Limbo

Limbo (Latin for, edge ',' hem ',' boundary ') referred to in Catholic theology two places on the edge of hell (also known as limbo, vestibule or outermost circle of Hell ) on which reside the souls that without fault of their own are excluded from heaven.

The limbus was never part of Church teaching, but applied on a theological speculation, which results from the dogmas of the Church on topics such as sin, original sin, salvation and baptism.

Term

A distinction

Neither the limbus patrum nor the limbus have infantium a biblical foundation, but their conception resulted as theological speculation from the question of the necessity of the redeeming death of Christ and the requirement of baptism for salvation. As such, the concept of Limbo as a place was never a dogma, but only part of theological speculation, in which the concept of Limbo was represented as a theory. Historically, it was such a different appreciation of what limbus means.

Discussion around the limbus

Since the teachers of the Church, Augustine of Hippo formulated the doctrine of original sin, theology saw baptism as essential for salvation and thus salvation. Augustine considered it impossible that unbaptized children would enter Paradise or even just in a different place of bliss. The Synod of Carthage in the year 418 solidified this doctrine and thus the view that infants who die without baptism go to hell.

In the Middle Ages this doctrine was (though not of the official church site ) mitigated again: Those without personal fault of the sky excluded souls are therefore indeed continue to be the Church's teaching according to hell, but to a particularly mild place at the edge, called Limbo or limbus. Peter Abelard (1079-1142) taught that such children suffered no sense of punishment, only the loss of the vision of God. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century described the limbus puerorum as a place of eternal natural happiness. The Dominican Hugo Ripelin of Strasbourg put in his work Compendium theologicae veritatis ( 1268 ) shows that this place befände about the hell of the damned.

The Council of Basel / Ferrara / Florence ( 1431-1445 ) confirmed the teaching of the Council of Carthage, that baptism is essential and people who die in the state of original sin alone, go to hell.

During the 18th and 19th century formulated individual theologians ( Bianchi in 1768, H. Klee in 1835, Caron in 1855, H. Schell 1893) theories, such as unbaptized children who died could still be saved. In 1952 the theologian Ludwig Ott could run this as a possibility in his plan of the Catholic dogma, although it still represented in the limbus than the conventional, established view.

In the Catechism of 1992, is no longer the term of the limbus. Literally, he expressed himself as follows: "As for the deceased children without baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as it does in the appropriate funeral rites. The great mercy of God who desires that all men be saved ', and Jesus' tenderness toward children which leads him to say: ' Let the children come to me; does not prevent it! ' ( Mk 10:14), entitle us to hope that there is a way of salvation for the dead without baptism children. The Church asks parents insistently not to prevent the children from coming through the gift of holy baptism to Christ. "How this way of salvation should look like, must remain an open question logically, since just about no disclosure has been made.

Since November 2005, the papal International Theological Commission dealt with the issue. It was suggested the formula that unbaptized infants dying to die " in the expectation of universal salvation by God." Because God wanted to redeem all mankind, one could assume that the souls of deceased unbaptized children go to heaven.

On 20 April 2007 (AP ) Pope Benedict XVI approved. the results of the International Theological Commission and enabled so that the devaluation of the doctrine of limbal puerorum to an older theological opinion, which is not supported by the Church's magisterium. Roland Minnerath, the Archbishop of Dijon, explained the decision: The theologians at the Vatican had come to the conclusion that small children who are not baptized and die, came straight to paradise. The document of the International Theological Commission, however, also states ( in paragraph 41) that limbus " would remain possible theological opinion " one. The limbus not belong to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, but he remained a theory that does not condemn the Church and its members accorded the.

Benedict XVI. to have had prior to his election to the papacy in mind the abandonment of the doctrine of the limbus puerorum. The British Times newspaper quoted its report on the situation of faith of 1985 ( " Ratzinger Report" ): "I would personally give up, because it was always just a hypothesis. "

The limbus in the literature

• In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy are poets, philosophers and scientists from pre-and non-Christian cultures in the limbus, which is upstream of hell.