“What can still be called death after I have died my death?”

I am the resurrection and the life, but not as the world knows them: that decaying cycle of springs and autumns, that millstone of melancholy, that aping of eternal life. All the world’s living and dying, taken together, are one great death, and it is this death that I awaken to life. Once I entered the world, a new and unknown sap began to circulate in the veins and branches of nature. The powers of destiny, the might of the planets, the demons of the blood, the rulers of the air, the spirit of the earth, and whatever other dark things still cover in the secret folds of creation: all of this has now been subdued and is ordered about and must obey the higher law. All the world’s form is to me but matter that I inspirit. My action is not grafted from without to the old life, to the old pleasure-gardens of Pan; being the very life of life, I transform the marrow from within. All that dies becomes the property of my life. All that passes over in autumn runs ashore on my spring. All that turns to mold fertilizes my blossoms. All that denies has already been convicted; all that covets has already been dispossessed; all that stiffens has already been broken.

I am not one of the resurrected; I am the resurrection itself. Whoever lives in me, whoever is taken up into me, is taken up in resurrection. I am the transformation. As bread and wine are transformed, so the world is transformed into me. The grain of mustard is tiny, and yet its inner might does not rest until it overshadows all the world’s plants. Neither does my Resurrection rest until the grave of the last soul has burst, and my powers have reached even to the furthest-branch of creation. You see death; you feel the descent to the end. But death is itself a life, perhaps the most living life; it is the darkening depth of my life, and the end is itself the beginning, and the descent is itself the soaring up.

What can still be called death after I have died my death? Does not every dying from now on receive the meaning and seal of my death? Is its significance not that of a stretching out of the arms and a perfect sacrifice into the bosom of my Father? In death the barriers fall away; in death the ever-forbidden lock snaps open; the sluice bursts, the waters pour out freely. All the terrors that hover around death are morning mists that disperse into the blue. Even the slow death of souls when they bitterly shut themselves off from God—when they entrench and wall themselves up, when the world towers up around them like the pit of a grave, and all love becomes as the smell of mould, and hope withers, and a cold defiance rears its head and shows its tongue, a viper up from the depths: have I not suffered my way through all these deaths. And what can their poison do against the deadly antidote of my love? Every horror became for my love a garment in which to conceal itself, a wall through which to walk.

Do not be afraid of death. Death is the liberating flame of the sacrifice, and sacrifice is transformation. But eucharistic transformation is communion in my eternal life. I am Life. Whoever believes in me, whoever eats and drinks me, has life in himself, eternal life, already here and now, and I will raise him up on the last day.

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Kronen & Reitan: Efficacious Grace as Lobotomy

In their book God’s Final Victory, philosophers John Kronen and Eric Reitan present an argument for universal salvation based on the efficacious grace of God. They lay it out in five steps:

1. It is always possible for God to extend to the unregenerate efficacious grace; that is, a form of grace sufficient by itself to guarantee their salvation (i.e. sufficient to bring about all that is necessary for salvation, including relevant subjective acts such as sincere repentance and conversion).
2. Making use of efficacious grace to save the unregenerate is morally permissible for God, at least when the recipient would not otherwise have been saved.
3. It is therefore possible and permissible for God to save all through the exercise of efficacious grace (1, 2).
4. If God has a morally permissible means or saving all, then God will save all.
5. Therefore, God will save all (3, 4).¹

Premise #2: The Moral Permissibility of Efficacious Grace

Let’s now move on to the second premise #2 of the argument. Even if God can effect the salvation of all through transformative intervention, is it morally permissible? Many will object that such action will violate personal autonomy and freedom. Kronen and Reitan respond to these concerns in several pages.

The 19th century Scottish theologian A. M. Fairbairn describes the doctrine of universal­ism as “compulsory salvation.” He apparently believes that the only way God can save all is for him, in essence, to “lobotomize” the obdurate. God overrides the individual’s free choice and replaces it with his own. Fairbarn puts it this way:

Compulsory restoration is only another form of annihilation. Freedom is of the essence of man, and he must be freely saved to be saved at all. Were he saved at the expense of his freedom, he would be not so much saved as lost. For the very seat and soul of personality is will; and were the will suspended, especially in the article of its supreme choice, the personality would be destroyed; what resulted would be not a new man, but another man from him who had been before. And the original man could not be recalled into being; for were the old will, suspended that the man might be saved, restored, the old state would be restored with it. Those alone can freely stand who have been freely saved; and without freedom there can be no obedience, without obedience no beatitude.

Hence the argument as little involves universal restoration as it allows partial annihilation. What it maintains is an eternal will of good, and, as a consequence, eternal possibilities of salvation. God will never be reluctant, though man may for ever refuse. But to necessitate were as little agreeable to the regal Paternity as to annihilate. The Fatherhood will ever love and ever seek to create happiness; the Sovereignty will ever govern and ever seek to expel sin and create righteousness; but neither will ever forget that the son is a free citizen, and must be freely won to submission and obedience. Sin is not to be vanquished either by the destruction or the compulsory restoration of the sinner, but by his free salvation; and should this fail of accomplishment, yet God will have been so manifested by the attempt at it, that all the universe will feel as if there had come to it a vision of love that made it taste the ecstasy and beatitude of the Divine.²

We may presume that the memory of the individual remains intact throughout and after the divine operation. He simply experiences himself differently. One moment he hated God, the next he loves him. He has no explanation for his metamorphosis. He does not remember anything having been done to him. He’s just different. In an instant his whole outlook on life and divinity has dramatically shifted. Perhaps he’s even ecstatic about his inexplicable transformation. But is he still the same person? Fairbairn thinks not. Free people cannot be conscripted into the Kingdom against their will, and to suspend their will necessarily entails the destruction of their personality. What in fact has happened, Fair­bairn asserts, is that God has annihilated the old person and replaced it with another.

Fans of the original Star Trek may recall the episode “This Side of Paradise.” The Enterprise is ordered to check on the colony on Omicron Ceti III. They discover the colonists to be exceptionally well, happy, and content, despite the dangerous Berthold rays now bathing the planet. As we soon discover, the colonists have been infected by spores from a native flower. Seeking answers for the health of the colonists, Spock asks Leila Kalomi, played by the beautiful Jill Ireland, to explain the mystery, and she takes him to a field where the flowers grow. He is exposed to the spores. The change is dramatic. For the first time in his life, Spock experiences happiness and joy. He immediately falls in love with Leila (who wouldn’t?). From that point on, he has no desire to be liberated from his rapture. Question #1: Is Spock still Spock? Question #2: Did Leila have moral warrant, without asking his permission, to expose Spock to the bliss-bestowing spores? Question #3: Does Captain Kirk have moral warrant, without asking his permission, to eliminate the influence of the spores, thus restoring Spock to his original Vulcan self? I’m guessing Fairbairn would answer no, no, yes.

Kronen and Reitan do not find Fairbairn’s argument compelling. Invoking the definition of Boethius that a person is an individual substance of a rational nature, they maintain that there is a critical difference between person (the hypostasis in which attributes inhere) and personality (beliefs, attitudes, memories, habits, affective states, etc.). A personality is what a person has; it is not what a person is. “If this is right,” the authors comment, “then a transformation destroys a person only if it removes something essential to being a person—such as the person’s rational faculty. A transformation in personality does not do this.”³

Recall the example of Jenny in our first article. By their therapeutic intervention, the resistance liberates Jenny from her addiction and restores her to health. They do not destroy her in her personhood; they save her:

To say that their activities do not save Jenny because they cause the drug-addicted, benighted individual to cease to exist makes little sense. Likewise, it is hard to see how doing away [via efficacious grace] with the ignorance and bondage to sin that afflict an unregenerate person would entail destroying them.⁴

Even if are using word “destroy” metaphorically to describe the redemptive change—the destruction of the old person—we still have to concede that the person is the beneficiary of that destruction. The essential core of their personhood has been salvaged from “sin’s ruinous effects.” Looking at efficacious grace this way also enables us to read Scripture differently:

In fact, if the biblical language of destruction is conceived in this way, it may help to reconcile some of the more troubling hell texts with God’s benevolence. The vessel of wrath then becomes the false self—the sinful personality destroyed through the divine act of bestowing efficacious grace. The vessel of mercy becomes the person’s true essence—the enduring beneficiary of grace.⁵

Even still, one might think that the person’s autonomy has been violated. Freedom is critical to our self-development. Kronen and Reitan formulate the objection thusly: “If God simply erases the character formed by our free choices, then God has not merely over­rid­den our freedom, but has ignored our prima facie claim on having our free choices deter­mine what kind of people we become.”⁶ In other words, God is acting immorally. Like Leila, he is exposing human beings to the spores of efficacious grace without their permission. Therefore, premise #2 is false. Or is it?

 

Footnotes

[1] John Kronen and Eric Reitan, God’s Final Judgment: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism (2011), p. 131.

[2] A. M. Fairbairn, The Place of Christ in Modern Theology (1895), pp. 467-468.

[3] K&R, p. 140.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

(cont)

Kronen & Reitan: The Argument from Efficacious Grace

In their book God’s Final Victory, philosophers John Kronen and Eric Reitan present an argument for universal salvation based on the efficacious grace of God. They lay it out in five steps:

1. It is always possible for God to extend to the unregenerate efficacious grace; that is, a form of grace sufficient by itself to guarantee their salvation (i.e. sufficient to bring about all that is necessary for salvation, including relevant subjective acts such as sincere repentance and conversion).
2. Making use of efficacious grace to save the unregenerate is morally permissible for God, at least when the recipient would not otherwise have been saved.
3. It is therefore possible and permissible for God to save all through the exercise of efficacious grace (1, 2).
4. If God has a morally permissible means of saving all, then God will save all.
5. Therefore, God will save all (3, 4).¹

Premise One: Efficacious Grace

I have not often explicitly availed myself of the Western notion of efficacious grace in my arguments on universal salvation, though it has made its appearance under different guises in articles on David Bentley Hart and Sergius Bulgakov.² Hart speaks of humanity as having been created with an innate desire for and attraction to the Good:

No one can freely will the evil as evil; one can take the evil for the good, but that does not alter the prior transcendental orientation that wakens all desire. To see the good truly is to desire it insatiably; not to desire it is not to have known it, and so never to have been free to choose it.³

Given humanity’s ineradicable engraced orientation to the Good, all God need do is remove the ignorance and disordered passions that inhibit sinful human beings from apprehending the Good and thus embracing the happiness to which they are destined in Jesus Christ. “To see the good truly is to desire it insatiably.”

Bulgakov speaks of humanity as having been created in the image of Jesus Christ. When Christ reveals himself to us at the Last Judgment, we will see ourselves within the proto-image and know who we are, who we are intended to become and be. In Christ and through Christ we will apprehend the fundamental truth of our existence:

This proto-image is Christ. Every human being sees himself in Christ and measures the extent of his difference from this proto-image. A human being cannot fail to love the Christ who is revealed in him, and he cannot fail to love himself revealed in Christ. The two things are the same. Such is human ontology. Love is the Holy Spirit, who sets the heart afire with this love. But this love, this blazing up of the Spirit, is also the judgment of the individual upon himself, his vision of himself outside himself, in conflict with himself, that is, outside Christ and far from Christ. And the measure and knowledge of this separation are determined by Love, that is, by the Holy Spirit. The same fire, the same love gladdens and burns, torments and gives joy. The judgment of love is the most terrible judgment, more terrible than that of justice and wrath, than that of the law, for it includes all this but also transcends it. . . . It is impossible to appear before Christ and to see Him without loving him.⁴

The divine judgment effects irresistible conversion because because it confronts us with our true selves in Jesus Christ: irresistible because it declares the truth we already know in the depth of conscience; irresistible because it presents the good and happiness we have always desired; irresistible because it pours out upon us the ravishing love for which we have long sought.

For both Hart and Bulgakov, efficacious grace is grounded in humanity’s created being. God acts in such a compelling revelatory way as to make it possible for humanity to see God as their true end, happiness, and glory. Grace is not an divine act extrinsic to their created nature but its healing and liberation. Theologians  will immediately note the Eastern Christian commitments of Hart and Bulgakov. Both eschew a hard distinction between nature and supernature. Grace is not a donum superadditum. Human nature is engraced from the beginning in its natural orientation to the Holy Trinity, which continues after the Fall. Grace is the Holy Spirit acting to restore human beings to their true humanity in the Incarnate Son.

Which brings us back to Kronen and Reitan. They define efficacious grace as follows:

“Efficacious grace”—grace that is sufficient by itself to save sinners, because it transforms their characters so that they fully repent of all past sins and embrace God without reservation.⁵

“Efficacious grace” refers traditionally to that species of grace sufficient by itself to fully convert creatures, such that all who receive it are saved.⁶ 

According to the Thomists and their Protestant followers, when God grants efficacious grace, He guarantees conversion and regeneration by putting creatures in a state that influences their motives such that they have every reason to respond favourably to the offer of salvation and no reason not to.⁷

By these definitions Hart and Bulgakov may be understood as advocates of efficacious grace.

In their elaboration of divine grace, Kronen and Reitan identify two propositions that ground their argument from efficacious grace:

1. Every rational creature is naturally ordered to the good.
2. God is the perfect good.⁸

This means that every person not only seeks to attain that which is good for them but they seek seek union with the God who is their objective, supreme, and ultimate good. As a result, every rational creature is “naturally disposed to imitate God insofar as its nature allows.”⁹ This entails the conclusion that rational creatures are necessitated to love the good, under the right conditions:

For Aquinas, just as the intellect is ordered to truth, so the will is ordered to goodness. Hence, just as the intellect cannot fail to believe a self-evident truth if it is presented to it, so the will cannot fail to love the the perfect good if that good is presented to it. This good, however, is God, and so only God, if clearly perceived, necessitates the will to love [ST pt. 1, q. 82, a. 2].¹⁰

Two questions immediately arise:

1. Why do rational beings turn away from God if he is their good?
2. If efficacious grace infallibly grants conversion to God, how does it not compromise human freedom?

In answer to both questions, the authors turn to Thomas Talbott and his presentation of rational freedom, which they believe is very close to Aquinas’ own understanding. “Like Aquinas,” they write, “Talbott insists that one cannot imagine anyone freely choosing what they have no motive to choose and every motive not to choose. Such a choice, for Talbott, is incoherent. If one is in a condition such that all one’s motives converge on one choice, Talbott thinks this choice becomes inevitable.”¹¹ Such an inevitable choice may be considered a free choice under certain conditions: (1) the absence of ignorance and deception and (2) the absence of controlling affective states that determine the person’s actions. The authors offer this provocative illustration:

Suppose Jenny grows up in a dystopian future where children are fed an addictive drug from infancy. They are taught (falsely) to believe that the drug is a medicine they need to stay healthy, while in fact the tyrannical regime uses it to control the people. Given her addiction and beliefs, Jenny’s motives converge on the choice to continue taking the drug; but insofar as this choice is governed by deception and addiction, it is not free in Talbott’s sense.

However, suppose a resistance group reveals to Jenny the truth. She now knows the drug is harmful but remains addicted. Hence, she has reason-based motives to stop taking the drug, but these are impotent due to her addiction. Now suppose the resistance gives her a counter-drug that weakens but does not stop her cravings. Whenever she is near the drug she faces an inner struggle. Sometimes, with the right support (and some luck), she resists her craving; but usually she falls prey to it, weeping in shame at her weakness. At this point we might say that she has some measure of freedom—but it remains constrained by the hold the drug continues to exert on her.

However, imagine that the resistance finds a way to break her addiction. Now she neither craves the drug nor thinks taking it is a good idea. Let us suppose, furthermore, that she has no other motive to continue taking it but many reasons not to: concern for her health and continued sobriety, gratitude to her liberators, a desire to oppose the unjust regime, and so forth. Suppose, in short, that once freed of her addiction, all her motives converge on the choice not to take the drug. Would we not say that now, at last, her choice is truly free—even if, as Talbott and Aquinas believe, her rejecting the drug is now inevitable?¹²

Kronen and Reitan note that the above illustration demonstrates the inadequacy of both libertarian and compatibilist explanations of freedom. Prior to Jenny’s liberation from her addiction, her choice to take the drug qualifies as a free choice according to a compatibilist understanding of freedom (Jenny chooses according to her preferences and desires), but does not qualify as free according to Talbott. After her liberation, Jenny’s choice to refuse the drug qualifies as free according to Talbott, but not according to a libertarian understanding of freedom (Jenny cannot rationally choose otherwise). What makes the difference? In the former, reason is unable to exercise its right function; in the latter, reason is “no longer impeded from playing the role it ought to play in decision making.”¹³

Underlying Talbott’s construal of rational freedom are four presuppositions:

• values are objective, such that there are objectively good or best choices and objectively bad ones;
• the rational faculty makes judgments in accord with its finite grasp of this objective order of values;
• the will can be controlled by non-rational forces (such as addictions or entrenched habits);
• the will is naturally ordered to choose in accord with rational judgments such that it inevitably does so in the absence of any non-rational controlling factors.¹⁴

The will, in other words, is naturally ordered to follow reason—its default setting, as Kronen and Reitan put it—and reason is naturally ordered to identify the objective good. When all is working rightly—there are no contrary affective states to disrupt the reasoning and willing process—our actions may be appropriately judged as free.

By rough analogy, the actions of the resistance to liberate Jenny from her false beliefs and addiction may be thought of  as an expression of efficacious grace. “If efficacious grace is a divine act producing uniformly salvation-favouring motives,” then not only does it not contravene freedom but establishes it.¹⁵ “Efficacious grace in this sense, rather than interfering with rational freedom, appears to be its culmination.”¹⁶

But is it possible for God to effectively remove the destructive affective states that inhibit freedom without violating personal autonomy? Given the divine omnipotence, surely we must think so. After all, this is his world which he has created, and is creating, from out of nothing. There are no apparent metaphysical reasons why he could not directly heal the disordered desires of human beings by the bestowal of grace. Nor is God a finite agent who needs to violently invade his creatures in order to effect change within them. The Creator/​creature relationship is too intimate for that kind of coercive intervention. The real question is not whether

God can bring about uniformly salvation-favouring motives in the unregenerate, but whether He can do so in a way that promotes rather than impedes rational freedom. In fact, we think an omnipotent being could do both, such that it is within God’s power to bestow efficacious grace without violating freedom—at least if ‘freedom’ is understood in this Thomistic sense.¹⁷

Kronen and Reitan propose two ways in which the omnipotent God might accomplish the transformation of sinners.

First, God might present himself in an immediate, unclouded experience of himself:

For rational creatures, this ordering to the good and to God takes a special form. Rational creatures, by definition, can choose based on reasons—that is, they are motivated to act not merely by instinct or appetite, but by the recognition that certain apprehended truths (reasons) entail that a course of action is good to do. Saying that rational creatures are ordered to the good means two things: first, when they directly and clearly encounter the perfect good in unclouded experience, they will recognize it as the perfect good; and second, the perfect good (which, by definition, is the standard according to which all other goods are measured) would, under conditions of immediate and unclouded apprehension, present itself as overridingly worthy of love. Creatures’ subjective values will thus spontaneously fall into harmony with the objective good, with all choices reflecting this proper valuation.

Put another way, immediate awareness of the perfect good will so sing to the natural inclinations of the soul that love for the good will swamp all potentially contrary affective states. One would have every reason to conform one’s will to the perfect good and no reason not to. This latter point gains further strength from the Christian notion that what is prudentially good for rational creatures (what promotes their welfare) does not ultimately conflict with what is morally good—both are realized through union with God. Unclouded apprehension of the perfect good will thus harmonize prudential and moral motives such that every rational creature presented with a clear vision of God would have every reason to love God and no reason to reject Him.¹⁸

Second, God might bestow on the unregenerate the gift of wisdom to enable them to choose truly:

Aquinas believed that God could grant efficacious grace to rational creatures, even without bestowing a clear vision of Himself, by first granting a person the ‘gift of wisdom and council [such] that his reason should in no way err regarding [either) the end [God] or the means [to the end) in particular.’¹⁹

With Aristotle, Thomas understood that disordered passions often prevent a person from doing what reason dictates they should do. God, however, can counteract a person’s disordered desires by “1) granting ‘infused virtues’ so that ‘his will is more firmly inclined to God’, and 2) divinely inspiring his ‘mind to resist sin’ whenever an ‘occasion for it presents itself’.”²⁰  Thomas, however, acknowledges that sinlessness may not be achievable for human beings in this life, though he notes the exception of the Blessed Virgin, was so confirmed in grace that she was made capable of living in unblemished communion with God. Thankfully, sinlessness in this life is not a condition for eternal salvation. Efficacious grace only guarantees glory—but what an awesome only.

One way or another, the omnipotent and gracious Savior will deliver us from our sin, ignorance, delusion, and interior bondage. In the words of Martin Luther: “When God works in us, the will is changed under the sweet influence of the Spirit of God. Once more it desires and acts, not of compulsion, but of its own desire and spontaneous inclination.”²¹

By our Lord’s gift of grace, the prophecy of Ezekiel will be made actual in the depths of every sinner:

A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will take out of your flesh the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. (Ezek 36:26-27)

The bestowal of efficacious grace is but the realization and fulfillment of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in humanity..

 

Footnotes

[1] John Kronen and Eric Reitan, God’s Final Judgment: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism (2011), p. 131.

[2] For Hart, see “Doomed to Happiness“; for Bulgakov, see “Irresistible Grace: Is Bulgakov and Augustinian?,” “Irresistible Grace: Our Secret Hope?,” and “The Irresistible Truth of Final Judgment.”

[3] David Bentley Hart, “God, Creation, and Evil,” The Hidden and the Manifest (2017), p. 345.

[4] Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb, pp. 457-459.

[5] Kronen and Reitan, pp. 4-5.

[6] Ibid., p. 128.

[7] Ibid., p. 132. This formulation is unusual. I do not recall a Thomist ever putting the matter quite like this, and I don’t imagine that Banezian Thomists will be satisfied with the “failure” to ground efficacious grace in physical premotion causality. But the emphasis on rational decision-making is crucial to the K&R thesis. The point is that God directly brings about the condition of rational clarity, thus leading to the inevitable embrace of God.

On efficacious grace in the Roman Catholic tradition, see the entries in the online Catholic Encyclopedia: “Actual Grace,” “Controversies on Grace.” For a vigorous Catholic defense of efficacious grace, see Reginald Garrigou Lagrange, Grace (1952), chaps. 6 and 7. For an equally vigorous defense from a classic Reformed perspective, see Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 15th topic.

[8] Ibid., p. 135. On God as the natural end of human beings, see pp. 68-80. The following proposition is an integral plank in K&R’s Argument from Complacent Love: “Every rational creature is naturally ordered towards union with God.” Ibid., p. 72. The authors explicitly reject the Catholic construal of natura pura. “Rational creatures are naturally ordered to union with God,” the authors explain,” because that is the only thing which, given what they are, will complete them and enable them to flourish.” Ibid., p. 78.

[9] Ibid., p. 136.

[10] Ibid., p. 212, n. 9.

[11] Ibid., p. 133.

[12] Ibid., p. 134.

[13] Ibid. “Specifically, the Thomistic view is that what we call libertarian freedom is a coherent understanding of freedom only when the creature confronts conflicting motives for action. It does not extend to circumstances in which the creature has every reason to pursue a course of action and no reason not to. Under such circumstances the Thomistic view is that the will of the creature is not merely inclined but is determined to perform the act. The act remains wholly voluntary, but since there is no possible world in which an agent who has every motive to do A and no motive not to do so nevertheless refrains from doing A, the action is also determined, and so conforms to what is usually labelled ‘compatibilist freedom’ by contemporary philosophcrs.” Ibid., p. 132.

[14] Ibid., p. 135.

[15] Ibid., p. 135.

[16] Ibid., p. 136.

[17] Ibid., p. 135. I will return to the autonomy objection in Part Two.

[18] Ibid., p. 136.

[19] Ibid.,  p. 136. The quoted clause from Aquinas is from De Veritate q. 24 a. 9.

[20] Ibid., p. 137. Aquinas: “By the grace proper to this life, however, a man can be so attached to good that he cannot sin except with great difficulty because his lower powers are held in check by the infused virtues, his will is more firmly inclined to God, and his reason is made perfect in the contemplation of the divine truth with a continuousness that comes from the fervor of love and withdraws the man from sin.” De Veritate q. 24 a. 9.

[21] Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will, trans. and ed. J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston (1957), p. 103

(Go to “Efficacious Grace as Lobotomy”)

“The resurrection of the Son is a new creation to the whole world”

The resurrection of the Son is a new creation to the whole world,
and the world is new on account of it and hence it is beyond sufferings.
From His resurrection life reigned over mortals,
and we have truly stripped off the old order by His death.
The Mighty One rose up and He made us, those who were thrown down, rise up with Him.
He descended alone, but with many He ascended from the tomb.
The day before yesterday Scribes were mocking at Him, “Save Yourself,”
and today the watchers are kissing His tomb which He has left and gone out.
Yesterday the Dead One was lying concealed and silent in the habitation of Sheol
but today He is alive and gives life to the dead and raises all to life.
The day before yesterday, lance, gall and vinegar and crucifixion,
but today glory and clamour of the watchers with praise.
The day before yesterday the Only-Begotten placed His soul in the hands of His Father
but today He assumed it for He has authority as He commands all.
Yesterday He had mounted the wood of crucifixion,
but today there is strength, resurrection of the dead and power.
The day before yesterday Simon repeatedly renounced that he does not know Him
but today he runs to see His tomb because He was raised up.
The Friday of the sufferings prepared ambushes for the apostolic group;
but on Sunday, a new vision and cheerfulness.
Yesterday the King was held in sleep in Sheol,
but today He woke up and stood like a man who has shaken off his wine.
The other day there were sufferings and sorrow for the women disciples
but today exultation because they were seeing Him as the Gardener.
On the sorrowful Sabbath that Free-Born was among the dead,
but on Sunday He was escorted about by the companies of watchers.
Friday scattered the apostolic group in desolation,
but today has given joy to, and gathered together the company of the disciples.
Yesterday the apostles were lying in concealment,
but today they went out to see the resurrection with wonder.
The other day they had to flee, to be scattered, and to hide themselves,
but today to run, to be gathered together and to bring the tidings.

St Jacob of Sarug

“Like Jonah, son of the Hebrews, He dived down into the whirlpool”

The Mighty One was struck and the sufferings made Him sleep on Golgotha,
and for three days the sleep overcame Him on account of the wounds.
And having laid aside His burden of pains in Sheol,
He rose up and despoiling the luxuriating Sheol and went from it.
He deceived death and was there three days in its dwelling place;
and when He laid waste all its treasures, He left it and went out.
He had been wearied by the scourging which He received from the judge,
and He entered and had taken rest in the abode of the dead
and pulled it down and came out.

While He was was redeeming the captives,
He was smitten by the persecutors,
and He reached death but did not become too weak for redeeming.
The sharpened sword met Him on Golgotha
and it made Him sleep heavily by its blow.
Death mixed for Him the cup to drink in the crucifixion.
He drank it to show that even in death He cannot be powerless.

For two days the Mighty One rested among the dead
but on the third day He conquered the region and went out of it.
Like Jonah, son of the Hebrews, He dived down into the whirlpool.
He explored it in two days and arose from it on the third day.
He descended and drew out Adam
who had sunk down into the depth of Sheol.
The superb image came out from corruption with its Lord.
On Golgotha the great Saviour was smitten by the lance
and He failed in strength on the Cross,
but at the resurrection He conquered corruption.
Ambushes surrounded Him to snatch away the captives from Him,
and He was dragged away but He did not leave it without redemption.
In three days He subdued His wounds so that they might be healed,
and with victory the Redeemer returned from the place of sufferings.

St Jacob of Sarug

“He is the Passover that is our salvation”

There was much proclaimed by the prophets about the mystery of the Passover: that mystery is Christ, and to him be glory for ever and ever. Amen. For the sake of suffering humanity he came down from heaven to earth, clothed himself in that humanity in the Virgin’s womb, and was born a man. Having then a body capable of suffering, he took the pain of fallen man upon himself; he triumphed over the diseases of soul and body that were its cause, and by his Spirit, which was incapable of dying, he dealt man’s destroyer, death, a fatal blow.

He was led forth like a lamb; he was slaughtered like a sheep. He ransomed us from our servitude to the world, as he had ransomed Israel from the hand of Egypt; he freed us from our slavery to the devil, as he had freed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh. He sealed our souls with his own Spirit, and the members of our body with his own blood.

He is the One who covered death with shame and cast the devil into mourning, as Moses cast Pharaoh into mourning . He is the One that smote sin and robbed iniquity of offspring, as Moses robbed the Egyptians of their offspring. He is the One who brought us out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of death into life, out of tyranny into an eternal kingdom; who made us a new priesthood, a people chosen to be his own for ever. He is the Passover that is our salvation.

It is he who endured every kind of suffering in all those who foreshadowed him. In Abel he was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.

It is he who was made man of the Virgin, he who was hung on the tree; it is he who was buried in the earth, raised from the dead, and taken up to the heights of heaven. He is the mute lamb, the slain lamb born of Mary, the fair ewe. He was seized from the flock, dragged off to be slaughtered, sacrificed in the evening, and buried at night. On the tree no bone of his was broken; in the earth his body knew no decay. He is the One who rose from the dead, and who raised man from the depths of the tomb.

St Melito of Sardis

“The cross of Christ became the altar not of the temple, but of the world”

When our Lord was handed over to the will of his cruel foes, they ordered him, in mockery of his royal dignity, to carry the instrument of his own torture. This was done to fulfil the prophecy of Isaiah: “A child is born for as, a son is given to us; sovereignty is laid upon his shoulders.” To the wicked, the sight of the Lord carrying his own cross was indeed an object of derision; but to the faithful a great mystery was revealed, for the cross was destined to become the scepter of his power. Here was the majestic spectacle of a glorious conqueror mightily overthrowing the hostile forces of the devil and nobly bearing the trophy of his victory. On the shoulders of his invincible patience he carried the sign of salvation for all the kingdoms of the earth to worship, as if on that day he would strengthen all his future disciples by the symbol of his work, and say to them: “Anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.”

It was not in the temple, whose cult was now at an end, that Christ, as the new and authentic sacrifice of reconciliation, offered himself to the Father; nor was it within the walls of the city doomed to destruction for its crimes. It was beyond the city gates, outside the camp, that he was crucified, in order that when the ancient sacrificial dispensation came to an end a new victim might be laid on a new altar, and the cross of Christ became the altar not of the temple, but of the world.

O the marvelous power of the cross, the glory of the passion! No tongue can fully describe it. Here we see the judgment seat of the Lord, here sentence is passed upon the world, and here the sovereignty of the Crucified is revealed.

You drew all things to yourself, Lord, when you stretched out your hands all the day long to a people that denied and opposed you, until at last the whole world was brought to proclaim your majesty. You drew all things to yourself, Lord, when all the elements combined to pronounce judgment in execration of that crime; when the lights of heaven were darkened and the day was turned into night; when the land was shaken by unwonted earthquakes, and all creation refused to serve those wicked people. Yes, Lord, you drew all things to yourself. The veil of the temple was torn in two and the Holy of Holies taken away from those unworthy high priests. Figures gave way to reality, prophecy to manifestation, law to gospel. You drew all things to yourself in order that the worship of the whole human race could be celebrated everywhere in a sacramental form which would openly fulfil what had been enacted by means of veiled symbols in that single Jewish temple.

Now that the multiplicity of animal sacrifices has ceased, the single offering of your body and blood takes the place of that diversity of victims, since you are the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, and in yourself you fulfil all the rites of the old law, so that as there is now a single sacrifice in place of all those victims, so there is a single kingdom formed of all the peoples of the earth.

St Leo the Great

Ainulindalë: Eru, Providence, and Free Will

The sages of the Eldar never formulated a systematic doctrine of providence and free will. I think this is a fair and accurate statement. The sages never wrote any disquisitions on the topic, nor did they publish their thoughts in the Elven academic journals, at least as far as we know. But they do appear to have firmly believed in fate and divine providence, grounded both in the teaching of the Valar and their corporate experience of history, with all of its tragedies, horrors, and often unexpected triumphs. Underlying and shaping their experience is the story of the divine composition of the Great Music and Eru’s creation of Arda, as told in the Ainulindalë. They no doubt knew well Eru’s words to Melkor, spoken as rebuke and warning, after his triumphant final chord:

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. . . . And thou, Melkor, wilt discover all the secret thoughts of thy mind, and wilt perceive that they are but a part of the whole and tributary to its glory.’¹

Eru asserts three metaphysical truths:

• Every Ainuric contribution to the Great Music has its source in Eru as the ground of being.
• Eru will gather every discordant interpolation into the Great Music into a more sublime and beautiful harmony, much like a Baroque contrapuntal composer.
• The consummation of Arda and its peoples is inalterably predestined.

We may logically deduce a fourth:

• Eru works through, in, and around the free actions of rational beings, whether good or evil, to accomplish his providential purposes.

As Daniel Timmons writes:

In all of Tolkien’s Middle-earth tales, sentient beings with particular powers are presented with momentous choices, often between good and evil courses of action. In every case, these individuals shape their destinies, affect the lives of others, and influence, sometimes catastrophically, the history and even the geography of the world. Still, these exercises of free will cannot supersede the One’s ultimate purposes, even if in the short term the cosmic designs can be altered. . . . In short, acts of free will can cause cataclysmic disasters in the temporal and incarnate world, but the One’s ultimate purpose remains eternal and inviolable.²

One way or another, no matter the roads and byways taken, Eru’s will will be done. The final good he intends for his Children will be accomplished. This Elven understanding of divine providence, however, worries modern readers, particularly given the frequent invocations of fate (umbar) in the stories.³ How is this not determinism? The problem, I suggest, rests on a category mistake: it confuses determinism as a specific form of causal relation between finite beings with the transcendent agency of the Creator. God does not function as a finite cause within the cosmos and therefore does not fit into the incompatibilist–compatibilist categories of modern philosophy.⁴ Divine and creaturely causality, as theologians today like to say, are non-competitive. Because Eru does not exist on the same metaphysical plane as creatures, the “causal joint” between divine and human agency remains inaccessible to both philosophy and science. But of course we all love to speculate, including Tolkien scholars.⁵

Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft summarizes the relationship of fate and free will in Arda and offers two philosophical principles to guide us:

The Lord of the Rings is dense with destiny. Though the events are surprises to the reader, as to the protagonists, they also form a pattern, and we eventually see that they all “had” to happen that way. None of the endings, happy or sad, are unconvincing, unnatural, or unbelievable (though they are unpredictable). Sauron had to fall. At least some of the Hobbits had to rise to the heroic occasion. Sacrifices had to be made. Battles had to be fought. And it was predictable that the unpredictable would happen.

On the other hand, the protagonists make hundreds of free choices, some large, some small; and even the small ones make large differences. . . .

We may not know how destiny and freedom can both be true, but we know that they must both be present in true-to-life stories because they are both present in life. Sometimes philosophers can help. Here are two philosophical arguments to explain how both of these ideas can be true without contradiction:

The first is the principle that divine grace, in dealing with anything in nature, does not suppress or bypass its nature but perfects it and works through it. (A human author does the same thing with his characters.) Therefore, divine predestination preserves human free will, because God invented it. As Aquinas says, man is free because God is all-powerful. For God not only gets everything done that He designs, but also gets everything done in the right way: subhuman things happen unfreely, and human things happen freely. Just as in a novel, the setting is not free and the characters are.⁶

Kreeft’s indebtedness to St Thomas Aquinas comes to expression in the bolded paragraph. Through the continuous bestowal of being, God ultimately causes all happenings in the universe, including the free actions of rational beings. (How this is possible is known only to the Thomist cognoscenti.) As a result, God is able to accomplish his divine purposes: everything ultimately gets done in the right way, as Kreeft puts it.

Kreeft’s second philosophical principle was originally advanced by Boethius in his famous work The Consolation of Philosophy. Because God exists outside of time, explains the Roman philosopher, he does not foresee the events of history. He apprehends them in one timeless now. Yesterday may be yesterday for us, but it is now for God—not a temporal now, which is here one moment but immediately disappears to be replaced by another now, but an atemporal now that transcends the movement of time. God does not remember what we did yesterday, nor does he previse what we will do tomorrow. He simply sees us doing them from his eternal vantage point. All of history is immediately available to his gaze. In the words of Lady Philosophy:

Since God lives in the eternal present, His knowledge transcends all movement of time and abides in the simplicity of its immediate present. It encompasses the infinite sweep of past and future, and regards all things in its simple comprehension as if they were now taking place. Thus, if you will think about the foreknowledge by which God distinguishes all things, you will rightly consider it to be not a foreknowledge of future events, but knowledge of a never changing present. For this reason, divine knowledge is called providence, rather than prevision, because it resides above all inferior things and looks out on all things from their summit.⁷

Thus the problem of divine foreknowledge, free will, and determinism is solved, so Boethius believes. Divine foreknowledge is not prevision but God’s “knowledge of a never changing present.” No necessity is imposed upon rational beings, forcing them to act against their wills. They remain free to act according to their best judgment:

If you should reply that whatever God foresees as happening cannot help but happen, and that whatever must happen is bound by necessity – if you pin me down to this word ‘necessity’ – I grant that you state a solid truth, but one which only a profound theologian can grasp. I would answer that the same future event is necessary with respect to God’s knowledge of it, but free and undetermined if considered in its own nature. For there are two kinds of necessity: one is simple, as the necessity by which all men are mortals; the other is conditional, as is the case when, if you know that someone is walking, he must necessarily be walking. For whatever is known, must be as it is known to be; but this condition does not involve that other, simple necessity. It is not caused by the peculiar nature of the person in question, but by an added condition. No necessity forces the man who is voluntarily walking to move forward; but as long as he is walking, he is necessarily moving forward. In the same way, if Providence sees anything as present, that thing must necessarily be, even though it may have no necessity by its nature. But God sees as present those future things which result from free will. Therefore, from the standpoint of divine knowledge these things are necessary because of the condition of their being known by God; but, considered only in themselves, they lose nothing of the absolute freedom of their own natures.⁸

By construing divine foreknowledge as the apprehension of history in his eternal present, Boethius appears to resolve the problem of free will and determinism. Yet it remains unclear  how, within this model, God is able to implement his divine plan. If the Creator is merely “observing” temporal happenings, how does he direct them towards the end he purposes? The eternalist solution thus appears to sacrifice God’s sovereign government of  history. Hugh J. McCann has accurately diagnosed the problem:

The Boethian conception does well at reconciling divine omniscience with creaturely freedom. The price, however, is much too high. For one thing, it introduces passivity into God’s nature, a fact which alone would be enough to make many traditional theologians reject it. More pressing for our present concerns is a problem a number of writers have pointed out: namely, that this view of things does nothing to secure God’s sovereignty, or his ability to exercise providential control over creation. In fact, it appears to do positive harm. In order to wield effective control over the course of history, God has to know as creator how the decisions and actions of creatures with libertarian freedom will go. Only then can he arrange the progression of events in such a way as to take full account of our behavior in achieving his ends.⁹

Boethius, however, is not deterred. Consider this passage from King Albert’s Anglo-Saxon translation of The Consolation of Philosophy:

As every artificer considers and marks out his work in his mind before he executes it, and afterwards executes it all; this varying fortune which we call fate, proceeds after his providence and after his counsel, as he intends that it should be. Though it appear to us complicated, partly good, and partly evil, it is nevertheless to him singly good, because he brings it all to a good end, and does for good all that which he does. Afterwards, when it is wrought, we call it fate; before, it was God’s providence and his predestination. He therefore directs fortune, either through good angels, or through the souls of men, or through the life of other creatures, or through the stars of heaven, or through the various deceits of devils; sometimes through one of them, sometimes through them all. But this is evidently known, that the divine predestination is simple and unchangeable, and governs everything according to order, and fashions everything. Some things, therefore, in this world are subject to fate, others are not at all subject to it. But fate, and all the things which are subject to it, are subject to the divine providence. Concerning this, I can mention to thee an example, whereby thou mayest the more clearly understand which men are subject to fate, and which are not. All this moving and this changeable creation revolves on the immovable, and on the steadfast, and on the singly-existing God; and he governs all creatures as he at the beginning had, and still has determined.¹⁰

Boethius wants to have his cake and eat it too. Don’t we all.

The Elven sages did not formulate a theory of fate and divine providence along the lines of Boethius, but I suspect they would have appreciated his presentation. As with Boethius so with the Elves, the divine Creator enjoys a timeless existence; as with Boethius so with the Elves, both believe that creaturely existence is qualified by fate and providence; as with Boethius, so with with the Elves, both believe that God will redeem evil and accomplish his good purposes.

But that is by the by. I’m already punching above my weight. Perhaps best to close with a song as we walk the many roads of the Great Music.

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

Footnotes

[1] Silmarillion, p. 5.

[2] Daniel Timmons, “Free Will,” in J. R. R. Encyclopedia (2007), pp. 221-222.

[3] See “The Umbar of Ambar.”

[4] See “Double Agency: Conceiving Divine and Creaturely Causality” (and subsequent articles in the series) and Jeffrey Vogel, “A Self-effacing Gardener: The Unity of God’s Activity in Nature and Grace in the Theology of Austin Farrer.”

[5] For a Boethian interpretation of Elven providence, see Kathleen E. Dubs, “Providence, Fate, and Chance: Boethian Philosophy in The Lord of the Rings,” Twentieth Century Literature, 27 (Spring 1981): 34-42; Helen Theresa Lasseter, Fate, Providence, and Free Will (2006), pp. 74-77; and Troels Forchhammer, “Fate and Free Will in Tolkien’s Middle-earth.” For a Thomist interpretation, see Jonathan McIntosh, The Flame Imperishable (2017), pp. 177-184.

[6] Peter Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien (2005), pp. 61-64 ; emphasis mine.

[7] Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy V.6.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Hugh J. McCann, Creation and the Sovereignty of God (2012), p. 91.

[9] King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius’ ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’, trans. Samuel Fox (1999 reprint), p. 106; emphasis mine.

(c0nt)