The Evangelical Universalist Forum

a quote about George MacDonald that I like

Evangelical Universalism Arguments for Evangelical Universalism
#1

Gabriel Kummant wrote:

“[W]e are diminished by engaging people who are either too stupid to see the tendency of the modern church or are complicit in its continuing degradation. But that is not the last word on the topic of universalism. There’s only one man that I know of who makes a case for universalism worth pondering, and that is George MacDonald. His love for God, and his indignation at the failure of imagination required to assume that divine mercy must be comprehensible to us, who don’t see that on the evidence we already have it must be stranger than we can fathom, and it does not, and will never, compromise with ANY sin, all of this was born of a Calvinism that would drive the damnationists crying into the arms of the nearest universalist. (I imagine that the beauty of this one soul and its fruit is a large part of the reason God allowed the Reformation in the first place.) If you’re going to rail against universalism, at least choose a target worth the time.”

link (quotation in the comments):
orthosphere.org/2013/11/03/fr-ba … list-hope/

#2

What is the “case for universalism” that George MacDonald makes (according to Gabriel Kummant)?

#3

I understand Gabriel to be referring to George MacDonald’s teachings on universalism in general (scattered, of course, throughout his written works). I don’t understand him to be referring to some particular syllogistic case found on page X of book Y.

#4

I possess nearly all of GMD’s books and have read them. I have never encountered a teaching about universal salvation, though I have seen hints of it in his writings—mostly in his novels.

#5

:open_mouth:

I must not be understanding you correctly. When I first read George MacDonald extensively back in the early 1990s, he was the one who brought me to universalism. I encountered universalism over and over in George MacDonald’s books. So, apparently, did C. S. Lewis.

To take one example out of countless:

“Then indeed wilt thou be all in all. For then our poor brothers and sisters, every one—O God, we trust in thee, the Consuming Fire—shall have been burnt clean and brought home. For if their moans, myriads of ages away, would turn heaven for us into hell—shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all his glories, his mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than The Father loves a son?—more than The Brother Christ loves his brother? Would he not die yet again to save one brother more?” (from the end of “The Consuming Fire” in the first volume of Unspoken Sermons)

#6

It appears that we have different concepts of the noun “teaching.” The quote you offered would not be classified as a “teaching” as I understand the word. It is a prayer to God, an expression of trust in God for the salvation of all, followed by a number of questions whose answers suggest universal salvation.