Quitismo y Calvinimo Sobre El Infierno

SELF-ABANDONMENT AND SELF-DENIAL

Quietism, Calvinism, and the Prospect of Hell

Stephen R. Munzer

ABSTRACT

Self-abandonment and self-denial are, respectively, Catholic and hyper-Calvinist analogues of each other. Roughly, each requires the surrendering of a person to God's will and providence through faith, hope, and love. Should the self-abandoning/self-denying individual accept his or her own damnation if that be God's will? This article, which is virtually alone in discussing the Catholic and Reformed Protestant traditions together, answers "No." The unqualified self-abandonment present in quietism and the radical self-denial of Samuel Hopkins are perverse and irrational responses to the prospect of hell because they run counter to the Christian's deepest need to spend eternity with God. However, a qualified self-abandonment is intellectually defensible and offers a viable Christian piety.

KEY WORDS: divine hiddenness, love, predestination, reprobation, trinity

THIS ARTICLE CONCERNS AN ISSUE IN PHILOSOPHICAL MORAL THEOLOGY: How

far should the self-abandoning or self-denying individual renounce the last particle of self-love and self-interest? The ultimate way of confronting this issue lies in the prospect of hell. If one should accept one's own damnation, that acceptance has dramatic consequences not only for dogmatic theology but also for the spirituality of individual Christians. What gives the issue traction is that neither mainstream Catholicism nor reformed dogmatics in Protestantism can sweep the problem aside. Throughout the inquiry, hell is understood as an eternal state in which people are punished after death for their sins by separation from God,

For helpful comments I thank James A. Benn, Toby Bordeion, D.A. Carson, David Dolinko, Sam Feldman, Paul Helm, Pamela Hieronymi, Aaron James, Whitley Kaufman, Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., Bruce Kuklick, Mathijs Lamberigts, Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., Sharon Lloyd, the late Gareth Moore, O.P., Herbert Morris, Richard Müller, Oliver O'Donovan, Mark Ravizza, S.J., Kim Richter, M.B.E. Smith, Roland J. Teske, S.J., Terranee Tiessen, T.J. van Bavel, O.S. Α., anonymous referees, and gracious audiences at meetings of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers. For financial support, I am grateful to the American Philosophical Association for the David Baumgardt Memorial Fellowship and the Academic Senate and the Dean's Fund at UCLA.

JRE 33.4:747-781. © 2005 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.

748 Journal of Religious Ethics

by spiritual torment, and, after the resurrection of the body, by physical suffering.

Two tributaries flow into this article. One is the Catholic tradition of self-abandonment. It starts with St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross and then goes to St. Francis de Sales and Jean-Pierre de Caussade and finally to St. Thérèse of Lisieux. A description of self-abandonment must await section 1. My perspective on this tradition is that it is difficult to label convincingly those mentioned "orthodox" and related figures such as Abbé François de Fénelon and Madame Guyon "quietist." The difficulties are evident in the struggles to come up with a text for the main work by Caussade (1675-1751), a Jesuit priest who spent the last three decades of his life as a spiritual director to a convent of Visitation nuns (Caussade 1966, 7-17; Tugwell 1984, 208-18).

The other tributary is the Calvinist tradition. If those who advocate self-abandonment are sometimes preoccupied by mortal sin that, if un-forgiven, would doom them to hell, the reformed tradition within Protestantism is understandably anxious over its doctrine of predestination. John Calvin stressed the sovereignty and glory of God and so-called double predestination—to either salvation (election) or hell (reprobation)— by God's will. How should believers react to the prospect that they are among the reprobate? As will emerge, Calvin's own answer is defective. Intriguingly, the American divine Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) answers that Christians should be willing to be damned if that is most for the glory of God. His view of self-denial rests on a radical understanding of disinterested benevolence. Self-abandonment and self-denial are Catholic and hyper-Calvinist analogues of each other.

The main themes of this article are philosophical and theological, rather than historical, in character. One theme buried within both the Catholic and the reformed traditions is that God is mysterious or hidden and that God's ways are beyond human understanding. A second theme is that both traditions wrestle with the nature of persons and the nature of love (of God, of oneself, and of one's neighbor). A third theme is that Christian believers who subscribe to self-abandonment or self-denial must respond to the prospect of hell out of their own situation, which I call the agent-centered perspective. The conjunction of these themes makes the central issue of this article remarkably difficult and perplexing. I argue, against some proponents of self-abandonment or self-denial, that it is not rational, virtuous, or sound to accept one's own damnation. I defend a qualified self-abandonment that maintains faith and hope in one's own salvation, and anyone who finds some aspects of self-abandonment attractive will see the matter as spiritual, not just intellectual (Munzer 1999, 322-24, 328).

To draw parallels between self-abandonment and self-denial is not to say that they are perfect analogues in the broad context of disputes over

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predestination, love, and the nature of God and of human beings. Predestination by God's will is a central doctrine of Calvinism but Catholic theology more commonly treats salvation and damnation in terms of God's foreknowledge of who will sin mortally without repenting. Love is oppositional in some versions of reformed theology; one's own good and the good of others sometimes conflict, and so to love God and others one must sometimes deny oneself. Catholic theology more often insists on a common good; what is good for oneself ties in with what is good for others and with what God wills for the creation that God loves. Nevertheless, the concepts of self-abandonment and self-denial are sufficiently alike to make investigation and comparison of the reformed and Catholic traditions fruitful.

Although hell and predestination may seem out of fashion, the inquiry is nevertheless significant. Self-negation, self-sacrifice, and similar concepts are central to most major religions. Sin, death, salvation or damnation, and the inscrutability of God form a major narrative in Christianity. Perhaps, too, sin and threats of hell are not so unfashionable after all, as readers of this journal can attest (see, for example, Basham 2002; Weaver 2003).

The course of the discussion is as follows. Section 1 sets out what I call the "standard view" of self-abandonment in Catholic spirituality and theology. Sections 2 and 3 offer scriptural and analytical critiques of this view. Section 4 argues that the standard view includes both quietist and near-quietist positions that are harder to separate than is generally supposed and are beset by basically the same problems. Section 5 justifies a more qualified understanding of self-abandonment that avoids the numerous infirmities pointed out in previous sections. Section 6 then sketches the meanings and pedigree of predestination in its broadly Calvinist form. Section 7 investigates reformed responses to reprobation with specific reference to Calvin and Hopkins. Section 8 concludes that, when faced with the prospect of hell, self-denial and unqualified self-abandonment are perverse and irrational responses, and closes with the tantalizing question of how Christians might respond to the present fact, as distinct from the prospect, of hell. In sum, self-denial and unqualified self-abandonment should be rejected, yet a qualified self-abandonment is intellectually defensible and a viable Christian piety.

I offer a few points before putting on my case.

1. In no way do I suppose that self-abandonment and self-denial are typical of Catholicism or Protestantism, respectively. Even if by the early twenty-first century near-quietist views had not faded from "orthodox" Catholic theology, the French thinkers discussed in Kavanaugh (2003) are hardly typical of Catholicism generally. Even among Calviniste, reprobation is not prominent in sermons or clerical conversation,


save in jocular and probably apocryphal stories like that of a young Presbyterian minister on the point of being called as a pastor. Members of the presbytery committee, thinking to test his Calvinism for their own amusement, inquired whether it would be all right with him if God sent him to hell, only to receive the reply that it would be fine with him if God despatched the entire presbytery committee to hell.

2. The atypical cases of self-abandonment and self-denial are nonetheless telling. They invite Christians to decide how they should position themselves with respect to an extraordinarily powerful God whose ways are sometimes mysterious or perplexing.

3. My own understanding of hell differs in various ways from the conception of hell stated in the opening paragraph. That conception, however, is traditional and makes particularly acute the issues that this article addresses. The qualified self-abandonment defended here helps Christians to think more clearly about that issue under a broad range of conceptions of hell. For illustration, if hell is understood so that God's mercy reaches those of its denizens who repent after death, a qualified self-abandonment recommends itself even more readily as a viable piety to Christian believers.

1. The Standard View of Self-Abandonment

Self-abandonment is a prominent theme in Catholic spirituality and theology (Kavanaugh 1967b, 2003). The historical resumé goes like this. The term "abandonment" has a passive and an active sense. In the passive sense, "abandonment" is a state in which a person feels forsaken by God (Kavanaugh 1967a). The feeling of forsakenness can stem from sin. It can also stem from a keen desire to be close to God and to obey God's will. In the latter case, the impression of forsakenness can involve intense suffering. In the active sense, "abandonment" is the surrendering of a person to God's will through faith, hope, and, above all, love. To avoid confusion, I reserve "abandonment" for the passive sense and use "self-abandonment" for the active sense. Self-abandonment, so understood, is the act, or series of acts, of surrendering unconditionally to the will of God.

An important theological objection to self-abandonment invokes the possibility that God might will the loss of a self-abandoning individual. Here "loss" covers damnation, perdition, separation from God, consignment to hell, or any equivalent calamity. The objection starts from the idea that self-abandonment involves an unconditional surrender to the supposed will of God. To state the objection carefully it helps to clarify the nature of the unconditional surrender involved in self-abandonment. First, one should distinguish between two different compound propositions involving a person P, where "P" ranges over self-abandoning


individuals who are not in a state of mortal sin (or do not satisfy some other plausible criterion of perdition): (a) Ρ wills what God supposedly wills and also endeavors to extirpate any other will on P's part; (b) Ρ wills what God supposedly wills, yet Ρ also wills that Ρ not be lost, but allows God's supposed will to predominate. Though neither proposition may prove attractive, (a) is perverse in a way that (b) is not, because (a) leaves no room for a reasonable self-concern. Second, one can question whether P's will comes to be congruent with God's will as a consequence of P's self-abandonment. If it does not, then it may not be correct to say that Ρ wills that Ρ be lost. Some other verb may capture P's state of mind. Thus, perhaps, Ρ accepts that Ρ be lost, or Ρ acquiesces in or yields to God's supposed will that Ρ be lost. For simplicity let us say that Ρ accepts that Ρ be lost.

With these clarifications, the objection runs as follows: (1) Self-abandonment involves an unconditional surrender to the supposed will of God. (2) It is logically possible that God could will that Ρ be lost. (3) If Ρ believes that P's loss is God's will, and if Ρ surrenders unconditionally to God's will on this occasion, then Ρ accepts, but perhaps does not will, that Ρ be lost. (4) It is highly unattractive, both theologically and psychologically, to say even that Ρ should accept himself or herself to be lost and hence allow God's will to predominate in this way. (5) Therefore, the foregoing exposition of self-abandonment must be rejected, or at least revised, if self-abandonment is to be an attractive Christian ideal.

This objection imposes limits on the concept of an unconditional sacrifice of one's salvation. The concept does not embrace certain quietist extravagances, such as committing the sin one most abhors, or failing to resist temptation, or ceasing to make any effort to stop sinning, on the ground that one has not yet felt the spur of grace to resist or to stop (Pourrat 1955, 4:180, 182-83). Still less does the concept embrace the idea that one should commit sins one does not wish to commit, just to ensure damnation. Rather, the idea is that because it is logically possible that God might will Ρ to be lost, Ρ accepts without condition whatever God wills, fathomable or unfathomable, including God's will that Ρ be lost (Pourrat 1955, 4:220-23; also Knox 1950, 231-87, 319-55). Furthermore, Ρ need not accept God's will with a perverse exuberance, as in the story of a young quietist priest who on his deathbed prayed to God "to send him to hell, so that the Divine justice and the Divine glory might be more fully manifested" (Knox 1950, 273). It is not clear that this tale involves acceptance of God's will rather than interposition of the priest's own will and desire.

The standard view of self-abandonment includes a response to the objection. The response rests on two new premises. One is that self-abandonment must be conformable to God's will—that is, consistent with whatever God wills. The other is that an unconditional sacrifice of one's


salvation is not conformable to God's will. Given these premises, the response says, only a conditional sacrifice is possible, and that is not theologically troubling for any self-abandoning Ρ who is not in a state of mortal sin. Such a Ρ conditionally sacrifices P's salvation if and only if, if God wills that Ρ be lost, Ρ accepts God's will that Ρ be lost.

The antecedent following the biconditional ("if and only if"), the response continues, is not conformable to God's will. God would not will the loss of any person who is not in a state of mortal sin. The consequent is false, because there never would be a divine will that Ρ be lost, given the range of the variable "P." Thus self-abandonment does not ever, and cannot ever, involve P's surrender to a putative divine will that Ρ be lost (except, perhaps, that persons unlike Ρ could satisfy some condition of perdition and then abandon themselves to eternal loss). No need exists, therefore, to reject the earlier exposition of self-abandonment. At most one needs to add to it by, first, introducing two new premises, and, second, drawing a distinction between unconditional and conditional sacrifice of one's salvation.

The standard view places a strong emphasis on love. Two key propositions buried in the standard view are these: (1) Self-abandonment arises from and expresses love of God; (2) This love is so strong that a self-abandoning individual becomes detached from his or her own interests and has concern for God's will above all else. The standard view makes room for faith and hope. They are, however, subordinate to love.

2. A Scriptural Critique of the Standard View

The new premises and the two propositions merit a close look. Consider the premises first in an objective light. If God is omniscient, then God knows what God's will is. How, though, can anyone else know God's will? Someone might answer: Anyone can know that an unconditional sacrifice of one's salvation is not consistent with whatever God in fact wills. 1 Tim. 2:4 states that God "wants everyone \pantas anthropous] to be saved."1 Hence, through revelation any intelligent person can know that God would never will the loss of a person who is not in a state of mortal sin.

Two cases throw doubt on this answer. Both involve situations where God commands or requests an action that seems repugnant, calamitous, deeply wrong, or unfathomable. One case is the story of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22:1-18). God commands Abraham to take his only son Isaac and "offer him as a burnt offering" (22:2). Evidently Abraham believes that sacrificing his son is the will of God. Abraham takes "the knife to

I quote from the New Jerusalem Bible, 1985.


kill his son" (22:10), and only then does the angel of Yahweh tell him, "Do not harm him, for now I know you fear God. You have not refused me your own beloved son" (22:12). It turns out that God's command was a test. Neither Abraham nor any human eavesdropper could have known that. From the story it appears that only God and, at some point, "the angel of Yahweh" (22:11, 22:15) knew that it was a test.

A second case is Christ's agony in the garden. Some of the patristics saw the near-sacrifice of Isaac as prefiguring the passion of Jesus. Jewish narrative and theology developed an elaborate account (the Aqedah) of the near-sacrifice of a bound Isaac in which some scholars see parallels to the passion narratives (Brown 1994, 2:1435-44; on Gethsemane, see Brown 1994,1:107-234; cf. Heb. 5:7-10). The present critique focuses on Abraham rather than Isaac in relation to Jesus, for it is Abraham who yields to God's will. Practitioners and theologians of self-abandonment often view the yielding of Jesus to the will of God the Father as the very model of surrender of self. So Matt. 26:39 has "Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it" (cf. Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42). From the perspective of Jesus, as reflected in the synoptics, it does not seem to be clear why he must die. Nevertheless, given the special relationship between Jesus and God the Father, Jesus would seem to be as good a human candidate, or deus-homo candidate, as possible to know the divine will.

Neither case is fully parallel to the doubt raised about self-abandonment. That doubt concerns the unconditional surrender of oneself to be lost. The story of Abraham and Isaac concerns the unconditional surrender to a command to kill one's own son. The agony in the garden concerns the unconditional surrender to death by crucifixion. In neither case is the actor's salvation at issue. Still, both situations have a common central element: the unconditional surrender to the will of God, where that will, really or apparently, dictates an action that seems repugnant, calamitous, deeply wrong, or unfathomable. Abraham and Jesus might well seem in a better position to know the will of God than any theologian of self-abandonment. If they are, how can a theologian know that the premises in question are true? More fully, it is not clear that any theologian knows both that self-abandonment must be conformable to God's will and that an unconditional sacrifice of one's salvation is not conformable to God's will. It is therefore doubtful that, by revelation, any person can know that God would never will the loss of a person who is not in a state of mortal sin. As for 1 Tim. 2:4, "everyone" or "all people" may not mean every human being but all types or kinds of human beings, and scriptural scholars worth their salt can show that this passage is not conclusive (for example, Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 24, sec. 16, 983-84). It is not a "proof-text" (in a nonpejorative sense) for the proposition that all will be saved any more than Rom. 9:10-24 is a proof-text for the proposition that some will not.


Recall the two propositions distinguished at the end of section 1, which subordinate faith and hope to love. The extent of this subordination is, however, misguided.

Consider the first proposition: Self-abandonment arises from and expresses love of God. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, however, arises from faith and "fear" (Sherwin 1987). Gen. 22:12 does not support the claim that it arises from love or even that it expresses love. Christ's willingness to die stems, in the synoptics, from faith or trust in the Father, and in John's gospel, from a freely coordinated plan with the Father. In the synoptic gospels, prior to the Father's final decision, Jesus's prayer of petition in the garden of Gethsemane sounds in hope and faith rather than in love (Matt. 26:39; Mark 14:35-36; Luke 22:41-42; cf. Brown 1994, 1:165-78; John 10:17-18).

Now consider the second proposition: This love is so strong that a self-abandoning individual becomes detached from his or her own interests and has concern for God's will above all else. The previous argument cuts the scriptural legs from under this proposition, for love of God does not come into the matter. Suppose, though, that those arguments are unsound. Even then the proposition seems false. Abraham has an interest in and a concern for Isaac's survival. When Jesus prays in the garden, he voices his concern to the Father that, if possible, he not die by gruesome execution. True, under the suggested interpretation of Jesus's prayer, he ultimately abandons himself to his understanding of the will of the Father, and Jesus loves the Father. Still, none of the synoptic gospels supports the idea that love for the Father is Jesus's reason for obeying the Father.

There is a way of trying to rescue both propositions but it quickly lands one in the complexities of trinitarian theology. This way appeals to the forsaking of Jesus on the cross by God the Father. In the first two synoptic gospels Jesus cries out at the end "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). Now John 3:16 supports the idea that God the Father gave up the Son out of love for human beings (cf. Rom. 8:32), and Gal. 2:20 supports the idea that the Son sacrificed himself out of love for us (at least for Paul). None of these passages supports either the claim that God the Father forsook Jesus out of love for Jesus, or the claim that Jesus abandoned himself to death on the cross out of love for the Father. Even if one moves to the idea that "God is love" (1 John 4:16), it is intensely debated how love works itself out within the trinity.

I do not assume either that scriptural theology is always sharply separate from dogmatic theology, or that no specimen of dogmatic theology could rescue the two propositions at stake. As to the former, dogmatic analysis that pays close attention to biblical texts and biblical exegesis that teases out dogmatic implications bleed into each other. Still,


dogmatic theology of a speculative or abstract nature generally outstrips biblical texts and is rightly distinguished from scriptural theology.2 As to the latter, a carefully constructed trinitarian theology might show how love works itself out within the trinity, how self-abandonment arises from and expresses love of God, and how out of love the self-abandoning individual, detached from self-interest, centers his or her concern on God's will above all. Any such theological feat, however, will not be a piece of scriptural theology. A theological explanation that rescues the two propositions in question here will be a piece of trinitarian dogmatic theology of the highest order, not an answer to the scriptural critique offered here.

3. An Analytical Critique of the Standard View

Both the new premises and the two propositions set forth at the end of section 1 are also vulnerable to analytical criticisms. Suppose that someone asserts that any intelligent person who thinks clearly can know, by reason alone, that God would never will the loss of a person who is not in a state of mortal sin. To assess this assertion consider the new premises in light of the situation of the self-abandoning individual. An individual who thinks and acts out of this situation has what one may call an agent-centered perspective.

Suppose that Theresa firmly believes, and perhaps even claims to know, that God wills her to be lost even though she also believes that no unforgiven mortal sin rests on her soul. Theresa has far more confidence in the belief that God wills her to be lost than in any claim that the two premises just discussed are true. She listens carefully to the reasoning and pleas of her spiritual director and anyone else who wishes to talk with her. She finds such texts as 1 Tim. 2:4 unpersuasive. Despite these conversations, she remains convinced that God wills her to be lost. She also remains convinced that the highest and best Christian life is a life of self-abandonment. Accordingly, she cannot lead that life without accepting what she believes is God's will that she be lost.

It is important to investigate the agent-centered perspective because the self-abandoning individual must decide how to respond to such a belief. Assume arguendo that it is knowable by some human beings that God would never will the loss of a person who is not in a state of mortal

2 To illustrate, Moltmann 1974,235-49, presents a sophisticated (if unconvincing) specimen of trinitarian theology. But it will not hold up as scriptural analysis. Moltmann (243) reads Gal. 2:20 so as to suggest that the first-person personal pronouns refer to the Father even though the context makes clear that they refer to Paul. Pace Moltmann (244), Gal. 2:20 does not refer to Jesus's love for the Father and Rom. 8:32 does not refer to love at all. On the meaning and wording of the death cry of Jesus in Matthew and Mark, see Brown 1994, 2:1043-56, 1085-88.


sin. It does not follow from this assumption that Theresa is one of these human beings. Theresa has to decide whether to accept that she will be lost, based on her firmest considered beliefs about God's will and the importance of self-abandonment. From an objective perspective she may be quite mistaken in her belief that God wills her loss. All the same, from an agent-centered perspective accepting this belief and God's supposed will may be her most appropriate response.

Next, consider anew the distinction between conditional and unconditional sacrifice. The standard view understands the former as follows: Ρ conditionally sacrifices P's salvation if and only if, if God wills that Ρ be lost, Ρ accepts God's will. The standard view takes the position that conditional sacrifice is theologically untroubling, for if the two premises are true, God would never will that Ρ be lost. Hence, no occasion will ever arise in which Ρ would have to surrender to such a divine will.

For two reasons, the standard view is unsatisfactory. First, as argued earlier, it is unclear that anyone can know that both premises are true. Second, even if someone could know that, a particular self-abandoning individual might not. From an agent-centered perspective, that individual may still rationally decide to accept that he or she will be lost in accordance with his or her beliefs about what God wills. Therefore, the distinction between conditional and unconditional sacrifice does not disarm an important objection. Even conditional sacrifice of one's salvation is theologically troubling.

The two propositions described as key to the standard view of self-abandonment are also vulnerable to analytical criticisms. That view places love of God at the center. Once again, the importance of faith and hope animates the criticisms. This time, however, the critique focuses on a particular dimension of faith: trust.

Faith, as the first theological virtue, is complicated. It includes cognitive elements; among these are explicitly propositional elements ("believing that") and elements that are at best implicitly propositional ("believing in"). Faith also includes elements that are primarily or entirely noncognitive, such as trust. As understood here, trust is a disposition to rely on the ability and goodwill of another, with the expectation that things will turn out all right. This understanding applies to other persons as well as to God. In God's case the reliance is of a far-reaching sort that goes well with the idea of self-abandonment, and God has control over a far wider range of events than other persons. To say that "things will turn out all right" is not to say that adverse outcomes will fail to matter—even to matter deeply. It is to say that adverse outcomes will not matter ultimately to any self-abandoning Ρ (cf. Moore 1988, 106-12). Ρ does not, for example, accept P's loss either because it is part of God's overall plan or because P's perdition enables one or more other individuals to be saved. As will emerge in section 6, this latter possibility


differentiates the Catholic concept of self-abandonment from the hyper-Calvinist concept of self-denial.

Hope is also complicated. Pertinent here is the hope that one will not be lost but saved. Thus circumscribed, hope is an attitude that involves an ardent wish or desire for a good outcome regarding one's final state, and an expectation that God will then take this enduring attitude favorably into account, but without the expectation that one is entitled to rely on God in this matter.

One might put the relation between trust and hope as follows. Trust is a disposition to rely on God with an expectation that things will turn out all right. Hope is an attitude that involves an ardent wish or desire without a felt entitlement to rely on God for a favorable outcome.

These understandings of trust and hope can now be brought to bear on the standard view of self-abandonment. Consider proposition (1): Self-abandonment arises from and expresses love of God. It is certainly possible that love could play a role in surrendering unconditionally to the will of God. It also seems possible that hope and especially trust could play a role. Moreover, if a self-abandoning person Ρ believes that God wills that Ρ be lost, hope and trust come to the fore. Ρ is almost certain to wish that the will of God might change. Similarly, Ρ is almost certain to try to summon up the courage to rely on God. The reliance is likely to rest on P's sense of God's general goodwill and God's power to make things turn out satisfactorily. It is apt to rest, too, on the fact that Ρ believes that God looks with favor on those who rely on God. Of course, if Ρ ends up being lost, as a final state "things have not turned out all right." So Ρ must also hope that something that matters ultimately will not befall Ρ or at least will not be P's final state.

Now consider proposition (2): The love of God is so strong that a self-abandoning individual becomes detached from his or her own interests and has concern for God's will above all else. Still, part of the point of trust and hope is that the interests of the self-abandoning individual survive to some extent. Ρ might have concern solely for God's will in the sense that, if push comes to shove, Ρ will surrender unconditionally to God's will. Trust and hope, however, bear the tincture of P's interests. Perhaps Ρ can lay aside even things that matter deeply. Ρ cannot, though, lay aside something that matters ultimately—namely, P's final state. The force of "cannot" is not logical or psychological impossibility, but rather what is rational for any Ρ who has an interest in his or her own final state. Ρ might rely on God's goodwill and power, and hope for an acceptable outcome, in at least two ways. First, God can change the divine will so that Ρ is never lost—instead upon death Ρ is either saved or consigned to some temporary intermediate state (for example, purgatory). Second, God can change the divine will after P's death. Here Ρ suffers some period of loss— for instance, temporary separation from God. A common assumption is


that someone in hell has no power to escape. This assumption does not entail that God lacks the power to procure that person's release or to obliterate hell altogether. Furthermore, even if hell remains, God could always annihilate P; this outcome is not ideal, because Ρ is not saved; yet Ρ might prefer annihilation to eternal loss.

4. An Ambiguity in the Standard View

Some may object that what I have called the standard view embraces two distinguishable positions and therefore harbors an ambiguity. These may be styled the quietist and the near-quietist positions. I do not label the latter the "orthodox" position because this article is intended for non-Catholic as well as Catholic readers, and because what the Roman Catholic Church considers orthodox is harder to separate from the quietist position than is commonly thought. Both positions encounter basically the same problems.

The quietist position holds that self-abandonment involves an extraordinarily purified state of love. In the letter Cum alias of 12 March 1699, Pope Innocent XII condemned twenty-three "errors" relating to quietism. Among them were

There is an habitual state of the love of God, which is pure charity and without any admixture of the motive of one's personal interest

... In this same state of holy indifference we wish nothing for ourselves, all for God....

... In this state of holy indifference we no longer seek salvation as our own salvation... but we wish it with our whole will as the glory and good pleasure of God... [Denzinger and Schönmetzer 1963,1327,1331-2; Denzinger 1957, 343].

Kieran Kavanaugh's brief exposition of self-abandonment, which served as a model for the standard view, contains some language that flirts with the quietist position:

Abandonment is above all an expression of love that leads to the perfection of love. To love God a person must abandon himself to God; to abandon himself to God he must love. Self-abandonment is thus the most integral expression of perfect love [Kavanaugh 2003, 886].

Precisely because the quietist position rests on an utterly pure and detached love of God, it subverts the roles of the virtues of faith and hope.

In contrast, the near-quietist position makes explicit room for all three theological virtues. Thus, Caussade writes:


Uétat de pure foi est un certain mélange de foi, d'espérance et de charité dans un seul acte qui unit le coeur à Dieu et à son action. Ces trois vertus réunies ne sont plus qu'une seule vertu, ce n'est qu'un seul acte, qu'une seule élévation du coeur à Dieu et un simple abandon à son action.3

This position dominates Kavanaugh's brief article. In language similar to tha t of Caussade he writes:

Self-abandonment requires the practice of the theological virtues and of detachment. In the act of abandonment there is a dynamic mingling of faith, hope, and love that unites the soul to God and to His action —

Like providence, the practice of abandonment reaches out to all things... [Kavanaugh 2003, 885-86].

Once one distinguishes between the quietist and near-quietist positions, the objection continues, it is possible to clean up the ambiguous standard view. One simply dismisses the quietist position as perverse and excessive, and attends to the near-quietist position as a viable piety. Its piety mines a deep Augustinian vein in French thought from Francis de Sales in the seventeenth century to Caussade in the eighteenth and Thérèse of Lisieux in the nineteenth. Their teachings on self-abandonment move one to see that one should love God as an end, for God's sake alone, and not for the sake of spiritual rewards and consolations. They do not, in recommending this vision of love of God, promote an unconditional disregard of one's own salvation, nor do they deny the importance of faith and hope. True enough, spiritually advanced individuals may experience the anguish of separation from God and believe that God wills them to be lost—in the face of which they are to persevere in faithful and hopeful love of God. All the same, the defenders of

3 Caussade 1966, chap. 5, "De l'État de pure Foi" ("On the State of Pure Faith"), 54 (footnote omitted). I translate:

The state of pure faith is a certain mixture [or blend] of faith, hope and charity in a single act that unites the heart to God and to his action. These three virtues joined together are but one single virtue, which is but a single act, a single elevation of the heart to God and a simple abandonment to his action.

I follow the text of Olphe-Galliard. The two English translations known to me follow the earlier text of Ramière. They seem to be influenced by Ramière's caption: "L'état d'abandon renferme l'état de pure foi et de pur amour," which means "The state of abandonment includes the state of pure faith and pure love." Both are somewhat loose translations of Ramière's text and caption. They place more emphasis on love and less on faith than does the text of Olphe-Galliard. See Caussade 1874, vol. 1, bk. 2, chap. 1, sec. 3, 59; Caussade 1959, pt. 1, bk. 2, chap. 1, sec. 3, 45; Caussade 1975, chap. 3, sec. 3, 62. The net effect of Olphe-Galliard's text is to distance Caussade from quietism, though Ramière, Joyce, Thorold, Knowles, and Beevers are all concerned to present Caussade as a non-quietist.


the near-quietist position (unlike its quietist cousin) hold that this sense of ultimate loss is only a spiritual trial, not an inevitable fate. They maintain that the subjective expectation of loss is to be seen against an objective background of faith and hope that, at the end of the day, God will not plunge the innocent soul into the fires of hell.

This objection falls short. I agree that the standard view of self-abandonment as stated in section 1 embraces both the quietist and the near-quietist positions just limned. I also agree that the quietist position is theologically unattractive and that the near-quietist position offers a seemingly viable piety. Nonetheless, the same epistemological worry that undermines the unconditional surrender of the quietest position also undermines the conditional surrender of the near-quietist position. Francis de Sales, a representative of the near-quietist position, writes that "Could we imagine the impossible, could we suppose that such a man knew his damnation would be more to God's liking than his salvation ... he would forsake heaven and hasten to hell" (Sales 1962, 366, emphasis added, ellipsis in original; see also Knox 1950, 255). Evidently Francis de Sales is confident that, objectively speaking, such a situation is impossible. How, though, is one to know that? From the agent-centered perspective described in section 3, it might seem to Ρ that an inscrutable God wills P's loss for reasons that Ρ cannot fathom. Ρ need not claim that Ρ knows that God wills his or her loss, only that Ρ honestly and immovably believes that is what God wills. Self-abandonment is a logically and psychologically possible reaction to this belief, even if this reaction is irrational.

The reply cuts more deeply than saying that one's spirituality cannot ultimately be grounded in epistemic certainty. A defender of the near-quietist position must do more than claim that even though it is impossible to know for certain that self-abandonment may be compatible with eternal loss, no good reason exists to base one's spirituality on such a skeptical worry. This claim only shunts to the side more probing reflection on the risky nature of self-abandonment. The near-quietist position recommends self-abandonment to a God who says "my ways are not your ways" (Is. 55:8) and then underscores the message by offering death on a cross as a path to salvation. The risk of abandoning oneself to such a God lies precisely in a healthy awe that God's will is sometimes incomprehensible to humans. It matters not that some irony lurks in the fact that the intellectual anxiety uncovered by reflecting on this risk finds its existential expression in the quietist and near-quietist literature under examination, for the literature on self-abandonment is preoccupied with how one perseveres in abandoning oneself to a God whose ways at times seem perplexing and threatening.

This emphasis on our inability to grasp God is not dismissible as a slick maneuver to put even the near-quietist position in a hole, because the


incomprehensibility of God lies at the core of Christianity. Incomprehensibility has two dimensions. First, the inner nature of God is ungraspable and hidden. Scripturally, as much is evident in Job 11:7,1 Cor. 2:11, and elsewhere. It appears in the official teaching of some denominations and in countless theologians on either side of Aquinas.4 It is often added that God is graspable only by God—not by angels, or by humans in the beatific vision. Second, many particular decisions and acts of God are incomprehensible. "We cannot," says Paul in Rom. 11:33, "reach to the root of his decisions or his ways." The two dimensions are related. If God's inner nature is incomprehensible, then it is unsurprising that the same should be true of God's decisions and acts. This second dimension will assume especial importance in the discussion of predestination.

The objection is unpersuasive for a quite different reason pertaining to the near-quietist position: its lack of specificity regarding the role of love. No doubt there is an improvement over any view that excludes faith and hope. All the same, Caussade leaves the matter vague when he writes of "un certain melange de foi, d'espérance et de charité dans un seul acte qui unit le coeur à Dieu et à son action" (1966, 54). Which mélange (mixture) does Caussade mean? If one is talking about a state (état) of faith, how can that unite faith, hope, and charity into an act (acte)? Under what criteria of identity and individuation are the three theological virtues somehow joined to become a single virtue (une seule vertu)? How can a virtue, which seems to be a subtype of character trait or disposition or habitus, ever be a single act (un seul acte)? Under what theory of acts and descriptions of them can a single act be both an élévation and an abandon? Whatever is going on here is not a simple abandonment (un simple abandon) to God's action. Kavanaugh is equally vague and problematic in referring to "a dynamic mingling of faith, hope, and love that unites the soul to God and to His action" (2003,885). What are the proportions of each virtue in the "blending" or "dynamic mingling"? How can such different virtues be combined into "one single act"? How can one know that any such act or acts unite one to God and God's "activities"? Might the blending also bear the tincture of awe or dread or anger as well as the theological virtues? Of course, just as without faith and hope one might not have a reason to persevere, so without love one might not have a motive to do so. Until further work is done the near-quietist position remains ill-defined.5

4 See, for example, Denzinger and Schònmetzer 1963, 254, 428, 1782; Denzinger 1957, 101,168,443 (Catholic teaching); Howard-Snyder and Moser 2002; Rahner 1961-92,4:36-73, 16:227-43, 16:244-54, 18:89-104 (theologians).

5 The work could involve a more sophisticated analysis of faith, hope, and love than is possible here. In correspondence Father Kavanaugh gently suggested to me that the theological virtues are interconnected and that one cannot have living faith and hope without love, or love without living faith and hope.


5. Justifying Qualified Self-Abandonment

It remains to construct a conception of self-abandonment that does not founder on the difficulties identified in sections 2-4. The place to start is with step (2) in the basic objection to the standard view of self-abandonment in section 1: It is logically possible that God could will that Ρ be lost. There are two hitherto unremarked-upon problems with this step. A technical problem is that a modal premise (here, "It is logically possible that . . . ") infects the conclusion. Hence, step (5) needs to be rewritten as "Therefore, it is logically possible that the foregoing exposition of self-abandonment must be rejected, or at least revised, if self-abandonment is to be an attractive Christian ideal." A theological problem is that for self-abandonment to be an attractive ideal it has to be compatible with a defensible theodicy. Little enticement exists to abandon oneself to a God who is unjust, vindictive, uncaring, or arbitrary in consigning one to hell. Put in the traditional Catholic vocabulary, it is hard to see why one should abandon oneself to a God who might damn one, not for an unforgiven mortal sin, but for a venial sin or no sin at all.

Let us solve these problems as follows. It must be metaphysically possible that God could will that Ρ be lost, where the adverb carries the idea that it must be compatible with God's nature. It must also he justified for God to will that Ρ be lost. Section 1, however, makes clear that the variable "P" ranges over self-abandoning individuals who are not in a state of mortal sin (or do not satisfy some other plausible criterion of perdition). Given these solutions, it follows that God could not will that Ρ be lost.

Now suppose someone objects that Ρ cannot know that these solutions are correct. The proper reply is that Ρ believes and hopes that they are. Self-abandonment as a potentially attractive ideal should be understood in relation to a personal and powerful God. If God is personal (that is, has some personality or character) and powerful (perhaps even omnipotent), then the question becomes how one should position oneself with respect to God's awesome force. Though epistemic certainty is lacking, the Christian can try to answer this question out of trust and hope as well as love.

For this answer to be convincing, it must overcome or dissolve the infirmities pointed out in sections 2—4. Let us begin with section 4. Pace Fénelon and Madame Guyon, pure love is neither appropriate nor enough. Love of a totally inscrutable but awesomely powerful and threatening God, though just barely intelligible, appeals to almost no one.6 In

6 Perhaps it appeals to a few who either believe no afterlife exists or pray for annihilation. In each case no post-death self exists to have any interests and hell disappears altogether. Weil (1970, 244) seems to pray for annihilation: "Father... rend this body and soul away from me. . . for your use, and let nothing remain of me, for ever, except this rending itself, or else nothingness."


contrast to Caussade and Kavanaugh, more specificity about the nature and role of love is now available. Love is not both a state and an act in the same way and at the same time. Love qua virtue hardly unites with the virtues of faith and hope to become a single virtue. The mixture or blending of love with faith and hope is not remotely akin to a stew. Each has a distinctive role. Faith, and specifically trust, disposes the Christian to rely on a personal God whose ways are not always knowable but are nonetheless counted on to be just. Hope leads the Christian to desire ardently and rely on a favorable ultimate outcome from God. Faith and hope, in these different but allied ways, are reasons for the Christian to abandon himself or herself to God. Love of God, in contrast, supplies a motive to do so. A sensitive account of faith, hope, and love supports a roughly near-quietist account of self-abandonment.

Moreover, Christian faith and hope tell the believer that he or she matters to God—not just as a person but as this unique person. If so, and if the believer loves God, then the believer matters to himself or herself, for to love God is in part to love the things that matter to God. Love is compatible with temporary separation from the beloved. Still, ongoing love is not compatible with ultimate separation from the beloved, which would be the result of unjustified eternal perdition. The intertwining of faith, hope, and love in these ways enables the self-abandoning individual to avoid the unattractive self-abnegation of the quietist view. Thereby is quietism separated more effectively from near-quietism than Caussade, Kavanaugh, and Pope Innocent XII in Cum alias manage to do.

This revised analysis also disposes of the analytical critique of section 3. First, it avoids the mistake of resting everything on love, and even the milder mistake of placing love of God so close to the center that it blocks the key roles of faith and hope. Second, the analysis aids Theresa in her predicament. Both the quietist and the near-quietist positions involve a spiritual thought-experiment that is based on a coun-terfactual hypothesis about God. Once the nature and roles of Theresa's faith and hope are brought home to her, she should be able to see that her agent-centered view that God wills her to be lost is faulty and indeed amounts to sheer impudence in the face of God. Of course, some people can hold a determinedly wrongheaded view despite cogent arguments against it. So the arguments deployed here cannot force Theresa to change her mind. Nevertheless, they demonstrate that she would be intellectually and spiritually in the wrong to cleave to her view.

Finally, the revised analysis, together with other considerations, disables the scriptural critique of section 2. The person who trusts and hopes in the word of God takes the Bible as a whole. By no means can difficult passages be ignored. They must also be read in the context of an overall message, and critical exegesis is important. Self-abandonment, properly qualified, is good insofar as the believer dethrones himself or herself in favor of a God who created us, cares for us, and to whom the


believer both matters and must give an account. The issue is not one of reducing supposed proof-texts like 1 Tim. 2:4 to a presumption in favor of salvation. It is one of absorbing the biblical witness of Jer. 3:12-25 and Ezek. 33:11 and New Testament refinements to see that God desires the repentance of imperfect human beings and promises salvation in return. To the extent that self-abandonment as discussed here is partly a biblical concept, it results from the heartfelt repentance of Matt. 16:24-28 and parallels, and from the other dimensions of the gift of God's grace.

The case of Abraham and Isaac differs from properly qualified self-abandonment. The Aqedah involves an announced command of God; self-abandonment, as expounded here, does not. The Christian believer will, moreover, read the story of Abraham and Isaac in light of Heb. 11:17-19. This passage supposes that Abraham believed that, were Isaac killed, God would raise him from the dead. In this way the near-sacrifice of Isaac prefigures not only the death and resurrection of Jesus but also the general resurrection, which is a matter of faith and hope for the Christian.

Likewise, Christ's agony in the garden differs from properly qualified self-abandonment. The garden passages involve, in the synoptics, an implicit decision by God the Father; self-abandonment, as elaborated here, does not. In both Testaments the theme of death is closely linked to sin and thence to a substitutionary death by Jesus for the sins of all. The suffering servant of Isaiah dies for others as an expression, not of divine perversity, but of God's love for human beings. No universally agreed upon theory of the atonement exists. Among the many candidates are expiation, purchase, sacrifice, payment of a just debt, divine victory over sin and death, and—notably in Abelard—the redeeming power of love (cf. John 3:16, 15:13). One can, moreover, give a Johannine cast to Jesus's consigning himself to death on the cross out of love for the Father without a trinitarian high-wire act: "[T]he world must recognise that I love the Father and that I act just as the Father commanded" (John 14:31, cf. 8:29).

It is now possible to deal with the comparative abilities of Abraham, Jesus, and theologians of self-abandonment to know God's will. If the self-renunciations of Abraham and Jesus are not the same as self-abandonment as sketched in section 1, then they may well be compatible with self-abandonment even on the perverse quietist view. Consequently, these self-renunciations do not entail that theologians are unable to know that the two new premises and the two key propositions stated in section 1 are, all of them, true. The premises, it will be recalled, are that self-abandonment must be conformable to God's will and that an unconditional sacrifice of one's salvation is not conformable to God's will. The propositions are that self-abandonment arises from and expresses love of God, and that this love is so strong that a self-abandoning individual


becomes detached from his or her own interests and has concern for God's will above all else.

My argument hardly establishes that any theologian actually knows any of these premises or propositions to be true. Help of a different kind, though, is on the way with the qualified self-abandonment articulated in section 5. Self-abandoning individuals believe and hope that God could not will them to be lost so long as they do not satisfy some plausible criterion of perdition. The appropriately restrained theologian now has reasons, sounding in faith and hope as well as love of God, for endorsing qualified self-abandonment.

6. P redes t ina t ion : I t s Mean ings a n d Pedigree

From the Augustinian pessimism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, I turn to the severity of sixteenth-century Geneva. The term "predestination" has various meanings and covers a range of theological doctrines. As used here predestination is a genus with two species: the election by God of some for salvation, and the reprobation by God of others for damnation. This use marks out what is sometimes called double predestination (election and reprobation), accords with almost all common and much theological usage, and is convenient. However, I do not suppose that the two different divine decrees are fully parallel, and I recognize that some theologians reserve predestination for election and view reprobation as a quite different matter.

As used here, predestination applies centrally to Calvin's view on God's saving some persons but not others:

We call predestination God's eternal decree, by which he determined with himself what he willed to become of each man. For all are not created in equal condition; rather, eternal life is foreordained for some, eternal damnation for others [Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 21, sec. 5, 926].

The election of some for salvation and the marking out of others for perdition does not, according to Calvin, pivot on God's foreknowledge that the former will not sin, or at least not sin grievously, and that the latter will sin (grievously). Instead, he holds that the outcome for each human being turns on God's will. The backdrop of Calvin's view is that each person, in the absence of God's will to the contrary, would be fitted for hell in accordance with God's justice. God displays mercy by electing some to receive mercy and extending to them, and them alone, the grace of salvation. Because the concerns of this article are theological and philosophical, the pastoral dimensions of Calvin's doctrine are left to one side. It is not supposed here that Calvin is historically responsible for more extreme formulations of double predestination in later generations.


The pedigree of Calvinist predestination is biblical and theological. Scripturally, the doctrine rests on various passages but above all on Rom. 9:10-24—with which 1 Tim. 2:4 is in obvious tension. In the history of theology the chief source is Augustine (for example, Augustine 1999; cf. Lamberigts 1999). From there the doctrine was reworked or altered by every major medieval thinker—including Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Ockham—and with the Reformation taken up by Luther. I stick to the task at hand: to see how those who believe that they are predestined to eternal loss might respond to their plight. Hence, I leave aside non-Calvinist views of predestination, general objections to the doctrine in its Calvinist form, and the repugnance or revulsion that many have for the doctrine (see generally Berkhof 1939,109-35; Garrigou-Lagrange 1939).

7. Personal Responses to Predestination to Hell

Different thinkers have grappled with this topic in different ways. Samuel Hopkins, writing in the late eighteenth century, said

You know that it is most for the glory of God that some should be damned. And if you do not know that you are a Christian, you do not know but it is in fact true that it is most for the glory of God that you should be damned; the supposition is therefore natural and easy, and you cannot well avoid making it. Supposing, then, this were true, which may be true, notwithstanding anything you know, how ought you to feel with respect to it? Ought you not to be willing to be damned? [Hopkins 1854d, 3:147].

Suppose that, as a working hypothesis, responses to learning that one is predestined (reprobated) to hell are functions of at least the following variables: general human psychology, the psychology of particular individuals, beliefs about God, and beliefs about predestination. It is less clear how to identify functions at this point. Still, it seems possible in principle to generate a particular response from a given variable and a given function.7 A complete account of all possible, or even all plausible, responses is out of the question. Nevertheless, it is possible to illustrate two responses to the predicament of believing oneself to be damned. I argue that Calvin's account ultimately breaks down, and that Hopkins offers by far the more interesting view for present purposes.

7 Those not put off by logical formulas can find the basic idea as well as its complications stated more clearly as follows. The basic idea is to obtain a response r from a variable υ given a function f. Schematically, for any vt and any ft, f% υ% implies rx. To get a complete list of all responses, the formula would have to take account of all variables υ χ,..., vn and all functions fi,...,fn and then show how they generate r 1 ? . . . , rn. But one cannot say simply that/i t^, . . .,fnvn implies r 1 ? . . . , r n , because some responses may result only from certain disjunctive or conjunctive combinations of functions and variables. It may also be necessary to quantify over variables, functions, or both.


7.1 Calvin's account

Calvin appreciates worries about motivation for action on the part of both the elect and the reprobate. "For who can hear," Calvin imagines opponents of predestination to object, "that either life or death has been appointed for him by God's eternal and unchangeable decree without thinking immediately that it makes no difference how he conducts himself, since God's predestination can neither be hindered nor advanced by his effort?" (Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 23, sec. 12, 960). Our chief concern is not with individuals who think themselves among the elect, who arguably might become cocksure or morally lax or revel in vice. Rather, it is with those who believe themselves to be reprobate, for if God "has destined [them] to death, [they] would fight against it in vain" (Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 23, sec. 12, 960).

Two features of Calvin's position make it well-nigh impossible to lay these worries to rest. First, human actions are evidence of election or reprobation. The elect will lead "a holy and blameless life," he thinks, because election will "arouse and goad" them to pursue "holiness of life" (Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 23, sec. 12, 960). In contrast, the reprobate are in Calvin's view "vessels made for dishonor" and "by their continual crimes [will] arouse God's wrath against themselves, and.. . confirm by clear signs that God's judgment has already been pronounced upon them—no matter how much they vainly resist it" (Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 23, sec. 12, 961). Second, God's decisions and actions are mysterious. The hiddenness of God is a pervasive theme in Calvin's theology and it marks many passages that deal with predestination. Thus he refers to "God's unattainable secrets," "God's secret and inscrutable plan," and the "inscrutable judgment of God to show forth his glory in their [the reprobates'] condemnation" (Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 23, sec. 12, 960; bk. 3, chap. 24, sec. 12, 978, and sec. 14, 981).

How, though, does one put these two features together in a way that can reassure those who believe themselves to be elect but not plunge into gloom those who believe themselves to be reprobate? If God's ways of predestination are past finding out, no one can know that he or she is either elect or reprobate. Perhaps some have evidence one way or the other, but the evidence is plainly not conclusive.8 The apparent elect

8 Calvin seems especially confident in his earlier polemic against Albert Pighius. "If Pighius asks how I know I am elect, I answer that Christ is more than a thousand testimonies to me." Calvin adds, "Now we do not deny that many things are found alike in the reprobate and in the children of God. But, however, they [the reprobate] shine with the appearance of righteousness, it is certain they are not possessed of the Spirit of adoption" (Calvin 1961, 130, 131). Given Calvin's emphasis on the inscrutable and hidden ways of God, his confidence is misplaced. The "thousand testimonies" are inconclusive evidence. Even if by definition the reprobate have only "the appearance of righteousness," this fact does not get round the epistemic problem of identifying who is reprobate rather than elect.


might fall into vice at the last moment. The apparent reprobate might turn to repentance and virtue on their deathbeds. These things are just what others can see; presumably only God can see into the hearts of the apparent elect and the apparent reprobate and know who is really saved or really damned. Thus, Calvin's account opens the door to self-deception. If individuals do not and cannot know whether they are saved or damned, they can always try to act as Calvin says the elect will act, but they are quite mistaken in supposing that any actions can change God's eternal decree. Furthermore, if God is as inscrutable as Calvin says, other features of his account do not assuage these difficulties one whit. Calvin says that God deprives the reprobate "of the capacity to hear his word" or "blinds and stuns them by the preaching of it" (Calvin 1960, bk. 3, chap. 24, sec. 12, 978). Still, neither Calvin nor any other human being can identify the reprobate, and so it is hard to see how anyone but God knows how God treats the reprobate. Or, to put the point more cautiously, even if one knows in principle how God treats the reprobate, one still does not know who the reprobate are, for one does not know who is deprived of the capacity to hear God's word or is blinded and stunned by the preaching of it.

The heart of the difficulty in constructing a satisfactory Calvinist personal response of the reprobate to their perdition is as follows. Those who believe that they are among the reprobate can respond in manifold ways—falling into despair, giving themselves over to sin, fancying that by good actions they can alter God's decree, inveighing against God's supposed justice, and so on. Given that no one but God can know who the reprobate are, it seems impossible to know how the actual reprobate will respond.

It may be protested that Calvin rejects divine absolute power as being speculative and tyrannical in its implications for God, and that the hid-denness of God in Calvin concerns the reasons God has for electing some and reprobating others. The protest fails. Calvin may dislike speculation and tyranny but disliking them does not warrant rejecting the sovereign power in regard to election and reprobation that Calvin ascribes to God. Calvin may repudiate divine absolute power in this regard but his other positions prevent him from justifying his repudiation of it. As for God's reasons, one way of interpreting "my ways are not your ways" (Is. 55:8) is that God's moral structures are so much higher than ours that discerning God's justice in electing some and reprobating others is beyond our ken. Believers who eventually learn that they are elect may be pardoned if they feel lucky but more unnerved than comforted, and those who eventually discover that they are reprobate may understandably sink into bewilderment. Of course, Calvin can always retreat to the ideas that faith and revelation are forms of knowledge, for which Deut. 29:29 and


other passages offer some support. The defender of Calvin can, moreover, point out that it is a mark of humility and faithfulness to acknowledge what we do not know, to accept what God reveals, and not to play off some bits of revelation against others so as to reach a truncated view of God that sits oddly with respect to the corpus of revelation as a whole. This defense, however, can easily be turned against Calvin's view of election and reprobation, for his view does not tally well with a holistic approach to revelation. The effort to bring knowledge and faith closer together is an arduous philosophical and theological project; not even its most insightful contemporary exponents try to justify Calvin on predestination in this way.

The seeds of self-denial exist in Calvin even though a clear formulation of this concept must await Hopkins. Let "S" be a variable that ranges over self-deniers—namely, those who practice self-denial on the basis of a radical understanding of disinterested benevolence. Suppose that S correctly believes himself or herself to be among the reprobate. S could forego the pleasures of sin and try to live virtuously in order to give others a model of righteous behavior. Differently, given the same supposition, S could pursue a life of depravity, as that would confirm God's justice and glory in selecting S for perdition, and could serve as a model of the damned in order to encourage righteous behavior in the elect (whoever they turn out to be). In each case S's behavior illustrates self-denial rather than (merely) self-abandonment, because S acts partly out of concern for others.

7.2 Hopkins's challenge

Hopkins argues vigorously that, on the suppositions in the extract that begins section 7, you ought indeed to be willing to be damned. The argument unfolds with admirable economy:

1. It is most for the glory of God that some, but not all, should be saved. 2. Who is saved and who is damned depends entirely on God's will. 3. No one except God knows who will be saved. 4. Thus, for all you know, God's will may be that you should be damned

(from 1, 2, and 3). 5. Your reaction to the prospect of your own damnation should be based

on disinterested benevolence. 6. Disinterested benevolence requires that you love your neighbor as

yourself. 7. Therefore, you may not prefer your salvation to your neighbor's (from

5 and 6). 8. Furthermore, your damnation may be most for God's glory.


9. If your damnation is God's will and is most for God's glory, and if you may not prefer your salvation to that of others, then you ought to be willing to be damned (from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8).

Four comments help to place Hopkins's argument in context. First, it unfolds in a dialogue between a "Calvinist" and a "Semi-Calvinist" against the background of a complicated milieu (see Breitenbach 1984; Conforti 1981; Post 1987). The Semi-Calvinist expresses shock at the notion that one might have to accept one's own damnation. Hopkins plays the Calvinist. His aim is to show that the variously inconsistent, halfhearted, and tempered positions of the Semi-Calvinist are untenable. Hopkins professes to follow Calvinism out to its logical extreme.

Second, Hopkins confronts seriously, as Calvin himself and many other thinkers who believe in reprobation as a consequence of God's will do not, the idea that no one can know whether he or she is saved or damned. Hence, one's reaction to the prospect of one's own damnation must be worked out behind an impenetrable veil of ignorance. Hopkins distinguishes sharply between intellect and will, and readiness to be damned poses for him an intellectual test rather than a dilemma in regard to action. The willingness to be damned expresses an attitude. Having this attitude does not, however, mean or entail that if its possessor were later to enter hell and complain bitterly, then he or she never had a willingness to be damned. A parallel point holds in regard to self-abandonment. Suppose that self-abandonment, qualified or unqualified, rests in part on having an attitude of unconditional love toward God. One's failure to love God at time t2 does not show that one lacked an attitude of unconditional love at an earlier time t\.

Third, a key premise in Hopkins's argument is disinterested, or, as he sometimes says, universal, benevolence. If love of God plays a central role in the Catholic theology of self-abandonment, love not only of God but also of one's neighbor as oneself plays a similar role in Hopkins's reformed dogmatics (Hopkins 1854b). Hopkins insists that self-love, in the sense of selfish affection ("a man's loving himself, as self, or merely because he is himself) is no part of "love to being in general, or universal benevolence" {ibid., 3:23). Hopkins, following Jonathan Edwards (1960, chaps. 1 and 2), holds that love to "being in general" does not mean being in the abstract but all individual beings, including God. Self-denial, rather than (merely) self-abandonment, more accurately captures Hopkins's thought.9 He bids

9 Only rarely do quietista such as Fénelon verge toward self-denial as contrasted with self-abandonment:

Les ames [sic] attirées au pur amour peuvent être aussi désintéressées pour elles mêmes que pour leur prochain, parce q'elles ne voyent et ne désirent en elles non plus que dans le prochain le plus inconnu, que la gloire de Dieu, son bon plaisir,


the possible reprobate not only to accept God's will but also to avoid even the thought or hope that a neighbor could somehow take his or her place in hell. In Christianity it is odd to believe that God would even permit one person to take the place of another in hell, though the Buddhist doctrine of vicarious suffering seems to allow for this possibility (Durt 1994). At all events, Hopkins's concern is not with actually trading places but with thinking or hoping that another might take one's place in hell. Hopkins's attitude is reminiscent of some varieties of utilitarianism: Each person counts for one and no one counts for more than one, and no person may prefer his or her own utility to that of another if the other's utility yields greater overall utility. For Hopkins, of course, the place of overall utility is taken by God's inscrutable plan to elect some and reprobate others.

Fourth, Hopkins's account of being willing to be damned for the glory of God nevertheless shares an important feature with the Catholic theology of self-abandonment: "true, unreserved resignation to the will of God" (Hopkins 1854d, 3:156). Although Hopkins's argument is abstract, he claims scriptural support for it (ibid., 154). Like theologians of self-abandonment, Hopkins makes room for hope, including hope of eternal salvation (Hopkins 1854c, 3:691-93), even though he has no systematic account of the blending of unreserved resignation and hope.

Various features of Hopkins's argument can be questioned but here I concentrate on just two. These concern God's glory and Hopkins's conception of disinterested benevolence.

1. God's Glory. Consider the first step in the argument: It is most for the glory of God that some, but not all, should be saved. Why? One's initial thought here might be that even if, as Hopkins and Calvin believe, everyone deserves hell and that damnation depends on God's will, it would better display God's glory if all were saved. Or, to put this thought more cautiously, the salvation of all would be most for God's glory so long as no one refuses God's offer to be saved. If God

et l'accomplissement de ses promesses. En ce sens, ces ames [sic] sont comme étrangères [sic] à elles-mêmes: et elles ne s'aiment plus d'ordinaire que comme elles aiment le reste des creatures [sic] dans l'ordre de la pure charité [Fénelon 1911, 206; "sic" indicates only the absence of accent marks that would exist in standard French].

The souls attracted to pure love may be as disinterested in regard to themselves as to their neighbor, because they neither see nor desire in themselves any more than in the most unknown neighbor, anything but the glory of God, his good pleasure, and the fulfillment of his promises. In this sense, these souls are like strangers to themselves: and they do not love themselves more than they love the rest of the creatures within the order of pure charity. [The translation is mine.]


"wants everyone to be saved" (1 Tim. 2:4), it is inexplicable that God's favoring some with salvation and selecting others for damnation would somehow maximize God's glory. If the first step in Hopkins's argument is wrong, steps 5 and 9 fall with it.

Some may reply on Hopkins's behalf that the foregoing objection assumes that everyone deserves to be saved. This assumption, it may be said, ignores the graciousness of God's elective and saving work, and conflicts with the idea that there is nothing unjust about God's elective grace because no one gets less than he or she deserves. I answer that no such assumption lurks in the objection. The point is rather that justice is in part a comparative matter. Given that all human beings sin, and given Hopkins's view that God brings human beings into existence as individuals who will sin (see Breitenbach 1984, 252-55), it would be unjust for God not to extend saving grace to all who do not refuse it. If the instinct behind this answer be familiar, the instinct and the answer are no less sound for the familiarity.

A last-ditch effort to save step 1 lies in Hopkins's sharp separation of intellect from will and his account of moral agency (ibid., 255-64). Hopkins scholar William Breitenbach gets to the core of the matter:

[T]he willingness to be damned for the glory of God... described the initial exercises of the regenerate heart [or will]. The new convert ['s] ... love of the law was a regenerate exercise, [so] those who performed it would never feel the torments of hell. A willingness to be damned was not a habitual exercise of the saint. It was rather a misapprehension arising out of an initial failure to realize that regeneration had occurred. The mistake was made because regeneration changed only the heart or will. The intellect lagged behind the heart: exercises of holiness came before awareness of conversion [ibid., 262-63 note 77].

However, this effort to rescue step 1 raises a new question about God: Why does it maximize God's glory to have created human beings as entities whose intellect trails the will in a matter so grave as their personal response to the prospect of hell? It would seem to be more for God's glory that the intellect and will of human beings should march more nearly in step, or that the intellect should precede and supply reasons for action to the will. That way the regenerate would not encounter the intellectual puzzlement of forming the thought that they should be willing to be damned if that is most for God's glory. Anyway, even if Hopkins's giddy trapeze work showed that it would maximize God's glory to create human beings whose intellect and will operate as he claims, that would still not show that it would also maximize God's glory that some, but not all, should be saved.

2. Disinterested Benevolence. Hopkins's conception of disinterested benevolence commands special scrutiny. This conception figures in


steps 5 and 6, and thereby in steps 7 and 9, of the argument. Hopkins's emphasis on disinterested benevolence had significant, even laudable, social consequences—including furtherance of the antislavery movement and resistance to the self-centeredness of early American capitalism (see Conforti 1981, 109-24, 212-15; Post 1987, 75-80). Nevertheless, defective ideas sometimes have beneficial consequences. Hopkins's extreme form of disinterested benevolence amounts to a nearly impossible, and certainly unattractive, self-annihilation. It is nearly impossible, for the act of trying to love oneself only as part of "love to being in general" inevitably focuses on one's desire to put aside self in precisely this radical way. It is unattractive, for the degree of self-denial makes difficult both self-respect and the giving of oneself in communion with others.

Hopkins is not, as some might object, inconsistent. Their objection is that disinterested benevolence requires giving no preference to one's own interests over the interests of others, but Hopkins bids each person to violate this requirement by giving primacy to his or her own interest in developing disinterested benevolence.

There are two cogent replies to this objection. The first reply distinguishes between different orders of interests. First-order interests include food, drink, shelter, love, and salvation. Second-order interests pertain to how one places first-order interests in relation to oneself. The requirement of disinterested benevolence governs first-order interests only. It is therefore consistent to say that one may attach special importance to the second-order interest of developing in oneself the quality of disinterested benevolence. This reply does not refute other possible second-order views, such as different forms of egoism. It does show that Hopkins is not contradicting himself in the way charged.

A second reply rests on presenting self-interest as a species of self-concern in relation to desires. According to Robert Adams, a desire is self-interested if and only if it aims at one's own good on the whole (1980, 88-92, esp. 91). A desire is self-concerned if and only if it is in some way indexed to oneself. Consider the desire that as many people as possible develop disinterested benevolence for its own sake. This desire could be made self-interested: I desire to develop disinterested benevolence because doing so, I believe, aims at my good on the whole. Still, the general desire could instead be made self-concerned without being self-interested: I desire that J be among the many people as possible who develop disinterested benevolence for its own sake. This second reply is perhaps intellectually less congenial to Hopkins's thought because the reply is adapted from the theological gymnastics in the debate over quietism, in which St. Francis de Sales and Fénelon worried about taking pleasure in one's love


of God or loving one's love of God as being insufficiently detached from oneself (Adams 1980, 91-92). Indeed, Hopkins is less bothered by motivations for developing disinterested benevolence than by motivations for preferring one's own salvation over that of others. In any event, this reply shows that making room for at least a self-concerned but not self-interested desire to become disinterestedly benevolent refutes the contention that Hopkins is inconsistent.

Nevertheless, Hopkins's disinterested benevolence is irrational, given a non-Humean account of rationality. Hume, famously, makes reason "the slave of the passions" (Hume 1960, bk. 2, pt. 3, sec. 3, 415). He thereby mistakes part of reason for the whole of it. Reason extends not only to appraisal of means to ends but also to the evaluation of ends themselves. Consider the end of being willing to be damned if that is most for God's glory. One must not only consider what spiritual regimen could serve as a means to the end of possessing this willingness, but also consider having this willingness as an end. To evaluate this stated end, unfettered as it is by anything other than God's inscrutable will, one has to see the end as contrary to one's deepest need—namely, to spend eternity in close relation with God. Hell is the opposite of this close relation. It therefore defeats one's deepest need to embrace the end in question. Consequently, it is irrational to be willing to be damned if that is most for God's glory, provided, again, that one has not refused God's saving grace.

Another objection is that a defective view of love undergirds Hopkins's disinterested benevolence. For Hopkins, proper love of oneself is limited to a special case of "love to being in general." However, that is not the way love operates, and here Hopkins neglects the Au-gustinian roots of the Calvinist doctrine of predestination that he refines. God has so made human beings that love—of oneself, of others, of things—has a tendency to be partial. Because of this tendency, love is appropriately channeled by propinquity and measure.

All people are to be loved equally; but since you cannot be of service to everyone, you have to take greater care most of those who are more closely joined to you by a turn, so to say, of fortune's wheel, whether by occasion of place or time, or any other circumstance [Augustine 1990, bk. l,chap. 28, sec. 29].10

But living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things; to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less,

101 quote from Teaching Christianity (1990). This is Edmund Hill's translation of De Doctrina Christiana, elsewhere translated as "On Christian Doctrine."


or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally [Augustine 1990, bk. 1, chap. 27, sec. 28]

The restraints of propinquity and measure channel and reduce, but do not eliminate, the partiality of love. This residual partiality implies that love of neighbor will not be utterly disinterested and will make room for friendship and community (see, for example, Blum 1980). It also implies that love of oneself will not remove every particle of interest in or concern for one's ultimate fate. It is no surprise, therefore, that Augustine thinks differently of the prospect of hell. He displays no willingness to be damned to maximize the glory of God. Not knowing whether one is predestined to salvation, one should struggle as if one were. Augustine's view may be objectionable in a different way, for he also holds that the lists of the elect and the reprobate are closed and that God prepares the wills of the elect to respond to grace but does not thus prepare the wills of the reprobate (Augustine 1844-55, bk. 1, chap. 10, sec. 2, 32:599). Pace Augustine, his God displays an unjust favoritism. Augustine is nevertheless right in developing a view of love that conflicts with Hopkins's disinterested benevolence and does not lead the real or imagined reprobate to embrace their own damnation.

The root difficulty in the self-denial of Hopkins's disinterested benevolence is that he misapprehends the nature of love. Hopkins recognizes that not only love of God but also love of one's neighbor play a role in responding to the prospect of hell. As Oliver O'Donovan states, "Augustine has no place either for a virtue of self-love independent of the love of God or for the love of God without self-love" (O'Donovan 1980, 37). Hopkins's understanding of reprobation reaches back to Calvin and eventually to Augustine but Hopkins does not see that an Augustinian piety makes room for the love of oneself.

Insofar as Hopkins's attitude toward disinterested benevolence is reminiscent of utilitarianism, he ignores the inherent partiality of self-love, most friendships, and some forms of community. Of late, pertinent articles in journals of philosophy have concentrated mainly on the case of friendship and on utility as a criterion of rightness of action versus disinterested benevolence as a motive for action (see, for example, Ashford 2000; Brink 1986; Cocking and Oakley 1995). As with all serious philosophical issues, debate will continue, even if at present nonutilitarians have the better of the argument. Although impartiality is an attractive moral ideal up to a point, one cannot square this ideal with a legitimate interest in or concern for one's ultimate fate. Hopkins's self-denial is radical, and untenable, precisely because it cannot allow that for each Christian his or her


salvation is the ultimate fate about which impartiality is separation from self.

8. Conclusion

What message should one extract from these arguments? As to unqualified self-abandonment, many may say: Common sense dictates that those devout Christians whose perfervid spirituality leads them to think that God wills them to be lost should get a grip on reality and realize that God wills no such thing for them. Others might draw three different conclusions. First, the standard view of self-abandonment and damnation is defective. Second, anyone who is attracted to thoroughgoing views of self-abandonment must be willing to see God's will as sometimes incomprehensible to human beings. Third, though a self-abandoning person could, as argued earlier in this article, allow trust and hope to override love, it is logically and psychologically possible, albeit irrational, for him or her to maintain that the love of God should trump all other considerations. In that case, loving God is an act of the wildest self-abandonment and a perverse and irrational response to the prospect of hell because it runs counter to the Christian's deepest need to spend eternity with God.

It is quite wrong to think that this third conclusion is, as regards rationality, viciously circular. I have heard some argue like this: What it is rationally possible for an individual to accept, you say, must be compatible with his or her ultimate interests; but unqualified self-abandonment, viewed in this way, is impossible only because it is impossible to abandon one's ultimate interests; so your view begs the question, for the advocates of unqualified self-abandonment hold that love of God makes abandonment of one's ultimate interests possible. I reply that this argument confuses impossibility and irrationality. It is no part of the third conclusion that unqualified self-abandonment is impossible. Sometimes people believe or accept what is irrational. As to rationality, it is a mark of philosophical sound sense to suppose that reasons interlock in a coherent way. True enough, good reasons must support this sound sense. In that respect, there is no way out of the self-endorsing legitimation of rationality. Love of God, though it supplies a motive for unqualified self-abandonment, does not provide a good reason for it.

Nevertheless, the qualified self-abandonment of section 5 is intellectually defensible and a viable Christian piety. It is not metaphysically possible for God to will the loss of a self-abandoning individual who is not in a state of mortal sin (or does not satisfy some other plausible criterion of perdition). Faith, and specifically trust, moves the Christian to rely on a personal God whose decisions are not always knowable and yet are counted on to be fair. Hope inspires the Christian to have an ardent desire to rely on God for a favorable ultimate outcome. Faith and hope tell


the believer that he or she matters to God as a unique individual. Faith and hope, in distinguishable yet related ways, supply reasons for the Christian to abandon himself or herself to God, and love gives a motive to do so. The intertwining of faith, hope, and love in these ways enables the Christian to avoid the excessive self-abnegation of quietist and some murky near-quietist views of self-abandonment.

Self-denial fares less well. Calvin's account of the response of the really or supposedly damned to their reprobation is irretrievably defective on philosophical, theological, and scriptural grounds. Hopkins's account of the Christian's response to his or her own real or supposed reprobation is vulnerable for a quartet of reasons: (1) In light of 1 Tim. 2:4, no explanation exists for how it maximizes God's glory to save some and reprobate others so long as no one refuses God's saving grace. (2) Hopkins's disinterested benevolence amounts to a nearly impossible, and certainly unattractive, sort of self-annihilation. (3) His disinterested benevolence is irrational, for it requires Christians to embrace an end that is contrary to their deepest need to be eternally close to God. (4) Finally, Hopkins's disinterested benevolence is undergirded by a defective view of love and specifically of Christian love of oneself and others.

The difficulties of facing the prospect of hell pale beside the difficulties of facing the present fact of hell. This distinction merits attention. In the former case, the individual looks to the future; he or she focuses on the possibility or expectation of perdition. In the latter case, if hell has any inhabitants at all, each inhabitant looks at the present; he or she experiences the reality of hell. Spiritual writers and theologians have paid much more attention to the prospect of hell for the living than to the reality of hell for the damned. And with good reason: It will prove much easier to recommend self-abandonment or self-denial to the living than to the denizens of hell. Unsurprisingly, a near-quietist who contemplated the latter situation quickly put it out of her mind:

One evening, not knowing how to tell Jesus how much I loved Him,... I was saddened at the thought that He would never receive a single act of love from the depths of Hell. Then from the bottom of my heart I said I would consent to be cast into that place of torment and blasphemy, so that even there He would be loved eternally. This could not glorify Him, of course, because it is only our happiness He desires, but when one is in love one says so many foolish things. Even while I spoke like this, I still had an ardent desire for Heaven, though Heaven meant nothing to me save love, and I was sure that nothing could take me from the Divine Being who held me captive [Thérèse of Lisieux 1951, chap. 5, 76-77].

St. Thérèse looked into the abyss and stepped back.


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^ s

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