Dear Universalists: What on earth are we doing “here”?

Below is a follow to Possible World & Free Choice Counterfactuals of Universalism – the lack thereof

It follows that musing — into the afterlife — to explore some putative realities regarding post-mortem anthropology, which will have broader implications protologically, historically & eschatologically vis a vis the problem of evil.

The ‘intrinsically possible counterfactuals’ previously discussed regard – not necessarily just evil, but also – an ever-expansive range of co-creative ontic novelties & have defined our choices throughout history as permitted by God. They ‘must’ be permitted by God given his ends, must continue to define the scope of possible choices into the Eschaton.

Intrinsically, nothing changes, essentially. Extrinsically, regarding our range of options? That’s quite a different matter!

Regarding such co-creative ontic novelties, they can come about – not only from defectibility, but – deviability. Defectibility first presents as mistakes or ontic (pre-moral) evil and may or not devolve further into moral evil. Plain vanilla deviability would refer to nonmoral ontic innovations as could contribute to emergent realities in evolution, for example, let’s say, before it goes awry from personal sin & its cumulative parasitizing privative effects.

Such innovations would involve & be telically ordered toward all manner of things, strictly ex Deo-wise, such as the autonomous self-determination of our secondary natures (habits) in our theotic soul-crafting, such as would co-creatively expand the divine aesthetic scope, the breadth of our theophanic expressions, the range of our beatitudinal enjoyments, & novelties of new heavens & new earths.


Epistemic distancing would variously refer to – not only our increasing, sometimes decreasing, awareness of divine presencings, for example, but – nonmoral ignorance, e.g. what’s behind door #2? what’ll happen if I drop a sweet tart into a bottle of soda?


Our temporal ignorance can be inconsequential vis a vis our well being, can enhance it or can make it ill or destroy it, all quite innocently. 

Willful ignorance & knowingly contributing to ontic evils without a proportionate reason (per double effect) can deprive the good, extrinsically, and build vicious habits, intrinsically.

Obviously, you know all of this. I’m just processing this outloud to make the point that epistemic distancing is a many splendored thing, indispensable to free choices, and will follow us into the eschaton to contribute epectatically, even given a beatific vision, all toward the same ad majorem Dei gloriam aspects inventoried above. 

Our temporal ignorance is an indispensable aspect of our ability to choose. But the inventory of ontic counterfactuals includes good deviations, not just bad deprivations. It also includes both nonmoral mistakes and ontic evils. It can further include pure, grave moral evils. Finally, some of what we imagine are real ontic evils may be just apparent. 

What survives the eschatological horizon?

Certain types & degrees of epistemic distancing, beyond a “mere” beatific vision, as would be indispensable to any experiences of ontic novelties & shedding of montony. But none that would further contribute, modally, to further soul-crafting or personal ontic formation of one’s secondary nature.

Why did God tolerate the possibility of personal ontic defectability, ontic evil & moral evil? 

They piggybacked, unavoidably, on the epistemic distancing that was indispensable to the innocent & harmless ontic deviations & novelties of our co-creative soul-crafting, parasitizing them.

I would argue 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.

Putative greater goods to be had from our historical sojourn might include our growth from divine abundance to superabudance, from an erotic to an agapic love of God, from image to likeness, from friendship to lovers.

Absent a formative period of mediated presencing, we would be mere images, mere friends, merely erotically engaged in an immediate presencing that gifts “mere” abundance. 

Ultimately, though, there has to be a mysterian residue regarding what no eye’s seen, ear heard nor heart of wo/man conceived.

So, I guess that I’m accepting of a certain post-mortem immutability to the superabundant upside but not regarding the purgation of any vicious natures as would obscure the divine image to the downside. Hence, apokatastenai or restoration.

Ergo, ontic defectability, ontic evil & moral evil will cease. Ontic restoration will happen. Certain ontic becomings will stop, e.g. depths of our capacities via our secondary natures, our esse naturale. Other ontic becomings go on, e g. our range of experiences via our esse intentionale. Ontic novelties will endure, along with our epistemic distancing re what’s coming next. Information entropy, only. No more physical or biological entropy.

An immediate divine presencing would foreclose on any becoming of soul-crafting as afforded us, formatively, via mediated rather than immediate presencings. Yet, it would, indeed, forestall & purge a vicious nature, leaving all impeccable even in the purgative process, itself.

A perduring question for me is how we might experience & respond, differently, to any transitory vs everlasting immediate presencing? Or even if there’s a spectrum of such divine presencing, where it can become more & more immediate even when not fully so? Consistent with divine attenuations of intensity & tailorings of scope for each soul?

There’s also the matter of distinguishing between the ontic FACT of being presenced & one’s degree of epistemic awareness regarding various presencings, especially considering that we’re constitutively indwelled. Clearly, though, both divine & human persons can manifest, reveal & disclose as they will to other persons, whether they’re immediately present to each other or just exchanging epistles. Under any scenario, post-mortem, all will be satisfied, none stung by remorse (not for very long, anyway).

What’s at stake in this the most important, defining choice of our existence?

For each individual, superabundant intimacy with God. For God, the global optimization of same in the Totus Christus. Economically, the greater glory of God, theophanically, and the greatest enjoyment of God by all persons, beatitudinally.

I have no reason to believe, however, that ALL must be given EVERY gift of God or the GREATEST gift either. I’m totally good with divine predilection. 

Efficacious gracing DOES sacrifice a degree of autonomy for the individual being graced but, ultimately, is ordered to optimizing the good of all. Still, it doesn’t involve a choice between perdition versus primary beatitude, as it only determines any given person’s degrees of beatitude beyond an essential abundance. And we must infer, morally, that that greater good must far exceed what we can even conceive. So, historically, it’s nothing to be sacrificed casually or indiscriminately, only most providentially. For that reason, certain forms of efficacious gracing should, historically, be exceptional, extraordinary, or it could, globally, cross the theshold of an unacceptable degree of coercion. That global optimization of autonomy as ordered toward maximal intimacy needn’t rule out ALL coercion, all the time, though.

Post-mortem, I believe that one does, in some ways, cross an eschatological rubicon to be graced with an immediate vision that has purgative efficacies as providentially proportioned to the ridding of every vicious vestige & the restoration of every divine image (via an erasure of any & all obscuring parasitic aspects). I gather purgation is no fun, having enjoyed its efficacies, proleptically, even if by mediated presencings. 

So, I can abide with this idea:

Any given grace can, in principle, be resisted. That includes ALL graces.

Any given grace can be gifted in a divinely determined set of circumstances that God has providentially narrowed down.

God infallibly knows that, given such a providential range of possibilities, it will be guaranteed that we’d cooperate with it based on our known natural inclinations (and secondary habituations).

Such an efficacious gracing, being consistent with those natural inclinations, keeps such a situation or set of circumstances or state of affairs from being repugnant to our exercise & experience of freedom. Volitionally, it’s ordinarily an intellectual outwitting, though, in principle, it could, extraordinarily, even involve a volitional outfitting that would be wholly amenable to our essential human freedom.

HOWEVER, to the extent that our autonomy represents a richer notion of freedom and our range of motion has been delimited by an efficacious gracing, even just extrinsically, it will indeed sacrifice one’s interior range of soul-crafting developmental opportunities. What’s new? One’s place & time of birth always has, too.

I resist overexplaining to prove more than can possibly be demonstrated, but I accept this model as a sufficienly SOFT determinism. STILL, the less of this the better, OVERALL, globally.

So, post-mortem, while all soul-crafting bets are off vis a vis our esse naturale, no one’s deprived of essential beatitudes.


I’ve been digging much deeper into Calvinist, Bañezian, Molinist, Open, Process, Classical and the whole Baskin Robbins assortment of divine – human interactivity models. What I’ve done is try to inhabit each of them as a universalist to fix the parts that don’t work. In so doing, I’ve discovered uncountable numbers of equivocal definitions, category mishaps, unspoken presuppositions & manifold caricatures in the “dialogue” between various stances & interpreters within them. Using them as a foil has deepened my self-understanding as well as facilitating my understanding of others better.

These most recent blog posts, immediately below, capture some of it. Surely “mistakes were made” due to my inchoate grasp & lack of academic training & rigor, but the overall thrust, I do truly believe, is coherent. Spiritually, for me, it’s been existentially actionable in my life of prayer & service.

https://syncretisticcatholicism.wordpress.com/2023/11/15/a-defense-of-double-agency-with-a-goldilocks-account-of-divine-sovereignty/

https://syncretisticcatholicism.wordpress.com/2023/11/18/grace-predestination-the-permission-of-sin-the-intention-of-ontic-novelties-a-universalist-approach/

https://syncretisticcatholicism.wordpress.com/2023/11/20/possible-world-free-choice-counterfactuals-of-universalism-the-lack-thereof/

Some of my discoveries: Calvinist & Bañezian stances aren’t wholly apposite or really opposite. Thomists can use both intrinsic & extrinsic models. Bañezians & neo-Bañezians can be compatibilist or libertarian. No Catholic, including compatibilists, believe grace is ever necessitating. It’s a total theo-anthropo clusterparty!

Summing it up –

Historically, God doesn’t even softly determine us, indiscriminately, only ever exceptionally. I believe that’s because there’s too much at stake, economically, that would be lost in terms of the greater goods He has in store, globally, for the Totus Christus. Those are goods that we only glimpse, but what a sight!!!

Providentially, those greater goods are optimally realized only temporally.

Post-mortem, as we segue from the mediated to the immediate knowledge, our epistemic capacities aren’t enlarged. Our intellect is further illuminated with all of the forseeable ramifications that will have, volitionally, per our free natural inclinations in that particular set of circumstances.

Every image of God, once harrowingly purged of vice, will theophanically manifest Christ & enjoy both primary as well as all manner of secondary beatitudes, blissfully, ecstatically and fully satisfied. Untold numbers of others, variously elected, will differentially manifest Christ along a spectrum of likenesses, with ever greater theophanic luminosities & ever more expansive beatitudinal capacities, all also fully satisfied.
My bet is that historically optimizing the number in this divine-likeness cohort is one of the greater goods that won’t be weighable in the eternal balance with our sufferings.

Are these beatitudinal & theophanic differentials just? No one will question them. Might there be divine predilections involved? They wouldn’t offend me. Will all be suitably recompensed? Sure.

Now, I know that much of this is stipulative & assertive & not exhaustively explained or defended. But those limitations inhere in the subject matter. I offer an exploratory metaphysic & speculative protology – eschatology. To whom shall you go?

I’m not trying to defend the Holocaust. Is God responsible even on privation models of evil? Fully. Is he morally culpable. Nyet. I don’t need a holocaust to have a theodicy problem, anyway. I only need Ivan Karamazov’s single innocent baby, whether in Moscow, Gaza or Kibbutz Re’im. I don’t want to have a specific answer for this! I’m anti-theodicy &, truth be told, don’t finally rely on any logical defense, either. I only develop them apologetically, recalling how important they once were to me.

So, divine coercion admits of degrees, because an indiscriminate coercion would be antithetical to the divine optimization of our global intimacy & theophanic glory of the Totus Christus. While the divine economy requires the least amount of coercion, overall, possible, this would not rule out ALL providential interventions, whether intrinsically and/or extrinsically efficacious.

If this seems unavoidably assertive & mysterian as a defense, that’s how it should be!

In the end, no one gets sacrificed or unduly disadvantaged. Economically, it’s always about the greater glory of God, theophanically, and the greatest beatitudinal enjoyment for the Totus Christus. Heck, I’d sacrifice the beatific vision personally and live a life of mediated experience & faith, eternally, for the chance to know my loved ones were so blessed! That’s my twist on Stump’s inverted eschatology.

I don’t have, then, a very robust post-mortem anthropology.
For example, I only assert an indicative apokatastenai, whereby purgative graces burn away our vicious natures. 

And I only further assert that it would be prima facie unjust to foreclose on our essential teloi, i.e. the beatific vision of our intrinsic desires, which underwrites all of our rational appetites in the first place.

But, I have no earthly idea of what a beatific vision would be like, in and of itself. I only conceive heaven, primarily, in terms of secondary beatitudes, which is the stuff we protect during hard freezes – people, pets, plants & liturgical pipes, and secondarily via weak analogies to same.

So, also having only weak notions of what it could be like to only choose among different aspects of well-being, I haven’t fully developed a post-mortem epistemology of freedom.

And, I still only assert a subjunctive apokatastasis, which corresponds to an everlasting beatific vision.

I do equate purgative graces with any and all manner of mediated divine experiences as well as, possibly, a transitory beatific vision or immediate presencing.

Post-mortem, absent ontic evils, there could be no moral evils. So, our free choices would be more analogous to a buffet than, for example, double effect deliberations.

I am not at all averse to God, indefinitely even, continuing his coy but never timid ecdysical ways in the most unobtrusive way possible in order to coax each of us into an ever more intimate union. 

Also at play, in all of this, is the fact that I do not in any way want to denigrate the knowledge of God in our lives of faith & experience and the substantial satisfaction those aspects of our lives can impart to the blessed, for example, who’ve advanced beyond the purgative & illuminative ways to the unitive way, here on earth. Might there similarly be a manner of post-mortem existence, a state in which one may dwell with every conceivable consolation & impeccably so? Is there some substantial parity, conceivable, between some ante- & post-mortem joy, even short of an everlasting beatific vision?

That seems possible to me, especially for those who may have been already gifted a transitory vision. I say that having experienced something analogous four decades ago, which I shared only with my spiritual directors (indeed, sent me into direction) and anonymously on my late friend’s (Jim Arraj) website. I’ll share it openly, now. If interested, go to https://www.innerexplorations.com/chmystext/christia.htm and look for the link to “A Journeyer: A Story.”

In the end, I just don’t have the info to speculate in a fully coherent manner on this topic. I am not even willing to say God would be unjust to indefinitely withhold the efficacious graces that could carry one across the bridal chamber threshold from the decorous & cozy drawing room. 

I do believe that there could come a point where, after a certain quasi-temporal duration, to withhold certain types & degrees of grace could become, for all practical purposes, tantamount to an unjust punishment as it could asymptotically begin to approach a deprivation that’s disproportionate to a finite creature’s offenses.

Who, in the heaven, knows!