These are extremely grave delusions which, by fostering complacency, are sure to add to the number of the damned. In reality, there is no reasonable hope whatsoever that all are saved. The relevant philosophical and theological considerations make this conclusion unavoidable. I have addressed these issues in some depth in many articles over the years, and it seemed to me a good idea to collect them in one place for readers who might find that useful.
My most detailed
and academic presentation of the philosophical considerations showing that a
soul that is locked on evil at death will remain so perpetually can be found in
my New Blackfriars article “Aquinas
on the Fixity of the Will After Death” and in chapter 10 of my book Immortal
Souls: A Treatise on Human Nature.
I have also
addressed this issue, along with other questions that frequently arise in
connection with the idea of damnation, in a series of articles here at the
blog. Why can a soul that is damned not
repent? Is there a sense in which God
damns us, or are we damned only insofar as we damn ourselves? Would annihilation not be a more suitable
punishment than perpetual suffering? Could
we really be happy in heaven knowing that some are in hell? Might we deny that hell is everlasting without
also denying that heaven is everlasting? If there is no hell, why is it urgent to
repent and be baptized? Is it hateful to
warn people that they are in danger of hell?
Wouldn’t it be pointless for God to create people who end up
damned? These and other questions are
addressed in the following posts:
Speaking
(what you take to be) hard truths ≠ hatred
The evidence
from scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the Magisterium that
the reality of hell has been infallibly taught is overwhelming. I set this evidence out, and address some
common attempts to get around it, in the following articles:
Scripture
and the Fathers contra universalism
Popes,
creeds, councils, and catechisms contra universalism
In recent
years, the most influential defender of universalism has been David Bentley
Hart. At Catholic Herald, I reviewed Hart’s book That All Shall Be Saved:
David
Bentley Hart’s attack on Christian tradition fails to convince
Hart responded
to this review, and in reply to his response I wrote the following much more detailed
critique of his book:
I had reason
to revisit Hart’s arguments in a further article:
I address
Balthasar’s views and the dangerous complacency they foster in another series
of articles:
Finally, a
few posts that are not on the topic of hell per se, but are relevant. I would suggest that contemporary discomfort with
the doctrine of hell is, at least in part, more a reflection of the softness of
modern Western society than a genuinely Christian understanding of the divine
nature and the human condition. Modern people
simply cannot fathom a God who would permit great suffering, much less a God
who would actually inflict it as punishment.
But Christianity has always taught that suffering is necessary even for
the righteous, and is a feature rather than a bug of salvation history. And if even the righteous must suffer, how
much more the unrepentant wicked? A few relevant
articles are:
The
“first world problem” of evil
Augustine
on divine punishment of the good alongside the wicked
Great Post Dr Feser, I completely agree with the urgency to clarify the truth about damnation. It is of grave importance.
ReplyDeleteA couple of points however,
In your first post of suffering, you mention
"The most fundamental point Remler emphasizes is that suffering is the inevitable consequence of original sin. Now, this is easily misunderstood. The theologically uninformed often suppose that it means that God takes special action arbitrarily to inflict a punishment on us for something somebody else did – which, of course, sounds unjust or even crazy. But that is not what it means."
However Aquinas says
"It was due to Isaac to be killed by the mandate of God, who is Lord
of life and death. For God inflicts the punishment of death on all
men, the just and the unjust, for the sin of the first parents. If a man
executes this judgment through divine authority, then he does not
commit murder, even as God does not commit murder."
Aquinas is specially emphasizing that even if Issac may be free of any personal fault, he is still worthy of punishment (death and pain) due to original sin, and as something that can be ordered by God "directly" not merely allowed as a consequence.
It would be great if you clarify on that.
The second point is that, in your post on Augustine, you seem to suggest that suffering is necessary for God to be able to reorder our wills from lower order goods to higher order goods, atleast after the fall. Specifically you that it is important that we suffer here in this life to be happy in the life to come.
This seems to be very close to Eleonore Stump's position in her book Wandering in Darkness where she basically argues that Suffering is necessary for our sanctification without which God wouldn't be able to reorder our wills. Indeed, you have actually recommended the book in the further reading section of Five Proofs alongside McCabe and Davies. That seems to indicate you are atleast sympathetic to her arguments
It strikes me though that since our free will doesn't escape the divine will of God and as such since he could have just willed that we make the right choice in every circumstance even apart from the beatific vision. It seems to me that at any point (from our perspective, since God wills from eternity),God can reorder someone's will without having them suffer, ofcourse Stump argues in her book that this would violate freewill but I am not sure she makes the case convincingly.
I think that it would be of great help to everyone if you could comment upon these issues in the future. I for one think they would make for great posts! I think many of the readers of the blog would agree as well.
Cheers :)
Norm
Delete"Suffering is necessary for our salvation." But many people (good and bad) hardly suffer at all.
Aquinas is specially emphasizing that even if Issac may be free of any personal fault, he is still worthy of punishment (death and pain) due to original sin, and as something that can be ordered by God "directly" not merely allowed as a consequence.
DeleteI don't take Aquinas meaning this. Human nature isn't immortal of its own nature - immortality was a special gift to Adam as part of the gift of Original Justice with sanctifying grace. By losing that grace, Adam and Eve also lost the special gifts in Original Justice, thereby consigning them to mortality - and us. This is the normal state of humans without Original Justice. It is a punishment-in-a-sense when compared to our intended state, Original Justice, but it is natural per our un-elevated state. When God imposes death at X moment instead of Y moment, that isn't as such a punishment due for personal sin any more than God's designing that a tiger catch and eat this zebra is a punishment to the zebra. God may also use it as a punishment due for personal sin (for one who has sins not yet "paid for"), but that's also an example of God's overarching grace enabling us to work out our demerits here on Earth. When God allows pain and suffering to saints who have already merited glory, those sufferings are for others and are embraced by the saints as acts of love for Jesus and for those sinners being saved by Jesus and by their own sufferings (since they are "making up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ").
It strikes me though that since our free will doesn't escape the divine will of God and as such since he could have just willed that we make the right choice in every circumstance even apart from the beatific vision.
The saints also suggest that in theory it was sufficient for Christ to undergo the least possible suffering - or even merely to be born as a man - to merit salvation for all. They posit that what God planned is more fitting for the overall design he had. To the extent that WE cannot see the fittingness, just to that extent perhaps we cannot yet grasp the heights of the Plan itself?
Tony
DeleteYou seems to be missing out the part where in , Aquinas says that that God can command this punishment directly as in , he commanded Abraham to kill his son. If you read the post, Dr Feser wrote that God arbitrarily commanding punishment for someone as a result of original sin is absurd, but that's precisely what he did with Issac and that's precisely what Aquinas justifies when he says of this death which is owed to all men, "If a man
executes this judgment through divine authority, then he does not
commit murder".
My recollection is that Aquinas is saying that God can command death at any time for anyone, but does not (in that context) characterize that as punishment. IIRC, he expressly avoids characterizing such "command" imposition as punishment, except when he is characterizing it as a punishment for that person's own sin.
DeleteTake a more general principle: God freely chooses to will our continued existence. In no way is it obligatory for God to continue to will my existence, (or the universe's either). If at moment X he ceases to will my existence, I will stop existing altogether, I will be annihilated without any remains. This would not be punishment, because it is metaphysically impossible for a mere creature to have obtained a condition where their continued existence is owed to them by God. It is true that God has revealed that He won't annihilate everyone, He will continue the existence of persons forever, but nothing forced Him to will that, it is His free choice.
Take the same principle, and apply it inside of the physical world: for animals, the Providential plan for a worldly ecology is that some get killed as prey, so that predators can thrive. That's the "natural order". It isn't a punishment to a bird to be caught by a cat for food, it is the bird having a pre-ordained place which meant growing for some time and then being prey. However, if God issues a special command that the bird simply drop dead just before the cat attacks and kills it, God isn't contravening the bird's rights or nature, He merely causes by non-natural means a death He could have equally caused by natural means. He is running His providential plan through other means than merely natural causes - which is His right.
Humans are part of the animal kingdom: absent special graces, they are subject to physical effects and can be killed. It is thus part of the natural order (absent special graces) that men will die. They will die of illness if they don't die by animal attacks or accidental injuries or homicide. Men aren't owed (from God) that they live forever. Like with other animals, God can simply issue a separate-from-natural-causes command that Bob die, and Bob will die at that moment. But God's doing so doesn't contravene Bob's right to go on living - Bob never had any right to live longer than God's plan had provided for.
It is only from Original Justice that Adam and Eve were free from death, and in them death was a punishment for their personal sin. Their sin caused the rest of the race to not have Original Justice, and this is a "punishment" as compared to the immortality we would otherwise have had if they had not sinned. But it is also more properly understood as a loss of a gift than a punishment.
The saints and prophets also note that God doles out death as punishments for personal sin some of the time. The fact that God didn't owe to those individuals to not take away their lives doesn't prevent God from using death as a means of punishing sin.
DeleteTake God making the Earth to swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiron (Numbers 16): those men clearly sinned against God, and Moses foretold their deaths by such gruesome means as God's punishment of them. But not only were those men taken, so also were their wives and children. For those children too young to commit personal sins, their deaths were at the same time as the death of their fathers, but in them it was God merely taking their lives at a pre-ordained time, by different means than by illness or accident, which He has absolute right to do. If he had left one of them alive then to die later by plague or leprosy, it would still be God causing the death, for God is the cause of all things other than sin.
Aquinas cites Dt. 32:39:
See now that I, even I, am he;
there is no god besides me.
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
and no one can deliver from my hand.
to show that God causes even ordinary death. "But the evil which consists in the corruption of some things is reduced to God as the cause". But he insists that God is not the cause (i.e. the proper cause) of EVIL qua evil, for evil has an accidental cause (see Prima Pars Q 49). God wills the good, and that good includes within it what appears as if evil, for some things are evil considered under a narrow, more limited view. He wills the good of the whole order, and the whole order entails that predators eat prey, (which is "bad" for prey but good for the order), also that bad men suffer punishments, and that good men suffer in union with Christ for the sake of saving others.
DeleteTony, I don't necessarily disagree with everything you have said. Indeed I agree with most of it.
Our main disagreement stems from, whether the fact that God can command death to anyone at any point entails that itcan be specifically inflicted as punishment for original sin apart from any personal fault and I just think that Aquinas is very clear that it can be. Not only can God do that, he can ask someone to carry out this Punishment and that person is bound to do so by divine authority. As such he is arguing that even if God had not intervened to stop Abraham, it doesn't mean that God did anything wrong.
This is the clear implication of
"ST I-II , 100, 8, ad 3. “
If you have any other translation of it please do present it, I already gave you a translation above, I will give you the new advent translation as well, Aquinas says and I quote
"Likewise when Abraham consented to slay his son, he did not consent to murder, because his son was due to be slain by the command of God, Who is Lord of life and death: for He it is Who inflicts the punishment of death on all men, both godly and ungodly, on account of the sin of our first parent, and if a man be the executor of that sentence by Divine authority, he will be no murderer any more than God would be."
Aquinas is clearly saying here that, if a man executes the punishment of death ,for original sin at the Lord's command, it is just. The punishment talked about here is clearly for original sin, and it is inflicted by a person, directly at the behest of the Lord's command not as an accident of circumstance. So God can directly command someone to carry out this punishment for original sin
You are free to dispute that line of thinking in general but I think it's harder to dispute it as Aquinas's thought unless you are willing to produce a different translation.
Eminent Thomist Dr Steven Jensen makes this point clear in his book Good and Evil Action, pg 187.
" ... the truth about damnation. ... is of grave importance." Norm
DeleteHey, that's pretty good. Just caught it. Make a poster
Norm,
DeleteFirst, it helps to remember that in the early Church "geography" of the afterlife, everywhere that was not the place of union with God was "hell" - that's definitional, so everyone not in the state of sanctifying grace went to "hell".
But they didn't mean by that, that everyone suffered tortures and pains. Even St. Augustine, among the most fervent in insisting that all need the grace of baptism to avoid hell, said
“Who can doubt that non-baptized infants, having only original sin and no burden of personal sins, will suffer the lightest condemnation of all? I cannot define the amount and kind of their punishment, but I dare not say it were better for them never to have existed than to exist there”
But later theologians went even further away from saying infants suffered pains:
The Angelic Doctor consigned infants who died without baptism to the outermost borders of hell, which he called the “limbo of children.” They died without the grace of God, and would spend eternity without it, but they were not worthy of punishment. St. Thomas insisted that these little ones would know no pain or remorse. He explained this opinion in various ways. In his commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, he stated that no one regrets the lack of something which he is totally unequipped to have (II Sent. , d.33, q.2, a.2). Ten years later (in De Malo, q.5, a.3) he suggested that infants would not be distraught over their loss because they simply would have no knowledge of what they were missing.
It is then plausible, perhaps even probable, to interpret St. Thomas saying for He it is Who inflicts the punishment of death on all men, both godly and ungodly, on account of the sin of our first parent, , that the term of "punishment" is used narrowly and properly for Adam and Eve who sinned and who brought about the loss of Original Justice for all mankind, and it is used in a qualified sense in respect of those (infants) who have committed no personal sin, in that they are subject to death through a sin, and that condition detracts from the prior design of the gift of Original Justice being passed down through generation from Adam and Eve.
Aside from Catholic doctrines ... One of the craziest things about hell from those supposed NDE testimonials [howsoever they are grounded] given by those who've supposedly briefly sampled the experience of being damned, is their eventual resignation to the fact that they really did deserve to be there, however much it may have disagreeably surprised them initially, or they desired escape.
ReplyDeleteThis seems to be a recurring theme on a par with the tunnel of light, utter blackness, etc.
There is something about the disposition of the will, aside from "sins" comitted per se, that seems to be key in these accounts. And once again, that is accounting for however it is that these experiences originate, or their actual ontological status.
One of the other things that has struck me about the theoretic objections to hell is how they are based entirely on the assumption that the God of the Christians is adequately comprehended by critics of him, and that they can formulate a series of propositions on that basis demonstrating the injustice and resulting logical impossibility of such an exclusion based on their definition of "Good".
Basically, it eventually reduces to: It's all your fault. And if you gave me a will free to hate you and exclude myself from your presence, then that is your fault too. How dare a creator make a real reality featuring real beings having a real core of free dispositional will, capable of experiencing a reality that does not bend and produces real consequences. How selfish of Him.
It's a hatred of all being, ultimately. First, that of all outside or not dominated by the self and its capricious untempered will, and then finally of the self, itself.
You know what finally convinced me that universal salvation had a good chance of being true? It was the terrible arguments advanced by people trying to discredit it. Here, we have two absolute gems. First, people who briefly imagined themselves being in Hell as they were dying decided they probably belonged there, therefore an eternal hell is completely just. Wow, let the universalists tremble. And second, there's the same old tired appeal to libertarian free will, a philosophical doctrine which 1) doesn't even make any sense, 2) wasn't the way many of the great thinkers of the church, including Aquinas, understood free will, and 3) doesn't have an ounce of empircal data to support it anyway. The will follows the intellect; that's the traditional Christian conception of freedom. LFW is just an ad hoc attempt to make an eternal Hell morally plausible.
DeleteWell said, Thurible. And one particular person here becomes very animated, even calling out the name of the person that he knows is being engulfed by flames in Hell.
DeleteDo you know what convinced ne that hell and damnation were as plausible at least as universalism? It was the ridiculousness of the obvious 'comforting lies mothers tell their children' quality of Universalist arguments.
DeleteNow, as I had explicitly placed aside Catholic doctrine - which holds hell to be real - in order to focus on the anecdotal psychological phenomena recounted by many persons who purportedly or reportedly died, what was being considered is the notion of an absolute "justice" which emerges from their minds' reported encounter with the brick wall of a (perceived) ultimate reality in extremis.
What happens there, in those instances, is that the usual blanket of comforting lies, excuses and self justifications reportedly evaporates away in a confrontation with what these persons experience, or remember as, the ultimate.
And said to cause you to tremble?
Please be aware that I no more care if you believe in the words of Jesus Christ or the existence of hell, than if you go there.
I am merely observing the silliness of the indignation based argument of the run of the mill Universalists: their "Inconceiveable!!!" rhetoric is just as stupid as saying spiders cannot exist because the actual fate of their victims is too horrible to imagine. Or that nuclear weapons use is "inconceiveable". And that the reports of persons who have been pronounced clinically dead, show at the least it is quite conceiveable and that they experience and grasp an evaluative framework in which it is so.
Because reality, whatever it is, does not adapt itself to the self consolatations and hand waving reassurances of bullshit artists.
Which brings me to your use of the phrase "morally plausible" which concedes what is already obvious and what D.B.Hart stated outright: That he could not accept the possibility because it offended him. And if there were a God such as the Bible describes, that Hart wanted nothing to do with him.
Well, as Granny used to say, "Go ahead if you are set on it, please yourself, and be damned"
Huh. Maybe she really only said the first part, being the gentlewoman she was.
I think Hart's would say the God of eternal damnation literally can't exist, since he would be evil and therefore not God, which is a perfectly legimate reason for rejecting a false god, in exactly the same way that it would be completely legitimate to reject a God who is finite or changeable. If you want to get technical, you could say what's being rejected is a "picture" of God. Hart isn't threatening to become an atheist.
DeleteAnd this isn't a matter of being "offended;" it's a matter of what Hart calls "moral nihilism:" the refusal to differentiate between good and evil when it comes to what we say of God. On the infernalist view, God is apparently so beyond our comprehension that things that seem obviously wrong (by God's own standards!) might mysteriously turn out to be right when He does them. It's the logic of the insane person who says they murdered their neighbor because "God" told them to do it, and since the command came from "God," it must be right, no matter how wrong it appears. It's fideism, pure and simple, and violence against conscience.
"Hart isn't threatening to become an atheist."
DeleteThere is probably little danger of that since basically, he sycretistically makes his God of Vedantic Christianity religion up as he creatively ambles along.
In fact he has discovered that in some non trivial sense he is God too.
Hart, famously,
" I do not care whether what I say fits a particular definition of orthodoxy, in part because such definitions are inconsistent, but mostly (I admit it) because I do not believe in the organs of authority that you believe in. I am also, you are right, a radical metaphysical monist, and a syncretist to the very core of my being. I deny none of it. We really do not believe the same things, Ed. And, if you think that what you believe is both Christian orthodoxy and truth itself, then you are quite right to see me as heterodox in many or most of my convictions."
So ...
"And this isn't a matter of being "offended"
No? As Feser noted ...
" ... he holds that the tradition is not just wrong, and not merely too pessimistic, but “manifestly absurd,” “morally horrid”, “abominable”, “loathsome and degrading”, “morally obtuse”, “perverse”, “inexcusably cruel”, “morally corrupt”, “religious psychopathology”, “logically incoherent”, and “essentially wicked”, to cite only the epithets I remember. In fact, Hart claims that if Christianity cannot be reconciled with his universalist position, then we must give up Christianity rather than give up universalism."
https://catholicherald.co.uk/david-bentley-harts-attack-on-christian-tradition-fails-to-
convince/
If that is not indicative enough perhaps we can find you a "bugs that think" moment where he expresses it with that exact word.
@TGTD
Deletei'am no fan of libertarian free will myself, but this got me curious:
"and 3) doesn't have an ounce of empircal data to support it anyway."
What do you have in mind when you think of something that would be capable of filling the spot of empirical evidence of libertarian free will? Is seems quite a philosophical question.
@Talmid
DeleteWell, most people who support libertarian free will are Cartesian dualists (either that or, like the many Thomists who believe it, they're making an arbitrary exception that doesn't fit their philosophical system). So basically, they need there to be gaps in the physical causality of neuroscience to make room for the immaterial causality of the sovereign will. Specifically, we ought to be most free when our decisions are most arbitrary, which is the exact opposite of what studies in decision-making find; we seem to be the least free when there's nothing to determine our choice. This is exactly what the intellectualist conception of free will would predict, although it's obviously also compatible with compatiblism. I am taking LFW and voluntarism to be two sides of the same coin, which I guess could be debatable.
I am obviously not the grey thimble full of darkness, but this question melds with Thimble's comments: "What do you have in mind when you think of something that would be capable of filling the spot of empirical evidence of libertarian free will? "
DeleteAnd here is the point that seems clear to me: that so-called "libertarian" free will has no irreplaceable role in formulating a Christian theodicy ... but that that is, oddly enough, from a purely secular point of view.
Unless one takes the position that human organisms are merely self-aware but wholly determined automatons [ a rider on the elephant style analogy], relatively prosaic, and seemingly trivial conceptions of acknowledged free will, will work their way into one's interpretive framework, notwithstanding laboratory demonstrations of pre-conscious/awareness decision makng or selection; notwithstanding autonomic processes, sympathetic and parasympathetic physical processes. Because in order for a will to be expressed at all, it must be embedded first, or express from, a given boundaried context, where there exists the potential for intentional objects to appear and subquently to be processed within a locus of intentionality , and preferentially evaluated.
Perfect knowledge or reasoning, is not required, nor analogically are 6 degrees of freedom. Only a relative, self-reflective feedback generated freedom, and a liberty from complete compulsion, is required for sufficient liberty to exist in order for an evaluation, even if retrospective, to be performed in context: A context in which a disposition is generally built up and solidified out of many preference opportunities, and many instances of conscious self-questioning regarding those choices. The fact that a reflection follows a previous, and perhaps unconscious choice is opening enough, a sufficient crack - or hiatus - in the stimulus response routine to add or establish, an objective moral evaluation and responsibility dimension to the particular context.
Now under this scenario, might a man nonetheless drift his way to hell through innumerable self-indulgent essentially nihilistic resentment grounded choices?
Yeah ... if there were a hell, yeah. Fortunately for sincere and orthodox Christians, of both Catholic and Protestant varieties, all that is believed required is that at some point, the earlier the better, but even at the last moment, the truly penitent yield his own will, and call upon His name with proper intention.
Seems a little lenient to me, but there you go.
@DNW
DeleteChristians should be offended by things that are morally repulsive. If you substituted "abortion" for "tradition," nobody would think Hart was being hateful or melodramatic. Besides, Dr. Feser has absolutely no room to play the "he's just offended" card, since the very same thing could apply to his response to Hart's rhetoric.
And speaking of rhetoric, part of why people get so offended at Hart's more adventurous theological statements is because they're not familiar with the kind of theological speculation that was permitted for most of church history. "Orthodoxy" wasn't always rigorously enforced by bureaucrats in the Vatican, and it certainly isn't as consistent as conservative Catholics need it to be for their conception of orthodoxy to carry much weight. But pay attention to what he's really saying: I care more about what I think is true than what you think is "orthodox." What's he supposed to do instead? Embrace an orthodoxy he thinks doesn't hold water? Pretend to believe something he doesn't just to please a church he doesn't even belong to? Is that kind of fideism really what God wants from us?
(Also, if you think Hart is "making his God up as he ambles along," I mean... his God is the God of classical theism, full stop. He just draws conclusions from that the other people aren't willing to draw.)
Have you ever actually listened to Hart talk, incidentally? Go listen to an interview with him. Does he sound hateful and hysterical? Does he sound like the doctrine of an eternal hell just hurts his feelings, or does he sound like he knows a lot about theology and philosophy and church history and he's wearied by people trying to discredit ideas that they obviously don't understand just because they find them threatening? Sure, Hart gives absolutely no deference to the self-proclaimed defenders to orthodoxy, but why would you expect him to? If he thinks an eternal hell is a philosophically incoherent idea that says blasphemous things about God, why should he pretend to think it's not?
"@DNW
DeleteChristians should be offended by things that are morally repulsive."
Is that a concession to and an acknowledgement of the terminology, I employed and the citations I provided? Because whether or not intended, functionally, it is.
I do note that you have, surprisingly to me, and reasonably, provided previously missing context for your remarks inveighing against "libertarian free will".
And that missing context is what, if any, relevance libertarian free will might have had with regard to my particular remarks. Which in hindsight was: little to none directly.
Thus both the concept of and objections to any conclusion positing libertarian free will as a premise [or premiss] , only functions within a specific set of initially dubious assumptions which condition the analysis. I.e.,
" ... most people who support libertarian free will are Cartesian dualists ..."
And,
" ... they need there to be gaps in the physical causality of neuroscience to make room for the immaterial causality of the [i.e., their] sovereign will.
I don't know many who argue for a sovereign immaterial will free to will what it wills from some position floating over and "above" any specific stimuli or context or materiality. Or at least I don't read them. So no, that does not make any sense to me either.
I did not encounter that notion advanced as tenable in my psychology curricula, in philosophical anthropology and related courses, nor in the coursework in phenomenology* or basic linguistic philosophy approaches, which more or less guide my perspective on intentionality now, despite the seductions of the old behaviorism.
We have free will in very "trivial" and superficial seeming, yet profound senses which Austin might have pointed out. Or in the way Ayer addressed the concept of private language with an initially snide appearing essay remark; which in fact, clarified the domain of relevant discourse.
* Never successfully made any profound sense out of Husserl's transcendental ego
I think I forgot to clean up an edit and a couple keypad misstrikes which have to be back scanned visually, as I have spell check and autocorrect disabled. Shrug. Good enough for Tablet work ... and a combox
DeleteBut pay attention to what he's really saying: I care more about what I think is true than what you think is "orthodox." What's he supposed to do instead? Embrace an orthodoxy he thinks doesn't hold water? Pretend to believe something he doesn't just to please a church he doesn't even belong to?
DeleteThe answer is the same answer that the Apostles made, and the men they taught made, and the men that followed after: To believe what Christ taught, even when I don't know how to "make it hold water" with everything else I grasp. Orthodoxy isn't "believing what is taught by orthodoxy", it is "believing what Christ taught and what He handed down through the Church He established and protects".
When Christ said "Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you", many of his disciples left because they thought it didn't "hold water". The act of faith was to believe in Christ's teaching even while not yet being able to see how it holds water. A Christian doesn't "care more about what he thinks is true", he cares more about what Christ says is true - even if it is a "hard saying".
When someone believes in Christ but rejects a Church "he doesn't even belong to" simply because it teaches stuff that he can't see how it holds water, how is that different from the disciples walking away from Christ?
@TGTD
DeleteI see, interesting point there. Libertarian free will to me is still a concept so hard to truly get that i admit that i have trouble imagining it on a test.
Existencial Comics point that our view of freedom pressuposed on things like time-travel histories is not very libertarian* did influence me on visualizing free will.
@DNW
Funny that even people more associated with libertarian free will like Beauvoir did offer a similar analysis of free will, that it is affected by the body, past etc but it nevertheless is a will that is free and that it needs these conditions to be a will at all.
*Multiverse series seems a exception, i guess
"Also, if you think Hart is "making his God up as he ambles along," I mean... his God is the God of classical theism, full stop."
DeletePlease take more care to quote accurately, or at least indicate you are nonchalantly caricaturing rather than accurately representing.
Because I actually wrote this.
" ... he sycretistically makes his God of Vedantic Christianity religion up as he creatively ambles along."
And Hart himself wrote, as I previously quoted,
"I do not care whether what I say fits a particular definition of orthodoxy, in part because such definitions are inconsistent, but mostly (I admit it) because I do not believe in the organs of authority that you believe in. I am also, you are right, a radical metaphysical monist, and a syncretist to the very core of my being. I deny none of it."
"These are extremely grave delusions which, by fostering complacency, are sure to add to the number of the damned."
ReplyDeleteThe doctrine of an eternal hell also surely adds the number of the damned by convincing them to reject the God of Christianity. In fact, just about everyone knows a real, actual human being who's rejected the Church at least partially because of the doctrine of eternal hell (and that's not to mention people who have stayed Christian only because of universalism). That's a much stronger argument than vague appeals to "fostering complacency." Consequentialism is not a safe game for infernalists to play.
But you won’t be damned if you reject Christianity on the Universalist view. At worst you’ll suffer a longer purgation. And how painful is the purgation to be expected before Universalists will say that is also unjust? Many Universalists seem to oppose capital punishment and life in prison which are extremely short (relatively) retributive punishments. I don’t think your argument works.
DeleteI agree consequentialism does not make a difference about the truth of the matter, but it certainly illustrates the gravity of the matter. If you do not care about Catholic doctrine, then I think a variation on Pascal’s Wager would at least make one act as if the Infernalist position were true.
I think we should all at least pray for the gift of final perseverance.
The Universalists among the Fathers thought purgation would last for aeons, and would be a slow and painful process, so you're beginning with a straw man. Universalists oppose capital punishment because 1) the Early Church did too, and 2) they reject the principle of retribution as an end in itself, and 3) they want evildoers to have as many chances as possible to repent and avoid that aeons and aeons of purgation. It's a perfectly coherent position.
DeleteAs for Pascal's Wager, I offer you Kreeft's Wager, which you'll find in chapter 1 his book "Forty Reasons I Am A Catholic:" Who would a perfect God think was closer to truth, an honest atheist, or a dishonest Catholic? Kreeft thinks the former, and surely the same applies to infernalists and universalists. Why not assume God is good and just and wants us to honestly seek the truth, rather than attempt shut down debate with fear?
FYI not every universalist opposes capital punishment. I was a convinced universalist for a long time and was totally in favor of the death penalty. Because there is a world of difference between eternal perdition and death. I had no problem with executing a particularly evil criminal; I did, however, have a problem with that evil criminal being lost forever (especially tortured forever).
DeleteNow I no longer count myself as a universalist because of some specific issues (though to be fair, I am still open to it and am much closer to universalism than the standard infernalist view), but I still defend capital punishment. And I still think universalists can and should accept capital punishment as well.
Universalists do not have to reject retributive justice or the idea that capital punishment is proper retribution.
And capital punishment doesn't strictly require retributive justice, either.
Just saying
Even if Hell is currently empty, you wouldn't want to the first!
ReplyDeleteI've been interested in this topic for a long time. I initially was a convinced "infernalist," but the arguments I found for universal reconciliation, if not totally convincing, were at least enough to move me to a Balthasarian hopeful universalism.
ReplyDeleteMy mother died in April, after having battled addiction and lived a sinfulness and squalid life. When she died, the only words that gave me hope were from St. Gregory of Nyssa's work on the Soul and Resurrection where he talks about God dragging the souls of the sinners out from under their sins like bodies being pulled from the wreckage of an earthquake.
At the end of the day, I knew all the talk about free will and such was bunk. The traditional Thomists put it in starker terms: God only willed to save some and not others at the end of the day. I'm not sure I can believe that anymore.
"... the arguments I found for universal reconciliation, if not totally convincing, were at least enough to move me to a Balthasarian hopeful universalism. ...
ReplyDeleteAt the end of the day, I knew all the talk about free will and such was bunk"
I suppose you had no choice but to say that.
What I mean is that you cannot freely will yourself to Heaven. The eventual perseverance of the saints, on the traditional view, is a grace that God either does or does not bestow upon a soul.
DeleteFrom the First Part of the Second Part, questions on merit:
"Hence it is clear that the perseverance of glory which is the term of the aforesaid movement falls under merit; but perseverance of the wayfarer does not fall under merit, since it depends solely on the Divine motion, which is the principle of all merit. Now God freely bestows the good of perseverance, on whomsoever He bestows it."
The "hell is locked from the inside" defense only works if you believe that people have the power to choose heaven under their own power. Traditionally, the denizens of hell have been regarded as very much there against their will.
What about molinism? It is a acceptable position that is closer to what St. Thomas denies here.
DeleteTo my, admittedly amateur and non-professional mind as a philosopher and a theologian, Molinism strikes me as the same thing but with different steps. The problem of damnation being a state that God is ultimately the cause of is derived not from the problem of freedom persay but what must necessarily follow from the implications of creation ex nihilo.
DeleteHaving studied the issue, I'm not really sure why people are so militantly against the hopeful universalist position. Especially since I think it has a great deal of pastoral value, and if construed in the proper way is not heretical.
It seems that what we must hold by faith is the following:
1. That Hell is real.
2. It is eternal in nature.
3. Fallen angels and human beings who die in a state of unrepentant mortal sin go there.
4. It is not the same thing as purgatory.
As long as you don't deny any of these things, you should be within the bounds of orthodoxy. One could hold a variety of "hopeful universalist" positions, such as:
1. Hell is exactly as described, but nobody goes there.
2. Hell is exactly as described, people go there, but God, at a certain point, releases the souls bound there on behalf of the prayers of the elect. In this view, Hell is eternal by the very nature of the thing, but God, being sovereign over creation, has the power to "commute" the sentences of the damned. This at the very least makes sense of the belief that it would be more fitting for the saints to pray for the damned as opposed to rejoicing in their suffering, as per the tradition of Peter Lombard.
3. Hell is real, people go there, but what is destroyed in Hell is the false self constructed by sinful behavior through life. In this reading, the false self is eternally destroyed in Hell, while the true self, or the self intended by God, is released unto purgation.
There are more or less problems with each of these readings, but they are not, as far as I can see, heretical.
I suppose that the dificult it is not these views being officialy heretical but that, given what we know from Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, these views seems to probably not being true.
DeleteDr. Feser do argue for this position on some of the posts he linked, i admit that the normal way of thinking about hell on the Church for a long time is a infernalist way.
That's how I used to feel. But then I started looking into figures like Origen and Nyssa and Clement of Alexandria who, say what you will, were closer to the source text both linguistically and culturally, and how they read the text. Plus, I think the linguistic case from the original Greek, while not a "slam dunk" against the traditional reading on Hell, throws it into some doubt.
DeleteAt the end of the day, I'm not "dogmatically" convinced that universalism is true, but I think its a healthy pious hope. I don't think it has the negative effect on morals that people think it does, and it helps people who have serious doubts on how this doctrine has developed have a greater peace with the church and with God. Indeed, I think it's a more fitting picture of God, but I don't go as far as some in saying that "infernalists" have a "twisted picture" of God.
That seems to me a pretty good view to take. While i see hell as having residents, how much who knows, i can see value in a hopeful universalism, i really hope to be wrong on infernalism! And it did have aderents on the East back them, that is a group that i respect a lot.
DeleteIf we didn't have Christ's (many) warnings about the wide road to hell and the narrow way to heaven, and his actions at the final judgment to send the wicked to eternal punishment, and so on, I would say that perhaps hopeful universalism is at least arguable, as to humans i.e. that there are no humans consigned to hell. I believe that even with that, it is heretical to claim (a) that there are no demons in hell, or (b) to claim that humans in hell merely have their "false selves" so-called 'destroyed" so that they can be purged to new life. That is just another description of Purgatory.
DeleteBecause we DO have all those warnings by Christ, I think that trying to weave out of them a hopeful universalist position for humans) is - while perhaps not explicitly heretical yet - is attempting to make wine out of a sow's ear. If universalism (hopeful or otherwise) is valid, surely Christ would have taught differently than what he did! Surely he would have described the Final Judgment differently. Surely he would have wanted, in theological teachings, to put forth a firmer basis for it than repeatedly describing hell the way he did describe it.
The many, many saints - Fathers and Doctors and theologians - who believed fully and utterly in a real hell actually populated for all eternity, who believed in Christ without limit, who loved God with an intensity that transcends description, attests to the fact that the Gospel message is not one of universalism. Rejecting that testimony because there is a facet of it that we don't fully understand is not where the smart betting runs.
I mean, whether or not Jesus was talking about the exact understanding of Hell that is dominant today is the question under dispute. Linguists and theologians disagree on these matters. It's not the universal consensus of the early church, as figures like St. Gregory Nyssa, Origen, Clement of Alexandria, etc illustrate. The universalist position was, it seems, widely held in the first five centuries of the Church, especially in Syria and the Levant. If this wasn't the case, Augustine wouldn't have bothered to write against these so-called "merciful hearted."
DeleteYes it's true that the dominant strain of church tradition is what we think of as the current doctrine of Hell, but that doesn't mean theologians can't advance other theories tentatively under the judgement of the Magisterium. This is what I see very often. I consider myself a traditionalist, but I see many traditionalists say that the Church has definitively ruled on something just because pious and influential people throughout history have believed it. That's not enough. If it were, this is a double-edged sword because if we want to say that we can ignore dissenting voices in the early fathers on the topic of Hell, then what do we do with seeming doctrinal reversals like the teaching on slavery, a practice that most church fathers and theologians accepted as licit until the 19th century? Saying a majority view can never be wrong causes major issues. This is what happens when we are too profligate with how we assign things to the consensus of the fathers/theologians.
@Tony
DeleteOur Lord warnings and the overall theme of saved vs lost that goes during all Sacred Scripture do seems to me the best arguments to infernalism. It just fits with how things are presented.
But Balthasar view do have a bit of merit when not insisted strongly. It is a wish with a "perhaps..." that while i can not hope for i can see why one would.
@Aurelian
Dr. Feser and others do point out that there is a diference between servitude and slavery, with only the first being okay to the fathers. St. Louis of Montfort do use a similar distinction as well.
I do wonder, how much these universalist views impacted the East?
I think the problem is having an unpleasant personality. Your personality type cannot change, and therefore having indulgences dispensed, even by the Creator Himself, cannot remedy that.
ReplyDeleteLike the perpetually frozen embryos, for which it is mortal sin to sustain their natural existence and it is equally mortal sin to destroy them, some problems in life admit for no easy solutions. Much like how most integrals are unsolvable in closed form, so are most souls unsaveable.
By the way, and just because this topic has surprisingly stirred up in some what looks to be a great depth of feeling, I will note that if Universalism were true, it would be fine with me.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I personally doubt it would have the gentling effects in the here and now which some [not necessarily here] seem to insinuate, that would be OK too.
Universalism would certainly - if one accepted supernaturalism at all - relieve one of numerous concerns connected with the treatment of the annoying or undesireable; both as regards their ultimate fate, and one's own.
Unless you imagined that "heaven" was fitted with economy, business, and first class rows, they would all be sent off to a far far better place, regardless of passing concerns with so-called justice, charity, or due.
Might be considered as a very liberating point of view.
I accept the teachings of the Church. I must admit I struggle with the idea of Hell, though. I could state my problem thus: Hell is the deliberate rejection of God for all eternity, understanding the gravity and eternity of this choice. It's impossible to imagine a rational being choosing this. But if it's not a rational choice, is it a free choice?
ReplyDeleteConcerning you Blackfriars piece, I'll ask again: (1) Why believe that the sinful angels' failure to attend to what they know is (fully) culpable; (2) What, if anything, prevents God from subsequently bringing the relevant knowledge to their attention?
ReplyDeleteBecause there was in them nothing by which their attending to what they knew was blocked or impeded, but their own free choice to not attend. The mystery of wholly evil choice is this, that it cannot possibly have a fully adequate explanatory efficient cause, what it has is per se a deficient cause. To find an adequate cause would be to find what "justifies" it, and that's just what there cannot be. The free will is free to reject a good in favor of a lesser good, in spite of there never being a GOOD reason to do so, in the very principle of things.
DeleteI don't this response will work. First, the idea of choosing not to attend is incoherent. Any choice to not attend to X would require a prior attending to X. Otherwise, what is the object of the choice? Second, (barring some voluntarist notion of 'freedom') a rational person cannot freely reject a greater for a lesser good unless he/she/it suffers from some defect. Whence the defect?
DeleteThat's why there are no fallen angels if they exist.
DeleteI saw Dr Feser's X about a gofundme for David Bentley Hart, and I will pray for him and make a donation.
ReplyDeleteIt was really nice of Dr. Feser to donate, especially after all the, uh... let's call it "theological bombast" that's passed between him and DBH over the years. Still, I'm not surprised. Beneath that flinty Thomist exterior, he's got a lot of old-fashioned, kind-hearted Christian charity. At least, that's the impression I've got from all these years reading his blog.
DeleteI know from talking to Catholic chaplains that they give an anointing and absolution to all dead soldiers they encounter on the battlefield. They told me that what happens to their souls after that is known to God alone.
ReplyDeleteI have a question, with a prefatory caveat:
ReplyDeletePrefatory Caveat:
I imagine this has been asked and answered elsewhere, but for whatever reason, I can't locate it. So, give a brother a hand, willya folks, and either gimme a link or an on-point response?
The Question:
Why do some people claim that Matthew 26:24 proves conclusively that Judas Iscariot went to eternal hell?
I think most agree that "things don't look good for Judas Iscariot, vis-a-vis damnation." But the passage has been taken to prove the damnation of Judas, and I'm not so sure that the proof is as airtight as some suggest:
“Woe to that man by whom the Son of man shall be betrayed: it were better for him, if that man had never been born” (Matthew 26:24)
I get that "never been born" is often used as a shorthand for "never existed at all." But I imagine that the phrase can also be used to mean, "existed, but never been born; i.e. miscarried." The latter is the more literal reading.
Let us say that it can be taken either way.
If we say that it was better that Judas Iscariot never existed at all, then it seems we're claiming that non-existence is preferable over existence with pain. But in that case, has God not made an error, in allowing Judas Iscariot to exist to begin with? I thought the idea was that God never allows any evil, unless He was going to bring a greater good from it?
Perhaps we can avoid this problem by paying attention to the phrase, "It were better for him...." In saying that it would have been better for him; that is, for Judas Iscariot himself, Jesus still allows that for humanity in general, the existence and betrayal of Judas produced a greater good. In other words, we can say that a very great good was brought out from Judas' existence, even though there is no greater good to be derived from Judas' own narrow perspective.)
But that leads us to another problem: How can we look at two options and say that one of them is better for Judas than the other, if Judas doesn't even exist in the other option? How can non-existence be better for a non-existent subject? How do you compare two options when one of the two options renders the comparison moot?
So much for the reading of the passage which takes "never have been born" to mean "never to have existed."
Turning to the other possible reading: Would it have been better for Judas to have been conceived in his mother's womb, only to have been miscarried, than to grow to manhood and betray the Son of God?
Well, yes! Trivially so! ...but in that reading, we can't make an argument for Judas' damnation, can we?
Presume for the moment that betraying Christ and committing suicide could plausibly lead to purgatory rather than hell.
And, presume for a moment (as I think most persons will) that miscarried or aborted persons are not damned to either eternal hell or purgatory. (What they get instead isn't relevant; you can say Heaven or Limbo or whatever you like, as long as it isn't hell or an unpleasant purgatorial experience. And I doubt that a person who never reached self-awareness could plausibly get anything like purgatory, since there'll be no temporal consequences of sin to be purged!)
So in that case, we could argue that Judas Iscariot got a difficult, painful purgatorial experience, and that Jesus is saying it would have been better for Judas (but not necessarily the rest of us) if Judas had been miscarried, since the after-death experience of a miscarried baby is far preferable to the kind of nasty purgation Judas would certainly get.
That follows; and, it doesn't require us to hold that Judas went to hell eternally. It allows that, but doesn't require it.
So that's the dilemma: The less-literal reading (nonexistence) appears to be full of problems; the more-literal reading (miscarriage) still works even if Judas doesn't go to hell forever.
Thus, the passage doesn't (to me) appear to prove what some claim.
Comments, anyone?
Purgation followed by beatitude is plausibly better than limbo which is why abortion is so evil. It robs children of the chance at a greater eternal happiness. So Judas certainly could have been damned. Also Jesus could have meant “exist” instead of born but also been speaking loosely or hyperbolically and not on a technical Thomistic ontological level.
DeleteLastly, Judas is also called the Son of Perdition. I don’t know how that goes with him just experiencing a temporary purgation. I think if anyone is in Hell (which I fortunately believe is the case), it would be Judas Iscariot.
"And, presume for a moment (as I think most persons will) that miscarried or aborted persons are not damned to either eternal hell or purgatory. (What they get instead isn't relevant; you can say Heaven or Limbo or whatever you like, as long as it isn't hell or an unpleasant purgatorial experience."
DeleteIf we imagine that a miscarried person goes to limbo, them living a full life and going to a painful period on purgatory actually would be better, for in the end you will be saved.
Of course, i admit that a lot of the weight of the tradicional reading is that it is traditional and that the contrast it generates between St. Peter and Judas is just fantastic, a very good message about forgiviness, but you raised interesting points.
My late pastor, who was an eminent scripture scholar, used to think that the wicked will be annihilated. He thought removal of the act of existence was the harsher punishment.
ReplyDeleteYes
DeleteThat is what Seventh Day Adventists believe. Annihilation.
This is pretty much why I don't think annihilationism is true.
DeleteIt would be an objective harm that God directly and intentionally inflicted on souls to destroy them. Hell, by contrast is the experience one gets when one rejects all goodness. God only gives you what is actually good for you, it's your fault if you have decided you don't like it.
@Anon #2: I think you may be wrong in what you say about God's inflicting an objective harm. Perhaps I should have said, not "removal of the act of existence" but rather, "God's willing not to sustain the creature's act of existence." On Prof. Feser's denial of existential inertia, a thing cannot "have/make an act of existence" unless God sustains its act of existence at every moment. So it's not at all obvious, if denial of existential inertia is orthodox Thomism, that God is inflicting harm by sustaining Joe's act of existence at time t and not at time t1.
DeleteWhat you say about hell gives the story of creatures choosing Hotel Hell instead of Hotel Heaven. What has happened to retributive justice?
Why would there be any problem with retributive justice?
DeleteIt seems to me exceedingly elegant that the demands of justice can be accomplished without God having to actually do anything unique or discrete to the damned. The result is exactly the same. You both get exactly what you ask for and exactly what you deserve.
@Anon #2: you are conceding that no Thomistic theses about God's attributes are violated if God is held to sustain a creature in existence at one time (God is "outside of time" of course) and not at another time?
DeleteThe Catechism says that the wicked suffer "the punishments of hell," chief of which is eternal separation from God. You are using "punishment" under a non-standard sense if you deny that there is an agent that inflicts the punishment. Aquinas teaches that God inflicts punishment ("... aeternae poenae reproborum a Deo inflictae"), although He does not delight in the punishments themselves but in the order of His justice, ST 1a2ae 87 ad 2, ad 3.
I don’t deny that God really does inflict a punishment on the damned. All I’m saying is that God gives you what is actually good for you. If you are the kind of person who loves God and has conformed your will to Him, that will make you exceedingly happy. If you are the kind of person who has put your will in opposition to God, then that same good that God gives you will be torturous.
DeleteAnnihilation would be God inflicting something that is actually bad for you, not some good thing which you perceive as painful and unpleasant.
"I would argue that even purely philosophical argumentation can establish that the soul that is in a state of rebellion against God at death will remain that way forever."
ReplyDeleteWell, that's technically true, since depending on which axioms one adopts this follows as a necessary conclusion.
But then, the opposite is also true, since "purely philosophical argumentation can establish that the soul that is in a state of rebellion against God at death will":
a) Be forgiven, no strings attached;
b) Be eternally punished because yes;
c) Be annihilated;
d) Be reincarnated in a new physical body as changeable as the previous one (depending on the argument this includes or excludes non-human lifes);
e) Continue changeable in an afterlife that's pretty much similar to earthly life;
f) Move into a new kind of existence that's dissimilar to spatio-temporal earthly life but also from either eternal punishment or eternal salvation;
g) None of the above, as souls doesn't exist;
h) None of the above and neither "g", as souls neither exist nor don't exist, because both nihilism and eternalism are false views arising from the delusion of a permanent self;
Etc.
I would say it's not so much the existence of Hell that bothers people, but the fact that it's spoken of as if people just fall into it. We are told that the fallen angels had complete knowledge of the decision they were making and yet still went along with it. They made a real choice. Yet, we are told that it won't be a choice for human beings, at least not a choice as we understand choice. And not only that, that damnation is the default state for human beings.
ReplyDeleteYet, if we suppose that human beings can make a real choice, something that has the qualities of the choices we see on Earth, then universalism and default damnation are not the only possibilities.
The argument that human beings cannot chose after death crucially depends on supposing that the powers of the human mind which work alongside the body are *entirely* dependent on the body. Alternatively, that only the powers of the soul (intellect and will) that we can be *sure* do not use the body are left when the body dies.
But that those must survive does not entail that no others can possibly survive. There may be some redundancy in the powers of the human soul. For instance, the scholastic philosophers believed in visions or dreams where the dead appear to the living. And in those visions, the dead have an appearance as well as memory and personality. The scholastic philosophers would say that God restores these powers to souls in such situations. That is one possibility but it is not the only one.
There is a principle in the Aristotelian philosophy that knowledge comes first through sense experience. The things that we experience in this life on Earth are not just the negation of eternal things, they have positive qualities of their own. And we know this through our sense experience and reasoning. In fact, the way that the soul and angels are spoken of in the scholastic philosophy, it's almost as if they are viewed as the negation of positive qualities that we experience on Earth. If angels have all their knowledge from the moment of their creation, then it would seem that they can't learn. But isn't it just as reasonable that there are positive qualities possessed by angels that we are unaware of? The arguments about the nature of angels and the soul crucially depend on intuitions about things which we have not experienced through the senses. The scholastic theories are one possibility but it cannot be said that they are the only one.
And so, it is reasonable to believe that the soul at death makes a real choice, a choice as we understand choice.
Yet, we are told that it won't be a choice for human beings, at least not a choice as we understand choice.
DeleteA deliberate mortal sin is a choice as we understand choice.
Ed,
ReplyDeleteI would like to see you address Ty Monroe's criticisms of the post-mortem fixity of the will. It does not seem to me that your article in New Blackfriars or book on the soul address the most pressing issues vis-a-vis this doctrine:
- How is this issue to be squared with purgatory? (This is not only a theological question.)
- How does the soul "bind" to the resurrected body so that it does not change even though it has sense experience again?
- Why can God not change the wills after death or allow for more chances? Thomas's position seems to go right up to Calvin's view that God just holds the wills in their decision, but Aquinas doesn't want to admit it.
- Why can the disembodied intellect not perform any syllogistic reasoning in order to reorganize the information that it has to come to new information that it didn't yet realize?
- Regarding what was just said above, how close are disembodied intellects to angelic ones? Aquinas is in tension with himself on what he thinks.
He addressed those in different posts. I'll try and summarize his position to the best of my understanding, also as a means of summarizing them for myself (others please correct me if I say something inaccurate):
Deletea) In purgatory a soul is free of original sin and also is mired into achieving the good, so even though they're punished for the sins they committed, they don't sin again by, e.g., accusing God of being evil for punishing them. So eventually all remaining sins as duly punished and since they didn't make any new one, they now find themselves among the saints.
b) The new body is made following whatever the soul already is, so a new body for a saved person is perfect as that soul is, and doesn't entice new sins.
Conversely, the new body of a fallen soul is such that it also follows it's perma-sinning nature and this is capable only of sinning. Also, since the fruits of sin are suffering, their bodies are made to maximize their suffering, so that the punishment is felt at maximum intensity, with no means of reducing the pain in the slightest.
c) He could, but he doesn't want to, as that'd interfere with the free will inherent of whatever those souls decided before.
d) Because will is distinct from reason. The idea seems to be one of funneling: in a disembodied state, every decision is free, but also permanent, so once a soul decides something, that's their eternal decision, because they eternally will that. A soul can continue making new decisions afterwards, but the previous decisions continue, so every new decision is bound by all their previous decisions, and every one of those decisions is permanently willed.
This links back into "c". God doesn't change a soul that willed itself into eternal punishment because at every instant in time that soul is still willing that, and tomorrow it will still will that, and so. New knowledge doesn't affect that will, at most it allows for new decisions bound by, and fully aligned with, that soul's all previous wills that it's still fully willing.
e) That one I'll leave for Mr. Feser. :-)
Well, I have not read the book on the soul yet, but maybe I can supply some answers from standard Thomas.
DeleteHow is this issue to be squared with purgatory? (This is not only a theological question.)
The soul in Purgatory is not changed as to its union with God, the main character. It is changed only as to lesser conditions - and even in that only by God's supplying for what is lacking from the lack of union with the body.
How does the soul "bind" to the resurrected body so that it does not change even though it has sense experience again?
It does not change as to the main status (in union with God) not because it is unable to act, but because in seeing God directly and without a veil, it is impossible for the mind to apprehend any other good as if it could be a greater good than God. It is unchanged as to lesser things in respect of its para-eternal character via the Beatific Vision, but it retains capacity to change in accidentals: for Christ after his resurrection, he spoke, he ate, he was touched by the Apostles. Mary and the saints have appeared to us and acted. Angels act and cause changes on Earth.
Why can the disembodied intellect not perform any syllogistic reasoning in order to reorganize the information that it has to come to new information that it didn't yet realize?
In the natural order, intellect acts with the support of the imagination to supply the phantasms which coordinate with the concepts in the intellect. Without anything but the intellect, the intellect would be stuck without its mode of normal function. God, however, can supply the lack of imagination, and both the saints and those in Purgatory have interacted with those on Earth illustrating reasoned thought.
The fixity of will in the angels after their initial choice (good and bad) is due to their very natures:
To find the cause, then, of this obstinacy, it must be borne in mind that the appetitive power is in all things proportioned to the apprehensive, whereby it is moved, as the movable by its mover. For the sensitive appetite seeks a particular good; while the will seeks the universal good, as was said above (I:59:1); as also the sense apprehends particular objects, while the intellect considers universals. Now the angel's apprehension differs from man's in this respect, that the angel by his intellect apprehends immovably, as we apprehend immovably first principles which are the object of the habit of "intelligence"; whereas man by his reason apprehends movably, passing from one consideration to another; and having the way open by which he may proceed to either of two opposites. Consequently [in this life] man's will adheres to a thing movably, and with the power of forsaking it and of clinging to the opposite; whereas the angel's will adheres fixedly and immovably. Therefore, if his will be considered before its adhesion, it can freely adhere either to this or to its opposite (namely, in such things as he does not will naturally); but after he has once adhered, he clings immovably. So it is customary to say that [in this life] man's free-will is flexible to the opposite both before and after choice; but the angel's free-will is flexible either opposite before the choice, but not after. Therefore the good angels who adhered to justice, were confirmed therein; whereas the wicked ones, sinning, are obstinate in sin. Q 64 A2
Aquinas follows Damascene in distinguishing, however: "death is to man what their fall was to the angels." But the angel's will is irrevocable after his fall, so that he cannot withdraw from the choice whereby he previously sinned [Cf. I:64:2]. Therefore the damned also cannot repent of the sins committed by them.
Anonymous,
DeleteThis does not address your question but is relevant to the topic of infernalism. Infernalism (the doctrine that there are some who suffer eternal conscious punishment) does not depend upon the fixity of the will after death. Infernalism is compatible with the wicked being offered infinite opportunites of repentance with each opportunity having a small but positive chance of the sinner repenting. Suppose that a certain group of wicked had a 10% probability of repenting at the first opportunity, a 1% probability of repenting at the second opportunity, a .1% probability of repenting at the third opportunity etc. Mathematically, only about 1/9 of such a group would repent, even though some repented on the 100th opportunity etc.
I find it fascinating that grown adults take this stuff seriously in 2024.
ReplyDeleteThe version of salvation on offer here – God telling us, do what I say or suffer eternal torment – makes God into a thug, a mob boss making an offer you can't refuse. Very unattractive, aside from the question of whether it is accurate or not.
If the idea of eternal damnation troubles you, you can take solace in the fact that none of it is real: no hell, no heaven, no god, no angels. Just real life. When you die, that's it (hopefully your memory will live on in the hearts of your loved ones).
Accept your real nature (finite and limited) or else you will waste what little of it there is.
Several things: 1) What, precisely, about the fact that the earth has revolved around the sun some two thousand twenty four times since the approximate date of the birth of Jesus implies not only the falsehood of, but also the non-seriousness of, belief in theism, eternal life, etc? 2) Assuming that your brand of naturalism is true, what precisely should be comforting about the fact that my existence will be terminated? 3) Given that you think none of these things are serious, how can you be sure you're not constructing and knocking down a straw man?
DeleteYes. Pure speculation.
Delete"The version of salvation on offer here – God telling us, do what I say or suffer eternal torment -"
DeleteIs that what we are discussing? Man, i feel a silly, all that time i was thinking that we were having a christian internal debate...
(1) Naturalism has the advantage that it is based on observable facts. The material world is present and undeniable. Theism – well, it may be true, but you can't go out and observe it to be true like you can the trees and the tides.
Delete(2) It's comforting because it acknowledging your true nature, rather than engaing in fantasy and wish-fulfillment. And given the post topic, it is comforting because you don't have to worry about eternal torment. That seems like a plus! Real-world torments can be pretty horrible but they at least are bounded.
(3) Not sure I understand what you are saying. What straw man? Have I falsely characterized Feser's view?
It seems to me that lots of those who want to argue for universalism do so because they either assert or assume that, after this life, when we come to directly see God in a way that we would all immediately just realize how wrong we were and change our minds and want to be with Him.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's all well and good, but it seems to fall apart when you consider what if God were drastically different than you think He is. It's really easy for me to say that, because I'm right, all those other people will just realize why they're wrong. But considering the counterfactual, if it were the case that God is like how Islam asserts He is, or how Mormons profess, or whatever, I don't think I'd like to worship that kind of God very much, regardless of how true it is. I don't really see a good reason why Mormons or Muslims wouldn't feel the same way. I don't really think that an atheist who thinks that the God displayed in the Old Testament is a moral monster is just going to say "gee, guess I was wrong" when confronted with the fact that He exists.
Continuing to advert to non dogmatic, and largely uncurated NDE anecdotes in order to see what, if anything these purported experiences might tell us about the concepts of hell, justice, and possibly punishment, let's ask a quasi philosophical question.
ReplyDeleteIf, so-called moral intuitions are considered by some as providing grounds for ruling out the existence of damnation as inconceivably unjust; what then, is one to make of those contrary evaluations or new intuitions purported to be experiential insights gained by ordinary people who actually died and were judged? These would be people who once shared universalist or a-theist commonplaces, but who due to the psychological experiences which they claim to have undergone, now espouse the opposite opinion as to the existence of hell, of damnation and ultimate deservingness.
Again, this is a question that narrows to the psychological, and to: How it is that conclusions based on the moral intuitions and interpretive scriptural inferences of a Universalist philosopher, should trump the purportedly experientially derived psychological perspective of an NDE subject who became as he saw it, the actual casualty of that judgment? With the result that he discarded his formerly shared assumptions.
Again we bracket the actual status of the event, only granting that it is a real psychological event impacting formerly developed moral intuitions and their entailments.
How does anti-universalism become psychologically conceiveable to these persons after a confrontation with an unsought life review and judgment?
I don't think someone necessarily would be committed to believing that all moral intuitions have the same value/weight. One might posit, for example, that moral intuitions developed from heavy drug use don't correspond well with reality at all, and then on the logic that NDEs share many properties of psychedelic trips that they are unlikely to be reliable as well.
DeleteAdmittedly, I'm having a hard time making a positive proposal here for when we ought to trust our moral intuitions that circumscribes exactly (or mostly) the morality intuitions of universalists but not the moral intuitions of those who believe in Hell.
"(...) what then, is one to make of those contrary evaluations or new intuitions purported to be experiential insights gained by ordinary people who actually died and were judged?"
DeleteNDE experiences tend to be patterned after whatever the person believes or, more generally, worries about. Someone who deep down fears the existence of some kind of Hell, and the presumed conditions for ending up there, finding themselves covered by one or more among those conditions, may under NDE experience being judged according to those parameters, even if they're outwardly a denier of those conditions.
So, in Christian and Islamic cultures it's common to see people, even those who aren't either, "experience" their relatively similar versions of hell (or heaven). But so it is for, say, a Buddhist to find themselves condemned to one of their 33 hells (or hundreds of good afterlives); or for a very devout Spiritualist to find themselves in an underworld of shadows or in an overworld of material-ish niceties (interestinly reminiscent of the bad and good regions of the Greek Hades); and other such variations.
And then there are those who are absolutely, positively, deep down absolutely certain there is and cannot be such thing a hing as a hell, at all, with not even a hint of a shadow of a doubt about this, and those come back from NDEs reporting no judgment, and neither condemnation nor salvation.
Which is to say, as best as we can tell, NDE experiences seem to be deeply plastic, and conform to a person's fears and hopes more than to anything that may be objectively happening to them or to a part of them.
Either that, or the afterlife has a really vast array of possibilities and one basically "opts in" to a "set" of outcomes, and then to a specific option from within that set.
"NDE experiences tend to be patterned after whatever the person believes or, more generally, worries about. Someone who deep down fears the existence of some kind of Hell, and the presumed conditions for ending up there, finding themselves covered by one or more among those conditions, may under NDE experience being judged according to those parameters, even if they're outwardly ..."
DeleteI don't know that that is true, unless we by stipulation look at all supposed accounts uncritically as honest retellings of an actual "experience", and add in as you do the term "tend", and assume that all so-called "karmic" religion societies, or more particularly, Abrahamic religion influenced societies will automatically set up a mild predisposition even if it were say, a Persian Muslim or a secular Israeli Jew who thinks he encountered a Jesus revealed as both judge and God.
But , I do think that the well has certainly been poisoned by modern media and by cross cultural pollination. Not to mention sheer attention seeking and fabulation.
Which is why I am primarily interested in the phenomenon from the psychological point of view as it relates to transformed moral intuitions.
Those who are interested in cross cultural studies and comparative and critical analysis can try reviewing whatever literature is available.
Here is a video I grabbed from a 1st page of YouTube queries.
"Near-Death Experiences and Universalism (Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad)"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vmj77VtvL1E&pp=ygUbQmh1ZGRpc3QgbWVldHMgSmVzdXMgaW4gTkRF
That seems to be an interesting video. I don't have time to watch yet this weekend, but a comment summarized it. I'm copying and pasting it in a separate comment (or more than one) as Blogger complained the answer was too long with it pasted below.
DeleteI'd like to add that interesting things appear if one Googles for "converted to ___ after a near-death experience", substituting names of different religions for the underlines. It shows anecdotes of people who converted from Catholicism to Islam, from Islam to Catholicism, from Atheism to Buddhism, who were of this or that religion but were losing faith and the NDE caused them to go back, etc.
Statistics can say how those experiences are distributed into different bins among the (quite small) population of people who had NDEs, but they cannot really point to one of those bins and say this is the real one unless we assume via a logical jump that, say, that the most common experience is the true(st) one.
As I said in my other comment, here's the paste of the comment summarizing the video:
Delete0:00 - did research on NDEs by
1:46 - research by professionals and found they r real. Also from death bed talks they r real.
2:45 - comparing....found 47 areas of overlaps. Personal God that loves us.
3:56 - 18-20% of NDEs c Jesus.
6:44 - ovr 5000, saw Muslim NDEs or were in Muslim majority nations. None saw Mohommad.
7:25 - Hundus, 3 saw Krishnas. 2 didn't no if it was an NDE. Mayb a vision.
8:04 - 0.6% said they saw aliens .
10:22 - data now doesn't show peopl c the person they believed in.
11:41 - very few talkd about reincarnation.
14:28 - athiests say they're no longer materialists. But if u don't do anything wrong, it's OK.
16:19 - peopl from very legalistic churches ️ that saw God say he isn't like what religion say's.
19:49 - a few said reincarnation's a choice. So they c the aftrlife 1st. They c dead relatives.
21:40 - did scientific research of NDEs.
(22:28) - most were more dedicated 2 their churches....
23:28 - distressing NDEs...books..typical response..they seek God.
24:34 - hellish NDEs r about 20%. Some say it's more than that.
25:20 - in 1688 Emanuel Swedenborg was born. At 50 he used psychic powers 2 tak 2 soul guides. 2 of 6 things he said that peopl who've had current NDEs hav said is:
1. You're drawn 2 heavn n hell. God doesn't send. Mayb bein good n havin a good state of mind draws u 2 heavn.
Mayb bein bad draws u 2 hell. Also killin yourself with a bad state of mind draws u 2 hell. Mayb mental illness at least sometimes draws u 2 hell.
2. Christians n non-Christians go 2 heavn.
28:08 - 47 accounts has strong evidence about Christianity.
34:29 - y r wickd peopl seein God? If you're bad n u don't know it, mayb it draws u 2 heavn. Then u r taught not 2 do those bad things.
Like I read when we were primitiv n died we were taught what we shouldn't do wrong. When we reincarnated some remembered, some didn't.
38:46 - thinks in the mid E., she was beatn. In NDE nevr b4 did she c a bein that lovd her.
44:11 - in life reviews a lot felt they were judged. Lot of it was self judgement. Some were horrified at what they said n did 2 othrs. They c how the othrs felt.
45:44 - some c peopl who r in emotional n physical distress.
46:28 - y doesn't God show evryone the gospel? A few peopl who've had NDEs hav said God gives us free will.
46:44 - someone who had an NDE askd God y he doesn't show that he's real. God said it would scare peopl. I think with today's tech some peopl would think or wonder if it was a trick someone's playin.
47:10 - Emanuel Swedenborg said the Old Testiment's stories r fiction based on fact. The only true ones r the buildin of a cathedral n the rule of a king. Then someone who had a NDE said they saw things that it talkd about like I think the followin...Adam n Eve n the ark. I hav 2 c his whole story 2c what I think.
Emanuel said God wanted Jesus 2 teach peopl right n since he doesn't communicate with us directly he sent Jesus. He also new he'd end up dead like the New Testiment say's.
50:43 - religion doesn't mattr. At least on who'se had an NDE said "it's not about religion, it's about lov." It may also b about knowing about the things I put b4.
57:49 - good u don't pay 4 interviews. What if there was somethin about the NDE u didn't believe?
Hi Ed,
ReplyDeleteNotwithstanding their support in Church tradition, arguments for the eternity of Hell are philosophically unconvincing. This is especially true of Thomistic arguments. Briefly:
(i) the Thomistic argument that even though God determines our choices (in the manner that the author of a story determines his characters' choices) they are nonetheless genuinely free, meaning that we are justly punished for our bad choices, rests on a poor analogy. As you yourself have written, "there is an obvious difference between us and fictional characters: we exist and they don’t." Also, it makes no sense for the author of a story to reproach his own characters for failing to obey his commands, yet God is said to reproach sinners. Putting it another way: it makes no sense for God to say to a sinner, "I made you do that sinful deed" AND "You shouldn't have done that sinful deed." Additionally, the characters in a story have no duties towards the author, yet we are supposed to have duties towards our Creator. Finally, an author cannot insert himself into his own story, as the Christian God is supposed to have done at the incarnation. The best he can do is insert a fictional character who resembles himself. But even if this fictional character dies, nothing happens to the author, showing that the two are utterly distinct. This construal of the incarnation makes a mockery of the hypostatic union;
(ii) the Thomistic argument that the will is fixed at death limits the power of God. Supposedly, once soul and body are separated, nothing can change the intellect's deliberations, so its final choice (either for or against God) while united to the body is unalterable. But there's nothing to prevent God from continuing to feed images and memories to an incorporeal soul, if He so chooses. Such a soul would still be malleable in its decisions, and therefore able to repent of its wicked acts;
(iii) in any case, reasoning from a totally unfamiliar case (the fixity of the will of angels, who are said to be pure intellect and will) is a poor way to argue. We don't know if angels are composed of form alone, or form plus some kind of 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);
(iv) 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 (see https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/near-death-experiences-%E2%80%93-paranormal-aspects ), which means they must have a body of some sort;
(v) your argument presupposes that there is a single, consistent Biblical view on hell. There isn't. As Bart Ehrman carefully documents in his book, "Heaven and Hell," there are about five different views on the afterlife presented within the Bible. The only book of the Bible which more or less matches your view is the Gospel of Luke, in its parable of Dives and Lazarus. Annihilation of the wicked has far more Biblical support.
@Vincent Torley: I am in sympathy with much of your post. But I have a worry about this: "But there's nothing to prevent God from continuing to feed images and memories to an incorporeal soul, if He so chooses." It's been a long time since I read Aristotle's De Memoria, but I think that images and at least memories that contain images are products ultimately of perception, no? How would an incorporeal soul as Thomists describe it experience images and memories?
DeleteYou touch on this later when you bring up NDEs, but I would think NDEs are a poor source of trustworthy evidence.
But since there are passages where Aquinas says that God does determine singular acts of will on the part of humans, but by determination another order than the creature's determination of its own will, your basic point seems to stand, i.e. why can't God be a prior cause of changes in incorporeal souls' intellects and wills?
the Thomistic argument that even though God determines our choices (in the manner that the author of a story determines his characters' choices)...Putting it another way: it makes no sense for God to say to a sinner, "I made you do that sinful deed" AND "You shouldn't have done that sinful deed."
DeleteThomas does not say that God determines our choices the way an author determines his character's choices. He causes things in quite a different way.
Also, God does not "make you do that sinful deed". Thomas explicitly says: "It is therefore evident that God is nowise a cause of sin." (Q 79)
Indeed, he causes all good, and allows (not causes) us to defect from good. He also plans for our defecting from the good.
The power company supplies the power to my house, and if I electrocute someone, in a sense the electric company "causes" the electrocution because they supplied the electricity. Analogously: If God tells an executioner to kill an evildoer who is endangering others, and the executioner "follows" God's order by striking the man dead, God is the cause of the death. If the executioner, in the moment of killing, wills the death out of malice, that is a sin and entirely apart from God's doing.
In a less obvious way but something remotely like the power company, God is the cause of our actions insofar as they are positive being, as the First Mover. But when the action is, also, a sin, the First Mover is not the cause of our wills being in defection from good, for sin is a deficiency of being, not being as such. The man is the (sole) cause of the defect.
(ii) the Thomistic argument that the will is fixed at death limits the power of God.
DeleteThe implication is only that God's power is limited given his prior Plan to determine our final reward as of the end of our temporal life. That is, it is limited in respect of his FREE CHOICE to plan a salvation order with this character. Likewise, his salvation of men is "limited" by his plan to save us through the Son - he could have planned to save us via other means, or to not save us at all, or other options. But given his plan, he has chosen to be limited to workings within that plan.
(iii) in any case, reasoning from a totally unfamiliar case (the fixity of the will of angels, who are said to be pure intellect and will) is a poor way to argue.
His argument is in part an argument from authority, which is generally not a very strong argument. However, in the context of the science of theology, the argument from authority has a different character, since it rests on God as the authority.
We don't know if angels are composed of form alone, or form plus some kind of 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);
St. Thomas had already addressed these questions and given their answers. There is nothing wrong with building on those to address this.
Tony
DeleteThe author analogy is used nu Ed Feser, who also claims that nothing would exist even for an instant if God
did not actively create and sustain it
If that's true, God does not merely allow anything and hence He is the author of everythng, including evil.
Whatever one thinks on this subject, I think too much confusion has been created around the (generally) false idea that universalists just ignore the references to gehenna. I've mostly seen universalists claim that gehenna is a terrible experience that is to be avoided, it just happens to be refining rather than retributive, and finite/of-an-age rather than endless.
ReplyDeleteFrom what Dr Feser has written there are gonna be a lot of people in hell for sexual sins. In the summer of 73, when I was 21, I spent time with Joan M. She slept with me and pulled me out of a deep depression. I have told priests that I know that I have no regrets about that and I will never confess it.
ReplyDeleteIf one were to envision a scenario in which something happened that might have had (at least partially) a good outcome for you but which still was offensive to God, would that change your outlook at all?
DeleteAnd if you still wouldn't change your tune on the matter, doesn't that very fact (that you are willing to offend God to your own benefit and are unapologetic about it) create any pause about the state of your relationship with Him?
" I have told priests that I know that I have no regrets about that and I will never confess it."
ReplyDeleteWell, since you brought it up for public consideration, sounds as though you did in effect informally confess to it, but merely refuse to repent. LOL
Of course in some cases repentance - for those who were less in need of a consoling bout of ostensibly therapeutic fornication - may indeed come years after the fact and retrospectively.
For instance, I saw a picture of old Rosie O'Donnell on X the other day; and I cannot imagine the retrospective regret and trauma that would be experienced by someone, even a lesbian, who had once engaged [presumably] in carnal relations with her. Impacting, one might say, like a certain scene in the movie "The Shining" wherein the implications of becoming one flesh forever are revealed in a time lapse fashion.
Though chagrin and mortification are not, I admit, quite the same as spiritual conviction.
On an equally serious note, those of us with some experience in the pick up joints, cocktail bars, and various other boy meets girls scenes back in the day, can probably testify to a considerable number of times when they, either days or years later said to themselves, "Man, I'm glad now that I passed on that invitation"
But maybe, that is just me, and my sensitive and feeling nature. Because growing up, I knew kids who would eat bugs just for the attention. So, who knows what they are doing in the sack as adults.
But you see, there just may be a hell after all. Nobody wants to spend eternity there. So, a fornicator doesn't really have to repent because he thinks what he did was sinful. He can one day resort to imperfect contrition (attrition) and confess fleshly sins because he fears damnation, and together with priestly absolution, an act of contrition and penance, that will suffice for forgiveness. Now, back in the day, when you were in those pick up joints, cocktail bars, etc., I doubt if there were any "invitations" at all for you to "pass on."
DeleteAnonyponce [or some version of it] writes,
Delete"But you see, there just may be a hell after all. Nobody wants to spend eternity there ..."
You might. You have all the charcteristics.
Nah. I go to confession now and then.
Delete"I go to confession now and then."
ReplyDeleteBetter try it a little more often.
I go often enough. You should start going.
DeleteHow does one enter an eternal state?
ReplyDeleteThis is of interest . https://www.facebook.com/share/p/2XGxjw5Fu6z5mCn5/?mibextid=WC7FNeIf
ReplyDeleteAnd this
Deletehttps://danheck.medium.com/why-brother-rooney-is-wrong-about-hell-and-the-coherence-of-christian-hope-a52df8c940b
I think you're way off base here. As Plato has argued, the ideal of justice demands that all after-death punishments--and rewards--must be proportional to the offenses that merited them.
ReplyDeleteDr. Feser. Are you familiar with Lacordaire on Henry Nutcombe Oxenham's work on the proportional number of the saved and the Catholic's freedom to maintain a highly optimistic account of that number? I feel it's a side of the tradition that's missing in your criticisms of apokatastasis and its defenders (von Balthasar, Hart, etc.). I'm going to be honest and say that the idea that only a minority of people will be saved is totally repulsive to me and only a direct statement from Christ to the contrary -- in a vision to me, honestly -- would change my mind on that. I'm sick of the control of the narrative -- it benefits hard Augustinians and Thomists and hard universalists alike -- that optimism is "liberal" and "modern" and pessimism is traditional to be either affirmed (by rigid Thomists) or denied (by dogmatic universalists). "A lie will remain a lie." (Dark Souls II, Scholar of the First Sin)
ReplyDelete“I would argue that even purely philosophical argumentation can establish that the soul that is in a state of rebellion against God at death will remain that way forever.”
ReplyDeleteI have two problems with this statement: First, to be in a state of rebellion against God entails having at least some knowledge of God, and it is existentially impossible to have some knowledge of God and being in a state of rebellion against him. Secondly, I fear people may think philosophical arguments are prior to God; it is absurd to hold that if God wants to save his last lost sheep, philosophical argumentation may stop him.
Now we are all fallible creatures. I think that hellism is one more deception, albeit a tragic one for it entails ignorance about the basic character of God. In the atonement of creation, deception, as all evil, will disappear. What saddens me is the existential price hellists must pay in this life, for they won’t be able to love God with all their heart and soul and mind. I am not saying that universalists like me love God in this way, but we are at least free to love him in this way. The bad fruit of the deception of hellism is that obeying Christ's last commandment becomes impossible. In both its forms.
Human beings are not intrinsically immortal so why should a soul be assumed as such? I assume you have read the articles at Rethinking Hell?
ReplyDelete