David Bentley Hart’s Inconsistent Triad (2): Comparing DBH to Tom Talbott

In my previous post, I identified an inconsistent triad in the essay “God,Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo” by David Bentley Hart.

Here is Hart’s inconsistent triad:

1. God freely created all things out of nothingness
2. God is the Good itself
3. It is certain or at least possible that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God

The work of Thomas Talbott, author of The Inescapable Love of God, can also be viewed through and summarized by an inconsistent triad.  I’ve written about Talbott's inconsistent triad here.

Here is (a form of) Talbott’s inconsistent triad:

1. All humans are equal objects of God's unconditional love in the sense that God, being no respecter of persons, sincerely wills or desires to reconcile each one of them to himself and thus to prepare each one of them for the bliss of union with him. 
2. Almighty God will triumph in the end and successfully reconcile to himself each person whose reconciliation he sincerely wills or desires.
3. Some humans will never be reconciled to God and will therefore remain separated from him forever. 

Or to put it more succinctly:

1. God wants to "save" everyone.
2. God has the ability to "save" all that he wants to "save".
3. Some will be forever separated from God, the nature of that separation notwithstanding (eternal conscious torment, annihilation, etc.)

The parallels between Hart's and Talbott's inconsistent triads are striking.  Most striking to me, however, is how the (sometimes subtle) differences in phrasing enrich and elucidate the meanings of the first two propositions in each triad.

Hart’s 1^st proposition (that God freely created out of nothingness) corresponds with Talbott’s 2^nd proposition (that God can save all that he wants to save).  It clarifies a connection between the free creative act of God and the nature and substance of God’s “sovereignty”.  Neither of the triads argues for or against specific ways that God exercises this sovereignty, but the connection does cement the idea that creatio ex nihilo demonstrates that there is no created thing that exceeds God's creative act.  It connects beginning and end.  God is not simply sovereign overlord, God is Creator.  And not Creator meaning a sovereign overlord who has the functional power to make stuff from nothing, but Creator as the one who "calls us forth" and whose calling is grounded in an eternal telos that's never separable from the eternal nature of God.  In the words of Hart:

In the end of all things is their beginning, and only form the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who called them forth from nothingness.  And in Gregory's thought, with an integrity found only also in Origen and Maximus, protology and eschatology are a single science, a single revelation disclosed in the God-man.     (God, Creation and Evil, p 16)

Hart’s 2^nd proposition (that God is the Good itself) corresponds with Talbott’s 1^st proposition (that God wants to save everyone).  It cements the connection between goodness and love, not just love as a general ideal of goodness, but as the particularity of willing the final good of the creation that God brought forth from nothing.  For many people the connection between love and goodness is perfectly obvious and goes almost without saying.  But for those who think that God's essential "goodness" need not entail a final love of all humanity, this one's for you.

So while these two inconsistent triads are worded differently, particularly the first 2 propositions, they could be combined to form a common argument: that goodness-as-love combined with sovereignty-as-creation-from-nothing means that the 3rd proposition, that some rational creatures will endure eternal loss of God, must be false.

Are DB Hart's and Talbott's inconsistent triads two ways of making the same argument?

In my next post, I'd like to look at DBH's triad in the context of theodicy.

continued

Creatio ex Nihilo and The Cosmic Christ (Jurgen Moltmann)

Ever since reading God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo by David Bentley Hart, the theological idea of creation ex nihilo has become an important one for me.  Subsequent readings, along with a few other essays (Theodicy, Hell, and David B Hart by Brian Moore being a notable one) have cemented it as foundational and formative.  The eschatological themes of heaven, hell and the destiny of creation, the connection between protology (beginnings) and eschatology (ends), the moral themes of theodicy and suffering, and the ultimate question of 'Who is God?' are all intimately germane to the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo.

For me, this doctrine (as implication of the Gospel) provides reason for hope and the occasion for faith.

I came across the same themes recently in the work of Jurgen Moltmann.  Moltmann, however, doesn't explicitly use the language of creation "ex nihilo".  Not here anyways.  For Moltmann, this line of thought falls within his theological expositions on "The Cosmic Christ".

The connection is amazing.  When we are talking about the meaning of Creation ex nihilo, we are talking about the cosmic Christ, the Alpha and the Omega.

Both of the citations below are taken from Chapter 6 (section 3) of Jesus Christ for Today's World by Moltmann.  The chapter is entitled 'The Cosmic Christ'.  Have a look:

If all things are created by one God, then a transcendent unity precedes their diversity and their historicity. It is not a matter of many worlds belonging to many gods or powers. This is the one creation of the one God. If all things are created by the one God through his Wisdom/Logos, and if they are held together in that, then an immanent unity in which they all exist together underlies their diversity in space and time. Their unity is not the outcome of some subsequent process, emerging from their relationships and the warp and weft into which they are bound. Everything has its genesis in a fundamental underlying unity, which is called God's Wisdom, Spirit or Word. The fellowship of all created beings goes ahead of their differentiations and the specific forms given to them, and this is consequently the foundation underlying their diversity. If God withdraws this foundation, everything disintegrates and becomes a nothingness. If God lends it fresh force, the various forms are renewed (Ps. 104.29f.).
--(Kindle Locations 996-998).


The Hebrew word roach is often translated Spirit, as it is here; but a better translation is 'wind' or 'breath'. The Hebrew word 'rahaph' is generally rendered 'hover' or 'brood'. But according to Deut. 32.11 and Jer. 23.9 it really means vibrating, quivering, moving and exciting. If this is correct, then we shouldn't just think of the image of a fluttering or brooding dove. We should think of the fundamental resonances of music out of which sounds and rhythms emerge. So in thinking about 'creation through the Word', we shouldn't think primarily in metaphors of command and obedience. A better image is the song of creation. The word names, differentiates and appraises. But the breath is the same in all the words, and binds the words together. So the Creator differentiates his creatures through his creative Word and joins them through his Spirit, who is the sustainer of all his words. In the quickening breath and through the form-giving word, the Creator sings out his creatures in the sounds and rhythms in which he has his joy and his good pleasure.
--(Kindle Locations 1004-1010).