Universalists have more to recruit from Maritain's anthropology than perditionists have to celebrate
Maritain’s notions regarding the nature of mortal sin & proportionality of everlasting punishments were already grounded in his stipulations to a boilerplate Thomism, quite independent of his & de Lubac’s departures therefrom regarding angel im/peccability.
The intramural squabbles among the Thomists regarding who was exaggerating or understating the powers of angelic &/or human wills are interesting but for other reasons. (I’m rather sympathetic to Maritain & de Lubac’s so-called exaggerrated versions.)
Where they all erred, in my view, was in relying on an exaggerated notion of rational creatures’ intellects as far as knowing God and on impoverished notions of divine justice & mercy as far as the subjective culpability of angels & humans.
Also, in some cases, they were having to solve pseudo-problems like post-mortem human immutability & “second instant” angelic immutability, lacking as they did the coherence afforded by a universal hylomorphism.
Maritain did get right how, even eschatologically, both angelic & human wills could be changed miraculously.
In a departure from the general approach of the Thomists, who believed that - in a state of pure nature - angels would remain impeccable, Maritain argued that they would've been peccable. So, what was in dispute was whether or not, even in a state of pure nature (never having been offered more), angels could or could not have sinned.
I'm with Maritain, that angels could.
Where I depart from both Maritain, in particular, & the Thomists, in general, though, is with regard to the theoanthropological reality that all rational creatures have been transcendentally determined such that, eventually, none would sin, even if, metaphysically, they still could.
What troubled some Thomists even more was Maritain's speculative account of how even Lucifer could be restored, as set forth in Maritain's "Reverie," which described such an apokatastenai. For that to even be possible, Maritain's inflationary account of angelic (& by implication human) autonomy, while it could stand, would have to otherwise accept, even if implicitly, the indispensable logic & theoanthropological mechanics of how a transcendental determinism would operate.
It has been said that Maritain's Reverie was an anomalous musing, crafted by an old man. There is evidence to the contrary that would suggest it was far more systematic than many Thomists might care to admit.
Universalists actually have more to recruit from Maritain's anthropology than perditionists have to celebrate.
In Sin of the Angel, Maritain's taking an elevated view of creaturely autonomy in relationship to divine power, providence & sovereignity. Some worry that this inflationary view of autonomy becomes even more curious (to some worrisome), when combined with Maritain's deflationary view of its significance, presumably due to the mitigation of its consequences, as expressed in his "Reverie."
In my view, Maritain's enhanced conception of creaturely autonomy enriches our notions of human - divine intimacy to the divinely gratuitous superabundant upside.
At the same time, Maritain's apokatastenai, by mitigating the natural consequences (whether retributive or otherwise) of our sinful acts, preserves - not compromises - divine power, providence & sovereignity over what would otherwise be a quasi-Manichean residue to an utterly godforsaken downside.
“The sin of the Angel does not presuppose either ignorance or error in the functioning of the intellect as such. His sin thereby reveals to us the frightening and, as it were, infinite power proper to free will. That will can choose evil in full light, by a purely voluntary act, and without the intellects being victim of any previous error.”
~ Jacques Maritain, The Sin of the Angel
In part, Maritain was arguing (correctly in my view) that, even without error or ignorance on the part of the intellect, the will can simply choose not to consider what it knows. It's not ignorance of the higher good but ignoring it to will & love a lesser good, inordinately.
Maritain continues: "in other words the sinning angel's disordered act of will itself tranforms the inordinately willed good into a good which is henceforth for him - by his order - his supreme good and his beatitude, which he wants at any price and prefers to what he knows with perfectly certain knowledge to be the true beatitude to which is being is ordained by God" [my emphasis]
What one does not know, "with perfectly certain knowledge to be the true beatitude," one cannot ignore, cannot willfully disregard, cannot choose not to consider? That doesn't support but, instead, flies in the face of the alleged coherence of mortal sin.
Most interestingly & consolingly, there's a theoanthropo - asymmetry in how we realize our "stability in the good" but could never attain to a "stability in the bad (a subcontrary)."
The way we were designed, LONG before anyone might receive a beatific vision (which, itself, doesn't entail infallible knowledge), we believe one can attain to a stability in the good, a practical (not metaphysical, substantial or essential) impeccability. After all, we believe that no one "will" (not metaphysically "can't") sin, even in purgatory.
Also, in ascetical & mystical theology, we believe one can attain to the unitive way, beyond the purgative & illuminative, on this side of a visio beatifica.
So, it's not just that we could never willfully disregard that which we haven't even comprehended, it's that, long before we get anywhere near even epektatically & asymptotically comprehending God, we (by transcendental design & determination but not efficient necessitation) could, as infallibly known to God, attain to a stability wherein we "would" not avert our gaze from the Good (as variously revealed), having exhausted our finite supply of "reasons" to ever do so!
Note:
Rational creatures, in our substantial being, will never attain to perfect knowledge or freedom. We will everlastingly remain fallible, so relatively knowledgeable, and finite, so sufficiently free. This remains true no matter what kinds & degrees of immediate & mediated knowledge of God one might enjoy.
Still, God has infallibly & transcendentally determined our natural inclinations in a way that all can nevertheless attain to a stability in the good, wherein we will awaken to His inancaritability & experience, thereby, our own practical impeccability. Precisely because of our radical finitude, we will run out of ways to disregard the Good and exhaust all of our reasons to avert our gaze from the Beautiful.
Who will attain to this stability in the good and when, where & how may remain an ineluctable mystery due to the depth dimensions mirrored by every divine image. Why all will uniquely experience various sorts of divine rest has been transcendentally determined
As DBH would insist, all rational freedom is first set into action by a transcendental final cause & only ever exists in direct proportion to the rational competency of the agent: “If we did not intrinsically desire immediate knowledge of God, we could not rationally desire mediated knowledge about truth in finite things."
It’s difficult to interact with interlocutors, including Maritain, who are stipulating to many aspects of esoteric angelologies that I just don’t accept.
For starters, only a universal hylomorphism makes sense to me. As it goes with us, so it goes with angels. That’s to say that all rational creatures are finite & fallible, so mortal sin’s incoherent for all of us.
Also, the “sin of the angels” took place when they were in sanctifying grace and not yet enjoying a beatific vision. Maritain’s account works otherwise regarding how we can sin. Properly nuanced, it could be interpreted as moderately libertarian. I’m okay with saying that we always can disregard what we know but not that such an act could ever entail perfect freedom. We just cannot, by definition, ever be absolutely culpable. Even if, metaphysically, it will always be so that we could sin, God infallibly knows & providence can ensure that we would not sin.
I rather like Maritain’s main argument, against perhaps the majority of his fellow Thomists. He saw a continuity with the angels & wo/men, in that all are peccable. The will, as an efficient cause, could disregard the intellect as formal cause. How else would sin be possible? After all, that’s required for culpability.
As to how our substantial being operates, I believe in a total continuity between protological, historical & eschatological horizons. Nothing changes in how our intellects & wills operate, including finitely, fallibly & deliberatively. Metaphysically, I believe that nothing changes, substantially or essentially, in how rational beings “could” respond. All extrinsic influences remain wholly non-necessitating.
Realities like impeccability & inancaritability, then, refer to how we infallibly “would” respond according to our freely soul-crafted relative & accidental being. God needn’t outfit us (superadditively), only outwit us (superabundantly). There are competing anthropological accounts of how intrinsic & extrinsic factors might variously impinge on our substantial, relative & accidental beings, but non-necessitation remains non-negotiable for me.
Of course, being transcendentally determined in how our free natural inclinations work in the first place is in no way repugnant to our freedom; those inclinations are how we’re established in freedom. So, God knowing what we would do & providentially guiding us, here & there, is never a metaphysical infringement on what we could do.
Only perfectly free persons behave in perfectly knowledgeable ways. Only perfectly knowledgeable persons behave in perfectly free ways. While finite creatures are merely sufficiently free to behave in only relatively knowledgeable ways, still, when perfectly free & sufficiently free persons act synergistically, the effects are perfectly loving!
To the exclusivists & perditionists, it is positively scandalous to imagine that the primary importance of our historical acts might lie moreso in what they would mean to our eternal, superabundant upside, while deriving not, rather, from the spectre of some everlasting downside (quasi-Manichean).
Maritain & HuvB, as soft universalists, were weak in their own distinct ways. I think they were caught in the subconscious undertow of our proportionality objection.
Those elements who contested Maritain’s account of angelic peccability were equally outdone with his apokatastenai, integral humanism, social & political philosophies, etc, all for pretty much the same reason. They felt like those accounts converged to elevate the autonomy & gratuity of creation, while diminishing the significance of the gratuity of grace & sovereignty of the divine. They thought that Maritain was playing into the hands of secular humanists & pomo-relativists. What was really going on, in my view, was that he was running away from the clericalistic & ecclesiocentric exclusivists and into the open arms of a universal pneumato-Christo inclusivism. Like Lonergan, he made some great moves which could’ve led him to more coherent conclusions, but didn’t.
The exclusivists worry — would not Maritain’s universal restoration trivialize the significance of our finite autonomous acts? But, good grief, is the enormity of human suffering & immensity of human pain, temporally & historically, not already sufficiently significant? Are such temporal consequences not already intense enough without being made everlasting in duration? And why pit the acknowledgement of evil and its mitigation as necessarily over against each other, as if purgative graces could not reckon with both? Are our distinctions between virtue and vice, good and evil, not already graphic & ghastly enough, temporally, without having to rely on the consequence of eternal punishment; as if that threat has ever sufficed as some indispensable deterrent; as if we with our finite freedom have too little to fear or worry about if its temporal consequences aren’t made everlasting; as if the gratuitous superabundant divine – human intimacy that’s on offer to us as our supersufficient greater good is not, alone, justifiable as the potential ultimate consequence of our free acts?
Is there not a real seriousness involved when two friends commit to eternally becoming two lovers rather than remaining “just friends?” Is there not a momentous grandeur in such a human choice?
Without at all denying grace as transmuted experience, can we recognize the gratuities of both grace & creation? the universal pneumato-Christo-presence? and acknowledge that, of course, we might move more quickly & with less hindrance on our journey with grace? All without giving in to some facile syncretism, insidious indifferentism or false irenicism? All while affirming a good old natural law, Nostra Aetate & the 1948 U.N. Declaration of Human RIghts?
What Maritain (a pneumato-Christo inclusivist) referred to as personalist, humanist & integral seemed, others (ecclesiocentric exclusivists) interpreted as too close to being relativist, secularist & atheist. But Maritain’s realism, of course, integrates the will & intellect at least as well as Scotus, Stump & Ratzinger. Can we not permeate & improve the temporal order as a proleptic realization of eschatological glories, a foretaste, an earnest, a down payment? the Holy Spirit?
Per rational creatures’ substantial being, all are essentially peccable & so could sin. It’s per our relative & accidental beings as co-self-determined through grace, that all can become practically impeccable & so would not sin due to various intrinsic & extrinsic factors. Rational creatures remain thoroughgoingly non-necessitated in their finite acts, while remaining in infinite potency to divine potentials that have been wholly determined, transcendentally. As always before, so now & ever more, protologically, historically & eschatologically for the free will of rational creatures.
A coherent theoanthropology must properly understand the nature of God (morally), the nature of freedom (both absolutely & relatively) & the nature of personhood (constitutively). It must then properly account for the dynamical interrelationships between God & persons (per such freedom) across protological, historical & eschatological horizons and account for the dynamical changes that each rational creature can experience, both intrinsically & extrinsically, in terms of its substantial, relative & accidental being.
It is precisely because rational creatures are wholly determined, transcendentally, that Maritain could optimistically affirm the thoroughgoing non-necessitation of our wills.
There are competing models that variously hold together our conceptions of freedom & necessity, nature & grace, efficacious grace & predestination, divine sovereignty & permission of evil, antecedent & consequent wills, intrinsic & extrinsic causes, divine simplicity, impassibility & universal causality, while steering a course between pelagianism & Calvinism.
Such competing models include the:
1) Augustinian & neo-Bañezian (Fr Rooney’s intrinsic libertarianism & O’Neill’s compatibilism);
2) Molinist;
3) Balthasarian; and
4) Maritainian (Grant’s extrinsic libertarianism, Lonergan, Maritain, Marin-Sola, Burrell, McCabe, McCann, Talbott & DBH).
The Maritainian model, broadly conceived, attributes the authoring of nonbeing wholly to creatures and emphasizes the lack of symmetry between good & evil. As an instrumental origin of moral evil, while a finite rational creature remains solely culpable, agentially, proportionally, one can only ever be relatively culpable, .
If we distinguish an apokatastenai (restoration) of a theophanic vision and an apokatastasis of a supratheophanic vision, then my stance represents an
1) affirmation of a predestinarian theophanic vision;
2) affirmation of the universal theophanic will;
3) negation of a predestinarian
supratheophanic vision; and
4) affirmation of the universal supratheophanic will.
Hence, I subscribe to an indicative apokatastenai & subjunctive apokatastasis.