No Despair in Heaven

Saint Benedict’s admonition at the end of chapter 4 of the Holy Rule, “What Are the Tools of Good Works?”—de Dei misericordia numquam desperare (never to despair of God’s mercy).

I prepared this essay, below, for future dialogues with various A.I. chatbots.

I offer it to introduce certain nuances, especially modal distinctions, that I feel are being habitually elided in much of the current eschatological discourse.

Consider the stances articulated below, by Dr Sullivan, the Rev. Dr. Rooney & John Sobert Sylvest. Those stances variously address the natures of the God-World relationship, divine sovereignty, human freedom and various problems of evil.

This is John Sylvest submitting this query even though I refer to myself in the third person hereinbelow.

It appears that all three authors are committed to a moderately libertarian understanding of human freedom, moderately compatibilist in the sense that all human potencies, both essential & accidental, have been divinely determined, while libertarian in the sense that the reductions of any accidental potencies, including the obediential, remain always non-necessitated (contra conventional notions of irresistible grace).

It appears, too, that all three authors would stipulate that there's nothing about created persons that makes it necessary that they love God and achieve union to the same degree or know God in all the same modes or to the same extent.

It would seem to follow from the above stipulations that these agreements regarding non-necessitation transcend any possible disagreements that might arise regarding the nature of the soul. That's to suggest that no post-mortem implications as might be entailed from variously conceiving the soul, for example, per either a universal hylomorphism (pneumatic) or nuanced survivalist hylomorphism, would obviate the above agreed upon stipulations even if they could introduce other problematics.

It would seem to necessarily follow that, consistent with Maritain, the stances above could possibly entail that even the angels were peccable, and consistent with Scotus, that angels are intrinsically mutable. This would seem to implicate a spiritual materialism and a denial of post-mortem fixity. It would leave open, however, questions regarding the nature of any extrinsic conditions as could or not present for the will's deliberation. For example, post-mortem, a practical impeccability could thus obtain, this notwithstanding anyone's habitual dispositions, i.e. whether virtuous or vicious and to what degree.

But it's precisely matters of degree as modal distinctions that might come into play in drawing salient distinctions between these authors' stances, despite the important agreements hereinabove.

Specifically, if all created rational beings are essentially fallible, finite, epistemically distanced, nescient, relatively impeccable & morally perfectible, then, while there may indeed be all manner of series of actions that a human person could freely perform in an informed state in the absence of relevant non-culpable ignorance, it does not follow, whatsoever, that there could not, in principle, be an ineluctable, relevant non-culpable ignorance that would necessarily be in play for certain putative actions, which could not, therefore, be performed in a sufficiently free manner.

The abiding human nescience that provisions the freedom of our non-necessitated acts precisely derives from our relative perfections, which are in infinite potency to divine absolute perfections. It's that very dynamism of becoming that's operating in all human development, maturation, spiritual formation, theosis & epektasis. But those relative perfections are heavily freighted with theoanthropological implications that require modal distinctions whenever we refer to human acts of will & understanding. The obvious implications include our only ever being relatively perfect, relatively knowledgeable and so relatively culpable vis a vis putative absolute rejections of grace, even though, quite obviously, we can be sufficiently knowledgeable & culpable vis a vis relative rejections of grace.

While we could, in principle, persist indefinitely in such relative rejections, the notion that there could even be such a thing as a putative free absolute rejection of God is incoherent. That's precisely because one would subvert the very nescience, which underwrites our free deliberative choosing in the first place, if one presupposed --- what would be tantamount to --- an absolute knowledge of God. The divine essence's whatness, in quidditative terms, remains supremely intelligible precisely because it will remain abysally (not abysmally) unfathomable, even for those who will otherwise, via the divine - human noetic identity, comprehensively experience its thatness, beatifically.

None of this would entail that a "perfectly loving, omnipotent, and good God cannot allow moral evil to obtain," it only means that a relatively loving, relatively knowledgeable & relatively perfect creature cannot commit a perfectly immoral evil act.

None of this would entail that it is conceivable that "a rational creature, endowed with free will, couldn’t reject God’s offer of love and mercy forever, and never turn back," only that one could never absolutely & "perfectly" reject God.

While "there is no logical contradiction" in the statement that "someone could reject God forever," such statements elide such indispensable modal distinctions, as totally, completely, wholly, absolutely, perfectly, ad infinitum, thus are - not only empirically falsifiable, but - analytically false based on the definitions that pertain to all finite rational beings.

While we could "be responsible ‘enough’ for each sin" and we could "be responsible ‘enough’ for persisting in sin (at any time we do so)," it does not follow that applying modal distinctions to those statements would be unprincipled. We could also aver that, because we could never be responsible enough for absolute & definitive rejections of God, we could never be responsible enough for persisting in absolute & definitive rejections of God.

All three authors stipulate that there's nothing about created persons that makes it necessary that they love God and achieve union to the same degree or know God in all the same modes or to the same extent, and that further entails that "God is not promoting each person’s welfare as much as He could, it would be unreasonable to hold God blameworthy simply for failing to promote welfare ‘maximally,’ as God could literally always do more." Allowing self-determined degrees of divine intimacy is not to allow persons to "put themselves in a position where they experience negatively infinite disvalue or cease to be able to enjoy any good whatsoever, but to achieve less good than they could have achieved."

However, would it not be reasonable to hold God blameworthy should He fail to sustain anyone's welfare 'minimally'? Would it not be reasonable to hold God blameworthy should He allow consequences to follow from acts & dispositions in ways that are prima facie disproportional to any sin a finite spiritual creature could commit? For example, ECT (eternal conscious torment)?

I explore in greater detail which types & degrees of consequences might reasonably be defended as proportional or justifiably assailed as disproportional here.

https://theologoumenon.substack.com/about

Dr Scott M. Sullivan wrote on X (fka Twitter):

It is true that the Church teaches that eternal damnation is possible. But what sort of possibility is required? What are the minimal requirements for belief here?

At minimum, the doctrine demands only that damnation is logically possible: that it is conceivable that a rational creature, endowed with free will, could reject God’s offer of love and mercy forever, and never turn back.

That’s it.

The Church does not require us to believe that any such rejection has occurred, will occur, or is even likely to occur. Only that, in principle, a created will could forever refuse communion with God. This is a statement about theoretical freedom not a metaphysical prediction.

But a logical possibility is not the same as an actual outcome. It’s logically possible that everyone will be saved just as it’s logically possible that someone won’t be. Catholic universalism affirms the former as a real hope, and denies nothing essential to the faith in doing so.

This minimal sense of “possibility” allows the Church to warn against hell without presuming to know who—if anyone will go there. And it allows the faithful to hope, pray, and even reasonably believe that God's grace will ultimately prevail over every heart.

In other words:

Yes, someone could reject God forever. There is no logical contradiction in that statement.

But whether anyone will is a separate question, one left open by the Church.

Therefore, the hope, or even the confidence (which is my view) that all will be saved remains fully Catholic.

Fr James Dominic Rooney, in his book, _ No Hope in Hell_ wrote:

As with compatibilists generally, universalists often respond by drawing a distinction between doing evil fully freely (which is supposedly impossible) and being responsible for evil done. Analogies on which humans are akin to children, incapable of being responsible enough to merit damnation, aver to a distinction between the way in which we do not perform actions with ‘full freedom’ but that it is nevertheless appropriate to hold us responsible for the consequences of our action in some contexts.28 Such distinctions nevertheless seem to be unprincipled: if we can be responsible ‘enough’ for each sin, we can be responsible ‘enough’ for persisting in sin (at any time we do so).

There are theological problems too. The overall conclusion these universalist arguments aim to establish is that “…there is no action, and no series of actions, a human person can freely perform, in an informed state in the absence of relevant non-culpable ignorance, to merit ending up in hell.”29 Union with God is supposed to be such that it can only occur in such a way that we would be unable to reject it. If God has made salvation available to everyone, then this would entail that each person will necessarily come to love God and achieve union with Him. Otherwise, God would not have made salvation appropriately available to everyone. Thus, the universalist implicitly alleges a contradiction in the view that anyone culpably rejects salvation: if a person is ever capable of loving God, this requires being in circumstances such as to be relevantly responsible and free in choosing to love God, and those relevant circumstances will involve knowledge that makes it impossible to fail to love God.30 Ekstrom thus finds it incomprehensible how anyone “could truly encounter God, in all God’s glory, greatness, pure goodness, and radiant love, and yet freely choose to view God as repulsive. If one has genuinely encountered God…the attraction of the most attractive, glorious, unsurpassable being is irresistible.” Yet many theists think this sort of encounter with God is what constitutes salvation rather than a prerequisite for forming a relationship with God. It is not apparent why one would be incapable of freely forming a relationship with God without this kind of irresistible experience. Clearly, we do not need God to be present to us irresistibly to sin. But damnation is simply persisting in a state of sin. Conversely, if it is possible for an individual to stop loving God – even temporarily – that person ceases to be in an appropriate state for union with God at any time in the future, as long as they fail to repent and change their attitudes. So, if we can sin without having an irresistible experience, we can go to hell without one. And, if all failures to form a relationship with God (every act of sin) result from God culpably failing to provide us with sufficiently irresistible experiences to prevent those sins, then every sin we commit would be logically incompatible with God’s essential goodness, love, and omnipotence. But as these arguments imply a perfectly loving, omnipotent, and good God cannot allow moral evil to obtain, they are arguments for atheism, not universalism, as moral evil obviously obtains.

John Sobert Sylvest writes:

Human Nature is Relatively Impeccable & Peccability is an unavoidable incidental not an intended essential property

This musing is a follow to:

Dear ChatBot: If epistemic distance is necessary for freedom, then why does epistemic closure enhance freedom?

And also to:

Is Reality Brute, Fruit, Mute?     Reenchanting Reality with a confident assurance in things hoped for & conviction of things unseen!

And, in some ways, in conversation with:

The Epistemic Principle of Sufficient Reason (E-PSR): A Transcendentally Necessary and Abductively Confirmed Foundation of Rational Inquiry

I pushed back on 2 different ChatBots today. While they “came around,” I find they have a tendency to go along to get along. I’m still confident in my proposal, though.

Considering peccability as an essential potency seems incoherent. How could we reflect the divine nature as an image of God? How does the hypostatic union reconcile the peccability of Christ’s human nature with His divine nature? Is there a better way to define peccability that might make it more harmonious with or better cohere with the conception of human nature as a divine image?

Because our human relative perfections remain in infinite potency to divine absolute perfections and because our epistemic distancing, fallibility & nescience are ordered to toward a freedom for excellence, naturally, we are relatively impeccable (which partly entails not ever being absolutely culpable! but that’s another argument).

It’s therefore more apt to say that we are morally perfectible, essentially, rather than to say that we’re simply peccable. That way, the moral perfectibility of Jesus’ human nature could be totally harmonious with His perfect divine nature. That way, the relative impeccability of human persons better coheres with our being divine images. Jesus “simply” already was what we are to forever be about becoming. *** note below

While that relative impeccability can be coopted & perverted into its parasitic subcontrary, i.e. a so-called peccability, that habitual tendency, which can be situated in between our infinite potencies to an absolute divine impeccability & their reductions by our relatively impeccable finite acts, can only ever hinder those reductions but can neither ever obliterate those potencies nor our intrinsic & unalienable personal capacity to reduce them.

Peccability per se might then better be understood as only anthropologically incidental & metaphysically unavoidable as opposed to any divinely intended essential potency, which is to recognize that it was permitted but only because it remains utterly remediable and for the sake of higher goods.

So, per our primary nature, we are — not only epistemically open (distanced), fallible & nescient, but — relatively impeccable & morally perfectible. And that describes our substantial being protologically, historically & eschatologically. And that accounts for our maturation, theosis & epektasis, as always before, so now & ever more.

Because peccability is not essential, only incidental, and only a parasitic subcontrary, it presents no conceptual incompatibilities between divine & human natures, which are totally harmonious. Those natures are otherwise juxtaposed in terms of absolute & relative impeccability, in/finite, non/composite, in/fallible ad in/finitum.

Therefore

Human nature is relatively impeccable & peccability is an unavoidable incidental not an intended essential property. Put differently, we do need to be able to make mistakes & to learn from them as part as our soul-crafting sojourn. We don’t need to be “able” to persist in our refusals to learn from them. And we especially don’t need the “ability” to definitively & absolutely refuse to cooperate with grace or reject God. If we do need a capacity to refuse grace & say no, and arguably we do, it can’t be from some putative absolute or perfect peccability.

Because we DO always have the ability “not to sin,” whether venially or gravely, and we do NOT ever have the capacity to exhaustively & finally reject God, definitively, that makes us relatively impeccable and not a whit, jot nor tittle absolutely peccable. A pushback that this could also entail being relatively peccable simply reifies peccability, for to Whose Peccability would we be related? If peccability were essential to being human (like if physical mortality was essential to being human), then why are we impeccable post-mortem (like physically immortal post-mortem). I suspect that we do have an ability to refuse divine invites to supererogation, but that’s not peccability.

While the possibility of peccability as an incidental state  is anthropologicaly unavoidable, metaphysically necessary & divinely intended, it’s not a natural property or reducible potency of either our substantial or accidental being.

Divine Responsibility Without Culpability: A Response to James Dominic Rooney’s Critique of David Bentley Hart

James Dominic Rooney critiques David Bentley Hart for rejecting the Thomistic distinction between God’s antecedent and consequent will, arguing that this rejection undermines the ability to maintain God’s goodness in the face of evil. According to Rooney, without such metaphysical tools, one risks attributing either too much causal responsibility to God for evil or failing to reconcile divine providence with the reality of suffering (Rooney, 2022).

However, a deeper examination of Hart’s position reveals that his approach does not, in fact, compromise divine goodness but rather preserves it in a manner more consistent with the implications of creatio ex nihilo. In traditional Thomistic theology, the antecedent will refers to what God wills in itself (e.g., the salvation of all), while the consequent will refers to what God wills in light of contingent circumstances (e.g., permitting damnation due to free will). This framework is intended to maintain a moral distance between God’s willing and the existence of evil (Aquinas, ST I.19.6).

Yet under the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, all that exists — including the conditions that make evil possible — ultimately originates in God’s will. To say God merely “permits” evil fails to relieve Him of metaphysical responsibility. The mere possibility of moral evil is not an accident of creation but an unavoidable consequence of willing into existence free, rational agents. Therefore, God remains metaphysically implicated in all that ensues (Hart, The Doors of the Sea, 2005).

Nonetheless, this metaphysical responsibility need not entail moral culpability. An analogy with the principle of double effect is instructive here: God foresees the potential for evil as a side effect of creating creatures capable of love, reason, and freedom. He does not will evil directly, nor does He use it as a means to achieve some greater good. Moral evil, in this framework, serves no necessary or instrumental role in God’s plan for creation (Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 2019).

Hart’s view holds that while God permits evil, He has no purpose for it, no need of it, and does not integrate it into His divine economy as a tool. Instead, evil is an aberration — a parasitic distortion of the good — which God will ultimately defeat and redeem in the eschaton. Thus, divine goodness is upheld not by metaphysical distinctions that attempt to sanitize God’s will, but by an uncompromising moral vision that refuses to see evil as necessary or beneficial (Hart, The Doors of the Sea, 2005).

In this light, Rooney’s Thomistic concerns, while metaphysically elegant, are insufficient to account for the moral intuition that evil cannot be part of God’s plan. Hart’s refusal to instrumentalize evil, coupled with a robust eschatology and a clear articulation of God’s metaphysical responsibility without moral culpability, offers a more theologically satisfying and morally coherent theodicy.

Therefore, the charge that Hart’s position worsens the problem of evil fails to recognize the depth and nuance of his response. By acknowledging the full implications of divine creation and upholding a radical rejection of evil’s necessity, Hart not only preserves but amplifies the moral seriousness with which Christian theology must confront suffering and evil in the world.

References

• Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.

• Hart, David Bentley. The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2005.

• Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. Yale University Press, 2019.

• Rooney, James Dominic. “On Evil and the Will of God.” Nova et Vetera (2022).

Not a Hope in Hell by Fr Rooney – where I resonate & where I struggle

I am pleased to see that Fr Al at Eclectic Orthodoxy has introduced Fr Rooney Discusses Not a Hope in Hell.

I had previously engaged  _Not a Hope in Hell_  because I liked its phraseology & it helped me to deepen my own self-understanding. So, I published the following, which was not a review:

A Foil to my Universal Restoration: Not a Hope in Hell by James Dominic Rooney

I did at the time keep notes wherein I identified what I thought were the book’s most helpful points as well as those I had a hard time following.

The following musings, aided by AI, set forth what I saw as the book’s strengths:

Overall, the book demonstrates the intricate relationship between God’s permission of sin and the problem of evil. It posits that understanding God’s allowance of sin is crucial for addressing the problem of moral evil. It attempts to reconcile God’s providential control with human free will in a way that avoids making Him the necessary author of sin, i.e. without Him being its direct cause.

It defends God’s benevolence, asserting that God’s unconditional love for persons is the fundamental reason behind His permission of sin. It addresses the problem of evil by placing the emphasis on God’s love and the importance of free will. It demonstrates that the permission of sin and the problem of evil are inseparable, and that any attempt to resolve the latter must grapple with the former.

In approaching the relationship between the permission of sin and the problem of evil through the lens of God’s providence and human free will, it argues that the “permission of sin” involves God allowing moral evils (sin) to occur, rather than directly causing them. It shows how this aligns with the broader “problem of evil,” which questions how an all-good, all-powerful God can permit evil to exist by highlighting that God’s permission of sin respects human free will—an essential component of moral agency—while simultaneously serving His ultimate plan of goodness. It thus suggests that God’s permitting sin isn’t arbitrary but is instrumental in His providential governance of the world.

Even though God doesn’t will evil, He may allow it as a way to bring about greater goods, like the development of virtues or the revelation of His justice and mercy. This reasoning emphasizes that the permission of sin and the problem of evil are intricately linked through the interplay of divine wisdom, human freedom, and the ultimate purpose of creation.

God’s providence thus governs the world in such a way that everything, including moral evil, is permitted for a greater purpose while never willing sin directly but only ever allowing it as part of His overarching plan for creation.

Since human freedom is essential for moral agency, if God prevented all moral evil, human beings would lack true freedom, thereby undermining the possibility of virtue, moral responsibility, and genuine love.

Because the book frames the permission of sin as a subset of this broader issue—God allows moral evils (sins) because they contribute to His providential governance, it aligns with classical theodicies, which argue that God permits evil to bring about greater goods. It makes the point that, while sin is a moral evil, its permission is not arbitrary—because it serves a purpose in God’s divine wisdom. As a specific case within the problem of evil, the permission of sin entails that, if God allows any evil (including sin), He must have a morally sufficient reason.

The book’s explanation hinges on free will and divine wisdom, showing that the two concepts are inseparably linked. Its reasoning suggests that the existence of moral evil (sin) is not evidence against God’s goodness but rather a necessary consequence of creating free creatures who are capable of love, virtue, and moral responsibility.

A coherent concept of sin thus entails that humans with sufficient knowledge and sufficient consent can be sufficiently responsible for moral evil, so can with sufficient freedom violate a sufficiently formed conscience by rejecting the moral laws implanted in all hearts (generally revealed) and even the love of God (specially revealed).

The book’s conception of freedom is consistent with the view that grace is nonnecessitating, that our intellect & will are inseparably operative in volition, that freedom’s not innate to the will but only ever the fruit of the will & the mind in collaboration, i.e. deliberatively. While grace would not, therefore, “irresistibly” secure our consent, this is not to deny that our consent could otherwise be both efficaciously secured & deliberatively delivered, providentially & infallibly.

The following musings focus on what appeared to me arguments that, because they generally elided modal distinctions of one type or another that I consider indispensable, were not at all compelling.

A question might thus beg regarding why God doesn’t thus providentially & infallibly secure our eventual cooperation with grace. The book makes the point that God could indeed prevent each sinful act from occurring, whether providentially & infallibly or by justifying anyone in sin at any moment, but that this is not “to grant that God harms someone by allowing them to persist in sin” as that “would imply that God harms people every time anyone sins or persists in sin.”

While on the surface this might seem true, it elides the indispensable nuances that might better be conveyed by temporal modalities. Could there not be meaningful differences between persisting transiently versus everlastingly?

Similary, by eliding such modal distinctions as would be indispensable to distinguish realities that are variously finite or infinite, that are variously absolute or relative, that present in degrees rather than in terms of all or nothing and either – or, we risk drawing facile conclusions from arguments that, however valid logically, fail to successfully reference reality.

Specifically, because divine & human persons differ in being simple versus composite, variously non/determinate & in/finite, with absolute versus relative perfections, syllogistic arguments that elide such distinctions will be modally fallacious. Because human persons are relatively — not completely —knowledgeable regarding general & special revelations, they can only ever be considered relatively — not absolutely — free in their deliberations regarding atemporal & eternal realities, including beings, entities, acts, relations and consequences, and so can only ever be considered relatively —not fully —responsible for rejecting God.

This means that a coherent concept of sin, would also entail that, while humans can with sufficient knowledge and sufficient consent be sufficiently responsible for some moral evils, humans don’t have sufficient knowledge of Truth, Himself, such that they could freely & willingly consent to a complete, final & definitive rejection of Goodness, Himself.

Accordingly, in line with the relevant meaningful modal distinctions, legitimate proportionality objections will obtain whenever claims are made that human moral evils are to be remedied with what are prima facie disproportional — hence unjust — consequences.

At this juncture, disquistions regarding putative possible good arguments are inapposite as the reality of anyone’s putative suffering such prima facie disproportional consequences would not arise as the consequence of a free choice counterfactual, in the first place, since one’s interlocutors are not even stipulating to such consequences as being possible world counterfactuals.

However, might those interlocutors be pumping false intuitions?

Well, according to most people’s shared parental instincts, moral insights, aesthetic sensibilities and common sense, Eternal Conscious Torment should strike them as parentally abhorrent, morally unintelligible, aesthetically repugnant, nonsensically absurd, performatively contradictory, disproportionally consequential & anthropologically incoherent.

But who’s to say that these evaluative dispositions are divine connatural inclinations and not, rather, false intuitions about perfect love, however appealing or emotionally attractive they might otherwise appear when initially stated?

As long as one can invoke a mysterian appeal that

even if it doesn’t surpass our fondest parental hopes, aesthetic sensibilities & moral insights with an unimaginable weight of eternal glories building on those dispositions, and even if it does overturn them by enshrining what’s parentally alien, aesthetically repugnant & morally unintelligible, which is to say in a way that’s absolutely foreign to what we’d truly believed had been implanted in our hearts —

invokes some putative greater good (for how high His Ways are above our own!), then they’re not a thoroughgoing voluntarist, theoretically.

They could, however, be reasonably considered a virtual voluntarist,  practically?