An Indicative Universal Sanctification & Subjunctive Universal Intimacization
Below is a follow to: The Compatibilist Freedom of Apocatastasis & Libertarian Autonomy of Epectasy
Universal Sanctification
Fr Benedict Groeschel once said something like: “Early on our journey, our faith is “clear but tentative.” Later, our faith becomes “obscure but certain.”
That observation seems ever more sage to me as the decades have flown by.
What it refers to, in my view, are our performative interpretations of mediated divine presences, i.e. the book of nature, the gifts of sacraments, liturgies, fellowships, scriptures, etc
Any immediate divine presence, however, would gift a “clear & certain” operative knowledge of God’s love to its recipient.
One would, then, consistent with our natural inclinations & with an imperfect contrition, freely cooperate with attendant purgative graces to properly interpret the vision beatific. This performative interpretation would be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, responsible & expressed by, at least, an erotic love of God.
That’s to observe that it would engage the very same entire human epistemic suite & volitional operations of intellect & will as are available to us in our interpretations of & responses to our mediated divine presences.
While an immediate divine presence would still leave us finite & fallible, for all practical purposes, it would also leave us impeccable, i.e. with our gaze fixed clearly on & our response made certainly to – not apparent goods, but – Goodness, Godself.
The above constitutes my essential indicative universalism vis a vis universal sanctification. It’s about realizing a divine abundance.
It’s so asymptotically close, probabilistically, to certain open theist universalisms that it makes more sense to refer to them as a virtual indicative universalism* (note below) than any subjunctive-type universalism.
Universal Intimacization
The journey will continue, everlastingly, as an everlasting soul-crafting, pursuant to our personal autonomy, which is richer than our freedom of natural inclination & ordered to our epectatic growth in divine intimacy, i.e. our agapic love of God, others, cosmos & even self! It’s about realizing a divine superabundance.
My libertarian intuitions are strong enough vis a vis our soul-crafting autonomy to acknowledge that my stance regarding any eschatological universal intimacization is essentially subjunctive (although certainly virtually indicative).
This is also consistent with a Thomistic Autonomy Defense per the logical problem of evil.
Finally, the greater epistemic distancing provided by only mediated divine presences marks the ordinary journey as ordered toward our ongoing sanctifications & intimacizations. The infallible soteriological efficacies that flow from an immediate divine presence will operate as the divine means of last resort, so as to optimize humankind’s overall degree of autonomy, all as ordered toward our most richly textured experiences of growth in divine intimacy attainable.
Note: I need to give more thought, however, to whether or not such a virtual indicative universalism is exposed to a moral modal collapse as it dares to risk, albeit to a very minimal degree, even the lowest probability of what would be a clearly disproportionate evil?
Divine Balancing Act
Our essential potencies (relative perfections) are reduced by our personal acts of existence (ex nihilo), thereby determining who & what we are as imagoes Dei. Those teloi of our primary nature are thereby fully realized & not frustratable.
Our earthly sojourn is ordered toward how we will manifest Christ as divine likenesses and affords us opportunities to expand the breadth of our theophanic expressions & grow our divine intimacy.
Such a growth in virtuosity doesn’t increase our intrinsic worth or essential perfection. Rather, it increases the scope of our participation in divine relative perfections, the breadth of our theophanic expression & range of our experiences of divine intimacy.
Our earthly sojourn is analogous, so not identical, to eternal epectasy. In both cases, our formal acts will reduce the manifold & multiform final potencies of our secondary natures. Temporally, such telic realizations represent our responses to mediated divine presences, while, eternally, they will ensue from our responses to an immediate divine presence. (All of these divine presencings admit of degrees.)
It is my belief that the telic realizations of our responses to mediated divine presences represent distinct types of theophanic expressions & personally unique experiences of divine intimacy, which will differ, qualitatively, from those that will be realizable by our epectatic responses to any immediate divine presence.
While “that we manifest Christ is not obliterable,” our temporal failures to follow our authentic natural inclinations & cooperate with grace can obscure His divine image within (requiring purgative graces). The risk of such sinfulness & its temporal consequences, which can be grave, could only be justified by some immeasurably greater good, which I propose can be measured in terms of an overall divine balancing that will maximize the overall augmentation of humankind’s autonomous soul-crafting.
Such a balancing act will optimize humankind’s overall self-determined ranges of intimacy, breadths of theophanic expression & scope of participation in divine relative perfections.
Q&A Addendum
Does efficacious grace alter human agency in your account?
JSS: No. Agency doesn’t change. As operators, we operate the very same finite & fallible epistemic & volitional operations temporally & eternally. There’s no protological loss & eschatological retrieval of any putative donum superadditum. Eden was subeschatological, i.e. creation was epistemically & axiologically distanced (though with an essential well being), ergo essentially finite & fallible and unavoidably peccable (so with a potential ill being). Protologically, then, the divine presence to creatures was mediated.
What is the greater good at stake in gifting humankind freedom and autonomy?
JSS: I am drawing a distinction between our essential & abundant erotic love of God, as inheres in our primary nature as gifted ex nihilo, and our superabundant agapic love of God (also others, cosmos & even our-self), as we, gifted by various graces, co-self-determine our secondary natures through our autonomous soul-crafting processes.
Both sanctification & intimacization do represent, concretely & integrally, varying degrees of sanctity – both primarily as images per nihilo & secondarily as likenesses per grace. I refer to the latter process as intimacization, the former as sanctification. Again, both are free & robustly Lonerganian in how they holistically engage his transcendental imperatives to be: attentive, reasonable, intelligent, responsible & in love (erotically & agapically).
I don’t invoke such a distinction as to what may be subjectively deliberative or not. Both optimal freedom & optimal autonomy require the full epistemic & volitional (integral will – intellect) monty.
The distinction in play in my account is, rather, objective, i.e. between mediated & immediate divine presences.
I’m saying that mediated divine presencing does maximize & enrich our interrelational, interpersonal authenticity, our depths of intimacy, our experience of secondary beatitude, our expansions of theophanic & aesthetic scopes.
What about post-mortem efficacious grace?
JSS: The particular efficacious grace that’s mediated via the beatific vision is, for any with a lingering post-mortem vestige of a vicious secondary nature (in various degrees), purgative. It’s also illuminative & unitive. It’s universally purgative, illuminative & unitive. No one, in particular, is really being “zapped.” ALL are being affected in accordance with their individual theotic exigencies. It merely functions “last resort” like for any who haven’t already “come to Jesus” via mediated presencing.
This post-mortem immediate presencing no more violates our epistemic-volitional operations than our grace-filled mediated experiences ever did. That the latter grew us from clear but tentative through obscure but certain faiths & the former gifted us with clear & certain operative knowledge of God all coheres for me.
What does post-mortem efficacious grace add?
JSS: This beatific vision, this immediate divine presence, universally gifts us our primary beatitude, thus fulfilling our telos. From a probabilistic perspective, we’re looking at a 1; sanctification will occur. At no point does the process involve a diminution of freedom, a deficit in our attentive, reasonable & intelligent engagements of reality or lack of personal responsibility. Rather, the process fulfills us.
The growth dynamics go on everlastingly. Post-mortem intimacization engages our autonomous soul-crafting, our ongoing reduction of divine potencies (relative perfections) via epectatic acts. From a probabilistic perspective, the objective probabilities are > 0 and < 1.
We could thus encounter differentials in the attainment of degrees of agapic love (Bernardian), humility (Ignatius), holiness, intimacy, theophanic breadth, aesthetic scope, sophianic realization, etc There can be differentials in how various complements, accidents & attributes of the beatific vision are experienced. They represent superabundant gifts, modally, and any differential in degrees do not correspond in any way to any type of telic frustration.
That the objective probabilities are less than 1 regarding HOW (theophanic expansively) we will manifest God and reduce to 1 regarding THAT (theophanic essentially) we will manifest God is where I locate our indispensable libertarian freedom & open theist intuition.
I strongly resist conceiving the objective probabilities of WHETHER we will manifest God as imagoes Dei to <1 because that seems to me to violate our double effect moral calculus & cooperation with evil principles. To me, it matters not a whit how vanishingly small one thinks the objective probabilities might be that anyone would not freely follow their natural inclinations in response to mediated and/or divine presences. The mere fact that it could be a divinely permitted possibility becomes tantamount to a divine intention since the evil involved would clearly be disproportionate to any finite failures to cooperate with grace. We dare not ever risk such disproportionate evils. Full stop.
But I also strongly resist conceiving the objective probabilities of HOW we will manifest God as imagoes Dei as = 1, because such an autonomous soul-crafting & co-self-determination of the ways & means we choose to manifest God, as we choose among various well beings, as we choose among equipoised divine optimalities, are part & parcel of how we experience loving intimacy & variously express unitive realities. I’m not uncomfortable in calling this a subjunctive intimacization or even a virtual indicative intimacization.
Why would post-mortem efficacious grace be gifted us from the cosmic get-go?
JSS: The question would be “why would God epistemically distance us from the get-go” or “why a sub-eschatological Eden?” or “why a mediated presence at all instead of just an immediate presence?” And my answer remains that an immediate divine presencing, alone, would not yield the breadth of theophanic expressions & aesthetic scope of intimate experiences available to rational creatures that’s afforded them in the opportunity for developmental soul-crafting in response to divine mediated presences.
There’s nothing on the line, soteriologically, vis a vis the depth of our intrinsic theophanic experience, just as there’s nothing at stake in terms of divine intrinsic perfections vis a vis the ad extra divine economy, which expands the divine theophanic breadth & aesthetic scope.
What’s on the line that an eternal epectasis & immediate divine presence wouldn’t alone gift us, then, would be accounted for in terms of the expanded theophanic breadths & aesthetic scopes afforded us temporally via all manner of mediated divine presencings & multiple incarnations, as would be qualitatively unique to that context.
I may be articulating my intuition poorly but in terms of the problem of evil, I am arguing a greater good defense, i.e. that there are goods at stake that are uniquely attainable via mediated plus immediate divine presencings as opposed to the latter, alone. The greater good to be thus attained must be immense and would be inordinately suboptimized without our temporal sojourn.
With Hart, I do resonate with a Pinckaers-like concept of “freedom for excellence.” That’s why I can assign a probability = 1 to an indicative universal sanctification. With Mats Wahlberg, I also resonate with the idea that there’s an essential human autonomy that’s ordered toward our intimacy with God. Wahlberg’s distinction between a freedom (as compatible with metaphysical necessity) & autonomy (as self-determination) and the latter’s role in intimacy has been an intuition that I’v relied on for a very long time, especially regarding our co-self-determining of our secondary natures, i.e. our autonomous soul-crafting. This type of autonomy’s compatible with the will’s nature “not to will’ a given object; in my account, such objects would thus only ever refer to “how” not “whether” to manifest Christ. Beyond any freedom for excellence, then, autonomy can include self-determinations regarding various aspects of interpersonal relations, friendship, love, intimacy.
It’s my intuition that our experiences of epistemically-distanced mediated divine presences in creation qualitatively augment & quantitatively amplify our intimacizing-autonomy, temporally, beyond what our immediate divine presencing will also assuredly gift us, epectatically.
That’s why I bought into Wahlberg’s Thomistic Autonomy Defense when I first encountered it. I was already explicitly relating grace, our secondary nature, theosis & intimacy to an implicit autonomy, beyond mere freedom. Our mediated divine presencing optimizes intimacy. While freedom’s inviolate, autonomy’s a superabundance that can be sacrificed, individually & locally, to maximize its realization, communally & globally. Post-mortem epectasis, alone, would not gift us the richly textured intimacy, the theophanic breadth, the aesthetic scope & degree of soul-crafting autonomy that our temporal sojourn provisions.
That defense fails vis a vis hell (disproportionate evil vs putative greater good) but not evil per its logical problem. Wahlberg satisfied me with his answers to putative objections, including the fact that we’re not introducing a less vs more perfect scenario between temporal & eternal dynamics. We’re talking about expanded breadths & scopes and not differentials in intrinsic perfections or essential telic frustrations. In my account, our erotic love of God’s natural, essential & abundant. Our agapic love & expanded divine intimacy is superabundant.
Why does God gift us deliberative agency in the first place, if efficacious grace can accomplish the same end?
JSS: Some impose a dichotomy between efficacious grace & deliberative process that I don’t even recognize in my account. Deliberative agency is just not an over against efficacious grace in my account. The matter hasn’t to do with changes in anyone’s subjective agency, anthropologically. It has to do, instead, with differences in objective experiences – mediated vs immediate divine presences. Questions might beg like “why not the immediate from the get-go” but they don’t disturb my intuitions, even if I haven’t translated them into plausible stories (not my strength, particularly, or interest, generally).