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:
- 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).
- 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.
- It is therefore possible and permissible for God to save all through the exercise of efficacious grace (1, 2).
- If God has a morally permissible means of saving all, then God will save all.
- Therefore, God will save all (3, 4).1
Premise #3 draws the appropriate inference from premises #1 and #2. So far the argument looks valid.
Premise #4: God Desires to Save All
A Dominican priest was gracious enough to inform me that premise #4 is the weakest in K&R’s Argument from Efficacious Grace. Why think that God will employ efficacious grace to save all, instead of just some? You’re not allowed to simply assume the truth of the premise—you need to demonstrate it. After all, God does not owe eternal salvation to anyone!
The “God does not owe salvation” rejoinder is a curious objection. Back in my pre-hopeful-universalism days, I don’t think I ever employed it in my defense of eternal damnation. It never occurred to me. Of course God does not owe us salvation; it’s a pure gift! I suppose I had read too many Lutherans in my early days. They taught me that grace (gospel) and law don’t mix. When preaching the gospel, do so in the performative mode of unconditional promise. When preaching law, preach it straight and don’t hold your punches. Of course God does not owe us salvation. The divine love is unconditional. We are saved by grace, not by works. Sola gratia!
Those who typically raise this objection are Roman Catholics (especially Thomists) and Calvinists—and for the same reason. In their classical forms, both Catholicism and Calvinism are grounded in in the absolute predestinarianism of St Augustine: God effectually elects some human beings to eternal salvation and bypasses (or in the case of “real” Calvinists, reprobates) the rest. There is one obvious chink in the Augustinian armor: If God desires the salvation of all, as the Apostle Paul teaches (1 Tim 2:4) but only wills the salvation of some, how does this not subvert the fundamental Christian confession that God is absolute love? Jacobus Arminius was quick to raise this point in the 16th century.2 Less directly, St Francis de Sales raised a similar concern in the early 17th century with the publication of his Treatise on the Divine Love.3 The principle of God’s universal salvific will became an essential dogmatic plank in the Arminian churches and post-Jansenist Catholicism.
In response to the above critique raised against absolute predestination, its defenders have always responded, God does not owe us salvation. Why he elects some and not others belongs to his inscrutable wisdom. Within this predestinarian context, the purpose of the invocation of justice is to divorce the divine love from divine grace. Yes, perhaps God’s love intends all human beings (or perhaps not), but because of original sin we do not deserve salvation (massa damnata). But in his unmerited grace, God has decided to save some but not all. Let’s call this the the predestinarian gospel. The homiletic and pastoral problems created by this “gospel” are well known. But if we jettison absolute predestination and adopt a theological position combining God’s universal salvific will, synergism, and conditional predestination, the “God does not owe us salvation” statement loses its original purpose. This is why it is rarely, if ever, heard within Arminian, Barthian, and Eastern Orthodox circles. That God does not owe us eternal salvation is simply an uncontroversial given. The language of desert is alien to the language of love. What is crucial is to offer God’s salvation to all people and summon them to repentance and faith.
Kronen and Reitan defend the fourth premise of their Argument from Efficacious Grace in chapters three and five of their book. They advance two arguments. I will discuss the first in this article and move on to the second in the next.
An Argument from Divine Benevolence
- Benevolence is an essential divine attribute.
- If (1) then God’s benevolence roots in Him an internal impelling cause to will what is best for every rational creature.
- Therefore, God’s benevolence roots in Him an internal impelling cause to will what is best for every rational creature (I, 2).
- If (3) then unless there is a divine attribute that could root in God an internal impelling cause not to will what is best for every rational creature, God does will what is best for every rational creature.
- There is no divine attribute that could root in God an internal impelling cause not to will what is best for every rational creature.
- Therefore, God wills what is best for every rational creature (3, 4, 5).
- If (6) then God wills that every rational creature be saved.
- Therefore, God wills that every rational creature be saved (6, 7).
- If God wills that every rational creature be saved, then all will be saved unless either it is metaphysically impossible for God to bring this about or all the means available to God for bringing this about are morally impermissible ones.
- It is not metaphysically impossible for God to bring it about that all rational creatures are saved, and there are some means God could use to do this that are morally permissible.
- Therefore, all rational creatures will be saved (8, 9, 10).4
“God’s benevolence is perhaps the most obvious impelling cause for God’s willing universal salvation,” write Kronen and Reitan, “and Christians generally agree that God is indeed benevolent. Although strict Calvinists have endorsed doctrines that are hard to reconcile with God conceived as universally benevolent, this strikes us as a point where strict Calvinism is most out of step with both the broad stream of Christian teaching and the New Testament portrait of God—according to which God seeks the good of each creature even to the point of becoming human, suffering, and dying so that sinners might be saved. This unmerited love is what theologians refer to as God’s agape.”5
As long taught by the Christian faith, the infinite benevolence of God—i.e., absolute love—is not motivated by the goodness and worth of rational creatures: the goodness and worth of creatures are are first conferred upon them by their Creator at the moment of creation. They are good because the good God willed them into existence; they are good because existence itself is a good; they are good because the Good is their final end. This is what salvation means for rational beings: to apprehend God in beatific vision and enjoy him forever. Hence nothing rational creatures do, no matter how wicked and heinous, can impact God’s eternal decision to bring them into saving union with himself. “God’s willing the salvation of all,” the authors explain, “does not depend on any external impelling cause, but only on an internal one.”6 God is love. His love is absolute, unconditional, immutable and intends every human being without exception. Kronen and Reitan invite us to consider this passage from St Thomas Aquinas:
I answer that, God loves all existing things. For all existing things, in so far as they exist, are good, since the existence of a thing is itself a good; and likewise, whatever perfection it possesses. Now it has been shown above (I:19:4) that God’s will is the cause of all things. It must needs be, therefore, that a thing has existence, or any kind of good, only inasmuch as it is willed by God. To every existing thing, then, God wills some good. Hence, since to love anything is nothing else than to will good to that thing, it is manifest that God loves everything that exists. Yet not as we love. Because since our will is not the cause of the goodness of things, but is moved by it as by its object, our love, whereby we will good to anything, is not the cause of its goodness; but conversely its goodness, whether real or imaginary, calls forth our love, by which we will that it should preserve the good it has, and receive besides the good it has not, and to this end we direct our actions: whereas the love of God infuses and creates goodness.7
Succinctly stated, the divine benevolence, precisely as a divine attribute, roots the impelling cause of universal salvation in God himself. The goodness of the cosmos does not move God to love, for he is himself the Creator of that goodness. God wills the best for human beings because he is essentially love, and that best is the beatific vision. Needless to say, eternal damnation does not qualify as the best.
Another, and theologically superior, way to state the divine benevolence is to ground God’s love for creatures in the eternal life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Again Thomas:
The Father loves not only the Son, but also Himself and us, by the Holy Ghost; because, as above explained, to love, taken in a notional sense, not only imports the production of a divine person, but also the person produced, by way of love, which has relation to the object loved. Hence, as the Father speaks Himself and every creature by His begotten Word, inasmuch as the Word “begotten” adequately represents the Father and every creature; so He loves Himself and every creature by the Holy Ghost, inasmuch as the Holy Ghost proceeds as the love of the primal goodness whereby the Father loves Himself and every creature. Thus it is evident that relation to the creature is implied both in the Word and in the proceeding Love, as it were in a secondary way, inasmuch as the divine truth and goodness are a principle of understanding and loving all creatures.8
While Orthodox readers may be hesitant to affirm the above statement, given Thomas’ commitment to the Filioque, I am hard-pushed to see any problems with it as it stands. One way or another we must all seek ways to speak of God’s love for creatures as a participation in the perichoretic love that is the Holy Trinity. Michael J. Dodds offers the following interpretation of the above passage:
God’s love may be seen as an immanent motion of the divine will. Such motion opens into the mystery of the Trinity, where the procession of the Son may be considered according to the immanent motion of knowing and the procession of the Holy Spirit, according to that of love. In this eternal and unchanging activity God both loves himself in his own goodness and loves all creatures as they participate him. In this way, the Trinitarian love of God embraces all of creation. . . . Unlike our love, which is awakened by the goodness perceived in the beloved, God’s love is not caused by the goodness of its object. His love for himself is not caused by his own goodness since it is one with his goodness, and “a thing cannot be its own cause.” Nor is his love for creatures caused by his love for his own goodness since it is by one and the same act that God wills both his own goodness as his proper object and the existence of creatures as ordered to his goodness, and again, a thing cannot be its own cause. And certainly his love for creatures is not caused by the goodness of creatures since it is the very source ofwhatever goodness is found in them. God’s love is in no way caused, No change in his will is brought about by the goodness of the beloved. While our love has the character of both change and immovability in its inception, God’s eternal and abiding love has only the character of immutability.9
The love of God for creatures is immutable and unchanging, as is the the love of the Father, Son, and Spirit for each other. In the act of divine creation, the Trinity opens itself to include the rational beings they have spoken into existence. Rational beings are the product of love and participate in the mutual love of the divine Persons. Dodd’s statement that “it is by one and the same act that God wills both his own goodness as his proper object and the existence of creatures as ordered to his goodness” should not be overlooked. For rational beings the eschatological end toward which they ordered is the beatific vision. If God is able by efficacious grace able to ensure this consummation, why would he not, how could he not, given his benevolence?
Although the Argument from Benevolence does not explicitly mention the atonement of Christ, Kronen and Reitan believe that it should be interpreted in light of the atoning work of Christ. However, given that different understandings of the Atonement exist within the ecumenical Church—they themselves favor a version of Christ’s vicarious–substitutionary work—they have not included reference to the Atonement in the Argument from Benevolence, even though several Western formulations of the atonement would resolve the possibility that there is within God an impeding cause (for example his justice) which might cause him not to will the best for human beings (premise #4). Think of the following as an unstated premise in the argument: “God is impelled to save all by virtue of the all-sufficient Atonement of Christ.”10
Let’s return to the fourth premise of the Argument from Efficacious Grace: “If God has a morally permissible means of saving all, then God will save all.” Given that God is love in his inner Trinitarian being, given that his salvific love intends every human being he has created, given that it is not metaphysically impossible for God to bring it about that all rational creatures are saved, and given that there are morally permissible means God could use to save all, then the fourth premise may provisionally be judged sound.11 For God not to save all would be unworthy of him.
Footnotes
[1] John Kronen and Eric Reitan, God’s Final Judgment: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism (2011), p. 131.
[2] Roger Olson, Arminian Theology (2006), pp. 181-185.
[3] Matthew Levering, Predestination (2011), pp. 117-127. For a contemporary Catholic attempt to reconcile predestination with God’s universal salvific will, see William Most, Grace, Predestination, and the Salvific Will of God (2004). Also see Joshua Brotherton, “Toward a Consensus on the De Auxiliis Debate,” Nova et Vetera, 14 (2016): 783–820.
[4] K&R, p. 68.
[5] Ibid., p. 30.
[6] Ibid, p. 31.
[7] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I.20.2.
[8] Ibid., ST I.39.2.
[9] Michael J. Dodds, The Unchanging God of Love, 2nd ed. (2008), pp. 207-208.
[10] K&R, p. 30.
[11] Needless to say, Aquinas, who I have quoted twice, would disagree with conclusions of both the Argument from Benevolence and the Argument from Efficacious Grace. I’ll leave it to readers to identity his points of disagreement. Personally, I believe his disagreement proceeds from a prior dogmatic commitment to everlasting damnation.
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
I accidentally hit the publish button this morning, so don’t be surprised if you see some minor revisions in the article throughout the day.
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The seriously problematic move is the move from 6 to 7 and following. Instead of explaining why I find this problematic, let me just illustrate that it is problematic in virtue of this counterexample: if that move were valid, the argument would entail that God should permit no evil at all to occur to rational creatures.
The following assumes (I think uncontroversially) that it is better for each rational creature not only to be saved – for example, after a long purgative process that would take eons and involve lots of gratuitous suffering – but to be saved such that they never commit any sin or undergo any suffering. Since this would be metaphysically possible for God to do this, then God ought to do it.
We can easily modify the argument to show that this is the case:
6. Therefore, God wills what is best for every rational creature (3, 4, 5).
7*. If (6) then God wills that every rational creature never commit any sin or undergo any suffering.
8*. Therefore, God wills that every rational creature never commit any sin or undergo any suffering (6, 7).
9*. If God wills that every rational creature never commit any sin or undergo any suffering, then no creature will ever commit any sin or undergo any suffering unless either it is metaphysically impossible for God to bring this about or all the means available to God for bringing this about are morally impermissible ones.
10*. It is not metaphysically impossible for God to bring it about that all rational creatures never commit any sin or undergo any suffering, and there are some means God could use to do this that are morally permissible.
11*. Therefore, all rational creatures never commit any sin or undergo any suffering (8, 9, 10).
[One might notice that the above argument is similar to JL Mackie’s famous logical problem of evil in its assumptions about premise 6 and 7. He, however, concludes that God does not exist, if evil exists, since God’s benevolence/omnipotence is incompatible with the existence of evil.]
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The issues with revised premises 6 and 7 in this case is that a) is it necessarily the case that God wills that no rational beings experience evil or suffering or to not commit any sin and b) is experiencing no suffering and being unable to commit sin what’s best for all rational beings taken to its conclusion?
Given that one can infer that after the Fall, that God does will that we suffer pain and that we have agency, even the agency to commit sin. Of course God atones for our sins in the end and saves us from the ultimate consequences, but it’s not necessarily the case that God doesn’t will that we suffer. There may be an unconfirmed higher purpose for the suffering we endure that makes it the better for us to experience it that we can theorise, whereas there’s no such apparent one for eternal damnation (like there would be for purgation).
It also assumes that it is metaphysically possible that God could make it that rational creatures don’t experience suffering given that much of that is deemed as “natural suffering” for example is extremely important for the continuance of life on earth. For instance, earthquakes, hurricanes and the like play a massive role is restoring ecological balance and the creation of new landforms, which would be impossible to cease only because some rational beings perceive its effects as suffering. The way how the world as it works is contingent on many “acts of suffering” like these and it’s hard to see how it would be possible to begin with. Of course this calls into question God’s omnipotence, but I’d rather that be in question than God’s benevolence.
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Joshua, your comment got trapped in the spam queue (I have no reason why) and I just noticed it this morning. My apologies for not noticing earlier.
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What if it is intrinsically impossible to bring about the final union of all with God – the fulfilment of all our rational natures – without sin and evil? Or at least without the possibility of sin and evil?
In which case “what is best” for the creature would obviously involve exposing them to that risk of sin and evil – given it would result in the literally infinite good of the permanent fulfilment of their nature.
If that is the case you have plenty justification for our present state of being.
The same argument would not, however, justify eternal hell because experiencing eternal loss – an infinite evil – and a final failure to fulfil our nature would obviously *not* be “what is best” for us. If that was the scenario then “what is best” for us would never to have been created.
This point has been made to you many times – unfortunately you consistently fail to respond to these kind of objections, and then reply in new threads (like this one) making your earlier bad arguments from scratch again with no acknowledgement or anticipation of previous rebuttals.
I’m sorry matey but I think you do this so much that many non-universalists must now think that you are a troll who is harming their cause.
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Good argument by K&R here.
I’m happy to note (pardon the plug) that K&R here provide an argument very nearly identical to one argued elsewhere here: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2023/02/22/the-god-of-the-possible/
And I’ll add that it does not follow, as Fr Rooney claims, that the move from P6 to P7, if true, would imply that ‘God should permit no evil at all to occur to rational creatures’. This is false. And it’s not difficult to imagine reasons for why deliberative agency (which makes choosing awry possible) would be a necessary condition in terms of which rational creatures must move from origin to end in God. It is not metaphysically possible that God give creation its end as its beginning and so foreclose upon all possibility of evil.
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So often one’s conclusions are not only embedded in one’s premises but in one’s very definitions. I locate one impasse in how folks must be defining “rational” differently.
To your point, Tom, of course we can sin & suffer. And the more knowledge we have & disregard, the worse the offense.
ISTM, that every epistemic distance on this side of a beatific vision has a residue of ignorance.
Because a fallible agent can’t definitively reject a reality it doesn’t fully know, only if that epistemic distance would get closed would one’s will even be poised to deliberate & choose awry.
It would be incoherent to suggest that a beatifically illumined intellect could, then, ever offer the will any apparent reason to reject God. So, even stipulating that it could, the will never “would.”
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JSS: “Because a fallible agent can’t definitively reject a reality it doesn’t fully know, only if that epistemic distance would get closed would one’s will even be poised to deliberate & choose awry.
It would be incoherent to suggest that a beatifically illumined intellect could, then, ever offer the will any apparent reason to reject God. So, even stipulating that it could, the will never “would.”
And that is the rub…
If rejection derives from ignorance, how does one reject when ignorance has evaporated?
One is not truly free to choose (to either accept or reject) until that epistemic distance is closed. Yet, when that epistemic distance is closed, and one is truly free with all ignorance swept away, how could one choose otherwise, since choosing otherwise requires ignorance?
I suppose Tom would say that the personal act of trust in the face of the void is needed to collapse that epistemic distance.
What about that hypothetical hellion who cannot commit an act of trust without seeing “something” in which to trust, when such seeing requires an act of trust? It is an insoluble dilemma, as others have noted, which could theoretically go on without end.
Who breaks the stale-mate? If it is up to the hellion to commit a sincere act trust while mired in ignorance, there is no indication this would ever change. On the other hand, if God removes the cloud of ignorance, the claim is leveled that the hellion’s agency has been usurped. The rebuttal that we are transcendentally grounded in God doesn’t solve this.
So, I guess that is my central question— how do the ignorant overcome their own ignorance?
And all of this against the backdrop of great suffering, which traditional notions of purgatory entail. Suffering is apt to engender distrust rather than its opposite. In fact, it is the suffering in life that is at the heart, either directly or indirectly, of all atheistic convictions.
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Joe, if you don’t mind I’m going to respond to this also in the previous Part 2 of this Series since it has to do more specifically with that debate and less the argument of this post.
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Joe: Thanks for this. In both this & the other thread, your questions & comments & concord – in – development w/Tom’s takes well express my own.
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John, I’m going to paste a response to this in the previous (Part 2) episode in this K&R series if you don’t mind.
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You disagree with premise 10*. I do not.
Theologically, God could have created rational creatures who never sinned. Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin committed no sin and yet are rational creatures. Ergo, committing sin is no requirement for being a rational creature. By the same token, it would be better for everyone to be like Christ or the BVM, and unable to sin from birth. It was a great grace we cannot deny. It would be better for each to be in that state. God does what is best for each individual, so He must do this unless it is impossible or impermissible. It is neither. Therefore, God should prevent all creatures from committing sin, if He is benevolent.
Philosophically, if you want, you can drop sin and just stick with suffering. Suffering is not metaphysically necessary. God could have created human beings incapable of suffering or a world without suffering of any kind. And it looks like universalists (of all people) should accept it is always better for individuals not to suffer, if the same good can be achieved without suffering. Run the same argument.
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That’s the problem of evil, which no one pretends to have any truly definitive solution to. However, your attempts to worm your way into the active willing of an evil which is by definition infinite and irredeemable from the permission of an evil which is, however awful, finite and redeemable fails because of the literally infinite distance between those two things. We may not know how, but it is at least conceivably possible for a finite evil to befall a creature and not contradict their highest possible good, but it is not so possible for an endless and infinite evil should that befall them.
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Calvin, you just said what I was going to point out! Well done. 😎
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The above parody argument I gave makes no appeal to the problem of evil. I merely noted that the premise about benevolence resembles what appears in a famous formation of the logical problem.
But, you tell me: is it better for someone to have sinned at some time in their life or to be impeccable?
And, to be more specific with my examples, do you think Hitler achieved the best human life he could have lived? Do you disagree that God could have stopped him? Do you disagree that a human being can achieve their ultimate end without being allowed to commit atrocities?
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Fr Rooney, I wish I knew how Dr Reitan would respond to your argument, but alas I do not, and I’m doubtful I can tempt him back to the combox. Apparently, he actually has a real life. 😎
A couple thoughts:
1) As Calvin has already noted, you are raising two classic problem of evil objections to theism: Why didn’t the omnipotent God create humanity as sinless? Why didn’t the omnipotent God create a world without suffering? Surely he could have done both. I’m confident you have your own answers to these two questions, just as I do–but I’m betting they are very different. In any case, whether atheists would find our respective answers persuasive is another matter. The simple fact is, if the problem of evil objections obtain, then then we should simply give up our faith. Either there is no God or God is evil. In other words, this is just not a universalist problem.
In my opinion, the only satisfying theodicy–at least the only one that keeps me a Christian–is universal salvation. It is only this doctrine that promises glorious redemption of both wickedness and horrific suffering. K&R come to a similar conclusion in their discussion of the problem of evil in chap. 9 of their book, to which I refer you.
2) Given that K&R’s divine benevolence argument is speaking of humanity’s eschatological happiness and good, I think we may distinguish between the temporal concern that you raise (why does an omnipotent and benevolent God permit sin and suffering?) and K&R’s concern (if God is both omnipotent and benevolent, will he not ensure that every human being will eternally enjoy the beatific vision?). To assert that universalists are obliged to believe that their vision of the divine love obliges them to believe that God should have created humanity sinless or created a world without suffering–well, as my daughter liked to say when she was a little girl, that’s just silly talk.
I concede, and perhaps K&R would also, that you have identified a gap in their formulation of the Argument from Benevolence. I imagine that if they attempted to address within the argument every objection that might be raised, it would have extended to 50, 100, or 1,000 additional premises. Surely you understand that. In their book, e.g., K&R acknowledge that the Argument from Benevolence is incomplete, at least within a Christian context, which is why they then advance their second argument, An Argument from Divine Complacent Love, which I will be summarizing in my next post. May I respectfully suggest that you carefully read, from beginning to end, God’s Final Judgment before jumping to embarrassing conclusions about their work. Kronen and Reitan are philosophers, not apologists, and they deserve a careful reading from their critics. I imaging that both would welcome a serious response from you published in journal like Faith & Philosophy.
As I mentioned in my open letter to you several months ago, the difference between our respective positions ultimately resolve to two incompatible fundamental apprehensions of the divine love. Orthodox Christians should believe, must believe, that the crucified and risen God will do his eschatological best for his rational creatures. Eternal damnation, by any criteria of unconditional love, does not qualify as the very best.
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No, your argument is entirely based on the problem of evil. You assert that because God permits certain finite evils to temporarily obtain it follows that he logically must, or can, permit an infinite series of evils to obtain forever. But that objection works far better for atheism than your attempts to make use of it for your church, as were we to say that God can do the worst thing possible without contradicting his benevolence it follows that “benevolence” is a meaningless term and the Christian story is simply not credible. Why does God permit this or that other thing? I don’t know, however using very simple logic it is plainly identifiable as being of a wholly different order to what you allege he ordains and at least theoretically compatible with benevolence, which your story fundamentally is not.
To answer your question, no I don’t believe Hitler achieved the best human life he could have on earth. However, I do believe it also fell short (one might even say infinitely short) of being an infinite and everlasting evil and that it is not in principle beyond ultimate redemption and goodness. It was an awful life, but the awfulness of it had a limit to it. An omnipotent and all-loving God might yet see it turned to something much better.
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Calvin — In fact, if God is as Fr Rooney says he is, then Hitler, evil as he was, achieved a better life than God does, since he caused far less suffering and evil to occur than God does.
But, of course, God is not as Fr Rooney says he is.
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Fr Rooney,
I can’t tell if you’re responding to me or John. I only commented on your claim about K&R’s move from P6 to P7, but you came back with claiming I disagree with P10.
Here’s P10: It is not metaphysically impossible for God to bring it about that all rational creatures are saved, and there are some means God could use to do this that are morally permissible.
I don’t disagree with P10. So I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
P10 is not describing the possibility that God could begin at the end, i.e., bring about an original state for spiritual creatures in which sin and evil are impossible. I happen to think that metaphysically impossible. But P10 is describing the ‘end’. And I don’t disagree that God is able to bring all to their final end and highest well-being in him, nor do I think the means by which he accomplishes this need be immoral.
I’m not Catholic (or Orthodox). I don’t think Mary was sinless from birth. And Jesus, being the Incarnate God-Man, is sufficiently unique to encourage us to approach his case with some humility. The fact that he was fully human and did not sin does not imply that God can bring about a world in which every human being is incapable of sinning from the get-go.
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Correction: That last sentence of mine. “The fact that he was fully human and did not sin does not imply that God can bring about a world in which every human being…[who]…is incapable of sinning from the get-go.” Delete “who” from it.
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Tom wrote: It is not metaphysically possible that God give creation its end as its beginning and so foreclose upon all possibility of evil.
Fr JD elaborated on the implications of premise 10.
With Tom, I don’t believe it’s coherent to suggest that our wills could ever be foreclosed on.
But I agree with you, Fr JD. Whether Denys Turner’s evaluation of Julian of Norwich’s stance is historically &/or interpretively correct or not, idk. But he well makes the case that we should bite the bullet and recognize precisely what you said, which is that neither our rationality nor freedom need grounding in any “permission of sin” or “possibility of evil.”
Both heaven, with specific – not thoroughgoing – superintelligible beatific epistemic closures, impeccability & deliberations only among eternal well beings, and earth, with its various epistemic distancings, peccability & deliberations between well being & ill being, are behovely, in the sense of being divinely fitting (not necessitated).
Both are somehow ordered toward divine theophanic ends. Both are compatible with divine benevolence.
Our theological skepticism & mysterian appeals re exactly how all could be well are not ad hoc and our speculations are not idle.
Any impasses regarding the in/coherence of an eternal hell lie elsewhere for me. And we’ve already stipulated that our arguments won’t be strictly logical & formal.
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You are simply making the same point you always make, which is that if you don’t believe God is good (in the sense of “good” revealed in the person of Jesus Christ) then universalism isn’t true. Everybody here, as far as I know, agrees with you on this, we just happen to think, unlike apparently you, that God is good. Move on.
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Father,
I think that 7 should read, “What is best for every rational creature is that they be saved.” Then 6 and 7 together would entail, “Therefore, God wills that every rational creature be saved.”
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Alas, what they have written, they have written. 😎
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The most seriously problematic moves come from the confusion between what’s divinely necessary & divinely fitting, between what’s divinely owed & gratuitously bestowed.
To properly engage the argument, it must not only be analyzed in abstract terms of mere metaphysical & logical possibilities. It should be placed in the context of how its authors freighted it in terms that are both aesthetically qualitative & ethically felt.
It’s much too low a bar to come into forums offering counterexamples based on sheer metaphysical possibilities, in order to defend one’s own stance as merely not unreasonable.
Appeals to evidential plausibility & existential coherence must also be made, especially with topics like benevolence. That’s where good storytelling comes in.
That’s also where the rationalistic dismissal usually takes place: “The only things grounding your argument are aesthetic sensibilities & moral intuitions?”
Well, no. We’re talking about the Greatest Story ever told. Beyond beauty & goodness, we’re talking about truth. Behind them all, we’re talking about the Truth, Himself.
And we’re asking: WWJD? not WMJD? [what MUST Jesus Do?]
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Dr Reitan asked me to post his response to Fr Rooney. He is very busy and will not be responding to comments. I am very grateful for taking the time to share his thoughts with us,
* * *
There is a big difference (in fact, an infinitely large one) between a finite evil (even one as horrific as the Holocaust) and an infinite one. Such an infinitely large difference is likely to make a difference when we consider what a benevolent being would and would not permit. Not only is it likely to, but it DOES make a difference.
Suppose Joe is poised to suffer an evil, and I am witness to this unfolding event. There are four kinds of reasons I might have for failing to prevent that evil from afflicting Joe:
1. Inability: I am not able to prevent it, or (given finite resources) I am unable to prevent it while while also preventing other proportional evils or producing other proportional goods (such that I must choose between preventing this evil or acting in some other way that is at least as devoted to the good of persons).
2. Deficiency of Benevolence: While I am able to prevent it, I am not perfectly benevolent and, lacking such benevolence, do not care enough about promoting Joe’s welfare in this case to make the effort to prevent it.
3. Joe’s Greater Good: While I am able to prevent it and benevolent, the finite evil in question will actually contribute towards Joe’s welfare (perhaps, but not necessarily, because of some other intervention of mine whereby I make the evil into part of some greater whole that is better for Joe than had the evil never afflicted him).
4. Moral Prohibition: While able to prevent it and benevolent, and while it is an evil that will, if permitted, make Joe’s life worse on the whole, the only ways I have available to me to prevent it are ones that are morally impermissible for me to act on (and I am the kind of person who does not do what is morally impermissible).
But now, suppose that, instead of ME as the potential intervener, it is God. While some might try to argue that it is metaphysically impossible for God to prevent certain evils that might afflict Joe, I will assume here that, given divine omnipotence, reason 1 is off the table. And while some theists might deny that God is perfectly benevolent, I will assume here that, given divine omnibenevolence, 2 is off the table.
This leaves reasons of kinds 3 and 4 as reasons why God might not prevent some evil from afflicting Joe. A reason of kind 3 would obtain if Joe’s overall welfare could be advanced through permitting the evil. For example, since I take moral virtue to be good for its possessor and more central to the possessor’s good that freedom from physical suffering, one might imagine God permitting Joe to suffer physically if Joe would thereby develop a virtue he would not otherwise develop. And since a positive relationship with God is the greatest good of any creature, one might imagine God permitting any number of finite evils if they contributed to that relationship.
But if the evil in question is eternal damnation, construed as unending creaturely alienation from God, we are talking about an evil for which a reason of type 3 does not apply. For any finite evil, we might say that avoiding it is better than enduring it ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL—but then note that all else is not always equal, because there is some creative way that God can work with that evil to bring about a state in which the sufferer is better off than they would have been absent enduring that evil. Even if we cannot imagine how a sufferer of some horror could be made better off thereby, God might know things we do not or cannot know.
But salvation is better for the creature than damnation, PERIOD—not all else being equal, but period. Why? Because on Christians teachings, salvation—loving union with God—is our greatest good. To be eternally damned is (put lightly) to be eternally worse off than we might have been had we been saved. While it is logically coherent, for any FINITE evil, to say, “Joe enduring this evil is something God permits for the sake of Joe’s good,” it is not similarly coherent to say “Joe enduring eternal damnation—that is, being eternally deprived of Joe’s greatest good—is something God permits for the sake of Joe’s good.” If there’s a reason God has for allowing Joe to be permanently deprived of Joe’s greatest good, it can’t be for the sake of Joe’s good—because that would entail that it is ultimately BETTER for Joe to be WORSE OFF than he might have been, which is a contradiction.
And so, when it comes to God permitting eternal damnation, we are left with reasons of type 4: some moral consideration OTHER THAN JOE’S GOOD precludes God from sparing Joe eternal damnation (something like an obligation to respect Joe’s freedom and autonomy, perhaps, or the greater good of humanity overall, or divine justice).
With respect to ALL OTHER EVILS, we might suppose there are reasons of type 3 AND reasons of type 4 that could explain God’s permission of them, but with respect to eternal damnation reasons of type 3 are incoherent. Hence, with respect to eternal damnation, we can say that, assuming God is perfectly benevolent, God would prevent the evil of eternal damnation (that is, would save Joe) if God had available a morally permissible means of doing so. With respect to finite evils, we CANNOT confidently say this, since for all we know God might have a way to bring it about that Joe’s good is served by Joe enduring that evil.
Let me lay this out as clearly as I can. In our Argument from Divine Benevolence, John and I invoke the principle that, granting God’s perfect benevolence, God would save all if God had a morally permissible means of doing so. Put another way, the principle we invoke can be stated as follows:
Eternal Damnation Prevention Principle (Eternal Damnation for short): “For the evil of eternal damnation, out of benevolence for creatures God would prevent that evil if God had a morally permissible means of doing so.”
In response, Rooney in effect argues that the following principle is false:
Any Evil Prevention Principle (Any Evil for short): “For any evil E, out of benevolence for creatures God would prevent E if God had a morally permissible means of doing so.”
But from the falsity of Any Evil we cannot infer the falsity of Eternal Damnation. In fact, I just argued BOTH that Any Evil is (as Rooney notes) false AND that Eternal Damnation is true. Hence, Rooney is vigorously arguing for the wrong conclusion here and then confidently asserting he’s refuted a premise he hasn’t touched.
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Hey, wait a minute, why am I being brought into this? Ha!
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It’s here where Stump et al import an informal evaluative appeal, what I call a soft infernalism, by denying ECT, describing any everlasting peccability & ill being as suboptimal but not catastrophic for those experiencing perdition. And easily tolerable for those witnessing same.
The problem is that ill being then becomes tantamount to an end rather than a means; evil’s existence becomes tantamount to *being* substantial rather than *nonbeing* & parasitic; divine permission becomes tantamount to intent; transient punishment becomes everlasting, so wholly disproportional to the finite offenses of fallible subjects, notwithstanding the Infinite Object.
Finally, such a putative frustration of humanity’s telos can’t be dismissed as in any measure equivalent to Nyssen’s epectasis, which involves movements among well beings & ad infinitum instantiations of relative perfections; and not between ill beings & well beings motivated by culpable imperfections.
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Thanks for passing that along, Fr Al. And many thanks to Eric.
I think the difference between Fr Rooney and universalists is intuition-level deep. It really is. It’s not about badly constructed arguments or misapplication of logic. It’s deeper than that. One believes love (in its fullness) entails doing all one can to secure the highest well-being of the other, and another believes love does not entail this. And there is no syllogism that can resolve the dispute.
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Eleonore Stump is a paragon among theo-analytics in suggesting that such nonpropositional knowledge is indispensable & is best conveyed narratively. So, hooray!
She’s also a paragon of a theo-anthropo-analytic whose moral intuitions & aesthetic sensibilities differ from mine. So, boo!
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I don’t see that Reitan has correctly construed the critique of his argument that I gave above. He is defending the view that the evil of damnation is of a different genus – infinitely worse – than any other evil. But that was not the object of any of my critique. In Kronen and Reitan’s argument, they invoked a premise that God will what is best for every individual rational creature (premise 6) and that, if God wills what is best, God will do whatever is best that is both possible and morally permissible (premise 9).
All I did was present a parody argument in which we assume those premises are true, and then show that problematic conclusions can be drawn from those same premises.
So, my parody similarly assumes that what is best for the creature is union with God. I then point out that there is no metaphysical impossibility in being impeccable by grace from the first moment of one’s creation and that this is morally permissible. At this point, evils do not enter into the question as such. All one needs is just that principle accepted by Reitan (premise 6, 9) that God always does what is best for the individual if it is permissible and possible. But it is certainly permissible and possible for God to preserve all rational creatures from sin. And it is would be better for each individual to be in this state than to have spent however-much time in separation from God by their sins, even temporary ones, since the good of union with the rational creature (which he admits and emphasizes are the supreme goods, outweighing all others, and infinite in quality) can be achieved without any such sin.
I do not see any reason one needs to prove that separation from God constitutes an infinite evil, since the argument Kronen and Reitan gave was NOT that (for example) God necessarily prevents all ‘infinite evils,’ but only that God always does what is best for every rational creature if it is possible and permissible. And clearly they admit that union with God would be an infinite, supreme good. All my parody needs to show is that union with God without any separation by sin, even temporarily, is better than union with God after some temporary sin or separation. As long as the former is better (i.e., that state in which the Blessed Virgin found herself, or Christ, was better than the state of any other creature), then premise 6 will entail that God’s benevolence should impel Him to create all persons in that same state, since it is best, if not simply far better than the peccable state in which we find ourselves.
Now, Reitan might think that natural evils (suffering) contribute to the overall good of each individual in a way that could not be achieved without that suffering. For my purposes, it is unimportant whether I concede that point. It is a clear theological datum from the life of Christ and the Blessed Virgin that the occurrence of sin would not have contributed to their overall welfare, it would not have made them better people to have committed a venial or mortal sin, and it would not thus have constituted a greater good for them that God permitted them to sin. So, not only do we know it was metaphysically possible for God to have created all creatures in a state like the Blessed Virgin, but we know that it is better to be impeccable than to have sinned. If it is best for any creature to be in such a state, then premise 6/9 entails that God will create each rational creature in such a state of impeccability.
Obviously, God has not done this. The parody therefore shows us that the Kronen and Reitan’s argument for universal salvation is faulty. And I would note that this could be the case even if you think their conclusion is true for other reasons.
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I agree that any universalism that agrees it’s possible for God to create spiritual creatures (who are not the Logos personally incarnate) incapable of sin from their first moment and still achieving the beatitude of union with God that is their highest well-being, is bound to wallow in quicksand. If one grants the possibility of such a world and concedes (as one must) that that world is not the world God created, I could only conclude that for such faith God is not the Good, the True, and the Beautiful as such.
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I’m not sure I’m following. So, I’ll bookmark it & watch for other responses that may help me to better grasp your meaning. Then, I’ll return & likely bring Scotus.
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John,
It was a bit garbled. Sorry. And “still achieving” should’ve been “still achieve.”
As you know I hold that deliberative willing (deliberative with respect to good & evil) is a necessary condition for what can only be for us a ‘movement’ from origin to end in God. So God’s creating us already impeccable is quite impossible in my view.
But I agree with Fr Rooney that IF such a thing were possible, we’d all face the difficult question of why a loving God would not go that route IF it got him the ‘end’ he wanted (spiritual creatures in union with him) without having to permit evil and sin. God obviously didn’t create that world, but the question is still relevant: Why not?
For universalists, for whom divine ‘love’ is paramount, something of our understanding of divine ‘love’ (as willing the highest good of creatures) is revealed in our answer to the question. It doesn’t bother me because I don’t in fact think ‘that’ world is a possible world at all, as Rooney holds. But I can see some universalists thinking it is a viable, possible world, in which case I agree their case for divine love involving God’s always willing our highest well-being in him is jeopardized.
It doesn’t matter in this instance that the universalist is talking only about finite, temporal sins and not eternal sin (as is the case with infernalism). If you’re basing your denial of the latter possibility on a notion of love that involves willing the highest well-being of another and doing all you can do to secure that well-being, you really are undermining that notion of love if you grant God can get the end he desires without having to permit any evil but he nevertheless permits the evil.
Rooney agrees this is a viable/possible world to create, so for him divine love has to be consistent with that. How he tries to do it is anybody’s guess. But his point was, if universalists agree (and he thinks they must, since it’s obvious to him that it’s possible – Jesus and Mary are the proof!) that an impeccably sin-free world is a metaphysically possible world God could create (but didn’t choose to), universalists have to tweak their claim that ‘God is love’ = God would not permit any spiritual creature to fail to find his/her highest well-being in him. That God could’ve had that end at the beginning but chose not to realize it says something about the universalist’s understanding of what God’s love implies even in the case of temporal evils.
I agree with Rooney. I think universalists who concede this metaphysical possibility are wailing in quicksand (along with Rooney).
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Thanks, Tom! That was a generous response and very clarifying.
It’s very difficult for me to reciprocate with an apposite response because I don’t inhabit the same theo-anthropo framework & use all the same definitions as you & Fr JD.
In many ways, I’m closer to him than to you, likely because I’m his co-religionist, cradle to grave! I’m close, even, to Dr TPO’Neill’s stances in many ways. On some issues, we couldn’t be further apart!
There’s perhaps no one whose views I resonate more with than yours, but — happily, I think — we do have an impasse re deliberative willing. And that tension can be creative!
Toward that end, in your choice of alternative choices vis a vis the objects of deliberative willing, istm that you are hypostasizing evil. It’s not a real entity. And peccability is not part of our divine – human nature. What is part of our nature – protologically, historically & eschatologically – is our ability to move toward God!
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John: …in your choice of alternative choices vis a vis the objects of deliberative willing, istm that you are hypostasizing evil.
Tom: I think we passed this way a couple weeks ago. ;o) I only view evil as privation. That said, there people out there making choices (deliberatively) that, while they aspire to some perceived good given the limitations of the deliberative context in which we all choose, bring about evil and further complicate their enslavement. But evil is never any more than privation of the good.
John: …peccability is not part of our divine – human nature.
Tom: It’s not our ‘end’. But it is our beginning. We wouldn’t be sinners apart from it – the peccability, the deliberation, these are finitude in its infancy – a horrible ‘end’, yes, but a very appropriate beginning. But this is not to hypostatize evil.
John: What is part of our nature – protologically, historically & eschatologically – is our ability to move toward God!
Tom: Certainly. But historically we are able to move away from God, and that capacity in itself (however you understand it) is not an evil or sinful state. How could it be if that deliberative capacity (which is our peccability) is our God-given beginning? However one imagines our origin, we didn’t start out impeccable and finished. So back to the question: Why? Why would God not create an order that emerges ex nihilo into being already impeccable?
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We best distinguish between finitude, mistakes & sin. We can mistakenly fail to cooperate with grace, whether due to deformative influences, early formative stages of conversion or ignorance. This is distinct from sinful refusals to cooperate with grace given sufficient knowledge (and the vicious nature formed by habitual refusals).
The deliberative choosing between real & apparent goods, alone, does not constitute peccability. Rather, it refers to a morally exculpable act as rooted in finitude.
The above describes the deliberative willing that’s inherent in our divine – human-nature. Our finitude in its infancy is by nature error-prone, which is indeed indispensable to our exercising FCOW. It is not by nature sin-prone. That’s what happens when we with willful blindness ignore our nature or with open eyes defy & relect our divine nature.
I think, therefore, we have reached another concord. I am simply more narrowly defining peccability and you are more broadly conceiving it to include both mistakes & sin.
It’s all deliberative & interrelationally dialogical, you know, like Mary’s fiat.
Impeccability doesn’t refer naturally. It’s modal. Knowledge is gifted the intellect, which learns what’s real vs apparent & presents that to the will, which metaphysically could but existentially & morally wouldn’t reject the real. Even Søren could live with that? ;>)
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The possible world – talk is to me theologically incoherent. Economically, the protological, historical & eschatological refer to One, with Whom we’re mutually constituted. In Him we already dwell in the best way possible, which is in that unitive reality, the Totus Christus, greater than which could not otherwise be conceived.
It doesn’t mean we don’t phenomenally experience tragedy, death, suffering & evil as the effects of our sin. It does mean that they are not substantial – only parasitic, not hypostatic – only parhypostatic and not real – only fantastical & epiphenomenal. All is well. The Best is not “yet to come” because Creation IS Incarnation. Not all would affirm this eternal temporal simultaneity, but it works for me &, istm, for Dr Reitan’s 6th premise.
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Exactly. Think of ‘possible worlds’ talk not as positing ‘possible evils’ (since evil is not substantial and, properly speaking, only substances are possible) but as imagining various different substances either not privated at all (the consummate totus Christus) or privated to different degrees. I can imagine a world in which the substantial me (not my evil) is privated less so than I am, or more so than I am. This is not to make the privation I suffer ‘substantial’, but just to imagine the substantial good that is ‘me’ more or less privated.
Strictly speaking, evil is not a ‘possibility’ but a privation of possibility (in this or that actual or imagined circumstance).
Does that help?
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Yes. I find the distinction between our primary & secondary natures helpful.
Our primary nature = imago Dei. It is inviolable. It is a finished product. It is untouched by original sin or however one conceives finitude. It is not on a journey away from imperfection to perfection but from its predetermined allotment of relative perfections to the co-self-determined realizations of even more, ever more, relative perfections.
Such a modal co-self-determination (tropic) of one’s secondary nature doesn’t entail a journey from privation to fullness, from evil to goodness, from ill being to well being. Its a journey, rather, from an historical well being to eschatological well being.
The above describes what’s going on both ontologically & modally (eu-tropic) vis a vis protology & divine intent.
Alas, superimposed on those essential – personal divine dynamisms comes the interruption of sin. Our essential nature gets obscured – not diminished – by a vicious secondary nature as our personal tropoi get dys-tropic. That’s privative.
Without sin, formative spirituality would involve only the illuminative & unitive ways, a theotic journey from abundance as an image to superabundance as a likeness.
Alas, we need, also, the purgative. It’s a provisional necessity.
This isn’t an over against. It’s just a teasing out of meanings.
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I don’t disagree here with anything really.
This is relevant:
“Such a modal co-self-determination (tropic) of one’s secondary nature doesn’t entail a journey from privation to fullness, from evil to goodness, from ill being to well being. Its a journey, rather, from an historical well being to eschatological well being.”
Quite so. That capacity for co-self-determination (however you parse it) is the very possibility of movement from less to greater, from infancy to maturity, as you say. None of this is privative as such. I’ve said this many times as well.
But this capacity is also the capacity to fail to move from one to the other. It is where and how we fall (not just make mistakes, but give place to sin’s privating effects in us). And so the question sill is whether or not this capacity is something God can simply foreclose upon by creating us with it, and so guarantee we make our journey without the possibility of privation, sin, evil.
If I understand you, John, you’re agreeing with Fr Rooney that God can efficaciously guarantee creation moves from origin to end without sin and evil, but God didn’t create the world that way.
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Tom, you wrote: “And so the question sill is whether or not this capacity is something God can simply foreclose upon by creating us with it”
Did you mean withOUT it?
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Yeah. Sorry. Without it.
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re: Fr Rooney’s take on realities like efficacious grace, the Immaculate Conception, yes, I’m in general agreement with what I understand his stance to be. But I think we are both saying, at least I am, that that’s indeed how God created the world. That’s to say that impeccability, as I’ve nuanced it, occurs eschatologically in purgatory & in heaven and also protologically & trans-historically in the Immaculate Conception.
The FCOW is essential to being human. The will & intellect are inseparable in human volition.That capacity always operates the same way. The will just responds – as it will – to info at hand. So, God doesn’t interfere with our volitional mechanics. It’s the information available to the intellect that God can & does change.
However, while some essential aspect of the intellect would be fallible for some value-realizations, both temporal, e.g. secondary beatitudes and eternal, e.g. epectasy, an essential infallible aspect of the intellect clearly predominates on our journey, specifically regarding what are real (not apparent) goods & Who God really is.
See: A Defense of Grace, Predestination, and the Permission of Venial Sin
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I omitted that, obviously, no, impeccability doesn’t extend universally in history.
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I’m completely lost, but don’t worry about it.
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For any interested in digging further, I have come across few better treatments of this topic than that by the Rev Dr Rooney in “Stumping Freedom: Divine Causality and the Will.”
Whatever one may think of his solutions, he comprehensively raises most of the problems and lucidly presents the philosophical & theological implications of various solutions.
https://philarchive.org/rec/ROOSFD
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In my reply I said: “…that an impeccably sin-free world is a metaphysically possible world could can create (but didn’t choose to)…”
“could can create”? I meant “…*God* can create…”
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“What’s best” is not sufficiently nuanced, I agree, even for moves I like to make as a universalist.
I do want to preserve realities like a guaranteed beatific vision with all the abundance that would entail in terms of primary beatitudes.
But, for various reasons, I’d want to recognize various supersufficiencies & superabundances, such as in mystical theology w/infused graces, such as per degrees of humility & sanctity, such as differences in number & kinds of secondary beatitudes. That God sovereignly & gratuitously differentially bestows blessings is not, alone, repugnant to what our tradition deems fitting & just.
Because there are 2 actual worlds where rational creatures are free, including one where they’re impeccable & one where peccability is permitted, and because I believe that all will be well in both, I can only look to Jesus in trust that it will be effected in a just & fitting way, even as I’m unable to imagine how.
Otherwise, I follow Denys Turner: “Julian’s ‘it is behovely that there is sin’ is narratival. ‘Behovely’ is the connective tissue of a storyline, not of a syllogism.”
I commend: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/all-will-be-well
Thanks for your contributions, Fr JD.
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“Obviously, God has not done this. The parody therefore shows us that the Kronen and Reitan’s argument for universal salvation is faulty.”
Actually, assuming your position regarding the necessity or lack thereof of peccability are true, particularly when paired as you do with a eschatology of eternal damnation, then it makes a far superior argument for atheism than Catholicism. That God in your view both actively chooses to refuse people what they need to avoid sinning and then turns around and blames them for sinning as tortures them forever for it can lead to few rational conclusions beyond “God is evil” or “this entire religion is made up”.
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I don’t see that, if God doesn’t give you the impeccablility of Christ or His mother, that God therefore “actively chooses to refuse people what they need to avoid sinning and then turns around and blames them.” He gives you what you need to avoid sin, even if you are not impeccable, and then can rightly hold you accountable if you misuse those gifts. You don’t need impeccability to avoid sin.
And, in fact, I think the above point summarizes what universalists miss: God not making you impeccable or ensuring your salvation does not makes you sin nor does it make God responsible for that sin.
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But universalists make that point all the time?
*If* it were possible for God to make everyone impeccable (and this was compatible with their ultimate good) and God didn’t do so, then God would obviously not be the Good (in your earlier response above you assume that this is “metaphysically possible” but that is rather begging the question, isn’t it?)
And certainly if God did not bring about the salvation of all he would not be the Good.
But this is nothing to do with the question of whether this would amount to God “making us sin” or even “responsible for sin”. You falsely claim that this is this is a point many universalists miss.
That’s funny as many universalists explicitly affirm it! God does not “owe” us salvation. We are responsible for all our sins – God does not “make” us sin.
The point is that a loving father would not fail to save his children if he were capable of doing so – and he would not have children if he knew there was a chance of them not being saved.
I made this exactly point to you recently – as have many others – but I note that every time you literally don’t respond to the comment. You then pop up a few topics later making the same point without any acknowledgement of the rejoinders. It is deeply disrespectful to everyone involved.
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At least if you’re gonna try to make this point, you should use someone like say, St. Basil. In “On the Human Condition” in Discourse 1, he argues that the tension is between what it means to be made in the image of a thing versus the likeness of a thing. Image and likeness aren’t synonymous, but are rather two distinct aspects that are bound within the tie of human nature itself, and the repetition of the words in the text from Genesis is to help define what God is responsible for versus what the human is responsible for….while I think the logic of this is an exercise of the great father missing the point as well, at least it’s a better distinction to have a discussion on.
I can only imagine the table pounding he and Gregory got into, and also, if the history is true, and those are finished works by the Nyssen himself in the voice of Basil, that even makes this whole thing more curious in that the Nyssen could speak for his brother in such a way that his voice sounds out even if the Nyssen didn’t agree.
And while we’re at it, at some point one has to understand that all acts of justice must be balanced out by acts of mercy, and vice versa within the divine act. The allowance of free-will and “hell” (in the purgative sense) neither betrays anything near the level of cruelty or culpability within the godhead. They (justice and mercy) are sides of the same coin. I’d also suggest you check out Bulgakov’s essay on the Nyssen and Apocatastasis of Satan. Most of the interweaving/straddling you’re trying to do, he addresses.
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Also, that was for Fr. Rooney, not David. Should have been more clear.
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“He gives you what you need to avoid sin, even if you are not impeccable, and then can rightly hold you accountable if you misuse those gifts. You don’t need impeccability to avoid sin.”
Assuming Catholic doctrine is true, this is an empirically false statement. No one without impeccability has ever successfully avoided sinned altogether, ergo it is an absolute necessity in order to do so.
“And, in fact, I think the above point summarizes what universalists miss: God not making you impeccable or ensuring your salvation does not makes you sin nor does it make God responsible for that sin.”
Yes it does. If you see someone starving, have a personally unlimited supply of food that you could give to them out of without cost to yourself, and then refuse to do so you are responsible for the fact that they starved to death.
Moreover, as the actual reality of the situation is that God is knowing, wiling origin of both the human nature you were born with and the circumstances you were born into, his responsibility even graver than that. He knowingly chose to begin the chain of events that he knew damned well would lead to this exact outcome while under no compulsion of any kind to do so.
Like I said, a far better argument for atheism than belief in Catholicism. This God of yours could save everyone effortlessly and at no cost, and cure all the evil in the world with a snap of his fingers. But he just doesn’t. But he’s totally benevolent and trustworthy because… because. Trust me bro.
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Amen. All rational creatures have all that’s needed to avoid sin. And we are rightly to be held accountable.
That ain’t the rub.
It’s how we variously imagine which particular remedies would be just or not based on their perceived dis/proportionalities.
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Fr. Rooney, are there possible worlds where one or more people get to Heaven with sufficient grace but not efficacious grace?
The hard universalist should not say that God owes us salvation, as if there is a law above Him that He is subject to. He can agree with Edward Feser who writes:
“Now, let us return to the question of whether God has obligations to us. To be obliged is to be subject to a law, where, as Aquinas says, “a law is imposed on others by way of a rule and measure” (ST I-II.90.4). Moreover, “the law must needs regard principally the relationship to happiness,” that is to say, the realization of what is good for those under it (ST I-II.90.2). But God has no superior who might impose any law or obligation on Him, there is no good He needs to realize since He is already Goodness Itself and therefore already possesses supreme Beatitude, and there is accordingly no rule or measure outside Him against which His actions might be evaluated. He is not under the moral law precisely because He is the moral law.” – http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-obligation-and-euthyphro-dilemma.html?m=1
Rather, says the hard universalist, it is evil to allow eternal suffering, and so He would simply not allow it to obtain. There are a number of reasons why He doesn’t give everyone efficacious grace from the start, the hard universalist could say. One possible reason is to allow God to manifest His glory in overcoming evil.
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“But it is certainly permissible and possible for God to preserve all rational creatures from sin. ”
This is the point where you go wrong Father Rooney.
You assume and take for granted a premise that most of the Church – outside Banezian Thomism and the Calvinists – thinks to be outrageous.
I’m not faulting you for using this premise as part of your argument – evil though it is – but you need to at least offer a persuasive argument for it being true before using it to prove something else.
It’s also curious how on other occasions you tell us how important free will is and how this justifies eternal hell – but now you are telling us that if God wanted he could have preserved us all from sin after all?
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David:
What I mean when I say that universalists hold that God would be responsible for our sin, for failing to prevent it, is exactly what you claimed. Namely, that “a loving father would not fail to save his children if he were capable of doing so – and he would not have children if he knew there was a chance of them not being saved.” This is what I refer to when I criticize the notion that God would be responsible for the occurrence of sin. Clearly, you think God would be blameworthy for failing to prevent sin, that He would be less than perfectly loving or good. This is obvious. You hold that God has moral obligations towards humans such that, if they were to reject Him and thereby be miserable on account of this sin, God would then be blameworthy for not ensuring that this did not occur. That is to be responsible for sin.
Similarly, it is obvious that you hold God owes us salvation. To ‘owe’ involves obligation to do/give X to Y. And you hold that God incurs a moral obligation to each person He creates such that, if He failed to ensure salvation for Y, He would be blameworthy/unloving/evil, at least toward Y. God would fail to give what He ought (‘owes’) to Y.
If God would fail to give what He ought (‘owes’) to any given person He creates in failing to ensure the salvation of that person, then God owes salvation to each person, given that He chooses to create them. Thus, for you, God owes salvation to each person, given that He chooses to create them. Clearly, if universalism were correct, it implies that God owes salvation to us. DBH and other universalists are a bit more perceptive and just admit the fact here.
Now, to preclude misunderstanding, the opposing view is not that God can therefore positively do us harm, but rather that He does us no wrong or harm in offering His gift of salvation equally to each person, while also allowing them to reject that offer. It seems to me this is perfectly loving of God to do. God does you no wrong by failing to do something better, like make you sinless, even though He certainly could do that.
I don’t think the possibility that God could save all or that God could have made each person sinless, like the BVM, is controversial. Nor is it connected to Thomism in particular, since I see no grounds for Scotists or Molinists to disagree. And I certainly don’t see that this is evil for God to do or not to do. The Fathers argue at points that God could have prevented the Fall, which implies the same.
At the end of the day, I think Francis de Sales was quite reasonable in putting his trust in God, whatever happens. “Whatever happens, Lord, you who hold all things in your hand and whose ways are justice and truth; whatever you have ordained for me . . . you who are ever a just judge and a merciful Father, I will love you Lord . . . I will love you here, O my God, and I will always hope in your mercy and will always repeat your praise . . . O Lord Jesus you will always be my hope and my salvation in the land of the living.” That, I think, is not a hope shaken by fear. Having cause to pray and hope that He will not allow us to stray from that love. I know God is good and will not leave me or anyone else helpless in the face of evil, nor that will He be unfair or unloving to us on the day of our judgement.
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Father Rooney
Thanks for your reply.
I think we need to make sure that we are not using the word “owes” equivocally.
You are correct that in the Christian tradition we do not normally want to say that Gods “owes” us forgiveness: rather, the nature of forgiveness is grace, something freely given without compulsion.
Yet this holds true for human affairs as well. That is, the Christian tradition would not normally say that we – let alone the murdered Jews of Auschwitz – “owe” Hitler forgiveness.
Nevertheless that is *precisely* what we as Christians are called to do – i.e. our *moral obligation* is to offer said forgiveness – no matter how evil the perpetrator and no matter how badly we have been wronged.
Relatedly, you say that “God does you no wrong by failing to do something better”. In one sense that is true – but really this is just the difference between sins of commission and sins of omission. I may not ‘deserve’ to be made better – but as God is the Good he clearly has a moral obligation to do that (in the same sense that I have a moral obligation to forgive and seek the highest good of even the most miserable of sinners who wish me nothing but harm i.e. to love my enemies)
I was recently blessed with a baby daughter. I would “not be doing any (active) harm” to her if I chose not to have her baptised. But would you – as a priest – say it was fine for me as her father to say “well, I’m not actively harming her by not baptising her (or instructing her in the gospel etc.) – and strictly speaking she doesn’t merit/deserve the grace baptism offers anyway – so I’m therefore justified in not sharing it with her”? I think the answer is obviously no.
So I hope we can agree that any normal Christian ethical teaching holds both that 1) we should forgive evil-doers who harm us; and 2) we should baptise our children, love our neighbour, share the gospel, etc.
Yet, as I hope you now see, we would never normally say that we “owe” anybody these things – by definition, forgiveness and baptism are the gospel – which, in turn, by definition is grace – which, finally, by definition is unmerited and therefore not (in the ordinary sense of the word) something ‘deserved’ or ‘owed’. Yet it still clearly a moral obligation in the sense that a good human being – let alone the Good that is God – *must* act in such a way if they are to genuinely conform to the nature of the Good.
If you wish to use “owe” in the eccentric sense of meaning “moral obligation” then – in that sense only – you can say that God owes us salvation. But you are speaking equivocally if you go on to falsely impute the idea that this implies I think we “deserve” salvation or that it not a free gift.
——
Similarly you should avoid equivocation regarding the word “responsible” and the idea that I hold “God would be responsible for our sin” if He chose not to offer us grace and make us better.
No – with respect to all the individual sins that I any other human being have chosen to commit, each of us is ultimately responsible for what we have done. My point is merely that God would not be the Good if he abandoned us in this way. Again think of a real human father – if I didn’t bother to baptise my daughter or teach her the gospel – or generally didn’t bother to instruct her in the moral law or otherwise offer her ‘undeserved’ chances to improve herself – what sort of father would that make me?
Or if in the future if my daughter as an adult did me a real grievous wrong – stole my money, murdered my spouse – and I therefore chose to stop attempting to help her – and she subsequently became even more sinful – then, while in a certain sense any individual sins committed by my daughter as a result of my lack of attention would be hers and hers alone, I would still clearly not be a good father – certainly I would not be unconditionally loving my daughter – if I did this. So why expect less from God?
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Fr Rooney: …it is obvious that you [David] hold God owes us salvation. To ‘owe’ involves obligation to do/give X to Y. And you hold that God incurs a moral obligation to each person He creates such that, if He failed to ensure salvation for Y, He would be blameworthy/unloving/evil, at least toward Y.
Tom: This is both false and nonsensical. It does not follow that God owes it to any of us to ‘be who and what he is’ with respect to us.
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Amen!
It’s worst than all that. That use of salvation implicitly refers to a reality, hell, that some of us don’t recognize. Salvation, to me, refers to remedies for death & sin.
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We don’t recognize it as any sort of substantial reality, but as privation, right? But we do recognize it as a privation, and the experience of one suffering this privation is not illusory. Hell is not a substance, but substance suffering the privation of its being.
Let’s shake on it and share the title. Beer is waiting for us!
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Ha ha! Well, that wasn’t my meaning. I only meant that I only believe in purgatory. 🙂
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I also. All hell is purgatorial.
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David,
I have to start a new thread to reply to your questions.
I disagree we are using ‘owes’ equivocally.
You seem to think we do not owe it to forgive others. I disagree. We have moral duties of charity to forgive others. Nor is it unusual to say that we owe it to them. In fact, Scripture uses financial language for our obligations to others, namely, that we have ‘debts’ to others. This language even appears in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive those who are our debtors.” A debt is something owed, which is why we can understand that Christ uses this language.
As to the claim God sins by omission in failing to save all: yes, that is the question. I think God has no such obligations and thus is not responsible for failing to prevent someone from sinning. God has no obligation to make you like the BVM or Christ. He does not owe you the hypostatic union or sinlessness from birth. Stating it straightforwardly should make it apparent that it is ridiculous to think that He owes you these things, or that He does not love you if He were to fail to make you like Christ or the BVM. He loves you just as you are and gives us each what we need to fulfill our vocation. That is enough.
“I would “not be doing any (active) harm” to [my daughter] if I chose not to have her baptised.”
Actually, I think you would be doing her harm. You would be failing to do what is in your power to secure her salvation, contrary to your moral obligations – as her parent, you have an obligation to obtain for her that grace of baptism. To fail to provide that is to do harm to her.
“…grace…by definition is unmerited and therefore not (in the ordinary sense of the word) something ‘deserved’ or ‘owed’. Yet it still clearly a moral obligation in the sense that a good human being – let alone the Good that is God – *must* act in such a way if they are to genuinely conform to the nature of the Good.”
When we are talking of grace, we are precisely referring to God’s graciousness, not ours. And the very meaning of the term grace, as you indicate, is something that is not owed. You are simply confusing what refers to our moral obligations to help others be saved – which is not grace ON OUR PART, since we are strictly obligated to do so, even though one is helping another attain to God’s grace – and what God does in being gracious. God’s grace toward us is what is unmerited. It is contradictory to say that God ‘must’ give us His grace, even given His moral character. God has no moral obligations to save us from our freely chosen death and sin; it is precisely His love and graciousness that is illustrated in the fact that He did so anyway. He was not obligated or impelled or required to do so, and He could have done otherwise.
It is apparent from your answer (and from the logical contours of the problem) that universalists do hold that God had moral obligations toward us. He fails to do what He ought if He fails to ensure the salvation of everyone. You think: if God chooses to create us, He incurs obligations such that He would be failing if He did not ensure that each person was saved; He is not doing what He ought, not doing right toward us, or doing us harm, etc., if He does not ensure that outcome. That is to ‘owe’ us salvation, since it is what the word ‘owe’ refers to in ordinary English (and other languages).
You argue that I should not say that you believe that God is responsible for the occurrence of sin, since your view is “that God would not be the Good if he abandoned us in this way.”
There is, again, no equivocation on ‘responsible.’ To be responsible is to have an obligation of some kind, which (as you said above) God would fail to fulfill by omission if He were to allow us to sin, rather than ensure that we did not. You think: God would be responsible for our sinful state if He were not to ensure that everyone is saved. That is to say, even if each individual is in some sense responsible for their own choices, the fact that anyone sins is also God’s responsibility, since God can prevent all sin.
Rather, your question brings out very clearly that you make assumptions about what God has done that I reject. You believe that God has somehow, by failing to ensure salvation of all, done us harm and ensured that we sin – ‘abandoned us’. For example, your analogies on which a father does not baptize or instruct his daughter or offer her chances to repent or help her, etc., all involve the idea that God not ensuring the salvation of all requires that He fail to help people avoid sin, such that their actions could not have feasibly been otherwise (given the lack of God’s help). But this is false. The doctrine is that people sin DESPITE God’s help. Christianity’s picture is not: God stops helping people, and thus they sin. Christianity’s picture is: God helps people and gives them chances and instructs them and gives them every grace they need to avoid sin, and they do it anyway. The sacrifice of Christ is perfectly sufficient atonement precisely because God unites Himself in love to us while we were sinners, despite our sins, and gives us the grace to overcome our sins.
So, as with other universalist analogies, the analogy is faulty and misrepresents what is required for the orthodox doctrine to be true. All that is required for the orthodox doctrine to be true is [1] that it is possible by a free, responsible human act of sin to reject God’s grace and not to be restored to it apart from divine intervention, and [2] God does not necessarily (‘inevitably’, ‘owe it Himself’, or whatever) ensure that everyone is restored to grace after such sin. [2] does not require that God stop helping. ‘Ensuring the salvation of all’ and ‘helping someone avoid sin’ are not the same. As in your analogy, you do not think that, if nothing else works, you would be a failed father if you did not tie up your daughter and try to make her avoid becoming a bad person by torturing her or doing a ‘Clockwork Orange’-type brainwashing. God acts different than we do, certainly, but so too we can distinguish what is involved in ensuring all are saved, such as making them impeccable, and helping people continually, giving them what they need to avoid sin. We do not deserve that God makes us impeccable. We cannot complain if God were to give us what we need to avoid sin, rather than the graces of the BVM to be preserved from all sin. We similarly cannot complain that God does not ensure all will be saved, as long as God gives each person what they need to avoid sin and does not abandon anyone.
(I’d point out that, on the theory of hell that I proposed in the CLJ articles, I propose that the pains of hell result from God continuing to love and do good for the damned, who are pained in resisting and rejecting that help. They do not result from God imposing suffering, as if suffering were good for its own sake.).
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Classical theists, whether universalist or not, need not and should not think God has obligations to us. See my comment where I quoted Ed Feser. This doesn’t mean that He can do whatever, such as commanding that we torture babies for fun or commit adultery. The hard universalist would say that (allowing) eternal torment is evil and that God would never allow it.
“He fails to do what He ought if He fails to ensure the salvation of everyone.”
Compare: God fails to do what He ought if He fails to refrain from commanding ‘Go torture babies for fun’ or ‘Go commit adultery’.
“…if God chooses to create us, He incurs obligations such that He would be failing if He did not ensure that each person was saved”
Compare: If God chooses to create us, He incurs obligations to refrain from commanding us to do evil.
Of course not. In all possible worlds, God’s nature is such that He would not do evil. Not-doing evil (e.g. allowing eternal torment) is not a contingent obligation he “incurs” only in possible worlds where He creates us. Even in the possible world where God doesn’t create, it would still be evil to command the use of contraception (or other intrinsically evil sex acts) or to allow eternal torment, according to the hard universalist.
You brought up DBH and how he admits that “God owes salvation to us.” I think DBH, given the way he uses the term, could agree with the quote I provided from Feser. For the hard universalist, in a loose sense of ‘owe’, sure, God owes us salvation just as He owes us His refusal to command that we abort babies.
“God does you no wrong by failing to do something better, like make you sinless, even though He CERTAINLY could do that.” (my emphasis)
I don’t think this is at all uncontroversial given that many Catholics (including yourself in part two of your discussion with Suan Sonna) use free will as an excuse for allowing eternal torment. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if you believe (as you’ve agreed) that God could introduce a factor prior to and logically sufficient for everyone’s salvation, then I never want to see the free will defense of hell ever again. The hard universalist and infernalist could gladly agree with each other on this, as it would help move the discussion further.
“We do not deserve that God makes us impeccable.”
The hard universalist, observing that we do in fact sin, would agree with this. If God made us impeccable, then we wouldn’t have the beauty of God drawing beauty out of ugliness:
“If I could start again…I would find a way.” -Nine Inch Nails, “Hurt”
A world without Trent Reznor and “Hurt”? I say it’s unspeakable.
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CR, And what about Johnny Cash’s version of Hurt? A world without that is also unimaginable.
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As is a world without the Replacement’s “Unsatisfied” — at least for me — or Neil Young’s “Cortez the Killer”, or Barber’s “Adagio for Strings.” God drawing beauty out of ugliness in this world, and I have to imagine that sad, mournful beauty will have its place in the next as well, even in the heart of the blissful Trinity.
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Thanks Father Rooney.
I understand your position better, but I’m afraid it is still obvious to me that the word ‘owe’ can be used in two different ways.
1. It can be used as a substitute for something like ‘moral obligation – i.e. ‘the moral laws mean one must do X / to conform to the Good one must do X’.
2. But it can also be used to mean ‘person Y merits or deserves act X’.
If you only want to use the word in the sense of ‘1’, that is your prerogative.
“God has no obligation to make you like the BVM or Christ. He does not owe you the hypostatic union or sinlessness from birth. Stating it straightforwardly should make it apparent that it is ridiculous to think that He owes you these things, or that He does not love you if He were to fail to make you like Christ or the BVM. ”
This is confused. I do not think it is possible for God to make ‘me’ subject to the hypostatic union… anything subject to the hypostatic is just ‘God the Son’. I also think there are compelling reasons to hold that it is not possible for God – in a way compatible with their highest good – to extend the immaculate conception to all.
But if I take your comments to refer to universalism itself (i.e. eschatological sinlessness) – and not red herrings about the BVM – then it is certainly not “ridiculous to think that He owes you these things”.
Or to be more specific, I would say that God does *not* owe us salvation in the sense of ‘2’ – my actions do not mean that I ‘deserve’ or ‘merit’ salvation – but he certainly *does* “owe” us salvation in sense ‘1’, i.e. God would not be the Good if he did not save us.
“Actually, I think you would be doing her harm. You would be failing to do what is in your power to secure her salvation, contrary to your moral obligations – as her parent, you have an obligation to obtain for her that grace of baptism. To fail to provide that is to do harm to her.”
I know it would be doing her harm Rooney – that’s why I said I wouldn’t be causing her *active* harm (rather than just harm) to make the point clear that this would be a sin of omission. i.e. while I would not be *actively* harming her, I would be failing to fulfil my moral duties towards her – I would be failing to conform to the good.
My point is that God ‘owes’ us (sense 1) the same. Your worries about not wanting to torture us into compliance or do a Clockwork Orange on us are well-founded but consider:
1) I do not see how this is a valid move for you (personally) to make given that you already hold that God *could*, if he wished, have predestined us all to freely accept salvation (or to be like the BVM) without harm to our free will. So it doesn’t make sense to you appeal to the good of free will and the fact that God shouldn’t ‘force’ us to be good – when you in fact you already believe that God could have made us all like the BVM (which you presumably do not think involves ‘force’).
2) You already know that universalists hold that *if* (per impossible) to create a creature meant that this necessarily created the *possibility* of eternal suffering (even as a result of their own moral choices for which they would be at least partially responsible) then it would be wrong to create on those terms. If that were true, then what God would “owe” us (in your sense of the term, sense 1) would be to never have created us at all.
Basically I think all this talk about the language of ‘owe’ is pointless. You already know that universalists hold it would be evil to create on the condition that hell was a possibility – and that universalists affirm that to create on those terms is incompatible with the Good, i.e. immoral / unethical /wrong.
If that’s all you mean by ‘owe’ – sense 1 – then fine, God “owes” us salvation. But it is illegitimate to then say that it is ‘obvious’ that God does not owe us (future) sinlessness or that ‘we cannot complain’ if we are not perfected etc. This is because this language obviously evokes and appeals to ‘owe’ in sense 2 – because it would indeed obviously be ridiculous to say we merit or deserve to be treated in such a way. But it is not obvious at all that it is wrong if we use ‘owe’ in sense 1. That is precisely what the argument hinges on, isn’t it?
“We cannot complain if God were to give us what we need to avoid sin, rather than the graces of the BVM to be preserved from all sin”.
Again, I ‘could not complain’ in sense 2, but *if it were possible* for God to preserve everyone from sin from the start – in a way compatible with their highest good – and he chose not to, then obviously God would be evil.
Imagine you had a daughter Father Rooney. And you could choose *either* to give her ‘sufficient graces’ to avoid sin – but she could still sin. OR you could give her the grace which meant she would be infallibly be preserved from sin forever. You would obviously be a terrible father if you didn’t bother to do this.
Or if it were not possible for you to give her the graces of the BVM in a way compatible with her highest good – as I believe – but you could either A) create her such that, while sinful, she would have sufficient graces to reach heaven, but it was still possible she’d go to hell; or B) you could create her such that, while sinful to begin with, this would eventually lead her to graces that would guarantee she reached heaven.
Do you seriously think you could choose A rather than B and live with yourself? Do you think a father who did A would be just as loving and perfect as the father who did B?
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David,
I’m not sure how much progress we will make. Semantically, I take sense 1 and 2 to be identical when we are talking about moral claims that people make on us. To merit or deserve treatment is for that treatment to be morally appropriate, for someone to be owed that treatment, for you to be obligated or morally blameworthy if you were to fail to treat them that way. So, I simply see no relevant difference.
Nevertheless, it is clear that you admit the matter of fact: we merit or deserve or it would be morally requisite for God to ensure that we are saved. The facts then are then not so much in dispute.
And, yes, I clearly am aware of harm by omission. I disagree that God does us any such harm by ensuring that we have sufficient helps to avoid sin, rather than ensuring we cannot but avoid sin. As noted, I think there is a clear metaphysical possibility that God could have prevented all sin, or made us all impeccable, and I see no fault on God’s part for setting up the world in a different way. The fact God can do more does not entail He has failed to do enough. That is why I simply reject the Kronen/Reitan principle that God must ensure ‘the best’ is done for each individual. It is false, generates logical paradoxes, and, I think, is a principle at the center of atheist critiques vis-à-vis the problem of evil.
I use the analogy of God forcing or brainwashing people to indicate that the nature of love does not demand that God take any means possible to prevent someone from sinning. God loved us while we were still sinners, and His love for us is not conditional on whether we love Him in return… even if we were to make our bed in hell, literally, God could still love us.
And it is also true that someone can have a means available to them to achieve some great good outcome, which might be in some cases morally permissible, and nevertheless them failing to use those means is not morally blameworthy. The police can prevent all crime by unilaterally locking everyone up, but their failure to do this does not make them culpable for the crime they could have thereby prevented.
So, to apply it to my case, I simply think God could have made us all like the BVM, but that He is not morally obligated to do that. He is not blameworthy for the sins we commit, which we would not commit if He gave us graces that would make us impeccable. And I think this case is obvious, which is why I think it illustrates clearly an absurd conclusion to which universalists are forced: they would necessarily need to conclude that God has harmed them by not giving them the graces of the Blessed Virgin or Christ, or in allowing the Fall to have occurred.
That is rank foolishness (and, I’d even say, sacrilegious), yet it illustrates that universalism relies on principles at odd with the core commitments of Christianity.
A basic principle which I suggest that universalism affirms implicitly that God is the cause, directly or indirectly, of evil.
As you put it, you think that if God created us with the possibility of eternal suffering, God would be doing harm to us. I think this is backwards metaphysics: according to the Christian tradition, God does not cause any evil of sin whatsoever. Nevertheless, we can apply your reasoning just as well (as I did with Kronen and Reitan’s argument) to the case of sin generically.
Recall that for Christians sin is literally the worst thing that can occur: “Take the most hideous of diseases, under which the body wastes away and corrupts, the blood is infected; the head, the heart, the lungs, every organ disordered, the nerves unstrung and shattered; pain in every limb, thirst, restlessness, delirium—all is nothing compared with that dreadful sickness of the soul which we call sin” (https://www.newmanreader.org/works/meditations/meditations10.html).
God foreknows in creating a creature that He necessarily created the possibility of sin. Clearly, it is metaphysically possible and permissible that God never create anyone who could have sinned. Yet, on your own reasoning, if one could have prevented the possibility of grave evil, and it was permissible to do so, yet one allowed it about anyway, then one is doing something morally evil. But, if God foreknows and nevertheless brings about the possibility of sin, God is responsible for it, and thus (by your lights) God is doing something morally evil.
Since I reject that sort of reasoning, I am therefore unconvinced that God has harmed anyone in allowing them to sin, whether that is for a short period or forever, since God could prevent any occasion of sin (at the least, by not creating that person).
As to the last case, I think your analogy misses the mark for the same reason as the former argument: God can prevent all evil whatsoever, yet He does not. I don’t think His allowing sin makes Him a bad parent, since I think He has reasons for allowing it that are for the best. I don’t know what God’s reasons are for allowing sin, although I can imagine some of those reasons (such as what we see revealed in the Cross). But it does not bother me that He could have set up the world differently. I know that He loves us and that all is for the best in this world that He created. So, similarly, I am sure that God’s decision to allow us to sin, rather than constitute each of us impeccable, is for the best. I don’t see anything more than foolishness, and at worst Pelagianism and other spiritual temptations, in trying to convince yourself that God would be wicked for not setting things up as you would wish.
Indeed, I think you get a clear illustration of what it is to say hell is possible by thinking of how universalists would react if they discovered, in the afterlife, that God permitted some to be damned. No matter what happens, no matter how long they were given, not matter how many opportunities for turning to love God, I can envision that it is possible some universalists would still reject Him as loveable. This illustrates to me the deep spiritual problem that lies at the heart of the view: a lack of hope in God for His own sake. Confidence in God that rests simply on convictions about what we think that He will necessarily do for us is presumption, not hope.
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“Yet, on your own reasoning, if one could have prevented the possibility of grave evil, and it was permissible to do so, yet one allowed it about anyway, then one is doing something morally evil. But, if God foreknows and nevertheless brings about the possibility of sin, God is responsible for it, and thus (by your lights) God is doing something morally evil.”
Your conclusion is invalid Father Rooney.
Firstly because it would would *not* be permissible to “prevent” us from sinning – it would be in compatible with free will, which would ultimately mean we would not be able to enjoy the happiness of heaven (which is the only thing which would make bringing about the possibility of sin ‘worth it’).
Secondly, as you must know, universalists do not believe that God has a moral obligation to not bring about the possibility of any evil whatsoever. This is obvious – both because it is constantly and explicitly affirmed by most universalists, and because of the obvious truth that the world is indeed filled with sin and thus God must have brought about its possibility.
There is nothing wrong with creating a creature – and thereby bringing about the possibility of sin or a great evil – *if* and only if 1) it guarantees said creature enjoys an eternity of happiness; and 2) the possibility of said sin or evil is an unavoidable part of the process.
“I don’t see anything more than foolishness, and at worst Pelagianism and other spiritual temptations, in trying to convince yourself that God would be wicked for not setting things up as you would wish.”
It’s not about God setting things up “as I would wish”. It’s just about recognising the God that is the Good necessarily acts for the best – meaning that, at minimum, it does not bring about the possibility of eternal evil, particularly not when he could have bought about the same ultimate goods without realising that possibility. That does not mean it cannot allow the possibility of temporary evils if it is the only means to guarantee eternal happiness – it is this guarantee which makes creating the possibility of evil permissible.
I notice that you did not answer my question. Please have a go, and be honest with me and yourself. If you were about to have a daughter and you had the choice either 1) to provide her with the sufficient means to have the possibility of being saved – but allowing the possibility she would go to hell and suffer eternal suffering (albeit due to her own moral failings for which she would genuinely be culpable for); OR 2) provide her with a guarantee of being saved — which would you do? Could you live with yourself if you chose 1 over 2?
I think you must know that you would be a deeply evil and repugnant man – not fit for the priesthood, let alone anything else – if you would willingly bring about the possibility that your daughter would suffer forever (again granted that it would be her ‘fault’ or her decision), when it was perfectly within your power to prevent this from happening and guaranteeing her free embrace of eternal happiness. What sort of Father would allow his daughter to send herself to hell when he could have had her willingly embrace happiness forever?
Or consider Jesus’s insight that “Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!”. Even evil men know how to give their child good gifts. Even the most evil probably would not create the possibility of eternal torment for no reason. But you think God would treat their children in a way that is even worse than the actions of what Jesus calls “evil men”. This is why I conclude that your ‘God’ is evil.
Relatedly:
“Indeed, I think you get a clear illustration of what it is to say hell is possible by thinking of how universalists would react if they discovered, in the afterlife, that God permitted some to be damned. No matter what happens, no matter how long they were given, not matter how many opportunities for turning to love God, I can envision that it is possible some universalists would still reject Him as loveable. This illustrates to me the deep spiritual problem that lies at the heart of the view: a lack of hope in God for His own sake. Confidence in God that rests simply on convictions about what we think that He will necessarily do for us is presumption, not hope.”
This is is a very silly and demeaning example Father Rooney. I might as well say to you “imagine if when you get to the afterlife, it turns out that actually ‘God’: ordains that all babies must be aborted ; overrides the free will of nuns in order to use them to torture all priests to death / had Jesus marry a goat / any other thing which you conclude to be evil.
The point is that I believe it is intrinsically impossible for the Good that is God to do such things – precisely because they are evil. So if it turned out these things were true, the conclusion would obviously be that this ‘god’ was not actually God in the sense of classical theism at all, and so would not be God at all. But by all means, tell me that you would embrace the God that orders murder and abortion and rape and bestiality if that was the being that met you in the afterlife. So much the worse for you.
Also:
“And I think this case is obvious, which is why I think it illustrates clearly an absurd conclusion to which universalists are forced: they would necessarily need to conclude that God has harmed them by not giving them the graces of the Blessed Virgin or Christ, or in allowing the Fall to have occurred.”
I’ve already explained to you Father that I believe it would be intrinsically impossible to grant everyone the graces of the BVM in a way that was permissible (the same for the Fall). If it *were* possible to permissible bring this about, God would indeed be evil. Tom and others have argued exactly this above. I know that you think this is “obviously” an “absurd conclusion” but that’s just an unproven assumption. Your reductio ad absurdum just doesn’t work I’m afraid.
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David,
If you accept Kronen and Reitan’s account of efficacious grace, as proposed in the article series we are commenting upon, then all God would have to do is to give everyone (what they mean by) ‘efficacious grace’ at the first moment of their existence. Then no further sin would be possible. Now, it is open to you to claim that sin is necessarily instrumental to achieving beatitude. When you say that God preventing sin would be incompatible with freedom, for example, what you could mean is that the occurrence of sin is necessary for the achievement of beatitude. This has nasty implications, however, as it requires that God brings about our sins so as to enable us to achieve happiness. On the one hand, it apparently makes freedom and happiness dependent upon sin. One might wonder whether God can be free or happy, since He is free from the possibility of sin. On the other hand, it entails that God not merely permits sin, but would need to positively intend its occurrence, since we could not be happy or free unless we committed sin. Both of these conclusions are highly repugnant, but implied by the position.
If, to the contrary, you insist it is only the *possibility* of sin that is so required, and this is compensated or justified by beatitude, if beatitude were not achievable without the bare possibility of sin, then I would propose that the possibility of hell is equally justifiable, on exactly the same grounds. I think the possibility of sin alone – taking sin to be a free act by which we lose the love of God and turn away from Him entirely – is what makes hell possible, as (after someone commits a sin) one can persist indefinitely in that state of sin. Yet, if God can permit this possibility of sin, which includes the possibility that people persist in sin forever, on the basis of the good of eternal happiness achievable, then it ipso facto follows that hard universalism is wrong. Since it is possible that all are saved, despite it being possible for each person to go to hell, I’ve noted before the ‘soft universalist’ scenario makes clear that God would have good reasons to allow the bare possibility of damnation to achieve the goods of heaven for each person, as long as He could not achieve that outcome without the bare possibility. And, frankly, that’s all I need for my claims to follow – it would not be the case that God can under no circumstances justifiably allow the bare possibility of hell.
I have already said that I find the ‘daughter’ scenario based on bad presuppositions. From my perspective, I cannot weigh well what the goods would be in allowing the possibility of damnation and what would be the goods involved in ensuring that she was impeccable. I can concede that impeccability is a greater good than creating someone peccable but with sufficient graces to avoid sin, yet it is not apparent that I am doing her harm by allowing the possibility of damnation, without knowing further relevant information of the sort God has. Simply put, if there are very good reasons to allow someone to be peccable, that pertain to the welfare of the persons involved, it seems reasonable to allow that possibility, even if there are other scenarios that are better in other respects. I think there are other goods which might be achievable only because God allows the actual occurrence of sin that separates us from Him – but, for example, if the choice were like the soft universalist scenario above, I think it would be obvious that a choice to allow the possibility of sin and damnation would be justified if this possibility were necessary in order for that person to achieve beatitude. So, it is not obvious to me that by failing to make her impeccable that I would be doing her harm.
The problematic assumption at the core is that you seem to think that God would “create the possibility of eternal torment for no reason.” I agree that God does not do things for no reason. Where we disagree is that I think that God can have good reasons to allow the possibility of sin, and I do not see any way in which we know that God could not have a good reason for it. It seems to me that you yourself agree that God could have such a reason, since you seem to think that the possibility of sin would be justified if it were necessary to achieve the goods of salvation. Similarly, if hell’s possibility were so necessary, then it too would be justified.
Maybe what is at the core is that we give different meanings to the word ‘sin.’ Perhaps you think that sin could only intrinsically be a temporary phenomenon; that nobody *really* loses grace or can turn against God completely, so that individuals would necessarily come to repentance on their own, given enough time, since they would still be loving God in some deep recesses of their heart. I do not think sin is like this. I think sin involves the definitive rejection of grace and turning willfully against God, and that the damage of sin would be irreparable except with divine intervention. I think, if God has good reasons to permit the latter’s occurrence, then He ipso facto has reason to permit hell. And I think God can have good reasons to permit sin.
One disanalogy between the case you give and universalism is that, in your cases, God would be commanding evil. God permitting damnation, as you yourself have noted repeatedly, is not to command evil but to omit to do something you think is morally requisite. If one discovered that there were no such failures, since God had good reasons to permit the occurrence of an evil, then I would think it would be perverse to insist otherwise. So, if I discovered that God’s reasons to permit various evils in this world were different than I imagined, or that He permitted lots more evils that I do not know about, but that He had very good reasons for doing this, I would not be disappointed – it would fit what I know about God. It is obvious by contrast that universalists put themselves in a position to think that a God who does not fit those expectations they have about allowing evils that they think are too heinous would be positively evil.
Second, what I noted is that universalists bank their hopes in God not on the fact that God is good in Himself, but that God would be good if and only if He were to save all. I can imagine, by contrast, a range of actions that would be good. Imagining that God has good reasons for lots of scenarios that we cannot imagine does not mean that we imagine God commands things that we know to be positively evil. If I found out, for example, that we were wrong about God intending to bring about a bodily resurrection, I do not see any reason (in itself) to be disappointed. So too in Scripture, Abraham did not know what God was going to do when He commanded that Abraham offer his son on Moriah, yet Abraham knew that God would not abandon Him and that God was capable of doing many things that Abraham could not predict (such as to resurrect his son). To me, that is an obvious illustration of faith, but quite distinct from the universalist mindset: if Abraham had refused, on account of his conviction that God would be evil if God did not restore Isaac to him by resurrection, he would not have been praised for his faith.
And, to conclude, I think we can illustrate the difference in respective attitudes as follow. The attitude of Christian hope involves the belief that, since God does all things for the best, then, if God allows something, even though it is evil, God would ipso facto have good reasons for doing so. That seems to me a component of the disposition that is hope or trust in God, whom one believes to be Good and therefore trustworthy. Given this attitude, the Scriptural and Christian teaching about the possibility of hell shouldn’t be bothersome. I think it is clear that Scripture, the consensus of the Fathers, and the definitive teaching of the Church through the centuries have insisted that this possibility is real for humans and actual for the demons. Even if I did not think we had *definitive* reasons from the tradition to affirm the possibility of hell (as I think we do), and I merely thought that there were good reasons to believe that the definitive teaching of Scripture and the Church *possibly* or *probably* taught that hell was possible or actual, it simply would not bother me. While I obviously put more weight on such authorities than many online at this site, being an important and integral component to the virtue of faith (as the Catholic and Orthodox traditions have always insisted), I would not be concerned to explain this evidence away. I would know that, though hell is bad, God would have good reasons to allow it, if He did. I would know that even those in hell would not be beyond God’s love and that God would be with them. The fact that universalists insist on something else illustrates to me a seriously different attitude – and, because it is apparently distinct from that attitude of trust in hope, a spiritually problematic one.
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“If you accept Kronen and Reitan’s account of efficacious grace, as proposed in the article series we are commenting upon, then all God would have to do is to give everyone (what they mean by) ‘efficacious grace’ at the first moment of their existence. ”
I don’t know how to respond to this other than point out that this is a severe misreading of the position as presented. In any event, it is certainly not my position – you should know this, given I have explicitly said several times that I believe it would be intrinsically impossible for God to (in a permissible way) to grant the graces of the BVM to all.
“if beatitude were not achievable without the bare possibility of sin, then I would propose that the possibility of hell is equally justifiable, on exactly the same grounds.”
But the two scenarios are infinitely disanalagous. If sin has a remedy which can make it finite, then that is one thing. If sin intrinsically introduces the possibility of an eternity of suffering, such that not even God could prevent it, that is another.
“It seems to me that you yourself agree that God could have such a reason, since you seem to think that the possibility of sin would be justified if it were necessary to achieve the goods of salvation. Similarly, if hell’s possibility were so necessary, then it too would be justified.”
I hold, as you know, that it is possible that there may be a good reason for allowing the *possibility* a finite evil, where the *permission* (not actuality) of the evil is essential to enable the highest good of a person to be achieved. This is very different from holding, as you do, that there may be a good reason for allowing an *infinite* evil to befall a person such that their highest good is *not* met.
“Perhaps you think that sin could only intrinsically be a temporary phenomenon…. so that individuals would necessarily come to repentance on their own, given enough time… I do not think sin is like this. I think sin involves the definitive rejection of grace and turning willfully against God, and that the damage of sin would be irreparable except with divine intervention.”
Sorry to break it to you Father Rooney, but I agree completely. People can genuinely turn away from God, and they certainly could not “necessarily come to repentance on their own”. You are quite right that the damage of sin would be irreparable except with divine intervention.
That does not stop one from holding that it is *necessary* that all will come to repentance and that sin is therefore ultimately finite.
That is because the “necessity” lies on God’s side, not ours. Sinful humanity – considered in and on if itself – could go on sinning forever, sure. But that is a hypothetical unreal abstraction and thus it would be a false consideration. There is no such thing as sinful humanity “on their own” – each moment of our existence depends on God. And because we know that God is good, and because (Universalists hold) it would be evil to create the possibility of endless suffering, we know that God must be able to (and will) bring sin and its concomitant suffering to an end. But there is nothing in me – the sinner – that guarantees I will stop sinning – that guarantee lies wholly with God.
[yes, universalists do often hold that we have a transcendental orientation to the good, but that certainly does not mean that we could repent and become morally perfect “on our own” – it is merely speaking to the fact that, as creatures, moral perfection is a capacity – but this is a capacity which can be fulfilled if and only if God gives us the grace to do so.]
If you want to reflect on this further, consider how you would parse this question: is it possible for Jesus to torture a goat to death? Well, considered from the side of the goat, yes – there is nothing intrinsic to the goat’s nature which means it could not be tortured to death, and nothing external to Jesus prevents us from torturing the goat. At the same time, we can be absolutely certain, with a perfect necessity, that this will never happen happen, because we know that Jesus’ nature is such that he would necessarily never do such a thing. That is exactly the sense in which I hold that sin will necessarily come to an end – not because of us, not because of sin, but because of God.
“I can concede that impeccability is a greater good than creating someone peccable but with sufficient graces to avoid sin, yet it is not apparent that I am doing her harm by allowing the possibility of damnation”, without knowing further relevant information of the sort God has. Simply put, if there are very good reasons to allow someone to be peccable, that pertain to the welfare of the persons involved, it seems reasonable to allow that possibility, even if there are other scenarios that are better in other respects.
It is not apparent that you would be doing your daughter harm by *allowing the possibility of damnation*? Really? You later talk of:
“good reasons to allow someone to be peccable, that pertain to the welfare of the persons involved”
That’s exactly the point Father Rooney – they pertain to the welfare of the person involved! Obviously allowing the possibility of temporary sin – if its possibility is the necessary condition of guaranteeing eternal happiness – pertains to the welfare of the person involved.
Whereas allowing *eternal damnation* by definition does not pertain to the welfare of the person involved! Or rather, it pertains to the infinite deprivation of their welfare!
So we know that whatever “good reason” God has (on your view) for permitting hell, it can’t possibly be for the good of the individual – because, by definition, hell is the worst experience they could suffer. And this is doubly the case when one believes – as you do – that God could have permissibly bought it about that said sinner freely embraced eternal happiness without the possibility of hell. So your “good reason” does not fulfil your own conditions or “pertaining to their welfare”.
Whereas if the “good reason” lies *outside* the welfare of the individual… well, as we’ve discussed before, this would obviously be treating said agent as a means, not an end. If you act – and remember permission is also an act! – such that a possibility is introduced for an agent which is not in the interests of their welfare, for the sake not of themselves or for any other agent, but for some additional principle or ‘good’, then you are treating people as a means, not an end – which is evil.
“One disanalogy between the case you give and universalism is that, in your cases, God would be commanding evil. God permitting damnation, as you yourself have noted repeatedly, is not to command evil but to omit to do something you think is morally requisite. If one discovered that there were no such failures, since God had good reasons to permit the occurrence of an evil, then I would think it would be perverse to insist otherwise. So, if I discovered that God’s reasons to permit various evils in this world were different than I imagined, or that He permitted lots more evils that I do not know about, but that He had very good reasons for doing this, I would not be disappointed – it would fit what I know about God. It is obvious by contrast that universalists put themselves in a position to think that a God who does not fit those expectations they have about allowing evils that they think are too heinous would be positively evil.”
But Father Rooney, there is no (substantive) difference between a sin of commission and a sin of omission.
Surely you admit that, if it turned out that ‘God’ did something which was objectively evil, then it would mean that this ‘being’ was not God after all. That is why you want to show a disanalogy between my examples of God commanding evil vs. what you call merely permitting evil.
But here is the problem. Yes, permitting evil can *sometimes* be morally acceptable. But sometimes permission – which is an act – can itself be an intrinsic evil.
For example, I can have a child and help them learn to ride a bike. Some evil will probably come about as a result of that decision, so in that sense I am “permitting” said evil – but this is not normally seen as sinful. Likewise God creating us despite the possibility of some sin. However if – for example – my daughter were about to drown, and I declined to throw her a life-ring, this ‘permission’ would be an active evil. In fact even throwing the life-ring – giving her the possibility of life – would be an evil if, say, I was an Olympic swimmer who could easily jump in and necessarily save her without effort. I have a duty to save my child. Likewise – I think – God has a duty to save his children.
The same is also true regarding more obviously ‘moral’ matters, e.g. I should not “permit” my children access to pornography.
Basically, Father Rooney, you cannot just stick “permission” at the front of something and automatically conclude that it is not evil.
On that basis, I simply hold that “permitting” the the possibility of an eternal hell is itself evil. This is of no different class whatsoever to my belief that “commanding” or “causing” torture or rape would be evil: there is no relevant disanalogy between them, because permission is an act and all classes of act, including permitting, can be evil. This is why I conclude that it is absurd for you to criticise universalists for their belief that God must not allow the possibility of eternal hell, and that if it turned out ‘God’ did allow it then this would be no real God at all. Because that is – surely – exactly what you believe would be the case if it turned out that ‘God’ commanded the holocaust etc. I understand and accept that we have different understandings of what good and evil are. I doubt anybody has identical understandings of these things. But I do not have an unchristian concept of hope just because I hold that God cannot do evil, and therefore he will not doing anything that is evil, and so that therefore if – per impossible – the being that met me at the eschaton had committed acts (whether through commission or omission, whether as an act of causation or an act of permission) which was objectively evil, then I would conclude that this being was not God. Whether said objective evils are hell or the holocaust is neither here nor there.
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David,
I think we’ve likely reached an impasse. You think it is intrinsically evil to permit damnation. I cannot see any reason that it is necessarily so, and I think we have good reason to reject those arguments that it is. Let me skip a lot of the dialectic to focus on a couple points that will help me frame that response.
I think, in short, the fundamental issues are ‘what is sin’ and ‘what is grace’.
[1] ‘What is sin’? I do take it that the possibility of sin is such that it intrinsically carries with it the possibility of eternal suffering. By ‘sin’ I mean what we call ‘mortal sin,’ to turn completely against God and abandon grace, and so come to hate God (in the sense of culpably preferring other things to Him and ceasing to love Him). If sin occurs, then we can persist in sin forever. Sin is intrinsically infinite that way, not finite, and the fact that God could prevent a sin from occurring or repair it after it occurs does not make sin finite.
When we talk of the reasons that God would permit evil, I agree with you that those reasons should ultimately include the welfare of the individuals who sin. But this is not incompatible with allowing those individuals to sin, or even to persist in sin forever. That is because it is not the *sin* which is beneficial to them. The sin is infinitely evil and is not an instrument to any good. Permitting sin could only be accidentally connected to some other goods, which are for the benefit of the individual, and which God directly intends. So, if God permits anyone to be damned, He obviously does not mean for that persisting in sin to be an instrument to any end – but that is exactly the same for all other sin. God wills no sin as a means to His ends, even ‘temporarily.’ I use the language ‘merely permit’ to indicate this fact.
So, yes, it can be the case (as in my response to the daughter case) that God allows a possibility of sin, and even damnation, for the benefit of the person involved. It is possible there are goods that are possible for that person (and perhaps others) which are not achievable without God permitting sin and the possibility of damnation. When God allows someone to persist in sin, God would intend that they make use of the goods He *did* make possible, which were for their benefit and welfare, and not intend their sin. The fact that they sin, and act contrary to their welfare, does not undermine that what God was aiming at giving them some great goods that were not otherwise available to them (which were for their welfare).
Sin itself is never for anyone’s welfare. God never aims at or intends sin as a necessary means to anyone’s end. So, when God does permit sin, it is in light of goods that are for our welfare – and eternal welfare. But that does not entail that all those goods must actually be used by us. It would remain true, for instance, that God gave us free will in order that we might know and love Him – not to sin – even if we misuse that free will for other ends. The fact we misuse it does not entail that God gave it to us so that we would, for example, ‘learn’ from its misuse; the misuse of sin is never essential to the good God aims at in the gift.
If this were true of sin, then, the fact someone ends up damned would be compatible with God allowing sin and damnation for the good of that person. That person will have freely misused the gifts they were given, gifts not given for misuse but for that person’s welfare. The classical distinction between God’s antecedent and permissive will summarizes this way in which God wills both that each attain eternal salvation, and the goods associated with it, and nevertheless permits that some do not attain to it.
[2] ‘What is grace’? Grace essentially is a share in God’s own life. Grace can enable us, among other things, to be incapable of sin – as those in heaven will not be able to sin. If God were not able to prevent sin, He would seem rather powerless, and we would be unable to attain beatitude. So, yes, God could stop any individual from sinning and being damned, just as He makes the saints secure in their beatitude by His grace.
But God ‘owes’ security from sin to nobody, just as His life belongs by nature only to Himself. So too God does not ‘owe it to Himself’ to make us sharers in His nature, because we are not by nature parts of Him or inevitable products of His will, or anything of the sort. God is by nature the Good. It is true that God must do good, not harm, to His creatures. But allowing someone to persist in sin is not to harm them; God merely allows them to do what *they want to do.* Or, they do not deserve to be sinless and impeccable – if God were to give them the graces necessary to resist sin, that would be enough. God would not be arbitrary or unfair in either case.
In matters that pertain to grace, God has no duties to Himself or otherwise – otherwise, grace would not be grace. It makes as little sense to say God harms us by failing to make us partakers of His life as it does to say He harms us by not creating us. All the analogies you give – of torturing an innocent animal to death, or not helping a drowning child – are disanalogous to grace and moral character. A king who forgives his minister a great debt is acting graciously. The kind is under no obligation to himself or anyone else to forgive a debt. If that same minister were to incur another debt, or to offend the king by harshly demanding debts from other ministers below him, the king has no obligations to forgive the debts again ad infinitum. That minister is doing harm to himself and spurning the gift he was given; the king is not harming him by failing to forgive the debt his minister freely incurred.
Universalism in the end seems to me not very distinct from Pelagianism, right down to the idea that salvation is our due and God would be harming us by failing to ensure it.
The underlying logic of both positions is similar: Pelagians argued God would be unfair if we could not merit grace, since whether someone was saved would be arbitrary; universalists argue God would be unfair if we could reject grace, since whether someone was saved would be arbitrary.
But both are premised on mistaken assumptions: Pelagians assume that, if we cannot merit grace, God would not give us sufficient help to be saved. Universalists assume that, if we can reject grace, God would not give us sufficient help to be saved. That is why, in both cases, they think that God would harm us by allowing us to find ourselves in a state like sin (actual or original), from which we cannot extricate ourselves.
The reality, by contrast, is we do not merit grace by what we do or are. God gives each of us sufficient help, not because of who we are, but out of free love to create us and raise us to His life. But then we cannot complain that God didn’t make us either sinless supermen or that He lets us freely reject (even definitively, forever) what He freely gave us. What He does is His gift, was intended for our welfare, and was sufficient to achieve that end. That we use those gifts of grace and nature badly does not make those gifts intended for our damnation.
To me, then, the possibility of sin combined with the reality of grace is what undergirds the Christian command that we “be even more diligent to make [our] call and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10). God can do what He wants with His gifts, but He is under no duty or obligation to ensure that we *will* accept His gifts, even after we freely reject them. He does us no harm by offering those gifts in a way that we can reject.
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Father Rooney, you are right that we are an impasse. You do not appear to have read or comprehended any of my arguments. Please do not think I am saying that because you disagree with me. I would say that the vast majority of non-universalists – whom I like and respect – understand my arguments, though they disagree with them, and can put compelling arguments against them. Whereas you seem to just spam sophistic attack lines unrelated to what I have actually said. I don’t know why this is so. It is a great shame.
I don’t have the energy to deal with all your misrepresentations but just a few further points:
“If God were not able to prevent sin, He would seem rather powerless, and we would be unable to attain beatitude”
This is a very silly claim Father Rooney given what you have affirmed elsewhere. You claim that God might permit might allow us to be damned “for a good reason”. But this argument only works if the only means by which these goods might be achieved is through the permission to damn. Which means you would have to say that God “could not” have achieved those other goods without the permission to damn. In which case you also have “God could not” in your vocabulary, and you have no right to criticise others. Whereas if you think that God could achieve those goods without permitting us to be damned, then you should obviously stop using ‘the greater good’ argument to justify permission.
“In matters that pertain to grace, God has no duties to Himself or otherwise – otherwise, grace would not be grace.”
But the Good is by definition the overflowing plenitude. There is no external compulsion for God to be good. The language of ‘duty’ is misguided and unhelpful. God just is overflowing goodness – overflowing grace – and thus he is good and graceful. To lack grace is to lack goodness. If you object that grace is not the same as goodness, then you must hold grace to be something distinct from goodness. But this would 1) imply grace is not good, which is absurd; and 2) imply humans could be ‘good’ without ‘grace’ – now that is the true Pelagian position.
“A king who forgives his minister a great debt is acting graciously. The kind is under no obligation to himself or anyone else to forgive a debt. If that same minister were to incur another debt, or to offend the king by harshly demanding debts from other ministers below him, the king has no obligations to forgive the debts again ad infinitum.”
This is a betrayal of the most basic Christian moral teachings. By the standards of ‘justice’ – what I would call the ‘sense 2’ of owing – then of course the minister does not deserve or merit being forgiven. None of us do. But it is clearly something we must do in ‘sense 1’ – we are duty-bound as Christians to forgive *always* and *in all circumstances*.
So if you think grace is something which we can rightly withhold then I’m afraid you don’t have the faintest clue about what grace is. After all, God explicitly tells us that we would be acting immorally – such that we would be judged by God – if we did not forgive unconditionally:
“Then Peter came to Him and said, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.” (aka AD FINITIM)
But then I suppose you would interpret this parable as limiting forgiveness to 490 times.
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David,
Yes, we are obligated to forgive others. But it seems to me you’ve made some elementary confusions in that regard. The fact it is obligatory to forgive means that it not a ‘grace,’ or supererogatory, on our part. If X is obligatory, it is not supererogatory, and vice-versa. Our obligation to forgive others DOES flow from the fact that we have received God’s grace, and thus our act of forgiving is a result of grace, but our obligation is not identical with God’s grace. God’s grace, by contrast, is owed to no one – as in the case of the king toward his minister, not one brother toward another. God does not have any moral obligation to forgive others and does them no wrong if He were to fail to forgive them. Christ repeatedly emphasizes this fact in His parables that salvation and forgiveness of our sins by God is not due us, although receiving that forgiveness by us incurs obligations. I find it difficult to see the coherence in what seems to be an accusation that Christ Himself – by teaching these things – would be involved in “a betrayal of the most basic Christian moral teachings.”
“… this argument only works if the only means by which these goods might be achieved is through the permission to damn. Which means you would have to say that God ‘could not’ have achieved those other goods without the permission to damn. In which case you also have ‘God could not’ in your vocabulary, and you have no right to criticise others. Whereas if you think that God could achieve those goods without permitting us to be damned, then you should obviously stop using ‘the greater good’ argument to justify permission.”
When it comes to whether God could not have achieved certain goods without giving us control over our salvation, such as giving us grace in a way that it was possible for us to reject, it seems to me that there are certain goods involved in this that God could not have achieved by making us impeccable. The fact that God does not achieve those goods for every individual does not entail that the gifts of grace He gives, and His intention or aim, are not for the eternal welfare of every individual.
But, yes, I obviously think there are things God could not do. From the beginning, I’ve very explicitly *not* criticized the very idea that God cannot do certain things. I have criticized the implications of universalism that we are owed or due grace, or that God is impelled necessarily in His goodness or love to give us grace and ensure that we cannot reject it (and would therefore fail in His moral obligations if He were not to do so). I have therefore, and on that basis, criticized the idea that God would not be free to do otherwise than create or redeem or ensure that every individual is saved.
The reason I reject those views is that they are obviously false. It is ridiculous to think that our own creation or redemption or salvation could be deserved or due to us, by our essence or our deeds. It is therefore false that God would be failing in His own purposes in creating those things with a human essence, if He were not to ensure each of their salvation, since that Vision can be naturally or essentially due to no one other than God (given it is God’s own self-knowledge). It is seriously problematic to suppose that God necessarily acts in some maximally good way toward all His creatures, since that generates the dilemmas I point out for such principles.
In the end, then, I think the question of universalism simply comes down to whether you think we are owed salvation. It is obvious to me, as a Christian theologian and a philosopher, that this very notion of being owed salvation, or being wronged by God in not being ensured of it or not being given impeccability equivalent to the saints or whatever, is nonsense – even though you do not see it that way. But it would seem an advance if universalists would be open and honest as to what they believe on this score: that their views entail or imply that God owes them salvation and, for that reason, that God would fail in His duties or obligations towards us if He were not to ensure all of us are saved.
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Let me clarify one thing quickly: “God does not have any moral obligation to forgive others and does them no wrong if He were to fail to forgive them.” This can be read two ways. Some might think of forgiveness as the attitude of loving someone, or, of being ready or disposed to forgive. I take *that* as essential to God’s nature – and I don’t think God can fail to have it. But, on another reading, we might take forgiveness to be, roughly, effecting reconciliation (or something of this sort). And that is what I mean: God is not obligated to effect reconciliation with someone, as in the case I gave of forgiving a debt. Clearly, the latter is what ensuring salvation would involve, not the former.
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“Our obligation to forgive others DOES flow from the fact that we have received God’s grace”
I disagree. We are obliged to forgive others because it is the right thing to do – not because we have received a gift from God. To say that we must forgive *because* we have received something is to turn forgiveness into a transaction – which is legalism and not grace.
“But, yes, I obviously think there are things God could not do. From the beginning, I’ve very explicitly *not* criticised the very idea that God cannot do certain things.”
Right – but I was responding to your explicit and most recent statement where you said “If God were not able to prevent sin, He would seem rather powerless”. This was not qualified in anyway. This argument reduces to ‘God can’t do X thing, therefore he would be powerless (and thus not really God).’ It wouldn’t make sense to make this kind of argument *unless* you otherwise held that it was axiomatic that, by definition, there can be no limits on what God can do. Given you don’t hold that, your tactics just come across as sophistical.
“In the end, then, I think the question of universalism simply comes down to whether you think we are owed salvation. It is obvious to me, as a Christian theologian and a philosopher, that this very notion of being owed salvation, or being wronged by God in not being ensured of it or not being given impeccability equivalent to the saints or whatever, is nonsense – even though you do not see it that way. But it would seem an advance if universalists would be open and honest as to what they believe on this score: that their views entail or imply that God owes them salvation and, for that reason, that God would fail in His duties or obligations towards us if He were not to ensure all of us are saved.”
You are back on the ‘owe’ language again! As you know, I have explained that that the word ‘owe’ has a range of semantic meanings. I have also demonstrated how the language of debt and owing in the Lord’s prayer is precisely the opposite of the more eccentric definition of ‘owe’ that you wish to use (i.e. in the prayer those with the obligation to forgive are not the debtors – those who owe – but instead of the ones who are owed).
As you know, universalists hold that for God to be the Good he will necessarily save all – because that is what is right and the only reality compatible with the nature of the Good – but that this is not correctly or meaningfully described as us being “owed” something because we do not *intrinsically* deserve or merit being treated in such a way (again, compare my example with the goat – there is nothing intrinsic to the goat that makes it impossible for him to be tortured by Jesus – however, something intrinsic to Jesus makes it impossible for this situation to actually occur. Likewise, there is nothing intrinsic to me that means I am ‘owed’ salvation, but because God is the Good, and because can be nothing other than Himself, he must act for the Good which is to save all. That is all universalists are saying.
But yes, we should bring this conversation to a close. I really don’t understand what is going wrong – I am not expecting agreement, but your words suggest not that you disagree with universalists but just that you don’t understand what they are saying. I have never encountered this to anything like the extent I see with you in any other non-universalist. I don’t know if this is related, but I am only sad to observe what I see as your increasingly erratic conduct (e.g. false accusations against Fr Kimel “calling people names” while praising yourself as “charitable”, “loving”, “eirenic”, etc.) and the deteriorating quality of your arguments which – while I’m sure you don’t intend them in this way – clearly come across to most (non-universalists included) as sophistical and trolling. Again, not sure why that is, but I hope it stops. Anyway, take care, keep on fighting the good fight, and I’ll look forward to pints with you in the eschaton.
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David,
Since it seems to me it is easy to get caught up on semantics, let me try instead to refocusing the question on what you take to be the reasons that “…God…will necessarily save all – because that is what is right and the only reality compatible with the nature of the Good.”
It seems to me there are only two ways in which your claim could be true that ensuring the salvation of all is requisite. You can correct me and give me the argument you prefer, if you you think this is wrong.
First option: God would be inconsistent in His creating human beings, without ensuring that they are saved, if their essence was such that God would be harming them by not ensuring their salvation. This seems to be Kronen and Reitan’s position: “Every rational creature is naturally ordered towards union with God /A necessary prerequisite for a rational creature to achieve union with God is that it experiences the beatific vision.” I’ve already argued that God would not harm anyone by failing to grant them grace, because it is no part of our nature that we live God’s life, and that includes granting them God’s own knowledge of Himself.
Second option: God would be arbitrary in ordering the universe if He did not ensure that all humans were saved, because (if He did not) their not being saved would be unfair/unreasonable/arbitrary. Why is it that God would be arbitrary or unreasonable not to save all? It seems to me we have a very good reason He would not be acting arbitrarily or unreasonably not to save some, if those were to reject salvation fully freely and responsibly, preferring something else to God (e.g., Jn 3:19: They preferred darkness to light). Thus, I do not see that things would be arbitrary if God were not to ensure the salvation of all.
In your explanation as to why it is impossible ‘for Jesus to torture a goat to death’ you seem to vacillate between options 1 and 2. Let me explain.
“Considered from the side of the goat, yes – there is nothing intrinsic to the goat’s nature which means it could not be tortured to death, and nothing external to Jesus prevents us from torturing the goat.” But this missed the point. Our discussion was not about the nature of goats and whether a goat would fail to die if someone tortures it. Our discussion involved questions analogous to whether Jesus would do wrong *to the goat* in torturing it.
If you think the animal has some kind of rights (I do), then you think Jesus would do wrong to the goat by torturing it. That’s analogous to Option 1: God would harm human beings by failing to ensure their salvation, since human beings are naturally due salvation. We can contrast that conclusion with another view on animal welfare, such as held by Immanuel Kant, that to harm the goat would not be to do wrong to the goat but only to do wrong to yourself (because you would act unreasonably). This explanation, as I see it, corresponds to Option 2: God would not harm human beings by failing to ensure their salvation, since human beings are not naturally due salvation, but would nevertheless be acting arbitrarily/unreasonably.
I remain unsure which you think to be the right answer. So, yes, I know universalists like yourself hold that “…because God is the Good…he must act for the Good which is to save all.” The important question is why ensuring the salvation of all would not just be good (which nobody disputes) but ‘morally requisite’ or necessarily the case. The distinction between Option 1 and 2 aims to cash it out.
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“Nevertheless, it is clear that you admit the matter of fact: we merit or deserve or it would be morally requisite for God to ensure that we are saved. The facts then are then not so much in dispute.”
They absolutely are in dispute because “merit” and “deserve” do not mean the same that as “morally requisite”. I expressly denied several times that we “merit” or “deserve” this treatment. I showed that the word “owe” and “debt” need not be used in your sense – and then demonstrated that it is used in precisely the opposite sense by Jesus – so you would do well to recognise the difference.
“A basic principle which I suggest that universalism affirms implicitly that God is the cause, directly or indirectly, of evil. As you put it, you think that if God created us with the possibility of eternal suffering, God would be doing harm to us. I think this is backwards metaphysics: according to the Christian tradition, God does not cause any evil of sin whatsoever.”
I agree that “God does not cause any evil or sin whatsoever”. You cannot argue that God does not cause evil and that therefore his allowing us to choose to undergo eternal suffering is not evil. That is what is backwards! First you determine what is evil, THEN you know God won’t do that thing.
So you can’t just blindly assert that God does something, and therefore conclude that said thing must not be evil. And you also can’t just blindly assert that God allows something, and therefore that act of allowing must not be evil. God does ‘the best’ for us – that is Christian hope, not wishful thinking – and it is pretty obvious that needlessly creating the possibility of suffering eternally is not the best.
You are a priest Father Rooney. Don’t you want to do the best by your parishioners? If you had a daughter, wouldn’t you want do the best by her? Would you allow your parishioners to risk hell – albeit where it would be ‘their fault’ – if you could freely and easily bring it about that no such risk of hell existed? You would truly be a monster and a vile evil man if you wouldn’t bring about anything but the best for those in your care, let alone allow them to gamble their lives away to eternal suffering. Surely you see that? So why would you possibly think that God would do less?
And even if – per impossible – your genuinely absurd arguments about ‘what is permissible’ were true, the rest of what you say ultimately amounts to saying “God can do the bare minimum” – what a sad, blasphemous and impoverished picture of God.
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David, all very well put.
I located my impasses with Rev Dr Rooney quite awhile back. He has helped me see various implications of beliefs.
Consider, if you are so led, if the following qualifications to his stance, which is a helpful foil to my own, are consistent with your own.
God could’ve have made us all like the BVM.
He is not morally obligated to do that.
He is not blameworthy for the sins we commit, which we would not commit if He gave us graces that would make us impeccable.
My universalism would NOT necessarily need to conclude that God has harmed us by not giving them the graces of the Blessed Virgin or Christ, or in allowing the Fall to have occurred.
My universalism does NOT affirm, either implicitly or explicitly, that God is the cause, directly or indirectly, of evil.
I DO, however, think that if God created us with the possibility of eternal suffering, God would be doing harm to us.
A “remedy” like everlasting perdition would be prima facie disproportionate to any sin of commission or omission by a finite person.
One could be sufficiently knowledgeable to intractably persist in sin, refusing to cooperate with grace, while otherwise neither totally nor definitively rejecting God (lacking the requisite knowledge to freely do that). Such persons could not justly be abandoned to that state everlastingly, as that would also be prima facie disproportionate.
Definitive rejections of God would require an infallible knowledge of Who God really (not apparently) is, i.e. a beatific vision.
For persons who have not eventually & wholly surrendered, pre-mortem, with sufficient grace & only fallible knowledge, efficacious purgative graces will gift them both the annihilation of any vestige of the vicious part of their secondary natures & any illumination needed to operatively know Who God really (not apparently) is.
I have a confident assurance (not presumption) & trust in God, as revealed by Jesus, to be the Trinity of freely loving acting divine Persons. Consistent with the character of Abba as revealed in Jesus, the divine ends of all manner of efficacious graces have been revealed to us as – not necessary, but – “fitting.”
I believe that all will be gifted the beatific vision & eternal well being. Further, God will do this because He is just and it is just to avoid disproportionate remedies.
Potuit, decuit, ergo
fecit.
Eternal union for all being possible & fitting, ergo, it will be accomplished!
It would be “backwards metaphysics” to believe that God causes any evil of sin whatsoever.
The concept of hell entails that evil, as a parasitic transient existence, will be allowed to become everlasting. That would be tantamount to substantializing it. That would also make divine permission tantamount to divine intent, because that remedy would be disproportional.
Belief in hell is thus backwards metaphysics as the permission of hell – not all sin – is tantamount to believing that God has caused the worst evil imaginable.
As Merton observed [paraphrasing from memory], our faith in God does not mean that we shall never suffer. Being a Christian, in some circumstances can even make our suffering more likely. Our faith in God does mean, however, that evil shall never become the worst.
Thanks for contributing. I enjoy & appreciate your exchanges.
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Amen
“My universalism would NOT necessarily need to conclude that God has harmed us by not giving them the graces of the Blessed Virgin or Christ, or in allowing the Fall to have occurred.”
I’d agree with that in the sense that – for all I know – being denied the graces of the Blessed Virgin is in some way essential for either our individual wellbeing or the wellbeing of humanity as a whole. Indeed I believe this to be the case which – I conclude – is why God has not given us those graces.
You’re quite right that really the evil of eternal hell – or, I think, eternal death/annihilation – is the only thing that we can be absolutely certain is not permitted by God, because these things only would mean that God had failed to guarantee the final welfare of his children, deny the final victory of good and let evil have the last word – unfitting indeed!
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Great Amen, re specific graces given to BVM. Or to anyone else. In some sense, their efficacies are flowing to all.
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p.s. just to pick up on the Lord’s Prayer understanding of ‘owing a debt’ – I’m afraid I don’t think this supports your preferred understanding of the term either.
The prayer commands us to “forgive our debtors” right?.
We have a moral obligation to forgive, right? And you think to have a moral obligation towards somebody is to “owe” them (sense 1)?
But the prayer says that we forgive our *debORs* not our *debtees*.
That is – in the prayer – the moral obligation to forgive is on the side of the person *owed* – not the other way around.
Again, those who suffered in the holocaust – like all of us – have (hard as it can be to fathom) a moral obligation of sorts to ‘forgive’ Hitler. But they do not ‘owe’ Hitler anything – quite the opposite, it is pretty obvious that Hitler is the one who owes them! He owes them repentance, he owes them a world free of genocide, he owes them their lives. That is why the Lord’s prayer states we must forgive our debtors – those who owe us – not the way around. That is why the Lord’s prayer does *not* characterise forgiveness as ‘debt to be paid’ – instead it the exact opposite, it is releasing another from a debt that they owe us.
But again this is just semantics. I am happy to use ‘owe’ in sense 1 when speaking to you, but I won’t accept that this is the only or usual standardised use of the term. ‘Sense 2’ is a common meaning of the term, and I hope it’s clear from the above that ‘sense 2’ must be the way in which it is used in the Lord’s Prayer as well.
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p.p.s. sorry on rereading I see that while I addressed you as Father Rooney at the beginning, I referred to you just as “Rooney” in a middle paragraph – apologies, I just forgot to type that out fully, no disrespect intended!
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Fr Rooney: “…Since God does all things for the best, then, if God allows something, even though it is evil, God would ipso facto have good reasons for doing so…. Given this attitude, the Scriptural and Christian teaching about the possibility of hell shouldn’t be bothersome.”
The question is, do you find it bothersome?
Because honestly, it seems like you do. It seems like you are desperately trying to convince yourself that it isn’t bothersome. And it seems like you are here in the hopes that someone might prove you wrong.
I mean, why else come to a universalist blog? Universalists certainly aren’t the only Christians that find hell bothersome. I think it is fair to say that most, if not all, Christians find the purported existence of hell bothersome. Do you frequent non-universalist blogs spreading the gospel of an agreeable holy hell?
You are rather obviously fixated on universalists—either because, as stated, you wish to be supplied with an apodictic argument for universalism or you are convinced that universalism is a particularly pernicious doctrine and, among all false doctrines, most requiring of correction. I may be wrong, but I can’t help but suspect it’s the former.
If it’s the latter, you must believe that holding a conviction in universal salvation is, in itself, grounds for eternal torment. And if that is the case, we can all rest assured that if God is allowing universalists to be deceived by such a deleterious doctrine, and if we become eternally damned for it, God must have a good reason.
So, rest assured, Fr Rooney. It’s all for a good reason and therefore, it shouldn’t be bothersome.
Just keep repeating: “The possibility of hell shouldn’t be bothersome.”
Repeat that over and over again endlessly…and maybe eventually you will believe it.
I wish you all the best.
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We can conclude from God’s not loving someone that ‘God is Love’ is false without this implying that God has a moral obligation to ‘be who & what he is’ (as the Good, the True, the Beautiful). He is these necessarily, which neither we ‘deserve’ nor he ‘owes’ anyone.
It’s like arguing that since 2+2=4 is ‘true for all of us’ it must be true in fulfillment of some moral obligation, or that since ‘God is the Good as such’ is necessarily true for all of us, God is morally obligated to us all to ‘be the Good’. But this is nonsense. It does not follow that since God loves all unconditionally and immeasurably, and since no exercise of our agency can finally severe us from the effective reach of his love, we therefore ‘deserve’ this love and God is equally morally obligation to love us.
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God allowing someone to sin, and reject Him, does not constitute God’s not loving that person. Otherwise, God could not love us while we are still sinners.
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I completely agree. Would never suggest otherwise.
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Hence, you’ve misunderstood my point entirely.
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Since we are at an impasse, and frankly have been from the beginning, I would like to approach this from another angle.
Also, it is unclear what a resolution to this impasse would even look like. Are you, Fr Rooney, amenable to universalism if a satisfying argument is provided? Or does the sole objective consist in getting universalists to concede that they hold erroneous, unjustifiable positions?
Disclosing your personal perspective would be helpful to put your arguments in context. If you would be entirely forthright in answering these questions, it would be very much appreciated.
1.) Are you personally bothered by possibility of hell? This is not asking as to whether you feel that you *should* be bothered, but whether you *are* bothered.
2.) Would you prefer to believe in universal salvation if it met your evidentiary requirements?
3.) Is it a possible, in theory, to meet your evidentiary requirements via logical argument?
You may say that all of this information is irrelevant to the debate at hand but I’m not so sure I would agree. But regardless, since we are an an admitted impasse, why not move in another direction.
Your unwillingness to respond to these simple questions, should you so choose, can only be taken as deeply revealing.
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Father Rooney?
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Having believed in and defended the majority view on Hell for most of my life, I’m always interested in why people persist in believing it, so I’d be interested in Fr Rooney’s reply.
I believe I read something on Twitter by him in recent weeks to the effect that, all other arguments aside, in the end what decides this question for him is Catholic dogma. The Magisterium has established for believers what the truth is in this matter.
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Fr Rooney has made several replies since this set of questions was posted. I think it is clear that he is not going to answer them. This speaks volumes. It’s time to move on.
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