The Epoché of Factical Damnation?: On the Costs of Bracketing Out the Likelihood of Final Loss

Richard Schenk O.P. The Epoche of Factical Damnation? On the Costs of Bracketing Out the Likelihood of Final Loss I. The Hermeneutical Situation of Today's Discussion In "Dornroeschen," one of the German fairy-tales woven into the version of"Sleeping Beauty" most widely known in North America, the dramatic action begins with plans to celebrate the long-awaited birth ofa royal child. The king invites only twelve of the thirteen "wise women" who live in his realm to the celebration of the new-born princess, because he owns only twelve gold plates with which to serve such special guests. The feast was celebrated with great pomp, and near its end the wise women showered the child with miraculous gifts. One gave her virtue; another, beauty; the third, riches, and so on, until eventually the child had received just about everything anyone could possibly desire in this world. Just as eleven of the wise women had finished their blessings, suddenly, in stormed the thirteenth; she wanted to take revenge for not Logos 1:3 1997 The Epoche of Factical Damnation? being invited. Without greeting or even looking at anyone, she called out with a loud voice: 'When the royal daughter is fourteen, she will prick herself on a spinning-wheel and fall dead.' And without saying another word, she turned around and left the hall.1 The sudden thought, much less a sustained argument, that the decision of some created persons against God and their own fulfillment might in fact prove to be final could easily seem to us, today more than ever, like an unwelcome, even wicked, if perhaps an inevitable, intrusion, which unfortunately cannot be kept away altogether from the general and more cultivated circle of good wishes; and yet the voice makes itselfheard, not just by intruders, but from within each of us. Those who assume that it is not the final voice can continue to relax; as the tale continues: AU the guests were shocked, but then the twelfth invited guest came forward, and she still had her wish to add. She couldn't do awav with the hard curse altogether, but she could soften it; and so she said: 'The princess will not fall dead; she will merely fall into a deep, hundredyear slumber.'2 Since, truly, grace does build on a nature to which even fairytales can sometimes testify, and since we are called by the Gospel ofgrace to believe that a less fictitious royal child has broken much ofthe ancient curse, why should we not take those one or two steps beyond the apparent drift ofthe scriptures and the admittedly limited horizons of the pre- and post-paschal gospel of Jesus of Nazareth3 to embrace the many voices of the present day that tell us that the final damnation of any created person is but a infinitely unlikely possibility, a nightmare from the past? Why not try, at least for all practical purposes, to just put the ghosts behind us? There are certainly many who, long shocked at the uninvited voice, now find the well-meaning choir of more welcome voices (not just 123 124 Logos Balthasar's) advising us to consider the final loss ofany person ever created as a most unlikely possibility to be something like the reassurance of the twelfth invited guest; even if it might force us to wonder, upon reflection, why the practical anticipation of final beatitude does not seem to have increased in quite the same measure in which the practical expectation ofsome final condemnation has receded. Why not just stop there and enjoy this new-found peace or neutrality of mind,4 accepting Albany's admonition to his wife in King Lear? "How far your eyes may pierce I cannot tell. Striving to better, oft we mar what's well."5 Whatever the final dieological judgment on Balthasar's calling into question the facticity of ultimate loss may turn out to be, there can be no doubt that his proposals that we bracket out (set in epoche) the assumption that the possibility of any final loss will ever be realized6 have added their own considerable weight to a far more widely motivated shift in the...