Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? Freedom, Impeccability, and Beatitude by Simon Francis Gaine

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 643 Will There Be Free Will in Heaven? Freedom, Impeccability, and Beatitude. By SIMON FRANCIS GAINE. London and New York: T & T Clark, 2003. Pp 141. $40.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-567-08950-9. The beatific vision excludes the possibility of sin. Thus George Wall concludes that the blessed are unfree. John Donnelly, conversely, sacrifices the impeccability of the blessed in favor of their freedom (3-7). According to Simon Francis Gaine, Wall and Donnelly are led to these unorthodox views because of an inadequate conception of freedom. Gaine intends to show not only that the freedom of the blessed is coherent with the beatific vision, but that freedom, correctly understood, has its fullest development when the blessed are in complete possession of God and when they are no longer subject to sin. What leads one to see a tension between freedom and impeccability is the understanding of freedom as "freedom of indifference." The tension is solved, however, when one adopts the patristic and Thomistic conception of freedom, which the author, borrowing an expression from Pinckaers, calls "freedom for excellence." Gaine investigates the problem of freedom in heaven mostly from the theological perspective. His main interest is seemingly to defend the orthodox view of eschatology according to which freedom is supremely possessed by the blessed. The framework of the problem of freedom in the presence of the universal good is clearly theological, yet it is also of great philosophical relevance: what is at stake is the understanding of the pedect mode of freedom and the definition of freedom. The question of the freedom of the blessed thus bt:comes a litmus test for an author's understanding of freedom and a test case for the coherence of his psychology and moral theory. The historical approach to this question gives rise to an interesting observation: "It seems that the more voluntarist a theologian becomes, the more he must perhaps limit the freedom of the blessed in order to maintain an orthodox position on impeccability" (84). The main authors Gaine studies are Aquinas, Scotus, Ockham, and Suarez. He first examines Suarez, who is significant as an historian, as it were, of medieval philosophy, and as one of the most influential thinkers to transmit medieval thought to modernity. Suarez provides us with a helpful conceptual tool by distinguishing between an intrinsic cause (i.e., the vision of God) of impeccability and an extrinsic cause (i.e., God's providence or grace}. Suarez attributes the intrinsic view, a position he himself adopts, to Thomas, while he classifies Scotus's and Ockham's views as extrinsic (16-21). Regarding the question of how there is freedom in the blessed, Suarez reviews the classical solutions of Augustine and Anselm of Canterbury for whom freedom, understood as freedom from the slavery of sin (Augustine) and as the power to preserve rectitude (Anselm}, is fully realized in heaven. But Suarez considers this an equivocal use of the notion of freedom, since in its core, freedom means for him not freedom from sin, but freedom from obligation and absence ofnecessity. In this regard, Suarez admits that the blessed are free to a certain extent, but due 644 BOOK REVIEWS to the necessitating character ofthe divine vision, this freedom is diminished (2132 ). On Scotus's account, the finite will of a creature has essentially the power to do otherwise than it does. This does not change in the vision of God. Though one cannot unwill or "nill" (nolle) happiness, one can always turn one's attention away from happiness and thus "not will" it (non velle). The vision of God does not by itself alter the will's capacity to turn away from God. It is God, not as beheld, but as providing a special grace, who prevents the blessed from sinning. God extrinsically determines the will so as to remain steadfast in the free enjoyment of the beatific vision (35-68). Ockham understands freedom as freedom of indifference: whatever the practical intellect dictates, the will has the power to will its opposite. The will does not necessarily will the good in general and it is capable of willing evil as such. The will is thus equally free to...