The following piece is adapted from a podcast series on the Problem of Divine Hiddenness. While my typical written work includes extensive citations, I have not added references to this particular post. In addition, I have largely preserved my manner of speech, which can be a bit more colloquial than my usual writing style. Perhaps, when time permits, I’ll revise this piece to accommodate a more formal tone with proper citations. But in the meantime, I trust my body of work should suffice to instill confidence that the philosophical, theological, and historical claims presented here are sound and can be verified by an investigation of the figures and sources referenced. If you have yet to read the prior pieces in this series, you may want to do so (links below). However, this final post wades into fresh waters, so one can likely dive in without looking back on the start to this series.
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Part 1: The Problem of Divine Hiddenness | When God Seems Silent
Part 4: Non-Resistant Unbelief
Part 5: Scrutinizing the Metanarrative of Divine Hiddenness
Part 6: The Eastern Fathers & Divine Hiddenness
The Fall: An Inversion of Human Nature
As discussed at the close of the prior post, the Eastern fathers understand the Fall to constitute an unnatural twisting of human nature — the subjugation of the higher nature to the lower. Rather than the rider steering the beast, as it were, the relationship between spirit and flesh is now inverted. So, we find ourselves in an unnatural state, our rational spirit subjugated to beastly passions. As St. Paul so aptly describes it, we know what we ought to do, but we fail to do it, our flesh having unnatural sway over our spirit, like a tyrannical taskmaster.
The importance of the point here concerns the discussion of nous in our previous post. As explained, the nous is created to have natural access to God, beholding the divine energies. Yet, one of the immediate consequences of our ancestral retreat from God is that the eye of the soul is blinded, no longer capable of beholding God as it was made to. This blinding is the first unnatural distancing of man from God.
Reading the story of Eden with the Eastern fathers, we can see the point there. Adam and Eve live in a state of paradise, having direct access and communion with God. Now, as discussed in the context of the epistemic distance argument, this access consisted of degrees. God evidently withdraws during the time of their testing and returns afterwards. But definitive change transpires in the Fall, where our First Parents cease to have divine vision, the nous being clouded by the corruption of our nature.
The change Basil of Caesarea sees in our First Parents realizing their nakedness. By way of background, the Eastern fathers tend to read the biblical references to Heaven, Hell, Hades, and other such “places” as allegorical depictions of a condition of the soul — of being in a state of corruption and death (Hades) or enjoying the presence of God (Paradise). And so it is with Eden. The term “Eden” (עֵדֶן = Ay-den / Εδέμ = Edem) means pleasure or delight, and the term “garden” in the Septuagint is paradeisos (παράδεισος). Hence, Basil reads this, not as a description of the beauty of the location in which Adam and Eve resided, but as a description of their state of being — enjoying the pleasure and delight of the paradise of divine vision. Wherever they set foot was paradise.
As we see in the Fall, they suddenly realize they are naked. Why? According to Basil, imbibing the vision of God, our First Parents paid no mind to the lesser needs of the body. But having turned away from God and sinned, this vision fell away, and they were immediately out of Eden. Though their feet remained in the same place, they ceased to behold the uncreated light — the eye of the soul was blinded — and having embraced the lower nature, they became attuned to the needs and vulnerabilities of the life of beasts. Such was the immediate effect of the Fall.
Now, in keeping with this narrative, the inversion of human nature that caused this blinding is the very same passed on to the progeny of Adam. The importance of the point is twofold. The first is that it explains why our experience of God is unnaturally diminished. But it also explains the road of return. In a prior post, I discussed the road taken by Saints to behold the uncreated light — renouncing the world, repentance and the sacramental life, asceticism and so on. The natural question is why so difficult a path is required? The reason is found in our unnatural state, one that requires us to claw our way back from corruption and death.
The fact is acknowledged not only by the Eastern Fathers. Rather, East and West alike acknowledge that the road to obedience and to participating in God was far easier for Adam and Eve because they were in an uncorrupted state. They had an easier road to partaking of God. But with the Fall — the blinding of the nous, the inversion of human nature, the subjugation of the rational spirit to the animal passions — the road back to God becomes an arduous one. The path is treacherous. For we cannot simply turn back to God but must untwist our twisted nature.
We will return to precisely what this untwisting involves, according to the Eastern fathers, but let’s, first, explore the type of hiddenness that sets in as a result of the Fall. As I said, I don’t think God is hidden in the way the hiddenness objection presumes. But there is, nonetheless, a sense in which God’s existence and presence is not as obvious to us as it was to our First Parents, who enjoyed the Eden of divine vision.
Why? The Eastern fathers provide good metaphysical reasons for why this is so. So, looking to them as our guide, I want to talk about both the subjective and objective modes of hiddenness that have resulted from the Fall.
Subjective Hiddenness
Beginning with the subjective mode of hiddenness, I trust the explanation is already evident. As discussed in the prior post, the nous is made to behold God, communing with him, partaking of him, imbibing the divine energies and transfiguring the human person. Yet, as also discussed in the context of moral properties and the need for man to cooperate in his own making, such participation requires active imitation, the icon actively mirroring its divine Archetype. By refusing such participation, the creature also refuses the divine energies.
Now, add to this that the power of self-determination, in the case of our First Parents, was a determination between the life of angels and the life of beasts. Having chosen the latter, the rational spirit is subjugated to the lower nature, enslaved to the life of mortal beasts. As St. Paul so aptly describes in his letter to the Romans, we know what we ought to do, but we fail to do it, our flesh having unnatural sway over our spirit, like a tyrannical taskmaster.
While our spirit retains its memory of what it ought to be and longs to return to the Eden of divine vision, it proves incapable of clawing its way out from under the passions to which it is enslaved. Hence, the blindness of the soul persists, a subjective hiddenness that we are unable to mend on our own.
The reason I refer to this as subjective hiddenness is because it concerns the blindness of the soul, not an absence of divine light. For God is everywhere present and fills all things. His energies are all around us — these being the very powers that first brought the world into being and continue to uphold our very existence at every moment. And yet, we are blind them because of the Fall. Our world is very much like the story of a land filled with sunlight but the inhabitants of the place question the presence of that light because blindness has become endemic amongst the residents of the kingdom. And so it is amongst our own world when the blinded soul cries out, Where is God?
Objective Hiddenness
In addition to this subjective hiddenness, the Fall also brings an objective stifling of the divine presence. What I mean is this.
I’ve discussed in other contexts the normative mode of divine providence, which stands in stark contrast to the presumptions of the clockwork universe — which I discussed in an earlier post. The presumption of many with the West, from at least the time of the Enlightenment to the present, is that our world is a closed system of matter that operates according to mechanical principles. Hence, the substance of the world and the substance of God are mutually exclusive. In order for God to manifest within the world, then, he must appear as something distinct from and in addition to the objects of our world.
The presumption stands in notable contrast to what we find in Scripture. Very rarely in Scripture does God (the Father) act in an unmediated fashion. Only two instances come to mind, his declaration at Theophany that Jesus is his Son and the same at the Transfiguration. Most of God’s acts are mediated, be it through the Son and the Spirit or, more often, through an angel, a Saint, an otherwise natural element, or a holy place or artifact.
Admittedly, the suggestion that God rarely acts in unmediated fashion could conjure the wrong image. The risk is imagining an aloof lord who has no time for his subjects. Rather than tending to their needs directly, he sends servants to them. Such a picture may feel more like neglect than providence. Hence, it’s important to clarify what I mean by mediation.
The concept requires us to return to the distinction, previously discussed, between God’s essence and his energies. Recall that this distinction differentiates what a thing is from the operative powers that express that nature — fire expressing its nature by the operations of heating and lighting, for example. And also recall that these same energies are, in some cases, communicable from one substance to another, such as when iron comes to glow and burn when enflamed by fire.
So, in the same way, the energies of God are communicable to the things of our world — to angels, to men, and even to places and objects. Such is central to the Eastern patristic understanding of Saints (divinely energized people), relics (divinely energized objects), and holy places (divinely energized locations). In a word, the world is a spiritually open system, populated with creatures made to partake of the divine nature to whatever extent they are able.
Such a vision of the relationship between God and world is exceedingly relevant to how one envisions providence. Our world is comprised of a hierarchy of beings, stretching from the least godlike to the most godlike, from rocks to man and on into the hierarchy of angels.
Within this hierarchy, the higher, more godlike beings are made to minister to the lower, drinking deeply of God in order to carry their greater portion of the divine to more humble beings, lower in the chain. Pseudo-Dionysius points out that angels are named for divine attributes precisely because they are made to serve as conduits, carrying that particular energy into the world. Likewise, man is often referred to as a microcosm because, as Genesis so aptly illustrates, and as we have already discussed, our peculiar nature joins the mortal things of creation — organic, earthly things — with the higher, celestial things of creation — the spiritual and intelligent realm. And this merger has a purpose, namely, so that the icons of God might carries these energies to the irrational things of nature, things that lack the divine image.
Once glimpsed, we discover a very different vision of creation than that of the clockwork universe. In this vision, cast for us by the Eastern fathers, the Holy Trinity radiates divine life and light, which flows into spiritual creatures in order that such energies may create Saints and cascade through them to the lower things of creation, raising up lesser parts of nature from their lowly estate to partake of their Maker in a degree that exceeds their innate limitations.
This cosmic vision informs the concept of spiritual mediation, touched on earlier. While we often think of a mediator as one who separates, standing in between two parties — Talk to my attorney, not to me — the fathers speak of spiritual mediators as those who bring near, bridging the gap between two things. To draw, once again, on the fire-metal analogy, if we imagine the metal as a branding iron, the iron serves to mediate fire to the beast that it brands, bringing the fire near to the animal, carrying its energies within it. Far from the iron standing between the fire and the beast, I have no doubt the fire feels exceedingly near to the branded animal.
When saying that the normative mode of providence is that God acts in and through his creatures, I do not mean that he “sends” someone to us while remaining aloof. Quite the contrary, I mean that God is present in his creatures, just as the fire is present in the metal. The branded beast truly experiences the energies of fire in the metal that carries them near.
Such is the normative mode of divine providence. The world is not designed such that creatures live as autonomous islands, insulated from God and one another. Rather, each creature exists to serve as a conduit for God, partaking of the divine nature, being energized by him, and carrying his portion of God to the other members of creation.
Key to this vision, however, are the icons of God — those rational creatures who are capable of bearing the likeness of God. The reason goes to man’s purpose within the cosmos. Already touched on is the Eastern patristic doctrine that man is a microcosm, a merger of the mortal and the immortal, of the things of heaven and the things of earth. What has not been discussed is why God created such a being. The Eastern patristic explanation goes to God’s desire that all things participate in him to whatever degree they are capable. These fathers believe this merger of the lower and the higher things of nature provides a means to raise up the irrational parts of creation to partake of God in a degree they otherwise could not.
Perhaps an analogy might help. Every instrument is capable of participating in the musical genius of J. S. Bach. But not every instrument bears the same capacity. Each has innate limitations based on its nature. A piano is perhaps the most capable conduit of Bach’s genius, while a tympani has a relatively limited capacity, and a triangle has even less capacity. Yet, if the triangle is placed within the context of an orchestra, that triangle transcends its innate limitation as a member of the whole.
So, in the same way, neither rocks nor plants nor beasts have the capacity to partake of the divine nature to the degree or in the manner of an angel. Yet, by merging the lower of things of creation with a rational spirit — as does in the creation of man — the things of the organic world are offered a means by which to partake of God far beyond what they could on their own. In short, man is a mediator of the divine energies to the lower things of creation, merging these lower elements with the icon of God, so that they might commune with the divine energies to a greater degree — hence the vision of cascading divine energies described above, producing a world ablaze with divine glory.
Man’s role in the cosmos, however, is a two-edged sword. While our capacity to partake of God offers to the world a means to commune with the divine, this role also means that our rebellion shuts off the valves through which God is to flow to creation. When the icons of God turn away from their Archetype, they choke his presence within the world. This is why, as St. Paul puts it, all of creation groans for the unveiling of the sons of God. Why? Because we are the only hope for the lower things of creation to partake of God.
This feature of providence introduces the objective side of divine providence. On the one hand, yes, we are creatures who are blinded to the divine light that surrounds us. Yet, even if our eyes were open to see God, if the divine icons refuse him, then the presence of God within our world is diminished in a certain sense. We are mirrors, made to refract the divine light throughout the world, amplifying it through our person to the world, but if those mirrors are tarnished, then so is the refraction.
The vision is inherently synergistic. Much like the way a branding iron mediates fire to the cow, carrying its energies near to it, so the presence of God is meant to be synergistic. The glow of the face of Moses or of Paisios or of Porphyry should not be the exception but the normative nature of human experience — the whole of creation ablaze with God. Hence, the felt absence of God is more than just a subjective sense of blindness. It is the sense that we, the conduits of God, have banished him from the world.
The Withdrawal of Divine Presence
There is still another dimension to divine hiddenness worth discussing. I don’t want to suggest that hiddenness is merely an effect of creaturely rebellion, as if God is passive in the result. Certainly, it’s true that the world is full of light and we are blind to it. Equally true is that our world is made to cascade divine light from the highest to the lowest creature, and our rebellion hinders this vision for creation. But we also discover in this metanarrative an intentional withdrawal of divine presence, which is out of love for creation.
What I have in mind is not the common explanations that love is necessarily non-coercive or that God desires faith born from uncoerced choice. As discussed in earlier posts, I certainly think these points are defensible. But what I have in mind here is a metaphysical claim, namely, that the divine presence is dangerous to corrupt creatures.
When discussing the impact of miracles, I argued that there’s something synergistic about our encounters with them. Specifically, I argued that miracles tend to draw to the surface whatever is already in the heart. On this point, I appealed to the example of Moses and Pharaoh. Well known is that God tells Moses that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. Less well known is how the Eastern fathers understand this statement. These fathers observe that God’s dealings with Moses and Pharaoh are identical: He reveals himself, declares who he is, demonstrates it by miracle, and makes a demand. Yet, the results could not be more different. Moses becomes a Saint, while Pharaoh hardens and cracks. The declaration that God will harden Pharaoh’s heart — according to Origen, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, et al. — is a declaration that he knows the heart of this man, and he knows that when revealing himself as God and demanding the release of his people, this exceedingly proud man, who believes himself to be a god, will harden and crack.
As Origen explains it, if the sun could speak, it could say, I cause growth and flourishing and I cause withering and cracking, but the sun would not be declaring that it treats each soil differently. The difference is not in the operations of the sun but in the condition of the soil. And so it is with the effect that God’s presence has upon men.
The point carries through much of Eastern patristic thought. With the Eucharist, for example, the Eastern fathers understand the sacrament to become the body and blood of Christ, which carries to us the divine energies. But the effects of these energies on the recipient varies, depending on the condition of each. As St. Paul warns, it is dangerous to partake of the mysteries in an unworthy manner.
Such is also the rationale behind excommunication — the idea that one should separate from the mysteries for a time of repentance after a grave sin, lest he bring harm upon himself by partaking in an unworthy manner.
We see the same theme throughout the Old Testament — that the presence of God is dangerous. When Israel rebels, God tells Moses to lead them on without him. Moses protests, asking what will differentiate them from the other nations if the LORD does not go with them. In reply, God warns that if he goes with them, he will destroy them. Now, one could read this as a decree of anger. But reading such a statement with the Eastern fathers, we see something else: The presence of God is dangerous to rebellious and unholy people, God being a consuming fire who burns up unholy things.
The hiddenness objection fails to recognize this fact. It speaks as if God could reveal himself like any other object, as if God might appear in a room to a group of people and the condition of the people would be immaterial to the effect. All would behold him alike, as if beholding a man or any other being within the world. The condition of the person — good or evil, rebellious or obedient, holy or unholy — would have no bearing on the experience. But this is neither how the Bible nor the Eastern Church fathers speak about the divine presence. God is a consuming fire, and as such, he is dangerous to things combustible. His presence may energize that which is substantial, like iron, but to that which is wood, hay, or stubble, he consumes.
In this light, there’s something presumptuous about the hiddenness objection. For it presumes, If God simply unveiled himself to me, then I would believe and change my life accordingly. But it gives no consideration to whether one’s condition is suitable to endure the divine presence.
This condition adds a further layer to divine hiddenness, namely, that there is a mercy in God withdrawing his presence in the more fantastical ways described in the stories of Saints because such unveiling is dangerous to fallen, corrupt beings.
This is one of the reasons why the Eastern fathers understand the Final Judgment to involve an unveiling of God, one that has positive effects upon the righteous and negative upon the wicked — not because of God’s disposition toward mankind but because of the respective conditions of these two groups. Hence, we have good reason, granting this metanarrative, to think that God’s withdrawal is meant to protect us, creating a season in which we might repent and prepare ourselves for this final unveiling.
The Demonic Component
Within the hiddenness objection, there is a tendency to speak as if there are only two characters within the cosmic narrative, God and world. But we cannot ignore the significance of the demonic within the Christian narrative. Due to the influence of Modernity, as well as Modernity’s influence on Protestantism, certain aspects of the Christian narrative and worldview have been ushered to the margins of the minds of many — these being a point of embarrassment to those in the West. But I, for one, am not embarrassed of the fact that Christianity believes in demons and devils, and believes that these are significant to human experience and to its worldview — even to the Gospel itself.
The significance of the point here is that humanity, by turning away from God, not only subjugated our higher nature to our lower, but also subjugated ourselves to the Devil and his demonic powers — to the god of this world, as St. Paul calls him.
Critical to the Eastern patristic narrative is that ministering spirits are entrusted with a variety of roles within the cosmos. According to these fathers, angels are entrusted with care of the elements, the well being of men, the shepherding of the nations, and even with the care of animals. Equally important is that these same fathers understand the cosmos to be a single organism. When I say the angels have been entrusted with specific roles, these roles are not arbitrary or dispensable, any more than the role of the liver in the human body is arbitrary or dispensable. These roles are woven into the very fabric of the cosmos.
The significance of this goes to an observation made in my series on the problem of evil about miracles. While a number of figures within Modern philosophy define miracles as a suspension of the order of nature, this seems a poor definition for one very important reason. Miracles, as understood by the Christian, do not violate the order of nature. Rather, they restore it.
I think, for example, of a man I know of who had brain cancer, but upon visiting Mount Athos, a monk prayed for him and his cancer disappeared. But notice that the miracle did not remove the cancerous organ, allowing the man to operate without a brain — what would be a suspension or violation of the order of nature. Quite the contrary, the miracle restored the brain to health, dispelling the cancer, which is a corruption of nature.
The importance of the point here is it goes to the natural question that many raise concerning demons: Why does God allow demons to operate within our world? If we understand that these spirits occupy a natural place within the cosmos — just as our heart or liver occupies a natural place within the body — then the answer should be evident. God does not dispense with a creature or a part of a creature simply because it has become corrupt.
To dispose of the angels who rebel, or to dispose of man because he is corrupt, would be a violation of the cosmic order on par with disposing of an organ because it has grown cancerous. Yet, the workings of divine providence, according to the Eastern fathers, are never contrary to the order of nature. Rather, providence works for the good of every creature, striving to move every facet of the cosmos toward proper formation and perfection.
The clearest evidence of this is the Incarnation itself. Rather than abandoning his creation or dispensing with Fallen man, the Creator enters his creation, becoming one of us, in order to heal the cancerous organ from within.
We will return to the Incarnation and its role in restoring the cosmos in a moment. But for now, let it suffice that man is not the only cancerous organ within the cosmos. According to the Christian narrative, a host of angels, too, have turned away from God, corrupting the cosmic order. And many of these ministering spirits exist to care for humanity, ushering us to God. Yet, having turned away from God, these angelic caretakers desire to drag us away from our Maker into darkness.
In this light, there is a further factor beyond our subjective blindness and divine withdrawal. To this is added an Enemy, one who proactively desires to deceive humanity, nurturing doubt and unbelief, drawing us away from things divine with the pull of the passions and the cares and concerns of this world.
In the first post of this series, I discussed the ways in which beliefs are shaped by more than rational analysis. As social animals, many of our beliefs are formed by social pressures and herd instinct. Such is the reason propaganda is so effective. And within our own cosmos exists another propaganda machine — a demonic one aimed at turning men away from God, believing the lie that he does not exist or, if he does, has little concern for how we live.
The circumstance in which we find ourselves is not simply that the soul has been blinded by the corruption of our nature, or that the natural channels for the divine have been choked by sin, or that God has withdrawn for our sakes, but to all of this is added a demonic propaganda machine, working sleeplessly to hinder men from finding their way back to God.
When it comes to the question of why God is not more evident to us in the current state of affairs, then, the reasons are manifold. But this leaves us with the question of what can be done to remedy this state of affairs.
Redemption: The Good Infection
The question — What can be done to remedy our condition? — carries us into the story of redemption. The natural question one might ask in the light of the foregoing is whether it is within our power to heal the eye of the soul and reorder our nature?
The answer depends on what one is really asking. If the question is asking whether we might remedy our condition through purely natural struggle, then the answer of the Eastern fathers is no. One can certainly engage in moral struggle, striving to put to death the passions, just as the Stoics or the Aristotelians or the Platonists did. And such struggle is not fruitless. Through such efforts, one may well take steps toward God and make incremental movements toward proper formation. But such efforts can never heal our nature.
The Eastern patristic understanding of the Christian gospel suggests that, after preparing the way through prophets and philosophers, God sends his Son, the second person of the Trinity to restore our species — the Creator God, as it were, entering our cancerous cosmos in order to heal it. He does so by joining himself to one of the cancerous organs, becoming a creature for our sake, so that he might do in us what we cannot do for ourselves — heal our nature and undo the death that has taken us.
This restoration begins by uniting our nature to his Life-giving incorruptible nature, which undoes our inherited corruption, restoring it to the state of our First Parents. And he then does what they did not, brings to pass the likeness of God through active imitation of God. He resists temptation, reordering human nature from within, putting the passions back to their rightly place and turning the soul back toward God. He united in his person our humanity with the divine nature, energizing it as it was meant to be, until ultimately, at the crucifixion, the remaking of man is complete.
He descends into Hades, carrying his divine life and incorruption into the realm of the dead. He who has life within himself brings life to those who sat in darkness, dispelling it with divine light, trampling down death by death, and bestowing life upon those who sat in tombs.
That’s where you get the resurrected Christ. That’s the first time you see humanity as humanity is made to be. That’s where you get the healthy organ. That is the picture of what man is made to be—the resurrected Christ. For the first time, Adam was not that. Remember, Adam had to participate and become something more. He didn’t. The first time you see that something more, you see it in the person of Christ.
That is what—to again harken to C.S. Lewis—that’s what C.S. Lewis calls the good infection. Just like in sickness, when you get an infection and it begins to spread to the body, the idea is that Christ is the healthy organ—it’s the good infection.
That’s one of the reasons why all of the language about the Gospel, the call of the Gospel, has to do with him and you, and you and him: eating his flesh and drinking his blood, the gift of the Holy Spirit, him purifying you, union with Christ and imitation of Christ, taking up your own cross, following that pattern, in the hope that ultimately, you too can become healed and restored and partake of God and ultimately attain to the resurrection of the dead and become what you were made to be from the first, even though we find ourselves in this corrupted state.
All of this helps us understand why on earth the saints did what they did. Why would they, after becoming Christians, renounce the world? Why would they go and engage in asceticism, fasting, prayer, lifting the soul up to God and so on?
The answer has everything to do with their understanding of reality and of anthropology—the idea that what the sacraments are is a union with Christ, a union with that good infection, the start of that good infection, the reception of the Holy Spirit. Those sorts of things start you on the road, put you into the hospital, and also in terms of the activity of asceticism and prayer, this is the restoration of human nature.
This is the idea that through asceticism, through fasting, the passions—the lower nature—is being put back in its proper place, and the higher nature through prayer and repetition and Divine Liturgy is being raised up to God. So it’s the reordering of the nature, an imitation of Christ all throughout your life, where you mortify the flesh, you put to death the deeds of the flesh, and you try to reorder that nature from the inside.
I had mentioned what the road was that the saints followed in order to get the sort of thing that Alex was saying that he wanted. I had raised the objection of saying, “Well, it should be easier.” But the question—and this goes back to the issues of metaphysical necessity—can it be easier?
My contention would be no. I think what you’re seeing there is this is how, given the nature of man, given the nature of fallenness, this is the road back. This is what’s required in order to purify the nous, in order to reorder our nature and reorder the higher and lower nature, and to raise the soul up to God and begin to experience the sort of healing that ultimately gives way to an unveiling of God that is not to our detriment but to our salvation.
It’s not just that God’s trying to make things exceedingly difficult. It’s just that the reality of the fall makes things exceedingly difficult, and that’s just the nature of reality.
The Question of Ultimate Unbelief
I want to close with one last thing I touched on. One of the presuppositions that sits underneath this non-resistant unbelief thing is that it seems that the concern or the interest is that non-resistant unbelief is something that shouldn’t exist either ever, or should be easily remedied within a short period of time.
As I said, Alex is a young guy, and he thinks that because he’s done these things for however long he has, he should already have overcome non-resistant unbelief.
But I think actually, for the objection to hold water—and I think there is a version that holds water—there has to be an issue of justice at play. I think the way of qualifying it isn’t just “is there rational non-resistant unbelief,” but “is there ultimately rational non-resistant unbelief,” because this really does go to the objection of justice.
I’d mentioned at the outset that these sorts of anti-proofs are always moral in nature. God ought to do a certain thing, or a creature is owed a certain thing. I do think that underneath this is a question of justice, saying, “Look, if I’ve done all that I can think to do in order to open myself up to God, and I still can’t find myself believing in God, then how can I be held culpable for my unbelief? Because I’m not resistant. I’m doing my part. I’m being proactive. Isn’t it incumbent upon God at that point to do something to overcome it?”
I think the formulation that’s viable is that, but I think the addition of the word “ultimate” is really important—that it ultimately has to land in unbelief. Because I do agree—I do agree that if it’s true that a person is held culpable for whether they believe or not, and their ultimate destiny is rooted in that, and they don’t have any capacity to believe, and even if they take all the steps necessary to investigate and to pursue God and things like that, and they come up with unbelief—I think that actually does get them off the hook.
I think that in terms of the conditions of culpability—the ability, knowledge of what you ought to do and not do, and the ability to do or not do it—that is a legitimate objection that says the capability, the ability to do or not do, is in some ways void. It’s missing. In that way, they would rightly have a case of saying, “I shouldn’t be held morally culpable for this.”
But the “ultimately” clause really goes to two things. On the one hand, it goes to the whole point that I mentioned earlier. Somebody like C.S. Lewis goes on a very long journey before he ends up arriving at faith. I went through a very long journey before arriving at faith. For Alex’s argument to work, I think it has to be that he continues down this journey, and at the end of his life, he still doesn’t have belief. He hasn’t arrived at faith. That’s why, I think, ultimately—the full counsel of his life—is important in order to assess whether he is an example of rational, non-resistant unbelief. Because right now, I’m not convinced he is, even if he is sincere and he’s non-resistant. His life is not over, and he’s still very young.
The other thing here is—and this is where I’m going to step into the narrative that I’ve been building here in terms of the Eastern Church Fathers—first of all, there is this question of whether or not all will be saved: universal salvation. This is a very controversial point within Eastern Christianity. Some people are big advocates of it. Some people oppose it as heresy. Some people sit somewhere in between, thinking it’s not heresy but they don’t hold it, or thinking it’s not heresy and they do hold it. There’s a spectrum of views on this. It’s a controversial point, and I’ve weighed in on this. We can link to my Substack post where I talk about it. I also have an audio letter on the same.
I don’t think it’s heresy. I think it has been held by—I know it’s been held by certain Eastern Church Fathers, and so I think it’s a permissible belief. For my part, I certainly hope it’s true, but I raise it not in order to say it’s true, but I raise it in order to say that even if it’s possible that it’s true, then I think the objection would fail, because the idea that there is ultimately rational, non-resistant unbelief would be false, because all would be saved. No one ends up in an ultimate state of unbelief and damned.
But even without this, what I would say is this: I would suggest that one of the challenges of the objection is it has to prove—like I said, I think the addition of the word “ultimate” is essential for the case to work—it has to prove that there is ultimately rational, non-resistant unbelief. I don’t know that we can know that, and that’s because even if Alex were to go to his grave without belief in God, that still would not be the end of Alex’s story.
I’ll point to a couple of different things within the Eastern Church Fathers. First, putting aside the question of universal salvation, one of the things that I’ve pointed out is that for folks who want to say, “Well, no, there’s a canon in Constantinople, the Ecumenical Council, where it anathematizes anyone who suggests that the pains of hell have a ceasing or an end”—one of the things that I pointed out is that even granting that, there is a distinction in the Eastern Church Fathers and in the Bible between hell and Hades.
The realm of the dead and Gehenna, the lake of fire, are two different things. Gehenna has to do with a final state of damnation, post-final judgment, whereas Hades is the realm of the dead—the moment you step out of your flesh, you are in the realm of the dead. Those are two different things, and we have ample stories of people being rescued from Hades.
There are these stories, for example, first of all, in terms of the doctrine of Christ’s descent into Hades—that’s a pivotal Holy Saturday doctrine. Holy Saturday referring to Christ’s descent into Hades between his crucifixion and his resurrection, in holy tradition. Christ descends into Hades and he liberates the dead. According to that tradition, he liberates certainly all of the righteous who have been waiting in the realm of the dead. It’s not as if the condition of finding yourself in Hades, in the darkness of Hades, was permanent.
But it’s also within tradition—you find people like Maximus talks about the fact that there’s this passage in one of Peter’s letters. Peter talks about—this is where the descent into Hades comes from, or at least part of it—Peter talks about Christ preaching to those who rebelled in the days of Noah. That’s the well-known part of what Peter says on this topic.
But one of the things is that Peter says something along the lines of “they were judging the flesh as men that they might live by the Spirit of God,” something along those lines. Maximus interprets this as referring to the noetic rebels. These are not the Old Testament righteous. These are people who were drowned—they were so wicked and in rebellion against God that they were drowned and ripped out of their bodies and put—their souls dwelt in the darkness of Hades, unable to exercise their passions and engage in wickedness because basically forced rehabilitation. Their souls don’t have a body to exercise their passions with, and they sat in darkness so that when Christ came and preached, they might repent.
You see something similar to this in Origen, when he talks about Pharaoh, where he talks about the drowning of Pharaoh, and he says even though that’s not the end of his story, and he hints at that same sort of thing—”Well, Pharaoh goes into Hades and who knows what happens when you take a guy who thinks he’s God and you rip him out of his flesh and you stick him in the corner for a couple thousand years until the real God shows up—he might just repent.” Obviously, that’s my imitation of Origen. That’s not a quote, but the point is, even if people are like, “Yeah, but that’s Origen, he has heretical views,” well, that appears in Origen’s Philocalia, which is actually edited by Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus. So it’s part of the approved passages.
Also, there are stories in tradition about the iconoclasts. There was the Pascha—the Lent preceding Easter, Pascha, after the ban of icons had been lifted—the entire church ended up writing out the names of the iconoclasts who had died, put them under the altar, they prayed for them all during Lent, and when they removed the parchment, all the names were gone, which they took to mean that those people had been absolved.
There’s story after story: Macrina praying for the pagan priest whose skull she finds in the desert and things like that. There are all sorts of stories about people being prayed out of Hades, or being brought out of Hades by Christ, or the apostles going to preach to those who are in Hades, held in darkness. After their repose, they go to the four corners of the earth, and even under the earth.
The point of all that is to say that the story of a person isn’t closed, within the Eastern patristic view, just because their soul left their body. I think the challenge is that even if we were to go into a scenario where Alex goes through the whole of his life and ends up in a place of unbelief at the end, and then died, I don’t think that would be the end of his story.
Going with the point that the addition of the word “ultimately” really matters, I’m not sure that we even would have this in that scenario, because a person’s story does not end just because their heart stops. For it is contrary to the nature of God to abandon any. Or as Elder Sophrony once said when asked if God would succeed in rescuing all, I cannot be certain. But you may be certain that as long as someone is in Hell, Christ will remain there with him. For he is Good and the Lover of mankind.