Another Minority Soteriology
a hard apokatastenai
Below is in conversation with my friend, Brayden Dantin, and Godchild, Caleb Sylvest. It is a memorialization of a 4 hour conversation regarding the putative theo-contours of a valid Roman Catholic universalism.
The majority soteriology seems to imply that divine images can freely & rationally choose to become mere shadows & vestiges of God, that human persons can refuse – even though never the omnipresencing – the divine indwelling.
My minority soteriology maintains that the lack of a mutual indwelling is not a free will counterfactual because it’s not a possible world counterfactual, in the first place, for divine images.
To wit:
In a grocery store, when a self-checkout kiosk goes down, we simply step aside to the next one. If we’re checking out with an attendant cashier, should she drop to the floor, we’d never just step over her body on our way to the next register. That’s because our presences to one another are never merely functional versus personal, never wholly impersonal versus interpersonal. This is true no matter how we often act toward one another and notwithstanding that our interpersonal relationships admit of degrees.
Free & rational human persons are never merely divinely omnipresenced, functionally, ontologically & participatorily, as might be Bonaventure’s creaturely shadows & vestiges. We are also ever mutually indwelled & divinely co-constituted in the Totus Christus, relationally, interpersonally & perichoretically as divine images in potency to becoming likenesses.
We assuredly grow in our self-appropriation of this indwelling, even if at first we experience it inchoately & unawares, for the Spirit’s abiding presence variously & always affects our intellects as form to matter.
While our refusals to cooperate with this ubiquitous grace to grow in divine likeness will assuredly parasitize this goodness & certainly obscure the divine image, they can never alienate the Spirit’s presence or obliterate the divine image, the fullness of which purgative graces can efficaciously restore. The Trinity eternally invites us to ever new illuminative heights, unitive depths & epectatic breadths.
Adopt this minority soteriology and everything else will fall coherently into place – anthropologically & eschatologically.
Human persons are created to grow in degrees of divine initimacy. What we are has been divinely determined, that is, divine images. What it is that we co-determine & self-appropriate is – not what, but rather – how & how much we reflect what we are & ever shall be.
This only speaks to the issue of Who satisfies the human heart. How it may be variously satisfied in eternity is a different question regarding both degrees of glory & types of beatitude, both secondary & primary.
While the above is only an argument for a hard apokatastenai & soft apokatastasis, it still entails that it would be prima facie divinely unjust to ever deny anyone the possibility of eventually enjoying an everlasting beatific vision.
These are the questions before us:
Who are You, Lord?
the character of the Father – love, mercy & justice
the primacy of Christ – Scotus & Maximus
the ubiquitous gift of the Spirit
And, Lord, Who Are We?
creation as Incarnation
constitutive, relational cosmotheandrism
multiple incarnations
the gratuity of creation
the gratuity of grace
nature of authentic freedom
how autonomy enriches freedom
If God is for us, who can be against? You, Lord, have the words of eternal life. To whom shall we go?
definitions of eternity
varieties of purgative grace – their nature, severity & duration
post-mortem anthropology
original, secondary & primary beatitudes
different degrees of glory
questions regarding immutability, impeccability, epektasis, predestination, efficacious graces
psychology of remorse & satisfaction
Sources of Revelation that speak to these questions
What does Special Revelation say about our journeys from image to likeness, from friends to lovers, from eros to agape?
Church History
Liturgies & Prayers
Scriptures
Fathers & Mothers
Ecumenical Councils
Magisterial teachings
Theological speculations
Historical practices & devotions
Mystical & Hagiographic witnesses
Ecumenical & Interreligious witnesses
What might General Revelation suggest regarding our journeys from image to likeness, from friends to lovers, from eros to agape?
Aesthetic Sensibilities
Moral Intuitions
Parental Instincts
Common Sensical Practices
Protology, History & Eschatology
Salient Distinctions exist between
1) how we would or wouldn’t respond in divinely determined circumstances, per both our free natural inclinations & self-appropriated habits, as infallibly known
2) how & how much like Christ we would or wouldn’t become as, generally, divinely open
3) what we could or couldn’t become as divinely determined
4) counterfactuals of free will versus those of possible worlds
5) which aspects of our historical journeys might be attributed to the divine antecedent will as intended for our sub-eschatological Edenic growth from image to likeness?
6) which aspects of our historical journeys might be attributed to the divine consequent will as permitted to help remedy our collective refusals to cooperate in our growth from image to likeness?