Thread by @postbarthian

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.

It is ironic to see #DBHart quote and praise Barth's substitutionary atonement "judge judged in our place" and Jesus going "into a far country" for us, after a hundred pages of rejecting Anselm as Western barbarianism.

#DBHart invokes Barth against contemporary ideas of eternal torment, yet 5 pages later he continues to deride predestination. I'll venture to say that #DBH needs to read Barth's reconstruction of double predestination in CD II/2. His argument would have been much better

Of course, Barth has a threefold coming of God (I still don't like that term) consisting of the death/resurrection on the cross, and as experienced in the church, and lastly on the last day, and these three events are unified.

#DBHart does a fair job of dissecting the linguistics of the Greek words for eternity, but theres physics poverty. It's one helpful thing to show that the Greek words has been mistranslated but it's still necessary to demythologize the concept of eternity with the aide of science

And this is a weakness to #DBHart's rejection of hopeful universalism because the final moment may be the Omega point, the heat or cold death of the universe. And as Barth said in CD 3/2 that our finite time may come to an end, and universalism is God's eternal memory of us all

So regressing 1500 years to antiquated pure theology preserved by Eastern orthodox theokogiand sounds appealing as having a root canal performed by a dentist from the first four centuries.