With the publication of David Bentley Hart’s newest book, THAT ALL SHALL BE SAVED, HEAVEN, HELL, AND UNIVERSAL SALVATION, there is absolutely no reason for me to post a writing like this. On my best of best days, I couldn’t shine Hart’s intellectual shoes, much less carry on a truly intelligent conversation regarding the history of universal salvation. Nonetheless, in a display of monumental hubris, I will give my own personal thoughts on this issue, mainly because  I am not as clear or determined on Apokatastasis as David Hart is, and therefore, still working my way through it. Perhaps my writing might help clarify some issue within Apokatastasis which is similarly bothering another reader.

It seems to me that in order to understand the dogmatic premise of an eternal, conscious, never-ending hell of torments, it is necessary to go back into history, to establish its foundational seeds, and to find how and where it geminated, who watered it, and how it grew into a full-fledged fence full of theological poison ivy. This information is withheld from the average person in the pew. Indeed, most folks think that ECT is something that Jesus Himself preached, and the more fundamentalist in nature the religious body, the harder they stress it that eternal hell is a dogmatic truth.

The great majority of Christians are totally unaware is that for the first five centuries of the united Church, Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic together, the majority teaching about the next life was that of the total restoration of all things – Apokatastasis. I am seventy years old and I never heard of this teaching until a year and a half ago. That’s how good a job the organized Church has done of hiding this fact from its members. As I go along, I hope to show you just why the Church has stuck the light of Christ’s all-redemptive love under a bushel basket of hellfire terror.

I was tempted to say that this all began with Augustine’s wretched and pessimistic anthropology, but it goes back farther than that. It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall. God created man in His image. Adam and Eve were created with the potentiality of becoming “gods.” (St. Athanasius – “God became man in order that man might become a god.“). We see verification of this in Apostle Peter’s epistle where he states that we have been made “partakers of the divine nature.” What is that divine nature which has been lost to us and restored in Christ?

The divine nature is love. God IS love. God doesn’t just love, He IS love. Man was created to become a creature of divine love, sharing in that divine nature (but never in the essence of God). It does not take long after the Fall to see that the effect of sin on mankind has introduced an element into creation which is alien to being a creature existing in divine love. Cain kills Abel. Lamech tells his wives that he has killed a young man who merely wounded him. As the Genesis account continues, we see violence and retribution, the very opposite of love, have become the norm of anthropological behavior. The darkness of sin brings man to such a point of continuting violence that  God wipes the earth clean by means of a flood. Man does not love his fellow man. He uses him, and kills anyone who objects to being used.

Augustine had a term for it: libido dominandi, the lust to dominate. It is the passion, based in complete self-centeredness, that the whole world – from  family members to the world outside of paterfamilias – must acquiesce to our desire for power and glory. For the great majority of men in the world, this lust cannot be lived out to its full desire, precisely because there are other men who will defend themselves from such excursions into their own personal liberty. These men who cannot oppress others sometimes became the oppressors of their families – wife beaters, adulterers, coarse, harsh men who in turn raise  the next generation of coarse, hard young men who will likely continue the oppression, beating their wives and terrorizing their families. This sin-borne sickness passes down from generation to generation.

For some in history though, strong, powerfully built men with both eloquence and savagery, it was easy to build up an army of degenerates who would form an army by which they preyed upon the less fortunate. Join me and together we shall plunder the world! Unsatisfied to take pleasure in the land in which they were born, the relationships and friendships they had, their libido dominandi sent men like Hannibal, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, and others on vast raiding parties to conquer unseen territories, slaughtering by the millions any innocent men, women, and children they found. When Alexander the Great saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer. His lust could find no further outlet.

To conquer, to rule over, to be worshipped and revered (or feared, either will do) is the irresistible siren call to such men. But some would not be content with just earthly rule. In their raging libido dominandi, like many other demented kings around the world, the caesars of the Roman Empire into which Christianity was birthed, claimed godhood and demanded worship.

While I would like to present it as otherwise, the Church and the men who ruled in it were not exempt from this temptation. The Catholic faith – both Orthodox and Roman – teaches us that the passions of the flesh are an enemy to us and our spiritual growth. A cursory glance at the history and behavior of many of the hierarchs of both East and West shows men who succumbed to the siren song of libido dominandi. If the best of Christian leaders were those who ruled in love, caring tenderly for their flock and leading them by example, the worst among these men were those who lusted after power and control. For them, the way to motivate the sheep to obedience was with the whip. But how do you whip a people who are not afraid of death because Christ has died and eternal life beckons?

You threaten them with an eternal, fiery hell!

You warn them that if they do not obey you and everything you teach, there will be hell to pay – forever! Unlike death, which is over in a second and then you are with God, hell and its tortures will go on and on and on and on. So to keep people in line and to be sure that they are plenty scared of it, you paint the most gruesome verbal pictures imaginable of the nature of that torment which will go on forever in the next life. With the great majority of men unable to even read for over sixteen centuries, in the hands of certain leaders, the Sacred Scriptures went from Good News of salvation to Weapon of Unquestioning Obedience. This is what is waiting for you, you rotten rebel, if you don’t obey me!

In PART TWO of this blog series, I will take examine a little further why the idea of eternal torment took hold on the Church.