Through the Narrow Gate - 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Through towns and villages Jesus went teaching, making his way to Jerusalem, where he was going to be murdered. He must have known that. It was probably the reason he was going there. He was going in through that narrow door, death, over the narrow path leading to it.

While he was thinking of all this, there came a man who asked: "Sir, will only a few be saved?" As usual, Jesus did not answer the question directly. He seldom did. His frame of reference was always too different from that of his questioners. He only said: "the gate is open, it is narrow, but it is open. Everyone should be able to pass, nobody should be left behind."

He said that even though sometime before he had told them that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for some to go through that narrow gate. The "needle's eye" was the name given to the narrowest of the four gates leading into Jerusalem, a proper bottleneck we might call it today. And his hearers would certainly have understood the reference to the gate.

Photo by Achim Ruhnau on Unsplash

It's a great question: how many will be saved? How many will be let through the pearly gates, their passports stamped with the seal of the Kingdom? It's a question I've been thinking about recently while reading a book on the subject by the Eastern Orthodox scholar and philosopher, David Bentley Hart, called That All Shall Be Saved which argues on the basis of the earliest Christian writings, theological tradition and scripture (1 Timothy 2:4), that universal salvation means exactly that: everyone will be saved.

He quotes the great fourth century Church Father, Basil of Caesarea, who argued that in his day most Christians believed that hell was not everlasting and that all would eventually attain salvation. The kernel of Hart's argument is that if God is the good creator of all things, then he is the saviour of all and cannot possibly fail with any part of his creation.

There have been "universalists" - Christians who believe that in the end all persons will be saved and joined to God in Christ - since the earliest centuries of the faith. I must say it's a long time since I've read a book that challenged my thinking so much on so many things. In my more charitable moments, I like to think that most people will be saved but then I think of those political tyrants (past and present) who have caused so much death and suffering to so many people and my charitable instinct begins to wane.

Clearly, I still have some way to go before I get even close to that narrow gate.