Aquinas holds that after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him. He takes this to be knowable not only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning. The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel. This article expounds and defends Aquinas's position, paying special attention to the action theory underlying it.
This is a topic I’ve written about here at the blog, but this new academic article explores it more systematically and in greater depth. I will also be addressing it in the book on the soul and I have been working on for some time and hope to finish by year’s end.
It's a difficult doctrine to reconcile with hope (that the will is fixed exactly at the moment of death) and here's why: natural man wants to believe that if the will is fixed at death, then that means it was fixed before death as well. It's very intellectually difficult to believe that the will is fixed exactly at death, because your will is your type, and because it's inherent that your type doesn't change over time, then that means that what orientation your will is must have been your orientation at birth, and so the particular judgment is just a "retroactive confirmation" of what was true all along, meaning that you will was always fixed since conception. But Catholic doctrine teaches that no, the will is fixed only at the moment of death and not a moment before.
ReplyDeleteThis is not rationally possible to believe, so it must be taken on faith.
Ed's article explains in depth why death is crucial (combined with the last choice of the will during life) - as removing the influence for change provided by the body and its passions. I feel that you don't really respond to Ed's (or actually Aquinas') arguments. Did you read the whole thing? I don't normally pay to get through a paywall, but in this case it was worth it.
DeleteTo say that 'your will is your type, and it's inherent that your type doesn't change over time' is an assertion that you don't give further support to. What is the proof that the will is an unchangeable 'type'? If you take this as your premise, any free choice changing your 'type' is impossible - regardless of the role played by death. So to assert this is really just a roundabout way of denying free will altogether (which I presume from the other things you say is not your intention, but that seems the implication). Denial of free will is a obviously a common enough position, but not one that can simply be asserted as uncontroversial common ground.
What is really incompatible with hope is the belief that the will is an unchangeable type - we would be fixed from conception in any deficiency in the orientation of our will.
What is unchangeable for everyone, Aquinas would say, is the will's necessary orientation to 'happiness', but during this life we can alter that which it is in which we take our happiness to lie.
"It's a difficult doctrine to reconcile with hope (that the will is fixed exactly at the moment of death) and here's why: natural man wants to believe that if the will is fixed at death, then that means it was fixed before death as well."
DeleteI suppose that having as little interest in religion per se as I do, it is curious that I should be bringing up literature such as the "Letter from Beyond", or in the past, some of the reported experiences of NDE subjects.
This next one too then seems odd even to me, but: In flipping through the pages of the diary of a visionary Polish nun, I read that she reported that even after the apparent death of the body there was some period during which some volition was still available to the dying person.
Now, I did not get the sense ( by memory here) that she was speaking of a stage after a completed supernatural transformation, but was merely noting a natural process or perhaps as she saw it, "grace" in some particular sense.
Now what is interesting is that there are rough parallels with what this nun said in the 1930s, and what some medical researchers are reporting about the only apparent ceasing of all activity in a flatlined and dying brain.
From her perspective, if I recall aright, the "soul" remained within the apparently dead body for some short period during which period it's final attitudes were set and a choice expressed.
Not a perfect across eras parallel with what researchers are now claiming, but a startling and partial, if superficial congruence, at least.
The good sister and modern researchers seem to agree that the dead are for some short period of time not quite as dead as they seem to be, even if technically beyond the point of reanimation.
Her name was Kowalska or something similar.
Maybe I'll look it up later.
@Ben
DeleteWhat is really incompatible with hope is the belief that the will is an unchangeable type - we would be fixed from conception in any deficiency in the orientation of our will.
Yes. This is why the Buddha taught rebirth: because, he reasoned, the will is an unchangeable type, (but at the same time believed that the universe was fundamentally a hopeful place) the only way, therefore, for a sinner to repent was for his brain to literally be destroyed and for the past emotions (good and bad karma: karma in Sanskrit means the same thing as emotion = ex + motio "consequence of the action") to cause the rebirth of a person in a new identity.
Type is tied to the lifetime of an object: a shotgun type gun remains a shotgun type gun from the moment it leaves the factory until the moment it's remelted in the foundry for scrap metal. But that doesn't rule out the scrap metal being used to rebuild it into a different type gun. That is an analogy for the Buddha's doctrine of rebirth.
DNW, her name is Sister Faustina Kowalska, and is the famous saint who promoted devotion to the Divine Mercy of God during the 1930's, including the Divine Mercy image and the Divine Mercy chaplet.
DeleteI find it humorous that her appointed task was to promote divine mercy to greatly spread HOPE in salvation, in contrast to HolyK's comment above.
It's very intellectually difficult to believe that the will is fixed exactly at death, because your will is your type, and because it's inherent that your type doesn't change over time, then that means that what orientation your will is must have been your orientation at birth,...
DeleteYour temperament may be permanent, perhaps. But your actions are subject to your free will, and (more centrally) even your main goal in life is changeable under your free will.
Type is tied to the lifetime of an object: a shotgun type gun remains a shotgun type gun from the moment it leaves the factory until the moment it's remelted in the foundry for scrap metal.
I suppose that's a theory of human soul. But it certainly is not Thomas's theory of soul. He expressly, and in great detail, sets forth ways in which the soul is of such a sort of thing as to change its chosen end.
He admits that the soul is permanently affixed toward "the good" IN GENERAL as end: it cannot choose something evil precisely under the aspect of evil. But he explains how within this general orientation, the will is capable of affixing as its prime goal one kind of good, and then later changing so as to affix itself to some other good as its prime goal. It is by nature neutral as between goods as to which it will make its primary goal of life. And in this life it can revise that choice. Hence a person who at one time made a bad choice to affix his main end in life as pleasure can change his will so that he rejects this and affixes his choice on God as his primary end. The examples of saints who were, earlier, great sinners, amply attests to the basic phenomenon of such change. This is a fact of human experience.
Your temperament may be permanent, perhaps. But your actions are subject to your free will, and (more centrally) even your main goal in life is changeable under your free will.
DeleteAre all temperaments equally likely to be saved? Keep in mind that the word choleric comes from χολή which means "wrath, anger". And the Bible says that those inclined to fits of rage will not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. (Galatians 5:21).
Meanwhile, the Book of Proverbs has some of the Lord's guidance on the type of temperament He prefers fellowship with:
"A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot." (Proverbs 14:30 NRSVCE)
"The wise of heart is called perceptive and pleasant speech increases persuasiveness" (Proverbs 16:21 NRSVCE)
It appears that the Lord God very strongly prefers phlegmatic, perceiving types--those like Mr. Spock from Star Trek or Elsa from Frozen--over others, according to the Bible.
" DNW, her name is Sister Faustina Kowalska, and is the famous saint ..."
DeleteYes, that's her.
What I found intriguing, was her personal history, her character, and the sociopolitical context and time in which these phenomena took place.
It turns out that on close inspection of their characters and lives, that several of these famous and influential Catholic female religious were startlingly normal in some respects, and anything but female milquetoasts, despite their developing devoutness.
"... her appointed task was to promote divine mercy to greatly spread HOPE in salvation, in contrast to HolyK's comment above."
Years ago I developed a mild passing interest in Zen after being given a book. It seemed to me to be a project at heart, similar in impulse to the aims of the phenomenological reduction. I was mosty mistaken in that analogy. And it turns out that the D.T. Suzuki version was disowned by some Buddhists who seemed to think he was not doing their religion at all.
Staring at an object - or whatever it is that they actually do - until its conventional meaning disappears, is one thing. The other stuff is quite another.
Kind of like the difference in nature between the at least superficially bracing elements of early Vedic religion, cite Rig Veda Hymn 32, and the swampy mess that followed on as Hinduism.
@DNW I find it humorous that her appointed task was to promote divine mercy to greatly spread HOPE in salvation, in contrast to HolyK's comment above.
DeleteI believe in the great Truth which Jesus's teacher Zaken Shammai said, which is that it is better for man to never have been created in the first place. But knowing that it is better for man to never have been created, what will you do to reduce the suffering of your fellow men, and work a success?
"@DNW
Delete'I find it humorous that her appointed task was to promote divine mercy to greatly spread HOPE in salvation, in contrast to HolyK's comment above.'
I believe in the great Truth which Jesus's teacher Zaken Shammai said, which is that it is better for man to never have been created in the first place. But knowing that it is better for man to never have been created, what will you do to reduce the suffering of your fellow men, and work a success?"
You are quoting Tony, not me.
However, in announcing your "great truth" you have done us a service, as it makes your approach angle easier to grasp.
But instead of asking me what I will do as a consequence of embracing a predicate I do not accept, ask yourself this: Have you never heard of superlatives?
Good, better, and best. Why, if having your view settle for half measures?
Now, ask yourself if it might not be that certain historical figures decided that consonant with your general premise, they would deliver the very best solution to a disfavored population, whether that population was aware of what was "best" for them or not.
You are also probably aware that some people are strong, and intelligent and quite capable and life competent. And that they work to make themselves moreso.
Do you think that they would agree that the best thing for themselves would have been never to exist?
Do you include population culling, or selective euthanasia, or eugenics as per, der Fuhrer, or Peter Singer, or John Rawls ( in that order) to be implementations of the best solution acheiving the " best" results for our putative "fellows"?
How about post humanism? How's that strike you as a rectification?
I think, HK, that actually, you almost certainly mean charity or material assistance, emotional suport and all that business.
But given your view, why settle for "second best"?
Perhaps will is found in the nature of man, but that doesn’t mean the will as formed to x desire is in the nature of man.
DeleteFree will is found in man as to the desire of goods: man's will is fixed in that he can only desire something under the aspect of good. However, his will is not fixed as to this or that good, specifically, so that he MUST adhere to it.
DeleteHerr Professor,
ReplyDeleteI leave it completely to you whether as to whether to allow this, my, in its essentials, multiply repeated comment.
But there is, from a psychologically interesting point of view, that well-known piece of didactic fiction?, vision?, or whatever it is, which was supposedly written by a nun; and, with regard to the death, and final fate of her onetime friend.
It probably cannot even be called a piece of private revelation. But in its profile of a certain state of irredeemable mind and intractable, unapologetic willfulness, it has the ring of authentic psychological insight.
In fact, among the commenters you have hosted over the years, we have seen more than one who says, "So what, if there is a god? Why should I care? Who is he to tell me what to do?"
And that was even before some of the type started jabbering on incoherently and in a circular fashion about the imagined metaphysical significance of "arbitrariness".
[I guess they cannot quite grasp the extension of the principle that no less than in a brute fact and meaningless reality, that in a theistic reality as well, this reality does not exist FOR them and their sake. In one case they are pointless accidents. In the other scenario, they are brought into being as guests of a sort.
This piece of literature is of course, the famous, or infamous, depending on your perspective, "A Letter From Beyond"
Unfortunately I could only find it on religious sites, and pious ones at that.
But as a work of psychological "fiction", and penetrating insight, it deserves some recognition on its own.
https://all-pdfs.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/Articles/Letter%2Bfrom%2BBeyond_Layout%2B2.pdf
" ... completely to you whether as to whether ..."
DeleteCompounded provisos, apparently. Or, a goofed edit ... in reality. LOL
Men are naturally curious about a place as morbid as Never-ending Gehenna, but the Truth is nobody knows how the afterlife works.
DeleteJ. P. Holding came up with the theory that there is no torture for the eternally damned but rather they're just marked as persona non grata because everybody knows that they're not the right type of person. This makes the Last Judgment kind of like the end of Pride and Prejudice where Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy get the Golden Ending while looking down their noses at their lesser, more vulgar sisters.
Thanks, I haven't come across 'A Letter from Beyond' before. Regardless of its actual origin, as you indicate it gives some powerful insights, psychological and theological. Combined with Ed's article providing intellectual substance, background and depth - a bracing piece of spiritual reading.
DeleteJP Holding's position(last I checked, at least) is a minimal level of existence Hell, like that depicted in CS Lewis's The Great Divorce. He still maintains that there is some torment, but not 'torture' as such. He envisions the punishment as a sort of realisation of the golden rule, where you take on the point of view of anyone you mistreated, and feel whatever they felt when you mistreated them.
Delete
DeleteThanks, I haven't come across 'A Letter from Beyond' before. Regardless of its actual origin, as you indicate it gives some powerful insights, psychological and theological. Combined with Ed's article providing intellectual substance, background and depth - a bracing piece of spiritual reading.
I forgot to say you are welcome.
Glad someone else saw significant psychological insights in it, despite its pious fiction tone.
Ed
ReplyDelete"The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation."
Doesn't that imply that Lucifer's will was also fixed immediately after its creation? IOW Lucifer is innocent.
No, the idea as far as I know is that the angelic will is fixed after its first choice, such that Lucifer's would have been fixed after choosing rebellion against God.
DeleteI find the idea a bit puzzling.
Aquinas' position is that for all the angels, the first movement of the angelic will comes from God, and is necessarily good. The second movement comes from the free will of each, and could be good or evil. They could choose either, proudly to focus simply on their own good; or they could attend to their good, in light of the higher rule and bigger picture that their beatitude had to be received, not from themselves but as God's supernatural gift.
DeleteIt is following and deriving from this free act of their own that the will of the angels is thereafter fixed, for good or evil.
Those who originally chose not to attend to the higher rule will never choose to refocus their attention, as a choice to refocus would not serve the ultimate end they have chosen. Human attention in this life gets refocused just by the wanderings of our brains, among other things; but obviously this does not happen with the incorporeal angels. There is nothing further to influence them, other than what their powerful intellects already perceived in the first instant; and in the light of that perception they have each then made their everlasting choice.
Atno and Ben
DeleteOkay, but that's not what Ed claims in the abstract.
I understand, that it may be explained in the rest of the article, but in that case, the abstract is really confused;
OP
ReplyDelete"The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel."
Free will is an illusion after all, then.
The angelic will is fixed at conception, and remains so fixed after death. That brackets all of a human life, during which the will is thus fixed.
All your sins are this god's fault. God created your will at conception, you certainly had no choice in the matter when you were just a fertilized egg.
God created your fixed will to remain fixed throughout your life, so you deserve no blame for your evils, and no praise for your goods.
Your will remains fixed after death, whereupon god sorts out his works, those he created with evil wills go to eternal torture, those he created with good wills go to eternal paradise.
God is just an evil, sadistic robot builder, then, creating evil wills at conception knowing that those so created will inevitably suffer eternal torture.
Those of you who were lucky enough to be created with a good will can sit up in paradise smugly condemning those of use with our fixed evil wills in eternal suffering, as though you somehow had something personal to take credit for in having been created with a fixed good will.
Impressive. You had only the abstract to go off, singled out a single sentence of it, and yet you wrote six paragraphs upon the most crass way one could misunderstand it.
DeleteStardustyPsyche
DeleteDr. Feser wrote in a confusing way, but he is saying that after death the human soul becomes like that of an angel's (which is fixed at creation). He did not say that at all times the human soul is like that of an angel's.
Therefore no, you cannot read that he is teaching double-predestination.
Just to clarify,
DeleteBy saying the angel's will is fixed at it's creation means that as soon as the angel becomes conscious, it uses it's free mind to make it's first and only free choice. The choice of destiny.
It still has full choice of ways and means to pursue it's chosen agenda of self service or obedience thereafter.
I know your not into free will in general, but it is a necessary consequence of having a free mind. A rational mind is also a free mind.
To clarify further, Dr Feser did not write that an angel's will is fixed "at conception" or even "at creation".
DeleteInstead he wrote that "the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed **immediately after** its creation", that is with its first choice.
I agree with Mutoh: Stardusty makes an impressive shambles of reading a simple summary but let's not stain our own remarks with the gore.
Mutoh,
Delete"Impressive."
I receive my just recognition at last!
"the most crass way one could misunderstand it."
Yet you express no description of how I have supposedly misunderstood "it".
Does "it" refer to the sentence I quoted, the abstract directly available at the link provided in the OP, or some other arguments?
HK,
Delete"Abstract
Aquinas holds that after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him. He takes this to be knowable not only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning. The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel. This article expounds and defends Aquinas's position, paying special attention to the action theory underlying it."
So, the soul cannot change after death.
The angelic soul is fixed upon its creation.
Elsewhere, Catholic generally believe that the soul in some sense inhabits the human being beginning at conception.
So, it seems as though the soul is fixed at its creation, and its creation coincides with conception, and it remains fixed after death.
What, does the orientation of the soul get fixed at conception, unfixed at birth, and fixed again at death?
I mean, sure, as long as you are just making stuff up I suppose you might just as well make that up if it suits your imagination.
Tim,
Delete"as soon as the angel becomes conscious, it uses it's free mind to make it's first and only free choice."
Wow, that is some pretty fast thinking!
Kind of a lot of pressure, I mean, I have a hard time making up my mind just ordering lunch at a new restaurant, but dang, one free choice!
This is like Aladdin's lamp, only I don't get 3 wishes, only 1 wish, and no wishing for more wishes, them's the rules.
"The choice of destiny."
Can I get some time to meet God first? I mean, it would be nice to, you know, shake hands, have some coffee together, and really get into the details of what this obedience service position is going to entail, you know, the full job description. Eternity is a pretty long time, I think it is only fair to meet the future boss, have some long conversations, and then make an informed decision as to my eternal direction. Am I such an evil person to insist on meeting the future boss face to face before I take the eternal job?
"A rational mind is also a free mind."
Is it? Is free will necessary to make rational decisions?
I code my computers to make lots of decisions, if X then Y else Z. I think you will agree that my computers do not have free will, but they make rational decisions.
Wow, that is some pretty fast thinking!
DeleteKind of a lot of pressure, I mean, I have a hard time making up my mind just ordering lunch at a new restaurant, but dang, one free choice!
sknsnsckkaahahahhahaha. Pretty funny comment. It seems to come from a viewpoint that cannot even imagine the possibility of a kind of mind that grasps a whole with its particulars all at one blow, a kind of mind for whom REVISING a decision would be inherently superfluous. In other words, he is criticizing Aquinas and Feser on the basis of something they already expressly dealt with.
Methinks he has a hard time with a great many choices, and ideas, and with logic, and...well, everything - except criticizing before having the facts.
Anon,
Delete"criticizing before having the facts."
Yes, in the broad sense, I suppose that is true, I don't know every detail of every expression made by both Aquinas and Feser.
In my defense I do have all the readily available facts presented in the OP, as I posted them above September 29, 2023 at 9:56 AM.
I agree, that is not a whole lot to go on.
"imagine the possibility of a kind of mind that grasps a whole with its particulars all at one blow"
Sure, that takes a lot of imagination, I mean, as long as you are just making things up out of your imagination you can imagine all sorts of wizards and angels and spirits and all kinds of stuff.
So, yes, in the imagination one can imagine an imaginary mind that can conceive of the circumstances of eternity "all at one blow".
I have, however, never encountered such a mind in my real life, and I'd wager you have not either.
I mean, I have a hard enough time taking in large bodies of information quickly as it is. I can only imagine that my reasoning skills will be drastically reduced when I die.
Zoe,
Delete"To clarify further, Dr Feser did not write that an angel's will is fixed "at conception" or even "at creation"."
Ok, right, as I mentioned, I can only extrapolate a bit about the conception thing, it being a general belief among Catholics that the human soul exists from the time of conception. I guess the soul is an angel?
Please do forgive my ignorance here, I have never met an angel, or a soul, or a god, or a spirit, or a demon, or any of those sorts of folks. I have only met regular people.
Now, Dr. Feser alluded to some philosophical arguments, in general, perhaps not on this point.
Per some other commenters here I have learned these subjects require a lot of imagination, so I imagine you have a sound philosophical argument for all this, correct?
"angelic will is fixed **immediately after** its creation", that is with its first choice."
OK, so I imagine that means right after the sperm penetrates the egg wall god puts an angel in there too, then, while the sperm is dissolving inside the egg the angel with its superhuman quick wit decides to either spend the rest of eternity with god (good angel), or to reject god and head toward an eternity of torture because, hey, who doesn't want to be tortured forever(evil angel).
So, now the basic orientation of the angel(soul) is fixed, and will remain that way irrevocably for eternity, rendering free will on the subject of one's salvation an illusion for adult human beings.
Really? You guys actually take these fairy tales seriously?
Well, I suppose you do have some sound philosophical arguments for all these imagined stories, don't you? Care to share some?
Zoe
DeleteTo clarify further, Dr Feser did not write that an angel's will is fixed "at conception" or even "at creation".
Instead he wrote that "the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed mmediately after<*b> its creation", that is with its first choice.
That does not remove the ambiguity, though, because Ed also says that "after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him."
To clarify further, Dr Feser did not write that a person's will is fixed "at death" , he wrote after death. That could mean, as with the angels, immediately after death, that is with his last choice.
Now, Ed probably explains in the rest of his article that this is not what he means, but it is still a fact that his abstract is ambiguous, and even misleading.
It seems that Ed believes that we do get a last chance immediately after death, because in his blog article "How to go to hell" he says, "It is very likely, then, that these various souls will be “locked on” forever to whatever it was they were habituated to valuing above all things during life on earth."
DeleteRepenting after death is very unlikely, but it's possible, according to Ed.
What a relief. because roght after death, like an angel, I will have all relevant information and I will choose according to what I will know then. Right now, I think the things I do are good, so I see no need to have any regrets about my choices. But, if after death it turns out I was wrong, I will repent.
"Repenting after death is very unlikely, but it's possible, according to Ed."
DeleteNo, that's not my position. I realize that the new article is behind a paywall, so that many will not have actually read it, but it clarifies my view on this topic. And I would say that repentance after death is impossible, not merely unlikely.
So, your position has changed since "How to go yo hell". Okay then.
DeleteWalter,
DeleteI read it differently, taking into consideration the previous statement:
A person who, at the end of his life, is strongly habituated to regarding some specific thing other than God as his ultimate good – money, sex, political power, etc. -- is very likely, in his first choice upon death, to regard precisely that thing as his ultimate good or end.
So since it is very likely that someone habitually attracted to something other than God will not break a lifetime habit. After all, most people already have the all the information they need. They've just chosen differently time, after time, after time.
bmiller
Delete"Very likely" is not the same as "most certainly", which is what you need for the claim that repentence after death is impossible.
Now, maybe Ed has a convincing argument for this in his latest article, but in his blog article "How to go to hell" he didn't get from "very unlikely" to "impossible".
I don't see how that would even be possible, considering Ed's take on libertarian free will, but for the time being, i give him the benefit of the doubt.
Walter,
DeleteAgreed that "very likely" does not mean impossible. But the phrase used in the article is "immediately upon death" not "after death".
That phrase could mean "during the process of dying" and once the process is complete, done is done. That is what makes sense to me with the data we have.
Anonymous
DeleteThe title of the essay is "Aquinas on the fixity of the will after death".
Walter,
DeleteSorry, I was that Anon you replied to.
There is an essay that is referred to in the OP and the blog post you referred to.
The quote(s) from the blog post discuss what happens upon death, but after death what is done is done. The essay's title as you point out refers to what happens after death. There is no contradiction as if "upon death" means "in the process of dying".
Sort of relevant to Professor Feser's more recent topic about uncharitably see fallacies where none necessarily exist.
bmiller
DeleteEd is comparing people to angels, whose will is fixed after their creation. And that doesn't mean that as soon as the angel is created, what is done is done. It means that, immediately after his creation, the angel makes his choice and that choice fixes his will.
In his "How to go to hell" post, Ed says,
"In effect, the soul now operates, in all relevant respects, the way an angelic intellect does. Just as an angel, immediately after its creation, either takes God as its ultimate end or something less than God as its ultimate end, so too does the disembodied human soul make the same choice immediately upon death.". So, "immediately upon death" does not mean "in the process of dying".
Furthermore, later in the post, Ed says, "It is very likely, then, that these various souls will be “locked on” forever to whatever it was they were habituated to valuing above all things during life on earth."
What i would like to know is how Ed goes from "very likely" to "most certainly". And, as for charity, I did say that "maybe Ed has a convincing argument for this in his latest article". But he didn't have such an argument in his blog post and I don't think that, given Ed's belief in some sort of libertarian free will, such an argument is even possible because on LFW, previous conditions of a mind can influence a person's will, but it can't determine his will. So, whatever a person was habituated to before death, cannot determine his final decision immediately after death.
Walter,
DeleteI read it that a final decision is made and that reflects the state of will that remains unchanged from then on. Ed has made it clear most recently that change after death is impossible. I'm going to trust his opinion on what he meant. Your opinion not withstanding.
Walter,
DeleteIt's very likely that the final state of the will remains the same as it has been for a lifetime but not impossible. After death it is impossible to change. Before death a decision has not been made. After death a decision has been made. So it is impossible to unmake that decision.
This seems in harmony with Ed's recent statement. No problems are necessarily involved.
Thanks for your opinion. Looks like we're starting to repeat so I'll let you have the last word.
Well, as I said, Ed may have an argument for why a finale decision can only be made before death when angels van make a first ( and finale) decision while being in a state that is just like a human's state right after death.
DeleteBut of course you are entitled to your own opinion. So, thank you for thé interesting discussion.
"God is just an evil, sadistic robot builder, then, creating evil wills at conception knowing that those so created will inevitably suffer eternal torture."
ReplyDeleteLOL
Since there is no free will in your materialist or naturalistic universe either, I guess you could characterize material reality in much the same, if zombified, terms.
Except that in addition to there being no free will in your worldview, neither is there any "objective" ( whatever you purportedly mean by that term) good or evil... whatever it is you "subjectively" imagine you mean by those terms.
And, inasmuch as natural kinds do not exist in your reality, and categories are asserted to be a projection upon a hypothesized noumenal world, any claim you might deludedly imagine you have on the forbearance, consideration, sympathy, or tolerance of another is based on your own (merely adequate to get itself propagated) hallucinatory projections.
Thus it is passing strange that you should concern yourself with the indifference of others who are not you, and not "objectively" like you, and not of a natural kind to you, and bear no intrinsic or , non-arbitrary obligations toward you.
So relax. Don't distub yourself with bitter and resentful thoughts of their eventual beatific happiness, while you are destined to writhe in flames, cursing the stench, the heat, the endless loss, and all those around you.
Your personal tastes being as ineffably subjective as you claim them to be, you may find that frying in Hell suits you perfectly well.
Just you be you, and let them be them, and it will all work out to its - according to you, anyway - inexorable conclusion.
Be of good cheer. You are more than halfway there already, your cynical solidarity pimping notwithstanding.
[Now we await a disquisition on the moral significance of arbitrariness in theistic versus nontheistic models of reality, and the existentialist embrace of blind arbitrariness as its own. "It's the "good" kind of arbitrariness!!!". Yada yada yada.Think of Rorty calling chance a worthy master]
@DNW,
DeleteA perfectly valid theological point was made, but your response to it was basically just: 'naturalism is stupid'. That isn't an answer. Try again...
DNW,
Delete"Thus it is passing strange that you should concern yourself with the indifference of others who are not you, and not "objectively" like you, and not of a natural kind to you, and bear no intrinsic or , non-arbitrary obligations toward you"
Indeed, I realize it is strange to you that human beings would have altruistic tendencies, sociable sensibilities, and seek at least in significant part to facilitate the flourishing of others...all absent the dictates of a celestial ruler.
For many it takes a Jesus to tell you to love your neighbor. For others of us we already have that innate sensibility and thus have no need for a Jesus. How strange we lot are to you lot.
"you are destined to writhe in flames"
Indeed, your sort seems to require the threat of eternal torture to enforce the message of a Jesus, yet my sort has no need of such threats because our altruistic sensibilities are innate to our beings. How strange indeed we sort are for your kind.
"your cynical solidarity pimping notwithstanding."
That does seem to be how your angelic orientation is fixed, so devoid of your own sensibilities of solidarity that you assume that when such values are expressed in avowed sincerity that can only mean a cynical attempt at manipulation. Projection much?
"A perfectly valid theological point was made, but your response to it was basically just: 'naturalism is stupid ..."
DeleteYou are confused.
I am not arguing that naturalism is stupid. I am simply observing the amusingly redounding sociopolitical and even metaphysical implications of naturalism for a certain class of especially contemptible naturalists themselves.
That class, is the class of collectivist, solidarity pimping, often sinecured, naturalists who delusionally imagine that having staked their terms and position out, they can then float away from the implications for themselves.
So far during these interminable exchanges, and despite the weaseling of the more ardent of the secularists seen here, it has been established that by the very terms they set, the paradigmatic materialist has no intersubjectively respectable claim to levy against anyone or anything.
We have previously seen how in the case of certain Australian males habituated to raping female infants and toddlers, the local naturalist, while expressing his stern personal disaproval, denied that either the traditional sense of "objective" or the findings of the last decades of social science research, or his own unwary use of the terms "moral" and "objective", sufficed to demonstrate that any proposition could be objectively formulated expressing a moral value. Even with regard to that. Even if one were discovered.
Thus it is at this juncture the term objective is conveniently inflated from merely meaning intersubjectively verifiable as existing, (or simply outside of an individual perceiving mind) to "objective" in some crypto transcendent evaluative sense; one established, figuratively, above and beyond all normal human experience, and even beyond any possible god's eye view, as well.
Where would such a freighted objectivity exist? Given the strictures laid out, it could by definition exist nowhere.
Yet, fascinatingly, when required, the more prosaic version of the term magically reappears at the service of the naturalist.
In placing any definition of objective so far out of even theoretical reach, it simply renders the term useless for much else than shameless polemics.
Of course, this endpoint might also be reached by simply stipulating up front and in ex cathedra tones, that all observations, and evaluations are radically subjective and relative to the posited experience of an individual.
Because categories are under this stipulative worldview, projections of the materially and comprehensively determined make up or manifestation of a sui generis individual, rather than an objectively like kind, each so stipulated individual is in effect conceived of as a moral species of its own: insofar as the term moral might carry any meaning in this frame of reference.
Whether it does or not, it is clear that what might be called moral or good and right, is ultimately reduced to no more than the self-serving or environmentally conditioned and emitted rhetoric of an individual, and very temporary, largely blind, locus of appetite bleating out preordained squeals.
To sum, I have no problem with relativistic naturalists reducing themselves to that, or reacting to them as such.
The only objectionable part emerges when a radical relativist proponent of extreme subjectivity bleats on as if it is speaking of its own free will, or making an intersubjectively valid point.
They cannot be, on their own premisses.
They have no standing to do so; and yapping about being a "card carrying human" is so pathetic under these circumstances, that even its comic value evaporates.
Nonetheless, humor is to be found in that reality. For the strong at least.
Sneglu-Halli ... came from a poor family from Fljót near Svarfaðardalur in northern Iceland. The meaning of his nickname (Sneglu-) is unclear, but it could have referred to his slender stature. Haraldr received the news of Halli’s death with the following comment ...: Á grauti myndi greyit sprungit hafa ‘The bitch must have burst with porridge’ skaldic.org
"That does seem to be how your angelic orientation is fixed ..."
DeleteMy "angelic orientation"? LOL
You silly thing. If I had an angelic orientation - whatever that might be - I'd probably be wasting my time trying to save you from your headlong and vainglorious rush to perdition, rather than simply remarking on 1. how you either wind up in Hell as a comitted enemy of God: or else if there is no God, you are 2. impeached by, and have your standing to be taken seriously as an objectively like kind and moral peer revoked, on the basis of your own repeatedly, endlessly, announced assertion of a : nominalist, subjective, morally nihilistic, deterministic, hallucinated version of an intrinsically meaningless reality.
Try unreservedly embracing that reality fully, in all its reflexive implications. Learn it, live it, love and suffer it. For you, if you are right, have liberated not only yourself from all intersubjectively verifiable moral imperatives, but all others from any mandatory concern with you, or obligation toward your existence, or your welfare, or your primate pets or your "Flourishing Pseudo New Natural Law Deracinated and Decaffinated Lite, Emotive Flavor version.
And, to carry that further, we have unburdened anyone at all from any obligation toward any identifiable subpopulation whom those embracing such a subjective and self-validating moral "aesthetic" (as you clownishly brandished that term *) may find uncongenial, or at least to be of no longer any significant marginal utility.
Many can easily live with that deal. Especially in Malaysia, and New Guinea among other places.
The question is: Can the needy bleating solidarity pimps with their life-cost shifting rackets, honestly do so?
Eh... probably not.
Does it objectively matter if we embrace full bore radical subjectivity? Eh ... most certainly not.
*Save yourself a G. E. Moore quote mining exercise. The effort would be unproductive.
DNW,
Delete"Australian males habituated to raping female infants"
Let this habit be P1. Clearly, ~P1 is not a human universal, since it is within the objective standard of good for those humans to P1.
Even if there were no such individuals who claimed P1 as good, and thus the claim P1 as evil and ~P1 as good would be a human universal, that still does not prove that P1 is objectively evil, only universally held to be evil.
If all human beings hold P2, that the Earth is stationary while the sun and the stars orbit the Earth, that does not prove P2 true, only universally believed.
DNW, this is philosophy 101, why are you so behind on this subject matter?
"proposition could be objectively formulated expressing a moral value."
An objective standard can be formulated to objectively determine if a behavior does or does not conform to P. P as good or evil is logically barred from being objectively good or objectively evil.
The rules of a card game are an objective standard this is subjective at base. One can objectively determine if one is or is not playing by the rules. But the rules themselves are subjective at base. Again, philosophy 101, not my invention, this was all worked out a very long time ago.
"objective is conveniently inflated from merely meaning intersubjectively verifiable as existing,"
That is a form of objectivity, yes, like judging conformance of a play to the rules of the game, the rules being a set of subjective judgments agreed upon by convention.
This is pretty pedestrian stuff, DNW.
""objective" in some crypto transcendent evaluative sense; one established, figuratively, above and beyond all normal human experience, and even beyond any possible god's eye view, as well."
Right, that is what William Lane Craig means, and a whole lot of religious apologists mean, and what you will get if you just do a search for "objective morality".
You act as though I somehow made this up, or that I have invented some novel use of the term "objective morality". This is just morality and ethics 101, pretty basic.
"Where would such a freighted objectivity exist? Given the strictures laid out, it could by definition exist nowhere."
At last we agree!!!
Objective morality cannot exist, yes, DNW, TYVM. All the apologists who claim to have access to the objective morality sourced by god are speaking incoherent nonsense, we agree on that, halleluiah.
"In placing any definition of objective so far out of even theoretical reach, it simply renders the term useless for much else than shameless polemics."
You go bruh, yup, exactly what the apologists asserting the objective morality of god are up to.
"or making an intersubjectively valid point."
A valid point is made in the context of a convention, an objective standard. If you value logic, and if you agree to communicate logically, then one can make a valid point within that conventional conversational framework.
Proving that the convention is objectively true at base is unnecessary. All we need is to agree on the convention to make objective judgments as to whether one is adhering to the convention or not.
Once the convention is agreed to we have a mutually acceptable objective standard by which we can objectively show that any particular P is valid or not within that convention.
Pretty basic stuff, DNW, I mean, why is this so hard for you?
"Let this habit be P1. Clearly, ~P1 is not a human universal, since it is within the objective standard of good for those humans to P1..."
DeleteYou were dealt with on September 6th.
During the course of the next 12 days and more, the problems with your comprehension of the very terms which you used, such as "moral" and "objective" were addressed at length by me and many others.
The circularity involved in your perseverating stipulations, your lack of understanding of the sociological and anthropological senses of morals and mores, was all disposed of.
You were invited to state the terms under which your definition of an objective moral statement could be met. You did not because your ideosyncratic stipulations precluded it in the first place.
You were even provided a famous landmark case involving invariable social behavior by non humans as a bird's eye view of a potential example of an objective empirically studied and verified "morality".
Was that social behavior objective or not? Did it constitute a morality, or not? If not, exactly why not?
If not, what would constitute an "objective morality" ?
You cannot answer.
All you can do is repeat your assertions.
The audience for that is demonstrably limited.
By the way, if you have read this far, the comment you responded to was not to you, but was rather to another describing your well known and thoroughly understood views and their implications.
Your giddy misinterpretation of a description of your views to a third party, as constituting an agreement with them or concession to their soundness, is kind of .... sad.
I don't wish you ill, but assuming you were not just trolling for attention, you really need to do something about that reading comprehension problem.
DNW,
Delete""moral" and "objective" were addressed at length by me and many others."
You clearly do not even know the difference between objective morality and an objective standard that is subjective at base.
What you call "addressed" was just so much muddled nonsense.
"your lack of understanding of the sociological and anthropological senses of morals and mores,"
All of which are subjective, not objective.
"You were invited to state the terms under which your definition of an objective moral statement could be met. You did not"
Now you are just making stuff up out of whole cloth. I gave you multiple wordings of what "objective morality" means.
The term "objective morality" is a part of ethics 101. You are yammering on as though I am making up some novel term. You don't even get the basics of this widely debated topic.
"You were even provided a famous landmark case involving invariable social behavior by non humans as a bird's eye view of a potential example of an objective empirically studied and verified "morality"."
Which is subjective, obviously. It is objectively true that people express subjective moral assertions.
More philosophy 101 material that you manifestly just don't get.
"Was that social behavior objective or not? Did it constitute a morality, or not?"
Wow. The social behavior was objectively observed to have transpired. The behavior can be analyzed for its morality based on any particular objective standard. All particular objective standards for morality are subjective at base. This is super simple material, how can you still not get this?
"If not, what would constitute an "objective morality" ?
You cannot answer."
I already answered, multiple times, but since this is clearly new and befuddling material for you I will give you some more references.
Just enter "objective morality" into google. Is that so hard for you?
"Objective morality is the idea that right and wrong exist factually, without any importance of opinion. It's the concept that some actions and beliefs are imperatively good or inherently bad, and that the goodness or badness of those things holds true no matter who you are or what else you believe in""
www.verywellmind.com/what-is-objective-morality-5525515#
"Craig says that objective moral values are “values that are valid and binding whether anyone believes them or not”"
"Objective morality is the belief that morality is universal and not up for interpretation, suggesting that objective morality exists independently of individual perspectives."
www.betterhelp.com/advice/morality/what-is-objective-morality-what-can-it-teach-us/
Objective moral standards are subjective at base.
Objective observation of subjective moral assertions does not make those moral assertions objective, just subjective assertions that objectively were asserted.
Human universals do not exist, and even if they did universal belief does not equate to objective truth. More philosophy 101 material you manifestly just do not understand.
Objective morality is logically impossible and you have provided zero sound argumentation to show otherwise.
Delete@ Stardusty,
...you incredibly blundering oaf.
You speak of philosophy and you have been quote citing a chef-nutritionist, and a licensed mental heath counselor/wedding day coordinator in support of your position?
I briefly wondered where you got such awkward and inadequate formulations. It was from the pink haired girl: Ariane Resnick, CNC. Chef, Nutritionist, Author
And did you even read what they wrote?
The latter of them, after offering up a boilerplate both-sides-of-the-issue survey, writes as a link,
"A recent study shows that non-human animals also have morality. "
From that linked study at Pub Med:
"It has been argued that some animals are moral subjects, that is, beings who are capable of behaving on the basis of moral motivations ... In this paper, we do not challenge this claim. Instead, we presuppose its plausibility in order to explore what ethical consequences follow from it. Using the capabilities approach ... we argue that beings who are moral subjects are entitled to enjoy positive opportunities for the flourishing of their moral capabilities, and that the thwarting of these capabilities entails a harm that cannot be fully explained in terms of hedonistic welfare"
So, what do you imagine you are dispositively accomplishing here by offering up sources which upon review, don't even support the case you are trying to make?
They instead - even Pinkie's -support the prosaic notion of both: an objectively verifiable pattern of interpersonal or intraspecies member relations in operation, patterns which are denotable as a morality; and a zoololgically supported standard by which they may be evaluated.
So then circling back to Wilson's termites, we see that I wrote,
"You were even provided a famous landmark case involving invariable social behavior by non humans as a bird's eye view of a potential example of an objective empirically studied and verified "morality".
And you responded,
"Which is subjective, obviously. It is objectively true that people express subjective moral assertions."
So, you respond that the scientifically established observations and findings regarding the behavioral patterns of non human social animals are subjective. Does this scientific subjectivity also impeach the discoverer of your hallucinated reality?
Then, you go on to assert that on your say so expressions of human judgments are themselves, objective acts. Apparently the noise made is objectively verifiable. By whom?
If observations to extablished scientific standards do not qualify as objective, what grounds do you then have to claim that any of your own assertions, i.e., " It is objectively true that people ... convey objectively true information?
It is obvious that against the historically standard use of the term "objective" in the scientific community, and against all historic use of the terms "morals" and mores in the social sciences, that you, (given your stipulations and your failure to state the conditions necessary or sufficient for you to concede that the existence of an objective morality was demonstrated), are simply stipulating objectivity out of existence as a possibility. This, by rhetorically deploying your special and impossibly inflated version of "objective" when rhetorically needed, and then hastily dropping it when it would bounce back in your teeth.
You don't deserve to be taken seriously on any level. Not even as a semi-competent annoyance.
Your latest demonstration of incompetence, establishes it.
DNW
Delete"So, what do you imagine you are dispositively accomplishing here by offering up sources which upon review, don't even support the case you are trying to make?"
You have it back to front. Those sources are describing what I have proved to be logically impossible, objective morality.
One of those sources is William Lane Craig, hardly a "pink haired girl", in your rather crass attempt at bigoted dismissal of logical points by reference to sex and hair style.
"So, you respond that the scientifically established observations and findings regarding the behavioral patterns of non human social animals are subjective."
The principles driving the behaviors objectively studied are subjective. How is this still hard for you.
People objectively do, as a matter of objectively observable fact, assert subjective moral propositions, and do, as a matter of objectively observable fact, behave in accordance to those subjective propositions.
So, when you cite objective scientific studies of behavior that is based on subjective moral propositions you have failed to provide an example of objective morality.
"Apparently the noise made is objectively verifiable. By whom?"
Once one agrees by convention that noises can be recorded and compared then that constitutes an objective standard of noise recording. One can then objectively determine whether noises were or were not recorded in the context of that objective standard of noise recording.
Even if you do not choose to join the convention of noise recording it is an objective fact of the cosmos that certain patterns of pressure fluctuations over time did or did not transpire, whether they are measurable or not.
"If observations to extablished scientific standards do not qualify as objective,"
Objectively what?
Objectively existent?
Objectively transpired?
Objectively good?
You manifestly do not yet grasp those distinctions. Objective morality is impossible because it is impossible for any moral proposition to be an expression of an objective good or an objective evil.
You are conflating objective existence with objective good. Philosophy 101.
Being is good. Metaphysics 101
DeleteAnon,
Delete"Being is good. Metaphysics 101"
Is all being good?
Is the being of Lucifer good? Is the being of a virus that infects, sickens, and kills good for the sufferer? Was the being of Richard Ramirez good?
Is the being of a rock good? Does that make the non-being of a rock evil?
In my hand right now I have the antithesis of the good being of a rock, the evil non-being of a rock, because there is no being of a rock right now in my hand, so I now hold evil in my hand.
Your assertion of "being is good" isn't metaphysics 101, it is gibberish.
But, by all means, can you name an objective good? I mean specifically, not just a generalized assertion that somehow there could be an objective good, rather, a particular objective good.
Can you describe one, specifically?
Is all being good?
DeleteYes
Is the being of Lucifer good?
Yes.
Is the being of a virus that infects, sickens, and kills good for the sufferer?
The virus has being, which is good. If it causes someone to suffer, as you well know, that means the virus is subjectively bad to that person.
Your assertion of "being is good" isn't metaphysics 101, it is gibberish.
I can't help it if you won't bother with metaphysics. It's there whether you study it or not. How could you know if it's gibberish or not without even attempting to study it to understand the basis for the point that being is good? Or can we just admit that what you, personally, cannot understand is what you call gibberish, setting yourself as the standard of truth.
But, by all means, can you name an objective good? I mean specifically, not just a generalized assertion that somehow there could be an objective good, rather, a particular objective good.
It's very easy: you, specifically, are a good because you are a being. You are in being as a particular human. That's a good. From Aquinas:
On the contrary, Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 42) that, "inasmuch as we exist we are good."
I answer that, Goodness and being are really the same, and differ only in idea; which is clear from the following argument. The essence of goodness consists in this, that it is in some way desirable. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. i): "Goodness is what all desire." Now it is clear that a thing is desirable only in so far as it is perfect; for all desire their own perfection. But everything is perfect so far as it is actual. Therefore it is clear that a thing is perfect so far as it exists; for it is existence that makes all things actual, as is clear from the foregoing (I:3:4; I:4:1). Hence it is clear that goodness and being are the same really. But goodness presents the aspect of desirableness, which being does not present.
Anon,
DeleteIs the being of Lucifer good?
"Yes."
So, then, your sense of the word "good" is not a moral sense of good versus evil, or are you suggesting Lucifer is morally good?
By your definition everything that exists is good, insofar as it exists.
If everything is good then nothing is evil, and the distinction between good an evil becomes meaningless or moot.
You have thus defined evil out of existence. There is no such thing as evil at all, since all that exists is good.
Well, at least you tried to name a specific good. Unfortunately, your answer makes moot the very notion of good and evil, since in your view, everything that exists is good.
By your lights:
Lucifer is good.
A rock is good.
A deadly virus is good.
Criminals are good.
Sinners are good.
"The virus has being, which is good. If it causes someone to suffer, as you well know, that means the virus is subjectively bad to that person."
Then the being of the virus, or anything else, is only subjectively good to you.
Who says all being is intrinsically good? Others say some being is bad. You say they are wrong and such being is actually good, even though that being enables harm to the other.
Thus, you have failed to provide an example of an objective good, only your subjective opinion of what constitutes good.
The fact that Aquinas wrote much the same subjective opinion in no way demonstrates that opinion as expressing an objective good, only a subjective judgement you and another individual agree to by convention.
So, since you have failed to describe an objective good, only your subjective opinion of what constitutes good, an opinion that trivializes and makes moot the very notion of evil, I will ask you again.
Can you describe an objective good?
And more specifically, can you write an ethical sentence that expresses an objectively good act, or some objectively good moral principle?
This is precisely the topic about the soul I'm looking forward the most to see in your upcoming book about the soul. It's a shame it's behind a paywall, but I guess I can wait for the book. I find it really difficult to explain thoroughly how the will would remain fixed even after resurrection.
ReplyDeleteYou could say that angels have free will all the time...
ReplyDelete...BUT, when an angel makes a decision, it has all the information it ever needs to consider; so it never has cause to change it's decision.
Satan knows all about what he's getting himself into, that's just not enough reason to make him let go of his pride.
Go to a large college library and read the article for free. Your own public library might be able to
ReplyDeleteaccess it for you. Battlefield Catholic chaplains will give conditional absolution to soldiers who appear obviously dead.
DNW
ReplyDeleteThis is off topic I admit, but important for understanding your general world view.
You have repeatedly stated that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no interest in religion per se. You are clearly very critical of naturalism, but it is not clear to me that you are a Christian. Briefly, just what is your theological perspective/position?
"You have repeatedly stated that you are not a Roman Catholic, and have no interest in religion per se. "
DeleteI'll clarify at some length, since your statement is accurate in all but one slight respect.
With regard to religion per se. That is comparative religion classes, sociological approaches to the religious impulse, world religions, the outpourings of modern theologians, Barth, Tillich, Kung, and modernist Catholicism, etc.: Yes, no interest.
I more or less obviously have some interest in Christian doctrines which I have come to see in a somewhat similar light to those Protestant "fundamentalist" preachers who claim seemingly incredibly at first, that Christianity is, at base, not a religion. For some people they are pointing a subjective distinction concerning the individual believer's stance, without a sociological difference; but I think it makes some sense.
I have referred to practicing Catholics, and probably sincere and believing and committed Catholics who respect the papal office enough to cover the current guy and who would extend a hand not only to atheists, the malinstructed, the unchurched and the indifferent, but to obnoxious apostates as well. Probably, without necessarily implying that I had no connection to Catholicism at all. I am the product of the offspring of secular Protestant and city dwelling Catholic families.
I found Catholicism, the doctrines of which I hardly knew or understood, suffocating in the extreme as a child, and rebelled the moment I was large enough to make it stick. My parents being tolerant did not fight me much.That was an age much younger than most.
My default worldview at the time and this was at 10 or so, was evolutionary, somewhat nominalist, highly reductionist, and secular; insofar as I grasped the ideas.
I was subsequently shocked or perhaps chagrined to discover in middle school that secularism, was or had become, a kind of default religion itself. An especially contempible one well suited to the morally labile, go-along types.
I discovered that secularists did not live out their own metaphysical doctrines fearlessly and personally, but almost invariably sought shelter
in the protected center of the herd and that it was from there as schoolmarms and institutional inhabitants, spouting cynical communitarian nonsense, that they held court.
That perhaps was the beginning of wisdom, finding myself standing between one religion which I found oppressive, and another, which was utterly contemptible, and filled with barely conscious fad chasing inclusionist meat sacks; some clever, most not.
You can see their lack of cleverness in their constant recourse to the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma. It is there in their analysis of the third option that one often sees what Jordan Peterson refers to as the low verbal intelligence of the progressive authoritarian and its kind, come into play.
They seem incapable of deploying words precisely and recognizing distinctions and keeping it apart from their social agendas.
Here is a good example of an agenda oozing out during what is obviously a freshman survey course presentation ... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aOR9LeTEFKA&pp=ygURZXV0aHlwaHJvIGRpbGVtbWE%3D
Now if you think on this for a moment, the whole tendency of the progressive mind reflects this equivocating blending and blind spot limitation. They apparently just have inherently greater than usual problems with categories and definitions. Formalizing obviously does little good if the variable ostensibly symbolized is not itself understood.
I was initially attracted to this site by Feser's moderate realism, his recent engagement with the attractions and difficulties of political libertarianism, his comprehensiveness in the treatment of problems, the fact that he reasons rather than pronounces, and his pugnacity.
He hits back. Not a wash rag. I liked that.
Thank you for that, but frankly, I am still completely in the dark as to your theological beliefs and commitments ( if any )!
DeleteDNW,
Delete"You can see their lack of cleverness in their constant recourse to the so-called Euthyphro Dilemma."
Yet you provide no rational argument to counter this true dilemma.
"It is there in their analysis of the third option that one often sees what Jordan Peterson refers to as the low verbal intelligence of the progressive authoritarian and its kind, come into play."
Yet you fail to provide a counter argument to the fact that appeal to god's essence merely collapses into one of the previous horns of the dilemma.
"They seem incapable of deploying words precisely and recognizing distinctions and keeping it apart from their social agendas."
Yet you fail to use your masterful powers of precise word deployment to counter any of the content of the video.
All you provided is a vague condemnation of the "progressive", totally failing to provide any substantial counter argument.
If P is asserted to be objectively good because it is a consequence of god's essence that god asserts P, and if god did not choose his own essence then god's essence is determined outside of god, leading to a non-converging infinite regress of sources for the objectivity of the good of P, thus negating P as objectively good.
If P is asserted to be objectively good because it is a consequence of god's essence that god asserts P, and if god did choose his own essence then god's essence is arbitrary because god could just as easily have chosen ~P as good, thus negating P as objectively good.
Arguments of the form employed in the Euthyphro dialog logically prove that objective morality is logically impossible, and you have failed to provide any logical argument to the contrary, your vague condemnations of "progressives" notwithstanding.
I must say, DNW seems to be a deeply damaged and embittered fellow, raling against naturalism largly because of his past experiences with secularists but promoting nothing else very specific and particular. He also seems to be greatly motivated by frankly macho concerns, being affronted by the cowardliness of secularists - as he sees it - to live out the implications of their metaphysics, while doting over Feser's pugnacity ( 'no wash bag').
DeleteIs that the exrent of it DNW?
Annonymous says,
Delete"I must say, "
Must you?
"DNW seems to be a deeply damaged and embittered fellow, raling against naturalism largly ..."
You must have "largly" missed this:
"To sum, I have no problem with relativistic naturalists reducing themselves to that, or reacting to them as such ... "
Next ...
"...because of his past experiences with secularists but promoting nothing else very specific and particular. "
You missed this, too:
"I am simply observing the amusingly redounding sociopolitical and even metaphysical implications of naturalism for a certain class of especially contemptible naturalists themselves.
That class, is the class of collectivist, solidarity pimping, often sinecured, naturalists who delusionally imagine that having staked their terms and position out, they can then float away from the implications for themselves."
Does that help?
"He also seems to be greatly motivated by frankly macho concerns, being affronted by the cowardliness of secularists - as he sees it -
It's hardly machismo to expect that a progressive materialist sleep in the metaphysical and anthropological bed which it has made.
Nor, is it unreasonably macho to note that if it comes to extremes, rather than come puling around when the fires they have kindled singe their own arses, they should instead remain among the brood of arsonist vipers whom they have spawned and instructed. Figuratively speaking.
Looks to me like an appreciation for simple redounding justice, not machismo.
" ...to live out the implications of their metaphysics, while doting over Feser's pugnacity ( 'no wash bag').
Wash rag. That would be Feser is no wash rag.
"Is that the exrent of it DNW?"
Unless you have something else stupid you must say, it pretty much is, Anonymous.
However, my advice to you before you attempt another such excursion, is that you learn to read the lines first, before you attempt to read between them.
So what exactly are your philosophical and theological commitments DNW, other than evangelising against naturalism and doing battle with cowardly naturalist rotters like that terrible StarDusty?
DeleteDNW
DeleteHow would you expect naturalists to behave in light of their metaphysical perspectives? They are social creatures with hopes and loves, and generally a desire to improve the world ( as they see it) for themselves and their fellow human being. They have no choice but to just get on with things, as if their metaphysics does not pertain. They have to be illusioned much of the time from psychological necessity. What would you expect you silly sausage?
Anonymous
DeleteOctober 2, 2023 at 12:18 AM
Says,
"So what exactly are your philosophical and theological commitments DNW, ..."
This question from you, a commenter who is too lazy or frightened to even commit to a commenter identity? Hilarious.
Come back when you have established some creds and standing in your own name. Maybe I'll humor you then. Or maybe not.
" ... other than evangelising against naturalism and doing battle with cowardly naturalist rotters like that terrible StarDusty?"
So, your mischaracterization aside, what's any of it got to do with you anyway? Are You paying for Ed's bandwith? Did I kick your dog by pointing to the hypocrisy of the self-deconstructed quailing at living their own "anthropology" out?
You need not answer those questions. They were rhetorical.
Anonymous
DeleteOctober 2, 2023 at 12:56 AM
DNW"
You again?
How would you expect naturalists to behave in light of their metaphysical perspectives?"
Given that I have seen these hypocritical blowhards, self-dealers, and perverts in action for years, I expect them to act just as they do:
To say one thing and to do another, to deconstruct and then shelter in the ruins, to kindle fires and then whine when burnt, to smirkingly declare that mankind is soulless and nothing special and then object to being treated that way.
They are social creatures with hopes and loves, and generally a desire to improve the world ( as they see it) for themselves and their fellow human being. They have no choice but to just get on with things, as if their metaphysics does not pertain. They have to be illusioned much of the time from psychological necessity.
Somebody get this guy a violin.
What would you expect...
See above.
I can't figure out how to access the article, but can anyone explain how this doctrine is compatible with the fall of Satan and the rebellion of one third of the angels? It seems either their orientation changed or that God deliberately fixed their wills to rebel against him.
ReplyDeleteI am sure DNW can explain all that to you
DeleteWCB
DeleteAquinas Summa Theologica. Part 1
Question 43
I answer that, An angel or any other rational creature considered in his own nature, can sin; and to whatever creature it belongs not to sin, such creature has it as a gift of grace, and not from the condition of nature."
If angels can sin, they can indeed change. Contradicting Aquinas as quoted by Dr. Feser.
I did not go through, Summa Gentiles, De Malo (On Evil), or other Aquinas works.
WCB
You can start with the article "how to go to hell" in this very blog itself.
DeleteOkay, I read over the relevant passage in "How to Go to Hell." I still don't understand why it's only possible for a disembodied spirit to make a single choice. Either a body is required to make a choice or it isn't. If it can make one choice without a body, why can't it make more than one? What am I missing? Probably everything, but if anybody could point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.
DeleteWCB
ReplyDelete"Impressive. You had only the abstract to go off, singled out a single sentence of it, and yet you wrote six paragraphs upon the most crass way one could misunderstand it."
Now, how does this comport with the New Testament? Paul assures us God grants some grace. You cannot earn grace through works. It is an unearned gift. To some. Some are created as elect and thus others non-elect. All predestion since the creation. Some arbitrarily chosen to be "vessels of mercy", others "vessels of wrath. Why did the Jews not believe Jesus was the messiah? Romans 11, God hardened them not to.
Why not harden all mankind to believe? This entire theology seems to be problematic when carefully examined.
WCB
Justice is one of the Divine attributes. If you give your creatures free will, not all of them will use it well. Not all virtues will practiced if there is no conflict. Many of the Greatest Saint's are martyrs. God not only wishes to save as many souls as possible, but those of the highest quality. Grace is unearned and shows the Divine Mercy. Allowing men and angels to choose between good and evil means many will reject that grace. They will then receive Divine Justice.
DeleteActually all Men who attain reason will receive both. They get the Graces to improve during their whole life. Those who keep it, will be justified. Those who don't keep it will get justice simply.
I don't understand why Angels are said to have no free will after their initial decision. Assume an angel has made the good decision and chosen to do God's will - is it impossible that God would give that angel a mission and say to it: "You choose how you will accomplish it". Wouldn't this involve a freedom of the will".
ReplyDeleteIt's not really that they don't have free will, that's just a shorthand (and really poor) way of describing what is meant. The angel's will remains the same kind of will as before. But with the first act freely willing the due and proper good (God), a meritorious act, he is immediately transferred into the Beatific Vision. In that state, every rational being sees God "as He is in Himself", seeing God so fulsomely that he also sees, without possibility of NOT seeing, that having God means having every good of every possible desire met and surpassed, so that the soul could not want to seek any other good. This state is LIKE to a state without free will, in the extremely limited sense that such an angel cannot sin. It is (much more importantly) unlike a state without free will, because in having the Beatific Vision, the angel freely wills what God wills, constantly, with delight and pleasure and joy.
DeleteDear Dr. Feser,
ReplyDeleteI thoroughly enjoyed and seem convinced of this particular topic you post in your blog (Eg, How to go to hell), so much so that I introduced that article for a group discussion. However, I have a question: assuming "Near Death Experience" accounts to be accurate, don't some accounts show a change of mind when they are in the state of NDE?
I'm sure Mr. Feser is right, but what about "he went and preached unto the spirits in prison ..." (1 Peter 3:19)?
ReplyDeleteHe means the Fathers in limbo who were now redeemed and waiting for Ascension day to enter Heaven with Christ.
DeleteTHE Tim Powers?!?!
DeleteHi Ed,
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I don't live near a large university where I could get hold of your article, so I'll have to restrict my comments to your abstract.
"Aquinas holds that after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him. He takes this to be knowable not only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning."
The question that immediately occurs to me is: what happens at death? Aquinas assumes that death is the separation of soul and body, which means that the only faculties whose powers the soul can exercise are the faculties of the intellect and will. However, it is by no means certain that the soul and the body are totally separated at death. There are well-attested reports of people who continued to perceive and feel after they were clinically dead:
https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/near-death-experiences-%E2%80%93-paranormal-aspects
Perceiving and feeling clearly require a body of some sort. That being the case, the notion that the will of an impenitent person is fixed at death is no longer tenable, if these reports are true.
"The heart of [Aquinas's] position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel."
Reasoning from a totally unfamiliar case is a poor way to argue. We don't know if angels are composed of form alone, or form plus some kind of matter. Are they altogether bodiless, or do they have invisible, incorruptible bodies that are not subject to the laws of this universe? We don't know. We don't know if angels have emotions, the Church having never pronounced on this matter. We don't know if the evil angels fell immediately after they were created, or at some subsequent time (e.g. at the creation of man). We don't know if God offered the evil angels a chance to reconsider, after they had had a taste of hell, only to have this second chance spurned as well. We just don't know.
There are well-attested reports of people who continued to perceive and feel after they were clinically dead:
DeleteIt is not in the least clear that "clinically dead" closely corresponds to the time when the soul is separated from the body. If these patients still had a union of soul and body, they might have appeared dead from all that science can (today) determine, but still not be dead in the philosophical sense. See the "Lazarus Syndrome" for more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_syndrome
If it sometimes happens that the soul is still present for some time after the doctors think the person is dead, and experiences phenomena that they can recount after being revived, then the experiences they have are not evidence that the soul and the body are ALWAYS joined, it is only evidence that the soul and body are sometimes still in union after doctors think the person is dead.
However, for the cases where the person really died and God took them on a tour of an afterlife, and then sent them back into the body: as a miracle, God can cause them to experience life-like phenomena by supplying - without the body as the mechanism - what they would have received from the body if the soul and body were in union during that time. Thomas's point regards what happens naturally, not what happens with God causing something nature alone cannot cause. The soul of a dead human retains the sense faculties insofar as they are powers of the soul, it's just that the person doesn't (while dead) have useful inputs to make use of those faculties.
Vincent,
ReplyDelete"There are well-attested reports of people who continued to perceive and feel after they were clinically dead:"
If that is true then the resurrection of Jesus was nothing special.
Person X was alive, then dead, then alive again. If person X was not alive again how did we get the reports of what person X felt after death?
Per your account just regular folks can not only come back from the dead, they can have sensory experiences while dead. So, in that case, Jesus was pretty ordinary in coming back from the dead, no reason to worship him for that, now is there?
"Perceiving and feeling clearly require a body of some sort."
So angels cannot perceive or feel? Well, in that case, hell is no threat and heaven is no reward. I would be neither in tortured agony or blissful paradise if I could not perceive or feel anything.
Thanks Vincent for clearing that up, I will stop worrying so much about going to hell now.
"Are they altogether bodiless, or do they have invisible, incorruptible bodies that are not subject to the laws of this universe?"
Does that question somehow make sense to you? If the angel has no body in any sense and is thus made of absolutely nothing at all then in what sense do you claim that absolutely nothing at all exists?
Or, supposing an angel has a body, yet there are no laws, no regularities, no structures, no properties within the scope of all that exists, that are applicable to this angelic body, yet somehow such a thing exists? Exists how, I mean specifically, how?
"the evil angels"
Do adults actually take time in their lives to seriously contemplate the reality of such things?
"We don't know if God offered the evil angels a chance to reconsider, after they had had a taste of hell"
Well, yeah, that would be kind of nice, being all loving and all, at least give the angel a second chance before lovingly torturing your creation for eternity.
I mean, that is just what a loving father does, right? Lock up the child, torture her at some length, and if she doesn't confess to loving you after that then lock her up permanently and torture her unrelentingly without any more chances...sure seems like the loving thing to do, even an omniscient omnipotent being could never come up with a better plan than that, riggghhhtt.
Hi StardustyPsyche,
DeleteI'll keep this brief. For the record, I do not believe that angels or departed spirits who reject God are tortured by anyone. The suffering of hell is that of self-imposed loneliness. Basing his views on Aquinas, Ed has attempted to show that a choice by a person to reject God at their moment of death is irreversible. I do not regard his reasons as terribly persuasive, and I think it is entirely reasonable (though I do not profess certitude on the matter) to believe that departed spirits can change their minds, repent, call on God, and be saved. That was the point of my post.
Re Jesus: unlike NDE experiencers, he is believed by Christians to have been resurrected on the third day after his death. Coming back to life after such an interval, assuming it happened, would require a miracle.
NDEs are remarkable experiences. I suggest you read the article I linked to above, when you get the time. Cheers.
StarDusty
DeleteHave you not understood yet that God "s love is only analagous to human love, so we have a very stretchy piece of elastic here that can make his love whatever we want it to be, including the horrendous abuse and torture that you mention!
Vincent,
Delete"The suffering of hell is that of self-imposed loneliness."
So, solitary confinement for eternity is not torture?
And, it is "self imposed"? Who would choose solitary confinement for eternity? Makes no sense. I don't hate myself enough to consider an eternity in solitary confinement to be a just punishment, nor would it in any sense be self imposed.
"departed spirits can change their minds, repent, call on God, and be saved. That was the point of my post."
Ok, so you suppose a departed spirit would be given a choice between eternity in paradise or eternity in solitary confinement and that would then be the voluntary choice of the individual spirit?
Nobody does that, I mean nobody. Nobody chooses to enter permanent solitary confinement.
"unlike NDE experiencers, he is believed by Christians to have been resurrected on the third day after his death."
So, clinical death is not really a death, necessarily, just a deep state of low brain function.
So, where was Jesus while he was "dead"? Did his spirit leave his body and then come back in? Some people report that, that while they were supposedly dead they sensed their spirit had left their body and then they looked down upon their own dead body.
I had a dream like that once when I was a kid, a very long time ago. It was kind of disturbing at the time. That seems like the kind of dream a kid who has been fed a lot of stories about ghosts and spirits and souls might have. I grew out of that sort of thinking, so I have not been bothered by such dreams as an adult.
So, that seems like the same thing Jesus did. Or is it a matter of time? Jesus was dead much longer than regular folks who are dead and then come alive again, so that makes it a miracle, as opposed to just a spirit of a regular person that decides to come back into the body again?
"NDEs are remarkable experiences."
What is remarkable about them is that otherwise highly intelligent and educated people actually take them seriously as some sort of indication of contact with a sprit world, or glimpse into the afterlife.
Such claims of NDE either don't make any sense at all or are easily accounted for with distorted dreamlike hallucinations at a time when ordinary brain function has nearly ceased.
I have had 2 near death experiences myself. Both involved traffic collisions. In one case I saw a very bright light at the time of impact, during which I was disoriented and not reasoning rationally, and once I landed on the pavement time slowed down, seemingly, as pieces of debris fell slowly out of the air like scattered tinkling rain drops.
The second time I remember nothing of the impact, or the trip to the ER, or being put in the bed, or being x-rayed. All I remember is coming back to consciousness slowly in a hospital room surrounded by my family.
After that I had a distinct sense of a time gap in my life. While I ordinarily sense a continuous history in my memories, that collision and period of unconsciousness placed a gap in my personal timeline recollection.
That gap provides me with a visceral sense of what it is like to be dead, the words "I know what it's like to be dead" ring familiar to me when I hear that Beatles song.
My NDE is one reason I value this life so much, because I have a personal experience of the utter void of all perception that comes with death.
near-death experience
Deletenoun
an occurrence in which a person comes very close to dying and has memories of a spiritual experience (such as meeting dead friends and family members or seeing a white light) during the time when death was near
Starrdusky:
The second time I remember nothing of the impact, or the trip to the ER, or being put in the bed, or being x-rayed. All I remember is coming back to consciousness slowly in a hospital room surrounded by my family.
After that I had a distinct sense of a time gap in my life. While I ordinarily sense a continuous history in my memories, that collision and period of unconsciousness placed a gap in my personal timeline recollection.
Not having any memories during the time would mean it is specifically NOT a "near death experience" in its term-of-art meaning. It would be, perhaps, a "close brush with death", if the injuries were life threatening, but many injuries can cause unconsciousness without being close to life threatening.
What is remarkable about them is that otherwise highly intelligent and educated people actually take them seriously ...
Such claims of NDE either don't make any sense at all or are easily accounted for with distorted dreamlike hallucinations at a time when ordinary brain function has nearly ceased.
They are not ALL easily accounted for. In some NDEs, the person recounts learning of facts during the event that they had no plausible way of learning if something unusual wasn't happening. Facts that nobody in their vicinity knew, facts that none of the doctors, nurses, or family members discussed during the event, etc. Even if some of the experiences can be accounted for in natural terms (without using any account of "the soul" and "the afterlife"), others cannot.
Anon,
Delete"Not having any memories during the time would mean it is specifically NOT a "near death experience"
Your definition is wrong, pretty simple.
I had an experience as a consequence of being near death, so I had a near death experience, what part of that is difficult for you to understand?
"in its term-of-art meaning."
Your so-called art is grossly deficient.
"In some NDEs, the person recounts learning of facts during the event that they had no plausible way of learning if something unusual wasn't happening."
I advise you to watch your wallet, you are clearly vulnerable to scams. Psychics and faith healers get rich from that sort of gullibility.
You can read all kinds of reports of amazing occurrences that cannot be accounted for except by ghosts, extraterrestrials, visitations by angels, communications with spirits, or apparitions of Jesus or Mary.
Just stop to read the papers at your grocery store checkout stand.
But hey, that crying statue, that stuff was real, there is just "no plausible way" those tears could not be a sign from god, or Jesus, or Mary, or an angel, or your great great great grandmother...
This topic cannot be regarded as anything but pious speculation....
ReplyDeleteYes! If there is one topic that can only be (mis)-informed by pious speculation then the topic of what happens after death comes in at number 1.
DeleteAngels are pure spirit. Their choice to sin was instantaneous and irrevocable.
ReplyDeletehttps://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/Part%201/st1-ques51.pdf
All of what you have said about paranormal experiences and near-death experiences is true, What Aquinas was saying about the orientation of a man's soul being fixed at death, can only apply when that person's soul has left the body and is before God at the Particular Judgment. When that occurs is known to Him alone.
Anonymous
DeleteEd is not talking about a man's soul being fixed at death, he is talking about it being fixed after death.
"At" death seems to indicate that once you are dead, you cannot change your mind anymore, but "after" death does not necessarily indicate this.
There could be a last chance immedialtely after death when a person can make the right choice.
If God is truly loving and merciful, I think this is to be expected.
Yes, Walter, this is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church says about those who commit suicide, implying there is some last chance immediately after death.
Delete'Catechism of the Catholic Church - Paragraph # 2283. We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own live."
Anonymous
DeleteIf there is a last chance for those who commit suicide, there should be a last chance for everyone.
If you don't commit suicide, it is possible that your chance comes at a moment near but before death.
DeleteOther Anon
DeleteBut if those who commit suicide get a last chance after death, then everybody shouold get a last chance after death.
I think this link from Prof. Freddoso of Notre Dame about the theology of Angles and Demons is better than I what I had originally.
ReplyDeletehttps://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/papers/angelsdemons.pdf
Anon,
Delete"Chesterton had earlier remarked that modern philosophy’s “despair is this, that it does not really believe that there is any meaning in the universe.” Indeed, one gets the distinct impression that many among today’s intellectual elite prefer it this way, even if it makes their lives on the whole less deeply
satisfying. Apparently, there’s something ‘grown-up’ about embracing despair, and something childish about looking for an alternative."
Why would the realization of the finite nature of life lead to making life less satisfying?
Just the contrary, the realization that this life is all we get makes this life truly precious.
If I could live forever then these few decades would mean virtually nothing by comparison.
"And lined up on the other side are the world, the flesh, and, yes, the devil, along with all his demonic followers. What more could you ask for by way of excitement? It’s even better than J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord ofthe Rings, where only a few angelic beings (e.g., Sauron, Saruman, and Gandalf) play a leading role."
How apt to compare Christianity to a fictional adventure story.
To answer the question, I find the quest for ever more understanding of the true nature of the cosmos far more exciting than children's stories made up about demons and gods and spirits and angels.
"But who are these angels and demons? What sort of beings are they? What do they know and when do they know it? How did the demons go bad? And what do they have to do with us?
Where better to look for answers to these questions than the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas? "
Thomas was just making it up out of his imagination, or his imagined interpretations of other fictional accounts, just like all writers about demons and angels.
What, do you suppose Aquinas actually observed angels such that he could provide you with some realistic information about them?
"So the demons are too proud to serve the living God. Yet, at the same time, Satan and the other fallen angels are envious both of the angels who have remained faithful to God"
Do adults actually take such things seriously?
Stardusty, my friend, one day you will know how seriously you should have taken it. One day we all will know.
DeleteAnon, we will only know if our consciousness persists after death and delivers the information, something that many of us seriously doubt. Even if it does, you may discover that your paradigm for what is to happen is falsified.
DeleteWe will know, Stardusty, we will know. But I think of you as an honest seeker of the truth, not as a troll, just as the late athiest professor of philosophy Quentin Smith was. Ed Feser wrote a moving tribute to him on this blog and entrusted him to divine mercy. I do the same for you and for me.
ReplyDeleteHonest seekers of the truth do not go to hell.
ReplyDeleteDr. Feser, you write:
ReplyDelete"when the fallen angels willed wrongly, it was not because their intellects either affirmed some falsehood or lacked knowledge of some truth, but rather because they culpably did not attend to a truth they knew. In particular, it is not that they were ignorant of the beatific vision or wrongly denied its possibility, but rather that in their pride and envy they did not attend to the fact that it can be attained only by grace and not by their own power." (p.10)
I have two questions about this. First, why is their failure to attend culpable?
Second, what would prevent God from subsequently bringing it to their attention?
Dr. Feser, you write:
ReplyDelete"when the fallen angels willed wrongly, it was not because their intellects either affirmed some falsehood or lacked knowledge of some truth, but rather because they culpably did not attend to a truth they knew. In particular, it is not that they were ignorant of the beatific vision or wrongly denied its possibility, but rather that in their pride and envy they did not attend to the fact that it can be attained only by grace and not by their own power." (p.10)
I have two questions about this. First, why is their failure to attend culpable?
Second, what would prevent God from subsequently bringing it to their attention?