I want to suggest an idea: perhaps it is impossible even for omnipotence to create moral, rational beings who have an awareness of both themselves and God without such beings committing sin. My rationale is as follows:

Perhaps for us to be persons independent from God, it was somehow necessary for us to experience an intentionality of our own, apart from God’s intentionality. Perhaps sin – or, more fundamentally, a “my will over against Gods” – is an experience without which there could be no true distinction or separation from God. We could not say “this is me and that is God” unless there was some sort of separation that would not be possible without sin and a “breaking away” from God. Perhaps sin simply is that: the true emergence of an “I” over and against God’s “I.”

If we take the concept suggested by Lewis and Talbott regarding pain, namely that it may not be possible to perceive the idea of “myself” without some form of pain presented to a consciousness – unless I do possess some desires which are not fulfilled at least in some way – I could not have the experience of “this is me.” If I never experienced pain, it is not clear it would be possible for a self-existent rational being to know itself apart from its fulfilled desires. Perhaps if we take this idea and apply it instead of to a rational, self-conscious being in relation to a physical world, but towards a rational, self-conscious being in relation to another rational, self-conscious, immaterial being (God), we can make some sense of the idea of sin being “necessary.” Maybe the notions of “commandment” and “guilt” serve to point us towards an idea otherwise impossible – a personal being? If there was only matter, I could never have any personal relationship towards that. But if I felt guilty, if I felt like I had violated a person’s will, then I could.

In other words, in what sense could I distinguish *my *will, my intentionality, my self from the will, intentionality, and self of another if there was no opposition or resistance in some way between the two? If the thing presented to me was not simply matter (which would require pain to distinguish from me), but personal, in what sense could I detect it as another person unless it had certain desires contrary to my own? Would I not have to experience God – who is Personhood itself – as an OTHER intent, desire, and will? And to be such an other, would my experiences not have to be, necessarily, different?

Perhaps it must be the case that there exists some sort of contrasting clash between wills, without which the understanding of “me” and “you” (or me and God) would not be possible. Perhaps if sin did not occur, the knowledge of myself and God as two distinct rationalities would not stand out and the distinction could not be made.

None of this would imply that, though sin was necessary, we need not be saved from it. On the contrary, what we need to be saved from more than anything is ourselves. Nor need its necessity imply that we are not still guilty (though not “infinitely” so, I would argue) of being in an objectively wrong relation to our creator.

Any thoughts?

Hi Chris,
I would agree with this and thought it would be interesting to formalize it a bit in a logical argument which may let us focus the discussion a bit.

1. In order for God to create independent free moral agents, it is necessary that they have their own will and not God’s or they would simply be an extension of, or indistinguishable from God.
2. A moral agent with a will other than God’s, will inevitably have desires or perform actions that conflict with God’s will.
3. A moral agent’s actions or desires that conflict with God’s will has sinned.
4. Therefore, if God creates independent free moral agents, sin is inevitable.

Thoughts?

Steve

Chris and Steve, I’m right with you on this. This is very good. I believe this view would not necessitate a literal fall of Adam and Eve, but an inevitable “fallenness” in each individual person.

Mankind is not the only creatures that are “moral, rational beings who have an awareness of both themselves and God.” The angels are also such beings. That some of those creatures sinned implies that they too were given the choice to obey God or disobey. Therefore, we would need to consider whether it was necessary for them to sin as well. However, since it stands that there were some angels that did not sin, then it follows that the second point in the syllogism in the Steve’s post above is not necessarily true, as they, as distinct moral beings did not have desires nor perform actions in conflict with God’s will.

Very interesting discussion. Just checking in here, so I can subscribe.

Dan,
Assuming angels exist, we know very little about their creation, origins etc from scripture. Looking at verses such as Jude 1:6 “And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” we could take a still fairly literal approach to this verse and postulate that angels essentially are created similar to humans, with similar wills and go through a similar process of moral growth but the “fallen angels” at some point “fell”, not from absolute moral perfection, but from, perhaps, some high level of moral attainment. Of course an allegorical interpretation could also be postulated.

Steve

Dan and Steve,

Regarding angels, there’s also this interesting verse:

“For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Col 1:19-20

So does Paul have in mind that God is reconciling demons to him as well through the cross? And would unfallen angels have been reconciled at some point to God through the cross at some point as well?

Spot on guys.

Absolutely sin is the inevitable consequence of true freedom. The Fall is a true myth, a symbolic retelling of mankind’s collective act of self-will. We, the ‘Adam’ (Hebrew for mankind) cannot help but sin simply by being alive and prey to our natural, evolutionary imperatives.

And for me, Universalism and the fully effective remedy for sin are as intrinsically entailed in creation as free will and sin. God knew that sin was inevitable when He created in the first place. He ‘foresaw’ it, because he ‘foresees’ everything that happens, because he is outside of time and all time is eternally present to Him. (But in his eternal observation of the ‘now’, God doesn’t ordain the future. He just sees it happening. An expression I like is ‘God sees what you did tomorrow’.)

God knows that the evolutionary process will produce sentient, self-aware creatures like us, but in doing so it will give us a ‘sin nature’, an innate tendency to do wrong. And He accepts that as the price of the freedom He values so much. And so He plans a way to ‘rescue’ us from the evolved sin nature. That is both the process and the fact of salvation.

Our salvation and eternal destiny were assured in the very act of creation, through the Logos, the agent of creation who is also the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Our role is to exercise our free will to embrace that salvation. God has eternity to manoeuvre us into a position where every single one of us will do just that. And that will be true apokatastasis.

Shalom

Johnny

I’m really sorry that I can’t get further involved in this interesting debate, but hopefully I can just throw out a couple of thoughts.

1. If God knew that free will would inevitably lead to evil and suffering then He is guilty of indirectly causing and willing evil and suffering IMHO. Even for the very best end, if one thinks that ends don’t justify means, then one must end up ascribing moral failing to God for such a creation. Better, perhaps, not to have created at all if His only available method resulted in the horrors I see throughout history. I would say that if God created a universe where evil was guaranteed, or indeed even just probable, then He is morally accountable. Parents can’t give children loaded guns without blame.

2. If free will inevitably results in sin, a) how is it truly free? b) can the redeemed sin in heaven? c) if not, what is the point of going through this universe where sin is inevitable when God could have just started with heaven? d) if people require some sort of experience of evil before being confirmed in holiness where does that leave dead infants and the mentally handicapped?

For these reasons I find it impossible at present to subscribe to the view that freedom inevitably results in evil and suffering and that God willed that in order so He could achieve a good end. I think that God is perhaps smarter and better than that (maybe), and that He could create a universe where suffering wasn’t guaranteed.

Edit: let me add an additional thought. If one holds to open theism + cosmic warfare + universalism, then one could argue that God created a universe with free will where evil was massively unlikely though still possible. In that case one could compare two theodices:

A) God creates the universe where sin and suffering is guaranteed. This would be like a parent giving an infant a loaded gun knowing full well that the child would blow his face off.

B) God creates the universe where there is a slim chance that the good gift of freedom could back-fire. This is like a parent giving a child a sweet/candy knowing that there is a tiny possibility the child could choke (yet knowing how to solve the problem should it arise).

We would judge parent A as evil or stupid; parent B as unlucky. I think God is more deserving of our pity than our castigation.

ECT believes God created just the Light not the darkness, but he is the Creator of everything even darkness for purpose,
everything is under his control, darkness and sin didn’t reveal accidentally

How positive are we that there were angels who never “sinned”? And, even if we postulate such exist – say Seraphim/Cherubim – it need not follow that they have self-awareness. The syllogism only applies to creatures who are aware of themselves as moral agents existing apart from God. That is, it only applies to creatures who have as an object of their knowledge their own existence. It seems perfectly possible to me that some of the higher angels are not aware of themselves at all, but totally absorbed in the contemplation and enjoyment of God.

I can’t imagine sin/evil/pain being totally unwilled by God in an absolute sense, since he could do away with all of it now by annihilating the universe. That would be like me saying “I wish this mess in the floor was not here” and, having the ability, never bending down to pick it up. Neither do I see how an open view absolves God of knowing, at least as a possibility, that sin could enter the world. In either case, its allowance or possible occurrence is/was justified in God’s mind. You say that if God created a universe in which evil was “even probable” he is responsible for it. But do you maintain that God had no idea the likelihood of evil before he created? Did he not establish the parameters of evil/pain/sin before creation? He made the human nervous system and brain and must understand it infinitely better than the best scientist. Did he not therefore know – indeed did he not *establish *-- the “laws” of human physiology, psychology, and pain? And how could God know, if he had no knowledge at all of a free libertarian choice, one way or the other whether evil was “probable” or “improbable”? It seems to me if free choice is entirely unknown – indeed if it is in principle unknowable – applying the ideas of more or less in a probabilistic sense to such free acts is incoherent.

But I believe we can say that God is “ultimately” responsible for sin and maintain his moral perfection – if, and only if, universalism is true (all evil/pain/sin is eventually eternally abolished) and that it was literally impossible for him to achieve this without the entrance of sin (and I try to justify this impossibility by arguing self-conscious, moral agents cannot distinguish themselves as moral beings separate from God and in a personal relationship with him unless sin occurs.)

I understand all answers to the problem of evil try to show how God could not have made a world with as much good without any evil. This is merely my exploration of the dilemma God’s omnipotence comes up against.

To address some of your other points: a) free will would be “free” in this model in the compatibilistic sense - i.e. nothing outside the agent causes him or her to act. In other words, to be a “free” act need only mean that the will of the creature is not violated when an act is performed. b) The redeemed in heaven, therefore, could not sin because their wills would be eternally inclined to the good. c) My point is that God could NOT have just “started us all in heaven.” Sin is a necessary requirement in coming to know oneself as a rational, moral agent separate from God. d) Infants and the mentally handicapped do not possess, presumably, the same level of self-awareness as other people. Therefore their experience and knowledge of sin is either very limited or non-existent. Their experience in heaven may be one which does not involve the knowledge of themselves from a self-conscious perspective, in other words. I imagine there could be all creatures like this, as a matter of fact - animals, certain angels, etc. Of course this does not mean they never experience pain. But pain and sin are different experiences and require different justifications for their entrance into the universe.

Hi Chrisguy,

As before I don’t have great answers, my comments were to simply point out that your proposed solution isn’t an answer either (IMHO).

However, my responses to your comments would boil down to the following:

1. There seems, in my mind, a big difference between temporarily permitting a bad situation to play out if the only other possible response to that situation is more morally reprehensible (annihilation) and deliberately creating the bad situation to begin with.

2. The open views absolves God from creating inevitable evil, and that makes all the moral difference in the world. If God knew that all the evil/suffering would happen He should of either not created or got a better plan. But if God was merely unlucky He cannot be held so morally accountable. There is also a huge gap between what is probable and what is possible. Lots of things are metaphysically possible without being in the slightest bit probable. Evil had to be at least logically possible since if God exists the logical possibility of anti-God must exist also, but that doesn’t make anti-God probable. For it to be moral for God to create a universe then it had to be that evil was as improbable as God could make it, and I see no reason for believing that the creation of evil was something likely. And I certainly see no reason for accepting it was guaranteed, which IMHO is finding moral fault with God.

3. I don’t believe God directly created humans, and therefore their nervous systems etc, and even if He had, if humans had any measure of the kind of libertarian freedom that makes moral accountability understandable, then it may still be, on open theism, that God did not know more than rough probabilities of person x doing y or z (ie the chances of every act of evil). This would be especially true in the aggregate since un-foreknowable freedom means a constantly changing environment which alters the chances/probabilities of further evil acts. Therefore, I’d say that God created the first freewilled being knowing the chances of that being rebelling, that for moral reasons that chance had to be slim, and that He could not have accurately predicted whether or not the holocaust would have happened at that creation point because of all the unknown contingencies that would have to happen between now and then. One thing I think might be possible within omniscience, though, is that God worked through every logically/metaphysically possible scenario for the universe in His head and perhaps in that way could know the chances of things being x or y or z. That seems possible to me.

4. Can something be probabilistic ally known without being meticulously foreknown? I have no idea, but I suspect that analogies drawn from quantum mechanics might show that it is possible. And, again, it seems reasonable to know that only certain possibilities are permitted within certain boundaries, like I know that a ball can land anywhere in a tennis court, but if the court is sealed then the ball cannot land outside. Without a lot of information and a closed deterministic system I can never know exactly where the ball will land, but I do know where it will not land (outside the court). Maybe God knew everything it was possible to know about the system and the ball, knew the kind of places it couldn’t land (certain extreme types of evil and suffering and eventual failure for His plans), but also knew that temporary evil etc was possible in the highly unlikely chance the ball came to rest exactly on one spot.

5. It seems that positive risk taking, adventure, journey and discovery, education and learning, wise response to changing circumstance, planning and forethought etc are all virtues. If God works from a script He doesn’t have those virtues, and seems less good. Indeed, He is only doing what an omnipotent robot could do.

6. I think I see the force of your argument, but do you see the force of mine? Consider some options:

A) God could only create the universe with evil; He foreknew exactly what that would entail, but created anyway. Is universalism enough to justify the horror? You say yes; I think not. I think better to not create in the first place as it would be more moral.

B) God could only create the universe with the chance of evil; He didn’t foreknow the outcome - so took a risk weighing the highly unlikely odds of evil against the certainty that should it arise it still wouldn’t stop His overall plan. I think this scenario makes God more moral than A) above; you fail to see how it is coherent as there are a number of problems with it.

Maybe both A and B don’t work? And, of course, the big difficulty here is that we’re both limiting what it is possible for God to do in order to get Him off the moral hook. But should we limit omnipotence that way?

Hi Pog,
I know you have limited time to participate in this discussion but thought I’d respond to some of your points.

First off, I wouldn’t think of the “necessity of sin” as outlined in the syllogism as a fully developed theodicy by any means, though it could be part of a more developed theodicy whether from an “open” view of God or a classical view. The fact that sin would be inevitable if free moral agents were created does not necessarily mean God foreknew the degree of evil and pain this would result in, nor does it mean that he couldn’t mitigate the evil. I think the power of this argument (“necessity of sin”) is that it doesn’t really limit God.

The only limitation would be a* logical* limitation. Do we limit God when we say he cannot create a round square? That being said, the choice for God then (if the syllogism is true) is whether to bring forth free moral agents that will inevitably sin (but will eventually be brought to the point where they want what God wants), or not to create any free moral agents. I think it’s possible to say (though this may be stretching it) that bringing forth any living creature, whether a moral agent or not, would result in some lower forms of evil. Even in the plant world we have things like strangler figs and parasitic fungi.Perhaps every living creature has a “will” of some sort that is its own and seeks what it wants/needs. The only universe God could have created in order to avoid evil may have been an entirely lifeless one.

Having brought forth these creatures that can’t help but sin, he is certainly responsible for them and the evil they do. Is this like giving a child a loaded gun? Perhaps, but I would suggest that a better analogy is simply parents deciding to have a child. We know going in to parenthood that any child is necessarily imperfect and will “sin”. Does having a child add to the evil in the world? Perhaps in many cases it does, and yet we continue to have children. Are we responsible for the sins or evil of our children? It many cases, yes, depending on how they are raised, if they are abused or neglected, but we generally don’t blame parents for having children who aren’t “sinless”.

So I don’t have a huge problem with God creating creatures who will necessarily sin. What get’s me though is the amount of evil and the severity of it— the usual sickening list of evil such as genocide, child molesters, serial murderers, rapists. Why doesn’t God intervene? This is a problem for the open theist as well, and I’ve heard Greg Boyd talk about the idea that God does limit evil but his limits are greater than the average human would willingly accept. Even if the open theist’s God does not know beforehand what individual decisions a person will make, he can certainly see the patterns; he can see a serial killer plotting his next murder or Hitler or his minions planning “the Final Solution”. There would be enough evidence for the open theist’s God to step in in some fashion, arrange an accident or a fatal illness, but God doesn’t. The fact that God doesn’t intervene, when it seems like he could, is the hardest thing for me to swallow. I can understand the need for epistemic distance in “soul-making” but it just seems that God could intervene more often.

This is actually a very intriguing question! Are infants (or the mentally handicapped) suddenly full-grown 33 year-old adults with all their faculties and a knowledge base comparable to at least the average adult (albeit with odd cravings for strained beets and animal crackers) ? Or perhaps they are, in essence, raised as a child on earth learning from their assigned “parents” and acquire some of the knowledge, experience and perhaps moral decision-making they were unable to. Perhaps there is also some epistemic distance in this environment as well. Something to ponder, I suppose.

Steve

Lots of good points Alec, and you’re right about me having little time … Sorry. I might stop posting after this, at least for a while. Real life is so intrusive

A couple of points:

A) if it is inevitable that I will sin, how am I free? This is a deep issue, but I suspect that most forms of libertarian freedom and meaningful moral accountability require that a being could have chosen not to have sinned. Even if one wants to talk about the massive influence of environment etc, this wouldn’t help with talk about the very first sin ever committed when the environment was as perfect as it could have been. What made the very first sin inevitable?

B) if sin is inevitable given freedom, then I again ask what of heaven and what of infants?

C) regarding logical constraints on omnipotence this is a tricky issue - there’s differing ways of understanding omnipotence. Self contradictory statements might be more word games than objective limitations, so it might be that omnipotence couldn’t make a shoe both a shoe and a non-shoe simultaneously, but omnipotence might not be subject to other logical limitations (especially if God is the ground of rationality to begin with, as He is the ground of morality), so God might be able to make 2+2=5 or make a rock so heavy He couldn’t lift it - and then lift it.

D) I don’t think creating creatures necessitates even lower forms of evil - else heaven/ resurrection won’t see an end to all suffering and evil. And it’s clear that God could make a non- evil life filled universe - after all, what was it like either before creation (just God) or before the first ever instance if sin or pain? And if God can be the cause of other members of the trinity, then what need to create less than perfect beings - just make the trinity an infinity.

E) I have a big problem with both foreknowledge of suffering, and inevitability of suffering. Both could be avoided by an omnipotent God. If universalism solves the moral dilemma that is like saying that all the pain was the entry cost of us going to heaven. It cannot be a moral entry price if the victims weren’t first consulted and agreed.

F) I agree that intervention is a huge issue - but it is a separate one. I hold that God is constantly intervening, else things would be much worse. However, regardless of how one deals with the intervention issue, making evil inevitable and forcing pain without consent only compounds the ethical problem rather than alleviating it. This is why I cannot accept either determinism, foreknowledge or inevitability of sin as part of a theodicy.

Hi Pog,

Thanks for the reponse and don’t worry about responding to this. I’ll try and touch on your points, but just to let you know if it wasn’t clear already, I don’t have a fully developed theodicy that makes all the evil and horror of the world make sense but I think these discussions (at least for me) do shed some light on the subject.

I would say it was inevitable because the first sinner’s will was not the same will as God’s and had different goals, priorities and desires. Being a different individual with a different will (and not being omniscient) would lead to wanting to do or thinking something outside of God’s will. This would be “sin”. The presence of epistemic distance would be necessary for the “sinner” to understand himself as a separate person from God and would also be necessary to allow the possibility of sin. If sin is inevitable, how is it free? The choice to sin was not compelled or forced, the individual had a certain amount of intellectual capacity and saneness, and the choice was indeed that individual’s choice. Is it absolutely free? Perhaps not, as that may require omniscience. Also, was the environment “as perfect as it could have been”? You may be alluding to the “fall” of angels or perhaps Adam’s sin in the garden. As far as Adam’s fall goes, I don’t take that very literally (more as a “true Myth” to quote Johnny) and suspect the first human sin took place in a smoky cave somewhere. As far as the first scenario, I think there must have been, again, some epistemic distance for an angel to “sin”. Perhaps the angel was out on the edge of the universe on a mission of some sort. In any event, I am pretty agnostic about the fall of angels, cosmic warfare etc. at this point.

I would say sin is not possible in heaven for the redeemed as they have then completed the process of “dying to self” and being conformed to the Will of God. I doubt this is an instant process, though if someone has gone far along this path in life, it may just take a brief moment in the presence of God to remove the last the trace of “self”. In others, it may require “the consuming fire”. As far as babies go, my suspicion is that they do undergo some type of maturing process. This is pure speculation of course. Would this take place in heaven? Maybe the “suburbs” of heaven or some other realm but certainly not in the direct presence of God as* some* epistemic distance would be necessary. . Do they go through the same stages as a human child? Would they be self-willed initially? I suspect so. As they reach the point of moral accountability, can they sin? Maybe. I would think this process would be much kinder, more efficient and though it may involve pain, would not involve the type of evil children are too often subjected to on earth.

It’s certainly a tricky issue, but I do think there is a certain power to the logic of “the necessity of sin” argument. I’ll leave it at that.

A couple points here, the end of suffering/evil in heaven/resurrection involves a redemption of the created earth. Perhaps it necessarily had to start out imperfect? As far as making the Trinity an infinity, is that even possible? You’ll have to ask Jason Pratt.

Should we also rail at our parents for bringing us into the world without our consent? I agree that the foreknowledge and inevitability of suffering is a problem, but don’t we know our children will inevitably suffer and also eventually die? Are we moral monsters as well? Of course, we don’t have the ability to change the conditions of this human life, but maybe God is constrained as well in some fashion. Certainly, God has ultimate responsibility and a lot to answer for.

Interesting…it seems (and I may be reading this wrong) that the inevitability of evil is a bigger problem for you than the degree of intervention. For me it’s the opposite. To use the parent analogy again, (or overuse it) for me, I’m fine being born into this world, but if I was being tortured with a red-hot poker and my parents just stood there with their arms crossed, well… to say the least, I might question their love.

All the best,
Steve

A quick couple of comments whilst I grab time - you made good points as always.

If babies can be matured and perfected in heaven why couldn’t God perfect us all that way? Why do they escape the horror and we don’t? What compelled God to make a universe like this, when He could have made a heavenly one?

I’m not sure how freedom, inevitability of sin, epidemic distance, heaven and ability to not sin all work together coherently. Are we less free in heaven than now? Can God collapse the epistemically distance without overwhelming us in heaven, but not here - then why the point of here?

Intervention is still the big issue, it’s just that foreknowledge/deliberate actualisation of sin is also huge. Consider you hot poker analogy. I agree that if my parents stood by and watched me be tortured when they could easily step in and stop it then I would seriously question their love for me. However, I would question it more if I discovered that they were the ones who created the torturer and his implements, booked the room, drive me to the chamber and pushed me in bound hand and foot knowing full well the outcome, and said it was for my eventual end good. I really can’t see how God choosing to actualise inevitable evil helps in terms of justifying His love one iota.

Hi Pog,
Good points as usual. The “babies in heaven” discussion may well warrant another thread. I’d be interested to hear other thoughts on this, see if anyone knows some historical views on this, thoughts from NDEs etc.

The non-intervention of God to stop or prevent evil might be worth a thread as well.

As far the 'inevitability of sin" goes, it would be interesting to try and incorporate that into an open theist argument to try and mitigate the culpability of God further. As you know, I’m certainly sympathetic to the open theist views, though I find my concept of God shifting between the classical and open views much like that picture of the “young woman and the crone”.

In regards to heaven and collapsing epistemic distance, there is much there to discuss and I think completely collapsing epistemic distance would indeed overwhelm and individual and eliminate a knowledge of self. In essence, doing this would “swallow-up” the individual. A decrease in epistemic distance would lead to greater understanding without eliminating the individual. Why not use this approach now? That’s certainly an excellent question but there must be some “good” achieved by maintaining the distance at least for awhile and working towards knowledge of God, the world, Truth and morality in an environment of uncertainty and ignorance.

A couple more thoughts: taking the syllogism I posted earlier, we could come up with this corollary:

1. In order for sin not to be inevitable, a free moral agent must have the will of God, with the same goals and desires.
2. A free moral agent with the will of God would be unable to sin.
3. If sin is not inevitable, it is impossible.

The implications of this would include the thought that once free moral agents conform to the mind or will of Christ, they are confirmed in sinlessness.

Steve

You cut to the chase here, pog. The epistemic distance issue has long troubled me deeply. The obvious truth is that if God exists then He has indeed created us at an epistemic distance. The saints and mystics can say what they like; us ordinary folk do not live with any immediate knowledge of God. That’s a fact.

So for me there are only two alternatives: epistemic distance is necessary (or at the very least very important) to God’s ‘plan’ for creation, or God does not exist.

And if epistemic distance is necessary now, here, on this miserable sodding earth, for us miserable sodding humans, whither all those who die without the saving knowledge of God?

I guess my tentative answer is that epistemic distance must continue on, to the ages of the ages, until we freely, at an epistemic distance, embrace the truth. But if that is true, then there must be continuity of awareness between this life and every life to come. And if we are aware in the next life that we have passed from this one into it, and haven’t died eternally, what then? Either we become aware of God’s role in our ‘resurrection’, in which case the epistemic distance is destroyed, or we just accept that, in a way we don’t understand, our lives have continued on from one plane to another. And surely that scenario could pertain forever? And hence we might never be saved?

I dunno, it all seems like Greek to me.

Well, what is your opinion about this? I read but I don’t know may be they are right:
godsplanforall.com/godswillversusmans

and skim the book you will find an article about babies in heaven, I don’t remember where is it,