An Open Letter to Fr. Aidan Kimel
regarding Universalism
by Dr. David C. Ford
June 22, 2020
St. Alban of Britain
Dear Fr. Aidan,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
I do want to thank you for
giving me the courtesy of letting me know ahead of time about your response to
my response to Fr. Plekon’s review of David Bentley Hart’s book, That All
Shall Be Saved.
And I suppose I should thank
you for giving my document such close attention, despite thinking it’s
“drivel”! I guess that’s a compliment of
some sort!
By way of contrast, here’s
what a retired Assistant District Attorney wrote to his priest about my
response to Fr. Plekon’s review:
I
read Dr. David Ford’s review of the review of Hart’s book on universal
salvation.
It was an excellent piece - very well written. He writes like a good
lawyer.
I believe it informed me of just about everything I probably want to know about
the book, and seemed to confirmed a suspicion of mine that Hart may have become
too “smart” for his own good.
To address your response to
my response, I’m sure we completely agree that it would be truly wonderful
indeed if every single human being, and every single angelic being including
every demon and even Satan himself, were to repent and beg Christ for
forgiveness before the Last Judgment occurs, or even afterwards (if that proves
to be possible), leaving hell utterly empty if not totally annihilated. Those with big enough hearts may well be
praying for that! That’s the hope
we all are welcome to have.
But not the certainty. For as you well know, for all the Scripture
verses and passages that might possibly be taken in a Universalist way, there
are many others that strongly imply what the Church as a whole has always
taught against that speculation. And who
has the authority and the certain knowledge of the future to declare
unequivocally that everyone, including the Devil and all his hosts, will repent
and be saved in the end? And of those
who dare to declare this as a certainty, which of them will be willing to bear
all the consequences if they are mistaken – especially if they’ve misled others
to the extent of their living without repentance in this life because they got
convinced they could just wait and repent in the next life?
Also, I’m very sorry that you
don’t seem to understand how the issue of authority is indeed at the very heart
of the matter. For no matter what any of
our speculations might be, no matter how well-thought out and well-intentioned
they are, if they’re not informed by, aligned with, and centered in the received
Tradition of our Orthodox Church, they simply can’t be correct! This is especially true when the issue at
hand is an important one, and when it has already been decided by the Church as
a whole, with virtually every Saint and Church Father and holy elder in
agreement.
Either our Church, Christ’s
Body, has preserved Christ’s Truth in all its fullness, or our Lord has not
protected His Body from “the gates of hell” as He promised He would. And the Spirit of Truth, Whom Christ promised
would lead His Church into all the Truth, must have failed to do that very
thing.
Concerning the claim that
some Christians in the early centuries were apparently Universalists, if we are
faithful Orthodox Christians and not crypto-Protestants, we trust our Church to
have made the correct decision in eventually rejecting Universalism, even if
some unknown number of Christians believed it in the early centuries. The historical record is that the Church as a
whole rejected it; and after about the middle of the 6th century it
rightly disappears, under the guidance of the Spirit of Truth Who was indeed
leading the Church into all Truth – as all faithful Orthodox Christians
believe.
By that same guidance of the
Holy Spirit of Truth, speaking in unknown tongues and the interpretation of
tongues, though apparently endorsed by St. Paul himself (1 Cor. 14), as well as
the office of the traveling prophets, also dissipated and disappeared, probably
by about the beginning of the third century.
And also, the early belief, held by many rigorist Christians, that
repentance and restoration to the Church were not possible even after deep
repentance for those having committed the worst sins – adultery, apostasy, and
murder – similarly was overturned by the Church as a whole, by the end of the 4th
century.
You’re asking our Church to
view our Orthodox Faith “through Universalist spectacles.” When I attempt to do so, I see very serious
and potentially disastrous pastoral and intellectual problems.
For instance, concerning the
pastoral repercussions of Universalism, through our Church's
rejection of Universalism She has recognized it as a misleading speculation
that could very well undermine our people's incentive to live a life of ongoing
repentance, which is so important in our Orthodox spiritual life, and which has
direct relevance for our future state in the next life. For if I can just plan on repenting in the
next life, what does it matter how dissolutely I live, or how blasphemously I think,
or how recklessly I believe, in this life?
I’m surprised you don’t seem to recognize this very real danger.
Really, with the Universalist claim, where is the incentive to
take the Last Judgment seriously, if it’s believed that God absolutely will
save everyone from hell the moment they finally repent? And why are the prayers and hymns of our
Church, as well as the Book of Psalms, filled to overflowing with calls and
entreaties for the Lord to save us and have mercy on us, if He’s going to do
that anyway the moment hell gets too hot for us and we finally repent then?
And what about for people who are in deep depression and
struggling to resist suicidal thoughts?
If they’ve become convinced that Universalism is true, what would stop
them, in a particularly excruciating moment of temptation, to give in to the
temptation and take their own life in the expectation that they’ll be able to
repent and be saved in the next life? It
seems clear that it’s not without deep pastoral wisdom, based in deep
experience with spiritual warfare, that our Church, in order to provide an
additional incentive for those dealing with suicidal thoughts to resist them,
has traditionally denied a full Christian funeral to those taking their own
life.
In addition, how would it not be deleterious to people's life in
the Church if they get swayed by Hart's rhetoric into doubting the wisdom and
trustworthiness of the great Saints and Church Fathers through the
centuries? People might ask themselves, If the Fathers are wrong on this
issue, what else might they be wrong about? And I wonder, how can people
venerate the Saints and Fathers and ask for their prayers with fullness of
reverence, esteem, and confidence if they get convinced that the Fathers were
wrong on such a crucial issue?
Concerning the Universalist
logic itself, granted that it may very well be extremely well-intentioned,
compelling, and driven by the highest of motivations, yet it remains another
attempt to reduce the mysteries of the Faith to the level of human
reasoning. It’s another example, as we
see with every heresy, of the human mind staggering at some aspect of the
mystery of our Lord’s inscrutable Being and Providence.
According to human reasoning
and conceptualizing, it might very well be true that knowing that God is Pure,
Divine Love is logically incompatible with the fact that there may well
be rational beings, demons as well as human beings, created by Him yet existing
in an eternal state of separation from Him because “men loved darkness rather
than light, because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). Such a scenario may very well not seem to us
to be something our All-Loving God could ever allow. But we can only make such a judgment
according to our own very limited definitions and concepts of what God’s love
must be like.
And the very foundations of
our Faith are wrapped in logically inconsistent paradox and mystery. How can Three be One? How can One be Three? How can God become man? How can a man be God? How can our Lord be completely inaccessible
to humans, and yet simultaneously be completely accessible? How can our salvation depend entirely upon
our Lord and His saving work, and also entirely upon ourselves to freely accept
that work for ourselves? How can our
Church contain the perfect fullness of Truth, yet consist of members who all
fall short of being perfectly filled with Truth? These are paradoxes, antinomies, mysteries,
all of which defy human logic, with which they indeed are entirely
inconsistent.
Speaking broadly, I think it
reflects a Scholastic mindset to wish to reduce the mystery, the paradox, to
the level of logical consistency. But
for the Orthodox, knowing our Uncreated Lord is infinitely beyond our created
capacities for reasoning, infinitely beyond the reasoning capacities of even
the most intellectually brilliant among us, we calmly accept the paradoxes, the
antinomies, the mysteries of our Divinely-revealed Faith. As St. Gregory Palamas says so well, “The
antinomy is the touchstone of Orthodoxy.”
I think we can say that the
mysteries that permeate our Faith are in a sense intended by our Lord to defy
human reasoning, as one of His ways to keep us humbly reliant upon Him in all
things.
We can also be reminded of
the Orthodox understanding of the difference between the apophatic and
kataphatic traditions in our Orthodox theology.
As St. Dionysius the Aeropagite says so well, God is Love and yet He is
also Not-Love, because His Love is both similar to human concepts of love, yet
at the same time His Love is infinitely beyond our human concepts of love.
It’s indeed admirable that
Universalists are so concerned to defend and protect the understanding of God
as Complete and Total Love. But in
Orthodoxy, we know this already; we’re always saying, “for He is the Good God
Who loves mankind.” I’m reminded of how
the erroneous and divisive Filioque clause was added to the Nicene Creed to try
to reinforce the full Deity of the Son in the face of continuing Arianism in
late 6th century Spain; but the Nicene Creed had already established
His full Deity with the use of the word homoousios. Similarly, the Universalist attempt to
reinforce the fullness of God’s Love by removing the possibility of eternal
separation from Him leads to divisiveness and confusion, and distrust of the
Tradition as a whole.
And in the end, of course,
despite all its emphasis on God’s Love, Universalism always boils down not to
love, but to power. As Hart says,
“Insofar as we are able freely to will anything at all, therefore, it is
precisely because He is making us to do so: as at once the source of all
action and intentionality in rational natures and also the transcendental
object of rational desire that elicits every act of mind and will towards any
purposes whatsoever” (TASBS, p. 183; his emphasis). Besides, this claim is false because it would
make God the ultimate author of every evil intention, decision, and action
that’s ever occurred, and we all know that He is not the originator of evil.
Universalism staggers at the
idea that any human or demonic will could ever eternally override the will and
desire of our All-Powerful God for every demon and every person to repent and
be saved from hell. But that’s part of
the mystery – God, in His humble Love, allows this. He always just knocks at the door of our
heart (Rev. 3:20); He never pushes open that door. It’s this humble dimension of the way
God loves that Universalism doesn’t seem to understand.
In addition, by the logic of
Universalism, if it’s morally absurd, if it’s cruel, if indeed it’s evil for
God to allow demons and humans to reject His love forever and hence to
experience hell forever, then it must have been morally absurd and cruel and
evil for Him to have created angels and humans in the first place with the
capacity to reject His will for them in anything. For every time we sin, we reject and override
His will for us to live without sin; and every time we sin, we plunge ourselves
into a certain kind of hell. Pressing
the logic of Universalism to a logical conclusion, how could a fully loving God
allow even one of His creatures to experience any form or degree of hell even
for a moment? – for that would be cruel, according to the humanistic logic of
Universalism.
But in the end, who would
ever think that any 21st century scholar, no matter how
intellectually brilliant, is more trustworthy than St. Athanasius the Great,
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory the Theologian, St.
Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Vincent of Lerins, St. Augustine
of Hippo, St. John of Damascus, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. Photius the
Great, St. Symeon the New Theologian, St. Gregory Palamas, St. Nicholas
Cabasilas, St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, St. Silouan the Athonite, St. Paisius
the Athonite, and countless other saints and elders?
Is David Bentley Hart really
living closer to God than they did? Is
he really more filled with God’s love and truth than they were? Is it really possible that all those Saints
were wrong about Universalism, and that you and David Bentley Hart are
correct? Do you really think the Head of
His Church, Jesus Christ Himself, would have allowed His Church to go into
error on this crucial point for all these centuries? Has He really been waiting all this time for
the truth to be finally discovered in the early 21st century by a
handful of intellectuals? – with David Bentley Hart even daring to imply that
all these Fathers and Saints were “moral idiots” for not believing in
Universalism!
Of course, we’re all free to
choose whom to trust, and whom to believe.
May we all choose wisely!
So, dear Fr. Aidan, please
prayerfully consider my words, even if they are not brilliant. And let’s all remember our Lord’s sobering
words about being a stumbling block to any one of His little ones: “Better for
him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he be drowned in the sea.”
With love and prayers,
Dr. David C. Ford
Professor of Church History
St. Tikhon’s Orthodox
Seminary
South Canaan, PA
