Regarding Proportionality Objections, perditionists ask “Where is thy sting?” & universalists counter “Where is thy victory?”

From Cardinal Dulles’ remarks regarding Maritain’s “Reverie,” which were reminiscent of Cardinal Newman’s evaluation of Mivart’s conjectures, we might infer that one could remain faithful to the Church’s eschatological doctrine — that it is necessarily possible that not all spiritual creatures will attain a supratheophanic vision — even while otherwise boldly speculating regarding what those creatures might otherwise experience – not just subjectively & psychologically vis a vis metrics of pain &/or felicity, but – objectively per alternative modes of divine union & mercy, each which gifts its own sort of rest & psychological satisfaction.

That’s to suggest that our interpretation of the essential doctrine needn’t necessarily entail an everlasting sting of remorse, much less an eternal concious torment.

Going beyond, however, what either Dulles or Newman would’ve affirmed, not only might retributive sufferings be mercifully mitigated, need our interpretations of the essential doctrine entail any other perpetual psychological deficits — such as everlastingly unfulfilled longings, psychologically, or unattainable desires, teleologically?

All can attain successive states of rest, each state fully satisfying psychologically, in each sublative mode of divine union. This is because, prior to our being graced by their peculiar novel divine manifestations, each progressive state of rest (stability in the good) will remain hidden to us (what no eye’s seen, ear’s heard nor heart of woman conceived).

If this is true during our temporal theotic sojourn via the lights of experience, reason & faith, how much more so must this be true during our eternal epektasis via the lights of glory?

So, regarding any given creature’s lack of a supratheophanic vision, against the arguments of those who lob proportionality objections, following Dulles, Maritain, Newman & Mivart, here, one could reasonably ask of justice: “Where is thy sting?”

However, not all disproportionality objections are grounded in any per se unjust punishments, psychologically. Rather, they will instead lob protests at all unjust foreclosures on any of the yet-to-have-been reduced infinite divine potencies of any spiritual creatures, teleologically. That’s because such absolute foreclosures would entail consequences that are prima facie disproportional to any sin a finite spiritual creature could commit.

Put differently, while one might indeed remain happily unaware of a generous inheritance that’s been intended for them, the injustice that would be committed against them by dispossessing them of same wouldn’t be obviated by the assertion that: “At least, they were robbed surreptitiously!” Here, one could reasonably ask of justice: “Where is thy victory?”

Human beings are best conceived in terms of dynamical becomings in infinite potency to the divine. It’s not enough to simply assert that our lights of experience, reason & faith are modes of union with their own sorts of beatitude & rest vis a vis the same formal object, God. It’s not a natural – supernatural distinction that applies, here. Rather, it’s a relatively – absolutely perfect distinction between those modes & the light of glory.

For the dynamically becoming rational creature, then, these successive modes of operatively knowing God are sublative (Rahner’s not Hegel’s sublation). In short, to abort this intrinsic human dynamism would do violence to the human person, whom God loves for her own sake.

In my view, all that I discussed above can be distilled in one clarification, by answering one question: What’s the proper understanding of obediential potency?

My two favorite responses to that question are given by Lonergan & DBH. I commend two resources to all.

For a more technical threading of the Lubacian-Thomist needle, here’s a discussion of Lonergan’s account:

“Concretely Operating Nature: Lonergan on the Natural Desire to See God” is a chapter in the book The Givenness of Desire by Randall S. Rosenberg. The chapter examines the human desire for God through the lens of Lonergan’s “concrete subjectivity”.

For a most entertaining & informative discussion of obediential potency as properly conceived, on Apr 17, 2022 David Bentley Hart published an open letter on his substack – “Edward Feser’s Sub-Christian Dualism”.

All that said, one could still hold that it is necessarily possible that not all spiritual creatures will attain a supratheophanic vision because, even if divine justice determines that no such infinite potencies could ever be divinely foreclosed, it may be that it’s left to each spiritual creature to co-self-determinedly & synergistically reduce same to acts. Those would include aspirational charitable acts of superogatory virtue beyond such obligational just acts of moral virtue as would already habitually ensue from one’s practical impeccability. Each one’s practical impeccability or stability in the good will have been uniquely soul-crafted per various kinds & degrees of intrinsic self-determination as will have been providentially guided by peculiar types & degrees of extrinsic conditioning.

The above conditions would meet any doctrinal insistence on a subjunctive supratheophanic vision, but would not violate any proportionality objections that would arise due to either retributive punishments or to consequences of teleological foreclosures.

This is all fleshed out in the 3500 + pages of my cosmotheandric vision.

Biblio

Cardinal Avery Dulles, “The Population of Hell,” First Things 133 (May 2003): 36-41.

Jacques Maritain, Untrammeled Approaches, University of Notre Dame Press, Jul 31, 2017, Ch 1: Beginning with a Reverie, pp 19-20

Probyn-Nevins, W. , Cardinal Newman on the Eternity of Punishment, The Nineteenth century: a monthly review, Mar. 1877-Dec. 1900; London Vol. 33, Iss. 194, (Apr 1893): 635-636.

Henri de Lubac, The Mystery of the Supernatural, 217, “this end is hidden from us because it is the supernatural end of our soul, but for us, unlike Cajetan, it is not the absence of any desire that is the reason for ignorance: rather it is the depth of our desire.”