Has anyone ever written or spoken more profoundly, or inspired a more deified vision than DBH? Happy to see you share my deep gratitude for his giftedness...
Whew!!...glad we got that all cleared up,.. for a second there I thought all this commotion about hell and eternal torment was going to be a real problem.
His language is such a refreshing break from the riff-raff you normally see on the Internet, or the over simplistic language of a fire and brimestone preacher clearly trying to "sell" faith in Christ, like a used car salesman, by using fear tactics to intimidate people into falling on their knees before Him. I actually saw a video of someone who claimed to go to hell and see it with his own eyes; complete with images of fire, deformed beings, shrieking noises, screams and cries of the "damned" who will wail there forever. This, of course, is deserved punishment because God is a good, just and sovereign God. Every single comment was "Dear God, please forgive me!" and "Praise the name of Jesus". Were all these people really seeking a love relationship with Jesus, or did they just see their life flash before their eyes? Is it really "love" when someone follows someone in fear? I like that Hart challenges these beliefs with sophisticated, elegant language. I am a software engineer with only a Bachelor's degree, and while I didn't understand every word he used, I could follow his meaning clearly. This is a very well done piece, and definitely one for my collection.
Sounds like God must live up to your standards of what real love is to really be loving/love? Isn't it God (who as creator is above us all in intellect, and foreknowledge) who knew what must come to pass for him to create us? Including what must come to pass for those that for all their lives refuse his love? We can't know what God saw in his foreknowledge and decisions. Therefore we can't judge God in what he has done, regardless of whether hell is eternal or not.
thank you for sharing - inspiring and helpful. Rightly identifies hyper-individualised concept of self underlying most defences of eternal suffering and an impoverished notion of freedom - as capacity to exist in a mythic, neutral space with a range of consumer choices before one. True freedom means the capacity and power to desire and embrace the good; to choose otherwise is indicative of freedom's absence (ask any addict).
This is brilliant, but the language is a little opaque. I suppose I'd summarise the key idea as follows: God's choice to create was a free choice - we do not worship a Pantheistic God who is part of Nature, or a god who is one among many - we worship a God 'ontologically distinct' from creation, to use Hart's language. And we also worship a wholly good God. In this context, we must ask: is the eternal suffering of one creature, or even the 'risk' of the eternal suffering of one creature (for when the dice is thrown, that which is hazarded has already been surrendered) a wholly good choice of a wholly free being? Hart asks if the saved shouldn't see this creature as the scape-goat they could have been, their Christ? The doctrines of creation ex nihilio, of the goodness of God, and of the eternal damnation of any soul, are inconsistent, for how can creation be a good, free choice, if it is the choice to damn some (or to risk the damnation of some - again, this doesn't change the situation at all.) Hart stresses that this in some sense the 'infinite' evil of eternal damnation poses a far greater problem than the evil we see around us today: that while it may be possible that the future hope of the kingdom of God can somehow 'justify' temporary suffering, the same argument cannot be used to justify eternal suffering. He also insists that his universalism is linked to creation ex nihilio: if God's choice to create were not free, then perhaps he could reasonably settle for second best. But precisely because it was a free choice, God is morally responsible for every part of His creation. Finally, Hart insists his goal is not to judge God - he is merely questioning the validity of calling something 'good' which is clearly anything but good. When we talk of God, it is always in analogy, and words often only have limited meaning: but their meaning with regard to God should never be transparently opposite the meaning we would normally understand.
+Thomas Moore What you and Hart don't understand is just what evil is and the great distance between good and evil. I didn't used to understand the eternity of hell either (and it's still a mystery), but I no longer have trouble accepting it. It's the mystery of iniquity that St. Paul talks about. Once you are aware of the mystery of iniquity you will understand why hell is eternal -- not only that, but you will be GLAD that hell is eternal, and thank God for it. St. Thomas explains that the reason hell is eternal is not so much that any one of our finite acts deserves an infinite punishment; it's that contained IN our finite acts is a TURNING AWAY FROM an infinite good: God. That is the true malice, the turning away from God. Now I will tell you something that will make this easier to understand. There are people in this world, though they are very few, that understand perfectly well that God exists, they believe in Him with all their hearts, and yet they despise Him completely. Just as the life of a saint is a life of continual prayer, their lives are lives of continual blasphemy; just as God as his elites on the earth (the saints), so the devil has his elite servants too. The first thing they do in a morning is raise their souls up over and against God. These people are devil worshippers in the real and true sense of the word, in that they literally do pray to and worship the devil, and receive knowledge and power from him. These people love sin and death; they have a lust for corruption; they understand that hell is eternal and that all they would have to do to go to eternal heaven is bow before God, but they refuse to bow; they would prefer to burn in hell forever and ever just to spite their Creator, out of sheer malice. Do you understand? I think it might be impossible to understand this unless God Himself makes you understand. It's a kind of evil that is almost impossible to fathom. Try going back in history and looking at all the examples of human sacrifice (even newborn babies) to pagan "gods", and just ask yourself what spirit of evil was behind these abominations, and you should begin to understand the mystery of iniquity. These people go about the world converting souls to hell; they love to drag others into the pit with them. Most people that go to hell are like lost sheep that fall into hell by carelessness and vanity, but these are the true sons of Satan that throw themselves into hell willingly. Can you understand this level of malice? They have eternity before their eyes and they wish eternal damnation and fire for themselves and for others. This is why hell exists and why it is eternal. I think the problem that you and Hart and people like you have is that you still have a somewhat Pelagian concept of evil where you think human beings are basically nice and evil is something people do by accident; you can't conceive of the malice of the wolf because you are more of a lamb.
+John Common Thank you for your clear and honest response. I actually agree with your analysis entirely. If hell is indeed eternal, if there are creatures God has created who shall forever chose to reject His love, then they must be 'slaves to their own sin'. They must have fully and completely rejected their creator, and all that is good in the world. As Christians, we cannot afford to treat evil lightly. Evil is more powerful than we can possibly imagine. It ensnares and entraps us in ways too subtle for us to understand. We must remember that the great panacea of evil, the cross of Christ, is itself a complete mystery to us: we cannot logically explain how the death of God has the power to draw out the poison of sin. And like cure, like cause; evil itself is above and beyond our complete vision. But even when one understands the great power of evil to destroy the image of God in us, one can still hope that the power of God is greater still. This hope is always available, and always rational. I'm not going to start quoting scripture passages left, right and centre, but I am convinced that the first Christians believed that, at the very least, God hopes that all shall be saved. This possibility is there, and it is something we can hope and pray for too. David Hart argues something stronger: we have more than hope, and may make positive statements about the salvation of all people. I'm not sure how far I can follow this. Instinctively I read universalist passages in the New Testament as prophetic visions, rather than as doctrinal guides. Of course, that might be a meaningless distinction. But with Karl Barth, I don't feel comfortable constraining God by holding Him to things He hasn't promised with total explicitness: I have grounds for hope and trust, and that's enough for me. You are correct that evil is indeed powerful. But the love of God is powerful too. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.
+Thomas Moore Thanks for your summary mate, I can understand that some critique Hart as being excessively verbose. However, this here, his message, I've actually been pondering deeply for a long time - what or where is "hell" and is it forever? Is it even metaphysically possible that a mind be in eternal torment? I don't know. That's a metaphysical question. Then of course is the moral question - God is the first cause - can human beings as agents be ascribed sufficient responsibility (freedom of the will) as to be totally independent from God's first act of creation? I'll check out the full transcript and keep searching
This is the gent that has spent his whole life seeking answers to questions most do not ask...and even further he is within the 1% of that 1%...and yet....he is compelled and there is a place for it. That does not mean you cannot come to the same conclusions by other and from another talking head. Best!
All of creation is a theophany. I'm trying to read his book, That All Shall Be Saved. He uses a lot of words I've never heard before but I would like a simple version that I could share. I do believe there's good and bad in each of us and we are all on a journey.
He seems overly concerned with impressing people, with coming across as intellectual wordsmith. To me it's hard to listen to the message because I get distracted with his constant use of unnecessarily verbiage.
I’m very interested in what this man believes. I wish he spoke to lay people and not only to super intellectuals. I cannot imagine the masses actually being able to comprehend this. I am not well-read on DBH, I’m only just discovering him (tho I will be buying his books), but it does seem to me like he uses a ridiculously expansive vocabulary on purpose, as if teasing his listeners with arrogance. But that’s a speculation, like I said, I very much do not know him or his writings or personality.
Well, that's because Christians are brainwashed to be this way. This is why no one should be going to a building called church. And we should start studying the scriptures for ourselves. This is just my opinion.Any thoughts?
Such a profound talk. I probably should have read it rather than listened to it. Instead I had to constantly pause and go back and listen a sentence at a time. No fluff, no unnecessary wording here, just concentrated and powerful meaning and, dare I say, logic. His conclusion is unavoidable: if God created with even the possibility that some--even one--would endure eternal conscious torment, whether by their own choice or any other means, God could not be called good in any meaningful sense. In the end, God will reconcile all things to himself (Col 1). I only disagree that free will (FW) is not an extremely important and determinative factor. Despite the problems understanding FW, we do see its necessity. Human responsibility and guilt become meaningless without it. By it we do create ourselves as good or evil, one with God or alienated from God. By it God allows us to eternally stain ourselves as one or the other. Revelation 14 speaks of the smoke of the torment of the damned rising up forever. It does not say they will be tormented forever, but rather our memory of their shame and suffering and final rebellion against God will never be lost. The smoke is an eternal memorial. After their punishment is over and they too come to know the summum bonum, the highest good of knowing God, then only one punishment, the punishment of bearing this shame, will remain. No, they won't be aware of it themselves, otherwise suffering will remain in the universe in some form, and that an infinitely good God cannot allow. In the end, all creation will be good and God will be all in all (1Cor 15.28).
Could you be a good person if you knew your child may end up as a serial killer after they are born? You after all brought that person into the world and the child did such heinous crimes because of it. Such is the gamble when beings with some capacity for free agency are made. It's not God's fault his creatures reject his good purposes. It's the fault of the creatures not the creator.
@@prayunceasingly2029 Saint Julian of Norwich said God had revealed the following to her. He said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner or things shall be well. For there is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go." We may be good no matter what happens when we understand God's overriding goodness and inalterable plans for us all.
"IT'S NOT THE LOGIC OF THE CLAIMS THAT BOTHER ME. IT'S THEIR MORAL HIDEOUSNESS." Wow! There is a line in the movie the matrix where neo is asked," ever feel like you are waking from a dream." The irony being he was waking from a dream. that is the essence of this mans rage at the truth of his statement. I love it.
Well if he is saying all is saved in the end that is a good God and a successful God. Eternal torment is evil. The sinner's being wiped out but not suffering for all eternity makes God a failure but more just. So both eternal torment and the sinner's ceasing to exist has major problem's. Eternal torment has moral problem's. The sinner's just ceasing to exist the effectiveness of the cross.
@Boandlkramer Plus to answer your other question the narrow path is ruling with Christ in his earthy kingdom. This is the path not everyone will find but in the end all People ends up in the same place. The 1000 year rule is the reward and punishment phase. After that is going to heaven for everyone but is not so much a reward. This is If you go by the original Hebrew and Greek. God gets his way in the end.
@@brianmonaghan4523 Well Christianity is a religion of the Roman Catholic church. Plus why would God let Christian's preach eternal torment if not true ? Their are ways of explaining it for starters maybe it's to make his true believers stand out. Maybe it's to reveal in the end the corruption with in man that he would think God is as low as the lowest human nature. Maybe God is a sadist like Christian's actually believe but will not say it themselves. Maybe God intends on flipping all the evil in this world from religion politics and the human nature in general for the greater good of all people. But if God is an eternal tormentor he sure is not good.
@@brianmonaghan4523 Well their could be a reason for that if it serves the purpose I mentioned plus youngs literal comcordant literal and ratherhams emphasised Bible is closer to the original Greek and Hebrew. What makes sense about a loving and just God torturing people with out end ? The answer is nothing about a loving God doing such a thing makes sense.
@@shanestrickland5006 God will have to bend the wills of the rebellious to have his will accomplished for their souls. Because they don't want him. The universalists sound similar to the calvinists, that God must supernaturally change the wills of his creatures so that they'll love him, to save them.
What distinguishes Christianity from other religions is it's utter rejection of idolatry. This is done by adhering to the maxim that God is ontologically other than His creation, expressed via creation ex nihilo. What DBH reveals here is that the notion of eternal hell necessarily brings God's essence into a contingent relationship with His creation, reducing Christianity to idolatry.
+abc123754212 To someone who asks such a question, probably none. To someone who isn't satisfied with being an ignorant bigot, something more than that.
+abc123754212 Go read Bentley Hart's paper. Since I suspect that will be something you're unwilling to do it would be pointless of me to try to make any impact on your ignorance.
I'm surprised he'd have such a jerk for a colleague. Everyone knows that scholars write papers so people won't read them and study what they've written.
I really don't even want to comment here. But for fear that some could fall victim to thinking that there is no true hell or wrath of God. I for one will stand with the Father's, Saints, and the scriptures which all agree that we just repent and that God's wrath and He'll are very real.
The destruction of those who are lost may be the "very good" of God when taking into the awe-ful fact of man being made to be His sons and daughters, in His image.
He spends an awful lot of time justifying why God is good and not evil. Which is a direct contradiction to man being made in his image. God is evil, and that's okay. Only good is meaningless without the possibility of evil. It is fundamental for free will, to make choices, God couldn't have mercy unless he could cause damnation. I think it's explained rather crudely in A Clockwork Orange.
I am not sure that Orwell would have appreciated David Bentley's use of the English language, for he tends to reach for a rarely used word where a more familiar word would serve just as well.
It is difficult to follow. I am history teacher, with a graduate degree, two undergraduate degrees and some doctorate work, but struggle to follow his points. No denying his brilliancy though.
bayreuth79 Are you sure it may not be your lack of understanding to the nuance of definition between specific terms? These points are normally important when describing theological perspectives and their differences.
Yeah, that Orwell bit is the stupidest thing he ever said. Anyone into more advanced literature than Orwell sees how dumb it really is. Language is also for beauty, for example, or precision.
tl;dr he is saying that the idea of hell is morally repugnant and frankly, requires one to believe thing we would otherwise think are absurd. Hell isnt a place of eternal torment, it is a state of the suffering of a soul when it becomes separate from god. But basically once god reveals himself to people in his glory, they'll basically want to choose to be with him and will freely choose to be saved because the Good is inherently desirable to all rational moral agents
filthy steve A year after posting this I read Aquinas’ treatise on happiness and finally understood Hart’s position. Thanks for the explanation, though.
I like Hart sometimes...but other times I find him to be intentionally speaking in a manner that elicits a sense of dumbfounded awe in the listener. That is to say he seems intent on being seen as the smartest guy in the room and seeks to reach this end by purposely invoking unnecessary vocabulary and word-chains so muddled and crowded it is like hacking your way through an overgrown forest. He knows this and enjoys it to the loss of others.
I used to feel the same way about Hart. It can be irritating, but after a while you get used to his effusive verbosity. It actually makes me laugh now, but it certainly helps that I agree with most of his views.
What's his views on Darwin I wonder? ..as I find life makes more sense with randomised acts, with a little help from survival of the fittest? ...as for heaven and hell, its a human construct I believe, ...was a Christian but asked too many questions, without good answers, if there is a God he knows what he'd need to do for me to believe in him, ...
God is love, no one is lost forever, before the Bible was translated into Latin, forever punishment didn't exist in the original Koine Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, 1 Timothy 4:10 says He is the Savior of “all people” and (especially) of those who believe, but we are to repent from sins, to be set apart from this evil and perverse generation, they are trying to deceive us, fear not the Kingdom of God is at hand, our battle is not against flesh and blood but the evil spirits, bad company still corrupts good character, protect your heart, keep away from evil, the word is a light for our feet, don’t worry cast those on Him, He says we are worth more than many sparrows, Jesus said in Matthew 5:25 Reconcile quickly with your adversary, while you are still on the way (speaking of God) saying, you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out “until” you have paid the (last penny) "Aionon" means age, not forever with punishment, Jesus already has the keys of death and hades, hades is the realm of the dead, (with no torture in fire) same place as sheol, they translated four different words as one "hell" including gehenna, a judgment on earth, the outer darkness is temporary as well, in revelation 20:13 all of the dead will come out of hades and the grave, then judged for everything good and bad they have ever done, no one can be there forever it won't exist anymore, after is the lake of fire, it’s not a literal lake of fire, nor is it forever, it’s the second death, for whose names aren't in the book of life, we also have two deaths one in our baptism with Christ, it shows them including unbelievers on the "outside" of the kingdom, after it's done talking about the lake of fire, the word in greek is "exo" used 63 times in the Bible and never once for dead, God called the (slavery in Egypt) an "iron smelting furnace" but satan is deceiving the nations, (universal reconciliation) is the truth, to help tell others, either way you are loved, He will be “all in all” shine with purity, and good fruit, obey and love God, also your neighbor as yourself, strive to not lose your full reward, (The total victory of Christ) on TH-cam has the answers.
10:01: "God proves himself just by showing mercy upon all" (ie., in the last judgement). So universal salvation is an act of God's justice? Not sure I understand that. In what respect would universal salvation be an act of divine "justice"?
The idea is that 1. God called finite creatures into existence. 2. Finite creatures will fail to be perfect. 3. Eternally punishing someone for losing at a rigged game is not justice.
Instead of abolishing the idea of "hell" altogether, would it not be preferable to reinterpret hell (as, for instance, purgatorial)? I imagine that, for not a few people, the idea of God would be, at least initially, as repulsive after death as was before death. What would be the point of translating them immediately to heaven? Presumably that, for them, would be a kind of hell. Perhaps hell, as a short-term solution at least, might be preferable, until they get used to the idea of an eternity in heaven.
The universalist view that Hart advocates does not abolish hell altogether. In the end, hell will be abolished; but there is such a thing as the refiner's fire, which Paul and Revelation speak of, and we all pass through it. But it comes to an end, and it is then that God will be "all in all."
@@christopherlin4078 I like that idea, yet maybe not *merely* this world. Rather, the spiritual and earthly planes overlap. Just as we begin living within the kingdom of God as we enter into the life of God through the Church, so too we are in hell already in this life, in this body, to the degree that we are deprived of such participation in the divine.
curiosity 2019 that’s a ridiculous way to think. There is absolutely no love in that statement, thinking people will get used to an eternal furnace and being ok with it. Repent my friend.
@@thomasdillon5416 and by the way, there is no evidence of any heaven or hell. If they exist, it's only in the crazy imagination of the human hallucinatory mind.
@@thomasdillon5416 imagine being in eternal hell for trillions of years unending. What matter burns for eternity. What is the chemical name for that matter that can burn forever? I would love to know.
The Bible is extensively clear that the suffering of the nunrepentant is not eternal. It tells us a great many times in both the old Testament and New Testament that the end of them will be complete destruction and non-existence. It does so perhaps 100 or more times. Never does it state that the suffering will be eternal. The wicked will be destroyed . . . Psalms 145[20] The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy. Job21[30] That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath. Isa13[6] Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Joel1[15] Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. 1Corinthians5[4] In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,[5] To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. . . .like the OT sacrifices . . . Leviticus 9[24] And there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed ('a^kal) upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. 'a^kal (aw-kal'): to eat (literally or figuratively): burn up, consume, devour, dine, eat, feed . . . they will be consumed because they become their own sacrifice to God since they do not have the lamb of God to take away their sins . . . Psalms37[20] But the wicked shall perish (ka^la^h), and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away. ka^la^h (kaw-law') A primitive root; to end, whether intransitively (to cease, be finished, perish) or transitively (to complete, prepare, consume): - accomplish, cease, consume (away), determine, destroy (utterly), be (when . . . were) done, (be an) end (of), expire, (cause to) fail, faint, finish, fulfil, X fully, X have, leave (off), long, bring to pass, wholly reap, make clean riddance, spend, quite take away, waste. Pss.21[9] Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them. . . . and consumed, nothing will be left of them. They will exist no more . . . Malachi4[1] For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. . . . because the wages of sin is death, not eternal life in torment . . . 2Tim2[18] Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. Ezekiel 18 [20] The soul that sinneth, it shall die [mu^th]. mu^th; to die (literally or figuratively); causatively to kill: - X at all, X crying, (be) dead (body, man, one), (put to, worthy of) death, destroy (-er), (cause to, be like to, must) die, kill, necro [-mancer], X must needs, slay, X surely, X very suddenly, X in [no] wise. Matthew10[28] And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Romans6[23] For the wages of sin is death [thanatos]; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. thanatos; (properly an adjective used as a noun) death (literally or figuratively): - X deadly, (be . . .) death. . . . because God is a consuming fire says the OT and the NT . . . Old Testament: Deuteronomy4[24] For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. New Testament: Hebrews2[29] For our God is a consuming fire. Psalms68[2] As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God. and that fire wherein their spirit will die, after their bodies have long since died is a lake of fire . . Job4[8] Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.[9] By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed. They will die the death of the soul (Ezekiel 18 [20] The soul that sinneth, it shall die.) because the 1st death is common to all, the death of the flesh: Revelation20[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. Revelation 21[8] But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death. Revelation 20[10] And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever ().[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.[15] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. eis aion aion means: "into age age" which translates literally as "into an age long age" or "a long age". This is a finite measure of time because they will be CONSUMED, DESTROYED, AND (Malaki 1) "it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Please try to accept what the Bible actually says about it. We are all taught a lie by pastors. The Bible itself teaches something very different from what is told to us by them.
Well ceasing to exist i can get behind if true. But endles suffering hell to the no. Despite ceasing to exist would watter down the effectiveness of the cross would be fare more just.
This is a misinterpretation of Scripture. The annihilation of the wicked is not ontological but spiritual. Sinners will actually perish in the age to come, but will do so as sinners so as to live as saints, once purified from sin. This is the transformation of sinners into saints, not the annihilation of sinners as creatures (God doesn't create in vain!). What will perish ontologically is rather evil itself, which was not created by God.
I used to agree that if God knew even one person would go to hell, the desire to forestall that horror should prevent him from creating anyone. But it occurred to me that that meant God was letting the evil hold the good hostage: many would be denied the Beatific Vision because someone who had CHOSEN SIN would otherwise suffer. So I no longer think that the suffering of sinners precludes the creation of saints. As for the inherent injustice of eternal punishment, that depends on the experience of the person being punished. We say “eternal punishment ” and imagine a quintillion millennia of pain, just for starters -an unendurable prospect. But if hell is outside of time as we know it, it may be a perpetual present, with no sense of prolonged pain. It may always seem to be happening for the first time. Or more likely, it’s something we can’t really imagine now. In any case, neither of these arguments seems very persuasive to me.
If you take a look at John 14:6 New King James Version 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Doesn’t universalism provide another way other than Christ to come to the father?
DBH is clearly an Academic of great knowledge.. It would be great though if he didn't speak as though he was speaking to his piers who understand his language. Its as though he really doesn't want to be understood. Its a little frustrating. Please keep it simple.
Really? I’m not a scholar but I would invite you to not be among those that resent scholarly prose simply because it extends itself beyond their vocabulary. Rather, rejoice in the opportunity to learn some new words and expand your world.
Yes request the text. In all honesty, I am not an uneducated individual having a graduate degree and two undergraduate degrees, but I find it difficult to follow Hart. You have can have more degrees than a thermometer, but something can be said for plain speech.
That's it. Having a degree makes you intelligent. Now I can see the limitations of your mind. You don't set the bar very high. Must I name all of the geniuses whom made scientific discoveries without degrees? Just because some of us didn't decide to succumb to the thievery that is school loans doesn't mean that we lack intelligence. We just choose to do our own research on things that matter most to us, like say, astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Not to mention it's easier to find actual facts when you aren't looking through a school system that was originally built by theists.
Where did I say a degree makes you intelligent ? I must have missed that part. Of course there a lot of self-educated people out there that outperform University graduates. My point was that Hart's vocabulary makes his message opaque to many. Even when I understand the word and its context, I find myself dwelling on it and missing the next couple of sentences.
Yes, indeed. He doesn't speak in laymen's terms. It makes it easier to deceive lesser educated people. Same thing the missionaries did to the Africans when they came to enslave them using Christianity.
I am for plain speech, and often suspect that when do not use plain speech it's because of a lack of understanding. On the other hand the purpose of speech is communication, and some ideas may be so uncommon that communication suffers when they are expressed using common words. Finally it seems that here Hart is giving a lecture to people for whom the words he uses are not as uncommon as for the majority of us. Incidentally, does anybody know where he gave that speech?
Hart mentions Romans 5:18 as a verse that supports the idea of universalism. However, it also seems to support the idea of original sin and inherited guilt which Hart is openly and clearly against.
@@sgt7 What I meant by the first statement is that Adam's did something (i.e. introducing corruption into the world) that rendered every human being sinning inevitable, and each person's own sin is is the ground of their condemnation - even though Adam's sin rendered this outcome inevitable. The second statement means that God considers each person guilty of Adam's sin, and that they are subsequently condemned for Adam's sin, even if they haven't or will not sin themselves.
@@thetasteofwater918 Ok that's a logical distinction. But surely you're not suggesting that any of those claims represent a just judgment. In both cases, one is condemned on the basis of something that was beyond their control. Surely you can only be considered blameworthy if there was a reasonable possibility for you to act otherwise (especially when the punishment is something as horrifying as hell).
@@sgt7 Well, since I believe God's justice and punishments are restorative and aim at our good, I can't really see it as unjust for God to punish us for sins we couldn't avoid, since the purpose of those punishments is deliver us from the conditions that render our sinning inevitable. But, if God's justice were retributive, and he punished not to restore and correct but merely to cause suffering, then I think it would be unjust for God to punish us for sins we couldn't avoid.
Does this kind of thinking make moral values meaningless? It seems to me that even if we are murdering we are in some way seeking God. Is not every action a movement toward that transcendental end? I simply do not understand why, if its all the same in the end (that we are all granted infinite grace and so entrance into the Kingdom of heaven), that we would continue to be moral. What is the motivation to be "good" if not the reward of God's presence? There's simply no way I am understanding this correctly. To me, if universal salvation is true, then moral values make no sense. But, if Universalism is false, then I cannot make sense of what Scripture is teaching. It seems to be the only answer and yet it makes no sense to me. I do not understand what the bible teaches about salvation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
SuperProben- I agree with you one hundred percent that universalism makes moral values, if not meaningless, at least unimportant in the long run. “That’s okay, Adolph. No harm no foul!” Him and the Devil too, evidently. Personally, I think that Hart and everyone else who wrings his hands over theodicy is looking up through the wrong end of the telescope. It does vaunt the ego, though, for mere mortals to feign the ability to judge an eternal God. There is an unmentioned predicate in the notion that, for God to be judged just, all must be saved. Namely “the immortality of the soul,” which by definition requires that the unsaved-ones suffer separation from God eternally, along with whatever torments go along with that state -- a notion that is trivially easy to refute via Ethics 101. But what if the soul is not immortal? It could be that The Preacher knew what he was preaching about when he preached: “I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” (Ecclesiastes 3.18-20) And it may be that the Psalmist put the truth to music when he sang: “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” (Psalm 146.4) And perhaps the Apostle Paul was correct when he predicated our hope of future life, not on “the immortality of the soul,” but on the resurrection of the dead: "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished (apollumi). If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." (I Corinthians 15.12-19) If the first death without a resurrection of the dead means perishing, then what does the judgment of a second death, upon the resurrected dead “according to their works,” entail? It’s a logical question, biblically. John 3.16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish (apollumi), but have everlasting life.” I’m no scholar, but from what I can ascertain, the Greek word for “perish,” apollumi, cannot be made synonymous with “eternal torment” by anyone other than a theologian who is more interested in protecting his theological home base of “the immortality of the soul” than he is about correctly ascertaining the plain meaning of the words in the text. Otherwise, “perish” simply means “perish.” I would contend that, looking up through the correct end of the telescope, Christ’s sacrifice represents a rescue effort directed at a species that would have otherwise gone wholly extinct, and justly so. And that without that rescue effort, God would be no more morally culpable for allowing homo sapiens to go extinct than He is for allowing Velociraptor mongoliensis to go extinct. Because you see, it is elementary. That if in the end God is just to all, rescue effort or no rescue effort, He can be held “morally accountable” by none. Haha, as if. No. “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2.4-7) How to receive this salvation? "…if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." (Romans 10.9-11) Simple as that.
Thanks for the reply! It seems to me that you're talking, in some way, of the annihilation of the soul. So it would seem that our punishment for not responding to general revelation (or special revelation through Jesus) would not be an eternal place of conscious torment, but of simple 'perishing' . Going back to the Greek, I totally agree with you. The same mistakes are made in Timothy and Thessalonians. But that just raises more questions: could I live my life as a Stalin, enjoy all the simple pleasures that life affords, and then simply be on my way without any ultimate punishment? Is my only motivation for being moral the ability to continue being conscious (perhaps not MERELY conscious, but aware of God which I am sure is "better" than just being aware). It still does not make much sense. I guess I like Gregory of Nyssa's concept of Hell; that is, separation from God and the pruning of sin so make one pure again so that God can be "all in all". The word used for Hell a lot of times refers to the process of cutting dead leaves off a plant so it can grow bigger and better fruit. I think hell will simply be a cleansing process whereby we are sent for a period of time according to our sins (But this contradicts many places of scripture). I still cannot come to grasp that God will "defeat evil" and yet some will still be left in Hell. Will He not also overcome Hell?
SuperProben- Thank you for your original post and for this reply. I know a lot of people, Christian and non-Christian. But I only know a handful who like to engage, like I do, in mutually-respectful but candid discussions about the Bible and spiritual matters. So I appreciate it. What I cannot grasp is a New Heaven and a New Earth where, "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4). But evidently, if the small "o" orthodox in the West are correct, that “sorrow, crying and pain” thing won’t have passed away completely because of this other place called Hell. A place that, apparently, we will be able to visit and amuse ourselves by denying the tormented ice water. So I'm glad I don't have to try to grasp it anymore, because it is wrong. As far as the “annihilation of the soul,” I am talking more specifically about the “mortality of the soul.” And clearly, I hardly came up with the concept myself. I believe that is what the scriptures I cited and God’s Word overall teach. I was churched, growing up, to believe the opposite. But I really didn’t have a problem changing my outlook when I got more light. So it has been surprising to me, over the years, how difficult it is for people to accept a concept that is as simple and self-evident as mortality. Not to mention how they fail to realize that they are discounting the monumental nature of God’s solution to mortality, which is the resurrection of the dead beginning with our Lord and Savior. For instance, it looks to me like the heterodoxy of “Annihilationism” is making a comeback. But to protect some semblance of “immortality of the soul,” I have noticed its adherents changing the theological designation to “Conditional Immortality.” I don’t know where “this mortal must put on immortality” got lost in their deliberations, since I don’t think the Apostle Paul is talking about putting on immortality by dying in I Corinthians 15.53. You wrote, “But that just raises more questions: could I live my life as a Stalin, enjoy all the simple pleasures that life affords, and then simply be on my way without any ultimate punishment?” Before I get to specifics, allow me a small digression. When it comes to God’s justice - or any subject in God’s Word - I have noticed a particular logical fallacy that comes up often, which I need to avoid in my thinking. It is called the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle or the False Dilemma. I ran into it, most memorably, when studying what to believe about the authority of scripture. And I fell for it, for far too long, when pondering the construct: "If the Bible is the Word of God, then it must be inerrant and it must be literal." Until one day I realized that neither “inerrant” or “literal” are words that the scripture uses to describe itself. Rather, most notably I think, in II Timothy 3.16 it describes itself: “All scripture God-breathed,” theopneustos. So if it turns out that Genesis 1-11 contains figurative records that were never meant to be taken as literal fact, that doesn’t affect my belief that the Bible is God-breathed in the slightest. And no one who has enjoyed the truths of life brought forth in literary fiction, which is wholly made up by the minds of men, could have a problem with that position either. Same thing goes for your term “ultimate punishment.” Does that have to be eternal torment? Sez who? The dilemma between "eternal torment or nothing" is a false one. Which to my mind brings up a more valid question, which is, if the unjust are annihilated in the end anyway, why bother raising them from the dead? I believe that the scriptural answer relates to what men will be judged by on that Great Day - that they will be judged according to their works. This standard of judgment is over the place, actually. To cut and paste from my likely-incomplete list: Psalm 28.4, Proverbs 24.12, Isaiah 59.18, Jeremiah 25.14, Matthew 11.22,24, 12.36, 16.27, Mark 6.11, Romans 2.5,6, 14.10,12, II Corinthians 5.10, 11.16, II Timothy 4.14, I Peter 4.5, I John 4.15, Revelation 2.23, 18.6, 20.12,13. So if God is going to raise the unjust from the dead to judge them according to their works, that means axiomatically that they have more to answer for before a righteous God than what their annihilation by the first death answers for. I suppose that I can be pigeon-holed as an Annihilationist, with which tag I would aver that neither I nor any of my fellows - of those I have ever run into anyway - claims that there will be no torment of the unjust. Simply that it will not be a never-ending torment, but rather, a just punishment according to their works. As far as the Ethics 101 objections that David Bentley Hart touches on in this recording, it is inherent in the Lord’s metaphor in Matthew 7.13-14 that most of the descendents of Adam are going to enter in through the wide gate. Including, for instance, both an infant that was annihilated in the atom bomb that hit Hiroshima and the Emperor of Japan who is arguably culpable for putting that baby in that position. Will both be raised and annihilated by a second death, or even more horrifically, “tormented day and night for ever and ever, world without end, amen”? The only answer I can find, in scriptures related to the resurrection of the unjust, is deliberately ambiguous. Revelation 20.15 says, “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” To which I can only say, if scripture is deliberately ambiguous on a subject, I don’t mind being ambiguous either. As to why God is ambiguous on this subject, it’s really none of my business. We’ll find out when we get there. Even though I suppose I could speculate on situations like that of Andrea Yates, but surely I have prattled on long enough…
That many paths lead to the same destination does not mean that all paths are the same. On the contrary, one of these paths is the straight one, some are close to the straight one, and many are just far from straight, but long and winding and stupid ones.
Jeff Stanley Thanks for your reply (which was pleasantly absent of any connotations). I think what you're talking about is the now heretical view of hell which Gregory of Nyssa imagined (by imagined I just mean he used a sort of thought experiment to visualize). Gregory said something to the effect of "those who build their houses with twigs and leaves will be consumed in the cleansing fire, but those who build their houses upon the foundation of spirituality will pass unscathed by the terrible flames." He's basically saying what you said; that is, you will be judged according to your spiritual works (what you build your house with). I think that an infinite Hell of conscious torment can only be reserved for those who truly do not want to be with God (which I would think impossible, since who wouldn't want to be with infinite goodness?). Hell is really just a place absent of God's active presence. It would be like strolling into an art gallery and being totally unable to find anything beautiful or good (since, as DVH says, we are always looking past a painting to a transcendental end; that is, God). Remove God's active presence and bam. Everything is miserable and unbearable. This view of hell actually totally jives with God's perfect justice. On the other view of hell (eternal torment) we are punished eternally for finite crimes. On your view we are given our just punishment and then admitted into heaven (given our resurrection bodies). However, I am puzzled as to where Jesus fits into all of this. Why is it that we are punished even though Jesus wiped away the sins of "all men"? Why are we not all seen as holy in God's eyes? Why must we pass through the wide gate at all? Why are we not simply forgiven and then offered admittance into heaven via Jesus' sacrifice? It begs the question as to WHAT we are being punished for since Jesus' did away with the sins of man (or so I think He did). In the end, I cannot bring myself to believe in an eternal place of torment (such a concept makes little sense of the scriptural data). I think that those who are truly regenerate in Christ will be fully reconciled to Him and those who are not will either perish or be cleansed (according to their spiritual works). If all of them is not spiritual, then all of them will perish. If some of them is spiritual then some of them will come out on the other side of that wide gate ("them" refers to an individual in this these sentences). I still have much to read on the matter (and the literature is not what one would call slim on this subject). Here's to hoping that the Holy Spirit will guide me in my studies and bring me to a greater knowledge of Him.
Actually, his position is somewhat different. Following Gregory of Nyssa, he holds that hell is real but not permanent and is for the purification of the soul. For example, Gregory, in comparing the soul to gold, writes that, "For it is as when some worthless material has been mixed with gold, and the gold-refiners burn up the foreign and refuse part in the consuming fire, and so restore the more precious substance to its natural lustre: (not that the separation is effected without difficulty, for it takes time for the fire by its melting force to cause the baser matter to disappear; but for all that, this melting away of the actual thing that was embedded in it to the injury of its beauty is a kind of healing of the gold.) In the same way when death, and corruption, and darkness, and every other offshoot of evil had grown into the nature of the author of evil, the approach of the Divine power, acting like fire, and making that unnatural accretion to disappear, thus by purgation of the evil becomes a blessing to that nature, though the separation is agonizing."
I have yet to understand a word that comes out of this mans mouth it's like listing to a closely familiar language that isn't quite English but is, I really want to understand what he says but I would need a dictionary by me and three hours just to listen to a 30 minute message. I just wish he would speak more clearly for the common folk.
TheGodGagsta I absolutely know what you mean, he sometimes speaks as if everyone is a PHD, his book Beauty Of The Infinite, was almost unreadable, I think I liked it but you had to know greek to fully understand it, however his book Experience Of God was a lot more excessable. Hart may be too smart!
Protos Telos I think David wants to impress, and he does, but goodness a smart person should be able to relate to the common thinker, I agree. But I love Hart.
TheGodGagsta I think he’s just highly eccentric, highly educated, and using the most precise language he know how. He’s not a show off, he’s an academic. He’s usually not talking to a popular audience.
The thesis sounds Stoic. Per the Stoics, "Zeus" creates all from himself, and to Zeus all things return. Except, that Hart maintains a strict Creator/creature difference, unlike the Stoics. But, God spends so much time warning us about the final judgment and Hell/the lake of fire, that I'll stick with God's revelation in Scripture, even if human language is constrained and even if there are secrets not revealed in language, hoping for Heaven, dreading the thought of Hell and desiring to be with God in such a way that Holy Eucharist is the most perfect expression in our time.
Stoic apokatastasis is about cyclical worlds, an infinite series of aeons where each aeon is identical to all the others. Very different from Christian apokatastasis. In order to scare Hell doesn't have to be eternal (see for example the end of Gregory of nyssa's On the soul and the resurrection).
I would agree that Hart's language is difficult to understand and he perhaps needs to consider his audience more. However, I would disagree that Hart is an obscurantist. An obscurantist is someone who has no content and tries to hide this using technical words. The more you dig the more confusing it gets because there is nothing of real meaning to pin down. Hart makes very specific points and if you give it time his ideas become clearer. His technical language allows him to express his ideas more accurately. Nevertheless, I think he needs to tone it down a bit. He has something valuable to say and he should therefore make this accessible.
If one dies as an unbeliever or not a genuine believer, he will suffer torment in the outer darkness, a holding place, for an eternity-like time, as this person has no idea about the things of God. At the appointed time he will be brought out of it to face the white throne judgement. If his name was found in the book of life or Christ Grace and Mercy is in effect based on the deeds he had done accdg to the records on the books that will be opened, or he calls upon the name of the Lord, repents, and beg for His mercy, he will be saved. Otherwise, turning out to be arrogant (did I not prophesy? Blah blah) and accusing and cursing God of being unjust for letting him go through the torment in the outer darkness,, he will be thrown in the lake of fire to be totally destroyed and will cease to exist. Eden then will be restored, and rebellion will be no more, as people learned from their refinement experience in the outer darkness, and seeing the smoke of destruction rising forever from afar as a reminder.
It also states in Revelation that 'every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord'. Doesn't that sound like an affirmation of faith?
15:33 This is evidence to me that DBH needs to be more critically listened to. I was very interested in this quote and I have come to conclude that Calvin never said it. DBH is mistaken. If you can find the source for this quote please post it, but I believe DBH heard it somewhere and has mistakenly attributed it to Calvin (I think it might even be Augustine referring to unbaptised infants). What I have found though, is very clear teaching of Calvin to the contrary. Here is a quote with source: “I do not doubt that the infants whom the Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret operation of the Holy Spirit.” (Amsterdam edition of Calvin’s works, 8:522). “I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from their mothers’ arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be universally detested.” (Institutes, Book 4, p.335). And very clear evidence to very poor scholarship on DBH's part.
Is it possible that he is quoting either a younger Calvin out an older one? People, even theologians, change views. For example, Dr Ramelli has shown that a younger Augustine was a universalist.
@@cherryswirlchale9511 Everything is possible. But without evidence it is hardly a fact. Not hard to do. Just provide a source. Otherwise you can say anything about anyone because "it's possible".
The idea of a god who has free choice is based upon the belief that humans have free choice. From the beginnings, the idea of "free will" has flowed from the question of moral responsibility. That we deserved the praise we receive when we act well, and the opprobrim and punishment when we do well. The whole thing is one big Argumentum ad consequentiam. Humans don't seem to have anything like free will the more we look. We can do what we want, but we can't want what we want. Resisting the impulses we have is not choosing freely. All control of desire comes from marshalling other desires. I want to cheat on my wife and satisfy desires but I also care for my children and don't want to blow my life up. Those desires can aid me to deny other desires. More and more research shows that when we think about and reason on things we desire we often don't even become consciously aware of information presented to us that would contradict the reasons we give ourselves to pursue what we want. We have inbuilt cognitive biases to accept as true information that conforms to what we wish to believe and discount what would force us to reconsider. It is an illusion that we are free to even think what we might wish to think. If we don't even know what we're talking about when we talk about choice how can you even begin to start talking about a god's choices? What does ex nihilo even mean? Nothing? The absense of all things? Before creation there was god and there was nothing? What is that? Was nothing uncreated? Does it just mean the lack of thing-ness to anything. So god wasn't everything? There was god AND there was nothing, and god fashioned something out of nothing? Is this just a dodge to avoid pantheism, that god created out of god's own being? After all things are just human conceptions. It's all just continuous ruminating on concepts that are very wooly and assumed to have some grounding in reality. Let's all just start by assuming there is truth in the Bible and go from there, seems to be the order of the day. Start with a conclusion and then build up evidence that appears to support that conclusion. Yeah, good job.
Saying the Big Bang answers nothing. From the observations we can make and what we've discovered about Physics there are multiple hypotheses about how this universe began, what kind of universe we find ourselves in, etc. Combining mathematical models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be seems to show a universe that began small and is expanding. We can't say yet whether the Universe will expand forever, or whether it will someday stop, turn around, and collapse. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the universe began out of nothing. No evidence for that.
" Is this just a dodge to avoid pantheism, that god created out of god's own being? " I suspect it is, although there's no good reason to conclude, as most Christian theologians seem to do, that God's creating out of his own being must necessarily yield pantheism.
Ex Nihilo - out of nothing isn't that hard, don't complicate. You don't have to assume there was god and only nothing. To Create out of nothing is just that. Imagine a wizard that can just summon something out of nothing, as opposed to an alchemist that transforms materials from one to another. And your last sentence is how all deductions work. We start with an idea and then build the evidence. Otherwise, you would have no comprehension. At some point you have to have a theory (conclusion), then build the evidence to support it or deny it. Right? Your confusing blind belief and using only evidence that supports a theory. Scientists do it all the time, and religious fanatics, and everyone of us. Mr. Hart is echoing your conclusion that humans don't have free will so I don't think we assume god has free will based on human free will. He has free will because he is the creator. The axe doesn't tell the woodcutter what tree to chop. the opposite. Which is great news, because Hart is saying that all will be destined for salvation. The human will cannot ultimately oppose god's will.
Just because you can imagine something doesn't mean it is based in reality. Saying imagine a wizard creating out of nothing is just nonsense. I can say just imagine a square circle and it amounts to the same thing. Saying a string of words that make grammatical sense doesn't imbue a sentence with real meaning. You have no evidence a god exists. You only have evidence that beings like us exist. No humans begin with an understanding that God exists and then from that assume the existence of human beings. You have it exactly backwards, Humans began with experience of the animate and inanimate things in the world and then assume the existence of another kinds of beings, spirits. Then over time those ideas of spirits evolved into gods. Then eventually you got monotheism. You start by assuming there's a god, and then you elaborate on the nature of that god. That is what we have evidence for.
This guy is good, but too complicated, big words, and way over a child's head. Truth is simple, so, that a child can understand; a young adult can understand. All was created BYn Him, Through Him, and FOR Him - He Christ is the HEIR TO ALL. Very simple! All will be drawn into being saved.
With all due respect to the learned doctors of theology, I think most Christians will search the scriptures for their answers and not place their trust in abstract reasoning about YHWH.
Lost me at the title! The question is what has God revealed and said about hell in His Holy Word!? Further, Bentley's argument tries to bifurcate Gods actions from His Essence! See, God IS LOVE. Every action of God, creation, fall, redemption and consummation as elucidated in the Bible must needs be filtered thru that which He has been and is from all eternity: Love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! The Bible reveals God's Love expressed toward consonance with His Love as favor prosperity , life and blessing but dissonance with His Love the obverse of the aforementioned! David has formed a god that he is fully familiar with and that is a problem! He has ignored Jesus' many warnings about overcoming and fidelity to Him in the Bible!
Oh yeah hes trying to ruin all our fun. Watching the vast majority of Jews that died in the holocaust burn up like a torch in Neros garden forever that what Jesus is all about baby. And maybe he will let us poke them with a stick. Wow and I can be holier then god and still treat people like crap in the traditional Christian approach. Move on nothing to see here.
Read the second meditation in DBH's That All Shall Be Saved, or Jersak's Her Gates Will Not Be Shut. Plenty of scripture to support Hart's position here.
@@stopwhinning All our fun? God is a God of Justice who "observes trouble and grief to Repay it by His Hand!"-Psalm 10. Justice will be had. However, those who marry Evil in no way will be saved. That's utter nonsense and is ahistorical. I'm an Orthodox Christian and can tell you that Bentley's view of Salvation doesn't align with Holy Tradition. It is well meaning but doesn't align. John Chapter 3 tells us what the condemnation is...Jesus Himself enlightens us with His Blessed Words. Bentley is Wrong!
PAY GREAT ATTENTION TO THESE VERSES, DO NOT LET ANY MAN STEAL YOUR CROWN! Rev 3:11 Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Jas 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. 2Ti 3:1-17 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was. But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience, Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me. Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
How about the fact that you cannot fill in a blank with god. You cannot state we do not know what "x" is therefore it is god. There is no repeatable demonstrable evidence to prove there is any god. There is no reason to believe god exists because our existence is proven through scientific theory. Don't be sheep.
I have the impression that Harris is an intelligent and well-meaning person. But he is virtually unread in theology never mind patristic theology. So to put Hart and Sarris debate theistic eschatology would be like putting Dawkins and the average primary school educated person to debate darwinian evolution.
Sigh, Bradon, I was once like thee, but alas, allow me to unchain thee from thy pseudo intellectual "new" atheist like chains. Your point would work brandon, if it were not for once thing, the God of the bible (as understood by people like David Bentley Hart), is ontologically speaking different than the pagan gods, who are "beings among other beings". You see, God is not, I am arguing, like a tree or a cat or a micro wave. Indeed, Dawkins shows his complete lack of theological understanding when he says (I paraphrase) "that if God were to exist, he would need to be a very complicated being indeed"...lol...as if God is again, like a microwave or a dinosaur. He isn't. He is ontologically distinct from creation, he is Absolute Transcendent Reality, not a cat...that leaves the "Evidence!" that the horde of triumphantly silly atheist always proclaim for, his not gonna leave a massive footprint on the moon or some cat hair on the couch...what Kind of God do you think we are talking about? Your argument, works fine for something like Hercules...a kind of half man half god type...who was created by another god and i think was not eternal within Greek myth. The God we (I hope) are talking about is the God who is metaphysically and ontologically necessary. Matter cannot create itself Brandon, that's called "magic", therefore there needed to be a "Eternal Transcendent reality" (not matter or anything made of matter) to create matter in the first place. This is philosophically necessary, Brandon, otherwise you simply have the explanation of "matter somehow made itself, which is anti-scientific, and magical mind you. The other option is you simply say matter has always existed...which is a philosophical absurdity and a scientific impossibility. Therefore, I am sure you will ask, "who made God then?"....but once again, this misses the whole Thomas Aquinas point...that the God that Christianity argues for isn't "an object within the universe"...he is not a microwave, that has parts, and has a manufacturing facility, and a use by date etc etc (even though God is incarnate in Christ, he is the incarnation of the transcendental reality, not a "creation" of God, the bible is very careful to not argue Christ' physical body is "made" by God, but that rather Christ was begotten, the incarnation of God, rather than a created being totally different from God the Father, anyway, back to what i was saying before about creation). Therefore, we are not saying, or at least, we should not say that since we don't have evidence for "x" therefore God. We are saying, God, therefore "x". God is the necessary ontological and philosophical "Transcendent Reality", or the ground of being that allowed "being" to be in the first place. Again, I apologize for all the silly comments from christian's who argue that God at the begging of creation was literally a human being, you atheist might get the impression that one day he was walking around and just thought to himself "man o man! I am bored playing this primordial version of Sudoku! I'm gonna buy some play dough and make the world!". God is not Iron man or superman. He is not Conan the Barbarian just way, way smarter and better looking. He isn't like us at all in some definitive sense. He is ontologically separate from us, even if Christ is God incarnate and God totally (which he is), though certainly Christ was not a human being at the beginning of the world, rather, just spirit. BTW, the ontological argument for God is not something that I am arguing here "proves Christianity", you can be irreligious and still know this argument to be true metaphysically and ontologically.
Brandon so you just automatically assume whatever the the speaker is on about, is god-of-the-gaps argument ? You were on about false claims which have no substance .... yeah.
Everyone " visits" hell, as hell actually means - grave. Those people were most likely experiencing a temporary state of separation from God. There is no literal endless state of suffering. The word, everlasting does not mean unending, nor does - forever. Research it. It gets easier.
Please answer my two questions. Are you a child of the LIGHT, or are you a child of the DARKNESS? Are you a child of the Devil, or are you a child of God? Let's see what the Bible says about people of the Devil, 1Ti 5:15 For some are already turned aside after Satan. 1Jo 3:10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. Act 13:10 And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord? Mat 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;Mat 13:39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. Mat 13:40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. Let's see what the Holy Bible says about people of the LIGHT. I hope you read and understand about the LIGHT. Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no LIGHT in them. Jhn 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the LIGHT of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the LIGHT of life. Jhn 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that LIGHT is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than LIGHT, because their deeds were evil. Jhn 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the LIGHT, neither cometh to the LIGHT, lest his deeds should be reproved. Jhn 3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the LIGHT, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Luk 11:33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the LIGHT. Luk 11:34 The LIGHT of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of LIGHT; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness. Luk 11:35 Take heed therefore that the LIGHT which is in thee be not darkness. Luk 11:36 If thy whole body therefore be full of LIGHT, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of LIGHT, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee LIGHT. 1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous LIGHT:1Pe 2:10 Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. 2Co 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath LIGHT with darkness? 2Co 6:15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 2Co 6:16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 2Co 6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord... 1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of LIGHT, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. 1Th 5:6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. 1Th 5:7 For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. 1Th 5:8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. Jhn 12:46 I am come a LIGHT into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness. 2Co 4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, LEST THE LIGHT OF THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL OF CHRIST, WHO IS THE IMAGE OF GOD, SHOULD SHINE UNTO THEM. Jhn 12:35 Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the LIGHT with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. Jhn 12:36 While ye have LIGHT, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of LIGHT. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them. Eph 5:5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Eph 5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience. Eph 5:7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them. Eph 5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye LIGHT in the Lord: walk as children of LIGHT... Eph 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them. Eph 5:12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret. Eph 5:13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is LIGHT. Eph 5:14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee LIGHT. Eph 5:15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,Eph 5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Mat 5:14 Ye are the LIGHT of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid. Mat 5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Mat 5:16 Let your LIGHT so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
The heresy of universalism is one that has been dealt with and condemned by the Orthodox Church at the 5th Ecumenical Council it is also anti-scriptural. You can come up with all sorts of brilliant arguments as Dr. Hart has but at the end of the day what Christ revealed to us in the scriptures. Matthew 25:31-46 (Below) makes it clear that some will be condemned to"everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:" Matthew 25:41. Please do not be led astray by these ideas, remember that we have one life for repentance and I am afraid that thinking there is no such thing as eternal punishment could lead one into a slothful life. Further THE ANATHEMATISMS OF THE EMPEROR JUSTINIAN AGAINST ORIGEN.(1) (Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. v., col. 677.) "IX. 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 ( apokatastasis ) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema." 31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the [c]holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed,into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ 44 “Then they also will answer [d]Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” -Matthew 25:31-46
Acts 3:21 talks about the Apocatastasis. So Justinian condemns himself with his own words. So people like him saying Jesus saving everyone is heresy doesn’t hold any weight whatsoever
This anti Origen affair was very dirty one to say the least. Please investigate it carefully. It was very unjust AT least because it condemned the man who was a confessor and who already died CENTURIES before.
partial elliptical statements NEVER reach the wisdom of truth. NOT a great talk. His theodicy and eschatological theology/system are reactionary...rather than biblical.
afterlife... clearly. He seems to be advocating for heretical universal redemption or some form of Christian universalism... perhaps (I hope anyway) I am mistaken.
A dumpster You are easily shown to be wrong and heretical as well. 1. We don't need to redefine any such words because what you have done is ignored the absolute Holiness of God. 2. You are just as over simplistic as he (David B. Hart) is when comparing an earthly father who is a fellow sinner (and who is NOT Absolutely Holy and logical Judge) to the conceptual Creator creation relationship. IF you say, scripture does this... you are missing "not in this context" of being absolutely Holy and Righteous Judge Who will give perfect justice. 3. Your "transgressions committed in a finite period" ignores how the existence of these transgressions stay in the historical record from the temporary creation for all eternity. Logical payment or justice is obligated in response. 4. You are being monolithic with respect to eternal separation and specific punishment for exact actions. These are two distinct things. The permanent eternal separation from heaven and from God's affectionate fellowship involves both the Holiness of God and the tainted little creator in God's universe due to a result of freewill... the punishment of being judged for your works/actions/deeds is distinct from this. 5. You fail to understand how "good" it would be for GOD to throw demons into hell for their evil (maybe you don't believe in their existence). What makes you believe it is any less "good" for God to throw sinners into a place of permanent separation and punishment? 6. Because you view this incorrectly as an infinite punishment for a finite crime you are blinded to the multifaceted aspects of all that is taking place regarding the inability for an imperfect being to ever reach perfection, or the inability of a sinner to ever be able to reach full payment, the distinctions already given between separation and punishment, the eternal existence of a being created in God's Conscious Image, the acts of moral evil which eternally taint the freewill agent unless they are made Holy (and how faith is required IN THIS LIFETIME), etc. 7. You probably also buy into the corruption of the universal fatherhood concept rather than understanding the difference between disobedience slaves and those slaves who get adopted. the difference between wheat and tares, the difference between sheep and goats, the difference between friends and enemies.. etc. According to this heretical doctrine God has no enemies... the word completely loses its meaning. Universalism is completely discombobulated and it is easy to demonstrate. Next post.
A dumpster Ask yourself a simple question.... IF everyone is saved in the end... then how is there ever a thing called "salvation?" If there is "no opposite condition" of non-salvation in eternity... THEN what are you saved from? How is salvation demonstrated as anything other than inevitable fate as the end result???? If everyone is saved... then NO ONE is really "saved" (as in the word can't be used) because there is nothing "real" in eternity to actually be saved "FROM." No opposite condition of non-salvation... nor is it demonstrated. This is just one of the many dozens of discombobulations that exist as a result of the heresy of universal reconciliation. QUESTION EVERYTHING. Start asking some basic questions as to "how can you be rewarded for your works? in heaven? if the good works you did had to be done in some sort of temporary hell?? You can't please God out of fellowship with Him... so when are you storing up these treasures in heaven??? How can God have enemies if everyone ends up with the same inevitable fate?? And how is mercy or grace "contrasted" with non-mercy or non-grace? If everyone gets grace and no one gets justice (eternal logical justice for transgressing against a Holy God) then How do you identify what grace/mercy are as to distinguish it from inevitable fate that everyone gets??? How is it a gift? (we have to say "it" because we cant use the word "salvation" because there is nothing real in eternity to actually be saved from)? How is it a "meaningful gift" if it is inevitable fate that everyone gets because it is supposed to be righteous and just rather than being mercy and grace? If everyone gets this meaningful gift what do we "contrast" this gift with? Please be specific. We are just beginning to scratch the surface of this heresy. Demonic deceptions are always discombobulated when you question them.
A dumpster Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Identity, Westboro Baptist all have a system of interpretation as well, but it does NOT make the hermeneutic any less heretical... especially if the hermeneutic is the result of demonic deception. Question everything! (especially how a loving Creator can send the majority of people born to eternal separation and logical judgment.... yes... especially this)
why do th;e Scripture, the Fathers use the word heresy? what is Orthodox? why is heresy toxic, a condition which corrupts the soul and orthodoxy medicinal?
I'll have to agree with the comments;for me, to understand this, I may have to have a dictionary or just total unobstructed concentration to digest this. He even sounds like some atheists I've listened to, that love big words to gain attention and leave the conversation, only in their favor.
Don’t be among those that resent scholarly prose simply because it extends itself beyond their vocabulary. Rather, rejoice in the opportunity to learn some new words and expand your world.
@@paulearle5361 Works very well if that was my agenda to begin with. But, thanks anyway- rejoicing, expanding, and learning has worked well for me, also!
If you take a look at John 14:6 New King James Version 6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Doesn’t universalism provide another way other than Christ to come to the father?
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Thank God for David Bentley Hart.
Has anyone ever written or spoken more profoundly, or inspired a more deified vision than DBH? Happy to see you share my deep gratitude for his giftedness...
"The rationale of evangelization has been a desperate race to save as many souls as possible from.. God." Wow
That is so true, though.
Wow indeed.
Right
Save them from Satan really.
This lecture changed my view of everything. Thank you.
God bless David Bentley Hart
No matter how often I listen to him speak, my soul sings. How does he live with himself, interiorly seeing these things without ceasing?!
Whew!!...glad we got that all cleared up,.. for a second there I thought all this commotion about hell and eternal torment was going to be a real problem.
His language is such a refreshing break from the riff-raff you normally see on the Internet, or the over simplistic language of a fire and brimestone preacher clearly trying to "sell" faith in Christ, like a used car salesman, by using fear tactics to intimidate people into falling on their knees before Him. I actually saw a video of someone who claimed to go to hell and see it with his own eyes; complete with images of fire, deformed beings, shrieking noises, screams and cries of the "damned" who will wail there forever. This, of course, is deserved punishment because God is a good, just and sovereign God. Every single comment was "Dear God, please forgive me!" and "Praise the name of Jesus". Were all these people really seeking a love relationship with Jesus, or did they just see their life flash before their eyes? Is it really "love" when someone follows someone in fear? I like that Hart challenges these beliefs with sophisticated, elegant language. I am a software engineer with only a Bachelor's degree, and while I didn't understand every word he used, I could follow his meaning clearly. This is a very well done piece, and definitely one for my collection.
Sounds like God must live up to your standards of what real love is to really be loving/love? Isn't it God (who as creator is above us all in intellect, and foreknowledge) who knew what must come to pass for him to create us? Including what must come to pass for those that for all their lives refuse his love? We can't know what God saw in his foreknowledge and decisions. Therefore we can't judge God in what he has done, regardless of whether hell is eternal or not.
Now I don't perceive myself as the dullest knife in the drawer, but this bloke is way above my pay grade! 😱
fields of the nephilim ..lol
No, he talks that way on purpose...to sound superior.
@@MGW_Outdoors so you know him personally?
thank you for sharing - inspiring and helpful. Rightly identifies hyper-individualised concept of self underlying most defences of eternal suffering and an impoverished notion of freedom - as capacity to exist in a mythic, neutral space with a range of consumer choices before one. True freedom means the capacity and power to desire and embrace the good; to choose otherwise is indicative of freedom's absence (ask any addict).
He speaks beautifully and convincingly.
This is brilliant, but the language is a little opaque. I suppose I'd summarise the key idea as follows: God's choice to create was a free choice - we do not worship a Pantheistic God who is part of Nature, or a god who is one among many - we worship a God 'ontologically distinct' from creation, to use Hart's language. And we also worship a wholly good God. In this context, we must ask: is the eternal suffering of one creature, or even the 'risk' of the eternal suffering of one creature (for when the dice is thrown, that which is hazarded has already been surrendered) a wholly good choice of a wholly free being? Hart asks if the saved shouldn't see this creature as the scape-goat they could have been, their Christ? The doctrines of creation ex nihilio, of the goodness of God, and of the eternal damnation of any soul, are inconsistent, for how can creation be a good, free choice, if it is the choice to damn some (or to risk the damnation of some - again, this doesn't change the situation at all.) Hart stresses that this in some sense the 'infinite' evil of eternal damnation poses a far greater problem than the evil we see around us today: that while it may be possible that the future hope of the kingdom of God can somehow 'justify' temporary suffering, the same argument cannot be used to justify eternal suffering. He also insists that his universalism is linked to creation ex nihilio: if God's choice to create were not free, then perhaps he could reasonably settle for second best. But precisely because it was a free choice, God is morally responsible for every part of His creation. Finally, Hart insists his goal is not to judge God - he is merely questioning the validity of calling something 'good' which is clearly anything but good. When we talk of God, it is always in analogy, and words often only have limited meaning: but their meaning with regard to God should never be transparently opposite the meaning we would normally understand.
+Thomas Moore Very well put! Thank you.
+Thomas Moore, Many thanks for your fine summation and for the link to Hart's essay in the RO journal.
+Thomas Moore
What you and Hart don't understand is just what evil is and the great distance between good and evil. I didn't used to understand the eternity of hell either (and it's still a mystery), but I no longer have trouble accepting it.
It's the mystery of iniquity that St. Paul talks about. Once you are aware of the mystery of iniquity you will understand why hell is eternal -- not only that, but you will be GLAD that hell is eternal, and thank God for it.
St. Thomas explains that the reason hell is eternal is not so much that any one of our finite acts deserves an infinite punishment; it's that contained IN our finite acts is a TURNING AWAY FROM an infinite good: God. That is the true malice, the turning away from God.
Now I will tell you something that will make this easier to understand. There are people in this world, though they are very few, that understand perfectly well that God exists, they believe in Him with all their hearts, and yet they despise Him completely. Just as the life of a saint is a life of continual prayer, their lives are lives of continual blasphemy; just as God as his elites on the earth (the saints), so the devil has his elite servants too. The first thing they do in a morning is raise their souls up over and against God. These people are devil worshippers in the real and true sense of the word, in that they literally do pray to and worship the devil, and receive knowledge and power from him. These people love sin and death; they have a lust for corruption; they understand that hell is eternal and that all they would have to do to go to eternal heaven is bow before God, but they refuse to bow; they would prefer to burn in hell forever and ever just to spite their Creator, out of sheer malice. Do you understand? I think it might be impossible to understand this unless God Himself makes you understand. It's a kind of evil that is almost impossible to fathom. Try going back in history and looking at all the examples of human sacrifice (even newborn babies) to pagan "gods", and just ask yourself what spirit of evil was behind these abominations, and you should begin to understand the mystery of iniquity. These people go about the world converting souls to hell; they love to drag others into the pit with them. Most people that go to hell are like lost sheep that fall into hell by carelessness and vanity, but these are the true sons of Satan that throw themselves into hell willingly. Can you understand this level of malice? They have eternity before their eyes and they wish eternal damnation and fire for themselves and for others. This is why hell exists and why it is eternal.
I think the problem that you and Hart and people like you have is that you still have a somewhat Pelagian concept of evil where you think human beings are basically nice and evil is something people do by accident; you can't conceive of the malice of the wolf because you are more of a lamb.
+John Common
Thank you for your clear and honest response.
I actually agree with your analysis entirely. If hell is indeed eternal, if there are creatures God has created who shall forever chose to reject His love, then they must be 'slaves to their own sin'. They must have fully and completely rejected their creator, and all that is good in the world. As Christians, we cannot afford to treat evil lightly. Evil is more powerful than we can possibly imagine. It ensnares and entraps us in ways too subtle for us to understand. We must remember that the great panacea of evil, the cross of Christ, is itself a complete mystery to us: we cannot logically explain how the death of God has the power to draw out the poison of sin. And like cure, like cause; evil itself is above and beyond our complete vision.
But even when one understands the great power of evil to destroy the image of God in us, one can still hope that the power of God is greater still. This hope is always available, and always rational. I'm not going to start quoting scripture passages left, right and centre, but I am convinced that the first Christians believed that, at the very least, God hopes that all shall be saved. This possibility is there, and it is something we can hope and pray for too. David Hart argues something stronger: we have more than hope, and may make positive statements about the salvation of all people. I'm not sure how far I can follow this. Instinctively I read universalist passages in the New Testament as prophetic visions, rather than as doctrinal guides. Of course, that might be a meaningless distinction. But with Karl Barth, I don't feel comfortable constraining God by holding Him to things He hasn't promised with total explicitness: I have grounds for hope and trust, and that's enough for me.
You are correct that evil is indeed powerful. But the love of God is powerful too. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.
+Thomas Moore Thanks for your summary mate, I can understand that some critique Hart as being excessively verbose. However, this here, his message, I've actually been pondering deeply for a long time - what or where is "hell" and is it forever? Is it even metaphysically possible that a mind be in eternal torment? I don't know. That's a metaphysical question. Then of course is the moral question - God is the first cause - can human beings as agents be ascribed sufficient responsibility (freedom of the will) as to be totally independent from God's first act of creation?
I'll check out the full transcript and keep searching
This is the gent that has spent his whole life seeking answers to questions most do not ask...and even further he is within the 1% of that 1%...and yet....he is compelled and there is a place for it. That does not mean you cannot come to the same conclusions by other and from another talking head.
Best!
Lone Wolf 👏..gonna have to agree
Finally, a theologian who talks like The Architect from the Matrix.
This is the Facebook Comment of the Day 😏
All of creation is a theophany. I'm trying to read his book, That All Shall Be Saved. He uses a lot of words I've never heard before but I would like a simple version that I could share. I do believe there's good and bad in each of us and we are all on a journey.
I love DBH just wish I could understand him more. So many words where I’m just like huh
He seems overly concerned with impressing people, with coming across as intellectual wordsmith. To me it's hard to listen to the message because I get distracted with his constant use of unnecessarily verbiage.
Great talk. Thanks.
I’m very interested in what this man believes. I wish he spoke to lay people and not only to super intellectuals. I cannot imagine the masses actually being able to comprehend this. I am not well-read on DBH, I’m only just discovering him (tho I will be buying his books), but it does seem to me like he uses a ridiculously expansive vocabulary on purpose, as if teasing his listeners with arrogance. But that’s a speculation, like I said, I very much do not know him or his writings or personality.
God is what he does. But what he does is not God. Truly, truly sublime lecture.
Pretty hard to say you love your neighbor or as yourself when you think they are going to burn in hell and you don't care.
exactly... true psychopaths
Well, that's because Christians are brainwashed to be this way. This is why no one should be going to a building called church. And we should start studying the scriptures for ourselves. This is just my opinion.Any thoughts?
Such a profound talk. I probably should have read it rather than listened to it. Instead I had to constantly pause and go back and listen a sentence at a time. No fluff, no unnecessary wording here, just concentrated and powerful meaning and, dare I say, logic. His conclusion is unavoidable: if God created with even the possibility that some--even one--would endure eternal conscious torment, whether by their own choice or any other means, God could not be called good in any meaningful sense. In the end, God will reconcile all things to himself (Col 1).
I only disagree that free will (FW) is not an extremely important and determinative factor. Despite the problems understanding FW, we do see its necessity. Human responsibility and guilt become meaningless without it. By it we do create ourselves as good or evil, one with God or alienated from God. By it God allows us to eternally stain ourselves as one or the other. Revelation 14 speaks of the smoke of the torment of the damned rising up forever. It does not say they will be tormented forever, but rather our memory of their shame and suffering and final rebellion against God will never be lost. The smoke is an eternal memorial. After their punishment is over and they too come to know the summum bonum, the highest good of knowing God, then only one punishment, the punishment of bearing this shame, will remain. No, they won't be aware of it themselves, otherwise suffering will remain in the universe in some form, and that an infinitely good God cannot allow. In the end, all creation will be good and God will be all in all (1Cor 15.28).
Could you be a good person if you knew your child may end up as a serial killer after they are born? You after all brought that person into the world and the child did such heinous crimes because of it.
Such is the gamble when beings with some capacity for free agency are made. It's not God's fault his creatures reject his good purposes. It's the fault of the creatures not the creator.
@@prayunceasingly2029 Saint Julian of Norwich said God had revealed the following to her. He said, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner or things shall be well. For there is a force of love moving through the universe that holds us fast and will never let us go." We may be good no matter what happens when we understand God's overriding goodness and inalterable plans for us all.
Ex ni·hi·lo: Out of Nothing! So beautiful! Very nice approach and well framed argument. Love it.
Out of nothing viable? Like an artist who creates from the heart.
Lol, just when I started thinking I was smart.
"IT'S NOT THE LOGIC OF THE CLAIMS THAT BOTHER ME. IT'S THEIR MORAL HIDEOUSNESS." Wow! There is a line in the movie the matrix where neo is asked," ever feel like you are waking from a dream." The irony being he was waking from a dream. that is the essence of this mans rage at the truth of his statement. I love it.
Well if he is saying all is saved in the end that is a good God and a successful God.
Eternal torment is evil.
The sinner's being wiped out but not suffering for all eternity makes God a failure but more just.
So both eternal torment and the sinner's ceasing to exist has major problem's.
Eternal torment has moral problem's.
The sinner's just ceasing to exist the effectiveness of the cross.
@Boandlkramer Plus to answer your other question the narrow path is ruling with Christ in his earthy kingdom.
This is the path not everyone will find but in the end all People ends up in the same place.
The 1000 year rule is the reward and punishment phase.
After that is going to heaven for everyone but is not so much a reward.
This is If you go by the original Hebrew and Greek.
God gets his way in the end.
@@brianmonaghan4523 Well Christianity is a religion of the Roman Catholic church.
Plus why would God let Christian's preach eternal torment if not true ?
Their are ways of explaining it for starters maybe it's to make his true believers stand out.
Maybe it's to reveal in the end the corruption with in man that he would think God is as low as the lowest human nature.
Maybe God is a sadist like Christian's actually believe but will not say it themselves.
Maybe God intends on flipping all the evil in this world from religion politics and the human nature in general for the greater good of all people.
But if God is an eternal tormentor he sure is not good.
@@brianmonaghan4523 Well their could be a reason for that if it serves the purpose I mentioned plus youngs literal comcordant literal and ratherhams emphasised Bible is closer to the original Greek and Hebrew.
What makes sense about a loving and just God torturing people with out end ?
The answer is nothing about a loving God doing such a thing makes sense.
@@shanestrickland5006 God will have to bend the wills of the rebellious to have his will accomplished for their souls. Because they don't want him. The universalists sound similar to the calvinists, that God must supernaturally change the wills of his creatures so that they'll love him, to save them.
HOLY BASED
What distinguishes Christianity from other religions is it's utter rejection of idolatry. This is done by adhering to the maxim that God is ontologically other than His creation, expressed via creation ex nihilo. What DBH reveals here is that the notion of eternal hell necessarily brings God's essence into a contingent relationship with His creation, reducing Christianity to idolatry.
The text (or a version of it): journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/view/135/86
anyone know where the Luther quote about loved ones in hell may be found?
I'd like to know if the text of this is available. I've listened to it a number of times and would like to have the text to study.
+Anthony McCarthy yes. here: journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/view/135/75
+abc123754212 To someone who asks such a question, probably none. To someone who isn't satisfied with being an ignorant bigot, something more than that.
+abc123754212 Go read Bentley Hart's paper. Since I suspect that will be something you're unwilling to do it would be pointless of me to try to make any impact on your ignorance.
I'm surprised he'd have such a jerk for a colleague.
Everyone knows that scholars write papers so people won't read them and study what they've written.
********
I really don't even want to comment here. But for fear that some could fall victim to thinking that there is no true hell or wrath of God. I for one will stand with the Father's, Saints, and the scriptures which all agree that we just repent and that God's wrath and He'll are very real.
Does anyone have a digital link to this paper?
This is as close as I could find: journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/view/135
This is a better link: journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/download/135/86
The destruction of those who are lost may be the "very good" of God when taking into the awe-ful fact of man being made to be His sons and daughters, in His image.
Destruction meaning existing less than even before one was born. (Annihilationism)
He spends an awful lot of time justifying why God is good and not evil. Which is a direct contradiction to man being made in his image. God is evil, and that's okay. Only good is meaningless without the possibility of evil. It is fundamental for free will, to make choices, God couldn't have mercy unless he could cause damnation. I think it's explained rather crudely in A Clockwork Orange.
I am not sure that Orwell would have appreciated David Bentley's use of the English language, for he tends to reach for a rarely used word where a more familiar word would serve just as well.
It is difficult to follow. I am history teacher, with a graduate degree, two undergraduate degrees and some doctorate work, but struggle to follow his points. No denying his brilliancy though.
It's neither snobbish nor arbitrary, but remarkably effective. His style reminds me of GK Chesterton.
bayreuth79
Are you sure it may not be your lack of understanding to the nuance of definition between specific terms?
These points are normally important when describing theological perspectives and their differences.
Or the frequency of Latin
Yeah, that Orwell bit is the stupidest thing he ever said. Anyone into more advanced literature than Orwell sees how dumb it really is. Language is also for beauty, for example, or precision.
It's English, but I don't understand it. Why?
tl;dr he is saying that the idea of hell is morally repugnant and frankly, requires one to believe thing we would otherwise think are absurd. Hell isnt a place of eternal torment, it is a state of the suffering of a soul when it becomes separate from god. But basically once god reveals himself to people in his glory, they'll basically want to choose to be with him and will freely choose to be saved because the Good is inherently desirable to all rational moral agents
filthy steve
A year after posting this I read Aquinas’ treatise on happiness and finally understood Hart’s position. Thanks for the explanation, though.
ahhh, dunno..low IQ ?
I like Hart sometimes...but other times I find him to be intentionally speaking in a manner that elicits a sense of dumbfounded awe in the listener. That is to say he seems intent on being seen as the smartest guy in the room and seeks to reach this end by purposely invoking unnecessary vocabulary and word-chains so muddled and crowded it is like hacking your way through an overgrown forest. He knows this and enjoys it to the loss of others.
Um, maybe. Do you know him personally?
I just think of it like those “word a day” apps or calendars except this is free, doesn’t have ads, and I learn a new word every 5 seconds.
Read up bro
This, exactly this.
I used to feel the same way about Hart. It can be irritating, but after a while you get used to his effusive verbosity. It actually makes me laugh now, but it certainly helps that I agree with most of his views.
What's his views on Darwin I wonder? ..as I find life makes more sense with randomised acts, with a little help from survival of the fittest? ...as for heaven and hell, its a human construct I believe, ...was a Christian but asked too many questions, without good answers, if there is a God he knows what he'd need to do for me to believe in him, ...
where is this paper published ?
+Jesse Smith If you haven't already found it, look here: journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/view/135/75
Thank you
That’s just a link to the abstract. Here’s the actual article. journal.radicalorthodoxy.org/index.php/ROTPP/article/download/135/86
God is love, no one is lost forever, before the Bible was translated into Latin, forever punishment didn't exist in the original Koine Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, 1 Timothy 4:10 says
He is the Savior of “all people” and (especially) of those who believe, but we are to repent from sins, to be set apart from this evil and perverse generation, they are trying to deceive us, fear not the Kingdom of God is at hand, our battle is not against flesh and blood but the evil spirits, bad company still corrupts good character, protect your heart, keep away from evil, the word is a light for our feet, don’t worry cast those on Him, He says we are worth more than many sparrows,
Jesus said in Matthew 5:25
Reconcile quickly with your adversary, while you are still on the way (speaking of God) saying, you may be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will not get out “until” you have paid the (last penny)
"Aionon" means age, not forever with punishment, Jesus already has the keys of death and hades, hades is the realm of the dead, (with no torture in fire) same place as sheol, they translated four different words as one "hell" including gehenna, a judgment on earth, the outer darkness is temporary as well, in revelation 20:13 all of the
dead will come out of hades and the grave, then judged for everything good and bad they have ever done, no one can be there forever it won't exist anymore, after is the lake of fire, it’s not a literal lake of fire, nor is it forever, it’s the second death, for whose names aren't in the book of life, we also have two deaths one in our baptism with Christ, it shows them including unbelievers on the "outside" of the kingdom, after it's done talking about the lake of fire, the word in greek is "exo" used 63 times in the Bible and never once for dead, God called the (slavery in Egypt) an
"iron smelting furnace" but satan is deceiving the nations, (universal reconciliation)
is the truth, to help tell others, either way you are loved, He will be “all in all” shine with purity, and good fruit, obey and love God, also your neighbor as yourself, strive to not lose your full reward, (The total victory of Christ) on TH-cam has the answers.
Apocatstacies nuff said.
10:01: "God proves himself just by showing mercy upon all" (ie., in the last judgement). So universal salvation is an act of God's justice? Not sure I understand that. In what respect would universal salvation be an act of divine "justice"?
The idea is that 1. God called finite creatures into existence. 2. Finite creatures will fail to be perfect. 3. Eternally punishing someone for losing at a rigged game is not justice.
@@23Hiya , that's a good point. Thank you
The Psalmist in the Old Testament says that God's mercy endures forever and in the New Testament James says that Mercy triumphs over judgement.
Instead of abolishing the idea of "hell" altogether, would it not be preferable to reinterpret hell (as, for instance, purgatorial)? I imagine that, for not a few people, the idea of God would be, at least initially, as repulsive after death as was before death. What would be the point of translating them immediately to heaven? Presumably that, for them, would be a kind of hell. Perhaps hell, as a short-term solution at least, might be preferable, until they get used to the idea of an eternity in heaven.
That’s DBH’s position. Hell is purgatorial.
The universalist view that Hart advocates does not abolish hell altogether. In the end, hell will be abolished; but there is such a thing as the refiner's fire, which Paul and Revelation speak of, and we all pass through it. But it comes to an end, and it is then that God will be "all in all."
@@drewcoope this world is such a great refiners fire lol
@@christopherlin4078 I like that idea, yet maybe not *merely* this world. Rather, the spiritual and earthly planes overlap. Just as we begin living within the kingdom of God as we enter into the life of God through the Church, so too we are in hell already in this life, in this body, to the degree that we are deprived of such participation in the divine.
@@drewcoope you have it down to a letter. heaven and hell is primarily psychological.
Anything that's forever....you'll get used to it, be it hell or heaven.
curiosity 2019 that’s a ridiculous way to think. There is absolutely no love in that statement, thinking people will get used to an eternal furnace and being ok with it. Repent my friend.
@@thomasdillon5416 and by the way, there is no evidence of any heaven or hell. If they exist, it's only in the crazy imagination of the human hallucinatory mind.
@@thomasdillon5416 imagine being in eternal hell for trillions of years unending. What matter burns for eternity. What is the chemical name for that matter that can burn forever? I would love to know.
curiosity 2019 hell isn’t real.
@@thomasdillon5416 That's correct.
The Bible is extensively clear that the suffering of the nunrepentant is not eternal. It tells us a great many times in both the old Testament and New Testament that the end of them will be complete destruction and non-existence. It does so perhaps 100 or more times. Never does it state that the suffering will be eternal.
The wicked will be destroyed . . .
Psalms 145[20] The LORD preserveth all them that love him: but all the wicked will he destroy.
Job21[30] That the wicked is reserved to the day of destruction? they shall be brought forth to the day of wrath.
Isa13[6] Howl ye; for the day of the LORD is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty.
Joel1[15] Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.
1Corinthians5[4] In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together, and my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ,[5] To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.
. . .like the OT sacrifices . . .
Leviticus 9[24] And there came a fire out from before the LORD, and consumed ('a^kal) upon the altar the burnt offering and the fat: which when all the people saw, they shouted, and fell on their faces. 'a^kal (aw-kal'): to eat (literally or figuratively): burn up, consume, devour, dine, eat, feed
. . . they will be consumed because they become their own sacrifice to God since they do not have the lamb of God to take away their sins . . .
Psalms37[20] But the wicked shall perish (ka^la^h), and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away. ka^la^h (kaw-law') A primitive root; to end, whether intransitively (to cease, be finished, perish) or transitively (to complete, prepare, consume): - accomplish, cease, consume (away), determine, destroy (utterly), be (when . . . were) done, (be an) end (of), expire, (cause to) fail, faint, finish, fulfil, X fully, X have, leave (off), long, bring to pass, wholly reap, make clean riddance, spend, quite take away, waste.
Pss.21[9] Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven in the time of thine anger: the LORD shall swallow them up in his wrath, and the fire shall devour them.
. . . and consumed, nothing will be left of them. They will exist no more . . .
Malachi4[1] For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
. . . because the wages of sin is death, not eternal life in torment . . .
2Tim2[18] Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already; and overthrow the faith of some.
Ezekiel 18 [20] The soul that sinneth, it shall die [mu^th]. mu^th; to die (literally or figuratively); causatively to kill: - X at all, X crying, (be) dead (body, man, one), (put to, worthy of) death, destroy (-er), (cause to, be like to, must) die, kill, necro [-mancer], X must needs, slay, X surely, X very suddenly, X in [no] wise.
Matthew10[28] And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
Romans6[23] For the wages of sin is death [thanatos]; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. thanatos; (properly an adjective used as a noun) death (literally or figuratively): - X deadly, (be . . .) death.
. . . because God is a consuming fire says the OT and the NT . . .
Old Testament: Deuteronomy4[24] For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.
New Testament: Hebrews2[29] For our God is a consuming fire.
Psalms68[2] As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.
and that fire wherein their spirit will die, after their bodies have long since died is a lake of fire . .
Job4[8] Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.[9] By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.
They will die the death of the soul (Ezekiel 18 [20] The soul that sinneth, it shall die.) because the 1st death is common to all, the death of the flesh:
Revelation20[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
Revelation 21[8] But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.
Revelation 20[10] And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever ().[14] And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.[15] And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.
eis aion aion means: "into age age" which translates literally as "into an age long age" or "a long age". This is a finite measure of time because they will be CONSUMED, DESTROYED, AND (Malaki 1) "it shall leave them neither root nor branch."
Please try to accept what the Bible actually says about it. We are all taught a lie by pastors. The Bible itself teaches something very different from what is told to us by them.
Well ceasing to exist i can get behind if true.
But endles suffering hell to the no.
Despite ceasing to exist would watter down the effectiveness of the cross would be fare more just.
Yes. Bible seems clear that Gehenna is annihilation of the wicked.
This is a misinterpretation of Scripture. The annihilation of the wicked is not ontological but spiritual. Sinners will actually perish in the age to come, but will do so as sinners so as to live as saints, once purified from sin. This is the transformation of sinners into saints, not the annihilation of sinners as creatures (God doesn't create in vain!). What will perish ontologically is rather evil itself, which was not created by God.
I used to agree that if God knew even one person would go to hell, the desire to forestall that horror should prevent him from creating anyone. But it occurred to me that that meant God was letting the evil hold the good hostage: many would be denied the Beatific Vision because someone who had CHOSEN SIN would otherwise suffer. So I no longer think that the suffering of sinners precludes the creation of saints.
As for the inherent injustice of eternal punishment, that depends on the experience of the person being punished. We say “eternal punishment ” and imagine a quintillion millennia of pain, just for starters -an unendurable prospect. But if hell is outside of time as we know it, it may be a perpetual present, with no sense of prolonged pain. It may always seem to be happening for the first time. Or more likely, it’s something we can’t really imagine now. In any case, neither of these arguments seems very persuasive to me.
If you take a look at
John 14:6
New King James Version
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Doesn’t universalism provide another way other than Christ to come to the father?
DBH is clearly an Academic of great knowledge.. It would be great though if he didn't speak as though he was speaking to his piers who understand his language. Its as though he really doesn't want to be understood. Its a little frustrating. Please keep it simple.
Really? I’m not a scholar but I would invite you to not be among those that resent scholarly prose simply because it extends itself beyond their vocabulary. Rather, rejoice in the opportunity to learn some new words and expand your world.
Yes request the text. In all honesty, I am not an uneducated individual having a graduate degree and two undergraduate degrees, but I find it difficult to follow Hart. You have can have more degrees than a thermometer, but something can be said for plain speech.
That's it. Having a degree makes you intelligent. Now I can see the limitations of your mind. You don't set the bar very high. Must I name all of the geniuses whom made scientific discoveries without degrees? Just because some of us didn't decide to succumb to the thievery that is school loans doesn't mean that we lack intelligence. We just choose to do our own research on things that matter most to us, like say, astrophysics and quantum mechanics. Not to mention it's easier to find actual facts when you aren't looking through a school system that was originally built by theists.
Where did I say a degree makes you intelligent ? I must have missed that part. Of course there a lot of self-educated people out there that outperform University graduates. My point was that Hart's vocabulary makes his message opaque to many. Even when I understand the word and its context, I find myself dwelling on it and missing the next couple of sentences.
Yes, indeed. He doesn't speak in laymen's terms. It makes it easier to deceive lesser educated people. Same thing the missionaries did to the Africans when they came to enslave them using Christianity.
I am for plain speech, and often suspect that when do not use plain speech it's because of a lack of understanding. On the other hand the purpose of speech is communication, and some ideas may be so uncommon that communication suffers when they are expressed using common words. Finally it seems that here Hart is giving a lecture to people for whom the words he uses are not as uncommon as for the majority of us. Incidentally, does anybody know where he gave that speech?
icl.nd.edu/events/creation-out-of-nothing-origins-and-contemporary-significance/ The talk was at Notre Dame it would seem.
Hart mentions Romans 5:18 as a verse that supports the idea of universalism. However, it also seems to support the idea of original sin and inherited guilt which Hart is openly and clearly against.
All Romans 5:18 says is that Adam's sin leads to condemnation for all; it doesn't say that all are condemned for Adam's sin.
@@thetasteofwater918 I'm sorry but I don't quite see how the first statement differs from the second statement.
@@sgt7 What I meant by the first statement is that Adam's did something (i.e. introducing corruption into the world) that rendered every human being sinning inevitable, and each person's own sin is is the ground of their condemnation - even though Adam's sin rendered this outcome inevitable. The second statement means that God considers each person guilty of Adam's sin, and that they are subsequently condemned for Adam's sin, even if they haven't or will not sin themselves.
@@thetasteofwater918 Ok that's a logical distinction. But surely you're not suggesting that any of those claims represent a just judgment. In both cases, one is condemned on the basis of something that was beyond their control. Surely you can only be considered blameworthy if there was a reasonable possibility for you to act otherwise (especially when the punishment is something as horrifying as hell).
@@sgt7 Well, since I believe God's justice and punishments are restorative and aim at our good, I can't really see it as unjust for God to punish us for sins we couldn't avoid, since the purpose of those punishments is deliver us from the conditions that render our sinning inevitable.
But, if God's justice were retributive, and he punished not to restore and correct but merely to cause suffering, then I think it would be unjust for God to punish us for sins we couldn't avoid.
Does this kind of thinking make moral values meaningless? It seems to me that even if we are murdering we are in some way seeking God. Is not every action a movement toward that transcendental end? I simply do not understand why, if its all the same in the end (that we are all granted infinite grace and so entrance into the Kingdom of heaven), that we would continue to be moral. What is the motivation to be "good" if not the reward of God's presence?
There's simply no way I am understanding this correctly. To me, if universal salvation is true, then moral values make no sense. But, if Universalism is false, then I cannot make sense of what Scripture is teaching. It seems to be the only answer and yet it makes no sense to me. I do not understand what the bible teaches about salvation. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
SuperProben- I agree with you one hundred percent that universalism makes moral values, if not meaningless, at least unimportant in the long run. “That’s okay, Adolph. No harm no foul!” Him and the Devil too, evidently.
Personally, I think that Hart and everyone else who wrings his hands over theodicy is looking up through the wrong end of the telescope. It does vaunt the ego, though, for mere mortals to feign the ability to judge an eternal God.
There is an unmentioned predicate in the notion that, for God to be judged just, all must be saved. Namely “the immortality of the soul,” which by definition requires that the unsaved-ones suffer separation from God eternally, along with whatever torments go along with that state -- a notion that is trivially easy to refute via Ethics 101.
But what if the soul is not immortal? It could be that The Preacher knew what he was preaching about when he preached:
“I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” (Ecclesiastes 3.18-20)
And it may be that the Psalmist put the truth to music when he sang:
“His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” (Psalm 146.4)
And perhaps the Apostle Paul was correct when he predicated our hope of future life, not on “the immortality of the soul,” but on the resurrection of the dead:
"Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished (apollumi). If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." (I Corinthians 15.12-19)
If the first death without a resurrection of the dead means perishing, then what does the judgment of a second death, upon the resurrected dead “according to their works,” entail? It’s a logical question, biblically.
John 3.16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish (apollumi), but have everlasting life.”
I’m no scholar, but from what I can ascertain, the Greek word for “perish,” apollumi, cannot be made synonymous with “eternal torment” by anyone other than a theologian who is more interested in protecting his theological home base of “the immortality of the soul” than he is about correctly ascertaining the plain meaning of the words in the text. Otherwise, “perish” simply means “perish.”
I would contend that, looking up through the correct end of the telescope, Christ’s sacrifice represents a rescue effort directed at a species that would have otherwise gone wholly extinct, and justly so. And that without that rescue effort, God would be no more morally culpable for allowing homo sapiens to go extinct than He is for allowing Velociraptor mongoliensis to go extinct.
Because you see, it is elementary. That if in the end God is just to all, rescue effort or no rescue effort, He can be held “morally accountable” by none.
Haha, as if. No. “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." (Ephesians 2.4-7)
How to receive this salvation? "…if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed." (Romans 10.9-11)
Simple as that.
Thanks for the reply! It seems to me that you're talking, in some way, of the annihilation of the soul. So it would seem that our punishment for not responding to general revelation (or special revelation through Jesus) would not be an eternal place of conscious torment, but of simple 'perishing' . Going back to the Greek, I totally agree with you. The same mistakes are made in Timothy and Thessalonians. But that just raises more questions: could I live my life as a Stalin, enjoy all the simple pleasures that life affords, and then simply be on my way without any ultimate punishment? Is my only motivation for being moral the ability to continue being conscious (perhaps not MERELY conscious, but aware of God which I am sure is "better" than just being aware). It still does not make much sense. I guess I like Gregory of Nyssa's concept of Hell; that is, separation from God and the pruning of sin so make one pure again so that God can be "all in all". The word used for Hell a lot of times refers to the process of cutting dead leaves off a plant so it can grow bigger and better fruit. I think hell will simply be a cleansing process whereby we are sent for a period of time according to our sins (But this contradicts many places of scripture).
I still cannot come to grasp that God will "defeat evil" and yet some will still be left in Hell. Will He not also overcome Hell?
SuperProben- Thank you for your original post and for this reply. I know a lot of people, Christian and non-Christian. But I only know a handful who like to engage, like I do, in mutually-respectful but candid discussions about the Bible and spiritual matters. So I appreciate it.
What I cannot grasp is a New Heaven and a New Earth where, "there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away" (Revelation 21:4). But evidently, if the small "o" orthodox in the West are correct, that “sorrow, crying and pain” thing won’t have passed away completely because of this other place called Hell. A place that, apparently, we will be able to visit and amuse ourselves by denying the tormented ice water. So I'm glad I don't have to try to grasp it anymore, because it is wrong.
As far as the “annihilation of the soul,” I am talking more specifically about the “mortality of the soul.” And clearly, I hardly came up with the concept myself. I believe that is what the scriptures I cited and God’s Word overall teach. I was churched, growing up, to believe the opposite. But I really didn’t have a problem changing my outlook when I got more light. So it has been surprising to me, over the years, how difficult it is for people to accept a concept that is as simple and self-evident as mortality. Not to mention how they fail to realize that they are discounting the monumental nature of God’s solution to mortality, which is the resurrection of the dead beginning with our Lord and Savior.
For instance, it looks to me like the heterodoxy of “Annihilationism” is making a comeback. But to protect some semblance of “immortality of the soul,” I have noticed its adherents changing the theological designation to “Conditional Immortality.” I don’t know where “this mortal must put on immortality” got lost in their deliberations, since I don’t think the Apostle Paul is talking about putting on immortality by dying in I Corinthians 15.53.
You wrote, “But that just raises more questions: could I live my life as a Stalin, enjoy all the simple pleasures that life affords, and then simply be on my way without any ultimate punishment?”
Before I get to specifics, allow me a small digression. When it comes to God’s justice - or any subject in God’s Word - I have noticed a particular logical fallacy that comes up often, which I need to avoid in my thinking. It is called the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle or the False Dilemma.
I ran into it, most memorably, when studying what to believe about the authority of scripture. And I fell for it, for far too long, when pondering the construct: "If the Bible is the Word of God, then it must be inerrant and it must be literal." Until one day I realized that neither “inerrant” or “literal” are words that the scripture uses to describe itself. Rather, most notably I think, in II Timothy 3.16 it describes itself: “All scripture God-breathed,” theopneustos. So if it turns out that Genesis 1-11 contains figurative records that were never meant to be taken as literal fact, that doesn’t affect my belief that the Bible is God-breathed in the slightest. And no one who has enjoyed the truths of life brought forth in literary fiction, which is wholly made up by the minds of men, could have a problem with that position either.
Same thing goes for your term “ultimate punishment.” Does that have to be eternal torment? Sez who? The dilemma between "eternal torment or nothing" is a false one. Which to my mind brings up a more valid question, which is, if the unjust are annihilated in the end anyway, why bother raising them from the dead?
I believe that the scriptural answer relates to what men will be judged by on that Great Day - that they will be judged according to their works. This standard of judgment is over the place, actually. To cut and paste from my likely-incomplete list: Psalm 28.4, Proverbs 24.12, Isaiah 59.18, Jeremiah 25.14, Matthew 11.22,24, 12.36, 16.27, Mark 6.11, Romans 2.5,6, 14.10,12, II Corinthians 5.10, 11.16, II Timothy 4.14, I Peter 4.5, I John 4.15, Revelation 2.23, 18.6, 20.12,13.
So if God is going to raise the unjust from the dead to judge them according to their works, that means axiomatically that they have more to answer for before a righteous God than what their annihilation by the first death answers for.
I suppose that I can be pigeon-holed as an Annihilationist, with which tag I would aver that neither I nor any of my fellows - of those I have ever run into anyway - claims that there will be no torment of the unjust. Simply that it will not be a never-ending torment, but rather, a just punishment according to their works.
As far as the Ethics 101 objections that David Bentley Hart touches on in this recording, it is inherent in the Lord’s metaphor in Matthew 7.13-14 that most of the descendents of Adam are going to enter in through the wide gate. Including, for instance, both an infant that was annihilated in the atom bomb that hit Hiroshima and the Emperor of Japan who is arguably culpable for putting that baby in that position. Will both be raised and annihilated by a second death, or even more horrifically, “tormented day and night for ever and ever, world without end, amen”?
The only answer I can find, in scriptures related to the resurrection of the unjust, is deliberately ambiguous. Revelation 20.15 says, “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.” To which I can only say, if scripture is deliberately ambiguous on a subject, I don’t mind being ambiguous either. As to why God is ambiguous on this subject, it’s really none of my business. We’ll find out when we get there. Even though I suppose I could speculate on situations like that of Andrea Yates, but surely I have prattled on long enough…
That many paths lead to the same destination does not mean that all paths are the same. On the contrary, one of these paths is the straight one, some are close to the straight one, and many are just far from straight, but long and winding and stupid ones.
Jeff Stanley Thanks for your reply (which was pleasantly absent of any connotations).
I think what you're talking about is the now heretical view of hell which Gregory of Nyssa imagined (by imagined I just mean he used a sort of thought experiment to visualize). Gregory said something to the effect of "those who build their houses with twigs and leaves will be consumed in the cleansing fire, but those who build their houses upon the foundation of spirituality will pass unscathed by the terrible flames."
He's basically saying what you said; that is, you will be judged according to your spiritual works (what you build your house with).
I think that an infinite Hell of conscious torment can only be reserved for those who truly do not want to be with God (which I would think impossible, since who wouldn't want to be with infinite goodness?). Hell is really just a place absent of God's active presence. It would be like strolling into an art gallery and being totally unable to find anything beautiful or good (since, as DVH says, we are always looking past a painting to a transcendental end; that is, God). Remove God's active presence and bam. Everything is miserable and unbearable.
This view of hell actually totally jives with God's perfect justice. On the other view of hell (eternal torment) we are punished eternally for finite crimes. On your view we are given our just punishment and then admitted into heaven (given our resurrection bodies). However, I am puzzled as to where Jesus fits into all of this. Why is it that we are punished even though Jesus wiped away the sins of "all men"? Why are we not all seen as holy in God's eyes? Why must we pass through the wide gate at all? Why are we not simply forgiven and then offered admittance into heaven via Jesus' sacrifice? It begs the question as to WHAT we are being punished for since Jesus' did away with the sins of man (or so I think He did).
In the end, I cannot bring myself to believe in an eternal place of torment (such a concept makes little sense of the scriptural data). I think that those who are truly regenerate in Christ will be fully reconciled to Him and those who are not will either perish or be cleansed (according to their spiritual works). If all of them is not spiritual, then all of them will perish. If some of them is spiritual then some of them will come out on the other side of that wide gate ("them" refers to an individual in this these sentences).
I still have much to read on the matter (and the literature is not what one would call slim on this subject). Here's to hoping that the Holy Spirit will guide me in my studies and bring me to a greater knowledge of Him.
SO WHAT IS HIS ANSWER ABOUT HELL AND UNIVERSALISM??
That hell is not real, and universal reconciliation in the ages to come is real.
Actually, his position is somewhat different. Following Gregory of Nyssa, he holds that hell is real but not permanent and is for the purification of the soul. For example, Gregory, in comparing the soul to gold, writes that, "For it is as when some worthless material has been mixed with gold, and the gold-refiners burn up the foreign and refuse part in the consuming fire, and so restore the more precious substance to its natural lustre: (not that the separation is effected without difficulty, for it takes time for the fire by its melting force to cause the baser matter to disappear; but for all that, this melting away of the actual thing that was embedded in it to the injury of its beauty is a kind of healing of the gold.) In the same way when death, and corruption, and darkness, and every other offshoot of evil had grown into the nature of the author of evil, the approach of the Divine power, acting like fire, and making that unnatural accretion to disappear, thus by purgation of the evil becomes a blessing to that nature, though the separation is agonizing."
Howdy, I was just wondering where (what book or passage) Gregory says this? Thanks!
+c dutt I don't know the answer to your question, but you can probably find it at Tentmaker dot org, a website dedicated to this specific issue.
He writes this in the Great Catechism.
I have yet to understand a word that comes out of this mans mouth it's like listing to a closely familiar language that isn't quite English but is, I really want to understand what he says but I would need a dictionary by me and three hours just to listen to a 30 minute message. I just wish he would speak more clearly for the common folk.
TheGodGagsta I absolutely know what you mean, he sometimes speaks as if everyone is a PHD, his book Beauty Of The Infinite, was almost unreadable, I think I liked it but you had to know greek to fully understand it, however his book Experience Of God was a lot more excessable. Hart may be too smart!
Protos Telos I think David wants to impress, and he does, but goodness a smart person should be able to relate to the common thinker, I agree. But I love Hart.
Are you implying DBH is an amateur?
TheGodGagsta I think he’s just highly eccentric, highly educated, and using the most precise language he know how. He’s not a show off, he’s an academic. He’s usually not talking to a popular audience.
@@elijahbachrach6579 please make your own video and show us how its done.
The thesis sounds Stoic. Per the Stoics, "Zeus" creates all from himself, and to Zeus all things return. Except, that Hart maintains a strict Creator/creature difference, unlike the Stoics. But, God spends so much time warning us about the final judgment and Hell/the lake of fire, that I'll stick with God's revelation in Scripture, even if human language is constrained and even if there are secrets not revealed in language, hoping for Heaven, dreading the thought of Hell and desiring to be with God in such a way that Holy Eucharist is the most perfect expression in our time.
Stoic apokatastasis is about cyclical worlds, an infinite series of aeons where each aeon is identical to all the others. Very different from Christian apokatastasis.
In order to scare Hell doesn't have to be eternal (see for example the end of Gregory of nyssa's On the soul and the resurrection).
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ Λόγος, καὶ ὁ Λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν Θεόν, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος
Sound MUCH more stoic
Forever
I wonder if he has ever heard himself talk....
And I thought obscurantism was a postmodern thing only...
Say what, David?
I would agree that Hart's language is difficult to understand and he perhaps needs to consider his audience more. However, I would disagree that Hart is an obscurantist. An obscurantist is someone who has no content and tries to hide this using technical words. The more you dig the more confusing it gets because there is nothing of real meaning to pin down.
Hart makes very specific points and if you give it time his ideas become clearer. His technical language allows him to express his ideas more accurately. Nevertheless, I think he needs to tone it down a bit. He has something valuable to say and he should therefore make this accessible.
Jesus, in horror-able realization, has said in regards to the one who betrayed Him, "It would have been better if he had never been born."
jamie Russell One of the most inconceivably difficult and heartbreaking comments I've ever read from the Saviour of mankind.
This may shed some light: bible-truths.com/JudasNotBorn.htm
Love would never say that
If one dies as an unbeliever or not a genuine believer, he will suffer torment in the outer darkness, a holding place, for an eternity-like time, as this person has no idea about the things of God.
At the appointed time he will be brought out of it to face the white throne judgement.
If his name was found in the book of life or Christ Grace and Mercy is in effect based on the deeds he had done accdg to the records on the books that will be opened, or he calls upon the name of the Lord, repents, and beg for His mercy, he will be saved. Otherwise, turning out to be arrogant (did I not prophesy? Blah blah) and accusing and cursing God of being unjust for letting him go through the torment in the outer darkness,, he will be thrown in the lake of fire to be totally destroyed and will cease to exist.
Eden then will be restored, and rebellion will be no more, as people learned from their refinement experience in the outer darkness, and seeing the smoke of destruction rising forever from afar as a reminder.
It also states in Revelation that 'every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord'. Doesn't that sound like an affirmation of faith?
15:33 This is evidence to me that DBH needs to be more critically listened to. I was very interested in this quote and I have come to conclude that Calvin never said it. DBH is mistaken. If you can find the source for this quote please post it, but I believe DBH heard it somewhere and has mistakenly attributed it to Calvin (I think it might even be Augustine referring to unbaptised infants). What I have found though, is very clear teaching of Calvin to the contrary. Here is a quote with source: “I do not doubt that the infants whom the Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret operation of the Holy Spirit.” (Amsterdam edition of Calvin’s works, 8:522). “I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from their mothers’ arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be universally detested.” (Institutes, Book 4, p.335). And very clear evidence to very poor scholarship on DBH's part.
You believe Reformed theology allows for infants to be saved? How?
Is it possible that he is quoting either a younger Calvin out an older one? People, even theologians, change views. For example, Dr Ramelli has shown that a younger Augustine was a universalist.
@@cherryswirlchale9511 Everything is possible. But without evidence it is hardly a fact. Not hard to do. Just provide a source. Otherwise you can say anything about anyone because "it's possible".
I can't hear this guy
The idea of a god who has free choice is based upon the belief that humans have free choice.
From the beginnings, the idea of "free will" has flowed from the question of moral responsibility. That we deserved the praise we receive when we act well, and the opprobrim and punishment when we do well.
The whole thing is one big Argumentum ad consequentiam. Humans don't seem to have anything like free will the more we look. We can do what we want, but we can't want what we want. Resisting the impulses we have is not choosing freely. All control of desire comes from marshalling other desires. I want to cheat on my wife and satisfy desires but I also care for my children and don't want to blow my life up. Those desires can aid me to deny other desires. More and more research shows that when we think about and reason on things we desire we often don't even become consciously aware of information presented to us that would contradict the reasons we give ourselves to pursue what we want. We have inbuilt cognitive biases to accept as true information that conforms to what we wish to believe and discount what would force us to reconsider.
It is an illusion that we are free to even think what we might wish to think.
If we don't even know what we're talking about when we talk about choice how can you even begin to start talking about a god's choices?
What does ex nihilo even mean? Nothing? The absense of all things? Before creation there was god and there was nothing? What is that? Was nothing uncreated? Does it just mean the lack of thing-ness to anything. So god wasn't everything? There was god AND there was nothing, and god fashioned something out of nothing? Is this just a dodge to avoid pantheism, that god created out of god's own being? After all things are just human conceptions. It's all just continuous ruminating on concepts that are very wooly and assumed to have some grounding in reality.
Let's all just start by assuming there is truth in the Bible and go from there, seems to be the order of the day. Start with a conclusion and then build up evidence that appears to support that conclusion. Yeah, good job.
Lambent Ichor The big bang.
Saying the Big Bang answers nothing. From the observations we can make and what we've discovered about Physics there are multiple hypotheses about how this universe began, what kind of universe we find ourselves in, etc.
Combining mathematical models with observations to develop workable theories of how the Universe came to be seems to show a universe that began small and is expanding. We can't say yet whether the Universe will expand forever, or whether it will someday stop, turn around, and collapse. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the universe began out of nothing. No evidence for that.
" Is this just a dodge to avoid pantheism, that god created out of god's own being? " I suspect it is, although there's no good reason to conclude, as most Christian theologians seem to do, that God's creating out of his own being must necessarily yield pantheism.
Ex Nihilo - out of nothing isn't that hard, don't complicate. You don't have to assume there was god and only nothing. To Create out of nothing is just that. Imagine a wizard that can just summon something out of nothing, as opposed to an alchemist that transforms materials from one to another.
And your last sentence is how all deductions work. We start with an idea and then build the evidence. Otherwise, you would have no comprehension. At some point you have to have a theory (conclusion), then build the evidence to support it or deny it. Right? Your confusing blind belief and using only evidence that supports a theory. Scientists do it all the time, and religious fanatics, and everyone of us.
Mr. Hart is echoing your conclusion that humans don't have free will so I don't think we assume god has free will based on human free will. He has free will because he is the creator.
The axe doesn't tell the woodcutter what tree to chop. the opposite. Which is great news, because Hart is saying that all will be destined for salvation. The human will cannot ultimately oppose god's will.
Just because you can imagine something doesn't mean it is based in reality. Saying imagine a wizard creating out of nothing is just nonsense. I can say just imagine a square circle and it amounts to the same thing.
Saying a string of words that make grammatical sense doesn't imbue a sentence with real meaning.
You have no evidence a god exists. You only have evidence that beings like us exist. No humans begin with an understanding that God exists and then from that assume the existence of human beings. You have it exactly backwards, Humans began with experience of the animate and inanimate things in the world and then assume the existence of another kinds of beings, spirits. Then over time those ideas of spirits evolved into gods. Then eventually you got monotheism.
You start by assuming there's a god, and then you elaborate on the nature of that god. That is what we have evidence for.
This guy is good, but too complicated, big words, and way over a child's head. Truth is simple, so, that a child can understand; a young adult can understand. All was created BYn Him, Through Him, and FOR Him - He Christ is the HEIR TO ALL. Very simple! All will be drawn into being saved.
Bueller.... Bueller....
With all due respect to the learned doctors of theology, I think most Christians will search the scriptures for their answers and not place their trust in abstract reasoning about YHWH.
And that's exactly the problem, isn't it
Lost me at the title! The question is what has God revealed and said about hell in His Holy Word!?
Further, Bentley's argument tries to bifurcate Gods actions from His Essence! See, God IS LOVE. Every action of God, creation, fall, redemption and consummation as elucidated in the Bible must needs be filtered thru that which He has been and is from all eternity: Love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit! The Bible reveals God's Love expressed toward consonance with His Love as favor prosperity , life and blessing but dissonance with His Love the obverse of the aforementioned!
David has formed a god that he is fully familiar with and that is a problem! He has ignored Jesus' many warnings about overcoming and fidelity to Him in the Bible!
Oh yeah hes trying to ruin all our fun. Watching the vast majority of Jews that died in the holocaust burn up like a torch in Neros garden forever that what Jesus is all about baby. And maybe he will let us poke them with a stick. Wow and I can be holier then god and still treat people like crap in the traditional Christian approach. Move on nothing to see here.
Read the second meditation in DBH's That All Shall Be Saved, or Jersak's Her Gates Will Not Be Shut. Plenty of scripture to support Hart's position here.
@@stopwhinning All our fun? God is a God of Justice who "observes trouble and grief to Repay it by His Hand!"-Psalm 10. Justice will be had.
However, those who marry Evil in no way will be saved. That's utter nonsense and is ahistorical. I'm an Orthodox Christian and can tell you that Bentley's view of Salvation doesn't align with Holy Tradition. It is well meaning but doesn't align.
John Chapter 3 tells us what the condemnation is...Jesus Himself enlightens us with His Blessed Words. Bentley is Wrong!
PAY GREAT ATTENTION TO THESE VERSES, DO NOT LET ANY MAN STEAL YOUR CROWN! Rev 3:11
Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.
Jas 1:12 Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.
2Ti 3:1-17 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.
But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.
But thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, charity, patience,
Persecutions, afflictions, which came unto me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured: but out of them all the Lord delivered me.
Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived.
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.
I would like to see this guy debate someone like Sam Harris. It'd be interesting to see how his false claims which have no substance are shut down.
Well.... What false claims ? Do not leave us in suspense, do tell.
How about the fact that you cannot fill in a blank with god. You cannot state we do not know what "x" is therefore it is god. There is no repeatable demonstrable evidence to prove there is any god. There is no reason to believe god exists because our existence is proven through scientific theory. Don't be sheep.
I have the impression that Harris is an intelligent and well-meaning person. But he is virtually unread in theology never mind patristic theology. So to put Hart and Sarris debate theistic eschatology would be like putting Dawkins and the average primary school educated person to debate darwinian evolution.
Sigh, Bradon, I was once like thee, but alas, allow me to unchain thee from thy pseudo intellectual "new" atheist like chains.
Your point would work brandon, if it were not for once thing, the God of the bible (as understood by people like David Bentley Hart), is ontologically speaking different than the pagan gods, who are "beings among other beings". You see, God is not, I am arguing, like a tree or a cat or a micro wave. Indeed, Dawkins shows his complete lack of theological understanding when he says (I paraphrase) "that if God were to exist, he would need to be a very complicated being indeed"...lol...as if God is again, like a microwave or a dinosaur. He isn't. He is ontologically distinct from creation, he is Absolute Transcendent Reality, not a cat...that leaves the "Evidence!" that the horde of triumphantly silly atheist always proclaim for, his not gonna leave a massive footprint on the moon or some cat hair on the couch...what Kind of God do you think we are talking about?
Your argument, works fine for something like Hercules...a kind of half man half god type...who was created by another god and i think was not eternal within Greek myth. The God we (I hope) are talking about is the God who is metaphysically and ontologically necessary. Matter cannot create itself Brandon, that's called "magic", therefore there needed to be a "Eternal Transcendent reality" (not matter or anything made of matter) to create matter in the first place. This is philosophically necessary, Brandon, otherwise you simply have the explanation of "matter somehow made itself, which is anti-scientific, and magical mind you. The other option is you simply say matter has always existed...which is a philosophical absurdity and a scientific impossibility. Therefore, I am sure you will ask, "who made God then?"....but once again, this misses the whole Thomas Aquinas point...that the God that Christianity argues for isn't "an object within the universe"...he is not a microwave, that has parts, and has a manufacturing facility, and a use by date etc etc (even though God is incarnate in Christ, he is the incarnation of the transcendental reality, not a "creation" of God, the bible is very careful to not argue Christ' physical body is "made" by God, but that rather Christ was begotten, the incarnation of God, rather than a created being totally different from God the Father, anyway, back to what i was saying before about creation). Therefore, we are not saying, or at least, we should not say that since we don't have evidence for "x" therefore God. We are saying, God, therefore "x". God is the necessary ontological and philosophical "Transcendent Reality", or the ground of being that allowed "being" to be in the first place.
Again, I apologize for all the silly comments from christian's who argue that God at the begging of creation was literally a human being, you atheist might get the impression that one day he was walking around and just thought to himself "man o man! I am bored playing this primordial version of Sudoku! I'm gonna buy some play dough and make the world!". God is not Iron man or superman. He is not Conan the Barbarian just way, way smarter and better looking. He isn't like us at all in some definitive sense. He is ontologically separate from us, even if Christ is God incarnate and God totally (which he is), though certainly Christ was not a human being at the beginning of the world, rather, just spirit.
BTW, the ontological argument for God is not something that I am arguing here "proves Christianity", you can be irreligious and still know this argument to be true metaphysically and ontologically.
Brandon so you just automatically assume whatever the the speaker is on about, is god-of-the-gaps argument ? You were on about false claims which have no substance .... yeah.
I dont buy it.
I don't believe in hell.
I didn't used to either, but I've seen so many credible testimonies from people who have visited hell.
(on youtube)
Everyone " visits" hell, as hell actually means - grave. Those people were most likely experiencing a temporary state of separation from God. There is no literal endless state of suffering. The word, everlasting does not mean unending, nor does - forever. Research it. It gets easier.
Please answer my two questions. Are you a child of the LIGHT, or are you a child of the DARKNESS? Are you a child of the Devil, or are you a child of God? Let's see what the Bible says about people of the Devil, 1Ti 5:15 For some are already turned aside after Satan.
1Jo 3:10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.
Act 13:10 And said, O full of all subtilty and all mischief, thou child of the devil, thou enemy of all righteousness, wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord?
Mat 13:38 The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;Mat 13:39 The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
Mat 13:40 As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
Let's see what the Holy Bible says about people of the LIGHT. I hope you read and understand about the LIGHT.
Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no LIGHT in them.
Jhn 8:12 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the LIGHT of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the LIGHT of life.
Jhn 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that LIGHT is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than LIGHT, because their deeds were evil.
Jhn 3:20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the LIGHT, neither cometh to the LIGHT, lest his deeds should be reproved.
Jhn 3:21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the LIGHT, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Luk 11:33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the LIGHT.
Luk 11:34 The LIGHT of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of LIGHT; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.
Luk 11:35 Take heed therefore that the LIGHT which is in thee be not darkness.
Luk 11:36 If thy whole body therefore be full of LIGHT, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of LIGHT, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee LIGHT.
1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous LIGHT:1Pe 2:10 Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.
2Co 6:14 Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath LIGHT with darkness?
2Co 6:15 And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
2Co 6:16 And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
2Co 6:17 Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord...
1Th 5:5 Ye are all the children of LIGHT, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.
1Th 5:6 Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober.
1Th 5:7 For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night.
1Th 5:8 But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation.
Jhn 12:46 I am come a LIGHT into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.
2Co 4:3 But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost:2Co 4:4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, LEST THE LIGHT OF THE GLORIOUS GOSPEL OF CHRIST, WHO IS THE IMAGE OF GOD, SHOULD SHINE UNTO THEM.
Jhn 12:35 Then Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the LIGHT with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth.
Jhn 12:36 While ye have LIGHT, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of LIGHT. These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them.
Eph 5:5 For this ye know, that no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.
Eph 5:6 Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.
Eph 5:7 Be not ye therefore partakers with them.
Eph 5:8 For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye LIGHT in the Lord: walk as children of LIGHT...
Eph 5:11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.
Eph 5:12 For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.
Eph 5:13 But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light: for whatsoever doth make manifest is LIGHT.
Eph 5:14 Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee LIGHT.
Eph 5:15 See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,Eph 5:16 Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Mat 5:14 Ye are the LIGHT of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Mat 5:15 Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Mat 5:16 Let your LIGHT so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
What's this have to do with the lecture?
@@23Hiya Jesus told me to preach the word 🙌
@@colinmurphy6000 So it has nothing to do with the lecture?
Unhelpful
The heresy of universalism is one that has been dealt with and condemned by the Orthodox Church at the 5th Ecumenical Council it is also anti-scriptural. You can come up with all sorts of brilliant arguments as Dr. Hart has but at the end of the day what Christ revealed to us in the scriptures. Matthew 25:31-46 (Below) makes it clear that some will be condemned to"everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:" Matthew 25:41. Please do not be led astray by these ideas, remember that we have one life for repentance and I am afraid that thinking there is no such thing as eternal punishment could lead one into a slothful life.
Further THE ANATHEMATISMS OF THE EMPEROR JUSTINIAN AGAINST ORIGEN.(1) (Labbe and Cossart, Concilia, Tom. v., col. 677.)
"IX. 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 ( apokatastasis ) will take place of demons and of
impious men, let him be anathema."
31 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the [c]holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats. 33 And He will set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. 34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:35 for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed,into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’
44 “Then they also will answer [d]Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’45 Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ 46 And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” -Matthew 25:31-46
Acts 3:21 talks about the Apocatastasis. So Justinian condemns himself with his own words.
So people like him saying Jesus saving everyone is heresy doesn’t hold any weight whatsoever
This anti Origen affair was very dirty one to say the least. Please investigate it carefully. It was very unjust AT least because it condemned the man who was a confessor and who already died CENTURIES before.
partial elliptical statements NEVER reach the wisdom of truth. NOT a great talk.
His theodicy and eschatological theology/system are reactionary...rather than biblical.
Which part of his eschatology do you think is mistaken?
afterlife... clearly. He seems to be advocating for heretical universal redemption or some form of Christian universalism... perhaps (I hope anyway) I am mistaken.
A dumpster
You are easily shown to be wrong and heretical as well. 1. We don't need to redefine any such words because what you have done is ignored the absolute Holiness of God. 2. You are just as over simplistic as he (David B. Hart) is when comparing an earthly father who is a fellow sinner (and who is NOT Absolutely Holy and logical Judge) to the conceptual Creator creation relationship. IF you say, scripture does this... you are missing "not in this context" of being absolutely Holy and Righteous Judge Who will give perfect justice. 3. Your "transgressions committed in a finite period" ignores how the existence of these transgressions stay in the historical record from the temporary creation for all eternity. Logical payment or justice is obligated in response. 4. You are being monolithic with respect to eternal separation and specific punishment for exact actions. These are two distinct things. The permanent eternal separation from heaven and from God's affectionate fellowship involves both the Holiness of God and the tainted little creator in God's universe due to a result of freewill... the punishment of being judged for your works/actions/deeds is distinct from this. 5. You fail to understand how "good" it would be for GOD to throw demons into hell for their evil (maybe you don't believe in their existence). What makes you believe it is any less "good" for God to throw sinners into a place of permanent separation and punishment? 6. Because you view this incorrectly as an infinite punishment for a finite crime you are blinded to the multifaceted aspects of all that is taking place regarding the inability for an imperfect being to ever reach perfection, or the inability of a sinner to ever be able to reach full payment, the distinctions already given between separation and punishment, the eternal existence of a being created in God's Conscious Image, the acts of moral evil which eternally taint the freewill agent unless they are made Holy (and how faith is required IN THIS LIFETIME), etc. 7. You probably also buy into the corruption of the universal fatherhood concept rather than understanding the difference between disobedience slaves and those slaves who get adopted. the difference between wheat and tares, the difference between sheep and goats, the difference between friends and enemies.. etc. According to this heretical doctrine God has no enemies... the word completely loses its meaning.
Universalism is completely discombobulated and it is easy to demonstrate. Next post.
A dumpster
Ask yourself a simple question.... IF everyone is saved in the end... then how is there ever a thing called "salvation?" If there is "no opposite condition" of non-salvation in eternity... THEN what are you saved from? How is salvation demonstrated as anything other than inevitable fate as the end result???? If everyone is saved... then NO ONE is really "saved" (as in the word can't be used) because there is nothing "real" in eternity to actually be saved "FROM." No opposite condition of non-salvation... nor is it demonstrated. This is just one of the many dozens of discombobulations that exist as a result of the heresy of universal reconciliation. QUESTION EVERYTHING.
Start asking some basic questions as to "how can you be rewarded for your works? in heaven? if the good works you did had to be done in some sort of temporary hell?? You can't please God out of fellowship with Him... so when are you storing up these treasures in heaven??? How can God have enemies if everyone ends up with the same inevitable fate?? And how is mercy or grace "contrasted" with non-mercy or non-grace? If everyone gets grace and no one gets justice (eternal logical justice for transgressing against a Holy God) then How do you identify what grace/mercy are as to distinguish it from inevitable fate that everyone gets???
How is it a gift? (we have to say "it" because we cant use the word "salvation" because there is nothing real in eternity to actually be saved from)? How is it a "meaningful gift" if it is inevitable fate that everyone gets because it is supposed to be righteous and just rather than being mercy and grace? If everyone gets this meaningful gift what do we "contrast" this gift with? Please be specific.
We are just beginning to scratch the surface of this heresy. Demonic deceptions are always discombobulated when you question them.
A dumpster
Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, Christian Identity, Westboro Baptist all have a system of interpretation as well, but it does NOT make the hermeneutic any less heretical... especially if the hermeneutic is the result of demonic deception. Question everything! (especially how a loving Creator can send the majority of people born to eternal separation and logical judgment.... yes... especially this)
Heresy... Move along
why do th;e Scripture, the Fathers use the word heresy? what is Orthodox? why is heresy toxic, a condition which corrupts the soul and orthodoxy medicinal?
Coming from a likely protestant, that's a comical response.
I'll have to agree with the comments;for me, to understand this, I may have to have a dictionary or just total unobstructed concentration to digest this. He even sounds like some atheists I've listened to, that love big words to gain attention and leave the conversation, only in their favor.
Don’t be among those that resent scholarly prose simply because it extends itself beyond their vocabulary. Rather, rejoice in the opportunity to learn some new words and expand your world.
@@paulearle5361 Works very well if that was my agenda to begin with. But, thanks anyway- rejoicing, expanding, and learning has worked well for me, also!
If you take a look at
John 14:6
New King James Version
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Doesn’t universalism provide another way other than Christ to come to the father?