Apologies in advance that this comment isn't more substantive for a first time comment, but, Dr. Hart, I've been spending time with your work for several years now and I just wanted to express how meaningful your thought has been to me. I am currently attempting to pursue a vocation in ministry as a healthcare chaplain and when I think about encounter with so many in distress and deep pain, these questions become so profoundly, humanly urgent. The universalist answer has become core to my faith and I can't but envision it as absolutely integral to approaching with due gravity the work of, as they say, a ministry of presence and of clarifying the nature of God one should seek to emulate in that work. On a purely personal level, your work has been central to my finding real rest, really for the first time, in God's love and been a site of deep healing. So, despite how understandably wearying these responses to Rooney have been, I wanted to offer my thanks for your recapitulation of them here, as they continue to help me find a theological way forward into a real hope and a way into encountering the tradition that actually makes sense, both intellectually and morally. Sending all good wishes.
Increasingly I find that those upon whom the church sets the attack dogs, have something helpful to say. Usually it’s something ‘hiding in plain sight’ which it suits deeper darker agendas to distract the faithful from, for example the surfeit of texts suggesting ‘That All May Be Saved’. Surely the well ordered heart must desire this to be so, if only for purely selfish motives. Thank you for becoming a lightening rod David, however wearying.
Father Rooney's God - and indeed the God of many sincere and apparently devoted Christians - brings to mind Dickens' Wackford Squeers "Who's a goin' to be blamed? Who's a goin' to be whopped?' It's so very clearly a human projection, based on probably rather unhappy experience, and betrays an impoverished lcapacity for getting beyond the personal. and imagining transcendence. It would be insulting if it weren't rather sad - and dangerous, since it gives licence for human beings to behave in the manner of the punitive God they have created in the name of corrective justice. This horrible travesty drives so many away - and rightly so. Also what is this barmy notion We don't know what Hell is for but it will be revealed to us when we die? Surely this is bonkers: God creating rational beings and then deliberately withholding rational explanations.
One qualification—retributive justice, not corrective. So much the worse.
I yield to your psychological expertise. I find it impossible to understand how one can believe such things, but I’m sure there’s some psychopathology behind it all.
I think both apply to human beings enacting what they consider the nature of God - This is for your own good - but I bow to your superior grasp of theology. In the matter of Jesus's analogical description of God the Father, suppose one's father is a brute, given to harsh words and "corrective" punishment. It's not hard to see how that becomes the model for the higher Father. I fear the crucifixion can feed this image albeit perhaps unconsciously.
I have found this as a barrier to thinking of God as a father for a long time, not that my father was a brute, though not exactly ideal either. Watching my friends become fathers and try to do the best they can with the role has given me a better picture of my own father's struggles and allowed me to better grasp the idea of a father who works the best for his children. But, yes, I agree, the analogy (maybe analogy in general) has it's limits.
I would be very interested to know if there is anything substantial to read on the psychology/ psychological effects of belief in eternal hell. If you happen to know anything or anywhere to point me, I would appreciate it very much. That's something I feel I should study in depth when I have the chance.
There is a good deal of literature on this but I'm afraid it is years since I practised so I cannot any longer give you chapter and verse. However, I can testify to any number of people I saw brought up in the Catholic faith whose psyches were plainly marked by having been raised from babyhood to believe in eternal hell. I could also see what the benefits were to society: a scrupulous avoidance of certain kinds of behaviour so I came to regard it as a means of social control. I would describe what I observed as a kind of constant existential terror often leading to alcoholism or drug taking to escape the fear of putting a foot wrong and falling into perpetual damnation.
That all makes perfect sense to me. I only did a pretty superficial search so far to find writing on this and didn't find anything too interesting or detailed, so if any titles or authors happen to come back to mind at any point and you can send them, it would be greatly appreciated.
I was fortunately not subjected to that kind of thing at an early age. I was raised Catholic but no one took it seriously. Yet being a Catholic revert of 7 years I can already see how it's stifled, warped and compartmentalized my trust in God. All the core teachings of the mystics on prayer or the metaphysics of God's goodness pointed to the impossibility of any creature being lost forever, and all the mentions of eternal hell seemed tacked on with no meaningful connection, but I felt I had to hold onto that possibility lest I be presumptuous like any number of other souls who surely had made the same mistake. I feel now that I've cut that teaching off, the things that brought me to the faith can start to breathe and unravel and be bold.
Well, I don't mean to go into a personal story, but I say that because I feel so much mental wellbeing must be at stake. And I can't imagine, given my (relatively!) small struggle with this, what others go through who labor under it from childhood. This seems like a major mental health issue. I tend to think Hart is right that no one can really believe in ECT, although the belief that one believes it, or the obligation to, is enough to do the damage - just the sheer weight of it independent of all the teachings of divine mercy. I wonder how much of the subjective side of eternal hell can be discussed, since that's what so much of it seems to come down to.
I love this so much. I've heard/read all the content before, but there is some kind of absurd humor in the tone of the interview: David Artman soldiers on with his summary of Rooney's argument while DBH grows increasingly exasperated. Artman's ability to keep going has some amazingly humorous quality that I can't quite pin down. It's like Beckett's Endgame somehow.
What is it with clerics (plenty in American Orthodoxy, sadly) who take such great delight in accusing people of heresy? It's as if it were the best part of Christianity: Shouting "anathema sit!" at your interlocutors.
For what it’s worth, here is my summary of how Fr. Rooney in his interview with Suan Sonna spoke about Aquinas and why humans are at fault for resisting God’s sufficient grace.
Father Rooney quotes Thomas Aquinas as saying God shines the sun on everybody and the only reason they are damned is because they shut their eyes to it. God doesn’t set us up to fail. He allows it to happen. He allowed the Fall to happen so we do not come into existence in a state of grace. That’s the world he decided to create. We just have to trust that God is good even when the evidence may seem otherwise. It can be spiritually dangerous to try and find out God’s reasons for the allowance of evil.
This is not an exact verbatim, but I believe it captures his line of reasoning pretty well, and it shows his attempt at combining Aquinas and a C.S. Lewis approach.
Well, you can turn this around, can't you? That's part of David's point in The Doors of the Sea: attempting to justify God is "spiritually dangerous" precisely because evil has to be fully and finally defeated, and trying to explain away anything less often leaves us with a lesser "God" that's spiritually dangerous to love and worship with intellectual and moral consistency.
Debating an absentee opponent through the lamentable and dross recitation of tedious quotes, though congenial in there Southern delivery, should not be repeated or imitated in any realm or context. My sympathies are with you, Hart. I earnestly believe you are a misunderstood man. Your cross to bare, perhaps. Praying for the speedy termination of your indisposition and the softening of prejudiced hearts.
Well, David Artman is trying to make sure the nonsense gets a proper answer. But it’s hardly a cross on my shoulders. Just a small irritation. Rather like a mosquito.
Thank you for having these interactions when you're up for them (however reluctant). They serve as therapeutic for those of us who, while intellectually persuaded by the [truly] Good News, yet suffer the nagging echos of infernalist doctrine from our childhood. The trauma is real and difficult to heal.
I’m halfway through the podcast and am impressed with your patience in having to recite basic propositions and principles. As a Catholic (former Anglican), I spent last weekend with a young-ish (mid 40s is young in the Dominican order) Dominican priest who knows (and ridicules) I believe we shall all be saved. I was in two minds whether to raise the Rooney - Hart ‘debate’ (and indeed whether he was even aware of it). In the end I chose not to and we spent the weekend discussing whether the rise of Talibanism in young conservative Catholics is a temporary phenomenon or are we going to be accusing our co-religionists of heresy for some time to come!! Jury is out.
One other remark. Bringing the principle of double effect into this is wildly off the mark and badly out of line with Aquinas' thought on this (which isn't any better). The principle of double effect is only relevant in the realm of finite agents where someone, intending the good with all their might, is met with outcomes and consequences they cannot control due to the interference of other finite agents. The principle simply cannot arise at the level of creatio ex nihilo where God's causality extends to omne quod quocumque modo est. Aquinas knew this perfectly well. But again Aquinas' answer isn't any better. For him, the very perfection of the universe requires a multiplicity of different grades of being, some of which are in hell and fail to achieve their end. But if you have hell and classical metaphysics, what else can you say? Ultimately for Aquinas, hell is something that cannot at the end of the day not be positively willed by God - it is necessary for the completion of the universe. Of course he tried to finesse it a bit more than this with the limping example and the heart as the motive power, but in several passages he just owns it.
‘For him, the very perfection of the universe requires a multiplicity of different grades of being, some of which are in hell and fail to achieve their end.’
Echoes here for me of multiple universe theory. Because certain metaphysical possibilities must not under any circumstances be allowed, lest people start to wonder if there is a God after all, there must be an infinite number of universes. That there is only one cannot be true because it suggests possibilities we cannot allow to be true.
I had a similar frustration reading a book by an Orthodox author invoking Isaac of Nineveh for the proposition that repentance is impossible after death.
Wow it is true that Isaac said that. At least I have an icon with that on it, but he is contorting its meaning. Never been a fan of Fr. Damick since I read his book about heterodoxy and orthodoxy.
"The opportunity that God gives us to repent is within the bounds of this current, mortal life. Once we no longer have mortal bodies—after physical death and even more so after the universal resurrection—we will not be capable of repentance. We will be crystallized in either rebellion or obedience. And that is why saints such as Isaac the Syrian said, 'This life is given to us for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits.' This life is our chance."
But, of course, for Isaac the failure to repent in this life meant purification in the life to come. Only a deeply intellectually dishonest man could possibly pretend that Isaac was anything other than an absolutely explicit universalist--as were so many of the East Syrian theologians of late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Apologies in advance that this comment isn't more substantive for a first time comment, but, Dr. Hart, I've been spending time with your work for several years now and I just wanted to express how meaningful your thought has been to me. I am currently attempting to pursue a vocation in ministry as a healthcare chaplain and when I think about encounter with so many in distress and deep pain, these questions become so profoundly, humanly urgent. The universalist answer has become core to my faith and I can't but envision it as absolutely integral to approaching with due gravity the work of, as they say, a ministry of presence and of clarifying the nature of God one should seek to emulate in that work. On a purely personal level, your work has been central to my finding real rest, really for the first time, in God's love and been a site of deep healing. So, despite how understandably wearying these responses to Rooney have been, I wanted to offer my thanks for your recapitulation of them here, as they continue to help me find a theological way forward into a real hope and a way into encountering the tradition that actually makes sense, both intellectually and morally. Sending all good wishes.
Grazie.
Increasingly I find that those upon whom the church sets the attack dogs, have something helpful to say. Usually it’s something ‘hiding in plain sight’ which it suits deeper darker agendas to distract the faithful from, for example the surfeit of texts suggesting ‘That All May Be Saved’. Surely the well ordered heart must desire this to be so, if only for purely selfish motives. Thank you for becoming a lightening rod David, however wearying.
Father Rooney's God - and indeed the God of many sincere and apparently devoted Christians - brings to mind Dickens' Wackford Squeers "Who's a goin' to be blamed? Who's a goin' to be whopped?' It's so very clearly a human projection, based on probably rather unhappy experience, and betrays an impoverished lcapacity for getting beyond the personal. and imagining transcendence. It would be insulting if it weren't rather sad - and dangerous, since it gives licence for human beings to behave in the manner of the punitive God they have created in the name of corrective justice. This horrible travesty drives so many away - and rightly so. Also what is this barmy notion We don't know what Hell is for but it will be revealed to us when we die? Surely this is bonkers: God creating rational beings and then deliberately withholding rational explanations.
One qualification—retributive justice, not corrective. So much the worse.
I yield to your psychological expertise. I find it impossible to understand how one can believe such things, but I’m sure there’s some psychopathology behind it all.
I think both apply to human beings enacting what they consider the nature of God - This is for your own good - but I bow to your superior grasp of theology. In the matter of Jesus's analogical description of God the Father, suppose one's father is a brute, given to harsh words and "corrective" punishment. It's not hard to see how that becomes the model for the higher Father. I fear the crucifixion can feed this image albeit perhaps unconsciously.
I have found this as a barrier to thinking of God as a father for a long time, not that my father was a brute, though not exactly ideal either. Watching my friends become fathers and try to do the best they can with the role has given me a better picture of my own father's struggles and allowed me to better grasp the idea of a father who works the best for his children. But, yes, I agree, the analogy (maybe analogy in general) has it's limits.
I would be very interested to know if there is anything substantial to read on the psychology/ psychological effects of belief in eternal hell. If you happen to know anything or anywhere to point me, I would appreciate it very much. That's something I feel I should study in depth when I have the chance.
There is a good deal of literature on this but I'm afraid it is years since I practised so I cannot any longer give you chapter and verse. However, I can testify to any number of people I saw brought up in the Catholic faith whose psyches were plainly marked by having been raised from babyhood to believe in eternal hell. I could also see what the benefits were to society: a scrupulous avoidance of certain kinds of behaviour so I came to regard it as a means of social control. I would describe what I observed as a kind of constant existential terror often leading to alcoholism or drug taking to escape the fear of putting a foot wrong and falling into perpetual damnation.
That all makes perfect sense to me. I only did a pretty superficial search so far to find writing on this and didn't find anything too interesting or detailed, so if any titles or authors happen to come back to mind at any point and you can send them, it would be greatly appreciated.
I was fortunately not subjected to that kind of thing at an early age. I was raised Catholic but no one took it seriously. Yet being a Catholic revert of 7 years I can already see how it's stifled, warped and compartmentalized my trust in God. All the core teachings of the mystics on prayer or the metaphysics of God's goodness pointed to the impossibility of any creature being lost forever, and all the mentions of eternal hell seemed tacked on with no meaningful connection, but I felt I had to hold onto that possibility lest I be presumptuous like any number of other souls who surely had made the same mistake. I feel now that I've cut that teaching off, the things that brought me to the faith can start to breathe and unravel and be bold.
Well, I don't mean to go into a personal story, but I say that because I feel so much mental wellbeing must be at stake. And I can't imagine, given my (relatively!) small struggle with this, what others go through who labor under it from childhood. This seems like a major mental health issue. I tend to think Hart is right that no one can really believe in ECT, although the belief that one believes it, or the obligation to, is enough to do the damage - just the sheer weight of it independent of all the teachings of divine mercy. I wonder how much of the subjective side of eternal hell can be discussed, since that's what so much of it seems to come down to.
I can't express how much I enjoyed it, and only wish I had a greater number like-minded friends with whom I could share it.
You know a matter doesn't even rise to the level of debate when even Dr. Hart's sighs have become rhetorically devastating.
Well, admit it: you were sighing loudly by the end too.
I love this so much. I've heard/read all the content before, but there is some kind of absurd humor in the tone of the interview: David Artman soldiers on with his summary of Rooney's argument while DBH grows increasingly exasperated. Artman's ability to keep going has some amazingly humorous quality that I can't quite pin down. It's like Beckett's Endgame somehow.
What is it with clerics (plenty in American Orthodoxy, sadly) who take such great delight in accusing people of heresy? It's as if it were the best part of Christianity: Shouting "anathema sit!" at your interlocutors.
Well, yes, for some that’s the whole point. That’s the great psychological payoff. It’s also all you need to know about them.
For what it’s worth, here is my summary of how Fr. Rooney in his interview with Suan Sonna spoke about Aquinas and why humans are at fault for resisting God’s sufficient grace.
Father Rooney quotes Thomas Aquinas as saying God shines the sun on everybody and the only reason they are damned is because they shut their eyes to it. God doesn’t set us up to fail. He allows it to happen. He allowed the Fall to happen so we do not come into existence in a state of grace. That’s the world he decided to create. We just have to trust that God is good even when the evidence may seem otherwise. It can be spiritually dangerous to try and find out God’s reasons for the allowance of evil.
This is not an exact verbatim, but I believe it captures his line of reasoning pretty well, and it shows his attempt at combining Aquinas and a C.S. Lewis approach.
I believe he also adores sardines and marmalade sandwiches.
Well, you can turn this around, can't you? That's part of David's point in The Doors of the Sea: attempting to justify God is "spiritually dangerous" precisely because evil has to be fully and finally defeated, and trying to explain away anything less often leaves us with a lesser "God" that's spiritually dangerous to love and worship with intellectual and moral consistency.
Debating an absentee opponent through the lamentable and dross recitation of tedious quotes, though congenial in there Southern delivery, should not be repeated or imitated in any realm or context. My sympathies are with you, Hart. I earnestly believe you are a misunderstood man. Your cross to bare, perhaps. Praying for the speedy termination of your indisposition and the softening of prejudiced hearts.
Well, David Artman is trying to make sure the nonsense gets a proper answer. But it’s hardly a cross on my shoulders. Just a small irritation. Rather like a mosquito.
If we walk in the woods, we must feed mosquitoes.
Using Dr. Hart's words, I would retitle this, "Why God Is Not an Ass."
- This podcast is a wonderful response to "That All Shall Be Saved" and those who keep raising... hell.
My Greek (?) is rusty. Who is the saint in the icon?
Maximus. The lettering is Cyrillic.
Thank you!
Besides that, there is nothing wrong with your Greek. This is Church Slavonic:).
Thank you for having these interactions when you're up for them (however reluctant). They serve as therapeutic for those of us who, while intellectually persuaded by the [truly] Good News, yet suffer the nagging echos of infernalist doctrine from our childhood. The trauma is real and difficult to heal.
This note is posted on Twitter about Maximus
Does Hart actually claim "the same genos"? Pretty amazing claim when looking at the exact opposite in Gregory of Nyssa (w/ the same wording).
In any case, no surprise of course... Just strikes this guy who was recently working on this line in Gregory.
https://twitter.com/jabgreig/status/1613807531079438337?s=46&t=dWmWUb3IHO4HfDM5-CnaYw
Amazing in its sheer irrelevance to the actual topic, which was about scriptural language concerning humanity’s divine filiation.
I’m halfway through the podcast and am impressed with your patience in having to recite basic propositions and principles. As a Catholic (former Anglican), I spent last weekend with a young-ish (mid 40s is young in the Dominican order) Dominican priest who knows (and ridicules) I believe we shall all be saved. I was in two minds whether to raise the Rooney - Hart ‘debate’ (and indeed whether he was even aware of it). In the end I chose not to and we spent the weekend discussing whether the rise of Talibanism in young conservative Catholics is a temporary phenomenon or are we going to be accusing our co-religionists of heresy for some time to come!! Jury is out.
I hope the weather lets up and you drink some tea with honey to soothe the throat at least.
The really frustrating thing here is the reference to Isaac of Nineveh and Maximus as supporting, or at least being consistent with, Rooney....
It defies parody.
One other remark. Bringing the principle of double effect into this is wildly off the mark and badly out of line with Aquinas' thought on this (which isn't any better). The principle of double effect is only relevant in the realm of finite agents where someone, intending the good with all their might, is met with outcomes and consequences they cannot control due to the interference of other finite agents. The principle simply cannot arise at the level of creatio ex nihilo where God's causality extends to omne quod quocumque modo est. Aquinas knew this perfectly well. But again Aquinas' answer isn't any better. For him, the very perfection of the universe requires a multiplicity of different grades of being, some of which are in hell and fail to achieve their end. But if you have hell and classical metaphysics, what else can you say? Ultimately for Aquinas, hell is something that cannot at the end of the day not be positively willed by God - it is necessary for the completion of the universe. Of course he tried to finesse it a bit more than this with the limping example and the heart as the motive power, but in several passages he just owns it.
Which has been my argument. You are of course right. But none of Rooney’s arguments rose to even a minimal level of cogency.
‘For him, the very perfection of the universe requires a multiplicity of different grades of being, some of which are in hell and fail to achieve their end.’
Echoes here for me of multiple universe theory. Because certain metaphysical possibilities must not under any circumstances be allowed, lest people start to wonder if there is a God after all, there must be an infinite number of universes. That there is only one cannot be true because it suggests possibilities we cannot allow to be true.
I had a similar frustration reading a book by an Orthodox author invoking Isaac of Nineveh for the proposition that repentance is impossible after death.
Oh dear…. Rather like reading Gandhi as an apostle of ruthless conquest and total war.
A book on the reception of Heidegger's thought among 2nd century stoics might be more intelligible....
Gandhi was accidentally coded as a ruthless warlord hellbent on nuclear holocaust in Sid Meier's Civilization, so...
Which book might that be?
Wow it is true that Isaac said that. At least I have an icon with that on it, but he is contorting its meaning. Never been a fan of Fr. Damick since I read his book about heterodoxy and orthodoxy.
This is the book: https://www.amazon.com/Arise-God-Gospel-Christs-Defeat-ebook/dp/B099TQVMDT.
And here is the passage in question:
"The opportunity that God gives us to repent is within the bounds of this current, mortal life. Once we no longer have mortal bodies—after physical death and even more so after the universal resurrection—we will not be capable of repentance. We will be crystallized in either rebellion or obedience. And that is why saints such as Isaac the Syrian said, 'This life is given to us for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits.' This life is our chance."
But, of course, for Isaac the failure to repent in this life meant purification in the life to come. Only a deeply intellectually dishonest man could possibly pretend that Isaac was anything other than an absolutely explicit universalist--as were so many of the East Syrian theologians of late antiquity and the Middle Ages.
Was St. Ephraim the poet a universalist as well? I've heard from a few people that he was not.
No one knows.