About our Divine Indwelling & the Beatific Vision
When an attempt is made to consistently hold together certain Thomist conceptions a universalism “problem” can be generated.
Such irreconcilable notions could include predestination, impeccability, inancaritability, efficacious grace, no character or disposition – based beatific contingencies and a double effect – cooperation with evil – like calculus.
For a rigorous account of this universalism problem, see Justin Noia’s “In the Beatific Vision, both Freedom and Necessity.”
In _God’s Final Victory_, wherein John Kronen & Eric Reitan present a comparative philosophical case for universalism, in Chapter VII, they explicitly argue for universalism from efficacious grace. See Fr Kimel’s “Kronen & Reitan: The Argument from Efficacious Grace” for a review of what’s at stake & how it’s relevant to what we’re addressing here.
June 17th 2023 Update
Especially see Fr Kimel’s recent essay, Predestined to Glory, where he superbly presents his thesis: God the Father has predestined humanity to eternal glory in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.
I’ve danced around this issue, too. See:
The Guarantee of the Beatific Vision & Incoherence of Beatific Contingencies
Thomism works well enough with a Dogmatic Universalism
A Defense of Grace, Predestination & the Permission of Venial Sin
Permission, Predestination, Peccability, Preterition, Predilection, Purgatory & ‘Pocatastasis
What “rescues” Thomism from its apparent universalism problem, Noia has suggested, has to do with the greater good of intimacy. There are parallels in his approach with the stance set forth by Mats Wahlberg in his “The Problem of Hell: A Thomistic Critique of David Bentley Hart’s Necessitarian Universalism.“
Noia asks: “Can God unilaterally decide to take up residence ‘inside’ of a person, to ‘unite’ God’s entire being with that person’s? The answer must be ‘no.’ A union of this all–embracing, absolutely comprehensive sort—like a nuptial union—is necessarily bilateral: it requires an act of will on the part of both parties. The vision of God is not a passive affair, a mere perceptual exchange.“
Wahlberg suggests: “The greater good that this defense appeals to is not autonomy itself—a notion I will shortly explain—but a good that presupposes autonomy for its perfection, namely friendship or intimacy with God. The aim of the defense is to demonstrate that the perfect goodness of God is compatible with the possibility of damnation.”
That reminds me, in addition to predestination, impeccability, inancaritability, efficacious grace, no character or disposition – based beatific contingencies and a double effect – cooperation with evil – like calculus, we must add the possibility of damnation. I almost forgot!
That’s what many Thomists are twisting themselves up into knots over as they try to formulate logical defenses & evidential theodicies for the problem of hell.
Noia & Wahlberg have done most of the preliminary groundwork for universalists by showing how the free will defense for evil can’t be facilely extrapolated to a defense of hell. Kronen & Reitan have well articulated how efficacious grace plays into the same problem with which they’re grappling.
What I have previously rejected out of hand is Noia’s strategy of rescuing Thomism from its universalism problem by introducing the divine indwelling (ordered to intimacy) as a beatific contingency & Wahlberg’s parallel strategy of replacing its free will defense with an autonomy defense (ordered to intimacy) of hell. Otherwise, I’ve used an intimacy account similar to Noia’s & Wahlberg’s in my own defense of evil – just not hell.
While I understand and appreciate the need to preserve the gratuitous nature of God’s grace, I also reject the notion that it has to be framed in an all or nothing dichotomy between hating God & nuptial bliss, total alienation & intimate indwelling.
In my musing “An Indicative Universal Sanctification & Subjunctive Universal Intimacization,” I set forth what’s otherwise at stake is, to put it simply – not enemy vs lover, but – friend vs lover. We have an erotic love for God per our free natural inclinations which can grow, modally & synergistically, into an agapic love by grace.
Below, though, is my attempt to better locate my impasse & explicate my objection, specifically, to an indwelling-based beatific contingency.
My move is simple. I adamantly reject all or nothing and either-or conceptions of the “mutual” divine indwelling of human persons. I am not saying anything different than DBH, I don’t believe. I won’t reiterate what he’s said here but wish to incorporate it by reference.
As for grounding universalism in either God’s nature or human nature, for starters, I recognize purgation & don’t recognize perdition as a successful reference. So, I’m rejecting the premises of many arguments based on both whether or not various references are successful, e.g. perdition, as well as whether or not my interlocutors and I share the same definition, e g. God as freely, loving Goodness, Himself, and how His Will would manifest to each of us personally & all of us ecclesiologically.
Nevertheless, that we are mutually constituted I – Thous, who’ve been generatively othered as persons, and with natures, which have been emanatively ex Deo’d as divine potencies or relative perfections, implicates unitive dynamics that, inescapably, will be both ineluctably unobtrusive as well as utterly efficacious!
So, over against all or nothing and either-or conceptions of the “mutual” divine indwelling of human persons, I recognize that there are different ways we can experience the indwelling to different degrees, e.g. with both gnoseological & operative knowledges, both mediated & immediate divine presences, both subjective (quasi-experimental) & objective experiences (robustly experimental), with God as an object of our faith, experience or vision and so on. The gratuities of grace aren’t going anywhere just because we’ve eliminated one putative gratuity, especially one that happens to be morally unintelligible, aesthetically repugnant & altogether nonsensical.
So, while recognizing natura pura as an eminently intelligible abstraction, I wholesale reject its reification as a concrete reality. It wouldn’t successfully refer, whatsoever or whenever, to human persons who are everlastingly & pervasively engraced.
Specifically, where my account will depart from the majoritarian eschatology will be micro-located in the distinction between omnipresencing & indwelling. It’s a nuanced distinction, though. The universal omnipresence for all rational creatures will be experienced as a mutual indwelling, albeit one that, alone, will be experienced only implicitly & quasi-experimentally. Other ways of divine presencing yet await and higher degrees will be enjoyed as each person cooperates with grace. This account, thereby, rejects indwelling-based contingencies. That will be the location, below, of my impasse with those who’d imagine they’ve “solved” Thomism’s universalism “problem” by using what’s an incoherent concrete duplex ordo to ground a putative indwelling-based beatific contingency.
The account, below, has practical implications for our Life in the Spirit, missiology, catechesis & evangelization, formative spirituality & theosis, lectio divina & liturgy, ascetical & mystical theology, corporal & spiritual works of mercy, the proleptic mystical nexus of our every historical synergistic act with our eschatological destiny and on and on and on.
Thesis:
That we shall everlastingly manifest Christ as imagoes Dei has been determined by the logoi of our primary nature.
How we shall manifest Christ, as His likenesses, we will co-determine, synergistically, by the tropoi of our secondary natures.
All creatures are divinely omnipresenced & all human persons are also divinely indwelled by – not only the created means of grace dispensed by the Holy Spirit, but – the three divine persons in an ad extra operation of the uncreated divine nature, which is ascribed in a special way to the Holy Spirit.
All persons experience the divine indwelling & manifestation of divine love as a foretaste of the beatific vision, which differs only in degree or state from that which binds the blessed to God in the eternal happiness of the beatific vision!
All persons are gifted an operative knowledge of God as they experience mediated divine presences in different ways & to various degrees.
All persons experience mediated divine presences, at least, implicitly & quasi-experimentally, if only through each person’s subjective experiences of their own essential, volitional & final divine potencies (relative perfections) as we, tropically, reduce same, respectively, by our existental, efficient & formal acts.
Potentially, all persons can also experience mediated divine presences explicitly & experimentally, which is to say, through each person’s experiences of God as also an object of both faith & of experience.
Each person’s essential, volitional & final divine potencies are gifted as the logoi of our natures, which operate in the gratuity of creation by way of the immensity of His universal & ordinary presence, ontologically as agent. All of these logoi & potencies are divine & ordered to the beatific vision as an intrinsic aspect of what we are and that, as imagoes Dei, shall everlastingly manifest per our primary natures & primary beatitude. As DBH says, re our rational appetite for the Good, for the Beautiful, for the One, for Being: “If we did not intrinsically desire immediate knowledge of God, we could not rationally desire mediated knowledge about truth in finite things.” If “God just is our Telos,” as DBH recognizes, then all are already thus teleologically ordered to the beatific vision.
Each person can express the logoi of human nature through synergistic tropic acts, which operate in the gratuity of grace by way of the intimacy of His particular & extraordinary presence, intentionally as object. We can, thereby, progressively realize ever increasing degrees of divine intimacy (expansions of theophanic breadth) as an intrinsic aspect of how we can grow, modally, per our secondary natures & secondary beatitudes.
Yes, persons will thus variously experience the beatific vision.
Yes, that’s what we, modally, co-self-determine, co-creatively, on our soul-crafting earthly sojourns.
The economy of grace is ordered to our tropoi and how we will personally & modally express, as Christ-likenesses, what, per the gratuity of creation & our natural logoi, we inalienably are & everlasting shall be, ontologically, as imagoes Dei.
Yes, we can & do freely sin and grow vicious natures, which parasitize the very theotic processes intended to grow our virtuous secondary natures. But those vicious habits can only ever situate themselves halfway between our human acts & divine potencies, tropically – hindering but never extinguishing them & naturally – obscuring but never obliterating our primary natures.
This is all to recognize, on one hand, that any vicious secondary natures will unavoidably require purgation, while, on the other hand, any notion like perdition wouldn’t even successfully refer.
Well, I’m not finished. Not sure when I’ll return to the task. I have grandchildren & baseball preoccupying me.
Update: As LSU heads to Omaha & the grandchildren to summer camp, I am now contemplating how I might put flesh on my skeletal abstractions re the various ways & degrees of divine presencing & our experiences of same by using a concrete example. I have settled on using Pip in Great Expectations as he searches for his benefactor, even his mistaking of the apparent for the real. I shall work on this while I mow the lawn this morning.
Post-weeding & Pre-mowing
For rational creatures, then, per the gratuities of both creation & grace, there is always a simultaneous divine omnipresencing & indwelling, both ontological & intentional, both universal & particular, first only mediated then eventually immediate, experienced, at least, implicity & quasi-experimentally, then growing ever more explicit & experimental, ever more gnoseological & operative, moving thru faith then experience &, finally, to vision.
What we experience implicitly, quasi-experimentally & subjectively through the universal omnipresence per the gratuity of creation roughly corresponds to those furnishings of our human epistemic suite as more fully accounted for by Maritain’s connaturality, Polanyi’s tacit dimension, Newman’s illative sense, Fries’ nonintuitive immediate knowledge and Peirce’s abductive instinct.
Both implicitly & explicitly experienced, subjectively & objectively accessed, then, the divine indwelling everlastingly abides with & to our intellects & wills as form to matter!
As Fr. Kimel explained, the indwelling Spirit is the decisive difference.
About Universalism – Perditionism Discourse
So many of the conundrums in universalism – perditionism discussions often come from a failure to just reject certain premises, up front, especially those containing concepts that don’t even successfully refer for universalists. Universalists often concede too much to perditionists by implicitly stipulating to realities they otherwise explicitly reject!
Why stipulate to definitions that aren’t even intelligible in one’s own system?
There can be way more talking past than talking to, when we disagree on – not only premises, but – basic definitions. e.g. God could ensure that all will freely come to, at least, a love of God for sake of self & an imperfect contrition, i.e. an enlightened self interest, while still allowing us to reject, to varying degrees, a love of God for sake of God & perfect contrition, i.e. self – transcendence. The choice would be between a merely erotic love or, additionally, a robustly agapic love w/progressive degrees of divine holiness & intimacy.
The beatific vision could thus be variously experienced (consistent with some traditions, like my Roman Catholicism).
Why does the choice have to be between hating God versus divine nuptial bliss?
Concepts like the gratuity of grace, predilection & predestination could still refer to divine favorings e.g. efficaciously gifting degrees of holiness & intimacy (not get out of hell free cards).
“Saved,” would refer to our deliverance from sin & death (not hell) by purgation & resurrection.
Concepts like perdition, hell & mortal sin would not even successfully refer.
Joseph Hontheim of the Society of Jesus (1859 – 1929) authored the Catholic Encyclopedia’s entry on Heaven. In parts 5, 6 & 7 he distinguishes essential & accidental beatitudes and describes the attributes of beatitude.
In my universalist take, the beatific vision admits of various degrees, both essential & accidental.
I don’t stipulate to all of Noia, Wahlberg or Stump’s definitions & premises e.g. neither “perdition” nor definitive rejections of God successfully refer for me.
But I do like the way they appeal to autonomy & intimacy. I accept their abstract distinction between the gratuities of creation & grace. I think they’re right in taking pains to preserve the latter, just wrong in disregarding how we’re always engraced, concretely.
I believe there are theo-anthropo dynamics that must be in play that are something like those Stump puts forth. Plausibly, for God to only love people in light of their greatest possible state wouldn’t be to love them for who they are, but only for who they could become? OK
re: Stump’s claims about different ‘offices of love’ are reflected in Aquinas’ claim that God “does not will every good for every one.”
OK.
Stump could be somewhat correct. God has allowed – not damnation, but – various degrees of beatitude, both essential & accidental, in the beatific vision, b/c He wants free creatures to – not just be in, but – enjoy union w/Him, each in their own most co-self-determined way.
A Putative Minimalist Universalism
I believe that divine presencing presents in degrees & that our knowledge of God grows (epistemic distance closes) in degrees. I don’t believe God acts via efficient causes on the will. But I definitely hold that He can act on our intellect via formal causes. Even those acts are non-necessitating.
Nothing happens to our essential nature, the primary property of which is our will, from the moment we are caused existentially through eternity in epectatic dynamics. God does act, in all sorts of ways in our lives, thru efficient causes, just not on our wills, e.g. physical healings, signs & wonders, miracles, etc
What separates Báñezians & Molinists from Calvinism is – not just single vs double predestination, but – the fact that grace is non-necessitating.
What’s rock bottom essential is that we acknowledge at a bare minimum, over against a vulgar libertarianism, is that degree of determinism implicated by divine logoi & defined as the human teloi of divine potencies. So, I consider my libertarianism as moderate b/c my determinism is soft (hard enough).
All of these dynamics present in degrees. It would not be wholly repugnant to me to accept that it’s metaphysically possible that one could perdure everlastingly in “only” a mediated divine presence, while also overwhelmingly improbable they’d not inevitably surrender to an immediate Presence.
Perhaps our definition of universalism could first turn on the fact of Maximian irrevocability & derivatively turn on the fact that all divine presencing presents in degrees & so does our operative knowledge. Further, no vicious nature could either totally obscure the divine image in us or obliterate the divine potencies of our final teloi.
Beyond being, well being & eternal well being, I firmly hold to the notion that there are degrees of glory or theophanic expressions. A minimalist universalism, which is what I lean toward, seems more coherent & easier to defend.
By bifurcating erotic & agapic loves I’ve been able to affirm both indicative & subjunctive eschato-aspects. I guess I’m saying that, if per some accounts, I could also thus distinguish an indicative mediated presence & subjunctive immediate presence, that would still meet my criteria for a minimalist indicative universalism.
What’s essential are everlastingly available purgative graces, everlastingly inalterable human epistemic furnishings & teloi, no ECT and a goodenough eternal well being w/an everlasting openness to it getting even better.