MysteriousFaith

Salvation: Universally Offered but Individually Refused?

We may then rightly ask what purpose all that we know as creation - time, the universe, humanity’s need to experience death and intense suffering - what could all of this serve? My answer: have you ever been forgiven? Have you ever known the soul crushing guilt of having wronged another? Have you experienced forgiveness for this wrong? What if the story of humanity is but an object lesson in God’s sovereignty and the ultimate revelation of His love - something forgiveness articulates with a power all its own? If He created out of an act of pure love, can we assume His ultimate plan ends in pure love?

Salvation: Universally Offered but Individually Refused?

Within Christianity, few things will result in you being branded a heretic faster than believing in universalism. With that having been said, please keep the following in mind: I am not an advocate of universalism. As I will discuss in this essay, I hope that it is true - as I believe any feeling and thinking Christian would; however, I can not set aside the clear warnings in Scripture as to the implications of disbelief which, at some level, an advocacy of universalism requires.

This article, in part based on thoughts I have had after reading Terrance Tiessen’s Who Can Be Saved? Reassessing Salvation in Christ (certainly not an advocate of universalism) and Philip Gulley and James Mulholland’s If Grace is True: Why God Will Save Every Person is an effort to understand universalism and to suggest a reasonable perspective Christians can hold on this teaching without giving way to what the Church has held as heresy. My interest in these books and in this article is less to prove that universalism is true, and more to understand its teaching - to wrestle with the questions it is asking, the greater points it is attempting to address. I struggle mightily with questions like why hell is necessary; thoughts that surely an all-powerful God could have created something better than a reality requiring damnation and eternal punishment. Knowing that brilliant Christian minds like that of Origin have had similar struggles and have advocated universalism suggests to me that we can learn from such teaching if we are willing to allow it to be a point of reflection within our spiritual life.

What Is Universalism?

Origen (185-254 A.D.) is widely acknowledged as the first teacher to develop the concept of universalism. This belief is that all will ultimately be saved. Most Christians are uncomfortable with this idea for reasons ranging from Scriptural interpretation to doctrinal prejudice. Origen said that “We assert that the Word, who is the Wisdom of God, shall bring together all intelligent creatures, and convert them into his own perfection, through the instrumentality of their own exertions. The Word is more powerful than al the diseases of the soul, and he applies his remedies to each one according to the pleasure of God - for the name of God is to be invoked by all, so that all shall serve him with one consent.”

Many times, the outworking of universalism after physical death - specifically the difference between universalists who teach an immediacy after death to salvation contrasted against universalists who teach that hell is a necessary component towards ultimate reconciliation with God - is lost on those who are wholly against its teaching. Believing in universalism no doubt encompasses as diverse a field of opinions as any other spectrum of belief in Christianity. It should be noted that to believe in universalism is not to deny the atonement of Christ, the reality of punishment in hell, or the consequences to man’s free will. I would propose to you that all three of these things can be held very much in concert with Christian orthodoxy while maintaining a position consistent with universalism.

Universalism need not negate the value of Christ’s atonement on the Cross - in fact, in one way universalism emphasizes the atonement of the Cross in a way orthodox Christianity does not: universalism sees Christ’s death as so complete, so atoning, that even after this life it will continue to work in the souls of those who have denied it on this earth. Rather than viewing the atonement purely as something that has value in this world in order to gain entrance into the next, universalism proposes that Christ’s death has resonating value even to those in hell who have denied His deity, His sacrifice and His gift. It believes a perfect sacrifice will ultimately work perfectly.

Such a belief requires us to ask at least one additional question which is how this atoning gift is revealed and acted upon in eternity by those who have denied it while on this earth. Such a question can not be answered with any degree of certainty given our lack of knowledge about God’s plan for eternity; however, believers in universalism would propose that in the after-life God’s revelation, His grace and His love continue - even for those in hell. If God’s desire is for all to be saved, and Christ’s death offers the potential for all to be reconciled to Him, universalism proposes that human death changes none of this. What universalism suggests is that after death God’s revelation changes, offering to man additional insight - no doubt requiring the punishment spoken of so often when discussing hell - and the choice of fellowship with God. This then does not require the dismissal of the doctrine of hell; rather, it shows a purpose to the punishment within hell - punishment to redeem and reconcile versus simply to punish.

Why the Resistance to Universalism?

No doubt, motivation for the resistance to universalism widely ranges. For some it is resistance rightly based in the fact that universalism is not explicitly taught in Scripture - it must be induced. Those who advocate universalism typically have a different view of what inspiration, infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture means. Origin developed a hermeneutic principle known as the principle of “Ultimate Meaning” which sought to focus on the ultimate spiritual truth within a portion of Scripture. Such teaching finds its roots in part on suspicion of what it means to transpose the thoughts of God to the pen of man - specifically, a belief that such an act of transposition is not the act of an automaton - that the scribe plays a role in its design, purpose, structure and meaning (more on that can be found in my upcoming article Infallible and Inerrant). Such an advocacy tends to develop two guiding principles to interpreting Scripture - a looser belief in holy inspiration than literalists espouse in parallel with a belief that Christian philosophy must be consistent and harmonize with the teachings of Christ. This same advocacy requires harmonization between the theology of Scripture and the character of Christ.

Universalism also proposes a fundamentally more profound view of the afterlife. Like few other perspectives, universalism believes so strongly in the love of God that it sees no way all of God’s creation will not be ultimately reconciled back to Him to be in fellowship with Him for all of eternity. Universalism has a powerful view of what it means to both be with God, and to be separated from Him for all of eternity. As a part of this article, it is my hope that I can challenge others to investigate their motivation for believing in heaven - is it based on a genuine desire to be closer to our Creator? To really know Christ? For me, for most of my Christian life, this has not been the case. Frankly, I viewed heaven as an escape hatch - which is probably why I was so fixated on what exactly I had to do, believe and say in order to make it through the hatch in time.

“I think one of the reasons I resisted the idea of God’s saving everyone was that I wanted heaven to be a party for me and a few select friends. I was relying, not on God’s grace, but upon my own goodness. I was interested in reward, not repentance. I now realize religion that is primarily motivated by heavenly reward is flawed. It is no more admirable than a man who tells a woman he loves her simply to get her into bed. The elder son’s response to grace was my response. Somehow he and I lived in the father’s presence without ever appreciating the father’s character.” (page 188) This quote touches on one of the most important components to understanding salvation - your motivation for seeking it. The authors are being honest about an underlying motivational issue that colors much of Christian belief - looking at salvation as “fire insurance.” To do this is to not understand the most basic part of salvation - being present communally with Christ.

Again here I believe universalism has an advantage to other teachings on salvation. On this point, universalism suggests that the desire to be with Christ only grows in the after-life, and that in the after-life the desire to be with Him is somehow more real than now - perhaps a need manifested as a result of the loss and pain experienced in hell. Yes, this time the opportunity to be with Him is marked by a more painful transition and a more painful growth process than it would have been had they accepted Christ on this earth; however, the desire is no less real and the potential to find that ultimate rest is no less.

What Is Salvation?

During my own reading on this topic, on comparative religion and on religious pluralism, I found myself often times wondering if the people engaged in the discussion agreed on what was meant by the use of the word “salvation.” As will become obvious in this article, such a point is not without disagreement in and of itself. This should come as little surprise given that some theologians’ comfort over a God who can damn people to hell for eternity makes many wonder if we share a view of God’s character, let alone the outworking His salvific plan.

As well argued as Tiessen’s Who Can Be Saved is, I still found it focused on the question of “who is in and who is out” versus what I think Christ focused on, which is our heart. While I in no way wish to trivialize doctrinal issues (if I did, much of my reading and questioning would be un-necessary), do the teachings of Christ and of Paul not point to what salvation results in much more than the question of who can be saved? In Tiessen’s book I miss the deeper sense of what salvation is. Much of this book, and others like it, focuses on Scripture about what we know about salvation as an act and belief versus Gulley and Mulholland’s perspective which takes more time to focus on what we know Scripture teaches about Christ and the work of salvation within the heart.

If salvation is primarily a change in the heart of man - a refocusing from himself to God and others - what I believe can be rightly summarized as loving others - then Christians have much more thorny issues to debate outside of universalism - specifically, more evangelicals need to begin debating the potential for salvation outside of the church. We should all be reminded more often that Paul said to us that “faith, love and hope; but the greatest of these is love.” It is not what we believe, it is not our hope of salvation and vindication in the life yet to come - it is our heart’s intentions towards others that Paul was concerned with!

A Response to Wooden Literalism on the After-Life

Modern-day Christianity is burdened by the implications of scientific reductionism and post-Enlightenment rationalism. Both taken together have robbed contemporary Christian theology of mystery, paradox and allegory. Today, the accusation of liberalism is leveled against any who propose that Holy Scripture be properly interpreted through any such lenses. No where is this difficulty more obvious than in the Church’s teaching on hell.

Is it possible that much of the over-reaching on the teaching of hell is not the basis for the wishy-washy elements of universalism? Were we to ever have moved beyond Dante’s vision of a torture-chamber hell (something any serious student of first century Israel can grasp as the imagery of Christ’s teaching on hell is an obvious allegory Jews in that day would have understood), would we not have been forced to seriously discuss what the point of eternal punishment is? Many Christians have not seriously contemplated the fact that many non-believers see the God who can sentence disbelievers to burn in an eternal fire through the same lens that Oliver Stone cast in his movie Natural Born Killers. In this movie, Stone allows Mickey and Mallory to douse with lighter fluid Mallory’s bound and gagged mother in bed, lighting her on fire and laughing in glee as she screamed and writhed in agony - dying a most terrible death. Is it any wonder that the God revealed within Christ is lost on many in a literal interpretation of hell?

I think we miss much when our overly literal hermeneutic is placed on the back of teachings on the after-life. I can content myself that God’s ways are not my ways, and that He must speak to me in terms that I can understand. At times that may require negative reinforcement (such as in the teaching that hell is painful and you do not want to go there); however, I can also appreciate that universalism looks at that same teaching and agrees with its need, but suggests a higher spiritual purpose - specifically an outworking of love, patience and reconciliation - something a wooden interpretation of hell can not support.

Genuine Confusion Over the Outworking of God’s Love

In reading these two books I was struck by how profound Philip Gulley and James Mulholland’s view of God’s love is. I have never heard such beautiful thoughts and questions about the love of God as I have in these two men’s writing - and I, for one, hope they are correct (as I believe any Christian should - is it not right that we all side with Christ’s own words wishing that all will come to know Him?). I found it difficult to set aside this refreshing, challenging and deeply moving view of God’s love with the simple belief that their teaching is heretical - somewhere a disconnect exists. If these men can so beautifully articulate the centrality of God’s love (something they share with the Apostle Paul), do we not miss something if we set aside entirely the point of their book?

For those who disagree with any tenet of universalism I would propose that you at the least appreciate that much within universalism is based on a genuine confusion over the outworking of God’s love in man kind. People who believe in universalism genuinely struggle with a God who creates life, gives it free will, then sentences those who do not understand or believe as required of them to an eternity of suffering. I think we can all agree that this teaching is difficult - it requires a profound belief in God’s sovereignty (which, I would suggest, most honest theologians would state means they hope God’s ultimate plan has more to it than we know of, but who are afraid to voice such thoughts over fear of being branded a heretic). Where I believe Gulley and Mulholland go to far is to not properly discuss hell within their teaching, and to be so confident in its truth - for me, I can hold to universalism only the candle of hope, not the flame of dogma.

If I may, I would even humbly suggest to you that the genuine confusion that sparks the fire of universalism is not only related to the outworking of God’s love, but also to the understanding of His character. Orthodox Christianity holds the belief in the Trinity - the Father, Son (Christ) and the Holy Spirit. This incredibly dense, complicated, and ultimately humanly unknowable reality requires of Christians to believe in one God manifested in three beings but consistent in character. In other words, the Son can not be defined by love and the Father by wrath. Each deity of the Trinity must be equal in power, in right and in character.

Universalism struggles with a view of God the Father defined by many as the Old Testament God - the mean, wrathful and some would say vindictive God - in contrast to God the Son (Christ) within the New Testament who commanded love towards even our enemies and the hope that all would be saved. The tension within looking for consistency between certain parts of the Old Testament God and the New Testament God of Christ are significant for many - myself included. It is a sacred tension that issues such as the Canaanite genocide also bring forward.

If Grace Is True explores this paradox in a way that is valuable: “Many share my love for Jesus. We accepted him as Lord. We were baptized in his name. We became his disciples. We worshiped and adored him. Yet we’ve often divorced the words and actions of Jesus from the God he worshiped and adored. We’ve forgotten the very one Jesus came to reveal … The church of my childhood often glorified Jesus at God’s expense. Jesus was Savior. God was judge and executioner. Jesus was closer than a brother. God was distant - remote at best and hostile at worst. Many churches fail to emphasize that the love we experience in Jesus is the persistent grace of God.” (pages 13-14)

We apparently grew up in the same type of church because this verbalizes my conundrum precisely. While I could love the God-Man Jesus, I could not understand God the Father. Not that I needed to - I think I was, and still am, smart enough to recognize that God’s ways are not my own; however, when I was told to view God through the lens of Christ’s teachings, much of the Old Testament and much on the teachings of Hell and damnation lost consistency. This is a struggle too few Christians are honest about - and probably because to ask the question that universalism attempts to answer is to be branded a heretic or someone who has not fully subjected their will to the sovereignty of God. When even asking the question signifies you are lost, most of us stifle the question and allow it to fester, creating deep soul wounds that ultimately rob us of our joy and love for a God shown to mankind in the deity of Christ.

Accepting Free Will but Believing in a Better Plan

I am no expert on Calvinism, Arminianism or free will. As such, I would be honest enough to admit that what I may miss quite a bit in this portion of my analysis. For me, perhaps the best question that universalism is attempting to answer is why the damnation of hell is necessary at all - what is really behind the doctrine of eternal punishment? The common answer to this is that God created out of love but knew that true love could only come with free will. Creating out of love meant knowing He might not be loved in return. This I understand; however, why is it necessary to punish those who do not return the love in a way that makes punishment the ultimate destiny, the ultimate reality, the ultimate necessity? Is this not again another reason to believe that the act of creative love, while using punishment as a part of the sovereign plan, does so knowing that punishment will redeem and reconcile and not be an end unto itself?

One of my more nagging questions revolves around the actualization of man’s free will. I asked a pastor friend of mine this question: will we still have our free will in heaven? If so, why will we not continue to choose wrongly? For some, the answer to this question is that in fellowship with God we experience a reality where sin has lost all its pleasure. This poses a problem for me: was this not the same reality that Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden? And yet they denied this relationship seeking their own pleasure, wisdom and self-actualization. We are even taught that a being not of our physical reality - Satan - also participated in the glories of heaven and yet chose to rebel against God.

It appears to me that the Bible teaches even proximity to the Divine is no insurance that our free will does not get the better of us. In fact, we can look no further than the record of Genesis and see man after man to who God physically appeared proceeded to grossly sin afterwards - yet another reminder that closeness to the Divine is no guarantee of freedom from sin.

Surely the answer to this is not that in heaven our free will is removed from us? If that is so, would we not become the automatons we claim God never wanted in the first place? And if this reality of a sinless heaven was possible initially, why was it not the subject of the original creation? If heaven is a reality of such a construct where sin loses all its appeal, why was this not the essence of the original creation? Why create the need for hell if point zero in the creation of man could have been only that of heaven?

We may then rightly ask what purpose all that we know as creation - time, the universe, humanity’s need to experience death and intense suffering - what could all of this serve? My answer: have you ever been forgiven? Have you ever known the soul crushing guilt of having wronged another? Have you experienced forgiveness for this wrong? What if the story of humanity is but an object lesson in God’s sovereignty and the ultimate revelation of His love - something forgiveness articulates with a power all its own? If He created out of an act of pure love, can we assume His ultimate plan ends in pure love? And what better ending than that of all of creation bound up, rejoicing in a Creator who gave them complete freedom and allowed them to stray, only to bring them back to Him in the ultimate act of redemption and love. I can imagine a spiritual reality of all of man-kind, across all of history, gathered worshiping at the feet of our shared Maker - a Maker who had no need for us, but chose to make us so that we could know as much of a fellowship with Him as created beings could. Universalism rests in the belief that such a communal and eternal reality is for all to ultimately share - a hope I have as well.

For those who think this question, my personal struggle, to be meaningless I caution you: Bertrand Russell in his famous collection of essays Why I Am Not A Christian asks this very question. Russell could not understand why an omnipotent maker with all of eternity to plan could not have come up with something better than a reality requiring hell, damnation and eternal punishment. He asks, I would suggest, a good question. Gulley and Mulholland make a power point about hell: “Hell was another Holocaust, where once again millions would be thrown into the furnaces while God stood by powerless and defeated.” (page 109) My heart ached when they asked what could be good about a hell that the Jews of the Holocaust share with Hitler - architect of their earthly fate.

Within most Christians’ response to such questioning lies a strong belief in God’s sovereign plan, His “election”, to borrow a word from Calvinism. This belief in God has a beautiful dimension to it that I would not wish to ignore for it is necessary for my own conclusion: such submission and acceptance of God’s sovereignty is a wonderful recognition that His ways are not our ways and that whatever His plan is, it is the best plan possible. For those who do not struggle with my questions, I sincerely commend and even envy you - you have touched on a truth that no doubt frees you to live the Christian life - something I am confident God wishes I would do more of!

It seems to me that universalism is more compatible with a view of heaven that embraces and reinforces human free will - it suggests timidly that even after death our spiritual journey is marked by lessons learned, relationships renewed, and spiritual realities uncovered. The net result from all of us is an eternity where fellowship grows sweeter and the mysteries of Christ become gradually clearer - only to find depth exists in Him that our minds on this earth could not begin to contemplate. It is within this reality, a reality of eternal communion and maturation, that some believers in universalism would suggest those who deny Him on this earth will find punishment to be the only means by which they will freely choose to follow He who made them.

Responses to this article may be quite negative, and so, let me finish by sharing with you my personal beliefs after having reflected on this topic for some time: I do not know whether or not universalism is true. I am not a believer in universalism. Rather, I am a believer in a just God whose outworking of His plan has dimensions I am not aware of. Ultimately, what I can rest on is those promises and those warnings called out in Scripture. Rather than seek to set either of those aside in an effort to construct a theology that gives me comfort, I instead seek to honestly leave such issues up to my Maker - a God I am confident acts in love towards all of His creation. Just as I see no compelling need to reconcile free will and predestination, I also must acknowledge an inability to reconcile God’s love (which suggests an outworking more consistent with universalism than eternal damnation and punishment) and God’s holiness - something that requires separation from sin.

I do sense that eternity involves an outworking of His plan that is not revealed to us - of which universalism may in fact be accurate; however, I am not foolish enough to set aside the cautions and guidance He has left me in Scripture with the hopes that the Divine plan compensates for man’s wrongly actualized free will. May God guide us all as we meaningfully ponder the implications to these questions.

Additional Quotes of Interest

“If in this life there are so many ways for purification and repentance, how much more should there be after death! The purification of souls, when separated from the body, will be easier. We can set no limits to the agency of the Redeemer; to redeem, to rescue, to discipline, is his work, and so will he continue to operate after this life.” Clement, 150-220

“For the wicked there are punishments, not perpetual, however, lest the immortality prepared for them should be a disadvantage, but they are to be purified for a brief period according to the amount of malice in their works. They shall therefore suffer punishment for a short space, but immortal blessedness having no end awaits them … The penalties to be inflicted for their many and grave sins are very far surpassed by the magnitude of the mercy to be showed them.” Diodore of Tarsus, 320-394

“The process of healing shall be proportioned to the measure of evil in each of us, and when the evil is purged and blotted out, there shall come in each place to each immortality and life and honor.” Macrina, 327-379

“Let them, if they will, walk in our way and in Christ’s. If not, let them walk in their own way. Perchance there they will be baptized with fire, with that last, that more laborious and longer baptism, which devours the substance like hay, and consumes the lightness of all evil.” Gregory of Nazianzus, 330-390

“In the end and consummation of the Universe all are to be restored into their original harmonious state, and we all shall be made one body and be united once more into a perfect man, and the prayer of our Savior shall be fulfilled that all may be one.” St. Jerome, 331-420

“For it is evident that God will in truth be ‘in all’ when there shall be no evil in existence, when every created being is at harmony with itself, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; when every creature shall have been made one body. Now the body of Christ, as I have often said, is the whole of humanity … Participation in bliss awaits everyone.” St. Gregory of Nyssa, 335-390

“Without doubt even in the demonic depths the creature remains the work of God and the traits of divine design are never effaced. The image of God, obscured by the infidelity of sin, is nevertheless preserved intact, and that is why there is always, even in the abyss, and ontological receptacle for divine appeal, for the grace of God.” Father Georges Florovsky, Eastern Orthodox theologian.

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• June 24, 2004

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One Response to “Salvation: Universally Offered but Individually Refused?”

1. Anonymous Says:
   July 2nd, 2004 at 9:22 am

   Thank you for writing such a challenging essay. I think it is really healthy to debate these issues…this too is wisdom isn’t it?

   It all keeps coming back to love doesn’t it? We recognize that, and continually fail at excercising it. Regardless of our ability to wrestle with the afterlife, who’s going where and what to pack; it really comes down to how has our heart been changed and daily manifested in how we live and love.

   My God is a god of love, may he continue to help me overcome my flesh.

   Thanks brother

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