Syncretistic Catholicism

another minority report

Syncretistic Catholicism where any Anglican, Episcopal, Roman & Orthodox

consensus informs core beliefs & divergences are received as valid theological
opinions

Conversations About Universalism – Spring 2023

These are thoughts evoked by Tom Belt’s recent article – The God of the
PossibleOur moral intuitions & aesthetic sensibilities are not “mere” but are
integrally intertwined with our discursive reasoning in every human value
realization. To speak of an “axiological epistemology” is to utter a
redundancy.That’s why Scotus’ primacy of the will doesn’t devolve into
voluntarism or Peirce’s aesthetic primacy — hedonism.

That’s why Merton said that, often, truth comes flying in on the wings of
beauty & goodness.That’s why Lonergan issued the imperatives to be
attentive, reasonable, intelligent, responsible & in love.That’s why so many,
formatively, begin with right belonging (orthocommunally), which then gifts
us right desiring (orthopathically), which then gifts us right behaving
(orthopraxically), before finally awakening to a right believing (orthodoxically).
Only when taken together will these imperatives lead us to our ever-
increasing human authenticity or right becoming (orthotheotically).Our faith
journey involves knowledge that’s propositional & gnoseological as well as a
participatory & operative knowledge.

That’s why Stump urges analytic theologians to engage logic & Franciscan
knowledge in tandem. That’s why infernalists know that, beyond their
arguments, they must indeed attend to our affective & evaluative
dispositions.

That’s why some do bother to engage us holistically, by using storytelling &

concrete examples, to complement their formal arguments. That’s why they
know, in both their heads & hearts, that restorative, remedial & retributive
punishments must be proportional to be just and that, otherwise, a moral
modal collapse will ensue, eschatologically. That’s why some will dismiss
eternal conscious torment, while others will provide examples of how hell’s
just not nearly as bad as most have imagined. It’s more like staying at a
suburban Motel 6 while your kinfolk are in the downtown Mariott; so, eat,
drink & be merry, for all may, can, will & shall be hell, ahem, well.

Those with eyes to see, though, know that allowing the possibility (running
the risk) of unintended eternal evils (e.g. an everlasting peccability) as an
unavoidable risk isn’t morally justifiable because the retributive (&/or
restorative) weight of such an infinite perdition (e.g. eternal purgatorial fire)
would be WAY disproportional, by definition, to any offense that could be
committed by finite, fallible persons.

That scenario collapses, therefore, per double-effect & cooperation with evil
type principles into ‘directly intending’ – not ‘merely permitting’ – an evil. And
no, one can’t coherently recruit Nyssen’s eternal, ecstatic epectatic dynamic
as aesthetically, morally or logically proportional to an everlasting purgative
sequestration (of course, state of being, not place). Given certain
circumstances, then, permission can become tantamount to intention. Given
certain circumstances, evil as a parasitic existence can become, for all
practical purposes, a substantial existent.

The whole time I was reading Tom’s article and the responses, apposite &
otherwise, I was thinking about my favorite General Audience of Benedict
XVI.

Lastly, Duns Scotus has developed a point to which modernity is very sensitive. It is
the topic of freedom and its relationship with the will and with the intellect. Our
author underlines freedom as a fundamental quality of the will, introducing an
approach that lays greater emphasis on the will. Unfortunately, in later authors, this
line of thinking turned into a voluntarism, in contrast to the socalled “Augustinian
and Thomist intellectualism”. For St Thomas Aquinas, who follows St Augustine,
freedom cannot be considered an innate quality of the will, but, the fruit of the
collaboration of the will and the mind. Indeed, an idea of innate and absolute
freedom – as it evolved, precisely, after Duns Scotus – placed in the will that
precedes the intellect, both in God and in man, risks leading to the idea of a God
who would not even be bound to truth and good.

The wish to save God’s absolute transcendence and diversity with such a radical and
impenetrable accentuation of his will does not take into account that the God who
revealed himself in Christ is the God “Logos”, who acted and acts full of love for us.
Of course, as Duns Scotus affirms, love transcends knowledge and is capable of
perceiving ever better than thought, but it is always the love of the God who is
“Logos” (cf. Benedict XVI, Address at the University of Regensburg, 12 September
2006). In the human being too, the idea of absolute freedom, placed in the will,
forgetting the connection with the truth, does not know that freedom itself must be
liberated from the limits imposed on it by sin. All the same, the Scotist vision does
not fall into these extremes: for Duns Scotus a free act is the result of the concourse
of intellect and will, and if he speaks of a “primacy” of the will, he argues this
precisely because the will always follows the intellect.

Toward a More Coherent Theoanthropology

Rather than consider certain theo-anthropo stances over against, I’ve looked
for aspects of truth, beauty & goodness in each to see if any apparent
 dichotomies might be dissolved. Consider sufficient:efficacious;
omnipresence:indwelling; synergism:monergism; im/peccability;
in/ancaritability; ir/resistible; justifying:sanctifying; un/elect; intellect/will;
formal/efficient; assent, refusal & quiescence (absence of refusal);
in/compatibilism; natural:personal; necessary:fitting; determination:freedom;
inter alia. It’s a long (1500 pp) story, but oversimplifying it, I’ve found that if
we allow many of the realities in certain competing theologoumena,
specifying some as universal, others – particular and some as
extra/ordinary, each can find a place in a coherent stance.

Certain dichotomies do have to be sacrificed if we want to salvage all of the

above divine realities.

In order to coherently hold all of those above realities together, any artificial
extrinsicism must be ditched re nature:grace. Transient purgation would stay,
while eternal perdition would have to go.

How I Read DBH & JDW

– And, if I’ve misread them, how I’ve appropriated them in my heuristic

Speaking essentially, consistent w/participation & analogy (of whatness), a creatio ex Deo
stance, whether Neoplatonic or neo-Whiteheadian, can secure the hypostatic realities of
humanization of the divine, incarnationally, and divinization of the human, theotically. This is
to say that it secures the natural theophanic harmonies of the divine & human.

I like to use emanation to refer, analogically, to both Monarchical & Christological essential
self-determinations of universals, which are both exemplifiable, when infinitely & absolutely
immanent, as well as signifiable, when finitely & relatively instantiable.
Speaking of persons, consistent w/perichoresis & a semantical univocity (howness), a Neo-
Chalcedonian stance can secure the hypostatic reality of our mutually constituted identities,
ie. It secures the interpersonal Christogonic harmonies of the divine & human.

I like to use generation to refer to the dynamics of both the infinite Trinitological as well as
the finite Christogonic (theophanic) personal otherings (via a multiplicative monism or
mereological panentheism).

Both natural & personal differences are therefore harmonious.

Because creaturely essences are primordially grounded in differences between relative &
divine perfections, the natures of all creaturely autonomies are essentially & ineluctably
harmonious with & participate in the Logos, ontologically.

The divine and human differences don’t present, then, in any violent sense, such as if they
were grounded in some being vs nonbeing nihilistic struggle.

Because creaturely identities are primordially grounded in differences between mutually

constituted I – Thous they are “embodied antinomies” – not in any volitionally competitive
sense, but – in an intentional - absential sense, teleologically.

Perichoresis refers, then, analogically, to Trinitological &

Cosmotheandric interpersonal communions and Christological essential harmonies.

Note: Bracken’s Spirit & Society appropriates Hegel in a way that could be used to vindicate
an Hegelian Christogony & neoChalcedonian syntheses from charges of theogony.
Perichoretically, per the corporate Oneness that theophanically manifests unitive acts of
understanding & love, the Christogonic Totus Christus would refer to the One concrete social
Absolute in terms of a dynamical & epectatic interpersonal unitive doing.
Heaven is Our Eternal – Temporal Universal Co-Dwelling (not a future
contingency)

It’s because I’m committed to an eternal – temporal simultaneity that I’ve spoken

more so in terms of ephemeralities vs eternalizations in an already –
thereness context, which more so maps to JDW’s
co-effectuation thesis.

Each finite rational agent’s eschatological horizon would involve an epistemic closure that
includes personalized forms & degrees of purgation.

The lack of any universal evil residue in the Totus Christus implicates

the particular purgation of parasitic evils in every member as we’re mutually constituted.

Perdition doesn’t refer in this system but we can employ its universalist properties as a foil to
competing eschatologies.

Transient purgation moreso would differentiate from everlasting perdition, qualitatively, vis a
vis the in/finite in terms of absolute ir/remediability than strictly in terms of duration.

That we can’t avoid references to the dis/proportionality, quantitatively, in terms of temporal

duration, i.e. transient vs everlasting, might be an artifact of our epistemic distancing and
fallible God-talk.

That’s all to recognize that, because we gaze through a glass, darkly, at phantasms of the Real
One, we’ll interpret every proleptic glimpse of each of our particular eschatological
fulfillments in Christ as if it’s a vision of a future contingency rather than a peep at
our heavenly eternal – temoral co-dwelling.

This is really a foil, then, to a qualitative disproportionality between purgation and perdition,
which transcends our temporal conceptions. It’s a disproportionality that would violate – not
only what I believe are most people’s moral intuitions & aesthetic sensibilities, but – a
putative divine fittingness, which would be analogous to those time-honored principles, which
morally justify double effect & cooperation with evil. That’s the locus of a moral modal
collapse, where divine permission would become tantamount to intent and evil’s parasitic
existence would become, for all practical purposes, substantial.

The Degree of Epistemic (Dis)Parity Between Majority & Minority

Eschatologies

Some distinguish logical defenses & evidential theodicies too neatly.

I, too, have said that I positively eschew the latter, while grateful for the
former.

But isn’t that a tad at odds w/my fallibilist, holistic, axiological epistemology?

After all, my cumulative case stance gives more than a nod to our, more &
less, shared moral intuitions, aesthetic sensibilities & common sense.

So, more rigorously, the epistemic divide’s not between analytic arguments,
logically, & robustly probabilistic inferences, evidentially.

Our defenses are, rather, weakly probabilistic or plausible, merely abductive

even.

Theodicies, though, make a pretense of interrupting, with inductive testing,

what they might otherwise fear to be a nonvirtuous cycle of abductive
hypothesizing & deductive clarifying?
One telltale sign of theodicies is how their authors will – not only explain, but
– even make predictions regarding realities that are (even to them, when
they’re not being disingenuous or hyper-rationally specious) aesthetically
repugnant, morally unintelligible & common sensically absurd.

In so doing, they can trivialize the enormity of human suffering & cursorily
dismiss the immensity of human pain.

So, where has this consideration taken us?

Perhaps onto familiar epistemic territory, where weaker arguments are easier
to defend, where our stances have merely avoided any ostensible
unreasonableness, where we formulate arguments without recourse to
argumentation (cf Peirce re the Ens Necessarium), where our tautologies
compete equiplausibly with others’?

But, not all tautologies are equally taut, n’est pas?

We don’t navigate away from solopsism through argumentation or toward
common sense notions of causation?

We employ the reductio ad absurdum in conjunction with our evaluative

dispositions. We combine our gnoseological, cognitive mapmaking with the
operative knowledge of our participatory imaginations, both which involve the
radically social assists of our personal trust & love relationships, which can
justify varying degrees of legitimacy to the manifold & multiform authorities
in our lives.

Fast forward, there’s no denying God is in the dock. A process approach with
an aesthetic teleology won’t get Him out any faster than the free will
defenses of classical theists. What gets God out the dock for me has not
boiled down to either case theories (defenses) or factual circumstances
(theodicies).

Using an analogy to criminal law, God should be sprung based on His

character & hagiographic character witnesses. Those, alone, can ground a
reasonable doubt independent of case theories & fact patterns. Either case.

What matters to me is that my minoritarian mysterian appeal leaves intact at

least a rudiment of my common sense, moral intuitions & aesthetic
sensibilities. It asks me to believe they will be surpassed & fulfilled by a
weight of glory – unimaginable.

Contrast that with the majoritarian mysterian appeal, which asks me to

believe that my epistemic suite – vis a vis my assessments of what are
undeniably abject horrors – will have to be placed on the curb.

Are there no defensible distinctions to be drawn between remediable &

irremediable horrors? Is there no clear disproportion?

Here’s another appeal: I’m a Daddy & a Grandpa. Jesus revealed His Daddy to
me. WWJD?

There’s an entire constellation of other theo-anthropo realities that support

my indicative universalism and most of it draws on stances that are time-
honored theologoumena.
I don’t ambition throwing over the majority position. I only aspire to advance
an indicative universalism to theologoumenal status alongside the
subjunctive as a valid minority opinion.

The better universalists can argue (properly conceding) the degree of

epistemic parity between their own & competing eschatologies, the more
defensible will be their claim that an indicative universalism should be
granted theologoumenal status alongside the subjunctive.

Locating the Disproportionalities Between Purgation & Perdition

It doesn’t work to compare reality’s radically unintelligible transient &

everlasting evils quantitatively. It’s not like we can relate them, algebraically,
to conclude that multiplying absurdity by infinity doesn’t change a “damned”
thing intelligibility-wise.

Finite transient & everlasting evils differ, rather, qualitatively per

ir/remediability.
That’s what grounds the disproportionality of DBH ‘s moral modal collapse at
the eschatological horizon as well as my cooperation with evil – double
effect principle analogy.

That’s what makes our distinctions between divine antecedent & consequent
wills and divine permission & intent dissolve, practically. That’s also what
makes our distinction between a parasitic & substantial evil existence
meaningless, practically.

These disproportionalities are grounded, qualitatively, in absolute &

categorical – not mere relative & quantitative – differences. That’s what
makes purgation intelligible and perdition unintelligible, notwithstanding that
evil, in & of itself, is otherwise utterly absurd.

disproportionality that would violate – not only what I believe are most people’s
moral intuitions & aesthetic sensibilities, but – a putative divine fittingness,
which would be analogous to those time-honored principles, which morally
justify double effect & cooperation with evil. That’s the locus of a moral modal
collapse, where divine permission would become tantamount to intent and
evil’s parasitic existence would become, for all practical purposes, substantial.

Infernalism’s Faustian Bargain

Because no concept of Hell successfully refers to any reality in my

theosystem, I reject both the theological & anthropological premises of any
infernalist argument, which employs that construct in any attempt to suggest
that my stance is incoherent.
Such arguments can only caricature my universalism, which has no need of
infernalist hypotheses & thus a priori rejects all Trojan Horse-like
introductions of same into the conversation.

Fr JD’s arguments thus remain inapposite to my universalism, which, instead,

affirms that imagoes Dei, as particular theo-manifestations, are among those
rational creatures who, universally, mutually constitute the Many of the One
Christ. My Totus Christus refers to the One concrete social Absolute in terms of
a dynamical & epectatic (ever on the move) interpersonal unitive doing.

It’s eternal theotic dynamics, eschatologically, refer unitively & epectatically

to movements of our finite & relative perfections toward the Infinite &
Absolute Perfection, Christself.

Soteriologically, those dynamics refer purgatively & transiently to the eventual

vanquishing of sin, death & every ill-being in each & every particular imago Dei.

This does not mean that my universalism & infernalism cannot be engaged
as foils in a competition for the most plausibility & coherence. It only narrows
the premises of such arguments.

To wit:

First, we can together stipulate to certain theo-realities like Thomist

predestination, impeccability, inancaritability, compatibilist-like relations
between freedom & determination, libertarian-like self-determination among
various states of well-being, denial of annihilationism, limboic & purgative
restorations, anagogical orientations, Auxiliis stances, etc

Then, we can watch competing Thomist schools tie themselves up in knots

of incoherency, only able to reconcile infernalism with these stipulations by
making ad hoc mysterian appeals, which rely on the Faustian bargains of a
highly implausible theological skepticism.

About those bargains

As with evil, in general, hell, in particular, presents both logical & evidential
problems.

Valid logical defenses to both can be offered but those require theologians to
opt for argumentative consistency over completeness, unavoidably requiring a
retreat into some form of theological skepticism.

Robustly probabilistic evidential theodicies aren’t on offer; at least, I positively

eschew them.

Weakly plausibilistic arguments do obtain, though. Universalism and

infernalism, concretely considered, are not equiplausible. Here’s why:

The form of skepticism in play for universalism strikes this Gödelian bargain,
while very much leaving in play our present moral intuitions, aesthetic
sensibilities & quotidian common sense. The weight of the glory will go
beyond but not without them.

The form of skepticism in play for infernalism, contrastingly, strikes a

Faustian bargain by sacrificing certain moral intuitions, as planted in every
heart & accessible via general revelation. Those intuitions aren’t mere.
They’re also superabundantly gifted via Jesus’ special revelation, which
reveals that God is Abba. It makes no sense that the weight of the glory would
fulfill them only by overturning them.

The Coherence of Universalism

At Eclectic Orthodoxy, Eric Reitan, Ph.D. has just published The Coherence of
Universalism: A Response to James Dominic Rooney (Part One), which is
splendid.I hope to join that conversation after wrapping up my own
reflections, below, by further explicating my own theo-impasses with Fr JD,
as I’d begun (prior to my Lenten cyber-hiatus) in An Open Letter to Rev. Dr.
James Dominic Rooney, OP, regarding David Bentley Hart’s Moral Argument
for UniversalismFr JD had written to me: “I myself simply deny that God
allowing people to reject His grace indefinitely would count as an instance of
Him positively intending that it occur (they are not ‘morally equivalent’), and
so I am affirming that it is possible for God ‘merely to permit’ people to reject
His grace in that way.”I had objected and asserted that, analogous to moral
principles re double effect & cooperation with evil, when such a permission
allows any possibility of disproportionate evils, then it is indeed considered
tantamount to formal intent. DBH’s game theoretic logic thus holds for
me.But Fr JD had also rejected my disproportionality argument, even invoking
the Nyssen: “Nor does it involve frustrating achieving the end of the human
being, since the theosis (which we can grant is the end of the human being)
continues dynamically forever.”Here, in my view, Fr JD failed to draw theotic
distinctions between purgative (suffering – laden) and epektatic dynamics. In
the beatific vision, finite human persons will indeed journey everlastingly into
God. That will be because we’ll remain relatively perfect, so in an
everdeepening relationship with the infinite One, Who is Absolute Perfection,
Godself. Purgation involves, rather, sinful imperfections (not relative
perfections). Denying anyone impeccability would, therefore, precisely
frustrate a person’s divinely intended end!Astute Thomists know that their
approaches to predestination and impeccability cannot be coherently held
with an eternal infernalism. That’s to acknowledge that there can be no
character-based (intractable habits of sin) beatific contingencies. So, they
introduce divine indwelling-based contingencies, where it seems that
infernalism could only be true if one employs a mistaken view of the relation
between nature and grace. For his part, Fr JD maintains: “Specifically, I think
universalism can only be true if there is a mistaken view of the relation
between nature and grace, such that it is literally impossible for anyone to
reject God’s grace definitively.”Well, in my view of the relation between nature
and grace, it is indeed literally impossible for anyone to reject God’s grace
definitively, because all imagoes Dei and the Christ are mutually constituted &
indwelled. In fact, His indwelling is to our intellects – wills as form to matter!
Our many rejections of God’s grace will, therefore, be inevitably & absolutely
frustrated precisely because they are not eternally intended ends but only
transiently permitted evils.

What I Like about Roman Catholicism’s Libertarian, Compatibilist, Annihilationist,

Limboic & Subjunctive Infernalisms!

What I Like about Roman Catholicism’s Libertarian, Compatibilist,

Annihilationist, Limboic & Subjunctive Infernalisms Is … (see note, below) …
that each contains one or more theo-anthropological intuitions that I find
indispensable to my own Roaming Catholic indicative universalism. From the
libertarian stance, I borrow an account of freedom that pertains to our
manner of choosing between various states of well being, as would
correspond to the divine aesthetic scope of theophanically equipoised divine
optimalities. In this freedom we engage in eternal soul-crafting, co-
selfdeterminedly choosing among spiritual vocations, missions, gifts,
charisms, secondary beatitudes & epektatic ventures. The account is
otherwise incoherent when it invests in a putative ability to rationally &
completely reject God. From the compatibilist stance, I borrow accounts of
predestination, impeccability & inancaritability and so eschew character-
based beatific contingencies. Over against any artificial extrinsicisms, I also
reject indwelling-based beatific contingencies. Predestination would only
refer to divinely gratuitous elevations to sainthood & higher degrees of
intimacy.
From the annihilationist stance, I borrow an account of annihilation vis a vis
the parasitic existences of our vicious secondary natures. This account
remains otherwise incoherent vis a vis any putative annihilation of an
intrinsically good imago Dei.

From the limboic stance, I borrow an account of the divine gratuity of

apokatastenai, whereby there will be a universal restoration of every original
theophanic manifestation, i.e. every creaturely shadow & vestige (divinely
omnipresenced) and image & likeness (divinely indwelled) of God.

From the subjunctive stance, I borrow an account of the indispenable role

that anagogy must play in every juxtaposition of eros & agape, the proleptic &
eschatological, incarnations & deifications, liturgical contemplations &
ecclesial communions, which is to say, the anagogical reveals the mystical
nexus between our every particular quotidian experience & our final
communal beatific consummation.

I would contend that I have not wrenched these conceptual borrowings out of
their contexts, as if they were necessarily inextricably intertwined within each
competing theological anthropology. Rather, I have juxtaposed them and
reintegrated them into a perfectly coherent stance. Taken together, their logic
necessarily leads to an indicative universalism. In fact, once properly
gleaning certain insights gifted us by these competing Catholic
anthropologies, one would have to engage in wholly ad hoc rationalizations
(abstractions divorced from any coherence as would be derivable from the
plausibility of our collective concrete experiences) to sustain any brand of
infernalism. Perhaps Molina, Báñez, Stump (quiescence) & Scotus (non velle)
all have insights to contribute regarding how human persons freely will in
response to various divine communications?
And Maritain & HUvB have insights to contribute regarding the bottomless
depths of God’s mercy & unfathomable heights of His Glory? Over against
their meanings in libertarian, compatibilist, annihilationist, limboic &
subjunctive infernalisms, then, I propose the following Glossary of Indicative
Universalism: Apokatastenai refers to the consummation of purgation.
Eschatologically, it is – not an alternative destination, but – a pit stop on our
journey to apokatastasis. Emanation can refer, analogically, to both
Monarchical & Christological essential self-determinations of universals, both
exemplifiable, when infinitely & absolutely immanent, as well as signifiable,
when finitely & relatively instantiable. Generation refers to both infinite
Trinitological & finite Christogonic (theophanic) personal otherings.
Perichoresis can refer, analogically, to both Trinitological & Cosmotheandric
interpersonal communions as well as the Christological essential harmonies.
Purgation refers to the purging of the parasitic existence of our vicious
secondary natures as will obscure (but never obliterate) our primary natures
as imagoes Dei (to varying degrees). Per Bonaventure’s universal
hylomorphism and Scotus’ angel mutability and over against a spiritual
immaterialism, there are no obstacles like a postmortem immutability vis a
vis repentance. See God Ordains Our Epistemic Distancing for an account of
how our vicious natures come about through our sinfulness.

Apokatastenai refers to the New Earth or universal restoration of the original

states of our secondary beatitudes. As per the original gratuity of creation,
we’ll remain creation’s ubiquitously indwelled imagoes Dei, while even
creation’s shadows & vestiges of God will be restored, thus ubiquitously
remaining divinely omnipresenced. Theosis refers to one’s progressive
epektatic instantiation of Christ’s self-determined cosmic nature (secondary
nature) as one grows from Christ’s image to likeness. Apokatastasis refers to
the New Heavens or universal attainment of the beatific vision of our primary
beatitude in the gratuity of grace, whereby the mutuality of the divine
indwelling can, vis epektasis, perpetually deepen from our synergic
cooperation.

Note:

For example, I’m thinking of various approaches taken by my coreligionists,

such as Rooney, O’Neill, Griffiths, Brotherton & Barron. Although Barron’s
subjunctive stance is grounded kerymatically but not otherwise
probabilistically, that suffices, in my view. Because the reality of hope
presents in degrees, I don’t think one must adopt Rea’s takes on hope or his
evidential criteria for rationality.

What I Like about Roman Catholicism’s Libertarian, Compatibilist,

Annihilationist, Limboic & Subjunctive Infernalisms Is … (see note, below) …

Fr JD wrote: “John and others – I do not have time to respond to all the other
threads now developing around the topic.”

Fr JD, thanks for your generous engagement. I think we largely agree on the
locations of our impasses and I also pretty much agree with you that my
arguments, at least, are ineluctably informal.

Specifically, that is to say that, they have evaluative dispositions implicitly

embedded in their premises, including both my aesthetic sensibilities & moral
intuitions, and they also rely heavily on the fast & frugal heuristics of our
common sense & sensibilities.

I also appreciate that many of your counter-arguments were simply

exploratory forays into the precise form of various justifications which would
underlie this or that premise. As such, they were neither representative of
your nor caricatures of my own position.
Also, know that I don’t disvalue analytic theology in the least as it certainly
can serve the purposes of clarifying competing stances & locating more
precisely any impasses. You’ve thusly served us well, here.

I think you’d agree that our quests for both logical validity AND soundness,
especially as they pertain to our ultimate concerns & primal realities, are all
exposed to Hitchen’s Razor – quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs negātur? That’s
to say that our many competing metanarratives, at their best, are often
merely equiplausible and not, finally & formally, adjudicable.

I might be taken for a godforsaken positivist, myself, insofar as I believe

that epistemology is epistemology is epistemology, i.e. I don’t bifurcate
religious & scientific epistemology per some scheme of non-overlapping
magisteria. Still, I very much hold to the view that radical empiricism, logical
positivism & metaphysical ignosticism are all both self-subverting and so
early 20th Century.

As a pragmatist (Peircean not the vulgar brand), I’m not in the least offput by
the charge that this or that stance of mine is ‘grounded’ by moral intuitions,
aesthetic sensibilities or common sense. I am much less open to any charge
that those may be ‘bare,’ but I will impute to your assessment a charitable
disambiguation.

I hope I haven’t spoken inartfully regarding Stump’s nexus of analytic

theology & Franciscan knowledge, which is indispensable. I only ever mean to
say that I am incredulous regarding certain stances that, per my evaluative
dispositions, strike me as morally unintelligible, aesthetically repugnant &
anthropologically absurd.

That’s why I suggested that we all best supplement our theo-anthropological

abstractions with suasive concrete appeals to our ubiquitous & quotidian
interpersonal experiences, using such as our parent-child & spousal
relationships as well as Scriptural references.

For example, I love how Stump employs Scripture as she navigates from the
merely logical to the more robustly evidential. What we’ll inevitably encounter,
especially in discussions regarding the problem of evil, are intractable
difficulties in moving from mere logical defenses to robustly evidential
theodicies. It is my contention that we should positively eschew (for reasons
I’ve explicated elsewhere) the latter exercise and so employ an eminently
defensible theological skepticism there (defended elsewhere). I say ‘there‘ to
suggest that it should in no way be employed, elsewhere, in a defense of
God’s character, as Jesus has sufficiently revealed Abba’s love & mercy.

So, all in all, I don’t make much of charges of circular reasoning & tautologies,
or regarding many informal fallacies. They’re not necessarily vicious or
untrue! And some are more plausibly taut than others. They’re often laden
with truth & meaning. Taken alone, they may lack epistemic warrant, but, in a
cumulative case-like appeal, taken together, they can often defensibly impart
significant normative force. So many things in our lives of faith, as well as
quotidian existence, will much more involve a practical reasoning under
uncertainty and existential “living as if,” than any quod erat demonstrandum?

So, to whomever wields Hitchens Razor, I simply say, tu quoque, as it slices in

both directions.

So, whether to the New Atheists or to those arguing against David Bentley
Hart & advocating a moral defense of hell, I say – quod grātīs asseritur, grātīs
negātur – backatcha.

It’s the same thing I’d say to any mischievous sophist, who enters a forum
arguing for solipsism, quite overenamored of mere logical validity, while, at
the same time, cursorily dismissive of all reductiones ad absurdum, even
those as are otherwise adequately grounded in our rather ubiquitous
common sense, aesthetic sensibilities & moral intuitions.

So, how can such appeals as ours – to “Gaze into the eyes of your beloveds –
children & lovers – and say THAT!” – be so fatally flawed, cursorily
dismissed, casually syllogized & perfunctorily QEDed?

None of this, of course, touches on contentious interpretations of Scripture &

patristic thought, competing theo-anthropologies regarding free will &
postmortem mutability, ongoing controversy regarding de Auxiliis,
confrontations regarding divine simplicity & the God – world relationship and
other parts of the fabrics we’ve woven into our otherwise seamless garment
of universal salvation. But, as long as what’s clear to us on its front remains
opaqe to those gazing from the rear, I shall endeavor to describe it to them.

You have helped me in that endeavor. Thank you.

Theophanic Turtles all the way down & Christogonic Rabbits all the way across

It’s Theophanic Turtles all the way down but Christogonic Rabbits
(multiplicative) all the way across –

Below is a glossary, a tad idiosyncratic, that I employ to bridge various idioms

to my own vague phenomenological heuristic as informs my Franciscan,
NeoChalcedonian Cosmotheandric Universalism. I say vague because I
bracket root metaphors like substance, process & societies and remain open
to various systematic accounts, even though inclining toward an emergent
monism, tehomic panentheism, sophianic accounts and others of the Ex Deo
ilk.

With an emphasis on theosis, I aspire to lay claim (with some modicum of

rigor) to humanity’s divinity.

TheoAnthropological Rubrics

To be deific is to be an entity in pure act, i.e. to be simply divine!

To be divine is to manifest Goodness via begetting, procession or

multiplication, variously exemplifying or signifying it.

To be embodied is to be an entity in act. Angelic & human persons are

embodied and in infinite potency to the divine.

The acts of embodied entities have both material (efficiently causal, e.g. the
will) and immaterial (formally causal, e.g. the intellect) aspects (integrally
intertwined). Both angelic & incorporeal human persons have material &
immaterial aspects.

To be corporeal (e.g. a live human person) is to be an embodied entity acting

physically.

Corporeal entities can be inanimate or animate.

Animate entities are agential and act, ententionally, in constrained ways

relative to specific realities they may lack, absentials.
Rational agents (e.g. human persons) can act both ententionally &
intentionally relative to specific realities they may lack, absentials.

Agents refer, therefore, to embodied antinomies or both ententional-absential

as well as intentional-absential dynamical aboutnesses.

Our personal aboutnesses refer to constitutive absences.

Paramount, then, in a Bulgakovian sense, “I”s are constituted by “Thous”!

I developed the above rubrics from diverse sources including Terry Deacon’s
Incomplete Nature, Eleonore Stump’s & Scotus’ understandings of will &
intellect, Bulgakov’s embodied antinomies, various conceptions regarding
universal & pneumatic hylomorphisms and my Peircean inspired modal
ontology. Taken together, these don’t pretend to provide an explanatory
account but do offer us a robustly exploratory heuristic.

Joseph Bracken’s challenge to Deacon remains apposite, also, to my entire

rubric:

In Bracken’s article, Is Terrence Deacon’s Metaphysics of Incompleteness

Still
Incomplete?, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 38 (2-3):138-151
(2017)

Fr. Bracken probes:

For, as Deacon makes clear in Incomplete Nature, “being alive does not
merely consist in being composed in a particular way. It consists in changing
in a particular way” (175). An Aristotelian substantial form is basically fixed in
its mode of operation. It is thus ill suited to be the governing principle in an
evolving life-system in which the mode of operation of the system keeps
evolving in the direction of greater order and complexity. But is it enough to
claim that the “constitutive absence” of a substantial form to govern its mode
of operation suffices to explain from a philosophical perspective how the
lifesystem continues to evolve in an orderly manner? Deacon’s appeal to the
notion of mutual constraint as the way that the components of a given
system dynamically interrelate is simply a description of what happens, not
of why it happens.

To Bracken’s point, then, whether one inclines toward a panpsychism or

nonreductive physicalism, neither precludes a putative universal divine
presence in divinely omnipresenced shadows & vestiges or indwelled
imagoes Dei, whose divine mutual indwelling is to our intellects & wills as
form to matter!

This post is a follow to TheoAnthropology per the Woodsian Entitative,

Scotistic Hylomorphic & Maximian Modal Ontological —-Heuristics of Angels
Dancing, People Dying & such

Re certain speculative anthropology questions as raised in Bracken’s

assessment of Deacon’s account, which is also an upshot of my stance

Beyond certain minimal metaphysical commitments, we needn’t get

overwrought, as many do in their theo-anthropologies, in necessarily insisting
on one philosophy of mind stance vs another. That’s to observe, for example,
that our analogical notions of the divine telos needn’t rise & fall based on
whether created teloi are, ontologically, variously primitive vs emergent
realities, e.g. panpsychism vs nonreductive physicalism. My strategy: stay
more vague to enjoy more certainty. And it makes for weaker claims that are
easier to defend, while most felicitously fostering bridging concepts between
competing systems. Toward such ends, for example, a compare & contrast
of the thought of Noam Chomsky as revised by Steven Pinker as further
revised by Terrence Deacon would be most fruitful. Using them as foils would
best illuminate what’s at issue.

Deacon’s work informs my emergentist phenomenology. We differ in that my

own is vague & epistemic while he, additionally, employs ontic
supervenience.

That’s to say that Terry leans physicalist while I lean metaphysically agnostic.
What we have in common are Peircean influences. The most important
takeaway is not HOW or whether there was a coevolution of language & brain
(Deacon’s thesis) or what the mechanisms were but, instead, is the
observation THAT symbolic language represents a marked qualitative
difference between humans & ALL other species. This is grounded in Peirce’s
semiotic categories, the very same ones that I use to map Aquinas, Scotus &
Palamas, and even different perichoreses.

The most salient point is that Deacon via Peirce affirms the meaningfulness
of formal causes and how they can be immaterial. Of course, I use that
opening to drive my divine omnipresence & indwelling dump trucks through,
while Terry resorts to a mere physicalism. This is all decidely undecidable,
ontologically.

To provide more context, while I believe Deacon is spot-on with his basic
Peircean phenomenology, other Peircean-inspired thinkers aren’t going to
allow him to prove too much or say more than we can possibly know. Hence,
Bracken’s critique as cited above. I continue to find great felicity between
Bracken & Bulgakov and my Gelpian – Peircean approach.

It’s theophanic turtles all the way down but Christogonic rabbits
(multiplicative) all the way across as the Totus Christus would refer to the
One concrete social Absolute in terms of a dynamical & epectatic (ever on
the move) interpersonal unitive doing.

The key metaphors = Bracken’s societies & subsocieties and agents, both
individual & corporate. Joseph Bracken’s challenge to Deacon remains
apposite, also, to my entire rubric.

My Categorical Rubrics

In order to overcome any residual dualism w/its problematic causal

disjunctions, persons & societies must be conceived as equiprimordial.

Exploratory heuristics for such mutually constituted wholes require

mereological & emergentist phenomenological categories.

Philosophical theology has no suitable root metaphor to provision any

robustly explanatory metaphysic. For example, combining conceptions of
emergence & supervenience, then further specifying them as variously weak
or strong, gives us notions that are, at best, trivial, or worse, question
begging.

This critique similarly applies to our explorations of the origins of the

quantum, cosmos, life, consciousness & symbolic language (free will). The
best of those emergentist explorations can only provide our systematic
theologies with the provisional metaphors of our different idioms, which we’ll
deploy to convey our faith in ways that will unavoidably vary in
communicative felicity from one audience to another. Following Nazianzen,
we aspire to communicate in the least inadequate way available.
So, while I offer a pneumatological emergentism as the most felicitous
exploratory heuristic for my mereological panSEMIOentheism, for example,
it’s not with the pretense that it could resolve the De Auxiliis controversy. I
only modestly ambition a bookmarking of reality’s manifold, multiform &
ineluctable aporia to help make our theological, metaphysical & scientific
heuristics more robustly exploratory. And they are of one fabric,
epistemically, whichever side one takes in the Copleston–Russell debate.

Insofar as creatio ex nihilo & ex Deo are apophatic & kataphatic expressions
of one reality, our mereological ontology must also be multiplicative.

And our categories must reflect various mutual conditionings, even though
variously bilateral & a/symmetric.

Our relating of freedom & grace must address un/created realities as

variously nondeterminate, self-determinate, determinate & indeterminate, as
well as providing for both extrinsic & intrinsic relations as well as monergic &
synergic operations.

Our phenomenological categories must also refer modally, both to identities &
ontologies, while ambitioning successful references even when definitions, in
principle, elude us. They’ll thus refer to – not only possibilities, actualities &
necessities vis a vis reality’s undeniable regularities, but – also probabilities,
variously epistemic or ontic (often unable to specify which).

So, it seems to me, that, vis a vis various divine interactions with created
cocreators, grace can flow through reality’s emergentist hierarchy and be
mediated both mereologically & top-down as well as entitatively & bottom-up
and both Absolutely & relatively as well as universally & particularly.
None of these criteria seem a priori or on the surface inconsistent with
Bracken, Milbank, Hart, Jenson or Jordan Daniel Woods’ approaches as I’ve
variously mis/appropriated them, whether neoClassical, sophianic or
neoChalcedonian. But some of them may have made bolder claims & more
refined specifications than I’ve picked up on. I’m thinking of im/passibility, for
example, which I resolve in terms of Clarke’s version of the naturale –
intentionale distinction & Boyd’s aesthetic intensity – scope distinction, more
perichoretically & theophanically than participatorily & essentially. The
Damascene distinctions between the operative, operating, operator &
operated are helpful here, also, and I map them to essences, energeia,
entities (social) & effects.

It’s never a mere exchange of thoughts that forms & transforms us, it’s the
kindness of other hearts. As an autodidactic with some rather idiosyncratic
takes & phraseologies, I don’t have an audience to worry about. Clearly, I
write from my head & heart for its intrinsic rewards. A few have been
exceptionally kind and encouraging. I already mentioned Jordan Daniel
Wood, Tom Belt & Amos Yong. I must add, here, Phil Krill and Garrett
@ViaScoti.

John Sobert Sylvest

What I’m doing with my metaphysic and its vague phenomenology & modal
ontology pretty much boils down to accounting for how we might best mine
the meanings of reality’s whos, whens, wheres, hows, whys and this & that’s,
even given the insurmountable epistemic – ontic constraints that confront us
when we attempt to define its various whats.

Heuristically, they can be roughly mapped categorically per the triads, below:
TheoAnthropology per the Woodsian Entitative, Scotistic Hylomorphic &
Maximian Modal Ontological Heuristics of Angels Dancing, People Dying &
such

Our speculative explorations regarding angels dancing on heads of pins can

shed a lot of theoanthropological light. For example, once one accepts that
“all finite causes must be together, spatially, to produce an effect,” many of
our other understadings about entities, persons, hypostases & even
cosmology can better cohere.

The same is true of our speculative explorations regarding the intermediate

state. Christologically, even, they can shed a lot of light on the perichoretic
dynamics of both the hypostatic union as well as the cosmotheandric
macro& microcosms.

Combining three sets of heuristics, which I’ve described in other contexts, we

can better relate how divine & finite persons can synergically inter-act with
noncompetitive wills. Those distinct forms of willing would include those of
divine persons per both nondeterminate & self-determinate natures and also
of finite personal beings (angels & humans) per both determinate &
selfdeterminate natures.

The three sets of heuristics include what I call the Woodsian Entitative,
Scotistic Hylomorphic & Maximian Modal Ontological heuristics.

I’m not going to put them to work, here, for illustrative & explicative purposes,
but I’ve followed their rubrics & employed their grammars as I’ve traversed
back & forth between the idioms of different systems like Scotism,
Neoplatonism, Palamism, Thomism & even NeoWhiteheadian Process
approaches. They are at work throughout my Franciscan, Neo-Chalcedonian,
Cosmotheandric Universalism. I just plucked them out of their contexts,
there, and gathered them together in one place here to continue to use as an
intersystematic cheatsheet for my Theological Anthropology. If there’s a
remote chance that it will interest or be of use to any others, then that would
be great.

Here are the three heuristics with their rubrics:

The Woodsian Entitative Heuristic

Persons & entities are indifferent & irreducible to but inseparable from
natures & essences.

The Scotistic Hylomorphic Heuristic

1) in/communicable essence? all essences, divine & creaturely

arecommunicable

2) dis/embodied? all creaturely entities are naturally embodied

(communicatability & spatial extendability) composites of forms & matter, the

latter which, as a part & principle of composite being, is an entity in act 3)

in/animate? some entities are animate & some animate entities are agential

4) in/corporeal agents? angels & contingently dis/carnate souls

areincorporeal (embodied, material & immaterial but not physical)

5) im/material? agential formal causes are immaterial

6) presence spatially located? operationally (Aquinas) or per se (Scotus)?

Modal Ontological Grammar of a Maximian Cosmology

Essentially, our primary nature’s not only not wounded but not woundable.
Grace, then, operates tropically & inescapably, as purgative grace can
annihilate vicious secondary natures without violating free will.

How I eisegetically appropriate JDW’s Maximian Entitative Heuristic using my

modal ontological grammar.

What’s going on, temporally & transiently, when one asserts that

a) persons & entities are indifferent & irreducible to but inseparable

fromnatures & essences?

b) generated – not by dividing essences, but – by multiplying entities (I –

Thous)?

And when we say that

c) all hypostases are enessenced;

d) all essences are enhypostasized

e) no energies are hypostasized?; and

f) essences, entities & energeia, as experiences & expressions, are

irreduciblytriadic in their manifestations?
Each novel multiplicative entity will be enessenced with a nature as
manifested by how select essential potencies reduce to existential acts.

This enessencing follows a logic of possibilities, wherein noncontradiction

folds (coincidence of opposites obtains) but excluded middle holds. Some
logoi-effected teloi may be enhypostasized, some not, based on varying
ontological densities of shadows, vestiges & images ex Deo, including the
nuanced differentiations between angels & humans as personal beings as
well as those, even, of contingently incorporeal human persons.

The recursive enhypostasization follows a logic of actualities, wherein both

noncontradiction & excluded middle hold as an enhypostasized original
nature (essential) will be manifested by HOW select im/material potencies
reduce to efficient acts.

Microcosmic entities, i.e. persons, reflect a reduction of all essential &

im/material potencies to irreducibly dyadic & contemporaneous existential &
efficient acts.

Microcosmic entities manifest & express via energeia in an irreducibly triadic

way as they also, contemporaneously, follow a logic of probabilities, wherein
noncontradiction holds but excluded middle folds as select final potencies
are reduced to formal acts (per tropoi encoded in an entity’s essential teloi as
effected by logoi). This is the theotic logic of growth in likeness.

The practical upshot of this grammar is that personal hypostases (dyad of

essence + entity) are essentially inviolable as imagoes Dei.

Further, their tropic reduction of final potencies to formal acts can be

hindered but never obliterated by vicious natures, as those reductive acts
remain eternally fostered by virtuous natures and graces, both created &
uncreated (even monergically), as always on offer.

Hereinabove references to essences, energeia, entities (personal & social) &

effects map pretty much to Damascene’s distinctions between, respectively,
the operative, operating, operator & operated. See

https://theologoumenon.substack.com/p/is-reconciling-the-impassibility

Tying all of the above theo-anthropological rubrics, categories & heuristics

together, then, here’s how I collectively incorporate certain anthropological
speculations from Roman Catholicism’s Libertarian, Compatibilist,
Annihilationist, Limboic & Subjunctive Infernalisms (see note, below).

Each of those stances contains one or more theo-anthropological intuitions

that I find indispensable to my own Roaming Catholic indicative universalism.

From the libertarian stance, I borrow an account of freedom that pertains to

our manner of choosing between various states of well being, as would
correspond to the divine aesthetic scope of theophanically equipoised divine
optimalities. In this freedom we engage in eternal soul-crafting, co-
selfdeterminedly choosing among spiritual vocations, missions, gifts,
charisms, secondary beatitudes & epektatic ventures. The account is
otherwise incoherent when it invests in a putative ability to rationally &
completely reject God.
From the compatibilist stance, I borrow accounts of predestination,
impeccability & inancaritability and so eschew character-based beatific
contingencies. Over against any artificial extrinsicisms, I also reject
indwelling-based beatific contingencies. Predestination would only refer to
divinely gratuitous elevations to sainthood & higher degrees of intimacy.

From the annihilationist stance, I borrow an account of annihilation vis a vis

the parasitic existences of our vicious secondary natures. This account
remains otherwise incoherent vis a vis any putative annihilation of an
intrinsically good imago Dei.

From the limboic stance, I borrow an account of the divine gratuity of

apokatastenai, whereby there will be a universal restoration of every original
theophanic manifestation, i.e. every creaturely shadow & vestige (divinely
omnipresenced) and image & likeness (divinely indwelled) of God.

From the subjunctive stance, I borrow an account of the indispenable role

that anagogy must play in every juxtaposition of eros & agape, the proleptic &
eschatological, incarnations & deifications, liturgical contemplations &
ecclesial communions, which is to say, the anagogical reveals the mystical
nexus between our every particular quotidian experience & our final
communal beatific consummation.

I would contend that I have not wrenched these conceptual borrowings out of
their contexts, as if they were necessarily inextricably intertwined within each
competing theological anthropology. Rather, I have juxtaposed them and
reintegrated them into a perfectly coherent stance. Taken together, their logic
necessarily leads to an indicative universalism. In fact, once properly
gleaning certain insights gifted us by these competing Catholic
anthropologies, one would have to engage in wholly ad hoc rationalizations
(abstractions divorced from any coherence as would be derivable from the
plausibility of our collective concrete experiences) to sustain any brand of
infernalism.

Perhaps Molina, Báñez, Stump (quiescence) & Scotus (non velle) all have
insights to contribute regarding how human persons freely will in response to
various divine communications?

And Maritain & HUvB have insights to contribute regarding the bottomless
depths of God’s mercy & unfathomable heights of His Glory?

Over against their meanings in libertarian, compatibilist, annihilationist,

limboic & subjunctive infernalisms, then, I propose the following Glossary of
Indicative Universalism:

Apokatastenai refers to the consummation of purgation. Eschatologically, it

is
– not an alternative destination, but – a pit stop on our journey to
apokatastasis.

Emanation can refer, analogically, to both Monarchical & Christological

essential self-determinations of universals, both exemplifiable, when infinitely
& absolutely immanent, as well as signifiable, when finitely & relatively
instantiable.

Generation refers to both infinite Trinitological & finite Christogonic

(theophanic) personal otherings.

Perichoresis can refer, analogically, to both Trinitological & Cosmotheandric

interpersonal communions as well as the Christological essential harmonies.
Purgation refers to the purging of the parasitic existence of our vicious
secondary natures as will obscure (but never obliterate) our primary natures
as imagoes Dei (to varying degrees). Per Bonaventure’s universal
hylomorphism and Scotus’ angel mutability and over against a spiritual
immaterialism, there are no obstacles like a postmortem immutability vis a
vis repentance. See God Ordains Our Epistemic Distancing for an account of
how our vicious natures come about through our sinfulness.

Apokatastenai refers to the New Earth or universal restoration of the original

states of our secondary beatitudes. As per the original gratuity of creation,
we’ll remain creation’s ubiquitously indwelled imagoes Dei, while even
creation’s shadows & vestiges of God will be restored, thus ubiquitously
remaining divinely omnipresenced.

Theosis refers to one’s progressive epektatic instantiation of Christ’s

selfdetermined cosmic nature (secondary nature) as one grows from Christ’s
image to likeness.

Apokatastasis refers to the New Heavens or universal attainment of the

beatific vision of our primary beatitude in the gratuity of grace, whereby the
mutuality of the divine indwelling can, vis epektasis, perpetually deepen from
our synergic cooperation.

Note:

For example, I’m thinking of various approaches taken by my coreligionists,

such as Rooney, O’Neill, Griffiths, Brotherton & Barron. Although Barron’s
subjunctive stance is grounded kerymatically but not otherwise
probabilistically, that suffices, in my view. Because the reality of hope
presents in degrees, I don’t think one must adopt Rea’s takes on hope or his
evidential criteria for rationality.
Note regarding the analogical distinctions implicit in our references to esse
secondarium, divine vs human.

The Son primarily (nondeterminately) enhypostasizes the divine nature &

secondarily (self-determinately) enhypostasizes the human nature, i.e. His
esse secundarium, exemplifying both as immanent universals.

Per a bundle theory of idiomata, His personally willing to be thus secondarily

enessenced refers to an idioma of His divine nature, peculiar to His
hypostasis and thus distinct from the hypostases of the Father & Spirit.

Created persons enhypostasize the very same human nature, so are primarily
enessenced by the eternally conceived logoi, as incarnately revealed &
creatively multiplied by the Logos.

The esse secundarium of human persons is analogous to esse secundarium

of the Son in that it refers to – not a secondary enessencing, but – to
individually distinct modal manifestations of the logoi, as are incarnate in
each human person’s individually instantiated essential nature.

The human esse secundarium thus refers modally to – not logoi, but – tropoi,
which are ordered to each person’s dynamical transformation, as we grow
from merely “signifying” to clearly “exemplifying” a divinized human nature.
We thus theotically, per infinite potencies, realize our essential nature in the
very same way & to the very same degree that it was enessenced in &
expressed by Jesus.

When theotically realized, we are no longer mere shadows, vestiges & images
of God, for once we dynamically & tropically realize our full humanity, we’ll
then fully exemplify Jesus’ humanity and robustly signify Jesus’ divinity, as
we become similitudes of God. For His part, of course, Jesus exemplifies
both.

This all bears further qualification because of certain eternal epektatic

dynamics in play. To wit:

Realizing our human authenticity is a journey without end. That journey is our
destination. That quest is our grail.

As doers (unique agent nouns) of energeia (manifestations), we each

exemplify our originally immanent & any subsequently instantiated
universals/logoi. Our tropoi may be (roughly) conceived, like a bundle of
idiomata, as our particular & unique bundle of logoi.

The macro/micro/cosmic logoi of Px eternally remain in infinite potency to &

reducible by existential, volitional (efficient) & formal acts of each person.

Because logoi refer to realities generated by Christ’s will to eternally &

variously manifest the divine nature, cosmotheandrically, our tropoi can grow
eternally (as do the logoi of the Logos). So, our unique bundles of logoi will
never exhaust those generated by the Logos.

This is to recognize that we will, eternally, only ever be able to exemplify part
of Christ’s human (cosmotheandric) nature (just as we will only ever signify
the divine nature). That’s to say, because the Christ is ever on the move
(Bracken), there will always be novel logoi for us to initially signify before
eventually exemplifying.

By exemplify, we mean – to manifest logoi that are either originally immanent

or secondarily instantiated.
By signify, we mean – to manifest logoi that are yet uninstantiated (not
habitual) vis a vis our secondary natures.

Hence, we will only ever signify the divine nature and only ever exemplify,
even, that part of human – macrocosmic nature that’s been instantiated by
us. There will always be emergent novel, hence yet uninstantiated, logoi.

Through individual formative – transformative acts, though, we can signify all

of human – macrocosmic nature. And, as they become habitual, i.e.
instantiated, eventually exemplify its novel logoi.

“the individual can attain perfect fulfillment only when all the others have also
attained to perfect fulfillment” (Walter Kasper).

Why Logical Defenses to the Problem of Evil Work but to the Problem of Hell
Do NOT Work

In God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo David
Bentley Hart observes that “it is one thing to attempt to judge the relative
goodness or badness of a discrete evil in relation to final purposes we either
can or cannot see, but another thing altogether to judge a supposed total
narrative that pretends to describe the whole rationality of all its discrete
events. The former can never be more than conjectural and inductive; the
latter is a matter of logic.”

What Hart has parsed above vis a vis the problem of evil is the classical
distinction between evidential theodicies and logical defenses.

In _That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation_, Hart
advanced a clarifying “game-theory” argument, which describes the
necessary “moral modal collapse” of the distinction between divine will and
divine permission (or between the divine antecedent and consequent wills) at
the eschatological horizon. It speaks to the relative goodness of God’s action
in creation and, by inevitable logical extension, of God in himself.

Regarding that eschatological horizon, Hart’s not suggesting we’ll have to

wait & see how good is the Lord, he’s demonstrating the incoherence of the
infernalist logic, wherein evil would’ve become a final end, protologically, in
the subjective intent of God’s permissively willing a disproportional infinite
perdition for finite agents. That denigration of God’s character, then, would
remain true even if, eschatologically, all would eventually repent & avoid all
objectively evil consequences.

No better analysis of Hart’s moral argument can be found than that gifted us
by Tom Belt in God’s Eschatological Salvific Will: Revisiting Hart’s Moral
Argument for Universalism. Therein, Tom recently revised and extended his
analysis to address why Hart’s moral argument does not otherwise render
our other logical defenses to the problem of transient evils impotent. I
encourage all with such lingering questions to check it out.

Below are a few thoughts his article evoked for me:Disproportional infinite
remedies to the upside vis a vis transient evils make their risk morally
defensible. Presumably, those unintended, unavoidable risks are worth
running because of the immense intrinsic value of our theotic growth in
intimacy from images to likenesses.

The possibility of unintended transient evils is an unavoidable risk, but

morally justifiable by the weight of the infinite glories, which no heart’s yet
conceived & as will be realized in our epectatic growth in intimacies.
Otherwise, allowing the possibility (running the risk) of unintended eternal
evils as an unavoidable risk isn’t morally justifiable because the weight of an
infinite perdition is disproportional, by definition, to any offense committed by
finite & fallible persons.

It boils down to God’s character per a double-effect reasoning – like calculus.

Even if all repented & were saved, thus avoiding any objective evil
consequences, that would not exculpate God’s original indefensible
subjective intention, which had already priced-in the inordinate cost.

To some extent, this is a pseudo-problem that only presents when implicitly

stipulating to the terms of libertarian infernalists. Using a proper
theoanthropology & conception of human freedom, a person could not freely
& completely reject God, in principle.

As for compatibilist infernalists, they have an insurmountable “universalist

problem.” On their own accounts of predestination & impeccability, it
necessarily follows that all shall be saved. What keeps them from
recognizing this is their artificial extrinsicism. The distinction between
omnipresence & indwelling makes sense regarding creation’s shadows &
vestiges, where the former – not the latter – would apply. For imagoes Dei,
though, only distinctions per degrees of indwelling make any sense, e.g.
growing in likeness, theosis, epectasy, holiness, intimacy, etc. That’s why
Thomists, who properly dismiss a character – based beatific contingency,
can’t coherently introduce, instead, an indwelling – based contingency.
Impeccability, then, introduces an intractable universalist problem:

Whether with or without sufficient information, by definition, no one can freely

& wholly reject God.

Impeccability is correct, of course.

Ergo, universalism is true.

The Moral Modal Collapse as an Analogate to Proportionate Reasoning: an

Analysis of Indirectly vs Directly Evil Acts

I recently came across a “double effect reasoning” analysis of Milton’s

“Paradise Lost.” To me, something analogous seems in play w/DBH’s
allegation of a moral modal collapse at the eschatological horizon.In neither
a logical defense of hell nor of transient evil need we worry whether the act of
creating the good of free rational agents is wrong, or whether anything evil
has caused that good, or whether God intended anything evil.There very
much does seem to be a concern, though, as to whether any of the bad
effects of transient & eternal evils outweigh such good effects as human
freedom. In other words, does God have a proportionate reason to tolerate
either transient or eternal evils?Eliding the whole question of just what
account of freedom properly obtains (in/compatibilist, libertarian, etc), a
significant impasse emerges at this point:Can one properly invoke
theological skepticism regarding God’s character vis a vis transient vs eternal
evils? Universalists claim that God’s character has been sufficiently revealed
such that He will clearly provide disproportional remedies & rewards and
manifestly eschew disproportional punishments!It is here, at this juncture in
proportionate reasoning, that universalists maintain that running the risks of
transient evils is morally licit and that the act of creation involves evil only
indirectly.Running the risks of eternal evils, however, is not morally licit
because, failing a proportionate reason (the good of a finite free will not
outweighing the evil of an infinite perdition), the act of creation would,
therefore, directly involve evil. Again, God’s subjective intent, here, could not
be exculpated, even by any putative avoidance of the objective evil
consequences (should all repent & be saved, for example). One dare not risk
such evils!
Continuing the conversation in my response to Tom Belt.

Fr JD raised the distinction between ‘merely permitting‘ vs ‘directly intending‘

an evil. That does seem to me to be precisely what’s at stake. And the crux of
that matter involves our beliefs about God’s character.This also relates
directly to his articulation of the distinction between any references to ‘end’ in
terms of moral intentions, as in unintended vs directly intended, and
references to ‘end’ in temporal terms, as in transient vs everlasting durations.
Those are also clarifying and to the point of what’s at stake. But, on my
reading, you weren’t conflating or eliding any of these distinctions.Further, Fr
JD recognized a distinction between suffering, generally speaking as it would
need to eventually end, and suffering in each person’s life as it would need to
end at some point (the Rasmussen scenario). That, too, is a distinction I
knew you had obviously already grasped.Specifically, he then referred to the
logical possibility of an individual indefinitely experiencing moral growth
forever via an everlasting purgatorial fire &, in so doing, invoked the
Nyssen.Here’s my take:That to me is thoroughly implausible and FAR
removed from how I conceive eschatology, especially as informed by
Macrina & Gregory.In my view, purgation burns away the parasitic existence
of our vicious secondary natures & opens us to the beatific vision & our
ensuing impeccability.Eternal epektasis, therefore, wouldn’t involve any
everlasting peccability or purgation of intractable evil residues. Rather, it
refers to our realization of a superabundance beyond a ‘mere’ abundance!
The dynamic derives from – not im-perfections moving toward perfection,
but – finite relative perfections moving toward Infinite Absolute Perfection.

Nothing less than eternal theosis!Allowing the possibility (running the risk) of
unintended eternal evils (e.g. an everlasting peccability) as an unavoidable
risk isn’t morally justifiable because the retributive (&/or restorative) weight
of such an infinite perdition (e.g. eternal purgatorial fire) would be WAY
disproportional, by definition, to any offense that could be committed by
finite, fallible persons. That scenario collapses, therefore, per double-effect
type principles into ‘directly intending’ – not ‘merely permitting’ – an evil.

Continuing the conversation in my response to Fr. Rooney:

Fr JD, you wrote: “But, first, classical double effect analyses do not hold that
permitting a disproportionate evil effect would be to intend that evil effect. It
would seem to be *unreasonable* to perform an act that would produce a
good and evil effect, if the evil effect outweighed any goods involved, but not
because one thereby intends the evil effect. One just acts
unreasonably.”JSS:What would seem to me to be most unreasonable would
be any stipulation that God could act unreasonably. Even granting that, One
would thus act not just unreasonably but unlawfully. But just like our parsings
of formal, material, im/mediate, remote, etc, one’s decision to act thusly can
be considered tantamount to formal intent.

The higher one sets the bar for putative acts of God to be deemed unjust, the
lower one sets the bar for the divine will to be either wholly voluntaristic or
vulgarly consequentialistic. Furthermore, theological skepticism regarding
God’s character in this regard are not in the least persuasive to those who’ve
seen Jesus and, thereby, the Father’s love.Fr JD, you wrote: “Why is that
suffering impermissibly disproportionate to the goods involved in ongoing
theosis? What if an individual were willing to accept such suffering
voluntarily? It seems to me there are many scenarios in which the suffering
does not need to be disproportionate merely because it goes on forever.”

JSS:My universalism, on its own terms, refers to – not an escape from

eternal hellfire, but – affirmations of the universal divine indwelling in all
rational creatures, beyond the divine omnipresence in creation. This is just to
point out to other interlocutors, that I’m stipulating to many premises, even
definitions, as I engage what, per my universalism, is a pseudo-problem. For
example, it’s important to me that other persons, who read this exchange in
years to come, know that I reject out of hand libertarian accounts of freedom
that would, for example, imagine one could, in principle, knowingly, willingly &
absolutely ever (much less eternally) reject God. So, neither would I accept
that an eternal theosis could ever fail to have transisted from the merely
purgative (of eternally peccable, imperfect, vicious natures) to the robustly
epektatic (of eternally impeccable, relatively perfect natures).

But, even granting your libertarian account and your suffering-laden theosis,
and as one who does believe there are both certain epistemic distancings
that do go on forever as well as hierarchies of beatitude (per degrees of glory
in terms of scope not intensity per secondary not primary beatitudes), still, in
my view, any degree of an infinite ill being remains a disproportionate
punishment of a finite person & unmitigated frustration of one’s end. That
infinite evil would not outweigh the finite good of a libertarian human
freedom.

We return to the recurring impasse regarding God’s character. I suppose it

will inevitably present itself because an analytic analysis must be tethered to
a shared evaluative disposition in order to reason our way to a consensus
conclusion regarding God’s character.While I do very much believe in our
ability to travel from the descriptive to the prescriptive, given to normative,
and ‘is to ought,’ that will always very much depend on our coupling of
selfevident prescriptive premises to descriptive premises in order to proceed
syllogistically to a valid normative conclusion. Embedded in those
prescriptive premises will be the evaluative dispositions of our shared moral
intuitions, common sensibilities & aesthetic inclinations, as can be either
connatural or deformed to various degrees.

All that said, my disagreements with the eschatological majoritarians are

rooted less so in any defects of formal argumentation, rejections of premises
& disambiguations of concepts, and much more so in the stances they take,
which to me are morally unintelligible & aesthetically repugnant. This whole
debate strikes me as what Stump criticizes as ‘doing analytic theology
without Franciscan knowledge.’

In very large measure, then, arguments like my own, weakly informed, or even
Dr. Hart’s, remarkably informed, rely very much on appeals to others’
common sense & sensibilities. We’re begging mothers & fathers, daughters &
sons, to not bracket their moral intuitions or set aside their aesthetic
sensibilities when thinking about God’s love & mercy.So, that’s where our
deepest impasse is, Fr JD, not in some justifying principle that distinguishes
duration from gravity. I find Calvinism, Libertarian Infernalism & Compatibilist
Infernalism to be equally repugnant, aesthetically, and unintelligible, morally.
I’m not judging those who hold these positions but am here to admonish
them regarding the dangers of their blindness becoming willful.

Fr JD, you wrote: “I myself simply deny that God allowing people to reject His
grace indefinitely would count as an instance of Him positively intending that
it occur (they are not ‘morally equivalent’), and so I am affirming that it is
possible for God ‘merely to permit’ people to reject His grace in that way.”

As with both double effect & cooperation principles, even if we disclaim

intent, if a disproportionality between bad & good effects obtains, it does
become tantamount to formal intent & morally equivalent. The impasse
cannot be reduced to mere analytics as it presupposes certain evaluative
dispositions, which make certain premises axiologically fraught &
proportionality contentious.

re: An evil cannot be redeemed unless that evil ceases to exist, at some time
or another.
I think we have all properly zeroed in on the fact that this premise is not just
propositional but also dispositionally loaded.

Those of us who don’t find it contentious believe that most others, who’d turn
within to truly consult, introspectively, what we believe to be humankind’s
most ubiquitously shared common sense, moral intuitions & aesthetic
sensibilities as reside within their hearts, won’t find it controversial.

If, by introducing this informal element, any syllogistic sport get’s disrupted,
well, I say, good riddance.Fr JD, you wrote: “I was merely pointing out that the
analogy with double effect reasoning would not show us that God would be
intending evil if He were to permit a disproportionate evil effect.”

If you similarly dismiss that it is tantamount to same, your stance remains

unintelligible to me.

Fr JD, you wrote: “Nor does it involve frustrating achieving the end of the
human being, since the theosis (which we can grant is the end of the human
being) continues dynamically forever.”

That’s not apposite to the distinctions I employed between purgation &

epektasis, eternal peccability & impeccability.

Fr JD, you wrote: “If you believe there is no sound argument against these
views, but only a bare intuition that they are false, then it would be helpful to
state that.”

If you believe that syllogistic reasoning bereft of the fast & frugal heuristics
our common sense, moral intuitions & aesthetic sensibilities, arguably all
divinely connatural (even when inchoately formed & fallibly accessed),
suffices for apologetics, it would be helpful to state that.
Those deeply ingrained evaluative dispositions play an indispensable role in
our forced, vital & live options when we leap past nihilism, solipsism,
subjective idealism, pantheism, objective materialism, materialist monism,
subjective materialism, Calvinism and libertarian & compatibilist
infernalisms.

So, no, I don’t believe there’s a syllogistic argument to defeat solipsism or

infernalism. Neither are there proofs that demonstrate anything more than
that theism is not unreasonable.

I reject all of these alternatives using the oldest knife in the philosopher’s
drawer – the reductio ad absurdum.

Influenced by Peirce, I’m something between a weak foundationalist &

nonfoundationalist, a semiotic pragmatic realist.

Your arguments strike me as a stark rationalism proceeding from a naive

realism bereft of quotidian interpersonal dynamics. If you would plead
plausibility using concrete examples of parent-child relationships or images
from the Song of Songs, that would illuminate your stance in the light of what
Stump calls Franciscan knowledge, which is sadly missing in so many sterile
neoScholasticisms & analytic theologies today.

Fr JD, you wrote: “Specifically, I think universalism can only be true if there is
a mistaken view of the relation between nature and grace, such that it is
literally impossible for anyone to reject God’s grace definitively.”

I did read all 3 of your articles and I’ve shared here & elsewhere my views of
why an artificial extrinsicism is wrong.

I invite you & other passers-by to encounter my own vision:A Universalist,

Neo-Chalcedonian, Franciscan Cosmotheandrism

The link is available at the end of this

article:https://theologoumenon.substack.com/p/my-universalist-account

You’re [NOT] Damned If You Do & [NOT] Damned If You Don’t

The distinction between omnipresence & indwelling makes sense regarding

creation’s shadows & vestiges, where the former – not the latter – would
apply.

For imagoes Dei, only distinctions per degrees of indwelling make any sense,
e.g. growing in likeness, theosis, epectasy, holiness, intimacy, etc.

That’s why Thomists, who properly dismiss a character – based beatific

contingency, can’t coherently introduce, instead, an indwelling – based
contingency.

Impeccability, then, introduces an intractable universalist problem:

Whether with or without sufficient information, by definition, no one can freely

& wholly reject God.

Impeccability is correct, of course.

Ergo, universalism is true.

What if YOU were one of us? ~ asks the Trinity

Jordan Daniel Wood recently shared this Maximian hymn (that’s how I,
meditatively, receive it).

JDW then interprets Maximus:

To be crystal clear, “this” refers to the “mystery” he just described:“In this

passage of Scripture, the mystery of Christ is itself called ‘Christ,’ and the
great Apostle clearly bears witness to this when he says that ‘the mystery
hidden from the ages and the generations has now been manifested’ [Col.
1.26],’ identifying the ‘mystery of Christ’ with ‘Christ’ Himself. This mystery is
obviously the ineffable and incomprehensible union according to hypostasis
of divinity and humanity. This union brings humanity into perfect identity, in
every way, with divinity, through the principle of hypostasis, and from both
humanity and divinity it completes the single composite hypostasis (εἰς
ταὐτὸν ἄγουσα τῇ θεότητι κατὰ πάντα τρόπον τῷ τῆς ὑποστάσεως λόγῳ
τὴν ἀνθρωπότητα καὶ μίαν ἀμφοτέρων ἀποτελοῦσα..τὴν ὑπόστασιν
σύνθετον), without creating any diminishment due to the essential difference
of the natures.” (QThal 60.2) The identity Christ is, is for Maximus the very
goal for which all exists, which itself has no higher reason & just so reveals
the depths of God’s goodness.

My reflection regarding “w/o diminishment due to the essential difference of

the natures” follows:

That is to say, for Christ’s sake, look beyond (not without) the analogia &
abandon your preoccupations with being adopted!

The Trinity thus inverts Joan Osborne to flip the script: “What if YOU were one
of us?”

I recall Fr Behr once rhetorically inquiring of JDW- “what work is done by

natures in your account?” [paraphrased].

In my view, per manifestation-talk:

It’s not that we’ll enjoy onto-equality with the Trinity’s nondeterminate nature,
which we’ll only ever “signify.” It’s just that such an equality with God is truly
nothing to be grasped after, even by Jesus!

It’s the Son’s self-determined nature (humanized divinity) that we (divinized

humanity) will progressively “exemplify,” together with Him, as that immanent
universal aka Totus Christus.

Through Him, With Him & In Him, we’ll thereby enjoy, with the Trinity, the
identical perichoretic communal delights they’ve shared eternally!
 John Sobert Sylvest April 14, 202 3 Uncate gorize d

Leave a Reply
Your email address will not be published. Required fi elds are marked *

Comment *

Name *

Email *

Website

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I
comment.

Post Comment

Notify me of new comments via email.

Notify me of new posts via email.

Syncretistic Catholicism Blog at WordPress.com.