Hi Jim —

Thanks for the question.

Paul is, in effect, saying that God is self evident by His creation. He is not saying that he (Paul) feels that way. This is the Word of God. Paul is not expressing an opinion. He is writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is not a word of Scripture that is not inspired.

On a deeper level, Paul is saying that reason itself will eventually lead you to a belief in God.

Scientists point to a big bang theory to explain the universe. Great, that still doesn't explain a cause or what was there before the big bang.

Atheism is usually not an intellectual problem. It, often times, is not a by-product of reason. Rather, it is a moral problem. People don't want to be held accountable to the creator. The pursuit of knowledge can become idolatry. This is not just true for Astrophysicists; it can be true of biblical scholars as well.

All one needs to do is look at the New Age Movement. Some great minds have bought into it.

• Why?

Because man is spirit and therefore longs for spiritual things. Of course, the New Age counterfeit allows man to explore the metaphysical but ultimately does not have a personal God to whom man must render an accounting.

That said, let us not discount grace. Your belief that God calls upon every man, even at his last breath, is not foreign to Catholic tradition. St. Faustina wrote in her diary that God beckons even the hardest hearts at the moment of death. She goes on to say that Jesus, (in a vision) told her that at the smallest sign of response from that sinner, that His Mercy and grace would take over.

This, of course, is a private revelation. It is not doctrine or magisterial teaching. Nevertheless, the Church approved her devotion to Divine Mercy and went so far as to declare her a saint.

Officially, the Church has not said any particular person is in Hell. Quite the contrary, it entrusts the souls of all the departed to the Mercy of God. We know ultimately some, or many, will reject that mercy but we don't know whom.

Respecting your analysis of Paul's attitude towards slavery in his epistles, I would not be so quick to assume he is projecting a matter of fact approach. If you carefully read his epistles, (particularly Ephesians), you will see that he calls for a transformation on all human relationships to somehow mirror Christ's relationship with the Church and indeed the Trinity's relationship from within, but that is another subject for another e-mail.

Under His Mercy,

John DiMascio

Hi Jim,

St. Paul was talking about people who worshipped false gods, not atheists. And he was speaking in general, of whole peoples and cultures, and saying that the existence of God could be seen from creation. St. Paul, also, when speaking in Athens of the altar to the unknown god, was appealing to their awareness that there was a mystery beyond what they knew.

As for individuals, the Church teaches, and so does St. Paul implicitly, that we can come to the knowledge of God and His Law only with great difficulty, and not all of us are able.

See the document on Divine Revelation from Vatican II. [Vatican]|[EWTN] We should be glad to help them by giving them the intellectual arguments for the existence of God, and for His nature.

Mary Ann

Jim,

You were right in your original thought. There are some people who do not believe in God through no fault of their own. This would especially pertain to those who are:

• mentally diminished
• infants, and
• others.

They are certainly not beyond the scope of God's mercy and offer of salvation. How God is able to obtain the fiat from those individuals is a mystery, but we trust it to God's universal salvific will that through Christ, redemption is available to all. Consider Paul himself who said,

"God, who is the savior of all, especially those who believe."

(cf. 1 Timothy 4:10) emphasis added.

The difference between you and your colleague is the assertion that what is true for some is true for all. He assumes that Paul is speaking about all non-believers in the collective, versus distributive, sense. This reading of Paul is neither consistent with Pauline theology nor the Church's teaching.

That being said, where there is probably agreement is considering those who have already been damned.

There is no one in Hell who is not there because of his own fault. God cannot be blamed for damning anyone who did not bring the judgment on himself. The rejection of God is the final position of those who are damned. While original sin makes us all deprived of the Grace of God, due to the God of Mercy, it is the very condition He seeks to rescue us from. He would not merely throw up his hands and say,

"Oh well, this one is simply not reachable; I don't have a way in."

Ultimately, this problem goes back to an ancient debate about limbo, the state of deprived of the beatific vision, but without the punishment of Hell for no personal sin.

This was how many of the Early Church Father's addressed the question of Where do the unbaptized infants go? You will note, however, that there has been no recourse to limbo in the church's theology for some time now, and it has never been accepted as dogma of the Church. While there will continue to be disagreement about this theological conundrum, we choose to trust that, in God's Mercy, there is always a way.

You can find more in the Catechism at # CCC 847:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ of his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience — those too may achieve eternal salvation!

You can use the Scriptural index in the back of the Catechism to look up the verses you are interested in to find them in the context of Church teaching. On-line you can go here and on the left side navigation bar scroll to the bottom and click on Index of Citations, part 1.

Peace,

Bob Kirby