In the second of three articles reviewing David Bentley Hart’s new book on Apokatastasis, THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED,  on Apokatastasis,  Tom Talbot writes the following, posted in Father Aiden Kimmel’s Word Press blog site:

Hopeful Versus Necessary Universalism

There seem to be two separate paths that have led some to a “hopeful universalism,” as many have called it: one biblical and the other philosophical.

The biblical path rests upon two distinct New Testament themes that many find difficult to harmonize: the theme of Christ’s total victory and triumph over sin and death, on the one hand, and that of God’s wrath and judgment of sin, on the other. David Bentley Hart thus points out that, according to the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, these two distinct themes represent “two kinds of absolute statements, both indissoluble in them­selves and each seemingly irreconcilable with the other. And we are supposedly forbidden—by piety, by doctrine, by prudence—from attempting to decide between them” (That All Shall Be Saved, p. 102). Evidently, then, we are being asked to hold together two theolog­ical claims, even though they might appear to us as flatly inconsistent; we are to hold them together “in a sustained ‘tension,’ without attempting any sort of final resolution or synthesis between them” (pp. 102-103). And maintaining such a tension will supposedly enable us to hope for, without being certain of, an ultimate reconciliation of all things, including all human beings, in Christ. Thus the title of Balthasar’s book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”?

But what sort of hope does that amount to? What does it even mean to hope for a universal salvation even as one tries to accept as equally true that some will be lost forever? Set aside the Bible for a moment, and consider the following two propositions on their own terms, so to speak:

1. All human beings will eventually be reconciled to God (through the redemptive work of Christ).
2. Some human beings will never be reconciled to God.

These two propositions are clearly inconsistent and are indeed self-contradictory if you subtract the parenthetical phrase in (1). There is no mystery about this and no sense in trying to hide this fact behind a lot of silly talk about antinomies or a supposed tension between these two propositions. The conjunction of (1) and (2) is simply false, even as every other conjunction of the form: p and not-p, is false. Whatever its source, therefore, any evidence for (1) is evidence against (2) and any evidence for (2) is evidence against (1); and furthermore, any sacred text or set of texts that appears to endorse—in different places, perhaps—both of them has thereby presented evidence of its own unreliability. That is why, if we turn our attention back to the Bible again, all but a relatively few Christian theologians have proceeded in one of two very different ways. Those who interpret such tests as 2 Thessalonians 1:9, the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46), and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), among others, as providing a biblical warrant for (2), or the idea that some will never be reconciled to God, have typically adjusted their under­standing of Christ’s triumph and total victory over sin and death accordingly. And similarly, those who interpret such texts as Romans 5 and 11, 1 Corinthians 15, and the old creedal hymn reproduced in Colossians 1:15-20, among others, as providing a biblical warrant for (1), or the idea of universal reconciliation, have typically adjusted their understanding of God’s wrath and judgment of sin accordingly. The one way of proceeding is just the reverse of the other. For obvious reasons, moreover, few theolo­gians, whatever their view of hell might be, have been willing to vacillate between (1) and (2) or, worse yet, to embrace them both in an act of sheer irrationality.¹

To which I wrote, addressing Father Kimmel:

Father -I wish that you or someone (DBH, Talbot etc) would address 2 from the perspective of the corruption of the Scriptures by the Western (Roman) mindset. I was taught in seminary that in the Roman Empire the LAW was EVERYTHING. That is, the Roman citizen was consumed with the application, the meaning, the results, etc. of the Law.

Simply put, looking at the soteriological differences between East and West (healing of the nous vs God as wrathful Judge) I must conclude that the legalist Roman mind prevailed over Holy Tradition and the Scriptures in coming to a  mindset of condemnatory jurisprudence in regards to how God deals with us.

This is most evident in how the modern translations of the Bible have rendered the Greek word κρίσις (krisis or in English “crisis”) as having to do with retributional justice. As I look in the Strong’s Lexicon and examine the word, I find that it has more to do with the following definition:

“a trial, contest, selection, judgment, opinion or decision given concerning anything”

These definitions could be nuanced in a number of ways. For instance, I am in a state of κρίσις when the doctor tells me that I have cancer. My κρίσις now is about what shall I do with this, what judgment shall we, the doctor and I, make regarding this disease. It has NOTHING to do with condemnation. The doctor has spoken the truth and now a certain action has to be taken. It is a moment of decision, or a crisis!

Likewise, in the κρίσις of the Last Judgement, truth will be declared and there will be a decision as to what happens next? Have I repented on earth, participated with the Holy Spirit in putting my flesh to death, sought Christ on a regular basis? Have I been changed by the influence of the Holy Spirit? Or am I a carnal person, my soul still bound by and in love with my sins? Having arrived at a proper understanding of what my exact spiritual state is, there is then a κρίσις in which it will be determined, much the same as a doctor will now tell the cancer patient, “This is what we are going to do to effect a cure and bring you back to fullness of health.” of what the next step in my spiritual journey will be.

As the Orthodox Church teaches, for some, those who die in love with their passions, filled with unrepented of sin, and in hatred of God, there will be a cure which will be quite painful (and one which we should urge others to avoid at all costs). The Fathers of Universalism called this state of suffering  “hell.” As St. Isaaac the Syrian declared, it is God’s love experienced by the sinner as hell. It is the scourging of God’s love on the back of the sinful soul, with the view of restoration of that soul.

But this is not the same as the way that Rome defines the word κρίσις :

“a sentence of condemnation, damnatory judgment, condemnation and punishment”

This is the Roman (Western) mindset whenever the word “judgment” appears in Scripture. And I believe it to be wrong, based on the influence of Roman Courtroom thinking on the Christians of the West. Beginning with Augustine and developed over the ages by men such as Aquinas and Anselm of Canterbury, the Western mind can only think of the word “judgment” in Scripture as one leading to some form of condemnation.

In the West, God is not Father. He is Judge, and a fearsome one at that. Somehow, this sense of God has bled over to certain priests in the Orthodox Church as well, who in their writings are both dismissive and insulting to anyone who would hold that Christ’s Sacrfice on the Cross was meant to completely undo the damage which took place at the Fall. And while many in both East and West may use words like “Father” or “love” in their homilies and/or theology, my sense is that they have not really plumbed the intellectal, moral, and philosophical depths of what it means to be a father. Speaking in earthly terms, a father who would hold his child’s hand over a flaming stove forever for an infraction of the household rules is someone whom we would call a psychopath and would remove from any future interaction with children. Yet so many over the centuries have described our loving, heavenly Father, of Whom it was said that He was “in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself,”  (2Co 5:19) as being of that kind of character.

More and more, I am coming to utterly reject that caracature of our loving Father.