david-bentley-hart

Christian Universal Salvation as a Better Motivation for Evangelism

1. Introduction: A Christian Universalistic Motivation for Evangelism

Evangelism is the announcement about God, God’s reign, and God’s salvation provided through Jesus Christ. Many believe that God’s salvation is limited because not all hear the gospel before they die or because not all accept the gospel. A dominant view holds that those who are not saved are condemned to eternal hell. Therefore, a major motivation for evangelism is to give persuasive opportunities for people to respond with faith and to be assured of eternal life. Conversely – and no less motivational for evangelism – those who are unable to respond or who reject the gospel are eternally lost in hell. James Packer, for example, says, “people without Christ are lost, and going to hell…And we who are Christ’s are sent to tell them of the One – the only One – who can save them from perishing…If [their need is urgent], does that not make evangelism a matter of urgency for us?”[1] In a similar vein, another Christian scholar claims that the doctrine of hell is the foundation for the church’s morality, spirituality, and mission.[2] Christians, with this view, hold eternal suffering in hell as a necessary motivation for evangelizing the lost.

There is, however, a minority of Christians who believe that, in the end, all will be saved. One such perspective has been recently articulated by David Bentley Hart. Basing his view on biblical exegesis, readings of Christian theological traditions, and metaphysical coherence, Hart argues for universal salvation through Christ, which he frames around issues of justice (the moral consistency of God and the analogous relationship between divine and human notions of the “good”), freedom (which is God’s gift and yet compromised in this life), and personhood (in which every human being exists only in relationship to all humanity).[3] In this paper I take up Hart’s argument in three parts – justice, freedom, and personhood – and contend that it is a better motivation for evangelism.

II. Justice

Any discussion about the eternal destiny of humanity is based on understandings of justice, which presupposes notions of morality, merit, and punishment. One prominent evangelical, Timothy Keller, explains hell and eternal life based on God’s justice, which he tries to hold together with God’s love. He affirms that in Christianity, “God is both a God of love and of justice.”[4] Because God loves creation, all that destroys “its peace and integrity” must be judged justly.[5] Keller believes that a high regard for God’s law and justice holds humans responsible for their disobedience – the ultimate consequence being a just sentence to an eternal hell.[6] Hell, for Keller, is not only God’s judgment, but the distorted notions of freedom that lead to a “prison of [a person’s] own self-centeredness.”[7] Justice requires punishment or penalty and for the “‘divine wrath’ against injustice to be appeased.”[8] This appeasement is accomplished by Jesus, in humanity’s place, on the cross. So, for Keller, evangelism is the proclamation of God’s grace – the forgiveness for injustices – that leads someone to “saving faith” through which they are restored to relationship with God for eternity.[9]

While there are convergences in Keller’s and Hart’s views, there is a significant difference in Hart’s understanding of judgment, which he thinks must be proportionate to the misdeed, corrective, and temporal. While there are different theories of justice,[10] the concept can be generally defined as “to each one’s due.”[11] For justice to be meaningful, punishment must be proportionate to the “infraction.” Any notion of penal justice presumes, as Hart affirms, “a due proportion between…intentions, knowledge and powers of the malefactor on one hand, and the objective wickedness of the transgression on the other.”[12] Keller, however, believes that because souls are eternal, the just consequence is that they are affected by their “moral and spiritual errors” forever.[13] Hart counters this idea, saying that “whenever the terms ‘justice’ and ‘eternal punishment’ are set side by side as if they were logically compatible, the boundaries of the rational have been violated.”[14] That is to say, regardless of a soul’s capacity for eternity, no temporal wrongdoing merits eternal suffering.

Furthermore, eternal suffering has the purpose of being punitive, but it is not corrective. For Christians, Hart contends that punishment is practiced as a remedial act and is conducive to moral reform, but it is not purely retributive.[15] Like Keller and those who see hell as necessary for holding humans accountable for their injustices, Hart believes that hell does instate human responsibility, but it does not need to be eternal in order to do so.[16] In this view, “the punishments of the life to come are (as Paul suggested in 1 Corinthians 3) merely the final, purgative completion of [God’s] act of rescue and restoration…”[17] Although harsh, this punishment is the “necessary means for bringing about the ultimate purification of every soul…”[18] Hell is a just response for disobedience that corrects and, ultimately, restores a human person.

That means that when the reformative purpose of the punishment is achieved, the punishment should cease. This has biblical support. There are some scriptural texts that speak of imprisonment or torture, but, importantly, they specify a limited term (Matthew 5:26; 18:34; Luke 12:47-48, 59). On the other hand, there are many texts that indicate universal salvation.[19] That said, there are also a few New Testament texts that refer to “eternal fire” (Matthew 18:6) and “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46). Most translations of the New Testament, render the Greek adjective aionios, from these texts, as “eternal” or “everlasting.”[20] However, Hart asserts that aeon, the noun from which the adjective derives, is most properly understood as “age,” a “substantial period of time,” or an “extended interval.”[21] Referencing uses of the term in the Septuagint and classical and Hellenistic Greek literature as well as understandings of early Greek theologians,[22] Hart convincingly asserts that neither the verb nor the adjective “have the intrinsic meaning of ‘eternal.’”[23] Rather, he believes it is best translated as “age,” which in the New Testament is differentiated between “this age” and “the age to come.”[24] So, for example, Hart renders Matthew 25:46 as: “And these will go to the chastening of that Age, but the just to the life of that Age.”[25] Similarly, he translates Matthew 18:6 as: “Now, if your hand or your foot causes you to falter, cut it off and fling it away from you; it is good for you to enter into life crippled or limping rather than, having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the fire of the Age.”[26]

In his critique of Hart, Michael McClymond claims that translating aeon as “of the Age” means losing not only an eternal hell but also eternal life.[27] However, McClymond seems to understand eternity as a static condition of life in which change is impossible for souls. In contrast, Hart believes in the possibility of change in the age to come.[28] Eternity does not fix one to a particular destination. While Hart believes in the existence of hell in the age to come, he understands that it will cease to exist “when all things are subordinated to him…so that God may be all in all (1 Corinthians 15:28).[29]

Besides situating the terminology within a broader context of ancient Greek literature, Hart also points out that the scriptural texts about damnation in the age to come are parabolic or apocalyptic and are, therefore, symbolic.[30] While the historical and cultural distance between the authors and contemporary readers make certitude about the symbols’ referents impossible, they do beg interpretation. This is especially true of the Revelation of John that also contains references to the aeon of future torment, which Hart translates “unto the ages of ages” (Revelation 14:11; 20:10). Miroslav Volf, however, thinks that these images from Revelation are important for securing justice for evildoers. He believes that Christians must understand that the slaughtered Lamb and the Rider on the white horse are one and the same and, as God, he is the only one who can judge justly.[31] Nonetheless, if divine justice is to inform human justice, then they must be analogous. Volf must explain which injustices in this life deserve “eternal exclusion.”[32] When the proportion between the misdeed and the punishment is lost, “the very concept of justice has been rendered entirely vacuous,” as Hart asserts.[33] Although Hart’s view of Revelation is perhaps overly preterist, interpreting it as a text for an early Judaic Christian community and discounting any prophetic messages for the future,[34] he does recognize that the book itself – these texts notwithstanding – concludes with those who are outside being invited to wash their garments, enter through the open gates of the city, and drink from life’s waters.[35] In this way, readings of eternal suffering in the age to come are subverted from within the biblical text in which God makes “all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

Hart’s view of universal salvation provides a vision for justice that renders judgments that are commensurate with the evil done, that holds humanity to account and remedies their disobedient impulses, and that ultimately ends “the lingering effects of a condition of slavery that God has conquered universally in Christ and will ultimately conquer individually in every soul.”[36] This perspective is a better motivation for evangelism for at least five reasons. First, evangelists announce the goodness of God. The seeming injustice of God condemning some to eternal hell does not need to be defended by claiming that God’s perfect wisdom is beyond human intelligibility. The images of a strictly punitive god can be cast aside.[37] Second, human justice corresponds to God’s justice. Not only is God not perceived to be capricious or evil, but evangelists can proclaim God’s justice as grounds for human justice. This means that humans are held responsible for their actions and have a strong impetus for ethical living. Christians are motivated to evangelize so that the experience of hell is limited and avoided. Third, hell is remedial. Evangelists do not only proclaim just judgment for evildoers but also the promised correction and restoration through any punishment.[38] Fourth, because hell is not only temporal but a present experience, Christians are prompted to share good news not only about one’s future destiny but also about their current suffering. The gospel is the way through sin (forgiveness and reconciliation) and out of sin (sanctification and imitatio Christi). This implies also that evangelism does not end after one is converted but, because hell is a pending consequence for disobedience, it is the continuous call to conformity with Christ. Finally, the gospel is the proclamation that God ultimately does not repay humans according to their merits but claims all creatures for God’s self.[39]

III. Freedom

A common understanding about the gospel is that it is a gift to be freely received and not coercively imposed on anyone. Rick Richardson’s statement is typical: “God will not violate our freedom to choose. God wants love or nothing; forced allegiance is not part of God’s will.”[40] Similarly, for Keller, who, although he believes that justification comes through faith alone,[41] thinks that this rests on human choice. Those that do not choose to respond in faith, choose hell.[42] In fact, he defines hell as “one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity.”[43] The permanency of hell, in this view, is proof of God’s absolute commitment to freedom.[44] Contrarily, Hart argues that freedom is the ability to choose that for which one is created, that humanity’s freedom is compromised by sin, and that God determines to work patiently in human beings, bringing them all to freedom.

In contrast to the “libertarian” model of freedom that values agency in terms of choice, the classical Christian tradition, according to Hart, understands freedom as “a being’s power to flourish as what it naturally is, to become ever more fully what it is.”[45] With this understanding, freedom is not the ability to select from various options. Rather, according to Hart, “to be fully free is to be joined to that end for which our natures were originally framed, and for which, in the deepest reaches of our souls, we ceaselessly yearn.”[46] The truly free human being is imaged by Jesus. With “perfect knowledge of the good” and being “perfectly rational,” he, in full freedom, could only choose the good.[47]

Human freedom, however, is compromised.[48] Hart says that “true freedom is contingent upon true knowledge and true sanity of mind. To the very degree that either of these is deficient, freedom is absent.”[49] Because rational freedom is teleological, there must be “a rational cognizance…of what constitutes either the fulfillment or the ruin of a human soul.”[50] When one’s choices lead to a self-damaging end, then the rationale that makes that choice is called into question. Furthermore, that which separates a person from God – the ultimate good telos for which humans are created – “even if it be our own power of choice, is a form of bondage to the irrational.”[51] Freedom is not simply the agency to choose but rather the demonstration that a person chooses well.

Bad choices reveal compromised freedom. Interestingly, Keller cites those suffering from “addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, and pornography,” as examples of not those who do not choose God and, therefore, merit unending hell.[52] However, as anyone acquainted with those who suffer from dependency issues knows, addictions reflect a bondage, not a choice. Addictions inhibit freedom. Even when the addicted want to choose to not consume another dose, they are not free to do so, giving stark depiction to the Apostle Paul’s words: “For I do not do the good I wish; instead, the evil I do not wish, this I do” (Romans 7:19).[53] Of course, there are different measures of agency as all humans wrestle in their negotiations with their desires and compulsions for the good. Yet, the claim that humans must respond to the gospel by freely choosing God does not take seriously enough the enslaving effects of sin and fails to recognize the existing limitations to human freedom.[54]

Along with humanity’s compromised volition and clouded rationale that call into question human freedom, God is not, as the free will proponents believe, one option to be chosen from among others.[55] Rather, Hart argues that God is “Being itself, the source and end of all reality, in which all things live and move and have their being (Acts 17:28).”[56] God, in the Christian view, does not exist as a being among other beings. Rather, all of reality, including freedom itself, exists from, in, and toward God.

This leads to the issue of divine determinism. Some justify eternal condemnation by appealing to God’s determination to preserve human freedom.[57] By God’s perfect love and knowledge, some, like Keller, claim that God also determines to save some from hell.[58] Similarly, Packer claims that God will not violate human freedom and yet will sovereignly make them willing to come to Christ by his grace.[59] Although God’s sovereign determination to save some seems to contradict humanity’s responsible agency to choose or reject Christ, Packer calls it an antinomy that is beyond human intelligibility.[60]

However, instead of employing divine sovereignty to explain why only some are saved, Hart affirms divine determinacy to save all. God is not an “external agency” coercing “creature’s intentions to bring them to the end he decrees.”[61] Rather, as creator, God “is already intrinsic to the very structure of reason and desire within the soul.”[62] Inasmuch as humans are free to will anything, it is because God “is making us to do so.”[63] God is both “the source of all action and intentionality” and the “transcendental object of rational desire that elicits every act of mind and will.”[64] For Hart, there is no need to appeal to antinomy. The “divine determinism toward the transcendent Good, then, is precisely what freedom is for a rational nature.”[65] Although freedom is only partial in this life and humans may need to go through hell to be liberated, God will inevitably set every soul free as they all find their home in God.[66]

This view of human freedom as created by God for God, limited, and ultimately guaranteed by God provides a better motivation for evangelism. The gospel declares that humans are created for freedom, but they are not free. This is particularly good news to those who are aware of their bondage or unfreedom. Understanding the limitations of human liberty, evangelists proclaim freedom as a consequence of the gospel, not its prerequisite. God does not absolutize one’s sense of freedom over their created purpose for eternal life with God. The gospel is the truth that brings freedom. Because this loving pursuit may take much time, Christians do not stop living and sharing the gospel after it has been heard.

Also, because human freedom is compromised, human responsibility is qualified. Although those who believe in eternal suffering cannot account for these, diminished rationale or external contingencies that influence behavior constrain human responsibility. Humans are not blameless, but they are not completely to blame.[67] Ultimately, the good news is that God takes it upon God’s self to rescue and liberate humans as they are unable to do this for themselves (John 8:36). Freedom is delivery from hell, which implies ongoing discipleship. On the journey to union with Christ, increasing agency is evidenced by the continuous “choice” for Christ.

Furthermore, because God is the source and goal of freedom, evangelists do not offer God on the marketplace of options for people to choose. Rather, God is at work in all creatures, shaping their desires, and “will drag everyone” to himself (John 12:32).

IV. Personhood

We have looked at justice, which is often viewed as the rapport between divine judgment and individual behavior, and at freedom, which is usually viewed as the individual prerogative to choose or reject God. Most Christians understand that the gospel is addressed to individuals who are saved as individuals. Even when an individualistic approach to evangelism is criticized,[68] it is fully defended as the locus of eschatological judgment. Hart contests this perspective, saying, “It would be possible for us to be saved as individuals only if it were possible for us to be persons as individuals…”[69] Persons, however, “are not self-enclosed individual substances,” but rather “dynamic events of relation to what is other than themselves.”[70] Therefore, humanity “cannot be saved as persons except in and with all other persons.”[71] Personhood, in Hart’s view, is constituted by humanity’s corporate identity, love by and for others, and memory of others.

Humanity is constituted corporately through creation, the fall, and restoration in Christ. Following the exegesis of Genesis by Gregory of Nyssa, Hart sees Adam, the primordial human being, as the “entire pleroma of all human beings in every age.”[72] In Adam, humanity shares a corporate ontology by virtue of their creation. Humanity also experiences together the collective effects of the Fall. Because of Adam, all humanity is infected with sin.[73] Humanity is “bound in disobedience” and experiences “shared brokenness” in the fallen world.[74] Paul says that all humanity experiences the fall so that God might show mercy to all (Romans 11:32). Just as humanity is created as an “indivisible solidarity” according to the image of God, humanity is recapitulated through Christ.[75] Because “the human totality is a living unity,” God enters “the plenitude of humanity as a single man…assuming humanity’s creaturely finitude and history as his own.” [76] “Reorienting humanity toward its true end…the incarnation of the Logos is of effect for the whole.”[77] This means that God is not simply making a way of salvation for individuals but for the whole fabric of humanity. “Each person is a body within the body of humanity, which exists in its proper nature only as the body of Christ.”[78] Thus, the resurrection is more than the reconstitution of individual corporality; it is “more crucially about the fully restored existence of the persons as socially, communally, corporately constituted.”[79]

That said, individuality is not dissolved in corporate humanity. Hart reiterates that “Christ’s assumption and final recapitulation of the human cannot simply be imposed upon the race as a whole, but must effect conversion of each soul within itself, so that room is truly made for God ‘in all.’”[80]

Humanity’s corporate identity is personally experienced through love and memory. No soul exists in isolation.[81] Each soul is “created by and sustained within the loves and associations and affinities that shape [them].”[82] Humans are attached to the ones they love not only by proximity but also across geography and generations.[83] Humans are “creatures of their loves” and “belong, of necessity, to an indissoluble coinherence of souls.”[84] Thus, in Hart’s view, there can be no eternal bliss for any individual soul without the eternal bliss for all of those who they love.[85] If one is suffering hell, then all those who love them cannot experience heaven.

Of course, some believe that redeemed persons can enjoy the new creation while their loved ones suffer.[86] Some propose that those suffering eternal perdition will be forgotten. Miroslav Volf, for example, argues that just as evil ceases to exist in the new creation so there will be no more memories of evil.[87] But does forgetting evil also entail forgetting the evildoer who is consigned to eternal punishment? Volf diplomatically avoids answering the question, referring his readers to the “hopeful universalist” Hans Urs von Balthazar.[88] However, too much hangs in the balance of Volf’s argument for the question to be left unanswered. If forgetting evil is necessary to enjoy eternal bliss, then the evil ones who suffer eternal hell must also be forgotten. Hart calls this “heavenly lobotomy” the decomposition of a person.[89] A parent, for example, is constituted by the relationship with their child. If they must eternally forget their child, a significant aspect of their identity is lost. If people are constituted by their relations to others, then the loss of the memory of others means a diminution of the one who forgets. Hart points out that when the “deepest emotional and personal elements that compose the soul [are] stripped away,” the soul that is saved loses any continuity between the person of this age and the one of the age of the resurrection.[90] Souls that, for the sake of heavenly bliss, must surrender their memories of the ones they love lose their personhood. If this is the case, then how can one call it “salvation?” Thankfully, forgetting or losing those who are loved or forfeiting any from the tapestry of humanity is not required. Through Christ’s obedience unto death, the whole human race is gathered in Christ and moved toward proper subjection until “they are yielded up as one body to the Father” and “God will be all in all.”[91]

This view of personhood constituted through corporate identity, love, and memory is a better motivation for evangelism. First, humanity is not saved as individuals but only together. That means that every person has a vested interest in the salvation of all other persons. Everyone experiences hell in some capacity until all are reconciled. Thus, each must be sharing the gospel so that all can be saved. Second, this proposal provides a strong basis for critiquing individualism and qualifies all individual decisions by their relationships to others. Third, this view roots evangelism in love and the promise of eternal life with each person’s loved ones instead of in fear of eternal perdition or in obligation to a command. Fourth, Christians do not need to forget others but can practice remembering others in prayer and in sharing the gospel.

V. Conclusion

We have summarized Hart’s argument for universal salvation through Christ and identified advantages for galvanizing evangelism. According to Hart, the gospel is the announcement of God’s victory over death, sin, and the rebellious spiritual powers. The Son is sent into the world and “even into the kingdom of death” to liberate “his creatures from slavery to a false and merciless master.”[92] A summons to all humanity, persons experience salvation in a “new and corporate way of life…in the community of love.”[93] The gospel is the joyous proclamation that the lost can and will find their home in God’s kingdom. On the journey home, the purgation of hell is proportionate to the evil done, corrective, temporal, and ultimately vanquished. So, evangelists can stand on God’s goodness, ground calls for justice in divine justice, and call people out of their hells and into the mercy of God. Although human freedom is compromised, it is created by God and ultimately experienced in God. Thus, evangelists declare the evangel, not as a choice, but as the truth that liberates, even if it takes time. The evangelists proclaim the God who is undeterred by human notions of freedom but is committed to delivering all creation to freedom. Because humans are persons who are constituted by a collective ontology through love and memory, they exist only through one another. The evangelist calls all to eternal life, affirming that none can experience it fully until all creation does. This view of universal salvation in Christ serves as a better motivation for evangelizing.

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[1] J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Books, 2012), 97.

[2] Michael McClymond, “David Bentley Hart’s Lonely, Last Stand for Christian Universalism,” The Gospel Coalition, accessed May 14, 2021, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/reviews/shall-saved-universal-christian-universalism-david-bentley-hart/.

[3] Pachuau states that “those who emphasize God’s universal salvation tend to either disparage the name and role of Jesus in God’s saving act or make too general a point without attending to details…(Lalsangkima Pachuau, “God’s Mission of Salvation: Dimensions and Scope of Salvation,” Presentation ESJ School of World Mission and Evangelism Seminar (Not yet published): 47.) This is not true of Hart’s proposal for universal salvation through Christ.

[4] Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, 2018, 75.

[5] Ibid., 76.

[6] Timothy Keller, Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just, 2016, 101; “Preaching Hell In A Tolerant Age,” Sermon Central, last modified January 30, 2018, accessed May 1, 2021, https://www.sermoncentral.comhttps://www.sermoncentral.com/pastors-preaching-articles/tim-keller-preaching-hell-in-a-tolerant-age-752.

[7] Keller, The Reason for God, 82.

[8] Keller, Generous Justice, 100.

[9] Ibid., 139.

[10] See, for example, Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984); Karen Lebacqz, Six Theories of Justice: Perspectives from Philosophical and Theological Ethics (Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1986).

[11] Miroslav Volf, “Exclusion and Embrace: Theological Reflections in the Wake of ‘Ethnic Cleansing,’” Communio viatorum 35, no. 3 (1993): 202; Aristotle, “The Internet Classics Archive | Nicomachean Ethics, (V.3),” accessed May 14, 2021, http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.5.v.html.

[12] David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2019), 45.

[13] Keller, The Reason for God, 83. Another rationale is held by Calvin who saw the eternal punishment of souls in hell as a means through which God receives glory and God’s honor is vindicated (John Calvin, “The Institutes of Christian Religion,” The Online Library of Liberty (2011): 1137.)

[14] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 43.

[15] Ibid., 44. See, for example, Hebrews 12:5-7, 1 Corinthians 5:5, 11:30-32, and 2 Corinthians 2:6-8.

[16] For Hart, hell is not understood as a torture chamber that forces people into salvation. Without specifying the details, Hart believes that it is purgative of sin and corrective of desires. With a similar proposal, MacDonald describes hell as a “post-mortem situation” where people face the terrible consequence of sin and are educated for salvation (Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2006), 162).

[17] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 165. In the Apostle Paul’s only image of the final judgment, he says, “If the work that someone has built endures, he will receive a reward; If anyone’s work should be burned away, he will suffer loss, yet he shall be saved, though so as by fire” (1 Corinthians 3:14-15).

[18] Ibid. Hart points out that the English word “hell” is often the translation of different New Testament images (Gehenna, Hades, and Tartarus), which effectively conflates the differences and tends to impose contemporary imaginary for hell onto the translations (ibid., 112).

[19] Hart cites Romans 5:18-19; 1 Corinthians 15:22-28; 2 Corinthians 5:14; Romans 11:32; 1 Timothy 2:3- 6; Titus 2:11; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Ephesians 1:9- 10; Colossians 1:27- 28; John 12:32; Hebrews 2:9; John 17:2; John 4:42; John 12:47; 1 John 4:14; 2 Peter 3:9; Matthew 18:14; Philippians 2:9- 11; Colossians 1:19-20; 1 John 2:2; John 3:17; Luke 16:16; 1 Timothy 4:10; 1 Corinthians 15:23-24 (Ibid., 95-105).

[20] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 121.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid., 121–125.

[23] Ibid., 123.

[24] Ibid., 126.

[25] David Bentley Hart, ed., The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017). Hart notes that the word kolasis, translated by many as “punishment,” mainly connoted “correction” and was distinguished from timoria, which means “retributive punishment,” which is why he renders it as “chastening.”

[26] Ibid.

[27] McClymond, “David Bentley Hart’s Lonely, Last Stand for Christian Universalism.” See, for example, John 3:16.

[28] Although the meaning of 1 Peter 4:6 is contested, it does intimate post-mortem change.

[29] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 194–195. (It is important to note that Hart does not subscribe to the Roman Catholic notion of purgatory (ibid., 118).)

[30] Ibid., 106–120. Keller also makes this point: “All descriptions and depictions of heaven and hell in the Bible are symbolic and metaphorical (Reason, 273, note 10).”

[31] Volf, “Exclusion and Embrace,” 297–302. Volf does hold out the possibility for universal salvation (note 8).

[32] Ibid., 297.

[33] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 45.

[34] For a Christian universalist interpretation of Revelation, see: MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 106–132.

[35] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 108–109.

[36] Ibid., 129.

[37] If humans who are evil know how to give good gifts to our children, then how much more our Father in heaven? (Matthew 7:9-11) and Bradley Jersak, A More Christlike God: A More Beautiful Gospel. (Place of publication not identified: PLAIN TRUTH MINISTRIES, 2016).

[38] This has implications on how societies practice correction or retribution in their penitentiary systems. See: Shane Claiborne, Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2016).

[39] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 52.

[40] Rick Richardson, Reimagining Evangelism: Inviting Friends on a Spiritual Journey (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 44; Pachuau, “God’s Mission of Salvation: Dimensions and Scope of Salvation,” 39.

[41] Keller, Generous Justice, 101.

[42] Keller, The Reason for God, 80.

[43] Ibid.

[44] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 171.

[45] Ibid., 172.

[46] Ibid., 173.

[47] Ibid., 190. Following Maximus the Confessor, Hart states that unlike humans, Christ, who is the “divine Logos” and “of one essence with the Father and Spirit,” did not have a “gnomic” will – a “faculty of deliberation – but only a “natural” will – “the innate and inextinguishable movement of rational volition toward God (ibid., 188-189). Thus, his will is perfectly free to choose only the “Good” and only will of the Father.

[48] See, for example, John 8:34.

[49] Hart, The New Testament, 177.

[50] Ibid., 178.

[51] Ibid., 173.

[52] Keller, The Reason for God, 80.

[53] Hart, The New Testament.

[54]  For example, see 1 Corinthians 13:12.

[55] While Hart does not discuss how this view of freedom commodifies faith, Stone does make this connection, critiquing the western church’s cultural accommodation to consumerism. (Bryan P. Stone, Evangelism after Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2018), 94.)

[56] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 181.

[57] Others, like Calvin, in fact, assert that God predetermines that some will suffer eternity in hell (Calvin, “The Institutes of Christian Religion, III.23.11.”).

[58] Tim Keller, “3 Objections to the Doctrine of Election,” The Gospel Coalition, accessed May 2, 2021, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/3-objections-to-the-doctrine-of-election/.

[59] Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 111–112. While both Keller and Packer draw on Reformed theology, Packer places more weight on divine choice about human salvation than Keller who emphasizes human choice.

[60] Ibid., 24–29.

[61] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 183. Following Nyssa, Hart understands creation within God’s freedom. God does not create or redeem out of any need but rather ex nihilo. Creation out of nothing is revealed in the creation narrative and also in the creation of a child in an old, barren womb, in the creation of a people out of insignificance and slavery, in the resurrection from the dead, and in the recreation of all things. God freely creates and freely recreates all things (Ibid., 68–73. Gregory Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 23, vol. The Church Fathers. The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection, 37 Volumes vols., 3 Series (Catholic Way Publishing, Kindle Edition., 2014).

[62] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 183.

[63] Ibid.

[64] Ibid.

[65] Ibid., 179.

[66] Ibid., 195.

[67] Ibid., 43.

[68] Richardson, Reimagining Evangelism, 55; Katie J. Rawson, Crossing Cultures with Jesus: Sharing Good News with Sensitivity and Grace (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, an imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2015), 83; Stone, Evangelism after Pluralism, 98. For a critique of the predestination of individuals, see Matthew W. Bates, Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019), 136–137.

[69] Hart, The New Testament, 144.

[70] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 151.

[71] Ibid., 146.

[72] Ibid., 139; Gregory Nyssa, On the Making of Man, XVI.16 (37 Volumes vols)., 3 Series (Catholic Way Publishing, Kindle Edition., 2014).

[73] David Bentley Hart, “Traditio Deformis,” First Things, accessed May 14, 2021, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/05/traditio-deformis. Hart, following the Eastern Church, does not affirm Augustine’s interpretation of genetic guilt based on his Latin translation of Romans 5:12 that “all sinned in Adam.” Rather, Hart follows the Greek text that states that “all sinned because of Adam.”

[74] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 145. See, for example, Romans 11:32.

[75] Ibid., 140.

[76] Ibid., 141.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Ibid., 153. Here we may mention a glaring omission from Hart’s proposal. When Hart says, “the body of Christ” or the “community of love” (p. 205), he seems to imply but does not explicitly state that this is the Church. Although he assumes the authority of Scripture, appeals to arguments from Christian tradition, and ultimately understands universal salvation through Christ, he does not mention the church’s place or role in mediating salvation or its message.

[79] Ibid.

[80] Ibid., 143.

[81] Ibid., 149.

[82] Ibid., 153.

[83] Ibid., 154.

[84] Ibid., 152–154.

[85] This is a major problem for the belief in ultimate annihilation of those who do not choose Christ. For an explanation of this view, see: Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, Paperback edition. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2017), 459–460.

[86] Jonathan Edwards, for example, asserts that the saints in glory will rejoice to see the torments of the damned. According to Edwards, the suffering of the wicked will increase the jubilation of the saints, and, because they love reflects God’s love, they will no longer love the damned (Jonathan Edwards, “Why Saints in Glory Will Rejoice to See the Torments of the Damned. Stedman and Hutchinson, Eds. 1891. A Library of American Literature: An Anthology in 11 Volumes,” accessed May 16, 2021, https://www.bartleby.com/400/prose/293.html).

[87] Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 2006), 190–191.

[88] Ibid., 180.

[89] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 150.

[90] Ibid., 151–152.

[91] Ibid., 142.

[92] Ibid., 205.

[93] Ibid.