That All Shall Be Saved — Part 2 — Who is God — Creatio Ex Nihilo — David Bentley Hart
I have a friend who is a pastor and holds to the Neo-Reformed worldview when it comes to Christianity. He strongly believes in the sovereignty and holiness of God and that God can do whatever what God wants because he is God and we are not (Isaiah 55:8–9), and that no one can understand and comprehend God’s plans and purposes unless God discloses what those plans and purposes are (Deut. 29:29). He also believes in double predestination where there are those that God has chosen for salvation and some that God has chosen for damnation. When I asked him about this, he said it is just the way it is, and who are we to question what God decides.
Now as those that have read, That All Shall Be Saved, David Bentley Hart has strong opinions about both predestination and the sovereignty of God. Also, he argues that from a creation perspective, because God is the Infinite Good and creates ex nihilo, thus his creation is good and not flawed by sin. Despite the fall, God intends all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4). He tackles both questions in his first meditation on the nature of God.
Part 1 — God the Infinite Good Saves All because He is Good
He mentions that within the doctrine of creation ex nihilo, that it is both cosmological, protological and also eschatological where God the ultimate Good creates with the end result of God being “all in all” as the ultimate telos for his creation.
David Bentley Hart writes in his article entitled “God, Creation and Evil: The Moral Meaning of Creation Ex Nihilo, which is part of this meditation:
“Yet, paradoxically perhaps, this means that the moral destiny of creation and the moral nature of God are absolutely inseparable. For, as the transcendent Good beyond all beings, he is the transcendental end of any action of any rational nature; and then, obviously, the end toward which God acts must be his own goodness: he who is the beginning and end of all things. And this eternal teleology, viewed from the vantage of history, is a cosmic eschatology. As an eternal act, creation’s term is the divine nature; within the orientation of time, its term is a “final judgment.”
Hart, David Bentley, God, Creation and Evil: The Moral Meaning of Creation Ex Nihilo, Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosphy and Politics., Vol. 3, №1 (September 2015), page 3
In the first meditation, he writes in his conclusion of his meditation:
“We are presented by what has become the majority tradition with three fundamental claims, any two of which might be true simultaneously, but never all three: that God freely created all things out of nothingness; that God is the Good itself; and that it is certain or at least possible that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God. And this, I have to say is the final moral meaning I find in the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, at least if one truly believes that traditional Christian language about God’s goodness and the theological grammar to which it belongs are not empty: that the God of eternal retribution [wrathful judgment] and pure sovereignty proclaimed by so much of Christian tradition is not, and cannot possibly be, God of self-outpouring of love revealed in Christ. If God is the good creator of all, he must also be the savior of all, without fail who brings himself all he has made, including all rational wills, and only thus returns to himself all that goes forth from him. If he is not the savior of all, the Kingdom is only a dream, and creation something considerably worse than a nightmare. But again, it is not so. According to scripture, God saw that what he created was good. If so, then all creatures must, in the ages, see it as well.” (DBH, Kindle Loc. 1194–1199)
So in the above, David Bentley Hart makes three claims about God and his relation to creation. First, God created all things out of nothingness (creatio ex nihilo), that God is good itself; and that some creatures will suffer eternal loss of God. He claims that if God is the creator of all, he must be the savior of all. Yet if God is not the savior of all, then the Kingdom that Jesus preached about is a nightmare. Divine Goodness requires universalism. (Robin Parry — Evangelical Universalist, Kindle Loc. 4662) This is also noted by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli in her book — A Larger Hope — Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich, where she notes that according to Gregory of Nyssa, “every being that had its origen in God will return such as it was from the beginning, when it had not yet received evil (In Illud 14 D). Like Origen, from 1 Corinthians 15:28, Gregory deduces that if God must eventually be “all in all then evil will no longer exist in any being, because God, the Good, could never be found in evil. (Ramelli, page 111)
Hart writes, “that God intends all human beings to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:4). A natural evil, however, becomes a moral evil precisely to the degree that is positive intention, even if only conditionally, of a rational will. God could not, then directly intend a soul’s ultimate destruction, or even intend that a soul bring about its own destruction, without positively willing the evil end as an evil end; such a result could not possibly be comprised within the ends proposed by a truly good will (in any sense of the word “good” intelligible to us). (DBH — Kindle Loc. 1074).
Thus God’s intention could never be evil for evil’s sake, but to destroy the evil within all created beings since his intention according to scripture is that all human beings to be saved and come to a full knowledge of the truth. God’s will cannot be both good and evil if he would intend all humanity to be saved. This claim that because of God’s nature, God will destroy evil in every human being is made by Ramelli when she discusses Gregory of Nyssa’s perspective on universal salvation. She writes:
“The Good, in the end will reach even “the extreme limit of evil,” and “nothing will remain opposed to the Good.” All will be united to God. All humanity, all creatures, and the whole of creation will become “one body.” (Ramelli, page 110)
This is also backed up in John Kronen and Eric Reitan’s book, God’s Final Victory, A Comparative Philosophical Case For Universalism. They write:
According to which God is moved to save the unregenerate because of the nature of the rational creature. The rational creature is, essentially, a being bearing the divine image and ordered towards union with God. The idea is that God can no more cease to value creatures — even if they fall into sin — than He can cease to value Himself, because rational creatures are a reflection of His own essence. (Kronen and Reitan, page 38)
So, in this view, God saves all because humanity is a reflection of God’s own essence, and because of his love for his creation, he saves all or provides the means by which they can be united to Him. My friend would reply, yet God did provide a way through Christ’s sacrifice that we can be united to him and be in communion with Him. I would agree with that, and as hopeful inclusivist, I would agree that Christ provides the means by which humanity is and will be united to Christ through his incarnation, his life and ministry, his death and resurrection, and ascension. Yet in David Bentley Hart and other Patristic Universalists, there is no opt out clause. Now my Arminian friends such as Thomas J. Oord and Gregory A. Boyd who are both open and relational theologians would say that ultimate union and salvation is still contingent upon our cooperation with God in his saving work as we accept and receive Jesus as Lord.
Yet, those that come from the Arminian camp say that God in his love for his creation, allows humanity to chart its own course which can lead to evil acts, impulses, and being eternally separated by God due to their own choices and personal freedom (he explains this in greater detail in his fourth meditation).
Part 2 — David Bentley Hart and The Argument Against Double Predestination and the Sovereignty of God
“Calvin draws not meaningless distinctions between the way God acts in predestining the elect to salvation and the way he acts in predestining the derelict to eternal agony. In Book III of his Institutes (III.23.7, to be precise), he even asserts that God predestined the human fall from grace, precisely because the whole of everything-creation, fall, redemption, judgment, the eternal bliss of heaven, the endless torments of hell, and whatever else-exists solely for the sake of a perfect display of the full range of God’s omnipotent sovereignty (which for some reason absolutely must be displayed).” (DBH, Kindle Loc. 644)
Now my friend would agree with Calvin’s view that God is absolutely sovereign and can do whatever he wants, and that through irresistible grace, God draws near some (John 6:44) that through a commitment to Christ reveals someone being chosen for salvation, and repels others who are predestined for damnation through their rejection of God (2 Cor. 2:16; Matt 10:33). David Bentley Hart mentions that Calvin’s double predestination is the most austere, “terrifying and severe expression of Augustine’s heritage and theology” (DBH, Kindle Loc. 655). He also mentions that the sovereignty of God has more to do with social structure and culture of Calvin’s time (DBH, Kindle Loc. 1014).
The truth is that all of these theological degeneracies follow from an incoherence deeply fixed at the heart of almost all Christian traditions: that is the idea that the omnipotent God of love, who creates the world from nothing (creatio ex nihilo) either imposes or tolerates the eternal torment of the damned.” (DBH Kindle Loc. 1020). He goes on and says this is from the Christian traditions prompted by Tertullian through Martin Luther that “insist that the saved will rejoice to see their loved ones roasting in hell.” (DBH Kindle Loc. 1030)
He goes on and says that human beings are no more than a history of “associations, loves, memories, attachments, and affiliates.” (DBH 1030). Because we are all interconnected if one person is not saved, then no one is saved which he calls “moral hideousness.” (DBH Kindle Loc. 1036).
He uses Hitler as an example of someone who doesn’t deserve salvation because of the moral evil of his crimes. Hart purports that in light of God’s justice, he would be okay with Hitler being purged of his crimes and sins in the fires of hell to eventually be saved over many aeons, but objects that Hitler suffer eternal conscious torment for his sins, crimes, and moral evil so that we all can be saved. It cheapens the cross of the Christ.
As he pokes holes in the Augustinian/Thomisian/Calvinist arguments for double predestination, the question then is why does God who is the ultimate good create if only some are to be saved? If one person is not saved thus all are not saved, would that make God not good, but morally evil? Some would argue that God is both, or neither and is beyond good and evil, thus absolute sovereign and can do whatever he wills following my friend’s reformed perspective. Hart would say God is totally free to create and draw all of humanity to himself (John 12:32). Following Hart’s logic, it isn’t a both and argument, but an either or argument that God cannot be both the Infinite Good whose creation is not flawed, nor create something that is going to ultimately be damned.
The bottom line that David Bentley Hart is driving at is that God is the infinite Good, and if God creates what is good, then shouldn’t the end result be that all of creation be one with ultimate Good since they are a reflection of the Good (Gen. 1:26–27)? Why would the ultimate Good create something that is destined for damnation? Wouldn’t that be evil and not Good?
Conclusion
To conclude, Hart makes a strong argument in his first meditation on God’s nature that because God is the creator of all, he is the savior of all. God does not intend anyone to be damned. He makes a good case why Calvinism, Predestination, and appealing to God’s sovereignty is a fallacious argument about God’s nature and character. God cannot will some for salvation, and some for damnation if God is the Infinite Good, all must be saved in the end. My reformed friends would ask about humanity’s fall and the need for a savior which God provides in Christ. My Arminian friends would ask what about humanities freedom? Human freedom and the nature of the will is the subject that Hart will take up in his fourth meditation.