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Final Version

SAVE NOTHING

A Review Essay of David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved

By John Panteleimon Manoussakis

Should we take the title of this book, That All Shall Be Saved, as its author invites us to do, that
is, not only as the expression of hope, but also as an inevitable and irrefutable conclusion of the
arguments presented here, then, that all shall be saved is not an entirely surprising claim. After
all, we knew all along that some, luckier than us, shall be saved and, therefore, all one adds in
saying all shall be saved is only the corrective that those previously thought of as not-to-be-saved,
namely sinners, shall be saved after all. In this sense, a more accurate title of this book might
have been Sinners Shall Be Saved. And yet, if sinners shall be saved, then this statement implies
that their sins and their sinning made no difference with respect to their salvation, since all,
sinners too and all sinners at that, shall be saved. Insofar as there is no difference between
sinning and non-sinning, one cannot but conclude that, in that sense, there is no sin. If, however,
there is no sin, that means that there are no (more) sinners to be saved, and the title of the book
could now be rendered yet more accurately as No Sinners Shall Be Saved, which, for the sake of
brevity and sales marketing could be rephrased as There Is No Salvation.
Humor aside, the salvation of all is no salvation of none. It would have been simply wrong
were one to claim that without a crime there is no punishment. Is it, then, more accurate to
proclaim, as this book does, that since there could be no punishment, then there could have
never been a crime? Given that universal salvation is a destination which we cannot possibly
miss, on account of our “rational will,” 1 no matter how misdirected our desire—so much so that,

1 David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2019). All page numbers and citations of text refer to the advance copy issued by the Yale University Press.
For the author of this book man’s desire for the good that is God functions almost entirely teleologically, whereby
volition is guarded and guided by the light of reason: “[i]n short, sin requires some degree of ignorance, and
ignorance is by definition a diverting of the mind and will to an end they would not naturally pursue” (p. 36). This is
point reiterated several times, for example: “[a]t the same time, any movement of the will prompted by an entirely

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as Hart suggests at times, I could not sin even if I tried;2 and given that universal salvation is an
end which God could not possibly fail to bring about—since he created the world (that is, by
creating the world God demonstrates that there could be no other alternative than that of
universal salvation),3 then what does the term “salvation” signify anymore? Insofar as there is
neither sin nor punishment whom does universal salvation save and what does it save them
from? Christ stands by the door and knocks—as the old story goes. “Let me in!” he says, “So I can
save you.” “Save me from what?” the person from inside the house inquires. “From what I will
do to you,” is the answer, “if you don’t let me in.” In the case of this book God will save us from
a punishment he couldn’t possibly impose and for a sin we couldn’t possibly commit. The joke,
even if reversed, remains a joke.
* * *
David Bentley Hart has gathered in his latest book some, beautifully written, papers on
eschatology, previously delivered or published on other occasions that are detailed in the
bibliographical note.4 These papers are arranged here into two parts: the first contains a survey
of the various arguments on the eternity of hell, while the second is comprised by four
Cartesianesque meditations on God and his judgement (Meditations One and Two) and on
human personhood and freedom (Meditations Three and Four). The former life of the book’s
material might explain a certain repetitiveness between Part I and Part II and across the four
meditations, as the author himself acknowledges.5
Hart does not burden his readers with the customary scholarly apparatus of
bibliographical notes and citations. The reader will find here the absolute minimum of citations
and no notes of any kind. Even so, Hart does not shy away from engaging ad libitum whichever

perverse rationale would be, by definition, wholly irrational...” (p. 40); repeated verbatim again: “[a]ny act of the
mind or will done without a reason...would be by definition irrational” (p. 173). The restriction of the will to the
rational (as will is almost exclusively qualified as “rational,” with the exception of gnomic will of course) has certain
disadvantages identified already since St. Augustine.
2 Early in the book the possibility of sin is somewhat maintained but not without caveats: “[s]o, yes, we can act

irrationally, but that is no more than a trivial deliberative power” (p. 41). By the end of the book sin is not conceivable
anymore: “ [y]ou cannot actually force yourself to behave ‘irrationally’” (p. 172). For Hart, children are doubtlessly
without sin. This, of course, contradicts the ecclesial praxis of baptizing children, even an infant of one day old, for
“the forgiveness of sins” according to the creed of Nicaea-Constantinople.
3 Op. cit., pp. 85-6.
4 Op. cit., pp. 211-214.
5 For example, on p. 171.

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great mind of the tradition deserves his praise (Gregory of Nyssa, for example, receives numerous
laudatory mentions throughout the book) or his criticism (Augustine is always criticized
apologetically, but Wittgenstein is dealt less leniently for “speaking utter nonsense”6). Neither
opprobrium nor approbation is always explained. In certain instances, the reasons of such
pronouncements are entirely mystifying as, for example, when the author declares Gregory of
Nyssa to be the “more comprehensive, more coherent,” and “more rigorously faithful” reader of
the New Testament than any other exegete of the Scriptures.7 Or, even more so, when the author
assures us that the New Testament, “read in light of the proper tradition,”8 contains nothing that
would support the notion of an eternal hell. One is left to wonder which mortal can claim for
himself that extraordinary authority (historically restricted only to synodal proclamations of the
Church) of knowing the proper and improper readings of the Scriptures and so to be able to judge
which of the Church Fathers read it faithfully or not?
And yet, is the author himself a faithful reader of those classical texts that he invokes in
support of his arguments? Let us consider two examples that raise some rather serious concerns.
Even though Hart is convinced that all shall be saved and, therefore, there is no hell, he graciously
entertains the possibility of some kind of hell, but only on the condition that such a hell should
not be understood as eternal. As Hart explains, the Greek adjective aionios comes from aeon
which, in its classical Greek understanding, does not signify what we understand today as
“eternity” and, thus, to translate aionios as “eternal” is misleading. To make his point, Hart
borrows from Plato’s Timaeus the distinction between chronos and aeon which are not, as we
may assume, two antithetical categories but rather “two different kinds of time,” 9 distinguished
from each other by the criterion of change. Chronos, Hart writes, “is characterized by change,
and therefore consists in that successive state of duration,” 10 while aeon “is characterized by
changelessness.”11 On the basis of this distinction, the author concludes that an aeon “persists

6 Op. cit., p. 160.

7 Op. cit., p. 163.
8 Op. cit., p. 25.
9 Op. cit., p. 121.
10 Op. cit., pp. 121-2.
11 Ibid.

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only so long,” and that it is possible to conceive that “one heavenly Age will succeed another.” 12
What such a succession of aeons, however, would be if not a form of change—that is, that very
characteristic which is supposed to differentiate it from chronos? If the aeon is changeless, then
it can neither come to be nor pass away, as Hart would have it, for generation and corruption are
two of the most exemplary cases of change for Greek metaphysics and we have seen that an
aeon cannot be subject to change. Therefore, Plato’s immutable aeon and the aionios of the
eschatological punishment are as close to eternity as any Greek term could be.
In an earlier passage, Hart takes into consideration “the traditional claim that a soul
cannot alter its orientation after death.” 13 The author finds such belief “grotesque in its
arbitrariness,” “senseless,” and “even feebler” than those eschatological tenets that he
previously dismissed. Then he goes on to trace whatever philosophical premises might be held
responsible for the origins of that claim:
At other times, however, this alleged postmortem inalterability of the will is
explained in terms of some hazy metaphysics of the conditions of disembodied
spirits. Supposedly—so, at least, argue a few Thomist philosophers of my
acquaintance—the soul detached from its carnal frame is no longer mutable, and
so no longer able to change its course. Obviously, that too is just a blank assertion,
since any finite rational nature can change the intentions of its will, even if its
physical substance is fixed; how else—presuming, that is, an orthodoxy that
Thomism positively insists upon—could bodiless intelligences like angels have
ever fallen?14

Had the author taken the time to consider seriously the connection between matter and
mutability or, to put it differently, the connection between embodiment and temporality—a
connection so axiomatic and, at the same time, elementary in the history of philosophy from
Greek and Scholastic metaphysics to contemporary phenomenology—he might have been less
hasty in calling it “a blank assertion” or “hazy metaphysics.” As to whether the angels are
“bodiless,” which Hart offers as proof for his argument, the Patristic consensus is unambiguous.
Angels are not bodiless in the strict sense. Instead, they are “celestial bodies” that are called

12 Op. cit., p. 122.

13 Op. cit., p. 45.
14 Op. cit., p. 46.

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“bodiless” only by comparison to our bodies (πρὸς ἡμᾶς);15 for by comparison to God, who is the
only one who can be properly called bodiless,16 angels are rather “thick and material” (παχῦ τε
καὶ ὑλικόν).17 Yet, even if one wished to consider angels as bodiless, then that would be in fact a
reason for explaining the inability of fallen angels to change their will and repent.18 Therefore,
either the angels are not bodiless and so their primordial fall cannot serve as evidence against
the “postmortem inalterability of the will” as Hart would have us believe, or if they are to be
considered bodiless then they cannot undergo any change, which is the position that “the
traditional claim that a soul cannot alter its orientation after death” asserted all along. On either
count David Bentley Hart is wrong.19 Even more regrettable, however, is the fact that the author
missed here an excellent double opportunity to inquire whether the soul should be understood
as essentially heterogenous to the body and to meditate on the importance of the human body
for our salvation.
Yet, corrections such as these (and many others, if one had the time and energy), are rather
minor points on the periphery of this book’s main thesis, namely universal salvation. On this topic
Hart’s arguments are organized around two questions20 that figure preeminently in the first part
of the book:
a) could God be considered good—indeed the Good—if even one soul is condemned to
everlasting suffering? And
b) could a human being ultimately reject God (read, the Good) and so condemn himself to
an everlasting suffering?21

15 Clement of Alexandria, Excerpta ex Scriptis Theodoti, 14 (PG 9, 664); so also Didymus of Alexandria, De Trinitate,
II, 4 (PG 39, 481).
16 Methodius of Olympus, De Resurrectione Mortuorum, III, 19 (PG 18, 328), similarly John Damascene, De Fide

Orthodoxa, II, 3: μόνον γὰρ ὄντως ἄϋλον τὸ θεῖον ἐστι καὶ ἀσώματον (PG 94, 368).
17 John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, II, 3 (PG 94, 368).
18 For St. John Damascene the devil is incapable of repentance on account of being (comparatively) bodiless:

“ἀνεπίδεκτος μετανοίας ὅτι καὶ ἀσώματος,” De Fide Orthodoxa, II, 3, (PG 94, 368).
19 On the question whether St Thomas Aquinas held the position that angels are incorporeal, as Hart seems to

suggest, one has only to look at Summa Theologicae, Question 51, Article I (“I respond that angels have no bodies...”).
20 See, for example, pp. 13, 17, 27, and 47.
21 Hart’s question how could a good God (“the Good itself”) be rejected by man—insofar as “to see the good and

know it truly is to desire it insatiably” (p. 79) finds a surprising answer by one of Hart’s intellectual allies, Origen.
Origen’s answer is boredom (κόρος, De Principiis, II, 8.2). The answer is surprising because it is neither ontological
or epistemological—the only two possibilities for Greek metaphysics grounded upon the twin pillars of knowledge
and being. Rather the answer is—recalling that Origen’s boredom is what we would call today ennui—existential.

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In the second part of this book these two questions are amplified as to become “three
fundamental claims, any two of which might be true simultaneously, but never all three.” They
are phrased as follows:
a) “God freely created all things out of nothingness”
b) “God is the Good itself”
c) “it is certain or at least possible that some rational creature will endure eternal loss of
God”22
The reader with some familiarity with the history of philosophy will surely recognize in these
three claims a variation on the ancient problem of theodicy: if God is omnipotent (a), and God is
omnibenevolent (b), how could we explain human suffering (c). Precisely because Hart chooses
to cast his discussion on the eschatological destiny of man in terms of theodicy his arguments are
bound to repeat those already advanced by others (one thinks, for example, certain passages
from Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, Leibniz’s Theodicy, and Bayle’s Dictionary, to mention only
few), thus depriving his insights of a much needed originality, and, what is worse, to lead him to
the same impasses that have characterized previous attempts to offer a satisfactory answer to
the problem of theodicy. By allowing his thought to be led and shaped by theodicy, Hart cannot
escape what, in my opinion, is the root of the problem, that is, the assumption that good and evil
are in a synchronic opposition to each other.
Thus, it comes as no surprise that Hart fails to raise that single most important question
upon which the entire discussion of eschatology rests (as he himself, unknowingly perhaps,
admits23), namely the question of protology. Why is there any difference temporal or historical

Indeed, Origen seems to warn Hart that, even if you know the good and even if you desire it, you could still reject it,
for man can do and often does what he doesn’t want and therefore he does not have to follow what he desires (see
Romans 7:15-20). Origen’s boredom suggests that God’s only imperfection is that he doesn’t have any.
22 Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, p. 90.
23 “There is ... no more brilliantly realized vision of the last things than [Nyssa’s] protological treatise On the Making

of Humanity” p. 68. Similarly, by following too closely Nyssa’s highly problematic eschatology of the De Anima et
resurrectione, Hart falls prey to the error of Nyssa’s protology (for example, a double creation that, in turn,
necessitates a double eschatology, see pp. 103, 139, and 143). For my review of Origen’s (also adopted by Gregory
of Nyssa) unique position of accepting two creations, one before and one after the fall, see “St. Augustine and St.
Maximus the Confessor Between the Beginning and the End” in Studia Patristica 15 (2017), pp. 155-163. For what is
problematic with Gregory of Nyssa’s eschatology in the De Anima et resurrectione, see chapter 9 of The Ethics of
Time (Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 144-148.

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between the end and the beginning? That is, why is there time? David Bentley Hart’s God, who
rushes to proclaim that all is good now, that we all shall be saved, and who, in his unfathomable
generosity, has decided not to punish us anymore, is a God who does too little too late. Am I
supposed to burst in praise for that God because he doesn’t punish me in eternity after he has
punished me, or allowed me to be punished, in life? Why doesn’t God save us all at the beginning?
Why didn’t he confer upon us whatever perfection eschatological salvation implies when he
created us? Why the wait, God?
The question is even more pertinent in this case as the author has no patience for waiting
for God: “And , frankly, I have no great interest in waiting upon God, to see if in the end he will
prove to be better or worse than I might have hoped.” 24 But this waiting is nothing less than
history itself. To ridicule those who rather leave to God the final word about the final things or
dare to go a step further and, like Hans Urs von Balthasar, hope that at the end we shall all be
saved (since the author also admits to “have very small patience for this kind of ‘hopeful
universalism’”25) and to demand to know now the not-yet could be excused only from a very
Hegelian vantage point of Absolute Knowledge. Hopefully Hart can hear Origen’s admonishing
voice addressing him and saying: “For you too will wait, just as you are awaited.”
For the apostles too have not yet received their joy: they likewise are waiting for
me to participate in their joy. So it is that the saints who depart from here do not
immediately receive the full reward of their merits, but wait for us, even if we
delay, even if we remain sluggish. They cannot know perfect joy as long as they
grieve over our transgressions and weep for our sins. Perhaps you will not believe
me on this point...but I will bring a witness whom you cannot doubt, the “teacher
of the nations”....the apostle Paul. In writing to the Hebrews, after enumerating
all the holy fathers who were justified by faith, he adds, “These, all of whom
received the testimony of faith, did not attain the promise, because God had
provided for something better for us, so that they should not be made perfect
without us.”26

Why the wait? It is usually at this point that one begins to mumble the trite excuse of
human freedom, agency, and free will. But Hart does not allow us recourse to this, admittedly

24 Op. cit., p. 103.

25 Op. cit., p. 66.
26 Origen, In Leviticum Homiliae VII, as cited by Joseph Ratzinger in Eschatology, translated by Michael Waldstein

(Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), p. 186.

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cheap, answer. For, as he writes, “God can so order all conditions, circumstances, and
contingencies among created things as to bring about everything he wills for his creatures while
still not in any way violating the autonomy of secondary causality...including free will.”27 If he
could, and he is not impeded by anything—for what could impede an omnipotent God?— he
ought to have already done so, that is, he ought to have directed my will and my actions in such
a way so that there would be no sin and no evil, no pain that I suffer or cause others to suffer, if
this is his will. In fact, on penalty of forfeiting his goodness once and for all, he should. Why, then,
doesn’t he? But he will, Hart replies. At the end of times, he will. And so I ask again, why the wait?
But let us put aside for the moment the problem of history that remains unaccounted for
and unaccountable—and let us assume that we shall all be saved: what will happen to the
memory of our histories? Hart raises the point quite eloquently, but only with respect to my
memories of others: “for, if the memories of others are removed, or lost, or one’s knowledge of
their misery is converted into indifference or, God forbid, into greater beatitude, what then
remains of one in one’s last bliss?”28 Hart is correct here. Yet, precisely because eschatological
salvation makes sense only if what is saved is real persons with real histories and real identities,
he ought to have raise the same question with respect to the memory of my own life. What place
do the painful memories of pain dealt to me so freely by God’s handiwork have in this
eschatological bliss of universal salvation? What, if anything, remains from this volatile creation,
bent on my extinction? What of the plain inflicted by other humans, God’s own images, and, last
but no less adept at provoking misery, by myself? Hart does not tell us what happens
eschatologically to the long litany of personal and collective suffering. If salvation means the
eradication of the memory of evil (as John Zizioulas has argued from a point very sympathetic to
that of this book), then all it is saved is “a spiritual anonymity, a vapid spark of pure intellection,
the residue of a soul that has been reduced to no one.”29 How quickly the salvation of all became
the salvation of no-one! Or, alternatively, the memory of evil (and doesn’t that also mean evil
itself?) abides in God’s kingdom. Even if eternity is not eternal, it is a long time to spend
remembering and re-living history’s sorrows.

27 Op. cit., p. 183, my emphasis.

28 Op. cit., p. 79. The author returns to this point with greater urgency on p. 152.
29 Ibid.

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 It is not only I, therefore, who stands in judgment at the end of times, but also the Lord
of history. Hart has indeed argued at great length why I should consider myself forgiven but he
doesn’t explain why should I forgive God—that is, why should I allow God to forgive me and, by
doing so, forgive himself. What if I, like Kierkegaard’s typographical error which became
conscious of itself as error were to say to God “No, I refuse to be erased [forgiven], I will stand as
a witness against you, a witness that you are a second-rate author [God].”30 If the tragic hero for
the suffering caused only by one mistaken action is driven to utter the words of the unspeakable
wish μὴ φῦναι, “better not to have been born,”31 then imposing on a human being not only an
unrequested and unaccountable existence but also an eternal memory of it is a salvation
marginally preferable, if at all, to eternal damnation.
* * *

I have raised a few questions with respect to Hart’s arguments in order not to diminish their
importance or even less to dismiss them but hoping to strengthen them for, as I believe, without
a satisfactory answer to these questions his proposal for universal salvation remains incomplete.
After all, I would earnestly wish that David Bentley Hart is right and that all, even I, in spite of
writing this review, shall be saved.

30 S. Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980), p. 74.
31 Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1225.