I’m reading That All Shall Be Saved by David Bently Hart, and it’s amazing.
I’m about 1/4 of the way through this book, and already I have enough praise for it to write this post. Admittedly, I have an AI tool open while I’m reading so that I can quickly look up definitions about 3-5 times per page, but it hasn’t taken away from the joy of the book. If anything, Hart’s use of colorful vocabulary is helping to expand my own.
One of the first observations I had while reading the book is how hilarious Hart is. There’s a section early on where he subtly makes a joke about how the commonly held view of eternal conscious torment includes for some a belief in immortal worms, and the way he words it is hilarious.
I have not yet been convinced of ultimate restoration, the doctrine that all will eventually be saved, primarily because of the number of scriptures warning against eternal destruction, but I believe something close to it. I certainly don’t believe in eternal conscious torment. For a long time now, I’ve believed that the wicked will be destroyed forever. That being said, I am more convinced now than ever before that God will go to great lengths, even beyond death in a corrective hell, to liberate the human will enough to choose to love and follow Him.
So far, the most profound and helpful part of the book has been Hart’s explanation of the rational will, that is, the will God created humans to have, and that a free will is a rational will, and a rational will is oriented towards the Good, who is, God Himself. Therefore, any decisions we make that distance us from intimacy with God come from a corrupted will, not a rational will. Therefore, it would be unjust for God to condemn a sinner to eternal torment because eternal torment is infinite while their sin is qualified by a corrupted will, and therefore the punishment doesn’t match the crime. That being said, that doesn’t mean all guilt is removed. After all, though every human has an unchosen corruption of their will, they still participate in and further that corruption, and for that reason, they are morally responsible. Furthermore, the human who is judged and condemned, whether temporarily in a corrective hell or permanently in annihilation, is condemned as the person they have become and for the sins that are their own, and the person they have become is damnable apart from redemption.
The question that remains is does God’s love compel Him to eventually restore every will in this life and through a corrective hell, if necessary, to the free state He intended for it and therefore do we need to figure out another way to understand the scriptures that warn of eternal destruction (which I interpret as annihilation), or do we take those warnings at face value and instead accept that His love does compel Him to liberate the will in this life and through a corrective hell, if necessary, but only to a certain point, a point at which a decision to reject Him is free enough to warrant eternal description?
That is the question I have at the point in the book I’ve gotten to so far. Perhaps Hart will help me find an answer to that question by the time I finish the book.