144 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
ently finite-in fact, in a sense, is pure finitude, pure limit-
and so builds only toward an ending; evil is a tale that can
have only an immanent conclusion; and, in the light of God's
infinity, its proper end will be shown to be nothing but its
own disappearance. Once it has been exhausted, when every
shadow of wickedness-all chaos, duplicity, and violence-
has been outstripped by the infinity of God's splendor, beauty,
radiance, and delight, God's glory will shine in each creature
like the sun in an immaculate mirror, and each soul- born
into the freedom of God's image-will turn of its own nature
toward divine love. There is no other place, no other liberty; at
the last, to the inevitable God humanity is bound by its free-
dom. And each person, as God elects him or her from before
the ages, is indispensable, for the humanity God eternally wills
could never come to fruition in the absence of any member of
that body, any facet of that beauty. Apart from the one who is
lost, humanity as God wills it could never be complete, nor
even exist as the creature fashioned after the divine image; the
loss of even one would leave the body of the Logos incomplete,
and God's purpose in creation unaccomplished.
III
Really, we should probably already know all of this-not for
theological reasons, but simply from a sober consideration of
any truly coherent account of what it means to be a person.
After all, it would be possible for us to be saved as individuals
only if it were possible for us to be persons as individuals; and
we know we cannot be. And this, in itself, creates any number
of problems for the majority view of heaven and hell. I am not
even sure that it is really possible to distinguish a single soul
in isolation as either saint or sinner in any absolute sense, in -