Time for another article from Universal Salvation: The Current Debate, and this one hopefully won't be quite as polemic (side note: I do want to make it clear that it was merely a particular style of Calvinism which I found offensive; even if Strange was correct in his points, the blindness of the God-centeredness of other traditions is a poison in any view). In context, Talbott has argued that no one could knowingly choose Hell; it is an essentially irrational option, one which no one could choose with full knowledge, and it is not right to make people choose without full knowledge (or at least, God would not love them if He made them do such). Sanders' critique is not the only one; Walls also makes his case, and from the essays which I've read so far in the book, I think that Walls has the strongest. However, Sanders' concern lies in different areas.
Sanders considers that God has made risks in creation; although he does not bring it up in this essay, this is part of his open theism position. Before getting to the criticisms, one might ask what is it that would make Sanders take such a position? His reasoning seems to be largely pastoral: telling people who have suffered horribly that all will work out in the end just doesn't cut it, for him. He points to people who have lost faith due to tragedies, with nothing really coming out of it spiritually or otherwise; evil and suffering seem to truly be pointless sometimes, and he thinks that Talbott (as well as Calvinists) too lightly downplay this with some sort of "soul-making" theodicy.
So, instead of saying that God has planned out this world in every respect, Sanders' thinks that God has taken risks. Presumably, this is supposed to be a virtue, and so something which God should have. However, is there any non-anthropomorphic reason why we should consider risk-taking to be a virtue? It would seem to me that risk-taking is fundamentally bad, a necessary evil brought on by disadvantageous situations and finitude. As it is a necessity for us, we ought to develop fortitude in order to meet these challenges. Foolhardiness (which, as far as I can see it, is what unnecessary risk-taking is) is a vice, and even more so when the ones who ultimately pay are others. God may suffer pain from our sinning (although again, sometimes Sander's account seems to be blatant anthropomorphism, with nary an argument or exegeted Scripture passage to back it up), but God's pain cannot come close to the pain which the damned will feel through all eternity.
Another point which Talbott uses to defend his argument is this: how will we be able to rejoice in Heaven, while our loved ones are in Hell? Talbott assumes that God would have to perform a kind of lobotomy to get us to forget the people, and this does not seem fitting; therefore, they must be saved as well.
Sanders brings up two rejoinders. The first is that even in this life, sometimes we have to get over bad things happening concerning loved ones; perhaps a death, or perhaps the person in question has committed a serious crime. However, people live on anyhow. To this, I would respond that people do continue, but hardly in a blessed condition. What sort of Heaven would it be if we must all carry our emotional scars through all eternity, without any hope of healing except maybe growing forgetfulness of other people (assuming that our resurrection bodies are forgetful)?
His other rejoinder to Talbott, though, seems on the mark: just as God would have to perform a "lobotomy" on us in order to get us to forget our loved ones, so too God would have to fundamentally alter us in order to give us the full knowledge which we would need in order to make an informed decision. This would not be just a couple extra facts, though, but a complete change in our characters (side note: I really can't see any way around the philosophical necessity of some sort of Purgatory, though I can't find any theological justification for it). God would have to do violence to our beings, whereas it seems at least possible that we could naturally deal with the fact that loved ones would be in Hell.
9 comments:
I'm following with interest although not finding much to say in response yet. :)
Ditto what Scott said.
On your comment, "God's pain cannot come close to the pain which the damned will feel through all eternity" -- If I read your post correctly, that is what you think, not part of your explanation of what Sanders thinks, right?
If that's right: how can you support that remark (for either half, what God feels about his creatures or what the damned feel)?
I have come in a little late to this conversation topic -- I read a few posts on the topic, but probably not all -- so if you already answered this elsewhere, please accept my apology & ignore this.
Oh my, don't worry about apologizing. I've rambled too much for anyone to have bothered to read what I have to say, even if I have answered your question.
Here's how I would support that statement: The damned are presumably in some less-than-ideal state for all eternity. Even an eternal itch, with no hope of comfort, would at some point end up as more suffering than what anyone on earth has to deal with. I would assume that the actual pain of Hell would be substantially greater, whether it is a lake of burning sulfur, Dante's Hell of various torments, or Lewis' picture of self-obsession in The Great Divorce.
Concerning God, I would say that assuming that God suffers for the sake of the argument (say, as the Triune God in His divinity and not merely the human nature of Christ), God's suffering would not be total; there would be blessedness as well, if there would be any hope for us to be blessed (how could we be happy in heaven serving a melancholy God?). So, even if God feels the pain of the damned, God does not share their hopelessness and despair, and also has a source of (ultimate) blessedness which they lack. As such, God's pain will not equal theirs.
Thanks for dignifying my comment with a response. I feel very out of my depth and very ignorant. I was just wondering if God, being infinite (though who knows how that applies to God's emotions), would indeed feel in some sense as much or more pain as those in Hell's torments. But really I have no idea, and you're right, God wouldn't feel the hopelessness and despair of Hell.
Good points on what we'd know/feel emotionally about other people who weren't in heaven or any other emotional scars. Do you remember Dante's concept at the end of Purgatorio about the rivers Lethe & Eunoe?
(Hi, Vi.)
We've talked here before about the proper sense of "infinite" (or "perfect") as applied to God. As a working hypothesis, let's say "infinite" in this context is the same as "limitless"/"unlimited".
Corduan (following Aquinas, I'm guessing?) uses the concept to connect the cosmological argument for God's existence to a proof that the necessary being fits the definition of the God of theism. As he argues, since the NB is unlimited by definition, the NB possesses all of His/Its(/Xi[t]s?) properties in an unlimited way. So, if it turns out that the NB is good, loving, powerful, knowledgable, then it follows that the NB is good without limit (perfectly good), omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient. As the NB, no other being could place limits or restrictions on God's goodness, knowledge, power, etc.
Spiegel has used a similar line of reasoning to argue for God's being unlimited in emotions. (I don't know if he has published this in Benefits of Providence, not having read that book, or if it is in an article somewhere...but he's presented the notion in class.) The idea (I think) is that rather than "impassive" in the sense of "unfeeling", God is unrestricted ("perfect, infinite") in his feelings of love, grief, wrath, etc. I myself make sense of this in terms of God's omniscience, omnipresence, and eternity (trans-temporality). God feels sorrow (& wrath) at sin eternally, and joy at repentence eternally--with reference (I would put it) to particular, temporal instances of persons' sinning and repenting (not, or not merely, to Platonic Ideas of Sin, Repentence).
Application of all this to present discussion: God's sorrow, wrath, regret, love, mercy, etc. is unrestricted, with reference to the souls and their rejection of Christ's atonement (the *only* sin I think that could be the basis for damnation). Now, what does this mean? (This I think restates Vi's question?)
I'm not sure how this relates to the notion of God as perfect in the sense of infinite, unlimited, unrestricted; but I am inclined to think God is morally perfect in an Aristotelian sense (the virtuous mean)--the sense of having the right emotions toward the right objects for the right reasons at the right times in the right measures.
It seems strange to me, then, to think that God's emotions could be unlimited in measure. Rather, their measure should be in accord with the virtuous mean. (I suppose the virtuous mean should be defined by or identical to God's moral nature rather than conceived as ontologically separte from God's moral nature, re: Euthyphro problem).
Indeed, the notion that God's emotions are unrestricted in measure seems not to square with Biblical theology: there is a limit to how long God is angry about sin (how many generations he remembers it) but by contrast, there is no limit (or a much greater limit) to how long God is joyful about righteousness (how many generations he remembers it). Presumably God's "forgetting" or "remembering" in such contexts does not refer to God's omniscience, but to the way God acts (to a reformed sinner or the descendents of sinners), or perhaps the legal records God keeps.
On an eternal conscious torment view of Hell, then God's wrath toward the Sin of those in Hell would be unlimited in time, because God's "forgetting" their Sin is contingent upon the Atonement being applied to them. God's sorrow and love would also be unlimited in time.
On a restorationist/universalist view, God's wrath and sorrow--in their legal application at least--would be limited, but God's "forgetting" their offence is still contingent upon the Atonement being applied to them.
On a conditional immortalist view, God's wrath and sorrow--even love--for the damned (and perhaps also the sorrow and love of the saints for the damned) would be limited by time, namely the time until the occupants of Hell are uncreated/annihilated/destroyed.
But then, that has to do with *time*--thus it is rather anthropomorphic (though easier to square with Biblical concepts); as a trans-temporal being God can eternally feel whatever towards whomever/whatever-at-time-t.
Not sure that I've made any progress on the question of the *measure* of God's feelings toward the damned.
(Once again, this is probably *way* too long a comment! Thanks for the privilege of doing theology together with you.)
Reepicheep78 - I must admit that I have not yet reached that part of the Purgatorio. What Canto would that be in?
S. Coulter - I must admit that I'm not quite sure what to do with God's emotions in general; my usual strategy is to use them as circumlocutions to talk about God's intentions and manner of acting.
Putting that aside, though, it seems that speech which quantifies emotions is highly metaphorical, and this causes the problem. I can talk about God having the same amount of suffering as another person, and this may be true in a sense (say, if we could talk about 1000 units of suffering; wasn't Plantinga's term "turps", at least for evil?); however, if both God and a soul in Hell have 1000 turps of suffering, and God also has 1000 units of blessedness, then God is not suffering as much. At the same time, we can't label these units of blessedness as negative turps, as God's emotional state would not be 0; God would be experiencing multiple states intensely. Put in a different fashion, the strength of an emotion is determined as much by what it is not than by what is is. In this way, I'm not sure what it would mean for God to have unlimited emotions of any type unless God only had one emotion. Otherwise, each would be limited by another.
I'm going to have to think through the part about God's changing emotions toward people; I have the beginnings of a response in my head, but I need to find a way to lay it out.
The rivers Lethe and Eunoe are introduced in canto 28 of Purgatory. Dante drinks of the river Lethe in canto 31, and its effects are revealed in canto 33 when Dante says he doesn't remember ever sinning (against Beatrice). Then he drinks of Eunoe, which means "good thought" or "good remembrance." I do notice that I'm following Dorothy Sayers' interpretation of Dante more closely than I remembered: in the introduction to Purgatory, she says, "The first [Lethe] destroys all memory of evil and the sin with it; the second [Eunoe] restores remembrance of the sin, but only as an historical fact and as the occasion of grace and blessedness." I'm taking Sayers' word that that's what Dante means by Eunoe.
Not that I think that this concept's appearance in The Divine Comedy makes it authoritative, and it's presenting how sin might be handled from man's point of view, not God's. I still find it a hopeful idea; forgiving and forgetting are not the same thing, but forgiving means remembering an incident differently. God has "removed our transgressions from us" (Ps. 103:12), yet being omniscient, I suppose He still knows that they happened. Perhaps in Heaven we will remember painful events in our lives in some such fashion.
The subject of God and emotions is such a big topic that it could fill several blog posts (or books). I might write a post on my own blog with some of my thoughts about it (but don't hold your breath; I've been busy lately, and will be lucky to get to write it before the end of May).
I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on the subject, whenever you should get around to posting on it. I've mainly thought about it from the position of a classical theist, so I would appreciate hearing some other views.
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