John Milbank and David Bentley Hart Podcast

"You Are Gods" with David Bentley Hart and John Milbank https://t.co/HAnpL5qOci via @YouTube

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) November 16, 2021

David Bentley Hart's New Substack

New blog site for DB Hart’s amazingly profuse and various writings. Not to be missed. https://t.co/WDpMCJ676K

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) July 3, 2021

David Bentley Hart - That All Shall Be Saved

Eastern Christian Books: Ordaining Women in the Orthodox Church

Eastern Christian Books: Ordaining Women in the Orthodox Church

Such an endorsement by David Bentley Hart casts doubts on his personal orthodoxy, as if his dogmatic speculation on universalism wasn't enough. The description provided for the book and the background of some of the contributors render all those who are contributing suspect, even though some (Fr. Andrew Louth?) may be just presenting "the other side" of the argument. Is this something open for discussion? Do any of the Chalcedonian Orthodox clerics make the claim that the ordination of women to the presbyterate and episcopate is beyond the bounds of discussion and possibility? From the reports I have read, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has capitaulted and embraced the position that it is open to discussion. Are there any Orthodox bishops willing to cut the innovators off from communion? I suspect the Greeks are too weak to do so.

Wipf and Stock: Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church: Explorations in Theology and Practice, eds. Gabrielle Thomas and Elena Narinskaya

The Logical Consequences of Hart's Universalism?

See the page generated by ThreadReaderApp.

DB Hart Responds to Feser's Review of His Book

The Edward Feser Algorithm (How to Review a Book You Have Not Read) | Eclectic Orthodoxy https://t.co/98eWAOghJU

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) July 21, 2020

Eclectic Orthodoxy

David Bentley Hart - Death, Sacrifice, and Resurrection

A Quick Response to DBH?

Would this be sufficient for him?

Universalism may be true but it may be false in so far as it is possible that I may reject God and "end up in Hell."

David Bentley Hart Responds to Michael Pakaluk

First Things: A Pakaluk of Lies by David Bentley Hart

(see also Eclectic Orthodoxy: St Basil and the Hoi Poloi: Side Note on the Hart–Pakaluk Quarrel)

David Bentley Hart's Objection to the Existence of Hell

Al Kimel summarizes in Apprehending Apokatastasis: The Incoherence of Everlasting Perdition:

1) The doctrine of creatio ex nihilo asserts the absolute liberty of the Creator in all of his acts. As the infinite plenitude of Being, God did not need to create the cosmos to fill some­thing that was lacking in his life (remember—no passive potency) and having created it he does not find that his happiness and bliss have been increased. Moreover, not only does God enjoy absolute freedom to create, or not create, the cosmos; but he also enjoys absolute freedom in what kind of cosmos to create. He is not subject to constraints outside himself.

Nothing remarkable so far. This is just the classical doctrine of divine aseity which Hart has so ably presented in The Experience of God.

2) God eternally wills himself as the Good, and his willing of the cosmos is encompassed within this eternal self-willing. The purpose, telos, goal, consummation, and end of the divine act of creation is the Good; or to put it in the language of Aristotle, God is the final cause of creation. The cosmos is created by Love out of Love toward consummation in Love.

In the background we hear the voices of St Gregory of Nyssa and St Maximus the Confessor, as well as Dionysius the Areopagite and St Thomas Aquinas.

3) God does not create evil. Only goodness flows from God. For this reason the classical theologians of the Christian tradition have understood evil as a privation of being, a defect, lack, surd, nothingness. The presence of evil within God’s good creation urgently raises the question of theodicy. The question cannot be banished with a mere wave of a philosoph­ical wand. Evil will always be the greatest challenge to faith, both intellectually and existen­tially. It’s one thing to acknowledge, and suffer, evil’s presence in the temporal order; it’s quite another thing to assert its eschatological perdurance.

4) The eschaton, therefore, necessarily and definitively reveals the character and identity of the Creator. The conclusion of the story can neither surprise nor disappoint him, for the conclusion is willed in the initial act of creation. Hence the presence of evil in the eschaton is quite impossible. In Hart’s words: “He could not be the creator of anything substantially evil without evil also being part of the definition of who he essentially is.” Here is the cru­cial Hartian claim: if everlasting perdition belongs to the climax of the cosmic narrative, then it was so intended by God from the beginning. Every free act is teleologically directed and therefore defined by its final cause. The inference cannot be avoided. After all, nothing compelled God to create this particular universe with this particular eschaton, and the omnipo­tence–omniscience combo precludes divine failure. If hell was intended, then it is good and inheres in the Good; if hell is intended, then hell becomes God.

To summarize: in his goodness the triune God creates the cosmos for consummation in his infinite goodness. All comes from Love and returns to Love. The Creator is both material cause and final cause. The eschaton, therefore, is not simply the climax of a story. It is the final revelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the fullness of their lordship and glory. In the words of the Apostle:

And, when all things have been subordinated to him, then will the Son himself also be subordinated to the one who has subordinated all things to him, so that God may be all in all. (1 Cor 15:28)

God will be all in all. This is the eschatological promise. How then hell everlasting?

The above reasoning leads Hart to the conclu­sion that a pernicious incoherence lies deep within the theological tradition. For the past 1500 years the Church has asserted three claims:

• God freely created the cosmos ex nihilo.
• God is the Good and wills only the good.
• God will condemn a portion of his rational creatures to everlasting torment.

Two of these propositions may be rationally held without contradiction, argues Hart, but not all three simultaneously.

And Apprehending Apokatastasis: Revealing the God Behind the Curtain

David Bentley Hart Responds to James P. Ware

Church Life: Looking Awry at Resurrection Bodies by David Bentley Hart

Truly Speculative Theology

The Incarnation Doesn't End with the Resurrection by James P. Ware

However, David Bentley Hart, in a recent article in this journal (“The Spiritual Was More Substantial than the Material for the Ancients”), argues for a very different reading. For Hart finds in 1 Corinthians 15, and throughout much of the rest of the New Testament, a conception of resurrection—both of Christ and of the faithful—involving the replacement of the corruptible body of flesh with a new “spiritual” or “celestial” body composed of the imperishable substance of spirit (the nature possessed by angels and spirit beings). According to Hart, when Paul, John, and other New Testament authors speak of Jesus or the faithful being “raised” to life, this involves “the transformation of the psychical composite into the spiritual simplex—the metamorphosis of the mortal fleshly body that belongs to soul into the immortal fleshless body that belongs to spirit.” It was, Hart claims, in such a “spiritual” body, “purged of every element of flesh and blood and (perhaps) soul,” that Christ rose.

Hart on Translating the NT Greek

Church Life: Spirits, Souls… Tunics? by David Bentley Hart
I do not pretend to have any firm conviction regarding the argument I intend to advance here; but I do find myself haunted by a curious suspicion I find...

Feser Responds to Griffiths and Hart

Ed Feser: Reply to Griffiths and Hart - Hot Air vs. Capital Punishment: A Reply to Paul Griffiths and David Bentley Hart

David Bentley Hart - The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss