Nature, Grace & Universalism

one Catholic perspective

Patterns of Divine Interactivity

Certain patterns of interactivity occur in nature, such as throughout evolution, as well as in human relationships, such as in parenting & codependency.

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

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.

I have described the above dynamics (an analogue to the science of pest control strategies, see below) to place my conceptions of nature, grace & freedom in a context that best fits both my Lubacian & Maritainian perspectives.

With de Lubac, I affirm the eternal preservation of our original teloi, which order us toward the ultimate intimacies of immediate divine presencings, which can be both transitory & everlasting. As an object of our vision, our experience of this presence will deepen epectatically.

With Maritain, I affirm the eternal restoration or apokatastenai of our original beatitude, which orders us toward a growth in our operative knowledge of God as gifted through various mediated divine presencings, which afford us myriad encounters of God. As an object of both our experience & our faith, our experiences of these presences will deepen epectatically.


Pest Control Analogy

apathetic indifference of a
low amplitude – low frequency approach or live & let live attitude toward roaches

pathetic interference of a high amplitude – high frequency approach or fly swatter strategy for killing roaches

sympathetic interventions of a low frequency – high amplitude approach or roach bomb remedy

empathetic influence of a low amplitude – high frequency approach of spraying your baseboards with roach poison

More aesthetically apt analogies could be constructed using parenting strategies, addiction psychology, etc In my repugnant example, just think of roaches as our vicious secondary natures.

My Indicative Universal Apokatastenai

My purpose here is to defend my approach which recognizes an efficacious divine interactivity that would include both a harder determinism (higher amplitude) as well as a thicker libertarianism (lower frequency). Efficacious grace is thus gifted extraordinarily.

My approach also recognizes a sufficient divine interactivity that’s ordinarily low amplitude & high frequency.

This is how I thus situate my indicative universal apokatastenai & subjunctive (though virtually indicative) universal apokatastasis.

My approach varies from most others in insisting on:

• 1) a universal restoration of our original beatitude,

• 2) a universal preservation (not necessarily realization) of our original teloi &

• 3) universal post-mortem impeccability.

My approach, however, is virtually indicative vis a vis the universal attainment of the beatific vision, i.e. our original teloi. That’s because I can offer no plausible reason for why anyone would not eventually consent to such an invite as their knowledge of God grows, even as that knowledge would be gifted through only mediated divine presencings, which afford us myriad encounters of God. That’s precisely because, even as an object of our experiences & faith, though not vision, our experiences of these divine presences will progressively deepen so very epectatically, hence leading us to ultimately consent to follow Him ever more nearly & love Him ever more dearly. Seeing Him most clearly in a vision beatific would most assuredly follow!

An Anti-Theodicy Universalism

Calvinists, Báñezians, Molinists & Open Theists, including their various stripes, have all proffered tailored free will defenses. I’ll stipulate that they’re all logically consistent & entitled to some form of mysterian appeal via a theological skepticism.

This is NOT to say I happen to employ the same definitions they do for every term in every premise or that I accept their conclusions.

Because I generally eschew evidential theodicies, I have little interest in evaluating their competing plausibilities.

While universalism doesn’t better equip us to do evidential theodicies either, it does properly & a priori rule out infinite consequences for finite choices as prima facie disproportionate &, ergo, as morally unintelligible.

This is all to say, then, I have no quarrels with anyone’s logical defenses of evil, whether they’re in/compatibilists, libertarians, hard or soft determinists. Logical consistency just isn’t that high a hurdle to jump.

This doesn’t mean I see these approaches as evidentially equiplausible, though, especially when employed in a greater good defense of hell. My appeal’s not THAT mysterian & my theism’s not THAT skeptical!

Not being able to empirically & inductively come up with anything plausible or robustly morally intelligible doesn’t mean I can’t spot, analytically & deductively, what’s manifestly contradictory & morally unintelligible.

While the antecedent – consequent will distinction collapses at the eschatological horizon re certain unitive thatnesses, it’s alive & well historically re certain theotic hownesses. A mysterian appeal re the putative greater goods in play, here, would not be ad hoc.

B/c the divine economy & eternal decrees are all about theophany, istm that optimizing the overall theophanic breadth is at stake &, for us, maximizing our overall divine intimacy is in play. That’s all just analytic. Evidentially, I’ve got 0 to “help” Ivan Karamazov.

My logical defense is decidedly Thomistic. I buy into Wahlberg’s distinction between freedom, which remains inviolable, and autonomy, a richer aspect of volition that we can be invited to sacrifice, in part. Efficacious grace does entail a sacrifice of autonomy but only ever toward the overall greater good.

I also buy into Noia’s denial of character or disposition-based beatific contingencies, just not his introduction of indwelling-based contingencies, which rely on an abstract natura pura apart from our concrete engraced existence.

What would be at stake in our protological epistemic distancing & peccability is a superabundant maximization of our overall divine intimacy. That theophanic expansion would far exceed any abundant threshold of divine friendship that would otherwise be afforded by any impeccable epistemic closures post-mortem. We might thus be differentially “established” in eternity in terms of degrees of beatitude. That is not objectionable to me as I agree with Phillip Cary:

Unequal treatment is a thing to rejoice in if it means some are treated more graciously than others (for why should we who receive grace be envious if others are treated even more graciously, as Jesus asks us in the wonderful parable in Matt. 20:1– 16) but not if the difference is between grace and no grace, salvation and damnation.

If certain Thomists & David Bentley Hart are Right (and they are), then …

For a great conversation, visit Eclectic Orthodoxy, where Phillip Cary‘s _Inner Grace: Augustine in the Traditions of Plato and Paul_ is under consideration.

Especially see Fr Kimel’s first comment with which I resonate.

The points of agreement between DBH & those Thomists who, like Hart, reject the free will defense of hell might be instructive?

Their shared “freedom for excellence” conception is consistent with a philosophically coherent double-agency?

It’s a type of compatibilism that would see grace as non-necessitating even when it’s shattering our vicious natures?

So, efficacious graces would only ever establish & enhance – not annihilate or hinder – our freedom.

One might ask, though, why the protological epistemic distancing & peccability? What greater good might they be ordered toward?

In any given infusion of efficacious grace, if our essential & sufficient free will is not at risk, just what is it, then, that we’re imagining as possibly being sacrificed (seemingly coerced)?

Wahlberg’s Thomistic Autonomy Defense introduced an autonomy ordered toward intimacy as an enriched notion of freedom. That tracks in the right direction.

I don’t view Wahlberg’s notion as changing anyone’s degree or depth of freedom, however. Rather, I interpret that in terms of one’s range or scope of freedom.

That’s to say that it has been eternally determined that we will freely manifest Christ as imagoes Dei, predestined as we are.

Ordinarily, what we autonomously co-self-determine is not whether but how we’ll freely manifest Christ as we grow in likeness. The ranges of how we will manifest Christ, however, can be variously expanded or narrowed, synergistically. They can be sacrificially self-surrendered during ordinary self-determined soul-crafting operations.

Extraordinarily, through predestination, election & all manners & degrees of efficacious gracing, we can respond extra-kenotically to invites that, in some ways & to various extents, will limit the scope of our theophanic expression, e.g. whether as priest or prophet or king or as Theotokos, Moses or Paul, always for the sake of others.

Total Aside:

No, Wahlberg’s Thomistic Autonomy Defense of Hell doesn’t work. Rather, it proves that God has no greater good to lose in terms of human free will. A restoration of all to their original beatitude & the eternal preservation of everyone’s capacity for the beatific vision would not risk — but would, indeed, enhance – their freedom for excellence.

Only extraordinarily would God infallibly determine that any given person will sacrifice their autonomous self-determination in this or that manner & to this or that extent. There is a sacrifice which can get mislabeled a coercion. Why and when He does is always ordered to maximizing the overall balance of human co-creative autonomy toward ends like the greater good of optimal divine intimacy & greatest expansion of theophanic breadth.

That’s why my approach insists on:

1) a universal restoration of our original beatitude,

2) a universal preservation (not necessarily realization) of our original teloi &

3) universal post-mortem impeccability.

If God can simply and unconditionally get what he wills antecedently, for example, via efficacious grace, why hasn’t He been infallibly arranging all of our free choices?

It’s clear God has not been infallibly arranging every free deliberation. To the extent, though, that he has infallibly arranged some of our choices, we do still want to inquire after what might be at stake in His having accepted those risks involved in His not infallibly arranging all of our choices?

In my approach, our post-mortem beatitudinal abundance is not at risk.

Our peccable deliberations are ordered toward a type of superabundance that is not going to be available via our post-mortem impeccable deliberations, however. This is to accept that we may indeed be differentially established, eternally, per degrees of beatitude & might variously manifest different scopes of theophanic glory. I say this in the same sense that Phillip Cary has not objected to post-mortem “differentials” as long as one of the options is not “no grace at all!”.

How is Efficacious Grace Non-neccesitating

This task is beyond my ken but I’ll honor your question with my best shot. There are several ways many others have tried to explain it, as you know. People are variously persuaded or not. No way can wholly avoid a mysterian retreat so all must aspire to consistency and admit incompleteness. No way is uncontroversial.

Still, here goes:

First, allow me an oversimplification. To me, efficacious grace works because God knows, presently, when a grace will – or re futuribles, would – be efficacious. It’s extrinsic & based on a congruity between infallibly known or knowable circumstances & how they’d inform one’s deliberative processes. It’s a divine calculation: If I do this, given her circumstances, I know she’ll freely respond like that.

For intrinsic accounts, a lot more heavy lifting is required. But, as an oversimplification, the divine calculation might be: He’s in skydiving school & wearing a parachute that will open automatically. While he lacks the courage to jump and, while with my shove and gravity’s pull he won’t be able to physically resist falling, he will freely consent to his glorious “free-fall.” God pushes her out the plane and it’s the best experience of her life.

While I don’t a priori dismiss the possibility of an intrinsically efficacious grace, if there even is such a thing, it would only be used extraordinarily in exceptional circumstances is my belief. Even extrinsic gracing is extraordinary, just less rare, I ‘d guess. This is just me speculating.

While extrinsic grace does make some sense to me, it seems to generate as many theoanthropo- problems as it solves. It can, in some versions, make the sufficient grace distinction meaningless.

After those feeble attempts, let me say that one of the best overviews in general in terms of clarity & accessibility can be found in Father John A. Hardon, S.J. ‘s Course on Grace, Part Two – B, Grace Considered Intensively, Chapter XIII, Sanctifying Grace and the Indwelling Trinity.

Access it at the link, below, & search for “non-necessitating” to zero in on the relevant discussion:

For those inclined to intrinsic accounts of efficacious grace, to Báñezian & neo-Báñezian approaches, the recent exchange in Nova et Vetera between Professor O’Neill & Fr Rooney is very illuminating (only after 3 or 4 reads for me).

This Exchange –
A Báñezian Grounding for Counterfactuals of Creaturely Freedom: A Response to James Dominic Rooney, O.P – Taylor Patrick O’Neill
From Báñez with Love: A Response to a Response by Taylor Patrick O’Neill – James Dominic Rooney, O.P. – can be accessed here:

https://stpaulcenter.com/product/nova-et-vetera-spring-2023-vol-21-no-2/

I’m more inclined to a Congruist take which is a mitigated Molinism. However, as I’m also deeply sympathetic to Tom Belt’s Open intuitions, mine is even a further mitigated Congruism, where efficacious grace needn’t necessarily rely on divine knowledge of exhaustively known futuribles or even a rigorous middle knowledge. It would suffice that God can infallibly deal with each pending move & its consequences as it presents in the eternal now of any given divine chess match. It would not be necessary for God to know from the cosmic get-go every move & related counterfactual to be made by every rational creature in the eternal chess match. God knows THAT His decree will be fulfilled & “mostly” – but not necesarily exclusively – leaves the HOW to us.

So, I incline to view efficacious grace as mostly, even if not exclusively, extrinsic (ab extrinseco), adapted to the nature & circumstances of the recipient (God’s knowledge of one’s maturity level, affective dispositions, cultural milieu, etc). Based on those circumstances, God infallibly knows how we will respond. An even further mitigated Molinism would say God knows how we “would” respond even though we “could” respond differently.

What causes Báñezians, Molinists, Congruists & Open Theists to tie themselves up into free will – determinist pretzels are often problems precisely arising from defending perdition & reprobation. Universalists who a priori reject those possibilities and, therefore, only have to defend an abundance vs superabundance dichotomy, can afford to be more eclectic & syncretistic by embracing the strongest & eschewing the weakest features of each approach. Such eclectic & syncretistic approaches would need much less conceptual rigor because the choices in play and stakes at risk are easier to defend, i.e. different degrees of beatitude rather than grace vs no grace at all. For example, perditionists are navigating questions like, to the extent any realities are foreseen, like de/merits, is reprobation/predestination after/before foreseen merits? Universalists can “relax” and focus on the logical problem of evil without those added perceived injustices. [tongue firmly in cheek]

The antecedent – consequent will distinction applies historically. In my view, I don’t see where any particular in/compatibilist universalist interpretation is either obviously privileged or clearly disadvantaged in devising a logical defense for the problem of evil (what has God been doing?). Logical consistency’s a rather low hurdle but that doesn’t mean it can’t be significant, especially when ultimate concerns are in play existentially (our forced & vital options must also be “live”).

At bottom, I don’t rely on defenses and my universalism is anti-theodicy, evidentially. I foremost rely on God’s character as revealed in Jesus coupled with a mysterian appeal to a putative greater good as consistent with a defensible (not ad hoc) theological skepticism.

As for logical defenses of hell, I haven’t seen one yet that’s morally intelligible. They can’t avoid invoking infinite consequences for finite choices. Analytically, that’s prima facie disproportionate & logically contradictory given almost everyone’s moral intuitions & aesthetic sensibilities (should they bother to confront them)?

Fr Pohle critiques all the approaches: intrinsic, extrinsic, congruist, syncretistic:

https://biblehub.com/library/pohle/grace_actual_and_habitual/section_2_theological_systems_devised.htm

That about covers several centuries re one of theology’s most vexxing problems. Anyone who fully grasped what I was saying may not have been paying sufficient attention.

How does grace irresistibly secure our consent, while, at the same time, that consent is also to be deliberatively arrived at?

All Catholics, including me, believe that grace is non-necessitating. Because Catholics hold that our intellect & will are inseparably operative in volition, we believe that freedom’s not innate to the will. Rather, freedom is only ever the fruit of the will & the mind in collaboration. At least, this is what I mean by “deliberative.”
THAT our consent can be both efficaciously secured & deliberatively delivered is our Catholic position.

All bets are off, though, as to securing a consensus or persuading all sincere inquirers as to HOW our consent can be both efficaciously secured & deliberatively delivered.

Entering stage left are the Báñezians (e.g. Prof O’Neill, I believe? & many Dominicans) with intrinsic accounts of efficacious grace.

Entering stage right are the Molinists (many Jesuits) with extrinsic accounts.

At center stage are the Congruists, Molinists who give a nod to the Thomists. Also near center stage are various Syncretists.

Elsewhere, with very highly nuanced stances are neo-Báñezians (e.g. Rev Dr Rooney).

Nowhere on the Roman Catholic stage are Calvinists, who bite the bullet & claim that efficacious grace is necessitating i e thoroughgoingly irresistable , yet still in a way not repugnant to free will.

So, when I saw Fr Al’s question inquiring about HOW I explain it, my initial visceral response was comment-box dread, because my Roman Catholic approach, as I’d self-describe it, is both syncretistic & eclectic.

It’s syncretistic insofar as I find elements in the stances of all my co-religionists that are congenial to my (idiosyncratic) brand of universalism. It’s also eclectic because I embrace a nuanced Open Theism (cf. Tom Belt) that’s consistent with a thin divine passibility (cf. Fr. N. Clarke).

My eclecticism basically acknowledges that our Catholic stances aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. Sometimes grace can be: intrinsic, sometimes – extrinsic; sufficient or efficacious. God needn’t exhaustively know the future of nature because He eternally knows via Logos & logoi the nature of the future (and that it doesn’t include interminable perdition & reprobation).

From everything I’ve ever read in dialogues at EO between, for example, Fr Al, DBH & Robert F., all of them hold to a robustly non-voluntarist understanding of freedom’s relation to the will. I fully concur.

In in my framework, by deliberation, I’m thinking of volition in terms of the inseparability of will & intellect and how we only ever experience freedom when they’re collaborative.

Other Thomistic distinctions are in play, though, which can give rise to misunderstandings.

The intellect can operate in both active & passive modes. Divine presencing can be both mediated & immediate. Immediate divine presencing can be both transitory or everlasting. Both mediated & immediate divine presencings can vary in both ways & degrees.

Given those distinctions, let’s consider an “extreme” gracing, the Beatific Vision, as it might be most illustrative. It is immediate & everlasting and involves an intellectual comprehension not entirely dissimilar to an “Aha!” moment. This encounter of God involves knowledges from our operative possessions of knowledge of the Other (love knows love) as well as from our direct or sudden intuitions. This grace gifts our “passive” intellect.

In no case, could freedom ever be realized in volition sans our intellects.

While an immediate presencing would certainly be experienced differently, psychologically, than our mediated encounters, it will no less involve the collaboration of the intellect & will. Indeed, this is why impeccability & inancaritability are not in the least repugnant to, but rather most exemplary of, our freedom.

It gets FAR more involved than these active & passive distinctions. My own moderately libertarian stance is informed by Eleonore Stump & Duns Scotus, especially regarding when & how different gracings operate via efficient vs formal causes, via the will or intellect, actively or passively, via quiescence (in a state that’s abstaining from judgement), etc

A Logical Defense of Efficacious Gracing

I began this nature-grace essay by drawing an analogy between cosmic energy systems & divine energeia. The analogy was precisely invoked as a putative logical defense regarding the problem of evil as ordered to the greater goods of a divine theophanic breadth expansion & human beatitudinal range augmentation.

Our cosmic dance takes place on the stage of nonequilibrium thermodynamics, where the dance partners are becoming & being, chaos & order, discontinuity & continuity, the random & systematic, asymmetry & symmetry, paradox & pattern, indeterminate & determinate, vague & specific, autonomous kenotic self-emptying & free co-creative participation, etc.

These emergentistist dance moves display analogous entropies, which include the physical, informational & biological.

If there’s one metaphor that might most aptly & ubiquitously apply to every level in the hierarchy of our pervasively probabilistic order of determinate being, it could be one which would combine what we observe in waveforms (in terms of periodicity, frequency & amplitude) with what we describe as homeostasis in all living systems.

Homeostasis refers to the optimal functioning of all quantum, physical, chemical, biological & social conditions in all living systems as measured in variables that must be maintained within certain limits.

So, whether we’re measuring rainbows, sunrises & sunsets, changing seasons, evolutions of species, circadian & physiological rhythms, hibernations, sleep-wake cycles, migrations and musical symphonies or devising daily or annual liturgical & devotional prayer cycles, we’ll notice that homeostatic optimality has a place for various degrees of both monotony & variety, for both the persistent & the novel.

These homeostatic optimizing dynamics are cosmically ubiquitous and all, each in their own ways, represent an optimal energy budgeting, which is generally describable by energy expenditures that are representable by waveforms:

1) low frequency – high amplitude,
2) high frequency – low amplitude,
3) high frequency – high amplitude and
4) low frequency – low amplitude.

I’ve thus related some of the optimizing dynamics of social living systems, such as in parenting, codependency, speciation & even pest control, (the analogous examples are countless!) in terms of whether they are
1) low frequency – high amplitude, sympathetic;
2) high frequency – low amplitude, empathetic;
3) high frequency – high amplitude, pathetic; and
4) low frequency – low amplitude, apathetic.

In terms of semiotic grammar, while the principle of noncontradiction clearly holds for our probabilistic categories of Peircean thirdness, habits, tendencies, generalities, laws, etc, we must definitely back off our tendency to misapply & overapply “excluded middle.”

In other words, we need to eschew our “either-or thinking” when talking about nature & grace, extrinsic & intrinsic grace, sufficient & efficacious grace, formal & efficient causation, will & intellect, etc

Specifically, regarding the logical problem of evil, there’s no need to absolutely & positively eschew all manner of efficacious gracing, predestination, impeccability, inancaritability & such divine interactivity toward the end of exculpating God, i.e. for not having efficaciously avoided all possibility of sin & its horrendous evil consequences. That’s because, in the cosmic order from which we emerged & in which Christ incarnated, while a thoroughgoing efficacious gracing would indeed be repugnant (pathetic) to the optimizing social dynamics on which we rely for our homeostatic human flourishing, an extraordinary & exceptional efficacious gracing (sympathetic) might even be considered, however variously in/dispensable, clearly congenial to the orders of both cosmic energy & divine energeia, wherein all divine-human interactivity can synergistically operate, i.e. whenever & however our wills & intellects collaborate per the logoi of the Logos.