On monkeys and exemplar theories of salvation

On “exemplar” theories of salvation, Christ’s work of the cross saves us by providing a deeply inspiring example of love, sacrifice, or the like.

Such theories of salvation have the following unsavory consequence: they imply that it would be possible for us to be saved by a monkey.

For imagine that a monkey typing on a typerwriter at random wrote a fictitious story of a life in morally relevant respects like that of Christ, and people started believing that story. If Christ saves us by providing an inspiring example, then we could have gotten the very same effect by reading that fictitious story typed at random by a monkey and erroneously thinking the story to be true.

Of course, that’s just a particularly vivid way of putting the standard objection against exemplar theories that they are Pelagian. I have nothing against monkeys except that they are creatures, and so that if it is possible to be saved by a monkey, then it is possible to be saved by creatures, which is Pelagianism.

Conditional and unconditional desires, God's will, and salvation

Consider three cases:

1. Bob doesn’t care either way whether Alice wants to go out with him. And he wants to go out with Alice if she wants to go out with him.

2. Carl wants Alice’s desires to be fulfilled. And he wants to go out with Alice.

3. Dave doesn’t care either way whether Alice wants to go out with him. And he wants to go out with Alice even if she doesn’t want to go out with him.

As dating partners, Dave is a creep, Bob is uncomplimentarily lukewarm and Carl seems the best.

Here’s how we could characterize Dave’s and Bob’s desires with respect to going out with Alice:

• Bob’s desire is conditional.

• Dave’s desire is unconditional.

What about Carl’s desire? I think it’s neither conditional nor unconditional. It is what we might call a simple desire.

The three desires interact differently with evidence about Alice’s lack of interest. Bob’s conditional desire leads him to give up on dating Alice. Dave’s creepy desire is unchanged. And Carl, on the other hand, comes to hope that Alice is interested notwithstanding the evidence to the contrary, and is motivated to act (perhaps moderately, perhaps excessively) to try to persuade Alice to want to go out with him.

One might query regarding Carl what happens if he definitively learns that his two desire to go out with Alice and to have Alice want to go out with him cannot both be fulfilled. Then, as far as the desires go, he could go either way: he could become a creep or he could resign himself. Resignation is obviously the right attitude. Note, however, that while resignation requires him to give up on going out with Alice, it need not require him to give up on desiring to go out with Alice (though if that desire lasts too long after learning that Alice has no interest, it is apt to screw up Carl’s life).

Now, it seems a pious thing to align one’s desires with God’s in all things. One “thing” is one’s salvation. One could have three attitudes analogous to the attitudes towards dating Alice:

4. Conditional: Barbara desires to be saved if God wills it. But doesn’t care either way about whether God wills it.

5. Simple: Charlotte desires to be saved. She desires that God’s will be done, and hopes and prays that God wills her salvation.

6. Unconditional: Diana desires to be saved even if God doesn’t will it. She doesn’t care whether God wills it.

Barbara’s attitude is lukewarm and shows a lack of love of God, since she doesn’t simply want to be with God. Diana is harder to condemn than Dave, but nonetheless her attitude is flawed. Charlotte has the right attitude.

So, when we say we should align our desires with God’s in all things, that doesn’t seem to mean that all our desires should be conditional. It means, I think, to be like Charlotte: it desire an alignment

And there is one further distinction to be made, between God’s antecedent and God’s consequent will. The classic illustration is this: When Scripture says that God wills all people to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), that’s God’s antecedent will. It’s what God wants independently of other considerations. But because of the inextricable intertwining of God’s love and God’s justice (indeed, God’s love is his justice), God also antecedently wants that those who reject him be apart from him. Putting these antecedent desires of God’s, God has a consequent desire to damn some, namely those who reject God.

I think what I said about Barbara, Charlotte and Diana clearly applies to God’s consequent will. But it’s less clear regarding God’s antecedent will. Necessarily, God antecedently wills all and only the goods. It seems not unreasonable to desire salvation only conditionally on its being a good thing, and hence to desire it only conditionally on its being antecedently willed by God. But I think Charlotte’s approach is also defensible. Charlotte desires to be with God for eternity and desires that being with God is a good thing.

A new theory of limbo

A fairly standard libertarian response to the question about how people can freely choose right over wrong in heaven is this: They have a morally perfect character that makes them unable to choose wrong but this character is the result of choices in this life, choices that they could have avoided. Thus, the choice of right over wrong in heaven is derivatively free, with the freedom deriving from non-derivatively free choices in this life. For a nice development, see Timpe and Pawl.

I had a student ask the question how this works for those who as small children and who hence have not developed their character through free choices. Multiple answers are possible, but I wanted to offer one that yields a somewhat interesting theory of limbo. The theory of limbo holds that some people--those who die in infancy are often given as an example--have not had the kind of life of faith that is required for heaven but nonetheless have done nothing to deserve hell. They are, thus, in limbo: a happy state that, nonetheless, falls short of heaven.

Here, then, is a theory of limbo. Limbo is very much like heaven. In fact, those who are in limbo are a part of the same community as those in heaven, and there is no difference of location, but only of state. Those who are in limbo enjoy most of the joys of heaven: the beatific vision of God, union with wonderful people, flourishing human activity, etc. Their lives are very much like the lives of those who count as being in heaven. However, their choices of right over wrong are not free, because although they have the same morally perfect character that those in heaven do, in the case of those in limbo, that morally perfect character is not the result of their own free choices in this life--it is simply imposed on them by God. So they don't have the joy of knowing that these choices are free, and they don't have the joy of remembering how they freely formed their character, but otherwise they get to enjoy all the joys of heaven.

On this theory, it is better to be in a heavenly rather than limboic state, but the main joy of heaven--the beatific vision--is equally had by people in both states. The difference is solely that those in the limboic state lack the derivative freedom that those in the heavenly state have.

What I don't like about this theory is this: I have the intuition that God shouldn't force people to love him. But perhaps I should simply say: it is better to love freely, but loving unfreely is still good?

An argument against Christian materialism on a pro-life view

1. No one is saved who does not have a love for God in this life.
2. If materialism is true, early human embryos do not have a love for God.
3. At least some, perhaps all, people who die as early embryos are saved.
4. So, materialism is false.

One might think that in premise (2), the antecedent isn't doing any work: that it is simply true that early embryos do not have a love for God. Not so. For if love for God is a matter of a certain orientation of the soul towards God, then people who do not have a brain might nonetheless have a love for God.

One might even try to run the argument with young infants instead of embryos. But there, I think, the argument could run into difficulty. For it may be that a young infant's brain hardware is sufficiently developed to love God, but simply does not have the software for it. And God could miraculously give the infant the software. I suppose the Christian materialist could think that God could miraculously join the embryo with a brain, perhaps a brain in another dimension. But it is not clear that that both such an embryo would then be one of us humans and that brain would be its brain.

Aquinas on why the incarnation is fitting

I find it striking and interesting that in the article where Aquinas officially addresses whether the Incarnation is fitting, his argument in favor of the fittingness of the Incarnation makes no mention of salvation. In other words, it's clear that the Incarnation would be fitting whether or not we sinned, though Aquinas is inclined to think that had we not sinned, the Incarnation would not have occurred. The focus on epistemic benefits is particularly interesting:

On the contrary, It would seem most fitting that by visible things the invisible things of God should be made known; for to this end was the whole world made, as is clear from the word of the Apostle (Romans 1:20): "For the invisible things of God . . . are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." But, as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. iii, 1), by the mystery of Incarnation are made known at once the goodness, the wisdom, the justice, and the power or might of God--"His goodness, for He did not despise the weakness of His own handiwork; His justice, since, on man's defeat, He caused the tyrant to be overcome by none other than man, and yet He did not snatch men forcibly from death; His wisdom, for He found a suitable discharge for a most heavy debt; His power, or infinite might, for there is nothing greater than for God to become incarnate . . ."
I answer that, To each things, that is befitting which belongs to it by reason of its very nature; thus, to reason befits man, since this belongs to him because he is of a rational nature. But the very nature of God is goodness, as is clear from Dionysius (Div. Nom. i). Hence, what belongs to the essence of goodness befits God. But it belongs to the essence of goodness to communicate itself to others, as is plain from Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv). Hence it belongs to the essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature, and this is brought about chiefly by "His so joining created nature to Himself that one Person is made up of these three--the Word, a soul and flesh," as Augustine says (De Trin. xiii). Hence it is manifest that it was fitting that God should become incarnate.

Of course, in the next article, Aquinas does talk of the need for the Incarnation for our redemption. It's not an absolute need, but it is necessary for our redemption to be worked in a better and more fitting way (Aquinas compares it to the necessity of a horse for a journey--presumably, one could always walk, but a horse is better). In that article, Aquinas gives ten benefits for the sake of which the Incarnation was fitting in respect of our redemption. It is interesting that penal satisfaction is only one of the ten.

And then Aquinas adds: "And there are very many other advantages which accrued, above man's apprehension." How does he know? Is it just a confidence that God does many, many good things for us? Could one argue that the Incarnation of an infinite being must somehow bring infinitely many benefits, of which only finitely many will be understandable to us?

Sola fide and evidential decision theory

Plausibly, there is a strong correlation between good deeds and salvation. Both are the fruit of God's grace. If evidential decision theory is correct, then the fact that good deeds correlate with salvation makes it rational to do good deeds. Thus, if evidential decision theory is correct, then it makes rational sense to do good deeds for self-interested reasons, even if the good deeds in no way causally contribute to salvation.

What conclusions could be drawn from this? Well, this means that even if sola fide were true, and good deeds in no way contributed to salvation, nonetheless it would be self-interestedly rational to do good deeds for the sake of salvation. This in turn means that those Protestants whose motivation for embracing sola fide is that the doctrine makes it not make sense to do good deeds for the sake of salvation either need to reject either evidential decision theory or their motivation for sola fide. Or one might draw a more ecumenical conclusion. If we all accept evidential decision theory, then our stance on the metaphysical question of sola fide need not affect our practices and motivations: Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics and Pelagians can all consistently do good deeds for the sake of salvation.

The above argument would be particularly interesting if it turned out that causal decision theory requires indeterminism. For the above argument might give my Calvinist friends reason to reject evidential decision theory, and hence to embrace causal decision theory, and hence to reject determinism. (A Calvinist does not need to be a determinist. She could embrace the position that W. Grant Matthews attributes to Aquinas in a fairly recent issue of Faith and Philosophy.)

Salvation of small children

It is tempting sometimes, when defending a position, to sweep certain cases under the rug, saying they are exceptional, or that they are troublesome for the competing positions. This may sometimes be an appropriate thing to do, but it is something a philosopher or theologian should not feel too good about. If my semantic theory is incompatible with, say, some obvious fact about the Liar Paradox, my semantic theory is, well, false. Sometimes one may hope that some small tweak will get one out of the problem, or that one can add an exception clause. But that is a dangerous thought, for it might be that the problem does in fact show that a completely different approach is needed.

Take the bearing that cases of small children, as well as of those the severely mentally retarded, have for accounts of salvation. Let us suppose that one theologizes and concludes that belief that Jesus is Lord is necessary for salvation. But then one is faced with the case of small children who, as far as we can tell, lack the conceptual resources to have the belief that Jesus is Lord. What can one do? Well, one could bite the bullet, and say that no small children are saved. One could mitigate this, then, by invoking a doctrine of limbo. But in fact nobody that I know makes this move. Or one could say that God can miraculously make it possible for a small child that he foreknows will soon die to have such a belief. I have heard one or two people be friendly towards this answer—I myself think it is not that implausible.

But the usual thing to say is just to make an exception of the case, and say that the belief that Jesus is Lord is necessary for salvation, except in the case of children and mentally retarded individuals. This is not a solution one should feel good about, though. First of all, as soon as one starts introducing some exception clauses, one should start worrying whether there aren't more. Secondly, one worries about continuity between exceptional cases and non-exceptional one (intellectual maturation seems to be a continuous process). But, perhaps most importantly, one should look for a unified theory that takes care of the exceptional cases.

There are, in fact, unified theories for this problem. Here is one. What is necessary for salvation is that one believe the Christian teaching to an extent proportionate to one's capacities. One thing that appeals to me about this formulation is that it does not simply let infants off the hook. It lets them off the hook, while increasing the requirements for those whose capacities are greater than average. More is asked of those to whom more is given.

And this unified theory, then, very naturally leads to further questions. What if someone's lack of an ability to believe is not due to an internal gap, but due to an external one? Does it, after all, matter whether one is incapable of belief due to internal causes, such as lack of intellectual capacity, or due to external causes, such as brainwashing or not having heard the gospel from someone who wasn't distorting it through living a life incompatible with it? Thus, a unified theory has the advantage of raising further questions, and leading perhaps to the solution of other difficulties.

Anti-pelagianism

Here are three levels of anti-Pelagianism:

1. No fallen human being can attain personal union (i.e., union of the relevant sort—such as the beatific vision) with God by his own powers.
2. No mere human being can attain personal union with God by his own powers.
3. No mere creature can attain personal union with God by his own powers.

Here, a "mere F" is a being that is an F and that has no nature other than the F-nature. The main point of this qualifier is to exclude cases where God is incarnate as an F. For in those cases we are dealing with an F, but not a mere F. Claim (3) entails claim (2), and claim (2) together with the plausible assumption that in fact every fallen human being is a mere human being entails claim (1).

An interesting difference at least of emphasis between Catholics and Protestants is that Protestants see Pelagianism primarily as a denial of (1), and focus on (1) in anti-Pelagian polemic, while Catholicism, I think, has an emphasis not just on (1), but also on (2)—grace is not only needed now for fallen man, but Adam and Eve needed grace, too, to attain the beatific vision. And even (3) is probably pretty common in Catholicism. E.g., Aquinas would surely endorse (3). His view of the fall of Satan, if my shaky memory serves me, was that Satan wanted to get by his own powers the good that God was going to give to him by grace—i.e., that Satan was a practical Pelagian.

Oeconomic necessity

A theological concept that I haven't seen much recent discussion of, but that strikes me as important, is what I will call "oeconomic necessity" (together with the related "oeconomic possibility": p is oeconomically possible iff not-p is not oeconomically necessary), referring of course to the "economy of salvation" rather than the sort of stuff economists talk about. The concept is not entirely clear. Paradigm cases are claims like the following claims (all of which I accept):

1. It is oeconomically necessary that if an unbaptized person after the time of Christ's resurrection repents of her sins and has water poured over her by another along with the other's saying the words "I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit", with the relevantly right intentions on the part of both, the sins are forgiven.
2. It is oeconomically impossible for an adult of at least normal intellectual capacities to be saved without at least implicit faith.
3. It is oeconomically necessary that whatever the bishop of Rome teaches all Catholics definitively in a matter of faith and morals is true.

Metaphysical necessity entails oeconomic necessity, but not conversely. Oeconomic necessity supports counterfactuals:

4. Had Patricia begged God to forgive her sins, she would have eventually entered heavenly life.

A simple-minded account of oeconomic necessity is that p is oeconomically necessary iff the content of divine revelation entails p. But this doesn't quite capture the concept. Revelation might at least in principle contain oeconomically contingent claims. God might reveal that in January 15, AD 26, one of Jesus's customers complained unfairly about the quality of a table that Jesus had made for him. This claim would then be found in revelation, but wouldn't be oeconomically necessary--it wouldn't be necessary in light of the plan of salvation. It is oeconomically necessary that (de dicto) whatever God reveals is true, but it can be oeconomically contingent that God reveals p.

The best characterization I have of oeconomic necessity is entailment by God's commitments (e.g., covenants or promises) and salvific plans.

The concept lets us distinguish some views. Thus, the standard universalist probably thinks:

5. It is oeconomically necessary that everyone is saved.

But one could imagine a moderate universalist who thinks

6. As a matter of oeconomically contingent fact, everyone will be saved.

One way to read the von Balthasar thesis about the possibility of hoping for everybody to be saved is that one can deny (5) while hoping for (6). One can similarly have anti-universalist views which distinguish between the following two claims:

7. It is oeconomically necessary that someone will be damned.
8. As a matter of oeconomically contingent fact, someone will be damned.

There is a real difference here. Someone who believes in double predestination and who thinks that the damnation of some is an important part of God's plan of salvation may affirm (7). On the other hand, I incline towards (8).

Another application is that a Catholic who believes that Anglican ordinations are typically invalid is committed to the claim that there is no oeconomical necessity that the bread and wine at a typical Anglican liturgy change into Christ's body and blood, but might nonetheless think that this could happen as an oeconomically contingent matter of fact ("by special divine dispensation"). We should not, however, count on what is oeconomically contingent.