The Coherence of Universalism – part infinitum

In response to Dr Reitan, the Rev Dr Rooney responded on the facial network:

Theology is not a battle of arguments, or what philosophical position appears most independently convincing; it is battle of authorities. And the authority of that Church, of the consensus of the Fathers, etc. etc., stands firmly against universalism, which universalists witness to explicitly with their embattled stance contra mundum. That is, nevertheless, a witness to the falsity of their own views, by theological standards.

My response:

One might complain that universalists are playing at theology without a net and ignoring the kerygmatic & practical implications. But my stance in no way ignores the creedal, historical, scriptural, liturgical, patristic, concilar, hagiographic, ecumenical or even authoritative & episcopal aspects of our faith.

My theological anthropology, in fact, draws eclectically but systematically from diverse theological opinions, which are each considered valid, magisterially.

It’s just that, when all of the above litany of faith elements are taken together with my theo-anthropology, coupled with my life’s experience of striving in the faith, they simply drive toward an indicative universalism, which doesn’t, in the least, deny hell. I just reject the notion that any given person’s stay might be everlasting in duration.

But only the crudest of caricatures would characterize such a stance in terms of mere logical argumentation or even as ignoring the appeals to legitimate authorities. And it must not prejudge this stance as if it must also be bereft of a lifetime’s striving to cooperate with grace.

By striving, I refer to a life’s journey through all of the joyful, sorrowful & luminous mysteries of our earthly existence, especially those associated with raising children & grandchildren. All of that integrally contributes to my speculative extrapolations from OUR proleptic experiences of glory, anagogically, to OUR putative beatific fulfillment, eschatologically.

There’s a lot of living & dying, loving & grieving, learning & laughing that’s contributed to our universalist stances. Some call it Franciscan knowledge. For my part, I aspire to leave a legacy in the form of a contribution to the eventual magisterial recognition of an indicative universalism as a valid theologoumenon, however minority its status. I lean Franciscan, I’m use to that status.

In response to Dr Reitan, the Rev Dr Rooney also wrote:

The second dogmatic fact is that God has no essential relation to human beings or to creation generally. For example, God’s goodness does not depend on there being human beings who are saved, so that God could have done otherwise than create the world or human beings. For similar reasons, God could have created human beings and not made them partakers in His own nature. Grace is not essential to what it is to be a human being, since being possessed of sanctifying grace is simply to participate in God’s divine nature, and humanity is not essentially divine. Conversely, if it were true that human beings ‘deserved’ to be saved, given what they are by nature, such that God would be unjust or unloving by failing to save each individual, then a view like Pelagianism would be true. But Pelagianism is false. Thus, it is not true that God necessarily saves all human beings He chooses to create.

My response:

I responded elsewhere that the practical & kerygmatic implications of an indicative universalism are not near as drastic as some would make them out to be, soteriologically. Above we see an example of the implications of doing what Stump calls “analytic theology without Franciscan knowledge.”

Above, we also encounter the implications of doing theology with the logic of natures but not persons, with the logic of ontological analogy & participation but not semantical univocity & perichoresis, with a logic of whatness but not Whoness & howness, with the logic of the essentially necessary but not of economical fittingness.

Dr Reitan has responded, super-sufficiently, to the incongruities of the above possible world talk. As I mentioned above, I only aspire to show the logical theo-validity & existential coherence of universalism. I’m even content to leave mere logical defenses of infernalism alone, while otherwise challenging their evidential plausibility & answering charges against the coherence of my own universalism (not denying that others might be specious).

What I will challenge is this account of grace, below:

Grace is not essential to what it is to be a human being, since being possessed of sanctifying grace is simply to participate in God’s divine nature, and humanity is not essentially divine.

I don’t challenge the account on the grounds that it is wrong. It’s just incomplete and doesn’t map to what astute universalists are claiming regarding – not WHAT God can or not do in any possible world, naturally & necessarily, but – HOW God has loved & continues to love in this multiply-incarnate world, personally & fittingly.

Personally & perichoretically, Christ refers to an interpersonal unitive doing of mutually constituted I – Thous, an identity precisely grounded in the differences of a loving & eternal generation of opposites.

Properly understood, the dynamical, reciprocal, mutual interpenetrations of perichoresis increase personal freedom & interpersonal unity in direct proportion, for divine and human wills are thoroughgoingly noncompetitive.

Those, who facilely charge so many different perichoretic accounts with pantheism, theopanism or any other type of thoroughgoing theological determinism, mistakenly believe that perichoresis increases personal freedom & interpersonal unity in inverse proportion. That misunderstanding comes from mistakenly treating discussions about unitive interpersonal dynamics, or how persons manifest via tropoi, as if they refer, instead, to essential participatory realities, or what persons manifest via logoi. That mistake obliterates individual hypostases, dissolving each person into a supra-individual unitary being rather than progressively liberating each for an ever-increasing inter-personal unitive doing.

Essentially, our primary nature’s not only not wounded but not woundable. Grace, then, operates tropically. What universalists add is that grace also operates inescapably – not because it’s essentially necessary, but – because it is personally fitting. Purgative graces, fittingly, will annihilate our vicious secondary natures without violating our free will.