Do the Souls in Heaven or Hell Possess the Capacity to Exercise Human Freedom?

 

 

DO THE SOULS IN HEAVEN OR HELL POSSESS THE CAPACITY TO EXERCISE HUMAN FREEDOM?

Do the souls of in heaven or hell possess the capacity to exercise human freedom? Are they still free to choose or to reject God?

The beatified and the damned are both free, but the beatified are united with God in a manner that makes the opposite choice impossible. Theologians have argued that if the soul sees God in his essence, the decision to choose God would be irresistible, perfectly so. No one can see God and live (Exodus 33:20). In heaven the beatified choose God freely, and they are confirmed by God in their choice.

“In heaven, we will also find perfect happiness. God alone can satisfy our human desires, whatever they may be. We find that infinite satisfaction in Heaven since we are enwrapped in God’s perfect life, truth and love. St. Augustine (d. 430) in his Confessions wrote, ‘Our hearts will not find rest until they rest in Thee’; this perfect rest comes in heaven.

“Therefore, while we retain our free will in heaven, we naturally choose to love the Lord.”

https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/is-there-free-will-in-heaven-1025

—Fr. William Saunders, “Is There Free Will in Heaven?” EWTN

This article appeared in the February 15, 1996 issue of The Arlington Catholic Herald.

In contrast, the damned remain free but are unable to choose God or the good. Their incapacity is because the good, that is, the moral good, no longer presents itself as an object of free choice. The damned desire God with all their being—in this sense, they remain free—but they cannot exercise this choice anymore. It is withheld from them forever. The forever in Hell is an eternal now in the sense that the loss of the beatific vision is an unchangeable attribute of being.

The choice of heaven or hell is irrevocable at the moment after death, the same way that the choice of the angels that rejected God cannot be changed.

True, if we fully knew the consequences of our eschatological choices (we don’t), we would necessarily choose God. However, we are asked to choose under conditions wherein the bestowal of the beatific vision—it is an unmerited gift—depends on the exercise of our freedom without compulsion or necessity.

Therefore, our eschatological decision for or against God is always made under conditions of imperfect but sufficient knowledge of God. Imperfect, because otherwise our choices would not be free—sufficient, because God wills the salvation of everyone and gives everyone at least sufficient grace to attain this end—indeed, God being God, the grace is superabundant.

The angels who rejected God did so under conditions of imperfect but sufficient knowledge. They understood who God is but not perfectly because otherwise they would have chosen God by necessity.

The same conditions of choice, essentially, hold true for human beings. They are asked to choose God under conditions of imperfect but sufficient knowledge. Thus Dives ends up in hell because he did not listen to the prophets and act accordingly, while Peter is rewarded in heaven because he repented of his disavowal of Christ and afterwards fulfilled his mission from Christ wherein the apostle’s faith consisted in a type of imperfect but sufficient knowledge.

“The good news is that while on earth, we still have a chance to change our lives and make good choices, not making the same mistake as Satan.”

https://aleteia.org/2020/10/30/why-did-satan-rebel-against-god/#

—Philip Kosloski, “Why did Satan rebel against God?” Aleteia, October 30, 2020

Of the angels who rejected God, it has been asked,

“…if these angels were in heaven, why would they rebel against God? Both Ignatius of Antioch (d. 110) and Clement of Alexandria (d. 211) speculated that at the beginning, the angels did not possess the full beatitude of heaven. [boldface mine] Instead, they underwent a period of trial and those that made the choice to serve and to love the Lord and to remain faithful to Him attained the full happiness of heaven, whereas those that rebelled were cast into hell.

“St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) expanded this notion of the angels undergoing ‘a period of trial.’ Right after their creation, the angels had ‘to choose’ God to remain in heaven, just as each of us must choose God during our lives on earth to attain heaven. [boldface mine] …Some angels merited the beatitude of heaven by a free-willed act of charity, motivated by grace; others were cast into hell by their free-willed act of pride. In Paradise Lost, Milton penned for Satan the words, ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’ St. Thomas further posited that the ‘beatified angels’ (the good angels in heaven) cannot sin ‘because their beatitude consists in seeing God through His essence...the very essence of goodness’ (Cf. Summa Theologica, Q. 62).”

—Saunders, op. cit.

You say that the choice of the angels and the souls in the afterlife is irrevocable—doesn’t the finality of their decision mean that in the afterlife time does not exist?

Creation exists in time, so that the heaven and hell of the angels and souls exist in time, because time is an attribute of creation.

“…We conceived time as past, present and future in accord with our created matter and space, whereas the angels live in a time, past, present and future, but without the restrictions of matter and space. The medieval theologians called this kind of time aeveternity, [italics mine] the time of the angels between eternity and time.”

—Ibid.

The state or condition of the damned is not static but rather dynamic because it exists in time, albeit unending. The souls of the damned change to the extent that change is possible in time. Private revelation indicates that the souls of the damned exist in time—they experience unspeakable horrors, “unspeakable” principally because they are unending—in their subsistent consciousness, which is dynamic, that is, with a before, present, and after. They are not frozen, inanimate rocks in eternity, in a manner of speaking.

Saint Gregory of Nyssa introduced a theological concept—epektasis, which refers to the continual, unending growth of the beatified in the love of God in heaven. According to this conception, the state or condition of the beatified is dynamic.