180 Apokatastasis: Four Meditations
IVI have to admit that, despite all I have just said, it is not pri-
marily on any of these metaphysical or logical grounds that
I find the free will defense of eternal torment an especially
absurd one (though I do take them to be decisive), but rather
as a matter of simple empirical observation. Nothing in our
existence is so clear and obvious and undeniable that any of
us can ever possess the lucidity of mind it would require to
make the kind of choice that, supposedly, one can be damned
eternally for making or for failing to make. Anyone who plays
the game of life in life's house knows that the invisible figure
hidden in impenetrable shadows on the far side of the baize
table not only never shows his hand, but never lets us see the
stakes of the wager, and in fact never tells us the rules. I am
not denying that there is such a thing as revelation; but I do
deny that very many of us can claim to have been accorded
such a thing directly. We believe obscurely, hopefully, on the
testimony of others. The real, unmistakable, ultimately irrefut-
able revelation of reality to all of us is one that as yet lies ahead,
at that unimaginable moment when-and in that undiscov-
erable place where-we will no longer see all things as in a
glass darkly, but will instead be granted a vision of reality "face
to face" (1 Corinthians 13:12). If we lived like gods above the
sphere of the fixed stars, and saw all things in their eternal as-
pects in the light of the "Good beyond beings," then perhaps it
would be meaningful to speak of our capacity freely to affirm
or freely to reject the God who made us in any absolute sense.
As it is, we have never known such powers, and never could
in this life. What little we can know may guide us, and what
little we can do may earn us some small reward or penalty; but
heaven and hell, according to the received views, are absolute