Free Will

Beautiful Heresy 101 – Reverse Pelagianism: “No, you are not free to choose Hell”

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foxtrot-free-will1[1].jpgJust as it is a heresy to believe that you can freely save yourself, so too is it a heresy to claim that you can damn yourself. By claiming that man is “free” to choose whether or not to accept God’s love, the catholic ministers of the gospel of perdition elevate themselves above God and deny his sovereignty; their condemnation will be swift and just. Do not be so foolish as to think you can climb the ladder to heaven apart from grace, and do not be so presumptuous as to think that you have the “freedom” to hide from God in Hell forever. God loves you and intends your salvation; do you really think you can defeat his sovereign will by a stubborn refusal to submit and a childish denial of worship?

Pure Theology – The Doctrine of God as Trinity in Unity: Divine Freedom and Necessity; Contradictions, Square Circles and Rocks that Can’t be lifted

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I have been reading a brilliant series by Father Aiden Kimel over on his “Eclectic Orthodoxy” blog about psuedo-Dionysius and his deep, profound reflections on divinity. I had to pause to worship and set my thoughts down. As I paced around my room churning it all over in my mind I felt as if I had a series of breakthroughs and insights. Here is my attempt to set them down. Such exciting theological discoveries are typically hard to capture with human language, but here is my attempt regardless.

Did God Have to Create? Is Creation Necessary?

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  • Yes, in the sense that God would not be God if he did otherwise than what he does. God needs a creation in order to be a creator.
  • No, in the sense that God’s act of creation is completely uncoerced, unforced. It is a completely free, gratuitous and voluntary act. There is no necessitating principle which requires him to create in order for him to be who he is, or if there is such a principle, it is absorbed into the divine simplicity along with everything else, such that God IS both the principle and that which it demands.

So,

Is God forced to create?
Is God forced to love?
Is God forced to save?
Is God forced to be omnipotent?

No. For this would imply some sort of superior principle determining God’s nature and actions. God is completely free of all such restraint.

But,

Could God have not created?
Could God have not loved?
Could God have not saved?
Could God have not been omnipotent?

No. For if he were not creator, lover, saviour and omnipotent, he would not be God.

The Internal Life of the Trinity

Call-to-Love-Learning-Journey[1].jpgThere is no necessity within God, imposing upon his nature that it must be such and such a way, for example loving, or omnipotent, or just. Instead, there is an invitation extended from God to God: the invitation to be loving, the invitation to be merciful, the invitation to be omnipresent, the invitation to be omnipotent, the invitation to be creator, the invitation to be saviour. God always fully and freely accepts this invitation which in his infinity is made from God to God as from one to another. Due to divine simplicity, God is both the one making the invitation and the one accepting the invitation, God is what the invitation offers, he is the act of inviting itself, and he is the act of accepting the invitation.

Whereas if there were necessity within God, this would imply a sort of dissonant violence within divinity: God commands God to be loving by necessity, and there is tension as God obeys this inevitable command, perhaps against his will. God commands God to be saviour, and there is rebellion and struggle as God begrudgingly accepts the pain that is involved. God commands God to be omnipotent, and God throws this infinite power back in God’s face by creating square circles and rocks that can’t be lifted.

Anthropomorphism at Fault Again

high-resolution-2048x2048-abstract-yin-yang-hd-arena[1].jpgThe problem comes from imagining freedom in a creaturely way. In our every day experience, we commonly deliberate between multiple distinct and contrary options, and we locate our freedom in the selection of one of these options. Whereas for God this cannot be the case. There is no deliberation between options in God and – more starkly still – there is no “choice” in God. God does not “choose” to create; he simply creates. God does not choose to love; he simply loves. But the crucial thing here is that whenever we attach a verb to God, the adverb “freely” is always implied, and the adverb “freely” itself implies an action that is completely uncoerced, completely unforced, and entirely gratuitous. So God does not simply love; he freely loves. God does not simply create; he freely creates. God is not simply who he is; he freely is who he is. God is not omnipotent out of some necessity that he be omnipotent in order to be who he is, instead, God freely embraces omnipotence. The definition of God as omnipotent flows from his free act to embrace omnipotence, rather than his act of being omnipotent flowing from some predetermined, and necessary definition which is superior to God.

Of course, as I have elaborated on elsewhere on this blog, it is possible to embrace dualism and anthropomorphism and conceive of God as choosing between two polar opposite alternatives: Good and Evil, Being and nothingness. The choice to love, to save, to create, to be omnipotent, omnipresent, infinite, to be free; in short, to be God – this represents the choice for good. The choice to hate, to damn, to destroy, to be powerless, to be illogical, to be nowhere, nothing, non-existent, enslaved; this represents the choice for evil. But really, when put in such stark terms, how could we imagine God choosing anything but the first option? If he didn’t, he would not be God.

Can God Actualise Irrational Potentials?

large-boulder[1]These considerations also directly bear on the age old problem of rocks that can’t be lifted and the possibility of square circles. Could God have actualised these strange and irrational potentials? No, because if he were to do that, he would not be God – he would be either greater than he currently is, in which case the God we worship is not truly God; or he would be less than he currently is, in which case he would not be worthy of the title “God”.

At this point the principle of non-contradiction comes into the spotlight and is sometimes invoked as a superior principle which even God is bound to follow. However it is important to remember that God is not bound by this principle as something over and above him, but he freely chooses to embrace order over disorder, structure over chaos, logic over irrationality. The principle of non-contradiction lies at the heart of logic, reason and rationality, and therefore God freely embraces this principle as part of his nature, just as he embraces omnipotence, omniscience, love, justice, mercy etc. Could he have done otherwise? Yes he could, but then he would be some other God, and some other God is no God at all, which in the end is just another way of saying no he could not have. This implies that there is a certain divinity inherent in the principle of non-contradiction; it is one of very few clear windows into the character of the mysterious and ineffable God whom we worship.

So, is there any external principle which prevents God from creating rocks that can’t be lifted or square circles? Again, no. God’s choice not to create these things is completely free and gratuitous, just as free and gratuitous as his act of creating the world, or being omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipresent.

But could he create them? Yes, but then he would not really be God, which is just another way of saying no. This does not represent some external principle, regulating and restricting his freedom and limiting his power. It simply represents the fact that God freely is who he is, and if he were otherwise he would not be God.

Calvinism, Sovereignty and Freedom

solar-system-11188_1280-e1505503768960[1].jpgGod freely embraces love, he freely embraces omnipotence, he freely embraces justice. But due to divine simplicity, he freely embraces everything else about himself too: he freely embraces transcendence, he freely embraces simplicity, he freely embraces infinitude, he freely embraces both unity and plurality. Most bafflingly of all, he even freely embraces freedom itself!

This sheds a little bit of light on the Calvinist obsession with the attribute of Sovereignty: God’s infinite freedom means that he freely embraces love, justice, mercy, grace, power. Where the Calvinists tend to go wrong is when they conceive of this freedom in anthropomorphic terms; as the choice between two options, either of which God could deign to choose. In this way the Calvinists tend to imagine a God who is free to save or to damn, to create or not to create, to love us or to hate us, to save us or damn us. But this is going about it all wrong, for the God who does not choose to love, to create and to save is not the true and eternal God. God is who he is and he is what he does and if he did any different he would not truly be God. Divine freedom and sovereignty is not a choice between two options; it is the infinite, free, overflowing bubbling fountain of love and salvation that is God himself. God is not forced to create us, love us, or save us; but he could not do otherwise and remain God.

Final Thoughts

Hakim_Art%20(1)[1].jpgAnd so finally we come to the most pressing question of all:

Must God save everyone?

No, for nothing can compel God to do anything.

But will God save everyone?

Of course! For if God did not save everyone, he would not be the true God, he would be some other god, and “some other god” is no God at all.

To he who resides in the impenetrably immanent depths of infinitude, bliss, being, love; to he who transcendently loves the cosmos into existence; to he who enters into the divine silence of the most holy inner sanctuary and freely offers himself to himself as one to another; to he who died for our sins and rose again for our salvation; to him be all praise, glory, honour, worship, devotion and love, in saecula saeculorum, αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων

Amen.

(Go to “Divine Plurality for Non-Trinitarians”)

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

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Two ways to liveThe 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:

  1. Incarnation: The Eternal Battle between Good and Evil. The marriage between the created and the uncreated, God and the cosmos, Christ and his church.
  2. The Murder of God: Original sin, Mortal sin and the Unforgivable sin. The great divorce. Cosmic Tragedy, Total Defeat, Hell and Damnation.
  3. Resurrection: Gospel, Good news and a twist ending. Redemption, Atonement, Unconditional Promise, Predestination and Election.
  4. 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.

Two ways to liveIn 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.

Two ways to liveThe 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

Two ways to liveAs 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.

Two ways to live

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

Two Ways to Live: Resurrection

Two ways to live

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.

Two ways to live

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.

Two ways to live

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

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”

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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.

Pure Theology – The Doctrine of God as Trinity in Unity: “God is Perfectly and Entirely Free, and yet he can not Do Other than what he Does: Create us, Love us, Save us.”

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Hi Father,

I’ve finally got around to reading the Dionysian ponderings series on your blog. I’ve been saving it for some months until I could find a time to properly settle into the armchair by the fireplace with the pipe and cheese and appreciate it. It was well worth the wait.

I’m currently up to the part about whether or not God was forced to create the world (or whether he could have not created the world). I want to try and summarise my understanding of what you’ve written in a few sentences and send it off to you for marking:

  1. God had to create necessarily, in the sense that if he did not create he would not be “creator” and therefore would be some other God. However the notion of “some other God” is incoherent because there is only one true God, which is the God revealed to us in this reality and therefore “some other God” is really no God at all.
  2. Despite the fact that God had to create, this necessity of creation is not necessity in the sense that God is “compelled” or “forced” to create. Instead, God made an 100% libertarian uncompelled “free” choice to create. In this way, creation remains 100% contingent upon Gods free choice and in that sense, creation “need not have been”
  3. Divine simplicity helps to frame the issue: God is what God does. Therefore God is both the one who creates and the free choice (to create) itself. If the choice had been different, we would be dealing with a different God. But as already mentioned, this is incoherent.
  4. Divine freedom should not be construed in the same way that we conceive of creaturely freedom, ie, as a deliberation and selection between multiple alternatives. Instead we should think of divine freedom as a movement of will which is completely uncoerced, uncompelled, unconstrained, unforced etc. in this way, there was only ever “one” possible “alternative” for God to “select”, but the crucial point is that his “selection” of this “choice” is completely and entirely free; completely and entirely uncoerced.
  5. So Could God have decided not to create? No. Does this mean that there is some necessity imposed on his will? Also no. The only necessity that it is reasonable to speak of here is the necessity that God be as God is, and this necessity encapsulates a perfect and infinite divine freedom; the total transcendence of all restrictions and constraints. God is perfectly and entirely free, and yet he can not do other than what he does: create us, love us, save us.
  6. Side point, often with creaturely freedom our choices are entirely compelled and coerced, even when there are multiple options on offer: for example when presented with a large variety of icecream flavours, I will always choose the mint choc; I simply don’t have the “free will power” to branch out and sample the other flavours on offer. Whereas God has only a single option: to create. And the crucial point is that his “selection” of this “option” is the most free movement of will conceivable

Thank you as always for your wonderful writings. Such a joy and source of edification in my life over the past four years. While I never pray as much as I should, I do try to keep you and your family in mind as you’ve been such a large influence in my spiritual journey despite the fact that we’ve never properly met.

Stay strong in Christ, with infinite joy and invincible hope,

Alex Herlihy

Orthodoxy 101 – Scripture Clearly Says that All will be Saved: The One True God and his One True Gospel

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If even a single soul fell through Gods fingers into Hell – regardless of the reason – this would demonstrate that he is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. It would prove him to be a weak and pathetic failure and completely nullify the Gospel.

Join the winning team: become a universalist. Come and worship the God who desires to save everyone, is able to save everyone, and will save everyone. Come and worship the God who is loving, powerful and sovereign. Come and worship the God who is more true to the tradition and more consistent with the scriptures.

“By one man’s act of disobedience all men without exception were made sinners, but by one man’s act of righteousness all men without exception were justified and made alive” (Romans 5 – the scope of salvation is equal to the scope of sin: both are universal)

“God consigned everyone to disobedience, so that he might have mercy upon everyone.” (Romans 11 – we are all simultaneously vessels of wrath and vessels of mercy)

“Every knee shall lovingly bow, and every tongue will freely confess that Christ is Lord” (Phillipians – all men will come to freely and lovingly accept Christ in the eschaton)

“The full totality of the gentiles will be saved, and then the full totality of Israel will be saved too” (Romans 11 – need I say more? Everyone is going to be saved, even though some may be saved “through fire”)

Orthodoxy 101 – The Calvinism and Arminian Debate: Free will and Apokatastasis

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Absurdity

1466066445_762285_1466066581_noticia_normal[1]The French philosophy of Absurdity, as I understand it, can be summarised thus: All major philosophical issues are defined by a tension between two perspectives. The first perspective is the perspective of God, known as sub specie aeternitatis, Latin for “Beneath the gaze of eternity”. The second perspective is our own, individual, human, subjective perspective. These two perspectives are often found to be clashing in seemingly irreconcilable ways on deep and major issues.

To give one example, subjectively it seems completely obvious that we have free will. We live it and breath it. We have strong experiences of choosing between different alternatives. Freedom is something hard to pin down, and when you try to look directly at it it tends to run to our peripheral vision, but it’s definitely there; freedom is an experience we can all relate to.

However objectively, when you zoom out and try to adopt Gods perspective, free will seems to disappear. We simply cannot locate it anywhere in objective reality. Everything seems either totally random or deterministically caused. When you zoom out and behold the entire history of creation, everything seems to follow from prior causes and free will is nowhere to be found.

So with the issue of Free will, there is a tension between our perspective and Gods perspective. From our perspective it seems plainly obvious that we are free; from Gods perspective we look like little machines operating according to predefined laws.

Predetermined according to freedom

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This tension can be resolved theologically. The primary action of God is to give existence to creation. God’s primary role is creator. One of the things that God creates is time; past, present and future. However God himself is outside of time and beholds all of history as a single eternal moment: all moments in creation, from the beginning to the end, are present to him simultaneously. In this way, we can speak of God creating in both the present continuous and past perfect.

In the past perfect, God has once and for all created all of history; everything that is going to happen in the future is predetermined and set in stone, and everything that has happened in the past is set in stone. From God’s eternal perspective creation is immutable, complete, finished. God has already created the end of history and beholds it immediately, even though to us it seems to have not yet come to pass. This is why God is able to speak to us about the end of time in scripture; he is able to promise us the eschaton and make it manifest in our present experience of life.

In the present continuous, God can be said to still be creating each individual moment that we experience, and everything contained within that moment. In this way God becomes the perpetual creator of everything: the sun, the stars, our emotions, our pleasure, our pain, and most importantly; our freedom.

We know from our subjective experience of the present moment that God has created freedom in us. When we experience freedom it is a direct window into the creative action of God. So why can’t we locate this freedom when we zoom out to God’s perspective? God performs a single, all-encompassing act of creation which stretches from the beginning of time to the end of time. As such, from God’s perspective, creation is immutable. However questions about this creation can be asked: In what way did God create? What are the details of this creation? According to what laws and patterns did God let it unfold?

When we step outside ourselves and examine creation, we are looking at the ways in which God has created. When we discover “laws of nature”, these are not laws of nature so much as habits of God. We discover that God constructs  his creation so that it unfolds according to these laws. A miracle is simply when God does something different and doesn’t follow his usual habits, and therefore the laws of nature are “broken”.

This is where freedom is to be found. Our freedom was taken into account when God created history. You can imagine the situation as God asking us “ok guys, what happens next?” and then consulting our freedom to work out how he is going to create the next moment. He repeats this for every moment in creation, until all of history has been worked out and set in stone. In this way, we all become co-authors with God of the story of creation.

And so this is why things seem predetermined and free will is nowhere to be found when we zoom out to God’s perspective: it is because everything is predetermined. However it is not God who predetermines: it is us! Through our freedom, we have predetermined the path that history will unfold. If you imagine God unfolding creation according to one big mathematical formula, our freedom was just another variable he incorporated into the equation.

The important point to remember is that this is true freedom: we are really and truly free, and this can be verified by our subjective experience of freedom in the present moment. However when God sums up all of our choices and incorporates them into the entirety of creation history, everything becomes predetermined. The paradox is that our actions are determined and predetermined according to our freedom.

Sovereign will and Permissive will

moses-breaking-the-tablets-of-the-law[1].jpgIt is possible to talk about God’s will in two ways. There is his sovereign will and his permissive will. God’s sovereign will can be loosely summed up as “What God wants to happen and what he is working towards”. God’s permissive will is essentially “whatever actually happens”.

An example of God’s sovereign will is his desire that all men be saved. This is something that God wants and is something that he is actively seeking. Another example of God’s sovereign will is all of his commandments that we must follow: for example that we love him and love our neighbour; that we do not murder and steal. These are things that God desires that we do and he is actively working towards helping us do them.

Examples of God’s permissive will can be easily found by consulting history: Nothing happens which God does not permit to happen. When the Jews were hunted down and slaughtered by Hitler, God allowed this to happen. When the printing press was invented, God allowed it to happen. When I was born, God allowed it to happen.

A prime example of God’s permissive will is our freedom. Every single action I take, whether good or evil, is permitted by God, but not determined by him. God creates my action, my freedom, and the results of my action, however the entire time he creates according to my freedom and permits what I choose to come to pass. This is the origin of sin and suffering in the world. God does not desire sin or suffering, however due to our freedom we choose it, and he ratifies our choice.

Hope in the promise of Apokatastasis

f8dbddff350460aa96df9d8e3606b01d--arch-angels-archangel-gabriel[1].jpgThe Gospel message of Hope is that God’s Sovereign will will eventually come to pass at the end of time, the end of creation, the eschaton. We hope and believe that God has a hidden and mysterious plan. He is like the perfect chess-master who is able to construct creation such that he can outmanoeuvre every single choice that we make, and eventually win the game. We cannot go on thwarting his sovereign will forever. In short, God gets what God wants. Every event in history is important to God’s plan. The entire reason we have a past, present and future is so that God can give us freedom and make us perfect in time, until we arrive at the eschaton in which all of God’s sovereign purposes have been achieved. The message of hope is that God incorporates all events, including our free choices, into his plan, and that once this plan comes to pass there will be no more tears, no more death, no more sin, no more guilt and despair, no more abuse of freedom. Instead there will only be boundless overflowing love, given freely, there will be glory and worship, every knee shall bow and declare that God is good. Hell will be empty, all of creation will be saved, singing and rejoicing. We will all look back and laugh. Slaves will forgive their masters. Rapists and their victims will embrace. Hitler and the Jews will be reconciled. No one will be left behind. All men will be saved. Even the Devil and his demons will be brought back to the light.

This grand vision of the eschaton is not something that we know with certainty. The future is still foggy for us where we stand right now. However we have promises from God written down in the holy scriptures that this future will come to pass. We trust that God can see this final future and we trust that he does not lie. We trust that he has the power to bring his promises about. Our freedom cannot thwart God’s plans: no matter what we do, he is able to outsmart us and eventually see us saved. How wonderful it is to hope and trust in this vision of the future.

(Go to “Objective and Subjective Salvation”)

Beautiful Heresy 101 – The Gospel Creed

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Nicaea_icon[1].jpgI believe in the gospel: the promise of the salvation of the entire cosmos, and of everything in it.

I believe in freedom: that all who repent, repent freely; that all who are damned embrace damnation with full knowledge and full consent; that no one is forced to be saved.

I believe in the universal scope of sin, total depravity and the massa damnata: that all souls with neither exception nor distinction are predestined to everlasting tortures, in the depths of the lowest hell, where the smoke of their torment rises forever and ever.

I believe in the perfect man, the Lord Jesus, and the perfect woman, the Holy Virgin Mother Mary. I confess that together they are one Christ, and as Christ they descended to the lowest and most infinitesimal circle of Hell, where they experienced the full force of damnation forever and ever and ever, unto the ages of ages, τον αιδιος και τον αιονιων, in saecula saeculorum. I confess that in doing so, they experienced the full chastisement for the sins of the world, and no punishment remains. I confess that they were resurrected immediately to the highest possible height of heaven, where they sit exalted at the right hand of God the father. I confess that they have come again, are coming again, and will come again, for the sake of the salvation of all souls.

I believe in the election of the damned and of all sinners; the predestination of Hitler* and of Satan and all of his demons.

I believe in epektasis: that Heaven is an everlasting struggle, in which we feel infinite pain as we become perfected in love and compassion towards the damned who wander in Hell.

I believe in the eschaton: the final moment – an eternity and a forever distant into the future – where all that ever was will be once again, and all who have ever lived will be raised to new life, resurrected into the fullness of perfection and glory. I confess that there will be no more sickness, tears, suffering, sadness, war, death, crime, murder, rape, sin, rebellion, Hell, or any other evil thing whatsoever.

I believe in the life of the final age; infinite joy, infinite satisfaction, divine bliss, immutability, impassibility, ineffability, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, omnibenevolence.

I confess that we may enter into this final age right now, through sincere faith in the good news and this promise. I confess that we will become one with the eschaton through love, and that ultimately not a single soul will fail in the struggle.

I affirm that after all the ages have passed – after we all have experienced an infinity of heavens and an infinity of hells – all things will come to the final, peaceful rest of nibbana. All things will return to the nothingness of God from whence they originally sprung forth; all sin will be extinguished and all virtue will be laid to rest; karma will cease and the cycle of samsara will come to it’s final conclusion.

I affirm that God is the Alpha and the Omega, and that therefore the end is but a new beginning, and after the final conclusion and timeless rest of nibbana, the cycle of samsara will start anew, all to the everlasting glory of God.

To the one who calls out to us from everlasting to everlasting, and whose burning heart relentlessly pursues us unto the ages of ages;

To him who embraces us as we burn forever and ever in this lake of fire, and who loves us without limit as we wander the edge of this outer darkness;

To the perfect lover in whom all of us live and move and have our being, and who will not cease sending grace until the last of us submits to sorrow and repentance;

To he who is eternally more eternal than eternity and infinitely more infinite than infinity; To the sovereign king who makes all things new and guarantees that all will be well with the world;

All praise, glory, honour, dominion and victory be yours, Until all sinners are restored to perfection, And the evil one himself has confessed you as lord, And the entire cosmos shines bright with your glorious love.

Amen

* Substitute the name of whoever is considered to be the most evil and hated figure of the day in your culture and community. Or if reciting this creed privately, substitute the name of the person you have the most trouble loving.

(Edited 27/7/2019)

Orthodoxy 101 – The Calvinist and Arminian Debate: Idolatry of the Freedom of the Will

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In Catholic, Orthodox and Arminian circles, “Freedom” often seems to be pushed as the central dogma of the faith. More important than the divinity of Christ; More important than the victory of the cross; More important than the all powerful, completely loving, salvation-intending will of God; Human “Freedom” reigns supreme. If we are not free to reject salvation, how can we truly love God? If we are not free to reject God’s loving, salvific overtures, where is our dignity as human beings? If we are not free to choose Hell, anathema sit.

My conviction and contention is that this popular view of “supreme libertarian freedom” essentially constitutes an idolatry of freedom and a perversion of Catholic dogma. I hate to see myself admitting it, but I suspect the Augustinian/Calvinist tradition actually has it mostly right when it comes to this matter of freedom.

In my own reading, I have encountered many authors who invite us to imagine freedom as a “scale”: One side of the scale represents a choice to perform some loving work, while the other side of the scale represents a choice to perform a perverse and sinful action. This image is incredibly useful for illustrating a variety of views on freedom.

Arminian / Catholic / Orthodox – Unimpeded Libertarian Freedom

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In the popular Catholic mind, humans possess a supreme and unassailable dignity in that we are free. When presented with a choice between good and evil, it is entirely up to the freedom of human subject to determine which alternative will be chosen. The human is completely impartial; his choice is completely uninfluenced; whatever choice is chosen will be determined by that persons freedom, and nothing else. The image is that of the scale previously described, in which one side of the scale is equally as appealing as the other side of the scale, and therefore the choice that is eventually chosen is determined purely by the whimsy of the human will.

This is libertarian freedom. When someone makes a choice, this choice is not determined by outside influences; it is determined purely by the agent who makes the choice. The interesting thing is that this libertarian view would appear to contradict Catholic dogma at a cursory reading.

Augustinian / Calvinist – The biased scale of Freedom

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It is a Catholic dogma that the fall lead to something called concupiscence in every human being who has ever lived. Concupiscence is essentially a tendency towards sin. Despite the fact that we are free, our human natures have been wounded such that we tend towards sin in everything that we do. It is an important philosophical point to establish that this tendency towards sin is not an external influence upon us; it instead arises from within ourselves, and proceeds from our very nature as human beings, and therefore it is not something that could be said to nullify freedom. As the Calvinists say: we are free to behave according to our natures, and if our natures are wounded and tend towards sin, then we are free to behave according to that nature and accordingly, we will almost certainly sin.

The image is that of the scale of freedom, as before, however that scale is now biased. Given any choice between good and evil we do indeed have the power and freedom to choose the good, however because of our wounded nature, the scale is biased such that we will in most cases tend towards choosing evil. The scale has a weight underneath the cup that represents the choice for evil; so while it is indeed possible for us to defeat this bias and do good, this is incredibly difficult to achieve due to the opposition we face via the bias given to the evil choice.

So in a sense we retain our libertarian freedom, because no outside influence is able to determine the choices we make. However that libertarian freedom is not “neutral”: it is instead biased towards sin from within due to our wounded human natures. This bias towards sin is called concupiscence within the Catholic tradition.

Arminian Grace – Equalising the Scale of Freedom

Kronk-listening-to-his-shoulder-devil.jpgThe Arminian account of the plan of salvation (as I understand it) is thus: Human beings were originally created with complete libertarian freedom, which is to say we were able to choose to sin or not to sin and this choice was not determined by any force outside of ourselves. However our first parents chose to sin by eating the forbidden fruit. One of the effects of eating the fruit was that we lost our libertarian freedom: now instead of being able to choose between sin and love, we always choose sin. Arminians (and Calvinists) call this “total depravity“. Our scales of freedom are biased towards sin. However the good news of the Gospel is that God has sent us his Holy Spirit, and this Holy Spirit is able to act as a counterweight on the scale of freedom, equalising the scale such that we regain our libertarian freedom. Now we are once again in our pre-lapsarian condition: we are able to exercise our freedom and choose between good and evil, unimpeded by any bias towards one choice or another. So the essential good news of the Gospel is not that God has saved us, it is that he has restored our freedom and therefore restored the opportunity for salvation.

Step back for a moment and consider the situation: It could easily be described as schizophrenic. The image is that of the demon and the angel sitting on each of the human’s shoulders, whispering into his ears and trying to influence him. The Holy Spirit acts as an equal counterweight to concupiscence. Yes, we have neutral libertarian freedom again, but only as a result of two competing vectors of equal magnitude pulling in opposite directions and equalising to a null vector. The human subject finds himself pulled in every direction at once, and as a result ends up going nowhere, with the final destination being determined purely by his will.

The end result is that both salvation and damnation appear equally appealing: The human subject has no compulsion to choose either way. As such, his choice is apparently “free”, although I would prefer to say that the choice is random, and randomness does not constitute freedom.

Calvinist / Augustinian Grace – Biasing the Scale Towards Good

saint-michael.jpgCompare this with the Augustinian/Calvinist understanding of the Gospel. In this account of events, the fall lead to a wounding of our human nature such that we tend towards sin. In other words, our scales of freedom are biased towards sin rather than good. However the good news of the gospel is that God has sent his Holy Spirit – not to equalise the scales of freedom, but instead to change the bias. So now instead of being biased towards evil, we are biased towards good! Technically we retain our libertarian freedom, because no outside influences are able to determine the choices we make, however the Holy Spirit has healed our nature, and not only healed it, but glorified it, such that rather than tending towards evil, we tend towards good.

The image is close to that of the Arminian account: There is an angel and a demon sitting on each shoulder of the human subject, whispering into his ear. However the angel is ultimately more persuasive, and tends to defeat the demon in debate. As such, the human person tends towards doing good rather than evil. Calvinists have historically referred to this as irresistible grace.

Universalism – A more nuanced view

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A common charge against universalism is that it nullifies freedom. I contend that universalism implies no such thing. I draw on the Calvinist/Augustinian understanding to explain my case.

We are free to behave according to our natures. If our natures are sinful, we will tend towards sin, but if our natures are glorified we will tend towards love and good works. The good news of the Gospel is that God is in the process of healing our natures, and not just healing, but glorifying them. That is to say, God is attempting to make us impeccable – incapable of sin. This is not to say that God is trying to take away our freedom to sin, instead he is simply removing any impulse within us which would tend towards sin. In other words we will retain our freedom, however we will never abuse our freedom.

The Universalist eschatalogical vision is that in the end times God will have successfully defeated sin whilst safeguarding freedom. This is to say, we will all retain our freedom, however we will never abuse our freedom. As such, we will only ever do good. However in the present time a battle is still raging – the Arminian vision of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on another is apt to represent the situation. We are in the midst of a battle between good and evil. Evil is powerful and will put up a fight, however we have a promise from God that God will have the victory.

The end result is that yes, in the present time we have neutral libertarian freedom: The spirit is battling with sin/concupiscence and it seems that they are equally matched. However the eschatalogical vision is that God will win the fight. Eventually we all will choose him, freely. Moreover, at that point, our natures will be completely healed and glorified – which is to say we will be impeccable; even though we are free to sin, we simply wont do it, and will instead always choose the good.

This vision is entirely glorious. God will not force us to choose him, but nevertheless we will choose him. Our freedom is safeguarded, our salvation is safeguarded. No one will be damned. Confronted with such a vision of the future, what can we do but explode in faith and hope, praising God and petitioning him to bring it all about? Let us love God and love his plans, praying for them and working towards them in love. God really is that wonderful; Salvation really is that beautiful. Thanks be to Christ for the total victory which he wrought at the cross. Amen

(Go to “Meditations on Freedom”)

Orthodoxy 101 – The Calvinist and Arminian Debate: Meditations on Freedom of the Will

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In the fascinating debate between Calvinists and Arminians, the issue of “Freedom” is key. For Arminians, nothing could be more obvious than the reality of free will, and they find evidence to back up this intuition in the pages of scripture; while for Calvinists, nothing could be more obvious than the bondage and enslavery of our wills to sin and evil, and the bible clearly backs up this conviction.

I recently came to an understanding of both sides of the issue, and I suspect that the two parties are simply talking past each other: When they use the word “Freedom”, they are talking about two different things. When Arminians assert that we are free, they mean to say that we are “free agents”, who have the power of self-determination, control over our own actions, and the power to choose between alternatives. Whereas when Calvinists assert that we are not free, they do not necessarily mean to deny that we have free agency and self-determination; what they mean to say is that our wills are enslaved to sin and evil, such that – if it weren’t for the liberating grace of God – we would always perform evil actions and make sinful choices.

Arminians – Freedom as the Power of Contrary Choice

Fruits3[1].jpgThe Arminian (and Catholic and Orthodox) conviction that we possess libertarian freedom rests on the idea that in order to truly love, we must not be coerced into doing so in any way or on any metaphysical level. If we love, it is because we freely choose to do so, and not because God forces us to do so.

This conviction flows on into more philosophical territory. Arminians wish to assert that we have free/libertarian “agency”: that is to say, God’s sovereignty does not determine our actions and choices. Neither are our actions and choices determined by prior causes as per the philosophy of hard determinism. Instead, the principle which determines our actions and choices rests entirely within ourselves as individuals.

An example to illustrate the idea: A person is offered a variety of fruits at lunch time and informed that they can only choose one. The person deliberates and then chooses between one of the alternatives on offer, for example, a banana. This choice is neither random nor determined by outside forces – it is solely the person himself who brings about the choice of fruit – a banana rather than an apple or orange.

Some Calvinists take an extreme view of God’s sovereignty and blow the maxim “God is in control” way out of proportion. Such Calvinists would disagree with the Arminian analysis of the prior example and would instead claim that it is God who determines the choice of fruit, not the individual person. This would indeed amount to a flat denial of self-determination, free agency and the power of contrary choice. However not all Calvinists share this extreme view of God’s sovereignty.

Calvinists: “We have no Freedom” – The Bondage of the Will

Slavery-and-Sin-300x225[1]Most Calvinists, when pressed, would probably agree that humans possess free agency as defined above. However they would also emphasise their firm conviction that we do not possess free will. Instead of our will being free, our will is enslaved to sin, evil and the powers of darkness. The shorthand term “total depravity” is apt to summarise the situation. If it were not for God continually sending grace to us, we would always freely choose to sin rather than to love and do good. The more we sin, the more we become enslaved to that sin. And so if it were not for the action of God, we would simply descend further and further into evil and spiritual deformity.

Luther argued powerfully that our free agency, unassisted by grace, is unable to do good. Our free agency, left to it’s own devices, will always tend towards doing evil. Catholics dogmatically agree with this concept in the doctrine of concupiscence. Our wills are enslaved to sin. Our wills are in bondage to evil. The more we sin, the tighter the chains bind us.

In this way, humanity does not possess free will. We may very well have a free agency as the Arminians insist, in that our actions are not determined by God and our choices arise from within ourselves rather than being determined via divine sovereignty. Nevertheless our will is in a state of bondage. One component of the good news of the gospel is that God promises to liberate us from this slavery, and is in fact in the process of doing so. In the eschaton, our wills will be free again! In the end-times, our wills will be liberated from their slavery to Satan and the powers of darkness. However right now we are in the middle of the struggle, and this is why we sometimes sin and sometimes do good. The conviction here is that we are not free when we sin; instead, sin is a demonstration of our being in bondage to evil. On the other hand, when we love and do good, this is indeed a demonstration of a free will, or perhaps what is more accurately described as a liberated will.

Talking Past Each Other

p02yy74b[1].jpgWhen sacred scripture talks about freedom, it talks about it in these terms – bondage, slavery, liberation. It does not talk about it in philosophical categories of agency and determinism, regardless of whether or not those categories are true and useful. According to revelation, we are free when we do good and enslaved when we do bad.

Arminians often take their doctrine of freedom too far and end up insisting that humans have such a supreme and unassailable dignity to the point where absolutely nothing can have any influence on our choices, including the biblical concept of slavery to sin. The truth of the matter is that being enslaved to sin and suffering from total depravity does not nullify the fact that we are self-determining creatures who have the power to make distinct choices. All that it means is that the pool of choices that present themselves to us are always evil and sinful in nature, and this is the essence of the bondage of the will.

Whereas Calvinists sometimes push their doctrine of an enslaved will too far and end up denying that mankind has any free agency whatsoever. Such Calvinists put all their eggs in the “God is sovereign” basket and end up claiming that any experience of free agency is entirely illusory, because God himself is the one who is calling all the shots – including my “free” choices. Such Calvinists don’t understand that divine sovereignty does not necessarily contradict libertarian freedom. God is indeed in control, and he will succeed at bringing about the promised eschaton; nevertheless, he gives us true freedom and true agency, so that we can truly love him. He is not a divine puppet master pulling our strings.

A Middle Way

A middle path between the two extremes of Arminian “inviolable freedom” and Calvinist “Deterministic hyper-sovereignty” is helpful to examine. In this view of things, mankind does indeed possess the power of self-determination and free agency, as the Arminians insist, however our wills are also indeed enslaved to sin, as the Calvinists insist. All that this means is that we have free agency to choose between alternatives, however all of the alternatives that present themselves to us are sinful. In more traditional language, this is called “concupiscence” and “total depravity”.

FreedomNow, obviously the picture thus described does not accord with our experience of life and reality. The clear objection that presents itself is “I do not always sin, some times I love, sometimes I do good. I am clearly not totally depraved.” – This is quite true, and so some qualifications need to be introduced. Firstly, it is true that we do not always sin, however this reflects more on God than it does on us. The only reason we do not descend into a complete and entire depravity, is because our God is a God who delights in rescuing captives and freeing slaves. As such, God is always and everywhere sending us the sufficient grace we need in order to climb out of the pit of our sinto climb out of the pit of our sin and throw off the shackles that bind us to evil. The further we descend into depravity and evil, the greater the quantity of grace that God sends us. He is always giving us the opportunity and the means to turn from our sinful ways and repent, and all we need to do is give our consent.

What happens when we turn from sin and instead strive to do good? We become liberated. We finally possess the promised free will. God himself takes hold of us and shatters the chains that tie our wills to darkness and evil. Until God does this, our will is not free. The more and more that we consent to this liberation, and the more and more we cooperate with God’s grace, the more and more free we become. This freedom and liberation from sin could almost be seen as a slavery of another sort – instead of being slaves to sin, darkness, death, evil and the devil; we become slaves of love, righteousness, goodness, light and God himself. The theological traditions generally agree that in the end, we will be so enraptured by love that we will be impeccable – incapable of sinning. This is a paradoxical slavery opposed to the one in which we started, and interestingly, we call it the highest, most supreme form of freedom.

The Promise of Freedom

All of this considered, “free will” actually is just another eschatological promise that God makes to us. God promises us “freedom” as in “liberation”. Due to the fall, humanity would naturally be enslaved to sin. But God has always been fighting against this tendency, and he has always been attempting to liberate us from this slavery to sin. Insofar as we sin, we demonstrate slavery to sin, but insofar as we love, we demonstrate freedom to love. The promise of God is that one day we will be perfected in freedom; in other words, one day we will possess such a total liberation from slavery to sin that we will be impeccable. To the extent that we have faith in this promise, the promise actualises in our experience of life right here and now.

Of course, we still sin now, and this is evidence that God’s plans have not yet come to completion: Our God is a God who delights in rescuing captives from slavery, and he is in the process of doing this, and yet the fact that we still sin is evidence that God has not yet completed this process of liberation. The question is raised: can God fail to save us? Can God fail to deliver us from slavery? Can God fail to give us the freedom that he promises us?

FreedomThe answer that the Catholic Universalist gives is a firm and resounding NO! God’s promises cannot be thwarted. If God promises us true freedom and impeccability in the eschaton, then that is damn well what is going to happen. We are all of us in the midst of a battle at the present time; a battle between Satan and Christ; a battle in which we are all partially enslaved to sin and partially liberated for love. Sometimes we are made more or less enslaved. Sometimes we are made more or less liberated. But the promise of God is that in the end-times he will be victorious: No one will be enslaved to sin; everyone will be completely and entirely liberated for love. Israel will exit Egypt and find it’s way to the promised land, even if it takes 40 years of wandering in the desert to get there. So too, we will all have our freedom from bondage to sin, no matter how long it takes and even at the greatest cost to God – If Christ was willing to endure a crucifixion and descent into Hell for the sake of the world, how could he leave any one of us behind? All without exception will be liberated from slavery to sin. All without exception will be made righteous. All without exception will be cleaned from spiritual dirtiness. All without exception will walk out of the darkness and into the light. All without exception will see the gates of heaven and enter, singing joyous hymns and doxologies to our good and glorious God.

God gives us freedom so that we can love him, he did not give us freedom so that we could damn ourselves. Freedom is good news. Freedom is salvation. Freedom is Gospel. Let us pray for the salvation of all and praise God for his beautiful promises of liberation. Amen.

(Return to first article)