A Universalist Theological Anthropology that's Moderately Libertarian
Happy Mother's Day, especially to any who've ever fretted, or worse despaired, over a child's salvation.
One more feeble attempt to articulate my universalist, theo-anthropology:
Our epistemic & beatific distancing (creation as Fall) remains ordered toward our co-creative, co-determination of our secondary natures, i.e. "how" we choose to manifest Christ per unique tropoi as similitudines Dei, while our primary natures & "that" we shall manifest Christ as imagoes Dei remain eternally & wholly determined per divine logoi.
The will cannot refuse the beatific vision, once one's intellect has beheld it, eschatologically.
Since each person's post-mortem purgation will precisely entail the closure of their original epistemic distancing, our freedom will include - no longer refusals, but - only assents & absences of refusal.
It's precisely via such absences of refusal that the graces of justifying faith are gifted, temporally.
Eschatologically, the saving graces of the soteriological restoration of our original beatitudes (apokatastenai) shall simlarly be freely gifted & freely received (assent or no).
The sanctifying graces & growth in holiness, which ensue synergistically from our assent, flow to us theotically as the spiritual gifts, charisms & secondary beatitudes of apokatastasis.
So, this universalist account affirms a compatibilist determination of our logoi & a moderately libertarian co-determination of our tropoi per our assents, refusals and absences of refusal to respond to general & special revelations, i.e. to universal & particular divine manifestations & presences.
Too many prevailing conceptions of human freedom are absolutist. Freedom, rather, remains a relative perfection that finitely participates in the intrinsic perfection of the divine freedom of the Absolute.
As such, it's in no way or degree competitive.
Creaturely refusals, then, have no constitutive significance, refer to no logoi or tropoi, are in no way created potencies reducible to human acts.
Rather, they are mere ephemeralities, parasitic existences on the epistemic distances that are temporally opened between our intellect & the beatific vision, thus situated between our human potencies & acts, hindering but never extiguishing those potencies & their reductions to virtuous acts.
All may, can, will & shall be well because our ex Deo logoi are absolutely determined and our tropoi are sufficiently - not absolutely - free to co-creatively determine - not whether, but - how we'll eternally manifest Christ.
Beatitudes & glory will vary in degree.
One thing I've never suffered is a libertarian neuralgia from imagining that, in the end, I'll be denied the 'freedom' to deliberate & choose between being & nonbeing, to follow or ignore my natural will, but will only be free to choose among various states of eternal wellbeing.
In my view, this account of volition remains wholly compatibile with the moderately libertarian stances of both Scotus & Maximus (and borrows distinctions of both E. Stump & Mary Beth Ingham).
See you on the other side. Whether a votive candle or blazing helios, see ya there!
See:
Do we have here a type of ‘double causality’? My destiny is determined, but how I actualize that destiny is my own? Does this mean I have somewhat ‘potential’ lives that exist at least as potentials, until I choose which I make real? What you call ‘various eternal states of well-being’?