The Totus Christus vis a vis Eternal Damnation
Professor Hart's response to Fr. Rooney
Below are the last paragraphs from James Dominic Rooney’s Hard Universalism, Grace, and Creaturely Freedom (January 17, 2023)
Implicit in this vision, above, but also explicitly affirmed in the article, above-linked, is the reality of the Totus Christus.
Couple that with his preface to the imagined afterlife scene as excerpted above: “Things might not be as bad as we imagine” and I sense some not insignificant convergences with my own vision, not only theo-logically between certain indispensable propositions but also axio-logically between important affective dispositions.
Still, the divergences between our understandings of human freedom & divine salvific efficacy leave an unbridgeable gulf. So, too, between our evaluative dispositions.
DBH responds to Fr Rooney’s vision in an interview with David Artman:
Ep. 108 David Bentley Hart responds to claims of heresy by Fr. James Dominic Rooney regarding the necessity of all being saved
Below, I’ve archived a particularly apposite response (from within this podcast interview) by Professor Hart to what I excerpted from Fr Rooney’s 3rd article, above.
Here’s a 5 minute snippet:
In my own view, beyond an essential vision beatific, which closes important epistemic distances for all, I also affirm that we may all experience different degrees of glory for various reasons, both merited & otherwise, both synergically & monergically.
So, there’s a spectrum of diverse eschatological states. I believe each person may even experience a post-mortem growth in intimacy, dynamically so. All would enjoy an essential eternal well being and any spectrum of various states would not cross some perditional threshold into varieties & depths of ill being. Scars & signs of disabilities may have a place, as per some fine theologies of disability (cf Amos Yong), but not unhealed wounds.
DBH wins yet another round.