Essential Kenosis and the Problem of Salvation

Essential Kenosis (EK) is typically offered as a response to the problem of evil. Because God is essentially love and love is necessarily uncontrolling, God cannot unilaterally prevent evil or determine creaturely outcomes. This paper offers an internal critique. It grants EK's account of divine love and action and asks what follows when salvation depends on future contingent creaturely states that God cannot guarantee. Belief is the principal illustration. Belief is generally not under direct voluntary control, sincere non-resistant non-believers exist, and reasons that make belief rational are not necessarily causally sufficient to produce belief in a particular person. EK may affirm that God provides the best possible non-coercive opportunities for belief, repentance, perseverance, sanctification, or continued relationship with God. Its own metaphysical commitments still prevent God from guaranteeing that any such future contingent state will obtain or continue to obtain. Appeals to eternity do not remove this limitation. An open future preserves both the possibility that every salvific condition will eventually be satisfied and the possibility that conditions already satisfied will later cease to obtain. EK consequently underdetermines salvific outcomes: universal salvation and widespread apostasy remain compatible with its metaphysics unless further theological premises are supplied. The commitments that make EK attractive as a response to evil require a substantially clearer account of how salvation can be secured.