The Question of an Eternal Hellmodel of human liberty (as I am myself), but who also insist
that it is possible for a soul freely to reject God's love, with
such perfect perspicuity of understanding and intention as to
merit eternal suffering. This is an altogether dizzying contra-
diction. In simple terms, that is to say, they want to assert that
all true freedom is an orientation of the rational will toward an
end that the mind takes in some sense to be the Good, and so
takes also as the one end that can fulfill the mind's nature and
supply its desires. This means that the better the rational will
knows the Good for what it is-the more, that is, that the will
is freed from those forces that distort reason and lead the soul
toward improper ends- the more it will long for and seek after
the true Good in itself; and, conversely, the more rationally it
seeks the Good, the freer it is. In the terms of the great Maxi-
mus the Confessor (c. 580-662), the "natural will" within us,
which is the rational ground of our whole power of volition,
must tend only toward God as its true end, for God is good-
ness as such, whereas our "gnomic" or "deliberative" will can
stray from him, but only to the degree that it has been blinded
to the truth of who he is and what we are, and as a result has
come to seek a false end as its true end. This means also that
the rational soul cannot really will the evil as truly evil in an
absolute sense, even if it knows that what it wills is formally
regarded as wicked by normal standards. Such a soul must at
the very least, even if it has lost the will to pursue goodness as
a moral end, nevertheless seek what it takes to be good for it,
however mistaken it may be in this judgment. In short, sin re-
quires some degree of ignorance, and ignorance is by defini-
tion a diverting of the mind and will to an end they would not
naturally pursue.
So far, so good. I agree with all of that, as I explain in
my Fourth Meditation below. But then, secondly, these same