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Michael Berrigan Clark, Hell, the Goodness of God, and Orthodoxy

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Michael Berrigan Clark, Hell, the Goodness of God, and Orthodoxy READING ROOM © 2020 The Wheel. May be distributed for noncommercial use. www.wheeljournal.com Hell, the Goodness of God, and Orthodoxy: Review of David Bentley Hart, That All Shall be Saved Michael Berrigan Clark In the introductory remarks to his latest universalists”, as opposed to the uni- book, David Bentley Hart admits that his versalists of absolute conviction (such arguments will convince few who were as Hart himself). The hopeful crowd be- not already predisposed to accept the lieve in the legitimacy of “hoping all will central thesis contained in the title of the be saved,” while retaining the possibility book. Yet he persists. Hart was already that some will lock themselves away in a known for his universalist understand- hell of their own making for all eternity. ing of Christian eschatology, yet for him, the significance of the question necessi- The position I want to attempt to tated reworking and expansion of his argue, therefore, to see how well it previous contributions. holds together, is far more extreme: to wit, that, if Christianity is in any David Bentley Hart, The book’s somewhat haphazard orga- way true, Christians dare not doubt That All Shall be Saved: nization betrays its previous incarna- the salvation of all, and that any Heaven, Hell, and Uni- versal Salvation (New tion as the content of several lectures, understanding of what God ac- Haven: Yale Universi- expanded here as the book’s middle complished in Christ that does not ty Press, 2019). section, entitled “Apokatastasis: Four include the assurance of a final apo- Meditations”, and the section entitled katastasis in which all things created “Part I: The Question of an Eternal Hell.” are redeemed and joined to God is Hart himself notes the incorporation of ultimately entirely incoherent and this previous material. While the new unworthy of rational faith. (66) introduction and conclusion bring the whole together, some awkward repeti- It is Hart’s self-assured confidence in his tion remains from the use of these earlier own conclusions that has most irked a source materials. rather diverse crowd of critics. Most re- cently, Giacomo Sanfilippo, founding So why the new book? Hart himself editor of Orthodoxy in Dialogue, pub- states the reason for pulling out all the lished a very negative assessment of stops and offering a definitive version Hart’s book based largely on Sanfilip- of his strongest arguments. While the po’s attachment to a very traditional pi- “infernalists” (those who believe in an ety of self-abnegation. Other reviewers eternal hell of endless torture for the have expressed skepticism that Hart’s damned) are his real target, Hart’s ire rigorous philosophical categories and is also aimed at a class of theologian relentless logic are appropriate tools for that most would consider a natural ally interpreting the New Testament’s escha- of universalism. These are the “hopeful tological passages. It is worth admitting The Wheel 21/22 | Spring/Summer 2020 105 (as most all critics do) that Hart’s pen- more naturally it tended to com- chant for rare and archaic latinisms and mand submission from the faithful hellenisms —what would be so wrong, by whatever permissible methods for example, with writing “laid aside” of persuasion lay near at hand. (206) rather than “praetermitted”?—frequent- ly detract from his point. His polemical These are not merely academic musings. skills and biting rhetoric may not always It might seem that the question of wheth- serve his best intentions. er the torments of hell are eternal or tem- porary has no immediate bearing on Still, if this book’s singular value lay in the status of the Church’s mission in the its rigorous argument in favor of a uni- contemporary world. But the prestige of versal restoration of humankind and the infernalist argument can be shown to the entire cosmos, then Hart’s peculiar proceed from an age when the Church’s verbal flair might be less objectionable. message was becoming a fixed feature of I believe, however, that Hart’s greatest society. It follows the rising curve of a co- moments come not in his arguments for ercive role for the Church in determining apokatastasis—admirable though these society’s moral order. It may well be that may be—but in his summarizing the Or- formally abdicating such moral hegemo- thodox Church’s vision of the gospel. In ny is part of the Church’s only hope for other words, the title of Hart’s book may relevance in the coming age. not reveal the most important point he has to make. With that caveat in mind, In addition to wielding all the power of Hart does not disappoint when he focus- his relentless logic, Hart spends a fair es with real precision on the Church’s amount of time describing his youthful fundamental message. encounter with the Christian faith in the context of his family’s High Church An- Hart is aware that this larger vision of glican roots. He discovered in the Eastern the Gospel must inform eschatological Church tradition the antidote to so much teaching. He also seems aware that this of what passed for Christian teaching in part of his message is most relevant for the contemporary world. The wrath of the contemporary Christian. God, the vicarious atonement of Christ to appease the Father, the eternal torture I would not say, however, that the of the damned, and other distortions of gradual hardening of the church’s the economy of our salvation in Christ teachings on hell into the infernalist come in for trenchant criticism: orthodoxy, over half a millennium, was merely an accident of history. It Happily, all of that is degrading may have been much more a neces- nonsense—an absolute midden of sity of culture, or of politics, or even misconceptions, fragments of scrip- of psychology. At least, if I allow tural language wrenched out of myself to take the cynical view of context, errors of translation, logi- the matter, I cannot help but believe cal contradictions, and (I suspect) that the infernalist view was fated one or two emotional pathologies. to prevail simply as an institutional It came as a great consolation to me imperative (or, at any rate, an insti- when I was still very young to dis- tutional convenience). The more the cover that, in the first three or four church took shape as an adminis- centuries of the Christian era, none trative hierarchy, and especially as of these notions had yet taken root, it became an organ of and support in either the East or the West, and for imperial unity and power, the that for the most part the Eastern 106 Christian world had remained in- tion of infernalism allows the Church to © 2020 The Wheel. nocent of the worst of them up until answer Ivan’s challenge, and to convince May be distributed for the present day, and furthermore him that his objections to the Church are, noncommercial use. www.wheeljournal.com that the New Testament, read in in fact, ontologically present in the Or- light of the proper tradition, turned thodox faith. out to contain nothing remotely like them. It is true, of course, that for Furthermore, Hart’s arguments are intent Paul the cross of Christ revealed the on restoring a communal understanding of law’s wrath upon sin, in that it was salvation in Christ. The “infernalist” idea, an eminently legal murder; but it on the other hand, is obsessed with the in- certainly revealed nothing about the dividual destination of each human being. will of God toward his creatures en- slaved to death, and was in no sense I am not I in myself alone, but only in a ransom paid to the Father to avert all others. If, then, anyone is in hell, I his wrath against us. For the earli- too am partly in hell. Happily, how- est Christians, the story of salvation ever, if the Christian story is true, that was entirely one of rescue, all the love cannot now end in failure or trag- way through: the epic of God de- edy. The descent into those depths— scending into the depths of human where we seek out and find those estrangement to release his crea- who are lost, and find our own salva- tures from bondage to death, pene- tion in so doing—is not a lonely act of trating even into the heart of hades spiritual heroism, or a futile rebellion to set the captives free and recall his of our finite wills against a merciless prodigal children and restore a bro- eternity. For the whole substance of ken creation. (25) Christian faith is the conviction that another has already and decisively The relative merits of a philosophically gone down into that abyss for us, to informed line of moral reasoning may set all the prisoners free, even from seem impenetrable to the vast majority the chains of their own hatred and of human minds. However, the gospel despair; and hence the love that has is for all. There is no ignoring the over- made all of us who we are, and that whelming power of the Church’s proc- will continue throughout eternity to lamation of Good News, not a tragic tale do so, cannot ultimately be rejected by with a twist ending, but unalloyed Good anyone. Thus all shall have their share News, full stop. in—as Gregory [of Nyssa] says in his great mystical commentary On the Few of Hart’s reviewers have mentioned Song of Songs—“the redeemed unity his arguments from literary sources. of all, united one with another by their Most significantly, he refers on more convergence upon the One Good.” than one occasion to the character of Ivan Only thus will humanity “according from Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers to the divine image” come into being, Karamazov.
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