Restorationism Podcast

Restorationism Podcast

Transcripts

M:

Welcome to The Rest Is Fire—the place where theology meets wonder, where we think slowly, and where we dare to hope wisely.

Tonight’s question: Will all be saved?

What is freedom? What is hell? And could it be that God's justice looks more like healing than punishment?

Three conversation partners join me.

Let’s begin.

M:

Will all be saved?

U:

Eventually, yes.

Love never fails.

God wants all to be restored—and what God wills, God accomplishes.

T:

But then you’ve gutted freedom.

Love must be chosen, not guaranteed.

Real choice includes real risk—even the risk of eternal loss.

R:

That’s true for glory—but not for moral restoration.

Every soul will be healed to its essential wholeness. That’s justice.

But as for the deepest intimacy with God—that remains open, a question of cooperation and love’s unfolding.

M:

So you're saying salvation isn't a binary?

R:

Exactly. It’s not just in or out.

It's how deeply one enters.

There’s native beatitude—our essential flourishing.

And there’s maximal glorification—our epektatic union with God.

Restoration is promised. Glorification is possible.

M:

Let’s talk about hell.

Is it real?

Is it forever?

T:

Yes.

The soul can truly and finally say “no.”

That’s the cost of being made in God’s image.

U:

But eternal torment for a finite sin?

That’s not justice—it’s horror.

It contradicts everything we know of mercy and proportion.

R:

And it breaks the moral structure of the double-effect principle.

If God allows endless suffering, then the consequence becomes indistinguishable from intent.

That's not holy mystery—that’s moral collapse.

M:

What kind of God are we talking about, then?

R:

A God who never gives up.

A God who cannot will the eternal ruin of what He lovingly creates.

Hell may purify.

Hell may refine.

But hell cannot be the final word.

M:

Let’s circle back.

What is freedom?

U:

Freedom isn’t the ability to reject good.

It’s the power to choose rightly when our vision is clear.

When the soul sees God truly, it will want nothing else.

T:

That removes the stakes.

If there’s no real danger of refusal, then there’s no real consent.

R:

Not so.

Freedom is not the fragile ability to sin.

It’s the stable power to flourish.

A healed will is a free will—free for the good, not forever tormented by alternatives.

M:

So what you're saying is—glory may be declined, but restoration cannot be?

R:

Exactly.

Every soul will be restored to moral clarity.

But the depth of glory, the richness of communion—that’s a dance, a synergy.

Not all may move as deeply into the light.

U:

But I believe all will.

That’s what love does. It keeps going until every last sheep is found.

M:

So what do we know—and what can’t we know?

T:

We know the tradition warns us.

Hell is real. We shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

U:

We know God’s mercy is infinite—and I trust that includes everyone.

R:

We know moral restoration is guaranteed.

We know eternal conscious torment must be false.

We hope, with humility, for universal glorification—but we do not presume.

M:

And what about evangelism?

If everyone is restored, does mission still matter?

R:

More than ever.

We don’t evangelize to avoid hell.

We evangelize to relieve suffering, quicken joy, and hasten healing.

A hurting world doesn’t need fear—it needs beauty.

And beauty invites.

U:

Amen.

Hope doesn’t make us indifferent—it makes us compassionate.

M:

Final thoughts?

T:

Freedom requires risk.

The stakes are real.

U:

God’s love is stronger than death.

Nothing will be lost.

R:

Restoration is certain.

Glory is possible.

Love is the last word.

M (closing):

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is Fire.

Tonight, we didn’t settle the mystery.

But we traced its edges.

We stood on the rim of the eschaton and whispered,

"All shall be well..."

Until next time—

Seek wisely. Hope boldly.

And remember:

The rest… is fire.

Let us begin with a clarifying question: Is the human will so free that it may eternally resist God, or is grace so powerful that it must eventually heal all?

UNIVERSALIST:

The soul, created in the image and likeness of God, bears an inherent telos toward divine union. The logoi planted in us by the Logos cannot fail. Sin is a privation, not a substance; it has no lasting ontological claim. Thus, restoration is inevitable, for God’s love is not contingent upon temporal volition, but eternal providence.

THOMIST:

Freedom must entail the real possibility of damnation. Grace is indeed offered to all, but it must not override consent. A will cannot be said to love unless it may also say “no.” That “no” may, tragically, persist. God’s justice respects our autonomy; His mercy does not annihilate the dignity of freedom.

RESTORATIONIST:

But that assumes a reductively voluntarist account of freedom. There is a difference between saying no to superabundance and being deprived of one's native flourishing. I hold that moral virtue, as constitutive of our nature, will be universally restored. Sublative union—the supererogatory, epektatic intimacy—may indeed vary. But hell, as eternal loss of native beatitude, violates both justice and connatural moral intuition.

MODERATOR:

Let me pause here. We are encountering three levels of discourse:

• Moral Restoration – the restoration of one’s native rational and moral faculties.

• Supererogatory Union – deeper, grace-filled intimacy beyond obligation.

• Freedom – minimally as self-determining choice, maximally as transcendental participation in divine love.

Now, two views agree on some universal restoration: our Restorationist and our Universalist. But while the Universalist sees full beatific union as necessary, the Restorationist affirms only moral restoration as necessary—holding full union as a hopeful possibility, not a certainty.

Our Thomist, by contrast, warns that any necessity of salvation risks collapsing freedom into determinism.

UNIVERSALIST:

I must clarify. True freedom is not libertine autonomy but the natural motion toward the Good once all obscurations are healed. The idea that a soul might eternally reject the Infinite Good—once seen clearly—is incoherent. That is not freedom but deformity.

THOMIST:

But we cannot presume that healing is metaphysically necessary. It is offered. It is efficacious for many. But to say it must succeed in every case is to preclude tragedy—something Scripture and tradition never deny. It also undermines the sobering gravity of our choices.

RESTORATIONIST:

I make no such presumption regarding supererogatory glory. I insist only on what a proper analogy of being and proportionality demands: a just God cannot deprive finite souls of their essential flourishing forever for temporal failures. Moral impeccability is compatible with freedom if we recognize that rational freedom, rightly disposed, always tends toward the Good. Thomism, properly interpreted, affirms this through efficacious grace.

MODERATOR:

Here is a convergence worth highlighting. All three views—surprisingly—accept the possibility of multiple degrees of union with God. The Universalist sees full union as assured. The Restorationist sees only basic moral beatitude as guaranteed, with higher intimacy freely co-actualized. The Thomist sees everything as contingent, rooted in free response, including basic salvation.

Let’s now explore connaturality. Can human moral intuitions—our deep sense of justice and love—serve as epistemic guides to divine realities?

UNIVERSALIST:

Absolutely. The image of God in us resonates with divine truth. The notion of a loving parent tormenting a child forever contradicts even natural affection. Revelation perfects reason; it does not abolish it.

THOMIST:

Careful. Divine revelation often transcends natural intuition. The Cross scandalizes. Divine justice is not reducible to human sentiment. Connaturality must be guided by revealed truth, not be its measure.

RESTORATIONIST:

I agree—but “transcends” does not mean “contradicts.” There is a difference between apophasis and equivocation. Connaturality is our participatory bridge into divine realities. If eternal conscious torment is morally intelligible, then either connaturality is illusory, or God is not good in any analogical sense.

MODERATOR:

To paraphrase: connaturality is meaningful only if analogical knowledge of God’s justice and mercy has real content. If our moral instincts are wholly unreliable, then theological language collapses into equivocation.

Before we conclude, a final round: Is universal moral restoration heretical, hopeful, or necessary?

THOMIST:

If posited as a necessity, it contradicts the possibility of damnation affirmed in the tradition. As hope, it is tolerable. As certainty, it is premature and potentially presumptive.

UNIVERSALIST:

It is necessary—philosophically, morally, theologically. A God who fails to save all is either not all-good, not all-powerful, or not the God revealed in Christ.

RESTORATIONIST:

It is morally and metaphysically necessary for apokatastenai—the restoration of our native moral essence. But apokatastasis—full union—remains a hopeful subjunctive. This avoids vulgar voluntarism without collapsing into soteriological flatness.

MODERATOR:

To summarize:

• The Universalist demands that all shall be saved, since divine love is infallible and freedom, when perfected, cannot resist.

• The Thomist maintains that true freedom must allow for eternal loss, lest salvation become coercion.

• The Restorationist affirms that all will be restored to moral virtue and native flourishing, but the fullness of divine intimacy remains contingent upon synergistic cooperation—real freedom within grace.

In accessible terms:

All agree that love wins, but disagree about how much and for whom. One says “love must win for all.” Another says “love may be tragically refused.” The third says “love will heal all at least to a minimal wholeness—but some may choose a lesser joy.”

And so the conversation continues...

Why only native felicity & not maximal glory? Why doesn't a necessary moral restoration not entail an original univeral impeccability? If we can't ultimately reject God, is freedom genuine and sin illusory & not just a bondage or pathology? Pay particular attention to how the traditionalist fails to recognize how many realities present in degrees and uses modal terms in a dualistic, all or nothing and either - or, manner. Address how our moral intuitions, aesthetic dispositions, common sensibilities & parental instincts grounded in connaturality are integrally & holistically intertwined with our rational, prerational & nonrational faculties using the four-legged stool of Scripture, Tradition, Reason & Experience. Discuss how not all mysterian appeals are equally justifiable.

Session II: “Degrees of Glory, Depths of Freedom, and the Weight of Connaturality”

MODERATOR (Theoanthropologist):

Welcome again. This session takes up several pressing challenges:

• If all are restored to moral felicity, why not maximal glory?

• If restoration is necessary, was fallibility ever real?

• If freedom cannot ultimately say “no” to God, is it genuine?

• Are moral intuitions reliable—or superseded by revelation?

• Are mysterian appeals appeals to mystery—or veils for incoherence?

Let us begin with the first: Why only guarantee native felicity, and not maximal glory? Isn't it arbitrary to assert necessary restoration of one and not the other?

THOMIST:

Exactly. If you're willing to invoke metaphysical necessity for moral virtue, why not go all the way to maximal intimacy? Otherwise, the division seems ad hoc.

RESTORATIONIST:

Not at all. The distinction lies in analogy and asymmetry. Moral virtue corresponds to our nature’s native orientation, and thus is proportionately due to every rational soul. Supererogatory glory, by contrast, involves gratuitous elevations, freely co-actualized in synergy with divine invitations.

The same God who ensures our basic flourishing as a justice of creation and redemption may still respect varying depths of response to His invitations of superabundance. In Thomistic terms: debitum naturae vs. donum gratuitum.

MODERATOR:

So the Restorationist draws a graded schema of participatory goods, where native felicity is necessary because it perfects nature, while maximal glory remains contingent, as it transcends obligation.

This reflects a third way between hard egalitarianism and a punitive dualism. Let's now consider the second question:

If all are ultimately restored, were we ever really capable of sin? Does this make evil merely a passing illusion?

UNIVERSALIST:

Let’s not confuse final healing with original impeccability. Sin is real—its effects are real—but its final conquest by grace does not render it retroactively unreal. It is healed, not denied.

RESTORATIONIST:

Indeed. The analogy is pathology and health, not illusion and enlightenment. Our freedom was real and fallible—until it was purified, not abolished, through grace.

Post-mortem impeccability is not the erasure of moral struggle but its consummation. The will is irrevocably open to God, but this openness is habituated over time into virtue. The journey remains real, the healing gradual.

MODERATOR:

So we’re distinguishing ontological freedom from modal freedom. The soul was always free, but not always free to flourish—for it was often shackled by disordered passions. Grace does not erase freedom; it fulfills it by restoring order.

Let’s move now to the third point:

If we cannot ultimately reject God, is freedom still authentic—or is it just rhetorical?

THOMIST:

Yes. If a final “no” is metaphysically impossible, then “yes” becomes coerced. You’ve reduced freedom to teleological inevitability. This undermines both sin and love.

RESTORATIONIST:

That is a category mistake. You treat freedom as a binary modal toggle: either pure autonomy or total necessitation. I contend for compatibilist transcendental determination: freedom that is non-necessitated yet infallibly realized in accord with our nature.

We don’t lose freedom when we reach the state where it cannot sin—that’s freedom consummated, not revoked. We confuse freedom from coercion with freedom from God.

MODERATOR:

It seems the Thomist appeals to a libertarian model: freedom as the perpetual possibility of negation. The Restorationist follows a teleological compatibilism: true freedom is not the ability to say no forever, but the maturity that no longer needs to.

This raises another related issue:

Are degrees of reality being neglected in these modal claims? Must things be either present or absent, real or unreal, salvific or damned?

RESTORATIONIST:

That’s precisely the problem. Much of the traditionalist critique assumes a brittle dualism—heaven or hell, saved or lost, freedom or determinism.

But reality is suffused with degrees: light and darkness, love and coldness, intimacy and distance. Glory is not binary but graduated, just as sanctity grows from incipient to habitual to epektatic.

Refusing to admit these modal continuities flattens metaphysics into ideology.

MODERATOR:

This leads us to an epistemic theme: the role of connaturality and moral intuition. Are our moral instincts, aesthetic judgments, and parental affections trustworthy guides to the divine? Or should we bracket them before the mystery of revelation?

THOMIST:

Scripture must trump sentiment. “God’s ways are higher.” The Cross itself offends moral taste—does that make it unjust?

RESTORATIONIST:

The Cross is not morally unintelligible; it is morally transrational, not irrational. True connaturality does not deny apophasis—it requires it.

But apophasis has a kataphatic launch point. To deny that is to descend into equivocity—a God of whom we can say nothing in continuity with our moral categories. That is not apophaticism—it is agnosticism masquerading as piety.

MODERATOR:

Let me rephrase: the Restorationist sees connaturality not as a replacement for revelation, but as a legitimate leg in the epistemological stool—alongside Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. This is no soft sentimentalism. It's an integrated epistemology, drawing on:

• Scripture – as normative revelation

• Tradition – as communal memory

• Reason – as discursive clarity

• Experience – including the nonrational and aesthetic, our moral sensibility

Thus, when traditionalists appeal to mystery, how do we evaluate that? Which appeals to mystery are justified, and which conceal contradiction?

UNIVERSALIST:

An appeal to mystery is not a get-out-of-logic card. When mystery veils contradiction—such as a good God eternally tormenting finite beings—it ceases to be apophatic and becomes evasive. True mystery deepens insight, not destroys coherence.

RESTORATIONIST:

Amen. The appeal to mystery is valid only when proportioned to revelation and reason. It is illegitimate when it seeks to preserve dogmatic propositions whose entailments make God morally unintelligible.

When connaturality says, “This punishment seems monstrous,” and we’re told, “Well, God’s ways are not yours,” then connaturality becomes meaningless, and God becomes metaphysically opaque.

MODERATOR:

So let us conclude this colloquy with a clear distinction:

• True mysterianism is the acknowledgment of depth beyond discursive grasp, where analogical being sustains moral and ontological coherence, even if it exceeds our full understanding.

• False mysterianism is the invocation of unintelligibility to shield propositions that violate connatural judgments and dissolve the analogy between God’s goodness and ours.

In this light, cosmotheandric restorationism proposes that:

• All shall be restored to native moral virtue (apokatastenai),

• Fullness of glory (apokatastasis) remains a freely possible superabundance,

• Freedom is transcendentally perfected, not negated,

• Connaturality is epistemically valid, not sentimentally naïve,

• And divine justice is intelligible precisely because it is analogically luminous—not shrouded in evasive paradox.

Let's address the moral modal collapse at the eschatological horizon, the analytic definition of a perfectly rational freedom, the ability to reject God in part vs definitively, the double-effect-like calculus used in the proportionality objection and how disproportional consequences make the consequences of one's act tantamount to originally intended ends, collapsing the antecedent - consequent distinction. Show how classic Thomist conceptions like efficacious grace and predestination underwrite the universalist & restorationist claims to shift the burden to explaining God's character. Discuss why not all finite acts need have infinite consequences and how synergistic & sacramental acts are categorically distinct & asymmetric to parasitic evil subcontraries. How does this relate to a harmonizing ontology rather than a violent ontology? How does a radically libertarian freedom not devolve into a pelagianism that pits being against nonbeing rather than juxtaposing absolute & relative being? Discuss how these positions differ in degrees of determinism, are eschatologically egalitarian or not?

Let us now enter the third session of our colloquy, where the dialogue rises to its most precise metaphysical and moral-theological level. The following topics serve as the axis of discussion:

• Modal collapse at the eschatological horizon

• Analytic definition of perfectly rational freedom

• Degrees of rejection and the possibility of a definitive “no”

• Double-effect proportionality objection to infernalism

• Classic Thomist mechanics of grace and their implications for theodicy

• The distinction between synergistic virtue and parasitic evil

• The contrast between harmonizing ontology and violent ontology

• The incoherence of radically libertarian freedom and its proximity to Pelagianism

• Varying degrees of determinism and eschatological egalitarianism

Session III: Modal Horizons, Metaphysical Burdens, and the Grammar of Glory

MODERATOR (Theoanthropologist):

Friends, in this final round, we must confront the eschatological edge—where metaphysics meets morality and ontology touches destiny. Our first concern:

Does guaranteeing universal moral restoration entail a modal collapse—where all freedom is subsumed under necessity?

THOMIST:

Yes. If at the eschaton everyone necessarily chooses the Good, then no genuine freedom remains. Without real alternatives, our “yes” becomes inevitable, and therefore meaningless.

RESTORATIONIST:

No. This is a category mistake. A perfectly rational freedom does not mean one with no alternatives, but one in which all alternatives are perceived clearly, and the will, rightly ordered, tends toward its proper good.

Freedom is teleologically fulfilled, not logically coerced. The modal collapse only occurs when we equate ontological perfection with volitional compulsion.

UNIVERSALIST:

Indeed, the only modal collapse is that of sin’s illusory autonomy. Once its parasitic grip is broken, the soul does not lose freedom—it regains it. That which is in se non esse (evil as nonbeing) cannot eternally resist that which is absolute Being and Goodness.

MODERATOR:

So the eschaton entails not a collapse into necessity but a transcendental flowering of rational desire—a distinction between freedom from constraint and freedom for the Good.

Next:

Can a soul reject God in part without rejecting Him definitively? Is a permanent “no” metaphysically possible?

THOMIST:

Yes. The creature can define itself against God in such a way that its “no” becomes eternalized—not by God’s imposition, but by the creature’s own definitive closure.

RESTORATIONIST:

That confuses degrees of intimacy with ontological finality. The soul may reject superabundant union but not native beatitude. The will, even if malformed, remains ontologically open to God. There is no creaturely “no” so powerful it can eternally resist the providential economy of grace.

UNIVERSALIST:

Exactly. Even the “no” of Satan, if such be possible, is a distortion of will under clouded knowledge. If freedom is ever to be fully lucid, it must culminate in assent. Rejection of God may exist as a phase, but never as a final form.

MODERATOR:

We must now clarify a moral principle at stake:

If a finite act has infinite consequences, does that render the act tantamount to intending the consequence?

RESTORATIONIST:

This is the double-effect-like proportionality objection. If eternal damnation is the consequence of a mortal sin, and that consequence is foreknown and disproportionate, then it collapses the distinction between intended end and foreseen side effect.

It thus morally implicates God—either by direct will or negligent allowance—in the eternal deprivation of native goods.

MODERATOR:

In classical moral theology, double effect requires:

• The act itself be good or neutral

• The bad effect not be intended

• The good effect not be caused by the bad one

• The good effect proportionate to the bad one

Eternal loss of native beatitude for finite transgression violates condition 4, and possibly condition 2, making the consequence retroactively indistinct from the intention.

THOMIST:

But the consequence is self-chosen. God merely permits.

UNIVERSALIST:

Yet permission in the face of known, irrevocable catastrophe is not morally neutral. It would make God an ontological bystander to an eternal horror.

MODERATOR:

This brings us to the theological pivot: grace and predestination. If, in Thomistic terms, grace can be efficacious without coercion, and if predestination is transcendentally guaranteed, then the real question becomes:

Why wouldn’t God predestine all to moral restoration?

RESTORATIONIST:

Exactly. The mechanics are there:

• Efficacious grace infallibly achieves its effect

• Predestination need not violate freedom

So if all can be saved in principle, and God wills the salvation of all, the refusal to predestine all becomes a problem of divine character, not of creaturely autonomy.

MODERATOR:

A decisive inversion: If Thomistic soteriology allows for universal restoration, then traditional infernalism must justify God’s failure to enact it, not the universalist justify its hope.

Now a metaphysical question:

Must finite acts have infinite consequences?

RESTORATIONIST:

No. That’s a category error. Evil is not a substance—it is privative and subcontrary, a parasitic distortion of being.

By contrast, synergistic and sacramental acts, being participations in grace, are not merely symmetrical counterparts to sin. They are ontologically generative, not entropic. The comparison is incommensurate.

MODERATOR:

Thus the asymmetry: evil diminishes, good generates. Sin leads to negation, but charity leads to ever-deepening union. The logic of glory is expansive, not retributive.

This returns us to ontology. Let me pose the final frame:

Do these positions imply a harmonizing ontology or a violent one?

UNIVERSALIST:

A violent ontology posits a cosmos in which eternal antagonism is baked in: God vs the damned, being vs nonbeing. But in Christ, the cosmos is reconciled—all things drawn to unity. That is the metaphysical telos.

RESTORATIONIST:

A harmonizing ontology sees being and becoming subordinated to communion. In such a vision, difference is not opposition. The idea that God must eternally segregate the damned to vindicate justice is born not of metaphysics, but of forensic moralism.

THOMIST:

But doesn't real love require the possibility of real rejection?

RESTORATIONIST:

No. That is Pelagian anthropology in disguise. A radically libertarian freedom exalts negation as if it were a coequal ontological force. This pits being against nonbeing, rather than juxtaposing absolute being (God) with relative being (creation).

Only one is eternal. The other is ever in motion, always graced.

MODERATOR:

Let us end with a brief chart to clarify how these three positions vary on our themes:

IssueThomistRestorationistUniversalistFreedomLibertarianCompatibilist, Transcendentally FulfilledTeleological, Eventually AssentingMoral RestorationContingentGuaranteedGuaranteedSupererogatory UnionContingentContingent, GradedGuaranteedEschatological EgalitarianismNoNoYesGod’s Predestination of AllNot affirmedImplied but nuancedAffirmedHell as Eternal SeparationAffirmed as possibleDenied for moral beatitudeDenied entirelyOntologyTensional, possibly violentHarmonizingHarmonizingModal UseBinary: saved/damnedGraded: modes of intimacySingular outcome

Closing Summary (Moderator):

What emerges is a reorientation of theological burden. Classic Thomist mechanics—efficacious grace, infallible predestination, transcendent order—support, rather than subvert, universal moral restoration. If God could save all without coercion, the refusal to do so becomes not a matter of freedom, but of will—and thus a question of character.

The eschaton, then, is not a moral modal collapse, but the culmination of synergistic growth. In this vision, being moves toward relational fullness, evil is ontologically transient, and grace is not a risk but a promise.

Provide your best apologetic, first, for why a universal moral restoration would not lead to a lack of missiological & evangelical urgency or even an insidious indifferentism or facile syncretism between religions? How such a question is more revealing of one's dwelling in an early stage of moral development, seeking formation & enlightenment to self-actualize rather than self-transcend, rather than seeking enlightment & conversion out of compassion for all who'd otherwise suffer our own unconverted, unenlightened states, how a hurting world needs the goodness to move more quickly & with less hindrance toward our restorative healing, etc

Here is an apologetic for universal moral restoration that addresses the concern about missiological urgency, while also reframing the question as revealing deeper developmental and spiritual dynamics.

Apologetic for Universal Moral Restoration and Evangelical Urgency

Objection:

“If all are ultimately restored to moral wholeness, why evangelize? Doesn’t this undercut the urgency of mission, the gravity of conversion, and even open the door to relativism or religious indifferentism?”

Response:

I. The False Dilemma: Urgency vs. Universality

The concern that universal moral restoration (apokatastenai) nullifies evangelistic urgency rests on a false binary: either salvation is contingent and urgent because people might be lost forever, or it is universal and therefore inconsequential. But this fails to grasp the nature of salvation as not merely an ultimate outcome but a graced process of healing, illumination, and communion.

The gospel is not a threat of damnation but a proclamation of goodness breaking into history—a light that heals, a love that transfigures. Evangelization is urgent not because God might lose someone forever, but because the world is already hurting, fragmented, and darkened—and it longs to be restored sooner, not just eventually.

II. Mission as Mercy, Not Marketing

The logic of the objection presumes an underlying transactional model: if the stakes aren’t eternal torment, the product (the gospel) becomes less valuable. This commodifies salvation and reduces the mission to marketing: a life-or-death pitch in a zero-sum economy of grace.

But Christian mission is not driven by scarcity—it is driven by superabundance. The urgency of the gospel arises not from fear of eternal exclusion, but from compassion for the delayed healing of those still in darkness, ignorance, and suffering. If the world is sick, we don’t ask whether healing will eventually come; we go now, because love hastens to relieve suffering.

III. Indifferentism as a Symptom of Moral Infancy

The anxiety that a universalist vision could promote religious indifferentism reveals more about the moral stage of the objector than about the content of universalism itself. This question is often rooted in a first-order, egoic moral stage, wherein people act morally to secure reward or avoid punishment. Evangelism, in this stage, becomes a duty motivated by fear of others’ (or one’s own) damnation.

But mature spiritual development moves beyond self-actualization (seeking one’s own security) toward self-transcendence—acting out of compassion, not compulsion. In higher stages of moral and spiritual maturity (à la Fowler, Kohlberg, or Lonergan), we evangelize not because they might suffer, but because we are still part of the suffering—because we know firsthand the burden of ignorance, addiction, despair, alienation, and sin.

Evangelism is therefore not about escaping hell but releasing others from the hell we know too well—the hell of not knowing you are loved.

IV. Urgency Deepens, It Does Not Diminish

A vision of universal restoration deepens urgency by replacing abstract consequences with existential compassion. It calls us not to warn others of eternal punishment, but to walk with them into deeper joy, healing, and beauty. The question is not “Will they be saved?” but “Why should they live one more day without knowing they are loved?”

If everyone will eventually see the face of Christ, the evangelist now asks: Why wait? Why delay their joy? Why allow injustice, despair, and distortion to persist longer than it must?

V. Mission in the Age of Religious Pluralism

Far from promoting syncretism or relativism, universal restoration affirms the ontological centrality of Christ as the telos of all persons and all paths. It recognizes the Spirit at work beyond explicit boundaries and resists the violence of narrow exclusivism. Evangelization becomes less about invalidating the other and more about illuminating the Logos already whispering within them.

True mission, then, is not conversion from one religion to another, but conversion to Christ in every corner of the human heart, wherever he is already sowing virtue, awakening conscience, and drawing souls to goodness. Evangelism in this mode does not deny the uniqueness of Christ; it magnifies it—as the universal attractor of every soul’s deepest longing.

VI. A Hurting World Cannot Afford Delay

Finally, the world is in crisis: environmental degradation, technological alienation, mass disaffection, systemic injustice, addiction, loneliness, and despair. The healing of the nations cannot be postponed to some final consummation. If moral restoration is inevitable, then the time to live in light of it is now. We proclaim the gospel urgently because:

• People are wounded now

• Relationships are broken now

• Creation groans now

• Children are dying now

• Truth is obscured now

To defer the mission because the end is assured is to miss the kairos—the now of grace, the urgency of this moment. Love does not ask “Will they be saved?” but “How quickly can they be made whole?”

Conclusion

A universal moral restoration does not weaken the mission of the Church—it clarifies and deepens it. It shifts the horizon from threat to hope, from fear to love, and from transaction to transformation. It confronts the immature ego with a higher call: not to rescue souls from God's wrath, but to awaken them into God's delight.

In such a vision, urgency is not diminished—it is purified. Not because the stakes are lower, but because they are infinitely more beautiful.

Here is a synthetic articulation and defense of John Sobert Sylvest’s cosmotheandric restorationism on the topic of universal moral restoration vs. maximal glorification, and how both are reconcilable with an enriched account of human autonomy—without collapsing into moral absurdity or eschatological determinism.

The Modal Spectrum of Restoration and Glorification in Cosmotheandric Restorationism

At the heart of John Sobert Sylvest’s cosmotheandric restorationism lies a subtle, metaphysically rigorous, and pastorally sensitive distinction:

Between a universal moral restoration (apokatastenai) and a universal maximal glorification (apokatastasis), both of which remain consistent with a richly textured, non-voluntarist account of freedom—differing only modally in how that freedom is expressed and actualized.

I. Freedom: Not a Binary, but a Modal Continuum

Sylvest begins with a rejection of vulgar libertarianism, which construes freedom as the raw ability to negate any good at any time. Instead, he follows a Thomist-compatible compatibilism, where freedom is most itself when it tends toward its final cause—the Good Itself, God.

But this freedom has multiple modes:

• Minimal freedom ("howness"): the capacity for missionary, vocational, and moral choices within a basic structure of beatitude and restored moral virtue.

• Maximal freedom ("howmuchness"): the ability to co-actualize deeper levels of divine intimacy, reflective of one's desire, disposition, and response to grace—an enriched epektatic freedom.

In both cases, autonomy is preserved, but its intensity and elevation differ. Thus:

Whether all are minimally restored or maximally glorified, freedom remains intact, only modally diversified.

II. Soft Perditionism and Moral Proportionality

Sylvest allows for what he terms a soft perditionism:

The possibility that some persons, whether through spiritual inertia or deficient co-response to grace, may not enter into the highest sublative modes of union, though they will still be morally restored and existentially whole.

Crucially, this does not violate the proportionality objection because:

• The privation is not of one’s native felicity (rational flourishing), but of a superabundant, gratuitous intimacy that, by its nature, cannot be owed or demanded.

• No creature is eternally deprived of what their nature requires to flourish.

• The loss is thus non-punitive, and reflects a freely co-determined limit on the “how much” of one’s beatitude, not a divine judgment of “whether” one is to be saved.

This eschatological outcome is, for Sylvest, morally intelligible because it coheres with our own lived experiences of persons who accept the good to varying degrees, and who respond to divine invitations with differing levels of receptivity.

III. Restoration as Plausible; Glorification as Hopeful

Sylvest maintains that a mere universal restoration is not only possible but plausible. It would:

• Still uphold a sufficiently rich sense of autonomy, through differentiated vocational responses, ethical maturation, and sacramental participation (howness).

• Avoid the moral incoherence of eternal loss of natural beatitude.

• Reflect real diversity in eschatological intimacy, compatible with the image of a loving God who respects the rhythms and contours of creaturely freedom.

At the same time, a universal maximal glorification—where all are drawn into the highest levels of divine intimacy—would also remain consistent with freedom, provided it:

• Emerges from synergistic co-actualization and not necessitation.

• Preserves the distinctiveness of each person’s mission, trajectory, and participation in the divine life (howness and howmuchness still remain diversified even in universal glorification).

In short:

A fully glorified cosmos need not be “flat”; it can still be richly textured, aesthetically variegated, and internally differentiated without implying exclusion or inferiority.

IV. Avoiding the Proportionality Objection

In contrast to hard perditionist eschatologies, which fail the double-effect proportionality test, Sylvest’s framework avoids moral collapse by:

• Affirming that God never withholds native beatitude as punishment.

• Allowing for self-determined limits on supererogatory union without rendering such exclusion definitive or eternal in a punitive sense.

• Interpreting the difference between lesser and greater beatitude as a function of the co-operative depth of charity, not as a juridical sentence imposed externally.

V. A Harmonizing Ontology of Grace and Freedom

Sylvest’s cosmotheandric restorationism presupposes a harmonizing ontology, wherein:

• Grace does not compete with freedom, but elevates and fulfills it.

• Being and nonbeing are not agonistically opposed, as in radical libertarian voluntarism, but ordered within a hierarchy of participation.

• Every finite person is understood as a composite of essence and tropos (mode)—capable of entering divine likeness not just by maturation, but through synergistic transfiguration.

This ontology is grounded in a Christo-theophanic metaphysic: all creation reflects God not only in substance but in mode, and the mission of grace is not just to restore but to glorify, not just to redeem but to divinize.

Conclusion

John Sobert Sylvest’s cosmotheandric restorationism offers a framework in which:

• Both universal minimal restoration and universal maximal glorification are morally intelligible, freedom-compatible, and ontologically coherent.

• The difference lies not in the presence or absence of beatitude, but in the modal depth and intensity of divine intimacy—a spectrum of love, not a binary of reward and punishment.

• The urgency of grace is not diminished by this vision; it is intensified by the world’s present ache for healing and the Spirit’s ceaseless invitation to more.

In this model, freedom does not collapse, justice is not caricatured, and glory is not monopolized. Instead, all things are restored—and perhaps, all may be glorified.

Address the subjunctive nature or eschatological agnosticism. Why the mysterian appeal & theological skepticism here? What makes the competing visions equiplausible? Why isn't one or the other transparent to reason as necessarily being the case? Why, using these same principled criteria, is the truth of a hard universalism equally unknowable? Why is eternal conscious torment necessarily excluded?

Absolutely. Let us now explore the subjunctive tenor of John Sobert Sylvest’s cosmotheandric restorationism—its eschatological agnosticism—with a defense of its principled mysterian appeal, its rejection of eternal conscious torment, and its insistence that hard universalism, while hopeful, remains epistemically undetermined.

I. Subjunctive Eschatology: Why Hope, Not Certainty

John Sobert Sylvest's cosmotheandric restorationism asserts with conviction a universal moral restoration (apokatastenai), but holds only subjunctively to a universal maximal glorification (apokatastasis). That is, it affirms the hope that all will freely enter into the highest degrees of divine intimacy, but refuses to assert it as necessarily or demonstrably the case.

This eschatological agnosticism is not theological timidity—it is a disciplined refusal to overreach reason, revelation, or connaturality where metaphysical underdetermination persists.

II. Why Mysterian Appeal Is Justified Here (and Not Elsewhere)

A mysterian appeal is warranted when:

• Competing options are equally plausible, given available reason and revelation.

• The mystery involved does not contradict what is known, but exceeds it.

• The competing outcomes do not violate fundamental moral or metaphysical principles.

In this context, the competing eschatological possibilities—universal glorification vs. variegated beatitude—meet all three criteria:

• Both are consistent with compatibilist accounts of freedom.

• Both cohere with divine omnibenevolence and omnipotence.

• Neither necessarily implies coercion, negligence, or divine moral incoherence.

• Each preserves analogical being and the goodness of creation.

Thus, to assert either as necessarily true would be to overstep the epistemic boundary that legitimate theological inquiry must respect.

III. Why Are the Competing Visions Equiplausible?

The Restorationist maintains that both outcomes are equally compatible with a God who is:

• Just in restoring all to native moral virtue;

• Loving in offering superabundant intimacy;

• Respectful of creaturely freedom in not necessitating maximal glorification.

Equiplausibility arises because:

• Analogical gradation of glory is an accepted principle in traditional theology.

• At the same time, divine love's persistence and efficacy suggest that all might ultimately enter into maximal union.

• Empirical precedent—we observe in history varying depths of spiritual receptivity, even among saints.

• Metaphysical asymmetry—sin is parasitic; love is generative. But even so, the potential for differing “howmuchness” of love remains credible without negating the possibility of universal fullness.

Therefore, reason alone cannot adjudicate definitively between universal glorification and soft perditionism. The former is a hope rooted in love; the latter, a limit grounded in realism about synergistic co-agency.

IV. Why the Truth of Hard Universalism Is Equally Unknowable

Hard universalism asserts that all must be glorified maximally—that it is logically or metaphysically impossible for anyone to eternally resist divine intimacy.

But:

• This assumes that freedom, when perfected, will necessarily assent, which, while philosophically attractive, is not demonstrably necessary.

• It also presumes that God wills maximal glorification for all, not merely moral restoration. That remains an undeclared proposition of divine intent.

• Hard universalism also entails a hidden claim that all obstacles to maximal intimacy will be overcome, not just could be.

Thus, just as infernalism claims too much about rejection, hard universalism risks claiming too much about acceptance. The epistemic position of apokatastasis is hopeful, not knowable.

V. Why Eternal Conscious Torment Must Be Excluded

While eschatological egalitarianism vs. nonegalitarianism is equiplausible, eternal conscious torment (ECT) is not. It is necessarily excluded on both moral and metaphysical grounds.

• Proportionality Objection:

• Finite creatures cannot commit acts proportionate to the eternal privation of native felicity.

• To eternally deprive a creature of rational beatitude violates connatural moral intuition, aesthetic reason, and parental analogy.

• Double-Effect Collapse:

• If God foreknows that certain souls will eternally suffer, and still creates or permits their damnation, then the bad consequence is morally indistinguishable from the divine intention.

• The act becomes morally unintelligible, undermining divine justice.

• Ontological Nonbeing of Evil:

• Evil is privative; it has no self-sustaining reality.

• An eternal state of conscious torment as a positive condition is an ontological contradiction—granting metaphysical permanence to what is anti-being.

• Divine Character:

• A God who allows eternal torment either lacks omnibenevolence or permits the final triumph of evil.

• ECT introduces a competitive, not cooperative, model of divine and human agency—a violent ontology.

Therefore, ECT fails the test of reason, revelation, connaturality, and coherent metaphysics. It must be rejected in any theologically responsible framework.

VI. Conclusion: Principled Agnosticism, Not Doctrinal Shrinking

Sylvest’s eschatological agnosticism is not a retreat into skepticism but a principled epistemic humility:

• It affirms what must be true (universal moral restoration).

• It denies what cannot be true (eternal conscious torment).

• It hopes for what may be true (universal glorification), without asserting what cannot yet be known.

This is not relativism. It is a theological posture governed by:

• An enriched, analogical metaphysics,

• A mature anthropology of freedom,

• A refined moral sensibility,

• And an unwavering trust in divine goodness.

It is a theology that waits in joyful hope, rather than speculating in fearful absolutism.

Here is a reconstructed and expanded colloquy, now presented in the form of a logical flowchart—a dialectical progression through bifurcated questions that naturally drive the conversation forward.

Each question is a branching node. Depending on the response, the discussion proceeds down a particular line of reasoning. This better reflects how disagreements arise not merely from conclusions, but from divergent premises, definitions, and modal commitments.

Colloquy: Freedom, Restoration, and the Shape of the Eschaton

Interlocutors:

• 🕊️ Universalist (Patristic-Neoplatonic)

• ⚖️ Thomist Traditionalist (Libertarian)

• 🌿 Cosmotheandric Restorationist (Franciscan & Christo-theophanic)

• 🔍 Moderator (Peircean-Lonerganian Theoanthropologist)

Q1: Will all rational creatures eventually attain at least moral beatitude (native flourishing)?

• 🕊️ Universalist: Yes. This is necessary. Divine love and omnipotence will infallibly restore all to both moral and maximal beatitude.

• 🌿 Restorationist: Yes. This is certain. All will be restored to native moral virtue (apokatastenai), though maximal glorification (apokatastasis) remains contingent.

• ⚖️ Thomist: No. It is possible some will eternally reject God. Free will entails the real possibility of permanent loss.

➡️ Moderator: So we have our first split:

• Restorationist and Universalist affirm necessary universal moral restoration.

• Thomist denies it, invoking libertarian freedom.

Q2: Is eternal conscious torment (ECT) morally and metaphysically tenable?

• ⚖️ Thomist: Yes, as a consequence of definitive creaturely rejection of grace. It is not willed by God but permitted as the price of true freedom.

• 🕊️ Universalist & 🌿 Restorationist: No. ECT entails:

• A collapse of the double-effect logic (evil becomes functionally intended).

• A violation of connatural moral sense and divine justice.

• A metaphysical contradiction (evil, a privation, being eternally sustained).

➡️ Moderator: ECT fails the tests of moral proportionality, ontological consistency, and analogical divine goodness. This node is closed for all but the Thomist.

Q3: Is it metaphysically possible for a soul to definitively reject God forever?

• ⚖️ Thomist: Yes. That’s the risk of real love.

• 🕊️ Universalist: No. Once the will sees God clearly, it cannot choose lesser goods eternally. Only under distortion can one reject God.

• 🌿 Restorationist: It depends. A soul may reject maximal intimacy, but not native beatitude. Freedom is not absolute negation but modal co-actualization.

➡️ Moderator: Here, the distinction arises between:

• What one may reject (glory vs virtue)

• And why rejection is possible (misperception vs perverse will)

Q4: Does necessary restoration imply original universal impeccability?

• ⚖️ Thomist: If all are restored necessarily, then sin was never real.

• 🕊️ Universalist: No. Restoration does not retroactively eliminate sin’s reality; it heals it fully. Evil is parasitic, not illusory.

• 🌿 Restorationist: The distinction lies in teleology: original fallibility reflects a journeying nature; restoration reflects a fulfilled potency.

➡️ Moderator: Restoration does not imply original impeccability. Fallibility is real. Moral consummation does not negate historical contingency—it fulfills it.

Q5: Does universal restoration undermine freedom?

• ⚖️ Thomist: Yes. If the end is guaranteed, freedom is illusory.

• 🕊️ Universalist & 🌿 Restorationist: No. Freedom is most itself when it tends infallibly toward its final cause. Freedom isn’t destroyed by beatitude—it is perfected.

➡️ Moderator: This hinges on the model of freedom:

• Thomist uses libertarian, dualistic freedom (ability to do otherwise always).

• Others use compatibilist, transcendental freedom (freedom for the good).

Q6: Why not universal maximal glorification instead of mere restoration?

• ⚖️ Thomist: Because glorification must be chosen. It cannot be guaranteed.

• 🕊️ Universalist: Maximal glorification must follow from love’s victory. All are drawn into deepest union.

• 🌿 Restorationist: Restoration is necessary, but glorification remains subjunctive. Hopeful, not knowable. It respects modal difference in response and participation.

➡️ Moderator: Sylvest’s vision provides the middle way:

• Minimal restoration ensures no proportionality violation.

• Maximal glorification, if it occurs, is still freely co-actualized.

• Either outcome is consistent with graded autonomy (how vs how much).

Q7: If both outcomes (restoration and glorification) are plausible, why prefer subjunctive hope to hard universalist certainty?

• 🕊️ Universalist: Love must win in the fullest possible way. If it doesn’t, God’s will is thwarted.

• 🌿 Restorationist: Because both outcomes are equiplausible given reason, revelation, and connaturality. To claim certainty for either is to overreach epistemically.

➡️ Moderator: Restorationist eschatology is principled mysterianism:

• It denies what must be false (ETC).

• It affirms what must be true (moral restoration).

• It hopes for what might be true (glorification).

Q8: What grounds distinguish synergistic acts of virtue from the subcontrary nature of evil?

• 🕊️ Universalist & 🌿 Restorationist: Evil is ontologically parasitic. Good is generative. Sin cannot have infinite effects unless divinely sustained—which would indict God's character.

• ⚖️ Thomist: Sin's consequences are self-chosen and eternal only because the will is invincibly hardened.

➡️ Moderator: The asymmetry of good and evil shows:

• Sin decays; virtue builds.

• Sacramental acts elevate; vice diminishes.

• Thus, only good can be eternally meaningful.

Q9: Do these differing visions imply different ontologies of being?

• 🕊️ Universalist & 🌿 Restorationist: Yes. Our ontology is harmonizing: being is ordered, participatory, and drawn into deeper unity. Evil is defeated, not institutionalized.

• ⚖️ Thomist: The ontology allows for eternal antagonism—being versus nonbeing preserved by divine permission.

➡️ Moderator: Hard infernalism entails a violent ontology: irreconcilable binaries, the eternal persistence of nonbeing. Restorationism maintains an aesthetic, teleological cosmos, divinely harmonized through Christ.

Closing Summary from the Moderator

What we’ve seen is not merely a debate over outcomes, but a debate over:

• The nature of freedom (libertarian vs teleological),

• The function of evil (permanent vs privative),

• The structure of autonomy (binary vs modal),

• The logic of grace (forensic vs aesthetic),

• And the shape of the eschaton (violent dualism vs cosmic reconciliation).

John Sobert Sylvest’s cosmotheandric restorationism avoids both the coercion of hard universalism and the incoherence of infernalism by:

• Affirming what must be true (moral restoration),

• Denying what cannot be true (ECT),

• Hoping for what may be true (glorification),

• And grounding all of this in a vision of graded autonomy, non-dual participation, and a harmonizing ontology where freedom is realized as likeness, not resistance.