This is technically correct, but it does not meet the defense. While I concede that free will does not necessarily mean any given agent will choose sin, it is logically possible that all free agents will choose to sin at least once. In fact, the Gospels contain dramatic language (in my opinion, hyperbole) that all men are sinners.
There are relatively few dogmatic teachings of the Church relating to heaven. Much of what can be said about heaven is from the field of speculative theology. There are different theories about free choice in the state called heaven. The one to which you refer above from Fr. Saunders suggests that free choices can still be made in heaven. If this is correct then people are free to sin, but they won’t - and not because they are forced by God. If the concept of heaven is to have any meaning, it is that God has been fully and finally (and freely) chosen by us as the ultimate good. Otherwise souls would not find themselves in heaven. This is consistent with your observation above that free will does not entail sin. Those in heaven have freely chosen not to sin.
You are confusing cause and effect. Souls are in heaven precisely because they freely chose to accept God eternally, not because heaven somehow “forces” them to act rightly. The reason why all souls are not in heaven from the outset is because they apparently haven’t freely chosen God.
I’m not sure that it is behaviour on earth per se that is the cause of behaviour in heaven. The theory of Fr. Saunders goes that if
anyone who is not intrinsically evil or totally ignorant were placed in direct contact with God (e.g. as in heaven), they would understand the nature of goodness and holiness, with the consequence of total obedience. However, if you believe heaven is what
only sufficiently good people feel when close to God, that contradicts the theory. It may then be thought that heaven is offered as a result of good behaviour on earth, so that good behaviour causes one to arrive in heaven, but obviously that is different from saying that heaven is how
anyone would behave in the direct presence of God.
I think that in both cases, everyone must go to heaven in order for God to be considered benevolent.
- In the former scenario where heaven is merely access to God that anyone would find ultimately good, that would entail that significant barriers are erected between human perception while on earth, and the divine. By this model, give the humans too much of a scent of the divine, and they will come running, soon enough getting full access and giving total surrender. Give the humans no trace whatsoever of divinity, and they will universally fail to notice goodness, and obviously never get access and live in communion. So far, I would say it was obvious that the people in this scenario are not morally responsible for their behaviour, because what else would you expect of intrinsically good people (as humans are supposed to be) in either the first or the second situation? Could a good person find God when God is totally hidden? Could a good person reject God when His glorious presence is so obvious? No, I don’t think so. It is clearly the case that God is turning the dials and increasing the divine brightness and contrast. Too much one way or too much the other produces failure. What is needed is a sweet spot where God is not responsible for people’s actions.
But say there is only one force in the moral universe, which is the degree of presence/absence of divinity, or the degree of perception of divinity. There is only goodness, it’s just a question of how much. Isn’t it the case that any measure of divine goodness would be sufficient to direct all such people inexorably towards God? Either God is even slightly visible, and everyone goes to heaven, or God is invisible and no-one does. To cut a laborious story short, isn’t God (in this scenario) always responsible for human conduct, whether He arranges the existence of sin through the provision of illusory good (pride, selfishness), or by partially corrupting humanity? That same questioning applies equally to whatever the first being was which rejected God.
- In the second scenario, heaven is the feeling which only the good people get when they experience God in the closest possible proximity, and that is why they naturally and voluntarily obey. I think this would mean that goodness is only felt to be desirable and worth sacrificing oneself for by people already performing good actions. The desirability of every new option confronting us (including seeing God face-to-face) depends on the moral value of all the previous choices we made. That seems fine when we look at the death-end of life - it is natural for good people to want the company of God, and perhaps plausible for the proud individuals to prefer isolation, in a twisted way. However, it gives us no better understanding of Original Sin. Surely it is just as impossible to set up a sweet spot in this scenario as it was before.
Adam and Eve must have been fresh and complete blank slates at some point. Their moral credit rating was absolutely neutral, and their perception of the value of good and bad behaviour would have been equally weighted, save for any other imposed variables. How could they have knowingly chosen bad, if the impulses on either side of the moral scales were at zero, and their natures were intrinsically good (in the image of God)? Here it seems that God is also responsible for their actions.
Basically, in a knowledge-based account of how we operate our free will, it seems that sin is done out of misunderstanding, and God is responsible for the degree of understanding humanity possesses. As such, I think it is the definition of being benevolent for a god to inculcate only decent understanding, and that the existence of sin and hell contradicts this.
