Heaven, the goods of others and the defeat of evil

There is a delight in competing athletically with one’s child: if they win, it feels good, and if one wins, it feels good, too. (The hedonic ideal is achieved when the child wins about 60% of the time; then one feels proud of their superiority, but not rarely one has the pleasure of beating a stronger opponent.)

Parental love makes it easy to love another as oneself (to paraphrase what C. S. Lewis says about Eros). It thus gives us an image of what it is like to be in heaven: we will greatly enjoy the goods had by others. This gives us an attractive picture of how the joy of heaven could fit with enduring differences in personal characteristics. Perhaps being an extrovert would not be true to my self and to God’s vocation for me, and so maybe even over an eternity in heaven I won’t be extroverted. But if so, I will still be fully happy for the joy of the heavenly extroverts, without any regret that I am not one of them, while they will be fully happy for me introverted joys, also without any regret that they are not like me.

Here are two controversial (for very different reasons) applications of this. First, there is a genuine and distinctive good in being a woman and there is a genuine and distinctive good in being a man, and it seems to make sense for a person to desire the goods of the other sex, regardless of whether it is possible to have them oneself. In heaven, however, Joseph can enjoy Mary’s good in being a woman and Mary can enjoy Joseph’s good in being a man, without Joseph regretting that he personally “only” has the good of manhood and Mary regretting that she personally “only” has the good of womanhood. That is what total love is like.

Second, given an eternalist or moving block theory of time, the past will always be fully real. This in turn gives us a solution to the problem that various important goods, such as marriage and self-sacrifice, will not be available in heaven. For we will be able to rejoice in others’ past possession of these goods, without regret for the fact that they aren’t ours and now.

The second point, however, raises the following problem: Won’t we also grieve for others’ past—and even present, if hell is a reality (as I think it is)—subjection to great evils? Maybe, but in God’s plan there is a crucial asymmetry between good and evil. Evils are defeated. How this defeat happens is deeply mysterious. But because of this defeat, I suspect the grief for a defeated evil will not hurt, precisely because of the evil’s being defeated, while goods remain undefeated and hence the joy for them will always delight.

In fact, the last point suggests something to me. A lot of philosophers of religion have said that it’s not enough for theodicy if evils are justly compensated for or their permission is in some way justified. We need these evils to be defeated. I think this is mistaken if all we are after is a response to the problem of evil. But we also need a response to the problem of why the past and present suffering of others doesn’t cause the saints pain in heaven. And it is here that we need the defeat of evil.