David Bentley Hart is Threatening Christian Imperialism (and that is a very good thing)

David Bentley Hart recently released his much anticipated That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation and, to put it frankly, the theology internet is freaking out. The book, Hart's argument for universal reconciliation—the idea that, in the end, everyone will be saved—has already been ably reviewed (I recommend Brad Jersak's review, this review by Dr, Akemi, and this interview with DBH over at Jonathan Martin's Zeitcast) such that I was not planning to post a review of my own. In fact, by way of review proper I will say only that I think Hart has successfully shifted me from the "hopeful inclusivist" camp into the "universal reconciliation" position and has almost certainly put forward an argument which any future conversations about hell will have to interact with. He makes four distinct and overlapping arguments, and the one I found most compelling is his third in which he points out that, because all persons are ultimately entangled in a web of relationship with all other persons*, it is impossible that any one person could ever fully experience heaven while any single person is still experiencing hell—the very nature of agape makes it impossible. Having said that much, what I really want is to move on to one particular dynamic which I think is present and active behind the scenes of this discussion.

It will come as not shock to any of my regular readers that I think white American Evangelicalism is deeply entangled with white supremacy to the point that its only hope for redemption lies in near-total deconstruction and careful reconstruction under the guidance and tutelage of extra-hegemonic Christians (if you aren't convinced then I would urge you to watch David Gushee's address to the American Academy of Religion In the Ruins of American Evangelicalism).  As is ever the case, conservative and Evangelical Christianity is freaking out over this latest broadside against the doctrine of an eternal hell. You will remember that the last time this happened was the infamous John Piper "Farewell Rob Bell" tweet in response to Rob Bell's Love Wins—a book which is far humbler and tentative in its challenge to infernalism (the belief in an eternal hell). While no less passionate this time around, the Gospel Coalition corner of Christian internet is somewhat more tentative as DBH is blistering compared to the irenic Bell, and is also an academic heavyweight who seems to delight in lambasting the perverse doctrines of Calvinism and whose scholarly credentials the Gospel Coalition folks are far more likely to find threatening. So the freak-out is a little quieter but no less real for that.

The question, though, is "why"? Hart (like Bell before him) is hardly threatening any doctrine of Christian orthodoxy. At no point do the creeds insist on an infernalist position, and Hart cheerfully and heartily affirms the incarnation, the deity, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hart's universalism (much less Bell's tentative speculation in the universalist direction) is hardly a threat to orthodoxy in any meaningful way. I suspect that the freak-out is happening because on some level, white Christian conservative and Evangelical leaders realize that they need the doctrine of eternal hell not only (as even Hart, following Origen speculates) to scare lay Christians into being good, but more fundamentally, to justify centuries of white Christian genocide and imperialism.

I do not mean to suggest that this is the conscious motive for all, or even for very many, of the infernalists; insofar as it plays a role in their motivations I expect that it is subconscious—that is how white supremacy operates at present. At the very least I am convinced that the theory fits the data. Eternal hell is a perfect justification for all sorts of atrocities and has been used precisely in that way for centuries; the tortures of the inquisition and of many medieval executions were justified as extreme measures which were necessary to save the soul of the victim from the eternal torment of hell. But so too were the epochs of white colonialism justified in this way. The beautiful (terrible) thing about the infernalist doctrine is that since it represents an eternity of torment--the worst possible fate any person could ever possibly suffer--any actions taken in the interest of preventing it are automatically justified, if not perfectly, then at least as an understandable overreaction. You see the argument? "Yes," the infernalist says, "it is a real tragedy that our ancestors/forefathers in the faith destroyed that indiginous culture, stole those lands, oppressed, enslaved, or even murdered those people. But at the end of the day they were trying to save souls." The whole crime, the great sin of white Christian Imperialism is thereby demoted from "ghastly sin" to a mere "tragic overszealous mistake". The atrocities of manifest destiny and the whole Doctrine of Discovery—that infernal carte-blanche from the Church to Europe to enact its bloody megalomaniac will upon non-white peoples and lands—may be reduced by infernalism to a culturally misinformed attempt to spread the gospel. "Gold," as the saying about white imperialism goes "provided the motive; God the pretext". Absent infernalism and the chance to save souls from eternal conscious torment, the shabby pretext becomes infinitely less effective. In sum, Hart's attack on infernalism constitutes nothing less than an attack on one great foundation of colonial white supremacy and its unholy entaglement with white religion.

Dave Gushee In the Ruins of American Evangelicalism

Mark Charles on The Doctrine of Discovery