A Catholic Eschatology – unlike many universalist & perditionist stances but somewhat like Maritain’s
Human persons are constitutively graced and mutually indwelled. We innately desire God’s presence in both mediated & immediate modes. Per our substantial being, we concretely experience both theophanic & supra-theophanic divine manifestations in certain ways & to specific degrees that are ontologically essential.
Such revelations beckon obligatory moral responses (deontic) from us per those creaturely potencies, which are ordered to our being divine images per precepts of charity.
Both the mediated & immediate modes of divine presencing are multifaceted and can potentially be experienced by us in an infinite variety of ways that are accidental (secondary nature), ie beyond those ways gifted by our essence (primary nature), including even what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man yet conceived.
Such revelations beckon supererogatory responses (axiological) from us per the obediential potencies, which are ordered to our becoming divine likenesses, i.e. both including & similar to evangelical counsels.
When the soul-crafting dynamics of our relative being go awry, due to our sinful refusals to cooperate with grace, our substantial being can be parasitized & the divine image obscured (but never obliterated).
Apokatastenai refers to the restoration of our substantial being. Apokatastasis refers to the theotic dynamics of our relative being. Epektasis refers to how everyone will enjoy an everlasting increase in accidental beatitude even though some will perpetually behold the Triune God more perfectly than others.
This account differs from many perditionist stances in both asserting a universal restoration or indicative apokatastenai as well as a nature – grace intrinsicism.
This account differs from many universalist stances in asserting both a subjunctive apokatastasis as well as heavenly degrees of glory per opera supererogationis (not merely aretaic but theological, as we’re always able through grace to do something better regarding what might be communally beneficial for the Totus Christus).
It is the specific aim of this account to preserve as many Catholic distinctives as possible while maintaining a proportionality objection to eternal conscious torment. It affirms Lonergan’s vertical & horizontal finalities & sublation with an intrincism that flows ex Deo from Christ’s free self-determination – not from metaphysical necessity. It squares Bracken’s Divine Matrix with the procession of logoi from Logos (JDW’s Maximus). In denying any concrete natura pura, it elevates Maritain’s limboic apokatastenai from hell’s attic to heaven’s basement.
Finally, this account navigates between Boersma’s theophanic & Gaine’s supra-theophanic beatific accounts, denying that it is the distinction between those modes of divine im/mediacy that define “the” beatific vision for they’re both already essentially constitutive of who, what & how we are. Rather, both our primary & secondary heavenly beatitudes will be gifted, consistent with our obediential potencies, in an infinite variety of ways beyond what any eye has seen, ear has heard, or the heart of woman has yet conceived in ways both immediate & mediated, theophanic & supra-theophanic. We already know the immediate via foretastes in the Spirit & the mediated from Real Presences in the Sacraments.
A Neo-Chalcedonian, Franciscan Cosmotheandric Universal Apokatastenai