In his frequently footnoted essay “Three Versions of Universalism,” Michael J. Murray introduces a threefold typology of the principal renditions of the greater hope. Each type, he believes, is philosophically flawed and unacceptable:
- None offer a compelling explanation for why God “God puts human creatures through the earthly life,” with the consequence that both earthly life and its evils are gratuitous.1
- Each denies a “centrally important feature of human freedom.”2
It is the first model that will be of interest to me in this article. Murray names it naïve universalism. According to this view, all persons upon death “are instantly transformed by God in such a way that they fully desire communion with God and are thus fit for enjoying the beatific vision forever.”3 Murray then comments: “no one has endorsed naive universalism.”4
I chuckled when I read this, as it just so happens that I know something that Murray did not know when he wrote his article. Naïve universalism is not a theological construct invented by contemporary philosophers as a foil for reflection on the greater hope. It was, in fact, a popular view among American universalists in the first half of the nineteenth century and was termed Ultra-Universalism. Hosea Ballou was its most famous advocate. Critics derisvely called it “Death and Glory.”5
Ballou discusses his position at length in his book An Examination of the Doctrine of Future Retribution. He begins with a common objection to universalism—namely, the need for the threat of post-mortem suffering to induce men and women to live moral lives. Why do good if I am guaranteed to enjoy eternal bliss anyway? To violently paraphrase Ecclesiastes and St Paul: “If the dead be not punished, let us eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. Death and glory!” Sounds like a great universalist toast.
Ballou does not deny that the threat of severe afterlife punishment (whether temporary or everlasting) may deter some from serious crimes, but he is not persuaded of its long-term effectiveness as a deterrent. But more importantly, promises of post-mortem punishment and reward, he argues, are poor motivators for virtuous living and do not generate genuine love of God. If I only obey God out of terror and dread, I cannot love him. He will always be a tyrant to me; the best I can offer is obsequious compliance. On the other hand, if I only obey God in the expectation that he will reward me, then I cannot love him for who he is. My obedience will be contractual, always determined by my selfishness. God will be nothing more than a glorified Santa Claus who’s “making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” Only the revelation of God’s character as absolute and unconditional love elicits divine charity:
There is no man so entirely ignorant of the laws of the human mind, as to suppose that we can be induced to love our Creator, either by a promised reward, or by threatened torment; and yet these motives are constantly urged on the people for this very purpose. . . . If our Creator is worthy of the love and devotion of his rational offspring, a fact which none will deny, it must be on account of his real goodness to them and if his requirements are worthy of our careful observance, which none will question, it must be because the keeping of them is enjoyment to us.6
Not only are the homiletical pronouncements of future punishments and rewards useless in the creation of authentic godliness, but they are pernicious. Why so? Because they communicate a false portrayal of God. “All such preaching, be it ever so well intended,” Ballou writes, “not only amounts to a declaration, that God and moral virtue are, in themselves, unlovely, and unworthy of being loved, but, as far as it is believed, serves to alienate the affections from these most precious objects.”7 Consider: our pastor is preaching a wonderful homily on the beauty and goodness of our heavenly Father and of the infinite benefits of union with him. “He is the bread of life,” he tells us. “In him all of our deepest desires will be fulfilled.” But then, and with great vehemence, he suddenly declaims: “But if you reject him, if you disobey him and refuse to repent, he will torment you with terrible afflictions.” Will you not begin to wonder whether this God is as loving and glorious as initially presented by your pastor, that anyone “who should make such proposals, and state such conditions, did not believe these things to be of any value in themselves; and the greater the zeal manifested by him from whom such proposals should come, the stronger would be the evidence to us of this forbidding fact”8
So far, Ballou has not said anything with which a contemporary universalist would disagree. Here is where things get interesting. As stated above, Ballou denied eschatological punishment, believing that at the general resurrection all will be raised into a glorified, sinless existence. Ballou thus opened himself to attack on two fronts:
- from his fellow universalists (unitarian and Trinitarian), who believed that God punishes the impenitent for purposes of reform, healing, conversion, restoration; and
- from the Unitarians and orthodox Trinitarians who believed that God eternally punishes the impenitent.
For Ballou, Romans 6:1-11 is decisive, specifically v. 7: “For he who has died is freed from sin.” Pull out your New Testament and read the passage with Ballou’s exegetical eyes. When Paul speaks of death in this passage, he is referring primarily to the death of the body, both Christ’s and our own. His refutation of the antinomian objection depends upon the literal termination of Jesus’ animal existence and our baptismal identification with it. “Shall we continue in sin,” Paul asks, “that grace may abound? God forbid! Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (6:1-3). “What death does the apostle mean here?” asks Ballou. “I believe all will allow that he meant the death of his body.”9 Paul continues: “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (6:4). “There can be no doubt,” comments Ballou, “that the apostle here spoke of the resurrection of Christ from the death of the body.”10 Ballou now attempts to draw together Paul’s argument:
All this being granted, it is seen at once, what is meant by being dead to sin. It was the being baptized, by faith, into the real death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But if that state of being which Jesus, by his resurrection, brought to light and manifested, be a sinful state, there could be no good reason why the apostle should argue that those, who were baptized into the death of Jesus were dead unto sin. Look at the 10th verse: “For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” How did Jesus die unto sin? In his flesh he was tempted in all points, like unto his brethren, because he had such a body, and such a natural constitution as we all have; but when he was dead, it is believed that he was not in a condition to be tempted. And it is further believed that in his resurrection state he was not in a condition to be tempted, or to suffer from the hands of sinners. He, therefore, in that he died, died unto sin; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.11
Sin is impossible for those who have physically died and now live beyond the desires of the flesh. This is true for Christ, who, having been resurrected and glorified, is now beyond temptation; and therefore must also be true for all the departed, no matter the moral state in which they died.
Paul’s refutation of the antinomian objection to his preaching of grace is hopefully now clear. Christians are disallowed from the exploitation of God’s gracious gift of justification because they have been baptized into the death of Christ and are thus summoned to reckon themselves dead to sin.
Ballou’s application of Paul’s argument in Rom 6:1-10 to the question of eschatological transformation is also now clear. “For he who has died is freed from sin” (Rom 6:7). Ballou designates the 7th verse as the “grand maxim” on which Paul’s argument rests. Once it is granted that the word dead means “the extinction of animal life,”12 then the Apostle’s crucial thesis may be liberatingly stated: “whoever is literally dead, is of course freed from sin. And for this very good reason, the body of sin being destroyed, sin can no longer exist.”13 If death is the end of sin for every human being, then it seems reasonable to conclude with Ballou (and Paul?) that everyone raised into a glorified body are necessarily free from the possibility of sin, no matter how wickedly they may have acted in their mortal lives, no matter how vicious their character. Their moral and spiritual state has been changed by sharing in the resurrection of Christ.
But what about repentance? we ask. If there is no after-death punishment, how will the wicked be brought into the love of God? One gets the impression that Ballou is genuinely perplexed by the objections raised to his death and glory eschatology. Do not his opponents understand what it means for Jesus to be Savior? How is this even a question that needs to be addressed?
If one who goes out of this world ignorant of Jesus Christ, and inexperienced in that reconciliation to God, which a knowledge of the gospel effects in the soul, commences his sentient existence in the future state, in an immortal constitution, in which no temptation to sin will even try the soul but where the true light of divine wisdom will direct every thought, and fix the affections entirely on the beauties and glory of infinite goodness, by which the sweetest and most tranquil felicity will be enjoyed, how then is Jesus Christ the Saviour of this subject?14
Repentance is unnecessary in the next life, suggests Ballou. All will be raised into Jesus’ knowledge of the Father, their every thought and affection perfectly and irrevocably fixed on the divine glory and goodness. The absence of repentance in the next life is hardly a problem. Death and resurrection in Christ effects the healing and restoration necessary for the blessedness of the immortal state.
Yes; Jesus must, after all, be our resurrection and our life; he must be to us all, the wisdom and the power of God; he must be to us the truth, and the bright mirror in which we may behold the glory of the invisible God.15
Ballou invites us to meditate upon 1 Corinthians 15:20-57. Consider how St Paul describes the resurrection body which all human beings will enjoy at the eschaton. At no point does he hint at a division between the righteous and the wicked.16 Is not the general resurrection presented as an objective salvific event for all?
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. (15:22)
And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. (15:49)
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (15:54-57)
“But if our ideas of the future state of man,” Ballou writes, “be conformable to the testimony of St. Paul in 1 Cor. XV, in which we are certified, that the state in which all men will be made alive in the resurrection, is Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, it seems unreasonable to believe that faith and repentance will be necessary in that state.”17 Why unnecessary? Because resurrection in Christ is salvation . . . is sanctification . . . is theosis.
But a final question is always put to the universalist at this point, whether it be Ballou, Thomas Talbott, or David Bentley Hart: If God wills the salvation of every human being, does that mean that “he will save them whether they will or not—whether they repent of their sins or not—whether they reform or remain sinful”?18
Ballou advanced a final answer to this question shortly before his death in his article “Salvation Irrespective of Character.” In this piece, he reveals that despite the unitarian understanding of the Deity that he adopted as a young man, he still retained much of his Calvinist upbringing. We see this in two ways.
First, Ballou emphatically upholds the anti-Pelagian sola gratia. Whereas his Unitarian opponents claimed that one’s eternal destiny is ultimately determined by the character one has freely formed over a lifetime, Ballou insisted that God saves sinners irrespective of character—that is precisely what it means for God to save!
Did the Lord Jesus effect the conversion of Saul irrespective of his moral character? The whole subject is seen in this simple question: Was Saul fit to become a Christian? Is a sinner fit to be saved from sin? Is a sick person fit to be cured? Is a blind man fit to have his eyes opened? Are such as are dead in sin fit to be quickened into a life of holiness?19
And of course no one is fit for salvation. If they were, they wouldn’t need a savior. They could simply save themselves by committing themselves to a life of repentance, virtue and prayer. But that misrepresents both the human condition and God’s way of salvation:
Jesus represented the process of the sinner’s salvation by the recovery of a lost sheep which had gone astray. The owner, who went after it, found it, and carried it home on his own shoulder; and Jesus applied his parable by saying, “Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.” Who recovered the sheep that was lost? The owner. Who saves the sinner? Jesus Christ. How does he save him? By bringing him to repentance. Does he do this irrespective of moral character? The reader sees that the question proves either the ignorance or insincerity of him who asks it.20
And if someone should object to the seeming injustice of God in saving those who have died in a state of impenitence by unilaterally bringing them into a state of divine charity, Ballou would remind them that God justifies men and women by his unconditional grace, not by their works and moral progress. “Could any sincere person,” he asks, “reasonably object to all this because it is unconditional as to moral character?”21
In the end, it’s all about love—the love of the Father for his children:
Your child has fallen into the mire, and its body and its garments are defiled. You cleanse it, and array it in clean robes. The query is, Do you love your child because you have washed it? or, Did you wash it because you loved it?22
Second, we see Ballou’s Calvinism at work in his unabashed assertion of God’s soteriological monergism through and in Christ’s resurrection, thus effecting the radical transformation of the incorrigible. For Calvin, only some human beings are divinely elected to glory; for Ballou, all are; but for both, God’s predestinating will is always successful. In his book Treatise on Atonement (1803), Ballou also speaks of the power of Christ to convert sinners from sin to love, thereby reconciling them to their Father.23 Whether he understands this power as resistible by human beings, I do not know. But for our purposes, all that matters is that the sanctification of the wicked is guaranteed. By the glorious resurrection of Christ Jesus, God will be all in all.
So what do I think about Hosea Ballou’s Ultra-Universalism? To be honest, I hope it’s true! I’d prefer to skip the painful purgatorial process altogether and jump directly to eschatological wholeness. What a joy it would be to awaken as a saint filled with overflowing love for my Savior and every human being.
Do I think the Ultra-Universalist construal of the greater hope more likely than the purgatorial proposals of St Gregory of Nyssa, George MacDonald, and Sergius Bulgakov? I have no idea. But purgatory as a process of healing and restoration has long made sense to me. As St Augustine remarked, “While God made you without you, he doesn’t justify you without you.”24 And if the healing process should need a dash of efficacious grace to bring it to its promised consummation—again, I have no objections. I am happy to leave the mechanics of our deification to the absolute Love that is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
I close my article with these beautiful words of the man whose fellow universalists knew as “Father Ballou”:
I close this work, humbly hoping and expecting the glorious increase and extensive growth of what I have (though feebly) contended for, viz. the holiness and happiness of mankind. I look with strong expectation for that period when all sin and every degree of unreconciliation will be destroyed by the divine power of that love which is stronger than death, which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown; in which alone I put my trust, and in which my hope is anchored for all mankind; earnestly praying, that the desire of the righteous may not be cut off.
The fullness of times will come, and the times of the restitution of all things will be accomplished. Then shall truth be victorious, and all error flee to eternal night. Then shall universal songs of honor be sung to the praise of him who liveth forever and ever. All death, sorrow, and crying shall be done away; pains and disorders shall be no more felt, temptations no more trouble the lovers of God, nor sin poison the human heart. The blessed hand of the once crucified shall wipe tears from off all faces. O, transporting thought! Then shall the blessed Savior see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied, when, through his mediation, universal nature shall be brought in perfect union with truth and holiness, and the spirit of God fill all rational beings. Then shall the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which maketh free from the law of sin, become the governing principle of the whole man once made subject to vanity, once enthralled in darkness, sin and misery, but then, delivered from the bondage of corruption, and restored to perfect reconciliation to God in the heavenly Adam.
Then shall the great object of the Savior’s mission be accomplished. Then shall the question be asked, O death where is thy sting? But death shall not be, to give the answer. And, O grave, where is thy victory? But the boaster shall be silent. The Son shall deliver up the kingdom to God the Father; the eternal radiance shall smile, and GOD shall be ALL in ALL.25
Death and glory!
Footnotes
[1] Michael J. Murray, “Three Versions of Universalism,” Faith and Philosophy, 16 (1999): 55.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid., 56.
[4] Ibid. Murray mentions Marilyn McCord Adams as a possible exception but notes that she only entertains the possibility of a miraculous transformation but does not endorse it. Murray directs readers to D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell (1964). Walker writes: “There is only a limited number of possible ways of eliminating eternal torment. . . . All the other ways involve universal salvation. Of these the simplest is that everyone should be saved straight away, at death or the Last Judgment. No one has ever proposed this way. All the remaining ways suppose for the wicked a period of torment before salvation” (67).
[5] On Ultra-Universalism and the 19th century restorationist controversy, see Ernest Cassara, Hosea Ballou (1961), 116-150.
[6] Hosea Ballou, An Examination of the Doctrine of Future Retribution (1834), 22-23.
[7] Ibid., 24.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid., 128.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid., 128-29.
[12] Ibid., 133.
[13] Ibid. I have taken the liberty of rephrasing the quotation from the past tense into the present tense. I trust Rev. Ballou will not mind.
[14] Ballou, 152-153.
[15] Ibid, 154.
[16] “Paul thought of resurrection as part of salvation, a transformation towards conformity to the resurrected Christ, rather than as a prerequisite for rewards and punishments following a general judgment.” Thomas D. McGlothlin, Resurrection as Salvation (2018), 34. McGlothlin does not, however, believe that the Pauline data allows us to say that Paul espoused universal salvation. For example: “Significantly, the Pauline epistles not only integrate resurrection into salvation, but they also fail to connect resurrection to a general judgment. Paul does not say that the dead will be resurrected on the coming day of judgment, when God will repay all according to their works (Rom. 2:5-10). If the vengeance and punishment of eternal destruction unleashed at Christ’s second coming on those who do not follow God involves their resurrection from the dead, Paul does not mention it (2 Thess. 1:6-10). When he does describe the resurrection that occurs at Christ’s coming, he only mentions Christians: first the dead in Christ will rise, then those who are living will meet the Lord to remain with him forever (1 Thess. 4:16-17). Paul’s discussion of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 illustrates well both of these aspects of his thought—his integration of resurrection into salvation and his silence on the resurrection of those who are not united to Christ. The resurrection of Christ serves as the paradigm for all resurrection (15:3, 12-16), and this resurrection has salvific and moral implications, for without the resurrection of Christ the Corinthians remain trapped in their sins (15:17) and the rational lifestyle is one of debauchery (15:32). Resurrection involves a transformation into imperishability, and there is no hint anywhere that the purpose of this imperishability for some might be eternal torments (15:35-55). Quite the contrary, resurrection is presented as ipso facto a transition into bearing the image of the second Adam, Christ. Correspondingly, Paul’s description of what it means for ‘all’ to be made alive in Christ stops short of describing the resurrection of anyone other than Christians” (39-40).
I imagine Ballou respectfully replying to Dr McGlothlin: “Brother, we need to talk further. I may not have a Ph.D., but I have studied the Scriptures all my life. Jesus Christ, I tell you with the greatest conviction, is the eternal life of the world. This the Apostle Paul believed most fervently. All will be saved.”
[17] Ballou, 155-156.
[18] Hosea Ballou, “Salvation Irrespective of Character,” Trumpet and Universalist Magazine, XXII (18 August 1849), 37.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Quoted by Cassara, 150.
[23] Hosea Ballou, Treatise on Atonement (1805), 120-136.
[24] Augustine, Sermo 169.13.
[25] Ballou, Atonement, 228.
(Revised: 2 June 2024)
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
It seems to me that Ballou’s objections to the idea post-mortem punishment of sin and his detractors’ concerns at the “free pass” given to those who die in sin might be resolved by the Orthodox “river of fire” concept of hell / Gehenna, in that though Ballou may be right that all will be equally sanctified and perfected and raised to glory after death regardless of their sins in this life, he seems to assume that this transformation must automatically be a pleasant or at least painless one, which, it seems to me, is an unwarranted assumption with respect to those of us who die determined to reject God and cling on to our sin.
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I do not know how Ballou might have responded to the river of fire model. He might well have deemed it superfluous. What does it achieve that is not already accomplished by death and resurrection?
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Just a gut reaction to that, Fr Kimel. I would respond by pointing out that such an immediate and instant eschatological vision doesn’t comport with experience – life is participatory: all is possessed in fragmentary fashion, marked by growth and decay; nothing is static, things move in and out of existence, constantly changing, increasing and decreasing. Participation by definition excludes possession in full by nature (not to get too Platonic about it, but the lesser participates in something greater and prior) – only God can make such a claim to full ‘possession’, for not only is He good, He is immutable goodness itself. The revelation of Christ was instant for Saul, while yet it took a lifetime of epektastic transformation for Paul to reach a great participation in Christ (from ‘glory to glory’). Ballou eschatology circumvents creaturely epektastis altogether – maturity is instantly granted. I also wonder how is consent given to this embrace of instant bliss – this too is circumvented and rendered superfluous. Ballou’s proposal operates on a radical notion of discontinuation between the person before and after death – I don’t see how we can speak of a continuation at all in a meaningful sense – from wicked impenitent to glorified saint.
That’s just what comes to mind. What do you think?
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Precisely, Robert. It would actually be the case that the wicked person is simply annihilated and a perfect saint created in his place at the resurrection. This could not be the same individual in any meaningful sense. We acquire a sense of self continuity through memory of change and growth through time and experience. Ballou’s ultra-universalism eliminates this but in the process also destroys the original person.
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Somehow my absolute universalism feels a bit ‘limp’ in light of this article. 😉
But seriously my biggest objection to Ballou is that of monergism, I just don’t see a one-sided account of salvation comport with life experience, not to speak of scripture and tradition. And there’s an account of wrongs that have to be given as well, “God is not mocked” – wrongs have to be revealed to be what they are – utterly devoid of value, meaning, and worth in the light of the Light. I suppose this could be entailed in God’s revelation of Himself. So I’m back to the objection of monergism – a robust imago dei means it takes two to tango.
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“Somehow my absolute universalism feels a bit ‘limp’ in light of this article. 😉”
I know the feeling, too, Robert! No fancy speculations from Ballou about how God will save everyone. Just a simple appeal to death and resurrection.
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Robert, let’s do a bit of speculating together. (Christine is at a family reunion, so I don’t have anything better to do.) You know that I am sympathetic to, if not fully supportive of, your objections to Ballou’s ultra-universalist position. I also know that you are sympathetic to, if not fully supportive of, DBH’s transcendental “determinism.” So let’s try, as an experiment, to defend Ballou’s position, despite whatever reservations and objections we may have.
I am a wicked person and I die in an impenitent state. I awaken into an eschatological state of immediate apprehension of the Good. My disordered desires have apparently, inexplicably been healed; my previous attachments to lesser or apparent creaturely goods no longer seem to be determinative for my life–“he who has died is freed from sin.” To my surprise I find I am filled with an unquenchable, indomitable love for God and even for all the people whom I previously hated and disliked. I am saved.
What is wrong with this scenario?
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Sorry if I interject the question, but maybe two answers might be given to your question. Three if we wanted to integrate the first two in a single picture (an option that I believe would be the best one for someone with sympathies for a non-competitive picture of Creator-creature agency).
The first one is the need for epektasis given that we aim to commune with the Infinite. For, if that is the case, insofar I am not fully in communion with the Infinite but am still finite I am not fully healed yet (that is, “fully saved”). Hence, a first suggestion might be to not only distinguish between the states of fallenness and salvation, but also between degrees of salvation. This distinction might also be justified by considering the practices that exist in both Orthodox and Catholic Churches where a distinction is made between the different degrees of intimacy that Blesseds and Saints and the Virgin Mother have with regard to the Lord.
A second answer might be the following: assume, like you did, we take the model of desire that Hart espouses, then even in this life we are already open and directed to the transcendental good. The problem is that I am not freely ordered to the Good in this life (I am in a state of sin). Even though I am directed toward the Good by simply being a creature, I am disordered, hence I am misaligned with my true end and so my will and desire get systematically confused about what their actual object is, ending up picking the wrong one and so relating to it in wrong ways that are detrimental to the both of us (unless that is, the true object somehow freely and graciously reveals Himself to us). Hence, it follows from this that, unbeknownst to me, I have deep down in myself, repressed, covered, disconnected by my daily consciousness, a stream of “my” life that has not been polluted by the rest and whose flow is in the direction of God. This means that, even if only “unconsciously”, also in this life, to quote your words, “I am filled with an unquenchable, indomitable love for God and even for all the people whom I (…) hate(…) and dislike(…)”. And still I am disordered.
Assume now that the post-mortem is analogous to the following scenario: an heroin-addict goes to sleep and when he wakes up he discovers that, overnight, every portion whatsoever of heroin and every portion whatsoever of every possible material one could use to produce heroin went forever out of existence. Moreover, the same happened for every drug the person in question might ever get interested in in the course of his life as an alternative to heroin. Finally, once he realises this, if he does not die of an heart-attack or in some other ways (this is where the disanalogy lies with our post-mortem scenario), but keeps on living, he will finally get better, because nothing of what he might pick up to consume could keep him in his addiction. But it will not be easy for quite some time. This scenario will obviously require the former addict to put some energy into getting adjusted to the way things are now. Analogously the work cannot be done only by God even if God makes it impossible for a person in a post-mortem state to sin again.
One could counteract this story saying that there is a disanalogy between the heroine-addict scenario and a scenario in which God has made a desire for Himself arise in the person in a post-mortem state stronger than it had ever been during that person’s mortal life.
Maybe something that would go in the direction of countering this objection is, firstly, remembering that even if that desire was not strongly felt, nonetheless it was present during the person’s life. Hence the scenarios are not fully disanalogous. Secondly, we may consider those stories where addicts *sometimes* choose to maintain their toxic habits contrary to what they rationally believe to be the best for themselves.
A suggestion, then, that ensues from this second answer is to distinguish between three different types of distinctions (sorry for the word-play): (1) between being in a sinful state and being in a non-sinful state; (2) between there being the possibility in a certain context for someone to commit sins and there not being the possibility in a certain context to do so; (3) between degrees of freedom from evil.
The reason for distinguishing between the first two distinctions is that if one is not in a sinful state and does not have the possibility to commit sin, then it does not follow that if he were to have that possibility again, he would not end up doing it again. This maybe could be also justified in terms of practices present in Catholic and Orthodox Churches. The practice I have in mind in this case is confession: for, once I truly confess myself, I am not in a sinful state anymore. Nonetheless, since there are many occasions for sinning again, I might end up committing a sin once more. One then could think of death like a confession after which every occasion for sinning has been removed. But this does not mean that were these occasions to be available in the post-mortem period, had I not gotten detached enough from my idols and had my will not gotten strengthened enough yet, I would not choose them once more.
For what regards the reason for positing the third type of distinction consider Plato’s Myth of the Cave: once the prisoner gets out of the cave, he cannot look directly at the sun yet, even if he is in the open. He needs to start looking on the floor to get his eyes used to the light of the Sun. He then will slowly proceed at looking at more luminous things, until his eyes will be able to look directly at the Sun. This is a distinction that is analogous to the one between degrees of healing/salvation,for the more one is free from evil, one is healed and the more one is healed, the more one is free from evil. If one were to think that being fully healed coincides with being fully united with the Infinite, this would imply that for a creature (which by definition is finite), the process of healing and purification would be infinite. Hence, the need for something like epektasis and, maybe, also the need for us to stop worrying about ourselves (there will never be a time finitely distant in the future we will be justified in not worrying about not being the best we possibly could be).
This third distinction nicely dovetails with the other distinctions and ease us, I think, into a non-competitive construal of Creator-creature agency
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Excellent comment, Gios. Thank you. I will need to ponder your reflections.
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Gios, regarding your second paragraph. Do I understand you rightly that because human beings are finite yet are created for communion with the Infinite, epektasis is a metaphysical necessity? Moreover, this epektasis entails degrees of healing/salvation?
Putting aside the contrary position of the Latin scholastics, my question is this: Why is epektasis incompatible with Ballou’s proposal? That’s not clear to me.
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For what regards the first question I am tempted to say yes. It seems to be a consequence of a claim which I have seen defended many times on this blog and which I am committed to. The claim is that it is an essential trait of creatures their being called to *commune more* with/participate more in the Infinite (not just commune, otherwise it would mean either that a creature could exist without being minimally in communion with the Infinite and then what we call “the Infinite” would not be actually the Infinite, or such things would not actually exist, contrary to our assumption). I think that negating this claim would be equivalent to taking nature and “supernature”/grace to be mutually exclusive categories (which is a problem if we want to call who we call the Graceful also the Infinite).
For the last two questions I think that an answer to the third requires an answer to the second first: I think epektasis implies there are degrees of salvation because epektasis has to do with “degrees” of partecipation in God (for more on this point see in the first PostScriptum). Having said that, if we then conjoin the assumption that there is such a thing as epektasis with the assumption that God is the Infinite, then it follows that there is not an highest degree of salvation/health (where I take a degree of salvation to be the highest one just in case once that degree has been reached by a person S, S cannot be more “healed”/saved than S actually happens to be at that moment and so S cannot commune more/being more intimate with God than S is communing/being intimate at that moment).
I think that what Ballou says (or implies) is that there is such a supreme/highest degree. If my interpretation and the argument I just gave are correct, then Ballou’s thesis would either require us to drop the assumption that there is such a thing as epektasis, or the assumption that God is the Infinite (or both). Be it the former or the latter the assumption we reject, this rejection amounts, it seems to me, to the denial that we are teleologically Infinite.
P. S.: In case one wonders why I seem to presuppose that there is some sort of one-to-one correspondence between degrees of participation in God and degrees of salvation, the following is my attempt to prove this connection between salvation and epektasis. Notice that I don’t take talk of “one-to-one correlation” to be totally correct and to not require further elucidation, because otherwise it would follow that Jesus Christ, the Incarnated Son, on the Cross would have been participating less in/of God than an healthy infant born in that moment would have been because of His sufferings. But I take this to be a fruitful paradox to investigate, hence, even so, I don’t feel the need to disparage talk of one-to-one correspondence.
What I will try to show then is that: if someone participates more/less in God, then it follows that that someone is more/less healed, and vice versa. A source of inspiration to this claim is Ireneous’ famous quote: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive, and the glory of the human person is the beholding of God”.
Let’s assume that epektasis is about the person’s call to participate more of God and that to participate “more” of God (whatever that means, since God is simple) implies that it is possible for someone to participate “less” of God (and vice versa).
Let’s start with the conditional “if a person S is more healed than S could have been, then S is participating more of God than S could have been”. I take this to be straightforwardly true, because otherwise S would be more healed independently of participating more of God, that is, independently of God, which is the source of every possible thing whatsoever, and so the source of every possible good (including that is, the good of one’s better health/major degree of “healingness”).
We can now proceed to the conditional “if a person S is participating more of God than S could have been, then S is more healed than S could have been”. There are three types of arguments I can think of that ‘prove’ the truth of this conditional:
1. if a creature S participates more of the Creator, S is more in accord with S’s creaturely nature. Hence, being in accord with him/her/itself, S is more healed than S would have been had S participated less of S’s Creator (for S would have acted less in accordance with his/her/its being a creature, which is an essential feature S has, that is a featurw without which S would not be S)
2. if it is an essential trait of a creature the call/vocation to commune more with the Creator, then not to take heed of that call is to act contrary to one’s nature. If S acts contrary to S’s own nature, that action by itself constitutes and determines a worsening in S’s overall health. Hence, to keep one’s health one needs to always take heed of the call to commune always more with the Creator. Moreover it would seem that the more S takes heed of S’s own vocation (and acts in accordance with it), the more S is attuned with/ordered in accordance to S’s own creaturely nature, for the more S realizes S’s end, the more S realizes/actualizes S’s nature. Hence, the more S realizes/actualizes S’s nature, the more S acts orderly. And finally, the more S acts orderly, the more S is healed.
3. I think there are now an infinite amount of different, but analogous, roads to reach our end. To outline just some of these “roads” : the first one deals with God the One, the second with God the Logos, the third one with God the Infinite, the fourth one with God the Beauty, the fifth one with God the Truth, the sixth one deals with God the Good, and one could go on. I think that, maybe, that there are as many roads to that conclusion as those names of the perfections which are also names of God. The idea is that if one participates more in God the P (where “the P” is the name of a perfection), which is equivalent to say, if one participates more to the P , that person will have been perfected more than he/she would have been had he/she participated less in the P. From that fact that a person S has been furtherly perfected under the respect P (which I take it to be the same of saying that S has become more ordered to what is S’s own end under a certain respect and, so, more virtuous under that respect), it would follow that S would be more healed/saved than had S participated less of the P (for S is more attuned to what is S’s nature under the respect of the P, that is,S’s own creaturely nature, and to S’s end).
I give two examples to better illustrate this pattern of reasoning:
(A) if God is the One, then if one participates more of God the One, then that one becomes more at one with God the One. This means, that that one becomes more at one with the One. This implies that a person that participates more of the One becomes himself/herself “more one” than he/she would have been otherwise. By being “more one” / “less one” I mean that the person was more/less unified internally and externally (with his/her neighbors), less/more fragmented. Something on the line of this saying from the Desert Father Nilus: “he who mixes with the multitude gets many wounds”.
(B) if God is the Good, then whether one were to participate more/less in God, this would make it the case that that he/she participated more/less to the Good. Hence, by participating more to the Good it would necessarily follow that he/she would be overall in a better condition (and so, more healed) than he/she would have been by participating less to the Good. Hence, he/she by participating more/less in the Good is more/less healed, i.e. more/less saved. Hence, he/she by being more/less healed/saved, he/she participates more/less in the Good, that is, he/she participates more/less in God.
P. P. S. : a lot of what I said here has been inspired by Maggie Ross’ work on theosis (and so, implicitly, on epektasis). There’s a lot of interesting things that can be found in her blog on similar topics. Two examples are:
http://ravenwilderness.blogspot.com/2013/05/more-development-from-al-mozol.html?m=1 ;
https://ravenwilderness.blogspot.com/2008/10/excursus.html.
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Gios, I’ve read everything that you have contributed in this article’s comboxes as of 21June. Your reflections are thoughtful & coherent. Your way of expressing them is very accessible. Thanks for sharing. I am deeply sympathetic to your overall thrust.
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You’re very welcome! And thank you for your kind words 😊
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If death is the end of sin, it would equally be the end of all deeds, including the good deeds that the New Testament indicates we are saved to do.
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To begin I would say that for me personally my theological convictions are deeply resurrection-centric, but my main issue with Ballou reading in regards to the resurrection is that he turns the Christian God into nothing but a “Deux ex machina,” that the resurrection is just a plot device to bring about a resolution, that the resurrection becomes a catch all device become a safety blanket, and if Christianity understands metionia as to turn around or as a sense of turning from one form of being to another (hence Saul becoming Paul) a sense of conversion, or contrition of heart, then I would have to disagree with Ballou ultra-universalism, but not specifically universalism in general.
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How about this twist. The concept of the Christian God is disgusting and abhorrent. I reject the claim of love and goodness in the face of unredeemed and excessive suffering. There is no defense love can make in the face of this reality. I die remembering the wicked indifference of this deity making him unfit for worship. What is my state? To be in heaven against any desire to pretend this God is good? Or to be in hell or non existent holding to the truth that love is not found in the baseless claims of this Christian God? It seems that this flavor of universalism, and universalism in general, assumes everyone is interested in a god that is abusive and/or indifferent to the entirety of the natural world. Is the assumption they are in the wrong in their experience and view of the workings of the world and the history of religious abuse in the tradition of Christianity? How will redemption look for those that hold this view?
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That’s not really a twist, Nicholas, is it? If God is truly abusive and evil, then Christianity is false. Nothing more need be said.
https://harleyvoogd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/dbh-the-devils-march.pdf
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Where is the “super like” button??
“The Devil’s March” – David Bentley Hart at his best! Read and reread!
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Of course Nicholas – but without redemption we can’t really speak of a Christian account, can we? God became a creature to redeem His creation – that after all is the crux of the Christian claim to truth and goodness.
You are disinterested in a small god – good for you!! The God who is love cannot but be desired and desired above all. To reject God is to not to have known Him. Our redemption will be to embrace the One that we know to be Good, and True and Beautiful.
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“To conquer death you only have to die, you only have to die….”
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Robert, that line from Jesus Christ Superstar reminded me of the following poem by Rumi:
I died from mineral and became a plant,
Then I died to vegetable and became an animal.
From the animal state I died and became human.
Why, then, should I fear death?
When have I become less by dying?
Soon I shall die from the human condition,
So that I may pass into the realm of angels.
From the state of angels too I must escape,
Everything perishes except His Face.
Once again I shall die to the angelic state,
And become that which cannot be conceived by any imagination.
Then I shall become non-existent,
non-existence said to me as an origin,
verily, “Unto Him we shall return.”
Rumi’s lines also suggest that the entire drama of evolutionary and cosmic history are one vast epektasis. We die only to rise into a more glorious state, and, in the end we shall die completely into the Ineffable Nonexistent One like a drop of water merging into the sea: the fana of the Sufis or the mahasamadhi of the Hindus. I believe that Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius and Plotinus would all have approved.
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It may be that death is much harder to effect than we usually think. We think it is hard to experience the suffering of death, but that death itself requires no effort on our part, it just happens and we suffer it. Maybe in that sense death is not easy at all, and actually very uncommon.
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I think that this may be possible. In some ways, it is the only outcome that makes sense. We may be able to infer how this might work from our daily transition from sleep states to waking states. We are well acquainted with the daily state-transition between sleep and waking, two entirely distinct states of being. I believe it is no coincidence that both Christian and non Christian mystical traditions refer to encounters with divinity as ‘awakening.’ This may be more than metaphor. We are told that the transition between our state of normative consciousness and the illumined state are like the distinction between dreaming and waking consciousness, although to an even greater degree, infinitely greater.
There is a certain continuity of self from our dream state and our waking state, which is why we can speak about having experienced the dream. The very same subjectivity that experiences dreams also experiences waking states. At the same time, our waking self is not identical to our dream self, even though our core subjectivity remains in each.
I can be running from a wolf in my dream only to be awakened and instantly transported to the waking world. My state has changed instantly along with a concomittant instant change in experience and, more importantly, knowledge. I’m immediately aware that my prior experience was an illusion, as compared to my current state. While I was immersed in the dream state, it was anything but illusion. With my expanded knowledge, I’m automatically—and instantly—freed from the conditions, constraints, and ramifications of the dream state.
Aldous Huxley wrote, “Knowledge is a function of being. When there is a change in the being of the knower, there is a corresponding change in the nature and amount of knowing.”
Our self in each condition: unconsciousness→ dreaming→ waking→ super-waking (illumined)—are, to a certain extent, defined by the context of the experience in which the self is immersed. There is both a continuity and discontinuity between each form of being/state of knowledge.
In dreamless sleep, there is nothing to experience and as such, the self is correspondingly non-existent. In this context, there is no experiential content which reduces the subjective self to nothing.
Your self is destroyed and recreated every time you are submerged into deep dreamless sleep and emerge from this condition and yet…you continue to be you. It is a profound discontinuity, and yet to you—as subject—it all flows.
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Robin, I very much like your reflections on dream and waking states and how they might be analogous to the state of a wicked person awakening into a state of sanctity and happiness. There would be continuity and discontinuity in personal identity–and yet the same “I.”
Clearly the transition would be a surprise and shock to the person: their memories would remain intact yet now transfigured by their direct experience of divine goodness and love. Why think it would be an unwelcome surprise and violation of autonomy? They might well experience it as a rebirth into a new and superior way of being, an unlooked for falling in love with the God they never knew, a discovery of their true selves.
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