Theology: On the Hem of Hell

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A child is born, takes a few agonized breaths, dies unbaptized. What then happens to its soul, uncleansed of original sin? Modern Protestant theologians generally find no basis in Scripture for an opinion, but Roman Catholic catechisms give a quite specific answer. Unbaptized innocents go to limbo (from the Latin word for "hem" or "border"), a fringe of hell where they spend eternity in a state of natural happiness. Published this week is a lively survey of the still unfinished debate over this theological issue, called Limbo: Unsettled Question (Sheed & Ward; $3.95). The author, the Rev. George J. Dyer, is a professor of patristic theology at St. Mary of the Lake Seminary near Chicago.

Most Christians have always defended the necessity of baptism for salvation, relying on Jesus' words in St. John's Gospel: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The stern-minded theologians of early Christianity, Father Dyer says, interpreted these words strictly, and consigned unbaptized babes to hell. "They are vessels of contumely and the wrath of God is upon them," wrote St. Augustine. "If no one frees them from the grasp of the devil, what wonder is it that they must suffer in flames with him?"

Negative Penalty. Medieval scholastics gradually construed a more humane destiny for unbaptized infants and for pious adults who died before Christ. In the 13th century, Albert the Great named this resting place limbo. Albert's disciple, Thomas Aquinas, argued that since unbaptized children were not guilty of actual, committed sins but only of original sin, their penalty would be a negative one—the loss of the vision of God that is heaven's supreme happiness. Moreover, Thomas suggested, the children would placidly exist through eternity unaware of the reward that was beyond their reach.

Aquinas' soothing proposal did not end the argument. Martin Luther, like many other Protestant reformers, believed that hell was the fate of the un baptized of any age. So did a new generation of Catholic Augustinian thinkers and the heretical Jansenists of the 17th and 18th centuries, who dismissed limbo as an unscriptural theory too ardently promoted by their enemies the Jesuits.

Salvific Will. During the past 30 years, Father Dyer notes, theological debate has focused again on limbo. A number of liberal Catholic thinkers have suggested that unbaptized children may get to heaven after all because of God's "salvific will"—his desire that all man kind be saved. A French theologian, Palemon Jean Glorieux, has argued that every soul, in the moment of death, faces a final choice of turning either toward or away from God; unbaptized infants without knowledge of positive evil could find it easy to make the right decision. Two English theologians, Jesuits Bernard Leeming and the late Vincent Wilkin, believed that limbo will end with the Last Judgment, and its inhabitants will be joyfully welcomed to the company of the saints.