a storyboard regarding the “hows” of apokatastenai

This isn’t an essay. It’s a storyboard for my project regarding the hows of apokatastenai.

We can’t, in principle, definitively reject God.

We can’t, in principle, have our human teloi foreclosed.

Beatitudinal flatlands are inconsistent with a post-mortem eschatological landscape, which allows for different degrees of divine presence & manifestations of divine glory.

Of the 3 Maximian apokatastases, in my view, 1) the apokatastasis of immortality and 2) a universal apokatastenai are indicative; 3) a universal theotic apokatastasis is subjunctive, although virtually indicative.

operative knowledge. We can taste & see the goodness of our axioms & the consistency in our realizations of that goodness, even though our speculative account remains, in principle, incomplete. But, otoh, by definition, our semiotic interpretations are already conditioned contextually & pragmatically. So, I can’t coherently hold that we couldn’t everlastingly remain practically uncertain in our operative knowledge of God, also, choosing one apparent good after another over the real ad infinitum.

I’m not calling for any superadded epistemic furnishings but am suggesting that, suboptimally, some extraordinarily intense divine presencing, including for some even an immediate presence, could be necessary to bring selected individuals’ knowledge of God to a level that would yield for them, per intellectual illumination, that degree of practical certainty sufficient to at least arrive at an erotic love of God. For me, resurrection would suffice.

It otherwise remains an enigma to me why anyone, in principle & concretely, couldn’t everlastingly persist in practical uncertainty regarding apparent vs real goods, again, given only mediated presencing. I have no problem saying that, probabilistically, it’s not very likely & the odds are vanishingly small, even virtually exceptionless. I can’t see, though, how that’s not a subjunctive universalism.

I’m good with relying on revelation for God’s character.

I’m good with an open theistic divine openness to how – just not that– re our teloi per God’s knowledge of mights & might nots.

I insist, too, that all grace is non-necessitating.

Together, this secures an indicative universalism, which like Dame Julian, relies on neither a logical defense nor evidential theodicy but only a personal trust in God.

Opting for evidential explanations at the level of compatibilism vs libertarianism apparently comes across to most as proving too much or an inapt framing of the tensions.

Still, a gratuitous immediate presencing that reduces (doesn’t cancel) a given person’s autonomy, indeed a sacrifice even ordered toward maximizing humankind’s overall intimacy, is just not in the least repugnant to me. This implies that I do buy into the Thomist autonomy (rather than free will) defense of evil (not hell).

Bottomline, specifying “which” deliberative operations resolve our final rest aren’t sufficient to plausibly explain “how” it gets resolved. For me, the how involves the formal cause of grace on the intellect, on which the will operates. It can vary in degree from a benign to a more coercive influence as relative to a given person’s habitual dispositions & formative stages of development/conversion. That intellect is what keeps our volition from being voluntarist & our libertarianism from being vulgar.

In my logical defense of epistemic distancing, our breadths of theophanic expression, AMDG, are the greater goods in play. They justify the divine risk of HOW – but not THAT – we’ll realize our essential teloi. And it jibes with my eschewal of any post-mortem beatitudinal flatlands.

I’m otherwise grappling with the notion that both the gratuities of grace & creation can gift the intellect via formal causes & so change what’s at hand for the will to deliberatively choose between and/or among. And I’m trying to imagine it all post-mortem, not as if we’ll have new epistemic furnishings but only in terms of changes in the kinds of objects that will be furnished the intellect or not.

Being committed to some sufficient degree of developmental incrementalism & synergistic dynamics (e.g. being not too coercive or overwhelming), I want to call our initial post-mortem experience a mere purgative state & not the beatific vision. It comes very close to that account which I’m looking for in describing my indicative apokatastenai, which entails -not only original beatitude, but – purgatorial impeccability, ie lack of gnomic willing. We’ll know, operatively, that God is the real good for us. That’s an erotic insight. We experience imperfect contrition & truly enlightened self interest.

I don’t consider this dynamic to be at all repugnant to our freedom & autonomy.

Theosis, proper, would ordinarily continue as we respond more agapically but ever in a non-necessitating way. I want this to, generally, be robustly libertarian, precisely embracing maximal autonomy as ordered toward the deepest intimacy. Hence, I’m committed to a subjunctive theotic apokatastasis and indicative apokatastenai.

To the extent death, itself, might be a form of divine pedagogy, might there be anything about the experience of death, in & of itself, including for example, that all would thereby be imparted both gnoseological & operative knowledge of both their immortality and its Source, that would, necessarily, minimally gift all at least a love of God for sake of self? And, further, even a minimal form of well being & beatitude?

I think so.

What about apokatastenai?

Is our intellect, at least, not robbed of certain objects of deliberation, even as our deliberative capacities remain the same? Do we not have novel apparent goods among our choices?

Full circle, we return:

We can’t, in principle, definitively reject God.

We can’t, in principle, have our human teloi foreclosed.

Beatitudinal flatlands are inconsistent with a post-mortem eschatological landscape, which allows for different degrees of divine presence & manifestations of divine glory.

Of the 3 Maximian apokatastases, in my view, 1) the apokatastasis of immortality and 2) a universal apokatastenai are indicative; 3) a universal theotic apokatastasis is subjunctive, although virtually indicative.