How to believe in human freedom without negating the incarnation
The question of exactly how far our human freedom extends has a huge effect on what we believe, but it is a really tricky issue to debate. I only see three positions that have any wide acceptance:
1. Materialist determinacy, which effectively denies the reality of people as intentional individuals and, at least to me, is totally incoherent.
2. Libertarian free-will, which is the majority belief today, and basically says that our choices are outside of the control of anyone but ourselves, and specifically within the Christian context, outside of the control of God. People reject him no matter how hard he tries.
3. God controlled free-will.* This says we are really intentional people not just physio-chemical entities, but there are bounds on our freedom, so that ultimately God determines our fate and can overcome our resistance.
I hold to the last, as do Calvinists (which I once was) and many universalists.
My arguments are.
1 If being human implies the ability to will the rejection of God, you have basically said that Christ is not human. Whereas Christ is the totally God-endorsed model for what it means to be a human.
2 If Love is not really really Love unless it is just one choice amongst many other objects of love, or maybe none at all, how does the love between the Persons of the Trinity work?
* This is my own term. A term often used is Compatibilist free-will, but this is mostly used by materialists which is why I avoid it.
1. Materialist determinacy, which effectively denies the reality of people as intentional individuals and, at least to me, is totally incoherent.
2. Libertarian free-will, which is the majority belief today, and basically says that our choices are outside of the control of anyone but ourselves, and specifically within the Christian context, outside of the control of God. People reject him no matter how hard he tries.
3. God controlled free-will.* This says we are really intentional people not just physio-chemical entities, but there are bounds on our freedom, so that ultimately God determines our fate and can overcome our resistance.
I hold to the last, as do Calvinists (which I once was) and many universalists.
My arguments are.
1 If being human implies the ability to will the rejection of God, you have basically said that Christ is not human. Whereas Christ is the totally God-endorsed model for what it means to be a human.
2 If Love is not really really Love unless it is just one choice amongst many other objects of love, or maybe none at all, how does the love between the Persons of the Trinity work?
* This is my own term. A term often used is Compatibilist free-will, but this is mostly used by materialists which is why I avoid it.
Comments
I flirted with a moderate form of Calvininism at one time but was never among the TULIP merchants.
It's one of those areas where I'm happy to file it under 'Above Pay Grade'.
Regarding free will - I believe we have it as long as we are in our right/mature minds (I don't like that phrase but can't at the moment think of an alternative) and know all the facts. We'd be pretty poor people, for example, if we allowed someone who was mentally ill or a child to run out into a busy road "because we respect that they have free will."
I believe it may have been David Bentley Hart (mentioned by @Anteater on another thread) who is on YouTube explaining free will in a really helpful way. If you are in a room with two doors behind one of which is a maneating tiger and behind the other is the person you love best in the world, and you have to choose which door to open, the choice is there but fraught with danger. If you know which door is which there can only be one choice.
I assume of course that you accept that Christ could never reject God, being himself God as well as Man.
However, fast forward to Matthew 25.46 and he says, "And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." There I see a dilemma. If salvation is God's business, but some go to eternal punishment, the only logical outcome is Calvinist double predestination. I couldn't worship or believe in a God who creates people for the purpose of seeing them eternally damned. Incidentally the criteria for eternal punishment or eternal life in Matthew 25 are entirely works based and have nothing to do with faith, still less to do with a system of belief. So for me, something has to give.
If irresistible grace can pull people towards salvation, which would be the only way to attain it if it is ever proved that free will is a straw man, then why would God give that to some of His creatures and not others? Are we to believe, to quote William Blake, that " Some are born to endless night?" This is a subject that I've been wrestling with most of my life, and universalism is my only answer. I can't explain away Matthew 25, but I don't believe it has anything to do with the usual Christian view that belief in the tenets of Christianity is what saves. It's clearly very Jewish and works based.
I'm afraid that I can't find the energy to debate with consistent materialists since it seems overall such an incoherent position. DBH does a good job of this in his other works, though he can be long winded.
But I do agree that .
But I don't think that locks one into Calvinism, but it does support the Calvinist view that the only other option is Universal Restoration, and I believe a strong case can be made for it, but it isn't the work of a few minutes.
I note you ignore the whole debate over the meaning of Matt 25. Whilst not a strong argument it is at least interesting that the further you go East in the early church, where there everyday language was that of the NT, the more you get Universalist ideas. As Bentley Hart remarked, it was a tragedy that Augustine relied on the Latin translation. There is room to question the traditional view.
I agree that there are only hints in the NT that the Church is to be the agent of the restoration, but they are pretty strong. And like you if the only Christian option was Calvinism I would have no part in it. I know I used to but I think I've made it clear that I took a long time to develop compassion.
I believe it was Einstein who said that he could understand the concept of free will if it meant "not being constrained by something external to the self" but not if it meant "not being constrained by something internal to the self".
And we arrive at the place where I feel compelled to point out that TULIP is an Anglo-American construct dating from the 19th C.
A strong argument can be made that the TULIP formulary not only fails to reflect what Calvin taught, but actually distorts what Calvin taught. It certainly distorts Calvin to the extent it is presented as some kind of five-point summary or pillars of Calvinism (rather than a supposed reflection of the five matters in controversy at the Synod of Dort).
For anyone interested, I highly recommend this article (originally a lecture) by Richard A. Muller, “Was Calvin a Calvinist? Or, Did Calvin (or Anyone Else in the Early Modern Era) Plant the ‘TULIP’?”
It seems that when Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, and therefore a tool of the state, the belief in universalism waned and all but disappeared. I've had numerous debates, even on this forum 20 years ago, and I have a long list of reasons for being a universalist, but it all hinges on my inability to believe in a God of infinite love who could permit ECT, or whose justice is stronger than his mercy.
Majority belief among whom?
Specifically I don't think it's a particularly stable belief on its own and in practice decays into some very strange by products
It raises the question, which may deserve it's own thread, on how much real information do people get in this life, and is it enough to come to the conclusion, which many Christians believe that people have rejected God.
Take the average person today in the UK. God is largely hidden, and many even in a country with a Christian past, will never have received a really intelligent account of the realities of God, and the options that people have had. The face of Christianity in much of social media is highly compromised. And yes, good stuff is there if you look for it. But can you really say that people have, generally, rejected an offer which they have a real grasp of? I doubt it.
I just think people who I try and talk to about the Faith, have a right to a clear answer concerning what lies ahead for people, and I think Hell is a big turn off. I agree it's a temptation to make Christianity "nice" and to believe that in the end of the world, everyone will be grateful for what God has done for them, despite all the shit that's befallen them in this life.
Is it so bad though, to believe that God doesn't do things that we would think cruel and malicious if anyone else did them? I couldn't be like a friend of mine, and a much more devoted Christian than I am, whose view is that she still can't decide whether God is going to eternally punish her Children.
I don't want to elide debate but the fact is, since I've become Orthodox it's become something of a non-issue. But I don't say that to diminish or disparage what you are saying.
@Nick Tamen - sure and I recognise these things are more post-Dort and/or 19th century developments.
That’s part of what the article to which I linked is getting at. “Calvinism” can carry a number of different, sometimes inconsistent meanings, some of which aren’t particularly attributable to Calvin.
To be precise, I am only saying that it is impossible for humans to reject God finally and forever, based on a true understanding of him. Which I think you will agree could not be true of the Son of God. Therefore who have to qualify his humanity.
But once our theology requires Jesus not to share our common humanity but to be human in some unique way that is not shared by humanity as it exists, then that destroys the Incarnation, at least in my view of it.
I raise this because there are generally two ways to try and support the idea that God created us with the ability to reject him.
The first line of reasoning is that humanity without that freedom is a contradiction is terms, so that decision to create humanity inevitably leads to the ability to reject. I believe the case of Jesus makes this untenable.
The second is to do with the nature of a loving relationship. The idea is that love is not truly love unless it is free from compulsion. I hesitate to use the word compulsion, because the very idea of being compelled to love someone doesn't work, and proponents of libertarian freewill like to use that term when anyone talks about Irresistible Grace (one of the 5 points I agree with), and I've even known people use terms like Rape. So let me unpack this a bit.
First, I found myself in a situation where I was driven/compelled to court my wife, and the fact that I was driven by emotional forces which I could not resist, never meant to me that there was anything missing in the event. So to me to be driven and free at the same time is just part of life.
But also, if we take seriously the idea of love between the persons of the Trinity, that removes, at a stroke, the notion that love which is inevitable is somehow not love. And whilst I agree that everything about God transcends our understanding, that doesn't mean that we cannot apply things to our own lives based on what we believe about God. And so the love of the Trinity is greater than any love we will ever know, and it is also an inevitable (irresistable) love.
Which is my argument against the idea that real love must be fully optional to be love at all.
Calvin took Augustine's theology with no significant modification. His real work was on the humanity of Jesus, which was being made more and more divorced from reality. And in many other respects he was a great thinker, and maybe it is unfair that his time has been tied to a certain view of Salvation, which generally I except once you make the equation between the Elect and Humanity.
But Calvin didn't to that, and I don't think you can get double predestination out of Calvin's thought, or Thomas Aquinas' for that matter.
What we can say about Christ's human free will is that it was/is perfectly submitted to His father's. This means that He could never reject God, but it doesn't apply to imperfect human beings. In this regard, it seems quite possible to think of humans as being able to reject God, because no-one other than Christ possesses *perfect* human free will.
(Is it really the case that nobody outside North Africa taught eternal torment in Hell before Augustine? I believe Augustine - and Jerome - had more influence in the East than the Orthodox like to allow, but surely not that much?)
(A lot of people blame Augustine for everything wrong in Western Christianity, but honestly Jerome seems to have had worse bad points and fewer good points in every way.)
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints
Being the Five Points of Calvinism
So if the ability to finally reject God is intrinsic to humanity, this would be part of Christ's humanity as well.
The Blessed Augustine certainly isn't dismissed entirely in the East, but there can be an over-reaction to him, particularly, I think, by those who want to 'parade' their Orthodoxy, if I can put it that way.
As with anything else, these issues are never completely binary nor clear-cut. But yes, you'll certainly find Orthodox who blame anything and everything on 'the West' be it a stubbed toe or belly-button fluff to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
It says in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge that of the six theological schools existing during the first five centuries four taught the final salvation of all souls (Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea and Edessa also known as Nisibis), Ephesus taught conditional immortality or the the annihilation of the wicked and only one, Carthage (under Rome's influence) taught endless punishment.
I'm sorry I can't give an exact page reference. I don't own that book and this is from some of the copious notes I took at the time I was discovering universalism.
This.
I referenced the section on apocatastasis (I normally see it spelled with a k) and it lists early advocates, but nothing about six evangelical schools, and I would be surprised if it's somewhere else. The section includes the statement: the writers defending apocatastasis are decidedly in the minority.
I'm sure there were more universalists in the early church than later. But I still think the claim reported which implies a majority for Universalist views doesn't stand up.
Regarding the idea of a perfect human freedom will, that seems to admit the claim that ability to finally reject God is not intrinsic to humanity.
This implies that God elected to create humanity with imperfect freewill, which could be taken to mean God wanted to be rejected. Which, of course, plenty of Christians believe. Personally I don't.
My contention is that if a person has a sufficient understanding of what the choice would involve, they would choose God. Based on the tiny extent to which people have that knowledge any rejection is temporary until they are given that knowledge.
I'm pretty well in agreement with @Gamma Gamaliel's comment right at the beginning in that I too don't find the original questions a particularly helpful line of enquiry. There is a lot about God and theology that I don't understand, that is too deep for me. Isn't it better just to accept that? Otherwise, isn't one just going into the territory I've commented on before on other threads, of insisting that God has to fit in with what my brain can grasp? If he doesn't, it must be him that is wrong.
I would though like respond to this. There are some good intellectual arguments in favour of Universalism, but it strikes me that the argument that Hell is a big turn off is not one of them. It would be nicer to believe in Universalism. I would love to be able to say with conviction that I did. It is something that I would like to believe. However, I do not have the confidence to commend it as being true. Scripture is full of so many warnings that Universalism seems to be against the revelation. Yes, condemnation or even oblivion are difficult to reconcile with the true fact that God really does desperately love us and wants us to respond to him, believe, love him and love our neighbours as ourselves.
What matters is what is true, and what God is really like. Presenting a false version of that on the grounds that is easier for people to accept it is what Job's comforters were condemned for doing, admittedly in their case unwittingly.
I am sure it is better, and more prudent, to accept that there are some things one does not understand, cannot answer, does not know, and perhaps does not even need to know.
I suspect that if one really wants to know answers to any of the dilemmas expressed in the opening post, how it appears through Jesus's eyes rather than through one's own, the only way one could have an inkling of this would be by spending many many years in his company, living the sort of life of devotion that some great saints have had, and so coming to appreciate what he is really like and who he really is.
I also suspect, though, that he calls people to know him as he is for his own sake, not for how he answers their theological dilemmas. I am fairly sure that he does not call anyone first to work out in their own head satisfactory answers to their theological dilemmas and only when they have done so to seek to approach him in person.
I suppose you consider that a terrible failing on my part. But I could only change it by becoming so unbelievable self-centred and self absorbed that my own salvation was the only thing that mattered to me.
So, yeah, maybe God is really like that. But if he is, I don't want to know. Let me live out my remaining decades in blissful ignorance because absolutely nothing beyond the grave can have any appeal to me.
I await your further condemnation of my evil belief that I know better than God. I don't actually care.
The only thing I think I have picked up, and even there I might be wrong, is that I get the impression you have been quite badly bruised spiritually by a rather over intense and possibly dogmatic fellowship of the sort that works for those that fit it and damages those that don't.
I suppose the best I can say, and I'm not sure whether this is any help at all, is that it is of the nature of 'life, the universe and everything' that no one can know better than God.
If we think we do, then the God that we think that we know better than is not the true God but some false picture that we or those around us have created in our heads. And I think I've deliberately chosen the word 'heads' rather than 'spirits' because it seems to me that's yet another way of trying to work out about God with the mind rather than try to draw near to him for his own sake.
This may seem an impertinent question, but does the picture of God that you are angry with fit with the personality that Jesus appears to be in the four gospels? Or, if it fits at all, does it fit more with the personality that has been presented to you by the 'worthily well meaning', or with the one who is actually there in the gospels themselves?
If it's how can human nature be united with the divine nature then I move more to your side.
But so is terrorizing children with the thought of being forever being burnt in fire. It works both ways, making God out to be cruel is just as bad as suggesting he may be kind. I'd say worse.
I go back to my friend you cannot decide whether God is going to punish the children she loves for ever and ever. But she loves him. The mind boggles. Of course like one of my mentors (Bentley Hart) I don't think she really does believe what she claims. But Universalism is tarred with the brush of heresy, and people want to stay loyal to the Church, which to be fair, has taught hell-fire for unbelievers for most of it's time of earth.
I think my point is that while your logic is sound, damnation is a deal breaker for me, inasmuch as I don't find it uncomfortable or difficult - I find it unconscionable and impossible. So my hope has to go beyond mere hope - if there is Hell, then there is no bearable eternity for me, in either place.
Rather the opposite. It's the only hope I have.
As far as I understand it, dogmatic Universalism would be seen as heretical in Orthodox terms but a hopeful Universalism wouldn't.
As the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware used to say, 'We may hope that all may be saved, we cannot say that all will be saved.'
I don't wish to appear flippant or dismissive but it really isn't anything that exercises me unduly. I pray for the departed irrespective of whether they were card-carrying Christians or not. 'Will not the judge of all the earth do right?'
As for whether brainy people like Jim Packer or Jonathan Edwards believed in double-predestination and so on ... well so what? Plenty of equally brainy people didn't and don't.
To their own Master they stand or fall.
It's taken me a while to get here but I honestly don't go round wondering whether this, that or the other person will be 'saved' or not. I pray and do my best to live a Christian life. I fail. I pick myself up and carry on.
God can sort all this stuff out. Thus business not ours.
My wife is not a universalist and we love each other dearly. But she's no hellfire believer either and I seriously doubt there are any on this ship. But there probably are some who don't definitely rule it out. Maybe including yourself.
I don’t think it’s at all surprising when the concepts we struggle most with or feel the strongest need to reject are direct reactions to things we heard or were taught as children or youth. But few if any of our experiences in this regard are universal. And so what is front and center for us may not be front and center for others.
I wish I could believe that. My understanding is that it is not a matter of intellect but of will—the will for selfishness or the will to love. The angels that fell presumably knew what God was like, and rejected Him anyway.