Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Am I a Religious Pluralist?

This from Tom O:

I would very much appreciate it if you could clarify your views on religious pluralism. Are you a pluralist of some kind? That is, do you believe no single religion or religious tradition can lay exclusive claim to the truth regarding the Divine, salvation, the soul, etc.? If so, could you please elaborate?

I'll make a start. It's a long story.

My belief, tentatively but not dogmatically held, is that no single institutionalized religion or church, such as the Roman Catholic Church (RCC), can justifiably claim to be the only way to salvation such that baptism into this church, and continuing good-faith membership in it, are necessary conditions of attaining salvation.  Holding this, I hold that Protestants and the Eastern Orthodox are not barred from salvation.  So in this weak sense I am a religious pluralist.* The Roman Catholics cannot justifiably claim that extra ecclesiam salus non est ("There is no salvation outside the church") applies only to their church, even if it is the case that good-faith membership in some Christian church or other is necessary for salvation.  And the same goes for Protestants of any denomination and the Eastern Orthodox of any stripe.

A more interesting question arises when we consider John 14, and in particular, John 14:6:

6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (KJV)

This implies, first, that to be saved is to "come unto [God] the Father," to be received by him, accepted by him, and in some sense or other come to share in his life for all eternity, and second, that there is only one way to come unto the Father, and share in his life (vita), and that is via Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who is both a particular man, and God the Son, and as such the truth (veritas) or Word or revelation of God.  Via, veritas, vita. A bit later in John 14 the Holy Ghost, the third Person of the Trinity, makes his appearance as the "Comforter." 

John 14 gives us normative Christianity in a nutshell, including Trinity and Incarnation, and provides partial answers to the questions, What is salvation? and How do we attain it?  

I expect to be asked:  "Assuming that this is what salvation is, do you hold that there is only one way to it, the way of accepting Jesus as God and by keeping his commandments? Or are there other ways?"

My tentative answer is that, yes, there is only one way, but this is so only on the normative Christian conception of salvation. For on this conception, to be saved is to participate in the life of the triune God, the Second Person of which lived on Earth as a particular man, in a particular place, and shared fully in the miseries of our earthly sojourn. So if you accept normative Christianity, there is only one way to salvation.

My point is that whether there is only one way to the ultimate religious goal, salvation, depends on what salvation is, and there are different conceptions thereof.  These will have to be examined.

I'll leave it here for now, and if Tom or anyone wants to pursue this topic and its many ramifications, I'm game.

_____________________________________

*Two questions that naturally arise, and that cannot be engaged in any detail at the moment are: What is religion? and What is salvation?  For present purposes we may assume that Christianity is a clear example of a religion, and that, within Christianity, salvation is participation in the divine life.

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Bill Vallicella

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17 responses to “Am I a Religious Pluralist?”

  1. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Thanks Dr. BV,
    You endorse some version of religious exclusivism or particularism because you endorse ‘normative Christianity’, assuming that normative Christianity entails religious exclusivism. But I just find religious exclusivism difficult to endorse. So, I want to know why I should accept normative Christianity. For example, I think your position here assumes the authority (inspiration and inerrancy?) of the Christian scriptures. But what plausible reason could you give me to think it is the Christian scriptures, and no other form of scripture, that is authoritative? I could go a step further and ask why I should even believe that the writer of the Gospel of John gives us the words of the historical Jesus, rather than the early Christians’ conception of Jesus that had developed by that time. At any rate, many religious traditions claim their scriptures are the inspired word of God. I can’t see how one could adjudicate between these competing claims in a non-question-begging way.
    But I’m not even sure I would grant you that normative Christianity entails religious exclusivism. I guess Christians have for the most part thought that way. But that doesn’t in itself mean much. And I don’t think John 14:6 is a proof-text. There are plausible pluralistic interpretations one could give (for e.g. there is roughly one agreed upon way to salvation among the world’s great religions – dying to self – and Christ embodies that way).
    Thanks for your time!

    Reply
  2. Dominik Kowalski Avatar
    Dominik Kowalski

    I will happily take you up on the offer.
    The third follow-up question would probably be how open the path to salvation is, in your opinion, of course.
    Gods existence isn’t obvious. I believe that there is a clear philosophical case that a rational worldview will entail the existence of a transcendent source that just is existence itself. This will be the ground of normativity/axiology and it will be the final cause of any creature, in virtue of the fact that it is only through it, that creatures can achieve a state of maximal goodness according to our nature.
    This is a long distance away from God, though. I am convinced by philosophical arguments that there can’t be a trinity, that incarnation is impossible and I don’t believe that the miraculous acts occuring in this world are done by the Absolute. Any type of meaningful, “loving” relationship ascribed to this being seems to be little more than an equivocation. If we have to follow Maimonides or Pseudo-Dionysius here and arrive at pure apophaticism, as I believe we must, then my position should come as little surprising. You have indicated in your past writing that you are sensitive to this uncertainty as well. This is not to start an argument over certain contents of dogma, but it illustrates crucial points.
    If we were to believe that salvation is the most important thing there is, then this uncertainty, especially when paired with a very narrow path to achieving it, should be unacceptable. I’m a universalist (Not a Christian one, except maybe in a very heterodox sense). I know that you are not. So this is a problem that your worldview would have to tackle. Is perhaps the “church” only in which salvation can be found, much much larger than merely the denominations we find in current day Christianity?
    And if it’s not, then let us ponder about a more provocative question. Say this type of exclusivism is true, and people past, present and future are barred from salvation. Through little fault of their own, as they rejected the revelatory claims in favor of their own, or none at all. Wouldn’t it be the more morally sensible, you might even say heroic, action, to follow Ivan Karamazov and return the ticket? At which point conception of salvation, even granting its truth, does the arbitrariness and its consequences compell a morally rational individual to reject the offer? Many might not see the issue, but I personally believe it’s the most serious philosophical problem of religious exclusivism, which doesn’t just has to defend its truth, but also its palatability.
    Lastly, a quick observation. You have indicated in the past your openness to religious, mystical and paranormal experiences, which I share. The question then becomes whether you feel a tension in your thinking between narrowing down the path to salvation and taking religious experiences seriously. Because at face value, they all have a certain truth claim, and as you have said about your own experience in the past, they can settle the issue for the individual. And it can hardly be denied, that these types of experiences are common all over the world in all types of religious and secular environments. Can that tension, another one between Athens and Jerusalem, be resolved? And why take the more restrictive position of Jerusalem, if Athens and its pluralism seem a lot more natural when faced with this kind of evidence?

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Tom,
    I shouldn’t have used ‘normative Christianity’ above. I didn’t define it — violating one of my own principles — and I see that it is used in different ways. So I now drop that phrase.
    But I don’t know what phrase to put in its place. Consider Dale Tuggy. He considers himself a Christian, but he is a Unitarian: he does not accept Trinity or Incarnation. But when I speak of Christianity, I mean a religion that includes those two doctrines.
    I stand by what I said in the portion of my post before the quotation from John. You asked me whether I am a pluralist of some kind. I answered that by saying that I am a pluralist in at the weak sense that one needn’t be an RC to be saved.
    The more interesting point — which i don’t think you understood — is that to make any headway with the question that divides pluralists from exclusivists we need to ask what salvation is.

    Reply
  4. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    “What is salvation?”
    This is a question that increasingly perplexes me as I enter the final years of my life, and I am sure that your answer to it, however provisional, is, given your philosophic sophistication, more profound than mine. Am I wrong in thinking that a good starting point in addressing it is to state, first, what it is exactly that we need to be saved from, since the answer to it will largely determine our notion of salvation itself? I suppose, assuming that one grants that human salvation is, in fact, required, that it would be from the effects one or more of the following realities that plague human existence: ignorance, suffering, decay, death sin, yet I understand that there are be very great religious and philosophical disagreements on which, if any of these, should be given pride of place, resulting in quite discordant notions of salvation and the means to achieve it.
    Vito

    Reply
  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik,
    Thanks for your comments.
    >>The third follow-up question would probably be how open the path to salvation is, in your opinion, of course.<< If we have an idea of what salvation is, then we can ask: (1) Is there a way for us to achieve it, and (2) what is that way? >>God’s existence isn’t obvious.<< I agree. If by 'God' we understand the personal God of the three main monotheisms (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), then it is surely not obvious that any such being exists. It is also not obvious that God so understood does not exist. >> I am convinced by philosophical arguments that there can’t be a trinity, that incarnation is impossible and I don’t believe that the miraculous acts occurring in this world are done by the Absolute.<< In many posts over the years I have presented the arguments against Trinity and Incarnation. Here, for example, is an argument against the Trinity: https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2018/08/the-logic-of-the-trinity-revisited.html
    >> I’m a universalist (Not a Christian one, except maybe in a very heterodox sense). I know that you are not. So this is a problem that your worldview would have to tackle.<< I take it that for you a universalist is one who believes that all will be saved. Why do you think I am not one? But you're right: if a person (Christopher Hitchens comes to mind) after death finds himself in the divine presence but refuses to submit to divine authority and plays the rebel for all eternity, then he will never be saved, i.e., never enjoy the transcendent bliss of participation in the divine life. You need to explain to me more clearly what exactly the problem is that my worldview needs to tackle.

    Reply
  6. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik writes
    >> let us ponder about a more provocative question. Say this type of exclusivism is true, and people past, present and future are barred from salvation. Through little fault of their own, as they rejected the revelatory claims in favor of their own, or none at all. Wouldn’t it be the more morally sensible, you might even say heroic, action, to follow Ivan Karamazov and return the ticket?<< You need to set forth the difficulty more clearly, but I think I know what you are driving at. By 'universalism' I take you to mean that all will be saved. But what do you mean by 'exclusivism'? Do you mean the doctrine that some will be excluded from salvation? One problem for Christians concerns all those we died before the Christian revelation, i.e., before the coming of Christ the Redeemer. Where do they end up? A second problem for Christians concerns those born after the Christian revelation but died before being baptized. Where do they go? Limbo? A third issue concerns those who >> rejected the revelatory claims in favor of their own, or none at all.<< This brings us to the distinction between vincible and invincible ignorance. If their ignorance of revelation is vincible, then there is no excuse for their ignorance of it.

    Reply
  7. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik writes
    >>Lastly, a quick observation. You have indicated in the past your openness to religious, mystical and paranormal experiences, which I share. The question then becomes whether you feel a tension in your thinking between narrowing down the path to salvation and taking religious experiences seriously. Because at face value, they all have a certain truth claim, and as you have said about your own experience in the past, they can settle the issue for the individual. And it can hardly be denied, that these types of experiences are common all over the world in all types of religious and secular environments. Can that tension, another one between Athens and Jerusalem, be resolved? And why take the more restrictive position of Jerusalem, if Athens and its pluralism seem a lot more natural when faced with this kind of evidence?<< Excellent paragraph. Klar und deutlich! But I haven't, so far, narrowed down the path to salvation. The point I made to Tom is that we need to ask the logically prior question: What is salvation? What is the salvific state? Who or what is saved, what is he saved from, and what is he saved to? If the terminus ad quem is a Person, then presumably this Absolute Person must take the initiative and save us. But He can't do that while continuing to do his job as the transcendent Source of the existence, intelligibility, and value of everything apart from himself. So he has to send himself into time and space in the form of his beloved Son to do the redemptive work. So the Absolute Person has to be at least a Binity -- which of course gives rise to the familiar logical problems that befuddle our discursive intellects. I will add that it is the attempts to solve these logical problems that give rise to the various Christological heresies -- but we can explore that later if you like. You are right, Dominik, that the various religious, paranormal, and mystical experiences are common to all times and all peoples, world-wide. And so I bring a third 'city' into the mix: Benares where the Buddha became the Buddha. And so we get the question: how exactly does the salvific state of Christianity differ from the nibbana/nirvana of Buddhism? The farther east you go in Xianity, the closer you get to Hindu and Buddhist conceptions of the salvific state. I am thinking now of the theosis of the Eastern Orthodox, which is almost the opposite of crude Protestant conceptions of salvation. But not as crude as popular Islamic conceptions!
    I am not taking the >>restrictive position of Jerusalem<<. I used to say that I straddle Athens and Jerusalem, with a foot in each. But now it occurs to be that I am on all fours: one foot in Athens (philosophy), the other in Jerusalem (religion), one hand in Benares (mysticism), the other in Alexandria (science). A posture not easy to maintain. Not that comfortable.

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  8. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito writes,
    >>Am I wrong in thinking that a good starting point in addressing it is to state, first, what it is exactly that we need to be saved from, since the answer to it will largely determine our notion of salvation itself? I suppose, assuming that one grants that human salvation is, in fact, required, that it would be from the effects one or more of the following realities that plague human existence: ignorance, suffering, decay, death sin, yet I understand that there are be very great religious and philosophical disagreements on which, if any of these, should be given pride of place, resulting in quite discordant notions of salvation and the means to achieve it.<< You're in the right track, Vito. The question, What is salvation divides into the following sub-questions: Who or what is saved? What is he saved from? What is he saved to? Why is there any need for salvation at all? And if there is a need for salvation, can we humans pull it off by our own collective effort? Or do we need help from a transcendent power (God) external to ourselves? The deepest illusion of the Left is that of Trotsky: humanity can haul itself out of the dreck by its own effort. And then there's the question as to the root of our misery in this world: orignial ignorance (avidya)? desire (tanha), original sin, economic exploitation of one class by another?

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  9. Dominik Kowalski Avatar
    Dominik Kowalski

    Good evening, Bill.
    Apologies, I shouldn’t have opened that can of worm with universalism, since you have your own subtle view. We had a similar exchange a couple of years back, so I remember your misgivings against universalism with the exact line of argument you just presented (though back then it was Mackie). And I would generally agree with you. Where we probably disagree is that I don’t believe a rejection of the Good is possible for any rational soul, unless the state of rejection is not as bad as often thought to be. Otherwise I can conceive of no scenario in which a soul in a fully informed state would prefer eternal torment or annihilation over the perfect fulfillment over ones own nature.
    I will try again to formulate the problem I see in the passages you quoted. Ivan Karamazov illustrates that problem quite nicely. I don’t read him as rejecting the existence of God, but rather as promoting the state of rebellion against an evil being, because no matter how your theodicy looks like, nothing could justify the evils that are occurring in this world. This isn’t the traditional problem of evil, but rather a deeper cut to the problem of worship-worthiness, which I take to be the final standard an exhaustive solution to the problem of evil would have to meet. I’m very sensitive to this idea and I don’t know how far Dostoyevsky had to look to find the examples for his book, but the stories of the injustices especially against children, are haunting.
    In essence I’m posing a challenge on whether given certain answers to theological questions, questions you correctly identified in your second comment, it’s the moral imperative to follow into Ivans footsteps of rebellion. Not every version of Christianity is worthy being followed. Augustine would be one example, at least the way he is commonly understood. Double predestination and believe in some sort of hell for unbaptised infants are revolting ideas, and I expect every rational being to come to the same conclusion. The issue isn’t to believe them. The issue is to think that this God would still be worthy of worship or uniting with.
    I took exclusivism as a such a question. Exclusivism, I take to be the thesis that salvation is exclusive to adherents of certain worldviews. This could be Christianity, or just a denomination thereof. Or perhaps the category of monotheists. The important part is that certain theological views make its proponent exempted from salvation. Wikipedia provides a nice succinct definition:
    “Religious exclusivism, one of the three classic typologies which describe religions relative to one another, states that one religion, to the exclusion of all others, has the correct understanding of God, truth and salvation, and eternal paradise is contingent on one’s belief in the core tenets of that religion.”
    Related to this question are deeper questions about the fate of the unknowing, the infants or those that reject the worldview for some reason (is vincible ignorance even possible outside of those that met Jesus?). None of these problems exist, if the ultimate salvation of all is affirmed. Or, to integrate your example, if it all boils down to a decision when faced with God himself. But if instead the contingent circumstances of our lives, e.g. the culture, religion and country we’re born into or the information we have access to, or our genuine philosophical and moral disagreements we’re having, truly matter to our salvation, then at which point should we think of Ivans state of rebellion as the morally good choice? These aren’t necessarily the type of questions that you would have to deal with, it’s not like you represented an exhaustive description of your views. But it certainly seems like a question much more in need of answering, if you follow many Thomists in saying that the will is “locked” at death and change of attitude becomes impossible.
    I may have misattributed views to you, that you haven’t expressed in that way. I guess due to your misgivings of what the Catholic church has become, it certainly has become more liberal, I have lumped you in there as a proponent of a traditional, or traditionally associated, views of hell and salvation in and outside the church or what the latter actually stands for. Whether you are or not, is nothing that I know for certain. Thus these questions I posed above aren’t necessarily challenges to your view, but rather challenges to certain perspectives on salvation.
    God or the One is identical to Goodness itself. Necessarily, then, every conscious decision against it, becomes irrational. Nothing it can do or cause is evil. Which type of answer to these theological questions can meet that standard?
    ———
    The conclusion to be on all four in different places is a beautiful one. I think I recall a fifth place you mentioned a couple of years back. It began with “S…” and was related to meditation as well, but I can’t recall it anymore.

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  10. Tom Avatar
    Tom

    Thanks Dr. BV,
    I do wonder if your approach has things backwards. I don’t see how the question of ‘what salvation is?’ is the logically prior one. I’ll grant that, at the very least, we need a general or working definition of what salvation is to make any headway here, something like ‘salvation is reconciliation or union with the Divine’, or whatever. But setting out to first determine what salvation is in detail will prejudge the debate, will it not? Suppose we take your approach, and you then come to the conclusion that salvation is (roughly), ‘accepting Jesus as God, etc.’. That conception of salvation will presuppose the truth of a particular conception of Christianity that in all likelihood entails religious exclusivism. You can’t answer all those sub-questions regarding what salvation is (who or what is saved, what is he saved from, etc.) without first figuring out which religious tradition is ‘true’. But that was my original question to begin with (I guess I was simply asking for your view on the matter originally. But my main interest here is whether it could plausibly be the case that only one particular religion is ‘true’. I have hard time seeing how that could be the case).
    Thanks again!

    Reply
  11. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik,
    I have time now to respond only to the first paragraph of your last comment.
    >>Where we probably disagree is that I don’t believe a rejection of the Good is possible for any rational soul, unless the state of rejection is not as bad as often thought to be. Otherwise I can conceive of no scenario in which a soul in a fully informed state would prefer eternal torment or annihilation over the perfect fulfillment of one’s own nature.<< This is not easy to answer. Your position seems to imply that Lucifer/Satan is impossible.

    Reply
  12. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill,
    “And then there’s the question as to the root of our misery in this world: original ignorance (avidya)? desire (tanha), original sin, economic exploitation of one class by another?”
    Just a brief comment: Each of these notions as to the “root of our misery” begins specifically in the disordered mental dispositions or moral choices of our species, ions after the creation of contingent things, including those early forms of life that would eventually lead to homo sapiens. Is this not rather late in the process? What if much of our misery (ignorance, suffering, decay, accident, death) is simply bound up with contingency itself, rather than with our own shortcomings? As I stated in an earlier comment to another post, there is something grasping in each of these religious explanations of our misery, in that they seek to evade what may simply be deep imperfections in the nature of created reality itself. It is all very confusing, and in thinking about the matter, I have (1) a greater appreciation for the motivation, if not the argument, of antinatalists such as Benatar and (2) a sense that if such a thing as salvation from our present predicament exists, then it must arise, as you suggest, from a source that lies beyond the reach of contingency itself, although the troubling features of contingent things, its supposed creatures, certainly raises additional questions as to the nature of that source.
    Vito

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  13. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito,
    Your comment suggests a distinction between two sources of our misery, i.e., human misery. One source is matter itself, its contingent existence and arrangement, its mutability, etc. The material cosmos antedated by eons the arrival of h. sapiens. So this source was there long before we came along. Since we are material beings, part of our misery is due to our materiality. Suffering due to this first source is pretty much unavoidable, although measures can be taken in mitigation, e.g., earthquake resistant buildings.
    The second source of our misery is in us and is due to our inherent stupidity, our willful self-enstupidation, mass ignorance due to groupthink, and other ‘more metaphysical/spiritual’ causes such as original ignorance, original sin, inordinate desire, and the like. Suffering in this second sense is to some extent within our control. There are various *therapies of desire* — I am alluding to a title by Martha Nussbaum — on offer.
    Now what would a final and complete solution to the double-sourced problem of human suffering look like? Isn’t that what both Buddhism and Christianity offer — just to mention these two? Christianity in the trad RCC version that you and I were raised on proposes to get rid of both sources of our misery by purifying us spiritually, mentally, and morally through an alignment of our wayward wills with the will of God (“Thy will be done” — Pater Noster) AND by transfiguring/transforming/perfecting, without getting rid of, our materiality via the resurrection of the body?
    But will our beloved cats join us on the Far Side? Thomas and his distinguished disciple Feser say NO! We will come back to this question since it fascinates me almost as much as it fascinates you — while leading us into a tangled thicket of perplexities.

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  14. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik,
    >> But it certainly seems like a question much more in need of answering, if you follow many Thomists in saying that the will is “locked” at death and change of attitude becomes impossible.<< Feser in his new book (see the top of this blog) discusses and defends the fixity of the will after death on pp 476 ff. I need to study this portion of his text and decide whether I agree with it. >>The conclusion to be on all fours in different places is a beautiful one. I think I recall a fifth place you mentioned a couple of years back. It began with “S…” and was related to meditation as well, but I can’t recall it anymore.<< So a fifth city in addition to Athens, Jerusalem, Benares, and Alexandria, a city the name of which begins with 'S', a city associated with meditation?? I can't recall . . . .

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  15. Dominik Kowalski Avatar
    Dominik Kowalski

    Bill,
    for those who don’t have Feser’s book, here is an article, that should suffice:
    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nbfr.12867
    Permit me one last comment on the possibility of Satan here. I will keep this very short, to not drag this out. I see three possible scenarios:
    1) Satan wasn’t in a fully informed and rational state
    2) Separation from God might be a real desirable state for some, with good reasons for them
    3) Unity with God is not that good
    We both reject 3). I would opt for 1). It would seem that at the very least you regard 2) as possible (or possibly more fitting with Christian orthodoxy)?
    1) may look weird, but it fits nicely with a common argument for why there won’t be sin in heaven: the bliss or beatific vision will be so overwhelming that the soul will freely choose to not sin. Proposition 1), then, would be the modus tollens of that argument. And it would preserve the truth of the Meister Eckhart quote at the beginning of your “Existence: Two Dogmas of Analysis”.
    Feser attempts to solve this argument by opting for a fourth option:
    “when the fallen angels willed wrongly, it was not because their intellects either affirmed some falsehood or lacked knowledge of some truth, but rather because they culpably did not attend to a truth they knew. In particular, it is not that they were ignorant of the beatific vision or wrongly denied its possibility, but rather that in their pride and envy they did not attend to the fact that it can be attained only by grace and not by their own power.”
    Willful ignorance would have to be for a reason. Pride and envy are weird reasons in themselves, they stem from additional truths these angelic intellects would believe to be true. Especially since Feser denies disordered appetites in them, and these feelings seem to fall under that. If someone really wants to affirm that these motivations are enough for a perfectly rational intellect, which **knows** its place on the ontological ladder and which **knows** that only by turning to God, perfect happiness for said individual can be achieved (both propositions affirmed by Feser in the article), then I’m begging for the return of the philosopher, because the dogmatist is impossible to reason with. Especially when said dogmatist also affirms that the damnation will be eternal and “God will ensure for it to be proper hellish” (blog quote), something these intellects would also **know**.
    I weep for the many souls past and future, which will be affected by religious trauma of that kind. The lingering fear of damnation, because goals like “unity” or “friendship with God” aren’t really ideas that can be contemplated, they are propositions with mysterious content, inaccessible from here. If that’s the consequence of the worldview, then my moral self demands its rejection and prayer for its downfall. I say that at the risk of sounding infantile, but the idea of this view is a horror and the thought that there are people of considerable intellect which are totally fine with it, is so much worse, especially in light of the question and problems we discussed in previous comments.
    One last thing: I have mentioned the article in the past, but Mark Johnston’s narrative in his article on a primordial free will defense against the problem of evil, provides a plausible way to accommodate proposition 2), at least for the angels or archons. Achieving the same thing for humans, it seems to me, would have to entail that the state of damnation is not fire and brimstone, but rather may not be that bad for some, perhaps spiritually stumped, souls
    https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/14/3/402
    The interesting parts begin with section 8. Thankfully Johnston is always very clear in his headline of each section, so that you could pick the paragraphs that are the most essential.

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  16. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    Bill and Dominik,
    Speaking as an amateur, I feel compelled to remark that this insightful short critique of Dominik’s on the specific issue of the culpability of the fallen angels and, relatedly, the post-mortem fixity of human souls, exposes the unavoidably unsatisfactory “philosophic” solutions of those who confuse theological speculation with rational demonstration. As I commented on this blog in August of 2019, in speaking of Garrigou-Lagrange’s L’éternelle vie et la profondeur de l’âme: “On these matters, we face, other than the promises and hints found in scripture, nothing but mystery that is impenetrable by human reasoning. Why pretend that we ‘know’ more? It is one thing to use the ancient philosophers to explore theological questions and quite another to create a theology of the soul from them, which is what I think is at work here. … [G]reater epistemological modesty should inform our efforts in speaking of final things. I can’t help feeling that there is a certain naiveté [and I would now add, doxastic anxiety] behind all of this [quite precise] talk of the afterlife, however much it is draped in luxuriant concepts and subtle distinctions.”
    Vito

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  17. BV Avatar
    BV

    Dominik,
    Is there a nice, crisp summary of Sterba’s argument somewhere, the argument that drew 40 detailed responses?

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