Reason & Theology Podcast with David Bentley Hart

Posted on 2 October 2020 by Fr Aidan Kimel

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44 Responses to Reason & Theology Podcast with David Bentley Hart

  1. Curdie says:
    2 October 2020 at 10:17 am

    At this point I think everyone should just stop interviewing DBH without reading the book first. I know I’m biased, but it’s so frustrating hearing DBH reiterate the arguments ad nauseam to little effect. Not that that’s Hart’s fault, I think it’s just easier for people to engage this thinking in a book, where they get to sit with the ideas a little while and see them fully explained as a complete argument, as opposed to being suddenly confronted with the abridged version in a live setting like a podcast or YouTube interview. I thought you were very articulate, DBH, I wish your arguments were received a little more openly.

    And no offense to the interviewer’s either, I thought they facilitated the conversation well in general. But man, I rolled my eyes maybe 25 times during the analogy about being the parent of a murderer in jail. Just missing the point so hard.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Curdie says:
      2 October 2020 at 10:20 am

      Someone even commented on the video “And what if God prepared vessels of wrath? What then? Who are you, O academic?” At this point my eyes are never going to roll back. Just read the book, people.

      Liked by 1 person

      • Curdie says:
        2 October 2020 at 11:57 am

        Dear Lord, I thought I’d journey into the comments section one more time, what a mistake. Here’s a gem:

        “Let’s apply this to EVERY DAY life. This is specifically for the parents out there. Do you feel comfortable telling your kids that no matter what sin they commit, they will eventually be forgiven without genuine repentance from free will?”

        There’s just so much going on in that comment I don’t even know where to begin. It’s almost a masterpiece in a way, every clause is more painful than the next. In a mere 3 sentences, I already have a raging headache.

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        • arthurja says:
          2 October 2020 at 1:25 pm

          Venturing out on a comments section about Hell?
          Was it not the triumph of hope over experience? 😉

          Liked by 2 people

          • Curdie says:
            2 October 2020 at 2:05 pm

            Ha! It must have been. I’m not that familiar with Reason & Theology or the leanings of it’s audience. I guess i usually assume if a podcast is willing to have DBH on to discuss universalism, the audience is probably sympathetic towards that view. I was wrong in this case.

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    • TJF says:
      2 October 2020 at 1:17 pm

      I don’t think we should focus on the combox, but on the interview itself. I thought it was quite good. Seeing Dr. Hart defend his arguments live in real time against some of the stronger infernalist claims was very enlightening. I will have to rewatch and take notes. I think the interviewers did read the book. What I think, though, is that to understand the book is very difficult for us moderns; at least it was for me. The unstated common sense of our age, especially in the US, of the highest good being libertarian freedom is very strong — it is extremely difficult to break out of its grasp. In fact, I’d say it’s impossible unless you fight to go upstream for a long time and let some of the more ancient views soak into your bones. I think the interviewers were very patient and polite and did a good job asking pretty good questions for those unversed in the complexities. I think DBH’s counters to their were ironclad and robust. He completely thwarted their arguments. That being said, I wish he wouldn’t have interrupted people as much; the priest especially got the brunt end of it. He was probably tired though, as that was towards the end of the podcast. All in all, I considered it the best interview yet. I hope to see more. I did love how DBH made it abundantly clear that he separated his disdain for people’s arguments from their characters and especially his inclusion of the unspoken argument about how ECT requires that we relinquish others to hell even in this life. Excellent!

      Liked by 1 person

      • Curdie says:
        2 October 2020 at 2:02 pm

        I think you might be right. I went back and listened to the first 30 minutes or so over my lunch, and I agree, the interviewing portion was very fun to listen to. I think once things got more contentious towards the end, combined with the comment section (I mean..what did I expect), left a sour taste in my mouth. But you’re right, the interviewing was good, especially at the beginning. I think once the interviewing turned to arguing is when it lost me a bit.

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        • Fr Aidan Kimel says:
          3 October 2020 at 10:04 am

          Personally I thought that the the interview was consistently good through the first hour and twenty minutes (Lofton, Ybarra, and Albrecht). The dialogue became more contentious and less constructive and interesting when Fr Patrick was given his turn. It’s unclear to me whether Fr Patrick had not read the book as well as the others (as far as I can tell, his questions were just rehashing previously trodden ground) or David was just fatigued and easily exasperated.

          But all in all, an excellent podcast. I’d love to have a transcript of the conversation!

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          • DBH says:
            3 October 2020 at 11:04 pm

            The interviewers were very good. If I grew impatient with Fr Patrick it was only because he was asking questions that had already been answered at length, and then kept asking them as if I had not replied already three or four times. After 90 minutes, it was depressing. It was emblematic somehow of an experience I have had all too often since the book appeared.

            Liked by 3 people

  2. Marcus says:
    2 October 2020 at 1:35 pm

    David looks like he lives in a Dojo 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Geoffrey McKinney says:
    2 October 2020 at 3:37 pm

    I was glad to hear Dr. Hart mention that, exegetically, the only two eschatological positions that one can deduce from the Bible are annihilationism and universalism. The only way to find eternal torment in the Bible is to force it into the text with a hammer.

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  4. Fr Aidan Kimel says:
    2 October 2020 at 4:30 pm

    I just finished watching this podcast. In my judgment this is the best interview yet with David on the subject of universal salvation. Each of the interlocutors had clearly read the book and read it well, and as a result they elicited from David some very helpful clarifications and elaborations of his arguments.

    Liked by 4 people

  5. armsopenwide says:
    3 October 2020 at 12:00 am

    “I am the alpha and the omega;” the full restoration of the natural will that was ours from the beginning – unlike the gnomic. “The truth will make you free,” says He who Is the Truth, the second Adam, Who declared that He will draw all people to Himself. Amen!

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Iain Lovejoy says:
    3 October 2020 at 7:00 am

    I thought the interview questions were excellent myself, largely trying to draw out DBH’s understanding and argument rather than just trying to contradict him. It’s also I think unfair to suggest they hadn’t read the book: I noticed one interviewer actually took out his copy and thumbed through it while DBH was talking!
    I suppose a problem with doing (and watching) multiple interviews with multiple people about the same book is that everyone who has read it will almost inevitably have the same questions and points to make, so DBH feels he has already answered the question a thousand times before in exactly the same way, even though the questioner (unless a DBH fanboy who has already avidly watched his previous interviews and read previous responses to criticism) will think they are making a new point and, of course, will have never themselves heard DBH’s answer. This, and fatigue, may explain DBH getting a little perhaps unnecessarily short with Fr Patrick at the end.
    Is it me, but in one of his answers to Fr Patrick about the reason for temporal evil, when DBH starts to talk about the progress of created beings from nothingness to completion and free will / sin in the context of that, did it sound like there’s another DBH book on the way?

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    • Curdie says:
      5 October 2020 at 10:23 am

      I think you’re absolutely right, my initial response was a little reactionary. They had definitely read the book and did a good job with the interview. I didn’t realize they had the book because I was listening without watching.

      Like

  7. chrisstanzio says:
    3 October 2020 at 12:39 pm

    Having trouble finding the article DBH mentions at the end. Could you provide it?

    Like

  8. armsopenwide says:
    3 October 2020 at 3:20 pm

    Reading the “Ethics of Beauty” by Timothy Pattitsas as well as just having finished “to Open One’s Heart” by Michel Evdokimov; these books have helped me understand Dr. Hart’s fierce confidence in universalism, which stood out in the podcast even more so than in the book. Fierce, because of his evident eros for the Lord. If the Lord was a God Who decreed damnation without end, He would not be first beautiful, nor good and true, in the eyes of Dr. Hart’s heart. The ethics of beauty point to a hell of loving chastening rather than an eternal dungeon and torture chamber. If we are indeed made in the image of God, our preference for the beautiful, good, and true would as a matter of course also be inherent in God. And also, as the understanding of the nature of the beautiful, good, and true of the Saints and holy individuals eschews vengeance and hate for enemies, this can be seen as deriving from God, Who has directed and empowered us in our striving toward these dispositions.
    At first I questioned Dr. Hart’s conclusions because of how vociferously he proclaimed them, suspecting the confusion of heat with light. But now I know better.
    Also, some time ago it was told to me that our Orthodox Christian monastic community puts great stock in the writings of St. Isaac the Syrian, which says something about what knowing via chaste beauty and goodness indicates.

    Liked by 2 people

    • DBH says:
      3 October 2020 at 10:51 pm

      And now someone who misstates my arguments from a Vaisnava perspective. Or Krishna Consciousness perspective, at least, which is sort of the Disney fundamentalist version of Vaisnava theology. (For the uninitiated, KC is to Vaisnav religion as Soka Gakkai is to Japanese Buddhism or American Evangelicalism is to classical Christianity or Hollywood Qabbalah is to the real thing.). Well, variety is always a blessing, I guess.

      I quote that very story about Ramanuja in The Experience of God, by the way.

      Unfortunately, Iamblichus, you’re saying nothing relevant to the topic. You even mistake the argument from Meditation Three as having to do with whether we could be happy in heaven apart from those in hell, which I clearly state even in this interview to be a misreading. You can’t answer an argument you haven’t understood. And you cannot reply to an argument about the internal coherence of Christian claims by reference to the bhaktic spirituality of the Bhagavata Purana. The narakas and transmigrations and heavens of Vaisnava thought don’t shed much light on whether certain traditional claims within certain construals of Christian tradition prove contradictory.

      But why are you bothering? You’re invoking categories that cannot possibly apply to the specific issues in the book. Even the question of illusion is entirely a category error here. As are your reflections on freedom. Oh, and, no, there is no mention of eternal torment in Christian scripture. That’s simply an objective fact.

      Actually, now that I think of it, variety is frequently a bore.

      Like

      • markchenoweth1 says:
        4 October 2020 at 9:44 pm

        Interesting that you think Paul vacillated between universalism and annihilationism. That seems to be an excellent assessment. Briefly looking through Mark Reasoner’s commentary on Romans, he reports that E.P. Sanders thought that Paul somehow held to both at the same not knowing how they would ultimately be worked.

        It seems that scholars like Dunn and Sanders who have less ideological commitments than most scholars (though I don’t agree with Dunn on his view of Paul’s Christology) see universalism in Paul’s letters much more readily than most other scholars.

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      • Iamblichus says:
        5 October 2020 at 1:52 pm

        Like

        • DBH says:
          5 October 2020 at 2:03 pm

          I used to visit a Krishna Consciousness temple in Catonsville MD when I was in my early twenties, to eat vegetarian food, to witness ecstatic devotions like this, and to discuss religion. It was very much like a charismatic church, and every bit as literalist and fundamentalist as most of them. It was my first encounter with “Hindus” who would argue for the verbal inerrancy of the Bhagavad-Gita no less sincerely than a Baptist fundamentalist would argue for the verbal inerrancy of the Bible. I admit that the first version of the Srimad Bhagavatam I ever read, before I ever studied any Sanskrit at all (something I’m always muddling through in fits and starts), was Swami A.C. Bhaktivedanta Prabhupada’s. I have happy memories of the very earnest and devout persons I met there; but I still now regard the KC movement as a simplified, fundamentalist sect within the Vaisnava stream of Bhakti. And I admit that I spend much more time talking to more philosophically inclined Vedantists these days. Needless to say, their opinion of the movement is…let’s say “mixed.”

          And, again, your commentary on my arguments was vapid. But I liked your religious ardor. It brought back fond recollections.

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        • arthurja says:
          5 October 2020 at 4:34 pm

          Sorry, what the hell.

          Like

      • Iamblichus says:
        5 October 2020 at 1:55 pm

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        • DBH says:
          5 October 2020 at 2:13 pm

          Ecstatic religions of devotion all instill this sort of joy, don’t they? Hasidism, Dervishism, Charismatic Christianity, popular Bhakti…even Vodoun and presumably the ancient Dionysian orgy (the real thing, not our debased notion of a sex-party), and any number of religious devotions involving hallucinogens or inebriants…etc.? Then again, every developed mystical tradition–and every great spiritual teacher who has experienced unitive knowledge–says that such ecstasies can be as much barriers as doorways to real union with God. My feeling about KC worship–as with charismatic rapture–is that it is impossible to say to what degree it expresses genuine spiritual release and to what degree it is nothing but emotional frenzy, with all the therapeutic and dangerous consequences that that entails.

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          • DBH says:
            5 October 2020 at 2:15 pm

            But it’s fun. And colorful. And loud. Like a Grateful Dead concert.

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          • The Iron Knuckle says:
            6 October 2020 at 12:36 am

            DBH, so awesome to hear that you used to attend KC events. Did you participate in the kirtan? how high in the air did you allow your hands to go? Did you dance? :p

            I’m not convinced that ISKCON are fundamentalist, at least to the extent that they are actually have a metaphysics, ontology, etc, and they are incredibly open to other religious perspectives being valid on their own terms. Whereas Christian fundamentalists are incredibly anti-intellectual and ignorant of everything outside the 4 or 5 bible verses they’ve memorised, but the KC fellas I know are very very intelligent and well read both in Dharmic and Abrahamic thought. I will concede that they are fundamentalist in that they are convinced they are the “most” right, but they don’t seem violently fundie in that “if you don’t sign up to our club you will burn in hell forever” way that is common among christians.

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          • The Iron Knuckle says:
            6 October 2020 at 12:51 am

            BTW, seeing as you seem to be a connoisseur of religious expression wherever they may manifest, I just thought i’d pimp “Voice of Vraja” by “Aindra Dasa.” I swear his kirtan tunes are the most intricate and energetic I have ever heard. Once I ate mushroom curry and read “the end of faith” by sam harris while listening to this kirtan; krishna was dancing in my intellect the whole time, and it made the book seem more profound than it actually is (admittedly, his presentation of the fundamental violence of the quran was powerful even sans mushrooms, and his survey of some of the superstitious insanity that went on during the time of the catholic inquisition was an eye-opener).

            I also recorded some Kirtan last year at the Sydney ISKCON. Much more straightforward melody and starts out way more chill but I love how it’s basically a 30 minute crescendo and gets crazy towards the end.

            Sydney Hindu Jam 1 2019

            Sydney Hindu Jam 2 2019

            Kirtan is the highest sacrament for these fellas, and they’ve told me that they have a “real presence” doctrine of sorts where the name of God is God himself (there is a similar tradition in recent eastern orthodoxy. cf. Imiaslavie (Russian: Имяславие, literally praising the name) ), so when you chant the name, God himself dances on your tongue. Wild stuff. All who are interested in learning more (in an interfaith spirit) are welcome to hit those links.

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          • TJF says:
            6 October 2020 at 11:01 am

            This is one of the more bizarre things I’ve read in a while, but it does sound like a decent way to spend a Wednesday night while the world burns.

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          • DBH says:
            6 October 2020 at 12:56 pm

            No, I never participated. I’m not a Vaisnav. I watched, I debated theology and metaphysics with devotees, I ate fiery vegetarian dishes, etc.

            ISKCON of course has some rather sophisticated metaphysical baggage that it takes on its evangelical peregrinations through the world, but that’s inevitable. There’s no such thing as Hinduism without metaphysics, apart from some very local devotions in rural areas. But it is still a simplified and fundamentalists–or enthusiast, or ecstatic–form of Vaisnavism. Nothing wrong with ecstasy, mind you. Caitanya, Baal Shem Tov, the Azusa Street Mission–all of them no doubt had a real and living faith, and the movements they inspired probably retain some trace of it. But all Dionysian worship is an infantile stage of spiritual life, say a disconcertingly large number of mystics, and it all tends to bore me after a while, in its Christian expressions or non-Christian. It’s like endless carnival. One Mardi Gras celebration a year is enough for anyone. For spiritual “ecstasy,” I prefer getting lost in a forest while praying. To me an ISKCON kirtan, as I said, looks like a Dead concert (or the Who, if you require a more driving bass line): the line between emotional exhaustion and spiritual transport is utterly indiscernible. (Maybe, says the Freudian skeptic, that’s what religion often is: a longing for exhaustion of eros and release into thanatos.)

            I do admire ISKCON for not tailoring its message to appeal to Western bien pensants on social and moral issues. It proves that they aren’t just selling something. I have never doubted their seriousness or piety.

            Like

    • arthurja says:
      4 October 2020 at 6:14 am

      Hello Iamblichus,

      To affirm that “the Christian Scripture proclaims eternal punishments for the damned” as if this actually were an undeniable fact is way too bold a move to make.

      If it were so crystal-clear (and even undeniable) that the New Testament teaches eternal Hell, then universalism would have been extremely weak or even non-existent among greek-speaking early Christians.
      It wasn’t : many or most were universalists, as even Augustine admitted.
      If it were so crystal-clear (and even undeniable) that the New Testament teaches eternal Hell, then all (or almost all) of those important Christian theologians who can actually read koine greek perfectly well (the whole 4 of them) would obviously agree which each other on that matter.
      They do not.

      I’ll read the rest of the post and I’ll do my best to try to understand it with my very limited knowledge and understanding of the Sanatana Dharma, but it doesn’t start on a very good note, sadly.

      Like

  10. Marcus says:
    5 October 2020 at 11:49 am

    What about the idea that eternal self- consciousness in general, rather it be eternal punishment or bliss would be a bad thing. I look at Paul Griffith’s view ,sometimes, that consciousness can be a burden. In his Decreation, he lays out the speculative idea that Heaven is a repetitive stasis with no novelty, no change, and I think to myself if that were true, would it be any better than eternal punishment. Of course it should be, but do we really want to be conscious for all time even in bliss? I don’t know if I agree with Griffiths, and this isn’t really meant to be an argument against Universalism. I am just trying to look at it from another angle.

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    • Robert Fortuin says:
      5 October 2020 at 12:20 pm

      This line of thought would need to accept that God as the Good, the True and the Beautiful is eternally neither good, nor true, nor beautiful. This is a radical departure of the traditional Christian claim that God is the fulfilment of creation precisely because He is its transcendental origin and telos as the Good, the True and the Beautiful. As such He alone can be creation’s eternal bliss.

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  11. Fr Aidan Kimel says:
    6 October 2020 at 1:15 pm

    DBH, I know that your parents became involved in the charismatic movement (and Cursillo?) sometime in the 70s. Did their experiences ever touch or influence your own? I know this is a personal question, so feel free to decline to answer. Just curious, since others at St Mark’s, Highland, were also drawn into both the charismatic and Cursillo movements around the same time.

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    • DBH says:
      6 October 2020 at 3:21 pm

      No. It came and went in the 70’s, but I was very young and had no interest in it. I was just there. My older brothers might have absorbed more of it for a while, but neither of them seems to have retained its marks. And it had no real deep effect, say, on my father. He was always devout and remained so, and he enjoyed the bits that seemed healthy and normal to him, but didn’t really pay much attention to the bits that were silly. He was much more devoted to the old Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal. In the end, it was the 1970’s–it was how churchgoers of a certain age got to dip into the counterculture from another angle because they were too old to go to Woodstock and didn’t want to dabble in hallucinogens. For myself, Woodstock and hallucinogens would have been more spiritually uplifting.

      Liked by 1 person

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