Perhaps the strongest argument that I hear against universal salvation is the claim that it is indeed possible for someone to so close their hearts and minds to God that they become impervious to the voice and influence of God. When confronted with the Talbottian rejoinder that no one can rationally choose evil, the response is offered that that is precisely the mystery and insanity of evil. The damned achieve a state of Satanic hatred of God.
Assume that there is no such thing as efficacious grace, how would you respond? Is it truly impossible for someone to commit themselves to evil wholeheartedly?
i think you may have answered your own question…
the insanity of evil. if evil is insane, because no one sane would knowingly choose evil, especially evil that affects their own destiny in a permanent way (and i mean here, with full disclosure and nothing hidden, and no comfortable lies to duck behind)…then one would be insane to choose it.
if that is the case, then one is broken, and only the great physician can heal one. and if that’s the case, then we’re no longer talking about a truly evil person, but a person who needs healing. such a person does not have free will of any stripe, therefore they will “make their bed in Sheol (hell, if you prefer), and God will be there with them.”
so it doesn’t really work that someone could shut themselves off totally to God and still be sane and free to decide.
well, that makes sense to me…i don’t know if i’ve explained myself well, though.
My reply to such people is usually that I don’t think it takes a specially robust faith to believe in the competency and power of God compared to sinners–but some people just seem determined to believe that sinners can overpower God somehow if they just work hard enough at it, dammit!
And the chief among such persons has typically been known by the name of…! – someone whom I would not want to be in agreement about with over against God on any matter.
Whatever else the scriptures may or may not say on the topic, I don’t ever recall reading them saying that even the chief of sinners can indeed become like the Most High and so become impervious to the influence of God. Even Manichean heretics had enough sense to realize that if someone was proposing an opponent of God impervious to God, this must be an eternally self-existent equal and opposite Anti-God, not one who became impervious to God by working hard enough at it.
A Mormon Christian on the other hand could conceivably propose a sinner working up to imperviousness to God, because their notion of ‘god’ involves God evolving up to godhood from manhood to begin with, so an equally powerful sinner might perhaps develop that way, too. (Unless the Mormon is going with an always self-existent tri-theism instead, but such cosmological Mormons wouldn’t be proposing that Satan could work his way up to par with the three Gods Most High.)
Such people aren’t proposing supernaturalstic theism, though, much less trinitarian theism. The source of even Satan’s existence has always been and will always be God (if supernat-theism is true), and even has always been a never-failing fulfillment of love between persons (if ortho-trin is true). No one gets to be sheerly ‘impervious’ to God, no one can grow to be permanently and totally impervious to God’s influence, anymore than someone can grow to be the eternal continuing source of their own originally derivative existence. It just isn’t possible.
No doubt the greatest sinner might delude himself for various reasons (or for various non-reasons!) into thinking that’s possible. But why should we accept a doctrine of Satan?!–one which represents the basic temptation of mankind to evil at that!? “You can be like the Most High!”
The people who try such an argument (if they’re any kind of supernaturalistic theist) simply haven’t paid attention to the logical implications of what they’re saying. Far from being one of the strongest, it’s one of the immediately and instantly weakest arguments for final perdition: a sinner impervious to the influence of God couldn’t be inconvenienced by God in any way and so wouldn’t suffer final perdition of any kind!
So don’t worry about it. It’s kind of a bait-and-switch shell game. The ‘god’ they’re talking about isn’t the Christian God (nor even the non-Christian Jewish God, nor even the Muslim God, nor even as much of a God as a reverent but non-religious deist proposes.)
I think two things can be said (two positions that I would hold, incidentally). First is to deny that it is irrational to reject God. Ultimately faith is a decision(s) towards other-oriented love. Either choice (faith or unbelief) necessarily effects some form of joy and suffering, but other-oriented love is an incredibly greater conduit for both. If you love greatly, you will suffer greatly, because you will suffer vicariously with everyone else who suffers. So I don’t think resisting that suffering is ever irrational, even if it means you miss out on a vastly greater joy because of it. And secondly, ignorance can be rooted in self-deception, and therefore it is logically impossible for God to forcibly remove ignorance that willingly originates and indwells within a self-determined person. God may forcibly overthrow deceptive systems, and remove the presence of deceptive agents from his beloved (and that may go an incredibly long way in reconciling individuals), but self-deception is a different beast. None of this precludes universalism of course.
I’d probably agree with Jason that one cannot ever be impervious to the influence of God without being self-existent (or becoming self-existent, but I don’t think God has ever hinted that possibility), or without God sustaining or allowing our imperviousness (which might be necessary for us to come to a secure state — deified or devilish). Though being eternally open to the influence of God doesn’t necessitate universalism either — a stalemate can logically exist for all eternity — however unlikely a stalemate may be. Though I think the scriptures do indicate some sort of definitive summation of the ages with God being all in all, and a stalemate doesn’t really account for this. I think the only recourse from universalism is in self-annihilation (but I really have to read Kvanvig who argued this point).
Even self-annihilation doesn’t work without God authoritatively allowing it: we don’t and can’t exist without constant active upkeep from God, if supernaturalistic theism is coherently true. (It only seems to work in supernat-theism by principle incoherency.)
So if a theology recognizes that God wouldn’t annihilate someone Himself, self-annihilation is no solution – not without denying supernaturalistic theism (including ortho-trin) and going with something like the lower version of Mormon theology instead (where a person could presumably evolve up to the ability to self-annihilate against Jehovah’s intentions).
I think there are two points here. With eternity to go at, and the rules being that you have to reject grace every time, but God only has to get you to repent once, the probability of your rejecting grace on every occasion has to be identically zero for you not to end up in heaven.
Secondly the reasons for rejection, the bad temper, the bottled up anger and pain, the frustration with God, will all be left behind with the body, and your pure intellect will face the truth. I can’t see anyone rejecting God under those conditions.
No, I’d say it’s not possible. Everyone wants good for themselves, even if they don’t want it for anyone else. Ultimately, to reject God is to reject good for oneself – ending up in the prodigal son’s pigsty, and brought to the realisation that even to be the lowest servant in his Father’s house would be better than that. It’s fun and wanton pleasure for awhile, but when daddy’s money runs out only misery and cold and filth and hunger are left.
Of course, some argue that some will choose the misery rather than go home, but with Christ actively seeking the lost to bring them home, I don’t believe that will be the case.
“I will make you fishers of men” – fish are caught whether they will or not!
I think it works if God wants us to freely choose a final and irrevocable end state. If God wants us to freely choose a final end state fully indwelt by God and thus existing, than it seems necessary for us to be able to choose a final end state fully empty of God (and thus non-existing). Although God wouldn’t personally initiate annihilation Himself, it seems possible that God could have provided for individuals to self-annihilate, just as much as he has clearly provided for us to reject his grace and sin. Annihilation would only follow from an eternally hopeless resistance of grace, and not by divine initiative. In that sense, it is self-annihilation, but yes, God would have to validate that capacity, for freedom’s sake.
Only if we exist without God’s constant action keeping us in existence. If that’s true, there can be no self-annihilation per se; at most, God can fulfill the wish of a person to be annihilated by withdrawing the life that’s keeping us alive, and that’s a personal and authoritative choice by God, as well as an active choice to redirect or withdraw His action. He’s personally initiating and accomplishing the annihilation, albeit in agreement with the person on this theory.
If we can exist without God’s constant action keeping us in existence, then that’s a proposition that we and whatever we’re calling ‘God’ share a common overarching reality upon which we can depend for existence apart from God. Which isn’t supernaturalistic theism, so we’re talking about a completely different theology (and aren’t yet talking about the real God, or else we’re talking about atheism).
It is by God’s grace that we continue existing at all, including as sinners. He allows us to abuse His grace; we only reject it in a subjective sense.
Which presumes a final failure of God’s potent competency in leading a sinner to righteousness is possible. In that case, once again we aren’t talking about God Most High anymore, but about some lesser similarly created ‘god’; one which shares existence with us in dependency upon some kind of eternally hopeless fundamental reality.
That’s the rub. If God authoritatively decides to agree with a sinner in bringing about that which results in the annihilation of the sinner, then God is the one acting in authoritative power to bring about the annihilation, especially if God is how the person derivatively exists at all for any duration.
The only way to conceptually avoid God having the final authority and action in annihilation of a sinner, is to be talking about an entity less than God which can be eternally and hopelessly defeated. And even then unless the sinner self-annihilates against the action of (whatever it is we’re calling) ‘God’, this ‘God’ is pulling the trigger or at least choosing to stop having anything to do with the problem, and so God still shares personal responsibility in what happens or even still authoritatively enacts it.
It’s still divine initiative unless it isn’t divine initiative at all; but if it isn’t divine initiative at all, then our life must also be based ultimately on something more than divine initiative and we’re talking about some kind of lesser deity.
Assuming for purposes of argument that God validates (and there’s the authoritative choice again) a capacity for a creature to annihilate their freedom, such a validation could not even possibly be “for freedom’s sake”. It might be for some other reason, but not for that reason; that’s totally contradictive. Or else we’re talking about a ‘God’ who (not Who) is so confused that he thinks destroying freedom respects and preserves freedom.
If God wants us to continually choose freedom, the way God continually and freely chooses freedom (so far as possible within the limitations of creaturely derivation in our case), it isn’t by willingly imposing on ourselves a final and irrevocable end state. That isn’t an active life of freedom, and at best it results in a merely mechanical notion of being trustworthy not personally trustworthy.
Note that we’re getting back once again to the huge conceptual difference between static and active existence, including the huge conceptual difference between static and active self-existence. An atheistic reality might statically self-exist, but such a reality wouldn’t even be capable of generating a set of randomly mechanical automatic reactions and counter-reactions as behaviors. A theistic reality must exist in and as rational intentional action, self-begetting and self-begotten; a static self-existence is conceptually contradictive to the notion of theism. Not coincidentally, Christianity historically embraced that contradictive notion whenever we leaned hard on a philosophical tradition that couldn’t ever quite bring itself to seriously propose that the ultimate foundation of reality ever does anything; to them if ultimate reality was rational it must not be active (like the Stoic and Platonic ideas of the Good), or if it was active it must not be rational (like fundamental Chaos or some kind of undirected but non-rational vitalistic life). To them the only rational actors were derivative creatures. Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, while an important ontological concept, didn’t move the spheres, the Prime Mobile did. Various similar demiurges and dyads were proposed to account for the active rational creation of reality, and so they were blamed for the messiness of reality (which such philosophers and mystics couldn’t imagine the Most High would ever have anything to do with) or even fought for reality against the Most High, or at best were trying to bring reality back away from the dynamic messiness of life to a pristine but static existence of non-action.
The Living God of Judaism (or of Biblical Judaism anyway) isn’t like that; and the Living God of Biblical Christianity incarnates (not merely manifests) in the messiness of nature, to redeem nature from the abuse of freedom.
But the solution to the abuse of freedom cannot be to remove freedom; otherwise the original gift of freedom would be inexplicable or even insane. The solution is for people to come to choose to stop the abuse, and for them to keep on choosing that instead of the other forever afterward. And that means true love.
But since true love cannot be simply imposed, the only way to stop abuses once they start while still validating freedom is to take a route that could (and apparently will) be long term, messy and painful for everyone involved.
And that certainly isn’t annihilation. Annihilation is the easy way out.
It’s kind of a bait-and-switch shell game. The ‘god’ they’re talking about isn’t the Christian God (nor even the non-Christian Jewish God, nor even the Muslim God, nor even as much of a God as a reverent but non-religious deist proposes.)