PMW 2025-031 by Peter Kreeft

Gentry note:
As I am researching my book on the Two Ages of redemptive history, I am reading a lot of material — some useful for my work, some not (at least directly) useful. This is an interesting clip from Zondervan’s Four Views of Heaven book by Roman Catholic philosopher Peter Kreeft. This is from pp. 172–74 in the Zondervan “Views” book. Surprisingly, it should be insightful and encouraging to Reformed believers. This book (with all its footnotes that I have left out!) is available from Amazon.

Peter Kreeft: “Will we remember tragic events of this life?”

8. Will We Remember Tragic Events of This Life? And Will We Remember and Regret the Absence of the Loved Ones Who Are Not with Us in Heaven because They Are in Hell?

These are two quite different questions. Let’s answer the last and hardest one first.

The question is a trilemma. If we will not regret their absence because we will not remember them, then our happiness would depend on our ignorance of the truth that they are in hell. If we will remember them but not regret their absence, then our happiness would depend on our lovelessness. But truth and love are the two divine and heavenly absolutes. And if we will remember them and regret their absence, then a third heavenly absolute would be sacrificed, namely, joy.

C. S. Lewis answers this trilemma — a truly difficult and worrisome one — in The Great Divorce, first by proving that the answer must be that we will have no loss of joy or love or truth. However God does that, we will do it too. The facts are certain and clear, even though the explanation of how that can work is not. For heaven cannot meet “the demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned (in hell) that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe; that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that hell should be able to veto heaven. . . . Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer allowed to infect it, or else forever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.”

God’s Law Made Easy

(by Kenneth Gentry)

Summary for the case for the continuing relevance of God’s Law. A helpful summary of the argument from Greg L. Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics.

See more study materials at: www.KennethGentry.com

Lewis then explains how this can happen, applying St. Thomas’s distinction between activity and passivity, or act and potency, to the affection of pity or compassion:

“The action of Pity will live forever, but the passion of Pity will not. The passion of Pity, the Pity we merely suffer, the ache that draws men to concede what should not be conceded and to flatter when they should speak truth, the Pity that has cheated many a woman out of her virginity and many a statesman out of his honesty-that will die. It was used as a weapon by bad men against good ones: their weapon will be broken. [But the action of Pity is] a weapon on the other side. It leaps quicker than light from the highest place to the lowest to bring healing and joy…. Every disease that submits to a cure shall be cured, but we will not call blue yellow to please those who insist on still having jaundice.”

Even in this life we can distinguish these two aspects of pity or compassion, even though they are always mingled together. When someone we love does something self-destructive, we say, “How could you do that to yourself?” This is active compassion, pure and unselfish charity. But there is always also an undertone of, “How could you do that to me?” And that is passive and self-centered pity. We cannot and should not try to separate these two aspects in this life, but God will separate them in the next. The activity of love, charity, pity, and compassion will persist, but the passivity or passion will not.

As to the other question: We will remember the tragic events in our life on earth (heaven is not a happy dementia!), but here again action will trump passion. We will remember them not simply passively, like photographs, our minds simply conforming to the events and adding nothing more. Rather, we will remember them actively and creatively, like an artist making a painting from a photograph or like an author writing a beautiful commentary on his own less-than-beautiful book. Even poor books can have great commentaries. We will see these tragic events as God sees them, not as we saw them at the time. This correction and reinterpretation will bring out their deeper meaning. We will see how even these evils were worked out for good by God’s perfect providence (Rom 8:28). We can believe that now (and that is an action, not a passion, for it is a free choice), but we will see it and rejoice in it then, as God does, because we will see our imperfect stories as part of his perfect story. We will see history as His-story.

Openness Unhindered (by Rosaria Butterfield)

Dr. Butterfield goes to great lengths to clarify some of today’s key controversies. She also traces their history and defines the terms that have become second nature today-even going back to God’s original design for marriage and sexuality as found in the Bible. She cuts to the heart of the problems and points the way to the solution.

See more study materials at: www.KennethGentry.com

Thus, in a sense we will make causality work backward in time: our corrected heavenly vision will act on these past earthly events to change their significance, but not their facticity. It will subtract nothing, but it will add the divine interpretation to them. The heavenly commentary we will write on our earthly lives will add no data but will add light to the dark data of our lives on earth. We will see even these dark parts in the light of God’s perfect plan.

I think this must apply not only to tragedies or physical evils suffered but even to sins or spiritual evils done. St. Peter will probably in confessing his greatest sin, his threefold denial of Christ, because it furnished the material and the occasion for his repentance and for God’s amazing grace of forgiveness and because God used this evil for the great good of the edification of millions of Christians. “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom 5:20). Evil cannot become good, but God can work even evils together for good (Rom 8:28), as he did two thousand years ago on Calvary. His revealed will and law is like the published score of a symphony, which we members of the orchestra badly misplay; but his secret will and grace is like a greater score, in which he uses our clunkers for his higher harmonies. We do not usually see this, but we can believe it. Why can we believe it? Simply because he has told us. There are no exceptions to this: “Behold, I make all things new” (Rev 21:5).

This is true even concerning the fall — the primal sin and the source of all the evils in the world. Augustine says of it, “O felicitous fault [felix culpa] that brought about so great a redemption!” Furthermore, we remember the greatest sin ever committed on a holy day that we call “Good Friday.”

Perspectives on Pentecost (Richard Gaffin)
A careful examination of the New Testament teaching on the gifts of the Spirit. Makes a case for the cessation of tongues at the close of the apostolic era. Gaffin is professor emeritus of biblical and systematic theology at Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia.

See more study materials at: www.KennethGentry.com

Everything, not only tragedies (physical evils) but even sins (moral evils), can be elements in heaven’s glory and joy. But the tragedies enter only through the gate of divine providence and the sins only through the gate of human repentance. Not all things are good, but all things work together for good. Not all things are virtuous, but all things, even sin, can be occasions for virtue. St. Thomas says that this is the reason why God deliberately withholds the grace to cure some of our most obvious and embarrassing sins. God foresees that if he gave such grace, the result would be a worse sin (pride), while if he does not, the result will be a great good (humility, self-knowledge, and repentance). God is a utilitarian. We dare not be because we are not God.

GOODBIRTH AND THE TWO AGES
I am currently researching a technical study on the concept of the Two Ages in Scripture. This study is not only important for understanding the proper biblical concept of the structure of redemptive history. But it is also absolutely essential for fully grasping the significance of the Disciples’ questions in Matthew 24:3, which spark the Olivet Discourse. This book will be the forerunner to a fuller commentary on the Olivet Discourse in Matthew’s comprehensive presentation. This issue must be dealt with before one can seriously delve into the Discourse itself.

If you would like to support me in my research, I invite you to consider giving a tax-deductible contribution to my research and writing ministry: GoodBirth Ministries. Your help is much appreciated!