1 God is the summum bonum (greatest good and highest well-being).
2 God is the ground of all possibilities.
3 God wills the final good (highest well-being) of all creatures in him.
4 God permits only possibilities that aid rational creatures in achieving their highest well-being in him. (From P1-3)
5 The possibility of finally failing to achieve one’s highest well-being in God is not necessary to achieving that well-being.
6 God 'would not' permit the possibility of any rational creature finally failing to achieve its highest well-being in him. (From P1-5)
7 God 'has not' permitted the possibility of any rational creature finally failing to achieve its highest well-being in him. (From P6)
8 No evil God permits can prevent a rational creature’s achieving its highest good in him. (From P3, P7)
9 ‘God as summum bonum’ is not compossible with ‘the possible irrevocable loss of a rational creature’s highest well-being in God’. (From P1-4)
Conclusion 1: Therefore, it is not possible that any rational creature should fail irrevocably to achieve its highest well-being in God.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, both annihilationism and infernalism are impossible since both assert the possibility of a rational creature’s failing to achieve its highest well-being in God.
Fr JD parses natural & supernatural ends, so anyone's failure to receive the beatific vision, to him, doesn't count as a telic frustration.
For any competing eschatologies, which have been well-constructed logically, it can be too high a bar to show how any of them are explicitly inconsistent, especially when each is considered using their own definitions of terms. The conclusions of such arguments are often embedded in - not only in the premises, but - definitions of those arguments.
If logical defenses are easy to defend, it's only because the claims are relatively weak. So, we ask for an evidential theodicy of hell and the majoritarians take refuge in the mysterian appeals of a theo-skepticism.
We respond with noseeum inferences that will ordinarily fail as atheological objections as regarding those putative greater goods to which we'll refer in our problem of evil arguments (evidential theodicies like free will, soul-crafting, autonomy defense, etc).
In problem of hell arguments, universalists rely, implicitly or explicitly, on weseeum inferences.
I'm merely recounting the structures I encounter in the problem of hell discourse. Beyond equivocal definitions of various terms and ambiguous employments of critical verbs (especially 'causes' and necessitates and permits and intends ad nauseum), the arguments transist back & forth from logical to evidential to plausible to formal to semiformal to informal ... But informal is where they often end up & where our impasses are mostly "grounded." At least, that's where I've located my own with Fr Rooney, it seems to me.
Rooney thinks like a mechanic: this collides with that and ‘causes’ such and such an effect. Such ‘chains’ of cause and effect seem to be how he tries to explain everything. Very machine-like.
One could revise his primary proposition and the triad. But first, no universalist thinks it’s metaphysically necessary that all be saved since creation itself is a metaphysical (or ontological) contingency. So it’s important to clarify the necessity of the final salvation of all. We’re talking about what follows necessarily from God being infinite love and freely creating, not a ‘necessary truth’ per se. And we should note that no universalist need deny that ‘anyone goes to hell’. That's not the issue. But over all, it seems to me that since Rooney only sees mechanical bits and pieces colliding and producing physical results, he’s unable to contemplate the question under other terms.
I'm agree all truths have one or more truthmaker. So perhaps:
If it is true that all shall eventually be saved, something makes it true. The truthmakers are:
1) Human beings cannot foreclose upon themselves the possibility of achieving their highest well-being in God,
2) Human beings cannot succeed in simply rejecting God freely over and over 'forever',
3) God could not fail to pursue the highest well-being of human beings in him, and
4) Part of (3) means that God will restore clarity of mind and remove the habituated tendencies of body and mind.
This means the achieving of our highest well-being in God is the *only* possible final, irrevocable closure to the capacities and appetites of human nature. That really should be enough.
Or, consider these 9 truthmakers:
1 God is the summum bonum (greatest good and highest well-being).
2 God is the ground of all possibilities.
3 God wills the final good (highest well-being) of all creatures in him.
4 God permits only possibilities that aid rational creatures in achieving their highest well-being in him. (From P1-3)
5 The possibility of finally failing to achieve one’s highest well-being in God is not necessary to achieving that well-being.
6 God 'would not' permit the possibility of any rational creature finally failing to achieve its highest well-being in him. (From P1-5)
7 God 'has not' permitted the possibility of any rational creature finally failing to achieve its highest well-being in him. (From P6)
8 No evil God permits can prevent a rational creature’s achieving its highest good in him. (From P3, P7)
9 ‘God as summum bonum’ is not compossible with ‘the possible irrevocable loss of a rational creature’s highest well-being in God’. (From P1-4)
Conclusion 1: Therefore, it is not possible that any rational creature should fail irrevocably to achieve its highest well-being in God.
Conclusion 2: Therefore, both annihilationism and infernalism are impossible since both assert the possibility of a rational creature’s failing to achieve its highest well-being in God.
https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/the-god-of-the-possible/
Pardon the link! That's barging in. Sorry.
Fr JD parses natural & supernatural ends, so anyone's failure to receive the beatific vision, to him, doesn't count as a telic frustration.
For any competing eschatologies, which have been well-constructed logically, it can be too high a bar to show how any of them are explicitly inconsistent, especially when each is considered using their own definitions of terms. The conclusions of such arguments are often embedded in - not only in the premises, but - definitions of those arguments.
If logical defenses are easy to defend, it's only because the claims are relatively weak. So, we ask for an evidential theodicy of hell and the majoritarians take refuge in the mysterian appeals of a theo-skepticism.
We respond with noseeum inferences that will ordinarily fail as atheological objections as regarding those putative greater goods to which we'll refer in our problem of evil arguments (evidential theodicies like free will, soul-crafting, autonomy defense, etc).
In problem of hell arguments, universalists rely, implicitly or explicitly, on weseeum inferences.
I'm merely recounting the structures I encounter in the problem of hell discourse. Beyond equivocal definitions of various terms and ambiguous employments of critical verbs (especially 'causes' and necessitates and permits and intends ad nauseum), the arguments transist back & forth from logical to evidential to plausible to formal to semiformal to informal ... But informal is where they often end up & where our impasses are mostly "grounded." At least, that's where I've located my own with Fr Rooney, it seems to me.
Rooney thinks like a mechanic: this collides with that and ‘causes’ such and such an effect. Such ‘chains’ of cause and effect seem to be how he tries to explain everything. Very machine-like.
One could revise his primary proposition and the triad. But first, no universalist thinks it’s metaphysically necessary that all be saved since creation itself is a metaphysical (or ontological) contingency. So it’s important to clarify the necessity of the final salvation of all. We’re talking about what follows necessarily from God being infinite love and freely creating, not a ‘necessary truth’ per se. And we should note that no universalist need deny that ‘anyone goes to hell’. That's not the issue. But over all, it seems to me that since Rooney only sees mechanical bits and pieces colliding and producing physical results, he’s unable to contemplate the question under other terms.
I'm agree all truths have one or more truthmaker. So perhaps:
If it is true that all shall eventually be saved, something makes it true. The truthmakers are:
1) Human beings cannot foreclose upon themselves the possibility of achieving their highest well-being in God,
2) Human beings cannot succeed in simply rejecting God freely over and over 'forever',
3) God could not fail to pursue the highest well-being of human beings in him, and
4) Part of (3) means that God will restore clarity of mind and remove the habituated tendencies of body and mind.
This means the achieving of our highest well-being in God is the *only* possible final, irrevocable closure to the capacities and appetites of human nature. That really should be enough.
TGB: And we should note that no universalist need deny that ‘anyone goes to hell’.
JSS: No universalist need even recognize hell as conventionally understood. As for purgation, I recognize it as a state & not a place.
Of course. I was just responding to Rooney's articulation of the universalist proposition that 'no one goes to hell', which isn't the case. But yeah.
Keep up the awesome work!