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That All Shall Be Saved - A Concise Review
Title: That All Shall Be Saved
Author: David Bentley Hart
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019
Pages: 222
ISBN: 0300246226
Author: David Bentley Hart
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2019
Pages: 222
ISBN: 0300246226
David Bentley Hart’s most recent book, That All Shall Be Saved, argues about the
dubiousness of the most commonly believed conception of hell and brings forward
grounds for a scriptural, reasonable, and thoroughly historic belief in
universal salvation or -as the Greek Church Fathers called it- Apokatastasis. Hart
opens the book in full swing, telling readers that he does not want to promote
an uncertain hope for the potential that God might possibly redeem all the
world. Instead, Hart says, “if Christianity taken as a whole is indeed an
entirely coherent and credible system of belief, then the universalist
understanding of it is the only one possible.”
That
All Shall Be Saved is broken into three parts, the first of which opens the
issue of eternal hell by introducing the questions and issues associated with
it, as well as establishing some vocabulary that will be used throughout the
book. Part two is the meat of Hart’s argument broken up into four meditations.
And part three is his concluding statements of the work, and his suggestions
for further reading.
Meditation
one, “Who is God?”, focuses on God as the creator of everything, and the ethics
of God (or rather, God as the source of ethics). This chapter also has an
interesting discussion about human language and our ability to talk about God,
especially in terms of our capacity to say that God loves. What do we mean when
we talk about God’s love, and is it similar in any way to discussions of human
love? Hart rightly says, that we can talk about and understand, to some degree,
the love of God, and that God’s love, if it is anything, is not the opposite of
love as we know it.
The
second Meditation, “What is Judgement?”, is the location of Hart’s primary direct
interaction with the New Testament. For many, this will be the section that
holds the most weight, and I think that Hart carries his argument well. This
section is inspired by his recent New Testament translation from 2017, therefore,
he employs considerate exploration of the Greek text along with his
explanations. Some Greek knowledge is helpful here, but readers be assured,
Hart makes this whole chapter very accessible to anyone. Here, Hart brings
forward recent academic discussions on the Greek words that we translate ‘eternal,’
‘everlasting,’ and ‘hell,’ while usefully pointing to texts from Plato to help
readers grasp the significance of these words.
Meditation
three, “What is a person?”, contained, for me, a very intriguing and new explanation
of personhood, which had never occurred to me before. Hart begins by asking how
people in heaven could be happy while any of their loved ones are forever
tormented in hell. The discussion in this chapter goes much deeper than most readers
-myself included- would realize. It is not all an argument from pathos
or emotion, -though the Greeks certainly have taught us the importance of those
kinds of arguments- but it also employs a lot of logic and Theological
reasoning. The culmination of this chapter is when he describes personhood in
terms of communal existence and synergistic development, saying that no one exists
alone; we are not merely ourselves. This is one of my favorite chapters because, in it, Hart reminds readers of the New Testament's emphasis on the community, rather than just individuals.
Finally,
meditation four, “What is Freedom?”, puts together an idea that strings itself
along the entirety of the book; namely, that humans have freedom, but they are
not so free as to wholly reject their creator in full knowledge. I would bet
that the subject of this last meditation is the starting point for many Christians
who hope to believe in Universal Salvation. For this section, Hart applies Aristotelian
ethics -particularly, of mankind’s search for ‘the Good’- to show that people,
no matter how hard we may try to turn from God, always have an interior drawing
toward goodness, of which God is the source.
Despite what some
commentators have attempted to say, David Hart is not a religious pluralist; he
does not believe that different religions make up different paths to the same
end. Hart does, however, show himself to believe that in Christ -and only
Christ- God brings all of man and womankind into the rest that can be found
only in Godself. According to David Hart, Universalism is not a shameful belief, and entrusting to God
the vindication of every human life, by his salvation through Jesus Christ, is
not a vain hope.
At its worst, That All Shall Be Saved will bring some readers to consider valid and
penetrating arguments against the hell that we take for granted
and neglect to consider deeply, and at its best, it should give some readers
the historical context and contemporary theological language in which to
situate oneself into a Christian expression of universalism that is not merely
a modern fabrication, as some would suggest. Throughout the text, Hart
consistently draws on Gregory of Nyssa (335 C.E.) -and periodically on others from throughout the centuries- in order to show
that this is no new teaching without precedent. I highly recommend this book to
academic students and non-academics alike, because it is a good articulation of
an educated universalist approach that is written, by necessity of conscience,
quite accessibly for all.
Hart,
David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal
Salvation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019.
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