It is broadly thought today that the Church admits the fire of hell as a moral hell and not as a material fire. That is at least the opinion of the majority of theologians and many enlightened priests. Nonetheless it is nothing more than an individual opinion and not a belief acquired from the orthodoxy otherwise it would be universally professed. One can assess it from the image below painted by a priest in the last Lent in Montreuil-sur-Mer:
“
The fire of hell is millions of time more intense than that of Earth and if one body that burns there without being consumed were thrown onto our planet it would have it infected from one end to the other! Hell is a vast and somber cave, full of sharp nails and sword blades, of cutting razors in which wicked souls are thrown!”
It would be useless to refute such a description. However one could ask the speaker from where he has taken the knowledge about a place that he describes so accurately. Surely it was not from the Gospels in which there is no nails, swords or razors. In order to know that those blades and really sharp one must necessarily has seen and experimented with that. Will that be the case that like the new Eneas or Orpheus he had gone down to that somber cave that by the way has something of similar to the Tartar of the Pagans? Besides, would he have explained the action that nails and razors would have upon the souls and the need for having them really sharp and of a strong temper? Considering that he knows so well the minor details of the place he must have also said where it is located. It could not be at the center of the Earth because he supposes the case of having one of those bodies thrown onto our planet. Is it in space then? But Astronomy has reached that region much earlier and found nothing. It is true that it did not look with the eyes of faith. In any case is this picture painted to attract nonbelievers? That is more than doubtful since it is more adequate for the reduction of the number of believers.
To counter that we will mention the fragment of a letter sent from Riom and mentioned in the La Vérité in its March 20
th, 1864 edition:
“Yesterday, to my great surprise and satisfaction, I personally heard this positive confession coming out of the mouth of an eloquent preacher before a crowded and surprised auditorium: There is no more hell. Hell is no more…it was remarkably replaced. The fires of charity, the fires of love atone our faults! Isn’t our divine Doctrine (Spiritism) totally contained in these few words?”Needless to say which one of the two was received with more sympathy by the auditorium but the second one could even be accused of heresy by the first. In former times he would be invariably punished at the stake or in a prison for the audacity of having stated that God does not have his creatures burnt. Those two citations suggest the following thoughts:
If some believe in the materiality of the penalties and others don’t some necessarily are right and the others wrong. This is a more important point than it seems at first sight because it opens up the avenue to interpretations founded on an absolute unity of the belief and that, in principle, repels interpretation.
It is well true that up until now the materiality of the penalties took part in the dogmatic beliefs of the Church. Why then not all theologians believe in them? Since none of them verified the actual thing themselves what is it that leads some to just see an image whereas other see a reality other than reason that to the former goes beyond blind faith? Well, reason is free examination. There we have then reason and free examination entering the Church by the force of general opinion. One could even say, without a metaphor, that it is through the door of hell. It is the hand upon the sanctuary of dogmas and not from the lay person but from the clergy.
Make no mistake about the importance of this issue because it contains the germ of a whole revolution in matters of religion and of a huge rupture much more radical than Protestantism because it does not threat Catholicism only but Protestantism, the Greek Church and all of the Christian sects. In fact between the materiality of the penalties and the purely moral penalties there is the whole distance between real meaning and figurative meaning, from allegory to reality. As long as the flames of hell are admitted as allegories it becomes evident that these words of Jesus: “
Go to the eternal hell” have a figurative meaning. From that one deduce that the same applies to many of Jesus’ words.
But here is the most serious consequence: from the moment when the interpretation of this point is admitted there is no reason to reject it about other points; it is therefore and as we said the open door to a free discussion, a deadly blow onto the absolute principle of blind faith. The belief in the materiality of the penalties is entirely related to other principles of faith that are their corollary. Once that belief is transformed the other will also transformer by the force of things and from there on successively.
Here an explanation. Not long ago the dogma “there is no salvation outside Church” was at its highest. Baptism was such an imperious need that even when the child of a heretic person received it clandestinely and irrespectively of the parents’ wishes it was enough to be saved because anything that was rigorously orthodox was irrevocably condemned. But since human reason has been up rooted against those millions of souls apportioned to the eternal penalties when they were not to blame for not having been educated in the good faith; the numerous children that die before acquiring the conscience of their actions and that nonetheless are not less damned if the religious belief of their parents deprived them from the baptism, with that respect the Church has moved away from its absolutism. Today the Church says, or at least the majority of the theologian say, that those children are not responsible for the actions of their parents; that the responsibility only begins when they deny after being enlightened and hence they are not damned for not having received the baptism; and that the same applies to the savage and all kinds of idolatries.
Some go even further since they acknowledge that the practice of the Christian virtues that is humility and charity, one can be saved in all religions because it depends on the will of a Hindu, a Jewish, a Muslim or a Protestant to live charitably; that the one that lives in that one is in the Church in Spirit even if not formally. Isn’t that the principle “
there is no salvation outside the Church” enlarged and transformed into “
there is no salvation but through charity”? That is exactly what Spiritism teaches and nonetheless that is exactly why it is declared the works of the devil. Why would such maxima be the breath of the devil in the mouth of the Spiritists and not in the ministers of the Church? If the orthodoxy of the faith is threatened it is not by Spiritism but by the Church itself because it inevitably feels the pressure of the general opinion and some among its members see things from a more elevated position where the force of logic overcomes a blind faith. It would be reckless to say that the Church marches towards Spiritism; it is true, however, that it shall be recognized later. Despite the fact that it moves towards confrontation with Spiritism the Church unnoticeably and gradually assimilates its principles.
This new point of view about salvation is serious. Beyond the form, the Spirit is an eminently revolutionary principle of orthodoxy. Since salvation is seen possible outside the Church the efficacy of baptism becomes relative rather than absolute and turns into a symbol. Considering that the non-baptized child cannot respond for the negligence or bad will of her parents what becomes of the penalty imposed onto the human race for the fault incurred by the first man? What becomes of the original sin as understood by the Church?
Sometimes the greatest effects result from the little causes. The right of interpretation and free examination, once the apparently puerile issue of the materiality of the future penalties is admitted, is a first step whose consequences are innumerable because it is a crack in the dogmatic immutability and a rolling stone drags others. Church’s position is embarrassing we must admit. However, there is only one path out of two alternatives: remain stationary, despite everything else, or move on. But then the Church will not escape this dilemma: if it remains absolutely immobile in the errors of the past it will be infallibly overcome, as it is now, by the flow of the new ideas; it will then be isolated and finally dismembered as it would be today had it insisted in expelling those that believe in the movement of Earth or in the geological periods of creation. The Church will change if it moves into the interpretation of the dogmas by the simple denial of the materiality of the penalties and the absolute necessity of baptism.
The danger of transformation, as a matter of fact, is clearly and energetically stated in the following passage from a brochure published by Father Marin de Boylesve, from the Company of Jesus with the title “The miracle of the devil”, in response to the
Revue des Deux-Mondes:[1]“Among other things there is one issue that is a matter of life and death to religion: the miracles. The devil is not a lesser one. Remove the devil and there is no Christianity. If the devil is not but a myth the fall of Adam and the original sin become just a fable. As a consequence redemption, baptism and the Church, in a word, have no meaning. Besides, science spares no efforts to erase the miracles and suppress the devil.”It means that if science discovers a law of nature that brings a so called miraculous event to the row of natural events; if it demonstrates the anteriority of the human race and the multiplicity of its origins the whole edifice collapses. A religion is very weak when a scientific discovery is a matter of life and death. That is an awkward confession. As for ourselves we are far from sharing the apprehensions of
Father Boylesve with respect to Christianity. We say that Christianity, as purely coming from the mouth of Jesus, is invulnerable since it is the law of God.
Hence their conclusion is this: No concession or death. The author fails to examine if there is more chance by living in immobility. In our opinion there is less and that it is better to live transformed than not to live at all. At any rate there is an unavoidable fission. One can even say that there is one already since the doctrinarian unity is broken because there is no perfect agreement in the teaching; because some approve what others deny and some condemn what others forgive.
We therefore see the followers giving preference to those whose ideas are more convenient to them. When the shepherds are divided the herd also divides. It is a short distance from this divergence to full separation. One more step and those that are ahead will be treated as heretical by those behind. That is a schism taking place. It is the danger of immobility.
Religion, or even better, all religions unwillingly suffer the influence of the progressive movement of the ideas. A fatal need forces them to maintain the level of the ascending movement otherwise they shall sink. Therefore they have all been forced from time to time to make concessions to science and to smooth out the literal meaning of certain beliefs before the evidence of facts. The one that denied the discoveries of science and their consequences from a religious point of view would sooner or later lose its authority and credit and would increase the number of nonbelievers. If a given religion can be compromised by science that is not science’s fault but the religion that is founded on absolute dogmas in contradiction to the laws of nature that are Divine laws. By repudiating science one is therefore repudiating nature and consequently the works of God. By doing so in the name of religion would be the same as putting God in contradiction with himself as if making God say: I established laws to govern the world but do not believe in those laws.
In all time mankind was not capable of knowing all laws of nature. The successive discovery of those laws constitutes progress. That entails the need for all religions to place their beliefs and dogmas in harmony with progress or be belied by the facts attested by science. That is the only condition that can make a religion invulnerable. In our opinion religion should do more than just following progress behind that is already a forceful and embarrassing march. Religion should be the advanced sentinel since it would be honoring God by proclaiming the wisdom and greatness of God’s laws. The existing contradiction between certain religious beliefs and natural laws produced the majority of the nonbelievers whose number increases in proportion to the popularization of those laws. If the agreement between science and religion were impossible there would not be any possible religion. We proclaim out loud the possibility and the need of such agreement because in our opinion science and religion are sisters for the greater glory of God and must complement one another instead of belying each other. They will reach out to one another when science sees in religion no incompatibility with the demonstrated facts and religion no longer fears for the demonstration of those facts. Spiritism shall be the uniting element that will allow them both to face one another, one not laughing and the other not fearing. It is by the agreement between faith and reason that God daily brings back so many disbelievers.
[1] Review of two worlds (TN)
