A statement from David Bentley Hart

NOTE: David Bentley Hart and I have had some very heated exchanges over the years, but I have always found him to be at bottom a decent fellow.  That remains true.  During our recent dispute over his book on universalism, the one thing I took great exception to was the accusation of dishonesty on my part, and I let David know this privately.  He sent me the following statement to post here, for which I thank him.  I would also like to reaffirm my longstanding admiration for much of his work, such as his books Atheist Delusions and The Experience of God.

Dear Ed,

Having prayed about this matter, I find I want to apologize.  I hereby fully repent of and retract any imputation to you of willful dishonesty in regard to your original review of my book, as well as in regard to all subsequent exchanges and arguments on the matter.  I admit, I concluded with a certainty that was uncharitable—and so unwarrantable—that you had only pretended to read my book; and, even if your accounts of its arguments seem wildly wrong to me, I should not have let myself assume I knew the cause of the failure of communication, or let my assumption color my view of your subsequent writings on the issue as well.  It may simply be the case that you and I are fated never to understand one another and never to agree on much at all, due to differences in our intellectual idioms, presuppositions, and commitments so basic that they cannot be overcome.  So I am sorry.  Mea maxima culpa.

My one (friendly) rebuke then is this: If you want to argue from scripture and the fathers, you should not rely on snippets of quotations rendered into standard English translations; you should consult the scholarship and the original texts in their own languages.  You should also make sure that you are firmly aware of what universalist scholars have claimed with regard to scriptural and patristic evidences before you set out to refute positions that you assume they have taken.  The issues are nowhere near as simple as they may seem.

That’s it.  I’ll continue to recommend your Philosophy of Mind and Five Arguments books to those who can profit from them.  Otherwise, I wish we could simply sign a non-aggression treaty and move on.  Oil and water need not mix to be at peace with one another.  Sometimes they can even flow into the same channels without disturbance and arrive at the same place.