Can the Damned Be Redeemed?

Tosca Lee points out a really fascinating complexity about the state of demonic salvation.

She quotes Augustine quoting the philosopher Plotinus* (and I quote Lee quoting them!):

"…that the very fact of man’s corporal mortality is due to the compassion of God, who would not have us kept for ever in the misery of this life. The wickedness of demons was not judged worthy of this compassion, and in the misery of their condition, with a soul subject to passions, they have not been granted the mortal body, which man had received, but an eternal body."

Plotinus is right. By association, so are St. Augustine and St. Tosca.

"Damned" isn't soft terminology. I think it is easier for those who have not faced a direct confrontation with evil to believe that it can be redeemed or reformed. It doesn't work like that. You don't purify Tianenman Square by celebrating the Olympics there: you only spoil the torch.

Keep in mind that demons, before demonhood, had been granted the one thing we really wish we had: immortal bodies. How many times have we thought that everything would be just fine if we only didn't have to deal with death in all its forms (breakdowns, breakups, breakouts, brokenness).

Well, so did the angels. But immortality turned out to be insufficient for a huge number of them.

So the demons are blessed with the one thing we covet: eternal existence. But it still isn't enough for them. They were built for community with God, but they used their immortality as a wedge against their own design!

Theoretically, physically, God could redeem a demon, but His just and righteous -- and loving -- character dictates that he not redeem a demon.

I know you humans think you are smarter than He is. You think you are more loving than He is. You, given the omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence of the Lord, would devise a delightful means by which the whisperers of Auschwitz might find redemption, even if they don't want the redemption you offer.

Instead of casting them to outer darkness, you'd be better than our father Abraham, who would not even send a dead man to witness to five lost brothers. Instead of separating yourself from the absence of good, you people, in your infinite justice, would marry yourselves to it.

Oh, wait, you** already have.

Why do we have such compassion for the devil? Isn't a demon a sort of tarbaby for misplaced sympathy?

Sincerely,


St. Grumpy



*Plotinus' efforts, by the way, should rightly be seen as an attempt to clarify Plato. His philosophical influence stretched from neopagans of the day to Christians. It is also worth noting that his philosophy is as overtly hostile to gnosticism at the intellectual level as Christianity is at the spiritual.

**(we)