February 4, 2026

Before proceeding any further in our discussions of Gnosticism in particular, or theology more generally, it would seem appropriate to first establish that we are not merely wasting our time with the discussion of fantasy and establish that there is an actual object that is the proper end of our inquiries. As, at the heart of all theological discourse is the notion of God, it would seem then that our first order of business should be to show that we have good reason to believe that there is in fact a God that we can study and attempt to understand as fully as our natures will allow us. For this reason, we shall begin this essay by considering the grounds of our belief in God. We shall find our justification for the belief in God in the dual grounds of direct experience and rational proof, in particular the modal version of the ontological argument as advanced by Alvin Plantinga. Having established God’s existence, we shall turn to an examination of God’s nature, arguing that God’s omnipotence gives us reason to go beyond Plantinga’s framework to full-blown modal realism, a la David Lewis. We will then apply our findings to resolve some of the tensions that arise between Calvinists and other denominations over the matters of free will, predestination, and the role of grace in salvation as well as to point to some dormant hints at our solution in ancient Gnostic texts. 

Let us, at the outset, clarify any potential confusion or worries that, in attempting to establish a modal theology, we are in any way trying to resurrect the ancient Christian heresy known as modalism. Modalism, in this historical sense, refers to the notion that the three members of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are not three distinct persons, but merely three different modes through which God might manifest Himself. Our use of modal here, on the other hand, should be understood in the same vein as it is used in modal logic, that branch of logic that studies notions such as possibility, contingency, and necessity. Thus, modality, as we understand it here, has nothing to do with the ancient doctrine of modalism and, moreover, we will be more than happy to admit that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three distinct persons, not merely three different modes of God’s manifestation. 

Having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, let us turn to our reasons for believing that God does, in fact, exist. The most immediate evidence we have of God’s, or any other thing’s, existence is direct experience. Just as my strongest evidence that the desk in front of me exists is my ability to see and feel it, so too is my strongest evidence for God my ability to see, feel, hear, and speak with God. And I am not alone. History presents us with a trove of examples of people who have had intense mystical experiences in which they claim to have come face to face with God. But the manner in which we directly experience God is obviously quite different from the manner in which we directly experience a desk. The spiritual faculties through which we perceive God tend to be far more subtle than those physical senses through which we perceive a desk and, often, these subtle perceptions can be drowned out by the constant and overwhelming onslaught of the physical senses. To perceive God requires, as Jesus tells us, ears to hear and eyes to see. And even if one does have the requisite eyes and ears, in a world where base naturalism all too often rules the day, one might still resist allowing themselves to believe in God, writing off their experiences as hallucination, delusion, or mere wishful thinking. For that reason, it is necessary to look beyond mere experience and find a rational proof for the existence of God that allows us to rest assured that our experiences of the Divine are, in fact, confirmations of the existence of the Divine and not the result of hallucination or any other sort of delusion. 

Over the course of philosophical history, a number of novel attempts to prove the existence of God have been proposed, some more convincing than others. While many of these arguments are quite interesting and deserve to be analyzed in their own right, for our purposes today, we shall confine our focus to a single argument that is the most simple, to the point, and promising, namely the argument typically referred to as the ontological argument. The ontological argument was first explicitly put forth in the eleventh century by St. Anselm of Canterbury. Stated simply, Anselm argues that we can conceive of a being than which none greater can be conceived, and observes that, because it is better to exist in reality than merely in the understanding, then this being must exist in reality, otherwise, we could conceive of a being having all of the same qualities as this first, but which actually exists in reality, in which case we could conceive of a being greater than this being than which nothing greater could possibly be conceived, which is absurd. Therefore, in order to avoid this absurdity, we must suppose that this being than which none greater can be conceived exists not merely in our understanding, but in reality as well. 

As far as I can tell, this argument is both valid and sound and it presents an air-tight case for the existence of God that few, if any, other arguments can even begin to approach. Nevertheless, it has raised a great deal of suspicion on the part of its opponents who claim that the argument amounts to little more than an intellectual magic trick. Some object that the argument is guilty of illegitimately defining God into existence. But I’m not sure what precisely is meant by this objection. If God is defined as a being than which none greater can be conceived, why should it be illegitimate to help ourselves to this definition in the formulation of our argument? And if, proceeding from this definition, we are able to construct a valid argument with true premises that shows that by consequence of this definition, God must exist, why should we not conclude that the argument is sound and that God must, in fact, exist? Perhaps the most famous objection along these lines was raised by Gaunilo, a Benedictine monk and contemporary of Anselm. Gaunilo argued that Anselm’s argument is absurd, because it allows us to define anything we’d like into existence at all. To demonstrate this he ran the argument again, this time replacing God with the Lost Island, which he defines as an island than which none greater can be conceived. Arguing parallel to Anselm, Gaunilo claims that because the Lost Island’s failure to exist in reality would imply a contradiction as we could then conceive of a greater island that has all of the qualities of the Lost Island in addition to existing in reality, we must conclude that the Lost Island, in fact, exists in reality. Anselm, however, responds that the argument does not succeed because the ontological argument only applies to necessary objects while islands are necessarily contingent objects. 

Thus the ontological argument lived on being adopted by a number of philosophers over the century, most notably Rene Descartes, in his Meditations on First Philosophy. But with the appearance of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason a new objection came on the scene which many, to this day, consider to have dealt a decisive blow to the ontological argument. Kant objected to the notion that an existent being than which none greater can be conceived would be better than a non-existent one on the grounds that existence is not an actual predicate as it adds nothing to the concept of an object. I must confess that, despite my great admiration for Kant, I do not find this argument convincing in the slightest, and I am perplexed as to why so many other philosophers do find it convincing. The flaw in the argument is immediately apparent in the very example that Kant himself gives. He asks us to imagine a hundred thalers (a denomination of money in Kant’s time) in our mind as opposed to a hundred thalers in reality. He argues that both of these will have all of the same properties as one another and so, therefore, existence cannot be a predicate as it adds no distinguishing property to the actual thalers that the thalers in our mind do not have. But this sort of argument is absolutely absurd on its face and that absurdity is especially highlighted in the object Kant chose for his demonstration. It is immediately clear that there is all the difference in the world between money that exists only in our mind and money that actually exists in our pocket and all that we need to do to convince ourselves of this is to go into the nearest store and try to buy something with the money in our mind. No doubt, if the cashier isn’t too frustrated with our antics, we will be laughed right out of the store. 

While I believe the rebuttals to these objections to be sufficient to establish the legitimacy of the ontological argument in the form that St. Anselm originally presented it, we are fortunate that Alvin Plantinga has given us a new formulation of the argument designed specifically to get around these sorts of objections by appealing to modal logic which he has laid out in his now classic work on modal logic, The Nature of Necessity. He writes there, 

Is there a way to remove this flaw? Perhaps. Why, after all, should we think that necessary existence is a perfection or great-making quality? Because the greatness of a being in a world W depends not merely upon the qualities it has in W; what it is like in other worlds is also relevant. In the course of an attempt to disprove God’s existence J.N. Findlay puts this point as follows: 

Not only is it contrary to the demands and claims inherent in religious attitudes that their object should exist “accidentally”; it is also contrary to these demands that it should possess its various excellences in some merely adventitious manner. It would be quite unsatisfactory from the religious stand point, if an object merely happened to be wise, good, powerful, and so forth, even to a superlative degree… And so we are led on irresistibly, by the demands inherent in religious reverence, to hold that an adequate object of our worship must possess its various excellence in some necessary manner. 

I think there is sense in what Findlay says. His point is that the greatness of a being in a world W does not depend merely upon its qualities and attributes in W; What it is like in other worlds is also to the point. Those who worship God do not think of him as a being that happens to be of surpassing excellence in this world but who in some other worlds is powerless or uninformed or of dubious moral character. We might make a distinction here between greatness and excellence;  we might say that the excellence of a being in a given world W depends only upon its (non world-indexed) properties in W, while its greatness in W depends not merely upon its excellence in W, but also upon its excellence in other worlds. The limiting degree of greatness, therefore, would be enjoyed in a given world W only by a being who had maximal excellence in W and in every other possible world as well. And now perhaps we do not need the supposition that necessary existence is a perfection; for (as I argued in Chapter VIII) a being has no properties at all and a fortiori no excellent-making properties in a world in which it does not exist. So existence and necessary existence are not themselves perfections, but necessary conditions of perfection. 

We may state this argument more fully as follows. 

(34) The property has maximal greatness entails the property has maximal excellence in every possible world.

(35) Maximal excellence entails omniscience, omnipotence, and moral perfection. 

(36) Maximal greatness is possibly exemplified. 

But for any property P, if P is possibly exemplified, then there is a world W and an essence E such that E is exemplified in W, and E entails has P in W. So

(37) There is a world W* and an essence E* such that E* is exemplified in W* and E* entails  has maximal greatness in W*. 

If W* had been actual, therefore, E* would have been exemplified by an object that had maximal greatness and hence (by(34)) had maximal excellence in every possible world. So if W* had been actual, E* would have been exemplified by a being that for any world W had the property has maximal excellence in W. But every world-indexed property of an object is entailed by its essence (Chapter IV, Section 11). Hence if W* had been actual, E* would have entailed, for every world W, the property has maximal excellence in W; hence it would have entailed the property has maximal excellence in every possible world. That is, if W* had been actual, the proposition

(38) For an object x, if x exemplifies E*, then x exemplifies the property has maximal excellence in every possible world

Would have been necessarily true. But what is necessarily true does not vary from world to world. Hence (38) is necessary in every world and is therefore necessary. So

(39) E* entails the property has maximal excellence in every possible world. 

Now (as we have learned from Chapter VIII) a being has a property in a world W only if it exists in that world. So E* entails the property exist in every possible world. E* is exemplified in W*; hence if W* had been actual, E* would have been exemplified by something that existed and exemplified it in every possible world. Hence

(40) If W* had been actual, it would have been impossible that E* fail to be exemplified. 

But again, what is impossible does not vary from world to world; hence it is in fact impossible that E* fail to be exemplified; so E* is exemplified; so 

(41) There exists a being that has maximal excellence in every world. 

That is, there actually exists a being that is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect; and that exists and has these properties in every possible world. This being is God. 

A similar but simpler version of the argument could go as follows. Let us say that unsurpassable greatness is equivalent to maximal excellence in every possible world. Then

(42) There is a possible world in which unsurpassable greatness is exemplified. 

(43) The proposition a thing has unsurpassable greatness if and only if it has maximal excellence in every possible world is necessarily true. 

(44) the proposition whatever has maximal excellence is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect is necessarily true. 

Now here we should notice the following interesting fact about properties. Some, like is a human person, are instantiated in some but not all worlds. On the other hand, however, there are such properties as is a person in every world. By principle that what is necessary or impossible does not vary from world to world, this property cannot be instantiated in some worlds but not in others. Either it is instantiated in every world or it is not instantiated at all. Using the term ‘universal property’ in a way slightly different from the way we used it before, we might say that

D ₂P is a universal property if and only if P is instantiated in every world or in no world. 

But clearly the property possesses unsurpassable greatness is universal in this sense, for this property is equivalent to the property of having maximal excellence in every world; since the latter is universal, so is the former. 

From (42) and (43), therefore, it follows that 

(45) Possesses unsurpassable greatness is instantiated in every world. 

But  if so, it is instantiated in this world; hence there actually exists a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and morally perfect and who exists and has these properties in the world. 

What shall we say of these arguments? Clearly they are valid; and hence they show that if it is even possible that God, so thought of, exists, then it is true and necessarily true that he does. The only question of interest, it seems to me, is whether its main premiss – that indeed unsurpassable greatness is possibly exemplified, that there is an essence entailing unsurpassable greatness is true. I think this premiss is indeed true. Accordingly, I think this version of the Ontological Argument is sound. 

This is certainly an impressive argument. Plantinga’s assessment that whether or not we accept the argument comes down to whether or not we accept the premise that it is possible for the property of unsurpassable greatness to be exemplified seems correct. So, what are we to say about this premise? Is it plausible? I certainly see no reason why we should think it isn’t. But, at the same time, I’m not entirely sure if there is any rational argument to be made to convince one who finds this premise implausible otherwise. But rational argument isn’t the only way to change someone’s mind. Direct experience of the Divine could also prove sufficient to convince someone that the premise is true. Indeed, I must testify that such experience was what ultimately convinced me to conclude once and for all that it is possible for unsurpassable greatness to be exemplified. Thus, rational argument and direct experience mutually reinforce each other. Rational argument is necessary to reassure us that our experiences of the divine are not mere madness, while our experience of the divine gives us the confidence to affirm that our rational arguments are indeed sound. 

But Plantinga’s argument inspires wonder in another direction as well. What is all this talk about worlds? Many of us, no doubt, instinctively assume that there is but one world, this world, the actual world in which we live. But as it turns out, talk of possible worlds is integral to the study of modal logic. In trying to understand possibility, contingency, and necessity, we frequently have reason to speak of how things could have been, how they had to have been, or how they could never be. In doing so, we are, whether we realize it or not, describing different worlds, for a world is nothing more than a complete state of affairs, whether that state of affairs is actual or merely possible. Thus, as it turns out, possible worlds are indispensable to the way we think about our own world and our everyday language is filled with appeals to these worlds that are not truly our own. Still, we might think, these worlds are not real in the same sense that the actual world in which we live and breathe is real, right? These must be merely figments of our imagination; mental fictions that help us to conceptualize our own world, but with no reality beyond this. This certainly is how Plantinga himself tends to think of possible worlds. 

But other philosophers are hesitant to dismiss these possible worlds as radically different or in any sense less real than our own world so quickly (As Sun Ra might put it, there are other worlds they have not told you of). By far the most prominent defender of the reality of these possible worlds, a position we may refer to as modal realism, was the philosopher David Lewis. So, what reasons and arguments does Lewis present to prove that modal realism is true? As it turns out, he is exceedingly cautious and humble in advancing his case. He writes in the preface of his book On the Plurality of Worlds,

Nowhere in this book will you find an argument that you must accept the position I favour because there is no alternative. I believe that philosophers who offer such arguments are almost never successful, and philosophers who demand them are misguided. I give some reasons that favour my position over some of its close alternatives. But I do not think that these reasons are conclusive; I may well have overlooked some close alternatives; and I do not discuss more distant alternatives at all.

And when we consider the reasons why Lewis finds modal realism an attractive theory, as it turns out, his reasons are surprisingly simple; in essence, they boil down to matters of convenience and utility. Essentially, modal realism offers us, as Lewis puts it, a “philosopher’s paradise” that we can’t afford to pass up. As he explains in the first chapter of his book, 

Why believe in a plurality of worlds? – Because the hypothesis is serviceable, and that is a reason to think that it is true. The familiar analysis of necessity as truth at all possible worlds was only the beginning. In the last two decades, philosophers have offered a great many more analyses that make reference to possible worlds, or to possible individuals that inhabit possible worlds. I find that record most impressive. I think it is clear that talk of possibilia has clarified questions in many parts of the philosophy of logic, of mind, of language, and of science – not to mention metaphysics itself. Even those who officially scoff often cannot resist the temptation to help themselves abashedly to this useful way of speaking. 

Hilbert called the set-theoretical universe a paradise for mathematicians. And he was right (though perhaps it was not he who should have said it). We have only to believe in the vast hierarchy of sets, and there we find entities suited to meet the needs of all the branches of mathematics; and we find that the very meagre primitive vocabulary of set theory, definitionally extended, suffices to meet our needs for mathematical predicates; and we find that the meagre axioms of set theory are first principles enough to yield the theorems that are the content of the subject. Set theory offers the mathematician great economy of primitives and premises, in return for accepting rather a lot of entities unknown to Homo javanensis. It offers an improvement in what Quine calls ideology, paid for in the coin of ontology. It’s an offer you can’t refuse. The price is right; the benefits in theoretical unity and economy are well worth the entities. Philosophers might like to see the subject reconstructed or reconstrued; but working mathematicians insist on pursuing their subject in paradise, and will not be driven out. Their thesis of plurality of sets is fruitful; that gives them good reason to believe that it is true. 

Good reason; I do not say it is conclusive. Maybe the price is higher than it seems because set theory has unacceptable hidden implications – maybe the next round of set-theoretical paradoxes will soon be upon us. Maybe the very idea of accepting controversial ontology for the sake of theoretical benefits is misguided – so a sceptical epistemologist might say, to which I reply that mathematics is better known than any premise of sceptical epistemology. Or perhaps some better paradise might be found. Some say that mathematics might be pursued in a paradise of possibilia, full of unactualised idealisations of things around us, or of things we do – if so, the parallel with mathematics serves my purpose better than ever! Conceivably we might find some way to accept set theory, just as is and just as nice a home for mathematics, without any ontological commitment to sets. But even if such hopes come true, my point remains. It has been the judgement of mathematicians, which modest philosophers ought to respect, that if that is indeed the choice before us, then it is worth believing in vast realms of controversial entities for the sake of enough benefit in unity and economy of theory. 

As the realm of sets is for mathematicians, so logical space is a paradise for philosophers. We have only to believe in the vast realm of possibilia, and there we find what we need to advance our endeavours. We find the wherewithal to reduce the diversity of notions we must accept as primitive, and thereby to improve the unity and economy of the theory that is our professional concern – total theory, the whole of what we take to be true. What price paradise? If we want the theoretical benefits that talk of possibilia brings, the most straightforward way to gain honest title to them is to accept such talk as the literal truth. It is my view that the price is right, if less spectacularly so than in the mathematical parallel. The benefits are worth their ontological cost. Modal realism is fruitful; that gives us good reason to believe that it is true. 

Good reason; I do not say it is conclusive. Maybe the theoretical benefits to be gained are illusory, because the analyses that use possibilia do not succeed on their own terms. Maybe the price is higher than it seems because modal realism has unacceptable hidden implications. Maybe the price is not right; even if I am right about what theoretical benefits can be had for what ontological cost, maybe those benefits are not worth those costs. Maybe the very idea of accepting controversial ontology for the sake of theoretical benefits is misguided. Maybe – and this is the doubt that most interests me – the benefits are not worth the cost, because they can be had more cheaply elsewhere. Some of these doubts are too complicated to address here, or too simple to address at all; others will come in for discussion in the course of this book. 

So, then, the case for modal realism, at least as Lewis has it, is not air-tight. We cannot be absolutely certain that modal realism is true, but we have good reason to suspect that it is true as doing so aligns with our common mode of speaking and the benefits of doing so for our theorizing are far too great to ignore. Though this might not be absolute proof that modal realism is true, we must admit that Lewis gives us compelling motivations, especially in his comparison to set theory, to suppose that it is, in fact, true and to proceed with our investigations as though it were. We might add an additional argument in favor of modal realism and against Plantinga’s view that possible worlds are merely abstract entities on the grounds that in order for possible worlds to do the work they are supposed to do in modal reasoning, we must suppose world that the worlds of our counterfactuals are precisely like ours except for the facts altered by counterfactuals. Thus, in a world where I make some slightly different decision than I do in the actual world, every other aspect of that other world would be the same as this world apart from the decision in question. The “me” in that other world must have experiences like I have in this world. Likewise there must be something that it is like for all of the other inhabitants of that world. Though we may be unable to directly access that other world, so too are the inhabitants of that world unable to directly access our world, but just as their inability to access our world does not undermine the reality of our experiences in this world, our inability to access that other world must not undermine the reality of the experiences in that other world. Thus, even if actuality is, as Lewis contends, an indexical property according to which only that world in which we find ourselves is actual, we must suppose that other worlds are every bit as concrete as our own.

Though, as far as I am aware, Lewis was a life-long atheist, it is worth pointing out that a very similar argument could be used to justify belief in God. There are many ways, it can be argued, that supposing God to exist provides us with theoretical and practical benefits that far outweigh whatever costs might be associated with such belief. For instance, God provides us with a ground for the existence of objective moral truths by reassuring us that there is an all-seeing and impartial judge capable of appropriately weighing our actions and administering appropriate deserts in accord with our conduct. This, indeed, is the essential thrust of the moral argument for the existence of God. In addition, supposing that God exists also provides theoretical unity and economy and is incredibly fruitful in very similar ways to set theory and modal realism, for not only does God give us a ground for morality, but also a ground for being itself. God provides us with profound explanatory power going well beyond the impressive feats of the empirical sciences, which succeed only in describing external, phenomenal reality, providing us with the ultimate reasons for and meaning of our existence. Interestingly, a belief in God might even prove to be more fruitful than modal realism, for, as it turns out, supposing that God exists gives us very good reason to think that modal realism is true. 

The reason for this flows directly from the perfections traditionally regarded as essential to God’s nature, in particular, God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and, especially, omnibenevolence, which give us good reason to think that God has created all possible worlds as a necessary consequence of His very nature. In the first place, if God is omnipotent, wouldn’t the greatest possible display of that power consist in God demonstrating that He is capable of making every single possibility a reality? If He did not, could we not, then, perhaps conceive of a being more powerful than God? The modal sceptic might, of course, answer that God’s failure to instantiate every possible world would not necessarily imply that God is not omnipotent. After all, simply because we refrain from doing something does not mean that we did not have the ability to do it and, perhaps, God has some good reason not to instantiate every possible world. However, presumably, in order for God to know that it is not worth his while to instantiate some possible worlds, He must have some knowledge of those worlds and the features that disqualify them from being worthy of instantiation. But how could God know which worlds are and are not worthy of instantiation without knowing the properties of those worlds and how could He know the properties of those worlds without their being instantiated? It might be said that God, being omniscient, knows of every property of every possible world even before those worlds are instantiated. But how could God know the nature of a world before it is instantiated? Perhaps these worlds merely exist in God’s mind as thoughts, but what distinguishes a world that exists as a mere thought in God’s mind from a world that is properly instantiated? If there is an answer to this question, I suspect it is beyond human comprehension, but from my lowly place as a mere human, I cannot for the life of me comprehend how God’s thinking of a world is any different from God’s instantiation of a world. This brings us to omnibenevolence. If God is all-good and all-loving, does it not seem reasonable to suppose that God should demonstrate that love by instantiating all possible things? 

As it turns out, however, omnibenevolence might just be the perfection that serves as the foundation of the strongest case against modal realism. Perhaps, rather than being compelled to create all worlds out of a love for those worlds and their inhabitants, it is God’s love that forces him to forgo creating some worlds in order to prevent the evil and suffering that will inevitably take place in those worlds. Indeed, Leibniz famously asserted (and Kris Kristofferson agreed) that God, having considered every other possible world, decided to create this world in which we live, and this world alone, because, for some reason or another, God concluded that our world is the best of all possible worlds. We must, in the first place, admit that there is a certain kind of sense to Leibniz’ declaration. Surely, God, being that being than which none greater can be conceived, in any creative endeavour, would create the greatest example of that which He set out to create that is possible. Thus, if God created our world, is it not reasonable for us to presume that our world must, in fact, be the best of all possible worlds? This reasoning might appear sound on the surface, but as soon as we step back from these abstract rationalizations and take a good luck at the nature of the world we find around us, it is not hard for our confidence to quickly turn to doubt. Sure, our world is generally nice, with various beauties, comforts, and the like to occupy us, but it is hardly the case that everything in our world is so pleasant or desirable, but our world is also filled with all manners of evil, horrors, and suffering. Does the best world God can create really still contain war, famine, pestilence, and the like? What sort of God would be helpless but to create a world of such marked imperfection? Surely not an omnipotent one. However, the Leibnizian might reply that though our world is not perfect in every single respect, it is still possible that it is the best of all possible worlds. Perhaps, they might say, moral perfection is not the sole measure of a world’s perfection. For instance, perhaps it was better that God create a world in which free will exists than one in which it does not even if that means that some evil will enter into the world as a result of this free will. Perhaps, God judged that it was better to have a world with some diversity rather than uniform moral purity. Indeed, perhaps, God saw that only by allowing some evil into the world could the true good of moral perfection be fully understood. 

These certainly are interesting, even plausible, explanations of the evil we observe in the world and let us, for the sake of argument, accept them for the time being. While these explanations might help to explain why God saw fit to create our world, they do very little to establish that God must create exactly one world and, on the contrary, even give us reason to think that God should have created very many worlds. This is because, even if we can admit that our world exhibits the perfect balance and varieties of all things, having precisely the perfect measure of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, and so on to make the creation of our world worth God’s while, there is still good reason to believe that there are other possible worlds that are at least as perfectly balanced as our own. Remember, a world can be defined as a complete state of affairs. Every possible complete state of affairs corresponds to some world. If there is a difference between two states of affairs, regardless of how small or inconsequential, those states of affairs are different worlds. And, surely, some differences between states of affairs are so small and inconsequential so as to have no impact whatsoever on whether a state of affairs is worthy of being created. For instance, let’s suppose I decide to make a cup of tea. I boil my water, go to the cupboard, take out the box of tea bags, and choose one of the bags to use to brew my tea. When I open the tea box, I see a number of indistinguishable tea bags looking back at me and, without much thought, choose one of these tea bags to brew my tea. That is the tea bag with which I brew my tea in this world. However, it is quite possible that in choosing my tea bag I might have chosen one of the tea bags directly adjacent to the tea bag I actually chose, or, I might have even chosen the bag furthest from the one I actually chose, or any other bag in the box. Each of these options represent a different world. Had I chosen any other of the tea bags than the one I actually chose to brew my tea, I would have found myself in a different world from the one in which I actually am in and only by choosing the bag that I actually used to make my tea could I possibly have found myself in the world I am actually in now. But, let us suppose that every tea bag in the box is qualitatively identical, having no differences from one another other than their position within the box. Each of these tea bags contains exactly the same amount and type of tea and will brew tea with exactly the same color, flavor, caffeine content, and so on. Let us further suppose that there are no extenuating circumstances that makes my choosing a tea bag in one position over another somehow more beneficial, for instance by allowing me to brew my tea faster, or causing me to dodge a falling asteroid that otherwise would have hit me and that the same is true in future cases of my making tea with the tea bags from this particular box as well. In such a case, it would seem entirely inconsequential to the overall goodness or balance of the world which tea bag I choose to brew right now. Thus, it would seem that there are at least as many worlds as there are tea bags in the box that it would have been just as appropriate for God to create as it was for Him to create the world in which we actually find ourselves in. And might there not be more acceptable worlds than this? How many more situations like my tea box might there be in the world? Would all of the possible choices in each of these situations, not to mention all of the possible combinations of choices across each of these situations, not be equally appropriate for God to create? All of these choices and combinations of choices no doubt represent an unfathomable number of possible worlds. We now come back to the perfection of omnipotence, for if there were multiple worlds that it was perfectly acceptable for God to create, then wouldn’t it only be a fitting display of God’s omnipotence for God to in fact create each and every one of these worlds? Therefore, it would seem that if God exists, then a plurality of worlds must exist as well. However, it does not, of course, follow from the fact that a plurality of worlds exists that modal realism is true, for modal realism is not the view that a mere plurality of worlds exists, but that all possible worlds exist. But we have already gotten over the biggest hurdle, namely the prejudice according to which we are inclined to view our own world as somehow special and privileged to be the only world to actually exist, so perhaps this next leap will not be so difficult to take. If we already have good reason to think that God should create very many worlds, why should He not demonstrate the full extent of His power by creating all possible worlds? And if we can rationalize the evil in our own world as a counterbalance to the good in our world that contributes to bringing about the best possible mixture of the two, why should we not be able to rationalize the existence of evil worlds as a counterbalance to good worlds, bringing about the best possible mixture of good and evil throughout all worlds? 

It is worth pointing out that there is a sense in which our thinking here is circular, though not viciously so. That God exists gives us good reason to believe that modal realism is true, for to create all possible worlds would be the grandest possible display of God’s omnipotence. And that modal realism is true gives us good reason to believe that God exists, both because a similar case for God can be made as can be made for modal realism and because, once we have accepted that modal realism is true and all possible worlds exist, the best possible explanation for the existence of all possible worlds is that they were created by an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful being, i.e. God. But this is not viciously circular as we do not rely on either the existence of God to prove the truth of modal realism, nor the truth of modal realism to prove the existence of God, but instead rely on separate and distinct arguments to arrive at both views. Our belief in God is founded on the conjunction of our direct experience of God reinforced by the testimony of reason, through the ontological argument, that belief in such a being is rational. Though we are able to appeal to modal realism in order to reinforce the ontological argument, this is not a necessary move and the argument is capable of standing on its own without modal realism. Likewise, our belief in modal realism is founded on an analogy to mathematical objects such as sets, the utility of supposing it to be true, as well as the argument from experience sketched above. Though our belief in God and His omnipotence provides us with a stronger argument that establishes modal realism as necessary, the analogical, utilitarian, and experiential arguments are more than sufficient for our invoking modal realism to reinforce the ontological argument. So then, this is a benign circularity that serves as a sign of the coherence and completeness of Creation, not a vicious circularity that serves as a sign of illicit moves in our reasoning. 

At this point, it seems prudent to establish some distinctions and to refine some of our definitions in order to prevent any unnecessary confusion and in order to establish some grounding principles to aid us in applying the insights of modal realism to theological questions. In common speech, we are accustomed to using the word “world” to refer to the totality of all that exists. It is obvious, however, that if we accept the existence, or even the possibility of the existence, of other worlds, that taking “world” to mean the totality of all that exists overextends the meaning of the word. Thus, to refer to the actual totality of all that exists, including all possible worlds, I will use the word “Creation” rather than “world”. Worlds will, then, be understood as mere parts of Creation. Thus, we can say that thoroughly good worlds, thoroughly bad worlds, and all sorts of worlds between these extremes exist in order for the best possible balance of good and evil to exist within Creation. (Perhaps the world can be stopped to let Waylon off, but to stop creation and be let off would be an absurdity.)

Though we have already given a preliminary definition of a world as a complete state of affairs, it is clear now that this definition will not do, as a truly complete state of affairs would no doubt account for all possible worlds and the states of affairs therein, but this, then, would just describe what we have already proposed the term Creation to describe. It is therefore necessary to find a more limiting definition for “world” that will more accurately express what we are trying to convey. Though to thoroughly address all of the relevant considerations would require a long digression that would take us far afield from our present concerns, let us tentatively draw on Lewis’ understanding of worlds as maximal systems, that are spatiotemporally isolated from one another. However, we must note one significant departure from Lewis’ conception, though our full defense of this departure will have to wait for another time. In addition to being spatiotemporally isolated, Lewis holds that possible worlds are also causally isolated from one another. I am not as convinced of this as Lewis, in part, I think, because I take a more holistic, Aristotelian, view of causation, whereas Lewis takes a narrower view, concerning himself, almost exclusively, with what Aristotle would have classified as efficient causes. Though Lewis may well be correct that there can be no transworld efficient causation (though I am even sceptical of this, for instance, if our thinking about a possible world causes us to act in this world to prevent that other world from coming into existence, did that possible world not act as an efficient cause of our action?), it would seem that, at the very least, what Aristotle calls formal causes as well as what he calls final causes need not be bound to any particular world. For instance, if we believe that God exists and has created all the worlds that exist, it would follow that God is a formal cause across all worlds. Similarly, if some sort of reunion with God is a legitimate end in all worlds, it would follow that God is also a final cause across all worlds. Thus, while worlds might be causally isolated from one another as far as efficient causes are concerned, they may still share causal influence as far as formal and final causes are concerned. It is also worth noting that by supposing the existence of formal causes, we might be able to explain how we can come to have some knowledge about other worlds despite our isolation from them. If a realm of Ideas exists and worlds participate in these Ideas in varying degrees and combinations, then it is possible that some worlds might participate in the same Ideas. Perhaps, then, we are capable of conceiving of other worlds as a result of other worlds in some sense being reflected in the common Ideas shared between those worlds and our own so that we are able to catch a glimpse, however brief and indistinct, of other ways our world might have been.

Closely related to this question of transworld causation, and the reason for our even bringing up the question of causation, is the question of transworld identity, which is the source of some of the most significant worries about the implications of modal realism. If all possible worlds exist, surely there are other worlds with people named Leon Larkin who might even lead strikingly similar lives to my own. In what way can I be said to be related to these people? Do I and these other worldly Leon Larkins share an identity with one another? And in what ways do the actions and accomplishments of these other Leon Larkins’ affect me? If there is some world where I successfully ran for president can I walk into the White House and begin giving orders in this world? If there is some other world where I am a mass murderer am I morally responsible for the murders I commit in that other world? Was it in any meaningful way me who did these things in these other worlds? Lewis answers “no.” Indeed, Lewis rejects the very notion of transworld identity entirely. Each of us is only identical with ourselves as we observe and experience ourselves in this world. We are not identical to anyone in any other world, no matter how similar to us any of the inhabitants of other worlds might be to us. However, though Lewis denies transworld identity, he does not think that there are absolutely no relations between inhabitants of different worlds. These individuals, according to Lewis, are not identical, but counterparts. The counterpart relation is not one of identity, but one of similarity. One’s counterpart in another world is that inhabitant of the other world who bears the greatest resemblance to oneself. Now, it is not the case that every individual has a counterpart in every world, or that they only have one counterpart in other worlds; there may well be worlds in which one has no or multiple counterparts, though these sorts of cases are not particularly pertinent to our current concerns. For our purposes here, the most important aspect of counterpart theory for us to keep in mind is that we are not identical to our counterparts in other worlds, but merely similar to them, though the extent of this similarity might vary greatly from counterpart to counterpart.

Now, I must admit that I am quite sympathetic to Lewis’ counterpart theory. It deals with many of the problems resulting from transworld identity proper quite efficiently and neatly. I am not responsible for any of the actions of my counterparts in other worlds because I am not identical with those counterparts, we just happen to share certain relevant similarities. But while counterpart theory might provide satisfying solutions to these problems and it may even accurately explain the relations between individuals in different worlds, in part, because of my disagreements with Lewis on the nature of causation in general and the possibility of transworld causation in particular, I am not sure that counterpart theory alone will suffice to accurately describe every possible circumstance we might encounter. In the first place, the notion that an individual or a cause must be confined to a single world and can have no influence on another world seems highly unintuitive. For instance, it is a fairly common trope in science fiction for a character to be accidentally transported to a parallel universe, sometimes being exchanged for his counterpart in that universe. 

Let’s take the classic Star Trek episode “Mirror, Mirror” as an example. The episode revolves around a transporter malfunction that occurs while Captain Kirk and several members of his crew attempt to beam back up to the USS Enterprise, only to find themselves in a parallel universe just like their own, except for the fact that everyone is ruthless and vicious (and Spock sports a fashionable new goatee). Meanwhile, the evil Kirk and his crew find themselves transported into the good universe, though the ever discerning good Spock realizes almost immediately that there is something wrong and has the evil crew members detained. Eventually, the good Kirk and his crew successfully return to their own universe (and vice versa) by repeating the transporter malfunction that caused the mix up in the first place. (Between two worlds, it seems, is where pathways meet.)

Now, on the face of it, this seems like a plausible, if a bit of a fantastic, scenario. There are no glaring logical contradictions involved and it makes for a perfectly coherent narrative. So why should we think that no such case should exist anywhere within the realm of logical possibility? Given Lewis’ definition of a world, it would seem that under his account of modal realism we would have no choice but to deny such a scenario could ever occur on the grounds that individuals are world-bound and there can be no causation between worlds. But should we really be so committed to man-made definitions that we are willing to restrict the entire realm of logically possible experience in order to preserve them? Perhaps Lewis would be willing to admit the possibility of a scenario such as this so long as we are careful to maintain that the good Kirk and his universe and the bad Kirk and his universe are actually all part of the same world. But to do this, it would seem that we would have to rethink our definition of “world”. As we have said already, there are good, intuitive reasons for thinking that, at least in part, what makes a world a world, distinct from all other worlds, is spatiotemporal isolation. If two realms of existence are spatiotemporally isolated from one another, then those realms belong to different worlds. But the parallel universes of Star Trek do seem spatiotemporally isolated. The inhabitants of either world are free to move about in their respective worlds to their hearts content without any chance, under normal circumstances, of coming into any sort of contact with the other world or its inhabitants. It is only because of a chance power surge in the transporter at a crucial moment that the two Kirks were allowed to cross into the other’s universe. Perhaps one might argue that one of these universes is somehow folded up within the other, or that they are somehow bound by some untypical spatiotemporal ties. Perhaps such a case is possible, but Star Trek gives us no indication that this is the case and even if it were, we could come up with some modified example. For instance, perhaps the Kirks are switched due to a wizard’s magic, or perhaps it is simply willed by God. At any rate, it is perfectly coherent and without contradiction to suppose that such a scenario could transpire with absolutely no scientific or naturalistic explanation as we understand them in our world. Thus it would seem that the only connection shared between the two worlds is causal, not spatiotemporal. Perhaps we could revise our definition so that two regions are to be understood as the same world just as long as they share a causal connection with one another, even if they share no spatiotemporal connection. But such a reformulation of the definition leads to some bizarre and undesirable consequences. In the first place, what could possibly be more intuitively essential to a world than spatiotemporal continuity? It seems natural to say that we share a world with anything that we could reach and come into contact with simply by traversing a distance through space, even if that space is so unfathomably large that we could not hope to cross it within a reasonable timeframe given current means. On the other hand, if there is some object that we could never possibly come in contact with no matter how far and how quickly we travel, it seems quite natural to say that that object does not exist in our world and if it exists at all, anywhere, it is in an entirely different world from our own. Moreover, if we are to define a world merely in terms of causal connections, we end up with some extremely bizarre and undesirable consequences, especially if we understand causation to include formal and final causes, in addition to the efficient causes that Lewis focuses on. Indeed, if we are theists who regard God as the ultimate formal and final cause of all things, then it would follow that all worlds share a causal connection and, in fact, all worlds are really a single world. But such a conclusion is highly unintuitive and seems to strip modality of all of its theoretical utility, or, at least, it forces us to radically reformulate our understanding of modality in order to salvage anything of value. It would seem far easier to merely concede that worlds are only spatiotemporally isolated from one another, but not necessarily causally isolated. 

We should also note that our acceptance of formal causes opens the door to additional interesting consequences that give us more reason to be open to the possibility of transworld identity. Though efficient causes explain how things come into being and behave in the world it is the formal cause that actually makes the things that come into existence what they are and that governs the manner in which it interacts with other things and responds to formal causes. For instance, though a farmer might be the efficient cause for wheat to grow because it is through his labor that the seed is planted and nurtured until it can mature and produce the grain that we eat, it is the form of the seed that causes it to respond to the farmers efforts in such a way that it grows into a plant that produces grain. Likewise, though many efficient causes might influence a man, it is, ultimately, the form embodied by a given man that causes him to respond to the forces that influence him in the manner that he does. Thus it is, because every man is animated by a different principle, that different men might react to the very same influences in drastically different ways. We might say that a man’s form consists not only of his outer appearance, but also his inner dispositions, his decisions, and, ultimately, every experience he undergoes and every action that he takes from the moment he comes into existence until the moment his existence ends. Thus, though a man’s form might bear resemblances to the forms of those we have called his counterparts in other worlds, even the slightest difference between a man and his counterpart proves that he and his counterpart participate in different forms and, thus, that there is a real, substantive difference between that man and his counterpart. But, on the flip side, taking a given man in our world, we can conceive of other worlds where everything about the man in question is exactly the same.

Let us take Julius Caesar as an example. We can conceive of a world in which every event of Caesar’s life went exactly as it did in our world. In this world, all of the history leading up to Caesar’s life would have been precisely as it is in ours. He would have been born to the same parents and had the same childhood before growing up to lead his campaigns in Gaul, cross the Rubicon, and assume the role of dictator before, ultimately, being assassinated on the very same day by the very same men, all the while having all of the very same experiences, thoughts, emotions, and so on as the Julius Caesar we all know and love in our own world. The differences in this other Caesar’s world would not become apparent until sometime after Caesar’s life, perhaps immediately, perhaps much later. For instance, perhaps in this other world, the very next day, or perhaps even hours after the assassination, Octavian would be thrown from his horse, hit his head, and die before ever having the opportunity to become emperor, radically altering the course of Roman history. Or maybe the differences between this other world and our own would not have come about until much later. For instance, perhaps this other world’s history would continue to be identical to our own until 1815, when Napoleon, not Wellington, prevailed at Waterloo. 

We can also conceive of another world in which Caesar’s life was precisely as it was in ours without any need to alter history at all. For instance, a major open question in contemporary physics is whether our universe extends infinitely or whether it is finite. Though we may not now, or ever, be able to know the answer to this question, there is, no doubt, a definitive answer to the question, but whatever the answer to that question might be, it is possible that it might have been otherwise. Moreover, it is possible that whether the universe is finite or infinite could have no impact on how we, on Earth, perceive and interact with the world. For instance, even a finite universe might be so large that it would be physically impossible for us to ever reach or even observe the limits, so that, for all intents and purposes, living in a finite universe would be functionally indistinguishable from living in an infinite universe. Thus, whether our world is finite or infinite, there is some other possible world in which the course of history unfolds precisely as it does in our own, but in which the question of the universe’s limits, or lack thereof, has the opposite answer. Thus, in these two worlds, not only would every single moment of Caesar’s life be precisely identical, but so too would every single moment of world history. 

So whether history is changed or unchanged and whether the universe is infinite or finite, it’s perfectly conceivable for all of these worlds to include Caesars who are, in every way, indistinguishable from one another. So, what are we to say of all these Caesars? Are they merely perfectly similar counterparts related by nothing more than mere appearance? Or is there something more, something substantive, uniting them at some more fundamental level? For Lewis, there is no deeper cause of these Caesars’ identical natures. They are simply inevitable, but unrelated, consequences of the possible chains of efficient causation; a sort of synchronicity, but an empty synchronicity that does not point to any deeper underlying foundation for its own occurrence. But for us, this synchronicity need not be empty, the similarity between the Caesars need not be without a more substantial foundation, for we accept formal causes in addition to merely efficient ones, thus we might point to the common form in which each of these Caesar’s participates as the common ground of their perfect likeness to one another. We would do well here to remember what, precisely, a form is, namely an eternal, unchanging pattern that imparts its qualities and intelligibility to those instantiated things that participate in it. These Caesars are much more than mere counterparts bearing passing resemblances to one another, they are alike in every conceivable detail aside from the worlds in which they reside. Each of their experiences, thoughts, and actions are entirely indistinguishable from those of the others. If by some magic we were to, unbeknownst to the Caesars, shuffle these Caesars between their various worlds while they slept, they would awaken none the wiser and go on living their lives precisely as they would have had they not been switched. It seems reasonable to say, then, that all of these Caesars are perfectly identical to one another and thus share a proper identity, eternally united in the form that they share. Therefore, the notion of transworld identity seems perfectly possible even without positing fantastical cases where a single individual moves from one world to another. (An interesting case is made by the possibility of two people who would have shared an identical form had they each remained in their own world, but who are somehow brought together. It would seem that the very act of meeting would introduce a difference between the two and immediately do away with whatever unity existed between the two. Thus, particular individuals can only remain identical so long as they remain isolated from one another, while those who are in contact with one another can never be identical. This seems to be understood on an instinctual level given the number of fantasy stories where such meetings have disastrous consequences. Much more could be said on this matter, but we will set it aside for the time being. For now, I’ll just leave you with a song I haven’t heard since I was six years old playing Tony Hawk.)

Though we may have salvaged the possibility of transworld identity, it is a rather narrow notion of transworld identity that only extends to our relations to those who are precisely like us in other worlds. It leaves entirely open the question of our relation to those in other worlds that are only somewhat similar to us. For these other cases, it might be necessary for us to hold on to some vestige of Lewis’ counterpart theory, slightly modified to accommodate our acceptance of formal causes and our grounding of identity in such causes. We may say that identity is a very special sort of counterpart relationship and that two individuals are identical if they participate in the same form. Two individuals participate in the same form if the entirety of their lives are alike in every single detail, even if they happen to inhabit different worlds. If there is even the slightest deviation between the lives of two individuals, those individuals participate in different forms. However, even two people who exemplify two different forms might be significantly similar to one another. In such cases, we may say that the two individuals share a non-identical counterpart relation with one another. Thus, we need not entirely dispense with Lewis’ counterpart theory and it will likely prove invaluable yet. 

Now, to be sure, we could fill many more pages contemplating the notion of possible worlds and the consequences of modal realism. And there are certainly a number of likely Lewisian objections that demand to be considered, but to do so would take us far away from our original purpose, so those concerns will have to wait until another day. For now, however, we have established an adequate foundation to move forward with applying modal realism in our attempts to resolve a number of theological conundrums. 

Of all of the theological disputes that have emerged over the course of history, few have proven as perplexing, unsettling, and divisive as those surrounding the doctrine of predestination; that doctrine that claims that God has established all that shall come to pass from the very beginning of Creation. This is by no means a new doctrine. It has been held by Christians stretching back into antiquity. However, there is, perhaps, no figure with whom the doctrine has been more closely associated than the sixteenth century reformer John Calvin, who developed a particularly radical version of the doctrine that still inspires controversy today. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Calvin’s understanding of predestination is his doctrine of unconditional election which holds that God determined from the very beginning of Creation that some souls would be elected to receive His grace and ultimately be saved, while others would not receive His grace and would be destined to be damned. What exactly are we to make of this doctrine? Are there good reasons to either accept or reject it? As it turns out, there are strong cases to be made on either side of the controversy. 

In the first place, Calvin’s supporters can point to a number of passages in the Bible to support their position. For instance, we read in the 139th Psalm 16, “Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”, in Proverbs 16:4, “The LORD works out everything to its proper end – even the wicked for a day of disaster”, in Ephesians 1:4-5, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will”, and in Romans 8:29-30, “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” And in addition to this support from scripture, reason itself provides us with other grounds for thinking predestination to be the case. After all, God is said to be omniscient, but how could He be so if He did not know from the beginning of time what would happen in the end? Moreover, how could God possibly be regarded as absolutely sovereign and omnipotent if other beings were absolutely free to do as they will, especially if at least some of those wills proved to be at odds with God’s Will? 

But on the other hand, much of the same can be said for the anti-predestination position. For instance, there are a number of Bible verses that call on people to choose righteous and good actions, suggesting that people have at least some degree of freedom. These include, Genesis 4:7, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it”, Deuteronomy 30:19-20, “This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him”, Psalm 81:13-14, “If my people would only listen to me, if Israel would only follow my ways, how quickly I would subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes!” and Romans 2:5-8, “But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God will repay each person according to what they have done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger.” Likewise, those who oppose predestination can easily handle the supposed rational arguments for predestination and advance their own in their place. For instance, it might be argued that free will in no way violates God’s sovereignty if God freely granted us sovereignty for some reason or another just as a king’s sovereignty is in no way diminished if he assigns some duty or another to a minister. Similarly, it might be argued that free will does not conflict with God’s omniscience as omniscience might be taken to mean only that God can know all those things that it is possible to know and that future actions are not possibly knowable. It might further be argued that if God truly predestines all that is to come to pass, that he could not possibly be omnibenevolent, for that would mean that he has determined from the beginning of time that some souls, through no fault of their own, but only as a consequence of God’s own Will, to be damned. Thus, predestination could not be true or else we would have to deny God’s omnibenevolence and with it God’s absolute perfection. 

And what do the Gnostics have to say about such matters? A survey of Gnostic texts reveals that the Gnostics were by no means silent on these topics, but closer examination of their opinions reveals just as much tension between predestination and free will within Gnostic texts as there is within the canonical texts. Indeed, one might even make the case that the tension is even more pronounced for the Gnostics with some texts seemingly endorsing one position only to seemingly shift to the opposite position almost immediately. For instance, we read toward the start of the Gospel of Thomas, “Let one who seeks not stop seeking until one finds. When one finds, one will be troubled. When one is troubled, one will marvel and will reign over all.” The call for seekers to not stop seeking would seem to suggest that it is within the power of the seeker to decide whether they continue seeking or not which would seem to suggest that salvation is a matter of free will. Later we similarly read, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you.” This would, again, seem to suggest that salvation is dependent on individuals’ own efforts to bring forth what is within them and not merely a matter of God’s eternal election. However, immediately following this we read, “If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you [will] kill you.” It would seem then that the hope that one can be saved by bringing out what is inside is dependent on having the right thing within oneself to bring out before one even tries to bring it out and, presumably, it is no fault of the individual themselves if they fail to find the proper thing for salvation within themselves to bring out. It would seem that such lack is merely a part of their nature. It is how God created them. Thus, this would seem to point back in the direction of election and predestination. Elsewhere in the very same text, Jesus suggests election even more clearly, saying, “I shall choose you, one from a thousand and two from ten thousand, and they will stand as a single one.” However, the phrasing would seem to suggest that this election has not yet happened, so though the passage might support election, it does not so clearly support predestination. The Gospel of Truth also seems to suggest election and points more clearly in the direction of predestination when it tells us, 

Those whose names he knew at the beginning were called at the end, as it is with every person who has knowledge. Such names the Father has uttered. One whose name has not been spoken is ignorant, for how could a person hear if that person’s name had not been pronounced? Whoever remains ignorant until the end is a creature of forgetfulness and will perish with it. Otherwise why do these wretches have no name, why no voice?

So whoever has knowledge is from above. If called, that person hears, replies, turns to the one who is calling, and goes up to him. He knows how he is called. That person has knowledge and does the will of him who called. That person wishes to please him, find rest, and has the appropriate name. Those who have knowledge in this way know where they come from and where they are going. They know as one who, having become intoxicated, has turned from his drunkenness and, having come to his senses, has gotten control of himself. 

But then, in the very next paragraph, the tone shifts and it seems that, while salvation still remains dependent on the Father uttering one’s name, this no longer need come at the beginning, but may happen after one has already erred. 

He has brought many back from Error. He went before them to the places from which they had turned when they followed Error, because of the depth of him who surrounds every place, though nothing surrounds him. Indeed, it is amazing that they were in the Father without knowing him and that they could leave on their own, since they were not able to contemplate or know the one in whom they were. 

For if his will had not come from him… he revealed it as knowledge that is in harmony with the expressions of his will – that is, knowledge of the living book, which he revealed to the eternal realms at the end as his [letters]. He showed that they are not merely vowels or consonants, so that one may read them and think them devoid of meaning. Rather, they are letters of truth; they speak and know themselves. Each letter is a perfect truth like a perfect book, for they are letters written in unity, written by the Father for the eternal realms, so that by means of his letters they might come to know the Father. 

Again in the Treatise on Resurrection we read in favor of predestination, 

The object of belief is great and the believers are also great. The thought of believers will not perish and the mind of those who know will not perish. We are chosen for salvation and redemption, since from the beginning it was determined that we would not fall into the folly of the ignorant, but we would enter into the understanding of those who know the truth. 

The truth they guard cannot be lost. Nor will it be. The system of the Fullness is strong; what broke loose and became the world is insignificant. What is held fast is the All. It did not come into being. It was. 

So never doubt the resurrection, Rheginus my son. Although once you did not exist in flesh, you took on flesh when you entered this world. Why is it, then, that you will not take your flesh with you when you ascend into the eternal realm? What is better than flesh is what animates the flesh. What came into being because of you, isn’t it yours? If it is yours, doesn’t it exist with you? 

But while you are in the world, what are you missing? Is that what you have attempted to learn about: the outflow of the body, which is old age? Are you nothing but corruption? 

Leaving this behind will profit you, for you will not give up the better part when you leave. The inferior part will suffer loss, but there is grace for it. Nothing redeems us from this world, but we are of the All, and we are saved. We have been saved from start to finish. Let us think about it in this way; let us accept it in this way. 

But shortly after this we read, 

Rheginus, do not get lost in details, nor live according to the flesh for the sake of harmony. Flee from divisions and bonds, and then you already have resurrection. If the mortal part knows itself, knows that it will die even though it has lived many years in this life, why not look at yourself and see that you already have arisen and have been received in?

You have the resurrection but go on as if you are to die when it is that mortal part that knows it is dead. Why am I so patient? Only because of your lack of training. Everyone needs to practice ways to be released from this element so as not to wander in error, but rather to recover what one was at the beginning. 

Here though the claim that Rheginus has already arisen and been received would seem to point toward predestination, the exhortation to practice ways to be released would seem to suggest that the matter of salvation has not yet been fully decided and that it depends, at least in part, on one’s own efforts. However, the call to recover what one was at the beginning, further complicates things once again. Perhaps God has elected some or even all people for salvation from the beginning, but this election depends on the active efforts of men to become as God intended them in the beginning. 

So, then, it would seem that Gnostic texts will do little to clear up this confusion without further effort and analysis. It is clear that there are strong arguments and Biblical (and extra-Biblical) foundations on either side of the debate around free will and predestination; but which arguments are we to favor? Could there be some middle path that preserves the intuitions of the two camps while doing no violence to God’s perfection? Perhaps our acceptance of modal realism will prove capable of providing us with the appropriate conceptual apparatus to successfully walk this tight rope.

Before proceeding it is worth noting that our acceptance of modal realism gives us more reason to favor Gnosticism over orthodox Christianity. If modal realism places our faith on sounder ground and Gnosticism provides a cosmological framework that is able to accommodate modal realism better than the framework advanced by orthodoxy, then we have considerable reason to favor Gnostic Christianity over orthodoxy To be sure, just as the Gnostic texts never clearly or definitively favor predestination over free will or vice versa, the Gnostic texts never explicitly endorse modal realism. To attribute the view to these texts would be an anachronism. Still, these texts present a far more robust and complete ontology than is found in the Biblical canon. The canon, to be sure, tells us that God and the angels exist, as well as the material world and its inhabitants, but beyond this, there is little more to see. In contrast, the world of the Gnostics is full, populated by the One, the Pleroma (literally “fullness”), the divine Aeons, the Demiurge, the Archons, a variety of demons, and ultimately humans and the other beings that populate our material reality. There are even several passages that suggest the existence of worlds beyond our own material reality. For instance, we read in On the Origin of the World, 

When she wished, Sophia, who is in the lower heaven, received authority from Pistis and created great heavenly lights and all the stars, and she placed them in the sky to shine upon the earth and designate chronological signs, seasons, years, months, days, nights, moments, and so on. Thus the whole region of the sky was organized. 

When Adam of light wished to enter his light, which is the eighth heaven, he could not do so because of the poverty mingled with his light. So he created a great aeon for himself, and in that eternal realm he created six more realms and their worlds, which are six in number and seven times better than the heavens of chaos and their worlds. 

All these realms and their worlds are within the boundless region between the eighth heaven and chaos below it, and they are considered part of the world of poverty. 

Similarly in The Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, we read, 

Five thousand years later the great luminary Eleleth said, “Let someone reign over chaos and Hades.” 

A cloud [named] Sophia of matter appeared… [She] surveyed the regions [of chaos], and her face looked like… in appearance… blood. 

[The great] angel Gamaliel spoke [to great Gabriel]. The attendant of [the great luminary] Oroiael, and [said, “Let an] angel appear to reign over chaos [and Hades].

The cloud [agreed and produced] two individuals… a little light… [the angel] she had established in the cloud [above] 

Sakla the great [angel observed] Nebruel the great demon who is with him. [Together} they brought a spirit of reproduction to the earth and [they produced] angelic assistants.

Sakla [said] to Nebruel the great [demon], “Let twelve realms come into being in the… realm, worlds…” 

Through the will of the Self-Generated One, [Sakla} the great angel said, “There shall be… seven in number…” 

He said to the [great angels], “Go, [each] of you reign over your own [world].” And each [of these] twelve [angels] left. 

It is necessary to emphasize that when the ancient Gnostics spoke of “worlds” as in the passages above, they were not using the term in the same way that we do when we speak of the worlds posited by modal realism. The worlds of modal realism have the same ontological status as our own world and can be thought of as, in a sense, lying side by side with our own world. The worlds of the Gnostic texts, on the other hand, all seem to be part of the very same continuum, arranged one on top of another, forming a hierarchy of realms. That being said, there is nothing to indicate that the sorts of worlds described by modal realism are in any way inconsistent or incompatible with a Gnostic framework. Might it not be appropriate for all worlds to be actualized so that Creation as a whole could be modelled after the fullness of the Pleroma? Let us, then, rejuvenate our Gnosticism with modern considerations and accept, in addition to the continuous hierarchy of worlds and realms of which our material world is a part, the existence of a vast expanse of worlds with the same ontological status as our own. 

Let us now examine how modal realism can help resolve the tensions between free will, predestination, and God’s perfections. We should start by considering some consequences of what we have said about forms and identity up to now. It might be helpful to begin by saying a few words about the nature of forms. Forms are intelligible patterns in which created things participate and which impart their intelligibility to the things that participate in them. Forms are eternal and unchanging and exist as mere potentialities until they are actualized by something that participates in them in some world or another. It is this process of actualization that transforms mere static, inert forms into fully animated, dynamic processes, bringing the forms to living completeness. However, while this process is still being carried out, which form the living being will ultimately partake in remains indeterminate. As we have said, two or more individuals in different worlds can be identical with one another if and only if they share the very same form. But because we might say that a person’s form is the shape of their whole life, we cannot say with certainty what form any particular person within a world partakes in until that person’s entire life has been completed. If two counterparts are alike in every respect up to the point of making some defining decision, after which, the two diverge, then up to that point of divergence, the two would be indistinguishable, and we would be unable to know which form either truly participates in. Thus, it is not only as Croesus says, that we should count no man happy until he dies, but, even more drastically, it is that we cannot even know who a man truly is until he dies. (In some sense, it might be said that counterparts are identical up to the point of such a divergence. If we trace these counterparts back along their common line far enough to the point before any other counterparts diverged from them, perhaps we can find some vestigial kernel of identity [perhaps, at least in humans and similar beings, in their genetic code] that grounds the likeness that all counterparts bear to one another.) The same can be said for worlds. Each world has its own unique form that makes it the world it is and distinguishes it from all other worlds, and just as we cannot truly know the form of a man until he has reached his end, neither can we truly know the form of a world until it too has reached its completion. 

It is in this dynamic relation between eternal, unchanging forms and their living actualizations that the solution to the tensions between free will and predestination, omnibenevolence and omniscience is to be found. God is omniscient and He has predestined all His subjects’ fates insofar as He created the eternal and unchanging forms and knows every intimate detail of the forms. However, in His omnibenevolence, God knew that the true inner significance and beauty of the forms could not be realized unless they were to be allowed to unfold and develop freely and organically in time, thus, He allowed the forms to be realized in actual worlds ordered under a principle of freedom. This required God to relinquish the direct, guiding role he played in Creation, through which He had guaranteed its perfection up to that point, opening the door for falsity, uncertainty, and error to creep in. But this risk was worth it, for with this new potential for error and imperfection came also a new potential for forms to attain a more complete sort of perfection, arrived at entirely through their own power and freedom. If there was to be any hope of realizing perfect free and living forms, it would be necessary to, at the very same time, accept the risk of realizing ruinous abominations. And, to be sure, there were far more ways that things could have gone wrong and given rise to abominations than there were ways that things could have gone right and given rise to perfect worlds filled with perfect inhabitants. Thus to ensure that freedom would, in the end, give rise to perfection, God had to put safeguards in place to counteract the potential for abominations, but he could not do this by guiding the development of the worlds or their inhabitants lest he sacrificed the very liberty on which the perfection of the worlds and their inhabitants depended. All that God could do to guarantee perfection would eventually arise, then, was to allow each and every possibility to play out, so that, ultimately every possible world and every possible individual, from the lowest to the highest, and all in between, would eventually be actualized. And, perhaps, for God, in His omnibenevolence, this was not so high a cost to pay after all, for if God is truly all loving, must not that love extend to even the most detestable of possible creatures? Might not He have expressed this love for even the lowest of things by allowing such beings to be realized in actuality? It is as Jesus says at Matthew 13:3-9, 

A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.

In this context, Jesus’ words acquire a cosmic meaning, not merely referring to individuals, or even to peoples or nations, but to entire worlds. 

At any rate, we can now see clearly how the circumstances described here might salvage God’s properties of omnibenevolence and omniscience. In the first place, God’s omnibenevolence remains intact as God bears no direct responsibility for the actualization of imperfect forms. Responsibility lies in the creatures themselves as the direct cause of imperfection lies in the manner in which the creatures have seen fit to make use of the freedom God granted them. Nor can God be blamed for granting creatures freedom, for only in this way could God’s creatures achieve actual perfection, and that perfection is so glorious as to make any imperfection that might come about in the process of attaining it an acceptable cost; indeed, perfection appears all the more glorious when contrasted with imperfection, thus, in some sense, imperfection can be seen as a necessary component of the glorification of the perfect. Creation is not the best of all possible Creations in spite of its having imperfections, but, in part, because of those imperfections. Moreover, on this account, we need not think that imparting freedom to His creatures renders God in any way deficient in knowledge. God retains all of his knowledge of every intimate detail of the eternal forms of the intelligible realm and though we may admit that for any world or individual in the process of becoming, He does not know what form they will, in the end, actualize, this is only because it is impossible to have such knowledge and, just as God’s inability to do impossible things, for instance, making a square circle, in no way counts against His omnipotence, God’s inability to know things that are impossible to know can in no way count against His omniscience. Still, however, while God cannot know what form any particular creature in the process of becoming will ultimately realize, He does know ahead of time every form it could possibly realize as well as that every possible form will be realized in some world or another. In this way we can also coherently harmonize the notions of free will and predestination, for creatures in the process of becoming have the power to influence and guide what form they ultimately realize; they are truly free to become what they will; but at the same time, whatever forms creatures realize have been determined beforehand eternally, as have the ultimate places of these forms in the Divine Order been predestined eternally.

Though modal realism might help us to resolve the tensions between predestination and free will and God’s perfections, free will is not entirely out of the woods just yet. There is one additional closely related problem that demands our attention, namely whether and to what extent salvation depends on receiving God’s grace. We can see hints at this problem already in the above discussion of free will and predestination. For instance, in the Gospel of Thomas where we are told that salvation depends on bringing out what is within us, so long as what needs to be brought out is, in fact, within us, it would seem plausible to suppose that what it is that needs to be brought out is none other than God’s grace. Likewise, when the Gospel of Truth tells us that salvation depends on having had one’s name called by God, it would seem reasonable to suppose that God’s act of calling names refers to His bestowing grace upon the people He calls. But if salvation depends on God bestowing his grace upon those He sees fit to save, what place does that leave for the will in the arithmetic of salvation? Is our salvation to any extent dependent on our own wills or is our salvation entirely dependent on God? To answer these questions it will be necessary to tread still deeper into Gnostic thought. 

A distinctive feature of Gnostic thought is the division of humanity into three distinct kinds, namely, pneumatic or spiritual, psychic, and hylic or material. We read in the Tripartite Tractate, 

Now, humanity came to exist as three kinds with regard to essence – spiritual, psychical, and material – reproducing the patter of the three kinds of dispositions of the Word, from which sprung material, psychical, and spiritual beings. The essences of the three kinds can each be known from its fruit. They were nevertheless not known at first, but only when the Savior came to them, shedding light upon the saints and revealing what each one was. 

The spiritual kind is like light from light and like spirit from spirit. When its head appeared, it immediately rushed to it. At once it became a body for its head. It received knowledge straightaway from the revelation. 

The psychical kind, however, being light from fire, tarried before recognizing the one who had appeared to it, and still more before rushing to him in faith. Though it was instructed, moreover, only by means of voice, <it> was content that in this way it was not far from the hope given by the promise, having received in the form, as it were, of a pledge, the assurance of things to come. 

The material kind, however, is alien in every respect: it is like darkness that avoids the shining light because it is dissolved by its manifestation. For it did not accept his <coming>, and is even <…> and filled with hatred against the Lord because he revealed himself. 

Now, the spiritual kind will receive complete salvation in every respect. The material kind will perish in every respect, as happens to an enemy. The psychical kind, however, since it is in the middle by virtue of the way it was brought forth as well as by virtue of its constitution, is double, being disposed to good as well as to evil, and the issue that is reserved for it is uncertain  <…> and to proceed wholly into the things that are good. 

Thus, as the Tripartite Tractate has it, pneumatics are fully aware of the Divine and are destined to be saved, while hylics remain unaware of the divine, or worse, are even hostile to it, and are destined to perish, and the psychics occupy a sort of middle position with the potential to either perish or be saved. On this picture, then, it would seem that both the hylics’ and pneumatics’ fates are sealed in advance and if there is any room for free will to play a role in bringing about salvation that such a possibility belongs only to the psychics. 

But other Gnostic texts, though they retain the division between pneumatics, psychics, and hylics, paint a much less rigid and deterministic picture. For instance, in the Apocryphon of James, Jesus says, 

You wretches! You poor devils! You pretenders to truth! You falsifiers of knowledge! You sinners against the spirit! Do you still dare to listen when from the beginning you should have been speaking? Do you still dare to sleep when from the beginning you should have been awake so that heaven’s kingdom might receive you? I tell you the truth, it is easier for a holy person to sink into defilement and for an enlightened person to sink into darkness than for you to reign – or not to reign. 

Similarly and more explicitly, the Interpretation of Knowledge tells us, “Thus, if we sin, who are the fighters [of] the Word, we sin worse than the gentiles, but if we overcome all sin, we shall receive the crown [of] victory, just as our head was given glory by the Father.” So, it would seem that it is well within the realm of possibility for the pneumatic to fall into sin despite their ability to perceive the Divine. This would seem to suggest that God’s grace alone is not sufficient for salvation, but that the individual must also freely choose to act in accordance with God’s Will and that failure to do so results in greater sin than either the psychic or the hylic is capable of committing. 

While these passages suggest that it is possible for pneumatics to fall to the level of psychics or hylics, passages pointing in the opposite direction, to the possibility of hylics or psychics rising to the level of pneumatics, are fewer and further between, still, there are a few suggestions of such possibilities. In the first place, the fact that the Tripartite Tractate tells us that there are hylics who are filled with hatred against the Lord because he revealed himself would seem to indicate that not all hylics are entirely blind to the divine. More importantly, the Teachings of Silvanus explicitly tells us that it is possible, through training and education to cast off our animal natures, saying, 

My child, accept for yourself the education and the teaching. Do not flee from the education and the teaching, but when you are taught accept it joyfully. And when you are educated in any subject, do what is good. You will weave a crown of education by your guiding principle. Put on the holy teaching like a robe. Make yourself noble by your good conduct. Gain for yourself the austerity of good discipline. Judge yourself like a wise judge. Do not stray from my teaching and develop ignorance, lest you lead your people astray. Do not flee from the divine and the teaching within you, for your teacher loves you very much and will leave you a worthy austerity.

Throw out the animal nature that is within you, and don’t give access to bad thought. For it is a beautiful thing for you to attain maturity by knowing the way I am teaching you. If it is good to rule over the [few],. As you see it, [how] much better it is for you to rule over everyone, since you are exalted above every congregation and every people and prominent in every respect with divine reason. You have become master over every power that kills the soul. 

My child, does anyone want to be a slave? Why, then, do you trouble yourself for the wrong reason? My child, do not fear anyone except God alone, the exalted one. Cast away from you the deceitfulness of the devil. Accept the light for your eyes, and cast the darkness from you. Live in Christ, and you will obtain treasure in heaven. Don’t become a bag stuffed with many useless things, and don’t become a guide for your blind ignorance. 

My child, listen to my good and useful teaching, and bring an end to the sleep that weighs heavily upon you. Come away from the forgetfulness that fills you with darkness. For if you were powerless to do anything, I would not have said these things to you. 

But Christ came to give you this gift. Why do you pursue darkness when the light is at your disposal? Why do you drink brackish water when sweet water is available to you? 

Moreover, the Authoritative Discourse gives us reason to hope that spiritual blindness can be overcome. There we read, 

Our soul is sick because she lives in a house of poverty, and matter strikes her eyes in order to blind her. For this reason the soul pursues the word and applies it to her eyes as medicine, and she <opens” her eyes and casts off [blindness]… thought of… blindness… after that, if such a one is in ignorance once again, that one is in complete darkness and is a material being. That is why the soul always [takes] a word and applies it to her eyes as medicine, so that she may be able to see. Then her light may overwhelm the foes that oppose her, and she may blind them with her light, capture them in her presence, make them collapse in exhaustion, and act boldly with her strength and her scepter. 

So, then, it would seem that all hope is not lost for hylics and psychics. There are means for them to pull themselves up to higher levels. Still, in order for anyone to know that they need to pull themselves up to the Divine, it would seem to be necessary to first have been graced with the good fortune to have had some perception of the Divine, however faint, and, even then, it remains incredibly difficult for the hylic to advance as they are liable to respond to such experience of the Divine with hostility and anger. 

But what of those hylics who are never graced with even the smallest portion of the Word and who, consequently, remain forever unaware of the Divine and thus, incapable of even knowing that they have the ability to choose the Divine? Can such people really be blamed for failing to pursue what they were not even aware existed? And why did God not reveal Himself to such people? If God failed to reveal Himself to some people, despite knowing that their salvation depended on that revelation, does God’s failure to reveal Himself not, once again, call His omnibenevolence into question? Perhaps it will be answered that the problem lies not in God failing to reveal Himself, but in such peoples’ inability to receive His revelation, but, does it not still count against God’s benevolence that he should have made people who would be doomed to perish because they were unable to receive the revelation of God essential to their salvation? 

We might respond to these challenges to God’s omnibenevolence in much the same way we responded to the objection that God allowing imperfect worlds to come into existence conflicts with His omnibenevolence by saying that by allowing these lowly people without the slightest awareness of God and no hope for salvation to come into existence, the true glory of the lives of those who could always perfectly perceive God and who were destined to be saved from the beginning appear all the more glorious. But, while this may well serve to justify God’s creation of such imperfect beings, there might be additional reasons to think that God’s creation of such people is not really as cruel as it might appear at first glance. We must take a closer look at what the Gnostic texts say about the fate of souls, for it may be that to perish is not as grave and as permanent a condition as we are inclined to think. The Apocryphon of John gives us a lengthy explanation of the different sorts of fates the various sorts of souls can expect,

I said to the Savior, “Lord, will all the souls then be led safely into pure light?” 

He answered and said to me, “These are great matters that have arisen in your mind, and it is difficult to explain them to anyone except those of the unshakable generation.

Those upon whom the spirit of life will descend and whom the spirit will empower will be saved, and will become perfect and worthy of greatness, and will be cleansed there of all evil and the anxieties of wickedness, since they are no longer anxious for anything except the incorruptible alone, and concerned with that from this moment on, without anger, jealousy, envy, desire, or greed for anything. 

They are affected by nothing but being in the flesh alone, and they wear the flesh as they look forward to a time when they will be met by those who receive them. Such people are worthy of the incorruptible, eternal life and calling. They endure everything and bear everything so as to finish the contest and receive eternal life. 

I said to him, “Lord, will the souls of people be [rejected] who have not done these things, but upon whom the power and the spirit of life have descended?” 

He answered and said to me, “If the spirit descends upon them, by all means they will be saved and transformed. Power will descend upon every person, for without it no one could stand. After birth, if the spirit of life grows and power comes and strengthens that soul, no one will be able to lead it astray with evil actions. But people upon whom the false spirit descends are misled by it and go astray.”

I said, “Lord, where will their souls go when they leave their flesh?”

He laughed and said to me, “The soul in which there is more power than the contemptible spirit is strong. She escapes from evil, and through the intervention of the incorruptible one, she is saved and is taken up to eternal rest.”

I said, “Lord, where will the souls go of people who have not known to whom they belong?” 

He said to me, “The contemptible spirit has grown stronger in such people while they were going astray. This spirit lays a heavy burden on the soul, leads her into evil deeds, and hurls her down into forgetfulness. After the soul leaves the body, she is handed over to the authorities who have come into being through the archon. They bind her with chains and throw her into prison. They go around with her until she awakens from forgetfulness and acquires knowledge. This is how she attains perfection and is saved.” 

I said, “Lord, how can the soul become younger and return into its mother’s womb or into the human?”

He was glad when I asked him about this, and he said to me, “You are truly blessed, for you have understood. This soul will be made to follow another soul in whom the spirit of life dwells, and she is saved through that one. Then she will not be thrust into flesh again.”

I said, “Lord, where will the souls go of people who had knowledge but turned away? 

He said to me, “They will be taken to the place where the angels of misery go, where there is no repentance. They will be kept there until the day when those who have blasphemed against the spirit will be tortured and punished eternally.” 

As we can see, there are a number of possible fates that can befall a soul depending on its individual circumstances. There are those who, having had knowledge and lived in accordance with that knowledge, will be saved. There are also those who, remaining ignorant, are to be cast into prison. This, however, does not appear to be a final or eternal imprisonment, for we are told that this only lasts until the soul awakens from forgetfulness and attains knowledge, at which point, we are told, the soul attains perfection and is saved. But what is this imprisonment like and how exactly does the soul awaken from forgetfulness, attain knowledge, and find itself saved? A clue to the answer to these questions can be found in the Revelation of Paul, where we read, 

In the fourth heaven I saw angels resembling gods in their rank, and they were bringing a soul from the land of the dead. The angels put the soul at the gate of the fourth heaven, and they were flogging her. 

The soul asked, “What sin did I commit in the world?” 

The gatekeeper in the fourth heaven answered and said, “It was wrong for you to commit all those lawless actions that are typical of the world of the dead.” 

The soul replied, “Bring witnesses and let them [tell] you in what body I committed lawless actions. [Do you want] to bring a book and [read from it]?” 

Three witnesses came. The first said, “Wasn’t I [in] the body? Around the second hour I [came and] rose up against you, until [you fell into anger, rage, and envy.” 

The second said, Wasn’t I also in the world? Around the fifth hour I entered, and I saw you and desired you. Look, now I accuse you of murders you committed.” 

The third said, “Didn’t I come to you around the twelfth hour of the day, near sunset? I brought you darkness, until you completed your sins.” 

When the soul heard these things, she looked down in dejection. Then she looked up again, but she was cast down. The soul that was cast down [entered] a body prepared [for her]. And look, the witnesses [against her] finished testifying. 

In this light, it seems that the prison into which ignorant souls are cast is, in truth, another body, another life. In other words, it seems that the fate that awaits at least some of these souls is something akin to what we are accustomed to calling reincarnation or metempsychosis (as we shall see in our next essay, the more precise term for this phenomenon is the more obscure “palingenesis”). The prison the soul finds itself trapped in is none other than the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth in which it is already trapped. On this picture, the supposed tension between God’s omnibenevolence and the existence of individuals incapable of being saved because they are incapable of perceiving God can be very easily resolved. God is not cruel for making individuals with no hope of being saved in this life, as they will have opportunities to truly earn their salvation in subsequent lives. Indeed, if we consider the possibility that at least some souls might endure multiple lives, then we have another avenue for disputing challenges to God’s omnibenevolence as it may be that some apparent injustices and misfortunes that people suffer through no fault of their own in this life, for instance, being entirely ignorant of God’s presence, can be explained as retribution for some injustice that the individual committed in a past life. 

Indeed, that some might find themselves trapped in a cycle of birth and rebirth is already hinted at in the section of the Apocryphon of John just cited where we are told that the souls of those who had knowledge and turned away will be sent to the place where the angels of misery are tormented for eternity, suggesting that these souls might, in fact, be reborn as fallen angels. This is made even clearer in the Gospel of Judas, where we read, 

Judas said, “Master, just as you have listened to all of them, now also listen to me. For I have seen a powerful vision.”

Jesus heard this and laughed, and he said to him, “O thirteenth daimon, why are you so excited? Speak your mind, then, and I’ll hear you out.” 

Judas said to him,”I have seen myself in the vision as the twelve disciples were stoning me and treating [me harshly]. And I also came to the place that… after you. I saw [a house]… and my eyes could not [grasp] its dimensions. Important people moved around it. That house <had> a thatched roof, and within the house there was [a crowd]…. Master, let me also come in with these people.”

[Jesus] answered and said, “Your star has deceived you, Judas.” Further:

No person of mortal birth is worthy

to go into the house you have seen:

that place is kept for the saints, 

where sun and moon will not rule, 

nor the day, 

but they will stand there always

in the eternal realm with the holy angels.

Look, I have told you the mysteries of the kingdom and I have taught you the error of the stars, and… send… on the twelve realms. 

Judas said, “Master, is it possible that my seed is subject to the rulers?” 

Jesus answered and said to him, “Come, that I may… [you, that]… but you will go through a great deal of grief when you see the kingdom and its entire generation.” 

When Judas heard these things, he said to him, “What advantage is there for me, since you have set me apart from that generation?” 

Jesus answered and said, “ You will be the thirteenth, and you will be cursed by the other generations, but eventually you will rule over them. In the last days they will… up to the holy [generation]

A few passages later we read, 

Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the stars above all bring matters to their end. When Sakla completes his time designated for him, their first star will shine with the generations, and they will bring to completion what has been mentioned. Then they will do immoral things in my name and slay their children, and they will… and… [in] my name, and your star will rule over the [thir]teenth eternal realm.”

And afterward Jesus [laughed]. 

[Judas said], “Master, [why are you laughing at us]?”

[Jesus} answered [and said], “I’m not laughing [at you] but rather at the error of the stars, because these six stars wander around with these five warriors, and all of them will be destroyed, with their creatures. 

Judas said to Jesus, “Those who have been baptized in your name, then, what will they do? 

Jesus said, “I tell [you] the truth, this baptism… [in] my name… to me. [I] tell you the truth, Judas those [who] bring sacrifices to Sakla… God… everything evil. 

“But you will exceed all of them. For you will sacrifice the man who bears me.

Already you horn has been lifted up,

and your anger has flared up, 

and your star has burned brightly,

and your heart has [grown strong].

“[I tell you] the truth, your last [days]… become… grieve…. The ruler, since he will be overthrown. And then the image of the great generation of Adam will be magnified, for before the heaven, the earth, and the angels, the generation from the eternal realms exists. 

“Look, you have been informed of everything. Lift up your eyes and behold the cloud and the light that is within it and the stars that are circling it. And the star that leads the way is your star.” 

Judas lifted up his eyes and beheld the cloud of light, and he entered it. Those who were standing on the ground heard a voice coming from the cloud and saying,… great generation… image… and…

… [Now], their high priests murmured because [he] had stepped into the guest room for his prayer. But some scholars were there watching closely in order to lay hold of him during the prayer, for they were afraid of the people, since he was regarded by them all as a prophet. 

And they came over to Judas and said to him, “What are you doing in this place? You are Jesus’ disciple.” 

He answered them in accordance with their wish.

And Judas received some money and handed him over to them. 

So, according to Jesus, it does not appear that Judas will be punished in any conventional sense for his betrayal of Jesus. Though his fellow Apostles will oppose him in the aftermath and he will be condemned to death, with his death he shall be lifted up to the place of the Demiurge and, ultimately, instead of Jesus the Apostles will come to worship Judas who will lead them into all manner of sin and debauchery. It is necessary to emphasize that though Jesus seems to accept his fate and recognize it as a crucial component in the conquest of death and, thus, the completion of his mission, there is no indication that he has in any way consented to or pardoned Judas’ betrayal and, thus, Judas’ elevation to the position of the Demiurge must not be regarded as any sort of reward for his participation in a plot he had been in on with Jesus from the very beginning. On the contrary, there is every indication that Judas is blameworthy for his betrayal, as Jesus tells him that entry into the house in his vision is granted only to saints, that he will exceed the other Apostles in evil, and that he acts out of anger. Therefore, we must regard Judas’ elevation to the role of Demiurge, not as a reward for participating in some higher plan, but as punishment for what is, arguably, the gravest sin imaginable, betraying the Savior and handing him over to his executioners. We must, then, regard Judas’ elevation to the role of Demiurge as a direct consequence of his sinful actions. In this, we can begin to understand how even those who have intimate knowledge of God and the Divine, can choose evil over good. Indeed, it is those who have the most intimate knowledge of Divine matters who are capable of the greatest evil for there is, indeed, a path to power, greatness, and immortality in such actions. Thus, Judas, the man responsible for the wickedest of crimes, is duly promoted to become the Lord of this World. (It would seem that many of us understand the power in evil at an instinctual level as evidenced by the popularity of conspiracy theories that posit that the elite take part in various forms of ritualistic abuse. The recent release of the Epstein Files, along with historical examples from Caligula, to Elizabeth Bathory, and many others in between, may even indicate that such conspiracy theorists are not entirely misguided even if they have a tendency to blow their claims out of proportion.)

At this point, there may be some with whom the notion of the power and status of the Demiurge being bestowed upon Judas as a consequence of his treachery does not sit well. Would that not be to reward Judas for his wickedness rather than to punish him? Though this might appear to be the case at first glance, a closer examination reveals a more complex situation. In the first place, in conversing with Jesus, Judas speaks with considerable anxiety and uneasiness about his ultimate fate. Moreover, as we have already seen in the Apocryphon of John, eternal punishment and anguish appears to await the angels of misery, amongst whom the Demiurge, no doubt, is appropriately counted. Indeed, according to the text the Nature of the Rulers, being the Demiurge might not be so enviable a position after all. There we read, 

The leader of the authorities is blind. [Because of his] power, ignorance, and arrogance he said, with [power], “I am God there is no other [but me].”

When he said this, he sinned against [the realm of the All]. This boast rose up to Incorruptibility, and a voice answered from Incorruptibility and said, “You are wrong, Samael” – which means “blind god.” 

His thoughts were blind. He expressed his power – that is, the blasphemy he had uttered – and pursued it down to chaos and his mother the abyss, at the instigation of Pistis Sophia.

A little later we read, 

“This ruler was androgynous and made himself a huge realm, an expanse without limit. He considered creating for himself offspring, and he created for himself seven offspring, androgynous like their parent. 

“He said to his children, ‘I am the God of all.’” 

“Zoe daughter of Pistis Sophia called out and said to him, ‘You are wrong, Sakla,’ whose name is understood as Yaldabaoth. Zoe breathed into his face and her breath became for her a fiery angel, and that angel bound Yaldabaoth and cast him down into Tartaros, at the bottom of the abyss. 

“When Sabaoth son of Yaldabaoth saw the strength of that angel, he repented and condemned his father and his mother, matter. 

“Sabaoth loathed his mother, but he sent songs of praise up to Sophia and her daughter Zoe. Sophia and Zoe took him up and established him over the seventh heaven, below the curtain between what is above and what is below. He is called ‘god of the powers, Sabaoth,’ because he is above the powers of chaos, for Sophia established him. 

When these things happened, Sabaoth made himself a huge four-faced chariot of cherubim, and an infinity of angels as ministers, and harps and lyres. 

“Sophia took her daughter Zoe and made her sit at his right to teach him about the things that are in the eighth heaven, and she put the angel of wrath at his left. [Since] that day, [his right] had been called “life,” and the left has represented the unrighteousness of the tyrannical realm above. These things happened before your time. 

“When Yaldabaoth saw Sabaoth exalted in such great glory on high, he envied him, and his envy became something androgynous. This was the beginning of envy. Envy produced death, death produced children, and death put each in charge of a heaven. All the heavens of chaos were full of their masses. 

“But all these things came to be by the will of the Father of the All, after the pattern of all that is above, so that the sum total of chaos might be reached. 

So, we learn here that, not only is the Demiurge a blind, idiot god, but that he is also ultimately overthrown and imprisoned in the abyss, has his own son betray him, and is forced to watch with envy from his place of torment; surely a pitiable condition. Furthermore, we also learn, through the example of Sabaoth, that even the wicked Archons are capable of repenting and being redeemed and even rewarded for their repentance. But what of the Demiurge? Can he repent and be saved? Whereas the Apocryphon of John seems to suggest that a figure like the Demiurge can be expected to be tormented eternally, others suggest that this might not last forever and that, in the end, the Demiurge will be completely annihilated. For instance, we read in On the Origin of the World, 

Before the end [of the age], this whole region will shake with loud thunder. The archons will lament because of their [fear of] death, the angels will grieve for their human beings, the demons will weep over their times and seasons, and their people will mourn and cry on account of their death. 

Then the age will come, and they will be disturbed. Their kings will be drunk from the flaming sword and will wage war against each other, so that the earth will be drunk from the blood that is poured out. The seas will be troubled by war. The sun will darken and the moon will lose its light. The stars of the sky will abandon their circuits, and loud thunder will roar from a great power, above all the powers of chaos, where the firmament of the female is located. She had produced the first creation, and now she will put away her wise fire of afterthought and put on irrational wrath. 

Pistis Sophia will drive out the gods of chaos, whom she had created along with the chief creator, and she will cast them down to the abyss. They will be wiped out through their own injustice. They will be like mountains blazing with fire, and they will consume one another until they are destroyed by their chief creator. When he destroys them, he will turn on himself and attack himself until he is no more. 

The heavens of the gods of chaos will collapse upon one another and their powers will be consumed. Their realms will also be overthrown. The chief creator’s heaven will fall and split in half. His [stars in their sphere] will fall down to the earth, [and the earth will not] be able to endure them. They will fall [down] to the abyss, and the abyss will be overthrown. 

The light will [overcome the] darkness and banish it. The darkness will be like something that never was, and the source of darkness will be dissolved. Deficiency will be pulled out by its root and cast down into the darkness, and the light will withdraw up to its root. 

The glory of the unbegotten will appear and fill all the eternal realms when the prophets and the writings of rulers are revealed and fulfilled by those who are called perfect. Those who have not become perfect in the unbegotten Father will receive glory in their realms and the kingdoms of immortals, but they will never enter the kingless realm. 

All must return to the place where they came from. By what they do and what they know all of them will reveal their natures. 

This is a truly remarkable passage with much for us to make note of. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this passage is not the ultimate fate of annihilation that awaits the Demiurge, but the means by which he is to get there. For we are not told that the Demiurge is annihilated by God, or Christ, or even some higher angel. No, we are told that his annihilation comes about when, after he has finished destroying the other gods of chaos, he finally turns on himself and destroys himself. In this we might have a clue to reconciling those accounts that claim the Demiurge shall be punished eternally and those, like this one, which claim he shall be destroyed. Perhaps there are some natures, like that of the Demiurge, that are so obstinately sinful and enamored with themselves that they are incapable of accepting God’s grace, even though they might be able to clearly perceive it, or others whose sins are so great that they are beyond any possibility of redemption. For such natures, unable to renounce their sins, accept God, and be redeemed, there are two options: they can continue to wallow in their sin, enduring the suffering inherent to their very station, separated as they are from God, or, they could simply cease to exist, thereby bringing their suffering to an end along with their very existence. For such souls annihilation is the only salvation available and, just as the salvation of the elect must be realized, at least in part, through the will of the one to be saved, so too must salvation through annihilation be brought about through the will of the one to be annihilated, which is why we are told the Demiurge destroys himself. Thus, God not only loved these doomed beings so much that he saw fit to bring them into existence despite their defects, but also enough to leave the question of their eternal punishment or annihilation to themselves. Thus, whatever suffering these beings experience as a result of their nature cannot be attributed to God, but only to their own free will. And if Judas, upon his death, was given a station befitting his character and conduct in life and the Demiurge given final say over his ultimate fate, perhaps, so too, is each and every man rewarded such a station upon their deaths and given the final say over their ultimate fates as well. For some, this might mean, like Judas, becoming a fallen angel, for others it might mean, rising to a higher station amongst the holy angels, in still others it might mean being reborn as a mortal creature within a world, whether human or otherwise. However, perhaps the most likely and common fate for those who have failed to reach the station of the elect is to be reborn as a counterpart to oneself so that one might try again to make actual a perfect version of themselves. Here, the reason for our lengthy digression on the possibility of transworld identity comes into focus, for only if we grant such a possibility can this picture of successive births and rebirths, particularly those cases in which one is reborn into another world, stand. (Thus, the ultimate choice, as Ray Wylie Hubbard tells us is, A. enlightenment, B. endarkenment, hint, there is no C.)

Ours is by no means a unique soteriological vision. It shares similarities with Dharmic notions of rebirth and reincarnations as well as with the Myth of Er that concludes Plato’s Republic and which, though lengthy, seems appropriate to repeat here. There Socrates tells us the following,

Well, it is not an Alcinous-story I am going to tell you, but that of a brave man called Er, the son of Armenias, by race a Pamphylian. Once upon a time, he was killed in battle. On the tenth day, when the rest of the dead were picked up, they were already putrefying, but he was picked up still quite sound. When he had been taken home and was lying on the pyre before his funeral on the twelfth day, we revived and, after reviving, told what he had seen in the other world. 

He said that when his soul had departed, it traveled together with many others and came to a daimonic place, where there were two adjacent openings in the earth and two in the heavens above and opposite them. Judges were seated between these. And, when they had made their judgments, they told the just to go to the right up through the heavens, with signs of the judgments attached to their fronts. But the unjust they told to travel to the left and down. And they too had on their backs signs of all their deeds. When he himself came forward, they said that he was to be a messenger to human beings to tell them about the things happening there, and they told him to listen to and look at everything in the place. 

Through one of the openings in the heavens and one in the earth, he saw souls departing after judgment had been passed on them. Through the other two, they were arriving. From the one in the earth they came up parched and dusty, while from the one in the heavens they came down pure. And the ones that had just arrived seemed to have come from a long journey, and went off gladly to the meadow, like a crowd going to a festival, and set up camp there. Those that knew one another exchanged greetings and those coming up from the earth asked the others about the things up there, while those from the heavens asked about the others’ experiences. They told their stories to one another, the former weeping and lamenting as they recollected all they had suffered and seen on their journey below the earth – which lasted a thousand years – and the ones from heaven telling, in turn, about their happy experiences and the inconceivably beautiful sights they had seen. To tell it all, Glaucon, would take a long time. But the gist, he said, was this: for all the unjust things they had done and for all the people they had wronged, they had paid the penalty for every one in turn, ten times over for each. That is to say, they paid for each injustice once in every hundred years of their journey, so that, on the assumption that a hundred years is roughly the length of a human life, they paid a tenfold penalty for each injustice. For example, if some of them had caused many deaths or had betrayed cities or armies and reduced them to slavery, or had taken part in other evildoing, they would receive ten times the pain for each of them. On the other hand, if they had done good deeds and become just and pious, they received commensurate awards. 

He said some other things about the stillborn and those whol lived for only a short time, but they are not worth recounting. And he told of even greater wages for impiety and piety toward gods or parents, and for murder. He said he was there, you see, when someone asked where the great Ardiaius was. This Ardiaius had been a tyrant in a city in Pamphylia just a thousand years before that, and was said to have killed his aged father and older brother and committed many other impious deeds as well. He said the one who was asked responded: “He has not come here and never will. For in fact this, too, was one of the terrible sights we saw. When we were near the mouth, about to come up after all our sufferings were over, we suddenly saw Ardiaius together with some others, almost all of whom were tyrants – although there were also some private individuals among them who had committed great crimes. They thought that they were about to go up, but the mouth would not let them through. Instead, it roared whenever one of these incurably bad people, or anyone else who had not paid a sufficient penalty, tried to go up. At that location, there were savage men, all fiery to look at, standing by, paying attention to the sound, who grabbed some of these people and led them away. But in the case of Ardiaius and others, they bound their feet, hands, and neck and threw them down and flayed them. They dragged them along the road outside, lacerating them on thorn bushes. They explained to those who were passing by at the time why they were being dragged away, and said that they were to be thrown into Tartarus. He said that of the many and multifarious fears they experienced there, the greatest each of them had was that the sound would be heard as he came up, and that each was very pleased when it was silent as he went up. Such then were the penalties and punishments, and the rewards that were their counterparts. 

When each group had spent seven days in the meadow, on the eighth they had to move on from there and continue their journey. In four days, they came to a place where they could see stretching from above, through the whole heaven and earth, a straight beam of light, like a column, very closely resembling a rainbow, but brighter and more pure. They reached the beam after traveling another day’s journey. And there, in the middle of the light, they saw stretching from the heavens the ends of its bonds – for this light is what binds the heavens, like the cables underneath a trireme, thus holding the entire revolving thing together. From those ends hangs the spindle of Necessity, by means of which all the revolving things are turned. Its shaft and hook were adamant, while its whorl was adamant mixed with materials of other kinds. The nature of the whorl was as follows. Its shape was like the ones here on Earth, but from Er’s description, we must think of it as being like this: in one large whorl, hollow and scooped out, lay another just like it, only smaller, that fitted into it exactly, the way nested bowls fit together; and similarly a third and a fourth, and four others. For there were eight whorls altogether, lying inside one another, with their rims appearing as circles from above, while from the back they formed one continuous whorl around the shaft, which is driven right through the center of the eighth. 

Now, the first or outermost whorl had the broadest circular rim, that of the sixth was second, third was that of the fourth, fourth that of the eighth, fifth that of the seventh, sixth that of the fifth, seventh that of the third, and eighth that of the second. That of the largest was spangled; that of the seventh was brightest; that of the eighth took its color from the seventh’s shining on it; that of the second and fifth were very similar to one another, being yellower than the rest; the third was the whitest in color; the fourth was reddish; and the sixth was second in whiteness. 

The spindle as a whole revolved at the same speed, but within the revolving whole the seven inner circles gently revolved in the opposite direction to the whole. Of these, the eighth moved fastest; second, and at the same speed as one another, were the seventh, sixth, and fifth; third, it seemed to them, in the speed of its counter-revolution, was the fourth; fourth was the third; and fifth the second. 

The spindle revolved on the lap of Necessity. On top of each of its circles stood a Siren, who was carried around by its rotation, emitting a single sound, one single note. And from all eight in concord, a single harmony was produced. And there were three other women seated around it equidistant from one another, each on a throne. They were the daughters of Necessity, the Fates, dressed in white with garlands on their heads – Lachesis, Clotho, and Atropos – and they sand to the accompaniment of the Sirens’ harmony, Lachesis singing of the past, Clotho of the present, and Atropos of the future. Clotho, using her right hand, touched the outer circumference of the spindle and helped it turn, pausing from time to time; Atropos, with her left, did the same to the inner ones; and Lachesis used each hand in turn to touch both. 

When the souls arrived, they had to go straight to Lachesis. A sort of spokesman first arranged them in ranks; then, taking lots and models of lives from the lap of Lachesis, he mounted a high platform, and said: 

“The word of Lachesis, maiden daughter of Necessity! Ephemeral souls. The beginning of another death-bringing cycle for mortal-kind! Your daimon will not be assigned to you by lot; you will choose him. The one who has the first lot will be the first to choose a life to which he will be bound by necessity. Virtue has no master: as he honors or dishonors it, so shall each of you have more or less of it. Responsibility lies with the chooser, the god is blameless.” 

After saying that, the spokesman threw the lots out among them all, and each picked up the one that fell next to him – except for Er, who was not allowed. And to the one who picked it up, it was clear what number he had drawn. After that again the spokesman placed the models of lives on the ground before them – many more of them than those who were present. They were multifarious: all animal lives were there, as well as all human lives. There were tyrannies among them, some life-long, others ending halfway through in poverty, exile, and beggary. There were lives of famous men – some famous for the beauty of their appearance or for their other strengths or athletic prowess, others for their nobility and the virtues of their ancestors, and also some infamous in these respects – and similarly for women. But the structure of the soul was not included, because with the choice of a different life it would inevitably become different. But all the other qualities were mixed with each other and with wealth or poverty, sickness or health, or the states in between. 

Here, it seems, my dear Glaucon, a human being faces the greatest danger of all, and because of that each must, to the neglect of all other subjects, take care above all else to be a seeker and student of that subject which will enable him to learn and discover who will give him the ability and the knowledge to distinguish a good life from a bad, so that he will always in any circumstances choose the better one from among those that are possible. He must calculate the better one from among those that are possible. He must calculate the effect of all the things we have mentioned just now, both jointly and severally, on the virtue of a life, so as to know what the good and bad effects of beauty are when it is mixed with wealth or poverty, and this or that state of the soul; what the effects are of high and low birth, private lives and ruling offices, physical strength and weaknesses, ease and difficulties in learning, and all the things that are either naturally part of the soul or can be acquired by it, when they are mixed with one another. On the basis of all that he will be able, by considering the nature of the soul, to reason out which life is better and which worse and choose accordingly, calling the worse the one that will lead the soul to become more unjust, and better the one that leads it to become more just. Everything else he will ignore. For we have seen that this is the best way to choose, whether in life or death. 

Holding this belief with adamantine determination, he must go down to Hades, so that even there he won’t be dazzled by wealth and other such evils, and won’t rush into tyrannies or other similar practices and so commit irreparable evils, and suffer even greater ones; but instead will know to choose the middle life in such circumstances, and avoid either of the extremes, both in this life, so far as is possible, and in the whole of the life to come. For this is how a human being becomes happiest. 

At that point our messenger from the other world also reported that the spokesman said this: “Even for the one who comes last, if he chooses wisely and live earnestly, there is a satisfactory life available, not a bad one. Let not the first to choose be careless, nor the last discouraged.” 

When the spokesman had told them that, Er said, the one who drew the first lot came up and immediately chose the greatest tyranny. In his foolishness and greed, you see, he chose it without adequately examining everything, and did not notice that it involved being gated to eat his own children, among other evils. When he examined the life at leisure, however, he beat his breast and bemoaned his choice, ignoring the warning of the spokesman. For he did not blame himself for these evils, but chance, daimons, and everything except himself. He was one of those who had come down from heaven, having lived his previous life in an orderly constitution, sharing in virtue through habit but without philosophy. 

Generally speaking, not the least number of the people caught out in this way were souls who came from heaven, and so were untrained in sufferings. The majority of those from the earth, on the other hand, because they had suffered themselves and had seen others doing so, were in no rush to make their choices. Because of that, and also because of the chance of the lottery, there was an exchange of evils and goods for most of the souls. Yet, if a person, whenever he came to the life that is here, always practiced philosophy in a sound manner, and if the fall of the lot did not put his choice of life among the last, it is likely, from what was reported by Er about the next world, that not only will he be happy here, but also that his journey from here to there and back again will not be underground and rough, but smooth and through the heavens. 

He said it was a sight worth seeing how the various souls chose their lives, since seeing it caused pity, ridicule, and surprise. For the most part, their choice reflected the character of their former life. He saw the soul that had once belonged to Orpheus, he said, choosing a swan’s life: he hated the female sex because of his death at their hands, and so was unwilling to be conceived in a woman and born. He saw the soul of Thamyris choosing a nightingale’s life, a swan changing to the choice of a human life, and other musical animals doing the same. The twentieth soul chose the life of a lion. It was that of Ajax, son of Telamon, who avoided human life because he remembered the judgment about the armor. The next was that of Agamemnon, which also hated the human race on account of what it suffered, and so changed to the life of an eagle. Allotted a place in the middle, the soul of Atalanta, when it saw the great honors of a male athlete, unable to pass them by, chose his life. After her, he saw the soul of Epeius, son of Panopeus, taking on the nature of a craftswoman, Further on, among the last, he saw the soul of the ridiculous Thersites clothing itself as an ape. 

Now it chanced that Odysseus’ soul drew the last lot of all, and came to make its choice. Remembering its former sufferings, it rejected love of honor, and went around for a long time looking for the life of a private individual who did his own work, and with difficulty it found one lying off somewhere neglected by the others. When it saw it, it said that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first-place lot, and chose it gladly. Similarly, souls went from the other animals into human beings, or into one another, the unjust changing into savage animals, the just into tame ones; and every sort of mixture occurred. 

When all the souls had chosen lives, in the same allotted order they went forward to Lachesis. She assigned to each the daimon it had chosen, as guardian of its life and fulfiller of its choices. This daimon first led the soul under the hand of Clotho as it turned the revolving spindle, thus ratifying the allotted fate it had chosen. After receiving her touch, he led the soul to the spinning of Atropos, to make the spun fater irreversible. Then, without turning around, it went under the throne of Necessity. When it had passed through that, and when the others had also passed through, they all traveled to the plain of Lethe, through burning and choking and terrible heat, for it was empty of trees and earthly vegetation. They camped, since evening was coming on, beside the river of forgetfulness, whose water no vessel can hold. All of them had to drink a certain measure of this water. But those not saved by wisdom drank more than the measure. And as each of them drank, he forgot everything. When they were asleep and midnight came, there was a clap of thunder and an earthquake, and they were suddenly carried away from there, this way and that, up to their births, like shooting stars. But Er himself was prevented from drinking the water. Yet how or where he had come back to his body, he did not know, but suddenly recovering his sight he now saw himself lying on the pyre at dawn.

And so, Glaucon, his story was saved and not lost; and it would save us, too, if we were persuaded by it, since we would safely cross the river Lethe with our souls undefiled. But if we are persuaded by me, we will believe that the soul is immortal and able to endure every evil and also every good, and always hold to the upward path, practicing justice with wisdom every way we can, so that we will be friends to ourselves and to the gods, both while we remain here on Earth and when we receive the rewards of justice, and go around like victors in the games collecting prizes; and so both in this life and on the thousand-year journey we have described, we will fare well. 

We share, then, considerable agreement with Plato that our current existence is just one in what may be a long chain of successive existences aimed at the gradual perfection of the soul and that, falling short of that goal, at the end of our lives we can expect to enter into a new sort of existence where we will have the opportunity to continue our journey toward the perfection of our souls. Our only substantial differences to Plato’s account lie in our contention that it is possible that some people might be reborn as divine or daemonic beings and that it is also possible that some, indeed, perhaps, most, can be reborn as counterparts to themselves. But even these distinctions might be more a result of Plato’s failure to explicitly mention such possibilities rather than an outright denial of them. And there may even be some indication of the possibility of the former in Plato’s account in that he tells us that many of the souls who must choose their fates came down from Heaven, thus suggesting, that though they had not been entirely separated from their mortal identities they had become a sort of demigod. (We might additionally note that Plato’s claim that the souls from Heaven were most likely to choose undesirable is consistent with the view in some Dharmic traditions that gods are amongst the most likely to face undesirable fates in their future lives.) 

Still, some might raise an objection to our account of the Demiurge being able to choose whether his fate shall be eternal punishment or total annihilation on the grounds of our previous support of the notion of apokatastasis, the idea that all of God’s creatures, even the lowliest, at the very least have the possibility of being redeemed and saved. This is, to be sure, a difficult challenge. To answer it briefly, if not somewhat cryptically, we can first suppose that annihilation and salvation are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. What could annihilation be to a being who was, otherwise, destined to suffer greatly for all eternity other than a sort of deliverance or salvation? Moreover, it might not be necessary to think of the nothingness into which the Demiurge is to be cast as an absolute nothingness. Afterall, if something becomes nothing, is there not ultimately something still concealed by that nothingness? (Let’s ask Townes about nothin‘.) Moreover, though nothingness might prove to be the end of the Demiurge, it may not, necessarily, prove to be the end of that which animated the Demiurge, just as the end of Judas was not the end of that which animated Judas, but merely an opportunity for it to be transformed into the Demiurge. However, to fully explain and justify this answer will necessarily take another essay. This will be our task when we next return to theological matters. 

There is one last benefit for the Christian in accepting modal realism that we would be remiss were we not to mention here. In accepting modal realism, we are capable of rendering Christianity impervious to any assault, even those founded on empirical grounds. That is to say, even in the unlikely event we were to uncover some new, irrefutable evidence that the entire Bible is a fabrication that doesn’t depict a single actual historical event, modal realism would allow us to remain as secure in our faith in Christianity as we could be should we find that every word of the Bible is perfectly accurate. This is because, according to modal realism, even if Christ’s life and the other events of the Bible did not occur as recorded there, there is some possible world in which they did occur precisely as recorded. Thus, whether or not it actually occurred in our world, there is some world in which Christ lived, worked his miracles, and died so that we might be forgiven for our sins, and because those events would be every bit as real if they occurred in some other world as they would had they occurred in our world, we can expect Christ’s sacrifice in some other world as every bit as efficacious as if that sacrifice occurred in this world. Thus, any world that has heard the good news of Christ has reason to rejoice whether this tale actually played out in that world or not. And, as our world is a strong candidate for one in which such events actually played out, we have special reason to think that our world might be especially distinguished in the grand scheme of Creation. Still, we must not take this fact for granted and allow it to lull us into a false sense of security and moral superiority. On the contrary, we must take this great honor as all the more reason to double down on our efforts to perfect ourselves and our world. For, if modal realism is true, and there are possible worlds where, despite Jesus’ ministry and sacrifice, the inhabitants chose not to heed his teachings. How many worlds must there be where Jesus’ sacrifice has been squandered? Let us not be one of them. Let us remain forever vigilant in our attention to our duties and enter into the destiny Christ made available to us.

This final argument, it must be said, is merely cursory. We first need to establish that there is good reason to think that Jesus is, in fact, God. This shall be the focus of our next turn to theology, where we will make use of as unlikely a thread as Schopenhauer’s theory of the Will in order to weave together those ends that have had to remain loose here.