So I got curious (for no good reason) and googled David Bentley Hart. Not really my cup of tea, if only because he’s neither a Barthian (some of my older seminary professors were), or a process theologian (a few were, or still process-curious), and the rest were Niebuhrians (Xian ethics, not necessarily theology), or in the Jesus Seminar, and so only interested in refuting literalists (the raison d’etre of the group; and now that the founder is dead and the popular works are no longer popular, so has the Seminar passed beneath the horizon (although I realized that a very few years out of seminary, when I met an even more recent graduate already schooled in a new school treating the Seminar as passé and no longer cutting edge; or even interesting. Sic transit gloria.)). Nor is Hart any other kind of interesting thinker, to me. Mind, I don’t have much use for Barth, and process theology rapidly went the way of the “God is dead” theologians. I don’t even have much use for systematic theology (which I understand Hart does). Too much Kierkegaard when I was young, too much Derrida in my middle years. Anyway, Bentley Hart made his biggest splash (says Google) arguing everyone will eventually be saved.
There. Don’t you feel better? ❤️🩹
But his argument seems (to be fair, I’ve never read anything he’s written) to be still based on some notion of metaphysical Christian soteriology. And while I’ve nothing against metaphysics (classical or otherwise), That All Shall Be Saved still pushes the matter into “pie in the Sky bye and bye;” for me.
Which I would have ignored, but I came across this post from a few years back and, since it was inconveniently long to copy and paste, I decided to write an inconveniently long introduction to the subject to reintroduce it.
Or just reframe it; because my purpose in bringing it up is to oppose “classical” soteriology (especially of the dominant Protestant form) with the soteriology of my spiritual ancestors in the church which ordained me lo these many, many years ago now. That soteriology focused on service to persons, not salvation of souls (you see the practical/metaphysical split there, I hope). I think Jesus (and Paul!) were more about the practical than the other; and I think an examination of Romans 12 and the parable from Matthew, along with the insights of Walt Brueggeman (several of my seminary professors still remembered when he taught there, so I learned the familiarity from them) begins, at least, to establish that.
We’ll see if I’m right. Even partially.
Hart said several years back that his plan was to concentrate on matters of consciousness for the rest of his life, leaving theology behind. I'm not sure what the state of his health is, he had a serious operation and the last I read was still in pretty bad condition.
ReplyDeleteI think questions of soteriology are a matter of what you've been brought up to. I think it was Hart who pointed out that it became an obsession of, especially, Western Christianity in the period of the Reformation, it might have figured in why he abandoned Anglicanism for Orthodoxy. That All Shall Be Saved is more than just about that, it's about the character of God and the nature of a God who would damn even one conscious creature to eternal conscious pain than it is about what the Scriptures back up or don't.
But I think everyone should concentrate on what they find important, God knows I'm all over the place in that regard.