I was debating whether to post this, but we (@Mark , @Michael_Callen and I) did talk a bit about universalism a couple of weeks ago. So, for those who are interested.
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Not a huge DBH fan.
Why does he think he should refer to everyone that disagrees with him as “infernalists”? Haha. That means that more than half of those in the Orthodox Church throughout the centuries have been “infernalists.” I don’t think universalism is heresy, and I’m certainly a tentatively hopeful universalist (in the sense that I think it’s possible, and I hope and pray for it, but I don’t endorse it as absolutely true), but I feel like Hart’s version of it doesn’t respect human freedom. Nicholas Loudovikos in his book on Maximus characterizes Hart’s theology as totalitarian, and I tend to agree.
His book on Christianity is interesting, but he plays he same game as Dawkins rather than moving above it, rhetoric-wise. Beauty of the Infinite, I’m sure, is excellent, but I don’t know enough contintental philosophy to follow it too well. The “Consciousness, bliss…” book was interesting, but I don’t agree with his Thomistic understanding of God. I think David Bradshaw shows where this goes wrong. And if you don’t agree with Hart about that, then almost half the book loses its punch.
Sorry @Djordje. Give me David Bradshaw, John Behr, Andrew Louth, Peter Bouteneff, John McGuckin, and Bulgakov (who Hart also LOVES). I 100 percent agree with Kallistos Ware’s article on universalism. Not too keen on Hart though I know he’s probably a freakin’ genius.
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Thanks for posting. I’m curious to see if it’ll get many hits. I’ve noticed that people are WAY more interested in science or science AND theology, but theology by itself doesnmt tend to gather that much interest on Peaceful Science.
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Yes, he can, on occasion, be too much. But yeah, he is a freaking genius.
Have you read ‘Traditio Deformis’, his paper? I think it’s pretty good, albeit, very rude.
And I do believe his humoristic rudeness is merely a way to hold complete attention. People tend to drift off when they’re bored.
No, I haven’t read. Can you link to his paper?
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Come on peaceful science forum. Isn’t SOMEONE interested in something other than science?
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It’s not “Peaceful Theology”, is it?
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It is interesting he is published in a conservative magazine like First Things.
I don’t know, Jesus had some rather frightening warnings he said against the religious hypocrites he faced, and he forgave ordinary sinners but also usually charged them to change their ways.
He’s a regular writer there.
He’s a rather popular philosopher and leads some work in Notre Dame so there’s no way they’re gonna let him go, whatever his belief. Plus, he’s a Greek Orthodox, and universalism isn’t considered heresy here.
A few thoughts:
- Pretty sure Hart is not a Thomist by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe take another look before dismissing him on that front. One of his most frequent punching bags is Ed Feser, a Thomist.
- The rhetoric I think is lots of fun. I know that Hart means it that way. His sense of humor is adolescent, and he knows it. It does put some folks off. But theology has always been polemical, and he’s participating in a long tradition there.
- Folks on here would probably be most interested in knowing that his argument for universalism is argued from a particular, and rather persuasive account of creation from nothing. That can be found in his excellent and challenging article here: God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo | Hart | Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics
That article would make a rollicking discussion on here I bet. - His short book Doors of the Sea contains echoes of the argument for universalism, but has more to do with ‘natural theology’ and also might be worth reading if you’re interested.
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One other thing. If you don’t have time to read the article linked above, think about what it might mean for God to be good, but to plan or decree or in some sense intend (even need?) some to be lost, so that the Big Plan works out right in the end. Is such a ‘goodness’ still good, or does that call into question our ability to use a word like ‘good’ to describe such a God? You may note that the Westminster Confession, to reference one example, nowhere affirms God as either ‘love’ or ‘loving’. Hart thinks that for it to be both true that God is good, and that God made creation ‘from nothing’, it must be finally unnecessary that any be lost. And for God to ‘allow’ someone to be lost is a failure of goodness even as much as allowing your child to ‘freely’ step in front of a speeding car would be. Take a look at the argument, and see where or if you think it goes wrong.
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I think the argument is interesting but I think it results in a God who doesn’t allow us the freedom to do wrong. His example of a father allowing his child to stick her head in the fire doesn’t really capture a lot of conceptions of hell. Fot instance, like many Orthodox, it seems plausible to me that hell is simply God’s love experienced as horrible for the person who hates God. If this is hell, why can’t God allow people to hate him for eternity? Makes it too close to an ego case of, “everyone MUST love me!”
If Hart tweaked it a bit and clearly said that universalism is true because, in the end, all will FREELY CHOSE to love God rather than themselves and their passions, this would make me much less uncomfortable.
I find Ware’s hopeful universalism much less prone to metaphysical totalitarianism. And I would probably say the same for Bulgakov and Nyssa’s theology as I would for Hart, though I dearly love them both.
I think Hart identifies most closely with Platonism, but his book the Experience of God takes the thomistic conception of God rather than Palamas’s, written about in David Bradshaw’s “Aristotle: East and West.”. I agree with Bradshaw. It all hinges on one’s interpretation of Dionysius. I read this a long time ago, but here, Fr Aidan says that Hart identifies most closely with Platonism. Hartian Illuminations: Being as Gift and Beauty | Eclectic Orthodoxy
Could you link to where he throws some punches at Feser? I’m very interested.
I really appreciate this type of universalism as well. Permit Me to Hope | Eclectic Orthodoxy
Extremely hopeful but not dogmatic.
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Hi - Just stumbled across this and wanted to offer a couple of thoughts. Thanks for offering these thoughts from the conversants. I think there are misreadings of Hart and human freedom in this initial post (that it somehow “doesn’t respect human freedom”). On the contrary, he completely respects it. But, first, I think Hart makes an important point that modern concepts of autonomous freedom are entirely flawed. No one is making a truly free decision when we are all deceived in innumerable ways and at various levels and have not only extraordinary finite minds; but those are biased or deceived by evil, suffering, culture, etc. (see below)
Second, as to the misreadings, Hart is anything but a “totalitarian” with respect to Divine interaction with human beings. He has stated numerous times that he believes human beings will freely choose God (not be forced to do so). His argument is that once humans are freed from the deception of sin, death, etc. (see above), and see the Divine for who God truly is, Love in the trinity, that all will freely choose God. Not forced to do so but naturally do so. Consider what he argues:
“Rational freedom — which is to say, the kind of freedom possessed by reasoning beings, which involves intention, deliberation, and judgment — is of its nature a reflective movement of the will, determined by what the intellect perceives as desirable in light of a more original, more general set of “transcendental” longings — that is, a constant, at times almost unconscious appetite for, say, goodness, or truth, or beauty. And to be perfectly free would be to possess the ability to know with absolute clarity, undistorted by ignorance or emotional trauma, what ends would really satisfy one’s truest and deepest desires, and to enjoy an unhindered ability to realise one’s nature by choosing those ends. Of course, in this life none of us has perfect freedom. But, to whatever degree we are free, it is because we can form judgments and make choices; and, conversely, to the degree that we lack rational competency — that we are deprived of full understanding and sanity — we are not free.
"What, after all, makes any choice a free act? Principally, an end, a telos, toward which it is oriented. To act freely, that is, one must be able to conceive a purpose or object and then elect either to pursue or not to pursue it. If it were not for this purposiveness — this “final causality”, to use the classical term — the will’s operation would be nothing but a brute event, wholly determined by its physical antecedents, and therefore “free” only in the trivial sense of “random”, like an earthquake or a purely neural impulse. To be free, one must be able to choose this rather than that according to a real sense of which better satisfies one’s natural longing for, say, happiness or goodness or truth or beauty. One must have some rational index of ultimate ends that are desirable in and of themselves in order to judge lesser, more immediate ends. Hence there can be no real “empirical” freedom except as embraced within a prior determination of the rational will towards these “transcendentals”. There must be a “why” in any free choice, a sufficient reason for making it, a general longing that makes each specific choice possible, as leading toward some kind of happiness. … My argument, therefore, is not that we cannot reject God, but only that we cannot do so with perfect freedom. The power of choice in itself is not true freedom of the will. In a sense, a lunatic has a far larger range of real options than does a sane person, but only because he or she also has far less freedom. The lunatic might choose to run into a burning building on impulse, to see what it will feel like to die in flames; a sane man, because he can form a rational judgment of what can and cannot satisfy his nature, lacks so expansive a “liberty”.”
Hart draws on the story, “The Lady, or the Tiger?” In which a young man must open one of two doors (as he chooses). Behind one waits a fierce and famished tiger, ready to devour him; behind the other, a beautiful maiden, ready to become his wife. Hart adjust the parameters just a bit and writes:
“Let us say instead that the young courtier has a choice between a door behind which that tiger is still crouching and another behind which the girl of his dreams (say, the princess herself) is waiting. First of all, which door should he want to open? If he is perfectly sane and healthy, and barring other contingencies, the latter, obviously. We can agree, I hope, that one of the conditions that allows him to make a truly free decision in these circumstances is that he is not captive to some sort of dementia that would render him incapable of judging whether it would be better to be torn to shreds by a wild beast or to be happily wedded to the woman he loves. But that also means that his freedom — his liberty from delusion, that is — has already reduced the range of his possible preferences to only one of the two outcomes. Then, however, a more crucial question must be asked. Under which conditions can he better make a truly free choice: either knowing or not knowing which door is which? Obviously, the former. Otherwise, it is all a matter of chance, and his choice is an arbitrary decision forced on him by circumstance. The more he knows, therefore, the freer he becomes; but then, at the same time, the freer he is, the less there is to choose, and the more inevitable the choice he will make. In fact, what follows is not really a “choice” at all, precisely because it is a purely free movement of thought and will toward the end he most truly desires. He has been liberated from the need to choose arbitrarily, and so has been determined toward an inevitable terminus by his own freedom.”
This does not in any way strike me as “totalitarian” but just the opposite: as the gracious unveiling of true knowledge from God. It seems an irony to me that, given rejection of God is a result of deception (deception by sin, suffering, evil, finitude, etc.) which leads to self-destruction, that turns out to be what is truly “totalitarian.” Non-universalism is true totalitarianism in that God chooses not to rid a human of his or her ignorance (of, say, what is behind each door), but allows them to continue in their self-deception. This certainly happens in this world, but I believe that is so that God allows us to experience the full end of our distorted behavior and thinking. However, for that to continue in eternity would appear to me to be truly totalitarian - God never permitting us complete freedom from the ignorance of our choices. Thanks for the good conversation here.
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@Youngman44 Welcome to Peaceful Science. 
As noted above, we don’t get a lot of pure theology discussion here, but it’s good to see these discussion don’t entirely go away.
There is an ongoing of discussion of Free Will in another part of the forum - which you do not have access to just yet. If you are interested I can grant you access.