A Goldilocks Eschatology: Hart’s Human Potencies of Truth, Gelpi’s Human Acts of Knowledge & the Infinite Human Continuum of Divine Intimacy

I have (mis?)appropriated certain aspects of the theoanthropologies of David B. Hart & Don Gelpi, SJ in a way that does not place them over against.

When I interpret them both through Lonerganian lenses, I’m able to move past any apparent incongruities. My broad maneuver is to adopt DBH’s account as the quintessential theory of our human potencies of Truth and Gelpi’s as the most exemplary theory of our human acts of knowledge.

I don’t employ this potency – act and truth – knowledge heuristic so rigorously that I am able to accommodate all classical distinctions, such as between the mediated vs immediate or the lights of experience & faith vs those of vision. I appeal, rather, to our quotidian experiences of degrees of intimacy, such as moving from being friends to becoming lovers.

An infinite continuum of intimacy, in my view, can most profitably refer to the realities of formative spirituality both in terms of kinds, orders & degrees of knowledge (e.g. cf Maritain, gnoseological, operative, epistemic distances, etc) and kinds, orders & degrees of love (e.g. Bernardian, Ignatian, Sanjuanist, Teresian, theotic trajectories, etc). My “continuum of intimacy” rejects as false or too abstract such dichotomies as natural & supernatural, especially regarding beatitudes & natures.

In terms of closing epistemic distances & traversing theotic trajectories, I do find helpful such distinctions as between original & heavenly (epecstatic) beatitudes and between primary (determined or essential) & secondary (self-determined or telic) natures. These distinctions comport well with our classical ascetical & mystical theology categories, such as purgative, illuminative & unitive ways.

DBH makes “a vigorous case for the all-but-complete eradication of every qualitative, ontological, or logical distinction between the natural and the supernatural in the life of spiritual creatures.”

See https://undpress.nd.edu/9780268201944/you-are-gods/

I find Hart’s account of human whatness (in terms of our potencies of Truth) the most persuasive. His theoanthropology affords us eminently coherent definitions of all things spiritual, especially regarding our free will and our divine ends & potencies, which are ordered to God, Who’s “the source and end of all knowledge and desire, sensible, appetitive, or rational, present in all as beyond all, and yet as more original than all.”

See https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/06/romans-81922

I find Gelpi’s account of human howness (our human acts of knowledge) the most persuasive. His theoanthropology affords us eminently coherent accounts of how we experience all things spiritual, especially regarding the continuities & discontinuities of how it is we actually realize our divine ends & potencies.

See Donald L. Gelpi: Two Spiritual Paths: Thematic Grace vs. Transmuting Grace

Part I

Part II


In my view, taken together, this Lonerganian heuristic can best accommodate, in addition to Hart’s “what” we are & Gelpi’s “how” we are, a robust account of classical Catholic eschatology’s “how much” we are.

That’s all to say that, over against any notion of eschatological flatlands, which have been too strictly & completely finally determined, a properly nuanced multiplicative monism can comport with our classically conceived heavenly hierarchies & choirs, where each might synergistically self-determine one’s own scope of divine manifestation & degree of experienced beatitude.

We’ll thus populate the heavenly firmament as various luminosities, all burning with the same divine fire, here as a tiny votive candle, there as a blazing helios, nowhere any fully extinguished.

This is my Goldilocks Eschatology – not too deterministic, not too intellectualist, not too libertarian & not too voluntarist

The wish to save God’s absolute transcendence and diversity with such a radical and impenetrable accentuation of his will does not take into account that the God who revealed himself in Christ is the God “Logos”, who acted and acts full of love for us. Of course, as Duns Scotus affirms, love transcends knowledge and is capable of perceiving ever better than thought, but it is always the love of the God who is “Logos” (cf. Benedict XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg, 12 September 2006). In the human being too, the idea of absolute freedom, placed in the will, forgetting the connection with the truth, does not know that freedom itself must be liberated from the limits imposed on it by sin. All the same, the Scotist vision does not fall into these extremes: for Duns Scotus a free act is the result of the concourse of intellect and will, and if he speaks of a “primacy” of the will, he argues this precisely because the will always follows the intellect. ~ Benedict XVI

Not to be coy, consistent with the above theoanthropology, has it been divinely determined that all will necessarily enjoy identical eschatological beatitudes (e.g. original – not natural – vs epecstatic)? Subjunctively, perhaps, all might be eventually gifted epecstatic beatitudes.

Will any suffer everlastingly? Indicatively, absolutely not.

Could there be a post-mortem fixity of the will vis a vis repentance or any foreclosure on all theotic potencies? As with any everlasting punishments for finite offenses, e.g. an everlasting sting of remorse, that, too, would be prima facie unjust per an analogous divine double-effect moral deliberation.

Are there no everlasting consequences, whatsoever, for finite offenses? It does seem that   our historico-temporal refusals to cooperate with grace will result in forever lost soul-crafting opportunities to enrich one’s experience of the divine, that one may indeed have permanently forfeited certain kinds, orders or degrees of superabundant intimacy. If such a loss will not be discernible in terms of felt aesthetic intensity, still, it may otherwise inescapably narrow one’s overall aesthetic scope of experience. At any rate, what’s at stake would be a superabundance vs “mere” abundance, an essential freedom further enriched by additional degrees of autonomy, or, perhaps, Steve Winwood’s higher love, a growth in intimacy from being fond friends to madly in love.

A Moderate Post-Mortem Anthropology – in Defense of a Goldilocks Eschatology

It’s not that there can never be infinite effects from finite causes? After all, that’s how divine synergistic dynamics work in the first place?

Also, analogous to human interrelationships, not every invitation extended to us by God & refused by us is necessarily morally fraught?

Some of our finite responses might be morally indifferent?

Still, such responses could have some role in differently situating us post-mortem vis a vis both our degrees of beatitude as well as the extent of our expressions of glory?

Even for those morally fraught invitations that we refuse, even though such finite decisions may very well have infinite & everlasting consequences (divine justice), those consequences couldn’t, in principle, include everlasting punishments, which, due to their disproportionality, would be prima facie unjust?

Such everlasting consequences may include, unavoidably, a narrowing of one’s aesthetic scope of experience, as various temporal refusals to cooperate with grace will have resulted in forever lost soul-crafting opportunities, at least, such as would have been peculiar to irrepeatable historical circumstances & so permanently forfeited?

To the extent such consequences may also include a diminished capacity for aesthetic intensity, affectively, such a loss might not be felt, everlastingly, either because purgative graces (divine mercy) will have imparted requisite healing & consolations, which will have removed any perduring sting of remorse, or because, in some cases, one could simply not miss or grieve the loss of such a kind and/or degree of beatitude, which one has never theretofore experienced or operatively fully known?

Not all finitely caused infinite consequences shall everlastingly be experienced as punishments. Some everlasting consequences could be self-determined diminishments (in aesthetic scope & or intensity) that have been affectively mitigated by divine mercies?

Beyond this general intimacy continuum heuristic, we don't want to over-specify any post-mortem losses because that would entail an over-definition of the eschatological glories, which no eye has seen, ear heard or heart of wo/man concieved?

We risk saying more than we could possibly know regarding post-mortem anthropology & proving too much about divine ad intra enjoyments!

Some of the logically valid syllogisms regarding the divinely im/mediate are much too weak, semantically, because they’re making references to experiences that are – not unknowable per se, but – yet unknown – operatively & gnoseologically?

When we do invoke analogies to bolster certain mysterian appeals, those best fulfill & surpass our finest shared parental instincts, aesthetic sensibilities, common senses & moral intuitions, as formed in community & shaped by revelation of Abba? Those mysterian appeals to greater goods, which employ arguments that are repugnant to those shared instincts & sensibilities and that ask us to jettison our common senses, intuitions & rational interpretations, are unworthy of serious consideration?