I thought I would use this post to highlight a puzzling oversight on the part of Von Balthasar. In Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? Von Balthasar disapprovingly quotes a ‘paradoxical’ statement by G. Hermes. Von Balthasar writes, “We are not allowed to have hope for all men. But perhaps for certain individuals, and if so, for which ones? Now comes a … paradox from G. Hermes: ‘We can well … hope for every [!] individual [!] man and pray that he attains salvation, because [?] we do not know what judgement God will pass upon him. But we cannot hope that all men will enter heaven, because that is expressly excluded through revelation’ … Let us, however, leave the paradoxical admission aside …” (Von Balthasar, 2014, p. 10, square brackets in original).
Presumably, Von Balthasar thinks that Hermes’s statements are paradoxical because if we can hope for every individual man then, according to Von Balthasar, we are allowed to hope for all men, which Hermes denies.
However, contra Von Balthasar, there is no contradiction in Hermes’s statement because the quantifiers change between the two sentences. As a result, Von Balthasar’s confusion betrays a quantifier shift fallacy on his part. A quantifier shift is a logical fallacy in which the quantifiers of a statement are erroneously transposed.
The standard example used to illustrate this fallacy is as follows: Every person has a woman that is their mother. Therefore, there is a woman that is the mother of every person. However, this is fallacious. It is fallacious to conclude that there is one woman who is the mother of all people.
∀x∃y(Px → (Wy & M(yx))) therefore ∃y∀x(Px → (Wy & M(yx)))
Put in simpler terms, it is absolutely the case that every person has a mother, but not everyone, therefore, has the same mother! In a natural language, like English, ‘Every person has a woman that is their mother’ can either mean ‘for every particular person there is a woman who is that person’s mother’, i.e. we all have mothers, but, unless we are maternal siblings, they are different people. Alternatively, it can mean ‘there is a woman (one woman in particular) who is the mother of every person’, i.e. we are all maternal brothers and sisters and one woman gave birth to over seven billion people (poor woman).
Hermes’s argument now becomes clear. We can hope for every individual person, considered as an individual, but we cannot hope for everyone, considered as a whole. Some people, at least one person, won’t make it to Heaven, but we don't know who. As a result, the ‘paradox’ exists only in Von Balthasar’s head. Now, little rests on this oversight by Von Balthasar, indeed he overlooks this ‘paradox’ and goes on to criticise Hermes on other grounds, but it is surprising to see such an obvious logical error in the work of such a distinguished theologian as Von Balthasar.
Maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe I am being unfair to Von Balthasar and there is a genuine fallacy in Hermes’s statement which I’ve missed, although I would then question why he doesn’t make this explicit. Either way, all this talk of mothers reminds me, I must phone mine.