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"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.
The first chapter with the horrific fable of the desert father Macarius and the speaking skull of the pagan priest in hell &concludes that "Abba Macarius was not only extraordinarily merciful, but in fact immeasurably more merciful than the God he worshipped" #ThatAllShallBeSaved
#DBH questions "whether we may make moral sense of God's acts in the great cosmic drama of creation, redemption, and damnation." And he calls defenders of real hell of eternal torment #infernalists
#DBH admits anxiety that the bodhisattva of Buddhism has outdone Christianity by their delay of entering Nirvana so that all shall be saved from the hells of Samsara, and he found solace in the effacious prayers of Macarius for souls in eternal torment
#DBH unsurprisingly admits that he is drawn to Eastern Christianity [Orthodoxy] because it powerfully represents today the heyday of early Christian universalism
#DBH gives an excellent explanation for "the fires of hell" which are "nothing but the glory of god, which must last, when God brings about the final restoration of all things, prevade the whole of creation"
I appreciate #DBH but I still believed double predestination provides the strongest argument for Christian universalism. I'm hoping he addresses reformed universalism in this short book.
#DBH admits a "hardened heart is already its own punishment" but if he repeats the morally repugnant (and anti-Semitic) argument that hell is locked from the inside based on the dwarves at the dark supper in CS Lewis' Last Battle, then I will throw this book into the inferno
On a positive literary note, the first chapter begins with this delightful quote from Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking-Glass 
