Stability in the Good and Stability in the Better - created freedom & divine grace
Joshua R. Brotherton writes: By “predestinarianism” is meant a com petitive understanding of the relationship between divine grace and created freedom such that freedom is authentic only if grace overcomes its capacity for sin.
John Sobert Sylvest qualifies:
Efficacious gracing can, exceptionally, either infallibly outwit or miraculously outfit the human will, but only ever in manners consistent with our free natural inclinations, which is to say by means that are not in the least repugnant to our essential human freedom.
If efficacious gracing remains necessarily extraordinary, that can be because a richer aspect of freedom is at risk --- autonomy. Because efficacious gracing, even though never violating our essential human freedom, will unavoidably sacrifice various aspects & degrees of human autonomy, such divine interventions should be expected - not ordinarily, but - optimally.
Later, Brotherton also writes: Maritain’s eschatological proposal is precisely that the pain of loss and remorse of conscience eternally suffered by the damned is mitigated by an ever-growing natural knowledge and love of God granted by divine mercy following the final judgment.
John Sobert Sylvest inquires:
How does Maritain's proposal not, itself, entail a type of predestinarianism?
It's predestinarian in the sense that an efficacious grace ubiquitously restores the essential human "ability to not sin" as distinct from overcoming a supposed "capacity to sin." Furthermore, it's not predestinarian vis a vis a universal beatific vision.
I would argue that a proper theological anthropology would necessarily reject any notion of authentic freedom that places it in com petition with divine grace, which is to say with an essential "capacity" for sin.
Epistemic distancing has extrinsic aspects in an environing sense as well as intrinsic aspects in both developmental & formative senses, i.e. the maturation (actualization) of one's substantial being, essentially, vis a vis one's primary nature, and the formation of one's relative being, accidentally, vis a vis one's secondary nature.
Both the extrinsic aspects & intrinsic dynamisms are necessary, provisionally, in order to afford each person sufficient opportunities to co-self-determine their secondary natures in terms of both how & how much they will freely choose to be divinized.
Any peccability is incidental to & parasitic of - not essential to - these developmental & formative dynamics. We don't have an innate "capacity to sin," but are only faced with the unavoidable possibility that the essential dynamics of the intrinsic perfectibility of our supererogatory virtue could get parasitized by our (relatively not absolutely free) viscious habits, which are subcontrary to - not constitutive of - our native virtue, i.e. essential moral perfection, relative supererogatory perfection & relative freedom.
Everlastingly, even once purgatively healed, we'll remain relatively & sufficiently free (finite), relatively knowledgeable (fallible & nescient), relatively virtuous, supererogatorily (so with an infinitely perfectible virtue) & sufficiently virtuous, morally (so with a fully actualized moral virtue).
As such, any post-mortem purgatively-graced healing of any & all degrees of habitual viciousness, would - far from doing violence or competing with one's essential freedom & moral perfection - felicitously restore the essential freedom & virtue of one's native substantial being.
At the same time, it would also seem that certain post-mortem closures of epistemic distancings vis a vis various extrinsic changes in one's environing would, in some ways, unavoidably impact the scope of one's co-self-determinative formative opportunities. That impact would be experienced in terms of both the modes & degrees of union, including many modes that are hard to a priori define, precisely because no eye's seen, ear's heard or heart's conceived such things.
With respect to our everlastingly remaining in infinite potency vis a vis our perfectibility in virtue, while the re-establishment (via both maturation & healing) of our substantial being in perfect moral virtue gifts us a "sort of rest" or "stability in the good," we can still enjoy an everlasting progression in supererogatory virtue, freely, co- self-determinedly & epektatically, by "notching" progressive levels of "stability in the better" vis a vis various other "sorts of rest," which would be concommitant with other modes & degrees of union (not all presently definable).
It seems that Brotherton's categories are premised on a caricature of authentic human freedom, which is defective both in considering peccability an essential capacity rather than incidental subcontrary and also in misconstruing the relationship between nature & grace as competitive rather than noncompetitive?
Joshua R. Brotherton, Universalism and Predestinarianism: A Critique of the Theological Anthropology that Undergirds Catholic Universalist Eschatology, Theological Studies 2016, Vol. 77(3) 603–626