(Universalist) Norms for Modelling Freedom & Grace

As we aspire to properly relate nature & grace and freedom & grace in an account that will preserve both the integrity of the human will & intellect as well as the priority of grace, we best bring along our most robust aporetic sensibilities.

While revelation does make what would otherwise be utterly incomprehensible mysteries eminently intelligible, that doesn’t mean that they’ll some day be reducible to mere analytic syllogistics.

Some degree of metaphysical bracketing will always remain unavoidable. Some creedal contours will ineluctably remain apophatic inference blockers, which will serve to constrain our kataphatic speculations, e g. theologoumena.

When we combine the grammars of our predications with our various logics of being, natures, hypostases & persons, our accounts will inescapably remain semi-formal. Such models will gift us successful references for our exploratory heuristics. They won’t ever provide the rigorous definitions as sought by those who naively ambition an explanatory adequacy.

Perhaps the primary nonformal ingredients of our competing models are the logics of hypostases, persons & perichoretic dynamics, those entitative realities that – while inseparable from – precisely remain irreducible to natures. These also happen to be the leading ingredients of our greatest beatitudes, which necessarily involve our most ineffable personal encounters.

Following Lonergan’s imperatives to be attentive, reasonable, intelligent, responsible & in love, beyond our propositional arguments, then, we must also account for our affective & evaluative dispositions. Beyond what would be an otherwise sterile propositional & analytical approach, we best convey our dispositional & operative “Franciscan” knowledge using the art of storytelling.

When I read Tom Belt’s theo-anthropo prescriptions for a suitably circumspect libertarianism, I come away thinking that they should provide a great deal of normative impetus for any who’d aspire to preserve the integrity of the human will & intellect in their freedom – grace models.

Similarly, Tom’s eschewal of syllogistic-like arguments &/or mere tautologies in our attempts to defend the priority of grace seem equally spot-on. Attempts to model interpersonal & perichoretic dynamics (of brute hypostatic positivities) that are bereft of evaluative appeals, affective aspects & storytelling will be fatally impoverished, because, by definition, those entitative realities will involve the ineffable, the immediate, the tacit, the operative, the dispositional, the infused & other fore“tastes“ of our final beatific knowledge.

Beyond a transcendental determinism (cf. Whether the will desires something of necessity? ST I, q. 82, a. 1, resp), which pertains to final ends, Tom rightly inquires regarding the putative divine means. Specifically, he wants to taste & see (my phraseology) how they can harmoniously interact with the intellect & will in a way that’s faithful to their transcendental orientation, naturally inclined, non-necessitated, deliberative & synergistic.

I thought it might be helpful to parse the relevant ends & means using the Aristotelian terms employed in the Decree on Justification (Trent) as condensed & paraphrased by me, below, where:

1) final cause = ad majorem Dei gloriam & our final beatitude

2) efficient cause = Father who mercifully washes & gratuitously sanctifies us via the Spirit

3) meritorious cause = Jesus

4) instrumental cause = Sacramental Economy which gifts faith & trust

5) formal cause = according to each one’s proper disposition and co-operation & so in a measure tailored to each, God calls, reputes, endows & renews each in spirit & mind with gifts distributed by the Spirit

On the surface, I think one could interpret these above-dynamics as being consistent with the theo-anthropo norms advocated by Tom. It would take some storytelling & concrete examples to fully flesh out our abstractions in a rhetorically persuasive way.

Let me introduce another Lonerganian account in an attempt to sublate the two components of Aquinas’ structure, that is, the theorem of the supernatural and Aristotle’s metaphysics: “Lonergan’s notion of sublation (Aufhebung) is taken not from Hegel but from Karl Rahner: ‘… what sublates goes beyond what is sublated, introduces something new and distinct, puts everything on a new basis, yet so far from interfering with the sublated or destroying it, on the contrary needs it, includes it, preserves all its proper features and properties, and carries them forward to a fuller realization within a richer context.’ “

“Essays in Systematic Theology 12: The Unified Field Structure for Systematic Theology: A Proposal”



Let me introduce yet another Lonerganian account to relate these sublation dynamics closer to the topic at hand – personal conversion: “Though religious conversion sublates moral, and moral conversion sublates intellectual, one is not to infer that intellectual comes first and then moral and finally religious. On the contrary, from a causal viewpoint, one would say that first there is God’s gift of his love. Next, the eye of this love reveals values in their splendor, while the strength of this love brings about their realization, and that is moral conversion. Finally, among the values discerned by the eye of love is the value of believing the truths taught by the religious tradition, and in such tradition and belief are the seeds of intellectual conversion.”

Theological Aspects of Bernard Lonergan’s “Method in Theology” by Giovanni B. Sala, S.J

This seems very much in accord with the Evangelical formula where it is said that, most often, it is (the gift of) right belonging that precedes (gifts) right desiring that instills right behaving that’s expressed in right believing, all ordered to right becoming in love.

Above are some categories that I have used to guide my own inquiries into the harmonization of freedom & grace. I’ve tried to more precisely locate any systematic impasses between my & Tom’s theoanthropologies. Increasingly, it seems like we’re wholly in sync normatively.

At the same time, I’m totally on board with manifold & multiform divine gifts of efficacious gracings, some which I suspect he interprets as repugnant to human freedom and violations of the integrity of human intellects & wills and which I don’t.

That all amounts to one hell of a lot of agreement. (See what I did there?)

Storytelling’s not a charism of mine. If Tom’s ever even almost persuaded to my outlook, I won’t likely be the one to blame. My offering above is an attempt to – not answer, but – better frame the questions involved.

I commend Fr Kimel’s An Open Letter to Dr Cyril Jenkins: Was Origen Condemned for Teaching Universal Salvation? as well as the comments that ensued.

I also commend the Christological musings of Lonergan, Rahner & HuvB. My primary take-away from their accounts of Christ’s earthly knowledge is that He enjoyed the benefits of the beatific vision as well as those of His human nescience (ordered to the excellence of obedience) – the gifts that hope, faith & trust can impart toward the end of each person’s autopoietic soul-crafting as ordered to that divine intimacy, which is God’s greater glory & our final beatitude.

That’s got to be the greatest story ever told?

Who wouldn’t want to be very circumspect when offering theo-anthropo accounts so as to guard against compromising the process or diminishing the significance of our becoming in love?

theoanthropo formative dynamics

Our existential acts, graced & synergistic, reduce the essential potencies of our substantial being or substance to establish – actualize – THAT & WHAT we are as we have
our being simply.

Our formal acts, graced & synergistic, reduce final potencies of accidental or qualified being and are realized, when we autonomously choose HOW to express WHAT we are, e g. like Jesus in our missiological conciousness, vocationally, etc

It is when we efficiently exercise WHAT we are, in each formal act of autonomously choosing HOW to express our substantial being, that we’ll also co-self-determine HOW MUCH more actualized we’ll become in terms of degrees of actuality, i.e. relative being, relative goodness, relative perfection.

Per Shawn Floyd’s “Moral Philosophy” — Members of the same species can enjoy different grades of maturity or completeness. As Norman Kretzmann and Eleonore Stump explain, something may be
“a more or less fully developed actualizedspecimen” (Kretzmann and Stump, 1988: 292). For example, a healthy adult dog is more developed—that is, more actualized—than a puppy, whose fledgling state prevents it from participating in those activities characteristic of
more mature dogs (e.g., reproduction, nurturing their young, etc.). The actuality referred to here is what Aquinas calls relative being. He says:
“by its substantial being, everything is said to have being simply; but by any further actuality it is said to have being relatively” (STIa 5.1 ad 1). The idea of “relative being” refers to the quality that accrues when
a living thing exercises its species-defining capacities and, in turn, becomes a more perfect. Again, by “more perfect” Aquinas simply means “more actual.” For “anything whatever is perfect to the extent that it is in actuality, since potentiality without actuality is imperfect”
(ST IaIIae 3.2). And just as a thing’s relative being is a matter of degree, so there is a kind of goodness —“relative goodness”—that corresponds to the degree of actuality a thing has. For “goodness [in the
current sense] is spoken of as more or less according to a thing’s superadded actuality”—the kind of actuality that goes beyond a thing’s mere substantial being (STIa 5.1 ad 3; ST IaIIae 18.1; SCG III 3, 4). —

The above maps to what I refer to as abundance &
superabundance, sufficient & supersufficient, etc

We must distinguish rest from existentially & synergistically
reducing esential potencies of essential being (and relative)
or primary nature & rest from formally & synergistically
reducing final potencies of accidental being or seconday
nature.

It’s precisely because I’m aspiring to be consistent w/our
epistemic distancing accounts, which include a sub-eschatological eden, indispensable autonomous soul-crafting thru an historical journey of faith, hope & trust, no wholesale jumping to the end (Edenic directionality), a
Christology & Mariology affirming integral aspects of our conatus in dynamic interplay with passio, SK’s King &
Maiden — that I parse the difference between,

on one hand, our essential & original beatitudes, which are secondary objects of a beatific vision, historical foretastes of divine immediacy as mediated via sacramental ontology and gifting a rest per that theophanic mode of knowledge, which corresponds to supernaturally synergistic but creaturely potencies that are subject to purgative & illuminative restoration or apokatastenai and,

Otoh, our accidental & final beatitudes, which are primary
objects of a beatific vision, eschatological realizations of
divine immediacy gifted via noetic identity and giving a rest
per that supra-theophanic mode of knowledge, which corresponds to supernaturally synergistic but obediential
potencies that are subject to illuminative & unitive
realization or apokatastasis. 

Above, I am threading the post-mortem anthropological
needle with an indicative apokatastenai & subjunctive
apokatastasis.

I’m appropriating various aspects of Origenian & Irenaean
theodicies along with suitable conceptions of epistemic
distance, where light & seeing refer to operative knowledge,
where loving & being loved constitute the dynamics of our
relative epistemic closures.
Those dynamics don’t violate any proscriptive norms
regarding seeking autonomy from God, as gleaned
exegetically from Genesis vis a vis the trees. Neither do
efficacious graces amount to any creature’s premature
attempt to take a fruit it’s not yet able to sufficiently digest.
Rather, they rather refer to God’s initiative, per the priority
of Grace, to give a purgative, illuminative or unitive gift
precisely when He deems it a due time.

I’m unsure what folks mean by irresistable grace. It is foreign
to my understanding of how efficacious grace is approached in Catholicism, across the diverse approaches.

Transcendental determinism refers to how the will is established as an essential potency of our substantial
being, which is reduced by each person’s act of existence. It does not ever involve God’s direct deterministic reduction of an im/material human-divine potency by circumventing the efficient causes of the human willing person, who responds synergistically to the divine graces that influence
the intellect, formally.

I’ll admit this, though, that a valid neoBanezian approach seems to, basically, replace a vicious will with a new one by a transcendental establishment. I think I saw you call this out over the years. Conceptually, to me, its logically consistent & internally coherent. Only, it’s among the most coercive of divine interventions. Again, it would seem to be fatally suboptimal to the overall balance of maximal creaturely – divine intimacy if ubiquitously deployed. The normal pattern seems to call for high frequency – low amplitude degrees of extrinsic coercions and, conversely, low frequency – high amplitude extrinsic coercions.

As ordered toward intimacy via autonomy, only the least coercive means necessary make sense as a norm.

re: the distinction between substantial & accidental forms. “Substantial form differs from the accidental form in this,
that the accidental form does not make a thing to be simply but to be such” (Summa Theologicae la. Q76 art. 4)
Additionally, moral character, as I understand it, refers to accidental qualities or modes of existing, not natural potencies, and it’s changeable, not indelible.

A virtuous or vicious moral habit, as an accidental quality, is a stable disposition which influences the rational powers of our substantial being, whether good or bad, acting as a
formal cause to variously affect our well-being or ill-being. That’s something like how grace ordinarily acts, too.

Our ability to perform acts comes from the rational potencies (reason & free will) of our substantial being, not
from our character. So, even unjust persons can always
perform just acts. Virtues & vices only affect the “manner” we perform un/just acts, as they say, promptly & with pleasure, whether in accord with or contrary to reason.

insist that we get an intact set of rational potencies that would act the same way, intrinsically, as before, i.e. deliberatively with trust. As I acknowledged above, though, I’m not sufficiently Thomist-conversant to advance this discussion in that idiom. I can say that grace ordinarily operates formally in the same anthropo-locale where our moral characters reside, for
better & worse. And, again, even if one admits an extraordinary re-establishment of volitional faculties, they’d still operate, intrinsically, per norms I have elaborated elsewhere.

We best not falsely dichotomize or absolutize the intrinsic & extrinsic factors involved. Old men dreaming dreams & young men seeing visions, variously being born in one
century or another, one continent or another, into one faith or another, can help one move more swiftly & with less hindrance toward knowledge of God via extrinsic influences?

Waking up on the other side, some day, won’t eliminate the role of trust or change our intrinsic operations, but it’s
difficult for me to imagine how that wouldn’t exhaust quite a few apparent reasons I could ever have for averting my gaze!

Does it not boil down, in some ways, to a disagreement regarding – not whether, but – how precipitously or not
anyone finally gets seduced (not rather raped) by God?

Of course, I have Molinist (& Banezian, Open, Congruist, etc) priors available to fuel my imagination. Others don’t
due to various priors. Keep in mind that per my Christological & Mariological conceptions, not even impeccability, properly conceived, would be wholly
incompatible with either our nescience or our conatus.

There’s another volitional dynamic I take from Scotus & Stump, which is the distinction between assent & absence of
refusal, both sufficiently free. In my imagination, even in purgatory, stipulating to a morning after crossing-over that gifts divine realities that are eminently (even infallibly in
some cases) worthy of trust, even after one has ceased & desisted from refusing grace, synergistic operations could
still differentiate between robust assents & timid absences of refusal, where, beyond a mere apokatastenai or
restoration, God may still uniquely tailor his epectatic initiatives, person by person, in terms of degrees of intimacy gifted by the Divine Ecdysiast.
So, I do have a modest speculative account of how God converts the soul. Specifying some divine causal nexus using a metaphysical root metaphor is one thing. Setting it forth in a vague phenomenological semi-formal heuristic isn’t proving too much.

Most grace – free will accounts seem motivated by theodicy concerns that universalists needn’t be over-concerned with b/c we don’t have the burden of defending a greater good in a morally unintelligible way. We can invoke a mysterian appeal that’s coherent vis a vis transient evils. For us, this
should ease the tensions between accounts of divine sovereignty & the integrity of human freedom?

I have few worries about answering questions like – If God can do this, why doesn’t He always do this or why hasn’t He done it already?

My answer to the second question is the same as David Bentley Hart.

And to the first, God only more coercively intervenes discriminately, just not promiscuously, as He maximally
optimizes our autonomous creaturely realizations of an everlastingly increasing intimacy. Again, low frequency – high amplitude interventions (and neither absolutely zero nor 1).

I resist over-specifying what aspects of our historical milieu are consequences of “the Fall” as I conceive it, but I don’t consider deliberative reasoning as anything but an original gift, not a consequence of original sin. At the same time, extrinsically, the objects of our deliberation & grace can & do act as form to matter on our intellect and give our will a LOT of input, which can make choosing VERY EASY, even if painful.

In continuity with my commitment to a radical theo-anthropo continuity across proto-, historico- & eschato-scapes, I would insist that our essential nescience & fallibility perdures, along with the gifts of faith, obedience &
trust that they entail. This is also consistent w/my Christology, which sees Jesus’ immediate & ineffable knowledge as compatible with His mediated & effable knowledge & nescience vis a vis realities pertaining to, for example, the hows, whens & wheres of His mission.

In my view, we already enjoy an inchoate degree of immediate divine knowledge (tacit, illative, etc) along with our mediated knowledge (sacramental ontology & such). I see the lights of faith & of glory as aspects of an integrally related dynamic that, again, display everlasting continuity.

Intrinsically, our substantial being as divine images operates the same, essentially, only purged of any accidental vicious qualities. This radical continuity is not inconsistent with Boersma’s insistence on a sacramental ontology that’s
thoroughly & Christologically theophanic. Best I could tell,
both DBH & Milbank are onboard w/this, which is closer to Nyssen’s view & over against Aquinas’ noetic identity account.

I have what are to me rather compelling reasons to affirm both theophanic & supra-theophanic knowledges. I will sort that out, below.

A speculative takeway of this post-mortem bifurcation is that I consider the theophanic account to represent a divine knowledge available to created agents who’ve been “easily but arduously” purged. It’s tantamount to a restoration of substantial being, which is what I have sometimes called original beatitude — not referring to lapsarian dynamics of the human race, so to speak protologically, but — merely
each person’s starting point, let’s say, on the cusp of the age of reason, historically. It was never a reference over against epistemic distancing in a sub-eschato-eden. So, it is in this sense that I roughly equate Boersma’s account of heaven with Maritain’s account of apokatastenai with LARGE qualifications. Because I reject natura pura & see us as constitutively indwelled, what would be limbo (hell’s attic) for Maritain & my coreligionists, for me, becomes heaven’s basement.

My apokatastenai refers to what many Orthodox are settling for as an exhaustive account of visions beatific, all Christologically theophanic.
Now, I’m not inventing this supra-theophanic distinction or any novel noetic identity account, which corresponds to what Catholics have always considered the primary beatitude of visions beatific. And I’m not facilely labeling Boersma’s account of heaven as largely mere secondary
beatitudes of visions beatific. That’s traditional, too. But I am exploiting the distinction in terms of affirming both modes & degrees of knowledge, one gifted indicatively, one subjunctively (per all the rubrics of merits, condign & ex congruo, etc). That’s where I differ from most of the Orthodox, I suspect.

What motivates my indicative stance is precisely my double effect moral reasoning, which sees disproportionate
punishment as unjust and tantamount to divine – not permission, but – intention.

My subjunctive stance sees no divine injustice in permitting persons to self-determinedly foreclose on a supra-theophanic experience of a Trinitological noetic identity, because no one could, ergo would, experience that as a punishment. We mostly refer to it abstractly. Concretely, no eye’s seen, ear’s heard or heart’s conceived the experience of participating in an ad intra Trinitological enjoyment. Many Orthodox wouldn’t give a whit about my stance, herein, since they reject that supra-theophanic possibility anyway. And no Catholic could protest my subjunctive stance because that’s official dogma anyway.

I sincerely believe that I’m on to something that could build
a universalist bridge for my coreligionists to walk over. Be
that as it may, it just so happens to be the most coherent view I can presently conjure.

It occurs to me that I should be more clear when invoking names like Aquinas, Scotus, Bracken, Lonergan, Boersma or whomever. My thinking has most often been “inspired” by various thinkers as would be distinct from my rigorously adopting their thinking. As it is, there are competing interpretations re what any of them actually meant, anyway.

Also, my (mis?)appropriations can often lead to some creative but quite idiosyncratic constructive theology.
It occurred to me that the best way to characterize what I think re our human epistemic suite across our proto-, historico- and eschato-scapes is in terms of conversions & sublations. It’s not that our essential epistemic furnishings ever change. Rather, we just rearrange the furniture in ever more perfect configurations. We’ve been gifted all these various pieces as substantial being & we progressively learn when & how to use each furnishing – this by the window, that by the fireplace, this for recreation, that for studying – perfecting the manner (i.e. an accidental quality of relative being) that we employ them.

Better put by BL: “Lonergan’s notion of sublation (Aufhebung) is taken not from Hegel but from Karl Rahner:
‘… what sublates goes beyond what is sublated, introduces something new and distinct, puts everything on a new basis, yet so far from interfering with the sublated or destroying it,
on the contrary needs it, includes it, preserves all its proper features and properties, and carries them forward to a fuller realization within a richer context.’ “

“Essays in Systematic Theology 12: The Unified Field Structure for Systematic Theology: A Proposal”

So, I apply sublation to our immediate & mediate knowledge of God, to the ineffable & effable, to our tacit,
illative & intuitive knowing & to our deliberative reason, will, faith & trust. None of these are destroyed by epistemic closures. They’re only ever perfected in terms of the manner we employ them, “suchly” speaking.

Better put by Simon Gaine, too: “It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that God’s supra–theophanic self–gift destroys rather than perfects the heavenly reality of theophany. Boersma is concerned that a non–theophanic beatific vision undermines the role of the theophanic, and so of Christ. But, as we have seen, Aquinas treats the new creation, and especially the incarnate Christ, as thoroughly theophanic. What knowledge of and through the divine essence provides, which no theophany itself can provide,
are the resources for perfect knowledge of this new creation as precisely what it is, namely, the theophanic manifestation
of God. It is in light of these supra–theophanic resources that the saint beholds Christ and his Kingdom, truly knows them for what they are, and so gives high praise to God. While in this life we perceive by faith, not without a measure of indirectness, that God is manifest in his creation, in the next we shall truly know the new creation, and especially the humanity of Christ, precisely as theophanic, that is, by way of an immediate vision that transcends the theophanic and so brings the theophanic not to its ending but to its eternal significance.”

Through ongoing extrinsic manifestations, which vary in
kinds & degrees of im/mediacy, God can titrate the divine purgations & illuminations that will meet each person’s unique needs for unitive conversion (transmuted experience).

Bracken writes: “Through intersubjective relations, a person can know & understand others’ subjective experiences by prehending the structural objectifications of those
experiences, objectively knowing & identifying with them but not subjectively identifying with them. Infinite persons objectively know & identify with each other in every way. The different subjective realities of each person precludes ontological identity (as in the logical principle of identity). Knowing & willing, then, pertain to both the divine nature AND to each person.”

I take that to mean that we can cooperate with the divine will & logoi and intentionally relate both to each Person – paterologically, pneumatologically & Christologically, as well as to their corporate agency – Trinitologically. I associate the
former mostly with effable, mediated & theophanic dynamics, the latter with ineffable, immediate & supra-theophanic dynamics. This is all consistent, too, with how both Jenson & Bracken can be interpreted as employing “tripolar presencing within a three domain model of reality
(infinitely & timelessly, eternally & everlastingly, temporally & transiently) and with Lonergan’s distinctions between horizontal & vertical finalities, each with its own sort of rest, each differing – not in their Object of knowledge, but – in their formally or modally distinct ways of knowing, which can grow everlastingly.