Will Only a Few Be Saved? What Scripture and the Saints Say

Graveyard at sunset

Most Adults Will Not Be Saved

This is not a topic to dismiss lightly. We are all sinners. We are considering a topic where the stakes are high. In fact, could not be higher - our eternal future.

a. What Scripture says

Let’s look at what Our Lord said, and at the consensus of saints and theologians over 2,000 years.

Luke 13:23-24
”And some one said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, [24] “Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.”

Matthew 7:13-14
”Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads \to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. [14] For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.”

Matthew 7:21
”Not everyone who says to me ’“‘Lord, Lord’”’, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of My father in heaven.”

b. The saints and doctors of the Church that accept few are saved

Below is a list of the fathers of the Church, saints and/or theologians for whom we have writings supporting the view that only a minority of mankind will be saved.

Father, saint or theologian	Date of Death	Doctor of the Church
St Irenaeus	202	Yes
Tertullian	c. 220	-
Origen*	253	-
Lactantius	325	-
Eusebius of Caesarea	340	-
Philo of Carpasia	350 approx	-
Pseudo Basil	350 approx	-
St Hilary	368	Yes
St Ephraim	373	Yes
St Basil the Great	379	Yes
St Gregory Nazianzen	390	Yes
St Ambrose	397	Yes
St John Chrysostom	407	Yes
St Jerome	420	Yes
St Augustine of Hippo	430	Yes
Pseudo-Jerome (St Paulinus?)	431	-
St John Cassian	435	-
St Isidore of Pelusium	436	-
St Cyril of Alexandria	444	Yes
St Peter Chrysologus	450	Yes
St Nilius the Abbot	450	-
Pseudo-Athanasius	450	-
St Leo the Great	461	Yes
Salvian	464	-
Ruricius of Limoges	510	-
Pope St Hormisdas	523	-
St Cesarius of Arles	543	-
St Gregory the Great	604	Yes
St Isidore of Seville	636	Yes
Antiochus of Palestine	650
St Bede the Venerable	735	Yes
Theophylactus	752	-
Ambrose Autpert	778	-
Jonas of Orleans	843	-
Bishop Haymo of Halberstadt	853	-
Christian of Stavelot	864	-
St Paschasius Radbertus	865	-
Remigius of Auxerre	908	-
Ratherius of Verona	975	-
Theophylact of Achrida	1070	-
Othlo of Ratisbon	1072	-
St Peter Damian	1072	Yes
St Anselm of Canterbury	1109	Yes
Euthymius Zigabenus	1122	-
St Bruno of Segni	1123	-
Abbot Werner of Saint Blaise	1126	-
Rupert of Deutz	1129	-
Cardinal Geoffrey of Vendome	1132	-
Ven Hildebert Of Lavardin	1134	-
Ralph of Flaix	1150	-
St Bernard of Clairvaux	1153	Yes
Honorius of Autun	1154	-
Pseudo-Anselm (?Honorius of Autun)	1156	-
Pope Innocent III	1216	-
St Anthony of Padua	1231	Yes
Pseudo-Aquinas (Thomas Anglus?)	1250	-
St Thomas Aquinas	1274	Yes
St Bonaventure	1274	Yes
St Albert The Great	1280	Yes
St Vincent Ferrer	1419	-
St Bernadino Of Siena	1444	-
St Lawrence Justinian	1456	-
St Antoninus	1459	-
Ven Denys The Carthusian	1471	-
St Thomas of Villanova	1555	-
St Peter Canisius SJ	1597	Yes
St Robert Bellarmine SJ	1621	Yes
Ven Louis De Ponte SJ	1624	-
St Vincent De Paul	1660	-
St Claude De La Colombiere SJ	1682	-
Ven Januarius Sarnelli CSSR	1744	-
St Leonard of Port Maurice	1751	-
St Alphonsus Liguori	1787	Yes

* Origen is included because some of his writings speak this way, but elsewhere he speculated that all might eventually be restored to God, a view the Church later rejected.

So amongst this list of 73 writers, we have 25 Doctors of the Church supporting the view that the majority of mankind will NOT be saved.

As the above list also shows, this has been the mind of the Church from the earliest times. For excerpts from these authors, see De Paucitate Salvandorum (“On the Fewness of the Saved”, 1899) by Fr Francis-Xavier Godts CSSR, and St Leonard of Port Maurice’s famous sermon, The Little Number of Those Who Are Saved.

This was, by a wide margin, the common view of the Fathers and Doctors. A few theologians, such as the Jesuit Francisco Suárez, thought that most Catholics would be saved, and some modern theologians hope for more still. But none of the great Doctors of the Church taught that the majority of mankind would be saved.

c. Examples of when much is lost for small errors

Don’t think some of those foibles are serious? Everyone does them? God would not damn me for one mistake.

Example 1. A driver is on a country road. The iphone rings and he looks to answer it. It should be hands-free but he hasn’t got around to arranging it. As he is distracted grabbing the phone, a cow walks in front of the car. There is a last minute swerve as the driver becomes aware of the peripheral movement. Smash! Into a tree… A paraplegic for life.

Example 2. A worker is using a power grinder to cut a piece of metal he has under foot. It is only a small cut so he doesn’t use his safety glasses. The metal moves under foot and the grinding wheel grabs. In the chaos that follows, the workman loses an eye.

Example 3. The family goes to a friend’s place for a barbecue. It’s a hot day. The young teenager sees the pool, strips off and takes a running dive. But it is the shallow end of the pool. Permanent head injury is the result.

What is the point of these examples?

Already in this life we have examples of how our future can change drastically with a seemingly small voluntary decision.

It is almost as though God is showing us, by the way the physical world works, that our destiny depends on our own decisions and some of these decisions can have huge consequences, way beyond what we thought about at the time.

In the spiritual sphere, God has warned us. We know that God is almighty, we are his creature, He deserves our respect.

We know we should not sin.

So if we deliberately disobey His specific commands, we can’t really complain we had no idea our sin could have dire consequences.

Not only has He told us how to behave, but He gave us the Church to continue to guide us.

d. If God is merciful, how can the majority of mankind be lost?

Because at some point, they sinned seriously and never repented.

By not repenting, the sinner is in a permanent state of turning their back on God. When the choice came to love God or self, the sinner chose self by choosing sin.

At death, the sinner is left with his choice - turned away from God. But now life is over, the time for change has passed. The sinner is in that state forever.

e. Looking around at society today, how do the majority live?

Against the ten commandments and the precepts of the Church, can we not recognize in the list below some common failings of Catholics in our world today:

missing Mass on Sunday – deliberately
not having the children baptised
giving scandal to the children by ignoring our religion
not going to Confession or Communion once a year
sacrilegious Confession e.g. no firm purpose of amendment
sacrilegious Communion e.g. while not in the state of grace
sex before marriage
serious abuse of alcohol or drugs
getting married outside the Church
pornography
artificial contraception
abortion
cheating or ignoring parents in need
homosexual acts
divorce and remarriage outside the Church

Any in this list, if grave matter, full knowledge and full consent are present, constitute serious sin and the loss of sanctifying grace. In other words, if one died unrepentant in that state, it would be damnation forever. It’s that simple.

Reflecting on what we see and hear every day amongst acquaintances and in the world at large, we see sin has hold. But that is not actually the main problem.

An even bigger problem is the lack of genuine repentance.

And that is why few will be saved.

f. Is it permissible to hope that all will be saved?

The Church has never defined how many are saved, and she has never declared that any particular person is in hell. She prays that no one should be lost (CCC 1058). Some modern theologians, most famously Hans Urs von Balthasar, have argued that we may hope that all will be saved, while admitting we cannot know it.

What a Catholic may not do is hold that it is certain that all will be saved, or that hell is empty or temporary. The Church condemned that view in the sixth century. And the weight of Scripture and of the saints listed above should make every Christian take Our Lord’s warning seriously, beginning with ourselves. The debate is set out fairly in What Is Hell, and May We Hope That It Is Empty?

g. The answer: repent and trust

The point of this teaching is not to make us anxious, still less to make us judge others. It is to wake us up. The same Lord who warned that the gate is narrow also died to open it. No sin is too great to be forgiven for anyone who repents. Go to Confession, pray, and “strive to enter by the narrow door.”