David Worsley

The beatific vision concerns our eternal union with God, which is our greatest good. If God loves us, and so wills our good, why does he not actualise that union now, in our earthly lives, instead of waiting until the life to come? Answering this question addresses some of the most fundamental issues of divine providence and of divine action, in particular, how divine providence is compatible with human freedom, and how divine action is compatible with a law-governed creation. Building on previously published work, we develop an account of our knowledge of God that allows for divine providence to be compatible with human freedom and an account of God’s grace that allows for divine action to be compatible with a law-governed creation. We then bring these two accounts together to create a unified theory of God’s love for us, and God’s desire that we love him, too. This allows us to account for the so-called problem of divine hiddenness, as not so much a problem, but rather a feature, of God’s providential care for us and for how he manifests that care in his action in the world.

In her widely acclaimed Wandering in Darkness, Stump argues that the suffering of mentally fully functioning adult humans can be explained by God's love for them, a love which consists of a twofold desire for their good and for union with them. This love, then, constitutes a morally sufficient reason for God's allowing suffering, even horrendous suffering, and so serves either as a defence against the evidential problem of evil or a theodicy, depending on whether one takes the conditions described in the account to be either actual or merely possible. (Adopting the weaker assumption, we will take Stump's account to be a defence, though nothing hangs on this.) In what follows, we will summarize Stump's defence, what we take to be the strongest objection to it, namely, Draper's objection concerning the role of consent in suffering for some future benefit, and how she might reply to it. We will conclude with what we take to be the lessons of the debate, namely, lessons concerning the processes of justification and of sanctification and their limits.

In The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, Yoram Hazony suggests that it is part of Rabbinic tradition that in the Akedah, Abraham never intended to sacrifice Isaac. In a recent paper, Sam Lebens argued that in making this claim, Hazony is misrepresenting Rabbinic tradition. In this paper, I show that Hazony can concede to Lebens’s argument and still have something interesting to say about the Akedah, namely, that it provides an opportunity to reflect on what might happen when a ‘Shepherd’ is commanded by God to violate what they understand to be a principle of natural law.

What might it mean for a person’s joy to be ‘complete’? Granting that such conditions obtain at the beatific vision, I suggest beatific enjoyment requires a specific kind of knowledge of God; namely, fundamental personal knowledge. However, attaining such personal knowledge necessitates the divine gifting of a special grace, that is, a power to know God’s infinite essence. Furthermore, this power, and so, this knowledge, can come in an infinite number of degrees. Granting this, one saint could come to a greater degree of fundamental personal knowledge of God than another, and therefore, one saint might experience a greater intensity of joy than another. Despite this difference in intensity, however, both saints may have their joy ‘complete’.

For an apophatic theologian, the doctrines of divine ineffability and of the beatific vision seem, on first glance, to contradict each other. If God is beyond knowledge how can we come to know Him, fully and completely? To resolve this problem, we argue that, if there are at least two qualitatively different kinds of knowledge, namely, propositional knowledge and knowledge of persons, then there are at least two qualitatively different kinds of ineffability, namely, propositional ineffability and what we will call personal ineffability. By postulating that God is propositionally ineffable but personally effable, we argue that the prima facie contradictory doctrines of divine ineffability and of the beatific vision can be reconciled. Thus, the apophatic theologian can know nothing about God, but they can still come to know God, fully and completely.

Paradise is often conceived as a place where suffering is not possible, so much so that the possibility of suffering in paradise has been used by various philosophers as a defeater for the possibility of paradise. [1] Employing a “reverse-engineered-theodicy,” I use Eleonore Stump’s morally-sufficient-reason for why God allows suffering in this earthly world to explore one condition that must obtain for suffering to remain impossible in paradise, namely, that internal fragmentation is not possible in paradise. After developing an intellectualist explanation of the primal sin, I suggest one reason to believe that the internal fragmentation of redeemed humans in paradise is not possible. However, this reason does not extend to other non-human inhabitants of paradise, and so I suggest that it remains possible that these other inhabitants might yet become internally fragmented. Given that Christ-like consensual suffering that aids a third party’s internal integration is presumably morally justifiable, I conclude by suggesting that the suffering of the redeemed in paradise is in fact possible. Therefore, even in paradise, there is a place for hope that the redeemed do not suffer, and for trust in others that they do not bring such suffering into being. [1] For one example see.