Christian Hope
Et iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos
From a Catholic daily newspaper, one ought to expect that, while paying attention to the ideas currently in circulation and enjoying success, it should be able to identify those which, on the one hand, point toward the path of truth, but which, on the other, may mislead by making what is false appear true in matters of faith, and what is true appear false.
Now, the daily newspaper Avvenire is the only national newspaper that explicitly declares itself inspired by Catholicism and is supported by the Italian Bishops; hence its evident responsibility for representing and fostering Catholic thought in journalism, in fidelity to the current Magisterium of the Church.
I read this newspaper every day with pleasure and profit. Yet, it happens to me from time to time—indeed, rather often—to notice that, instead of identifying and correcting certain errors contrary to the faith, especially those typical of modernists, it allows itself to be misled by them, with the result of scandalising the faithful or distancing them from the path of truth, thereby harming their souls.
As a Catholic and an emeritus professor of theology, I therefore feel it my duty, whenever Avvenire departs from the right path of the Gospel, to point out these deviations with charity and frankness, and to indicate the remedy offered to us by the Magisterium of the Church. On this occasion, I refer to the article by Luciano Floridi, “If ‘God is dead’, we must find the courage to build”, published in the issue of April 18 last[1].
(Translator’s note: Luciano Floridi is an Italian philosopher known for his work in the philosophy of information and digital ethics, widely active in the Anglo-American academic context.)
The Author takes up the well-known thesis of Nietzsche, according to which God is “dead”—that is, we have realised that His image no longer lives in our minds, since it was merely a mental construct lacking any foundation; and thus we have come to understand that God does not exist. Consequently, there is no reason to expect that, on some decisive future day for the destiny of humanity, He will act—like a supreme judge of a high court of justice—issuing final and unappealable judgments, bringing definitive clarity and justice to all wrongs suffered, redressing all injustices committed, compensating damages, restoring stolen goods, and granting satisfaction to those who have endured injustice.
The Author instead maintains that it is we ourselves who must be agents and builders of justice. Hence the term “constructivism”: that is, we can and must manage on our own.
This thesis seems to presuppose two possible conceptions of the human condition, both nihilistic: either the idea that man can resolve his own problems and satisfy his own needs by himself—a Promethean notion, an illusion and a delirium of omnipotence that reappears in Marx and leads to catastrophe; or the idea that man must accept himself in his frustration and incapacity—a bleak pessimism found in Leopardi and Nietzsche, which likewise leads to catastrophe.
Now, we observe that, as is well known, in the language of Christ we find a series of paired terms which clearly show that Christ divides humanity into two categories: the elect and the non-elect, the children of this world and the children of light, the children of the Kingdom and the children of the evil one, sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good fish and bad fish, the blessed and the cursed, the children of God and the children of this world, the righteous and the wicked, the saved and the condemned.
Today, by contrast, there has spread a sentimentalist mentality[2] of a Rousseauian type, which denies the consequences of original sin and the usefulness and justice of punishment or of the use of force. According to this view, everyone is fundamentally good and a friend of God. The use of armed force is always illicit. One must build only bridges and never walls. In this way, it would even become illicit to build a boundary wall around a villa or a monastery.
All are presumed to act in good faith and with goodwill; therefore, all are saved. Hell is empty. Peace in conflicts is thought to be achievable solely through dialogue. No one speaks any longer of victory over the flesh, the world, and Satan. The agonistic and ascetical sense of Christian life has been lost. Sacrifice is regarded as masochism. There are no longer enemies to be conquered. The Apocalypse is no longer cited, with its characteristic battle of Christ against His enemies. There is no longer the Church militant, but only the pilgrim Church.
One naively believes, with Rahner, that all are oriented toward God, are in grace, and seek God; thus, the entire problem of the relationship with the world would consist merely in proclaiming the Gospel in an intelligible and attractive manner. The Catholic has no enemies, but only encounters men who are different. It is no longer believed that ecclesial communion, concord, and peace are founded upon truth to the exclusion of falsehood, but only upon affectivity, free choice, and empathy. Yet the teaching of Christ is quite different. Christ teaches us that there can be no love and no peace without the concern to distinguish truth from falsehood.
If, indeed, about the meaning of existence and of life, what is false for you is true for me, if there exist no absolute, common, universal, immutable moral and theoretical values—values that are shareable by all, intelligible, and objective—upon what shall we base dialogue, unity, concord, collaboration, communion, and peace? Upon the imposition of the stronger? What is it that can unite us? The command of a duce? Shall we not find ourselves in an irresolvable state of permanent war? Shall we not be compelled to impose and to endure unity through violence? Shall we not be forced either to exercise violence or to suffer it? If, as Johann Gottlieb Fichte believed, the other of the ego is a “non-ego,” what will become of peaceful human coexistence? What will become of pluralism?
On the other hand, what meaning can an ecumenism have in which one evades the issue and continually circles the problem without ever laying one’s cards on the table? This is certainly not the true ecumenism intended by the Council. The remedy to Gianni Vattimo’s “weak thought” is not Emanuele Severino’s absolutist thought, but Thomistic realism, as the Popes teach us.
Nevertheless, a truth today accepted by all—and this is something very beautiful—is that God wills to save all, to make all children of God; that the good news is proclaimed to all; that the Gospel must be preached throughout the whole world; that all are called to repentance and conversion and are offered the remission of sins; that God enlightens every man; that all are called to enter the Church; that forgiveness and mercy are offered to all; that Christ gave His life for all; that salvation is offered to all; that all can be saved and have the means to be saved.
Yet the fact remains: today, who is interested in God? As a theologian, I have preached for decades on the mystery of God. But how many are there who follow me and listen to me? There also exist various concepts of God, some false, such as the pantheistic, the idealist, the Lutheran, and the evolutionist concepts. In order to be saved, the correct concept of God is necessary; otherwise, one falls into an idol that does not save. Some, perhaps, encounter Christ without realising it, in serving the poor and the oppressed.
God certainly offers Himself to all; yet each one of us has the faculty to accept Him or to reject Him. God indeed chooses His elect, but He brings it about that the elect themselves, in turn, choose Him. And much is said about salvation. But how many of us know that it consists of the vision of God? And who is interested in the vision of God? Thus, we see why not all are saved.
For when Jesus speaks of the saved, He does not say “all,” but “the elect.” Therefore, not all. Who are they? Why does Jesus say that many will remain outside the Kingdom? Why does He turn some away from Himself? Why does He say to some that He does not know them? Why will some be cast out into outer darkness? Why is the fire of Gehenna reserved for some?
We must recall that Christianity conceives the history of man as a drama, in which man, at the origin, destroys through sin an order originally established by God. Yet God wills to re-establish this order. The God who is judge and merciful arises from this divine will. Within sinful humanity, two parties are thus formed: that of those who recognise their sin, are repentant, and wish—with the help of God—to restore the order that has been destroyed; and that of those who do not intend to convert, but, obstinate in their sin, take pleasure in the disorder they have caused and wish to replace it with an order of their own, contrary to that willed by God.
At this point, it becomes clear how God welcomes those who desire the restoration of the original order and distances Himself from those who refuse to cooperate in its restoration. Justice consists in the observance of the order established by God and in the restoration of that order where it has been violated.
In the course of history, many wrongs have been committed without being repaired. There does indeed exist a human justice, but, as we well know, it does not always function. Indeed, there are, unfortunately, corrupt judges who condemn the innocent and acquit the guilty. For this reason, justice is not rendered to many who have suffered injustice. No one defends them. Impostors appear as prophets and are honoured and followed by many. The honest are mocked, harassed, despised, and marginalised. God undoubtedly, for the present, tolerates these injustices. Yet He does so because He wishes to give the unjust time and opportunity to repent, to make reparation, and to do justice.
There is, however, a deadline. Outstanding accounts must be settled—and they will be settled. If, for the present, God remains silent and does not intervene, it is not because, like the Lutheran conception of God, He resigns Himself to sin and legitimises it, but solely because He exhorts sinners to an examination of conscience.
The time granted by God is limited, and at any moment He Himself will intervene to call to account and to remedy all the wrongs committed by hypocrites, by the wicked, by the arrogant, and even by human justice itself. This final intervention of God in history is the Last Judgment. The humiliated and the offended, therefore, have reason for consolation and hope, as they await the final Coming of Christ, who will render justice for all the wrongs committed by the unjust, while rewarding those who have endured with patience and have feared His judgments. This is Christian hope.
By contrast, the constructivism presented by Avvenire forbids man to await—deeming it a vain illusion—a day of truth and justice, a day on which God, as the supreme judge of humanity, will definitively unveil the deceptions of hypocrites, take the side of the righteous, reveal to all the calumnies of which they have been victims, free the oppressed once and for all from their oppressors, bring injustice to an end, grant satisfaction to those who have suffered wrongs and abuses, punish evildoers, restore goods to those who have been deprived of them, and render to each his due.
For the constructivist, such a God does not exist. We may then ask: what is the true God for the constructivist? Who, according to this view, establishes and sanctions the norm of justice and injustice, of good and evil in human actions, and ensures its observance? Does man possess sufficient wisdom? Is he capable, by his own powers, of creating perfect justice? How does the constructivist conceive human power? What relation does he posit between man and God? What concept of God underlies the constructivist vision? To whom does omnipotence belong—to God or to man?
Let us begin with this last point, which illuminates and explains all the rest as a consequence of its premises. It is clear that, for the constructivist, the attribute of omnipotence passes from God to man. It is man alone who must reward and punish, administer justice, and repair wrongs. The God of the constructivists resembles the God of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: not a God who acts, but a God who merely observes, while it is man who acts. It is a notary God, who simply records what man does.
It is not God who decides, sustains, confirms, approves, or disapproves human actions; rather, it is man who acts, does and undoes, achieves and decides, presuming divine approval and confirmation. Is such a God truly so different from the Lutheran God of “forensic justification”—or, more precisely, of a kind of forensic hypocrisy?
Thus, for the constructivist, God is not omnipotent, and divine justice does not consist in rewarding or punishing, but simply in justifying everything that man does—every event of history, both good and evil—like the Hegelian God[3], a God who always vindicates the victor, while the defeated are always in the wrong.
Moreover, even for the constructivist, God is infinite goodness, although, according to this view, the world is not outside God but within God Himself. Now, in the world, there are both good and evil actions. It follows, then, that both good and evil are within God Himself. And since God is all, everything is good just as it is and as it happens. Therefore, even evil is good. From this, we see how sentimentalism turns into a justification of evil. If everyone is good, then everyone is evil.
This is not to deny that, if God had so willed, He could indeed have saved all, as Origen believed He had in fact done. But we, as faithful believers, must adhere to what God has actually done and what Christ has revealed, without presuming to be more merciful than God.
For the constructivist, therefore, as for the Lutheran conception, God does not remove or cancel sin, except in appearance; in reality, He preserves and approves it. It remains hidden and concealed. Thus, it is a form of hypocrisy. God pretends not to see it, but knows perfectly well that it is there.
In the final analysis, therefore, the God of the constructivist is not a God who renders justice, but a God who considers the unjust to be just, sin to be as just as righteousness, who forgives the unrepentant, absolving both the just and the wicked alike. It is a God who manifests His divine essence by forgiving and saving all, because He is a God who loves good and evil equally.
And what place does man occupy within constructivism? God does not transcend man, but is rather the summit and horizon of human transcendence, as in Karl Rahner. Man is not created by God, but is the finite manifestation of God. And since God is the One-All, as in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Parmenides—that is, the totality of reality—man is the finitised divine I appearing to the human ego, while God is the infinity of the human ego.
God is the beginning and the fullness of man. For this reason, the law of justice is not a divine goodness preceding human goodness, but is human will itself raised to its fullness. How far this vision of God and man conforms to the Catholic understanding, I leave to the judgment of the reader.
We may ask, however, what can man “construct” by his own powers alone? Are we certain that man possesses divine powers? Or must we rather be content with the finite? We cannot ask of God what we can accomplish by our own strength. In this respect, Dietrich Bonhoeffer is right in his critique of the “God of the gaps.”
But how can one deny or despise the fact that God comes to our aid where our own powers fail? To tempt God would be to throw ourselves into the abyss and then ask for His help. But if we are truly falling through no fault of our own, why should we not trust in His assistance? We cannot demand more than what is due to us, but why should we not ask Him for that without which we perish?
Certainly, the wise and courageous man is active and constructive. He knows how to employ with courage and diligence whatever powers he possesses, while remaining aware of his own fallibility and fragility, inclined to sin, and at the same time in need of the infinite and the absolute. If he does not trust in God as judge and restorer of the injustices that he himself commits or suffers, what can he achieve, what can he construct, if not fair dreams of greatness and castles in the air, destined to collapse and vanish at the appearance of truth?
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli, OP
Fontanellato - April 28, 2026
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/la-speranza-cristiana.html
Notes
[1] “Se ‘Dio è morto’, dobbiamo trovare il coraggio di costruire,” by Luciano Floridi, Avvenire, 18 April 2026
https://www.avvenire.it/idee-e-commenti/se-dio-e-morto-dobbiamo-trovare-il-coraggio-di-costruire_107202
[2] L’eresia del buonismo. Il buonismo e i suoi rimedi, Edizioni Chora Books, Hong Kong, 2017.
[3] See Il Dio di Hegel, in Jacques Maritain, La filosofia morale, Editrice Morcelliana, Brescia 1971, pp. 215–248.