Jeremiah Carey poses a response to an objection which I have raised against universalism. That objection, in short, is that if universalists are right that God can manipulate free choices such as to ensure that we all end up in heaven, then God can also ensure we never sin.
The best way to understand my objection to universalism is as a dilemma, hinging on the fact that most universalists are compatibilists. If the ability to sin is essential to human free choice, then one can sin at every time, such that not even God can prevent sin from occurring, which precludes God's ability to ensure universal salvation; if the ability to sin is not essential to human free choice, then God can ensure that no sin ever occur, and God can ensure universal salvation, but then ought also to ensure (by their same principles of divine love which universalists endorse) that no sin ever occur.
Carey responds by appealing to a strategy proposed by David Bentley Hart, who argues that there is a logical contradiction involved in creating a free being that is perfect from the first moment. Carey then adds references to Maximus the Confessor, who Carey interprets as posing that it is essential to rational creatures that they need to make their own choices and that not even God could create a free being perfect from the first moment of their existence. Carey refers to the following passage as evidence: "If then rational beings come into being, surely they are also moved, since they move from a natural beginning in 'being' toward a voluntary end in 'well-being'" (1073C). Thus, Carey summarizes, "since we are also rational creatures, essentially capable of reaching this Good by our own voluntary choices in accordance with perception and desire, we could not be what we are without passing through a stage of pursuit and development...."
However, neither Maximus' passage nor Hart's argument nor Carey's short inference prove what is necessary to avoid my objection. I did not assume that, if God could manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation, He could thereby create finite creatures 'perfect' without their choice or at the first logical moment of their existence, but rather that, if God could manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation, then God could also prevent all sin from occurring.
Carey's citation of Maximus is then not to the point. In the passage cited, Maximus seems to be saying that it is required of free creatures that they engage in free choice in order to attain their ends, such as voluntarily chosen happiness. But Maximus does not say here anything about [1] whether the will can be determined to a specific outcome by means of God's Providence (or whether God can indirectly ensure a given outcome) or [2] whether this situation makes it such that not even God could prevent a person from sinning without violating their free will. Maximus therefore does not here speak to whether God could prevent all sin from occurring, and so the passage is irrelevant to my dilemma.
As to [1], a compatibilist too could hold that every free creature needs to move through a period of voluntary choices. They simply think God's determining the choices to a particular outcome or indirectly ensuring that a given choice occurs is not in contradiction with the choices being voluntary. That is: you don't need to say God creates us perfect from the first moment in order to affirm that God could ensure we end up perfect and never commit a sin along the way. As to [2], there is nothing in the position that every person must make some choices to achieve their natural teleological end which precludes that God could prevent sin occurring in those choices. We don't even need to believe God determines our will to particular choices to think God can prevent sin. We might imagine that God could indirectly ensure that free creatures only had 'good options' open to them, without making them impeccable.
Hart, for instance, acknowledges that free will does not require sinning at all - and not even the ability to sin - and thus concedes the critical point that these responses do not actually avoid the objection, even if we were to grant all these claims about what is essential to free choice. In the end, then, even if it were essential to free creatures that they make voluntary choices over time, it does not follow that those choices could not be entirely determined by God's Providence or indirectly prevented from being sinful.
One possible response would involve an argument to the effect that it is essential to free will that one sin or be able to sin. But there is a problem in Christian theology if we hold that it is essential to free will that either one sin or be able to sin. On the one hand, Jesus Christ is free but impeccable. On the other hand, it is Orthodox and Catholic belief that the Blessed Virgin Mary was prevented by God's grace from ever committing a sin. And Maximus the Confessor himself plausibly - e.g., according to Christiaan Kappes - held and defended the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin was 'immaculate,' that is, preserved from original and actual sin. If it were strictly impossible for God to prevent a person from sinning, then these doctrines about the Blessed Virgin would entail a contradiction. And, if you thought that a period of sinfulness was essential to being a finite free creature, then the Fall of Adam would seem necessary - but, whereas some universalists seem to endorse such conclusions, this view that sin is necessary for our welfare is pretty bad.
Now, it is very unlikely that Maximus is either a compatibilist about freedom or a universalist. Rather, Maximus seemingly rejects universalism (when he does) on grounds of freedom, as when he talks about individuals freely or voluntarily bringing about their own eternal ill-being (rather than well-being) through their own choices. Maximus' commitments then seem to play into my dilemma for universalists. If God cannot manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation either directly or indirectly, then not even God could ensure universal salvation. If God could manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation, then God could entirely prevent sin - and He ought to, by universalist principles regarding God's 'perfect divine love.'
If Maximus the Confessor were a universalist, however, I don't see anything in what Carey cites from Maximus that provides any response to the dilemma. Maximus simply says that free creatures necessarily achieve their well-being by voluntary choices, over time. He does not give an argument that God cannot prevent those choices from being sinful. If Maximus DID pose such an argument, it would aid in undermining universalism, not supporting it, since we could then infer that not even God could prevent someone from continuing in sin forever - and hence ending up damned.
Why do we need to put limitations on God’s abilities in order for us to explain free will and sin? If He is omnipotent, He can create beings with free will who He designs in such a way that sin is a possibility. Regarding universal salvation, while I think it follows from His omnipotence that He *could* manipulate everyone to coming into union with Him, I don’t think this is even necessary. Because again, as He is omnipotent, this could simply be one of the conditions with which He created us: we will eventually come back to Him, not necessarily through His “manipulation”, but simply because this is how we were made. Since He made us in His image and likeness, we must on an eternal level be united with Him, as an eternally separate, sinful, imperfect being would in no way be the image of God.
Another argument from a different angle is that His glory is simply too great for any finite being to eternally “hold out” against Him, so to speak.
I don't know what it means to 'put limitations on God's abilities' in this context. My claim was: if you posit that sin is necessarily a possibility such that not even God can prevent free creatures from committing sin (if they choose), then He cannot prevent anyone from being damned, since damnation is simply to persist in sin and never achieve beatific union with God. I'm not sure what in that claim involves putting a limit on God's ability that was not already imposed by the condition (being proposed by universalists) that sin is something which not even God could prevent. If you think there are no limits to God's abilities at all, then it seems obvious a universalist would quickly find themselves in my dilemma, since God could not only save all but prevent all sin - and that's just what is in question.
The suggestions that 'we will come back to God not necessarily through His manipulation but simply because this is how we are made..." and the following suggestion His glory is 'too great' for anyone to reject it forever, are both what I meant by indirect instances of manipulation. I call these 'indirect' since I take these to be cases not where God efficiently acts upon the will to determine its outcomes but instead manipulates the conditions of choice or other factors such as to ensure outcomes.
In any event, the terminology of 'manipulation' doesn't matter; I meant being able to ensure outcomes of free choices. The reason that I group direct and indirect manipulation together is because neither avoid the dilemma: if God can indirectly manipulate our choices such as to ensure we will be saved, then He can indirectly manipulate our choices such as to ensure we will never sin. So, if God must ensure we are saved, given His divine perfect love, then it seems He ought to prevent all sin (or, conversely, you should hold that sin is necessary for our salvation and that's why God allows it).
Why is God's glory too great for us to not hold out against him forever, but not too great as to never hold out against him for even a moment?
If eternal ill-being is impossible, why not ill-being itself? Why is there an arbitrary limit on God's power? If God is so good that he can never countenance eternal damnation, is he not good enough, that he can countenance temporal sins and temporal damnation? Both are unquestionably, incontrovertibly bad, they differ only in how long they last.
On the other hand if God's goodness is compatible with allowing murder, rape and genocide then it's compatible with eternal damnation too.
What do you make of St. Maximus’s “eternal ill-being” in contrast to “eternal well being”? Eternal ill being occurs when tropos and logos do not align.
Have you considered entropy when thinking about telos, “eternal well-being”?
“But entropy isn’t just about disorder—it’s about **probability**. Systems naturally evolve toward states that are more probable, and high-entropy states are statistically more likely because there are more ways to achieve them.” (this is from Deepseek, btw).
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Let us suppose, as seems plausible, that there are different types or kinds of being that God could create. Such beings can be perfect of their kind, or imperfect or defective in some manner such that they cannot develop their full potential, or they can be as yet imperfect but moving or developing so that they have the possibility of becoming perfect of their kind. This seems true of plants and animals here on earth. God could not create creatures like us humans but perfect from the beginning. But that does not seem to show that God could not have created "an already-perfected creature capable of choice and self-movement ". A being whose character was such that, though it had the power to choose wrongly, it could not choose to exercise that power. Such angelic beings would not develop, of course, because they were perfect of their kind from the beginning. Then the question might be, why create beings like us, liable to go wrong in various ways, rather than create only 'angels'. I'm inclined to think that the right answer to that is an ethical rather than a metaphysical one. That God would have reasons of love to create imperfect and developing creatures as well as ones perfect from the beginning.
My neoplatonic intuition tells me that a creature created to immediately be perfect would revert to its source immediately and there could be no true distinction between creature and creator. Creatures would simply be extensions of God, or even necessary emanations. I think we need to insert an “interval” of ontologically distinct choice between creation and reversion in order to guarantee the distinction which is needed for free and real love and therefore theosis. See Perl’s thesis on St. Maximus (free online) which discusses this idea, in the section that speaks of pre-existence (which is really somewhat of a misnomer here since it’s more like simultaneous choice with creation which IS the very creation of a creature.)
But if we aren’t operating in the land of participatory ontology, the above probably doesn’t apply.
Jeremiah Carey poses a response to an objection which I have raised against universalism. That objection, in short, is that if universalists are right that God can manipulate free choices such as to ensure that we all end up in heaven, then God can also ensure we never sin.
The best way to understand my objection to universalism is as a dilemma, hinging on the fact that most universalists are compatibilists. If the ability to sin is essential to human free choice, then one can sin at every time, such that not even God can prevent sin from occurring, which precludes God's ability to ensure universal salvation; if the ability to sin is not essential to human free choice, then God can ensure that no sin ever occur, and God can ensure universal salvation, but then ought also to ensure (by their same principles of divine love which universalists endorse) that no sin ever occur.
Carey responds by appealing to a strategy proposed by David Bentley Hart, who argues that there is a logical contradiction involved in creating a free being that is perfect from the first moment. Carey then adds references to Maximus the Confessor, who Carey interprets as posing that it is essential to rational creatures that they need to make their own choices and that not even God could create a free being perfect from the first moment of their existence. Carey refers to the following passage as evidence: "If then rational beings come into being, surely they are also moved, since they move from a natural beginning in 'being' toward a voluntary end in 'well-being'" (1073C). Thus, Carey summarizes, "since we are also rational creatures, essentially capable of reaching this Good by our own voluntary choices in accordance with perception and desire, we could not be what we are without passing through a stage of pursuit and development...."
However, neither Maximus' passage nor Hart's argument nor Carey's short inference prove what is necessary to avoid my objection. I did not assume that, if God could manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation, He could thereby create finite creatures 'perfect' without their choice or at the first logical moment of their existence, but rather that, if God could manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation, then God could also prevent all sin from occurring.
Carey's citation of Maximus is then not to the point. In the passage cited, Maximus seems to be saying that it is required of free creatures that they engage in free choice in order to attain their ends, such as voluntarily chosen happiness. But Maximus does not say here anything about [1] whether the will can be determined to a specific outcome by means of God's Providence (or whether God can indirectly ensure a given outcome) or [2] whether this situation makes it such that not even God could prevent a person from sinning without violating their free will. Maximus therefore does not here speak to whether God could prevent all sin from occurring, and so the passage is irrelevant to my dilemma.
As to [1], a compatibilist too could hold that every free creature needs to move through a period of voluntary choices. They simply think God's determining the choices to a particular outcome or indirectly ensuring that a given choice occurs is not in contradiction with the choices being voluntary. That is: you don't need to say God creates us perfect from the first moment in order to affirm that God could ensure we end up perfect and never commit a sin along the way. As to [2], there is nothing in the position that every person must make some choices to achieve their natural teleological end which precludes that God could prevent sin occurring in those choices. We don't even need to believe God determines our will to particular choices to think God can prevent sin. We might imagine that God could indirectly ensure that free creatures only had 'good options' open to them, without making them impeccable.
Hart, for instance, acknowledges that free will does not require sinning at all - and not even the ability to sin - and thus concedes the critical point that these responses do not actually avoid the objection, even if we were to grant all these claims about what is essential to free choice. In the end, then, even if it were essential to free creatures that they make voluntary choices over time, it does not follow that those choices could not be entirely determined by God's Providence or indirectly prevented from being sinful.
One possible response would involve an argument to the effect that it is essential to free will that one sin or be able to sin. But there is a problem in Christian theology if we hold that it is essential to free will that either one sin or be able to sin. On the one hand, Jesus Christ is free but impeccable. On the other hand, it is Orthodox and Catholic belief that the Blessed Virgin Mary was prevented by God's grace from ever committing a sin. And Maximus the Confessor himself plausibly - e.g., according to Christiaan Kappes - held and defended the doctrine that the Blessed Virgin was 'immaculate,' that is, preserved from original and actual sin. If it were strictly impossible for God to prevent a person from sinning, then these doctrines about the Blessed Virgin would entail a contradiction. And, if you thought that a period of sinfulness was essential to being a finite free creature, then the Fall of Adam would seem necessary - but, whereas some universalists seem to endorse such conclusions, this view that sin is necessary for our welfare is pretty bad.
Now, it is very unlikely that Maximus is either a compatibilist about freedom or a universalist. Rather, Maximus seemingly rejects universalism (when he does) on grounds of freedom, as when he talks about individuals freely or voluntarily bringing about their own eternal ill-being (rather than well-being) through their own choices. Maximus' commitments then seem to play into my dilemma for universalists. If God cannot manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation either directly or indirectly, then not even God could ensure universal salvation. If God could manipulate choices to ensure universal salvation, then God could entirely prevent sin - and He ought to, by universalist principles regarding God's 'perfect divine love.'
If Maximus the Confessor were a universalist, however, I don't see anything in what Carey cites from Maximus that provides any response to the dilemma. Maximus simply says that free creatures necessarily achieve their well-being by voluntary choices, over time. He does not give an argument that God cannot prevent those choices from being sinful. If Maximus DID pose such an argument, it would aid in undermining universalism, not supporting it, since we could then infer that not even God could prevent someone from continuing in sin forever - and hence ending up damned.
Why do we need to put limitations on God’s abilities in order for us to explain free will and sin? If He is omnipotent, He can create beings with free will who He designs in such a way that sin is a possibility. Regarding universal salvation, while I think it follows from His omnipotence that He *could* manipulate everyone to coming into union with Him, I don’t think this is even necessary. Because again, as He is omnipotent, this could simply be one of the conditions with which He created us: we will eventually come back to Him, not necessarily through His “manipulation”, but simply because this is how we were made. Since He made us in His image and likeness, we must on an eternal level be united with Him, as an eternally separate, sinful, imperfect being would in no way be the image of God.
Another argument from a different angle is that His glory is simply too great for any finite being to eternally “hold out” against Him, so to speak.
I don't know what it means to 'put limitations on God's abilities' in this context. My claim was: if you posit that sin is necessarily a possibility such that not even God can prevent free creatures from committing sin (if they choose), then He cannot prevent anyone from being damned, since damnation is simply to persist in sin and never achieve beatific union with God. I'm not sure what in that claim involves putting a limit on God's ability that was not already imposed by the condition (being proposed by universalists) that sin is something which not even God could prevent. If you think there are no limits to God's abilities at all, then it seems obvious a universalist would quickly find themselves in my dilemma, since God could not only save all but prevent all sin - and that's just what is in question.
The suggestions that 'we will come back to God not necessarily through His manipulation but simply because this is how we are made..." and the following suggestion His glory is 'too great' for anyone to reject it forever, are both what I meant by indirect instances of manipulation. I call these 'indirect' since I take these to be cases not where God efficiently acts upon the will to determine its outcomes but instead manipulates the conditions of choice or other factors such as to ensure outcomes.
In any event, the terminology of 'manipulation' doesn't matter; I meant being able to ensure outcomes of free choices. The reason that I group direct and indirect manipulation together is because neither avoid the dilemma: if God can indirectly manipulate our choices such as to ensure we will be saved, then He can indirectly manipulate our choices such as to ensure we will never sin. So, if God must ensure we are saved, given His divine perfect love, then it seems He ought to prevent all sin (or, conversely, you should hold that sin is necessary for our salvation and that's why God allows it).
Why is God's glory too great for us to not hold out against him forever, but not too great as to never hold out against him for even a moment?
If eternal ill-being is impossible, why not ill-being itself? Why is there an arbitrary limit on God's power? If God is so good that he can never countenance eternal damnation, is he not good enough, that he can countenance temporal sins and temporal damnation? Both are unquestionably, incontrovertibly bad, they differ only in how long they last.
On the other hand if God's goodness is compatible with allowing murder, rape and genocide then it's compatible with eternal damnation too.
What do you make of St. Maximus’s “eternal ill-being” in contrast to “eternal well being”? Eternal ill being occurs when tropos and logos do not align.
Love St. Maximus. Just finished Cosmic Mysteries of Jesus Christ. Also have an essay about it in the works. Great work!
Beautiful. Thank you!
Great quote from Hart here.
Well-stated!
Have you considered entropy when thinking about telos, “eternal well-being”?
“But entropy isn’t just about disorder—it’s about **probability**. Systems naturally evolve toward states that are more probable, and high-entropy states are statistically more likely because there are more ways to achieve them.” (this is from Deepseek, btw).
I’m thinking about it because of this article. https://phys.org/news/2025-03-nature-spirals-link-entropy.html
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing. Let us suppose, as seems plausible, that there are different types or kinds of being that God could create. Such beings can be perfect of their kind, or imperfect or defective in some manner such that they cannot develop their full potential, or they can be as yet imperfect but moving or developing so that they have the possibility of becoming perfect of their kind. This seems true of plants and animals here on earth. God could not create creatures like us humans but perfect from the beginning. But that does not seem to show that God could not have created "an already-perfected creature capable of choice and self-movement ". A being whose character was such that, though it had the power to choose wrongly, it could not choose to exercise that power. Such angelic beings would not develop, of course, because they were perfect of their kind from the beginning. Then the question might be, why create beings like us, liable to go wrong in various ways, rather than create only 'angels'. I'm inclined to think that the right answer to that is an ethical rather than a metaphysical one. That God would have reasons of love to create imperfect and developing creatures as well as ones perfect from the beginning.
My neoplatonic intuition tells me that a creature created to immediately be perfect would revert to its source immediately and there could be no true distinction between creature and creator. Creatures would simply be extensions of God, or even necessary emanations. I think we need to insert an “interval” of ontologically distinct choice between creation and reversion in order to guarantee the distinction which is needed for free and real love and therefore theosis. See Perl’s thesis on St. Maximus (free online) which discusses this idea, in the section that speaks of pre-existence (which is really somewhat of a misnomer here since it’s more like simultaneous choice with creation which IS the very creation of a creature.)
But if we aren’t operating in the land of participatory ontology, the above probably doesn’t apply.