T
The_Exodus
Guest
I’ve been exercised for a long while about predestination before merits and demerits. I think, if one follows St. Augustine and St. Thomas, this is the logical conclusion of their thought: God, before any decree or creation, willed to display himself in a creation, and since he wished to display all of himself, he wished also to display justice and hatred of evil. Therefore, he wished, before having created any creatures, to create a Hell. Needing creatures to put there, he then decided to create some an “allow” them to “defect” or “fail.”
It seems to me that this doctrine – which I have long held – means that God created certain creatures for the sole purpose of submitting them to eternal torment in order to glorify his own good pleasure. These creatures, though they are given “sufficient grace”, do not really have the sufficient power in themselves to go beyond this grace and reach efficacious grace: for efficacious grace is needed or else sufficient grace necessarily fails. It appears to follow then that such creatures are necessarily damned and they cannot do anything about it.
I am aware of the rebuttals to the above – indeed I have long held them and used them in responses to various professional theologians across the country.
Rebuttal: God does not will the end-- displaying Hell and eternal torment – before the means, but rather wills them both simultaneously. He therefore doesn’t think he has to show justice, and then go around looking for something to show justice on, but simultaneously wills to allow this creature to fail and to show justice on it.
Reply: Unless the creature has some ontological parallel with God, God’s willing the creature’s existence must be prior to the existential status of the creature. Therefore, it seems that God must have created a particular creature with the sole purpose of damning it.
Rebuttal: The deity, since he is limitless being, extends his causative power even to the mode of created being. Therefore an effect is truly contingent, for God has created such a contingent modality of being. All modes of being are predicated on God’s motion: whether that be what is necessary or what is contingent, for he gives the mode of being its particular status.
Reply: If the deity’s action itself causes the difference between necessity and contingency, we may no longer apply the terms to the deity himself. Hence his “action” would be beyond the words “necessary” or “contingent” and our conception of him falls apart.
Another rebuttal: A creature with sufficient grace is in true potency towards efficacious grace. It therefore truly has the power of attaining it, even if it never does. Socrates may be sitting in a chair from all eternity and still be in potency of rising. Since potency is a true mode of being, it is true to say that those given sufficient grace truly have the power to act – even if they do not have the application.
Reply: It would seem necessary for the word “sufficient” to mean “that which requires nothing else in order to be effective.” But sufficient grace requires efficacious grace to be effective, since, although the creature may be in potency towards that grace, nevertheless the creature cannot truly pass from potency to act without it.
My rebuttals and replies seem insoluble antinomies (though, for some intuitive reason I find my replies more effective than the rebuttals.) Then again my rebuttals seem possibly true.
The answers I’m looking for revolve around the question of what the deity has chosen to do in himself. I think the reasoning is all sound from the Thomists perspective. IF God wanted to express his own nature the way of creating creatures just to damn them, I see no logical reason why he would not. He may be the sort of being who gets glory out of “permitting defective causes to fail.” Would this be unjust, though, and does the rebuttal to this claim succeed (that he wills the ends and means simultaneously and that he is not bound to hold all creatures in a state of perfection)? Remember, ascribing an unjust action to God is to ascribe to him a contradiction. In other words, if we described a just God who did such and such a thing, we would effectively be proving that such a God did not exist.
The question it seems to me depends not on what God could do, but: what has he chosen to do? And, can God choose to do something without being necessarily bound to do it?
Could God logically, on the Thomist perspective, save all creatures, or could he, logically speaking, damn them all? St. Thomas’ theology also seems to make God trapped in displaying his effects a certain way. Even if God wanted to create a universe with no evil, for instance, he would sort of be forced to. He would in a way say “well, I didn’t want to, but don’t you know that in whatever I create must show my eternal wrath?” (Almost reminds me of W. Blake’s Book of Urizen, which terrifies me to be honest.)
Now to get to my point.
I think it possible – though I have not studied the topic as much (this is more of a spur of the moment thing) – that these antinomies can be solved by the doctrine of universalism. I realize that this is an extremely unorthodox doctrine, but, at the same time, I find it – after much thought on the topic – extremely plausible, particularly in relation to the alternative. I also realize that most people do not really understand the consequences of following St. Thomas through with regards to predestination before merits or demerits.
If I can ask, hoping to get some clear thoughts on this instead of ad hominems and claims of heresy, what are your thoughts on the above and on Universalism?
It seems to me that this doctrine – which I have long held – means that God created certain creatures for the sole purpose of submitting them to eternal torment in order to glorify his own good pleasure. These creatures, though they are given “sufficient grace”, do not really have the sufficient power in themselves to go beyond this grace and reach efficacious grace: for efficacious grace is needed or else sufficient grace necessarily fails. It appears to follow then that such creatures are necessarily damned and they cannot do anything about it.
I am aware of the rebuttals to the above – indeed I have long held them and used them in responses to various professional theologians across the country.
Rebuttal: God does not will the end-- displaying Hell and eternal torment – before the means, but rather wills them both simultaneously. He therefore doesn’t think he has to show justice, and then go around looking for something to show justice on, but simultaneously wills to allow this creature to fail and to show justice on it.
Reply: Unless the creature has some ontological parallel with God, God’s willing the creature’s existence must be prior to the existential status of the creature. Therefore, it seems that God must have created a particular creature with the sole purpose of damning it.
Rebuttal: The deity, since he is limitless being, extends his causative power even to the mode of created being. Therefore an effect is truly contingent, for God has created such a contingent modality of being. All modes of being are predicated on God’s motion: whether that be what is necessary or what is contingent, for he gives the mode of being its particular status.
Reply: If the deity’s action itself causes the difference between necessity and contingency, we may no longer apply the terms to the deity himself. Hence his “action” would be beyond the words “necessary” or “contingent” and our conception of him falls apart.
Another rebuttal: A creature with sufficient grace is in true potency towards efficacious grace. It therefore truly has the power of attaining it, even if it never does. Socrates may be sitting in a chair from all eternity and still be in potency of rising. Since potency is a true mode of being, it is true to say that those given sufficient grace truly have the power to act – even if they do not have the application.
Reply: It would seem necessary for the word “sufficient” to mean “that which requires nothing else in order to be effective.” But sufficient grace requires efficacious grace to be effective, since, although the creature may be in potency towards that grace, nevertheless the creature cannot truly pass from potency to act without it.
My rebuttals and replies seem insoluble antinomies (though, for some intuitive reason I find my replies more effective than the rebuttals.) Then again my rebuttals seem possibly true.
The answers I’m looking for revolve around the question of what the deity has chosen to do in himself. I think the reasoning is all sound from the Thomists perspective. IF God wanted to express his own nature the way of creating creatures just to damn them, I see no logical reason why he would not. He may be the sort of being who gets glory out of “permitting defective causes to fail.” Would this be unjust, though, and does the rebuttal to this claim succeed (that he wills the ends and means simultaneously and that he is not bound to hold all creatures in a state of perfection)? Remember, ascribing an unjust action to God is to ascribe to him a contradiction. In other words, if we described a just God who did such and such a thing, we would effectively be proving that such a God did not exist.
The question it seems to me depends not on what God could do, but: what has he chosen to do? And, can God choose to do something without being necessarily bound to do it?
Could God logically, on the Thomist perspective, save all creatures, or could he, logically speaking, damn them all? St. Thomas’ theology also seems to make God trapped in displaying his effects a certain way. Even if God wanted to create a universe with no evil, for instance, he would sort of be forced to. He would in a way say “well, I didn’t want to, but don’t you know that in whatever I create must show my eternal wrath?” (Almost reminds me of W. Blake’s Book of Urizen, which terrifies me to be honest.)
Now to get to my point.
I think it possible – though I have not studied the topic as much (this is more of a spur of the moment thing) – that these antinomies can be solved by the doctrine of universalism. I realize that this is an extremely unorthodox doctrine, but, at the same time, I find it – after much thought on the topic – extremely plausible, particularly in relation to the alternative. I also realize that most people do not really understand the consequences of following St. Thomas through with regards to predestination before merits or demerits.
If I can ask, hoping to get some clear thoughts on this instead of ad hominems and claims of heresy, what are your thoughts on the above and on Universalism?
