Battling With A Christian Universalism

If you've been following my posts, you'll notice my recent fascination with Dr. David Bentley Hart. I am generally attracted to his combative writing style and peculiar outlook on things, generally theological things. It was my encounter with his work that has led me to finally embrace, however tenuously, a "Christian Universalism" (I put the quote due to my belief that only the Christian vision of reality can accomodate a coherent universalism, which in turn means that it is the only true universalism).

However, due to my upbringing, this has been a hard thing to accomodate, as much as I want to. I was raised protestant (I still am protestant), which is not the most universalistic of traditions. I've been ingrained with a host of objections to what we may call Apokatastasis (The restoration of all things) as it pertains to the salvation of all rational beings (human and angelic).

Part of me realizes this has a lot to do with the battle with sin in my life, my apathy in spiritual matters, and my quest for assurance and peace. However it also has to do with the "totalizing" nature of Hart's arguments (You can read them here). They are coherent, I can't find any objection capable of overturning them. Even when fellow protestants, being protestants, argue from Sola Scriptura that Scriptures are at best vague on the matter, that just helps to intesify my conviction of the arguments veracity.

This post is just to gather a bit of my thoughts of the past few weeks. It's still a fight to conquer old habits of thinking, but I don't think I can turn back. I've tasted the fruit, time to die.