I
On the free-will rebuttal to universalism, there is an irreducibility in our wills to divine causation or influence. To be more specific, the resistance is to divine cosmogonic influence, where the deity organizes the world. There is a freedom to dissent, to desire other world orders and ways of being, and to resist the perceived totalization of a world by a monad.
This is the intuition behind the rebuttal that the "infernalist" God is "merely a Demiurge" since Demiurgy is the organisation of temporal world orders. But, there is nothing "mere" about Demiurgy. There is indeed something irreducible in the will, and because of this, it is indeed impossible to have "all persons under Christ" insofar as that implies one world order among possible others. There is no rebuttal of "many worlds under Christ" either since it's still possible to Intuit alternatives to it, and thus show that it is itself a "meta-world order" among others. The cycle continues because indeed there is no holistic single and exclusive "totality" of "all things".
However, this is not an endorsement of so-called "infernalism", since "infernalism" also assumes the existence of only one allowed world order in which all dissent is punished, either through self-punishment or divine punishment (which is indistinguishable at some point).
Instead, this is an endorsement of multiple world orders. There is no desire not rooted in a desire for the Good. Given the identity of the Good and the One as perspectives on the first principle, and the fact that to seek the One is to seek one's own integral existence (rather than a monad as such), it is prudent then to affirm a "multi-universalism" or a "poly-universalism", rooted in the ultimate inviolability of our selves that have no limits and the Gods in whom we are existential sparks. Whether one seeks a Christocentric Cosmos, a Mariocentric Cosmos, a Shiva Centric Cosmos, or an Ogun-centric Cosmos, there is space for all, in an indefinite communion.
II
Conversations with Dr Butler, along with present life circumstances, have given me an occasion to think about money in a different way. The key idea here is money as "tokenized time".
Basically, we see that in labouring for someone, whether boss or customer, there is a recompense of time spent, in the form of money. The time spent working could have been used to make more food, or clothes, or something else. But with tokenized time, you can get the fruits of those labours. You can buy food, clothes, etc. You too are compensating someone for that time, giving it back. It's not just paper money here. It could be anything, even barter, since one fruit of labour, your tokenized time, is exchanged for another. Profit works the same way too. You compensate someone for their labour in producing some thing (basically an exchange of tokens), add your labour to it, and gain compensation for that labour plus the item being sold (itself being a token of time). It brings context to the tweet below, and perhaps more thoughts later.
III
In thinking about an ideal future for religion in Nigeria, I've often been caught in a series of traditionalisms. This includes those of indigenous religions as well as monotheisms. I've been trying to learn about the pre-colonial past, but these days I'm trying to free myself of the vestiges of originalist thought with respect to it, given how impractical and morally problematic it is.
For instance, while I'd like Monotheist religion dismantled in the country, I do not want indigenous hegemony to take its place, since its "place" is one of totalization and erasure. I don't want to lionize pre-colonial empires, nor do I want to condemn them unfairly. It's not necessary for Yoruba traditional religion to ossify itself in the past against Christianity and Islam. There were new and growing cults of Orishas then, and there can be now. There can be new revelation because revelation is not scarce. It is not oil. It is as abundant as space and as endless as time. We don't need tribal purism, since there is no homogeneous tribe. We don't need incoherent fascisms, including those of tribe (which tend to essentialize and ultimately demean the Gods it appropriates). The future is uncertain, but we can put our hands into forming it, one where there is freedom, real freedom.
IV
One question I have been trying to work out is the place of Jesus in my theology. I've been trying to organise a loose ontology from my experience. I was recently reminded of Antonio Vargas' proposal of Jesus as the God whose activity is the formation of human bodies. I think that's perfect, I won't lie. But what else can I say about this? I think this is due for its own essay. I think it isn't just human bodies that he forms, or at least the definition of "human" here is more expensive. Let's see what happens.