Omnibenevolence, sin and judgement

If God creates us and wills that we be safe forever in eternal life with him, how can we square this love with the idea of judgement and eternal damnation?  This extract from Stanford encyclopaedia considers this question.

There is a great good that God, as a loving creator, is able blamelessly to will for us, but which in its exercise inevitably leads us into blameworthiness. That good is our autonomy — the thing that makes us most like God, and is the sole means by which we are able to reach friendship with him, but which can be responsibly exercised to enter that friendship only if first employed in a conceit of rebellion, wherein we learn our limitations, and come to appreciate the emptiness of a life based on subjective independence. Only thus are we able to reach a position of moral autonomy from which an authentic choice to enter into fellowship with God is possible.

But it is not a part of  religious tradition that all are saved. St. Paul, for example, seems clearly to have believed that some, the elect, are destined from the beginning for salvation, and others not (Rom. 9:10–24), and the same appears true of Jesus himself (Matt. 26:24, Luke 10:20). And it is part of standard theology that, after death, the saved are joined to God in the beatific vision, a state of eternal and indescribable joy. The lost fare far worse. They are condemned to the bitter and devastating frustration of permanent separation from their creator, and on many accounts to a lot of other miseries as well. Now on the present view, God is as much involved in the rebellion of the reprobate as in the conversion of the saved. And one may well wonder what could justify this. Why should a loving God create creatures destined for damnation?

To the first of these objections it may be responded that although all of our destinies are fully in the hands of God, and all of our actions under his authority as first cause, it does not follow that the choices on our part through which our destiny is achieved are anything but fully authentic, or that the moral identity in which we are created by God is imposed upon us. God’s will does, of course, determine our decisions in the logical sense: if we know his will for a creature, we can always infer that creature’s fate. But that is only a deductive relation among propositions; in itself, it does not necessarily imply any relation among real entities that curtails our freedom. And if, as was suggested above, the first expression of God’s will regarding our choices is those very choices themselves, then there is no independent occurrence in the world or in God before which we are rendered passive. On the contrary: our acts of will are fully endowed by God with the characteristics of personal choice. Thus, our moral identity is in no way forced upon us. It is an identity fully of our own choosing, adopted by us in complete freedom and integrity, notwithstanding the fact that our doing so is entirely within the providence of God. Believers should not, then, fear that their destiny is a sham, or find fault with God for creating them what they are. Rather, the appropriate response would be to follow the scriptural injunction to work out one’s salvation in fear and trembling, knowing that an all-powerful and provident God is also working through us to achieve his ends.

As for the second objection, many have found the idea that some creatures are destined for final reprobation troubling, if not downright incompatible with divine omnibenevolence (M.M. Adams 1993). One option here is to reject the concept of reprobation, opting instead for one or another form of universalism — the view that in the end all are saved, or at least that salvation is never completely foreclosed to anyone. Perhaps in the end the will of those who would reject God is simply overwhelmed, so that they have no choice but to accept him. Alternatively, it may be that those who would reject God’s friendship are never able to do so with finality, so that the opportunity for salvation is always available to them even if they never opt for it. But universalist views face the twin challenges of apparent unorthodoxy and of seeming to trivialize earthly moral existence, which most religions treat as of paramount importance.

For those who find universalism unacceptable the problem is to find adequate justification for the idea that some may be irretrievably lost. Here it should be pointed out that whatever the sufferings of the lost may be, theologians have always agreed that the greatest evil they sustain is final and irremediable separation from God. Nothing could be worse than to be cut off from the love and friendship of a father whose power extends to every detail of the universe, and who invites us to a share in his very life.

But if this is the greatest evil of damnation, then no one who ends that way is treated unfairly, for this separation is precisely what one chooses by insisting on a life of rebellion rather than seeking reconciliation with God. Indeed, having once created beings destined to be lost, it is hard to see how a loving God could do anything but honor their choice in the matter (Kvanvig 1993, ch. 4). What is troubling, rather, is that he should create such beings at all, much less will their performance of the very actions through which they reject him. It may be argued, however, that even here God’s love is at work. He cannot, of course, directly intend the rebellion of sinners, nor the destruction of the finally unrepentant. But the lost are full participants in securing their tragic destiny; and while a life ruined by final rebellion is morally indefensible, it is still morally meaningful. Through their actions, the lost carve out for themselves a character which, though not upright, represents a real option for a free creature.

Thus, the argument runs, to the extent that moral autonomy is a good it can be willed for a creature by God even when it takes this form. Furthermore, it is claimed, it is a mistake to think that God is not lovingly involved in the lives of the reprobate, or that he would have been more loving had he not created them. On the contrary: what is meaningless is to suppose that God would have shown greater love toward the lost by omitting them from creation. What is not there cannot be loved. Equally, it is meaningless to think the lost would be better off had they not existed.[9] What does not exist is neither well nor poorly off, nor anywhere in between; and it is as good for the reprobate to have life, the opportunity for salvation, and an autonomous choice as to whether to accept it, as it is for the saved. What is not good for them is the use they make of the opportunity, in choosing to be without God. But that is fully their decision, and its consequences are fully earned.