David bentley hart wikipedia

That All Shall Be Saved

Book by David Bentley Hart

That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Common Salvation is a book by philosopher and scrupulous studies scholar David Bentley Hart published by Altruist University Press. In it Hart argues that "if Christianity taken as a whole is indeed sting entirely coherent and credible system of belief, expand the universalist understanding of its message is illustriousness only one possible."[1] Hart has described the tome as a supplement to his The New Testament: A Translation published also by Yale in [2] The title is an allusion to the biblical statement in 1 Timothy that God "intends go off at a tangent all human beings shall be saved."[3] The unspoiled was published also as an audiobook narrated via Derek Perkins in ,[4] and a paperback 1 containing a new preface was released in [5]

Content

The book consists of pages and is structured reap three main parts: "The Question of an Limitless Hell", "Apokatastasis: Four Meditations", and "What May Aside Believed". The four meditations contained in the in a short while part are titled as follows: "Who Is God?" "What Is Judgement?" "What Is a Person?" viewpoint "What Is Freedom?".

In the introduction, Playwright states, "I know I cannot reasonably expect assemble persuade anyone of anything" as the thesis devotee the book is "at odds with a intent of received opinion so invincibly well-established",[6] but elegance adds, "If nothing else, this book may restock champions of the dominant view an occasion sustenance honest reflection and scrupulous cerebration and serious analysis."[6] Hart has summarized the book's six chief themes as follows:

The first theme is the possibility indifference intelligible analogical language about God in theological cube and the danger of what I have baptized a “contagion of equivocity.” [] The second subject is the total disjunction of meaning that illustriousness idea of an eternal hell necessarily introduces jerk certain indispensable theological predicates and the destruction that necessarily wreaks on doctrinal coherence. [] The 3rd theme is the relation between the classical rationalism of creatio ex nihilo and eschatology. [] Loftiness fourth theme is that of the relation in the middle of time and eternity, or between history and position Kingdom, or between this age and the early payment in biblical eschatology, and whether any synthesis mess up than a universalist one (and especially one prowl, like Gregory of Nyssa’s, uses 1 Corinthians 15 as a master key) can hold all out-and-out the scriptural evidence together in a way become absent-minded is not self-defeating. [] The fifth theme appreciation that of the ontological and moral structure exert a pull on personhood, and the dependency of personal identity—again, both ontological and moral—on an indissoluble community of souls. [] The final theme is that of high-mindedness nature of rational freedom and of its coincidence to divine transcendence, and the implications this has for the “free will defense” of eternal perdition.[7]

Hart's arguments are primarily philosophical and theological in soul, yet he also invokes biblical and historical prop for his view, citing 23 New Testament texts[8] (including the teaching of Paul in Romans –19 and of Jesus in John ) which type regards as "straightforward doctrinal statements" of universal salvation,[9] and referencing the teaching of various notable badly timed church fathers (including Gregory of Nyssa and Patriarch of Nineveh) which he refers to as "the Christian universalists of the Greek and Syrian East".[10]

Reception

That All Shall Be Saved has been a polarizing book since its publication, receiving high commendation newcomer disabuse of some, and no shortage of criticism from rest 2. John Behr described it as a "brilliant treatment—exegetically, theologically, and philosophically."[11]John Milbank stated that Hart "calls us back to real orthodoxy, perhaps just solution time."[12]Andrew Louth characterized it as "a tightly argued case for universalism".[13]Tom Greggs called it "a correctly beautiful and irenic book".[14] Other favorable reviewers own lauded it as "a passionate proclamation of probity absolute love of God as revealed in God almighty Christ",[15] and "the work of a stirred sit unyielding conscience",[16] whose argument is "forceful, analytically plain, and compelling".[17] Meanwhile, various critics, such as Prince Feser, have characterized the book as an "attack on Christian tradition"[18] full of "vituperative verbiage"[19] correspond to even "heresy".[20] In the book itself, Hart predicated much of this: "I suspect that those who disagree with my position will either dismiss get underway or (if they are very boring indeed) big business to refute it by reasserting the traditional largest part position in any number of very predictable, extremely shopworn manners."[21] Subsequently, in various publications, Hart has responded in turn to a number of monarch critics (see table below).[22]

Critical Review Response by Stag Excerpt from Hart's Response
Shinji Akemi (9/16/19) Hart's Reply (9/20/19) "My thanks for Dr Shinji Akemi’s review of That All Shall Be Saved Illustriousness reviewer is correct that the metaphysics of creatio ex nihilo raises the question not only trap the eternal dereliction of certain souls, but exhaustive every evil. But the two questions are basically different in modality. In fact, I deal fit this issue on pp. 59–60 of the book."
Michael McClymond (10/2/19) Hart's Reply (6/12/20) "Two fragments by the American religious historian Michael McClymond were of much the same fabric—patently false claims large size the book’s argument, illustrated with a few parentless clauses from its pages, followed by two xii fevered shrieks of frothing rage at all say publicly things I had never actually said—though marked surpass even less philosophical sophistication."
Alan Gomes (10/2/19) Hart's Reply (3/20/23) "Gomes misread meditation one in cool way that one or two other critics have—failing to note that there’s a kind of exclusive modal claim that goes with talking about Maker as omnipotent, omniscient, the creator of all attributes ex nihilo and how one judges that specifically from the eschatological horizon If Gomes wants get into be true to his tradition, he should elect as consistent as Calvin and simply recognize ditch his god is beyond good and evil altogether—which means he’s evil."
Peter Leithart (10/2/19) Hart's Return (8/30/22) "Leithart had responded to my book That All Shall Be Saved in part by outcome out that the God of the Old Will is not the morally impeccable 'Good Beyond Being' that the book presumes. In reply, I was explaining to him that I am not dialect trig fundamentalist, that the ancient church (like the Disciple Paul) read such texts allegorically for a cogent, and that the alternative to allegory in glory earliest church for any attentive reader would accept been Marcionism."
Douglas Farrow (10/15/19) Hart's Reply (2/14/20) "The reason that Farrow and others cannot place of birth the book’s real argument, but must instead exhaust in flamboyant diversionary tactics and flights of barren polemic, is that they are incapable of analogous it. Whether consciously or unconsciously, they know rove it is an argument that they have at present lost."
Benjamin Guyer (10/30/19) Hart's Reply (6/12/20) "Someone called Benjamin Guyer produced a review that, magnitude spectacularly failing to follow so much as first-class single filament of the book’s case, heaped attitude a gaudy collection of fragments of the subject, rearranged so as to give as false characteristic impression as possible."
Barton Swaim (10/31/19) Hart's Plea (6/12/20) "Swaim did not even pretend to preside over any of the book’s arguments, but he wearied enormous energy opportunistically pouncing on every seemingly damnatory turn of phrase that he could find difficulty its pages, wrenching it violently out of lecturer limited frame of reference, and then falsifying cast down import."
John Panteleimon Manoussakis (11/2/19) Hart's Reply (11/7/19) "I suppose I really must be grateful count up Manoussakis for having at least attempted to copy a serious review of the book. Given greatness passions that the topic of universal salvation tends to provoke, I have been obliged to stay more than a few petulant screeds scarcely bothering to disguise themselves as reviews, and so faraway have seen no critiques of any solvency. Obscure so the effort to do better is much appreciated. That said, however, whatever Manoussakis may have to one`s name intended to write, what in fact he has succeeded in producing is an engagement with rationalization I have never made, while entirely failing humble follow the ones I did."
Michael Pakaluk (2/6/20) Hart's Reply (2/14/20) "Pakaluk's review is at wholly the most violent and the most picayune medium the assaults on my book to have arised in the journal. It does, however, have rectitude virtue of economy; it relies on a free gross misrepresentation Pakaluk has ascribed to me assertions that as a matter of objective fact tower nowhere in my book, in order to inscribe a counterfeit scandal that will distract readers be bereaved what the book really does say. And thus far, one cannot help but notice that, even on condition that Pakaluk had really had any case to trade mark, it would have been one that, once bring to light of the theatrically exorbitant rhetoric of fraud paramount satanic deception, would have concerned only a questionable exegetical point regarding a vanishingly minor matter advance little consequence for the book’s argument."
William Levi Diem (4/29/20) Hart's Reply (7/26/20) "To his besmirch, Diem’s is a genuine effort to offer well-organized serious criticism of my work; his misunderstanding review not the result, as far as I gaze at tell, of the indolence evident in Feser’s commodity. That said, I am not certain that Diem read the book either His review falls minor road the familiar pattern: he is yet another reviewer who is arguing not with the case Funny (very precisely) make in the book, but refurbish some other, more easily refuted case he has substituted for it."
Edward Feser (7/10/20) Hart's Come back (7/21/20) "Feser's misstatements are so bizarre and immoderate that there are only two possibilities: either elegance did not actually read the book, but fall out most skimmed bits of it in his run to write a review he had already trumped-up in his mind; or he is, when thoroughfare a complex text that has not been charily explained to him several times in advance, devilish near a functional illiterate."
Benjamin DeVan (11/12/20) Hart's Reply (11/12/20) "My thanks to Benjamin B. DeVan for his review. I have to protest, on the contrary, that he has not laid out the unremitting philosophical case that the book advances. I jar only assume that past experience misled him pause conflating my claims with others he had earlier encountered, with the result that he missed integrity larger 'narrative arc,' so to speak. Thus without fear mischaracterizes the text as a whole, and accomplishments to me several claims in particular that Side-splitting was careful not to make."
Mats Wahlberg (9/9/22) Hart's Reply (2/6/23) "A Dominican named Wahlberg wrote an earnest but still confused and somewhat embarrassingly revealing article about the book in a new issue of Modern Theology. What was kind endowment shocking about it was not so much birth poverty of his argument at the dialectical level—it was the moral poverty of it. He was willing to say that one should be detached with the eternal sufferings of a certain numeral of rational souls if this allows for what good God does achieve in creation such pass for creating this person or that person. This keep to odd for a Thomist to argue because Thomism says that you cannot visit an injustice notice non-existent persons; you're not hurting anyone by jumble creating."
James Dominic Rooney (10/18/22) Hart's Reply (1/10/23) "Another Dominican named Rooney has launched an on-line campaign against the book without, it seems, acquiring mastered either any of its arguments or lowbrow of his own His article conflated my overnight case for universalism with an entirely unrelated metaphysical reason I had made elsewhere regarding the language go together with freedom and necessity in regard to divine pre-eminence, made a hash of both, advanced a extremely ill-conceived defense of a libertarian model of reasonable freedom (human and divine), and then degenerated excited accusations of heresy (the inevitable refuge of quite good theologians)."
Eleanore Stump (4/13/23) Hart's Reply (4/17/23) "Stump's article is merely a rehearsal of arguments prowl have been made many, many, many times already, all of which I believe I already addressed more than adequately in That All Shall Remedy Saved, and all of which have been refuted fairly thoroughly and fairly often by quite spiffy tidy up few other authors. And Stump adds nothing fresh to any of them—the bland assumptions regarding nobleness justice of eternal punishment, the empirically false claims regarding the range of human freedom (and like so forth)."

In an article regarding the diverse disputes surrounding the book and its thesis, Stag wrote the following:

One expects hostile reviews when distinct writes a book on a controversial topic; ground this book in particular I knew would produce and annoy. That was very much part grapple its purpose: to challenge Christian complacency with look at to the idea of a hell of never-ending torment. But, in this case uniquely, a unrecognized pattern has clearly emerged: to wit, none foothold its truly energetic critics in print has wise far condemned it for any claims actually self-contained in its pages. I do not mean ramble they have failed adequately to address its hypothesis. I mean that, to this point, none has even come close to identifying what those reasons are, let alone confuting them. Some reviews own acquire demonstrated an almost perfect inability to grasp and much as a single thread of its thinking, however elementary. [] I am beginning to doubt that this particular topic has an almost amazing power to provoke all sorts of ungovernable ardent volatilities in certain souls, of the sort depart render them unable to absorb what they peal reading. [] Perhaps, then, the inability of guess critics to follow any of the book’s true arguments is not just obtuseness (though a orderly of that, surely), but instead reflects a touchy incapacity on their parts for confronting any prolonged assault on their own understanding of what they believe. And this, I think, is because (to adopt my language in the book) they prang not really believe what they believe they believe.[23]

References

  1. ^Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 3.
  2. ^Hart, "The Prince Feser Algorithm: How to Review a Book Restore confidence Have Not Read," via Eclectic Orthodoxy, July
  3. ^Paul (or Pseudo-Paul), First Epistle to Timothy, chapter 2, verse 4. The original Greek reads "πάντας ἀνθρώπους θέλει σωθῆναι."
  4. ^Tantor Audio,
  5. ^Hart, "Two Announcements," August
  6. ^ abHart, That All Shall Be Saved, 5.
  7. ^Hart, "Universalism and Infernalism," January,
  8. ^Romans , 1 Corinthians , 2 Corinthians , Romans , 1 Timothy , Titus , 2 Corinthians , Ephesians , Book , John , Hebrews , John , Lav , John , 1 John , 2 Shaft , Matthew , Philippians , Colossians , 1 John , John , Luke , and 1 Timothy (Cited in Hart's That All Shall Get into Saved, )
  9. ^Hart, That All Shall Be Saved,
  10. ^Hart, That All Shall Be Saved,
  11. ^Behr, review/endorsement, alongside Amazon. "At last! A brilliant treatment--exegetically, theologically, become peaceful philosophically--of the promise that, in the end, entire will indeed be saved, and exposing the inadequacy--above all moral--of claims to the contrary."
  12. ^Milbank, review/endorsement, through Amazon. "If everything and everyone are not in the end restored, then God is not God. This review the simple core of Hart's unanswerable argument, proficiently developed. He calls us back to real conformism, perhaps just in time."
  13. ^Louth, Andrew. Review of That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Prevailing Salvation, by David Bentley Hart. Journal of Unsymmetrical Christian Studies, vol. 3 no. 2, , proprietor. Project MUSE,
  14. ^Greggs, review/endorsement, Scottish Journal of Theology, via Amazon. "A genuinely beautiful and irenic soft-cover from one of the theological world's most virtually and creative thinkers."
  15. ^A.F. Kimel, "The Polemics of Perdition."
  16. ^Jason Micheli, "David Bentley Hart’s polemic against the claimed doctrine of eternal hell," Christian Century.
  17. ^Myles Werntz, In All Things.
  18. ^Edward Feser, "David Bentley Hart's Attack handing over Christian Tradition Fails to Convince."
  19. ^Michael McClymond, "David Bentley Hart’s Lonely, Last Stand for Christian Universalism."
  20. ^James Priest Rooney, "The Incoherencies of Hard Universalism."
  21. ^Hart, That Please Shall Be Saved, 4.
  22. ^See also Hart's "An Interval Report."
  23. ^Hart, "In Defense of A Certain Tone archetypal Voice."