Twitter Tweets
My TweetsFollow on Facebook
Recent Comments
DBH on A (New) Suspended Middle? On D… Fr Aidan Kimel on A (New) Suspended Middle? On D… Kossa on Please Pray for Met Kallistos… Tom on A (New) Suspended Middle? On D… Tom on A (New) Suspended Middle? On D… Michael on Please Pray for Met Kallistos… Elizabeth on “Very nearly the most di… Fr Aidan Kimel on “God by nature is always… John Grinnell on “God by nature is always… johnnsw on “God by nature is always… -
Recent Posts
- Destined for Joy: Mid-August Update
- Please Pray for Met Kallistos Ware as He Prepares to Meet his Lord
- Charles Williams and the Inklings
- “God by nature is always one and alone, substantively and absolutely, containing in Himself all-inclusively the totality of substantive being”
- Was St Maximus the Confessor a Universalist?
Categories
- Alexander Earl
- Apostle Paul
- Aquinas
- Athanasius
- Basil of Caesarea
- Bible
- Book Reviews
- Brian Moore
- Byzantine theology
- Citations
- Cyril of Alexandria
- Dante
- David B. Hart
- Dionysius the Areopagite
- Dumitru Staniloae
- Eschatology
- Fiction & Poetry
- George MacDonald
- Grace, Justification & Theosis
- Gregory Nazianzen
- Gregory of Nyssa
- Herbert McCabe & Friends
- Holy Trinity
- Hugh McCann
- Humor
- Inklings & Company
- Interesting Theologians
- Irenaeus
- Isaac the Syrian
- Islam
- John Stamps
- Jordan Wood
- Julian of Norwich
- Lamentation
- Liturgy & Sermons
- Mark Chenoweth
- Mythopoeia
- Nicholas Wolfterstorff
- Paul Griffiths
- Personal
- Philosophical Theology
- Preaching
- Robert Farrar Capon
- Robert Fortuin
- Robert Jenson
- Sacraments
- Sergius Bulgakov
- Spirituality
- T. F. Torrance
- T. S. Eliot
- Theology
- Theotokos
- Thomas Allin
- Thomas Talbott
- Tom Belt
- Uncategorized
- Vincent of Lérins
- Zizioulas & Yannaras
Archives
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
Stunning. Thank you for sharing. Have there been any remote estimates on when DBH’s translation of the New Testament might be finished? He’s been working on it publicly for something like four years, yes?
LikeLike
Wow! Thank you for posting this. Is the paper online anywhere? When was this talk given?
LikeLike
The talk was given last week: http://goo.gl/SZ77tw
LikeLike
This is great. I’d never thought before about the damage that eternal torment does to our theological language. If a good God is also complicit in condemning human beings to endless Hell, then we must torture our words to get this to work. “Good” for God must be something of a very different species than “good” for humans, since clearly any human eternally tormenting another human would be considered very evil indeed. But then as “good” for God loses its connection to human concepts, and therefore its meaning for us, so do all other theological terms, Hart argues.
LikeLike
Beautiful! So great to hear a theologian of his stature proffer apokatastasis as a real and may I say nexessary aspect of Christian theology. May this be the start of a much bigger discussion on the biblical, theological and even Traditional merits
of this doctrine which finally presents God as not only not a
tyrant but actually as just in the real biblical meaning of that word. I imagine that Dr. Hart’s position will shake up many. So be it.
LikeLike
PS. Can’t wait for his translation and subsequent book. It seems his health must be better if he was attending a conference. May God grant him many years!
LikeLike
I put the last 2 or 3 minutes into text form and posted to Facebook. Hopefully without too much error.
“If all are not saved, if God creates souls He knows to be destined for eternal misery, what, then, is the proper predicate to apply to God’s moral nature? Well, why debate semantics. Maybe every analogy fails. What is not debatable, it seems to me, is that if God does so create in himself, it is not possible for us, meaningfully, to call Him good as such and creation cannot be a meaningfully moral act. It is from one vantage, an act of predilective love, and from another logically necessary vantage, a tragic act of provincial malevolence and, so, this doctrine cannot be true. I don’t think it can be simultaneously true that God is all good, that God creates from nothingness freely and that it is possible, or definite, that certain souls will suffer eternal loss of God. And this, I have to say, is the final moral meaning in the doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo, at least if we truly believe that our language about God’s goodness and the theological grammar to which it belongs are not empty, that the God of retribution that has been proclaimed by so much of Christianity really is not and cannot possibly be the God of self-outpouring love revealed in Christ. If God is the creator of all, He is the savior of all without fail. He brings to Himself all He has made, including all rational wills, and only thus returns to Himself in all that goes forth from Him. If He is not the savior of all, the kingdom is only a dream, creation is something considerably worse than a nightmare. But, again, it is not so. God saw that it was good and in the ages so shall we.”
LikeLike
Thank you.
LikeLike
Yes, Eric, thank you so much for this transcription of the final paragraph. It is simply amazing. It would be so wonderful to see a full transcription starting from about 18 minutes into the speech for us plebes who can hardly follow the introductory remarks. 🙂
LikeLike
That’s “prudential” malevolence, not “provincial.” The text will appear in the Radical Orthodoxy Journal, since I just told the editor that he can publish it.
LikeLike
Is there a transcript of this paper anywhere available for .pdf download?
LikeLike
So what is new? So thought Origen, St Gregory of Nyssa and Anselm of Canterbury. Not bad company for DBH.
Archpriest Lawrence Cross
LikeLike
Fr Lawrence, welcome to EO.
I am surprised to see St Anselm linked with St Gregory and Origen on apokatastasis. Could you elaborate for us please.
LikeLike