Thread by @postbarthian

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.

#DBHart throughout the book continually appeals to the innocence child who dies in suffering (especially the unbaptized) and is predestined to eternal torment unjustly. The Reformed Confessions have always spoken graciously and salvifically for such children's.

Charles Hodge was an influential reformed theologian that argued for the salvation of children that did not have the ability to reason, and this has also been adopted by Evangelicals as a mythical age of innocence usually extending to 8years old when Baptists start baptizing kids

Even dispensationalism which has a horrific Eschatology of suffering and wrath in a tribulation and Armageddon and thousand year reign, allowed for the rapture of children.

Ultimately though, #DBHart's argument that how may any finite and temporal sin be justly condemned to and an infinite and permanent punishment in fiery torment. How may such a God be considered good even in the worst circumstances? cf #DBH discussion of Hitler earlier in the book

The 3rd med. includes frightful counterarguments by #infernalists including one argument that the horrors of hell will cause people to glorify God in the same way as gazing into the terrifying grand canyon!

Another horrific defense of hell: As people receive justice by serial killers locked away in American prisons, likewise they will praise God for those locked away in eternal torment.

The book continually praises the Greek father, and sadly ignored Macrina the Younger, the sister of Gregory of Nyssa and genius beyond the Cappadocian Father's, who informed their universalism without getting the credit she deserved. Her name appears twice without engagement

This is a disappointing oversight in a book that exclusively sources it's arguments from the Cappadocian fathers and their Greek contemporaries. In addition to the consistent use of he/him pronouns for God.