ramblin_rosie | More SPN meta

Something I've been pondering this afternoon, picking up a thread from my last meta. Mild spoilers for 7.07.

I mentioned last time that it’s probably impossible for anyone to be completely healthy, in a Chestertonian sense, in a universe where God has abdicated. Given Dean’s confession in 7.07, I think it’s time to explain that idea.
Chesterton begins Orthodoxy by explaining his view that two signs of mental health are the ability to accept mystery and paradox for what they are and the related, crucial ability to believe in something other than oneself. He further argues in St. Thomas Aquinas that the ability to reason rightly begins with the question of whether a person can know anything about the objective reality outside his own mind. If the answer is no, then thought stops. If the answer is yes, sooner or later, the person will realize that the outside world is highly changeable. The next question is thus whether visible reality is the ultimate reality. If the answer is yes, the philosopher will end up siding with the Eastern philosophy that the only constant is change—heck, even the position of the North Star changes over time. If the answer is no, however, where is ultimate reality to be found? Or, to cite the question that prompted Chesterton to write Orthodoxy, “If man is not to believe in himself, what is he to believe in?”
Chesterton, Aquinas, and pretty much the whole of orthodox Christian thought answer that ultimate reality is to be found in God (YHWH, I Am That I Am). He is, to use the medieval framing, the unmoved Mover, the uncaused Cause. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and in Him we live and move and have our being. The universe as we know it does possess an objective reality—we’re not just figments of God’s imagination—but this reality derives from God’s.
This understanding is the same one that J. R. R. Tolkien used in The Debate of Finrod and Andreth when, drawing on Aquinas’ commentary on Hebrews, he had Finrod distinguish between amdir, hope that is an expectation of good based on past experience, and estel, often translated “high hope” but here translated as “trust”:

It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from experience, but from our nature and first being. If we are indeed the Eruhin, the Children of the One, then He will not suffer Himself to be deprived of His own, not by any Enemy, not even by ourselves. This is the last foundation of Estel, which we keep even when we contemplate the End: of all His designs the issue must be for His Children's joy. Amdir you have not, you say. Does no Estel at all abide?

Ay, there’s the rub for Dean. In that universe, he has no reason for estel because the angels had a hand in Mary’s death and God explicitly refused to help when Dean needed help the most. And his answer (if Joshua related it correctly) wasn’t “No, you have what you need; you can do this on your own” but “Back off, I’m done helping you,” words calculated to hurt. All created beings, as Aquinas argued and Dean has unfortunately learned, are inherently unstable and can’t live up to the kind of absolute trust that is estel. Had Cas not fallen, Dean might have been somewhat okay, but even that hope has been dashed. And now Cas is (presumed) dead, Sam’s cracked, Bobby’s mortal, all their other friends are gone, and Dean still hasn’t gotten over the fact that he broke in Hell...
If gold ruste, what shal iren do?
I have no clue how the writers can resolve this problem in any way that ends well for Dean (or Sam, for that matter) short of God finally returning to take charge of Heaven. I hope they’ll show Dean at least being able to trust Sam. But Ellen’s right; something has to change before Dean, and maybe the entire universe, self-destructs.