A Thinking Reed

Author: Lee M.

  • Keith Ward: An appreciation

    As longtime readers are aware (if there are any of you left!), Anglican philosopher-theologian Keith Ward has been a big influence here at ATR. I think the first book of his I read was What the Bible Really Teaches, which at the time was extremely helpful to me by articulating a theology that was open to change but also still broadly orthodox and metaphysically robust. I had been put off by the kind of reductionistic liberalism espoused by figures like John Shelby Spong but was also uncomfortable with much conservative theology. (This also happened to be a time when the acceptance of same-sex relationships in the church was probably the issue roiling mainline Protestantism.) Ward showed that one could be “liberal” while still adhering to the reality of God and the unique significance of Jesus as savior and revealer.

    Since then, Ward has continued to publish at a steady clip, largely in the areas of philosophical theology, the science and religion dialogue, and issues of religious pluralism. In particular, he published three volumes comprising a more-or-less systematic theology in the last decade or so that spell out his version of a broadly orthodox-yet-liberal Christian theology.*

    Ward, now in his 80s, has slowed down more recently, but has still managed to publish several worthy volumes in the last few years. In 2022, he published a very short work (less than 100 pages) as part of Fortress Press’ ‘My theology’ series. The series consists of short summary statements of theological perspective by several contemporary luminaries such as Ilia Delio, Cynthia Bourgeault, Grace Ji-Sun Kim, and Scot McKnight, among others.

    Ward’s contribution is titled Personal Idealism, which is how he characterizes his particular philosophical-theological perspective.

    In short, as an idealist, Ward holds that mind is more fundamental than matter and provides the explanatory principle for the existence of the cosmos. This may sound highly counterintuitive, but Ward argues that consciousness — including feelings, thoughts, and sense-impressions — is actually prior to matter in the order of knowledge. We are more certain that these things exist than that “matter” exists, because they are the medium through which we know anything. Moreover, it’s highly implausible, Ward thinks, that mental events or properties, broadly speaking, are identical or can be reduced to material properties or events. In fact, the world as contemporary physics describes it is highly remote from our experience, consisting of wave/particle dualities, vibrating 11-dimensional stings, and probability waves. Ward thinks that the world of physics is an abstraction from experience — a framework for explaining and predicting events insofar as they are measurable and quantifiable and thus susceptible to the methods of physical science. This unavoidably leaves out a lot.

    But what, you may ask, does this have to do with God? According to Ward, a fully satisfying explanation of the existence of the universe would answer the question of why this universe exists rather than some other. It’s intuitively plausible to think that there are many possible universes, so why this one? Ward suggests that there is an infinite “ocean of possibilities” out of which one set of possibilities has been actualized — namely our universe. But possibilities in themselves are just abstractions — how can they subsist independently, much less have any causal power?

    Ward argues that it makes the most sense to think of the set of all possibilities as residing in an infinite and eternal Mind. This Mind then actualizes the set of possibilities that will contain certain goods — states that are worthwhile for their own sake. This is a personal, axiological explanation for the existence of the cosmos. The universe exists because the Eternal Mind wanted to bring into existence certain worthwhile states such as beauty, creativity, and friendship. These are states that are best actualized by free, rational beings.

    Idealism, in Ward’s sense, is the view that everything that exists either consists of mind (a strong version) or depends on mind (a weaker version). All theists are idealists in the weaker version, since they hold that everything which exists depends on God. According to Ward, the universe can be seen as an environment brought into being by the Eternal Mind so that created agents can further realize new forms of value through interactions with each other and the wider world.

    Now, one might at this point ask what all this has to do specifically with Christianity. Ward suggests that an Eternal Mind (let’s just call it “God” from now on) seeking to realize certain values would have good reason to make rational, intelligent creatures aware of its existence and purposes. Thus we have revelation – the disclosure of the Divine Spirit to people through various mediums such as inspired holy people.

    Ward is clear that he doesn’t think Christianity has a monopoly on divine revelation. Moreover, he argues that no tradition is a monolith: each one changes and evolves over time, so it’s very difficult to say what the Christian (or Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim…) view on a given topic is. Moreover, whether they like to admit it or not, traditions interact and learn from each other, often correcting their own limitations with insights from others. Ward calls his view “expansivism” to contrast it with the usual typology of exclusivism/inclusivism/pluralism. By this he means a view that is committed to a particular tradition, but is open to learning and correction from others.

    The Bible, on this view, is the record of the Jewish people’s wrestling with God and its developing idea of God and sense of universal morality. The New Testament in particular is the witness to Jesus, who Christians believe, discloses the divine as a God of unlimited love who wills the salvation of all. Ward goes on to sketch his views on key doctrines such as the Incarnation, Atonement, and Trinity. As is usually the case, he embraces the intent of the orthodox doctrine while departing from some of the traditional formulations. (For example, he develops the “two natures” theology of Chalcedon in ways that might make some traditionalists nervous, and he rejects forensic “penal substitution” models of the Atonement, preferring to say that God participates in human suffering and unites humanity to Godself.)

    The capstone of Ward’s theology is the union of all created being with God. The Eternal Word, or Logos, unites itself to a particular human being in order to overcome the estrangement between God and humanity that has resulted from our pride, hatred, and greed. In Jesus, the divine and human are united in the closest possible way, which provides the archetype of the new humanity. With the resurrection, new possibilities are created, and God sends the Holy Spirit into the hearts of people so that they can be refashioned according to the pattern of Christ. And our ultimate destiny is to be “partakers of the divine nature” as we are united with the Eternal Christ along with “all things.” As Ward sums up:

    The Trinitarian God — transcendent, finitely expressed in Jesus, and present within all created persons throughout the universe — is the Christian vision of the supreme mind of the cosmos, who calls all creation out of estrangement and suffering into a joyful communion of love. As the New Testament puts it: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world [and I think we need to make clear that, with our expanded knowledge of the universe, this means the whole cosmos] to himself” (1 Corinthians 5:19). (p. 93)

    As I noted at the beginning of this post, Ward has had a significant influence on my thinking (check the archives if you doubt it!). Maybe it’s because I have a background in philosophy, but I appreciate his willingness to bring philosophical tools to bear on theological questions. There has been a trend in theology over the last several decades (though maybe this is waning?) to treat theology as fully autonomous either because it’s supposedly based entirely on revelation or because it constitutes its own thought-world (or “language game”) and thus can’t be critiqued by norms outside itself.

    I’ve always thought this was a dead end. In my view, theology has to make sense in relation to other domains of human knowledge, whether that be science, philosophy, history, or other religious traditions. That doesn’t mean that it should uncritically accept the findings of these other disciplines (which would be impossible in any event, since there are disagreements among practitioners of all those disciplines!). But I do think theology needs an account of how, at least in principle, it relates to truths revealed by other areas of human knowledge. After all, they are all trying to tell us something about the same world — a world that we believe was created by God and is at least in part able to be understood through patient inquiry.

    To take a specific example, it’s all well and good to derive an idea of God from the Bible. But questions will inevitably arise about how that idea relates to what we know about, e.g. how natural processes work or the occurrence of certain historical events. As we bring these domains of discourse into contact, there will likely (inevitably?) be adjustments in our idea of God. Ward is trying to do this in a principled, rather than an ad hoc way. Though, as he readily admits, many (most?) philosophers don’t agree with him about many of these issues.

    Further, Ward is able to give an account of why some doctrinal or theological positions are open to revision without giving the store away, so to speak. He can articulate a robust incarnational faith while rejecting literalism and fundamentalism. Again, many people may disagree on particular points, but surely this is the most viable approach for a theology that wants to remain faithful to the central Christian truths while accepting that the world has changed in myriad ways since the 1st century. (I’d argue that it’s the approach that much Christian theology has historically taken, even when it denies that it’s doing so.)

    One might also complain that Ward’s theology is too abstract and intellectual and therefore doesn’t motivate moral commitment or experiential spirituality. While his writing is generally not warm and fuzzy, his commitment to the ethical upshot of Christianity is clear from a number of works, and he has even written a book of meditations and prayers (which to be fair is still pretty darn intellectual!). What I think is fair is that some Christians aren’t necessarily preoccupied with the issues Ward focuses on and would rather get on with the business of following Jesus. That’s certainly a reasonable stance! But for those who, as Ward says about himself, are interested in these “big questions,” he has provided a rich body of work that helps us to grapple with them.

    *For more, see the following posts: God as Ultimate Mind: Keith Ward’s “Christian Idea of God” and And yet they are not three gods but one God; somehow I never got around to writing about the third volume in this loose trilogy: Sharing in the Divine Nature.

  • Is love always uncontrolling?

    I recently re-read Thomas Jay Oord’s 2015 book The Uncontrolling Love of God, which made a bit of a splash in certain circles when it first came out. While it’s a stimulating read, I found myself once again not fully convinced by the argument.

    In brief, Oord argues that God cannot — because of the divine nature itself — unilaterally act to guarantee certain outcomes in the world. According to Oord, God’s nature as “kenotic love” is inconsistent with the ability to act in a “coercive” manner. Rather, God’s activity is characterized by an “other-empowering” love that gives created beings the ability to act; however, God cannot, consistent with the loving divine nature, “override” creaturely activities to ensure that events take a particular course. God can act “persuasively” to woo creatures toward the good (similar to process theology) but cannot determine what they will do. In Oord’s view, this is the most satisfying solution to the problem of evil. This is because it allows us to see gratuitous evil as something God can’t prevent (in a very strong sense of “can’t”) rather than something God chooses not to prevent (much less directly wills or causes).

    It’s important to distinguish Oord’s view (and he is at great pains himself to distinguish it) from a family of views which holds that God voluntarily limits the divine power for the sake of creaturely freedom. Oord argues that this type of view leaves God vulnerable to the charge of permitting unnecessary evil because God could, on this view, intervene to prevent evil, but simply chooses not to, at least much of the time. On Oord’s view, by contrast, God cannot do this because the divine nature is such that God’s activity is always other-empowering and never coercive.

    While Oord does offer a strong critique of the “self-limitation” view, one point at which I remain unconvinced is that “kenotic love” must always rule out “coercion” or unilateral action by God. This has a certain plausibility when we’re talking about God’s relationship with human beings, who have (at least on Oord’s view) libertarian free will. In other words, it makes a certain sense to say that it would not be loving for God to unilaterally override my free will, and thus such an action is inconsistent with the divine nature as Oord understands it.

    Where this seems less plausible to me is when we’re talking about non-human creatures, and especially inanimate objects. Is it really the case that it would be a violation of love for God to unilaterally control the activities of creatures without free will (or even consciousness)? It’s far from obvious to me that it would be. It may be a great good for God to call into existence natural processes that by and large run according to their own immanent laws or principles; but would it necessarily be unloving for God to cause changes in these processes, even “coercively”? It’s just not clear to me that “coercion” has the same moral implications when we’re talking about non-human creation.

    Oord might respond that God’s nature simply requires a consistent approach to creatures of all kinds, whether conscious and/or free-will-having or not. But why should this be the case? Being loving doesn’t, at least on its face, seems to require treating everything the same way. It seems to me that God’s loving nature would only rule out unilateral action if such action were in violation of love. But why are we supposed to think this is the case when it comes to the non-human creation? I think the common moral connotations of “controlling” or “coercive” might be leading us to think there is a conflict with love in cases where there actually isn’t.

    Oord has an ancillary argument for why God can’t unilaterally determine any event – namely that God is an “omnipresent spirit” who lacks a localized body and therefore can’t physically intervene. But this seems to me to both prove too little and too much; for, if God can exert any causal influence on material objects (which on Oord’s view, God can, just not “coercive” influence), then why does God’s lack of a localized body mean that God can’t unilaterally determine outcomes? Either the lack of a localized body shows that God can’t exert any influence on physical processes, or it’s no barrier to God exerting influence of whatever kind.*

    In short, while I think Oord’s proposal is intriguing and original, I don’t think the concept of “kenotic love” does quite as much work as he wants it to. At the very least, I think more work would be needed to show that love necessarily rules out all unilateral or “coercive” divine action.

    *One possible solution to this would be to adopt a panpsychist view of creation which holds that all creatures have a mental or quasi-mental aspect. Then, one could perhaps say that God, as spirit, influences just this mental aspect of creatures.

  • Consider the beasts

    Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, Ronald E. Osborn (IVP Academic, 2014)

    Much traditional Christian theology has taught that death and suffering entered the world when Adam and Eve fell into sin. Prior to the fall, many theologians have assumed, the world was free from suffering, sickness and death — and this included the nonhuman world. The prelapsarian world, on this account, was free from predation, parasitism, natural disaster and anything else that causes suffering in the animal kingdom. It was humanity’s sin that, somehow, resulted in all of creation being cursed, leading to the widespread suffering and death that is so evident in nature.

    One advantage of this account is that it, at least ostensibly, exempts God from any moral blame for the suffering of the non-human world. If animal suffering is the result of human sin — either as a penalty or through some more metaphysical connection — then creation as originally made by God did not include these morally troublesome features. God made creation perfect; it was humans who messed it up.

    However, one of the downsides of the traditional view is that it seems to conflict with the well-established findings of modern science. Not only evolutionary biology, but geology, paleontology, and other disciplines, seem to have established beyond a reasonable doubt that death, along with predation, parasitism, natural disasters, and their attendant suffering, long preexisted the appearance of humans on the scene. Accordingly, any theology that wants to make its peace with evolutionary science seems to be presented with a heightened theodicy question: Why would a good God create a world that contains so much animal suffering?

    In Death Before the Fall, Ronald E. Osborn, a scholar and theologian working out of the Seventh-Day Adventist tradition, wrestles with the problem of animal suffering in the context of a rejection of biblical literalism and creationism. This may seem somewhat counterintuitive given the Adventist Church’s affirmation of a literal, six-day creation. But Osborn is one of a number of Adventist scholars who dissent from his church’s official teaching on this point.

    In fact, Osborn spends over half of the book critiquing young-earth creationism and the literalist-fundamentalist readings of the Bible that support it. He argues that creationism ironically adopts an enlightenment-modernist model of knowledge and expects Scripture to conform to the same canons of evidence and factuality as modern science. However, creationism proceeds in a deductive rather than inductive fashion: a literalist reading of the creation story is treated as an unassailable foundation that can’t be questioned. Any facts that seem to contradict it either need to be denied or explained away via increasingly byzantine auxiliary hypotheses.

    This is both bad philosophy and a bad reading of scripture, according to Osborn. For example, he highlights some of the mental gymnastics creationists resort to in order to render the two creation stories in the first chapters of Genesis into one seamless account. These are hardly the result of a “plain” reading of the text!

    Not only does Osborn critique the intellectual supports of creationism, but he also argues that it leads believers into a quasi-gnostic enclave mentality in which any dissent is treated as the first step on the slippery slope to apostasy.

    Osborn has a high view of the inspiration and authority of scripture, but he maintains that this is consistent with reading the creation stories as symbolic-metaphorical narratives (or “saga” to use Karl Barth’s term). He marshals witnesses from history — Augustine, Maimonides, Calvin and Barth — to show that faithful believers have had a range of views on how these stories should be interpreted.

    For me, this was mostly well trod ground since I’ve never been particularly tempted by biblical literalism or been part of a tradition that taught it. But Osborn’s thorough critique allows him to clear the ground for the problem of how, if we reject creationism and a “deathless” prelapsarian world, to reconcile the violence and suffering of nature with the goodness of God the creator.*

    Wisely, in my view, Osborn doesn’t claim to offer an airtight defense or a knock-down solution to the problem of evil. Rather, he points to resources in scripture and tradition that indicate an alternative way of thinking about God’s relationship to creation.

    These resources include the idea of a “cosmic” fall demonic powers as articulated by C.S. Lewis (which is at least in theory consistent with cosmic history as science tells it), the depiction of an untamed creation that is nevertheless loved by God in the book of Job, and the self-emptying life of Jesus as a clue to how God relates to creation. Readers will likely vary in how persuasive they find these responses — but I think the picture that emerges is broadly consistent and appealing. Osborn sees God as creating a “space” where creation can operate according to its own immanent principles, which allow for the possibility that suffering could emerge as a concomitant of these processes. Nevertheless, God works from within creation to draw it toward its fulfillment, and that action is characterize by the “cosuffering humility, nonviolent self-limitation and liberal self-donation” exemplified in Jesus.

    This could be described as a version of the “free process” defense (analogous to the “free will” defense) articulated by John Polkinghorne and others. Essentially, it says that creation has a real, albeit limited, autonomy because God recognizes that it is a great good for created beings to exercise their own causal powers, even if it may lead to consequences God doesn’t’ intend. Many readers will note affinities here with various strains of “open and relational” theology, which is not coincidental, based on some of the references in Osborn’s book. And, cards on the table, my own sympathies are largely with some version of that theology. Certainly, I find it more compelling than the omni-causal deterministic God found in some versions of reformed theology.

    Osborn concludes his book with some reflections on the ethical implications of his vision. One I found particularly interesting was his argument for a recovery of Sabbath-observance as a recognition that human beings are not masters of this world but were made to share in God’s own rest. The Adventist church is one of the few Christian denominations that has maintained observance of the Sabbath, and Osborn suggests that it is importantly distinct from celebrating the Lord’s Day and it could be one way of repenting of Christianity’s long history of anti-Judaism.

    More directly relevant to the topic of the book, he also offers a passionate call for improving our treatment of animals and the rest of God’s non-human creation (it’s worth noting that Adventists are generally expected to practice vegetarianism):

    Herein, it seems to me, lies the most pressing theological dilemma of our age–not the theodicy dilemma of evolutionary biology but the anthropodicy dilemma of late capitalism. Is it still possible to justify the existence of that species that has become a force of such destruction on the planet that it is no longer clear that other species will survive? Does the imago Dei remain, or shall we devour the earth that was left in our care without restraint until it is an utterly scorched desert? Any credible answer to these questions, which grow in urgency every day, must take the form not of the detached theologizing but of concrete and ethical action that brings sabbath peace to our brothers and sisters in the animal kingdom. Their blood may or may not be upon God’s hands. On the third planet of the sun there can be no doubt that it is now upon our own. (p. 175)

    As I perhaps hinted above, I might’ve preferred if Osborn had spent less time critiquing creationism and biblical literalism and more time fleshing out his alternative approach. But that may just be a case of whishing an author wrote a different book than they did. (Readers interested in pursuing some of these ideas further might consult the volume The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, edited by John Polkinghorne.) That minor quibble aside, this was a thoroughly stimulating and largely compelling read on a topic that is crucial (and sadly still much neglected) for any credible Christian theology.

    ———————————-

    *It’s worth noting that creationism’s “solution” to the problem of animal suffering isn’t as straightforward as it seems. As Osborn points out, it’s far from clear that it’s just of God to condemn the entire animal creation to untold amounts of suffering as a “punishment” or “curse” resulting from the sin of human beings!

  • Best Theology Books I Read This Year

    Continuing the experiment of dusting off this creaky old blog, here are the best theology books I read this year (not necessarily published this year!):

    Teresa Morgan, Trust in Atonement: Teresa Morgan is a scholar of classical antiquity as well as New Testament and early Christianity, and she brings this perspective to bear in developing a new model of the atonement in this stimulating book. Taking the Greek pistis, with its connotations of “trust” and “trustworthiness,” Prof. Morgan argues that Christ is the one who God entrusts to create trust in human beings. In order to reconcile God and human beings, Jesus creates a “space” where trust can be (re-)established. God entrusts Jesus to us, even at our worst, in order to demonstrate that we can put our trust in God. This is an intriguing work that offers a genuinely fresh alternative to the typically rehearsed atonement models.

    St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation: I decided to revisit Athanasius’ classic treatise this year, which remains one of the touchstones of classic Christian theology. One thing that struck me this time around was that, although Athanasius is sometimes presented as an alternative to “forensic,” “juridical” satisfaction theories of the atonement, there are elements of such accounts in his argument. For example, Athanasius says that in dying for us, Christ discharges a “debt” to God, which sounds positively Anselmian. Though it should be said that the emphasis remains on the ontological change effected through the incarnation. There are certainly arguments one could pick with Athanasius’ treatise (e.g. it says very little about Jesus’ earthly ministry and it’s not clear he has completely absorbed the point that Jesus is fully human), but it remains a lucid presentation of one of the essential truths of Christianity.

    Nijay Gupta, The Affections of Christ Jesus:When there is so much niche scholarship being published on Paul, it’s nice to see someone offer an original interpretation of his thought as a whole. Gupta, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, argues that, as the book’s subtitle has it, love is at the heart of Paul’s theology. He applies this insight to Paul’s gospel, his understanding of Christian community, and his ethics, among other topics. “Christianity is about love” may sound trite, but Gupta’s work throws fresh light on Paul’s theology and its relevance for us.

    Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, A Theology of Love: I read and discussed this book a chapter at a time with one of my good friends, who is also a deacon in the United Methodist Church. Wynkoop was a Church of the Nazarene theologian in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition who tried to interpret the language of her tradition (“sanctification,” “perfection,” etc.) in ways that would make sense for contemporary people. One of her key insights is that doctrine has to connect with life in a meaningful way – too often theological terms become shibboleths that don’t find purchase in our actual experience. For Wynkoop, “holiness” is fundamentally about the flowering of love in our relationship with God and others. It is never a sub-personal, mechanical, or quasi-magical process; rather, it is an intensely personal relationship with the God of love.

    Samuel Wells, Constructing an Incarnational Theology: This is an ambitious work that tries to reframe Christian theology around a “supra-lapsarian” understanding of the incarnation. Wells, a pastor of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, and author of numerous other works, applies his concept of “being-with” to some of the classic loci in Christian theology. Wells argues that, most fundamentally, God desires to be with God’s creatures and all of creation exists for this purpose. Rather than the incarnation being a “plan B” in response to sin, it is the manifestation of God’s desire to be with God’s creation. This is a provocative and original work, though I’m not 100% sold on Wells’ organizing idea of “being-with” as a kind of master key for scripture.

    Adam Hamilton, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? See my review here!

  • The Cross as God’s Word

    Adam Hamilton, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? The Meaning of the Crucifixion (Abingdon Press, 2025)

    Adam Hamilton is the pastor of the Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, KS, one of the largest Methodist churches in the country. He’s also the author of numerous books and bible studies where he’s tried to carve out what I would characterize as an irenic Christian orthodoxy for mainline Protestants. He’s “progressive” in the sense of supporting women in ministry and the full equality of LGBTQ+ folks in the church; but his theology is more in the spirit of a Lewisian “mere Christianity.”

    I co-lead a small group at my church, and we’ve used a number of Hamilton’s books over the years. His latest book, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? is one of the more explicitly theological of his works. In it, he wrestles with several of the traditional “theories” of the Atonement – or how Christ’s death and resurrection reconcile us to God. Since this is a topic I’ve long struggled with, I was interested to see how Hamilton would approach it.

    Maybe the most important move Hamilton makes is how he frames the Atonement. It’s a mistake, he argues, to treat theories of Atonement as though they describe the “mechanism” by which God effects our reconciliation. Instead, he says, we should see the cross as “God’s Word to humanity”:

    Jesus incarnates God’s word, revealing God’s heart and character, God’s action on our behalf to reconcile and heal us, God’s word about the human condition, and God’s word concerning God’s will for our lives. Our task is to hear this word, to receive it, and to allow it to have its intended effect on our lives, and through us, on the world. (p. xviii)

    Hamilton acknowledges that some might see this as a merely “subjective” interpretation of the cross. However, he notes “that claim fails to understand the power of God’s Word and how God works in our world”:

    Throughout scripture God acts by speaking. “God said ‘Let there be light.’ And so light appeared. God saw how good the light was” (Gen. 1:3-4). God speaks and a stuttering sheepherd named Moses becomes the great deliverer. God speaks and the childless Abraham and Sarah conceive a child. God speaks through prophets and kingdoms rise and fall. Paul, as well as the writer of Hebrews, describes God’s word as a sword. But most importantly for our purposes, in his epic prologue, John describes Jesus himself as God’s Word. (p. xix)

    In this perspective, the various New Testament motifs or metaphors for the salvation Jesus brings are better viewed as multifaceted images of the word God speaks in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

    In the succeeding chapters, Hamilton provides an overview of various NT metaphors and the theories of the Atonement that have been built upon them. These include:

    Recapitulation – Jesus is the new human archetype

    Penal substitution – Jesus bears the punishment we deserve

    Sacrifice – Jesus offers himself for our forgiveness

    Passover Lamb – Christ delivers us from slavery and death

    New Covenant – Jesus institutes a new covenant in his blood

    Ransom – Christ frees us from the devil/powers of evil

    Redemption – Jesus purchases our freedom

    In all these cases, Hamilton thinks we can recover the power of these metaphors/images interpreted as aspects or facets of the word God speaks to us.

    An instructive case study is that of penal substitution, which is both the most popular theory of atonement in some Christian circles and the most controversial in others. Hamilton offers strong criticisms of this theory as it’s often presented. These will be familiar to those who’ve followed the debate:

    1. The idea that Jesus’ death was to appease God’s anger seems contrary to the gospel message.
    2. It paints an unflattering image of a God who needs an innocent person to be tortured and killed in order to forgive.
    3. It suggests God cannot forgive sin without punishment. But God is portrayed throughout Scripture as forgiving without punishment.

    There are, of course, more sophisticated and nuanced presentations of penal substitution (e.g. John Stott’s The Cross of Christ). But even the most sophisticated interpretations of penal substitution tend to suggest that Christ’s suffering and death was something God needed in order to be gracious to us.

    Hamilton does think, however, that the motif of Christ suffering for us can be helpful:

    I believe it is we who needed Jesus’ death, not God. It was to change our hearts, not to change God’s heart. God can forgive anyone God chooses and does not require God’s Son’s torturous death in order to appease his anger.

    As God’s Word, we can say that we see God demonstrating the pain he himself experiences as a result of human sin but also the lengths to which he is willing to go to save us from it. (p. 28)

    I might put it this way: The cross reveals that God is always bearing the pain of our sin – and yet always offering mercy and forgiveness. The more “transactional” view suggests that there was a time when this wasn’t the case — that God had to be persuaded or paid off in order to be merciful. Attempts to salvage this by appealing to the Trintiy only get you so far, because you still end up having to say that God is paying Godself off or self-propitiating, which is an obscure idea to say the least.

    Interestingly, given the reputation “moral exemplar” theories have had (almost as bad as penal substitution!), Hamilton spends to chapters expounding and defending multiple versions of this motif.

    Essentially, Hamilton boils this down to two elements:

    1. Christ provides an example of sacrificial love that we are to imitate.
    2. Christ’s death reveals God’s loving heart to us.

    It’s the second of these ideas that Hamilton says he finds the most compelling of the traditional atonement motifs. But what, one might ask, distinguishes the death of Jesus from the deaths of other heroic saints and martyrs throughout history?

    What differentiates Jesus’ death … is his identity as God’s Word enfleshed. In John 14:11, Jesus said “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” Christians believe that Jesus is the incarnation, the very embodied presence of God the Son. He is God’s anointed King. He is the Word of God enfleshed. He is God, the Son, who willingly dies not just for one person, but for all of humanity. (p. 80)

    As Hamilton puts it:

    [The Cross] reveals the very heart of God for humankind, and the motivation behind Christ’s death. It sees the story of Jesus as a love story portraying God’s steadfast love for humanity climaxing with the highest expression love might take — that of dying for another. When this love is experienced and accepted, it draws us to God, leads us to repentance, transforms our hearts, and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, compels us to live a life of selfless love. (pp. 80-81)

    One could say that the death of Christ reveals God’s love because it was the (inevitable?) outcome of the kind of life he lived — the life of God’s love reaching out to us. God in Christ willed to be with humanity and creation, but human beings, in their sin, rejected God. However, this didn’t (indeed, can’t) deter God’s love, and God “loved his own to the end” (Jn. 13:1). (For a theology that puts God’s desire to be with us at the center, see Samuel Wells’ Constructing an Incarnational Theology.)

    Fittingly, Hamilton concludes the book with an exposition of the “Christ the Victor” motif. All too often, Christian thought has separated the cross from the resurrection. This can suggest that it’s Christ’s death alone which saves us and this was the entire reason for his coming.

    Through his death and resurrection Jesus overcomes the forces of evil. This doesn’t mean these forces have been destroyed — history and current experience give ample evidence that they still plague us. But the cross and resurrection demonstrate that God’s love is sovereign over these powers and they will ultimately be defeated once and for all. Importantly, this means that we can be freed from the fear of death and for works of love for our neighbors.

    Summarizing, Hamilton offers some key takeaways:

    • Jesus didn’t have to die, but he believed God could use his death for a redemptive purpose.
    • Christ’s death is about forgiveness — but also more than forgiveness. It’s about transformation, new life, and victory over death, among other things.
    • Metaphors for atonement shouldn’t be confused with “mechanisms” that explain “how it works.”

    I think some more transactional understandings of the Atonement appeal to our desire for things to be fixed through a quasi-magical act that doesn’t require anything from us. But Hamilton’s insistence that, in the cross, God is reaching out to us emphasizes the personal nature of this relationship. Ultimately, the cross and resurrection are God offering Godself to us through God’s Word, for our reconciliation, forgiveness, liberation and new life.

  • A ransom for many

    I just finished reading Deceiving the Devil: Atonement, Abuse, and Ransom by feminist theologian Darby Kathleen Ray, partly at the suggestion of someone on Twitter. It’s essentially a critique of traditional models of the atonement from a feminist and liberationist perspective, but it creatively mines the tradition for a constructive counter-proposal.

    One strength of this book is the detailed discussion of feminist concerns about certain traditional atonement motifs (e.g. Anselm and Abelard)–namely that they encourage suffering, victimization and passivity in the face of evil. Sometimes these critiques are tossed off without really being substantiated (e.g., vague references to “divine child abuse”). But Ray spends a lot of time explaining exactly what feminist critics find troublesome about these models and how they contribute to suffering. Even if one doesn’t find these criticisms wholly persuasive, there’s a substantial argument here that needs to be engaged with.

    Another contribution of this book is that Ray connects the concerns of (largely) North American feminists to the similar, but also importantly different, issues raised by Latin American liberation theologians and shows how each can enrich the other.

    For example, despite their criticisms of certain traditional interpretations of the atonement, some liberation theologians have developed a more positive account of the significance of Jesus’ death. The suffering Jesus becomes a figure with whom the oppressed poor can identify, and this can give them strength in their struggle. Moreover, liberation theologians have shown how Jesus’ death is consonant with his life and ministry, which on this reading was about bringing mercy to the downtrodden and confronting forces of evil and oppression. On this view, Jesus’ death was a consummation of the way he lived and powerfully shows what nonviolent resistance to the powers that be looks like. Ray thinks this is a useful corrective to some feminist theologians’ refusal to attribute any salvific significance to the crucifixion.

    Ray’s constructive proposal seeks to incorporate these insights but also to go beyond them by reclaiming imagery from the early church. The motif or model she develops is essentially a demythologized version of the patristic “ransom” theory where Jesus’ death tricks Satan into surrendering his rights over humanity. In the colorful images offered by some church fathers, Jesus is the bait on the fishhook or the cheese in the mousetrap that ensnares Satan. Humanity, by sinning, had put itself under Satan’s dominion, but by killing Jesus the innocent one, Satan forfeited any rights over us. (This is dramatically, and famously, portrayed in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)

    In Ray’s demythologized version, Jesus subverts or “outsmarts” evil by responding with nonviolent love instead of with coercive force. By killing Jesus, the forces of evil, which Ray identifies with oppressive social, political and economic structures rooted in a desire to dominate and control others, are exposed as bankrupt and lacking legitimacy.

    The way of Jesus, culminating in his death, reveals the illegitimacy of coercive domination. Humanity’s enslavement to evil is loosened because Jesus, in his life and death, has established a new way of being in resistance of evil. This becomes a permanent possibility, accessible to all human beings, because it was “incarnated” in Jesus. This interpretation of the ransom motif could also be seen as a variety of Christus Victor — Jesus wins a paradoxical victory over the powers of evil be persisting in his mode of non-violent love, even to the point of death.

    This, however, brings me to some of the qualms I have about Ray’s model. In the traditional Christus Victor model, the resurrection of Jesus plays an essential role. By raising him from death, God puts the stamp of approval on Jesus’ ministry, and shows that noncoercive love has the last word in the cosmos, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. The resurrection is the locus of victory over the evil powers, although its meaning can never be separated from the cross.

    However, the resurrection plays virtually no role in Ray’s discussion. The closest she comes is in saying that the community, when it follows Jesus’ lifestyle of nonviolent love, “resurrects” him. This could be because Ray simply doesn’t believe in a traditional version of Jesus’ resurrection. But it may also be because she wants to avoid seemingly tidy resolutions to the problem of evil.

    Ray emphasizes the “tragic” nature of existence and the fact that all our efforts to resist evil are piecemeal. This seems to lead her to deny that there will be some kind of ultimate resolution–or at least downplay the possibility. She seems to worry that belief in any such divine intervention could lead to complacency about evil, something that she has argued is encouraged by certain traditional interpretations of the atonement.

    I think one has to respect this refusal to prematurely declare victory over evil. Heaven knows that Christianity has been guilty of more than its fair share of triumphalism over the centuries. As Clark Williamson, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and other theologians focusing on Christian anti-Judaism have pointed out, Christianity has often lost the “proleptic” nature of the of redemption–the idea that Jesus’ resurrection is a sort of promissory note for an ultimate redemption that is still to come (whatever that may look like). On this view, evil has not been eradicated but continues to stalk the world in this time between the times. Too often, Christians have conflated the church and the kingdom, losing the eschatological hope for a redeemed creation.

    Such an understanding of redemption might address some of Ray’s concerns about complacency in the face of evil, without surrendering Christianity’s traditional hope in God’s ultimate victory over evil. By downplaying the resurrection Ray’s re-tooled ransom theory ends up looking a lot like another version of exemplarism. Jesus embodies a way of living that Christians (and potentially others) can emulate, and his death reveals the bankruptcy of coercive domination (or what Walter Wink called “the domination system”). While this account of sin and its grip on human beings is powerful and illuminating, I wonder if the atonement as she interprets it is capable of liberating human beings from its power. In other words, it’s not clear on this account how Jesus’ life and death (and resurrection) save, as opposed to being inspiring examples of nonviolent resistance. 

    What this understanding of sin calls for, it seems to me, is a power that can truly liberate humans and which promises fulfillment and salvation for all. Of course, there’s always the possibility that such a hope is a form of wishful thinking and we should be content with what Scottish theologian John Macquarrie called the “austere ending” as one possible interpretation of the story of Jesus.* But I at least continue to hope that the alternative, “happy ending” is the true one. I’m also hopeful that this story can be a source of love and freedom for all creation rather than something that fosters abuse and suffering.

    —————————————————

    *In his Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, Macquarrie contends that there are two possible endings to the Jesus story, based on the historical evidence and a responsible theological interpretation. The “happy ending” of the Jesus story is the series of “mysteries” that follow the crucifixion–the descent into hell, the resurrection, the ascension and the second coming. This is obviously the convetional ending, the version of the story taught by most churches and believed by most Christians. It assures us that we will live beyond the grave and that at least some of us will be crowned with everlasting happiness. But there is also an “austere ending” that also provides a plausible interpretation of Jesus’ career and in which we can still find meaning. As Macquarrie writes, “Suppose we omitted the ‘joyful mysteries’ that traditionally came after the cross? Would that destroy the whole fabric of faith in Christ? I do not think so, for the two great distinctive Christian affirmations would remain untouched — God is love, and God is revealed in Jesus Christ. . . . If the highest virtue is the kind of love which the New Testament attributes to Jesus, then it seems to me that his victory over evil was already won in the agonizing hours before his death, and that it would remain decisive even if there were no subsequent events of resurrection and ascension.” (p. 412) Somewhat similar to Ray, in his treatment of the work of Christ, Macquarrie develops a demythologized version of Christus Victor, in which Jesus’ atonement consists in his loving to the point of death and establishing a new template or possibility for human living.

  • Only a crucified God can help

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    Is the Christian gospel about the life and teachings of Jesus, or is it about his death and resurrection? These two poles of the Christian message have often been pitted against one another, sometimes in the form of St. Paul’s “theology of the cross” vs. “the Jesus of the gospels” (particularly the synoptic gospels).

    In her brief but rich book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: New Testament Interpretations of the Death of Christ, esteemed New Testament scholar Morna Hooker argues (persuasively, to my mind) that the NT authors were largely on the same page regarding the significance of Jesus’ crucifixion and its implications for Christian living, even though they might differ somewhat in emphasis.

    Hooker dedicates successive chapters to the though of Paul, each of the four gospel writers, the letter to the Hebrews, and 1 Peter/1 John/Revelation. These authors use a variety of metaphors, images and concepts to express the meaning of Jesus’ death (and resurrection), and one would look in vain for a fully developed “theory of atonement.” Nevertheless, Hooker shows that there’s a remarkably consistent set of assertions that are virtually unanimous among these witnesses:

    • “Jesus was put to death through the weakness and sin of wicked men and the rebellion of satanic powers, [but] it was part of God’s plan, and took place in accordance with scripture.” (p. 139)
    • “Through Christ’s death and resurrection God has reconciled us to himself.” (p. 139)
    • “That Jesus suffered ‘for us’ does not mean that Christians can expect to escape suffering themselves — the very opposite! Christ triumphs over death, but those who want to share his triumph must share his shame and suffering and death.” (p. 140)
    • “It is not simply the absurdity of the gospel itself — a crucified Messiah!– which might cause Christians to blush, but its implications for the life-style of those who commit themselves to following a crucified Lord.” (p. 140)

    That Jesus’ death is part of the divine plan and the site of divine forgiveness goes against certain liberal theologies that are uneasy with the idea of God using such gruesome methods to redeem humanity. At the same time, Hooker insists that the cross is no mere “substitution” whereby Jesus suffers instead of us. She prefers the language of “participation”–we are saved through union with Christ in his dying and rising. This has implications for how we live–Christians must expect to suffer as part of following a crucified messiah. This rules out certain individualistic interpretations of Christianity that peddle Bonhoeffer’s “cheap grace” and downplay the cost of discipleship. And how far from the spirit of the NT are the various “prosperity gospels” that promise an untroubled life of material success and contentment!

    In other words, talking about the gospel as either a religion of redemption and forgiveness or a way of life modeled after the example of Jesus is a false dichotomy. Hooker seems to find the image of participation the most compelling way of expressing this: God in Jesus became like us so that we can become like him. This isn’t a simple “exemplarist” understanding of salvation; it’s more like a mystical union with Christ whereby we share in his righteousness and are (re-)formed in his image.

    Ultimately, Hooker says, the revelation of God’s glory in the cross is the deepest meaning of the NT witness:

    The idea — common to Paul and John — that God’s glory is revealed in the death of Christ is perhaps the New Testament’s most profound insight into its meaning. … The belief that God is revealed in the shame and weakness of the cross is a profound insight into the nature of God. … By embracing the scandal of the cross, and joyfully accepting its shame, these early Christians discovered the true character of God, and found that the true source of joy consisted in becoming like him. (p. 141)

  • Thanks, Elizabeth Warren

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    I’ve leaned toward Elizabeth Warren for most of the current primary campaign. Almost exactly a year ago, I placed her at the top of my preliminary candidate rankings. I cheered her on (and gave her a modest amount of money) as she ascended to near-front-runner status, driven not just by her famous “plans” but by her laser-like focus on political corruption and inequality. She had an infectious, “happy warrior” vibe, totally unafraid to skewer the powerful and well-connected. She seemed, to my mind, ideally poised to bring together mainstream liberals who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and left-wing fans of Bernie Sanders’ populist message.

    But of course that didn’t happen.

    There have been many autopsies of her candidacy’s slow descent, culminating in a series of third-, fourth-, or fifth-place finishes in the early primary contests, and I’m sure there’ll be many more. Some have argued that the “lane” for a candidate between Sanders on the left and more moderate candidates like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar on the right simply didn’t exist. She also seems to have appealed disproportionately to professional-class whites and didn’t do nearly well enough with working-class voters and African Americans, among other key groups. At times she struggled to find her footing on issues like Medicare for all. And, maybe most crucially given the mood of Democratic voters this year, she was perceived, fairly or not, as less likely to beat Donald Trump than some of her competitors.

    And of course there’s the role of sexism and the question of whether Democrats were too gun-shy to nominate a woman after Clinton’s humiliating loss to Trump. Whatever mistakes Warren and her campaign made, it’s impossible not to notice that some of the men in the race have recovered from worse. Then again, nobody ever said politics is fair, and your qualifications and the merits of your policies don’t count for much if you can’t persuade people to vote for you.

    Whatever the limitations of Warren as a candidate, though, she genuinely came across as a highly intelligent, committed and compassionate woman who was sincerely fighting to advance the interests of ordinary Americans ill-served by our existing political and economic systems. (Allowing for the fact that every politician is almost certainly ego-driven to some extent.) She was the most interesting thinker in the race, but her nerd-chic wonkiness and policy expertise were wedded to an appealing vision of what America could become if we took its promises of liberty and justice for all seriously. Her vision is about dismantling the structural barriers and inequities that keep people from realizing their God-given capabilities and participating as free and equal citizens in a democratic republic. The religious inspiration of this vision is indicated by her frequent invocation of Matthew 25 and its promise that our fealty to the Lord will be tested by how we treat “the least of these.” 

    Whether Warren ends up serving in a Sanders or Biden administration, or continuing her work in the Senate, I hope she’ll be around for years to come, fighting to make her vision a reality.

     

     

  • Digital simplicity

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    Hank says “Put the dang phone down!”

    It’s not news that a lot of us have a complicated relationship with technology. Many of us feel like we spend more time on our phones–particularly social media–than we think, in our more reflective moments, is probably good for us. Phone addiction is now discussed as a serious issue, and the ubiquity of mobile phones has even been linked to a significant increase in mental health issues among the young. The ubiquity of mobile phones and the rise of social media seem to contribute to anxiety, isolation and depression, even while making utopian promises to “build community and bring the world closer together,” as Facebook’s mission statement has it.

    I personally have wondered (but been afraid to find out) how much time I’ve spent on these services and what I could’ve done with that time instead. As often as not, social media is, for me anyway, a source of anxiety and irritation. I’ve sometimes thought of Twitter as “letting the world’s angriest people set your mental agenda for the day.”

    And yet, it’s hard to stay away. In addition to social media providing a distraction from whatever else might be going on, there’s a vague, but ever-present sense that you might be missing something (however ill-defined that something is) if you aren’t logged on. And yet, at the same time, the world of social media has a tendency to encroach on other activities that we (theoretically at least) value more. Have I checked Twitter or Facebook while ostensibly playing with my kids or enjoying a long walk on the leafy streets of my neighborhood? Why, yes I have.

    None of these observations are new or original, but they set the stage for a recent book that helped me crystallize some of the real problems with living this way and why and how to make a change.

    In his newest book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport, a professor of computer science at Georgetown and author of several popular books, makes a compelling case for intentionally limiting your use of digital tools, particularly social media, whose entire business model rests on sucking up as much of your time as possible. He recommends a 30-day digital “declutter” where you eliminate, or significantly cut back your use of voluntary digital tools; then after the 30-day period you reintroduce only those that add significant value to your life.

    Newport calls his philosophy “digital minimalism” because he thinks the value added to our lives from the time we invest in these services is likely, for most of us, to be a bad deal. Instead of mindlessly meandering about in these environments whenever we’re bored, we should decide what, if anything, we really want to use them for, and limit our time engaging with them to these purposes. He cites Henry David Thoreau’s advice to “simplify, simplify, simplify,” not for its own sake, but to make room for richer values and experiences.

    The second half of Newport’s book makes the case for activities that we can make more room for if we spend less time mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. These core activities–solitude, conversation, and high-quality leisure–are, Newport contends, essential to a flourishing human life.

    • Solitude means spending time alone with your own thoughts without the input of another mind. (So this excludes reading, listening to podcasts, etc.) Solitude in this sense is essential, Newport thinks, for processing our own thoughts, self-reflection, and turning over a particular problem. Taking long walks is an excellent opportunity for such solitude.
    • Conversation is defined in contrast to the fleeting “connections” we tend to make online–likes, retweets, comments. Newport says that humans are designed for a much higher “bandwidth” form of connection, as evidenced by the ways we, largely unconsciously, process the many non-verbal cues during face-to-face conversation. Online connections should largely be relegated to logistical purposes–to facilitate genuine conversation, whether in person or over the phone (or even an app like Facetime).
    • High-quality leisure includes the kinds of activities that we undertake for their own sake. Paradigm examples for Newport are fixing or building physical things, playing a musical instrument, engaging in “supercharged” forms of sociality like intense group workouts, and other “analog” activities that don’t involve simply flopping down in front of a screen.

    Newport’s final chapter focuses on the “attention resistance”–a loose but growing movement of people who realize that, for social media companies and other producers of digital tools, we aren’t the customer, but the product (as the saying goes). The “attention economy” thrives when we spend as much time as possible on these platforms, and technology companies have incredibly smart engineers working to make their tools and apps as addictive as possible. The attention resistance is made of of people who take a more adversarial approach to these companies and seek to deprive them of their attention, except to the extent that they derive benefits from these tools.

    While I found most of Newport’s argument persuasive, I did have a few disagreements. Despite quoting Aristotle on the value of leisure, Newport all but ignores Aristotle’s emphasis on contemplation as the highest goal of human life. Virtually all of the people Newport describes as exemplars of high-quality leisure are super high-activity types who are out clearing trees in the forest or learning how to weld as their preferred forms of “leisure.” I do agree that engaging with the physical world is an essential part of human life, virtually all of Newport’s examples still focus on a high-productivity “doing” rather than “being.” (I had a similar concern about his previous book Deep Work, which seemed at times to be mainly a manifesto for being more productive, rather than questioning the obsession with productivity.) One could argue, for instance, that the contemplation of nature has as much, or in some case more, value than putting the human stamp on it.

    All that said, I found the core of Newport’s argument convincing: It is very hard to maintain that the amount of time many of us spend on social media is time well spent and that it wouldn’t be better put to use otherwise. If anything, he somewhat undersells the drawbacks of social media: particularly the dread, anxiety and malaise it can induce in many of us. I honestly can’t think of too many times I’ve come away from Twitter or Facebook feeling happier and more energized. And he seems right on about the shallow forms of affirmation we’ve come to rely on in our quest for more likes and clicks.

    Moreover, though Newport is writing from a secular perspective, many of his insights would dovetail with religious wisdom, particularly on the importance of simplicity, solitude and engaging with other people and the created world without the mediation of a glowing screen. At the same time, religious wisdom could also correct Newport’s tendency to value production over contemplation. In any event, Newport convinced me to attempt my own digital declutter: a Twitter hiatus and a significant cutback on my use of Facebook. Whether I’ll be able to put these services in their proper place in my life (if they have one!) after 30 days remains to be seen.

     

     

  • The God who never gives up

     

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    If all are not saved, if God creates souls he knows to be destined for eternal misery, is God evil? Well, perhaps one might conclude instead that he is both good and evil, or that he is beyond good and evil altogether, which is to say beyond the supremacy of the Good; but, then again, to stand outside the sovereignty of the Good is in fact to be evil after all, so it all amounts to the same thing. But maybe every analogy ultimately fails. What is not debatable is that, if God does so create, in himself he cannot be the Good as such, and creation cannot be a morally meaningful act: It is, seen from one vantage, an act of predilective love; but, seen from another–logically necessary–vantage, it is an act of prudential malevolence. And so it cannot be true. 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 and pure sovereignty proclaimed by so much of the Christian tradition is not, and cannot possibly be, the God of self-outpouring love revealed in Christ. If God is the good creator of all, he must also be the savior of all, without fail, who brings to himself all he has made, including all rational wills, and only thus returns to himself in all that goes forth from him. — David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, pp. 90-91

    I had already come around to a position pretty close to the one David Bentley Hart argues for in his most recent book, though I’m a bit more diffident about my views. (Then again, who isn’t more diffident than Hart?) Nevertheless, I still enjoyed the book, not least because of the moral passion Hart brings to it. And I do think the moral argument is at the heart (ahem) of this book. Sure, he delves into classical theistic metaphysics and the nature of freedom (both divine and creaturely), but at the end of the day this book is really about whether God can be trusted to be good and bring creation to the best imaginable fulfillment. A creation in which even one creature suffered unending torment as the consequence of a finite offense is (necessarily) worse than one in which all creatures are restored. And if God is both good and sovereign, why wouldn’t God be able to bring about the best state of affairs?

    One quibble I had is that Hart largely ignores the discussion of universalism in more recent theology. He generally takes the later Augustine, Thomism and Calvinism as his interlocutors, which makes the tradition seem more monolithic on this point than it is. At least since the early modern period, theologians have been questioning the received view of hell. Schleiermacher, the great 19th-century liberal theologian, argued for what we might call “single predestination” and, as Richard Bauckham points out, he had a “deeply felt conviction that the blessedness of the redeemed would be severely marred by their sympathy for the damned.” And several major 20th century theologians–Barth, Rahner, Von Balthasar, Tillich, Kung, and Moltmann, to name a few–either downplayed traditional notions of hell or were outright universalist. The same is true of more recent theology, largely though not exclusively within mainline Protestantism and Catholicism. In addition, feminist, liberation and other theology written from the perspective of marginalized groups has emphasized that humans are quite capable of creating hell on earth and God is the one who delivers from violence and oppression, not the overseer of an eternal torture chamber. This is all somewhat at odds with the way Hart plays Western Christianity off against the Eastern church and the early fathers.

    This isn’t to detract from Hart’s arguments, which stand or fall on their own merits. But it suggests that the Western Christian tradition is more hospitable to universalism than he suggests. A recent example is offered by Keith Ward, a theologian-philosopher whose work has influenced me quite a bit:

    God does not compel humans to repent, and repentance is required if people are to turn to the path of life. But if God wishes that all should reach repentance, God must make repentance and salvation possible for all, without exception. A God of love would always hold the door of repentance open. In that sense, Hell cannot be God’s final word to any created being. It must be possible even in Hell to repent, and God, the God revealed in Christ, must be present and active to make that a real possibility. (Re-thinking Christianity, p. 43)

    This is very similar to Hart’s argument: If God is good, then God will never give up on any created soul. Hell may exist as a kind of purifying state, but it cannot be an unending, sheerly retributive form of punishment. God wills that all shall be saved, and the divine love is inexhaustible in seeking the lost.