There’s an unofficial dogma in Christianity. “The Fewness of the Saved” they call it. The basic idea is that almost nobody ends up going to heaven and the vast, vast majority of mankind burns for all eternity in Hell. Observe:
“It is certain that few are saved.” — Saint Augustine
“Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue to sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.” — Saint Jerome
“What I am about to tell you is very terrible, yet I will not conceal it from you. Out of this thickly populated city with its thousands of inhabitants not one hundred people will be saved. I even doubt whether there will be as many as that.” — Saint John Chysostom
“The number of the elect is so small, so small, that, were we to know how small it is, we would faint away with grief, one here and there, scattered up and down the world.” — Saint Louis Marie de Montfort
“There are select few who are saved.” — Saint Thomas Aquinas
So, yeah. Pretty depressing. Pulling quotes from Catholic sources is the easiest but the idea is not uncommon in Protestant circles either. Not hard to see why. Many of the statements of Jesus appear to give us the same view:
“Enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who go therein. How narrow is the gate and how straight is the way that leads to life, and few there are that find it!” — Jesus
"Many are called, but few are chosen.” — Jesus
That’s not all by any means. Without boring you with more pull quotes, many other verses in the Bible can be read as supporting the fewness of those who make it to Heaven.
The problem is, of course, obvious. If true… why bother?
A reasonable question. Seldom in my life have I been in the top 1% of something. I play ukulele. I am not in the top 1% of all ukulele players. I do karate. I am not in the top 1% of all karateka. I write this blog. I am not in the top 1% of all bloggers. And so on. So forth. I wrestled in high school and did pretty well. Was nowhere near the top 1% of all wrestlers in the world though. Had I been, I suppose I’d have become an Olympian.
Are you an Olympian?
No?
Do you now or have you ever had the capacity to become one? Be honest.
Because that’s what believing in the fewness of the saved requires. It’s the theological equivalent of saying that only the spiritual best of the best of the best, the 1% of the 1%, the elite, the Olympians of the soul, will get to heaven.
Everybody else?
Sorry. No luck.
I could’ve trained my entire life to be a sprinter. Practiced from the day I could walk. Had I done so, I would certainly be a better sprinter today than I am, but I would have never reached the level of Usain Bolt. I simply don’t have the genetics for it. My torso to leg length ratio is not in the proper zone, the percentage of my muscle which is fast twitch fiber is not high enough, and so on. So forth. Me being a world class sprinter was never in the cards. Just like it was never in the cards for me to be a gymnast. Too tall. Is it unreasonable to assume then that, if one needs to be a spiritual Olympian to get to heaven, most of us are simply SOL?
No. In fact it seems the only reasonable conclusion.
So again. Why bother? Beyond that… what sort of God is it who is so weak that he cannot save his children? This too is a reasonable question. We are told that God loves us all, indeed, that he is love, and that his heart’s desire is that all of us be saved. And yet… he fails to get the job done. At the risk of sounding heretical, if the fewness of the saved is true doctrine, then Christ largely failed in his mission. He came to save the world, and, in the end, only managed to scoop up a couple of handfuls of lost souls. Depressing in the extreme, no? I mean, if Jesus’s mission was so utterly unfruitful, again… why bother? Why bother with anything really? Why bother going to the grocery store? Why bother taking a bath?
This problem is why folks like David Bentley Hart get so much traction. I don’t like Hart by the way. He’s the epitome of the pompous self righteous academic with an exceedingly inflated perception of his own intelligence. That and he’s gross looking. I doubt he can do a pushup. I’ll be fair and cop to being a bit of a snob in my own way in that regard. If a man has such a flagrant disregard for his body as to exude a perpetual flabby weakness I don’t put much stock into what he says. You’re excused for being elderly or disabled of course, Hart being neither. Ugh. I bet he smells.
Sorry.
Anyway, for all his faults, Hart gets traction because he’s talking about a real problem in Christianity. The idea of the fewness of the saved can’t just be ignored. It’s either true or it isn’t and, if it is, let’s just pack it up and go home. Hart therefore decided to swing the other way and become a universalist. He believes everybody, eventually, will be saved. To be clear he believes that Hell is real and even that it, itself, is eternal. He just doesn’t believe that any given person sits in it for all eternity. For Hart hell is just like, super purgatory, or something. It exists to burn the evil out of a person and then, once that evil has been burned away, they can move on to paradise. In his cosmology Hell eventually sits empty.
An attractive position. For obvious reasons.
I myself am tempted to believe the same at times. That all will be saved. Not even out of a sense of hope for myself or others but rather out of a sense of awe in the power of God. In some moments I feel as though the universe and everything that’s ever been within it must be saved because God’s love is so great no darkness can ever overcome it.
But.
Then I remember Tully.
Tully. A nickname for Tulip. Tully is a woman whom I truly believe is in Hell. I believe she’s in Hell forever. Only God can know such things for certain, true. But I would be shocked beyond measure if she wasn’t.
Outwardly Tully wasn’t bad. She wasn’t a murderer or an extremist. She didn’t want to gas the Jews. She didn’t want to stone homosexuals. She wasn’t racist. She wasn’t any of the things our culture normally points to as an example of evil. She wasn’t greedy nor lustful. I don’t even know if she could’ve been considered prideful. In fact in many ways she was a humble woman. One of her favorite phrases was “…but you would know better than me.” She was a nice lady. She was. She was also totally and completely unforgiving. Unforgiving to the point of becoming a monster. But, perhaps I repeat myself.
Tully had been harmed.
No doubt about it.
Throughout her life various family members had betrayed her. Often in quite dramatic fashion. No need to get into the details here but suffice to say that two ex husbands, a son, a sister, and a niece had all screwed her over in epic fashion. Left her high and dry. Abandoned her in her moment of need. Left her alone without a penny when she had cancer. Underhandedly taken her share of the inheritance. Lied about her to lawyers. Taken her kids. So forth. So on.
Tully had been harmed.
No doubt about it.
In her last weeks of life her son came to her to try and make amends. It was like a Hallmark movie. One of those that comes on at two in the afternoon so housewives can get in a good cry while they fold laundry. She was there, in bed, hooked up to machines. The son, whom she’d not seen in decades appears suddenly in the doorway, holding a bouquet of flowers.
“Mom…” He says pensively from the threshold.
Her eyes flicker open. She gasps. Her aged body struggles to sit more upright in the bed and she beckons him to come closer. He lays the flowers on her lap and takes hold of her wrinkled hand tethered to various IVs. They talk softly for a while. I can’t hear what they’re saying from the hallway. Minutes pass. I look up and notice that Tully has motioned for her son to put his hear close to her mouth. She has trouble speaking loudly. Mostly what comes out are only whispers. Lungs are bad. Cancer. Decades of cigarettes. So forth. So on.
“I will never forgive you.”
The words come out loud and clear into her son’s ear.
“Do you understand me?” She repeats. “I will never forgive you.”
The son jumps back. Startled. Unsure if he’s heard correctly. This is unexpected. It’s not how Hallmark movies are supposed to go.
The flowers hit him in the face and fall to the ground. The old woman drawing a sudden strength to hurl things out of the depths of hatred.
“I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU!” Somehow she can shout.
“NEVER. I WILL NEVER, EVER, FORGIVE YOU! GET OUT!! GET OUT!!!! GET OUT!!!!”
He ran.
Never saw him again and Tully died that evening.
I ask you…
Where do you think she went?
Right.
So I believe in Hell. Hart is wrong. Hell is a very real place and you can be in it while you’re still alive. At the same time though, I’d like to believe it’s not all that hard to avoid.
Here’s the formula:
“For if you forgive others their sins, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their sins, neither will your Father forgive yours.”
— Jesus
and again,
“Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” — Jesus
So maybe I’m a middle of the roader. A proponent of the middle way. A Buddha, if you like. Hell is very real and if you want to hang on to it, you can have it. You can have it for your whole life and forever. Like Tully did. But I also believe that escaping it is within everyone’s grasp. Those who make it seem as though Heaven and forgiveness are unattainable are unwittingly doing the work of the devil. At least that’s how it seems to me. They love to speak about the way being hard and the gate being narrow, but they leave off the bits about the yoke being easy and the burden being light. Despair is a sin and I must unfortunately agree with David Bentley Hart that you should not listen to anyone who preaches it. God is not bad. God is not trying to get you. God is not a legalist just waiting for you to fail to check some moralistic boxes so he can throw you in a fiery furnace forever and ever. We are not, after all, sinners in the hands of an angry God. We are sinners in the hands of a loving one.
I beleive that God is willing to overlook everything you have ever done or will ever do. Truly. At least most of us had better hope so. The only caveat though is that you have to do the same to everybody else. Maybe that’s harder than I give it credit for or maybe I’m too optimistic, but I do believe that that is within the grasp of most people. Ordinary people. All of us who are not spiritual Olympians.
And hey. God’s mercy is inexhaustible. That’s true. So maybe there’s an off chance that Hart is correct and Tully will meet us all on the other side eventually. Perhaps, one day, in the by and by, her hardened heart now softened… she and her son will hug again. For real this time.
I hope so. I do.
(Note: A sincere and heartfelt thank you to all of you so generous as to be paid subscribers. You have been more help than you could possibly know. Thank you again.)
Very well said.