hey beloveds,
i am clearing out my old drafts in my blog. here’s some stuff that i started working on and then didn’t finish. there’s going to be a lot, so it will take some time. the only change i am making is to give this little introduction at the beginning, brief comment at the end, and then to add “graveyard posts [#]:” to the beginning of what the title is saved as. there will be lines separating the post i drafted and these intros and conclusions. so enjoy this look at how my mind has worked overtime.
Some might call me a “universalist” because of my beliefs. I resist that label. I am not a universalist. I am a believer in ultimate reconciliation. I believe that ultimately – at the very end of the very end of the very end – all shall be “saved.” I place “saved” in quotations here because I do not mean any reductionist get-out-of-Hell-free-pass kind of Evangelical dribble that is often mean by that word. Few concepts have been as emphasized nor as bastardized as salvation in Protestant evangelical circles. This is my case and attempt to articulate where I am at on this so that I can share that with others in my own words and own interpretation of scripture rather than being placed in reductionistic boxes and stuck with labels like an insect on a cork board for a third grade science project.
Some helpful distinctions to begin. “Universalist” is often used in this discussion even by people that I agree with. I resist the label because of how I have traditionally been given an explanation of it. I was told at some point in my journey that universalists believed that everyone would “go to heaven when they die” regardless of what they believe and perhaps even through whatever they believed. So, for example, a Buddhist would be saved through Buddha (which is not how my Buddhist friends would think about this!) and my Islamic friends would be saved through obedience to Allah and we Christians would be saved by Jesus.
I do not think this. I think all will ultimately experience salvation, but salvation through Jesus. That is a scandalous claim for sure. I am claiming that my Buddhist friends and Islamic friends are wrong and that my faith is right. I pray I can make that claim without arrogance or pride, but I make it nonetheless. How then do I believe they will be saved by Jesus? I believe they will ultimately bow the knee to Christ and obey him by professing that he is Lord.
At this point then – before going any further – we must parse out what exactly we mean by “salvation.” Salvation does not mean “go to heaven when I die.” What a poor and terrible summary of Biblical faith and Christian theology. How have we possibly jumped on the band wagon that this is all there is? Heaven is not even the ultimate destination for which we long. We go to heaven when we die, but I do not envision that once we die we instantly go to our ultimate destination. Heaven is not the ultimate destination as N. T. Wright has gone to great lengths to show in his excellent book Surprised by Hope.
What about Hell? What about it? What does it say about your heart that you are hell bent on there being one? If I could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was no hell (at least in conventional ways of conceiving of it) would you care? If God Himself were to divinely reveal to you that there was no Hell as you had conceived of it would you believe Him? Some of you are so committed to Hell that not even God Himself could convince you otherwise…. Sounds like a pretty hellish existence to me.
But, I can articulate further.
Links, Readings, and Resources
- “Readings in Universalism” – Eclectic Orthodoxy
- Reforming Hell
- “The Case for Christian Universalism with Robin Parry”
- Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist: The Biblical Hope That God’s Love Will Save Us All
- David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation
- Thomas Talbot, The Inescapable Love of God.
- Gerald O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples
- Richard Beck, “Why I Am a Universalist: Sum Up and Some Links”
- Keith DeRose, “Universalism and the Bible.“
i still hold this view. and these links are really good. still worth checking out. maybe if and when i get some more time and come speak more to ultimate reconciliation/universalism.
a.
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