Abstract
Having been (hopefully) cancelled in 2007, Limbo, and its legacy, remains to be well researched (something which has hardly been done). A profound and thorough investigation in its genealogy, geography, history (starting from Augustine and ending with Thomas of Aquinas), and poetics demonstrates how a secularized Limbo (with secularized understood properly) could still prove to be very operative in our contemporary world. Maybe the papal demise was not Limbo’s epitaph but merely its notification of migration to the immanence of this world.
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Notes
- 1.
The pope had approved the end of Limbo already in January (January 19, to be precise), but the document that literally signed the deal was only made public in April.
- 2.
This document by the International Theological Commission is freely available online at: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20070419_un-baptised-infants_en.html—Accessed April 30, 2015. We will refer to this document in the following way (HoS 2007, § chapter nr. when possible).
- 3.
As is written in a preliminary footnote of the document: ‘The theme “The Hope of Salvation for Infants who Die Without Being Baptized” was placed under the study of the International Theological Commission. In order to prepare for this study, a Committee was formed which consisted of the Most Rev. Ignazio Sanna, Most Rev. Basil Kyu-Man Cho, Rev. Peter Damien Akpunonu, Rev. Adelbert Denaux, Rev. Gilles Emery, OP, Msgr. Ricardo Ferrara, Msgr. István Ivancsó, Msgr. Paul McPartlan, Rev. Dominic Veliath, SDB (President of the Committee), and Sr. Sarah Butler, MSTB. The Committee also received the collaboration of Rev. Luis Ladaria, SJ, the Secretary General of the International Theological Commission, and Msgr. Guido Pozzo, the Assistant to the ITC, as well as other members of the Commission. The general discussion on the theme took place during the plenary sessions of the ITC, held in Rome, in October 2005 and October 2006. This present text was approved in forma specifica by the members of the Commission, and was subsequently submitted to its President, Cardinal William Levada who, upon receiving the approval of the Holy Father in an audience granted on January 19, 2007, approved the text for publication’.
- 4.
The 1992 edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church is freely available online (http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/_INDEX.HTM). The notion of Limbo used to be present in some earlier editions of the Catechism. For example, it was very present in the Catechism prepared by the famous Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine upon the request by Pope Clement VIII at the end of the sixteenth century. As the publication of this Catechism happened on the eve of the Jansenist controversy (a controversy to which we will return), it did arouse a whole world of contestation in the decades, and century, that followed.
- 5.
This stance is, for example, proposed by John L. Allen, the journalist and Vatican watcher in his The Catholic Church: What Everyone Needs to Know (Allen 2014). Allen, furthermore, indicates exactly the theory of Limbo as one of the paradigmatic cases where the Church has shown that its teaching (Allen writes ‘doctrine’) can ‘develop’ (Allen 2014, 95–96).
- 6.
One often forgets the influence exercised by the Bishop of Hippo on Ratzinger, who, in fact, wrote his PhD—The People and the House of God in Augustine’s Doctrine of the Church—on St. Augustine.
- 7.
In the end, it seems that this document is a statement of a sort of neo-Augustinianism, and its wind was (is still?) blowing rather freely inside the walls of Vatican City.
- 8.
Throughout this work, I will refer to this Limbo as the Limbo of the Fathers or the limbus patrum.
- 9.
My main source for these three traditions is Loofs (1908, 300).
- 10.
‘Similarly’, Justin writes, ‘have they removed the following words from the writings of the same Jerimiah: The Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, remembered his dead that slept in their graves, and he descended to preach to them his salvation’ (Justin Martyr 2003, Chapter 72, §4; 112).
- 11.
Not only is the research on Limbo very scarce, but also the medieval sources are rarely available in English translation. Beiting’s correct translations of Albertus Magnus’ and Saint Bonaventure’s fragments on Limbo have rendered our work a lot easier.
- 12.
Retelling the ecclesiastical and legal trials of Pelagianism is not part of the scope of this section. For further information, George J. Dyer’s first section of his The Denial of Limbo (Dyer 1955, 1–37; especially 4–10) offers a good starting point.
- 13.
Dyer tells of the almost comic comment made by the Augustinian seventeenth-century cardinal Henry (Enrico) Noris who, while pondering the mildness of punishment into which the unbaptized infants would incur according to Augustine, wrote that ‘he did not believe that the infants were consumed by the flames; they were rather heated to a point where they were in real discomfort’ (reported in Dyer 1955, 106).
- 14.
Dyer offers an interesting schematic summary of the Pelagian Eternal Life, Scholastic Limbo, and Augustine’s refusal that is worth to re-propose here:
Pelagians
Augustine
Limbo
Unbaptized children are born in a state of innocence and sentenced to neither Heaven nor Hell but rather a middle ground (eternal life) which is a state of innocence involving neither the pain of sense nor the pain of loss but a measure of happiness (Dyer 1964, 18)
Unbaptized children are born in a state of original sin and attain not to Heaven, nor any middle ground but are rather sentenced to damnation in which they suffer the pain of sense and the pain of loss
Unbaptized children are born in a state of original sin and sentenced to neither Heaven nor Hell but rather a middle ground (limbo) which is a state of damnation involving not the pain of sense nor the grief of exile but a measure of happiness
- 15.
Gary Gutting is quite accurate in insisting that this text was written along the lines of the typical explication de texte-style which Foucault must have used a manifold of times when studying under Jean Hyppolite—to whom this text was dedicated. This means that we should not consider this text as containing Foucault’s manifesto of what genealogy is (Gutting 2011, 92). However, regarding the distinction that interests us, this consideration can somewhat be left aside.
- 16.
If anything, as Dyer correctly remarks, there is a remnant of Origen’s, by the Church, repudiated Apokatastasi theory—the theory of ‘universal restauration’—present in Gregory. At times, it is as if all beings will once return to the bosom of the Father, even the Devil in person will be, eventually, purified by the Word and saved for the rest of eternity (cf. Dyer 1964, 28).
- 17.
Between the eleventh and mid thirteenth century, the population of Western Europe had doubled.
- 18.
The bellicose needs and desires were obviously not suppressed (it suffices to think of the crusades), the battlefield-lines were simply displaced to the ‘fringes’ of ‘Western European Christianity’.
- 19.
- 20.
It was more than probably William of Auvergne who coined the term Limbo.
- 21.
That Alexander was studying and writing about the same topics should not surprise. It was, in fact, mainly through the insistence of Alexander—who was a little bit older than Albertus, Alexander was born in 1185 and died in 1245, while Albertus was born in 1205 and died in 1280—that Peter Lombard’s Liber Sententiarum was confirmed as the ‘official’ textbook of the universities.
- 22.
§1035 of the Catechism states: ‘The chief punishment of Hell is eternal separation from God [the lack of the beatific vision], in whom alone man can possess the life and happiness for which he was created and for which he longs’ (part 1, Sect. 2, Chapter III, Art. 12, IV, §1035). Available :http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P2O.HTM#-1C6.
- 23.
We will use Bonaventure’s Commentary as main reference. At times, though, we will also refer to Bonaventure’s Breviloquium (2005) as this text often offers very concise and accurately formulated summaries, written by Bonaventure himself. To my knowledge, there is no official English translation available of the Commentary. Also, on this occasion, we will refer to Christopher Beiting’s translation (cf. Beiting 1999).
- 24.
Bonaventure does, when talking about Limbo generally not make clear which Limbo he is referring to, be it the Limbo of the Fathers or the Limbo of the children. From this, one should, however, not infer that for Saint Bonaventure Limbo is one place that houses two different groups. In the fourth book of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, while he is discussing the different meanings for which the word Hell has been used, we can read the following specification that makes it perfectly clear that also for the Seraphic Doctor there are two different and separate spheres that go under the name of Limbo: ‘Hell is applied not only to the lowest place with the punishment of sense and damnation and also a lower place accompanied by the punishment of damnation alone, namely limbo, which is either the limbo of children, or the limbo of the Fathers (or bosom of Abraham)’ (Bonaventure, In IV Sent., d.45 a.1).
- 25.
As the great scholar of medieval thought, Etienne Gilson, put in his powerful volume dedicated to Bonaventure: ‘St. Bonaventure’s thought appears as if bent with all its powers towards the creation of a new synthesis, a synthesis wherein he should find a place for all the philosophical and religious values of which he had had living experience—from the humblest form of faith, rising through philosophy, then through theology, from grade to grade—with no unjust deprecation of any, yet never permitting any to usurp a place not its own—to the very highest peaks of the mystical life wither St. Francis beckoned him’ (Gilson 1965, 33).
- 26.
Whereas in his Commentary he does not mention the Pelagian heresy, he does so in his Breviloquium. His argumentation is very illuminating in this short passage that it is worth reproducing in full: ‘Finally, because the absence of justice in the newly born is not caused by an act of their own or by any actual pleasure, it is not fitting that they should be punished in their senses in Hell after this life on account of original sin. This is because divine justice is always tempered by superabundant mercy and punishes us not more but less than we deserve. We ought to believe that blessed Augustine was aware of this, even though on the surface his words seem to state otherwise, because he was reacting so strongly against the errors of the Pelagians, who had granted such infants blessedness in some form. But in his effort to lead them back to a moderate position, he veered too far in the other extreme’ (Bonaventure 2005, III, 5, 6; 111–112).
- 27.
The condensed formula Bonaventure uses in his Breviloquium summarizes the just described situation accurately: ‘Concerning the effects and fruits of the passion of Christ, the following must be held with unquestionable faith. After the passion, the soul of Christ ‘descended into Hell’ or limbo, to release, not all, but those who had died as members of Christ through living faith or through the sacraments of faith’ (Bonaventure 2005, IV, 10, 1; 164).
- 28.
As reported in Beiting (1998, 232).
- 29.
That Thomas’s argument can be considered as simplistic is related to the examples he offers to sustain his reasoning. In fact, as he states, unbaptized children who will eternally lack the beatific vision should not feel any sorrow just like ‘no wise man grieves for being unable to fly like a bird, or for that he is not a king or an emperor’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2).
- 30.
Thomas repeats this also at the end of his treatment of this second question: ‘[A]lthough unbaptized children are separated from God as regards the union of glory, they are not utterly separated from him: in fact, they are united to him by their share of natural goods, and so will also be able to rejoice in him by their natural knowledge and love’ (Aquinas 1947, Suppl., App.1, q.2, ad.5).
- 31.
- 32.
The whole message at the gate of Hell is the following:
Verse
Verse THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO THE GRIEVING CITY, THROUGH ME THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW, THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST PEOPLE. JUSTICE MOVED MY HIGH MAKER; DIVINE POWER MADE ME, HIGHEST WISDOM, AND PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME WERE NO THINGS CREATED EXCEPT ETERNAL ONES, AND I ENDURE ETERNAL. ABANDON EVERY HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER.
(Dante 1996, III, 1–9; 55) - 33.
It might be interesting to point out how the description of Limbo in the three cantiche is one of a progressive simplification. That we can find the more complex and full description of Limbo in the Inferno should not surprise. As the first circle of Hell it is only normal that Limbo is given a good amount of attention. That the few words dedicated to Limbo in Purgatory and Paradise are less and less profound is at least somewhat surprising. Dante scholars have not reached any agreement on the meaning of this progressive simplification.
- 34.
Dante does seem to be closer to Bonaventure than to Thomas. Dante’s description of the four poets as ‘neither sad nor happy’ (Dante 1996, IV, 84; 75), which in Dante’s Italian goes like ‘né trista né lieta’ does remind one of Bonaventure’s description of the children in Limbo as being without tristitia and without laetitia (cf. Bonaventure, In II Sent., d.33, a.3, q.2).
- 35.
There is an intriguing fresco entitled ‘Descent into Limbo’ by Giovanni da Lomazzo in Milan’s town house Palazzo Marino—the fresco is not original to the Palace. At first sight, the fresco might seem a typical representation of the Descent and harrowing theme. Jesus, holding the victorious banner, is standing on top of a violently torn down gate that used to enclose a cave-like ambient, from which he is helping people climb out. What is surprising is the presence in this scene of naked little children (who do not seem to be little angels). If our reading of the fresco is correct, it seems to be one of the rarer representations of a unified Limbo.
- 36.
- 37.
That in particular Milton’s treatment of Limbo can be considered as a fierce critique on, especially, Roman Catholicism is quite an interesting statement and seems to go against C.S. Lewis’ defense of the orthodoxy of Milton’s Paradise Lost (cf. Lewis 1969, 82–93). But maybe, as we will attempt to make clear at the end of our treatment of Milton, the difference between these two positions is not so broad.
- 38.
The four orders, respectively, are: the Carmelites, the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the Augustinians.
- 39.
That the Paradise is ‘now unpeopled, and untrod’ has nothing to do with any sort of harrowing that Christ might have done. Milton is coming full circle and is closing this vision of Satan. Satan, in fact, arrived in Limbo when it was still empty. He was ‘[A]lone, for other creature in this place Living or lifeless to be found was none, None yet, …’ (Milton 2005, III, 442–444; 92). What followed then was Satan’s vision we have discussed, and now, Satan is returning to himself finding it again empty, …, ready to be filled very soon.
- 40.
The question of the existence or not of Limbo cannot be understood as a question of primary importance. Even in the case Limbo should be judged as nonexisting, what it precisely was that was considered as not existing should, in fact, have been cleared previously to the decision upon its (non-)existence.
- 41.
There is, obviously, nothing wrong with the theory of secularization being a narrative. There is something wrong with a narrative pretending to be something else (that is, even worse than mythology).
- 42.
That the secular can still mean the entry of religion ‘in-the-world’ can be discovered by the phenomenon of the ‘third orders’. Take, for example, the religious order of the Franciscans (also the Carmelites or the Dominicans would work as an example). Besides the male friars, the priest-friars and ‘simple’ friars (with ‘simple’ friars, I intend the brothers who have been ordained as friars, but not as priest), and the female nuns (the Clarisse), the order has another subdivision. This subdivision, the so-called third order, is known as the secular order of the Franciscans. This group consists of lay people (often married and with children), but as one can imagine, they can hardly be considered as non-religious. It is precisely this group of members of the Franciscan order that has the explicit task (even more than the ‘regular’ friars who already live much more ‘in-the-world’ with their in-the-city-convents as opposed to the often isolated monasteries of, for example, the Benedictines) of bringing the Franciscan message into the world.
- 43.
Another philosopher to whom we could have turned is John Gray, who has provocatively claimed that ‘[O]f all modern delusions, the idea that we live in a secular age is the furthest from reality’ (Gray 2004, 41)—or more recently, ‘Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion’ (Gray 2008, 1). As Gray explains, secular societies are ruled by suppressing religion, and what results from this suppression is a bizarre and pervert faith what he calls liberal Humanism (cf. Gray 2004, 46).
- 44.
Jeff Fort, the translator, surprisingly translated the Italian ‘rimozione’ (which is rather easily and ‘naturally’ translated as removal) as ‘repression’ a concept that clearly has a very different understanding and changes the meaning of Agamben’s claims.
- 45.
Even though metamorphosis is not synonymous with displacement, both concepts do, however, invoke a very similar operation that stands very much against the more traditional operation invoked by mainstream ‘secularization’.
- 46.
- 47.
Agamben has, on various occasions, underlined the singularity and paradoxical nature of the paradigm. In The Coming Community, Agamben writes the following: ‘[N]either particular nor universal, the example is a singular object that presents itself as such, that shows its singularity. Hence the pregnancy of the Greek term, for example: para-deigma, that which is shown alongside (like the German Bei-spiel, that which plays alongside). Hence the proper place of the example is always beside itself, in the empty space in which its indefinable and unforgety life unfolds’ (Agamben 1993, 10). So the paradigm is a singularity that, however, can only be considered as such through its relation to what it is the example of, that is, to the group or set it exemplifies. In fact, as Agamben writes in the first chapter of The Signature of All Things. On Method that has the telling title ‘What is a Paradigm?’: ‘[I]f we now ask ourselves whether the rule can be applied to the example, the answer is not easy. In fact, the example is excluded from the rule not because it does not belong to the normal case but, on the contrary, because it exhibits its belonging to it. […], the example is excluded through the exhibition of its inclusion. However, in this way, according to the etymological meaning of the Greek term, it shows ‘beside itself’ (para-deiknymi) both its own intelligibility and that of the class it constitutes’ (Agamben 2009, 24—emphasis added). Of particular importance are the last words of the previous quotation. In fact, the goal of Agamben’s peculiar usage of the example/paradigm is precisely the constitution of a ‘group’ or a ‘class’ of ‘normal cases’ that is exemplified by the example: ‘[…] the paradigm’, as Agamben writes, ‘is a singular case that is isolated from its context only insofar as, by exhibiting its own singularity, it makes intelligible a new ensemble, whose homogeneity it itself constitutes’ (Agamben 2009, 18). The singularity, and the uniqueness of the example/paradigm, allows, through its constitution of this ‘group’ or ‘class’, the understanding of this ‘group’ or ‘class’, this ensemble, that is, a ‘[…] series of phenomena whose kinship had eluded or could elude the historian’s gaze’ (Agamben 2009, 31).
- 48.
A similar statement has been made by the protestant theologian Nathaniel Micklem in 1939 (more than a full decade later than Schmitt’s text was published). Micklem, in fact, claimed that ‘all political problems are, in the end, theological ones’ (reported in Gentile 2007, 161).
- 49.
As the historian Edmund Morgan wrote, what is generally forgotten when commenting this saying is that ‘the concept of the sovereignty of the people was not a repudiation of the sovereignty of God. God remained the ultimate source of all governmental authority’ (Morgan 1989, 56).
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Vanhoutte, K.K.P. (2018). Limbo. In: Limbo Reapplied. Radical Theologies and Philosophies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78913-2_3
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