The Guarantee of the Beatific Vision & Incoherence of Beatific Contingencies

I like to draw the distinction between primary & secondary natures, between what we are essentially & how we manifest it personally.

What we are, as mutually constituted with Christ, each a member of the Totus Christus, comes from an existential act that reduces essential potencies, which are relative perfections gifted us per divine logoi.

Our existential acts are wholly monergistic and gifted gratuitously by divine efficient causes of creatio ex nihilo and continua. They represent a reduction of whatness to thatness. Our thatness and whatness are wholly determined & not frustratable. That deal is a done one.

Existentially & essentially, then, we are already outfitted to enjoy the beatific vision. That’s been determined and without any so-called beatific contingencies, e.g. character / disposition – based (overwhelmingly implausible) or indwelling – based (contra natura pura)

Justin Noia, in Aquinas on the Possibility of Hell argues that, for Aquinas, the possibility of
hell seems to follow from a desire that we presuppose God has, viz., the desire for free creatures.

But I will argue, below, that, in heaven, we’ll enjoy our essential freedom of natural inclination, such freedom including a deliberative volition in choosing among eternal well beings. We thus have no need of that hellish hypothesis or of evil’s practical hypostasization.

The problem of evil, therefore, would derive, rather, from our being superabundantly (presumably so) gifted with a co-self-determinate freedom of co-creation beyond our abundantly gifted essential freedom as grounded in our natural inclinations.

Noia, In the Beatific Vision, Both Freedom and Necessity, compellingly argues against character – based beatific contingencies.

As imagoes Dei, per eternal temporal simultaneity, we’re already part of the Totus Christus, Who has already realized the all in allness of the creation in Incarnation. There’s no arguing or frustrating the fact THAT we SHALL manifest Christ.

Human deliberative volition would operate via will & intellect in our ongoing eternal  choosing from among an infinite array of well beings. This dynamic would unfold in our everlasting epectatic journeys, wherein we’ll eternally instantiate relative perfections, employing our rational freedom as it follows our natural inclinations.

This is not to diminish, however, our theotic journey of becoming like Christ in our secondary natures. This involves a reduction of our final potencies by formal acts of co-creative soul-crafting, as we co-self-determine HOW we WOULD manifest Christ.

Our formal acts, then, reduce final potencies, which, like the reduction of our essential potencies by our existential acts, also refer to relative perfections as gifted us per divine logoi. In both cases, we instantiate our divinely human potencies, which are exemplified as immanent universals by Christ, Who grounds their existence. It’s in this dynamic of freedom that our secondary natures can grow both virtuous and vicious, in the latter case obscuring but in no way obliterating our theophanic manifestations of our primary natures.

Those vicious aspects of our secondary natures parasitize the ineradicable goodness of our primary natures, so will be purged, one way or another, by gratuitously gifted, efficacious purgative graces.

At the least, these purgations can be synergistically effected, if only by virtue of how our rational volition works in accordance with how it was originally & efficiently caused. This is to say that, only when we cooperate with grace are we doing anything that’s real & substantial and eternally so. Our sinful refusals & mere fallible failures to cooperate with grace, by not being CO-self-determined, amount to a passive self-annihilation of our vicious natures, which are parasitic, nonsubstantial & not eternally real but sheer ephemeralities.

That above account of efficacious purgative graces does not seem like it would be repugnant to those who cringe at other purgative dynamics, which they find hard to square with libertarian freedoms.

I, too, find accounts of divine efficient causation on the will, beyond merely creating the will, to be incoherent. But, I’ve fewer problems in imagining how divine efficient causations could, otherwise, efficaciously act in manifold & multiform other ways, both vertically & transhistorically (via primary causation) as well as horizontally & intrahistorically (via secondary causations). I find those efficacious graces to be sufficiently plausible, especially in the context of those graces that would affect formal human causes and primarily via our intellects & our secondary natures (habits).

Again, in the first case, as pertaining to our primary natures, those instantiations are divinely determined. In the latter, as pertaining to our secondary natures, they’re co-self-determined. In the first case, THAT we shall manifest Christ has been determined; in the latter, HOW we would manifest Christ involves co-self-determination.

I bring up these distinctions to illustrate how, as per what we are and that we shall enjoy the beatific vision, no “problem of evil” obtains vis a vis a putative hell.

The problem of evil derives, therefore, from our formative theotic dynamics. Those theotic dynamics superabundantly allow for our co-self-determinate freedom of co-creation. They go beyond, then, but not without, our abundantly gifted, essential freedom of natural inclination.

Both freedoms are ordered to the instantiation of divinely human potencies. Both are ordered to our personally free theophanic manifestations. Both engage a deliberative volition that integrates will & intellect.

Was the addition of our co-self-determinate freedom of co-creation worth the permissions of sin & possibilities of evil that otherwise play no part in our enjoyment of our essential freedom of natural inclination? Was the cost of this expansion in theophanic breadth justifiable?

Those are the undecidable questions. I’ve addressed them here: A Defense of Grace, Predestination, and the Permission of Venial Sin

As to why there could be no beatific contingencies grounded in divine indwellings, consider Aquinas:

“When therefore intellectual light is received into the soul, together with the indwelling Divine essence… the Divine essence will be to the intellect as form to matter.” (ST Suppl.92.1). As Justin Noia observes: “Thus in the beatific vision a person’s intellect and God become, not one thing simply–speaking, but
‘one as regards the act of understanding’ … “ (ST Suppl.92.1 ad 8)

Noia goes on to defend an indwelling-based beatific contingency that, without a lot more narrative story-telling, seems as overwhelmingly implausible as, even practically tantamount & reducing to, character-based contingencies. Those indwelling-based beatific contingencies, however, incoherently require ad hoc ante-mortem & post-mortem distinctions to defend heaven’s freedom, impeccability & inancaritability. They also require a natura pura reconciliation of nature & grace, abstracted from our concrete experiences of the universal divine omnipresence in creatures and divine indwelling in rational creatures.