tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post712353841614531549..comments2024-03-12T00:51:27.766-04:00Comments on Ground Motive: Trading Hell for Hope: An Interview with Nicholas Anselladmin1http://www.blogger.com/profile/16479743334126277132noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-25953910693715965332016-06-01T14:12:45.008-04:002016-06-01T14:12:45.008-04:00This is a fantastic interview Nik! I really apprec...This is a fantastic interview Nik! I really appreciate your insights on this topic (they have helped me a lot). <br /><br />Anyway, a lot of people get cought up on the mechanics of universalism (ie. are people then saved from a kind of hell or purgatory after they die, ect?), does the bible suggest anything in this direction, or (like theodicies) is this only a temptation, and it is enough to know that God promises our salvation? stefanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17316946991358437222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-88430225647564193242016-06-01T14:00:17.902-04:002016-06-01T14:00:17.902-04:00Thank you for posting that responce Bob! I've ...Thank you for posting that responce Bob! I've been following this conversation and it has helped me alot. I have heard others speak agains evil as privation on the grounds that it suggests a sort of Platonic view of evil (that evil is only ignorance and that a kind of education can banish it). I don't actually think that is a fair reading of Plato either, but I understand the need to recognize evil as an active malignancy which is deeply intolerable for creation. Yet evil as privation simply works so well with everything we know of evil (it's unoriginality, it's lack of a place in creation, and the fact that it is ultimately signified by death) that I could not make sense of it without the concept of privation. Perhaps all I needed was a more Augustinian view of evil. stefanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17316946991358437222noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-89991003655574846652014-02-28T16:31:56.356-05:002014-02-28T16:31:56.356-05:00Okay, I'll try this again. Nik, your descript...Okay, I'll try this again. Nik, your description of the annihilating work of evil is exactly what the privatio boni tradition within Augustinian theology is attempting to account for. Good's privation is not there to mark an opening to theodicy by which evil is naturalized via some demonstrative argument. So your objections to the tradition is to later appropriations of the tradition rather than to its founding voices (Augustine in particular). Privatio boni should when properly understood heighten the scandal of evil and its annihilating ways in the world, rather than put us at our ease. Privatio you see has the sense not only of a privation, the lack of something that by rights ought to be there but of depravity, of the malignancy of the lack as if it were a deformed mouth that leers and supperates and revolts us who must find a way to live under the effect of such despite. What is indisputable is that Augustine appropriates the privatio boni tradition from Plotinus, or better the libri Platonicorum that freed him at last from the vestiges of his dalliance with Faustus and his loquacious band of Latin Manichaeans. But his appropriation is not orthodox Plotinianism; it could not be, for Plotinus is happy enough to naturalize evil in this sense: that it owes its presence in his view to matter the eternal bearer of non-being in the world of beings-that-yet-tend-toward-non-being. For Augustine matter is a creature and hence good. Evil is then far more mysterious and problematic for him than for his Platonic source. Its annihilating effects far more of a stumbling block, perhaps even Ansellianly so. Hope this helps. bob sweetmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02020964276816359915noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-73522690537046969912014-02-11T12:09:44.296-05:002014-02-11T12:09:44.296-05:00Yes, I hear you. The strengths and the weaknesses ...Yes, I hear you. The strengths and the weaknesses of the privatio tradition/paradigm is a great discussion topic. So I hope others (including some historians) will weigh in. I do think evil attempts to drag creation into annihilation. Some have posited an annihilative view of Final Judgment as an alternative to the eternal torment posited in the traditional view. In my thinking though, and I imagine in yours, such annihilation would mean the victory of evil over good. So we need a different view of Final Judgment. On Arendt, and going back to the privatio, I gather she takes this from Augustine to a large extent (though I haven't read her [PhD] dissertation on Augustine). Presumably the privatio is thus very indebted to Augustine's neoplatonism. Investigating those roots would help us discern the strengths and weaknesses of a privation paradigm. It is probably the neoplatonic implications that don't work for me.Nik Ansellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835880466508957575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-7889545183110821282014-02-11T11:15:30.653-05:002014-02-11T11:15:30.653-05:00Again, that's very helpful. I'm attracted ...Again, that's very helpful. I'm attracted to the 'privatio boni' tradition insofar as it recognizes that evil must usurp its power in order to be effective. I see Arendt's "banality of evil" analysis of Eichmann and Nazism to be in line with this tradition, and I think her analysis is very powerful and explanatory. Evil only has as much power as people give up to it. But I agree that, while evil is effective, it is all too real. That said, because its path is one of death and destruction, and because it usurps its power, it inevitably drags everything it can into its own eventual annihilation, no?. But perhaps that's too in line with the "privatio boni" tradition for you? If so, how do we avoid a gnosticism that sees evil as its own competing principle, one that as you say is "countered" by the reality of redemption/liberation? At any rate, Arendt did not think all evil was banal, and that there was such a thing as what Kant called 'radical evil'. Obviously I need to think about this a lot more.Ron Kuipershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08762890662834794531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-49409952252803123372014-02-10T23:57:22.088-05:002014-02-10T23:57:22.088-05:00Hi Ron,I think there are a number of ways of appro...Hi Ron,I think there are a number of ways of approaching this, but the way you put it strikes me as a good way. I like the language of hopeful mystery orienting us. There are some aspects of the mystery at least which I think we can understand a bit more re: how we will find deliverance (I have some suggestions in the book). As for evil as nothing in and of itself, I'm not sure how Pauline that is. The "privatio boni" tradition strikes me as starting later (in Christian thinking, at least), for all its appeal to Paul. That said, it has real strengths. But I hesitate to embrace it without reservation. Part of that tradition (as I understand it) tends to suggest that evil is not really real -or really evil- in the larger scheme of things. Somehow we need to find a way to say that evil is utterly real, and yet has no (eschatological) staying power. Evil's "in itself" posture cuts it off from God and from life in the true (Deut 32) sense of life. Perhaps early Christian thinkers adopted the privatio tradition in order to say precisely that. I don't want to say evil "is" nothingness though, even though I do want to say that it will be. Moltmann would say that evil is nothingness-oriented in the sense of annihilating. That's why my title - The Annihilation of Hell - plays on the "of" being both subjective genitive and objective genitive. So evil is more "annihilatio boni" than "privatio boni". But that annihilating power is itself countered. The reason it can't last does not (just) lie in the nature of evil (as maybe the privatio tradition tends to suggest?) but lies in the reality of redemption/liberation. Plenty to ponder. Thanks!Nik Ansellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835880466508957575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-35604342579185742002014-02-10T13:04:21.641-05:002014-02-10T13:04:21.641-05:00Thanks for that detailed and helpful response. Thi...Thanks for that detailed and helpful response. This is an issue I've often struggled with, and I really appreciate the way you don't simply dismiss those texts that on their face seem to challenge the universalist hope for cosmic redemption. May I put it this way: Scripture tells us that there are death dealing ways that will be excluded from having a place in the Kingdom where God is all in all; and it also tells us that everyone who is now bound to those ways (i.e., all of us) will be delivered from them. This is mystery, but a hopeful mystery that helpfully orients us in the here and now. This hope also fits with the Pauline understanding of evil as nothing in and of itself. God will be all in all as evil finally and inevitably vanishes into the nothingness it 'is'.Ron Kuipershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08762890662834794531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-31483568316094641972014-02-10T13:02:46.525-05:002014-02-10T13:02:46.525-05:00This comment has been removed by the author.Ron Kuipershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08762890662834794531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-30805895992369141592014-02-10T12:47:27.512-05:002014-02-10T12:47:27.512-05:00Good question. First some clarifications.
In my vi...Good question. First some clarifications.<br />In my view, the judgment that Jesus sees up ahead for his immediate contemporaries and for the coming generation (ie those who would have been children at the time) relates to what is now called the "Jewish War" of AD 66-70, which culminated in the destruction of the Temple. Matt 24, Luke 21, and Mark 13, and other gospel passages, all convey this to that coming generation, first and foremost. As the Temple was seen as a microcosm of the whole world and as the meeting point of heaven and earth, this imminent judgment would mark the end of the old age. Yet the death-throes of the old order were also the birth-pangs of the new age. Warnings along the lines of “its better to lose an arm than to be thrown into Gehenna” relate to the call to Jesus' Jewish contemporaries to “sever” themselves from the nationalistic, “holy war” spirit that would lead to the fatal war against Rome. We know historically that the early Jewish Christians were among those who escaped this (thus escaping Gehenna)<br />So this is a judgment “in” history. Yet it marks the apocalyptic transition between the ages. Hence the earth-shattering language. NT Wright's work (especially chap 10 of New Testament and the People of God) is extremely helpful here. As a judgment in history, I also see this as a judgment unto salvation as it serves the (re-)opening up of history. My interpretation of the book of Revelation (cf. appendix to Annihilation of Hell) argues that this is how John's sees things too and has structured his apocalypse accordingly. <br />My own inclination is to see all of God's judgments in history as "unto salvation". Furthermore, they all tell us something of what we might still call a "final" judgment in the sense of the kind of justice that needs to be established for God to become fully "all in all" –as anticipated in the long eschatological passage in 1 Cor 15. (Moltmann would say that this "final" judgment is penultimate as it serves something beyond itself. I agree. But for now, lets call it "final" in quotes, as it will mark the final end of evil, injustice, misery, etc.) <br />So what does the judgment that Jesus sees coming, the one that involves the fall of the temple have to tell us about the "final" (God becoming "all in all") judgment? Many, in effect, transfer the separation that takes place re: AD 66-70 (in Jesus' language the separation between the sheep and the goats, etc) to the "final" judgment. (I say "in effect" because they don't actually distinguish the "apocalyptic" judgment from the "final" judgment at all, seeing Jesus' words as exclusively or at least partially-yet-directly related to the end of history.) In my view, what the apocalyptic judgment of AD 70 tells us about the final judgment - and in my view it actually is the inauguration of that "final" judgment; just as the "final" judgment is the fulfilment of the apocalyptic judgment - is that idolatry, holy war, sin, evil have zero future in God's world and cannot enter the new age, the age to come [which has already begun]. They can only belong to the age that is passing away, the age that has been judged. <br />That does not mean that we have to see a separation (between sheep and goats, etc) as carrying over to the "final" judgment. We actually don't find separation language in 1 Cor 15. And if God's judgments in history have an "unto salvation" or "in the service of life" character, we can hope for that in the justice/judgment that accompanies God finally becoming all in all.<br />This perspective allows the various NT texts that refer to salvation without limiting that salvation to some and not others (there are many of these in Paul) to finally speak to our hope. In the words of Rom 11:32: "God has bound all over to disobedience [and its consequences] so that he may have mercy on all".Nik Ansellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835880466508957575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-76226994677334505762014-02-08T14:34:49.622-05:002014-02-08T14:34:49.622-05:00Hey Nik. How exactly do you connect the idea that ...Hey Nik. How exactly do you connect the idea that Jesus' 'divisive' judgments (where some are saved and others are not) in the NT are what you call judgments 'in history' (relating them to judgments in Jeremiah) with the idea that, as such, they can be read in a Moltmannian direction as 'judgments unto salvation' (non-divisive judgments?). This is just a matter of me not following the connection. Is the idea that a judgment IN history is qualitatively different from a judgment at the END of history? (i.e., that Jesus' divisive judgments are not final or eschatological judgments?).Ron Kuipershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08762890662834794531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-20337475378800689192014-02-08T13:19:35.702-05:002014-02-08T13:19:35.702-05:00Thanks very much for your comments! You raise a ho...Thanks very much for your comments! You raise a host of important questions. It might help to click on the "full version here" link to get a longer version of the interview. Also that version has a link to an online article of mine. I think the book (especially chapter 7) does aim to address the concerns you raise. Thanks again for raising them as they are certainly important. Nik Ansellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14835880466508957575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-17728217647784941372014-02-08T03:16:35.538-05:002014-02-08T03:16:35.538-05:00This was a joy to read. I always like to read/hear...This was a joy to read. I always like to read/hear new perspectives on Biblical doctrine. My concern: universalism seems to ignore God's attributes of Justice and Wrath. Suddenly, Hell does not exist or ceases to exist? God no longer punishes sin? If Christ is the only way to God (John 14:6), then how will all people be saved during the final judgement? Because there will be people who have not affirmed Christ as Lord and Savior, those who do no believe. Christ's death on the Cross atoned for our sins; allowing us to reconcile with God. Atonement does not equate to salvation. Yet, Mr. Ansell seems affirm the atonement = salvation position based on this post. I think Scripture is very clear on what Hell is and why people are sent there. I agree with Mr. Ansell that Christians can and should hope for all people's salvation. However, that does not mean it will actually come about. Scripture gives no indication in Revelation that Hell is destroyed when the new heaven and earth are made.This reinterpretation seems dangerous to me because it doesn't coincide with the rest of Scripture. Though, I would need to read his book to form a more educated opinion. Either way, thanks for posting this Matt. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com