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That All Shall be Saved: Heaven, Hell and Universal Salvation (2019) Yale University Press – by David Bentley Hart

A Quick Review

Christianity has a long-lasting problem: apparently, a just, merciful, and loving God will consign some persons to eternal suffering, or at the very least, eternal annihilation.  There seems to be a deep psychological or even ideological aversion to universalism, which is the idea that all persons, sooner or later, will be saved and eternally united with God.  So deeply entrenched is this aversion, that on the live chat feed of a YouTube featuring David Bentley Hart discussing universalism with several theologians, someone actually said (apparently in all seriousness) “universalism is depressing.”

David Bentley Hart is a Christian of the Eastern Orthodox Church and a scholar of religion.  His book is a defense of Universalism.  I have read defenses of universal salvation before, but none so bold as David Bentley Hart’s.  In fact, the last chapter, “Final Remarks,” begins thus:

Custom dictates and prudence advises that here, in closing, I wax gracefully disingenuous and declare that I am uncertain in my conclusions, that I offer them only hesitantly, that I entirely understand the views of those that take the opposite side of the argument, and that I fully respect contrary opinions on these matters.  I find, however, whether on account of principle or of pride, that I am simply unable to do this. (199)

I laughed out loud for sheer delight when I read this, because it is time the infernalist position not only be rejected, but rejected without quarter.  Indeed, Hart is even critical of Hans Urs von Balthasar, sometimes referred to as a “hopeful universalist,” because he wants to hold the infernalist and universalist positions apparently found in scripture “in a sustained ‘tension,’ without attempting any sort of final resolution or synthesis between them…. I [Hart] cannot quite suppress my suspicion that here the word ‘tension’ is being used merely as an anodyne euphemism for ‘contradiction’” (102-03).  It is encouraging to hear a scholar of Hart’s repute take such a bold stand.

The book addresses and refutes on a rational basis the usual objections to universalism.  One of these is that for human life to be meaningful humans must be free, and that genuine free will requires that individuals be free even to choose eternal hell, and that therefor damnation for some is at least possible.  Part of Hart’s critique of this view involves assailing the conception of freedom implied here.  Another objection to universalism is that God, being God, can do what he wants and is outside our paltry understanding of what we might call just, good, or loving, etc., and therefor can torture certain persons forever without in the least diminishing any of these qualities in himself.  Hart deals with this objection handily too, as well as others, showing that we cannot defend infernalism by letting our conception of the divine retreat into some ineffable mystery as a cover for sheer cruelty.

One thing this book does not do is undertake a thoroughgoing scriptural analysis of what the Bible might be saying about hell, nor does it pretend to do this.  Hart restricts the book mostly to a rational refutation of the idea of eternal hell.  I don’t know what his stance is on Biblical inerrancy or infallibility, but he is not prepared to sacrifice reason to scripture, if scripture speaks nonsense.

I have been asked more than once I the last few years whether, if I were to become convinced that Christian adherence absolutely requires a belief in a hell of eternal torment, this would constitute in my mind proof that Christianity should be dismissed as a self- evidently morally obtuse and logically incoherent faith.  And, as it happens, it would.  (208)

But it is not Hart’s contention that scripture does speak nonsense on this score.  He presents around the middle of the book numerous Bible passages which state or strongly suggest universalism.

To me it is surpassingly strange that, down the centuries, most Christians have come to believe that one class of claims—all of which are allegorical, pictorial, vague, and metaphorical in form—must be regarded as providing the “literal” content of the New Testament’s teaching regarding the world to come, while another class—all of which are invariably straightforward doctrinal statements—must be regarded as mere hyperbole.  (94)

If one can be swayed simply by the brute force of arithmetic, it seems worth noting that, among the apparently most explicit statements on the last things, the universalist statements are by far the more numerous.  (95)

Nor does Hart back off and give annihilationism (the belief that the damned are not tormented forever, but at some point annihilated) any quarter.

Hart is unintimidated by authority (Augustine or Aquinas, for example) or some idea of what we are “supposed” to believe according to such persons.  He has a distinct attraction to certain of the early church fathers, such as Gregory of Nyssa.  Calvin, however, comes in for some very hard knocks here.  In a YouTube somewhere (I quote from memory) Hart has joked, “some people think I hate Calvin.  And that’s because I do.”

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We Must Put Anti-Capitalism on the Liberal Table

It is the achievement of progressive politics (i.e., liberals and leftists, broadly defined) that issues of race, sex, and gender, as they challenge an unjust status quo, remain paramount in the public eye.  But what of an actual alternative to capitalism?  A defining difference between leftists and liberals is that the former criticize capitalism as such, and advocate for a different way of running the world, whereas the unquestioned liberal assumption is that only capitalism is possible or desirable.  According to the liberal, capitalism may have very serious problems, but they can be fixed: capitalism is and must be here to stay.

The essence of capitalism is that a certain class—the bourgeoisie, or in particular the big bourgeoisie or large corporations—own and/or control most of the means of production: land, machinery, patents, natural resources, etc.  They do this through their use of capital.  Whether the capitalists work hard or are as lazy as a sack of oats, the real source of their wealth is the wealth they already own, wealth created mostly from other people’s labour.  Even those very few capitalists who started out poor, no matter how hard they work, rise to the top mostly on the backs of the working class.  Even the most well-intentioned capitalists pay this class less than its labour is worth; if they didn’t, they would perish as capitalists.  The lie capitalism spreads is that the capitalists’ phenomenal wealth is the just desserts owed to the hardest working members of the global community, and that somehow, the 1% that owns between 30% and 50% of the world’s assets really does 30% to 50% of the world’s work.

If you believe it is humanly possible to work anything close to that hard, I have wasted enough of your time already and you may as well go elsewhere.

Liberals need to question capitalism: not just its excesses or abuses, or its favouring of white males, but capitalism as such, where exploitation is built-in regardless of anybody’s intentions.  An international rainbow coalition of the exploiting class, where all racial, gender, and sexual groups were proportionately represented within the palaces of privilege, would only rearrange the various identities of who are the rich thieves and who are their poor victims.  The amount of robbery and injustice would not decrease significantly.

The critique of capitalism, however, should not be done in competition with the usual liberal concerns over sex, race, and gender.  Rather, a critique of and opposition to capitalism has a great deal to do with these other forms of oppression and is a tremendous boon to the understanding of them.  When you think about it, anti-capitalism has a great deal to say about these other issues of oppression.

Consider these examples, which only scratch the surface:

 Traditionally, women in many times and places have not been allowed to own land: the most fundamental means of production.  They have been forced to rely for sustenance on fathers or husbands.  They often have not been allowed to have the same jobs as men, and where they have made progress and acquired some access to the same jobs, they have often been paid less.

Indigenous people have been oppressed when their means of production–the land–was stolen from them.  Because they were pushed onto reserves, where the economic potential of that land tends to be minimal, the oppression continues.

Africans, in being turned into slaves and taken to foreign lands, not only lost their means of production, but became the means of production: the fruits of which belonged to others.

A perennial problem with LGBTQS people is on-the-job harassment, or even the loss of their jobs if they are open about who they are.

Also, the exploitation of all workers, regardless of dis/ability, race, gender, or sexual orientation is inherent in capitalism.  The Marxist labour theory of value shows clearly that capitalism is founded on the theft of labour.  And even without familiarity with the ins and outs of that theory, we can see the bourgeoisie does not get rich in proportion to its labour.

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FIRST POST

Let me say, first of all, that I hate the word “facilitate” with the fiery passion of ten thousand suns.