I am working on a short essay that has been approved for publication by Heythrop Journal, and the goal of the essay is to reply to Marilyn Adams' objection that postmortem changes to a person's character poses an ID continuity problem. Roughly, the argument goes like this:
Horrendous evils might damage a person's character so deeply that any reparative psychological measures for this person in the afterlife by God--which are typically included in 'optimal grace' solutions to the problem of horrendous evils--would be so significant that the person would no longer retain their identity in a relevant sense. If this is the case, then the person's agency will have been overridden to such a degree that this override is not different from a universal salvation of all persons, which (at least on Adams' account) would require God to override the agency of every person in order that they might accept him. Therefore, the 'optimal grace' solution to the psychological distress that comes from horrendous evils does not succeed in retaining libertarian free will of persons.
My initial response is that it seems prima facie absurd to suggest that psycho-therapy constitutes some violation of agency, since we observe people go into counseling all the time without the slightest thought that they're somehow being coerced. The obvious counter-example to my response is exactly the person who is coerced into psycho-therapy/rehabilitation for addiction, such as the Office episode in which Michael tries to check Meredith into rehabilitation for her troubles with alcoholism. It seems that the Michael-Meredith case constitutes an obvious violation of Meredith's agency, especially when the rehabilitation center refuses to take Meredith in. So, while psycho-therapy is not necessarily coercive in a way that violates agency, it has the potential to be coercive.
In a postmortem world, we should expect that there will be a significant amount of persons who enter it with psychological disadvantages that come from their experiences with horrendous evils of various kinds, and the question we face is what God will do about them. I think it uncontroversial that there will be a sub-group who will be willing to undergo any psycho-therapy available to them in this life (perhaps given to them by God Himself? By angels? Who knows...) in a way that protects their agency, whereas there will be a group of people like Meredith who refuse any kind of treatment at all.
What do we do with Merediths in the postmortem world? Are they lost beyond cause? There are at least two possible ways of dealing with Merediths:
a) We can take a harsh view and posit that the Merediths who refuse God at every point in their lives-- including psycho-therapy in the postmortem world--will be justly condemned to Hell forever in virtue of their perpetual refusal of God, even if we know that they are doing so because of the psychological disadvantages they obtained from their participation in horrendous evils. I'm uncomfortable with this view because the persons involved in making such a radical decision seem unqualified to make the decision in a similar way that US legal courts allow persons to make insanity please. This is where I'm sympathetic to Adams' reading on 'impaired agency,' which holds that persons are far too irresponsible to use their agency responsibly in a decision that determines their eternal fate.
b) We can class persons with such severe psychological disadvantages accorded to them from horrendous evils in a special class of persons with impaired agency, with whom God can make a special exception in overriding their wills in some way. This class can include persons who die before a certain age of accountability (I'm thinking especially of infants, though some philosophers think the postmortem world might consist in God permitting infants to grow up to a certain age of accountability and then making a decision about him from there--though that's a discussion for another time), persons with significant mental disabilities, etc. I'm more comfortable with this option.
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