Distinguishing a Universal Restoration from a Universal Beatific Vision

Nov 10, 2024

Below is a preliminary draft of notes which summarize the present consensus of our local (South Louisiana) Apokatasking Study Group.

Why are we here?

God made me to show forth His goodness and to make me happy with him in heaven. ~ The New St. Joseph First Communion Catechism

Why not theotic realization & epectatic dynamics from the get go, then?

Our journeys are ordered to the maximization of the global divine – human intimacization of the Totus Christus via each person’s co-self-determined actualizations of their relative being: image to likeness, friend to lover, AMDG, etc

All will thereafter enjoy eternal epectatic immersion in God, each according to their divine relative perfection (unique in ways & degrees of loving God) as proportionate to each’s free cooperation with grace or even per divine predilection & efficacious predestination.

The greater goods we can thus attain from our initial epistemic distancing, our historical sojourns & our autonomous soul-craftings (of a sub-eschatological Eden) will include the global optimization of human – divine intimacy as well as all manner of glorious inconceivables.

What do we mean by intimacization?

Our theotic journeys can be something like how acquaintances (or even parents & children) become good friends or even best friends. They can even be like romances, where friends can even freely choose to become lovers.

Our growth in relationship will increase both the types & degrees of intimacy we share with God. Think of the Ignatian Degrees of Humility, the Teresian Interior Castle, the Sanjuanist Ascent of Mt Carmel, the Bernardian loves or the classic ways of spirituality – purgative, illuminative & unitive.

What could possibly go wrong?

As with any romance, risks are involved when friends explore becoming lovers. A failed intimacy can yield to degrees of enmity. But God decided that the overall rewards associated with the greater goods of divine intimacy are worth the risks of our free, co-self-determined theosis or autonomous soul-crafting. This is precisely because God knew that He could repair any breaches, heal any wounds, dry every tear, forgive all sins, redeem all sufferings and conquer all evil, purging all parasitic existences, vanquishing all divine enemies, confronting every sinful crimson stain to wash it white as snow.

In other words, God made us to move forward but at some risk of our temporarily falling backward. He will not forsake us by allowing us to suffer any disproportional (infinite) consequences or punishment of such backsliding (finite), but will restore each to her substantial being & essential felicity (cf Maritain).

All will otherwise be rewarded in proportion to their theotic growth (much of it supererogatory) in relative being due – not strictly to merit as commonly understood, but – to what God owes Himself in fulfilling various promises He’s made to all.

When things do go wrong, what then?

Like all loving parents, God is pleased with and will reward even our imperfect contrition, e.g. our sorrow due to the consequences we suffer due to our sins and our love of self, others & God for the sake of self, i.e. our enlightened self-interest, our erotic motivations.

God will further reward our perfect contrition, our agapic motivations and our love of self, others & God for the sake of God.

There are different ways to love God. There are different degrees of loving God. God creates us and allows us to largely self-determine those ways & degrees of loving Him, to grow from an image to likeness of Him. This growth is called soul-crafting or theosis.

What happens “then”?

How does God guarantee His Divine Intentions for us?

Efficacious gracings can operate per a mix of both intrinsic & extrinsic dynamics, e.g. providential placements in infallibly determined circumstances based on each one’s known habits & dispositions and how they’ll thus respond.

Providence can place us in particular circumstances which will infallibly protect us from sin based on God’s knowledge of each person’s peculiar habits & dispositions. In so doing, God can gift us an impeccability & establish an inancaritability that’s been derived from extrinsic positionings.

Impeccability & inancaritability can derive, too, from self-actualized intrinsic dispositions, which can eventually establish our stability in the beautiful, good & true. All are thereby both extrinsically positioned & intrinsically dispositioned in unique ways & to varying degrees.

How does God preserve our freedom & respect our autonomy while realizing His divine intentions?

While Providence can grace us both ordinarily & extraordinary via both intrinsic & extrinsic influences, the greatest attainments of intimacy & sanctity will be realized from the least coercive divine interventions. Those least coercive interventions will implicate a greater role for the intrinsic, character-based dispositions of our free theotic co-self-determinations. The greater the role that intrinsic aspects will have played, the lesser any degrees of divine coercion will have been in play, because extraordinary & efficacious graces will typically involve some measure of sacrificed personal autonomy.

In divine interactivity, such as in kenotic dynamics, the agapic Spirit coaxes, lures, invites & seduces (infallibly determines in part) but never inordinately coerces (wholly necessitates) the emergence & eternalization of truth, beauty, goodness, unity and freedom of rational creatures.

This pattern of divine – human interactivity reflects dynamics we witness in nature, e.g. parenting, codepency, etc, where dysfunctional patterns would include both the apathetic indifference of a low amplitude – low frequency pattern of interactivity as well as the pathetic interference of a high amplitude – high frequency pattern of interactivity. Spiritually healthy patterns would include both the sympathetic interventions of a low frequency – high amplitude pattern of interactivity as well as the empathetic influence of a low amplitude – high frequency pattern of interactivity.

Based on our everlasting finitude, not only do we not ever know God so perfectly that we could thereby definitively & absolutely reject Him, should we ever know God even to that divinely – determined sufficient degree of knowledge, which all will experience in purgatory, no character-based contingencies would withstand his beatific inancaritability. No one would withstand, even in the earliest purgative states, thus being infallibly determined to impeccability. (Beyond the present scope of discussion, we subscribe to a universal hylomorphism, so reject post-mortem immutability.)

What about our deliberative will? Does it operate differently in the afterlife?

Metaphysically our deliberative will always could reject God but efficaciously God can infallibly determine that it never will. For some this will be mostly intrinsically determined by their self-actualized character, while for others it could largely be determined by a providential preservation from and/or placement in certain extrinsic circumstances as would be infallibly known to be efficacious, precisely considering each’s particular inner dispositions & general free natural inclinations.

What does our deliberative willing ultimately determine? What difference does our free will make?

The virtuosity of each will reflect various providential combinations of both intrinsic & extrinsic factors as will be commensurate with distinct degrees of sanctity, humility & intimacy. The AMDG will be expressed in how & how much each manifests God’s glory & in how & how much each experiences various beatitudes.

Our redemptions, then, could involve both each person’s healings &/or preservations from &/or placements in very specific circumstances, extrinsically, as well as each one’s own free incremental self-actualizations of their particular virtuous dispositions, intrinsically.

So, our epistemic distancings & theotic journeys are about optimizing human – divine intimacy via each person’s autonomous soul-crafting, which will co-self-determine each person’s unique actualizations of personally selected infinite potencies of our divine – human relative being.

The distinction between substantial & relative being must not be overplayed as they are integrally intertwined in our ongoing becoming of Who we are per AMDG. They are intertwined, too, in our experiences of hell, purgatory, heaven & the beatific vision.

What is the beatific vision, anyway?

Super/natural, supra-theophanic, horizontal – vertical rests, im/mediate, etc (cf Boersma vs Gaine), are distinctions that refer not only to the beatific vision. Because of our innate divine noetic identity, we can already experience God immediately via our divine apprehension. What the beatific vision immediately & supra-theophanically imparts is our divine comprehension.

Heaven could be experienced per an infinite spectrum of degrees of perfection, beginning with the mere restoration of our substantial being & essential beatitude (secondary) and extending to the beatific vision (primary), which — is not only immediate & supra-theophanic, but — gifts a divine obediential comprehension, which will surpass our immediate & supra-theophanic divine innate apprehensions.

Divine immediate apprehensions & comprehensions will differ not only in terms of degrees but in qualitative terms related to distinct holistic aspects of our axiological epistemology. Those aspects will be analogous to how Bracken describes Trinitarian intersubjective dynamics. While we can successfully refer to, we can’t robustly define, this emergentist hierarchical analogue of noetic transcendence, or meaningfully conceive — much less predict — its novelties.

Bracken describes those Trinitarian dynamics: “Through intersubjective relations, a person can know & understand others’ subjective experiences by prehending the structural objectifications of those experiences, objectively knowing & identifying with them but not subjectively identifying with them. Infinite persons objectively know & identify with each other in every way. The different subjective realities of each person precludes ontological identity (as in the logical principle of identity). Knowing & willing, then, pertain to both the divine nature and to each person.”

The divine manifestations of the Lights of Glory will elicit obediential beatific potencies, actualizing them by divine agency, for they are not otherwise realizable, innately, i.e. by creaturely agency, alone.

How does sin enter the picture?

We can commit grievous acts & form vicious habits in a fully culpable manner by willfully disregarding those aspects of the Good, Beautiful & True of which we are sufficiently knowledgeable. Such seriously sinful refusals to cooperate with grace parasitize our personal goodness with vicious aspects of our personal (substantial) being. Such viciousness will merit eternal annihilation. A few have speculated regarding the actual mechanism of its destruction. Cf accounts of J. Coyle, T. Ross, T. Pomplun & JSS (self-nihilating ephemeralizations).

Purgatory otherwise salvages those virtuous habits, which we’ve actualized, as will have remain tainted, to any extent, by a less than full cooperation with grace. Purgative graces thus purge our personal being of any vicious remnants of less serious sins.

How do we experience the beatific vision?

While the resurrected body will equip us with certain novel metaphysical capacities, our epistemic furnishings are already capable of beatific visions, as we know from Christ, perhaps Mary, Paul, Moses & other mystical tales of infused graces.

Will everyone experience the afterlife the same?

It does seem that opportunities for soul-crafted increases in sanctity & intimacy from ordinary graces will abound more so if one’s theotic journey has enjoyed fewer shortcuts from extraordinary gracings. Undeniably, such interventions will involve an extra degree of divine coercion, ergo some sacrifice of one’s personal autonomy. (One’s autonomy is not inviolable. One’s freedom is.)

Because many historical opportunities are entirely unique & definitely unrepeatable, our failures to cooperate with grace would seem to amount to real forfeitures of certain degrees of sanctity & specific types of intimacy in a way that could be permanently consequential. We must distinguish, though, between consequences & punishments. The lack of a beatific vision as a reward may not even be recognizable as a deprivation or so-called disproportional punishment. As long as each is restored to their substantial being & essential felicity, no disproportional punishment would otherwise prevail.

While all will forever actualize more & more of their divine relative being, epectatically, each would experience God with whatever degree of perfection He has ordained, i.e. per both different types & various degrees of beatitude, whether as will have been “merited” or even predestined per divine predilection.

A subjunctive hopeful stance toward the universal beatific vision is thus warranted. And an indicative stance toward universal restoration will more perfectly cohere with our greater good reasoning, especially in the light of our moral intuitions as are informed by double effect principles.

Heaven will be a many splendored state with all types & degrees of beatitude & relative perfections, including our earthly, historical joys, all manner of secondary beatitudes, and the lights of experience & faith, which, even absent a beatific vision & lights of glory simply could not be equated with or experienced as eternal conscious torment. That’s why we best avoid any beatific vision or bust (vs hell), romance or bust (vs friendship) or superabundance or nothing (vs abundance) approach. In so doing, we would denigrate, for example, the OT Covenant & justice vs the NT Covenant & charity. We would also denigrate the lights of experience & faith vs the lights of glory, along with the entire catalogue of the divine presencings found in our sacramental, ascetical & mystical traditions & theology, e.g. Ignatian: more clearly nearly & dearly; earlier stages of journey vs later; dynamics of epectasy.

There would be nothing “mere” about universal restoration, whatever one’s stance regarding a putative egalitarian universal beatific vision. Maritain’s apokatastenai remains necessary & sufficient to overcome post-mortem proportionality objections.

Notes:

More felicitously, we could’ve quoted Ratzinger: “It is sufficient to know that God gives each and every person his fulfillment in a way peculiar to this or that individual, and that in this way each and all receive to the uttermost.”

Still, with Ratzinger, we wouldn’t deny that:

“Heaven is ‘reward’ in that it is a response to this life-way, this biography, this particular person with his actions and experiences.”

We’d’ve been more circumspect had we not been addressing our coreligionists.

Less can be said, really, than has been asserted traditionally about our unique eschatological experiences, e.g. in terms of operating (loving) in different modes at various levels with specific capacities, wearing different crowns.

But we are presently reworking our tradition’s capacity metaphors, changing them from differently volumed cups & containers to variously diametered capillaries, conduits & culverts!

For you see, w/Ratzinger, we “recognize the task of enlarging the vessel of our own life. “

“But … this enlargement is not meant to ensure that in the world to come we have the largest barn possible in which to store our wealth, but rather to be able to distribute all the more to our fellows.” ~ Ratzinger

“In the communion of the body of Christ, possession can only consist in giving, the riches of self-fulfillment in the passing on of gifts.”

~ Ratzinger

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology:_Death_and_Eternal_Life

Jean Daniélou’s interpretation of epektasis compared to those from the Eastern monastic tradition.

On the Interpretation of the Theory of Perpetual Progress. Taking into Account the Testimony of Eastern Monastic Tradition by Gheorghe Ovidiu Sferlea

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gheorghe-Sferlea

reconciling Aquinas’ light of glory & Nyssen’s epektasis, especially re what Aquinas did & did not mean by “comprehension”

Thomas Aquinas on Gregory of Nyssa’s Epektasis: An Impasse or Paradox? by Aaron J Weisel

https://www.academia.edu/97706194/Thomas_Aquinas_on_Gregory_of_Nyssa_s_Epektasis_An_Impasse_or_Paradox

reconciling Aquinas & Nyssen re the beatific vision

Thomas Aquinas, the Beatific Vision and the Role of Christ: A Reply to Hans Boersma by Simon Francis Gaine

https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/theologica/article/view/16613

I list the above “Catholic” resources from Cardinals Daniélou & Ratzinger & the Rev Dr Simon Gaine OP to provide a reference point for how our Catholic study group approaches some of the tensions between Nyssen & Aquinas. We do so charitably, ie presupposing their reconciliation.

Dear Lord,

three things I pray;

to see thee more clearly,

love thee more dearly,

follow thee more nearly,

day by day.

re epektasis & beatific vision, beyond the finite modal distinctions re how we might variously see God, doesn’t knowing the true Essence = to love & follow Him?

Coyle

https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2019/09/22/may-catholics-endorse-universalism/

Ross

https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-severity-of-universal-salvation/

Trent Pomplun, “Heat and Light” Modern Theology (2020)

https://afkimel.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/heat-and-light.pdf

Джон’s Theologoumena: Another Minority Report

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