Apokatastasis Osmosis

Johnny is a Bishop, Heretic, Prophet, Priest, Apostle and ASM (Ascended Spiritual Master). On his good days he is often also the one true almighty God incarnate. He enjoys writing theology and philosophy articles and spreading the Gospel promise of Universal Salvation

The Need to Belong

03/01/202228/03/2023 / TIK / Leave a comment

“What do you think I should do with you?”
I sigh. Not this shit again. The unanswerable question. Haven’t teachers learned by now that asking the criminal student what their punishment is going to be only results in blank stares and a mumbling of “Umm..I dunno”? I mean, how the hell do you answer a question like that? “Well sir I think it would be most excellent if you give me a piggy back and buy me my lunch today” or “Oh please give me a good spanking sir! I’ve been a very naughty boy”. Even a hearty response of “Aye my lord!” would be as good an answer as any to this ridiculous question.
But do you know the funny thing? Every time the request for my most valuable opinion on this matter has been thrown at me, I’ve always managed to somehow produce the correct answer. It doesn’t matter what I’ve done; whether I’ve just murdered a classmate with a lead pencil for stealing my ruler (The bastard deserved it), I’ve burnt down the science block because science is the worst subject in the world (Who the heck designed that syllabus?!) or I’ve just stolen the bank account details of every teacher in the school: I always manage to smooth talk out of trouble.
Hell… It must go with the name. A-Lex: “Above the law”. Just give me time to make a considered response and I’ll have the words they want to hear, presented in Iambic pentameter with a British accent to boot. But don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m ‘lying’, oh no I could never do that. Everything I say is completely truthful and sincere. It has to be! And so here I am; faced with the impossible question again. One multiple choice answer away from a million and one dollars.
What did I do this time? Well let me put it this way: This is what happens when the clockwork orange doesn’t drink his milk.

I was born with a brain to rule the world, whether by anarchy or monarchy is irrelevant; all you need is something to think about and a good dosage of ADHD to keep you from thinking about it. I grew up free of added substances, and oh what a stroppy young lad I was! Centre of the universe, as all children tend to be, and ready to fight to maintain the position. Ironically I was filled with modesty and far from spoilt, it’s kind of the case when you come from a loving, yet quite dysfunctional family. Nevertheless, from a young age I had the criminal tendencies and loved them. My teachers and carers didn’t. I found myself in trouble every second day, but managed to hang on; the fire of my wrongdoings growing ever higher. Eventually the flames flew out of control; the straw that broke the camels back; I had performed the perfect lead pencil poisoning. We were sitting there in the library, cutting and pasting, or some other tedious task designed to keep a collection of five year old kids occupied, and my ruler had gone missing. I was filled with rage, someone must have stolen it! Lo and behold, there it was, in the hands of my best friend. I drew my lead pencil, immediately confronting him and demanding to know why he was holding my ruler.
“This is my ruler…?”
That was as good as an admission of guilt for me. I wore the best mask of rage a child of that age could ask for, and plunged my pencil deep into his chest.
His failure to breathe registered in my mind as the sign of victory and I pressed the pencil in harder, grinning sadistically as all that beautiful blood gushed from the wound. The other children screamed and ran for the Librarian, the fools, my friend wasn’t complaining; I hadn’t heard a word of protest from him. Foam, phlegm and other disgusting bile of the inner body was bubbling at his throat and coating his lips, which had begun to turn blue. I didn’t recognise the signs of imminent death, if I had I would have been as horrified as the rest of my class mates; and so in ignorance I assumed I was merely providing an eye for an eye, a pencil for a ruler, and enjoyed it as much as possible.
The librarian finally parted us, and everything that occurred next happened in such a whirlwind that to describe it in this linear fashion would not do it justice. I had killed him. To this day he still has to wear nappies to compensate for the damage I did, and to be honest, when you’re wearing pants like that, that’s as good as death to me.

It had taken them a while, but they had realised something was seriously wrong with me. And so, to the best and most expensive doctor I had to go.
“He doesn’t really seem to belong”
“I don’t WANT to belong”
“You don’t want to belong? aww, that’s too bad, because you see… You ‘need’ to belong. If you don’t want to belong, we’re going to make you. We’re going to make you a good boy.”
Drugs, prescription or otherwise, ruin life. I was administered cocaine with a brand name, and that ruined my life by fixing it.
So this is what it feels like to belong huh? Not half bad… 103% on every test, teachers falling over themselves to have me in their class, give me merit awards, call me the model student. Super concentration ability, incubated natural intelligence to the point of genius. Sounds good. Lack of sleep, the inability to talk to someone’s face, headaches, the loss of my sense of taste. Sounds good?
Changing school six times, losing sight of what it means to have a best friend, losing the creative side of my brain to logical, mathematical, computerised thought processes. This is what it means to belong? Alright.
What a Dreary world… I rebelled in much the same manner as I always had, but in much more controlled doses, and always escaping punishment.

Nine years on, and I’d lost my emotions. If this is what it means to belong, I still want nothing to do with it! Why do they keep telling us all that drugs are bad, while feeding them to me as if the whole country depends on it, and then I only end up like this anyway. Hypocrisy on every level! My dosage had doubled, tripled and doubled again, and I had had enough.

I didn’t drink my milk. And here I am; facing the consequences.
It seems rather sad to me, that I truly do need to belong in order to survive in this world. Belonging is annoying, but it’s something that has to be endured. The world doesn’t need another terrorist, murderer, rapist. The world needs a good leader, not a criminal. I know this and understand it. Hate it and accept it.

But it doesn’t stop me enjoying myself every now and then.
The door of the Principals’ office clicks loudly, locking the outside world away.
The one sir to rule them all slowly moves back towards his desk, his shoes thudding loudly and echoing off the walls with every step.
He sits down at the extraneously large table, rests his arms upon it, crosses his fingers together and glares at me over his glasses.
I smile and stare right back.
“I don’t know sir; What do you think I… should do with you?”

Alex Herlihy – 2010

Dark Days

03/01/202228/03/2023 / TIK / Leave a comment

/* Bad poetry warning */

Why is my bed not happy?
Why is my chair not sad?
Why isn’t a watch full of envy?
Why is my pen not mad?

Because they are inanimate objects?
At least that’s what science says so…
But I always hated that subject,
Trust it? or stick to what I know?

How is a brain any different,
to a bed or a pen or a chair?
They all came from atomic elements
As physical as the paper we tear.

So how on earth can it be
that I possess personality?
As I fall back on my bed
A scary thought swirls in my head;

I’m sad to say not a tear was shed.
I’m sad to say… This world is dead.

Alex Herlihy – 2009

Beautiful Heresy 101 – The Great Apostasy: “Bride of Christ and Whore of Babylon. Infallible Church and Harlot of Adultery”

03/01/202227/03/2023 / TIK / Leave a comment

I don’t think Jesus ever said the church will never fail. (In fact he said just the opposite in a couple of parts of the bible). What he did say is that the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.

So the church is the army of God, and the image is not one of defence, it is one of offence. Christ’s army is attacking the prison/stronghold/gates of hell. The prophecy of God is good news! Hell will be (has been) conquered. There is a victory to both rejoice at right now and also work towards in the future. But there’s nothing to ultimately worry about. There might be a hell, but not in any way or sense which contradicts Gods sovereignty, power, love or goodness. Hell is a prison, and Jesus has just orchestrated the ultimate jailbreak. Not one soul remains left in the grave. All things, all people, become saved and glorified. O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?

That message sounds so much better and so much more “gospel” and so much more “good news” than anything anyone in the catholic church ever told me. Then again no one from any church told me that, I had to work it out myself through prayer and direct mystical insight. The messages of the churches are constantly mixed with this great lie that God isn’t good enough, or god isn’t powerful enough, or even if he IS good and powerful enough we simply don’t know whether he will act on his power and goodness, and therefore some/many/most people would burn in hell forever and ever and the ending of the story would be complete tragedy. No church ever explicitly says any of this, because if they were to do that they would be instantly recognised for the satanic hoax that they are. However pay attention to what they’re telling you and you should be able to discern this fundamental nihilism that permeates it.

Surely we all know on some level that can’t be right. But out of fear and obligation to “the church”(aka the priests, bishops, and other Pharisaical figures), we find ourselves defending this narrative again and again against those who are in the worst and most dire circumstances. Which do you reckon will energise them to fight the most? The idea that they, their friends and family will all probably be damned forever? The idea that God gives them the “opportunity” to be saved and now it’s up to them and their freedom to do the rest (hah! Good luck!)? Or the revolutionary “gospel” idea that because of the cross and resurrection, their eternal future is secure and there is ultimately nothing to be afraid of.

Maybe all of these “churches” are actually the whore of Babylon. The catholic church, the Mormon church, whatever. They are flirting with Satan and misleading people to hell. They keep mixing the “good news” of the gospel with this toxic pessimism and then wrongly invoking the authority of God over the false teaching in order to keep the people in fear and subservient to the prince of darkness himself. People end up blindly defending and serving the very thing that they thought they were fighting against.

Perhaps the solution is to be always listening. Look out for an individual who has a new, energising perspective. A prophet with fresh revelation. For example a Muhammad, or a Joseph Smith. God speaks to individuals well before he speaks to institutions. Listen out for the voice of the living prophets in our age: they may very well be prophesying your own doom and warning you to repent.

Can anything these prophets say actually contradict the truth? Of course not. The “mystical” church is the holy and infallible bride of Christ. But the “institutional” church is the harlot, drunk with the wine of adultery. Regardless of whether your church is called Mormon, Catholic, Anglican, Muslim, Reformed, Adventist or whatever; your church has fundamentally betrayed you. And to go on insisting otherwise is to simply be an agent of evil and to do the devils work for him.

The solution is throw off institutional shackles and human authorities: to pray harder and to seek guidance from God directly into your soul. I’m sure that if you pray about it, God will verify the essence of his Gospel: he sent his son in love, we murdered him in rejection, his son descended to the worst possible depths of hell and damnation, in order to rise again to resurrection and new life, and that this grand gospel narrative is a reassurance of the promise that our final future (heaven) is secure and there’s nothing we need to worry about. If only we would just trust that promise, the joys of heaven would be ours right at this very moment.

The surrounding details are optional: we can come to an agreement on whether the pope is the head of the church or Joseph Smith was a prophet later. What is essential for us to agree on right now is that the gospel really is “good news”: Jesus really has conquered evil, death, hell, sin and the powers of darkness. And until someone hears that message and believes it, they are just yet another soul thrashing about in hell while being under the illusion that they are devoutly serving God.

Praise God that the gates of hell wont prevail against the assault of his church. Praise God that eventually everyone will hear the message and respond to it with faith and true repentance. Praise God that in the eschaton, every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, and neither principalities nor powers, hell; freedom or rebellion can prevent God from fulfilling his loving plans for us all.

Beautiful Heresy 101 – An Impotent and/or Evil God: “Is Damnation Merely Everlasting or Entirely Irrevocable?”

I don’t deny everlasting damnation. I deny irrevocable damnation. The idea that God would not or could not save souls who find themselves in Hell is the most outrageous blasphemy and unholy heresy of our age, regardless of what reasons are invoked to justify it. All those who insist on the irrevocability of damnation are possessed by dark and Satanic powers, and have fallen victim to the great apostasy of the Church, worshipping the god of this world rather than the one true Lord and King of the cosmos.

I will not hear you tell me that God respects a person’s freedom more than he desires the salvation of that person, giving up on trying to save them once they pass the threshold of death; I will not tolerate talk of God torturing a soul forever just so that he can show off his glory and justice; And I will not accept the irrational notion that our sovereign God desires the salvation of all but ultimately fails to achieve it.

It would be such a magnificent failure of God, if he went to all that trouble of dying and descending to Hell for the salvation of us all, only to have some, many or all of us spit in his face and refuse the offer. No, our freedom is not that powerful. God is good, loving and powerful, and he cares about his children more than he cares about his glory. All have been redeemed and all will be saved. Not even the fate of everlasting damnation can ultimately prevent our omnipotent God from rescuing all souls from the darkness and fulfilling his universal salvific plan.

Two Ways to Live: One True Gospel Edition – Christianity 101

The Anglicans in Sydney, Australia have a “Script” which they use to present their understanding of the Gospel to new investigators. Called “Two ways to live”, it gives a whirlwind tour of scripture in an attempt to convey a complete soteriology and quickly hammer home the idea that we are all sinners in need of a saviour and that the only way to escape destruction is to accept Christ as lord.

I thought I would put together my own version, which more accurately reflects the Christian message as I understand it. It follows the following sequence:

Incarnation: The Eternal Battle between Good and Evil. The marriage between the created and the uncreated, God and the cosmos, Christ and his church.
The Murder of God: Original sin, Mortal sin and the Unforgivable sin. The great divorce. Cosmic Tragedy, Total Defeat, Hell and Damnation.
Resurrection: Gospel, Good news and a twist ending. Redemption, Atonement, Unconditional Promise, Predestination and Election.
The Way of Salvation: Two ways to live; how will we freely respond to the gospel? The Sacraments.

I think that these four points fairly well capture the entire Gospel story in an easy to understand and remember way. And so here is my version of “Two ways to live”:

Two Ways to Live: Incarnation

Good and Evil

Genesis 1:1: In principio creavit Deus cælum et terram.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

In the beginning there was God and there was nothing else. And out of that nothingness, God brought forth the cosmos and all the myriad created things within that cosmos. God was good, and the creation was also good, as it reflected God’s goodness just as the moon reflects the light of the sun. However the nothingness from whence the creation came was pure evil.

Evil represents the polar opposite of everything that God is. God is the infinitude of being; Evil is the infinitesimal rejection of being, which we refer to as “nothing”. God is freedom and joy and bliss; Evil is darkness and despair and hatred. If God is masculine, then Evil is feminine. All opposites are encapsulated in this fundamental dichotomy between good and evil.

From all eternity and up to the present day and even into the far future, the story of history is the story of the everlasting battle between the good God and the Evil nothingness from which he has drawn out his creation.

Now, there is a fundamental distinction between God and the creation: God is simple, eternal, a perfect unity, infinite, necessary; whereas the creation is complex, temporal, contingent, imperfect, constantly tending back towards the dark and evil nothingness from whence it came. This fundamental duality manifests in all of our lives as two ways to live: do we pursue good or embrace evil?

The Divine Marriage of God and Cosmos

Genesis 2:24: Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.

At this point in the story there is a twist. From before the foundation of the world, God chose to unite himself to every aspect and facet of his creation in the closest and most profound way possible: He decided to marry it. This divine marriage of created and uncreated realities has at it’s heart the λογος, or 道 of God.

Just as a husband and wife become one flesh in marriage, so too Creation and God become one essence and substance in the divine marriage of flesh and λογος.

John 1:1-4,14: In the beginning was the λογος, and the λογος was with God, and the λογος was God.He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
And the λογος became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.

The λογος entered the world in the form of the man Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus, Divinity and creation were united perfectly and intimately. Jesus was God, come to the creation in a way that the creation could understand and relate to. Jesus came as a bridegroom, and the entire creation was his bride to be. The New Testament refers to Jesus’ bride as “The Church”. The church is not merely a building; it is not merely a group of people; it is the entire cosmos, adorned with beauty and being prepared for the wedding feast after which God will receive it into the marriage bed he has prepared, and envelope it in an infinite love that is so wonderful and elevated that no poet or bard could possibly capture it in song or verse.

Ephesians 5:21-33: Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Saviour. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Even so husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no man ever hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This is a great mystery, and I mean in reference to Christ and the church; however, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

So God came to us – his creation – in the form of a man, and proposed marriage. Like an inflamed, infatuate young lover, he sings to us “I love you with all my heart, soul and mind. So I pray from the depths of my being: Would you please return my love?”

The eternal battle between good and evil thus takes the form of an infatuation between the Lover and his loved. God tries to woo the world over, but how will the nervous, young and timid creation respond? There are two ways to live; will we choose the good path or the bad path?

Two Ways to Live: The Murder of God

As it turns out, the creation rejects God’s romantic overtures in the most definite way possible. God came to us with open arms and proclaimed his undying love, but we responded by torturing him, spitting on him, nailing him to a cross and leaving him to die.

This was the ultimate tragedy. This represented the defeat of God by his creation. The conclusion to the everlasting struggle between good and evil had been revealed: Evil won.

In the marriage of God and creation, God willingly bound his own fate to the fate of his lover, and the creation found itself united to God. They had become one flesh, so whatever happened to God happened to the creation, and whatever happened to the creation happened to God. And God had just been murdered, therefore the creation also became infected by death, decay, destruction, sin. The entire creation became destined for total annihilation and everlasting damnation.

Christ’s bride, terrified by God’s flaming love for her, rejected his overtures and flew away, hiding in the isolation of the outer darkness. This final and ultimate rejection of God’s love has many names: Mortal Sin, Original Sin, The Unforgivable Sin.

It is the original sin because it was the one fault from which springs all the death and decay in the world, as well as our tendency towards the darkness and Hell which drags us down like magnetism and gravity.

It is the mortal sin, because it is the sin which leads to death. All men sin, and all men die. Every sin is a repetition of the crucifixion. Every sin represents the murder of God. God comes to us and says, “I love you, please love me back”, but we sin again and again, and in doing so, continue to drive the nails into his hands, feet and heart.

It is the unforgivable sin, because what could we possibly do to recover from such a sin? The only one who has the power to forgive us has been left hanging dead and helpless on a cross. God is dead, there is no other who remains to forgive us. God is dead and by the divine marriage we are doomed to die with him, cursed to pain and suffering and torment for all of our days as we spiral further and further down into the lake of fire and outer darkness, until at the very end of the torments we finally cease to exist altogether.

By killing God, we had judged him and sentenced him to the worst fate: the deepest depths of Hell, the most unspeakable tortures of the lake of fire, and the desolations of the outer darkness. At the end of it all we sentenced him to annihilation and non-existence. But our marriage to God means that all of us are doomed to the very same fate.

This sin represents the total defeat of the good, cosmic tragedy, the most brutal divorce, and the victory of Hell over our good and loving God. Nothing remains to look forward to. The future is bleak darkness, full of nothing but hatred, death and war. There were two ways to live, and we chose the bad one.

Two Ways to Live: Resurrection

But behold, there is a twist ending to the tale. Jesus rose from the dead! Death could not hold him and Hell could not contain him! He rose to new life, a new and glorified life from which he could never die again! Right as it seemed that evil and the demonic powers had achieved their victory over God, and right as God experienced the full depths of the consequences of our sin and rejection; he miraculously snatches victory from the jaws of defeat and turns the tables around completely.

This is called the “Gospel”, or “good news”. This is the core message that Christians proclaim. God is victorious! Hell has been defeated once and for all! The love of God is so powerful and seductive that ultimately the creation cannot escape it, even despite our most definite rejection.

O Death, where is your sting?
O Hell, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown.
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen.
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice.
Christ is risen, and life reigns.
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave.
For Christ, being risen from the dead, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To him be glory and dominion unto ages of ages. Amen.

We refer to this glorious event as the “Redemption”, because this is where God “bought back” his lost bride. God has paid the price that must be paid, in order to win back the affections of his bride. He loved us so much that he was willing to descend to Hell and the terror of non-existence for the sake of his marriage to his bride, the Church.

This price being paid, we also refer to this event as the “Atonement”, because it is the event which restored all things to how they should be. Once again there is love and joy between God and his creation, because by his resurrection he has secured the rewards of eternal life for us all.

This was also the moment which secured the “Predestination” of all things to heavenly glory. We have moved from one of the two ways to live to the other: Where before all things were set on a path towards Hell, destruction, desolation, darkness and torment; now all things are set on a path towards Heaven, Joy, Bliss, Love, and divine Relationship. There is a single destination to which the entire creation moves: God himself, the bridegroom who eagerly awaits to consummate his marriage with his bride.

God became man so that man might become God

The entire creation and everything within it thus becomes “elect”. Just as Jesus became the reprobate man, the creation that dwells within him also experienced reprobation. However just as Jesus became elected to heaven and glory, the entire creation that dwells within him is also elected to heaven and glory and beatitude.

God will not abandon anyone or anything. His love for his bride is relentless. He intends the salvation of the entire cosmos and everyone and everything in it. He will not rest until every one in the creation has returned his love.

To seal the deal, God has prepared an unconditional promise of salvation, which he desires to speak to every individual soul. However he requires our cooperation in order to spread the message.

Two Ways to Live: The Way of Salvation

Sacrament and Struggle

God has prepared the sacraments as a concrete way for us to come to him and return his love. In baptism, he washes us clean from all our sins and promises us that he forgives us for our mortal, original, unforgivable sin against him. In confession, he reiterates that promise, because sometimes we forget God’s love and forgiveness as we go through life and need to be reminded. In confirmation, he seals us with his Holy Spirit, which serves as a promise and guarantee that he will never ever abandon us. In the Eucharist, he gives us the gift of eternal life and unites himself to us in a marriage feast in which we literally feed on him. In the Last Rites, he prepares us for our most dangerous journey; the journey from life to death, from this earthly life to the terrors of Gehenna.

Phillipians 2:12-13: Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

We are predestined to victory in the war, but we may yet fall in the battle. We still have free will; God will not force himself upon us despite his relentless, burning love. Even though he promises that he will love us forever and never abandon us, and even though he has infallibly secured the eternal glory of every creature, we may yet persist in our rejection. We may continue to drive the nails into Christ’s hands, we may continue to repeat and reiterate the mortal sin that doomed the world to damnation.

God calls us to repent of these sins, for we have been bought by his blood already. While it is true that one day everyone will achieve heaven, he is not going to carry us there against our will. God requires our free cooperation. So why wait? Why procrastinate the task of striving towards heaven? Why not repent and love God and Neighbour now? There are two ways to live: God draws lines in the sand, and one of those lines is death: If we haven’t responded to God’s love by the time we die, a fiery fate awaits us; the very same fiery fate that God himself endured to save us. It does no good to procrastinate the task of repentance. Far better to strive now, while we are alive. Salvation is guaranteed, but salvation is not automatic. God will not carry us to heaven, or force us to love him. We must walk the path on our own.

God will not save you without you
-St Augustine

Two ways to Live

So finally we come to the classic two ways to live. Will you accept Christ as your Lord, saviour and bridegroom? Will you return the love of God? Will you do your best to submit to his guidance and strive for his holiness? Or will you instead continue living as your own king, pointlessly rebelling against the God who loves you? Such rebellion is indeed pointless, because it is foreordained that God will win you over in the end. So will you continue to procrastinate your repentance? Or will you seize the day and run the race to heaven?

God’s love has conquered, is conquering, and will conquer. Join the winning team; become a Christian today.

Beautiful Heresy 101 – Original Sin, Mortal Sin, and the Murder of God: “The Cross Was The Fall”

The fall didn’t happen when Adam ate from the tree; the fall happened when humanity nailed God himself to the cross. Original sin was not something that happened “way back then” in the murky mythologies of before the beginning of history; The original sin was when God offered us life and we chose death; he offered us friendship and we chose brutal murder.

So it simply will not do to appeal to our “freedom” to explain how we end up in hell or heaven. We had the freedom to choose God, but no longer. We freely, wholeheartedly and definitively rejected God when he came to us with peace and love and we executed him. This was the unforgivable sin; there is no freedom after this, no repentance, no turning back. Every one of us has already made our final choice: non accipio.

And yet God can forgive even the unforgivable sin: and this he did by his resurrection. He does not “respect” our freedom. If he respected our freedom he would have just stayed dead. No, he conquers our freedom. We always and everywhere choose death: but from this death he draws out life. We constantly choose evil; and from this evil he brings about good. We respond to his friendship with hatred: yet from this hatred he works irresistible love.

He could have “respected” our freedom by staying dead and withdrawing his love. But instead, he insists on continuing to love us and by his victorious resurrection he has revealed that he will never stop loving us until every single one of us loves him back. We will not die: we will rise again. We will not be damned: We have already been saved.

History is the story of us choosing death and God giving us life in spite of that choice. History is the story of Grace: it is not the story of a God who “respects our freedom”. We all without exception have chosen Hell, and so God bestows his mercy on us all.

When a Devout Christian Attends a Rave and Takes MDMA

Flying From The Divine

We found ourselves among the magenta lights,
Swimming in the ocean of fireflies,
Dancing in the galaxy of vibrating embers.

A certain kind of bliss.
But not the blessed happiness.

I saw you sitting before me, sipping an ice cold rivet, slightly nodding your head as the band before us exploded with sound.
You were absolutely gorgeous.
I couldn’t avert my eyes for more than a few seconds before I was drawn back again to gaze upon your beautiful face and figure.
My masculine hesitation prevented me from saying anything, or perhaps it was simply the catastrophic chaos of the mosh and the violence and volume of the drums.
I suppressed my subtle longing to reach out and connect.

And then the gig was over.

I turned and talked with my new friend and flatmate, another lovely lady joining us in the conversation.
Eventually they ran off, and I was alone.

And then you returned, met me in the doorway, and said hello.
What on earth is happening?
The most beautiful girl at the party, confidently walking up and introducing herself to me?

My head was reeling, as the empathic amphetamines were beginning to overwhelm me.
It was easy to talk, and yet hard to converse.
I felt elevated, and yet unable to follow a train of thought to conclusion.
Nevertheless, we laughed, and we spoke, and we connected.

Danielle was your name, and Alex mine;
You study psychology, I study scripture;
You work on the street, I spin code on a screen;
You are drinking beer, I am drinking water;
Your heritage is chinese malaysian, mine is the british isles;
And both of us are true blue Aussies.

You ask why I’m drinking water.
I respond that I’m being very cautious tonight.
You immediately know what’s going on: you fully understand the nuances of the scene: Magnesium, Vitamin C, Alpha Lipoic Acid, 5-HTP.
I laugh and shake my head: “She knows!”

So I am here to find God in myself and God in the other, and experience the joy and bliss of connection.
Why are you here?

“This is my fourth beer in half an hour”
Laughing, I reel back in surprise.
“And I’ve dropped a cap too”
Smiling, I shake my head in shock.
What on earth are you running from?

But I don’t have the chance to ask, for the party whisks you away to the next conversation.

The night goes on and the love flows round.
People are dancing, people are stumbling,
people are pinging, people are munting.
Everyone is laughing, everyone is having fun.
The beat never changes for the entire night, but the crowd remains content.
And the whole time, I wonder, what are you running from?

I meet many people, all of them lost souls, finding consolation in the ephemerality of life.
Some lay beneath the blossom tree, gazing up at the flowers. Watching them float away and die.
Some take refuge in the absurdity of nihilism, and angrily proclaim the pointlessness of life.
No one here experiences salvation.
No one here understands the gospel.
No one here understands the power of Christ.
How sad.
How bittersweet.

Where are the elect in this place?
Where are the ones who walk in the light?
Perhaps this is my mission field.

A night concluded in the blink of an eye.
I’m back home, lying in bed.
Thinking back to the people and the party,
And especially you, that most gorgeous girl.

What were you running from?
I may never know.
But then again, I plan to return once more.
I plan to carry the light of Christ into that dark place;
To shine and illuminate;
To preach and proclaim;
To save this abandoned nihilistic hedonistic mass.

I don’t know what you were running from, but I know what you are searching for:
You are searching for the love that never dies;
The bliss that always endures;
The divinity that satisfies all longing;
The salvific rest of the Savior;
The warm embrace of Christ.

You don’t believe it’s possible, but I know it’s true, and I will embrace this descent into Hell to convince you of it.
I will not abandon you to the illusionary pleasures, but introduce you to the source of all life and love.

What were you running from?
I don’t know, but whatever it was, I want you to know: there IS meaning in life.
Take my hand and i will show you;
Follow me and I will give you rest.

God beckons, and he is waiting to wrap you up in an eternal embrace of ecstatic bliss, so let us ascend to heaven and enjoy the divine feast that has been prepared for us.
There is a seat at the table of the lord with your name on it, and I will not rest until you have taken your place at the supper of the lamb.

Whatever you may be running from, run to God,
And you will experience the ecstasy beyond ecstasy,
The life beyond life,
And the love beyond all love.

Run to God, and you will become one with the infinite beauty;
United to the hidden aesthetic truth,
Forever soaring beyond the sun and the myriad stars.

Pure Theology – The Doctrine of God as Trinity in Unity: Simplicity and Trinitarianism

(Return to first article)

In the previous post, we saw how pure reason, unaided by revelation, is able to arrive at an understanding of God which approximates the classical Christian presentation of the Trinity. In that article I used the words “Father”, “Son” and “Spirit” to refer to the three hypostases out of habit, however this was something of a premature move, and perhaps I should have referred to the hypostases simply as “Loved”, “Lover” and “Love”, or “God A”, “God B” and “God C”, or even “God One”, “God Prime” and “God A”. The classically Trinitarian “Father”, “Son” and “Spirit” terminology is incredibly loaded. In the previous article I simply wanted to demonstrate that within the ocean of being, consciousness and bliss that is God, there is both Unity and Plurality, Infinity and Simplicity, and that this coalesces into a divine relationship of love between distinct individuals.

However now I propose to turn to the actual, revealed Christian Trinitarian doctrine, and see what we can make of it in light of divine simplicity and the other concerns of classical theism.

Speculations on Loving, Creating and Begetting

Traditional Trinitarian doctrine states that the Father is eternally unbegotten, and that he eternally begets the Son, who is in turn spoken of as being eternally begotten. Let us immediately invoke the principle of Divine simplicity: The Son is fully God, and the Father is fully God, and therefore anything that can be predicated of the Father or the Son can also be predicated of depersonalised divinity (that is to say, “God”). Notice that we immediately end up with a baffling paradox: God is simultaneously eternally unbegotten, eternally begotten, and the eternal act of begetting. Any devout Muslims reading this are probably having a seizure.

Surah Al-Ikhlas 112
قُلْ هُوَ اللَّهُ أَحَدٌ اللَّهُ الصَّمَدُ لَمْ يَلِدْ وَلَمْ يُولَدْ وَلَمْ يَكُنْ لَهُ كُفُوًا أَحَدٌ
Say, “He is Allah, who is One, Allah, the Eternal Refuge. He neither begets nor is begotten, Nor is there to Him any equal.”

Now, traditionally Christian theology has said that God is free to create or not to create, and this would not compromise his nature as creator. However, God needs to create something in order to be a creator; so if not the cosmos, then what? If God could have not created creation and yet remained the creator, he must have created something within himself, so what is it that he is eternally creating?

Substitute the word “beget” and its relevant conjugations for the word “create”, and we come up with an answer: Divinity creates itself, as God begets God. God is himself the principle of his own existence. God is simultaneously created and uncreated, begotten and unbegotten. His essence is his existence; he both eternally creates himself and is eternally uncreated. God is an ocean of paradox.

In order to make sense of this paradox, the doctrine of infinite plurality in unity comes into play: there are separate and distinct individuals in God, all playing their individual roles. The Father is the source and principle of the Godhead, the eternally uncreated and unbegotten. But the Son is the Fathers knowledge of himself, eternally created and begotten as another distinct divine hypostasis. The Spirit is the relationship between the Father and the Son, and of course, the relationship in question is one of infinite love; the father eternally loving the son into existence.

But here’s the crucial point. As mentioned towards the end of the previous post, the exact actors in the divine equation do not matter – they are interchangeable. God is the lover, the loved and the love itself. All of the hypostases are purely actual and divinely simple and therefore any of the hypostases can stand in for any of the other hypostases in this equation. The crucial thing to realise, is that within the equation itself, there are distinct roles. To make the point clear, let me restate the Trinitarian dogma in more abstract terms:

1. The Lover is God.
2. The Loved is God.
3. The Love is God.
4. The Lover is not the Loved.
5. The Loved is not the Love.
6. The Love is not the Lover.
7. There is only one God.

To talk in Anthropomorphic terms, any of the infinite persons of God could occupy the role “Lover” at one moment, “Loved” at the next, and “Love” at the moment after that. You can imagine these three roles as “boxes”, and the infinite persons of God as ghostly apparitions which float in and out of these boxes, and migrate between them at will.

However, regardless of “which divine person” is currently occupying the different boxes, the fact remains that the boxes themselves are rigidly defined in relationship to one another: namely, the first box is the eternally uncreated source of the love, the second box is the object of this eternally uncreated love, eternally loved into creation by the first box, and the third box represents the eternal act of love itself. So while divine personhood itself is fluid, and can flow back and forth between the different boxes, the boxes themselves are rigidly defined in a very specific relationship to one another.

Now, all we need to do is tweak the terminology we are using, and the doctrine of the Trinity immediately falls out: The three boxes are the three “hypostases” of God. The first box we call the Father, the second box we call the Son, and the third box we call the Spirit. Suddenly the Trinitarian dogma makes so much sense: The Father hypostasis is not, and simply could not be, the Son hypostasis. And yet by divine simplicity the infinite God who “currently occupies” the Father hypostasis is very the same infinite God that “currently occupies” the Son hypostasis (using language loosely in the mode of condescension to make a point)

Divine simplicity also sheds light on the internal relationships of the Trinity in another way in that in God, to create is to love and to love is to create. So saying that the Father loves the Son, is to say that the Father “creates” the Son, and the Holy Spirit just is that act of creating. And so God is from eternity simultaneously created, uncreated and the free act of creating itself. I suspect that the church fathers adopted the language of “begetting” in order to distinguish this “eternal creation” relationship from the relationship of creation that exists between God and the contingently created cosmos which we occupy.

An East/West Controversy

Now we can turn to that most controversial of words: the filioque. The Father begets the Son, and the Spirit proceeds…. from who? The Father alone? Or both the Father and the Son?

Well, the uncreated ground and source of the love between the father and the son is the father, so in that sense, the Spirit proceeds from the father alone. However, the actual act of love between father and son is given and received and reciprocated in both directions: The son loves the father just as the father loves the son. This is a throwback to the idea mentioned earlier that it does not matter which exact divine person sits in which “relationship box”. At the end of the day, God loves God and God is the love. So the Divine person occupying the father box loves the Divine person occupying the son box., and these two divine persons could swap positions and this formula of love would remain true. In other words, the son could take the position of the father and the father could take the position of the son, and the relationship would hold true. If this interchangeability were not possible, it would represent a violation of divine simplicity, because the three hypostases would become three segregated, separate and distinguishable parts of a single divinity. So so long as we are unhooking the infinite divine personhood of God from the individual Trinitarian hypostases, we are free to say that the Spirit proceeds not only from the Father and the Son, but also from the Spirit itself! Because really what we are saying is that God begets God and God proceeds from God.

Of course, if we were being pedantic by abstracting away the infinite divine fluidity of personhood and instead focusing on the concrete relationships between the concrete hypostases, then of course the spirit proceeds from the father alone, because it makes perfect sense to say that the uncreated (Subject: Father) creates (Verb: Spirit) the created (Object: Son), but it makes absolutely no sense to reverse the terms of the sentence and say that the created (Son) creates (Spirit) the uncreated (Father). This is absurd, illogical and incoherent. The Father hypostasis is the ground and source of divine being and the other hypostases, and therefore the Spirit proceeds from him alone.

So the west is correct to note the fluidity of personhood that results from divine simplicity, infinity and plurality: God loves God and God is the love. However the east is correct to insist upon the precise definition of the relationship between the hypostases: The lover is not the loved, the loved is not the love, and the love is not the lover.

To Create is to Love and to Love is to Save

God is not merely a creator and a lover, he is also a saviour. But how could God be a saviour if there were nothing to save?

I’m now about to tread onto extremely speculative ground. So far we have seen two ways in which God manifests as a “Subject Verb Object” Trinity: 1. The Father loves the Son. 2. The Father creates the Son. Due to the doctrine of Simplicity, these two formulations, and the terms of these formulations are all entirely interchangeable. I propose to introduce one further Trinitarian formulation: From all eternity, the Father is the saviour of the Son.

The doctrine of the incarnation comes into play at this point. From all eternity, the son assumed fallen human nature, and took onto himself all of our sins and bore the consequences of those sins, namely – damnation, rejection, Hell, non-existence, death. The son willingly embraced this state of damnation on our behalf. But, someone who is in such a state of damnation requires a saviour; someone to deliver them from the darkness. This saviour is the father. So from eternity by his incarnation the son embraces death and non-existence and plunges into it, and from eternity the father rescues him from the Tartaran depths, resurrects him and raises him up to new life and eternal glory.

And so the divine paradoxes continue to proliferate: God is both living and dead, both unity and plurality, both simplicity and complexity, both existing and non-existing, both being and non-being, both light and darkness, both created and uncreated. God takes everything that is opposed to him up into himself and in doing so defeats it and glorifies it.

Incarnation as Trinitarian Identity

The incarnation itself can be expressed as a Trinitarian relationship: The Father (Subject) eternally incarnates (Verb) the Son (Object). The Father is inaccessible, eternally hidden, entirely transcendent, out of reach of our intellect. The Son is accessible, perfectly revealed, completely immanent, and able to relate to us as an equal. The Spirit is the act of the taking on of flesh. All three terms of the equation are equally Divine.

And due to divine simplicity, this Trinitarian relationship is equal to the others. In some analogical way, to create is to love and to love is to create, to love is to save and to save is to love, to save is to incarnate and to incarnate is to save etc etc etc.

And this is where theology becomes Gospel. Because of the doctrine of incarnation, creation has been united to divinity. And so God loves Adam just as much as he loves Jesus, because Adam has been absorbed into the infinite ocean of living love that is God. All creation lives and moves and has its being in Christ, the incarnation of God. The infinite act of creation that flows from Father to Son, now also flows to us. The infinite act of love that flows from the Father to the Son, now also flows to us. The infinite act of Salvation that flows from the Father to the Son, now also flows to us. And the infinite act of incarnating glorification that flows from Father to the Son, now also flows to us. God creates us, loves us, saves us and deifies us, because he has drawn all of us up into his inner divine life where this beautiful theodrama eternally plays out.

Final Implications

I return now to the question which launched this series: Did God need to create the cosmos? Could the cosmos not have been?

As we have seen in this post, God could have not created us, and yet still remained a creator. God could have not loved us, and yet still remained a lover, God could have not saved us, and yet still remained a saviour. So not only are God’s acts of Creation, Love and Salvation completely and entirely free, gratuitous and uncoerced, but it is within the realm of reasonable possibility that God may have chosen to do otherwise without compromising his nature. But, could God have chosen not to become incarnate?

Incarnation is the bridge where necessity and contingency meet and it is the road where Divinity and Creation collide. Is it necessary that the Father eternally love the Son into being? No, the Father’s act of love towards the Son is completely uncoerced, unforced, free, gratuitous. However if it were not the case that the Father loved the son, then God would not be God. The incarnation brings all of creation into this equation. Is it necessary that God eternally loves creation into existence? No, God’s act of love towards creation is completely uncoerced, unforced, free, gratuitous. However because of the incarnation, if it were not the case that the Father loved creation, then God would not be God.

This same trick can be repeated for the other Trinitarian relations: Creation, Love, Salvation. The incarnation assumes us up into the divine life of the Trinity, a life where there is no necessity and no compulsion, only freedom. And yet it is also a life of perfect Creation, Love, and Salvation, gracefully bestowed as freely offered, freely accepted gifts between one person and another. By the incarnation, we are taken up to experience the uncoerced necessity of God’s free choice to save us. God chooses to save us, and it no longer makes any sense to speak of him as doing otherwise, because we have been assumed into the divine life itself, where the boundary between freedom and necessity has melted away and God can do nothing but love us with all of the infinite freedom that this love implies.

But, all of this is predicated on the necessity of the incarnation. And so the question becomes pressing, could God have chosen not to incarnate?

Let’s once more invoke divine simplicity: If the Father freely and gratuitously loves the Son, and yet it does not make any reasonable sense to imagine the Father not freely and gratuitously loving the Son, then we must imagine the incarnation in the same way. The Father freely and gratuitously incarnates the Son, and it does not make any reasonable sense to imagine things happening any other way.

In this way, the conclusion of the first post hasn’t changed: God does not create out of some sort of necessity or out of obedience to some higher principle, but if he didn’t create, he would not be God, and it is therefore nonsensical to imagine that the cosmos might not have been. However the crucial point here is the incarnation: if not for the fact that divinity eternally united itself to creation, creation very well might not have been, because God contains everything within himself and is completely self-sufficient. But because of the incarnation, created reality is assumed into the divine life, and the so the necessary freedom of God has become applicable.

And once more we finish on a note of Gospel: We have been assumed into the divine drama. If within this drama the Father would not abandon the Son to Hell and everlasting torments, instead resurrecting him to new life and glory, then how much more will he save his creation; perfectly uniting us to Christ by faith, sacrament and theosis? Could God leave anyone or anything behind? Only if God could abandon himself, for he has united himself to the creation and everything in it. But we know that he will not abandon himself, and so we know that he will not abandon any of us. All creation, and everything and everyone within creation are destined for glory and beatitude. I leave the final word to God himself:

If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies;who is to condemn? Is it Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us?Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,
“For thy sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Eschatology and Soteriology – A Universalist Catholic Account Of The Last Things

03/01/202225/03/2023 / TIK / 2 Comments

I affirm the dogmatic, three-fold, Catholic eschatological division of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven. However I understand these three realities in ways that are different to the standard presentation, and I also propose a fourth realm which I’m not sure what to call, but will tentatively refer to as Eschaton. Finally, there is also a state called Limbo which overlaps with both Heaven and Purgatory, but it is important to note that my understanding of Limbo is quite different to the traditional understanding.

Hell

In my understanding, and following the current Catechism, Hell consists of “Total separation from God”. I take this at face value and interpret it as meaning that Hell consists of “Ceasing to Exist”, because this is the only way to truly be “totally separate” from God. As it says in the psalms “If I make my bed in Hell, you are there with me”

I also believe that Hell is empty, which is to say that no one will actually experience this fate. I allow room for the idea that Jesus himself descended to this Hell and suffered the punishment of annihilation on our behalf on Holy Saturday. However I am not dogmatically committed to the idea.

People might wonder what the point of this Hell is if no one goes there. This is easily answered: Without everlasting damnation there can be no salvation. God needed to save us from something, and this is what it was. In this way, the purpose of Hell is to remind us how bad it could have been, which in turn serves to emphasise just how much God loves us, and just how great his Grace is.

Purgatory

In my understanding, Purgatory is both a punishment and a purification. Both the punishment and the purification are directly proportional in intensity to the amount of sins a person commit during life.

Purgatory is also what I take all the biblical references to “Gehenna” to be referring to. As such, I believe that Purgatory is experienced as “Eternal Conscious Torment” (as long as the word “eternal” is understood to mean “timeless”). I take biblical references to the worm that dies not, eternal punishment, eternal fire, the outer darkness, weeping and gnashing of teeth, and eternal destruction as references to the experience of purgatory. Purgatory really, really sucks and you don’t want to go there.

I also believe that people who do not have explicit faith in Christ prior to death go to purgatory. I believe that it is impossible for someone who has not been evangelised and who has not come to faith in the unconditional promises of God to enter salvation. Salvation requires a full purification, but also explicit faith in the gospel message. Without these two things, it is impossible to experience heaven.

Heaven

In my understanding, Heaven is the place where someone goes when they have perfect, explicit faith in the unconditional promise of salvation, and when their soul has been fully purified of all stain of sin. Implicit faith is not enough. A loving heart is not enough. The soul must be perfect and their faith must be explicit.

The degree of reward received in heaven is directly proportional to the good works that the person performed during life. It is an abstract, spiritual sort of pleasure that consists of the direct apprehension of God and his pure beauty, truth, goodness, love, mercy, justice and so forth.

Where my view of heaven starts to differ from the standard account, is that I believe that it is impossible for the people in heaven to actually enjoy the fullness of heavenly bliss while their friends and family remain suffering in Gehenna. I believe that the people in Heaven can see the suffering in Gehenna, and they are horrified by it. As such, so long as there is a single soul remaining in the dark torments of Gehenna, this will cause a chain reaction of compassionate empathy that effectively nullifies the supreme joy and bliss of everyone in heaven.

I believe that because of this, the people in heaven will organise missionary trips to purgatory. They will descend from Heaven and minister to the poor souls who are trapped in Gehenna, preaching the Gospel to them, reasoning with them, loving them, and generally doing everything they can in order to bring these poor souls to perfect faith and repentance so that they may escape the darkness. This missionary activity will continue so long as there is a single soul remaining trapped in Gehenna.

Limbo

Limbo is not really “another state”, and is instead just a dramatically reduced experience of Purgatory and Heaven. People who did not do many or any good deeds during life, but who also did not commit many or any sins during life, therefore do not merit much or any punishment and reward in the afterlife. Therefore regardless of whether these people end up in Heaven or Purgatory, the experience will be much the same: very blank and devoid of any content. This “nothing” state receives the name “Limbo” in my theology. Notice that it is different to “The limbo of the infants” and “The limbo of the fathers” from traditional Catholic scholasticism, although aborted babies and young infants do indeed experience my version of Limbo, on account of the fact that they haven’t sinned or loved at all during life.

Eschaton

Where the previous states were disembodied spiritual realities which the soul experiences alone, this state has to do with the resurrection and new creation.

The eschaton is the final state, the end of history, the teleos of creation. In this final state, there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more suffering, no more sickness, no more death. The lion will lie down with the lamb. Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Christ is lord. All the gentiles will be saved, all of Israel will be saved. Even all of the fallen Angels will have been saved.

The eschaton will not arrive until the missionary activity from heaven has succeeded and therefore every soul who is stuck in Gehenna has escaped. The joy of salvation cannot be complete until everyone has been fully saved. The eschaton represents the state of affairs when this has finally occurred. It is the most glorious state of all: No longer is there any impediment to the saved enjoying their salvation, because all of their friends and families have been saved too!

Furthermore, this is simultaneous with the resurrection, the Parousia, the final (general) judgement and the new creation. All the disembodied souls will be reunited with their glorified bodies, in a renewed and glorified physical reality that encompasses all of history and includes everything that has ever lived or existed. This is the true and final end to the story. So long as people fail to achieve heaven, heaven can’t really be heaven. But in the eschaton, everyone will have finally achieved salvation and therefore the joy of salvation will be complete. Finally we will all be able to enjoy God to the full, experiencing unadulterated, uninterrupted heavenly bliss, as well as perfect love for all people, all things, all creation and God himself.

Conclusion

Heaven is not what we should be aiming for, and purgatory is not what we should be settling for. The eschaton is what we are working towards, and the good news of the gospel is that we can’t fail! Salvation is guaranteed, but it is not automatic: we still have to walk the path. But the good news is that we will walk the path. God guarantees and promises us that in the end, we will fight the good fight, we will run the race, we will win the prize. There is a crown waiting for each of us, and in the eschaton we will all be victorious, to the praise and glory of God.