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A World Renewed. - Review - book review
National Review, March 20, 2000 by Michael Potemra
Neuhaus says that this hope is intended for all humanity; but his interpretation of this principle will annoy many evangelical Protestants, as well as those among Neuhaus's fellow Catholics who espouse an excessively literal understanding of the dogma that "there is no salvation outside the Church."
Neuhaus contends that while "cognitive humility" demands that we acknowledge our ignorance on this subject, we are nonetheless both entitled and encouraged to hope that all people will enjoy God's favor in heaven; that while hell exists, we are doing God's will when we hope and pray that hell be empty. Neuhaus's arguments for this position are based on the nature of Christ's sufferings: Because God has been on the Cross-a fact that will remain true for all eternity-"God is present in the forsaken so that nobody-nobody ever, nobody anywhere at any time under any circumstance-is forsaken. . . . [Christ's] penetrating to the heart of darkness means that nobody, absolutely nobody, is alone in the heart of darkness. . . . Our new situation is radically different from and radically better than the original human situation. . . . Humanity can never again be alienated from God, the bond between God and humanity can never be broken, for in the God-man Jesus our humanity participates in the eternal life of God."
If this salvation applies to all humanity, what rational basis is there for continued Christian evangelization? Neuhaus's answer is disarmingly guileless. He says that Christians should continue to tell their non- Christian neighbors about Christ for the simple reason that Christ asked them to; and further, that love for others, and joy in their companionship, will make Christians want to report the news about Christ as widely as possible.
Neuhaus recounts a moving anecdote about how he started down the intellectual path that led to his convictions about the universality of salvation. When he was a 7-year-old boy growing up in Canada, he attended a "mission festival" at which a guest preacher was delivering a fire-and-brimstone stemwinder: "The preacher suddenly stopped. For a full minute there was complete silence as he looked intently at his wristwatch. Then he tossed his head, threw out his arm and, pointing directly at me in the third row, announced, 'In the last one minute, thirty-seven thousand lost souls have gone to eternal damnation without a saving knowledge of their Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!'"
The preacher-avatar of a still-important ideological current in Christianity-provoked a "theological crisis" in the young Neuhaus, one with which he continues to grapple today. Could a Son of God willing to die a sadistically brutal death for sinners subsequently countenance the mass damnation of so many of them? Would he not, rather, in the words of St. Paul, "desire all to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," in whatever mysterious fashion this might be accomplished? These questions, when posed in the context of the sufferings of Christ, answer themselves.
