Like you and Daniel, I used to be a convinced Calvinist. So, while I'm not an insider to your experiences, I am very much a former insider to this world. I've crossed over a lot of boundaries that would have horrified by college-age self, and only because I felt I had no choice. So, with that said...
I think the critique that “smart people are just better than most at coming up with reasons to act and believe as they like” carries more weight when it's not coming from a religion as thoroughly fideistic as American Calvinism. There's a long-standing tendency within Calvinism to exclude the purported character of God (and the nature of Scripture) from scrutiny and reasoned inquiry, and this stems from the Calvinist conviction that human reason is fallen and therefore unreliable. Which is perfectly fine if you're convinced (as many people are) that you just happened to be born into the One True Faith, but if you have to decide between rival interpretations, you need smart people. Otherwise, you're not issuing a call for humility; you're committing intellectual suicide.
Hart's universalism was, for many years, something I bracketed away as "well, that's just his weird thing, and I don't really care what he believes." Turns out it's hard to be neutral when one side of the debate has such uniformly terrible arguments. The attempts by Calvinists to attack universalism have been especially telling, since they always (and I do mean *always*) are phrased in such a way as to rebound catastrophically onto their makers, if only they would stop and listen to what they were saying. Which brings me to your friend's remarks on parallels between Hart's thought and Calvinism. The problem is that we're back with fideism disguised as humility, because these arguments about the eschaton being "good in the fullest sense of the word" and "salvation belong[ing] to God" are, within Calvinism, attempts to dodge arguments about the objectional nature of eternal damnation. If all they really amounted to was "I don't know how things will end, but it will be Good," well, fine, but that's precisely the opposite of their meaning. What they really mean is "I know for certain that some (or most) people will be eternally damned, and that will somehow turn out to be okay because God is good." This also applies to the way fundamentalists of all stripes refuse to call evil "evil" in Scripture because if God did it, and God is good, it was must be good too. Hart is right that this is precisely the opposite way that we ordinarily reason. If someone told me that my mom had murdered one of her coworkers, I wouldn't say, "Well, I know my mom is a good person, so murdering her coworker must have been good in some mysterious way." No, I'd say, "It is not possible that my mom murdered a coworker; you're lying." And Hart is also right that this was once a perfectly respectable way to do scriptural interpretation.
Here's something I will grant from your friend's critique: I think Hart's training in religious studies (as well as his 19th-century Romantic sensibility) leads him to romanticize pagan religions because of their fairy-friendly worldviews. People who don't have first-hand experience with animistic religions often don't realize how preoccupied they are with the manipulation of spiritual power, and just how terrifying it is to live in a world where nymphs and satyrs curse your children and ruin your crops instead of just dancing daintily to the pipes of Pan by gently flowing streams. It's entirely possible that Hart would be perfectly willing to grant all that, and I know he doesn't take kindly to people critiquing his lack of equal time for problems he doesn't think are equally threatening (are Taoist animists debating turning America into a theocracy?), but I'm willing to back your friend up on this one. I think Christians owe ethical monotheism at least a little partisanship, even if we shouldn't resort to demonizing other religions.
Here's something else I'll grant: what Hart believes is definitely incompatible with what most conservative American Christians believe about God and the Bible. He doesn't believe Scripture is inerrant, he doesn't think Tradition is inerrant (although he obviously thinks that it got a lot of things right, just not eternal damnation), and he's waaaay more syncretistic than most Christians are comfortable being. He's doesn't do biblical interpretation according to the historical-grammatical method, he doesn't think the Bible is free of contradictions, and he doesn't mind borrowing concepts from other religions if he thinks they are true. But, I think he's right that all of these positions would have been much less objectionable in early centuries of Christianity than they are today. There was simply a more adventurous spirit in the church's early centuries, and we'd benefit from bringing that back.
I should add that most Calvinists are, in my experience, wonderful and Godly people, and the little PCA church I went to during college is still the best church I've ever been a part of. However, I also know from experience that there are very few consistent Calvinists in America because of theological bleedover from other denominations, and that hardly any Calvinists actually subscribe to the kind of fideism that Reformed theology and epistemology actually entails. The point is that they *should* if they were actually conforming to their formal creeds, and old-guard Calvinists see any recoiling before double predestination or a retributive hell that's locked from the outside as "compromising with the culture."
I should probably be a little more explicit about what I mean by how arguments against universalism "rebound catastrophically onto their makers," at least for your friend's sake; people sometimes accuse DBH of relying too much on assertion and not enough on evidence or explanation, so let's avoid that if we can. Calvinist attacks on universalism tend to either appeal to a free will defense of hell or the consensus of the Christian tradition. Now, neither of these lines are argument are available to a consistent Calvinist. As John Wingard (who was my teacher for Intro to Philosophy at Covenant College) will tell you, Calvinists must be compatibilists about free will. The sovereignty of God is absolute, therefore the Lewisian "free will defense" is a non-starter for a Reformed Christian. I don't care if Timothy Keller or any other Reformed pastor has made that argument; it's a foreign idea to Calvinism being brought in to help because the traditional doctrine of double predestination has been found wanting. If you want to use it against universalism, you have to stop being a Calvinist first. As for appeals to tradition, not only does Calvin explicitly reject the authority of church tradition in the Institutes (Book 4, Chapters 10-12), but Calvinism itself frequently conflicts with the consensus of the church during the late antique and medieval periods. Again, you can't appeal to tradition without first ceasing to be a Calvinist.
Here's the thing, though: I think Calvin is 100% correct about free will (that is, that the human will is enslaved and corrupted, and therefore not free), and that's exactly why the Lewisian free will defense doesn't work. So, there is actually a possibility for remaining a intellectually consistent Calvinist who believes in strong predestination: become a universalist.
I’ve only noted two brief (but emphatic statements):
DBH blurb on the 2020 book *Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church* edited by Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya: “Some traditions are old because they are truly valuable, while some are valued only because they are old. The exclusion of women from the priesthood is a practice for which the theological arguments are notoriously weak—to the point of fatuity in many cases—but Orthodoxy's veneration of the past has usually made it impossible to undertake a serious reconsideration of the issue. A book like this, encompassing essays by such eminent scholars, has long been desperately needed.”
DBH having fun in his Sept 17, 2021 chat with Tony Golsby-Smith: "I'm to this point in my life where I think that the priesthood should be limited only to women. I don't trust men to be capable of spiritual wisdom. It has something to do with age and with continual disappointments with the people who do wield ecclesial power. But I'm still waiting for the first incarnation of the Matriarch of Constantinople."
Like you and Daniel, I used to be a convinced Calvinist. So, while I'm not an insider to your experiences, I am very much a former insider to this world. I've crossed over a lot of boundaries that would have horrified by college-age self, and only because I felt I had no choice. So, with that said...
I think the critique that “smart people are just better than most at coming up with reasons to act and believe as they like” carries more weight when it's not coming from a religion as thoroughly fideistic as American Calvinism. There's a long-standing tendency within Calvinism to exclude the purported character of God (and the nature of Scripture) from scrutiny and reasoned inquiry, and this stems from the Calvinist conviction that human reason is fallen and therefore unreliable. Which is perfectly fine if you're convinced (as many people are) that you just happened to be born into the One True Faith, but if you have to decide between rival interpretations, you need smart people. Otherwise, you're not issuing a call for humility; you're committing intellectual suicide.
Hart's universalism was, for many years, something I bracketed away as "well, that's just his weird thing, and I don't really care what he believes." Turns out it's hard to be neutral when one side of the debate has such uniformly terrible arguments. The attempts by Calvinists to attack universalism have been especially telling, since they always (and I do mean *always*) are phrased in such a way as to rebound catastrophically onto their makers, if only they would stop and listen to what they were saying. Which brings me to your friend's remarks on parallels between Hart's thought and Calvinism. The problem is that we're back with fideism disguised as humility, because these arguments about the eschaton being "good in the fullest sense of the word" and "salvation belong[ing] to God" are, within Calvinism, attempts to dodge arguments about the objectional nature of eternal damnation. If all they really amounted to was "I don't know how things will end, but it will be Good," well, fine, but that's precisely the opposite of their meaning. What they really mean is "I know for certain that some (or most) people will be eternally damned, and that will somehow turn out to be okay because God is good." This also applies to the way fundamentalists of all stripes refuse to call evil "evil" in Scripture because if God did it, and God is good, it was must be good too. Hart is right that this is precisely the opposite way that we ordinarily reason. If someone told me that my mom had murdered one of her coworkers, I wouldn't say, "Well, I know my mom is a good person, so murdering her coworker must have been good in some mysterious way." No, I'd say, "It is not possible that my mom murdered a coworker; you're lying." And Hart is also right that this was once a perfectly respectable way to do scriptural interpretation.
Here's something I will grant from your friend's critique: I think Hart's training in religious studies (as well as his 19th-century Romantic sensibility) leads him to romanticize pagan religions because of their fairy-friendly worldviews. People who don't have first-hand experience with animistic religions often don't realize how preoccupied they are with the manipulation of spiritual power, and just how terrifying it is to live in a world where nymphs and satyrs curse your children and ruin your crops instead of just dancing daintily to the pipes of Pan by gently flowing streams. It's entirely possible that Hart would be perfectly willing to grant all that, and I know he doesn't take kindly to people critiquing his lack of equal time for problems he doesn't think are equally threatening (are Taoist animists debating turning America into a theocracy?), but I'm willing to back your friend up on this one. I think Christians owe ethical monotheism at least a little partisanship, even if we shouldn't resort to demonizing other religions.
Here's something else I'll grant: what Hart believes is definitely incompatible with what most conservative American Christians believe about God and the Bible. He doesn't believe Scripture is inerrant, he doesn't think Tradition is inerrant (although he obviously thinks that it got a lot of things right, just not eternal damnation), and he's waaaay more syncretistic than most Christians are comfortable being. He's doesn't do biblical interpretation according to the historical-grammatical method, he doesn't think the Bible is free of contradictions, and he doesn't mind borrowing concepts from other religions if he thinks they are true. But, I think he's right that all of these positions would have been much less objectionable in early centuries of Christianity than they are today. There was simply a more adventurous spirit in the church's early centuries, and we'd benefit from bringing that back.
No fair jumping ahead to topics that I’ve not gotten to yet myself. 😅 Good stuff on fairies. Does not sound like you grew up Calvinist.
I became one for about six years during college (and after).
I should add that most Calvinists are, in my experience, wonderful and Godly people, and the little PCA church I went to during college is still the best church I've ever been a part of. However, I also know from experience that there are very few consistent Calvinists in America because of theological bleedover from other denominations, and that hardly any Calvinists actually subscribe to the kind of fideism that Reformed theology and epistemology actually entails. The point is that they *should* if they were actually conforming to their formal creeds, and old-guard Calvinists see any recoiling before double predestination or a retributive hell that's locked from the outside as "compromising with the culture."
I should probably be a little more explicit about what I mean by how arguments against universalism "rebound catastrophically onto their makers," at least for your friend's sake; people sometimes accuse DBH of relying too much on assertion and not enough on evidence or explanation, so let's avoid that if we can. Calvinist attacks on universalism tend to either appeal to a free will defense of hell or the consensus of the Christian tradition. Now, neither of these lines are argument are available to a consistent Calvinist. As John Wingard (who was my teacher for Intro to Philosophy at Covenant College) will tell you, Calvinists must be compatibilists about free will. The sovereignty of God is absolute, therefore the Lewisian "free will defense" is a non-starter for a Reformed Christian. I don't care if Timothy Keller or any other Reformed pastor has made that argument; it's a foreign idea to Calvinism being brought in to help because the traditional doctrine of double predestination has been found wanting. If you want to use it against universalism, you have to stop being a Calvinist first. As for appeals to tradition, not only does Calvin explicitly reject the authority of church tradition in the Institutes (Book 4, Chapters 10-12), but Calvinism itself frequently conflicts with the consensus of the church during the late antique and medieval periods. Again, you can't appeal to tradition without first ceasing to be a Calvinist.
Here's the thing, though: I think Calvin is 100% correct about free will (that is, that the human will is enslaved and corrupted, and therefore not free), and that's exactly why the Lewisian free will defense doesn't work. So, there is actually a possibility for remaining a intellectually consistent Calvinist who believes in strong predestination: become a universalist.
Thank you, Jesse. Where does DBH write or speak about female ordination?
I’ve only noted two brief (but emphatic statements):
DBH blurb on the 2020 book *Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church* edited by Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya: “Some traditions are old because they are truly valuable, while some are valued only because they are old. The exclusion of women from the priesthood is a practice for which the theological arguments are notoriously weak—to the point of fatuity in many cases—but Orthodoxy's veneration of the past has usually made it impossible to undertake a serious reconsideration of the issue. A book like this, encompassing essays by such eminent scholars, has long been desperately needed.”
DBH having fun in his Sept 17, 2021 chat with Tony Golsby-Smith: "I'm to this point in my life where I think that the priesthood should be limited only to women. I don't trust men to be capable of spiritual wisdom. It has something to do with age and with continual disappointments with the people who do wield ecclesial power. But I'm still waiting for the first incarnation of the Matriarch of Constantinople."
Odds of women's ordination actually happening in the Orthodox communion are basically zero, right?
Well, never say never. We got our first female deacons in a millennium in Zimbabwe recently. But certainly it looks bleak.
There's also a YT video from the Love Unrelenting channel where DBH briefly expands on his remarks about women's ordination to Golsby-Smith.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M35gvAO_vPM
Right. It has happened once (and a few other times in the distant past). It is kind of like the chances of the Ents finding the Entwives.
🙏
Thank you, Jesse. Where does DBH write or speak about female ordination?