositions (especially cycles of worlds and the salvation of demons), but Gregory’s name remained among the great Doctors.
7/ Was Gregory one of the “compassionate Christians” Augustine had in mind? Augustine does not name him in City of God XXI. Gregory had died decades earlier. Augustine’s knowledge of the Cappadocians was incomplete. Yet Gregory represents exactly the type of view Augustine is answering: a great, orthodox, anti-Arian bishop whose hope for restoration was wider than Augustine’s.
Many later writers (East and West) saw Gregory as the outstanding example of this “greater hope” held within the bounds of the Creed.
8/ Important distinctions a Catholic must keep:
- The eternity of hell is defined. No one may deny that some can be lost forever.
- Baptism (or its desire / martyrdom) is the ordinary, necessary means of salvation. Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus remains true.
- Gregory’s language of “all” and “no being outside the saved” is stronger than later Catholic “hope.” It is not the defined doctrine of the Church.
Hopeful Semi-Universalism, as used here, does not mean “all will certainly be saved.” It means: we may hope, work, and pray that a majority of the human race will in fact be baptized and persevere, so that Christ’s Kingdom is not smaller than Satan’s. The 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia treats the majority of Christians, especially Catholics, being saved as a safe and probable opinion. Some older authors (e.g. Gener) even spoke of half of humanity.
9/ Today there are roughly 8.3 billion people. Christians number about 2.6–2.7 billion (~32%), Catholics about 1.45 billion. For 50%+ of humanity to be saved as baptized Christians, the Faith must still spread far beyond its present share - especially in Asia and among the unevangelized. That is a missionary, not a sentimental, hope.
Augustine would say: preach, baptize, correct, and leave the number of the elect to God. Gregory would say: the Fire of God heals until nothing opposed to the Good remains. The Church has kept both the warning and the hope.
10/ St. Augustine feared that excessive compassion would make people presume and live wickedly. St. Gregory feared that despair of God’s power would limit the victory of Christ. Both are saints. Both must be read in the analogia fidei.
The Catholic position today remains: hell is real and eternal; baptism is necessary; we do not know the final number; we may lawfully hope that the saved will be many, even a majority of those who die as Christians, and we must labor so that as many as possible of the 8 billion become such Christians.
That is not Origenism. It is not indifferentism. It is the tension the Fathers themselves lived.
St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyssa, pray for us - and for the conversion of the nations.
Topic: St. Augustine on "Compassionate Christians", St. Gregory of N the Universalist (Read 480 times)