I, for one, could care less about how abrasive or egotistical Dr. Hart appears in his conduct: he’s an eloquent purveyor of ideas with real merit, and that’s really what I’m here for. I’d argue that Hart is as compassionate as he is intelligent, a zealous thinker who holds his views in great esteem, and that this gives his arguments an urgent intensity borne out of a sense of righteous indignation that people confuse for “bullying.” I’m quite new to his lectures, and I can understand how they don’t exactly appeal to the average listener, but they feel refreshing to me.
I agree and disagree. Considering that Saint Nicholas punched Arius for his heresy, it seems clear to me that gentleness was not common in the past, and I think that that is pretty obvious seeing as how most of human life was very brutal. So I can agree abrasion isn't necessarily bad, although given the fact that he is wrong in his views it can come off as arrogant or stubborn, and I would say there can always be room for charity
@@TheBrunarr considering the council that intoduced eternal torment was one the pope at the time initially refused to agree on, until the roman emperor tried to have him killed and and he gave in I'd say the devil was behind the doctrine of eternal torment.
I can’t blame him for his arrogance considering how intelligent he is, it would be hard not to be but he needs to become more like Jesus and be more humble
1 Corinthians 15:28 - “And, when all things have been subordinated to him, then will the Son himself also be subordinated to the one who has subordinated all things to him, so that God may be all in all.”
I have to admit that I think the other gentlemen on the podcast weren’t prepared to take on DBH. He’s a tough cookie to beat, particularly because his arguments bear the natural rational inclination of what we would hope God would do!
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"Let us beware in ourselves, my beloved, and realize that even if Gehenna is subject to a limit, the taste of its experience is terrible, and the extent of its bounds escapes our very understanding. Let us strive all the more to partake of the taste of God’s love for the sake of perpetual reflection on Him, and let us not have experience of Gehenna through neglect." -Isaac the Syrian
Gehenna is “The Valley of Hinnom” a real place right outside of Jerusalem that they used as a garbage dump. It was always on fire because they would burn their trash to get rid of it. Back then they didn’t have antibiotics so they would also burn the dead bodies of the people who died with leprosy and other diseases so that it didn’t spread. Gehenna isn’t “Hell”. “Hell” isn’t even actually in the Bible, anything in the Bible that is translated as “Hell” are mistranslations of Gehenna, Sheol, Hades or Tartarus
This is my mentality. I don’t want to spend a second under Gods wrath let alone an eternity. I hope and pray before I die I can be confident that will be the case. That being said. The hope friends and loved ones will somehow someway be restored by God may be a long shot to most Christian’s but to hope the God who all things are possible with accomplishing this shouldn’t be so despised.
Thank you to the interviewers who asked questions and... Actually gave sufficient space to respectfully listen to the answer. Amazing, what a novel concept in a world of sound bites and shallow rhetoric. Good job. Subscribed!
30:56 "There's an irresolvable contradition in a faith that commands us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind *and* our neighbors *as ourselves*, while also enjoining us to believe in the reality of an eternal hell. We can't possibly do both of those at once."
@@carsonianthegreat4672 The key here is "as ourselves" as stated. You can maybe imagine such a feebly pacifistically pious Myschkin-esque figure doing both, loving God *in spite* of his permission (at best) of such evil (the distinction between natural and moral evil ultimately collapsing) but even they would only wish for their neighbor to be relieved at once, and even to take their place, in proper Christlike compassion, agape and kenosis. There would be no uncompromised bliss; infernalism makes a mockery of the beautific vision.
@@CrystallineWyvern well if you walk that position out all the way that is essentially what you arrive at. We are all guaranteed heaven, this world is no walk in the park, suicide is perfect answer to sin in the world. Please don't pretend that you do not see that.
@@deusvult6259 I was genuinely confused. To start, David and the entire tradition of apokatostasis affirms the potential of a real experience of hell for some, and suicide is a form of rejection of the gift of being - even if it may be quite understandable in many cases - and thus committing it is hardly the wise spiritual shortcut you seem to be proposing. As David says, how long do you want to end up putting your hand on the hot stove? I think not having an ultimate good hope in terms of depth, breadth and time - even at least a neutral one, which is functional even for stoicism ect., - leads to a kind of reciprocal narrowing that sways between buried resentment toward God and a frantic horror for +/- resigned callousness toward those presumed to be doomed (even if this is merely an abstract group it will effect one's behavior), both utterly in contradiction to the Christian way of reverence, charity and agape. It leads toward an instrumentalization of every aspect of one's life, rather than a love of the good (and the other transcendentals) for their own sake, which is what real worship is all about. Ironically, despite Christian emphasis to the contrary, anti-natalism ends up as the logical result of belief in an eternal hell. The infinite risk of bringing a new soul into being in an ultimately dualistic reality is not only irresponsible but can no longer be called an unqualified good. Most only believe that they believe in infernalism, they don't act as though they believe it, which is where the truth plays out. In fact, ironically abortion can be more justified by the Christian infernalist than by most, in that it at least guarantees limbo, and there's an even better argument for it now that the Vatican recently all but decreed that they go directly to "heaven" after all. Insidiously enough, infernalism leads to a logic of post-baptism infanticide as the surest way to save souls (infernalism was already was a factor in the proposal of kidnapping Jewish babies historically). In contrast, an ultimate good final end with varying degrees of potential suffering awaiting en route depending on the manner of one's being affords an ultimate hope and faith in the goodness of being while still drawing one toward adherence to virtue. As an aside, "going to heaven" is not a true Christian idea, and the modern reduction of the idea of the beautific vision and restored creation often leads to a gnosticism that trivializes the ecological crisis and the beauty of the cosmos.
St Paul, Epistle to the Romans, chptr 5: “18So, then, just as by one transgression unto condemnation for all human beings, so also by one act of righteousness unto rectification of life for all human beings;r 19For, just as by the heedlessness of the one man the many were rendered sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be rendered righteous.” Excerpt From The New Testament David Bentley Hart
Dr. Hart in the midst of four Infernalists (three of whom are Catholic). Talk about the lion's den! This was a great interview. I haven't enjoyed an interview like this in quite some time.
I find even opening this discussion your attacked with heresy, being a modernist, a corrupter, against scripture and tradition etc... In this interview he held his ground using the Bible, the church fathers, linguistics, philosophy, psychology etc... I admit at 1:55 is something that has always perplexed me.
I always found the argument from free will for hells existence to be the most compelling. But after reading the book and contemplating on free will for a bit I've come to see the incoherence in the standard case. If one is to freely act then one must rationally know the consequences of ones actions. In the same way a child touches the stove and is burned but through this experience learns not to touch the stove, this child has become more free. Thus this child unless some rational deficiency hinders it would not freely touch the stove again. I would say that if someone is to commit some type of sin then it is because their corrupt will has lead them to believe it has a good ends. One would never sin if they didn't think the ends would be good. In the same way no one would ever run into a burning building. I would say that in Hitler for example to steel man the case, he had some type of moral deficiency that lead him to believe what he was doing had a good end. This perhaps was due to trauma or some environmental factor. But we know as generally decent people that we would never commit such an atrocity so for Hitler to do it there had to be a reason. Now should Hitler be punished, obviously yes. Whatever moral deficiency caused him to act in this manner must be purged. But does Hitler deserve eons upon eons of torment. I would say no. As Hart points out a finite sin could never justify an infinite punishment. Bottom line a rational creature with free will could never reject God if not for a deficiency of some sort. “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” Matthew 18:12-14
@@user-wl7zi6pc3j I agree, I could never psychologically handle if one of my atheist friends was being tormented eternally simply because they weren't convinced of the arguments or they had some type of experience that hindered their ability to except religion. Tbh there are thousands of religions, with thousands of different ideas. It would take multiple lifetimes to sort through every core argument and discover the truth. But most people don't have that. They have families, and job responsibilities. Not everyone can be a theologian or a philosopher. We are all subject to the information we are given and our individual environments. Just judgment could only happen if every single aspect of your life was factored in down to the inclinations of your genetics. Only God can do this, and I have faith he will understand our predicament in this fallen world and forgive our transgressions.
The belief that hell is infinite punishment for finite sin is mistaken and a purported teaching. Hell or the Lake of Fire or whatever term you want to use is the judgement of a heart, by God, that is living a particular trajectory of life that entails the rejection of the authority and salvation of God. This trajectory of existence is lived out in eternity. Why do people assume that those judged by God cease to sin in hell? Do those in hell cease to transgress God's law? They do not, and therefore the law continually stands against them for all eternity. All humans are born in sin and under the law and live under the requirements of the law, and their sin means they owe a debt for said sin against God and sin against those made in God's image. Hell is like debtors prison. You cannot get out while the debt is owed and unless you can pay it with your moral goodness then forever the debt will stand and forever you will owe it. That debt continues to grow in the next life as well. Hell is not a place where people are being infinitely punished for finite sin, it is a place where people continue to live out the same trajectory of life they lived before death/judgement. For the Christian (the one who puts their faith in Christ) Jesus' life releases them from the requirements of the law (since he met those requirements) and therefore they live a life trajectory into eternity that is not under the penalty of law. The Law of God ceases to stand against them now and forever, they owe no debt to God or humanity for transgressing his law, and thus salvation is theirs and eternal life is theirs because Jesus stands for all eternity on their behalf as their intercessor. Those judged for their sin, who do not put their faith in Christ, do not have an eternal intercessor, and they will forever be under the condemnation of the law. As they continue to practice sin in this life so they will continue to practice sin (haters of God, self-justifiers, blame shifters, believing they have been treated unfairly and accusing God of evil) in the next, and the law forever stands against them. Hell is not a place where people are being eternally judged for finite sin, they are being eternally condemned for their ongoing sin, for which they cannot make payment and refuse the cross of Christ; so every passing moment in hell their sin mounts and their debt grows larger and larger and the law stands against them and God is justified in his judgements. It proves he is correct in his judgements. They have been treated fairly and rightly by God, but they will never be convinced they have been treated fairly by God just as they were never convinced while on earth that the warnings of Scripture about sin would lead to judgement unless they repented and put their faith in the life of Christ for salvation. They were unconvinced on earth and now that their judgement is in place, they will weep to get out for they are sorry they got caught and express regret because of the consequences, but they will never truly repent and turn to God, and when they find out he will never let them out, it will not soften their hearts, it will only make them more angry and their hearts harder, and they will try to plead with him that they were better than others and they don't deserve this, and they will judge others and condemn others and appeal to their moral goodness and moral righteousness (but still they have no need for the righteousness of Christ), and they will do this for eternity, and as they lose hope the harder their heart will grow and they will NEVER SEE, AND NEVER MAKE THE CONNECTION that the condition of their heart in hell is nothing new, but a simple continuation of a love for self and a hardness of heart that they've always had against the righteousness of Christ and God's salvation. Don't be drawn in by the universal salvationists. They misrepresent the realities of sin, the ongoing existence of sin and the unremitting Law of God in eternity, the warnings of Scripture concerning the justice of God, and the necessary and glorious righteousness of Christ for salvation.
@@rjeffes You said a lot of words, but they seem to just be assertions. I hold to Bishop Barron and Von Balthasar’s view, so I’m nkt a universalist in the same sense of DBH, but your paragraph is just making claims and also doesn’t really provide reasoning for the claims, just more assertions. I don’t think you refuted the position at all.
@@rjeffesMortal sin doesn't exist for humans (creatures with limited minds). What you are saying is basically "God knows the trajectory of our own hearts and we will be condemned to that trajectory even if we don't know it." Does that sound just?
"it (Reformed theology) is not just unconvincing to me... It is diabolical nonsense, morally offensive, and utterly detestable." good 'ol mealy-mouthed DBH! -said no one ever.
@@allegoria07 that is a good point. I have pastor friends from Christian Reformed Church and First Baptist who are not Calvinist, and I don't believe their denominations require it. However, I do believe neo-Reformed types are nearly all Calvinist.
Thanks for this. I have had so many conflicted feelings and thoughts about the idea of an eternal hell full of suffering, especially when I look at my own frailty, limitations and flaws. One question and I ask this with truly wanting to get a perspective on John 3 and Christ’s discourse with Nicodemus ( being born again of the water and spirit, baptism) I order to see the Kingdom of Heaven. I invite good willed and charitable understanding of this.
I will take a try at it, I am no theologian, but I have been saved by Christ entering my heart. In order for the world to be "made new", we have to die to the flesh, and be born of the Spirit. Once you see the world through spiritual sight, you see that you are already in the kingdom of heaven. Resentment and lust and malice fall away, charity and love take their place. I don't know what happens to those who die before they are reborn in the spirit, but it was like this before Jesus came, and it is said he entered Hades and freed the captives and pagans who died before his coming. I guess I would say, if you aren't reborn while you are alive, you won't see the kingdom, and you will gnash your teeth because you missed the party, the joy of God's love. I don't know about reincarnation or "do overs" or what, but I don't think time and space are limitations to God. If he will make all things new, as scripture says, then I believe Him.
@@ragnarlothbrok2808 That would be incorrect. Based on Theology being Born Again of Water and Spirit is not something that YOU choose to do. It is something that GOD did FOR you. You had no say in your physical birth, so why would you ever think that you have a say in your Spiritual birth? You’re missing the whole point of what Jesus Christ came to do. God Incarnated into Human flesh both fully man and fully God, Jesus Christ is the only way to repair the relationship between God and Mankind. You were not and never could be capable of fulfilling the Old Covenant law, so instead God came down into our darkness and fulfilled the Old Covenant law for us AS us in the incarnation of Jesus Christ. You were born again when Jesus Christ was Crucified on the cross. God Poured out the Holy Spirit upon ALL flesh. As in Adam we died to sin, so in Christ ALL were regenerated and made righteous. The one Righteous man Jesus Christ both Fully Man and Fully God sacrificed himself as the spotless lamb slain before the foundation of time in Our place to make us all Righteous. God Judges us based upon the perfect life he lived in our place as Jesus Christ. Nothing you can do could ever change that. All shall be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth and God’s Glory. Not to mention the fact that “Hell” isn’t even actually in the Bible at all, rather it’s a mistranslation of Gehenna (a physical place in Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump that was always on fire to burn the garbage and diseased bodies), Sheol (Hebrew word for the grave, Hades (Greek word for the grave) and Tartarus. If you don’t believe me go re-read your Bible starting with these 1 Peter 4:6 - For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit. Galatians 3:28 - There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Luke 20:38 - He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive. 1 Timothy 2:1-6 - I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time. (This one specifically gets the point you should be paying attention to across and says that God wants ALL people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Since God will not lie and will ALWAYS succeed in carrying out his will, then ALL OF HUMANITY WILL BE SAVED) 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 - But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.”[c] Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. Romans 5:12-21 - Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned- To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ! Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for ALL people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for ALL people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord
@@Azuma951 I got no problem with what you say, however, it seems people are still putting themselves in a kind of mental hell and bondage to the flesh. Go downtown in a major city, and you see people shooting up and dying all over the place. It might be that Christ has already done the work required to save them, but they still need to wake up and hear the good news, don't they? Eternity with God might be our ultimate destination, but people are having a rough time getting there. I see God's perfect love at work in all creation, even the 'least of these', but they still need to hear the good news, don't they?
@@ragnarlothbrok2808 Just hearing the good news itself may not be enough. The born-again seem very busy denying the tragic in life; hence what appear as their lack of charity and humility.
@@vaska1999 it's natural for a human to become conceited once pain and anguish have been removed. But the good news found a way into my life despite all the conceited and self-righteous Christians out there. As Leonard Cohen said, "And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said, "All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them"
Thanks for another great show! Some guest suggestions for the future: - John Collorafi & Scott Butler (They have an excellent but unpublished book on the Papacy called "Keys Over The Christian World" and it is the most comprehensive, but approachable and convincing treatment I've come across on the topic). - "Classical Theist" from RUclips - Dave Armstrong Catholic Apologist - Fr. Hezekias Carnazzo (Founding Executive Director, Institute of Catholic Culture) - Trent Horn (Catholic Answers) - Dr Nigel Cundy (Oxford Quantum Physicist and Thomist)
@@williammurray85 I obtained a copy from someone permitted to distribute the book. Reach out to me if you'd like me to send you a copy (or if you'd like me to. put. you in touch with the man who sent me my copy).
I like the way DBH openly admits the Bible possibly teaches - and some of the very early Church fathers taught - Annihilationism: 19:27 and 23:02 and 32:55 and 34:40 and 1:53:39
I think the free will defense of hell is the best argument for hell but I think I found a flaw in it that leads either to Calvinism or universalism. The question is if we take better for him if he hadn't been born to mean better for him if he never existed then why would God create him in the first place? Wouldn't it be more loving of God to never create that individual in the first place? Maybe God couldn't make a world with only saved people in it. Then God sacrificed the well being of the reprobate for the good of the saved. Maybe as sinners they deserve it, but that would make a man's very creation a curse, that it was out of wrath that God made him. This seems more like Calvinism. But if I cannot accept Calvinism as coherent with itself or the scriptures then what must I accept?
When Dr Hart is making his case on the nature of persons, the examples in terms of things which essentially constitute the personhood and what change the person if themselves change are emotions, memories, etc. But these things are given by the sensitive soul, so impersonal animals have these as well, so although he could instead try to make the argument that those things are essential to the human _being_ , they arent essential to the being's personhood, even if they inform the personhood.
Fairly certain that Dr. Hart would say that animals have souls too. In fact, the Genesis text in Hebrew clearly says this and some of the early church fathers and modern theologian hold to such a view. Clearly the human soul is more “advanced” and only humans are made in the image of God.
@T R peace be with you. Jesus will save them out of that hell either in this age or the ages to come, the marvelous redemption of Jesus does not stop at death, that is why the King of Kings has the keys of death and hell, because He will stop at nothing from lighting up the darkness of the graves with his unfailing love. Romans 11:32-33 "For God has shut up all in disobedience, so that He may show mercy to all. Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!"
@@Mrm1985100 Do you think Adam and Eve were literal persons, or symbolic for early humanity's choice of dualistic rational self-consciousness over a lived communion with God? I think it's clear we left our Adamic communion out of a nascent ignorance. We only learned the wages of sin in historical retrospect (isolation, fragmentation, anxiety, alienation, loss of spiritual light, shame, guilt). To truly know the indwelling Spirit redeeming not only our lives but also our rational self-conscious minds would eliminate the possibility of choosing Hell. Perhaps your skepticism is simply a confession that your religiosity is dry and legalistic without an interior experience of the presence of God- nothing could be sweeter or more satisfying than knowing God.
They do not have full knowledge. That's an assumption made by orthodoxy being that the heavenly creatures are more enlightened than we are. Not so. They are in need of the truth, and God has chosen us to minister to them
@1:52:20 to 1:53:20, DBH seems to conflate 'guilt' in the sense of reatus culpa (i.e. the disorder of the will following sin) and the 'guilt' of concupiscence (i.e. the absence of sanctifying grace). The Catholic position does not hold that 'guilt' can be inherited in the sense of reatus culpa (disorder in the will following sin) or reatus poena (penalty due to sin), but 'guilt' can be inherited in the sense of a corrupted nature that lacks sanctifying grace. It is this more nuanced sense of 'guilt' in which we believe all men are implicated in Adam's sin.
Exactly. I was quite surprised he made that misinterpretation, and when it's that late in a presentation it makes you wonder what else you might've missed. Good talk overall
This guy is misunderstanding human autonomy. He's basically saying that in order for humans to be culpable for their mortal sins, they need to have knowledge equivalent to God himself. He uses an analogy where a man is so "insane" he can't make a proper decision not to run into a burning building and burn himself up. People are not actually that insane, they are not literally psychotic. They are afflicted by original sin. They are diseased as it were, but more like they have an addiction, but can be made aware of their disease and its cure and actively strive for its cure by taking medicine (following Christ). Jesus repeatedly tells us that we need to radically reject sin at all costs to avoid Gehenna. We can't do this on our own, we need Christ, that's the point. We are culpable if we reject Christ and give in to our addiction if we've been made aware of Christ and the consequence of rejecting him. The idea that we can't really make these moral choices reduces us to autonomatones that lack reason, but for most adults, this simply is not the case. And the idea that we can't love each other without presuming their salvation makes no sense at all. I can love my spouse and kids knowing they might choose to die spiritually. The same way you might have a child who is snared by addiction. You hope that they choose life, but know they may give in and OD. No one takes pleasure in their fall. But there is such a thing as divine justice. It need not ever be employed, but we do sin, and often with full knowledge and consent because people slowly become the sin they commit just as we slowly become like Christ as we follow him. There can even come a point where a person is fueled by hatred, rage, and a desire to see humanity burn just as the demons do. If we deny this, we fundamentally misunderstand human nature. The way I see it, and I think this concords with Catholic doctrine, is our salvation is like quantum superposition. We have the potential to oscillate between states of Grace and mortal sin like in the double slit experiment as wave functions (though obviously not a uniform oscillation). Then when Christ judges us at the instant of our death we begin to approach asymptotically either divine union God or union with Satan. Like in the double slit experiment, upon observation the wave becomes a particle and goes off to one direction or the other, the same happens with our soul.
Great stuff. Hi William; I am going to subscribe. Please have Hart back again with some audience participation. This is is in a way the most fundamental of issues; and lies at the very heart of the Gospel of salvation, that is, how and why are we saved.
I'm certain Dr Bentley-Hart is a towering intellect and excellent scholar, but there's several points where he came across as so dismissive especially towards some of the Fathers "they were good men but not necessarily good theologians" (I'm paraphrasing here) and kind of disrespectful "I don't give a damn what the Catholic Church teaches" etc. Really enjoyed Fr. Patrick's input, calm and collected. Anyway thanks for having a variety of guests on. Highest quality Catholic Show on RUclips.
@@youngyvidz716 You can reject something but still engage with the ideas being put forward in a meaningful, respectful way; the same way RC hosts and guests on this show seriously engage with EO guests and EO Theology. And that also doesn't justify the way he was talking about some of the Saints and Fathers of the Early Church, shared by RC and EO as not being all that theologically well versed. It just comes across as downright rude.
@@villentretenmerthjackdaw4205 You mean be kind and charitable as the evangelical and catholic religious institutions, theologians, priests, pastors etc. have been with perceived heretics? More often than not the doubts and questions are ignored and the individual berated at the very least.
The Catholic Church protects pedophiles, so I think the more disrespect directed in that institution’s direction the better. I appreciate honesty and directness and passion more than politeness.
I'm going to take a second shot at this just because, after my first listen, it seemed like David Bentley Hart so dominated his challengers. I wonder how well his arguments would hold up against his academic equal (however hard it might be to find one)?
If the panel were opposed to DBH's position, and well prepared, they should have made the best arguments available. As it is, I think DBH demolished the very GROUND for any convincing argument in favour of infernalism. In ny experience, there ARE no good arguments for infernalism in the face of the clear logic and deep understanding of the matter from a scriptural perspective that DBH brings to the table. Most arguments for infernalism fall back to a slavish a-priori acceptance of dogma, not on clear argument.
For. Real. This was such a red a flag early on, though I'm glad I listened the whole way through. He makes some really interesting (albeit verbose) points. I think the heart of it though (or at least the most obvious question on everyone's mind) comes up at 1:54:40.
The farther away from the source, the more polluted the waters of life. Unless you take the easy way out and say "Anyone that doesn't share my beliefs are not part of the Church" Hart is correct.
Except that’s generally true… or we would continue the same choice and beliefs that we had 1000s of years ago. Democracy and the right of persons - wasn’t a widespread belief - until radical individual thinkers spread it Or The immorality of slavery - wide spread wideeeeeee spread belief in the good of bondage. Even within Christianity. Or A plethora of moral ideas that we now find disgusting yet - 1500 years ago a totally fine and permissible.
@@tysmith9309 Ty, I don't believe in modernism and I happen to hold to the Christian faith of all ages (500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 1500 years ago, 2000 years ago, etc) which is found in the Orthodox Church.
I'm an Orthodox Christian and agree with DBH on the central question, especially the biblical and moral apologetic cases for universal reconciliation, but I do think his severe anti-individualism leads him to an uncharitably narrow, nonstandard definition of libertarian freedom and a willingness to allow the natural will to overwhelm or supplant the gnome or prohairetic will proper to hypostasis. The universalist philosopher Thomas Talbott might be a little better in that respect. Can we just take a moment to note that DBH admitted his prose is self-indulgent?
Is Thomas Talbot a better read in regards to the topic of ultimate restoration? I’m a libertarian anarchist/voluntaryist if mentioning that is worth anything. And yea, I do find Hart’s anti-individualism to be pretty antagonistic (he is a self-ascribed socialist, so I assume he’s mixing his theological and socio-political beliefs together).
@@Hibernial Hart's ideal socialism is more in line with William Morris or Thomas Hodgskin (he has spoken favorably of Peter Kropotkin as well) than anyone in the Marxist tradition. He appreciates the anarcho-sociaist theorists, but tends generally to side with left-wing economic concerns in a way similar to Noam Chomsky in that his socialism always seems to take priority over antistatism, leftist unity over bottom unity. When Hart thinks of "capitalism" he imagines 19th c. privileged industrialists, "libertarianism" the ego-worshiping rhetoric of Ayn Rand. So, while he has a true disdain for cultural individualism, and he hasn't reflected much publicly on political philosophy or non-idealist economics, Hart has a definite classical anarchist streak. Perhaps it's worth noting that many individualist anarchist heroes, such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, who inspired later capitalist-identifying radical libertarians, did themselves identify as free-market socialists or anticapitalists. A more recent example would be the Christian anarchist writer Jacques Ellul. Just suggesting this intellectual tradition as a possible point of contact between your politics and his. Thomas Talbott holds analytic philosophy in higher esteem than Hart does, and his arguments are more accessible, more direct, and I'd say less metaphysically demanding. But if you follow Hart's logic to the end, his case for apokatastasis is extremely difficult to dismiss. I think one can be totally on board with Hart's theological reasoning without sharing his political opinions or even his distaste for metaphysical libertarianism as he interprets it. Radical libertarianism is only at odds with an Orthodox Christian personalist anthropology and communitarian culture if, like Hart and Rand (may Hart forgive me for the association), you see legal and political individualism as relying on an anti-communal, atomistic conception of the human person. Most libertarians recognize that isn't the case, just as they recognize that liberal toleration doesn't entail either relativism or ethical hedonism, and they're pretty eager to correct that misimpression. I'm no deontological ancap (more of a bleeding-heart radical libertarian and Georgist), but I don't think there's any deal-breaking contradiction between a Rothbardian-style voluntaryism and Hart's universalist perspective. Hope this helps.
...this just shows the church that understands the mercy of God truly knows God is truly His Church Nothing demonstrates and expresses the mercy of God than universal salvation of All..☦
As smart and as oddly articulate, David Bently Hart may be, when I think of CHRISTIAN, I don't think of him. He's not someone who I would ask to PRAY for me. Sorry. I think he's more in love with what he thinks he knows, what he believes, and how he's able to deliver this message, than he is with our CREATOR.
Lol too true. I wish I could say this thorough conversation fully convinced me (there's something beautiful about focusing on the image and nature of God for a change, rather than the nature of punishment) But even where his logic is bulletproof, it's hard to imagine Hart ever believing in something he couldn't explain. That's just how some people are I guess, but it's not really my experience of faith. Bringing these new 'findings' into my prayer feels a lot like the aftermath of an ultimatum.😆
Be careful not to judge the way someone exhibits love. Emotional relief is one of the main attractions of cults. This unwavering stridency of Harts is an encouraging sign of one who has wrestled with and loved God with all his mind, not just his heart (no pun intended).
I agree. I've just sat through this and for the first time I'm thinking if DBH is going be in heaven it will be eternal torment for me. I'm interested in his arguments but his lack of charity, especially with the Othodox priest, was painful to endure.
God's mercy isn't opposed to his justice, like universalists want to affirm. Apart from that I should believe all saints to have lied to us and it is absurd.
Also reconciling mercy with justice is just the thing universalists are trying to do. The universalist believes everything God does is both fully merciful and fully just including the lake of fire. Universalist George MacDonald has a great sermon on the topic of reconciling mercy and justice ruclips.net/video/Yyr4GxgRhU0/видео.html
So far for an hour and a half, all I have heard from DBH are arguments from simplistic analogies, ad hominem on those who disagree, and arguments based on the fact that eternal hell doesn't make DBH happy.
Which specific texts from Vespers, Orthros (matins), and the Divine Liturgy in Eastern Orthodox liturgical texts have “infernalists” references, often, if at all?
The idea-content is excellent, but it would be technically better with equalizing of sound volume, to avoid the frequent volume-changing that's required so we can hear Hart without hearing the "shouting" of others.
@@ReasonandTheology Isn't there a way for you to manually adjust the volume of each section, by Hart & by others? (e.g. by using Audacity, an excellent free program) This would make it easier, and more pleasant, for all of us to hear-and-enjoy the excellent ideas that (thank you) you're sharing.
@@DTprocess I do shows live. I don't edit them as it takes way too long and I do the show part time while working a full time job with 6 kids in my household.
For the absolute noobs (like myself) that are shaky on what DBH means when “he says willing every possibility of an act”, in the interview with Dr. O’ Neill (ruclips.net/video/7FGa1-wRqFE/видео.html) Michael paints a nice example At the 37:08 mark
I wonder to what extent the radical nature of American individualism makes it nearly impossible for Americans as such to receive patristic understanding of not just things like free will, but humanity as such. If we look at Gregory of Nyssa or, say, Maximus the cohesion of persons as integrally part of one Adam is so fundamentally at odds with our received notions of individualism that it seems many Americans have difficulty understanding their ideas en toto about Salvation - something that seems even more problematic when it comes to their understanding of cosmic restoration. Our reception of Paul is filtered through a rather tortured western history that tends to make him intelligible in way that is rather independent of what he seems to have written and meant. With patristic writers there is no such historical mediation so our projections seem even more odd.
True; I think this is where the core disagreement is: Hart believes that a free will couldn't truly be called such unless it was fully informed (i.e. seeing the fullness of God's Grace), and only an insane person, once thus informed, would still turn away from God. Essentially, I'm guessing the doctrine holds that as free-wills, it's possible to make ourselves spiritually "insane" so to speak. Scary thought.
In light of this, I'm reminded of JP II's comment that "Hell is a state of mind". That did always resonate with me. (Though I still do find some of Hart's argument quite compelling. As far as God's goodness and our spiritual motivations are concerned, it's worthy food for thought)
@@neiloswald2208 Lucifer and the fallen angels were exposed to God much more fully than us as humans and he and his minions still rebelled against God.
No one here believes God has to violate free will to save everyone we simply believe that an all knowing God is capable of repairing the brokenness in someone that would cause them to reject god because there is no truly sane person that will reject god if someone does then they don’t really have free will
I think people and the Church have been too dogmatic on this. What is important is that we are told how to walk and that should be our focus. What we should know is that to walk wickedly is not only unwise in this age, but brings with it punishment...the degree to which it was important enough to implore us to do everything we could to avoid it. Even in a universalist view, I do not think it is a kind of punishment we would so easily shrug off, but a purifying fire that breaks us and reforms us. I would prefer to be refined now. Additionally, people discount the rewards and think that all are equal in the Kingdom, but this is not so. Just because someone wicked may be punished and then refined does not mean they are equal to a saint. They will have missed out on rewards.
DBH claims knowledge of the "eschatological horizon" that we don't have. I don't have it, you don't have it, and Hart doesn't possess it either. Try an alternative hypothesis - God (and the saved) continue to love those who are eternally damned, and this pure love is part of beatitude, even though the damned have made themselves unable to reciprocate. To love even when there is no reciprocation - perhaps this is also our 'deification', becoming like Him because we see Him as he is. His arguments around human ignorance and limitation don't explain why some of the angels fell - they don't have our human limitations. He says he believes in human culpability, but that it is not possible to merit (demerit) ETERNAL punishment because human decisions are always made under conditions of limitation and ignorance (not his exact words, I know). I don't see why we wouldn't push this all the way, and noticing that it is impossible to have a situation without some limitation/ignorance, argue that there is really no true culpability. In all our sins, even the smallest, we just didn't know enough!! Why not go there? It gets a bit tiresome when he claims that all the other translators from Greek were blinded by their commitment to an eternal hell, but apparently we should never suspect that DBH might be blinded by his desire to reject the doctrine. When Augustine explains passages with subtle difficulties, he is "explaining away', but Gregory of Nyssa just "explains". This just means that Hart agrees with Gregory, and disagrees with Augustine. Similarly, he refers to competent theologians who (he says) present imbecilic arguments for an eternal hell that they themselves wouldn't accept in any other context. So all those great minds just didn't notice in this one instance that their arguments were stupid. How could this be? Are we supposed to believe that when they come to this one topic, they suddenly turn childish and incompetent, but in everything else they are learned guides!
"Try an alternative hypothesis - God (and the saved) continue to love those who are eternally damned, and this pure love is part of beatitude, even though the damned have made themselves unable to reciprocate." What does love mean in the absence of active caring for the other? If God and the blessed are not busy saving the souls in Hell, the damned, then their orientation towards them cannot be called love.
He calls the reformed position "diabolical nonsense" but makes a 2 hour argument and wrote a book that's in favor of a reformed position? Rome and Ortho aren't universalist churches. We can all cherry pick quotes of Church Fathers but the Orthodox Dogma is not universal salvation. Someone explain what I'm missing here as the guy is clearly smarter than me (and more smug and condescending).
If one starts with Christian Classical Theism then I think logically Hart has nailed it. The dilemma that Hart creates for a traditional Christian is that the Traditions of the Churches have been illogical. Yet Tradition is held in such high esteem in the classical Christian traditions that such a one could not give into Hart's logic. Hart forces one to choose a logical God or the evil monster God of popular Christian infernalism. A tough spot for an honest, truth seeking Christian classical theist who wants tradition and logic to agree.
@Filaretos The Zealot Mormons, Muslims, Jehovah's witnesses, Calvinists, etc all say the same thing and find excuses for why their views have been rejected by mainstream traditional Christianity for centuries.
@Filaretos The Zealot You're right. It's not an interaction with what you wrote. It is a outright dismissal. I am not interested in heretical nonsense and I have debating pro LGBT, pro choice and half assed Christian-atheist universalists since 2007. Edward Feser already did a got job ripping Hart apart on the point you raise: edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/07/scripture-and-fathers-contra.html?m=1
@Filaretos The Zealot “There isn’t one passage in scripture - not one - that asserts or implies the universalist thesis that all will in fact be saved.” If you read That All Shall Be Saved you will find that in fact there are 4 times as many passages that support universal salvation, then there are ones that support eternal damnation. DBH actually went to the pain of collecting all verses that support universal salvation and collected them all in his book and listed them.
I'm not sure about a hope that all might be saved like what Bishop Barron believes, but when DBH says things like (paraphrasing), "It is impossible to love a God that sends people to an eternal hell" that sounds like heresy that needs to be repented of to me.
I am interested how does universalism fit with predestination in Romans 8 .... maybe he was talking about that but I missed it (he was not loud enough for the most time)
You have to keep reading Romans to understand. Any understanding of predestination that doesn’t get to Romans 11’s salvation of all Israel and the full number of the Gentiles misunderstands Paul.
Predestination relates to Christ. The only-begotten Son in ages past was planned and meant to be lifted up in glory. The only-begotten son from where being lifted up in resurrection from the grave, became the first-begotten son from which many others would follow. Those who believe onto Christ as well as live him out into the fullness and maturity of their christian life will share in His predestination onto glory, and as such will co-rule with him in the coming age. However many are called, but few are chosen, which just means few readily respond to Christ’s Spirit approaching and them in this age. Nonetheless every knee shall bow. This will happen during the ruling of the saints alongside Christ, testifying to those still lost of His restoring love.
As a catholic (traditionalist type)... i am seriously confronted by these arguments. It is plausible it scares me. Do you guys have a plan in a criticism of this interview? PS His snide against original sin seems logical too. Can you also make a video regarding the nuances of Catholicism's view of original sin?
There are only 2 possibilities: Universalism is false or the Bible is contradictory. Why? Because Christ's Church, the Catholic Church, has taught some will perish in hell.
@@MrMosin-sv3xu I will never understand the infallibility of the church. For weren’t Paul’s letters - to church who strayed away and needed guidance ? How can on consider their church infallible when the earliest churches weren’t and were just as susceptible to problematic teachings
I sometimes forget how Protestantised elements of EO can be; such a variety of individual opinions. It's can be like that in the RC Church too but at least there exists a system to settle these disputes definitively at some point. Ultimately it's hard to find DBH's position convincing and is the same Balthasarian mental gymnastics and over philosophing that's present to justify a comforting world view.
Individual opinions exist in all areas. What may not be seen in Orthodoxy, in recent times, is the hierarchal action to condemn heretics rather than let them go. This is not a problem with the EO system but of the bishops engaging with it fully, which they still do but not perhaps as before. Someone like DBH has to justify himself by citing and supporting heretics and denying the councils as false. By his publics statements as such he has denied himself to be Orthodox, and he does not represent Orthodox views but his own opinion, heresies. The Orthodox system in this regard it working as it always had. Heretics argue that they are in Tradition but actually need to deny it to support their position as DBH did this evening.
Well, what is provided in any law is to be read at its face or literal value at first instance. If then there is unclarity on the matter, the context of the specific law in its group of laws is used to help clarify this but never to contradict what was written. If this is not sufficient the arguments raised in the context of writing the law may be consulted and then the general context in which the law is set considered. None of these things can overturn the law as written but only clarify ambiguity. This is not conciliar fundamentalism but standard secular legal practice. I mention this because before claims can be made to context, the specific text must be considered as it is in itself apart from context as what the law makers decided to actually write and pass having debated the matter considerably. Only if reasonable ambiguities arise can context be consulted to help. My particular point in the comment was not that DBH was simply arguing for the text to be properly interpreted, which he did to an extent, but he went further, I believe if I heard him correctly, to reject the authority of the text itself and that was my issue.
This is the context, but the canon sets out a specific part of that being: "If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration ( ποκατάστασις) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema". Since the Fathers pulled this out in a separate canon, they are declaring that this specific idea in itself is condemnable even in another context. That is why they singled it out for its own canon. You will have to show that this deliberate separation out into a separate canon does not single it out as a condemnable idea in itself despite the context, but the singling out as such carries this intention in its singling out.
Highlights for me: - Contradiction between the commandment to love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and belief in eternal torment Romans 5:18 1 Cor 15:22 These were interpreted as universalist by Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Isaac of Ninevah, and Origen ● "The distinction between divine will and permission, between antecedent and consequent decrees, and even between natural and moral evils, suffer a modal collapse. They just do if you think it through." - seems to admit he has no coherent theodicy with this. Then again people like Alvin Plantiga, acknowledge the same thing. • (An omniscient being presumably) cannot will a whole without willing all the parts, if only as possibilities). Implies that if there is any evil, moral or natural, in the eschatological vision, his will of creatio ex nihilo willed evil directly • "Because any intentional act not conditional on some prior necessity is a revelation of the moral nature of the agent" ● 1:04:18 - Hart affirms as plausible the non-omnipotence theodicy of God in the manner I have repeatedly emphasized is already implicit or explicit in Alvin Plantiga, Aquinas, and countless other theodicians: "I'm more than willing to allow some permission of evil. I'm saying that maybe in the venture of creating free spiritual natures it is logically intrinsic to what a free nature is that it must have a full, must have an absolute past in nonbeing and an absolute future in God's infinity and no step along the way can be omitted to truly create a free creature rather than a character in a novel." He also says not even God has the power to make someone be guilty for something they did not commit, contra Augustine on original sin. To be fair to Augustine he doesn't say we inherited Adam's culpa, but "merely" his "forensic" guilt, but still unfortunatley used the language of inheritance Also says God cannot say a square is a circle In the end God will be judging himself if there is evil permitted Proleptic decisions are ultimate decisions. If we love our neighbor truly we could not also love God if we believed they would be consigned to eternal torment. We would have to develop at some level a cold indifference at best toward them and their soul The death of a rational being is a Natural evil repugnant to God and so in the eschatological vision any permitted natural evil is also a moral evil for the one who willed creation that is the mirror image of the eschaton in the first place, even if the natural evil is obly a possibility. Proleptically willing to sacrifice is a sacrifice you have actually made • Persons are persons because of relationships with other persons, and this extends to all logically. Thus in order for an individual to be saved and another damned an arbitrary partition must be made between this continuum of interbeing, all the more obviously problematic in the case of a parent and child. Because a major part of that parent was that child through relation who precisely is saved? A disembodied primordial soul or intellect perhaps, but that is not the Christian vision. If one loses memory of others not in the beautitude as per William Lane Craig that person is no longer fully who they are (and btw this sounds like the plot for a horror show / movie tbh, with one person initially realizing the screams of suffering below that everyone else is blissfully ignorant of). The person in beautitude may accept the justice but cannot be in bliss without amputating their souls Q: if he can reconcile annihilationism with universalism (former as death of the sinful nature of the creature) doesn't this also mean that the person is no longer the whole person, a state he uses to argue against infernalism in the meditation on the interbeing of persons? Or is he saying that the most whole and pure expression of the person is one free of sin and so in that sense God is still Good by stripping aspects of the creature's earthly nature? Well, regardless, his other 3 meditations still hold up. Much gratitude to the host and participants here an most of all to Dr. Hart for writing this much needed book. And I can agree from personal experience that the doctrine of eternal condemnation drives people away from the faith much more than the reverse.
re: his theodicy, i just finished his The Doors of the Sea and it's very beautiful. in that book, he *does* distinguish between permission and will, but he says that our free will is free but also doesn't thwart the final eventual working out of God's good purpose
@@2b-coeur While I appreciated The Doors of the Sea I think That All Shall Be Saved is a much more coherent and powerful argument. In the former David elegantly dismantles various bad theodicies and I applaud him for that, but still spends 119 pages eloquently avoiding - for the most part - the central question of the book's premise (or at least, the premise's root premise - why is there evil? From whence cometh evil? I think the implication is that for true freedom in creation, including the created principalities "governing" it, there had to be the potential for evil, but that stil bega the question of why there was this potential). I really think most arguments about the problem of evil stem from poor definition of terms, namely the notion of omnipotence. Essentially every theologian (outside the Calvinist determinists Hart rightly excorciates) giving a theodicy at some point admits either implicitly or explicitly that a free relationship to God is a greater good than not creating or a simulacrum of freedom, and that this freedom somehow necessitates the potential for evil. In doing so they continue to use the classical word "omnipotent" in describing God, but the issue is often people have a very extreme, voluntarist, absurdist sense of the word that became more popular after the Nominalist, voluntarist theological trun after Ockham, where God could have created a reality where murder was good, circles are actually squares, ect. Granting the intelligible and tempered definition of omnipotence, the issue then becomes that of the possibility of "arbitrary" interventionism, which is thus the issue that miracles cause for theodicy: God allows creation be truly free for the highest good end, which includes the potential for natural evil in a panexperientialist cosmos, but this then makes any discrete miraculous interventions look like arbitrary special pleading. I think a solution is simultaneously understanding God in a less anthropocentric way, and more importantly either denying "miracles" or understanding them (most importantly the only really necessary one doctrinally - the resurrection) being ot purely a top-down intervention but a sultaneous top-down emanation and bottom-up emergence of reality at a heightened level such that something incredible and rare occurs (e.g. re: the resurrection, that it wouldn't have occurred had Christ not lived a perfect life). One can argue such seemingly miraculous events have already occurred at multiple points is cosmic history in the language of emergence vectors; e.g. life from chemistry, mind / cognition from life, culture (distributed cognition) from mind, ect. (see Gregg Henriques beautiful and brilliant Tree of Life model that integrates all of cosmic development up to the level of culture). This is basically where I'm at in holding an intelligible theodicy while making room for the potential of orthodox theology.
@@2b-coeur Could not one see that God's kenosis and condescension to humanity in the incarnation also applies as the divine level generally in the kenotic condescension necessary for a free creation, and that this means God doesn't intervene in creation in a purely top down fashion that breaks the intelligibility of reality but in a cocreative, persuasive, transjective manner that reveals the depths of reality (that always already participates in God) in miraculous occurences rather than these being an intervention from a totally separate dimension? That God may (or maybe doesn't) know the end of reality but not by which paths that end will be reached (either open theism / process theism or molinism)? That God condescends into time and doesn't know the temporal future but eternity itself? And this is already in addition to God having an intelligible nature (or rather, intelligibility itself flowing from God) which is already implicated in saying God couldn't make a square circle or make an evil good in the same respect as people always say regarding the free will defense that God can't make truly free beings without the potential for evil. Furthermore, regarding the problem of whether God could make a stone so heavy he cannot lift it, I say yes, he can and he did in creating manifest reality, but he can influence things to lift it, such as inspire humans to use technology to do so or raise a perfectly virtuous human he condescends into from the dead as a transjective ratchet point in the story of the evolution of the cosmos. David in a blog post also answered why God doesn't just deify everyone immediately: "Not even God could create a free spiritual being without that real history [of the journey from nothingness into the infinite, a free movement toward a final cause, that of deification]
@@CrystallineWyvern mmhmm i am uh.. sometimes i think im book smart and then i read something like this lol i really CANNOT give an intelligent answer, except that i do think God knows the end from the beginning - He transcends time so He'd have to..
44:04 Hart giving a good analogy also for why capitalism is inherently oppressive and that there's no such thing as free will. Reminds me of the coconut analogy
@@MrSmith-zy2bp “All things belong to God, the Father of us and them. We are all of the same stock, all brothers. And when men are brothers, the best and most equitable thing is that they should inherit equal portions.”-Gregory of Nyssa Damn, I can do it too :O
@@xuyouj1e I was agreeing with you about capitalism by using an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote, whom many capitalists think is on their side, but he [Solzhenitsyn] saw the evil in both systems.
@@MrSmith-zy2bp The problem is capitalism consistently rewards those people who put profit first and conscience second. Those who value profit over conscience will generally have the competitive advantage over those who do not and will subsequently accumulate more capital until they outcompete those with moral scruples or force them to adopt the same contemptable practices. There are exceptions, there are businesses that operate by an ethical code, your Chick-fil-As and your free trade coffees but one has to recognize that these are exceptions not the rule. Of course if everyone had absolute moral conviction about buying abstaining from unethical business practices and not buying from those who do capitalism would be fine, but I'm afraid that's asking more than what can be reasonably expected from fallen man.
I find it interesting that some Christians believe that it is possible for a fully informed person with their rational faculties functioning properly to reject God. As far as I know all Christians believe that is impossible for the blessed in heaven to sin, meaning they are continually choosing communion with God, yet surely those in heaven retain their freedom and aren't reduced to mere automatons. What could explain the blessed's eternally free choice for God? Is it not that because the blessed have been entirely freed from the corruption of sin and ignorance of God that they cannot but choose God? So it seems most Christians already implicitly accept DBH's view of freedom, in this matter at least.
Guy, Adam was free of corruption and sin and so was Satan when they were created. Yet, they both feel into sin. They were free to do so, so freedom from corruption and sin is not the answer. Also, just as full information about the danger of drugs and smoking and over drinking even the experience of them, does not stop people from engaging with these things, so too knowledge about God in a mental form does not keep one stable in God. The answer comes from final union with God at the end of time, theosis, that is the end of any process of change. God is unchanging yet infinite in Life and entirely free and self-determined, so our participation in God at the end of time is not something that binds freedom or life in a type of static stop but rather an entry into an eternal infinity. However, change of state no longer happens. We remain eternally in our freedom, if we freely develop a habit of likeness to God, or eternally bound to prevent our sinful actions if we continued in a habit of sin. It is not anything about a lack of temptation or full realisation of reality that prevents a fall, but the change of our mode of existence from our initial and necessary space-time existence as changeable limited creatures to union and participation in the eternal, unchanging of God; man in this sense becomes God without ceasing to be man, a creature begun in space-time but ending in the unchanging eternal God. In this state we can no more deny ourselves that God can deny Himself. God bringing all creation to an end in Himself also means that those not with Him, those He does not know, so they are unable to participate in His Life as contrary to His unity and purity, (He cannot deny Himself in allowing sinners to continue their choice of sin or in a manner separated from His unity in actions or separated in body apart from the unity of the Body of Christ), are permanently in that state of death not having life in themselves of themselves. God to not deny Himself must bring things to an End in Himself as all in all. He tolerates the existence of space-time only for a one-off single event to allow as many as He wills to have the possibility to participate in Himself. While the good participate in the eternity of God as End, the evil are bound to the same End and unable to change state but remain in utter darkness deprived of the Light that they denied in thought or deed by the free self-determination of the Image of God in them, that God cannot deny without denying His image in them and their ability to participate in His likeness.
@@youngyvidz716 The point addressed with Guy is whether corruption of sin and ignorance of God lead to stability in themselves. Neither Satan or Adam started with any corruption of sin and neither was ignorant of God. The matter of created as limited creatures is indeed necessary as I stated in my comment. If what is meant by imperfect is that Adam had not yet come to perfection of theosis as in the coming age then indeed, this state of initial creation put Adam in a state that was able to sin, although it was not in itself the reason for the sin. I assume that you are then suggesting that we are free from sin through our final perfection in Christ, which is consistent with my point. That they judge the drug as a higher good is relevant because given knowledge of God, they may still judge sin as a higher good. How can we say that their choice is mistaken? To do so is to impose our own value system on them. Their choice may be that they the drug is indeed the higher good despite knowing the health risks. We may say that long life and health are a higher good than death in war, but Achilles made the choice for a short life and death in war because for him the higher good was the glory of success in war. Just showing someone what we may think as the highest good for very good reasons does not mean that they will automatically choose it. The evidence seems that many people use their free self-determination in a way contrary to what is thought to be the common good and education may help but it does not guarantee conformity. I don't see any reason why knowing about the higher good of God is any different to this. When I am speaking of coming to an End in Christ, I am not applying it in the same manner to both the good and to the evil, nor saying that the evil come to an end in Christ as such. What I am saying is that our created existence is brought to an end with the good coming to their end in Christ. This includes the changing life of the evil too. There is not some type of unchanging eternity for the faithful and temporal changing existence for the wicked, but all temporality is brought to an End. Also, we can speak of in God in different manners. One is that to which you refer the completion of the faithful in Christ. The other is the existence of all creation 'in" God because there is no out and beyond God. Even the continuing existence of the wicked can only happen because God sustains it; He maintains His own image in the wicked which is very good despite there evil actions in that image. The evil actions are bound and the evil do not participate in the energies of God being deprived of them through their sin. The separation of the wicked is not as though somehow out of God but a deprivation of any synergy with the energies of God and even a chaining of their own created energies. Their soul and body, so far as it is good is nevertheless maintained by God. The deprivation of the energies of God and their own energies is finalised at the same consumption in which the saints participate in God for eternal life; the whole created system in brought to its proper conclusion in God.
@@johnramsey5651 Adam’s loneliness despite his immediate proximity to God, and his dependence on an egoistic self-reflection in the form of Eve to sate that loneliness, is good evidence that Adam was not entirely without corruption.
@@abhbible As far as I read Genesis, it is God who decided that man should not be alone and who decided to make woman from Adam's side and bring her to Adam. I don't see any loneliness issue here or egoistic self-reflection, but Adamsimply accepting what God decided to do for him as God determined was best. As such, I don't think that this is corruption. If deciding to create another being in one's image and likeness in one's singularity is a sign of corruption then God must be corrupt for creating man.
@@johnramsey5651 Gen 2:18 it is not good for Adam to be without a helper. Why? What does Adam gain in a helped that he does not already have perfectly in God? Companionship, as a salve for loneliness, is the only phenomenologically intuitive option. This is further evidenced by Paul’s reflection on the diverting effects of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. It would be better for Adam to have been alone and for the fullness of his attention to be directed at God, but lack of self-control or some other deficiency prompted him to need another material creature. What Adam ends up setting in Eve is just himself reflected back at him. God’s creation of man filled no need for God. God’s creation of Adam filled a need for him.
DBH: "Not that they could accept it as just-but that they could not be happy." First: Facts dont care about your feelings. Second: People in glory would be nothing but joyous in relation to justice. To be other than joyous in regards to righteous judgement would be to misunderstand justice. They would be in ignorance. They would be in the same state for which DBH says they do not choose the good. Because they do not know it. And all DBH could do was interrupt Fr Patrick and say NO ITS NOT, without answering the objection.
Sophrony the Athonite, a student of Silouan the Athonite. Both canonized saints in Eastern Orthodoxy. I know that Silouan was a universalist. I don’t know anything about Sophrony.
@@nicklausbrain that’s pretty cool. Each apostle having his own thrown next to the glory of Jesus. I’m curious how this applies. Elaborate. Either way, I always love the words of Jesus
DBH is brilliant. I am, by comparison a Philistine. His ideas opened up a different and perhaps, plausible explanation of universalism. However, his brilliance, regrettably, is only eclipsed by his colossal arrogance and rudeness as displayed in this discussion. Hard to win hearts and minds by being an intellectual bully. He needs a mommy to teach him some manners. Lol!
Heaven cannot exist while there are some who are suffering the torment of eternal hell, since having to witness their suffering would make a hell out of heaven.
@Šljorgađ Gruđljaf Making people suffer for what they have done is the revenge of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Revenge will only result in more broken people. It is not justice, but retribution without forgiveness, which is the antithesis of what Jesus taught. There can be no justice without mercy. It must be remembered that sin is not a matter of the individual in isolation, but is always embedded within the context of family and community. Many abusers were themselves abused, and if you have any experience working in corrective services, it becomes evident that these people are suffering from serious psychopathologies which no amount of punishment will alleviate. While we should not tolerate evil doing, we must not be tempted to treat sinners as human trash deserving of our condemnation and bad treatment, or torture. While it is true that justice must be served, it should be quite obvious that eternal punishment for a sin of limited duration in time is not justice, but a perversion of God’s justice.
@Šljorgađ Gruđljaf Actually, I never claimed that there is no evil. Quite clearly, evil exists, and is both personal and trans personal. I did say that evil is not to be condoned, and that all evil acts done by human beings are temporal, and therefore finite, not deserving of eternal hell. Having to watch unfortunate souls, who were seduced into evil acts, fry in the fires of hell for eternity would make a hell out of heaven. It would also suggest that God’s love is limited rather than infinite. You would then be stuck with the following nonsense: God is love. (as stated in the Bible.) God’s love is limited. (what you claim since there are some that are beyond God’s love.) It then follows that God is limited and finite. It’s just simple logic. To suggest that God is limited, and thereby finite, is both unbiblical and very bad theology. My point of view is certainly not emotional, but is logically sound and based on a solid theological understanding.
@Šljorgađ Gruđljaf Glad to hear that God still loves those in hell. I would agree that hell is not an inferno but a state of mind, and that God loves even those who choose not to receive God’s love. Hell is then a state of separation from God and from God’s love, rather than a place of eternal punishment. It still follows that this state of separation is not eternal. As stated biblically: “Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38)
@@christianthinker2536 God is love, and love does not seek vengeance. You understand nothing of basic human empathy, and even less of unconditional love. If you have no understanding of love, you have no understanding of God, and your reading of scripture is entirely without context, is demonstrably lacking in compassion, and turns the good news of the gospel into bad news. It is a tragic travesty of Christianity that can only be described as the anti Christian since Christ did not hate sinners, and even on the cross, asked for them to be forgiven; and God cannot be any less forgiving than Christ.
Anyone else in the discussion: Well, I'd like to ask you if.. DBH: B'b'b'but!!! wait, wait, wait! I'd like to finish this 30 min thought. for 2 straight hours.
I think of Ghandi, and then I think of the theif on the cross next to Jesus. All the thief did was believe and years of sinning were washed in a few seconds without the need for him to "live up to" his faith and never having the chance to loose his salvation - by contrast I think of a man like Ghandi, a sinner like all of us who nonetheless was the tool for freedom and equality, his life was put to the test and he tried his best to do good for his people.... if Ghandi is in Hell and the Thief in heaven we would be dealing with an extremely injust god. A God with no balance nor mercy, whilst all of creation screams of God's balance and mercy.... where the people who were robbed or killed by the thief, even if for example, pagans who diligently worked would burn in eternal hell whilst the perpetrator enjoys his reward in heaven. This is a en elitist, exclusive, "club" which most Christians believe in, and it goes against Jesus' and Paul's teachings. I have a very sick child who has ASL in my class, he hasnt had the time to understand and believe in Jesus before his mind and body started giving in (he is now 14) - will HE go to eternal hell as a JUST "punishment" for his debilitating, catstrophic illness? That is not the God that made sure wed have trees to bare fruits, wood for shelter, animals for substance, wine to share with friends, skin which heals and minds which strive to feel and give love. That is NOT the Christ who died on the cross for the sinner who hated him. Jesus Christ is love as we cannot imagine, the ultimate martyr.
@@koppite9600 what does that have to do with anything we’re talking about after the cross not before the cross Jesus came here to teach us how to live and then pay for our sins he didn’t come here to beg people to accept him he knows that is going to be taken care of later not through begging like you think God does but by choice like the Bible says but this is what happens when just anyone can pick up a Bible and think they know what it says without even asking the Holy Spirit u get a billion different people who think there view of god is correct without looking once at what the Bible actually says in its context and without twisting scriptures to say what they want it to say but I understand u won’t allow hell to be taken from you because it was probably the only victory you had to look forward to even though it implies the suffering of almost everyone else to ever have existed
![Megan Thee Stallion - Neva Play (feat. RM) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/TpYTyAaTRts/mqdefault.jpg)
I, for one, could care less about how abrasive or egotistical Dr. Hart appears in his conduct: he’s an eloquent purveyor of ideas with real merit, and that’s really what I’m here for. I’d argue that Hart is as compassionate as he is intelligent, a zealous thinker who holds his views in great esteem, and that this gives his arguments an urgent intensity borne out of a sense of righteous indignation that people confuse for “bullying.” I’m quite new to his lectures, and I can understand how they don’t exactly appeal to the average listener, but they feel refreshing to me.
I agree and disagree. Considering that Saint Nicholas punched Arius for his heresy, it seems clear to me that gentleness was not common in the past, and I think that that is pretty obvious seeing as how most of human life was very brutal. So I can agree abrasion isn't necessarily bad, although given the fact that he is wrong in his views it can come off as arrogant or stubborn, and I would say there can always be room for charity
@@TheBrunarr How is Dr Hart wrong in his views? He seems very scholarly and well researched to me.
@@TheBrunarr considering the council that intoduced eternal torment was one the pope at the time initially refused to agree on, until the roman emperor tried to have him killed and and he gave in I'd say the devil was behind the doctrine of eternal torment.
I can’t blame him for his arrogance considering how intelligent he is, it would be hard not to be but he needs to become more like Jesus and be more humble
@@jonnyw82 as do we all.
1 Corinthians 15:28 - “And, when all things have been subordinated to him, then will the Son himself also be subordinated to the one who has subordinated all things to him, so that God may be all in all.”
I have to admit that I think the other gentlemen on the podcast weren’t prepared to take on DBH. He’s a tough cookie to beat, particularly because his arguments bear the natural rational inclination of what we would hope God would do!
yes exactly, well put!
Esteemed Christian scholar, David Bentley Hart discusses Universal Salvation with members of WWF
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"Let us beware in ourselves, my beloved, and realize that even if Gehenna is subject to a limit, the taste of its experience is terrible, and the extent of its bounds escapes our very understanding. Let us strive all the more to partake of the taste of God’s love for the sake of perpetual reflection on Him, and let us not have experience of Gehenna through neglect." -Isaac the Syrian
What’s the name of this work can I find it online?
@@chrishaynes599 don't know
Gehenna is “The Valley of Hinnom” a real place right outside of Jerusalem that they used as a garbage dump. It was always on fire because they would burn their trash to get rid of it. Back then they didn’t have antibiotics so they would also burn the dead bodies of the people who died with leprosy and other diseases so that it didn’t spread. Gehenna isn’t “Hell”. “Hell” isn’t even actually in the Bible, anything in the Bible that is translated as “Hell” are mistranslations of Gehenna, Sheol, Hades or Tartarus
This is my mentality. I don’t want to spend a second under Gods wrath let alone an eternity. I hope and pray before I die I can be confident that will be the case.
That being said. The hope friends and loved ones will somehow someway be restored by God may be a long shot to most Christian’s but to hope the God who all things are possible with accomplishing this shouldn’t be so despised.
He took way the sin of the world, and He got the keys to death and hell. Now that's Good News
It’s a shame that Dr. Hart doesn’t realize the importance of a good microphone.
Thank you to the interviewers who asked questions and... Actually gave sufficient space to respectfully listen to the answer. Amazing, what a novel concept in a world of sound bites and shallow rhetoric. Good job. Subscribed!
The audio fluctuates wildly between the different speakers. Unfortunate, as this renders the podcast near-unlistenable.
If only DBH returned the grace.
He’s so sassy
He's definitely known to have that reputation lol
All he needs is a bag of rocks from which to hurl at people who annoy him, and his reincarnation of St Jerome would be complete.
I'm glad he is. He is still less sassy than those who attack his view as heresy.
He's rude and condescending.
Ibarra is still processing Hart's first claim since the beginning of the talk🤣
Great episode! Now you just need Brad Jersak on to discuss his book, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut.
30:56 "There's an irresolvable contradition in a faith that commands us to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind *and* our neighbors *as ourselves*, while also enjoining us to believe in the reality of an eternal hell. We can't possibly do both of those at once."
@@carsonianthegreat4672 The key here is "as ourselves" as stated. You can maybe imagine such a feebly pacifistically pious Myschkin-esque figure doing both, loving God *in spite* of his permission (at best) of such evil (the distinction between natural and moral evil ultimately collapsing) but even they would only wish for their neighbor to be relieved at once, and even to take their place, in proper Christlike compassion, agape and kenosis. There would be no uncompromised bliss; infernalism makes a mockery of the beautific vision.
Encouraging suicide then?
@@deusvult6259 In what sense do you mean it is encouraged?
@@CrystallineWyvern well if you walk that position out all the way that is essentially what you arrive at. We are all guaranteed heaven, this world is no walk in the park, suicide is perfect answer to sin in the world. Please don't pretend that you do not see that.
@@deusvult6259 I was genuinely confused. To start, David and the entire tradition of apokatostasis affirms the potential of a real experience of hell for some, and suicide is a form of rejection of the gift of being - even if it may be quite understandable in many cases - and thus committing it is hardly the wise spiritual shortcut you seem to be proposing. As David says, how long do you want to end up putting your hand on the hot stove?
I think not having an ultimate good hope in terms of depth, breadth and time - even at least a neutral one, which is functional even for stoicism ect., - leads to a kind of reciprocal narrowing that sways between buried resentment toward God and a frantic horror for +/- resigned callousness toward those presumed to be doomed (even if this is merely an abstract group it will effect one's behavior), both utterly in contradiction to the Christian way of reverence, charity and agape. It leads toward an instrumentalization of every aspect of one's life, rather than a love of the good (and the other transcendentals) for their own sake, which is what real worship is all about.
Ironically, despite Christian emphasis to the contrary, anti-natalism ends up as the logical result of belief in an eternal hell. The infinite risk of bringing a new soul into being in an ultimately dualistic reality is not only irresponsible but can no longer be called an unqualified good. Most only believe that they believe in infernalism, they don't act as though they believe it, which is where the truth plays out. In fact, ironically abortion can be more justified by the Christian infernalist than by most, in that it at least guarantees limbo, and there's an even better argument for it now that the Vatican recently all but decreed that they go directly to "heaven" after all. Insidiously enough, infernalism leads to a logic of post-baptism infanticide as the surest way to save souls (infernalism was already was a factor in the proposal of kidnapping Jewish babies historically). In contrast, an ultimate good final end with varying degrees of potential suffering awaiting en route depending on the manner of one's being affords an ultimate hope and faith in the goodness of being while still drawing one toward adherence to virtue.
As an aside, "going to heaven" is not a true Christian idea, and the modern reduction of the idea of the beautific vision and restored creation often leads to a gnosticism that trivializes the ecological crisis and the beauty of the cosmos.
St Paul, Epistle to the Romans, chptr 5: “18So, then, just as by one transgression unto condemnation for all human beings, so also by one act of righteousness unto rectification of life for all human beings;r 19For, just as by the heedlessness of the one man the many were rendered sinners, so also by the obedience of the one the many will be rendered righteous.”
Excerpt From
The New Testament
David Bentley Hart
If other parts of scripture deny universal salvation, then you are likely reading something into the text which wasn't intended by the writer.
You guys are so far out of your league with DBH, it's cringy to watch. As they say, fools rush in...
So glad David has done the work he has and is testifying strongly about out.
Dr. Hart in the midst of four Infernalists (three of whom are Catholic). Talk about the lion's den! This was a great interview. I haven't enjoyed an interview like this in quite some time.
I find even opening this discussion your attacked with heresy, being a modernist, a corrupter, against scripture and tradition etc... In this interview he held his ground using the Bible, the church fathers, linguistics, philosophy, psychology etc...
I admit at 1:55 is something that has always perplexed me.
I always found the argument from free will for hells existence to be the most compelling. But after reading the book and contemplating on free will for a bit I've come to see the incoherence in the standard case.
If one is to freely act then one must rationally know the consequences of ones actions. In the same way a child touches the stove and is burned but through this experience learns not to touch the stove, this child has become more free. Thus this child unless some rational deficiency hinders it would not freely touch the stove again.
I would say that if someone is to commit some type of sin then it is because their corrupt will has lead them to believe it has a good ends. One would never sin if they didn't think the ends would be good. In the same way no one would ever run into a burning building.
I would say that in Hitler for example to steel man the case, he had some type of moral deficiency that lead him to believe what he was doing had a good end. This perhaps was due to trauma or some environmental factor. But we know as generally decent people that we would never commit such an atrocity so for Hitler to do it there had to be a reason.
Now should Hitler be punished, obviously yes. Whatever moral deficiency caused him to act in this manner must be purged. But does Hitler deserve eons upon eons of torment. I would say no. As Hart points out a finite sin could never justify an infinite punishment.
Bottom line a rational creature with free will could never reject God if not for a deficiency of some sort.
“What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” Matthew 18:12-14
@@user-wl7zi6pc3j I agree, I could never psychologically handle if one of my atheist friends was being tormented eternally simply because they weren't convinced of the arguments or they had some type of experience that hindered their ability to except religion.
Tbh there are thousands of religions, with thousands of different ideas. It would take multiple lifetimes to sort through every core argument and discover the truth. But most people don't have that. They have families, and job responsibilities. Not everyone can be a theologian or a philosopher. We are all subject to the information we are given and our individual environments.
Just judgment could only happen if every single aspect of your life was factored in down to the inclinations of your genetics. Only God can do this, and I have faith he will understand our predicament in this fallen world and forgive our transgressions.
The belief that hell is infinite punishment for finite sin is mistaken and a purported teaching. Hell or the Lake of Fire or whatever term you want to use is the judgement of a heart, by God, that is living a particular trajectory of life that entails the rejection of the authority and salvation of God. This trajectory of existence is lived out in eternity. Why do people assume that those judged by God cease to sin in hell? Do those in hell cease to transgress God's law? They do not, and therefore the law continually stands against them for all eternity. All humans are born in sin and under the law and live under the requirements of the law, and their sin means they owe a debt for said sin against God and sin against those made in God's image. Hell is like debtors prison. You cannot get out while the debt is owed and unless you can pay it with your moral goodness then forever the debt will stand and forever you will owe it. That debt continues to grow in the next life as well. Hell is not a place where people are being infinitely punished for finite sin, it is a place where people continue to live out the same trajectory of life they lived before death/judgement. For the Christian (the one who puts their faith in Christ) Jesus' life releases them from the requirements of the law (since he met those requirements) and therefore they live a life trajectory into eternity that is not under the penalty of law. The Law of God ceases to stand against them now and forever, they owe no debt to God or humanity for transgressing his law, and thus salvation is theirs and eternal life is theirs because Jesus stands for all eternity on their behalf as their intercessor. Those judged for their sin, who do not put their faith in Christ, do not have an eternal intercessor, and they will forever be under the condemnation of the law. As they continue to practice sin in this life so they will continue to practice sin (haters of God, self-justifiers, blame shifters, believing they have been treated unfairly and accusing God of evil) in the next, and the law forever stands against them. Hell is not a place where people are being eternally judged for finite sin, they are being eternally condemned for their ongoing sin, for which they cannot make payment and refuse the cross of Christ; so every passing moment in hell their sin mounts and their debt grows larger and larger and the law stands against them and God is justified in his judgements. It proves he is correct in his judgements. They have been treated fairly and rightly by God, but they will never be convinced they have been treated fairly by God just as they were never convinced while on earth that the warnings of Scripture about sin would lead to judgement unless they repented and put their faith in the life of Christ for salvation. They were unconvinced on earth and now that their judgement is in place, they will weep to get out for they are sorry they got caught and express regret because of the consequences, but they will never truly repent and turn to God, and when they find out he will never let them out, it will not soften their hearts, it will only make them more angry and their hearts harder, and they will try to plead with him that they were better than others and they don't deserve this, and they will judge others and condemn others and appeal to their moral goodness and moral righteousness (but still they have no need for the righteousness of Christ), and they will do this for eternity, and as they lose hope the harder their heart will grow and they will NEVER SEE, AND NEVER MAKE THE CONNECTION that the condition of their heart in hell is nothing new, but a simple continuation of a love for self and a hardness of heart that they've always had against the righteousness of Christ and God's salvation. Don't be drawn in by the universal salvationists. They misrepresent the realities of sin, the ongoing existence of sin and the unremitting Law of God in eternity, the warnings of Scripture concerning the justice of God, and the necessary and glorious righteousness of Christ for salvation.
@@rjeffes You said a lot of words, but they seem to just be assertions. I hold to Bishop Barron and Von Balthasar’s view, so I’m nkt a universalist in the same sense of DBH, but your paragraph is just making claims and also doesn’t really provide reasoning for the claims, just more assertions. I don’t think you refuted the position at all.
@@rjeffesMortal sin doesn't exist for humans (creatures with limited minds).
What you are saying is basically "God knows the trajectory of our own hearts and we will be condemned to that trajectory even if we don't know it." Does that sound just?
"it (Reformed theology) is not just unconvincing to me... It is diabolical nonsense, morally offensive, and utterly detestable." good 'ol mealy-mouthed DBH! -said no one ever.
Minute 49:28 for anyone interested....
What about non-Calvinist reformed theology 🤔?
@@allegoria07 that is a good point. I have pastor friends from Christian Reformed Church and First Baptist who are not Calvinist, and I don't believe their denominations require it.
However, I do believe neo-Reformed types are nearly all Calvinist.
@@allegoria07 Calvin thought god predestined newborns to hell. He was sick
@@tonyaiello5776
It's equally sick to deny that the scriptures say hell is eternal, something many saints also taught in history.
Thanks for this. I have had so many conflicted feelings and thoughts about the idea of an eternal hell full of suffering, especially when I look at my own frailty, limitations and flaws. One question and I ask this with truly wanting to get a perspective on John 3 and Christ’s discourse with Nicodemus ( being born again of the water and spirit, baptism) I order to see the Kingdom of Heaven. I invite good willed and charitable understanding of this.
I will take a try at it, I am no theologian, but I have been saved by Christ entering my heart.
In order for the world to be "made new", we have to die to the flesh, and be born of the Spirit. Once you see the world through spiritual sight, you see that you are already in the kingdom of heaven. Resentment and lust and malice fall away, charity and love take their place. I don't know what happens to those who die before they are reborn in the spirit, but it was like this before Jesus came, and it is said he entered Hades and freed the captives and pagans who died before his coming.
I guess I would say, if you aren't reborn while you are alive, you won't see the kingdom, and you will gnash your teeth because you missed the party, the joy of God's love. I don't know about reincarnation or "do overs" or what, but I don't think time and space are limitations to God. If he will make all things new, as scripture says, then I believe Him.
@@ragnarlothbrok2808 That would be incorrect. Based on Theology being Born Again of Water and Spirit is not something that YOU choose to do. It is something that GOD did FOR you. You had no say in your physical birth, so why would you ever think that you have a say in your Spiritual birth?
You’re missing the whole point of what Jesus Christ came to do.
God Incarnated into Human flesh both fully man and fully God, Jesus Christ is the only way to repair the relationship between God and Mankind.
You were not and never could be capable of fulfilling the Old Covenant law, so instead God came down into our darkness and fulfilled the Old Covenant law for us AS us in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.
You were born again when Jesus Christ was Crucified on the cross. God Poured out the Holy Spirit upon ALL flesh. As in Adam we died to sin, so in Christ ALL were regenerated and made righteous.
The one Righteous man Jesus Christ both Fully Man and Fully God sacrificed himself as the spotless lamb slain before the foundation of time in Our place to make us all Righteous.
God Judges us based upon the perfect life he lived in our place as Jesus Christ. Nothing you can do could ever change that.
All shall be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth and God’s Glory.
Not to mention the fact that “Hell” isn’t even actually in the Bible at all, rather it’s a mistranslation of Gehenna (a physical place in Jerusalem that was used as a garbage dump that was always on fire to burn the garbage and diseased bodies), Sheol (Hebrew word for the grave, Hades (Greek word for the grave) and Tartarus.
If you don’t believe me go re-read your Bible starting with these
1 Peter 4:6 - For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.
Galatians 3:28 - There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Luke 20:38 - He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.
1 Timothy 2:1-6 - I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people- for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. This has now been witnessed to at the proper time.
(This one specifically gets the point you should be paying attention to across and says that God wants ALL people to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth. Since God will not lie and will ALWAYS succeed in carrying out his will, then ALL OF HUMANITY WILL BE SAVED)
1 Corinthians 15:20-28 - But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.”[c] Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
Romans 5:12-21 - Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned-
To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for ALL people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for ALL people. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord
@@Azuma951 I got no problem with what you say, however, it seems people are still putting themselves in a kind of mental hell and bondage to the flesh. Go downtown in a major city, and you see people shooting up and dying all over the place. It might be that Christ has already done the work required to save them, but they still need to wake up and hear the good news, don't they? Eternity with God might be our ultimate destination, but people are having a rough time getting there. I see God's perfect love at work in all creation, even the 'least of these', but they still need to hear the good news, don't they?
@@ragnarlothbrok2808 Just hearing the good news itself may not be enough. The born-again seem very busy denying the tragic in life; hence what appear as their lack of charity and humility.
@@vaska1999 it's natural for a human to become conceited once pain and anguish have been removed. But the good news found a way into my life despite all the conceited and self-righteous Christians out there. As Leonard Cohen said, "And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said, "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
Thanks for another great show! Some guest suggestions for the future:
- John Collorafi & Scott Butler (They have an excellent but unpublished book on the Papacy called "Keys Over The Christian World" and it is the most comprehensive, but approachable and convincing treatment I've come across on the topic).
- "Classical Theist" from RUclips
- Dave Armstrong Catholic Apologist
- Fr. Hezekias Carnazzo
(Founding Executive Director, Institute of Catholic Culture)
- Trent Horn (Catholic Answers)
- Dr Nigel Cundy (Oxford Quantum Physicist and Thomist)
Is there anywhere to access a pre-print copy of "Keys Over the Christian World"?
Where do you find Collorafi and Butler's book?
@@williammurray85 I obtained a copy from someone permitted to distribute the book. Reach out to me if you'd like me to send you a copy (or if you'd like me to. put. you in touch with the man who sent me my copy).
@@alistairkentucky-david9344 Thanks! How can I get in touch? (I believe my Gmail is visible if you go to my about page on my RUclips profile.)
@@williammurray85 Sent :)
I like the way DBH openly admits the Bible possibly teaches - and some of the very early Church fathers taught - Annihilationism: 19:27 and 23:02 and 32:55 and 34:40 and 1:53:39
I think the free will defense of hell is the best argument for hell but I think I found a flaw in it that leads either to Calvinism or universalism.
The question is if we take better for him if he hadn't been born to mean better for him if he never existed then why would God create him in the first place? Wouldn't it be more loving of God to never create that individual in the first place? Maybe God couldn't make a world with only saved people in it. Then God sacrificed the well being of the reprobate for the good of the saved. Maybe as sinners they deserve it, but that would make a man's very creation a curse, that it was out of wrath that God made him. This seems more like Calvinism.
But if I cannot accept Calvinism as coherent with itself or the scriptures then what must I accept?
Enlightening.
Pls in future episodes, make sure your guests are as loud as the hosts. It's a strain to hear DBH
Unfortunately, DBH has a terrible microphone. It is bad in every video call interview I've listened to.
Pondering Spirit I literally had to do this as well
+1
He's a low talker; it's a problem 😒
When Dr Hart is making his case on the nature of persons, the examples in terms of things which essentially constitute the personhood and what change the person if themselves change are emotions, memories, etc. But these things are given by the sensitive soul, so impersonal animals have these as well, so although he could instead try to make the argument that those things are essential to the human _being_ , they arent essential to the being's personhood, even if they inform the personhood.
Fairly certain that Dr. Hart would say that animals have souls too. In fact, the Genesis text in Hebrew clearly says this and some of the early church fathers and modern theologian hold to such a view. Clearly the human soul is more “advanced” and only humans are made in the image of God.
@@cherryswirlchale9511I explicitly say in my comment that animals have souls, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make
@@TheBrunarr They *are* essential: there's no human personhood without memories, emotions, etc.
For as much as he likes to hear himself talk, you'd think DBH would have a better mic.
I've never been convinced by those who say people wouldn't choose hell. I see people voluntarily choosing their own waking hell every day.
@T R peace be with you.
Jesus will save them out of that hell either in this age or the ages to come, the marvelous redemption of Jesus does not stop at death, that is why the King of Kings has the keys of death and hell, because He will stop at nothing from lighting up the darkness of the graves with his unfailing love.
Romans 11:32-33
"For God has shut up all in disobedience, so that He may show mercy to all.
Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!"
TR, that's because they are spiritually sick, like a person with rabies. Would you hold anything a sick man said against him?
@@linjicakonikon7666 Were Adam and Eve sick when they sinned?
@@Mrm1985100 They where not all knowing.
@@Mrm1985100 Do you think Adam and Eve were literal persons, or symbolic for early humanity's choice of dualistic rational self-consciousness over a lived communion with God? I think it's clear we left our Adamic communion out of a nascent ignorance. We only learned the wages of sin in historical retrospect (isolation, fragmentation, anxiety, alienation, loss of spiritual light, shame, guilt). To truly know the indwelling Spirit redeeming not only our lives but also our rational self-conscious minds would eliminate the possibility of choosing Hell. Perhaps your skepticism is simply a confession that your religiosity is dry and legalistic without an interior experience of the presence of God- nothing could be sweeter or more satisfying than knowing God.
I wonder what DBH thinks about the angels that followed Satan. They would have had full knowledge and complete sanity and still chose to rebel.
They do not have full knowledge. That's an assumption made by orthodoxy being that the heavenly creatures are more enlightened than we are. Not so. They are in need of the truth, and God has chosen us to minister to them
@@mugenel3712 In what way then are angels superior to man?
@@deusvult6259 They cannot grow old or die. That is the qualifier of equality according to Luke 20:36.
Nothing more, nothing less.
@@deusvult6259 In the Bible it says that man were made a little less than the Angels.
@@mugenel3712 Where in the Scriptures can I find God assigning this role to us?
wow, really enjoyed it, going to re-watch it and make some notes. God bless
Thank you for sharing this discussion
@1:52:20 to 1:53:20, DBH seems to conflate 'guilt' in the sense of reatus culpa (i.e. the disorder of the will following sin) and the 'guilt' of concupiscence (i.e. the absence of sanctifying grace). The Catholic position does not hold that 'guilt' can be inherited in the sense of reatus culpa (disorder in the will following sin) or reatus poena (penalty due to sin), but 'guilt' can be inherited in the sense of a corrupted nature that lacks sanctifying grace. It is this more nuanced sense of 'guilt' in which we believe all men are implicated in Adam's sin.
Exactly. I was quite surprised he made that misinterpretation, and when it's that late in a presentation it makes you wonder what else you might've missed. Good talk overall
It's the disorder of the will which results in sin. This is why in sinning, we miss the mark: we miss it, we sin, because our wills are disordered.
Dang.. DBH let his beard grow longer.
This guy is misunderstanding human autonomy. He's basically saying that in order for humans to be culpable for their mortal sins, they need to have knowledge equivalent to God himself. He uses an analogy where a man is so "insane" he can't make a proper decision not to run into a burning building and burn himself up. People are not actually that insane, they are not literally psychotic. They are afflicted by original sin. They are diseased as it were, but more like they have an addiction, but can be made aware of their disease and its cure and actively strive for its cure by taking medicine (following Christ). Jesus repeatedly tells us that we need to radically reject sin at all costs to avoid Gehenna. We can't do this on our own, we need Christ, that's the point. We are culpable if we reject Christ and give in to our addiction if we've been made aware of Christ and the consequence of rejecting him. The idea that we can't really make these moral choices reduces us to autonomatones that lack reason, but for most adults, this simply is not the case.
And the idea that we can't love each other without presuming their salvation makes no sense at all. I can love my spouse and kids knowing they might choose to die spiritually. The same way you might have a child who is snared by addiction. You hope that they choose life, but know they may give in and OD. No one takes pleasure in their fall. But there is such a thing as divine justice. It need not ever be employed, but we do sin, and often with full knowledge and consent because people slowly become the sin they commit just as we slowly become like Christ as we follow him. There can even come a point where a person is fueled by hatred, rage, and a desire to see humanity burn just as the demons do. If we deny this, we fundamentally misunderstand human nature.
The way I see it, and I think this concords with Catholic doctrine, is our salvation is like quantum superposition. We have the potential to oscillate between states of Grace and mortal sin like in the double slit experiment as wave functions (though obviously not a uniform oscillation). Then when Christ judges us at the instant of our death we begin to approach asymptotically either divine union God or union with Satan. Like in the double slit experiment, upon observation the wave becomes a particle and goes off to one direction or the other, the same happens with our soul.
Great stuff. Hi William; I am going to subscribe. Please have Hart back again with some audience participation. This is is in a way the most fundamental of issues; and lies at the very heart of the Gospel of salvation, that is, how and why are we saved.
I'm certain Dr Bentley-Hart is a towering intellect and excellent scholar, but there's several points where he came across as so dismissive especially towards some of the Fathers "they were good men but not necessarily good theologians" (I'm paraphrasing here) and kind of disrespectful "I don't give a damn what the Catholic Church teaches" etc. Really enjoyed Fr. Patrick's input, calm and collected. Anyway thanks for having a variety of guests on. Highest quality Catholic Show on RUclips.
@@youngyvidz716 You can reject something but still engage with the ideas being put forward in a meaningful, respectful way; the same way RC hosts and guests on this show seriously engage with EO guests and EO Theology. And that also doesn't justify the way he was talking about some of the Saints and Fathers of the Early Church, shared by RC and EO as not being all that theologically well versed. It just comes across as downright rude.
Villentretenmerth Jackdaw DBH is a prideful heretic who knows nothing of what it means to be a “good theologian”
@@villentretenmerthjackdaw4205 You mean be kind and charitable as the evangelical and catholic religious institutions, theologians, priests, pastors etc. have been with perceived heretics? More often than not the doubts and questions are ignored and the individual berated at the very least.
The Catholic Church protects pedophiles, so I think the more disrespect directed in that institution’s direction the better.
I appreciate honesty and directness and passion more than politeness.
I'm going to take a second shot at this just because, after my first listen, it seemed like David Bentley Hart so dominated his challengers. I wonder how well his arguments would hold up against his academic equal (however hard it might be to find one)?
@@Erick_Ybarra as I recall, it seemed like you guys came prepared to challenge DBH's position.
@@MarkDParker no Erick said no about that
@@australopithecusafarensis5386 then there is a conflict between what he says and what they did.
@@MarkDParker I respect Erick. You misunderstood the situation
If the panel were opposed to DBH's position, and well prepared, they should have made the best arguments available. As it is, I think DBH demolished the very GROUND for any convincing argument in favour of infernalism. In ny experience, there ARE no good arguments for infernalism in the face of the clear logic and deep understanding of the matter from a scriptural perspective that DBH brings to the table. Most arguments for infernalism fall back to a slavish a-priori acceptance of dogma, not on clear argument.
A good sign that something is the wrong teaching is that it has been the majority opinion throughout the history of the church? I don’t think so.
For. Real. This was such a red a flag early on, though I'm glad I listened the whole way through.
He makes some really interesting (albeit verbose) points. I think the heart of it though (or at least the most obvious question on everyone's mind) comes up at 1:54:40.
The farther away from the source, the more polluted the waters of life.
Unless you take the easy way out and say "Anyone that doesn't share my beliefs are not part of the Church"
Hart is correct.
Except that’s generally true… or we would continue the same choice and beliefs that we had 1000s of years ago.
Democracy and the right of persons - wasn’t a widespread belief - until radical individual thinkers spread it
Or
The immorality of slavery - wide spread wideeeeeee spread belief in the good of bondage. Even within Christianity.
Or
A plethora of moral ideas that we now find disgusting yet - 1500 years ago a totally fine and permissible.
@@tysmith9309 Ty, I don't believe in modernism and I happen to hold to the Christian faith of all ages (500 years ago, 1000 years ago, 1500 years ago, 2000 years ago, etc) which is found in the Orthodox Church.
@@alexcovell6905 …so the slavery allowed by the church is still permissible today?
Edit orrrr did the church get it wrong?
I'm an Orthodox Christian and agree with DBH on the central question, especially the biblical and moral apologetic cases for universal reconciliation, but I do think his severe anti-individualism leads him to an uncharitably narrow, nonstandard definition of libertarian freedom and a willingness to allow the natural will to overwhelm or supplant the gnome or prohairetic will proper to hypostasis. The universalist philosopher Thomas Talbott might be a little better in that respect.
Can we just take a moment to note that DBH admitted his prose is self-indulgent?
Is Thomas Talbot a better read in regards to the topic of ultimate restoration? I’m a libertarian anarchist/voluntaryist if mentioning that is worth anything. And yea, I do find Hart’s anti-individualism to be pretty antagonistic (he is a self-ascribed socialist, so I assume he’s mixing his theological and socio-political beliefs together).
@@Hibernial Hart's ideal socialism is more in line with William Morris or Thomas Hodgskin (he has spoken favorably of Peter Kropotkin as well) than anyone in the Marxist tradition. He appreciates the anarcho-sociaist theorists, but tends generally to side with left-wing economic concerns in a way similar to Noam Chomsky in that his socialism always seems to take priority over antistatism, leftist unity over bottom unity. When Hart thinks of "capitalism" he imagines 19th c. privileged industrialists, "libertarianism" the ego-worshiping rhetoric of Ayn Rand. So, while he has a true disdain for cultural individualism, and he hasn't reflected much publicly on political philosophy or non-idealist economics, Hart has a definite classical anarchist streak. Perhaps it's worth noting that many individualist anarchist heroes, such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, who inspired later capitalist-identifying radical libertarians, did themselves identify as free-market socialists or anticapitalists. A more recent example would be the Christian anarchist writer Jacques Ellul. Just suggesting this intellectual tradition as a possible point of contact between your politics and his.
Thomas Talbott holds analytic philosophy in higher esteem than Hart does, and his arguments are more accessible, more direct, and I'd say less metaphysically demanding. But if you follow Hart's logic to the end, his case for apokatastasis is extremely difficult to dismiss. I think one can be totally on board with Hart's theological reasoning without sharing his political opinions or even his distaste for metaphysical libertarianism as he interprets it. Radical libertarianism is only at odds with an Orthodox Christian personalist anthropology and communitarian culture if, like Hart and Rand (may Hart forgive me for the association), you see legal and political individualism as relying on an anti-communal, atomistic conception of the human person. Most libertarians recognize that isn't the case, just as they recognize that liberal toleration doesn't entail either relativism or ethical hedonism, and they're pretty eager to correct that misimpression. I'm no deontological ancap (more of a bleeding-heart radical libertarian and Georgist), but I don't think there's any deal-breaking contradiction between a Rothbardian-style voluntaryism and Hart's universalist perspective.
Hope this helps.
...this just shows the church that understands the mercy of God truly knows God is truly His Church
Nothing demonstrates and expresses the mercy of God than universal salvation of All..☦
As smart and as oddly articulate, David Bently Hart may be, when I think of CHRISTIAN, I don't think of him.
He's not someone who I would ask to PRAY for me.
Sorry.
I think he's more in love with what he thinks he knows, what he believes, and how he's able to deliver this message, than he is with our CREATOR.
I'd ask Brother Nathaniel, to pray for me before I ask this guy.
Lol too true.
I wish I could say this thorough conversation fully convinced me (there's something beautiful about focusing on the image and nature of God for a change, rather than the nature of punishment)
But even where his logic is bulletproof, it's hard to imagine Hart ever believing in something he couldn't explain. That's just how some people are I guess, but it's not really my experience of faith. Bringing these new 'findings' into my prayer feels a lot like the aftermath of an ultimatum.😆
Be careful not to judge the way someone exhibits love. Emotional relief is one of the main attractions of cults. This unwavering stridency of Harts is an encouraging sign of one who has wrestled with and loved God with all his mind, not just his heart (no pun intended).
I agree. I've just sat through this and for the first time I'm thinking if DBH is going be in heaven it will be eternal torment for me. I'm interested in his arguments but his lack of charity, especially with the Othodox priest, was painful to endure.
Dave, please get a decent mic. You've got great things to say, but it was hard to hear you.
yea, Dave, come on dude, like for real bro get a mic so u can sound like the giga chad u are.
God's mercy isn't opposed to his justice, like universalists want to affirm. Apart from that I should believe all saints to have lied to us and it is absurd.
Some seem to have believed it, like Gregory of Nyssa. Others who believed it where on staints list before being removed.
Also reconciling mercy with justice is just the thing universalists are trying to do. The universalist believes everything God does is both fully merciful and fully just including the lake of fire.
Universalist George MacDonald has a great sermon on the topic of reconciling mercy and justice ruclips.net/video/Yyr4GxgRhU0/видео.html
Saints can be wrong. To imagine otherwise is to see them as equal to God.
“Felted” - DBH
What do we make of satan with infused knowledge that says I will not serve ?
Oh boy. That’s a whole other subject. Satan is not a proper noun.
So far for an hour and a half, all I have heard from DBH are arguments from simplistic analogies, ad hominem on those who disagree, and arguments based on the fact that eternal hell doesn't make DBH happy.
Then make a specific response instead of making a speculative judgement of something you know nothing about.
Duration of time isnt an argument. You must be taking logic lessons from Hart. Again, you are assuming i havent watched his videos or read his books.
A bit of an unrelated question.
In the live chat, an interview with John Behr was mooted but then unscheduled. Anybody knows why?
All these dudes are listening to DBH and like: “oh shit, this dude got us all stupefied. We need to reevaluate “
Far out guys, your disccusion was great but why did you let David's audio be so quiet!
Which specific texts from Vespers, Orthros (matins), and the Divine Liturgy in Eastern Orthodox liturgical texts have “infernalists” references, often, if at all?
The idea-content is excellent, but it would be technically better with equalizing of sound volume, to avoid the frequent volume-changing that's required so we can hear Hart without hearing the "shouting" of others.
I cant control their audio.
@@ReasonandTheology Isn't there a way for you to manually adjust the volume of each section, by Hart & by others? (e.g. by using Audacity, an excellent free program) This would make it easier, and more pleasant, for all of us to hear-and-enjoy the excellent ideas that (thank you) you're sharing.
@@DTprocess I do shows live. I don't edit them as it takes way too long and I do the show part time while working a full time job with 6 kids in my household.
@@ReasonandTheology OK. Again, thanks for "putting it together" by gathering people and doing it, for sharing the ideas.
For the absolute noobs (like myself) that are shaky on what DBH means when “he says willing every possibility of an act”, in the interview with Dr. O’ Neill (ruclips.net/video/7FGa1-wRqFE/видео.html) Michael paints a nice example At the 37:08 mark
I wonder to what extent the radical nature of American individualism makes it nearly impossible for Americans as such to receive patristic understanding of not just things like free will, but humanity as such. If we look at Gregory of Nyssa or, say, Maximus the cohesion of persons as integrally part of one Adam is so fundamentally at odds with our received notions of individualism that it seems many Americans have difficulty understanding their ideas en toto about Salvation - something that seems even more problematic when it comes to their understanding of cosmic restoration. Our reception of Paul is filtered through a rather tortured western history that tends to make him intelligible in way that is rather independent of what he seems to have written and meant. With patristic writers there is no such historical mediation so our projections seem even more odd.
Trump: *obnoxiously interrupts repeatedly during debate*
DBH: hold my beer
you can barely hear Mr. HART!
Florovsky covers this heresy. Forgiveness depends on conversion. It cannot be forced on a free-will.
True; I think this is where the core disagreement is: Hart believes that a free will couldn't truly be called such unless it was fully informed (i.e. seeing the fullness of God's Grace), and only an insane person, once thus informed, would still turn away from God.
Essentially, I'm guessing the doctrine holds that as free-wills, it's possible to make ourselves spiritually "insane" so to speak. Scary thought.
In light of this, I'm reminded of JP II's comment that "Hell is a state of mind". That did always resonate with me. (Though I still do find some of Hart's argument quite compelling. As far as God's goodness and our spiritual motivations are concerned, it's worthy food for thought)
@@neiloswald2208 Lucifer and the fallen angels were exposed to God much more fully than us as humans and he and his minions still rebelled against God.
No one here believes God has to violate free will to save everyone we simply believe that an all knowing God is capable of repairing the brokenness in someone that would cause them to reject god because there is no truly sane person that will reject god if someone does then they don’t really have free will
@@neiloswald2208yes. There are plenty of mentally insane people why would there not be spiritually insanity also?
I think people and the Church have been too dogmatic on this. What is important is that we are told how to walk and that should be our focus. What we should know is that to walk wickedly is not only unwise in this age, but brings with it punishment...the degree to which it was important enough to implore us to do everything we could to avoid it. Even in a universalist view, I do not think it is a kind of punishment we would so easily shrug off, but a purifying fire that breaks us and reforms us. I would prefer to be refined now. Additionally, people discount the rewards and think that all are equal in the Kingdom, but this is not so. Just because someone wicked may be punished and then refined does not mean they are equal to a saint. They will have missed out on rewards.
DBH claims knowledge of the "eschatological horizon" that we don't have. I don't have it, you don't have it, and Hart doesn't possess it either. Try an alternative hypothesis - God (and the saved) continue to love those who are eternally damned, and this pure love is part of beatitude, even though the damned have made themselves unable to reciprocate. To love even when there is no reciprocation - perhaps this is also our 'deification', becoming like Him because we see Him as he is.
His arguments around human ignorance and limitation don't explain why some of the angels fell - they don't have our human limitations. He says he believes in human culpability, but that it is not possible to merit (demerit) ETERNAL punishment because human decisions are always made under conditions of limitation and ignorance (not his exact words, I know). I don't see why we wouldn't push this all the way, and noticing that it is impossible to have a situation without some limitation/ignorance, argue that there is really no true culpability. In all our sins, even the smallest, we just didn't know enough!! Why not go there?
It gets a bit tiresome when he claims that all the other translators from Greek were blinded by their commitment to an eternal hell, but apparently we should never suspect that DBH might be blinded by his desire to reject the doctrine. When Augustine explains passages with subtle difficulties, he is "explaining away', but Gregory of Nyssa just "explains". This just means that Hart agrees with Gregory, and disagrees with Augustine. Similarly, he refers to competent theologians who (he says) present imbecilic arguments for an eternal hell that they themselves wouldn't accept in any other context. So all those great minds just didn't notice in this one instance that their arguments were stupid. How could this be? Are we supposed to believe that when they come to this one topic, they suddenly turn childish and incompetent, but in everything else they are learned guides!
"Try an alternative hypothesis - God (and the saved) continue to love those who are eternally damned, and this pure love is part of beatitude, even though the damned have made themselves unable to reciprocate." What does love mean in the absence of active caring for the other? If God and the blessed are not busy saving the souls in Hell, the damned, then their orientation towards them cannot be called love.
Hart always shines.
He calls the reformed position "diabolical nonsense" but makes a 2 hour argument and wrote a book that's in favor of a reformed position? Rome and Ortho aren't universalist churches. We can all cherry pick quotes of Church Fathers but the Orthodox Dogma is not universal salvation. Someone explain what I'm missing here as the guy is clearly smarter than me (and more smug and condescending).
Smart =/= correct
reformed refers to Calvinism not reform of the Orthodox conception
40 minutes in. Is ybarra-1 sleeping or praying intermittently?
If one starts with Christian Classical Theism then I think logically Hart has nailed it. The dilemma that Hart creates for a traditional Christian is that the Traditions of the Churches have been illogical. Yet Tradition is held in such high esteem in the classical Christian traditions that such a one could not give into Hart's logic. Hart forces one to choose a logical God or the evil monster God of popular Christian infernalism. A tough spot for an honest, truth seeking Christian classical theist who wants tradition and logic to agree.
Progressives say the same thing about the Church's traditional view of homosexuality and abortion. So?
@Filaretos The Zealot Mormons, Muslims, Jehovah's witnesses, Calvinists, etc all say the same thing and find excuses for why their views have been rejected by mainstream traditional Christianity for centuries.
@Filaretos The Zealot You're right. It's not an interaction with what you wrote. It is a outright dismissal. I am not interested in heretical nonsense and I have debating pro LGBT, pro choice and half assed Christian-atheist universalists since 2007. Edward Feser already did a got job ripping Hart apart on the point you raise:
edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2020/07/scripture-and-fathers-contra.html?m=1
@Filaretos The Zealot “There isn’t one passage in scripture - not one - that asserts or implies the universalist thesis that all will in fact be saved.”
If you read That All Shall Be Saved you will find that in fact there are 4 times as many passages that support universal salvation, then there are ones that support eternal damnation. DBH actually went to the pain of collecting all verses that support universal salvation and collected them all in his book and listed them.
@Filaretos The Zealot Shut up progressive.
I'm not sure about a hope that all might be saved like what Bishop Barron believes, but when DBH says things like (paraphrasing), "It is impossible to love a God that sends people to an eternal hell" that sounds like heresy that needs to be repented of to me.
Cope
@@dissatisfiedphilosophy Lol, what?
Two hours of universalism fully accepted by the Catholics on the panel. Thanks lol.
I am interested how does universalism fit with predestination in Romans 8 .... maybe he was talking about that but I missed it (he was not loud enough for the most time)
You have to keep reading Romans to understand. Any understanding of predestination that doesn’t get to Romans 11’s salvation of all Israel and the full number of the Gentiles misunderstands Paul.
Predestination relates to Christ. The only-begotten Son in ages past was planned and meant to be lifted up in glory. The only-begotten son from where being lifted up in resurrection from the grave, became the first-begotten son from which many others would follow. Those who believe onto Christ as well as live him out into the fullness and maturity of their christian life will share in His predestination onto glory, and as such will co-rule with him in the coming age. However many are called, but few are chosen, which just means few readily respond to Christ’s Spirit approaching and them in this age. Nonetheless every knee shall bow. This will happen during the ruling of the saints alongside Christ, testifying to those still lost of His restoring love.
As a catholic (traditionalist type)... i am seriously confronted by these arguments. It is plausible it scares me. Do you guys have a plan in a criticism of this interview?
PS
His snide against original sin seems logical too. Can you also make a video regarding the nuances of Catholicism's view of original sin?
It shouldn’t scare you; it should free you.
There are only 2 possibilities: Universalism is false or the Bible is contradictory. Why? Because Christ's Church, the Catholic Church, has taught some will perish in hell.
@@MrMosin-sv3xu that is a completely false statement.
@@MrMosin-sv3xu Or the RCC is wrong. You don't start by your conclusions.
@@MrMosin-sv3xu I will never understand the infallibility of the church. For weren’t Paul’s letters - to church who strayed away and needed guidance ?
How can on consider their church infallible when the earliest churches weren’t and were just as susceptible to problematic teachings
I sometimes forget how Protestantised elements of EO can be; such a variety of individual opinions. It's can be like that in the RC Church too but at least there exists a system to settle these disputes definitively at some point. Ultimately it's hard to find DBH's position convincing and is the same Balthasarian mental gymnastics and over philosophing that's present to justify a comforting world view.
Individual opinions exist in all areas. What may not be seen in Orthodoxy, in recent times, is the hierarchal action to condemn heretics rather than let them go. This is not a problem with the EO system but of the bishops engaging with it fully, which they still do but not perhaps as before. Someone like DBH has to justify himself by citing and supporting heretics and denying the councils as false. By his publics statements as such he has denied himself to be Orthodox, and he does not represent Orthodox views but his own opinion, heresies. The Orthodox system in this regard it working as it always had. Heretics argue that they are in Tradition but actually need to deny it to support their position as DBH did this evening.
@@johnramsey5651 Well said, Father. May the Lord grant our bishops courage to stand against this nonsense.
Well, what is provided in any law is to be read at its face or literal value at first instance. If then there is unclarity on the matter, the context of the specific law in its group of laws is used to help clarify this but never to contradict what was written. If this is not sufficient the arguments raised in the context of writing the law may be consulted and then the general context in which the law is set considered. None of these things can overturn the law as written but only clarify ambiguity. This is not conciliar fundamentalism but standard secular legal practice. I mention this because before claims can be made to context, the specific text must be considered as it is in itself apart from context as what the law makers decided to actually write and pass having debated the matter considerably. Only if reasonable ambiguities arise can context be consulted to help. My particular point in the comment was not that DBH was simply arguing for the text to be properly interpreted, which he did to an extent, but he went further, I believe if I heard him correctly, to reject the authority of the text itself and that was my issue.
I have read much on this and I haven't read everything. I also forget what I have read at times. I will have a look at them again. Thank you.
This is the context, but the canon sets out a specific part of that being: "If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration ( ποκατάστασις) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema". Since the Fathers pulled this out in a separate canon, they are declaring that this specific idea in itself is condemnable even in another context. That is why they singled it out for its own canon. You will have to show that this deliberate separation out into a separate canon does not single it out as a condemnable idea in itself despite the context, but the singling out as such carries this intention in its singling out.
It seems the need for a singularity in theology and science will lead to many misconceptions, some expressed here, the arguments become dogmatic.
Any chance you could boost the audio in post?
People who have a god that is into eternal torture are always on the right side of this god.
Terrible sound balance. Very hard listening with headphones.
I agree with everything DBH says, but why is he so condescending and rude?
The one and only...
Highlights for me:
- Contradiction between the commandment to love God, love your neighbor as yourself, and belief in eternal torment
Romans 5:18
1 Cor 15:22
These were interpreted as universalist by Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Isaac of Ninevah, and Origen
● "The distinction between divine will and permission, between antecedent and consequent decrees, and even between natural and moral evils, suffer a modal collapse. They just do if you think it through."
- seems to admit he has no coherent theodicy with this. Then again people like Alvin Plantiga, acknowledge the same thing.
• (An omniscient being presumably) cannot will a whole without willing all the parts, if only as possibilities). Implies that if there is any evil, moral or natural, in the eschatological vision, his will of creatio ex nihilo willed evil directly
• "Because any intentional act not conditional on some prior necessity is a revelation of the moral nature of the agent"
● 1:04:18 - Hart affirms as plausible the non-omnipotence theodicy of God in the manner I have repeatedly emphasized is already implicit or explicit in Alvin Plantiga, Aquinas, and countless other theodicians:
"I'm more than willing to allow some permission of evil. I'm saying that maybe in the venture of creating free spiritual natures it is logically intrinsic to what a free nature is that it must have a full, must have an absolute past in nonbeing and an absolute future in God's infinity and no step along the way can be omitted to truly create a free creature rather than a character in a novel."
He also says not even God has the power to make someone be guilty for something they did not commit, contra Augustine on original sin. To be fair to Augustine he doesn't say we inherited Adam's culpa, but "merely" his "forensic" guilt, but still unfortunatley used the language of inheritance
Also says God cannot say a square is a circle
In the end God will be judging himself if there is evil permitted
Proleptic decisions are ultimate decisions. If we love our neighbor truly we could not also love God if we believed they would be consigned to eternal torment. We would have to develop at some level a cold indifference at best toward them and their soul
The death of a rational being is a Natural evil repugnant to God and so in the eschatological vision any permitted natural evil is also a moral evil for the one who willed creation that is the mirror image of the eschaton in the first place, even if the natural evil is obly a possibility. Proleptically willing to sacrifice is a sacrifice you have actually made
• Persons are persons because of relationships with other persons, and this extends to all logically. Thus in order for an individual to be saved and another damned an arbitrary partition must be made between this continuum of interbeing, all the more obviously problematic in the case of a parent and child. Because a major part of that parent was that child through relation who precisely is saved? A disembodied primordial soul or intellect perhaps, but that is not the Christian vision. If one loses memory of others not in the beautitude as per William Lane Craig that person is no longer fully who they are (and btw this sounds like the plot for a horror show / movie tbh, with one person initially realizing the screams of suffering below that everyone else is blissfully ignorant of). The person in beautitude may accept the justice but cannot be in bliss without amputating their souls
Q: if he can reconcile annihilationism with universalism (former as death of the sinful nature of the creature) doesn't this also mean that the person is no longer the whole person, a state he uses to argue against infernalism in the meditation on the interbeing of persons? Or is he saying that the most whole and pure expression of the person is one free of sin and so in that sense God is still Good by stripping aspects of the creature's earthly nature? Well, regardless, his other 3 meditations still hold up.
Much gratitude to the host and participants here an most of all to Dr. Hart for writing this much needed book. And I can agree from personal experience that the doctrine of eternal condemnation drives people away from the faith much more than the reverse.
re: his theodicy, i just finished his The Doors of the Sea and it's very beautiful. in that book, he *does* distinguish between permission and will, but he says that our free will is free but also doesn't thwart the final eventual working out of God's good purpose
@@2b-coeur While I appreciated The Doors of the Sea I think That All Shall Be Saved is a much more coherent and powerful argument. In the former David elegantly dismantles various bad theodicies and I applaud him for that, but still spends 119 pages eloquently avoiding - for the most part - the central question of the book's premise (or at least, the premise's root premise - why is there evil? From whence cometh evil? I think the implication is that for true freedom in creation, including the created principalities "governing" it, there had to be the potential for evil, but that stil bega the question of why there was this potential).
I really think most arguments about the problem of evil stem from poor definition of terms, namely the notion of omnipotence. Essentially every theologian (outside the Calvinist determinists Hart rightly excorciates) giving a theodicy at some point admits either implicitly or explicitly that a free relationship to God is a greater good than not creating or a simulacrum of freedom, and that this freedom somehow necessitates the potential for evil. In doing so they continue to use the classical word "omnipotent" in describing God, but the issue is often people have a very extreme, voluntarist, absurdist sense of the word that became more popular after the Nominalist, voluntarist theological trun after Ockham, where God could have created a reality where murder was good, circles are actually squares, ect.
Granting the intelligible and tempered definition of omnipotence, the issue then becomes that of the possibility of "arbitrary" interventionism, which is thus the issue that miracles cause for theodicy: God allows creation be truly free for the highest good end, which includes the potential for natural evil in a panexperientialist cosmos, but this then makes any discrete miraculous interventions look like arbitrary special pleading. I think a solution is simultaneously understanding God in a less anthropocentric way, and more importantly either denying "miracles" or understanding them (most importantly the only really necessary one doctrinally - the resurrection) being ot purely a top-down intervention but a sultaneous top-down emanation and bottom-up emergence of reality at a heightened level such that something incredible and rare occurs (e.g. re: the resurrection, that it wouldn't have occurred had Christ not lived a perfect life). One can argue such seemingly miraculous events have already occurred at multiple points is cosmic history in the language of emergence vectors; e.g. life from chemistry, mind / cognition from life, culture (distributed cognition) from mind, ect. (see Gregg Henriques beautiful and brilliant Tree of Life model that integrates all of cosmic development up to the level of culture). This is basically where I'm at in holding an intelligible theodicy while making room for the potential of orthodox theology.
@@2b-coeur Could not one see that God's kenosis and condescension to humanity in the incarnation also applies as the divine level generally in the kenotic condescension necessary for a free creation, and that this means God doesn't intervene in creation in a purely top down fashion that breaks the intelligibility of reality but in a cocreative, persuasive, transjective manner that reveals the depths of reality (that always already participates in God) in miraculous occurences rather than these being an intervention from a totally separate dimension? That God may (or maybe doesn't) know the end of reality but not by which paths that end will be reached (either open theism / process theism or molinism)? That God condescends into time and doesn't know the temporal future but eternity itself? And this is already in addition to God having an intelligible nature (or rather, intelligibility itself flowing from God) which is already implicated in saying God couldn't make a square circle or make an evil good in the same respect as people always say regarding the free will defense that God can't make truly free beings without the potential for evil.
Furthermore, regarding the problem of whether God could make a stone so heavy he cannot lift it, I say yes, he can and he did in creating manifest reality, but he can influence things to lift it, such as inspire humans to use technology to do so or raise a perfectly virtuous human he condescends into from the dead as a transjective ratchet point in the story of the evolution of the cosmos.
David in a blog post also answered why God doesn't just deify everyone immediately: "Not even God could create a free spiritual being without that real history [of the journey from nothingness into the infinite, a free movement toward a final cause, that of deification]
@@CrystallineWyvern mmhmm
i am uh.. sometimes i think im book smart and then i read something like this lol i really CANNOT give an intelligent answer, except that i do think God knows the end from the beginning - He transcends time so He'd have to..
@@CrystallineWyvern Every answered prayer -- and some prayers do get answered -- is evidence of (arbitrary) interventionism.
44:04 Hart giving a good analogy also for why capitalism is inherently oppressive and that there's no such thing as free will. Reminds me of the coconut analogy
“Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
@@MrSmith-zy2bp “All things belong to God, the Father of us and them. We are all of the same stock, all brothers. And when men are brothers, the best and most equitable thing is that they should inherit equal portions.”-Gregory of Nyssa
Damn, I can do it too :O
@@xuyouj1e I was agreeing with you about capitalism by using an Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote, whom many capitalists think is on their side, but he [Solzhenitsyn] saw the evil in both systems.
@@MrSmith-zy2bp I misunderstood. My apologies.
@@MrSmith-zy2bp The problem is capitalism consistently rewards those people who put profit first and conscience second. Those who value profit over conscience will generally have the competitive advantage over those who do not and will subsequently accumulate more capital until they outcompete those with moral scruples or force them to adopt the same contemptable practices. There are exceptions, there are businesses that operate by an ethical code, your Chick-fil-As and your free trade coffees but one has to recognize that these are exceptions not the rule.
Of course if everyone had absolute moral conviction about buying abstaining from unethical business practices and not buying from those who do capitalism would be fine, but I'm afraid that's asking more than what can be reasonably expected from fallen man.
Brilliant man.
Where can o find these meditations so that I can also read them?
His book. That All shall be saved.
Man those first 11 sec I thought I was having computer problems
I find it interesting that some Christians believe that it is possible for a fully informed person with their rational faculties functioning properly to reject God. As far as I know all Christians believe that is impossible for the blessed in heaven to sin, meaning they are continually choosing communion with God, yet surely those in heaven retain their freedom and aren't reduced to mere automatons. What could explain the blessed's eternally free choice for God? Is it not that because the blessed have been entirely freed from the corruption of sin and ignorance of God that they cannot but choose God? So it seems most Christians already implicitly accept DBH's view of freedom, in this matter at least.
Guy, Adam was free of corruption and sin and so was Satan when they were created. Yet, they both feel into sin. They were free to do so, so freedom from corruption and sin is not the answer. Also, just as full information about the danger of drugs and smoking and over drinking even the experience of them, does not stop people from engaging with these things, so too knowledge about God in a mental form does not keep one stable in God. The answer comes from final union with God at the end of time, theosis, that is the end of any process of change. God is unchanging yet infinite in Life and entirely free and self-determined, so our participation in God at the end of time is not something that binds freedom or life in a type of static stop but rather an entry into an eternal infinity. However, change of state no longer happens. We remain eternally in our freedom, if we freely develop a habit of likeness to God, or eternally bound to prevent our sinful actions if we continued in a habit of sin. It is not anything about a lack of temptation or full realisation of reality that prevents a fall, but the change of our mode of existence from our initial and necessary space-time existence as changeable limited creatures to union and participation in the eternal, unchanging of God; man in this sense becomes God without ceasing to be man, a creature begun in space-time but ending in the unchanging eternal God. In this state we can no more deny ourselves that God can deny Himself. God bringing all creation to an end in Himself also means that those not with Him, those He does not know, so they are unable to participate in His Life as contrary to His unity and purity, (He cannot deny Himself in allowing sinners to continue their choice of sin or in a manner separated from His unity in actions or separated in body apart from the unity of the Body of Christ), are permanently in that state of death not having life in themselves of themselves. God to not deny Himself must bring things to an End in Himself as all in all. He tolerates the existence of space-time only for a one-off single event to allow as many as He wills to have the possibility to participate in Himself. While the good participate in the eternity of God as End, the evil are bound to the same End and unable to change state but remain in utter darkness deprived of the Light that they denied in thought or deed by the free self-determination of the Image of God in them, that God cannot deny without denying His image in them and their ability to participate in His likeness.
@@youngyvidz716 The point addressed with Guy is whether corruption of sin and ignorance of God lead to stability in themselves. Neither Satan or Adam started with any corruption of sin and neither was ignorant of God. The matter of created as limited creatures is indeed necessary as I stated in my comment.
If what is meant by imperfect is that Adam had not yet come to perfection of theosis as in the coming age then indeed, this state of initial creation put Adam in a state that was able to sin, although it was not in itself the reason for the sin. I assume that you are then suggesting that we are free from sin through our final perfection in Christ, which is consistent with my point.
That they judge the drug as a higher good is relevant because given knowledge of God, they may still judge sin as a higher good. How can we say that their choice is mistaken? To do so is to impose our own value system on them. Their choice may be that they the drug is indeed the higher good despite knowing the health risks. We may say that long life and health are a higher good than death in war, but Achilles made the choice for a short life and death in war because for him the higher good was the glory of success in war. Just showing someone what we may think as the highest good for very good reasons does not mean that they will automatically choose it. The evidence seems that many people use their free self-determination in a way contrary to what is thought to be the common good and education may help but it does not guarantee conformity. I don't see any reason why knowing about the higher good of God is any different to this.
When I am speaking of coming to an End in Christ, I am not applying it in the same manner to both the good and to the evil, nor saying that the evil come to an end in Christ as such. What I am saying is that our created existence is brought to an end with the good coming to their end in Christ. This includes the changing life of the evil too. There is not some type of unchanging eternity for the faithful and temporal changing existence for the wicked, but all temporality is brought to an End. Also, we can speak of in God in different manners. One is that to which you refer the completion of the faithful in Christ. The other is the existence of all creation 'in" God because there is no out and beyond God. Even the continuing existence of the wicked can only happen because God sustains it; He maintains His own image in the wicked which is very good despite there evil actions in that image. The evil actions are bound and the evil do not participate in the energies of God being deprived of them through their sin. The separation of the wicked is not as though somehow out of God but a deprivation of any synergy with the energies of God and even a chaining of their own created energies. Their soul and body, so far as it is good is nevertheless maintained by God. The deprivation of the energies of God and their own energies is finalised at the same consumption in which the saints participate in God for eternal life; the whole created system in brought to its proper conclusion in God.
@@johnramsey5651 Adam’s loneliness despite his immediate proximity to God, and his dependence on an egoistic self-reflection in the form of Eve to sate that loneliness, is good evidence that Adam was not entirely without corruption.
@@abhbible As far as I read Genesis, it is God who decided that man should not be alone and who decided to make woman from Adam's side and bring her to Adam. I don't see any loneliness issue here or egoistic self-reflection, but Adamsimply accepting what God decided to do for him as God determined was best. As such, I don't think that this is corruption. If deciding to create another being in one's image and likeness in one's singularity is a sign of corruption then God must be corrupt for creating man.
@@johnramsey5651 Gen 2:18 it is not good for Adam to be without a helper. Why? What does Adam gain in a helped that he does not already have perfectly in God? Companionship, as a salve for loneliness, is the only phenomenologically intuitive option. This is further evidenced by Paul’s reflection on the diverting effects of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. It would be better for Adam to have been alone and for the fullness of his attention to be directed at God, but lack of self-control or some other deficiency prompted him to need another material creature. What Adam ends up setting in Eve is just himself reflected back at him. God’s creation of man filled no need for God. God’s creation of Adam filled a need for him.
DBH: "Not that they could accept it as just-but that they could not be happy." First: Facts dont care about your feelings. Second: People in glory would be nothing but joyous in relation to justice. To be other than joyous in regards to righteous judgement would be to misunderstand justice. They would be in ignorance. They would be in the same state for which DBH says they do not choose the good. Because they do not know it. And all DBH could do was interrupt Fr Patrick and say NO ITS NOT, without answering the objection.
So they would enjoy the fact that some people are in hell? Then they would be unlike their father as he does not enjoy the death of the wicked.
i still just want to know what the message said that ybarra sent to Fr Patrick at 1:44:23
There's a problem with audio. You need to equalize the volume for all speakers. Otherwise it sounds horrendous.
At 25:06, what is the writing Hart is pointing to? I can't quite understand.
I see this comment is three years old but still... it's 'De anima et resurrectione' by the church father Gregory of Nyssa
@@yerauldda4909 Perfect! Thank you so much~! :)
@@leftstanding No problem! It is a little difficult to make out in the video but I'm fairly certain that's what he said :)
The podcast audio cuts off at around 1.5 hours
I'll check on it. Ty
Does anyone who “Abba Safroni” is? I’m not sure who he was referring to.
Sophrony the Athonite, a student of Silouan the Athonite. Both canonized saints in Eastern Orthodoxy. I know that Silouan was a universalist. I don’t know anything about Sophrony.
I am getting more irritated by the minute , he does not let another person say anything.
Morality would be obedience to God. Anything God does is by definition good. We cannot judge.
If we are made in the image of God, we can judge. Are ethically required to.
Please read Matthew 19:28
@@nicklausbrain that’s pretty cool. Each apostle having his own thrown next to the glory of Jesus.
I’m curious how this applies. Elaborate.
Either way, I always love the words of Jesus
Hell does not exist. Hell is what we, as alienated individuals, condemn ourselves and others to in this world.
"The devil's greatest trick was to convince modern man that he doesn't exist." Baudelaire
DBH is brilliant. I am, by comparison a Philistine. His ideas opened up a different and perhaps, plausible explanation of universalism. However, his brilliance, regrettably, is only eclipsed by his colossal arrogance and rudeness as displayed in this discussion. Hard to win hearts and minds by being an intellectual bully. He needs a mommy to teach him some manners. Lol!
Heaven cannot exist while there are some who are suffering the torment of eternal hell, since having to witness their suffering would make a hell out of heaven.
@Šljorgađ Gruđljaf
Making people suffer for what they have done is the revenge of an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Revenge will only result in more broken people. It is not justice, but retribution without forgiveness, which is the antithesis of what Jesus taught. There can be no justice without mercy.
It must be remembered that sin is not a matter of the individual in isolation, but is always embedded within the context of family and community. Many abusers were themselves abused, and if you have any experience working in corrective services, it becomes evident that these people are suffering from serious psychopathologies which no amount of punishment will alleviate.
While we should not tolerate evil doing, we must not be tempted to treat sinners as human trash deserving of our condemnation and bad treatment, or torture.
While it is true that justice must be served, it should be quite obvious that eternal punishment for a sin of limited duration in time is not justice, but a perversion of God’s justice.
@Šljorgađ Gruđljaf
Actually, I never claimed that there is no evil. Quite clearly, evil exists, and is both personal and trans personal. I did say that evil is not to be condoned, and that all evil acts done by human beings are temporal, and therefore finite, not deserving of eternal hell.
Having to watch unfortunate souls, who were seduced into evil acts, fry in the fires of hell for eternity would make a hell out of heaven. It would also suggest that God’s love is limited rather than infinite. You would then be stuck with the following nonsense:
God is love. (as stated in the Bible.)
God’s love is limited. (what you claim since there are some that are beyond God’s love.)
It then follows that God is limited and finite. It’s just simple logic.
To suggest that God is limited, and thereby finite, is both unbiblical and very bad theology.
My point of view is certainly not emotional, but is logically sound and based on a solid theological understanding.
@Šljorgađ Gruđljaf
Glad to hear that God still loves those in hell. I would agree that hell is not an inferno but a state of mind, and that God loves even those who choose not to receive God’s love.
Hell is then a state of separation from God and from God’s love, rather than a place of eternal punishment.
It still follows that this state of separation is not eternal.
As stated biblically:
“Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:38)
@@christianthinker2536
God is love, and love does not seek vengeance. You understand nothing of basic human empathy, and even less of unconditional love.
If you have no understanding of love, you have no understanding of God, and your reading of scripture is entirely without context, is demonstrably lacking in compassion, and turns the good news of the gospel into bad news.
It is a tragic travesty of Christianity that can only be described as the anti Christian since Christ did not hate sinners, and even on the cross, asked for them to be forgiven; and God cannot be any less forgiving than Christ.
I missed the live stream 😡
Volume is bad
1:56:13 bookmark
You can tell David really triggered William with his arguments.
Anyone else in the discussion: Well, I'd like to ask you if..
DBH: B'b'b'but!!! wait, wait, wait! I'd like to finish this 30 min thought.
for 2 straight hours.
Is this the worst conglomerate of microphones ever assembled on RUclips?
Your more then welcome to buy and mail one to them. They do this for viewers.
@@thunderthumbz3293 aight
LOL. Around 1:37 im pretty sure Ybarra is totally asleep. LOL
I think of Ghandi, and then I think of the theif on the cross next to Jesus. All the thief did was believe and years of sinning were washed in a few seconds without the need for him to "live up to" his faith and never having the chance to loose his salvation - by contrast I think of a man like Ghandi, a sinner like all of us who nonetheless was the tool for freedom and equality, his life was put to the test and he tried his best to do good for his people.... if Ghandi is in Hell and the Thief in heaven we would be dealing with an extremely injust god. A God with no balance nor mercy, whilst all of creation screams of God's balance and mercy.... where the people who were robbed or killed by the thief, even if for example, pagans who diligently worked would burn in eternal hell whilst the perpetrator enjoys his reward in heaven. This is a en elitist, exclusive, "club" which most Christians believe in, and it goes against Jesus' and Paul's teachings. I have a very sick child who has ASL in my class, he hasnt had the time to understand and believe in Jesus before his mind and body started giving in (he is now 14) - will HE go to eternal hell as a JUST "punishment" for his debilitating, catstrophic illness? That is not the God that made sure wed have trees to bare fruits, wood for shelter, animals for substance, wine to share with friends, skin which heals and minds which strive to feel and give love. That is NOT the Christ who died on the cross for the sinner who hated him. Jesus Christ is love as we cannot imagine, the ultimate martyr.
@@koppite9600 and since he grants knowledge and understanding your view opens the door for universal reconciliation
@@koppite9600 what does that have to do with anything we’re talking about after the cross not before the cross Jesus came here to teach us how to live and then pay for our sins he didn’t come here to beg people to accept him he knows that is going to be taken care of later not through begging like you think God does but by choice like the Bible says but this is what happens when just anyone can pick up a Bible and think they know what it says without even asking the Holy Spirit u get a billion different people who think there view of god is correct without looking once at what the Bible actually says in its context and without twisting scriptures to say what they want it to say but I understand u won’t allow hell to be taken from you because it was probably the only victory you had to look forward to even though it implies the suffering of almost everyone else to ever have existed
I'm dumb founded by universalism Doctrine
Why, expound on it.
Whoever put this together really really really needed to do a SOUND CHECK. Next time please do that. Thank you. David Bentley Hart is barely audible.
❤