Hart’s newest release is a strange read for a book published by Yale University Press. The entirety of it is written in the first person. No original research is presented on the topic and it in fact treads the same grounds that Rob Bell’s Love Wins covered a decade ago. It lacks a single footnote (though somewhere near the end Hart manages to cite a sermon by Saint Gregory of Nyssa). Lastly, the book is written with such vitriol it barely refrains from profanity. That All Shall Be Saved reads more like a series of blog posts than a book.
The author comes across as a tragic figure, struggling with bipolar disorder or some sort of serious mental illness. The tone of the book is calm perhaps only at one point, that being where Hart claims the argument put forward is a “logical and rhetorical experiment” (p. 5). This appears to be a rhetorical escape hatch of sorts so that Hart can arbitrarily disown content under the guise he was playing a sort of character, but at the same time maintain his overall argument.
Whatever was really going on in Hart’s mind when he wrote the book, the character he plays is a bitter man who probably could not get along with anyone for eternity. He shows no humility, boasting that, “I cannot alter my views (since they are almost certainly correct)” (p. 108). Like an enraged pundit on the Twitterverse, he accuses what he calls “infernalists” (i.e. those who maintain the orthodox position of eternal damnation) of “one or two emotional pathologies” as the basis of why they believe in eternal damnation (p. 25). If he is an eminent philosopher as he bills himself to be, he ought to know that ad hominem arguments are logically fallacious–an embarrassing “fail” one would not expect from a “philosophical treatise” published by a “scholarly” source.
Sadly, this is not some sort of exception. The childish attacks persist throughout the whole book. Hart attacks “infernalists” as “victims of their own diseased emotional conditions” (p. 29). He calls into question the view of a theological opponent simply because he is an “ordained convert to Eastern Orthodoxy” (Father John Whiteford)–as if being an ordained convert (like Saint Cyprian was) automatically disqualifies someone from making a point. He accuses Tertullian, Aquinas, and Peter Lombard of having “peculiarity of temperament” for teaching that the saved look upon those in Hell with a sense of enjoyment (p. 78). Rev 14:10, Rev 22:14-15, and 2 Clem 17:6 mention that the damned suffer in the presence of God (and those with Him) and they have no reference to heavenly enjoyment being decreased as a result. One must ask Mr. Hart, does Saint John share the same aforementioned temperament? Hart insults so many people in his book, he even insults himself. He describes himself as “insolent” amidst calling everyone else he is flailing rhetorically at as “genuinely odious” (p. 65).
One who reads the book cannot help but feel sorry for its author. There is something very wrong with the man and he needs emotional support. If a student of his were to hand a master’s thesis like this to him at Notre Dame, he would certainly give the student an “F” for its unscholarly tone and argumentation. For a “scholar” to fall so low is indicative of a severe problem in his life–one we must hope and pray he gets help for.
One may describe reading the book’s torturous 200 pages of streaming insults and schoolyard “arguments” as a form of intellectual masochism. Hart’s arguments lack citations. Instead, they are a stream of consciousness pertaining to things he probably once read. He quotes the Bible and then proceeds to cite Saint Gregory of Nyssa, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Dante, and other unrelated material; and weaves all of these together into what in his mind is one long, continuous, ingenious thread that is supposed to make sense. However, if one cares to pay attention to his actual arguments, looking past all of the infantile rhetoric, they do not hold up to scrutiny.
For example, he cites Saints Augustine and Basil the Great as commenting that a “large majority” of fellow Christians were universalist. “This may have been hyperbole,” writes Hart, “but then again it may very well have not been” (p. 2). The argument here is another logical fallacy an eminent philosopher should avoid: an argumentum ad populum. If history proves anything, the majority is usually wrong. Across denominational lines, it has never been believed by any group of Christians (let alone the Orthodox) that doctrines are determined by majority vote. For example, 53 percent of Orthodox Christians believe abortion should be legal in all cases. Obviously, the poll did not include residents of Mount Athos or any canonized saints. This is an important, but obvious detail. All denominations have some sort of view that the saints rightly preserve doctrine–not the majority. To a reasonable thinker, the appeal to a majority actually gives one grounds for suspicion of a position, not acceptance.
Hart also makes some weak logical arguments. For example, he argues that (1) a rational being can only choose “the good,” (2) men are rational beings, therefore (3) man must ultimately choose “the good” at some point in eternity. An obvious rejoinder would be that men do not always will to be rational (hence, gnomic willing–we deliberate between good and evil). Therefore, if a man enters a state where he can no longer learn or change, specifically the state of the soul after death (Saint Clement of Rome teaches there is no repentance after death, 2 Clem 8:3), a man according to his own natural capacities is “locked” into a state of not choosing “the good.”
Hart appears to anticipate this and argues that “eternal culpability lies forever beyond the capacities of any finite being” (p. 43). This means, according to Hart, a man cannot be culpable of something infinite if he is finite. However, this does not take into view Whom the finite being wronged. Logically speaking, wronging an infinite being carries an infinite penalty, just like punching the President carries with it a stiffer sentence then punching one’s neighbor. Hart’s logic is not self-evidently true as he claims.
The consistent theological thread that undergirds the logic of Hart’s universalism is a soteriological heresy called “predestinarianism.” In short, predestinarianism is the belief that God could make a man do anything and so, a man’s destiny is solely the result of the whims of an omnipotent God. So, presuming this logic, if God is good then God must save everyone because He can. Hart implicitly concedes this when he writes, “It makes no more sense, then, to say that God allows creatures to damn themselves” (p. 80). From this, Hart reasons (he always reasons), eternal culpability cannot exist because God will not let a man damn himself–He is too nice a god nor would he hold man responsible for something he could not fully realize would have such everlasting consequences.
Hart is in fact talking about two different things. For one, culpability does not logically depend upon knowledge of wrongdoing. One could inadvertently venture into something bad. A child who touches a hot stove does not deserve getting burned as a punishment, though it is certainly the result of the action. Eve was deceived by the serpent and fell into sin. We have no indication she knowingly chose evil.
Second, Hart’s obvious rejoinder (“why wouldn’t a good God prevent the child from touching the stove”) underscores his predestinarian heresy. Hart, in all his reasoning, presumes God will make sure that everyone at some point in eternity chooses “the good” and attains to heaven. For Hart’s view to work, man can never authentically have free will, because choosing freely always leaves open the possibility of choosing wrongly. So, Hart must hold to the contrary–God will not let man choose the wrong thing eternally. However, this appears to contradict a clear teaching of Jesus:
You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life (emphasis added, John 5:39-40).
This view of Hart’s creates all sorts of even more profound theological problems. For one, this means man is not really made in the image of God. God has complete freedom of will and for Hart’s system to work, man’s will must not be independent from God’s. If man cannot choose to reject “the good” (before His will is divinized, which makes choosing wrong impossible), he does not fully have free will. If men do not really have free will, then, by Hart’s blasphemous logic, Jesus Christ was never really human–His divine nature so overshadows His human nature (monophystianism) that He according to His human nature has a free will that is constitutionally different than that of normal men (monothelitism)–Christ would not authentically have a human free will in addition to a divine will. It was because Jesus Christ’s will was divinized completely (i.e. His human will always cooperated with His divine will) that He could not choose wrongdoing. Man, without cooperating with God, cannot attain to a divinized will after death–and therefore maintains a heart turned against God.
For man to be in the image of God he must have free will. It is only by being sanctified in Christ, authentically cooperating with God’s grace, consistent with the aforementioned free will, does man attain to heaven. In short, we must freely will to be like God to attain to Theosis. Theosis is not a switch God can simply turn to “on” without man flipping the switch together with God. (Prayers for the dead appear to contradict such a rationalization, but that is outside our purview here. It is generally presumed the dead that are prayed out of Hades at some sort of inclination towards God and canonically the Church only prays for baptized Christians and sinless children.)
Further, heaven cannot exist in such a predestinarian system. If man is some sort of puppet or trained animal, unthinking and unfeeling, he is thereby constitutionally unable to enjoy Heaven or know God. Only free agents can really attain to Godliness. A well behaved dog, or a sock puppet, even when manipulated to do good things, are no closer to Godliness than an inaminate rock. For there to be a good universe created out of nothing, which contains real people who bear the image of God, an eternity for some of those people who turn away from “the good” (i.e. Hell) continually appears logically necessary–not impossible as Hart posits (p. 82).
On another note, the book’s Biblical arguments come across as epistemologically Protestant. They do not refer to the teaching of the saints. Hart writes, “The whole book [of the Bible] is to my mind an intricate and impenetrable puzzle, one whose key vanished long ago along with the particular community of Christians who produced it” (p. 106-107). This sort of digging back into the original sources, parsing Greek terms to find the “truth” in the Scriptures which has apparently (in Hart’s mind) been lost to the saints for centuries, is no different than the approach of the Reformers.
Hart’s Biblical translations have eisegetical universalist slants. For example, he translates 1 Tim 2:4 to state that God “intends [θέλει] all human beings to be saved.” The Greek term can carry the connotation of intent. Of course, no translator has ever rendered the verse as such, nor is that literal Greek term every translated as “intends” elsewhere in the New Testament. N.T. Wright, himself a renown liberal Biblical scholar, views Hart’s translation of the Scriptures as clunky and intentionally biased. The bias in 1 Tim 2:4’s rendering is obvious. “Intent” carries with it the implication that if God does not accomplish what He set out to do, He is not all powerful. Yet, the word “desire” does not carry this implication. I may desire for my son to be happy, but I may also desire his discipline. Saint John of Damascus understood that God has antecedent and permissive wills, which if understood correctly explains how God can will two different things and there is no contradiction. Hart is aware of this and cites Saint John of Damascus on this point (p. 187), but dismisses his argument as some sort of after-the-fact ad hoc theological paradigm created to defend “infernalism” and other “bad stuff” attributed to God.
In such an emotionally charged book with no attempt at impartiality, it is unsurprising that Hart employs gross exaggerations in the process of substantiating his argument. Hart asserts, “The texts of the gospels simply make no obvious claim about a state of endless suffering,” and he adds that nor do “the earliest Christian documents of the post-apostolic church, such as the Didache” (emphasis added, p. 118). Matt 25:46, 2 Thes 1:9, and Rev 20:10 would be clear Scriptural examples against such a notion. Further, even Hart concedes (p. 114-115) that first century Jewish thought taught everlasting damnation. As for the testimony of “the earliest Christian documents,” this would appear to be an artificial criteria as these documents are simply not long enough to go into enough detail to meet Hart’s very specific criteria for “state of endless suffering.” Nevertheless, the following were written within 50 years of the Scriptures and certainly suggest that “infernalism” was the teaching of the early Church:
- The Didache clearly teaches that there are those who are saved and those that “perish” (chap 16).
- 2 Clem 17:5 says the damned’s “worm shall not die, nor their fire be quenched, and they shall be for a spectacle to all flesh” after the day of judgement.
- Polycarp Chap 2 speaks of retributive justice, saying that “blood will God require of those who do not believe in Him.”
- Saint Ignatius wrote that those “becoming defiled [by false teaching] shall go away into everlasting fire, and so shall every one that hearkens [i.e. follows] unto him” (Ephesians, Chap 16).
- The Epistle of Diognetus states the damned “shall be condemned to the eternal fire, which shall afflict those even to the end” (Chap 10).
- It should be noted that “to the end” is a common euphemism for “without end” when there is no known end in sight. See Irenaeus Against Heresies Book V, Chap 16, Par 1 and Saint Victorinus’ Commentary on Revelation, Par 16. Jesus Christ Himself says that, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20). Obviously, the implications is not that Christ will not be with the saved at some point. The opposite is being communicated: Christ will always be with Christians, until the second coming–which He then continues to abide with Christians.
Hart makes factual errors. He repeats the urban legend that universalism “was not” rejected at the fifth ecumenical council (p. 4). During Session 8 (Chap 5:11; p. 123-124, Vol 2, of Price’s translation) the aforementioned council explicitly asserts that “Origen” and his “impious writings” have already been “condemned and anathematized by the holy catholic and apostolic Church” and anathematizes all that agree with him. As we discussed elsewhere, one of the specific documents the council in mind by the council fathers was the 543 synod of Constantinople which in its ninth anathema records:
If anyone says or holds that the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time, and that there will be a restoration of demons and impious human beings, let him be anathema (p. 281 of Price’s translation).
This means, in the eighth session, the fifth ecumenical council gave ecumenical authority to the earlier council in Constantinople in 543 and therein we have an explicit rejection of universalism.*
*This view needs to be somewhat nuanced. What is for sure is that Origen and apokatastasis was certainly condemned. A document from 553 AD may have been the only one in mind, though this is unlikely and the 543 AD document is most likely referred to. For more details go here.
If this were for whatever reason “unclear” to those who are eminent scholars, thankfully the seventh ecumenical council was even more explicit.
In the sixth session (which is an official response to the Council of Hiera) the following is stated:
Definition 18 [of Hieria]: If any one confess not the resurrection of the dead, the judgment to come, the retribution of each one according to his merits, in the righteous balance of the Lord that neither will there be any end of punishment nor indeed of the kingdom of heaven, that is the full enjoyment of God, for the kingdom of heaven is not meat and drink but righteousness joy and peace in the Holy Ghost, as the divine Apostle teaches, let him be anathema.
Epiphanius [in giving the definitive reply of Nicea II to Hiera] reads: This is the confession of the patrons of our true faith the holy Apostles, the divinely inspired Fathers–this is the confession of the Catholic Church and not of heretics. That which follows, however, their own full of ignorance and absurdity for thus they bluster… (emphasis added, Source, p. 423)
This shows that the second Council of Nicea, in rejecting Hiera, goes through the trouble of actually concurring with Hiera on the never-ending nature of damnation. The council has several explicit condemnations of Origen. Further, the council fathers calls Hell “eternal shame” and “perpetual shame.” Shockingly, they reject apokatastasis by name. One can click here for more details on that subject.
“Christians dare not doubt the salvation of all,” Hart asserts. “[A]ny understanding of what God accomplished in Christ that does not include the assurance of a final apokatastasis…is ultimately incoherent” (p. 66). Sadly, in making this statement, Hart falls under the same anathema endorsed by the fifth ecumenical council that Origen did.
Hart might retreat from his position and assert he takes the more tempered view of apokatastasis of Saint Gregory of Nyssa. (This would be disingenuous given the positive assessment Hart gives of Origen and the salvation of demons on p. 76.) However, he apparently does not understand that the same saint said in no uncertain terms that for Judas “the chastisement in the way of purgation will be extended into infinity.” Hart may view this as a wink and a nod to the ignorant masses, but judging from the book’s selective portrayal of facts, one has no compelling reason to trust his assessment of the saint’s theology.
Elsewhere in the book, Hart uncritically asserts that Saint Issac the Syrian was an Origenist universalist (p. 16), but fails to mention this is a point that is in doubt. Further, he accuses Saint Silouan the Athonite of the same. However, the saint explicitly rejects Origen’s universalism and asserts that “many or few, we do not know” will eternally reject salvation and thereby be damned.
While a book review like this could hardly flesh out the Church’s “infernalist” position, it does not need to. One certainly can question Hart’s book on intellectual and moral grounds. For this reason, the book is a disappointment–not because its position is right or wrong. Rather, it is argued so badly and unconvincingly that only those who already agreed with Hart would get edification from its contents. And, if the point of books is to teach and change (perhaps improve) minds, Hart has failed dramatically in fulfilling the very role a eminent scholar ought to.
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If you want to read further madness, see Hart’s response to a critique from Peter Leithart: https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/good-god-a-response/
If he responds to “some kid of pantheos” then he might respond to this one too, LOL
Yeah: in before he accuses you of not having read his book or understood his arguments.
My review I think pretty thoroughly gets into his psyche. I think he is pretending to make an argument honestly. He is falling back on, “I am too brilliant for you, you cannot possibly understand,”
Well, he does suggest at the end that Leithhart become Orthodox (which I highly second).
Other than that, might you tell me exactly what DBH said in his rebuttal that devolved to the level of “madness?”
If you know anything about Leithart’s quite prolific work, he’s hardly a “fundamentalist” or a “literalist”. Additionally, to call Leithart a “Marcionite” when Hart then says the Bible has a garbled and confused notion of God, where the God of Torah is “blood thirsty” and a genocidal maniac, borders on the comically absurd.
I am not defending Hart, nor do I care to either agree nor disagree with his beliefs. But these personal comments about Hart personally fill this review of his work, and offer ad hominem comments against him personally, while hypocritically claim to be outraged that Hart has violated ad hominem logic. It would be better to respond to Hart’s doctrines from the Scriptures and Orthodox Church tradition, and leave it at that, than to waste many words attacking Hart personally in the name of orthodoxy and correct belief. My belief is no agreement with universalism, nor do I hold to Calvinism, which virtually amounts to “universal damnation” of all and no hope of salvation for virtually almost anyone, and a hypocritical predestined sin and evil as somehow being “God’s perfect double predestined holy merciless will”. Whatever Hart’s faults may be personally, it would be better for you to discuss his ideas and leave it at that, and keep the personal comments about the man to a strict minimum. Again, I am no fan of Hart nor do I wish to be partisan, though my view of Eastern Orthodox theology is colored by my strict adherence to the orthodoxy of Photius, Mark of Ephesus, John S. Romanides, and Vladimir Lossky, and despisement of Sergius Bulgakov. If one is going to get ad hominem, it would be better to criticize Bulgakov, Berdyaev, and Soloviev, and praise Khomiakov, basically. And I owe my conversion to John 15:26 to Fr. Peter E. Gillquist in “Becoming Orthodox: A Journey to the Ancient Christian Faith” (1st ed., Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989). Maybe Hart is arrogant, but one does not criticize ad hominem in Hart by making an ad hominem against Hart. That would be hypocrisy. And I am no critique of you. I am your friend and friend to all. I have strong opinions on EO doctrine, just like the rest of us Augustinian-Pentecostal Lutheran-charismatic antinomian Evangelical Protestant Religious Right converts to Eastern Orthodoxy and ROCOR -MP. God save us all. I think you would do better to review Hart’s doctrines and see to what extent the agree with the Nicene Creed without Filioque the book “THE RUDDER”, Orthodox catechisms, Monopatrism, and the traditions of the NT and the 7 (8, 879-880 Pope John VIII) ecumenical councils. God bless you and save you, whether you are cradle EO or a convert to the EOC. God have mercy on me a sinner. LORD Jesus Christ, Son of God, Remember us in Thy Kingdom. Amen.
I think there is truth to this review, but here is why I included comments about Hart himself.
First, for a book published by Yale University Press, the standards should be higher than a blog. So, one cannot criticize my own critique without invalidating the book itself.
Second, I was criticizing Hart for something he actually said. He is simply name calling. So, for example, I never even addressed why I think Hart is so wrong on this topic (my opinion is that he does not care about the truth, he has a preconceived notion and he will bend logic and history just to fit it.) However, he almost concedes this much in the book itself. Nevertheless, I definitely criticize him for his behavior–but his behavior would not invalidate his arguments (unlike his several claims to those being infernalist having mental problems and their views are self evidently wrong.)
So, I think I have actually avoided ad hominems, because my critique of his behavior *does* actually pertain to the quality of the book. However, I never said it invalidated his position.
God bless
Craig
My response to you is the same as I made to Benjamin Guyer in the link below.
Some of us, having seen the theological and psychological wasteland that certain religious groups and practices have created, are less than enamored with them, ecumenicalism, or the idea of treating them with anything other than the searing contempt that the Early Fathers had for heresies in general. That is not to say that I won’t be gracious and kind to those individual still trapped by their distortions of Scripture, but the idea of treating their organization in toto with anything less than contempt does not appeal to me.
For me, this goes especially for any form of Anabaptist Fundamentaliem of the Tennessee Windsucker variety, which theology first seduced me, then ruined me.
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2019/10/31/defending-david-bentley-hart/
Dude –
All you did was bloviate about his “rudeness” (and did not answer my first response to you, which I think shows a lot about you!) Indeed, the first several paragraphs of your “review” are nothing more than a public display of panty-wringing over Hart’s alleged meanness.
Now….when you get the time, how about a substantive review instead of having a public fit of the vapors? Start, if you will with Discourse One in Hart’s book regarding Free Will and Hart’s insistence (quite correct, I think) that any man in his right mind will exercises his free-will to pick that which is in his best interest, and indeed, it would only be a mentally ill or deranged person who would choose that which would destroy him. Prove to all of us that in our current position on earth here, i.e., lost, subject to corruption, out of touch with God, decieved by both our own thoughts and those of others, that somehow we are actually “free” to make the best choice we could, i.e. to choose union with Christ.
I’ll wait…………..(Jeopardy Music in Background)
If Hart criticizes Aquinas and Lombard, he is on the right track, as they are almost as bad as Calvin, and they are surely humanistic arrogant secularist empiricists (Aristotelian idolaters) like Calvin (well, Calvin is more of a Nestorian and maybe a neo-Platonist Augustinian that an Aristotelian). Lombard’s “The Sentences: Book 1 – The mystery of the Trinity”, and Aquinas “Contra Errores Graecorum” (James Likoudis, “Ending the Byzantine-Greek Schism, 1992), are simply horrifying. Clearly it seems this criticism of Hart has not shed a certain debt to Calvinism. I do not have this problem of a Calvinist background, and I was a Lutheran, more prone to depression and despondency and self-criticism, than the Calvinist attitude of supremacy and criticism of others, and a kind of tendency to think they are more logical and rational than everyone else, especially us irrational antinomian Lutherans, with way too much emotional baggage and mental aberrations and glossolalia to be objective about others faults if they have any. I am not making this personal about you, Craig, but I find that the biggest obstacle to personal growth and humility in all of Christianity is a Calvinist background. Almost every Calvinist I have ever met has had a certain attitude. I find in you Craig less of this Calvinism, to your credit, and you are very open minded, having had a Calvinist background. I find this is the other side of Calvinism: much of Calvinism is rather tame and open minded and liberal: but sadly I fear most of the Calvinism I have experienced has been in a certain type of the Calvinist Charlie Ray and his comments to me. I also had some problems of the former John W. Robbins of “The Trinity Foundation” of Unicoi TN. And Trinity Foundation Calvinist philosopher Gordon H. Clark in all seriousness uses Calvinism to praise and justify sin and evil and impenitence, as Clark wrote that if a man comes home and murders his wife, it was God’s holy will that he should do that, just as our Calvinist President Trump said in passing that he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and they would let him get away with it. Seriously fortunately for your brother Craig you are not from that kind of Calvinist antinomian background; but I was an antinomian Lutheran. As it is, the major problem in coming into the EOC and repenting is the Protestant Reformations’ Augustinian predestinarian Filioquist background. God save us. God bless you, brother.
It should concern you that univerrsalism is predestinarian. So, it is in fact the very worst excess of Calvinist soteriology.
I do not wish to fall into the ad hominem activities which you have decried in your post, so just let me say that from the beginning I found your review to be less than accurate and your take on predestinarianism puzzling.
Then I read on this page that you are a former Calvinist and *AHA!* the light comes on. Apparently you are a convert, n’est ce pas? One of the problems with being a convert is a tendency to drag over into the state of being “newly enlightened” much baggage from previous errors. I would couple that with a tendency to read DBH’s book with certain presuppositions and biases, such as believing that God really MUST send all to eternal fire, that Aquinas was correct in his supposition that once dead, you cannot change or repent (which flies in the face of theosis, the state of ever changing in the next life), and a kind of insistence on other errors of the legal-based, Roman Courtroom mentality of the West in matters of soteriology. In short, you are not yet fully Orthodox (neither am I, a convert myself from Calvinist errors).
As for your erroneous comments on free-will, I would offer you food for thought, if you would be kind enought to read the mental meanderings of yet another universalist heretic. Once I stumbled into Apokatastasis, I had to make sense of it (as you are attempting to do), just as I had to make sense of the Apostolic faith when I was a Calvinist. Writing things out is the normal way I do this.
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2017/07/03/gods-hand-our-free-will/
My response to reluctant heretic:
“I do not wish to fall into the ad hominem activities which you have decried in your post…”
Just to reiterate, to point out someone has personality flaws is not an ad hominem attack. Our President obviously has these. However, that does not make his policies good or bad.
For example, “President Trump is uncouth. I also think that his lack of tact has had an affect on his ability to get bipartisan support for his bills. He with Republicans in the house and senate could not even reform the healthcare laws on the books and many politicians cited his divisiveness as a reason.”
That is not an ad hominem.
“President Trump is uncouth. He clearly is not educated, which is why he does not know what he is doing in the Whitehouse. If you do not agree you are either racist or you are mentally ill.”
That is an ad hominem.
I partook in the former. Hart, in the latter.
“Apparently you are a convert…being a convert is a tendency to…you are not yet fully Orthodox”
Not sure how this is relevant. It does not make Hart any classier, his arguments any better, or my own points even weaker. In fact, all you did was a classy ad hominem. You essentially argued that converts have so much old baggage, they cannot make a good point.
“…believing that God really MUST send all to eternal fire…”
I actually did not make this argument. I would affirm what the Church teaches. Apart from the Church, logic may dictate such. Athenagoras and Kant made rational arguments to the same effect.
“…once dead, you cannot change or repent (which flies in the face of theosis, the state of ever changing in the next life),…”
Actually, it does not. Luminaries such as Metropolitan Vlachos affirms that people cannot change after death, they grow more holy or more wicked…for eternity. I quoted 2 Clement to the same effect that repentance is impossible after death. So, unless you know about Theosis better than these people, I think you may be oversstating your point.
“As for your erroneous comments on free-will, I would offer you food for thought…”
Where is my food? You did not make a single point against my comments on free will. You simply meandered down a non sequitur.
I will give you the last word.
God bless,Craig
Predestinarianism? Really???
Hart addresses this whole issue in his writing regarding creatio ex nhilo and the telos of the creation act. What you are getting your knicker in a knot about is nothing less than God and not evil having the final word.
Or are you willing to presume that when God wills something, man’s puny and rebellious will can somehow override and defeat the established purpose of God?
This, of course, leads to the good question of God’s will and purpose in Creation. In the Calvinism you claim to have left (I’m not believing it in toto) God creates not for the Orthodox purpose of making little gods (theosis) as Athanasius said (God became man so that man might become god) but rather solely for His glory. God did not create a son in the Garden, Adam was nothing more than a worker-bee to till the Garden and keep the pests out. The idea of sonship is not found in Calvinism.
Therefore, in Calvinist thought, anything that gives glory to God achieves the purpose of creation, even if it means damning and torturing an unthinkable number of sentient beings to prove the righteousness and power (glory) of God.
If however, the telos of the creative will was our glorification in obtaining the divine nature, as St. Peter says, then anything less than that for any of God’s created human beings turns out to be an utter failure of His will and purpose.
You haven’t answered that position from Hart’s book. Indeed, you haven’t done much more than to bloviate against the man. If you are going to present yourself as a philsopher and theologian – you have to do much better.
This is a bunch of criticism of Hart himself and not a cogent reasoned response to his ideas. It would be better to say, “Hart says X”, but the EOC and NT say “Y”, and so what Hart says, according to Scripture, the Fathers, is not true. I got none of this. It seemed to have a still Calvinist flavor, a suggestion that Hart was a “universalist”. I found little evidence you proved your point, that Hart believed in absolute universal salvation. It seems however that Calvinist tends to universal damnation and absolute despondency, with about hope of salvation for about only 13 souls, the 12 apostles and the Virgin Mary, maybe. Such “Calvinism” must even leave St. Paul himself out of the list of the redeemed, but it certainly would suggest a 14th soul, John Calvin himself, rather than Paul. But I just, but my sarcasm has a cogent point: you seem to be lingering in Anselmian Calvinist rhetoric, and you cited little from the EO Fathers to offer a reasoned balance fair assessment of Hart. And you actually made a serious mistake in faulting Hart for animosity against Tertullian Aquinas and Lombard. No EO Christian should have any sympathy whatsoever for their non-Ecumenical, non-Photian doctrines. God bless you.
Did you read the whole review? He explicitly affirms Origen and he says repeatedly that all shall be saved. In fact, that’s the title of the book. 🙂
QUOTE: ” It seemed to have a still Calvinist flavor, a suggestion that Hart was a “universalist”. ”
Oh, you noticed that also?
I find myself wondering exactly what harm is done to the cosmos by the reality of Apokatastasis? What harm will come to the dignity of God that He actually be A.) Immutable. That is, not subject to our darkened human passions which would gladly torment our enemies forever and rejoice in it (Aquinas’s sociopathic view) B.) Is Love. Or in other words, would act according to the ontological reality we have been given in the Bible.
And if He does have it as the telos of all Creation, mankind being part and parcel of it, the apex of His creation, then is that bad? Is it somehow a terrible thing that in the next life, He has the omnipotence to bring all beings to exercise their wills and repent after being “scourged by the cords of love” as St. Isaac the Syrian wrote.
Y’all act like saving everyone is a bad thing!
I’m a convert, but I’ve been one for years, and I’m not a Calvinist. I don’t think I’m “not fully Orthodox”, because Christ came into the world to save sinners. David Bentley Hart is *also* a convert, so I am not sure what the validity is to your argument. Vladimir Soloviev was raised Orthodox. So was Joseph Stalin.
I will skip the rather-speak you use to pre-emptively justify your conclusion: “Y’all act like saving everyone is a bad thing!”
Not a bad thing at all. It’s just not what the Scriptures, Fathers, and Councils of the Church have taught. I like a nice translation of Voltaire’s “Candide” (we really can find all the answers to life in Robinson Crusoe, can’t we?) I am also sure it won’t save my soul, because it has nothing of the doctrine of the Church in it.
Not saving everyone is Calvinist. Orthodoxy is apophatic and negative theology. It never makes any dogma on the extent of the atonement. It leaves the extent of the atonement to God alone. Calvinism fails to believe 2 Peter 3;9 and 1 Tm. 2:4. If not all are actually saved, it does not negate the truth of these verse. Calvinism denies free will. Orthodoxy affirms free will. Calvinism is cataphatic and claims to speak positively for God itself, and makes itself and antichrist vicar and substitute for Christ and God Himself in stating positively that certain humans are predestined to hell. This is not something true Christianity does, and Calvinism is a cult of Calvin and a heresy of Calvin. Orthodoxy is different and leaves all to God’s mercy and judgment, including Calvin. But Calvin was not so merciful. Calvinism cannot be believed by anyone who wants to be saved.
Of course dear brother Craig, I am not at all suggesting you are still a Calvinist, just noting as all Christians would say that the old nature remains in us all after our conversions to Christ; so the Western Augustinian mindset we have all inherited from Augustine and the Reformers as Protestants does tend to blend back into our EO convert new thinking; it is hard to strain out a gnat to swallow a new camel of pure Photian Orthodoxy; as it is, I think you could have done a more sympathetic reading of Hart. I tend to not appreciate negative reviews of anyone, and I’m not trying to be critical or you Craig. I think that Barth was Calvinist and he tended more to universalism than anything you mentioned in Hart. After my conversion to Orthodoxy, I still retain the anxiety-laden torment-fearing glossolalia of the A/G Pentecostalism I wandered into in my A/G experiences outside of the LCA and ELCA. I have also attended PCUSA services. But you have a right to criticize Hart if you think really think it was necessary. Whatever the book actually says, I shall have to actually read Hart myself before I defend him too much out of hand based on nothing. As it is, I am more occupied with Photius and “On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit” of Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1983. I would appreciate your review of, Craig Truglia, the books: Peter Lombard. (1100-1160). The Sentences: Book 1 – The mystery of the Trinity. Giulio Silano, translator. Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2007), PIMS – Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies; of James Likoudis. (1992). Ending the Byzantine-Greek Schism: Containing the 14th century apologia of Demetrios Kydones for unity with Rome, and the “Contra Errores Graecorum” of Saint Thomas Aquinas. New Rochelle, New York: Catholics United for the Faith. And I would like to read any critique you offer of Azkoul, Rev. Fr. Dr. Michael, Ph.D., and Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, Massachusetts, translators. Saint Photius the great, Patriarch of Constantinople. On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit. (1983). Boston, Massachusetts: Studion Publishers. God bless you always Craig Truglia. Take care. Scott Harrington Erie PA ROCOR layman
Origen may say “All shall be saved”. Did Hart say that? I don’t know. I haven’t read Hart, so I suspend judgment. But what does 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Timothy 2:4. God wants all to be saved. All does not mean satan and demons. It means all humans. But Scripture specifically mentions Judas Iscariot as the son of perdition, so we may gather that Judas did not make it to life. But really, we all must let God be God and decided whether or not all humans shall be saved, or not. It is not for any of us to say and decide, but for God, for Jesus Christ, to say who is going to be saved or is saved.
No. God doesn’t WANT all to be save. He WILLS that all come to salvation. There is a vast difference between willing and wanting.
And the fact of the matter, as Hart says in his First Discourse in his book, the creative act shows the will of God. Or let me put it more clearly. All acts are taken towards a telos – a goal of some sort to be accomplished. When I roll up my sleeves, grab a rake and head out of my garage, the telos I am headed towards is no leaves on the front yard.
Now that leaves only two possible telological wills of God possible in Creation – either God created with the sole purpose of showing His power and glory, which means that the salvation of human beings is not essential to that will being achieved, and that their damnation, as Calvin and others have stated simply manifests His power, glory, and righteousness, or God created mankind with the telos of St. Athanasius – “God became man so that man might become god.” The becoming god was the original creative purpose, not an afterthought like, “Oh, gee, that’s swell, I guess I’ll make them gods”
I have seen no response to Hart’s elucidation on creatio ex nhilo and the telological purpose for it. Perhaps someone here would like to have a crack at it, eh Criag?
Friends, I was never a Calvinist, but I was an Augustinian (as a Lutheran and denominational Pentecostal, and both the ELCA/LCA and A/G (Springfield, MO, 1914) are Augustinian in their Filioque and other Augustinian-based errors: and I am grateful I never fell for the great Calvinist lie and sin of double predestination: but my antinomianism was my biggest fault, in a way perhaps every bit as dangerous to the immortal soul than the usual Augustinian arrogance of presumptive Calvinists, some of them, many of them (unfortunately, such as Charlie J. Ray and John W. Robbins, (who said to me “you are lost” when I questioned Luther’s fiction of “justification by faith” “alone”). But the point is conversion is a process, an ongoing thing, and becoming Orthodox is a lifelong journey of acquiring the Holy Spirit in prayer humility and the sacraments: but it seems to me that apokatastasis and Origen are perhaps a deadlier error almost than double predestination Calvinism: certainly we must not ever have any sympathy for satan and demons, or hope for the salvation of “all” (of the devil himself and demons, or for whichever humans in the future turn out to be the final antichrist and the final false prophet). Maybe most humans will be saved, that makes some sense in the light of 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Tm. 2:4, but Christ also says or suggests “few” will be saved, whatever that “few” shall actually mean. Since true Orthodoxy is at heart totally “apophatic”, without falling into the traps of pure agnosticism, pure relativism, unmitigated despondency, or insolent triumphalist presumptive arrogance, we should … for Christ’s sake, admit in all humility: it is only for Christ Himself alone to say and judge, whether in the end, that “all shall be saved”. Humans maybe. But not any of the fallen angels, none of them. That much is certain. For sure.
I was accused of bring a Calvinist (which is true, BTW).
How interesting it is to come across your blog after all this time and see that you are now Orthodox. I recall years ago engaging with you in the comments section of Shameless Popery when you were Protestant and I was Orthodox. As it happens, I recently returned to the Anglican Communion after 6 years in the Orthodox Church.
An interesting anecdote, I have had several friends read Hart’s latest book, including mainline Protestants, Catholics, Mormons and Atheists. Without fail it has been those with the strongest commitments to certain understandings of ecclesiastical and dogmatic authority who are most annoyed by Hart’s arguments. My dear atheist friend, who is currently completing his PhD in philosophy, believes that Hart’s book is among the most fascinating and well-argued that has been published in the past decade.
Anyways, to your review, I wonder if you are aware of how much of it is reducible to subjective, unsubstantiated sentiments and ad hominem claims rather than reasoned responses. As someone who has spent the greater part of a decade immersed in the theology, history and philosophy of universalism, I must say that you also overlook the nuance and diversity that are characteristic of this topic.
You begin by proposing that Hart’s book is “a strange read” at least, in part, because it is written from the first person perspective and lacks footnotes. While I agree that footnotes would have been welcome in some instances, it also isn’t all that strange for a book of philosophical and theological meditations to lack the sort of citations one would find in books that depend on research and evidence, such as historical or sociological texts. Academic publishers frequently publish theological and philosophical meditations that are light on footnotes.
By claiming that Hart “treads the same grounds” as Rob Bell’s book is perhaps the clearest evidence in your review that you have completely overlooked the various ways in which Hart’s thesis differs from Bell’s. Their methodological approaches, arguments employed and eschatological conceptions are quite disparate.
The next several paragraphs of your review are a string of hyperbolic, ad hominem attacks against Hart that suggest, more than anything, that you have been very deeply, and very personally vexed by what he has to say. Sure, Hart often employs visceral, ad hominem against his opponents which is understandable given his convictions regarding just how harmful and wrongheaded certain eschatological perspectives have been, but there is a clear logic to Hart’s thesis that really isn’t that difficult to follow. By all means, disagree with his argument on the grounds that he is operating from faulty premises, but at least acknowledge that there is a clear path of logic running through his arguments.
You then accuse Hart of committing the argumentum ad populum fallacy when referencing Augustine’s and Basil’s statements. This would be true if Hart was presenting some sort of argument that universalism’s veracity was bolstered by these statements, but the context in which he employs these citations clearly shows that his purpose is to show that universalism was much more common in the early Church than is often supposed. No fallacy has been committed.
You next contest Hart’s argument for universalism from the claim that human beings ultimately seek after the good. In your attempt to rebut this argument you isolate it from its broader context wherein Hart has addressed the very contentions you raise. Hart himself explains why it is a contradiction in terms to speak of an irrational will, since the decision originates from a deficient agent who is not truly free in his or her exercise of intentionality. Hart continues by demonstrating why it would be an absurd act of evil for God to have constructed existence in such a manner that one’s eternal destiny depends upon finite and deficient actions. He also outlines why reasons for holding that we are locked into a certain state after death are insufficient and even seem to contradict other points of tradition and logic. You unsubstantiated appeal to Anselm does little to bolster your contentions, given that Anselm’s theory of just desserts is itself rooted more in medieval, feudal conceptions of justice than in anything patristic or scriptural (points I am almost certain Hart raised in the book). As Robin Parry highlights in his book, the Evangelical Universalist, the Anselmian perspective eliminates any capacity for distinguishing between greater and lesser sins since even the most minor offense is an infinite affront to the Divine.
If one actually does justice to the full scope of Hart’s arguments the weaknesses you highlight are shown to be nothing of the sort. A single strand of fiber may be easy to break, but if it is one of myriad fibers constructing a rope the task of breaking through becomes far more difficult. You have attempted to convince your reader that what is, in actuality, quite a formidable rope is a mere strand of fiber.
You next accuse Hart of being guilty of the predestinarian heresy, which holds that God is the sole agent operating when it comes to one’s salvation. There is a distinction, albeit a nuanced one, that reveals your error. According to Hart’s argument, God has created the human will in such a manner that its telos is the Good, ultimately found only in God. Thus it is indeed necessarily the case that each and every human will ultimately seeks after God, but it is the human in which this will and desire originates
As Hart states:
“In the terms of the great Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662), the “natural will” within us, which is the rational ground of our whole power of volition, must tend only toward God as its true end, for God is goodness as such, whereas our “gnomic” or “deliberative” will can stray from him, but only to the degree that it has been blinded to the truth of who he is and what we are, and as a result has come to seek a false end as its true end.”
and
“Only because there is such a thing as a real rational terminus for intentional action, which is objectively distinguishable from irrational ends, is there such a thing as real freedom.”
Next, you reveal that you seem to lack understanding of what culpability means, first stating that culpability does not depend on knowledge of wrongdoing and then highlighting an example in which an agent is not culpable to (apparently) support your claim.
You then state the following which, again, leads me to believe that you haven’t actually understood Hart’s arguments:
“Hart, in all his reasoning, presumes God will make sure that everyone at some point in eternity chooses “the good” and attains to heaven. For Hart’s view to work, man can never authentically have free will, because choosing freely always leaves open the possibility of choosing wrongly.”
Hart nowhere claims that God will make sure that everyone chooses the good. Rather, Hart’s argument is that when one is truly free from the bondage of sin they will naturally desire God who has created their wills to desire communion with him. Hart explains at length why this view of freedom is more coherent than the notion that one can truly, freely intend that which is evil. You actually undermine yourself in your next statement:
“For one, this means man is not really made in the image of God. God has complete freedom of will”
God’s freedom is clearly not of the sort that wills what is evil, meaning that God’s is the sort of freedom that conforms to His nature, which is wholly Good. Hart demonstrates this in what I think is his most insightful and profound argument in the book:
“if human nature required the real capacity freely to reject God, then Christ could not have been fully human… According to Maximus, however, Christ possesses no gnomic will at all, and this because his will was perfectly free… What distinguished Christ in this regard from the rest of humanity, if Christological orthodoxy is to be believed, is not that he lacked a kind of freedom that all others possess, but that he was not subject to the kinds of extrinsic constraints upon his freedom (ignorance, delusion, corruption of the will, and so forth) that enslave the rest of the race.”
I’ve already spent far too much time engaging this post, so I will say only that the remainder of your rebuttals, based on Hart’s biblical and historical statement, are no less problematic than what preceded them.
I highly recommend that people actually read Hart’s book and draw their own conclusions.
“Hart nowhere claims that God will make sure that everyone chooses the good. Rather, Hart’s argument is that when one is truly free from the bondage of sin they will naturally desire God who has created their wills to desire communion with him.”
Hart therefore denies that theosis is a process and more importantly that sinful humans, once loosed by baptism, can never have interior conflict.
I really think Hart’s anthropology is all wrong.
DcnJosephSuaiden,
It in no way follows from what I stated that Hart denies theosis. He would merely have to posit that the liberation of the will is a process through which one becomes divinized and liberated. What Hart would disagree with is that baptism is a once-for-all liberation from sin.
How do you figure that this is a “denial of theosis.” Sounds exactly the opposite to me. As one who struggles with the ascetic practices of the East and has seen such slow to little progress over the years, it seems to me that if I, or anyone else, was to be freed completely from the passions, intellectual error, and decietful teaching from human beings and spirits, that I would really make some serious progress in theosis.
I must respectfully disagree with your assessment of my review. On the onset, let me state two things: I do not seek to disprove universalism and my ax to grind is by how offended I am by how unscholarly the book is.
Hence, I do not really need to prove a negative. I simply have to show that Hart falls flat on his face trying to prove a positive. Further, there is zero excuse for a book published by Yale University Press to be written by the peer-reviewed version of Donald Trump. Just because someone is boorish, that does not make them wrong–but, it demands rebuke when they are claiming the veneer of scholarship.
“Sure, Hart often employs visceral, ad hominem against his opponents which is understandable…”
I completely disagree. Academic debates have basic standards. For one, not calling people names. Another, avoid obvious logical fallacies. Third, actually citing claims. Fourth, actually getting history correct. Can you see, even if I agreed with Hart, why I would think his book was such drivel?
“…there is a clear path of logic running through his arguments…”
There most certainly is not. His argument meanders, all on the cloak of “meditations” and “discourses,” academic-sounding words to give his ramblings the facade of legitimate speculation.
“This would be true if Hart was presenting some sort of argument that universalism’s veracity was bolstered by these statements…”
He clearly draws the inference and I quoted him as such.
“Hart himself explains why it is a contradiction in terms to speak of an irrational will, since the decision originates from a deficient agent who is not truly free in his or her exercise of intentionality.”
I will reiterate that men are clearly not always rational. Being irrational does not make one unfree. Hart very freely wrote an irrational treatise. I, if I am irrational in your eyes, am freely writing a response. The argument he is positing is absurd and my review literally covered this point.
“it would be an absurd act of evil for God to have constructed existence in such a manner that one’s eternal destiny depends upon finite and deficient actions”
I also answered this point with the “hot stove” example. Again, Hart’s logic fails.
“He also outlines why reasons for holding that we are locked into a certain state after death are insufficient…”
This is also absurd for the Christian, because we accept as dogmatic the teaching of the Scriptures and fathers that there is no repentance after death. I do not need to consider speculations that run contrary to revelation. Otherwise, I have to hit the drawing board for every Christian dogma which, let’s face it, is not self-evidently true.
“According to Hart’s argument, God has created the human will in such a manner that its telos is the Good…”
This is also illogical. Hart re-defines free will so everything that is not good is unfree. While this is not categorically false depending upon the context (Jesus Christ speaks of us being “free indeed”) this is not the sort of freedom that is invoked in soteriological discussions as they pertain to predestinarianism. He knows it and I am sure you do to. You simply ignore it, because Universalism requires a sort of historical and logical blinders just for it to make sense.
Your invoking of gnomic willing does not help your argument. If it did, then none of us have free will by default because we all have gnomic will.
“…you reveal that you seem to lack understanding of what culpability means…”
Actually, unlike yours and Hart’s redefinition of the term, my application actually exists in reality and the Scriptures (hot stove, Eve’s fall into deception).
“Hart nowhere claims that God will make sure that everyone chooses the good. Rather, Hart’s argument is that when one is truly free from the bondage of sin they will naturally desire God.”
Again, this reveals his absurdity (and sadly your lack of common sense by being suckered by his lack of logic.) We already know that not everyone is free from bondage from sin and they in fact die that way. Hence, for universalism to be a solution as to how those people will be saved in the end, how can they naturally desire God if they were never free from bondage? Hart is employing circular logic.
Man, at some point, has to be made free. There are only three possibility. Man by his own capacity repents (pelagianism), man by his own capacity and the grace of God repents (Orthodoxy), and man repents solely by the grace of God (predestinarianism.) So, how does the person who is dead then repent when, we take it on faith, there is no repentance after death? Predestinarianism is the only answer that makes universalism work. And, if you posit that there is repentance after death, though this is rejected in 2 Clement, even then how do you guarantee that everyone does? You cannot. The only way you can guarentee it is, you guessed it, predestinarianism. Universalism is predestinarian, there is no escaping it.
“God’s freedom is clearly not of the sort that wills what is evil…”
Being a book review cannot give a comprehensive, philosophical treat of free will, I will neither do so in a comment. I will merely say that Christ does not have gnomic will because He has deified will. In heaven, we no longer have gnomic willing as our will is deified. Those who are not deified have gnomic willing, and so freely can choose evil whether our of inclination (us affected by the fall) or by deception (as in Adam and Eve, who had no such inclination.)
So, I think we have different views of anthropology and without getting into that, your critique here falls flat. In short, those who lack deified will still have freedom, they are simply not choosing rightly.
As for the end of your reply, you conveniently give up when you hit the part of the book review that literally cites Scriptures and fathers that explicitly dispute Hart’s claims. Why does Hart literally contradict the 8th session of the 5th council, one I was kind enough to cite and qupte? Or Nicea II for that matter. Or Saint Ignatius who literally speaks of eternal damnation? Or the Epistle of Diognetus?
I would respect a Universalist who agrees with Hart’s position, but admits his book is a piece of trash that would not be convincing to anyone reasonable.
I will give you the last word, because I have noticed universalists tend to fight tenaciously and to no end. However, I will make the exception if you want to talk about the latter half of the review.
May God find you back into the Church.
God bless,
Craig
Your response is as superficial and disappointing as your review, filled with unmerited, subjective diatribes and rigid, clumsy interpretations of tradition. My fault for foolishly wading into this mess. I’ll stick to the dialogue taking place between the many scholars who, rightfully, recognize the force of Hart’s thesis (scholars who, in your estimation, couldn’t possibly be reasonable despite being considered some of the greatest Christian thinkers of our era) as I should have done from the onset.
Cameron, a friend of mine at church said I was too tough on you. For that I apologize. Please accept that I appreciate your reply or I would have not written back.
For the record, I am not angry at you!
God bless,
Craig
The problem with talking through a machine is it allows us all to have unconscious emotions come through. If one is talking to any particular person one does not know on Facebook, maybe unconscious anger, animosity, or attraction can creep in, especially if one is debating doctrines of religion or political opinions on Facebook. They particularly get angry if you discuss politics; they muted me for 7 days for discussing Trump and politics in a religious discussion page, but I can’t seem to keep my distaste for Trump out of things. It makes me angry that people with hypocrisy twist religion to worship Trump.
Why is the response from Hart defenders this blustering faux-high mindedness? It’s a brilliant rhetorical strategy because you never have to defend yourself: at the end of the day, your opponents simply have not yet contemplated the forms and are still in the cave.
It’s the attitude Hart took with NT Wright: someone who has spent 30+ years publishing on NT studies and 2TJ is a dolt because he (graciously!) offered criticisms. In almost every field he’s published in, there has been exasperation about Hart’s lack of understanding (e.g. continental philosophy, NT studies, Church history). But his defenders, enchanted with the twinkle in his eye and his verbose command of the English language, repair to the master. Just because a thesis is worth discussing doesn’t mean it’s good, only that it touched the right nerve. John Milbank’s RadOx is a fraud, but it stirred much debate about politics and theology.
I don’t know why you have to adopt such snotty fatheadedness when writing internet comments.
Cal, I sort of gleaned the same thing. Hart’s comments are meandering and imprecise–subject to rhetorical verbosity but very little substance. Of course, Hart will say, “You are just too much of a simpleton to understand what I am *really getting at*.”
Sorry, but from what I do understand I am not impressed!
I am finding a tendency in anti-Apokastasis writers to fall back upon the writings of various and selected Fathers and Metropolitans of Orthodoxy as being infallible in anything and everything they say.
The burden of proof is on you to prove that they were speaking with a divine imprimatur of infallibility, such as the statements that after death, repentance is impossible. Just the fact that we pray for the deceased makes this statement look kind of silly.
Excellent, critical, well reasoned review of the original post – Thank you for taking the time to do this!
(My original comment is meant as a “reply” to Cameron Davis’s original comment)
Failing in logic is not as bad as failing in love. And I am failing in both. So I have more problems than Hart. I am not saying that I believe universalism is true. You just haven’t shown me Hart believes the devil will be saved. That is going to far. But if all humans are going to be saved, only God Himself has the right and goodness to say otherwise and say some may be lost. Let us hope we all shall be saved, both Craig and Hart. As it is, with all my emotional problems, if I obtain the Holy Spirit that may do more in saving my heart and mind than all the psychiatric medications that keep me from being more depressed. God help me and save me. God bless all of you. I do not know and have no right to defend or detract from Hart’s book unless I read it. Even then, I have to read more of Chrysostom and Ambrose and Augustine and Jerome. I only read Cyril of Alexandria and Basil and Photius and Mark of Ephesus mainly. And a few others. Romanides and Gillquist. I need to read more Orthodox writings, especially Chrysostom. God save us all.
Some thoughts:
Sure, the book contains ad hominems, but if you are so hung up on those that you believe they are the substance of his arguments, griping about how those are fallacies, then you’ve missed the real substance. The ad hominem stuff is just some spice and entertainment (obviously not entertaining for those at whom they are directed). It really doesn’t matter if ad hominems are a fallacy … those aren’t the arguments.
You appear to suggest that Hart’s citations about a majority of Christians being universalist is part of his actual argument. It is not. It’s not argumentum ad populum because these citations aren’t held up as anything more than examples showing that universalism wasn’t such an unthinkable thing at certain times and places in Church history.
You hold that the majority is usually wrong. Well, the majority of Christians appear to hold that universalism is an untenable view. Perhaps this is one of those many cases where the majority is wrong.
You have grossly simplified Hart’s argument about rational beings choosing the good, and then offered a grossly simplistic “obvious” rejoinder that does not address anything about ignorance and knowledge. And then you seem to feel that citing St. Clement of Rome somehow proves that there is no repentance, learning or change after death, despite the fact that saints such as Gregory of Nyssa (with his doctrine of epektasis and in several of his writings) and Maximus the Confessor (Thalassios 61-65) understand a kind of movement and growth for human beings after death. In any case, Hart provides arguments against the notion that there is no repentance after death, but you don’t address those.
In the next paragraph write that Hart “does not take into view Whom the finite being wronged. Logically speaking, wronging an infinite being carries an infinite penalty.” You say this as if you hadn’t noticed the part in Hart’s book where he addresses this very notion.
Your description of Hart’s supposed “predestinarianism” doesn’t seem to understand the idea of free will that Hart is describing in his book. Your ideas expressed in this section of your review show that you would do well to study St. Maximus more closely. You say that in Hart’s account, man can never authentically have free will “because choosing freely always leaves open the possibility of choosing wrongly.” So, Christ must not have had free will? St. Maximus insisted that Christ did not will gnomically. Rather, Maximus taught that Christ’s human will was natural, meaning that it aligned with its natural good, its natural logos, which means it did not resist the divine will in any way. It could not resist the divine will in any way because the person doing the willing was the Divine Word. This is true freedom in Maximus’ understanding (and in Hart’s book). Christ could not choose to reject the good. You call this view “blasphemous” and “monophystianism” (whatever that is … I suppose you meant “monophysitism” … but Maximus puts that notion to rest in his disputation with Pyrrhus and his Opuscula via discussion of hypostasis/nature and logoi/tropoi that I can’t reproduce here). You suggest that to hold this view means to hold that Christ’s human nature has a free will that is constitutionally different from that of the rest of us, but that’s not what it means. What it actually means is that Christ’s human will shows us the mode by which our human wills are meant to operate, the mode that is in accordance with the logos of our nature, the mode of obedience. We achieve this gnomically because we are not divine persons ourselves. The fact that we will gnomically is simply due to our personal ignorance on the one hand and our creaturely limitation on the other hand. Gnomic will is personal will and its choosing between good and evil is not ultimate freedom. Unimpeded natural will is true freedom.
You say “we must freely will to be like God to attain to Theosis.” In the context of your previously expressed notion of what human freedom is (the ability to choose good or evil), this statement sounds fairly pelagian. But let’s set that aside because I’m sure that’s not what you meant and you’d want to clarify that. Instead, let’s consider that freely willing to be like God, that attaining to theosis, is precisely the development of a habit of will that accords with God’s will (which is a habit of will that is less and less gnomic and more and more natural … until the point, in the age to come, when there is no longer any gnomic willing to be found … only natural willing, which is to say unimpeded motion according to the logos of one’s creation. This is the sort of thing found in Maximus and the sort of thinking found in Hart’s book. None of this is being a “puppet.” It’s being what we were created to be.
You accuse Hart of saying that the whole book of the Bible is a puzzle whose key vanished long ago, but in the quote you provided Hart is speaking about the Book of Revelation, not the whole Bible. Read more carefully.
You say that Hart doesn’t refer to the teaching of the saints, though he clearly refers to the teaching of St. Gregory, who is a saint. Of course, I suppose one saint isn’t enough, even if it does happen to be the “father of the fathers.”
You write of Hart’s translation of 1 Tim. 2:4 as being eisegetical, yet then you admit that the Greek term actually can carry the connotation that Hart gives it. If it can carry that connotation, then it isn’t eisegetical. And even if you insist that it is eisegetical, one could suggest that any translation of a word that could be translated more than one way will be translated eisegetically given that translators must make judgment calls. But unless a translation is clearly incorrect, so what? Those of us who don’t read scripture in the original language should be aware of different possibilities. It’s not any more “biased” to translate a word one way or another if both translations are possible. And to say that no translator has ever rendered the verse as such seems to presume on your part that you know how every translator into every language has translated it, and that you know the nuances of all those translations. Of course, Hart has addressed N.T. Wright’s criticisms of his translation. Clunkiness of language, by the way, is intentional in Hart’s translation, which sought to help us see beyond familiarity and also to get a taste for the clunkiness of some of the original writers.
You mention St. John of Damascus speaking of God’s antecedent and permissive will (“consequent will”). You say that Hart “dismisses” St. John’s argument on page 187, but that’s not what I read there at all. Rather, I see Hart suggesting that it need not be assumed, as it tends to be, that the consequent will cannot bring about the same ultimate intention as the antecedent will.
All the quotes you provide from the apostolic fathers are repetitions of biblical language, yet if the Bible itself is open to universalist interpretation, then so are these passages from the apostolic fathers. The typical Orthodox universalist isn’t denying the reality of hell, after all.
My assertions won’t change your view on this, but the condemnation of “Origen and his impious writings” is a condemnation of a particular overall system. The year 543 anathematization of “anyone” who holds that “the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time” clearly is not an absolute anathematization. St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the devil will be restored (it’s in his Catechism), along with all evildoing human beings, but he has not been anathematized.
As for Saint Isaac the Syrian, even if you reject the authenticity of “the Second Part,” as your link suggests, in the homilies that are not disputed by anybody, St. Isaac says that evil will come to an end and disappear.
Thanks for the comment. Ad hominem might be “some spice,” but it has no place from a book made by Yale University Press. If this were a Manhattan, popular publisher I would accept it.
Being that Universalism has strong a strong contingent within Orthodoxy, Hart has done them a huge disservice–sort of like what Trump did to the Republican Party. He has put forward a very poor public face, in so doing, has put his faction on poor footing. Publishers are not going to reprint the topic so now Hart’s book is the defense of Orthodox universalists–they could have done far better.
You write:
“You hold that the majority is usually wrong. Well, the majority of Christians appear to hold that universalism is an untenable view.”
The majority of Christians hold, “Really bad people go to Hell, but most people are ‘pretty good’ and go to Heaven.” This view is wrong. So, the truth is neither the majority view nor the universalist view.
“You have grossly simplified Hart’s argument about rational beings choosing the good…”
It is a book review…
“…and then offered a grossly simplistic “obvious” rejoinder that does not address anything about ignorance and knowledge.”
Actually it does, please re-read the hot stove example.
“And then you seem to feel that citing St. Clement of Rome somehow proves that there is no repentance, learning or change after death, despite the fact that saints such as Gregory of Nyssa (with his doctrine of epektasis and in several of his writings) and Maximus the Confessor (Thalassios 61-65) understand a kind of movement and growth for human beings after death.”
So, do we pit the saints against each other or do we try to see what they have in common? I wrote elsewhere on this. I believe in progressive sanctification and retrogression after death. So, there is no repentance. There are slides into deeper damnation or greater bliss depending on one’s initial volition entering the afterlife.
In the fathers, the whole debate is over the middle party who avails from prayers of the Church–but they too do not repent. The fathers teach that God’s purely by grace *somehow* looses someone after death (I talk about that in some detail here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtAD5BTBsHU&list=UU9Z-xXb0tzX2FSCSDEnNJ8w&index=35). This is wildly inconsistent theologically speaking, and theoretically, it would seem God can do this with everyone. However, we do not have any indication that He does. Rather, it seems that someone who died had to have some sort of will directed towards God (i.e. grace needs to have some sort of fertile soil in the individual). This is where Siloun the Athonite’s speculations fit in…just *how many* have “enough” to be brought to God in the afterlife in some ultimate sense? His answer is he does not know. I will concur with the saint.
“In any case, Hart provides arguments against the notion that there is no repentance after death, but you don’t address those.”
I did address this, in fact. I took it as a matter of dogma and I don’t evaluate dogmas on their philosophical merits. “To the Greeks, the cross is foolishness.” If the saints teach it, that settles it.”You say this as if you hadn’t noticed the part in Hart’s book where he addresses this very notion.”
He does in the very end, when he insults Father Whiteford. I did not detect a sound argument amongst his insults. Perhaps my frustration threshold with childishness was reached prematurely and I should have paid more care in my reading.”Your description of Hart’s supposed “predestinarianism” doesn’t seem to understand the idea of free will that Hart is describing in his book.”
The problem is, one cannot just define free will to be whatever one wants it to be. I can prove Jar Jar Binks is President if you let me change the definitions of words. I addressed the notion of will that is Biblical in my review.
“Your ideas expressed in this section of your review show that you would do well to study St. Maximus more closely.”
Perhaps. I have only read Disputations with Phyrrus. However, it does not appear that Hart understand gnomic willing, because if he did, he would never be positing that those with gnomic willing are not free.
“So, Christ must not have had free will?”
Christ did not have gnomic willing–every human being ever born has gnomic willing. Gnomic willing dissipates when the will is deified, as it is supposed to be. Obviously, Jesus Christ had deified human free will. The saints in heaven now have deified human free will. So, we all on Earth have free will but it is not deified. Those who die apart from Christ die without deified free will, and hence, Hart’s whole made up definition of free will does not apply.
What Hart is positing is that we are not really free right now. Maximus did not make that argument. This is an example when minds, who try to understand Maximus apart from the teachings of the will taught by other saints like Chrysostom, do not have the sanctity to apply the saints teaching using their own paradigm.
“You say “we must freely will to be like God to attain to Theosis.” In the context of your previously expressed notion of what human freedom is (the ability to choose good or evil), this statement sounds fairly pelagian. ”
I address this in one of the above replies. Control F Pelagian.”You accuse Hart of saying that the whole book of the Bible is a puzzle whose key vanished long ago, but in the quote you provided Hart is speaking about the Book of Revelation, not the whole Bible.”
I disagree. His application of his own exegesis clearly fits how I interpret that passage. Not having the book in front of me, I do not remember it being purely about the book of revelation. Nevertheless, he clearly employs sola scriptura throughout his whole book whenever he quotes the Bible. He never cites a teaching of a saint on a given Scripture. This is disconcerting when he is giving a contrarian view which, by default, must meet a higher burden of proof.
“You say that Hart doesn’t refer to the teaching of the saints, though he clearly refers to the teaching of St. Gregory, who is a saint. Of course, I suppose one saint isn’t enough…”
We must understand St Gregory via the teaching of other saints–not Hart, who has other inaccuracies in his book so I have no reason to trust his conclusions.
“You mention St. John of Damascus speaking of God’s antecedent and permissive will (“consequent will”). You say that Hart “dismisses” St. John’s argument on page 187, but that’s not what I read there at all.”
Fair point. I found him to be dismissive.
“All the quotes you provide from the apostolic fathers are repetitions of biblical language…”
And therein lies the problem. The Bible and a father can say, “Hell is eternal, it will never even, and universalism is false;” and the universalist will respond, “Surely, that’s not what the Scripture means, that’s too literal.”
I addressed that we have several passages that certainly make it appear more plausible that eternal damnation is spoken of. One of the passages specifically said that punishment is eternal after the bodily resurrection. How does a universalist work with that? No saint teaches that after the bodily resurrection those punished repent or change. The saints always posit change before the last judgement, which is last–there is nothing afterwards.
But, the Universalist demands absolute epistemic certainty that the grammar no matter what means eternal damnation, but being that they take the words “unto ages of ages” and “forever” to mean “not forever,” that is an impossible task.
Let me ask you. What would a father or Scripture have to say to definitively prove eternal damnation? What verbiage would you require?
“My assertions won’t change your view on this, but the condemnation of “Origen and his impious writings” is a condemnation of a particular overall system. The year 543 anathematization of “anyone” who holds that “the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time” clearly is not an absolute anathematization.”
It clearly is. The ninth anathema cannot be understood as anything else but a condemnation of universal salvation and those who ascribe to the view.
“St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that the devil will be restored (it’s in his Catechism), along with all evildoing human beings, but he has not been anathematized.”
While I will certainly appreciate a citation to this, Saint Theophilus of Antioch made Christologically suspect statements before the theological language was hammered out. So, simply taking one thing a saint said that was wrong, presuming he really said it, does not overturn ecumenical teaching.”As for Saint Isaac the Syrian, even if you reject the authenticity of “the Second Part,” as your link suggests, in the homilies that are not disputed by anybody, St. Isaac says that evil will come to an end and disappear.”
And what does that mean, precisely? As for Saint Isaac, if he was not Nestorian (and this would be a stretch), Nestorians tend towards universalism. So, for his writings to employ universalist language would not be unexpected. However, I am not convinced of the authenticity of the second part due to it venerating men that are condemned. This requires a lot more profound discussion of the saints, what we accept from them (Isaac was canonized for his ascetic works translated into Greek, not his unknown works–I view this as providential). Further, we have saints that, historically, maybe never existed…so what do we do with all of that? Way bigger question I cannot answer here.
God bless,Craig
Craig, I strive to separate discussion from partisanship or appeal to keeping track of wrongs but I strive for sympathy empathy with all sides of an argument debate. I don’t shy from mere disagreement or passionate debates on theological doctrines. But in all honesty, I feel, there would be more universal salvation for all or most of us if we would simply leave universal salvation to God’s hand and pray that 2 Peter 3:9 and 1 Tm. 2:4 be fulfilled by God however God in His perfect loving holy will, actually wills to fulfill these Scripture; and that, not humans, but may the devil and his angel be damned. And pray for God to have mercy on who God wills to have mercy, whichever many humans, or all, or whatever, God desires to do. In the end, it’s up to him, and will not be changed by our pointless attempts to understand this here. It is better for us all to ask God Himself to grant us here peace and repentance, and not try to find fault or justification in something St. Gregory Nyssa did or did not say. God bless Craig. God bless the other guy, reluctant”heretic” whatever! Take care. Lord have mercy on us sinners. Amen.
“It has no place from a book made my Yale University Press.” That’s up to Yale University Press. But in any case, the supposed ad hominems aren’t integral to the arguments of the book. They could be removed and, even though the book would lose some personality (which you think is just bitterness), there would still be a series of arguments to be grappled with. You acknowledge as much by attempting to grapple with some of them in your critique.
“The majority of Christians hold, ‘Really bad people go to hell, but most people are “pretty good” and go to Heaven.’” Is there a survey about this? (I’m asking only rhetorically.) This is certainly not what the majority of Christians in circles I’ve moved seem to profess, though admittedly it does seem that many avoid the topic. But in this assessment, you’re not far away from Hart’s assessment, I guess. Anyway, the fact that a majority or a minority believe anything, other than what is more or less empirical and obvious, is basically irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the thing believed.
The fact that what you wrote is a book review doesn’t excuse gross oversimplification of important material from the book that is being reviewed. The hot stove example touches on ignorance but it doesn’t touch on knowledge. And your argument connected with the hot stove example, taken in the context of your overall thoughts, seems to lead to little more than God saying “It’s too bad you didn’t know better … tough luck, Sport.” Anyway, here you say something about ignorance being something that leads us into sin, but when I say you didn’t address ignorance and knowledge, I mean that you don’t have much to say about the notion that the person who sufficiently knows the good will choose the good. This is a notion with a strong patristic pedigree.
We don’t pit saints against each other. But we do sometimes find saints saying contradictory things that can’t be easily reconciled. In any case, my critique of your citation of St. Clement was that you act as though your quote settles the question of whether there is repentance after death. In any case, perhaps it is true that there isn’t repentance as we find available to us in this life, which would be why (in a certain universalist scheme) the fires of hell would be needed in the age to come to purgatively and quite unpleasantly bring about the restoration of the sinner. But Jesus himself does speak of forgiveness in this age or in the age to come (Matthew 12:32). Perhaps you’d riposte that this verse supports the idea of endless damnation, but it certainly broaches the notion of a forgiveness in the age to come. I don’t mean to open a can of worms with that verse; I already have an idea what you’d say about this given your comments about prayers for the dead.
Related to that, you go on to say “… theoretically, it would seem God can do this (“somehow loose someone after death”). However, we do not have any indication that He does.” One could say that the universalist fathers are an indication, and the universalist understanding of St. Paul’s letters are an indication that God at least might do this. And in Hart’s book, his argument about God’s creation ex nihilo invites us to reflect on what we’re actually saying about God when we are quite certain that He does not do this.
You take the matter of no repentance after death as dogma. It isn’t dogma. It has not been dogmatically pronounced or defined. The teaching about the Trinity is dogma, as is the teaching about the two natures of Christ and the points in the creed and such things. “If the saints teach it, that settles it.” Well, different saints have different things to say about this. Obviously there’s Gregory of Nyssa, a saint, who does not teach this. Ephrem the Syrian, another saint, in his Hymns on Paradise gives us suggestions of sinners moving in the direction of well being.
Hart did not invent his ideas about freedom and free will, as you suggest he does (“… Jar Jar Binks is President …”). They’re very much in line with the teaching of St. Maximus. You admit that you haven’t read much Maximus, and at the risk of being too patronizing I would suggest that you should carefully read and reread much more Maximus before concluding that Hart’s ideas about the will are “made up.”
Hart is not positing that “we are not really free right now,” at least not in the sense that we don’t have free will, unable to choose one way or another. He rather says that our darkened intellect, our ignorance, prevents us from making the best use of our free will. Just as St. Maximus and the Cappadocians (and so many others) say, we are enslaved in our passionate attachments. An enslaved person has free will, so is free in that sense, but is enslaved, and so is not free in another sense. It is similar to when Jesus says “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The idea here is that our freedom isn’t perfect, and to the degree that it is impaired, one can say that the person is to that degree unfree.
The fact that Christ, fully human and possessing human will, did not will gnomically tells us that gnomic willing is not integral to human nature. It’s true that all human beings other than Christ will gnomically (due to our status as finite hypostases in finite circumstances, affecting and being affected), but the gnomic will is not the natural will. The natural will moves/directs us in accordance with the good, which is something inherent to human nature, the logos of human nature. The gnomic will chooses against the natural will only to the degree that the person can’t properly discern the good, to the degree the person is passionately attached to what is not its true good (and the very notion of “passion” indicates impaired freedom). To the degree that the person can discern the good, the person will move in that direction because that is the direction of the desire, the appetite, that underlies all human willing. And of course, this is not robotic. We are still able to choose how we move in accordance with the good.
Even if you haven’t had a chance to check the reference to your quote where Hart talks about “a puzzle whose key has vanished long ago,” I can assure you that he is writing about the book of Revelation. It’s clear as day on the page.
“He clearly employs sola scriptura throughout his whole book whenever he quotes the Bible. He never cites a teaching of a saint on a given Scripture.” This is weird. It’s not “sola scriptura” to quote from the Bible and suggest what it means, especially when the person doing so is grounding his ideas in patristic traditional understandings (which you don’t seem to acknowledge or detect). It’s not somehow “Protestant” to fail to accompany every biblical citation with a quote from a saint. There’s a phronema that’s needed when reading the Bible, certainly, but one’s phronema isn’t proven by one’s multiplication of saintly citations (in fact, saintly citations can often reveal how the one using them may lack an Orthodox phronema in one way or another).
But, as I said, Hart does rely on St. Gregory heavily, but you feel free to ignore that because “we must understand St. Gregory via the teaching of other saints, not Hart.” Not really. We can understand St. Gregory on his own terms by reading St. Gregory himself. His writing is not as complex or hard to grasp as someone like St. Maximus. And Hart does not misrepresent St. Gregory. I think what you really mean is that we should read each saint while keeping in mind and considering the ways in which other saints may concur or differ on one point or another. And that’s a wonderfully sound thing to do. But there are saints of the church who have greater stature and influence in the church’s tradition as dogmatic teachers or as ascetic teachers. Maybe one can argue that certain saints’ ideas shouldn’t carry more weight than those of others, but the fact is that they have and they do. Gregory of Nyssa is one of those giants. And certainly there are others among the giants who don’t seem to agree with him on his universalism, but that doesn’t simply negate the worth of what he said on the matter.
“I addressed that we have several passages that certainly make it appear more plausible that eternal damnation is spoken of. One of the passages specifically said that punishment is eternal after the bodily resurrection. How does a universalist work with that?” In the case of the New Testament, a universalist works with that by reading damnation passages in light of universalist passages rather than the other way around. And a universalist considers the meaning of the word translated “eternal” in the Bible, related as it is to the concept of “ages.” Thinking about the difference between the created and the uncreated can also lead one to understand that “eternal” as applied to the timeless uncreated cannot be exactly the same as “eternal” as applied to the finite created.
“No saint teaches that after the bodily resurrection those punished repent or change.” St. Gregory teaches change after the resurrection. St. Maximus does as well. St. Ephrem the Syrian appears to teach it. St. Isaac the Syrian does. To name a few.
“The ninth anathema cannot be understood as anything else but a condemnation of universal salvation and those who ascribe to the view.” As I said, St. Gregory of Nyssa held to the view that the devil will be restored. (The citation I have in mind is the Great Catechism Chapter 26, but there are other places as well in St. Gregory’s writings where you can find the idea.) He was not anathematized. So the condemnation was not absolute. The reason why is most likely that the anathemas were against the adherents to the “Origenist” school of thought that was prevalent at the time, not against universalism per se (I know you don’t agree). Much of Maximus’ writing was also dedicated to correcting Originest errors. It was just too bad Origen’s name had to be attached to this school of thought, otherwise he might have gotten a pass like Theophilus of Antioch does in your example. That being said, I don’t think the example of Theophilus really explains why Gregory of Nyssa was not anathematized.
Well, I’ve taken a lot of bandwidth on your blog, and I’m not a regular here. I’ll see what your reply is, but I’ll try not to trouble you any further.
Good morning. Pardon my frank reply, as I have time constraints.
“That’s up to Yale University Press.”
That’s like saying it is up to Donald Trump whether or not he uses profanities as President. I expound an idea that a decent society has minimal standards. Our university presses should not be publishing books as crass as Hart’s.
“But in any case, the supposed ad hominems aren’t integral to the arguments of the book.”
That is simply incorrect. Hart pines repeatedly that his position is self-evidently true and that his opponents simply have some sort of mental problem. He even says that he could not worship God if He eternally damned people–which betrays his argument itself is emotional, not based on logic. He already states his conclusion is set despite the evidence.
“This is certainly not what the majority of Christians in circles I’ve moved seem to profess, though admittedly it does seem that many avoid the topic.”
Actually, poll data supports what I told you but I did not need a poll to back up what I already knew anecdotally: https://abcnews.go.com/US/Beliefs/story?id=1422658
“Anyway, the fact that a majority or a minority believe anything, other than what is more or less empirical and obvious, is basically irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the thing believed.”
Which was my point.
“The hot stove example touches on ignorance but it doesn’t touch on knowledge.”
I disagree. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge.
“…seems to lead to little more than God saying “It’s too bad you didn’t know better … tough luck, Sport.””
Are you a negligent parent in all circumstances if your kid touches the stove? This is why the universalist is ultimately a predestinarian. They leave no room for God letting us do our thing.
“…the person who sufficiently knows the good will choose the good.”
Again, predestinarianism. Man must choose to pursue the good. God cannot make the man do it monergistically.
“And in Hart’s book, his argument about God’s creation ex nihilo invites us to reflect on what we’re actually saying about God when we are quite certain that He does not do this.”
I addressed this argument, it is essentially a rehash of Liebniz’s theodicy. Suffice it to say, Voltaire was not very impressed by its logic and wrote Pangloss panning the idea via argumentum ad absurdum.
“You take the matter of no repentance after death as dogma. It isn’t dogma.”
I disagree. Being that we have two ecumenical councils condemning Origen and apokatastasis I have very firm grounds to assert its dogmatic nature.
“Obviously there’s Gregory of Nyssa, a saint, who does not teach this. Ephrem the Syrian, another saint, in his Hymns on Paradise gives us suggestions of sinners moving in the direction of well being.”
I personally do not trust your reading of these saints, as you cannot concede the explicit teaching of ecumenical councils whose purpose is not to be confusing, but rather to clear misunderstandings. If you cannot understand that, then how can you begin understanding heavily theological works, or more difficult yet, hymns–which are very high context?
“Hart did not invent his ideas about freedom and free will, as you suggest he does (“… Jar Jar Binks is President …”).”
But this does not matter. He cannot choose any definition he wants. Christ uses will in the sense that people do not choose the good. So, Hart is using a fundamentally different definition, it does not matter who he stole it from.
“…I would suggest that you should carefully read and reread much more Maximus…”
I would suggest you carefully read the whole fifth and seventh ecumenical councils’ minutes before we reinterpret Orthodox dogma.
“He rather says that our darkened intellect, our ignorance, prevents us from making the best use of our free will.”
We already know that, though, this is nothing new. Hart posits that we will ultimately make best use of our will, which is predestinarian. People are under no ultimate compulsion to do so.
“The fact that Christ, fully human and possessing human will, did not will gnomically tells us that gnomic willing is not integral to human nature.”
But it is to fallen human nature. Until we are resurrected with glorified bodies, we all have this. To make your argument, you would have to get into what happens with the bodily resurrection. Which Hart does not, because in reality he is simply a predestinarian. God will just make everyone good. This is impossible with fallen wills.
“Even if you haven’t had a chance to check the reference to your quote where Hart talks about “a puzzle whose key has vanished long ago,” I can assure you that he is writing about the book of Revelation. It’s clear as day on the page.”
Let me concede to the idea, because you have the book in front of you and I do not. How is this in any principle different? Do we lack commentaries from the fathers on this book? Why does he get to simply make up his own interpretation at odds with the fathers?
“It’s not somehow “Protestant” to fail to accompany every biblical citation with a quote from a saint.”
It is “Protestant” do so when there are a plethora of patristics that disagree with every single one of his renderings and translations that he provides. SImply go to Aquinas Study Bible, pick on of Hart’s re-translated verses, take into account what Hart wants you to think it means, then go down the list of pre-schism saints teaching on the same verse. Then you can tell me whether Hart is being Protestant or not. You don’t need to cite a father each time–but you need to be within the same stream of thought of the fathers. You will notice Hart is wildly divergent and seeing verses talking about universalism that not a single father read into the same verse.
“We can understand St. Gregory on his own terms by reading St. Gregory himself.”
Not true. You cannot truly understand Cambodian society by reading a book about Cambodia, or a book by a Cambodian. One must live amongst them and immerse themselves in their lives to really get it. The saints are understood by fasting, prayer, going to the services, reading the other saints and Scriptures–one must gain a sanctified mind to understand the saints. So, you cannot understand Gregory on his own terms because you are going at it all wrong. A saint cannot be approached like just another book.
“St. Gregory teaches change after the resurrection. St. Maximus does as well. St. Ephrem the Syrian appears to teach it. St. Isaac the Syrian does. To name a few.”
Quotes and citations, or it never happened.
“As I said, St. Gregory of Nyssa held to the view that the devil will be restored. (The citation I have in mind is the Great Catechism Chapter 26…”
I am not convinced that chapter teaches what you say it does. Saint Gregory speculates, “even the adversary himself will not be likely to dispute that what took place was both just and salutary.” Not “likely”? This sounds like the teaching of Saint Siloun–that God gives everyone the chance to repent and not everyone makes it. Further, I see no indication that this is after the bodily ressurrection. So, I reject your reasoning here.
“…not against universalism per se”
If anyone says or holds that the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time, and that there will be a restoration of demons and impious human beings, let him be anathema.
God bless,
Craig
Dear Craig,
Thanks for the review. A you can see, unless you agree with Hart or agree that universalism is a legitimate belief in Orthodoxy, the fan club marches out to excoriate you. Oh, and point out how you just don’t get the Hartian view of universal salvation. The list of people who don’t get it is rather long.
If we know a tree by its fruit, what kind of tree produces the rotten fruit of denying Ecumenical councils, questioning the sanctity of long canonized saints, and the questioning of dogmas of the Church? What kind of fruit produces the notion that “You bishop cannot define heresy”? Whatever fruit it is, the fan club is feasting on it.
Fro my part, I can tell you, my Hierarch Archbishop Alexander Golitzin said publicly, we cannot teach or hold universal salvation as a church teaching. He’s a scholar, an athonite monastic, and very humble man. I’ll look to him and our other Holy teachers throughout the centuries that have clearly upheld the actual teaching of the Church. Universal salvation is NOT that.
Stand firm brother and God Bless you!
Unworthy priest Alexis
Thank you Father for your kind comments. May God bless you as well,
Craig
Good, solid words, dear Fr. Alexis! Thank you!
I am going to abstain from commenting on most of the review here due to the fact that I am still reading the book. Nonetheless, I really must disagree with your interpretation of the Eighth Session of the Second Council of Constantinople. It is not at all clear from the passage which your referenced that the local synod of 543 gained ecumenical authority, for two reasons. First, it does not explicitly adopt those canons of 543. All that the passage says, which you reference, is that so and so is condemned along with their heretical writings IN ADDITION to (I capitalize not to yell, but to stress this point) the previous heretics anathematized by the previous four ecumenical councils. This statement is fairly standard procedure. Anytime new heretics are anathematized, the old ones from centuries past are reanathamatized. The reference is to the previous four ecumenical councils, not the the Synod of Constantinople of 543.
The above interpretation is also made more likely for the simple fact that the canons of 543 are not admitted wholesale into the council. Instead a similar, yet crucially different, set of canons are allegedly admitted into the the Council. In Canon I of this new set, the doctrine of apocatastasis is condemned as it pertains to the preexistence of souls, thus making the ecumenical condemnation crucially qualified from the blanket condemnation of Canon IX of the Synod of Constantinople of 543. Furthermore, if 543 was accepted wholesale without amendment, then why did they not recapitulate their canons? At the Synod of Trullo, as part of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, over a century later, many of the canons of the North African Church were recapitulated and accepted wholesale. We don’t see this same phenomenon at the Fifth Ecumenical Council as it relates to the Synod of Constantinople of 543.
Let me also add, because I think it is instructive to break down the canon in one of the two original languages:
Canon XI of the 8th Session says:
“Si quis non anathematizat Arium, Eunomium, Macedonium, Apollinarium, Nestorium, Eutychen, Origenem cum impiis eorum conscriptiis, & alios omnes haereticos qui condemnati & anathematizati sunt a sancta catholica & apostolica ecclesia, & a praedictis sanctis quatuor conciliis, & eos qui similia praedictis haereticis sapuerunt vel sapiunt, & usque ad mortem in sua impietate permanserunt vel permanent, talis anathema sit.”
“If anyone has not anathematized Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nestorius, Eutychius, Origen with their impious writings, as well as the other heretics, who have been condemned and anathematized by the holy universal and apostolic church and by the aforementioned four holy councils, and those who understood or understand likewise as the aforementioned heretics, and who until death remained or remain in their impiety, let such people be anathematized.”
Now, there are a number of different clauses throughout this canon. The main clauses are the “Si quis”/”If anyone clause” and the “talis anathema sit”/”let him be anathematized” clause. In short, these two make up the if-then scenario – a very common feature of canons.
You argue that the “qui condemnati”/”who have been condemned” and so forth clause pertains to each and every person mentioned prior to “alios omnes haereticos”/”and all the other heretics”. And therefore, from this claim, you further argue that since Origin was only condemned at a synodal level at 543 (10 years prior; and I am not even sure this was the only synodal condemnation against him, but I digress), then Canon XI must be referring to Canon 9 of the Synod of Constantinople of 543. A plain reading of the Latin text renders this interpretation very unlikely. The key words “cum impiis eorum conscriptiis”/”with their impious writings” separates the entire named group from the group of unnamed heretics. If “cum impiis eorum conscriptiis” came after “alios omnes haereticos” (whether before or after the “qui condemnati” clause, then your interpretation would be more plausible. But the fact is that the “cum impiis eorum conscriptiis” acts as a separator between the named heretics and the unnamed heretics. Ergo, the “qui condemnati” clause should only be read as pertaining to the “alios omnes haereticos”, not to the named heretics – Origin among them. From this conclusion follows that the following “qui condemnati” clause is not referring to the Synod of Constantinople of 543 at all or in the least bit. And to briefly recapitulate what I said in my first comment, the further lack of repeating wholesale the canons of the local Synod of Constantinople of 543 further bolsters my argument.
Allow me to correct one error in my Latin translation. I translated “anathematizat” as though it was in the perfect tense, when in fact it is in the present tense. My apologies.
Alura,
Thank you for your reply. For the sake of being conciliatory, let me concede that Session 8 is not explicitly referencing the nine anathemas (though this is likely, even Father Kimel conceded this.) Ultimately, it is really unimportant because Origen is condemned and we know via the 7th council that it was interpreted that this included the doctrine of apokatastasis. But, let’s quibble over a finer historical detail, which really makes no difference as it pertains to the dogma that universalism is damnable heresy, just for the fun of it.
Let me ask you: what past condemnation(s) is it invoking in your opinion? It id easy to pick at me for posing an answer, but you have not offered us a real alternative. The recent 553 synod, which Father Price thinks occurred before the 8th session? The synod of Theophilus (approx 400AD), which is mentioned in passing during the fifth session as proof that someone dead can be condemned (for what it is worth, the council doesn’t seem to definitively address universalism, but odd strange points from Origen–such as Christ suffering again for demons.
See http://www.copticchurch.net/topics/patrology/schoolofalex2/chapter04.html). It has to be to one of these. I posit the 543 council is most likely, simply because it is the only one that was considered “churchwide” and that we know actually occurred before the eight session in which to be referenced. It fits the bill the best.
You give two reason why this is not the case, which I will point out do not hold up to scrutiny. “First, it does not explicitly adopt those canons of 543.” This is not a good point. First, we would have to prove that 543 AD is what was had in mind at the time. If it is the 543 AD council, and the fact that it says that “Origen” and his “impious writings” were anathematized, clearly they must have in mind some sort of specific content from his writings. What council lists said content? I think, again, 543 is the best choice–especially because we are looking for a churchwide condemnation. And if so, then this shows it was already tacitly accepted that 543 was binding–sort of like Chalcedon accepting the canons of Antioch (approx 340 AD). When one council accepts another, the teachings become canonical with the authority of the ecumenical council.
Your grammatical point, that “their heretical writings IN ADDITION…the previous heretics anathematized by the previous four ecumenical councils…The reference is to the previous four ecumenical councils” does not prove your point. First, it is self refuting–Origen is not mentioned in any of those four councils Second, the same formula is used during Session five and it explicitly expands past the four councils (Leo condemned Eutyches before Chalcedon) and actually refers to the 543 council:
Also Leo of holy memory, pope of Elder Rome, both received Eutyches andwrote approving him; yet afterwards he condemned and anathematized him as a heretic. And we find indeed many others who were anathematizedafter death, including also Origen: if one goes back to the time of Theophilusof holy memory or even earlier, one will find him anathematized afterdeath. This has been done even now in his regard by your holinesses [the bishops at Constan II, perhaps the 553 anathemas] and byVigilius the most religious pope of Elder Rome [the 543 anathemas] (87).
Interestingly, we can only speculate that “your holinesses” refers to COnstantinople II’s fathers exclusively (Eustochius of Jerusalem and others present signed onto 543, I believe). However, they are clearly citing the 543 Origenist council as proof one could condemn the three chapters, because Vigilius only signed onto the 543 council (see vol 1 of Price, page 43)…we do not have an indication he signed onto the 553 council. I honestly think the preceding renders the parsing of Latin you provide irrelevant.
You write:
“Instead a similar, yet crucially different, set of canons are allegedly admitted into the the Council. In Canon I of this new set, the doctrine of apocatastasis is condemned as it pertains to the preexistence of souls, thus making the ecumenical condemnation crucially qualified from the blanket condemnation of Canon IX of the Synod of Constantinople of 543. Furthermore, if 543 was accepted wholesale without amendment, then why did they not recapitulate their canons?”
This is a good question, but I do not yet have an answer. I do think it is more than plausible that the 553 canons are in view, upon second thought because they are probably referenced in session 5 alongside the 543 synod signed onto by Vigilius, but I would need to finish reading the fifth council to give a better answer. Nevertheless the 11th anathema of the 553 ad council speaks of a material punishment and the 14-15th anathemas condemned apokatastasis. So, this runs counter to Hart’s thesis about Origen and apokatastasis more generally. Regardless, being that the 5th session references the 543 council and uses the same language “condemned and anathematized,” as the 8th session, so that sticks us with the ninth anathema (amongst others) that Vigilius signed onto and was cited as proof of Origen’s condemnation–being that Origen was not named in the anathemas.
Thank you for the fun here, but again this is a book review of poor scholarship, not an article definitively proving this or that about universalism or the fifth council. I’d like to finish reading the fifth council before proceeding further.
God bless,Craig
Craig,
You have missed my central contention regarding the parsing of the Latin. You have insisted that the “qui condemnati” clause must have its referent to the entirety of the list of names, not just the “alios omnes haereticos”/other heretics. My contention is that it only refers to the latter, for reasons that I have already given, particularly in my second post where I give the Latin and its translation, and which you have not addressed. I ask once again that you pay attention to the “cum impiis eorum conscriptiis” phrase as a separator that limits the referents of “qui condemnati” solely to “alios omnes haereticos.” It is enough for me to say, therefore, that the past condemnations that it is invoking are just those in general pertaining to the four previous ecumenical councils.
Furthermore, you say that the Synod of Constantinople of 543 was considered churchwide. It was not churchwide. 5 patriarchs do not make the church. Only II Constantinople was churchwide, not 543.
But for the sake of argument, Canon XI of the 8th session could be a quickhand affirmation of those pertaining to the 4 previous ecumenical councils as well as an affirmation of Canons 1-15 of the anti-Origen canons from 553. The reason I suggest this alternative possibility is because scholars now regard those 15 anti-Origen canons from 553 to be the product of an unofficial session that was held prior to the first session, while Pope Vigilius resisted St. Justinian. In short, Origen had already been condemned by all the bishops gathered (minus Vigilius, of course), but in an informal session. Canon XI then can be read as officiating Canons I-XV of the anti-Origen canons. Appendix I from Volume 2 in Richard Price’s translation speaks about this unofficial session.
As for your point about the fifth session referring to 543, if you could please elaborate and provide citations, I would appreciate it. Nonetheless, I would venture to suspect that you are citing pp. 338 of Price’s translation, which states, “This has been done even now in his regard by your holinesses and by Vigilius the most religious pope of Elder Rome.” Price says in the footnote 307 that this reference is explicitly referencing the unofficial session. Price says,
“The bishops had condemned Origenism shortly before the council formally opened (see vol. 2, 270-1). ‘Your holinesses’, if used strictly, would refer only to the patriarchs, but doubtless all of the bishops had signed the decree. According to Pseudo-Anastasius, ‘On heresies and councils,’ a letter of Vigilius to Justinian was extant in which he expressed his assent.”
It is in this case then that 543 is not being referenced. Rather the unofficial session of 553 is being referenced.
As for your claim that canons XI, XIV, and XV condemn apokatastasis as well, they only condemn a specific version of it. Again, this contention has been my point all along. There is no blanket condemnation of apokatastasis at II Constantinople. There is only a condemnation of a specific version of it.
I will briefly comment on the fifth session. It explicitly states that Vigilius had already condemned Origen. We know this did not occur during 553, because Vigilius was not involved with the council until after the 8th session.
This means that the 543 anathemas, and Vigilius subscription to them (which I cited), were invoked in session five. This is beyond dispute.
So, I will reiterate, your position that the eight session is only condemning those who are condemned in the 4 ecumenical councils is indefensible, unless I am misunderstanding your true position on the matter. Origen is not a subject in the first four councils, for one. Second, the fifth session uses the same terminology, and invokes condemnations that are not part of the four councils. My reading, that I commented in more detail in Father Kimel’s blog, is the only one that makes sense of the 5th and 8th sessions, let alone the grammar as I can see it in English. If what you parse in Latin contradicts the 5th session, then I presume you are parsing wrongly.
The life of sabas was written 5 years after the fifth council ended according to price. This life specifically says four patriarchs signed onto the 553 condemnations. So, we know that Vigilius was left out–this is not simply scholarly speculation. We have this on good authority. The same source is the source quoted by the 7th council–it states Origen was condemned in his person at the council as well as apokatastasis.
Historians put great weight in the witness of a contemporary than speculations centuries later. The fact that contemporary was cited in the affirmative by the seventh council, when then reiterates the same condemnations, makes this for Orthodox who are historically inclined a done deal. No parsing of Latin can undo this.
I honestly think you are being blinded by an agenda. Approx 160 bishops signed onto Session 8. They clearly had what was discussed in Session 5 in mind. We know, from the life of sabas that all the patriarchs signed onto the 553 anathemas. We know from correspondence and the fifth session that Vigilius signed onto the 543 anathemas.
Being that at minimal, the 5th session was invoking the 543 condemnation as well as Theophilus’, at most it included the 553 condemnation on top of the previous two–we must conclude that the 8th session at minimal was invoking 543 and Theophilus, at most invoking all three. Neither of which favors your reading of session 8, which for reasons I already stated, is impossible and contradictory–unless it is not your position that the eight session’s condemnation is not restricted to the four councils.
You state, “5 patriarchs do not make the church. Only II Constantinople was churchwide, not 543.”
This is a silly observation to make, honestly. No one is pretending 5 patriarchs make up the Church. However, in the posturing of the 5th council and in Justinian’s agenda, clearly they were asserting that these synods reflected the mind of the Church. TBH, the fifth council hardly reflected the mind of the Church at the time it was conducted–probably half of everyone was tortured and intimidated into submission. So, I think you are reading the fifth council very wrongly if you are not legitimately going to get the sense of the 8th session as speaking that the 543 AD (and probably the 553 AD as well) anathemas were indicative of the “holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’s” teaching–even if in a literal sense this would have not really been true outside of Justinian’s head.
I want to ask you one question, which is, how can your interpretation of session 8 make sense being that it condemns someone by name that was not mentioned in any of those councils? You must answer this question before anyone should even bother looking at the Latin. We must have a good reason, because the moment we see Origen’s name there we already know the four councils are not exclusively in view.
God bless,
Craig
Craig,
You are ignoring not only my Latin arguments, but also the citations I provide. Even if, the entire group of named heretics applies to the “qui comdemnati” clause as well, you still have to contend with the fact that:
Quite literally, Canon XI that you cite from the 8th session is referred to by Price himself, whom you have selectively relied upon with no rational thus far, on pp. 271 of vol. 2 fn. 10 as pertaining to the unofficial session of 553/II Constantinople, not 543:
“That the condemnationg of Origenism preceded the eight formal sessions in implied by the references to it in the fifth session (V.87) and in the council’s Canon 11, which adds Origen’s name to the heretics already listed in Anathema 10 of Justinian’s edict ‘On the orthodox faith.'”
Price argues that both references (Section 87 of Session V and Canon XI of Session VIII) that you say both must refer to the local Synod of Constantinople of 543 actually refer to the 15 canons from the unofficial session of 553. Again, he cites that this understanding is substantiated in the writings of pseudo-Anastasius, which refer to a letter from Pope Vigilius confirming the acts of the unofficial session. Allow me to repeat what he says:
“The bishops had condemned Origenism shortly before the council formally opened (see vol. 2, 270-1). ‘Your holinesses’, if used strictly, would refer only to the patriarchs, but doubtless all of the bishops had signed the decree. According to Pseudo-Anastasius, ‘On heresies and councils,’ a letter of Vigilius to Justinian was extant in which he expressed his assent.” – pp. 338, vol. I, fn. 307
Here Pope Vigilius expressed his assent to the unofficial session. You are ignoring this argument in favor of interpreting it as referring to 543, whose canons – once again allow me to stress – are explicitly not recapitulated. Instead, a different set of canons condemning Origen and Origenistic beliefs from the sixth century are made. You say that Vigilius was not involved until after the 8th Session. However, you neglect to mention that he did maintain contact with the council. For instance, he sent his first Constitutum on May 14th of 553. Session V of the Council began on May 17th. Whether it be with his submission of the first Constitutum, with his submission of the first Constitutum, or during the middle of Session V, we have historical evidence indicating that Pope Vigilius assented to the 15 canons against Origenism that were promulgated at the unofficial session of 553.
Alura,
I am going to do an about face as I have read the same footnote and out of tiredness or whatever, thought it was speaking of Vigilius’ acceptance of 543 (which we also know that Vigilius accepted, I already cited this above.) I find Pseudo-Anastasius’ presumption that Vigilius signed on to 553, when he was presently being excommunicated and vice versa during the fifth council, to be highly suspect–but I will withhold judgement until I finish reading the council and get the whole timeline.
Nevertheless, I am still not sure how this helps your position. For one, your reading of the Latin is still wrong and you have refused to explain how it can make sense when it clearly refers to outside the four ecumenical councils. Do you want to concede this or do you want to ignore this?
Furthermore, being that session five speaks about Theophilus’ condemnations 150 years previously, it would be strange that they would not be presuming Origen’s several condemnations.
Lastly, in all of your replies, what I find also strange is you ignore how the 7th council interprets the 5th (the 7th council also several times invokes unending damnation.)
Nevertheless, if all of this is to quibble over which exact council(s) were condemned by session 8, I do think that you have made a strong case for 553. However, your claims that session 8 is not invoking anything past the four ecumenical council are obviously irrational and how this pertains to a pro-universalist slant, which appears to be your agenda (though you have not disclosed this when asked), still is not entirely clear to me.
The fact that Hart endorses apokatastasis by name, when it is likewise rejected by name by the 5th and 7th councils, is highly disconcerting. Whether the council rejected some tuned-up version of universalism that did not exist in the 6th century is obviously anachronistic. However, being that the ninth anathema of 543 does plainly reject universal salvation, it would seem reasonable to infer that the fathers in making all of these statements simply presumed unending damnation for the devil, judas, and other damned people.
God bless,
Craig
Craig,
You keep asking me to have my Latin argument address a point of yours that the very Latin argument already precludes. I don’t understand why you insist on this point. Allow me to reexplain, if you will, although I will repeat it in summary form. My argument pertaining to the Latin is that due to the phrasing of the Latin text, which might I add is the only complete copy of the Council to survive in mss., indicates that the subject of the clause – “who have been anathamatized by the councils and the universal and apostolic church and so forth and so forth” is limited. You argue that the subject pertains to all of the named heretics including Origen. My argument is that it does not seem that this reading is likely the case because of the prepositional qualifier in the Latin that is translated as “with their impious writings” cuts in between the list of proper names and the “other heretics” who are not named. Many other heretics have been condemned by the first four ecumenical councils. But you also simultaneously insist that the canon must be referring to outside the four ecumenical councils because Origen was not condemned in any of the previous four councils as a condemned man. Again, I return to my point that the Latin seems to suggest that the subject of “who have been condemned by the four ecumenical councils and the universal church, etc.” is restricted solely to the “other heretics” and does not include Origen among its subjects in that clause. The grammar argument here is by no means foolproof, but the precise text that I highlight should not willy nilly be dismissed.
Price himself obviously would not agree with this Latin-based argument, as his entire interpretation – that Canon XI of Session 8 is referring to Origen as having been previously condemned somewhere – presupposes that the clause “who have been condemned” includes not just the “other heretics” as its subject, but all of the named heretics, including Origen, as well. From this interpretation, Price goes on to argue that this statement must be in reference to the unofficial session of 553, which is well-established by historians at this point.
I myself am fine with either aforementioned avenue taken for the precise reason that the canons of 543 are not recapitulated at II Constantinople. If 543 is being sanctioned in its entirety, then its canons MUST be recapitulated. The canons from the synods of Carthage were recapitulated at the Session of Trullo at the Sixth Ecumenical Council/III Constantinople. They were recapitulated because they were deemed appropriate, worthy, and dogmatic.
I have no idea what you mean by “tuned up version of universalism that did not exist in the 6th century.” I know of no one who denies the existence of the Isochristoi, which is the group who professed this particular version of universalism that is rejected at II Constantinople. Which leads me to my next point.
The version of universalism that Hart professes is quite different from the version of universalism that II Constantinople condemned. Again, Canon I of the anti-Origen canons from the unofficial session of II Constantinople is explicit on this subject – universalism that presupposes the pre-existence of souls, which is a doctrine from Origenism – which itself has many forms.
I am not sure why you are casting doubt on the pseudo-Anastasius evidence. Lots of documents are missing from the Fifth Ecumenical Council and its surrounding events. We don’t even have a complete copy of the Greek original. pseudo-Anastasius has been cited for over a century now as reliable. Franz Diekamp writes in his book,
“Der Werth der Aufzeichnungen des Anastasios Sinaites springt in die Augen, zumal da seine Notiz über den Brief des Papstes Vigilius an den Kaiser verbürgt, daß er die Acten der füften Synode gekannt hat…. Was endlich den Brief des Papstes an den Kaiser betrifft, so berichtet Evagrios nach dem Texte des Valesius zwar umgekehrt von einem Briefe des Kaisers an den Papst über die origenistische Angelegenheit; allein die gleichfalls handschriftlich bezeugte Lesart (I cannot reproduce the proceeding word in Greek) Βιγίλιος steht mit den Worten des Anastasios in vollem Einklang und darf demgemäß vielleicht als die richtige betrachtet werden. Da Vigilius in der fraglichen Zeit in Konstantinopel war und sicher kein Bedenken getragen hat, die Irrthümer der Origenisten zu verurtheilen, so konnte ein Antwortschreiben von ihm schon eingelaufen sein. Gegen die Glabuwürdigkeit der Nachricht über den Brief des Papstes ist also nichts einzuwenden. Eben diese Nachricht schlißt die Möglichkeit aus, an eine Verwechslung mit der [Greek phrase] von 543 zu denken; denn diese trat alsbald nach demn Erscheinen des kaiserlichen Edictes gegen Origenes zusammen, so daß eine Meinungsäußerung des Papste Vigilius, der damals in Rom weilte, noch nicht vorliegen konnte.”
“The merit of the record of Anastasio Sinaites jumps to the eyes, particularly his note about the letter of Pope Vigilius delivered to the emperor, that he (Pope Vigilius) knew of the fifteen acts of the fifth Council…. Finally what pertains to the letter of the pope to the emperor, likewise Evagrius [Scholasticus], according to the text of [Heinrich] Valesius, reports conversely [as well] from a letter of the emperor to the pope about the Origenist matter; but the signed, witnessed version [insert Greek phrase here] stands in support with the words of Anastasios in full accord and can accordingly perhaps be considered as correct. Since Vigilius was in Constantinople during the time questioned and [since] he certainly bore no reservations for condemning the errors of the Origenists, thus an answering letter by him could have been received. Against the credibility of the report of the letter of pope there are no objections. Even this report precludes the possibility of contemplating a confusion with the [Greek phrase] of 543; because this [council] assembles shortly after the appearance of the imperial edict [to Patriarch Menas] against the Origenists, with the result that an expression of an opinion of Pope Vigilius, who at that time had tarried in Rome, could not yet be present.” – Die Origenistischen streitigkeiten im sechsten Jahrhundert und das fünfte allegemeine Concil, pp. 114 : https://archive.org/details/dieorigenistisch00diek/page/114
The general acceptance of this proposition is demonstrated in the historiography cited by Daniel Hombërgen’s The Second Origenist Controversy, pp. 21fn2. See here: https://afkimel.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/Daniel_Hombergen-The-Second-Origenist-Controversy.pdf In short, no historian sees Session 5 or Session 8 as referring to 543, but rather to 553.
As for why I have not addressed II Nicaea, I have not addressed it because I am not presently concerned with how II Nicaea may have seen II Constantinople. My central concern here is what actually happened in 553 (eigentlich gewesen), not what happened in 787.
I just found your comment. My reply:
As for your translation, I don’t see how it fundamentally differs with Price.
Price:
If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, with their impious writings, and all the other heretics condemned and anathematized by the holy catholic and apostolic church and by the aforesaid holy four councils, and those who held or hold tenets like those of the aforesaid heretics and persisted {or persist} in the same impiety till death, let him be anathema.
You:
If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nestorius, Eutychius, Origen with their impious writings, as well as the other heretics, who have been condemned and anathematized by the holy universal and apostolic church and by the aforementioned four holy councils, and those who understood or understand likewise as the aforementioned heretics, and who until death remained or remain in their impiety, let such people be anathematized.
Clearly Origen and his writings are condemned so I honestly dont even see the point of your re-translation. In your second reply i must’ve thought you were simply quoting Price–because the inferences you draw are not there.
God bless
Alura,
You wrote:
For instance, he sent his first Constitutum on May 14th of 553. Session V of the Council began on May 17th. Whether it be with his submission of the first Constitutum, with his submission of the first Constitutum, or during the middle of Session V, we have historical evidence indicating that Pope Vigilius assented to the 15 canons against Origenism that were promulgated at the unofficial session of 553.
Am I misreading Price because in the intro of session VII it states that the first constitutum was the opposite of a submission and that contact was only made of may 26th:
Sessions IV–VI of the council, extending from 12 to 19 May, had examined
and found heretical the Three Chapters in turn. It met for this seventh session
of 26 May with the intention of finalizing and issuing the corresponding
decrees (2). However, this was postponed in consequence of the arrival of an
imperial envoy, the quaestor Constantine, with a message from the emperor
on the subject of Pope Vigilius. On 14 May the pope had finally signed his
promised judgement on the Three Chapters (the first Constitutum), and on
25 May, on the expiry of the twenty days’ grace he had asked for previously (II. 5.6), had attempted to have this document delivered to the emperor
through the offices of a number of bishops (including Theodore Ascidas)
and high-ranking officials (VII. 4.2). The emperor had refused to receive
it: doubtless he knew of its contents – that it acquitted the Three Chapters
and declared that any contrary verdict would be null and void. This created
a new situation: the pope had issued the strongest possible challenge to the
authority of the council, and an immediate response was called for.
___
This lends credibility to the 543 ad thesis i posited above. i still need to finish volume ii of price so I am only putting this out there because i came across it.
Father, this review is middle school level stuff amplified with the zeal of a recent convert. One need not accept Hart’s argument to see that. Making foolish counter arguments still looks foolish regardless if one’s ultimate commitments are correct.
In any case, I personally know of several Bishops who have answered clearly that universalism is an acceptable theologumenon. When we get around to anathemizing Gregory of Nyssa I guess that point will be moot, until that time, and with all due respect to His Eminence (a good man as far as I can tell), it is well within the Tradition.
Not a response to the fifth and seventh ecumenical council’s but OK
Greg,
One must choose what one puts ones faith in.
Whatever a theologumenon is or isn’t; why rely on any house of cards…or build any house on sand?
When one elevates a minority opinion to the same level as dogma, well, I think we already see the fruit of that.
Why anyone would receive dogmatic theology from a university professor is beyond me. We have and bishops to teach us the faith.
I applaud anybody’s attempt to keep and uphold the actual teaching of the church.
Sadly, Americans have a lot of squandered free time. Perhaps that’s what makes us so drawn to bizarre infatuations with theologically dubious reflections.
Craig, This letter is also on another topic, my web site, Saint Andrew of Valaam Association, Scott Robert Harrington, WordPress.com, and my main topics are Filioque versus Monopatrism of John 15:26 and Acts 2:33 of the Russian Orthodox Church, but I post many posts in English, and in foreign languages, including Hungarian, Russian, Greek, Welsh, Italian, Spanish, Finish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Scots Gaelic, Serbian, Macedonian, French, German, Swedish, Chinese, Estonian, Romanian, and so on: and in Khmer and other languages; here is a message in Khmer from my site on the Filioque versus Orthodoxy debate in English language books by James Likoudis, Ending the Byzantine-Greek Schism, Peter Lombard (1100-1160), The sentences, book 1 – The mystery of the Trinity, for Filioque, versus Saint Photius, for Monopatrism, On the mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, English translation from the Greek, with Greek texts, Holy Transfiguration Monastery, Boston, Massachusetts, translators, 1983. God bless you. Scott R. Harrington Erie PA Message in Khmer. សារជាភាសាខ្មែរ។ នៅលើការជជែកដេញដោល Filioque រវាងរ៉ូម៉ាំងកាតូលិករួមគ្នាជាមួយការធ្វើកំណែទម្រង់ប្រូតេស្តង់ប្រឆាំងនឹងការផ្តាច់មុខនៃយ៉ូហាន ១៥:២៦ និងកិច្ចការ ២:៣៣ នៃវិហារគ្រិស្តអូស្សូដក់ខាងកើត។ សៀវភៅរ៉ូម៉ាំងកាតូលិក។ Likoudis, James ។ (១៩៩២) ។ ការបញ្ចប់ប៊ីហ្សីធិន – ក្រិកស៊ីស។ មានផ្ទុកនូវការសុំអភ័យទោសរបស់ដេមេទ្រាសកូឌីនេដើម្បីសាមគ្គីភាពជាមួយរ៉ូម៉ាំងនិងរឿង “Contra Errores Graecorum” របស់ Saint Thomas Aquinas ។ ញូរ៉ូឆេលរដ្ឋញូវយ៉កៈសៀវភៅកាតូលិកយូនីធីសម្រាប់សេចក្តីជំនឿ Inc។ សៀវភៅរ៉ូម៉ាំងកាតូលិក។ Lombard, Peter ។ (២០០៧) ។ ប្រយោគ៖ សៀវភៅ ១ – អាថ៌កំបាំងនៃព្រះត្រៃឯក។ តូរុនតូ, Ontario, កាណាដា: ភី។ អាយ។ អេស។ – វិទ្យាស្ថាន Pontifical នៃការសិក្សាមេឌៀ។ សៀវភៅអូធូដុសខាងកើត។ Saint Photios, អយ្យកោរបស់ Constantinople ។ (១៩៨៣) ។ នៅលើអាថ៌កំបាំងនៃព្រះវិញ្ញាណបរិសុទ្ធ។ វត្តផ្លាស់ប្តូរព្រះដ៏បរិសុទ្ធនិងព្រះវរបិតាម៉ៃឃឺលអាកុលអ្នកបកប្រែ។ បូស្តុនរដ្ឋម៉ាសាឈូសេត៖ អ្នកបោះពុម្ពផ្សាយក្រុមហ៊ុនបោះពុម្ពផ្សាយ។ sar chea pheasaeakhmer . now leu kar chchek denhdaol Filioque rveang raumeang kataulik ruomoknea cheamuoy kar thveu kamnetomrong brau te stang brachheang nung karophtachmoukh nei yauhan 1 5: 26 ning kechchakar 2: 33 nei vihearokrist au ssaau dk khangkaet . sievphow raumeang kataulik . Likoudis, James . ( 1 9 9 2) . kar banhchob bi hsaei thin – krek sai sa . mean phtok nouv kar som aphytosa robsa de me treasa kau di ne daembi samokkipheap cheamuoy raumeang ning rueng “Contra Errores Graecorum” robsa Saint Thomas Aquinas . nhou rau che l rodth nhou v y k sievphow kataulik you ni thi samreab sechaktei chomnue Inc . sievphow raumeang kataulik . Lombard, Peter . ( 2 0 0 7) . brayok : sievphow 1 – athrkambang nei preah trai ek . tau roun tau, Ontario, kanada: phi . ay . e sa . – vityeasthean Pontifical nei karseksaea medie . sievphow au thou dosa khangkaet . Saint Photios, ayyokao robsa Constantinople . ( 1 9 8 3) . now leu athrkambang nei preahvinhnhean brisotth . vott phlasa btau r preah da brisotth ning preahvorbetea mai khu l akol anakabakabre . bau sto n rodth mea sa chhou set : anak baohpoump phsaay kromhoun baohpoump phsaay .
Craig, But I think you have made an introductory case against trusting Hart’s book, but I believe universalism is not actually the final truth and real answer, but that it all depends on God in any case, and not on what any man can do: but I do not know nor presume to either accept or reject the main points of Hart’s book until and unless I actually read the book myself and try to compare it to the NT the Church Fathers, and the Creed of Constantinople I 381 AD without Filioque.
But I reject Monergism, and that is not what I mean by it all depends on God.
This is the most confused and dishonest review I have ever read. Hart’s book insults no one. You have violently ripped phrases out of context. He has harsh things to say about certain beliefs, but he blames all Christians (including himself) for painting ourselves repeatedly into corners.
As for the book’s long philosophical argument, you have misunderstood it so badly that it’s almost as if you read it while drunk. It’s one of the most brilliantly constructed logical arguments I’ve ever seen made on theological topics. No wonder the book is admired by Thomas Talbott and other accomplished philosophers.
If you can’t read better than this, then don’t write reviews.
Ok dave
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand That All Shall Be Saved. The arguments are extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of Patristics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer’s head. There’s also Hart’s Origenistic outlook, which is deftly woven into his characterisation – his personal philosophy draws heavily from Saints Origen and Maximus, for instance. The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly appreciate the depths of these arguments, to realize that they’re not just true- they say something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike That All Shall Be Saved truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Hart’s existential catchphrase “actually, αἰώνιον doesn’t really mean everlasting” which itself is a cryptic reference to the Gospel of Matthew. I’m smirking right now just imagining one of those addlepated infernalists scratching their heads in confusion as David Bentley Hart’s genius unfolds itself on their book pages. What fools… how I pity them. 😂 And yes by the way, I DO have a David Bentley Hart tattoo. And no, you cannot see it. It’s for the ladies’ eyes only- And even they have to demonstrate that they’re within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower) beforehand.
Probably one of the finest displays of pointed sarcasm I have ever seen. Congratulations!
Craig, The universal final Catholic Authority in the Orthodox Church is Scripture and Tradition, Scripture and the Creed of 381 AD without Filioque, and the 8 ecumenical councils, 325-880 AD, arguably there may be 11 ecumenical councils in EOC; the bottom line on the question of universalism is Conciliar, a Council, not Hart’s book, or any Church Father’s book, unless that Church Father is received as Apostolic Tradition by the whole EOC. The whole EOC has alreadfy condemned apokastasis, Origenism, the idea of literal universal salvation, that there will be no hell for the devil and demons, and that “satan shall be saved”, this idea is anathema, and Origen’s teaching condemned. Whether all humans will be saved from hell is up to Christ Himself and the free will of humans; not all humans have necessarily repented, and humans who do not repent do receive hell. It is for God to decide this matter. It is better to repent and receive Christ than to speculate much about this. It seems some humans do not repent. But only God knows. It is clear that satan will not be saved and the demons will be damned too. But God wants all humans to be saved, but whether all humans shall finally all be saved, it is better not to say anything on this, and it is true: God will say. Let God be God.
Such fun! I have not had one substantial argument whatsoever from Craig in regards to the links I posted about free-will and the 10 Questions.
If he runs from me, a high school edjemacated wanna be philosopher with time on his hands, one things he would hide in trembling from a real debate with Hart because he knows Hart would hand him his shorts.
This is the problem with Calvinists (I speak as an X-Calvinist myself). They think they are the apex philosphers and theologians of the cosmos. I remember a Sunday School class in which one of the members said this, inferring that anyone not a Calvinist lacked the mental firepower to hold court in John Calvin’s august presence. Craig has not lost this attitude, as evidenced by the numerous posts here. The shame is, that as pointed out by several other people, me included, his screed is nothing more than an exhibition of the theological vapors over the idea that God really WILLS to save all and that Hart is a meanie in the way he says it.
Craig, if you want respect, at least from me, answer Hart’s objections and ignore his penchant for disdain of those whose theology deserves scorn. You have done neither so far.
And BTW – to save you time, here again are my questions and issues. I’ll have a lot more respect for you when you answer them. I really want answers to the first two. The rest are to ponder upon.
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2017/05/20/10-questions/
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/vacuous-answers-to-reasonable-questions-part-two/
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2019/07/26/the-univocality-of-gods-love/
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2018/08/30/still-struggling-to-understand/
I think you are running from my objections. To get you started, read the 7th ecumenical council cover to cover. Then get back to me. https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5sCqMrxtjBAC&dq=The+seventh+general+council&source=gbs_navlinks_s
I did Craig. There is NOTHING in it about Apokatastasis. NOTHING. There is reference to Origen. That is not the same as Apokatastasis. You don’t seem to realize that.
https://http4281.wordpress.com/2020/03/20/but-the-5th-ecumenical-council-says-stop-no-it-doesnt/
And once again, you are ducking my 10 Questions. Don’t accuse me of what you are doing. Read my links and answer the questions, please.
You read the whole thing, every single word? I will not answer any of your questions until you have.
Late to the conversation, I have reread the 21 canons of the 7th council. Where do they mentional Apokatastasis or Universal Reconciliation by name? I can’t seem to find it.
I stumbled across this in a Google search of critiques of Hart’s work and found it informative and useful. I appreciate the forthrightness written here. I also read about a third of the comments. As a Christian that would characterize himself as a Calvinist if asked (whatever that’s worth) I found many comments here intriguing regarding what I do or do not believe. I do not know much about EO. Some names and concepts are familiar enough to understand the conversation. I hope in the future I am as gracious to my EO brothers as they have been here to each other.
We have surely not been gracious enough here, but may God bless you!
I don’t like it when other people, whoever they are, in discussing theology, make it personal and political, and discuss other people, instead of their ideas and doctrines and theology. There is no need to say “Craig” and “you” and “I” and “We”. Or make ad hominem statements about Craig or David Bentley Hart, or become a “meanie” in one’s statements, by saying “Craig doesn’t like Hart” because “Hart acts like a meanie”. I believe this is the mind-reading fallacy and gets rational discussion nowhere. We should skip the personal comments on other persons, and deal only with their doctrines and words, and compare their words carefully, cogently, and theologically with the “consensus Patrum”, the “mind of the Father” of the Holy Orthodox Church. If Hart’s doctrine is innovation, prove it from the NT in the Church Fathers; if it is sound doctrine and Orthodox (orthodox), do the same from NT and Fathers. That is all I have to say. God bless all of you. God bless Craig. I do think Craig spends too much time trying to prove Augustine’s speculations on Filioque are not heterodox, but they are only speculations, but they aren’t Orthodox dogmas, so they are options, not Orthodox obligations, so I think just let Augustine go, and stick with Photios and John Chrysostom, Basil and Cyril of Alexandria and Athanasius, and the consensus Patrum of the other Church Father, but no need to defend Augustine. The Church has already let him pass as a basically okay member of the Church Fathers in spite of the heretical leaning of his Filioquism, so let’s let him go, and move on to Saint Photios, “On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit”, (1983), Holy Transfiguration Monastery, translators. Boston, Massachusetts: Studion Publishers.
Oh, I certainly agree with you. Now if you could just convinced Craig to read my links and give me a saluatory answer to my 10 Questions, i would be deeply appreciative
Oh, I certainly agree with you. Now if you could just convinced Craig It seems that you backtracked a little on your initial agreement. No need to bring up Craig’s name. I like Craig. Don’t you? Bless you brothers! God bless!
That;s true. But why are either of us giving any time by a man who calls himself a heretic? This whole debate between you two honestly disgusts me. You brought up the book. Why should anyone read it is the question. Unanswered. I do not mean to suggest that man is acting normal. But I am not Saint Andrew. I just pray Saint Andrew the real one protect me. I believe we should all go by the truth, sinner. But because of Christ, not myself, and baptism, I don’t follow heresies. God cleanse me of hidden faults. As far as I know, I don’t actually believe any false doctrines. Perhaps we should drop all contact with this reluctant heretic dude.
I am just one man. And I could be wrong. It seems to me the debate on this book is not warranted. It is beyond understanding. And God is uncomprehensible. All that can be said rightly is that God decides these matters. And perhaps we should not be debating it. I wonder why Craig even brought up the book. Too much for me to say. I’d rather we hope the West be saved from Filioque and whatever else they need to change. And I pray God deliver me from delusional thought. Even without any more belief in Filioque, I am still just a sinner. Though my hope is in God. And I am God has delivered me from Filioque. Thank God! Please see this post:
From the Synodicon of the Holy Spirit.
by Micke Stensson .
From the Synodicon of the Holy Spirit (to be read on the second day of Pentecost)
Background: This is subtitled: “A confession and proclamation of the Orthodox piety of the Christians, in which all the impieties of the heretics are overthrown and the definitions of the Catholic Church of Christ are sustained. Through which the enemies of the Holy Spirit are severed from the Church of Christ.” This Synodicon (a decision, statement, or tome either originating from a synod or council or possessing conciliar authority) is attributed to Patriarch Germanos the New (1222-1240). It demonstrates how the theology of St. Photios the Great became the Church’s definitive voice on the subject of the filioque. There can be no doubt that the filioque was judged to be heretical by the Orthodox Church. What follows are just a few of the anathemas from the Synodicon. (This background information, and the anathemas, are taken from On the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, ibid.)
“So likewise do they who despise and disdain piety receive curses; wherefore, all we in unison, since we constitute the plentitude of piety, lay upon them the curse which they have put upon themselves.” [an excerpt from the Synodicon of Orthodoxy, read on the Sunday of Orthodoxy during Great Lent].’ To those who do not deign to consent to the unaltered and unadulterated holy Symbol confessed by the Orthodox, that one, I mean, which was evangelically formulated by the First and Second Holy Councils and confirmed by the rest, but who rather amend it and distort it to support their own belief, thereby not only corrupting the conciliar traditions of the holy fathers and of the holy and God-instructed apostles, but also the definitions of our true God and Savior, Jesus Christ, ANATHEMA.” …
“To those who in any way undertake investigations into new doctrines concerning the divine and incomprehensible Trinity and who search out the difference between begetting and procession, and the nature of begetting and procession in God and who increase words and do not abide and persist in the definitions handed down to us by both the disciples of Christ and the divine fathers; and who thereby uselessly strive to dispute over things not delivered to us, ANATHEMA.”
“To those who scorn the venerable and holy ecumenical Councils, and who despise even more their dogmatic and canonical traditions; and to those who say that all things were not perfectly defined and delivered by the councils, but that they left the greater part mysterious, unclear, and untaught, ANATHEMA.”
“To those who hold in contempt the sacred and divine canons of our blessed fathers, which, by sustaining the holy Church of God and adorning the whole Christian Church, guide to divine reverence, ANATHEMA.”
“To all things innovated and enacted contrary to the Church tradition, teaching, and institution of the holy and ever-memorable fathers, or to anything henceforth so enacted, ANATHEMA.”
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THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED: HEAVEN, HELL, AND …
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Jan 25, 2020 – Throughout my reading of That All Shall Be Saved, my thoughts and … on the central themes of David Bentley Hart’s book than as a conventional review. … and of experiencing the theology of the Orthodox Church in her Holy …
Hart is the messiah and all who deny him will be denied him before the judgement seat.
All will be saved, and any who disagree will be cast into the lake of fire unto the ages of ages