Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #thatallshallbesaved
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Near the end of #ThatAllShallBeSaved, David Bentley Hart adds additional criticisms of the free will defense of hell by #infernalists and against sounds similar to reformed predestination (which he ridicules throughout the book).
#DBHart argues that true freedom does not mean the ability to arbitrarily choose from any outcome, and it does mean the ability to always choose what is good.
He then does a good job of explaining that God is not a being independent from existence, like Zeus wandering about Mt. Olympus. Hart quotes the #panentheism prooftext (Acts 17:28) to demonstrate that god is bound up with creation (although without affirming/denying pantheism)
A beautiful quotation by George MacDonald in David Bentley Hart's #ThatAllShallBeSaved 
Sadly not many quotations from George MacDonald appear in this 200 page book but #DBHart does praise George MacDonald many times.
Generally the book is void of quotations in general and I know it's not fair to criticize a book based on what it doesn't say. But where the hell are the references or quotations from Christoph Blumhardt or his father Johann?
In the Third Meditation (very Cartesian headings) of David Bentley Hart's #ThatAllShallBeSaved, he provides a helpful (yet terse) commentary on Paul's sermon in Roman 9-11 regarding "Jacob I loved, Esau I hated", demonstrating the rejecting of one brother, ultimately saves both.
#DBHart argues that this literary unit with Romans is wrongly used to justify a double judgement with one part being identify as "vessels of wrath" due to ancestral sin, but the loci actually demonstrates the salvation of all through the rejection of one brother
It may be true for Augustine that original sin is a sexually transmitted disease #STD and sin is concupiscence but this is not the reformed tradition's understanding of it. So he is flat wrong to lump Reformed in with this older Catholic dogma.
David Bentley Hart finally engages with the great Reformed theologian Karl Barth on p. 128 of #ThatAllShallBeSaved
This page follows a long platonic diatribe arguing that NT Greek word for "eternity" does not mean perpetual time without end, and an attempt to reduce eternal torment to a bounded expitory purgatory, scoping down from a life time to a single year or less
And now #DBHart appeals to Karl Barth (CD IV/1) to show the final judgement isn't eternal because it has already occured at Calvary.
In the 2nd Meditation of #ThatAllShallBeSaved David Bentley Hart provided a translation and commentary of 20+ New Testament passages that support universalism: biblegateway.com/passage/?searc…
#DBHart also provided the original Greek and then his own unique translation in the book. Overall the book is void of references or citations and this was a welcomed list, that also features syllogisms of combined verses that imply universalism.
#DBHart makes the welcome confession that he has "no patience whatsoever for twentieth-century biblical fundamentalism and it's manifest imbecilities." He is willing to admit that the scriptures contains contradictions but unwilling to form theology that contradicts scripture
"The God in whom the majority of Christians throughout history have processed belief appears to be evil (at least, judging by the dreadful things they habitually say about him." #DBHart #ThatAllShallBeSaved
David Bentley Hart argues the "broad mainstream" of Christians "not exclusively in the West" … "reconcile" the "repellant notion that all humans are at conception already guilty of a transgression that condemns them justly to eternal separation from God and eternal suffering"
David Bentley Hart writes that he has "very all patience for this kind of hopeful universalism" represented by Hans Urs von Balthasar
#DBH argues that Christians who hope for universalism believe that God is a "failed creator" if their hope may not be realized #ThatAllShallBeSaved
And pace #DBH to doubt all shall be saved is tantamount to doubting what "God had accomplished in Christ"
"We should all already know that whenever the terms 'justice' and 'eternal punishment' are set side by side as if they were logically compatible, the boundaries of the rational have been violated." — David Bentley Hart #ThatAllShallBeSaved
"From the perspective of Christian belief, the very notion of a punishment that is not intended ultimately to be remedial is morally dubious (and, I submit, anyone who doubts this has never understood Christian teaching at all)"
#DBH argues that an infinite punishment for a finite sin is immoral
"Augustine of Hippo … refered to such persons [universalists] as misericordes, 'the merciful-hearted'" — David Bentley Hart #ThatAllShallBeSaved
According to #DBH, Basil of Caesarea reports that the majority of Christians were universalists and believed hell was a purgatory (pace 1 Cor 3) and not eternal. And #universalism was common place in the first half of the first christian millenium. #ThatAllShallBeSaved
#DBH says the arguments against #universalism are predictable and sophomoric. He says the clear language of scripture does not in fact oppose universalism, nor was it condemned as heretical by the 5th ecumenical council.
