A Dialectic Between Sin and Hell

In the following from Prayer, Balthasar quotes a relatively obscure Cardinal Bona. Giovanni Bona (1609-1674) was an Italian Cistercian, cardinal, liturgist and devotional author. One can only be amazed at Balthasar's depth and range of knowledge of the western canon and Church leaders through the ages. Cardinal Bona responds to the mystery confronted when one contemplates God's infinite mercy and at the same time his just judgement.
Balthasar does make it clear that there can be no uncertainty regarding our sinfulness and our deserving of the just judgement of God. We have no defense. "Yet at the same time, if my faith and love are alive and genuine, I simply cannot accept my personal condemnation from the mouth of God, for the Son, Love himself, has borne it on my behalf."

from pp. 300 – 301

There is a dialectic to be maintained in the contemplation of hell. We see it in the Son's being forsaken by God and in his descent into the darkness of Hades. In the Son who bears, not his own sins, but mine, I glimpse the terrible severity of the fathers judgment -- for who but the Son really knows what it means to be forsaken by the Father? It is my "journey into hell" that I observed him undertake, a journey which, God knows, I have deserved. I cannot dissociate myself from it in my contemplation. I cannot nurture the secret sense of having saved my own skin because my Friend, my Beloved, Eternal Love himself, has taken the rap in my place. That would be absolute lovelessness, crass egoism, cold heart…. All the sinner can do, contemplating the judgment pronounced upon his own sin, is simply to be there while his case is heard, to be there just as he is, the sinner who wasn't there when he was needed, who betrayed the Lord like Judas and denied him like Peter and fled like the others;… And so is bound to consent to the Judge's sentence and the Victim's cry of abandonment: Yes, that is the truth, that is what I have deserved.

The dialectic of this contemplation consists in this: because he believes (that what is involved is the redemption of the world and his own redemption), because he loves (and hence cannot dissociate himself from the Son), the believer must accept the Father's sentence of condemnation upon the sinner (i.e., upon himself). The very faith and love which go to make this contemplation also submit to the Father’s judgment. Naturally faith and love you expect from the Father nothing but what is good; they themselves are graces flowing from the completed redemption and resurrection. But their expectation of everything that is good actually includes saying Yes to their own just condemnation. God would be right to condemn them. He was right to forsake the Son who was carrying my sin, who embodied my sin. And yet it is really faith and love, and they alone, who conduct this contemplation; faced with redemption from hell -- the process which alone proves that there is such a thing as faith, as love -- they admit that we are worthy of damnation. Yet at the same time, if my faith and love are alive and genuine, I simply cannot accept my personal condemnation from the mouth of God, for the Son, Love himself, has borne it on my behalf. What the holy Cardinal Bona made bold to say is a thoroughly Christian affirmation, essential to the theology of faith and love:

"O Lord, in thee I have trusted: let me never be put to shame. And if an angel from heaven were to assure me that I had been cast out from thy sight, I would not believe him. Even if thou thyself, O God Most High, wert to say that thou hadst damned me for all eternity, I would not listen to thy words. Pardon me, O Lord, but I would not believe thee. For even if thou slayest me and bringest me down to hell, I will still hope in thee for ever" (Via compendia ad Deum, c.12, decas 9).

There is no other way of reflecting upon grave sin and its penalty but this. Worldly reason will find the double truth unintelligible, but for faith it is quite clear: there is no alternative. For where the vitality of faith and love (which springs from the Lord's resurrection) breaks through, we cannot be under the dominion of the fear of hell.