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ThatAll ShallBe Saved
Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation

DAVID BENTLEY HART

Yale UNIVERSITY PREss

New Haven and London

Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund.

Copyright © 2019 by David Bentley Hart.

All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, includ-
ing illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by
Sections 107 and 108 of tlie U.S. Copyright Law and except by
reviewers for the public press), without written permission from
the publishers.

Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for

educational, business, or promotional use. For information, please
e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or [email protected]
(U.K. office).

Set in Minion type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.,

Durham, North Carolina.
Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019933695

ISBN 978-0-300-24622-3 (hardcover: alk. paper)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British

Library.

This paper meets the requirements of ANS1/N1s0 z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).

10987654321
 ForNarcis Tasca,
who reminded me of somethingthat I was
in imminent dangerofforgetting,
though it was somethingof the utmost importance
"Our savior God ... intends that all human beings shall be
saved and come to a full knowledge of the truth."
-1 TIMOTHY 2:3-4
 Contents

Introduction 1

PART I: THE QUESTION OF AN ETERNAL HELL

Framing the Question 9

Doubting the Answers 33

PART II: APOKATASTASIS: FOUR MEDITATIONS

First Meditation:
Who Is God? The Moral Meaning of Creatioex Nihilo 65
Second Meditation:
What Is Judgment? A Reflection on Biblical Eschatology 92
Third Meditation:
What Is a Person? A Reflection on the Divine Image 130
Fourth Meditation:
What Is Freedom? A Reflection on the Rational Will 159
PART III: WHAT MAY BE BELIEVED

Final Remarks 199

Acknowledgments and Bibliographical Notes 211

Index 215
 Introduction

There have been Christian "universalists" -Christians, that is,

who believe that in the end all persons will be saved and joined
to God in Christ- since the earliest centuries of the faith. In
fact, all the historical evidence suggests that the universalist
faction was at its most numerous, at least as a relative ratio
of believers, in the church's first half millennium. Augustine
of Hippo (354-430) referred to such persons as misericordes,
"the merciful-hearted," an epithet that for him apparently had
something of a censorious ring to it (one, I confess, that is quite
inaudible to me). In the early centuries they were not, for the
most part, an especially eccentric company. They cherished the
same scriptures as other Christians, worshipped in the same
basilicas, lived the same sacramental lives. They even believed
in hell, though not in its eternity; to them, hell was the fire of
purification described by the Apostle Paul in the third chap-
ter of 1 Corinthians, the healing assault of unyielding divine
love upon obdurate souls, one that will save even those who
in this life prove unworthy of heaven by burning away every
last vestige of their wicked deeds. The universalists were not
even necessarily at first a minority among the faithful, at least
not everywhere. The great fourth-century church father Ba-
2 Introduction

sil of Caesarea (c. 329-379) once observed that, in his time, a

large majority of his fellow Christians (at least, in the Greek-
speaking Eastern Christian world that he knew) believed that
hell was not everlasting, and that all in the end would attain
salvation. This may have been hyperbole on his part, but then
again it may very well not have been; and, even if he was ex-
aggerating, he could not have been exaggerating very much,
as otherwise the remark would have sounded silly to his con -
temporaries, whereas he stated the matter as something almost
banal in its obviousness. Over time, of course, in large part as
a result of certain obvious institutional imperatives, the voices
of the universalists would dwindle away to little more than a
secretive whisper at the margins of the faith, except in a few of
the sunnier quarters of Christendom (such as the East Syrian
church). And it was not, perhaps, until the nineteenth century
that the tide of opinion on this matter began, if only ever so
slightly, to turn back again.
Much of what I shall argue in this book, consequently,
is likely to seem rather exotic to many readers, and perhaps
even a little perverse. But this would not have been the case in,
say, the first four centuries of the church, especially not in the
eastern half of the Roman imperial world and its neighbor-
ing territories, precisely because the believers of those times
and places were closer to the culture, language, cosmology,
and religious expectations of the apostolic age; as yet, their
imaginations had not been corrupted by centuries of theology
written in entirely different spiritual and intellectual environ-
ments, and in alien tongues. My chief ambition in what fol-
lows, therefore, is to try to think through certain questions
about "the last things" in a way that might naturally bring me
nearer to the obscure origins of the Christian conception of
reality, when the earliest texts of Christian scripture were still
Introduction 3

being written, edited, sorted through, and designated as either

canonical or spurious. My hope is that I can assume a van -
tage somehow "innocent" of any number of presuppositions
belonging to the inheritance of later developments in Chris-
tian culture. In a sense, in fact, I regard this book as a compan-
ion to, or additional piece in the critical apparatus of, my re-
cent The New Testament: A Translation (YaleUniversity Press,
2017). If possible (and I say this not simply in the hope of fur-
ther increasing my sales), I hope the reader of this book can
consult also the introduction and postscript of that volume,
and perhaps the footnotes it provides for some of the verses
cited here. Perhaps he or she might even read the translation
in its entirety (I can vouch, if nothing else, for the good faith
of the translator). I am firmly convinced that two millennia of
dogmatic tradition have created in the minds of most of us a
fundamentally misleading picture of a great many of the claims
made in Christian scripture. And I hope that my translation -
simply by restoring certain ambiguities I believe to be present
in the original texts- might help modern readers understand
how it is that a considerable number of educated late antique
Eastern Christians, all of whom were familiar with the New
Testament in the original Greek, felt entirely comfortable with
a universalist construal of its language. It is my conviction, you
see, that the misericordes have always been the ones who got
the story right, to the degree that it is true at all. That is not to
say that they were all in perfect agreement with one another, or
that I am in perfect agreement with all of them regarding every
aspect of that story. I mean only that, if Christianity taken as
a whole is indeed an entirely coherent and credible system of
belief, then the universalist understanding of its message is the
only one possible. And, quite imprudently, I say that without
the least hesitation or qualification.
4 Introduction

I find it a very curious feeling, I admit, to write a book

that is at odds with a body of received opinion so invincibly
well-established that I know I cannot reasonably expect to per-
suade anyone of anything, except perhaps of my sincerity. The
whole endeavor may very well turn out to be pointless in the
end. I suspect that those who are already sympathetic to my
position will approve of my argument to the extent that they
think it successfully expresses their own views, or something
proximate to them, while those who disagree (by far the larger
party) will either dismiss it or (if they are very boring indeed)
try to refute it by reasserting the traditional majority position
in any number of very predictable, very shopworn manners.
Some, for instance, will claim that universalism clearly contra-
dicts the explicit language of scripture (it does not). Others will
argue that universalism was decisively condemned as hereti-
cal by the fifth Ecumenical Council (it was not). The more ad-
venturous will attempt what they take to be stronger versions
of those same philosophical defenses of the idea of an eternal
hell that I describe and reject in these pages. The most adven-
turous of all might attempt to come up with new arguments
of their own (which is not advisable). There is no obvious way
of winning at this game, or even of significantly altering the
odds. Even so, I intend to play it to the end. And perhaps I
can derive a certain comfort from my situation. There is, at
the very least, something liberating about knowing that I have
probably lost the rhetorical contest before it has even begun.
It spares me the effort of feigning tentativeness or moderation
or judicious doubt, in the daintily and soberly ceremonious
way one is generally expected to do, and allows me instead to
advance my claims in as unconstrained a manner as possible,
and to see how far the line of reasoning they embody can be
pursued. For all I know, this in itself might make some kind of
Introduction 5

worthwhile contribution to the larger conversation, even if in

the end it should prove to be a suasive failure; if nothing else,
this book may provide champions of the dominant view an
occasion for honest reflection and scrupulous cerebration and
serious analysis (and a whole host of other bracing intellectual
virtues of that sort). Even if it should serve merely as a kind of
negative probation of the tradition -the plaintiff's brief duti-
fully submitted by an advocatusdiaboli,on behalf of an eccen-
tric minority position, in full anticipation that the final ver-
dict will go the other way-it may at least help the majority to
clarify their convictions. So, I offer all that follows as a logical
and rhetorical experiment, and ask chiefly for the reader's in-
dulgence as I proceed as far along the path of my reasoning as
I find it possible to go. My expectations regarding its effect are
very limited. Even so, if by chance the reader should happen
to find any of my arguments convincing after all, I ask also that
he or she consider whether that might be the result of some in-
trinsic merit in them.
I should note that this is not the first public exposition of
my views, but I intend it to be more or less the last. In my ex-
perience, this particular issue is especially fertile in generating
circular debates, and in inviting the most repetitious sorts of
argument. But I feel I have to give a complete account of my
views on the matter simply as a courtesy to those who have
taken the time to respond to my earlier statements, but with-
out the benefit of knowing the entire shape of my thinking.
Back in July 2015, at the University of Notre Dame, I deliv-
ered a lecture, most of whose argument is reprised below in my
First Meditation. At the time, it received considerable atten -
tion, and it continues to provoke discussion and commentary
in various venues. Many readers have followed its argument
without difficulty, usually with approbation, probably on ac-
6 Introduction

count of a prior disposition on their parts to agree with some-

thing like my general approach to these matters. There were
other, less enthusiastic reactions as well, however. Regarding
these, though, I can honestly say that, to this point, all have
been based on misunderstandings-sometimes extravagant-
of my lecture's central contentions. This is not, I think, because
what I said that day was particularly difficult to follow, but
rather because I did not advance the conventional argument
that many critics quite reasonably expected me to make, and so
they reflexively read into my words the one they were already
prepared to reject. As a consequence, I have been asked repeat-
edly in the past few years to answer objections to positions I
have never taken. The only good thing I can report about this
is that I seem to have nearly perfected a tone of voice that veils
vexation behind lustrous clouds of disingenuous patience; and
the acquisition of a new social skill is always a blessing. But
otherwise, to tell the truth, this is just the sort of conversa-
tion that makes the pleasure of even the most charming soiree
begin to pall; I mean, really, how many times can one say, 'Tm
sorry, you've mistaken me for someone else" before the siren
song of the cocktail-shaker across the room becomes irresist-
ible, or before one suddenly remembers that one is extremely
late for a pressing appointment one has made with the large
topiary duck in the garden? So it is my hope that here, in com -
pany with the rest of my argument, the questions I raised and
points I made in that earlier, more fragmentary presentation
will be so clear as to require no further elaboration. Then the
argument as a whole may instead, I hope, simply be accepted
or rejected or ignored, as the reader pleases. But, for me at
least, debate is otiose. For better or worse, my reasoning con -
vinces me entirely, and that- sadly or happily-will certainly
never change.
 I
The Question of an Eternal Hell
Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't
believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the
Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-
hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast."
-LEWIS CARROLL, THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS
 Framing the Question

I
According to a legend recounted in the Apophthegmata Pa-
trum, or Sayings of the Fathers-a name shared in common
by various ancient Christian collations of anecdotes about the
Egyptian "desert fathers" of the fourth century- the holy man
Abba Macarius (c. 300-391) was walking alone in the wilder-
ness one day when he came upon a human skull lying beside
the path and, as he casually moved it aside with his staff, it all
at once began to utter words. Astonished, Macarius asked it to
identify itself, and it obliged. It told him that in life it had been
a pagan high priest who had tended the idols and performed
the rites of the people that had once dwelled in those climes.
It said also that it recognized Macarius, and knew him to be a
bearer of the Spirit, one whose prayers actually had the power
temporarily to ease the sufferings of the damned. Hearing this,
Macarius asked the skull to describe those sufferings. It replied
that he and his fellow pagans were forced to stand crowded
together, day and night, wrapped from head to foot in flames,
suspended above an abyss of fire stretching as far below their
feet as the sky had stretched above their heads when they had
lived upon the earth. Moreover, it added, they were prevented
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