A Defense of Dogmatic Universalism
archive of my redacted forum discussions
Even if all wrongdoing offends God & has an objectively infinite aspect, the subjective aspect of the offense remains finite, unless the person’s knowledge is fully illuminated by a vision beatific. An infinite punishment would be disproportional, hence evil.
Since I embrace impeccability & inancaritability vis a vis the beatific vision, the question of offending God in a subjectively infinite way is moot.
Any person who’s God-given volitional capacities have been fulfilled would, by definition, be a freely willing loving person. The more one’s telos is realized, the more one’s freedom & loving likeness to & intimacy with God grows. A person who rejects God in any measure commensurately lacks the same amount of freedom.
Subjectively, by definition, one can’t freely & infinitely offend God, for all sorts of reasons? and especially for many Thomist’s whose accounts of freedom include post-mortem impeccability & inancaritability? Toss in election & predestination and they have a serious “universalism problem” that not even Stump et al have solved.
I’m metaphysically agnostic as far as different root metaphors go. ###
I’m – not eclectic, but – rather promiscuous. I’m willing to be seen on the theo-streets with Thomists, Scotists, Palamites, NeoPlatonists, Sophiologists, NeoWhiteheadians & more, but, in the sheets, I’m Peircean-inclined, an inveterate pragmatist, just not of the vulgar sort.
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Fr Rooney, that sounds like a logically consistent argument to me. It’s Implausible to us who 1) accept DBH’s game-theoretic analysis of the antecedent – consequent will distinction at the eschato-horizon, i.e. moral modal collapse and 2) believe we have, antemortem, sufficient knowledge of God’s character vis a vis what is or is not good.
I appreciate that our criteria of what’s good requires some rigor, but the Thomist notion of that which fulfills our human capacity vis a vis increasing goodness & being suffices here?
I appreciate especially the Totus Christus conception that you & other eschato- majoritarians have recognized as well as earnest attempts to ameliorate the degree of suffering involved vs any vulgar ECT account.
From my understanding of the Hartian account, I’m quite sure that our impasses have nothing to do with pantheist, determinist or theopanist impulses, nor with denials of simplicity or analogia, much less Hegelian, etc ad infinitum
The impasse is almost strictly located as regarding God’s character & whether or not we have sufficient antemortem knowledge of whether or not an eternal perdition’s proportional to a finite offense, subjectively, of God, notwithstanding it’s objectively infinite.
Finally, other Thomists have well stated the “universalism problem” that presents due to affirmations of postmortem impeccability & ante mortem election & predestination, rejecting secondary nature = character-based contingencies. Have you addressed this anywhere? akin to work of Stump, Pawl, Noia et al
Pax!
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D’accord!
What gets God out of the dock for me vis a vis evil is, more so, character evidence provided for Abba by Jesus and His great cloud of witnesses. That suffices to create the reasonable doubt necessary to exhonerate God, Who, however otherwise ostensibly responsible per given circumstances just couldn’t be morally culpable. It’s not that case theories (logical defenses) don’t matter, it’s just that, notwithstanding those & other evidence (including theodicies, which I positively eschew), character, alone, suffices. Analogy to criminal jurisprudence – seems right-headed & good-hearted.
Most succinctly, what I think is going on with the back & forth is that
– When the only tool one has is an analogical, essentialistic hammer, every problem, suspiciously looks like a natural participatory nail.
Thomism has the tools to avoid this, thankfully, especially in its transcendental, existential & personalist schools.
Truth be known, the Báñezian stance may, ironically, be the most felicitous of all, when purged of the tradition’s majoritarian Paterological Character Defects.
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Fr JD
Regarding any circular argument critique, as an epistemological pragmatist, whose theory of knowledge is coherentist & of truth is correspondent (so on the spectrum of weakly to non-foundational), in my view, the most any of us can ambition about primal realities are semi-formal heuristics, which is closer in form to persuasive rhetoric than formal syllogism.
That said, I purposefully & implicitly indicate certain inescapable circularities, most every time I employ them, prefacing same with “by definition,” even in my informal argumentation.
What’s of more interest to me, when I do encounter or employ tautological, circular or analytic strategies is – not only whether or not they strike me as virtuous or vicious, but, more so – whether or not they are plausibly true or, at least, make mostly successful references to reality, evidentially.
My interest, therefore, in juxtaposing different words like inancaritability, impeccability, predestination, election, justification, infused contemplation, goodness, being and the like, as others have variously defined them, is much more modest than advancing some formal argument. Rather, first, it’s to avoid talking past others due to our equivocal and/or ambiguous conceptions. Next, once we’ll have agreed upon those notions, we can explore how well they cohere, systematically.
Other Thomists have acknowledged a “universalism problem” and have variously addressed it, mutually critiquing one another’s approaches. I will receive your generous response as a helpful foil to their approaches as well as to my own, hoping to both better understand all of you as well as to deepen my self-understanding.
For now, my focus remains on more preliminary concerns than examining the logical relationships between premises & conclusions.
We have not even reached an agreement on our definitions of the terms, which are employed in our premises, definitions which often unavoidably embed our conclusions within (not necessarily viciously), making our reasoning far less ampliative & persuasive than we’d hope.
I’ll likely respond further to any points you made, only if I haven’t previously addressed them here, or even elsewhere in some way, as long as they strike me as an on the nose challenge to my stance. The older I get, and the more critiques I’ve incorporated, the less that stance has changed. Even if I am substantively repeating myself, though, I’ll respond if I discover a new idiom & better way of saying what I’ve already said for decades (and inartfully so)!
Thanks!
St. Meinrad, ora pro nobis.
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For others, this pertains to the moral modal collapse argument of DBH.
Fr JD, I’ll stipulate that you above-articulated the proper understanding of the logical defense of evil. I find it compelling enough. That’s not my quibble. And DBH has already well spoken for himself.
It’s just not a sustainable logical defense of hell.
It’s as if, in the beginning, God surveyed the tehom & saw that it lacked an eternal agency sufficiently potent to oppose His Will, i.e. it lacked any Manichean attributes.
So, out of nothing, He created finite agents, whose relative goodness could host evil parasitic existences, as they’re merely privative & enjoy no substance of their own.
Of course, on the free will defense of evil, only the possibility of these parasitic existences is necessary. They’re neither a necessary instrument nor a desired final end.
As such, those viscious natures can be purged & remain mere ephemeralities.
OR …
On a free will defense of hell account, the cost of any actual eternally vicious natures is deemed acceptable. Then, whether or not there’s ever an eternal Manichean residue of finite agents, who can eternally oppose His Infinite Will, the price of that Manichean habitus will have already been negotiated, sufficiently allocated for in the ad extra budget of the divine economy.
[I’ve no argument that the “mere” possibility is a logically low bar. The evidential problem is the inordinately high cost that’s been “justified” morally, in any event.]
This will have all been done for an unambiguously instrumental purpose with an ostensibly perfectly acceptable end-result. And calling it a by-product & not an end-product wouldn’t be exculpatory because one dare not risk the grave evil involved in the de-formation of an imago Dei into a mere vesitge or shadow of God (as effected by allowing the obliteration of capacities, the removal of essential human potencies).
Only a perverse & insidiously evil double effect calculus could abide the enormity of such a loss within the Totus Christus or the immensity of the suffering of any of its beloved members.
As we know, when a doubt of fact is in play, the safer course must be followed, when something as serious as life is at risk. Why not even more so if it’s a life, eternal?
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Fr JD, I’m processing your extensive response in bite-size pieces.
I’m not reflexively over against all elements of Báñezian Thomism. I can make room for physical premotion, for example. But the conceptual mapping which would be necessary to make your response sufficiently apposite to my own dogmatic universalism is not reflected in your discussion of essences, natures, participation, grace and so on. There are more categories in play for many of us of a more personalist bent, e.g. Clarke re divine esse naturale & Intentionale. While variously distinct but integrally related, many of the dynamics in play are otherwise theo-phanic & perichoretic, otherwise involving idiomata, energeia, and personal hownesses & references to – not definitions of – whonesses, logoi & tropoi, ad infinitum.
It’s not to say I’ve been deliberately straw-manned but I can’t even see my positions fully reflected back to me in your replies, so am feeling inadvertently caricatured.
It’s not like we’re totally talking past each other but, in your essays & conversations, I only see through a glass darkly my own stances as well as my meager understandings of DBH.
So, when we are within a single idiom, we’re yet to have agreed upon the same definitions. When we’re critiquing cross-systemwise in different idioms, we haven’t established all the categories required.
I hope that makes sense. I don’t intend it harshly. You are internally coherent and earnest. There are a lot more external congruences than your philosophy has dreamt of?
The Ignatian counsel to impute an orthodox construction when interpreting others can be more than us hard universalist can or should expect? So, maybe let’s at least find a few things to which we might stipulate starting, let’s say, the 7th council backwards. Just joshing.
Pax et bonum
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Fr JD, you wrote “we should leave entirely aside Banezianism. It is irrelevant to any aspect of my arguments against Hart or universalism.”
JSS
Oh, I already recognized that. After all, it seems quite clear to me that, in and of itself, it’s not incompatible with hard universalism. If Oliver Crisp is right, that a universalist case could be made from Calvinist construction, a Báñezian take would be “doubly” felicitous!
So, it’s not the Báñezian systematics but the extraneous God-conceptions of so many Báñezians that I find theo-repugnant & to which I meant to refer, implicitly.
Fr JD, you also wrote: “My case universalism is false alleges there are both dogmatic and metaphysical grounds to reject that what it is to be human is not what it is to be God; or, that God’s nature has an essential relatIonship to human beings. Nothing in that requires Thomism in the least.”
JSS
Again, d’accord. I won’t reiterate the impasses I’ve already located & previously articulated. Insights from Clarke, Rahner, Maritain & a host of others have largely influenced my outlook &, yes, even Réginald.
Fr JD, you also wrote: “your argument just assumes that God cannot intend to …”
JSS
More precisely, I argue that God WOULD not intend to create free creatures who are able to knowingly resist the beatific vision. Their ante mortem epistemic distancing would not be inconsistent with a culpable, sinful resistance to divinization that can form a vicious secondary nature, however eternally & irrevocably subject to purgative graces.
Respecting the analogical interval between the divine esse intentionale and our human volition, noncompetitive though they may be, most discussions of what God can, must, would or should do, whether as essentially necessary or as theophanically fitting, are much too facile per my sensibilities.
Fr JD, you also wrote: “It’s not Manicheanism”
JSS
I concede that. In my other writings I more rigorously & artfully sescribe it as quasi-Manichean, precisely because it’s parasitic not subsistent, you know, like a screw-tapeworm.
Fr JD, you also wrote: “Take that case where God does, in fact, predestine everyone from the first moment of their existence – all persons are like the Blessed Virgin. Would this good of union with God have defeated the evil involved in the *mere metaphysical possibility* that free creatures can reject grace forever? I don’t see
Why it isn’t.”
JSS
Only the evil of the objective consequences but not of the subjective intent. N’est pas?
I reject both divine indwelling based (grounded in God) as well as character disposition based beatific contingencies (grounded in human persons). While the former is a superior theo-construct to the latter, it only works with a viciously abstracted conception of natura pura, which means it’s untenable.
But not even the competing auxiliis schools need be an obstacle to my dogmatic universalism as long as the nature – grace relation is treated concretely & integrally, such as can be glimpsed in Maritain, Rahner & Lonergan’s Thomist conceptions, for example, or as in a host of panentheist systems.
Finally, I encourage you to delve more deeply into perichoretic dynamics so as not to approach every impasse as strictly a participatory & essentialist problem.
To wit:
https://theologoumenon.substack.com/p/each-persons-beatific-capacity-remains