Incidentally, I might pay real money for [tag]Sobornost[/tag] to write up a summary digest of SttH, since I think a number of site members and visitors would appreciate that, not having time and/or energy to plow through 850+ pages.

(Ah Dave – so you’ve had that hitting a wall without wearing a crash helmet experience too  - all sympathy to us both)

I’m completely flabbergasted by all of this praise Jason – and remember that I’m half Quaker so you should never take your hat off to at least half of me (silly plonker that I am ).

I’d be very happy to work on a digest of this Jason. As the discussion has developed lots of new things have cropped up and it’s too sprawling in its current form. I think it is important to have answer to this lecture – it’s essentially a persecution myth in the making. No one is going to get bunt at the stake because of it – but Universalists might be dis-fellowshipped in some churches on the basis of it. What is so annoying is that it ranges widely in arcane areas of knowledge that no one who listens to the lecture or reads the book - when it comes out - will have much inclination to check out (both will simply act to confirm existing prejudices in most). Also it sounds very plausible in some ways. So yes I’d be delighted to do this and can get going on it properly the week after next.

I guess we should check that Arlenite is OK about this - but I think he has his own project concerning fighting this one and a proper digest from me - with bibliographies - would help him too.

Thanks

Dick

My apologies for being so quiet. I’m in the midst of end-of-the-semester writing, studying, etc., but I’ve tried to keep up with at least reading the discussion. I’d be delighted if you whirled up a digest, Dick, if you want to subject yourself to such an undertaking.

Oh well Arlenite someone has to do it - so

I’ll become the cleaner
Of McClymond’s dark patina
In the morning
Someone has to do it
Dunk the mop in suds and fluids
Come the dawning

I’ll set my liquid gumption
Against each errant germ
And scrub that Gnostic chalice clean
Of things that makes us squirm

When I become the cleaner
Of McClymond’s dark patina
In the morning

(Sung to the tune of ‘Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina’)

Bravo!

Love it, Dick!

I really meant a digest of Sword to the Heart after your Hegelian romp; but a digest of this thread would be something I might pay actual money for, too.

I’ve got you Jason - yes OK. See PM… I’m being a monomaniac here

Back to Hegel -

How do I know that Hegel did not actually teach apocatastasis and therefore cannot be described as a Universalist if I do not have detailed knowledge of Hegel’s voluminous writings? Well the answer is that it seems almost certain to me that he did not teach it (and I need to be proved wrong on this before agreeing with Dr McClymond). My hypothesis is based first on the fact that serious Hegel scholars disagree on whether Hegel actually teaches anything about the immortality of the soul. And second it is based on another curious fact. Dr H. Martensen was Kierkegaard’s contemporary and Bishop of Zeeland in Denmark. He was the Christian Hegelian par excellence and thus Kierkegaard derided him for his abstract metaphysics . Martensen wrote the following -

Hegel scholars today argue that Matensen was a funny sort of Hegelian for speculating on the afterlife in the first place. But I think the example of Martensen does demonstrate my point – when a solid Hegelian does dabble in speculations of this kind there is no reason to think that they will inevitably be Universalist in their eschatology.

Was Hegel a Christian Universalist?

I’m am almost certain that he did not teach apocatastasis as part of his philosophy (and actually I’d say ‘I’m certain’ as much as a chap can be certain – but my claim is of course falsifiable by new evidence)

Have Christian Universalists ever used Hegel as a resource in their philosophy/theology?

Yes – Barth and Kung (hopeful Universalists) have, and so has Moltmann (certain Universalist). Indeed Dietrich Bonheoffer (hopeful Universalist) was probably influenced by Hegel in his idea, mooted in Letter’s and Papers from Prison, of ‘Mankind come of Age’ (as Kung argues in his book on Hegel and Christology). But in using Hegel – or having a dialogue with some of his ideas – they were thinking through the theological implications of God being active in the history of humanity and not their eschatology as such.

Tillich, who also gets a mention in Dr McClymond’s lecture theorised about all things coming from Unity and returning to Unity – in a way that almost fits Dr McClymond’s (flawed)typology of Gnosticism. However Tillich was a funny sort of Universalist - he believed that whatever is essentially good about a person will somehow survive (as opposed to all believing that all people will be redeemed and made whole), and his eschatology is expressed in abstract terms of ‘Being’ and ‘Absolute’ that sometimes seem to verge on Monism and lose any sense of relationship IMHO (and loose any mooring in Biblical Revelation). He got his ideas form Schelling rather than Hegel – a thinker even more difficult than Hegel and who influenced continental Romanticism but is largely forgotten today.

Hegel has had very little influence on Universalists who are not part of the continental tradition of theology. We might find bit and bobs of use of synthesis in the thinking of Tom Talbot, Robin Parry, Rob Bell etc. However, there is no big debt to Hegel in their writings.

Why would someone want to forge a strong polemical connection of Hegel with Christian Universalism today?

Because Hegel has been associated with pantheism, totalitarianism, Gnosticism and the occult and – if someone is arguing (falsely) that Jacob Boehme is the fount of modern universalism, that person can also claim ‘and Hegel was influenced by Boeheme’.

Was Hegel a pantheist?

Hegel argued vigorously that he was not one – that his philosophic idea of the absolute had relationship at its basis. After Hegel’s death one faction amongst his successors - the so called Young Hegelians – lead by Strauss - interpreted , indeed bowdlerised Hegel in a pantheistic direction. Strauss argues that the Absolute will be realised not in the individual in relationship with other individuals but in the ‘race’. But this is a complete distortion of Hegel

Was Hegel a totalitarian?

Strauss’ pantheism of course opened the way for totalitarian thinking – pantheism entails a denial of the individual and as a political ideology (as a opposed to a wooly mystical opinion) can underpin totalitarianism. Marx – then turned Hegel on his head arguing that Hegel was right about some things – dialectical process, alienation etc – but the material rather than the spirit was the basis of historical change; and that the contradictions in history would be resolved in the classless society to which was the deterministic, impersonal goal of history. (Camus was to refer to this goal of history, rightly IMHO, as the abstract man of tomorrow who legitimated the slaughter of countless millions of real people today) Hegel himself did not predict the future and was very worried by revolutionary fanaticism and nationalism in his day. His main concern was with realising the sort of society in which the claims of the individual and the community could both be honoured.

The twentieth century thinkers who blamed Hegel for all manner of evils notably Karl Popper and Eric Voegelin – were not well acquainted with the real Hegel. Popper based his critique on a pre selection of Hegel done by another, while Voegelin based his critique on an appraisal of Hegel seen through the eyes of the Marxist Alexander Kojeve.

Was Hegel a Gnostic?

This was first claimed by a Neo Hegelian theologian Ferdinand Bauer in the nineteenth century and has been taken up by Voegelin in an extreme way and Cyril O’Reagan in a far more modest and focussed way. Hegel was not influenced by the ancient Gnostics. He is certainly a very difficult writer so in this sense he is a bit exclusive (but so was Kant). His actual intentions for his philosophy were modest – he did not try and give a total explanation of everything and certainly did not predict the future like Marx and his followers. He does speak in ‘Phenomenology of the Spirit’ about something he terms ‘Absolute Knowing’ – but this does not denote correct and exhaustive knowledge but rather the possibility of us being open to the absolute in terms of relationship (it is a critique of Kant’s idea that human beings can know nothing of the absolute at first hand).

Yes Hegel is very difficult and obscure – but I’m not sure this makes him a Gnostic in either of the senses that Voegelin uses the term.

Was Hegel an Occultist?

Dr McClymond cites a book Hegel and hermcitsm and claims this somehow backs up his thesis (whatever his thesis is). Hegel was certainly influenced by ideas current in this times that seem strange and unscientific to us like mesmerism and animal magnetism – but these just happend to be ideas that were current in his times (root around in any thinker or theologian and you’ll find some baggage of this kind). Hegel was also inspired by Jackob Boehme. He was critical of Boehme but Boehme’s idea of the immanent Trinity did inspire him poetically (although he changed Boehme’s idea radically).

Dr McClymond’s argument here seems to be implying that

Boheme was a universalist and the fount of modern universalism (false)

Boheme was influenced by occult ideas (true to some extent)

Totalitarianism has its roots in Gnosticism and Magical Alchemical traditions that undermine rationality (this is what Voegelin’s followers now argue in tandem with their polemic about modern Gnosticism – and it’s the start of a complex discussion rather than an obvious truth)

Hegel was influenced by Boehme and open to various magical alchemical ideas (true in a qualified sense)

Hegel was a Universalist (his thinking does not advocate universalism)

Hegel was a totalitarian (false – but certain successors of Hegel who changed his ideas radically were)

Therefore universalism is of a kind with occultism and totalitarianism (false – non sequitur)

Dr McClymond’s arguments are kind of Gnostic in being totalising and requiring a level of hugely abstruse argumentation to refute.

That’s the backbone of my Hegel stuff completed. Any Questions (about specific details to fill out any bits of the outline)?

I know that the deeper I go here the more obscure it gets and I get . I hope you can see why it seems to me that we have a persecution myth in the making here – and how some of the preposterous links and conclusions drawn by Dr McClymond seems only explicable in the light of a Voegelian polemic That has turned very sour indeed (I may be wrong in some small details but I believe I’m very much on the right track here).

Ironically Voegelin was at heart a passionate defender of freedom – he sought to delineate the society or polity in which what he called ‘the tension toward the ground of being’ could be protected. What he meant by this ‘tension towards’ is the truth of the human situation – that we live in between the relative and the absolute. We have intimations of the absolute but our knowledge of the absolute will always be limited and revisable especially in the social and political sphere. I would agree completely – it is only sad that in his intemperate and ill focussed attack on Gnosticism and what he deemed to be Gnostic currents in modern thought he furnished those that have come after him with a charter for paranoia and projection of evil onto many others without discrimination (and with Dr McClymond the ‘evil other’ seems to have become the Christian Universalist).

Christian Universalists today have little connection with thinkers and visionaries such as Jacob Boehme and Friedrich Hegel (and it is untrue that Christian Universalists in the recent past taken as a whole had connections with them). Today at EU the fount of our inspiration is Biblical Christianity and the Universalist Church Fathers read in the light of the superior scholarship that is now emerging about them. This much seems obvious to me.

Also I think that we are getting to point where we are ready to discuss the legacy of the American Universalist Church (which was only a small part of the wider re-emergence of Christian universalism). This denomination was short lived and there were many reasons for this. IF we find that part of this history had to do with some members losing their way in speculations about pantheism and various other quasi mystical ideas including new thought mind cures (which I think is probable) then we can learn from this history.

In this we are no different from the likes of Dr McClymond – we are a people with a history and live in between the relative and the absolute; and to somehow try to discredit our history through insinuation because it is comprised of imperfect people and imperfect movements seems uncharitable.

The resistance theology of Beze – Calvin’s successor (however understandable in the light of the St Bartholomew Day massacres) did much to ferment terrible and pitiless wars of religion in France. It inspired French Calvinist participation in the French Revolution and the Terror echoes with the earlier religious wars in the destruction done in the name of absolutes. Rousseau the unwilling theorist of the French Revolution learned his ideas of the General Will in the Genevan Cantons and his political thinking shows a huge debt to his Calvinist upbringing (while his rejection of hell, probably based on his reading of Marie Huber who had a very tenuous historical connection to the Philadelphians – she was the granddaughter of a Camisard – played very little part in his political theory, and anyway he was not a Christian universalist ). I could go on at some length – but we can all learn through our collective pasts. And yes we should be charitable to Calvinism too – however much we may passionately disagree with strong Calvinism, Calvinists too have a nuanced and complex history (I’m enjoying Alister McGrath’s ‘A Life of John Calvin’ at the moment which is a salutary read).

Regarding totalitarianism – much work has been done on how totalitarianism thrives on demonization of the ‘evil other’ and heresy hunting and rooting our dissent. The writings of Norman Cohn are standard works in the field and these also point out how totalitarian persecuting ideologies are often rooted in paranoiac, dualistic views of good and evil and in violent millenarian expectation. We should all take note here – including Dr McClymond.

Dear All–
Thank you all for your incisive comments on the presentation(s) I did at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in 2012.
I am hopeful that the book on universalism, when it appears, may address many of the questions that you have all raised in the 350+ comments.
One of the “aha” moments came as I was in the Yale University stacks (where I was a Visiting Fellow in 2012) with a list of names of Christian universalists prior to 1900, and I was wondering: What is it that links these people together?
To my considerable surprise, each of the names on my list had an essay devoted to him or her in Wouter Hanegraaff’s Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism. So that was the start of a process of tracing out a number of different forms of Christian universalism, including the gnostic-esoteric, unitarian, and christocentric strands. Cyril O’Regan’s works let me back to F. C. Baur’s Die christliche Gnosis, which is a very helpful work for understanding German-language theology in the 1800s and 1900s. It is also quite helpful for understanding why universalism became pervasive in Germany before it did in the English-speaking world. Someone should translate it–or at least the portions dealing with the modern era.
The brief lecture I gave did not (and could not) express the larger historical and an analytical template that I will be presenting.
I hope that you will all keep an open mind–and will read my book. It may be late 2015 when it is appears. I have all your comments to think about before then…
Yes, i do expect to become EXTREMELY wealthy and influential through writing this book.
Unless I am discovered first for my rock 'n roll talents, which unfortunately have grown rusty in recent years.
I will certainly keep your many comments in mind.
Thank you.
Yours,
Michael McClymond
Professor of Modern Christianity
Saint Louis University

Thank you for commenting Dr. McClymond!

Considering that there are several trinitarian Christian universalists on-or-connected-to the board (including Dr. Ramelli the Patristic scholar), none of whom are gnostic (and at least some of whom are patently anti-gnostic), you’d be welcome to actually ask any of us about what we believe and why. If you think talking to any universalists who insist on orthodox trinitarian theism (especially over-against gnosticism) would be of any relevance to your book, I mean.

Hi Dr Mike,

Thanks for commenting. I hope someone here will read your book and give us a proper review – though I doubt our purchases will contribute significantly to your future wealth.

This must be why George MacDonald was accused of being “tainted” by German theology. I wondered what that was all about.

Do you have any Youtube videos? That’s the way to get started these days!

Sonia

F. C. Baur proposed a Gentile Gnostic Christianity from Paul of Tarsus competing with the Jewish Christianity of Peter, with subsequent Christianity incorporating both strands in the 2nd century resulting in the eventual creation of orthodox trinitarian theism – with the non-historical pagan mythos of Paul (supposedly) contributing the details to change the merely Jewish messianism of Peter from an acceptably Jewish theology into something the historical Jesus (who on this theory worked no miracles, never made divine claims of authority, etc.) not only wouldn’t have recognized but would have roundly rejected. His conspiracy theories (largely indebted to a developmentalistic philosophy of the evolution of religion) were heavily criticized, even by liberal scholars eventually, and his arguments on Christian origins are largely regarded as inaccurate nowadays (except by some aggressively sceptical anti-Christians) though the spirit of his enterprise lives on in various radically sceptical approaches.

Any trinitarian Christian universalist per se (including George MacDonald and Elhannan Winchester, to take two prevalent ones from the beginning and end of the 19th century) would necessarily be opposed to Baur’s whole approach to Christian origins and theology. The concept that we’re somehow following his lead is (ironically?) on par with Baur’s own arguments about Christian origins.

Look forward to it Dr Mike -

Although I don’t think I’ll be reading it for some time because I live in the UK. I’m doubtful if the sources you cite can support the positive case you’ve made (and Bauer is a good source but need to be used with due caution fro reasons that Jason has stated above, especially by you because his worldview was very different from yours I think) and I’m certain that Cyril O’Reagan would not support your conclusions as expressed in your lecture (his purpose is far more modest). As for the ‘Dictionary of Gnosis’ and who was classified in this as Gnostic - well it all depends on what the definition of Gnostic was to start with I guess

If some forms of universalism have some sort of link with esotericism - but you have to nuance this far more carefully I think) it would be very easy to do the mesa sort of hatchet job on your school of theology - you look for the worst in something not for the best in something, and I could go on and on about hard Calvinism (even when it appears to be accommodating) in the same vein if I wanted to do as you have done about universalism in your lecture

But good luck Dr Mike . I actually grew quite fond of you when watching your lecture - I like you when you crack a joke; you are sweet and funny You’ve certainly opened up a very interesting discussion - but its a discussion to be peer reviewed by others (and others more competent than I ) and you’ll get that.

In Christ our Hen

Dick

To be clear, I’m rather doubtful Dr. Mike would be using Baur as a source for the history of anything at all – but he means to tie us somehow back into Baur, as though we’re using his ideas in some significant way, which is frankly ludicrous. The so-called Unitarian Universalist church, that makes perfect sense. More power to Dr. M in that regard! Barth? – well he couldn’t help having connections to the Tubingen influence of his day, but he clearly rejects the anti-trinitarian elements related to Baur.

Readers should also keep in mind (as Sobor mentioned earlier upthread) that Baur wasn’t making his Gnostic Paul the hero of his tale of Christian origins, but rather was blaming Paul’s influence. Not that Baur was especially fond of the ‘primitive’ Jewish Christianity he imagined for Peter’s clique either. But Baur would have been the first to mock trinitarian Christian universalists for being trinitarian and appealing to St. Paul’s testimony or the Gospel accounts of Jesus, or for appealing to theological coherency of ortho-trin and its implications. He would have certainly regarded us as being on exactly the same base as Dr. McClymond, if perhaps a touch more palatable to his taste.

Quite so Jason

And Dr Mike -

I’d recommend that you have a look at ‘And Introduction to Jacob Boehme’ edited by Hassayon and Apetrei - which is a collection of essay by leading scholars in the field and covers , Hegel Romanticism (German and English), William Law re. Boehme etc. It comes wit a warm note of recommendation by Cyril O’Reagan and gives a variety of nuanced scholarly perspectives by the specialists in the field.

I really enjoyed the book and have you to thank - I only; read it because I was interested by the things you said I your lecture but had enough general knowledge to have me doubts. I guess some of the contributors may peer review your conclusions about modern universalism as Illaria Ramelli may well peer review your conclusions about ancient universalism. And that’s good and right and proper; and it’s how scholarship works when it’s working well.

Quelle Vacance?/ (I’m on holiday Dr Mike )

One last thing - if your book does create a stir Dr Mike we’ll make sure that leading scholars do get to peer review it Well we can but ask - and I’m certainly not afraid at least to ask. It will further the debate properly and with due dignity