Thanks for making this one public, Jesse. I started following you at your old blog. Being on a fixed income, I have to limit my paid subscriptions, but I will be happy to read whatever you release from the paywall.
I haven't read nearly as much Hart as you have, but I have read some and listened to many interviews. Reading the assertion that he is a Calvinist made me actually laugh out loud. Hart's view is so much more uncomplicated than any of his opponents' rationales, and presents a bigger God who is interested in the "right-wising" (NTWright) of creation, rather than its destruction.
The "big God" theses appeal to me, always have. I came to universal reconciliation 25 years ago as an Evangelical, reading the New Testament "all things" texts straightforwardly, along with other texts that imply or outright state that God is good enough and big enough to ultimately bring everyone to himself without coercion. I saw that if *anything* is lost to Christ, then the devil wins - and I don't believe the devil wins.
When I dead-ended in Evangelicalism, the only avenue open to me was that of Orthodoxy (I was raised Catholic but have theological issues that prevented me from reverting). Kalomiros' view, which I encountered first, was so much more open and God-worthy than anything I had known of anything in any western theology that took Scripture seriously. It was a short step from there to finding out that Orthodoxy has never articulated any doctrine about what happens to people after the Judgment beyond "He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead and of his kingdom there shall be no end." "Settled" doctrine ends up in the liturgies and prayer services; I've been in the Church nearly 15 years, and I've never encountered anything like a full-throated "infernalist" view in any of them - it's manifestly the opposite. I can't even express how relieved and at peace I was to simply find a place to sit at St Gregory's and St Isaac's feet. Fr Aiden's resources and Brad Jerzak's writings have simply helped me settle in at that end of the table. In the rare instances I'm asked about it, I am careful to say that the idea of eternal torment has actually not been declared dogma historically, and therefore it's not in the there in the liturgies, lots about it ignores interpretive issues and good Scriptural hermeneutics, and there are in fact bishops who tell us we may hope for UR.
I believe Frs D and DY have peoples' best interests at heart. You did a good job interacting with them respectfully in this post. I also think there are a lot of folks out there like me, who long for a Truly Good God and believe that he actually must exist as such in order to be rightly worshiped. I have prayed and thought about this a lot, for years - decades, now - and I have found beauty and depth and "more Jesus" in Orthodoxy precisely because UR can stake out a place there. The hope in my heart around this has solidified over the years (and probably with the accumulation of years - I'm 67), and Hart's TASBS has only settled it more. The God - even the Father - of our Lord Jesus Christ can be trusted to make all things well, and all manner of things well.
It bears repeating again and again that Damick and De Young are not credible sources on the things they seek to pontificate about. They are, basically, out of their league in trying to deal with Hart, just as they are trying to deal with the Ancient Near Eastern, biblical, and classical materials that they frequently butcher or otherwise misrepresent. To borrow an older phrase, they know enough to be dangerous, but not to be careful.
Given your training and ongoing studies, you are in a good position to judge on those specific topics of Ancient Near Eastern, biblical, and classical materials. Given my relative ignorance on those topics, I still enjoy *The Lord of Spirits* show from time to time and fancy that I learn a thing or two, but I also read your writings, and I can tell that I'm learning even more there.
A systematic look-through of their podcast is more dealing with them than I'm typically inclined to do, but I'll just say for now that
a.) awareness that Second Temple texts exist, what they say, and that they are somehow related to the NT is not quite the same as being able to exegete them in context or understand what their authors are trying to say through them;
b.) treating the apocalyptic mythology of 1 Enoch like it is a literal history of the world is...an odd choice, even if it's what ancient Jews and Christians believed, and some of their attempts to rationalize or naturalize the myth are equally odd;
c.) they resolutely resist the "New New Perspective"/"Radical New Perspective" school that sees Jesus, Paul, and the apostles as practicing Jews running an observant, Jewish movement, because their apologetic goal is to argue that Eastern Orthodox Christianity was the religion of the apostles, rather than the more modest (and defensible) claim that Orthodoxy is descended from the apostolic community, though it is a very different phenomenon from what the apostles were doing (cue De Young's "The Religion of the Apostles");
d.) They buy more or less into Heiser's read on Ancient Israelite/Judahite and Second Temple theology, which is better than nothing but far short of the real, cutting-edge scholarship on these topics, and this maligns some of their exegesis of the Tanakh, especially passages that reference, for example, Canaanite mythology and reapply it to Yhwh, or in their understanding of Yhwh's original place in the Israelite pantheon;
e.) they fail to track the changes in what the New Testament means in its evolving contexts from the first century, when it was Jewish literature written for Jews and sympathetic non-Jews, to the second and successive centuries, when it was read as "Christian," anti-Jewish literature, and as teaching a coherent theology (later understood to be Nicene Trinitarianism and Chalcedonian Christology);
Jesse, I rediscovered this article today. I've been reading, and rereading, the transcript of Fr Stephen De Young's Ancient Faith video. Your remarks in this article resonate. Fr Stephen's refusal to take the universalist position seriously (as Met Kallistos Ware certainly did) and his blithe acceptance that God might condemn the impenitent to eternal torment is very disturbing.
Glad this made some sense. I agree with you about the concerns. I wrote this a good while back and in “one go” as I recall. I’d put things a little more clearly and systematically, I’d hope, if thinking about it again. Anyway, yes, this kind of thoughtless dismissal of the “other side” within “uncomfortable” topic areas is disappointing.
A lot of this comes back to reading Scripture not merely through tradition, but also importing the legacy of voluntarist notions of freedom into what is taken as an unproblematic way to conceive of God and man. If, for instance, one equates divine sovereignty in the direction of arbitrary decision, then to deny this is seen as an illicit constraint on God’s freedom. The entire problem is bad theology driven by hidden presuppositions contrary to any discerning grasp of a coherent metaphysics of love.
At the creaturely level, this manifests as the idea that personal freedom is “spontaneous” and tethered to a spurious concept of autonomy. Incommensurable perspective can only arise through the nurturing of others. From the initial dependence of the child on parental care to the acquisition of shared language that precedes any unique utterance, the person is never a nominalist individual. Without encounter with the creaturely other, the person never attains awareness of interior consciousness. Development is always already dialectical in that sense.
Further, Hart is good at pointing out that every individual act, even mistaken, sinful action, cannot but operate within the horizon of the Good, because the light of intellect simply is the Good. Just as one cannot really imagine a new primary color, no one chooses apart from an implicit orientation. The nihilist may deny God and meaning, but the very possibility of denial is inevitably reactive, and thus draws sustenance from the reality that is denied. Such acts of destructive will are never primary; they are diseased manifestations of the hidden ontological quest to realize flourishing, even if distorted into a refusal of the given.
Distinguish between the egophanic revolt (to borrow a phrase from Voegelin) and the ontological depths of the person, which are always an originating participation in the Logos. The will is not fundamentally a function of the psychological self, but a gift called forth by Love. The perdurance of freedom, post-mortem, is coincident with the absolute fidelity of Love.
I think there is a compelling aspect to Pavel Florensky’s eschatological intuitons: there might very well be an annihilation of the psychic detritus that makes up much of a human life. There’s no doubt that many never in this life emerge from diabolic delusion, near complete egocentrism, and sinful refusal of the gift of Being. These might very well constitute “effigies” of fallen time. None of that touches upon the kind of ontological unity that allows Dostoevsky’s Father Zosima to proclaim that “each is responsible for all.”
Metaphysics of gift reveals the inescapable relationality of all Creation. It is a seamless garment. Nothing and no one can be excluded. Creation is not an aggregate of discrete individuals, just as analogously, Trinity is not three gods. The being of differentiated creatures are yet Sophianic, manifesting an eschatological unity.
Thank you, Jesse! That All Shall Be Saved follows quite logically on the philosophical and patristic theological ground laid in Hart’s devastating and incisive critique of popular subChristian theodicies found in his book, The Doors of the Sea. Among the most vigorously rebutted of those was a species of rigorist Calvinism, so I find it risible (to use a vocabulary word I learned from that book) DeJong calls Hart a Calvinist. The latter was my introduction to Hart, for which I will be forever grateful, even though despite a BA and summa cum laude graduation from “the Harvard of the Midwest”, I had to read it with a dictionary by my side! Some of its passages bring me to shouts of acclamation and a couple never fail to elicit tears of profoundest joy at their vehement and lyrical defense of the unspeakable beauty and purity of the grace of God and His complete victory over sin, death and hell in our salvation in Christ in spite of the brokenness in this world.
I find it dismaying that so many would-be “traditional” Orthodox eager to defend what they understand as Orthodox teaching so completely fail to grasp what Hart is actually arguing in his book. Instead of grappling with his actual arguments, they continue (albeit perhaps unwittingly) to construct “straw men” that they proceed to knock down with simplistic and superficial arguments and proof texts from the Fathers and Scripture. Disappointing and dissatisfying are how I would characterize their typical responses, even though like you I can appreciate their sincere pastoral concerns and affirmation of prayer for the salvation of all. It would be interesting to see them address the full texts of the Kneeling Prayers of Pentecost in this context as well, since these are found in the actual Liturgy of the Church. “Lex orandi. Lex credendi…”
Thanks for making this one public, Jesse. I started following you at your old blog. Being on a fixed income, I have to limit my paid subscriptions, but I will be happy to read whatever you release from the paywall.
I haven't read nearly as much Hart as you have, but I have read some and listened to many interviews. Reading the assertion that he is a Calvinist made me actually laugh out loud. Hart's view is so much more uncomplicated than any of his opponents' rationales, and presents a bigger God who is interested in the "right-wising" (NTWright) of creation, rather than its destruction.
The "big God" theses appeal to me, always have. I came to universal reconciliation 25 years ago as an Evangelical, reading the New Testament "all things" texts straightforwardly, along with other texts that imply or outright state that God is good enough and big enough to ultimately bring everyone to himself without coercion. I saw that if *anything* is lost to Christ, then the devil wins - and I don't believe the devil wins.
When I dead-ended in Evangelicalism, the only avenue open to me was that of Orthodoxy (I was raised Catholic but have theological issues that prevented me from reverting). Kalomiros' view, which I encountered first, was so much more open and God-worthy than anything I had known of anything in any western theology that took Scripture seriously. It was a short step from there to finding out that Orthodoxy has never articulated any doctrine about what happens to people after the Judgment beyond "He shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead and of his kingdom there shall be no end." "Settled" doctrine ends up in the liturgies and prayer services; I've been in the Church nearly 15 years, and I've never encountered anything like a full-throated "infernalist" view in any of them - it's manifestly the opposite. I can't even express how relieved and at peace I was to simply find a place to sit at St Gregory's and St Isaac's feet. Fr Aiden's resources and Brad Jerzak's writings have simply helped me settle in at that end of the table. In the rare instances I'm asked about it, I am careful to say that the idea of eternal torment has actually not been declared dogma historically, and therefore it's not in the there in the liturgies, lots about it ignores interpretive issues and good Scriptural hermeneutics, and there are in fact bishops who tell us we may hope for UR.
I believe Frs D and DY have peoples' best interests at heart. You did a good job interacting with them respectfully in this post. I also think there are a lot of folks out there like me, who long for a Truly Good God and believe that he actually must exist as such in order to be rightly worshiped. I have prayed and thought about this a lot, for years - decades, now - and I have found beauty and depth and "more Jesus" in Orthodoxy precisely because UR can stake out a place there. The hope in my heart around this has solidified over the years (and probably with the accumulation of years - I'm 67), and Hart's TASBS has only settled it more. The God - even the Father - of our Lord Jesus Christ can be trusted to make all things well, and all manner of things well.
Dana
It bears repeating again and again that Damick and De Young are not credible sources on the things they seek to pontificate about. They are, basically, out of their league in trying to deal with Hart, just as they are trying to deal with the Ancient Near Eastern, biblical, and classical materials that they frequently butcher or otherwise misrepresent. To borrow an older phrase, they know enough to be dangerous, but not to be careful.
Given your training and ongoing studies, you are in a good position to judge on those specific topics of Ancient Near Eastern, biblical, and classical materials. Given my relative ignorance on those topics, I still enjoy *The Lord of Spirits* show from time to time and fancy that I learn a thing or two, but I also read your writings, and I can tell that I'm learning even more there.
A systematic look-through of their podcast is more dealing with them than I'm typically inclined to do, but I'll just say for now that
a.) awareness that Second Temple texts exist, what they say, and that they are somehow related to the NT is not quite the same as being able to exegete them in context or understand what their authors are trying to say through them;
b.) treating the apocalyptic mythology of 1 Enoch like it is a literal history of the world is...an odd choice, even if it's what ancient Jews and Christians believed, and some of their attempts to rationalize or naturalize the myth are equally odd;
c.) they resolutely resist the "New New Perspective"/"Radical New Perspective" school that sees Jesus, Paul, and the apostles as practicing Jews running an observant, Jewish movement, because their apologetic goal is to argue that Eastern Orthodox Christianity was the religion of the apostles, rather than the more modest (and defensible) claim that Orthodoxy is descended from the apostolic community, though it is a very different phenomenon from what the apostles were doing (cue De Young's "The Religion of the Apostles");
d.) They buy more or less into Heiser's read on Ancient Israelite/Judahite and Second Temple theology, which is better than nothing but far short of the real, cutting-edge scholarship on these topics, and this maligns some of their exegesis of the Tanakh, especially passages that reference, for example, Canaanite mythology and reapply it to Yhwh, or in their understanding of Yhwh's original place in the Israelite pantheon;
e.) they fail to track the changes in what the New Testament means in its evolving contexts from the first century, when it was Jewish literature written for Jews and sympathetic non-Jews, to the second and successive centuries, when it was read as "Christian," anti-Jewish literature, and as teaching a coherent theology (later understood to be Nicene Trinitarianism and Chalcedonian Christology);
f.) they're just smug.
Helpful breakdown!
Jesse, I rediscovered this article today. I've been reading, and rereading, the transcript of Fr Stephen De Young's Ancient Faith video. Your remarks in this article resonate. Fr Stephen's refusal to take the universalist position seriously (as Met Kallistos Ware certainly did) and his blithe acceptance that God might condemn the impenitent to eternal torment is very disturbing.
Glad this made some sense. I agree with you about the concerns. I wrote this a good while back and in “one go” as I recall. I’d put things a little more clearly and systematically, I’d hope, if thinking about it again. Anyway, yes, this kind of thoughtless dismissal of the “other side” within “uncomfortable” topic areas is disappointing.
As I also appreciate the work of Fr. Damick and Fr. De Young, it was great to read such a respectable rebuttal. Thank you for this!
Thank you Jesse. A fine model of critique.
But I must say: Bonhoeffer was right about stupidity. And *pious* stupidity —only God can deal with that.
A lot of this comes back to reading Scripture not merely through tradition, but also importing the legacy of voluntarist notions of freedom into what is taken as an unproblematic way to conceive of God and man. If, for instance, one equates divine sovereignty in the direction of arbitrary decision, then to deny this is seen as an illicit constraint on God’s freedom. The entire problem is bad theology driven by hidden presuppositions contrary to any discerning grasp of a coherent metaphysics of love.
At the creaturely level, this manifests as the idea that personal freedom is “spontaneous” and tethered to a spurious concept of autonomy. Incommensurable perspective can only arise through the nurturing of others. From the initial dependence of the child on parental care to the acquisition of shared language that precedes any unique utterance, the person is never a nominalist individual. Without encounter with the creaturely other, the person never attains awareness of interior consciousness. Development is always already dialectical in that sense.
Further, Hart is good at pointing out that every individual act, even mistaken, sinful action, cannot but operate within the horizon of the Good, because the light of intellect simply is the Good. Just as one cannot really imagine a new primary color, no one chooses apart from an implicit orientation. The nihilist may deny God and meaning, but the very possibility of denial is inevitably reactive, and thus draws sustenance from the reality that is denied. Such acts of destructive will are never primary; they are diseased manifestations of the hidden ontological quest to realize flourishing, even if distorted into a refusal of the given.
Distinguish between the egophanic revolt (to borrow a phrase from Voegelin) and the ontological depths of the person, which are always an originating participation in the Logos. The will is not fundamentally a function of the psychological self, but a gift called forth by Love. The perdurance of freedom, post-mortem, is coincident with the absolute fidelity of Love.
I think there is a compelling aspect to Pavel Florensky’s eschatological intuitons: there might very well be an annihilation of the psychic detritus that makes up much of a human life. There’s no doubt that many never in this life emerge from diabolic delusion, near complete egocentrism, and sinful refusal of the gift of Being. These might very well constitute “effigies” of fallen time. None of that touches upon the kind of ontological unity that allows Dostoevsky’s Father Zosima to proclaim that “each is responsible for all.”
Metaphysics of gift reveals the inescapable relationality of all Creation. It is a seamless garment. Nothing and no one can be excluded. Creation is not an aggregate of discrete individuals, just as analogously, Trinity is not three gods. The being of differentiated creatures are yet Sophianic, manifesting an eschatological unity.
Beautifully put. Thank you for reading and sharing!
Thank you, Jesse! That All Shall Be Saved follows quite logically on the philosophical and patristic theological ground laid in Hart’s devastating and incisive critique of popular subChristian theodicies found in his book, The Doors of the Sea. Among the most vigorously rebutted of those was a species of rigorist Calvinism, so I find it risible (to use a vocabulary word I learned from that book) DeJong calls Hart a Calvinist. The latter was my introduction to Hart, for which I will be forever grateful, even though despite a BA and summa cum laude graduation from “the Harvard of the Midwest”, I had to read it with a dictionary by my side! Some of its passages bring me to shouts of acclamation and a couple never fail to elicit tears of profoundest joy at their vehement and lyrical defense of the unspeakable beauty and purity of the grace of God and His complete victory over sin, death and hell in our salvation in Christ in spite of the brokenness in this world.
I find it dismaying that so many would-be “traditional” Orthodox eager to defend what they understand as Orthodox teaching so completely fail to grasp what Hart is actually arguing in his book. Instead of grappling with his actual arguments, they continue (albeit perhaps unwittingly) to construct “straw men” that they proceed to knock down with simplistic and superficial arguments and proof texts from the Fathers and Scripture. Disappointing and dissatisfying are how I would characterize their typical responses, even though like you I can appreciate their sincere pastoral concerns and affirmation of prayer for the salvation of all. It would be interesting to see them address the full texts of the Kneeling Prayers of Pentecost in this context as well, since these are found in the actual Liturgy of the Church. “Lex orandi. Lex credendi…”
That should be “Lex orandi, lex credendi.”
Thank you for this kind comment.
Thank you so much for this, Jesse! So glad to have discovered your work.
Glad it’s helpful!
A lot of opinions on all sides about nuthin. Back to the garden.
Well done. I look forward to reading more of your work.
So glad to hear that my thoughts were intelligible!