, Brendan"][The following is an email I sent to an internet religious group which believes in the inevitable Universal salvation of all people and perhaps even angels. Since orthodox Evangelical Christianity considers this an error, and therefore so do I, I thought I would write them an open letter. But I thought I would try an alternative tact, and approach the question from an explicitly Arminian soteriology about God’s will, his grace, and human free will.]
Dear _________________,
Greetings to you! I, the author (see name below), am a young Evangelical Anglican from Sydney. Below I have sought to provide a throughout argument about God’s universal saving intentions for the world and for all human beings, and how, rather than supporting Universalism, these really serve to contravene Universalism in light of certain theological subtleties about God’s sovereign will and free grace, and facts about human free will, and the imputation of the merits of Christ on the cross conditionally to believers alone. I would be grateful for some feedback from some Universalists concerning this argument. Great thanks in advance for taking the time to consider this extended thought.Anyone interested in reading/responding, either here or in the comments there?
My name is Jason Pratt, a trinitarian Christian apologist (from a Southern Baptist background), one of the main authors for about ten years at the weblog for the Christian Cadre (christiancadre.blogspot.com), where I argue very extensively for the coherent truth of the metaphysics of trinitarian theism, and also for the historical reliability of the New Testament. I can also argue extensively for trinitarian theism being what the Judeo-Christian canon adds up to, and the superiority of the canon to extra-canonical texts, and several other things of that sort, but I’ve focused on other topics at the Cadre Journal (more-or-less by topical accident). Over the years, I’ve written easily over ten thousand pages of apologetics for Nicean-Chalcedonian orthodoxy, there and as a guest commenter on other sites, from what may be called the “Lewisian” school. (My largest work for example is, in effect, an almost 900 page update and expansion of Lewis’ Miracles: a Preliminary Study.)
I have also been a trinitarian Christian universalist since early 2000; and in 2008 I was invited to be a guest author, teacher, and administrator at (www.evangelicaluniversalist.com) the Evangelical Universalist forum (along with Dr. Thomas Talbott, and Dr. Robin Parry who was writing at that time under the pen-name of Gregory MacDonald.) I was invited, not only because the site owners were looking for guest authors they thought made good arguments for Christian universalism, which up until then I had only made occasionally as a consequential side effect of my other work, but also because they wanted a site that (while allowing discussion of other theologies) would promote orthodox trinitarian theism – and especially they recognized that my universalism followed consequentially from my trinitarian theism.
In other words, I came to universalism from (a Lewisian) Arminianism, as a consequence of (first) my metaphysical arguments for trinitarian theism, and (later) as a consequence of my scriptural arguments for trinitarian theism. (Also because I came to see that Lewis was inadvertently pointing that way, and tended to contradict his own arguments about trinitarian theism when trying to argue in favor of some non-universalism. I still honor Lewis as my teacher, but on this topic I’ve come to believe the man he posthumously honored as his own taecher, George MacDonald, is right and Lewis wrong – though Lewis is usually better on other details.)
I write this as an introduction, not to appeal to an inherent superiority of study (since after all many people have studied Christian theology longer than I and do not accept Christian universalism), but only to emphasize that I am not a casual theologian, though like many people I’m an amateur (in the sense of not being paid to do the work). I am not unacquainted with certain theological subtleties about God’s sovereign will and free grace and facts about human free will etc. I am a very picky hyper-orthodox trinitarian theist, who works hard to make sure I am not contradicting myself, or using poor (or cheating) arguments for trinitarian Christian theism, or am otherwise formally incoherent. I am also the sort of person who critiques other trinitarian theists for not being trinitarian enough; and if someone tries to make a claim that (I find) contravenes trinitarian theism, I’m not going to accept it (even if on non-trinitarian grounds it might be otherwise valid enough).
In short, I care about orthodoxy, especially trinitarian orthodoxy, and I reject heresies and non-trinitarian theologies.
And I am a trinitarian Christian universalist. One who doesn’t only hope for it as a technical possibility, but who believes (as you put it) “in the inevitable universal salvation” of all sinners from sin, including all rebel angels.
To your open letter, then, which I shall quote for reply as I go through it.
“Orthodox Evangelical Christianity”, including among Anglicans, is also heavily split between broad categories of Calvinisms vs. Arminianisms (to borrow convenient labels for broad groups with mutually exclusive soteriologies). Calvs regard themselves as no less “evangelical” than Arminians, even though some proponents of each side like to regard each other as not sufficiently “evangelical” for various reasons. Yet you seem to allow that Calvinists may be included in the group of “orthodox Evangelical Christianity”, since you propose to proceed not along that more general appeal but “from an explicitly Arminian soteriology about God’s will, his grace, and human free will.”
Calvinists believe and stress the certain salvation of whomever God seriously intends to evangelize: an evangelism maximally deep to completion. Arminians believe and stress the total scope (or near-total scope, minus rebel angels usually) of God’s serious intention to evangelize: an evangelism maximally wide. Christian universalists believe, rightly or wrongly, in both evangelical width of scope and originally persistent and competent depth of evangelism. And trinitarian Christian universalists (or Kaths as I like to abbreviate us for convenience) are just as orthodox in trinitarianism as the spread typically found among Calvs or Arms.
We can only be “unorthodox”, consequently, if we’re wrong in being too evangelical! But at least we aren’t denying one or the other standard assurances of evangelism. I don’t think or find that orthodoxy supposed to be a denial of evangelism in one or the other fashions.
(Granted, the so-called Athanasian Creed features wrapping statements insisting that people will be hopelessly punished unless they affirm and continually hold to a detailed Nicean-Chalcedonian doctrinal set. I strongly affirm the set, including an interpretation of “eonian” that was perfectly acceptable among Greek Fathers for hundreds of years, including among the drafters of Nicean-Chalcedonian orthodoxy. I disaffirm the wrapping statements because, as a trinitarian theist, I reject the heresy of gnosticism, salvation by doctrinal knowledge; but the wrapping statements are about the two lobes of the creed, and are not themselves the creed anyway. Athanasius himself regarded himself as the disciple of Christian universalists; appointed a well-known and respected universalist, Didymus the Blind, as the president of the first Christian catechetical school in Alexandria; and usually argued trinitarian theism in terms stressing the eventual salvation of all sinners from sin. At the very least, he would have disagreed with the wrapping statements locking Christian universalists out of orthodoxy; certainly Gregory of Nyssus, champion of Chalcedonian orthodoxy, and a disciple of both Athanasius and Origen, would have disagreed with them, being an explicit Christian universalist himself. The difference is that by the time the AthCreed was drafted, the Roman Catholic Church had taken a dogmatic stand against Christian universalism, and so was naturally requiring Eastern Orthodox bishops to reject this before entering communion with the RCC. This is also why the filioque was included in the AthCreed – a point of doctrine I strongly accept, for what it’s worth. I digress on this point because various Anglican professions still refer to the AthCreed as an orthodoxy test, which technically I agree with. I just don’t agree with the statements about the Creed typically included as though part of the Creed.)
To the three assumptions you hold then, which I also hold as inferences (not merely assumptions but I suppose you meant inferences), both from metaphysical logic and from scriptural testimony:
I have not the slightest disagreement with any of those three points, especially the freedom of the human will to accept as well as refuse this grace. I extend recognition of the freedom of that will to all sinners, whether human by species or not (e.g. rebel angels, with various scriptural testimonies); but more importantly I don’t turn around and deny the freedom of the human will to accept this grace later.
In other words, I affirm more of the scope of salvation than you do (rejecting the Calvinist doctrine that God does not even intend for some sinners to be saved from sin back into being righteous), but that logically includes your (and Calvinist!) more limited scope. And I affirm and don’t deny the freedom of the will (by the grace and intention of God) to accept or refuse this grace, now or later.
Thus I also don’t deny that persons saved from sin have freedom of the will to sin again either; I just affirm that for each sinner a point will come where they will, freely and as a matter of continuing fact not as a lack of capability, never choose to do so again.
Well, you haven’t included the original and competent persistence of God to salvific victory in your three points, the way a Calvinist would (whereas the Calv wouldn’t include your scope of salvation – or might perhaps agree, on the basis of limited election, that it should be limited only to all humans!)
So of course, the three points you gave do not in themselves lead to soteriological universalism; nor would a Calvinistic set of three points. The two assurances have to be put together. Leave out one, and only Arm or Calv soteriology (in some variation) can follow, depending on which assurance is denied.
Indeed. Neither do I think we should forget the testimony of the two preceding verses, that the secret of God’s will, in accord with God’s delight which He purposed in Him (the Father in the Son), is to “head up the all in the Christ”, i.e. to bring all things into the federal headship of Christ, “both that [the all] in the heavens and that [the all] on the earth” as the fulfillment (or completion) of the eons. The all-things must be those which are not yet led by Christ, thus are ignorantly neutral or in rebellion, since St. Paul goes on to distinguish in verse 11 that this is the same Christ “in Whom our lot was also cast”.
Nor do I think we should forget the testimony of subsequent verses like 1:18-23, where St. Paul appeals to the potent certainy of the Father in under-setting all under the feet of Christ (including also those things in the lower parts of the earth where the dead are, to whom Christ descended and out from whom He was raised). Headship always implies, later if not sooner, a proper coherent relationship between the head and those under the authority of the head, especially in Paul’s “membership” analogy (which he seems to have been the first Greek writer to have invented) to the body of Christ. It is as the head of all that Christ, Who (very emphatically) fills complete the completion of the all in all (v.23), is given to the Church (over which Christ is also head of course) by the Father. Who is also included under this headship that shall complete the completion of the all in all? Every original leader and authority and power and lordship (using terms recognized elsewhere as referring to rebel spiritual powers) and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the age to come.
Just as the Father had the strength to raise Christ out of the dead ones, so He shall have the strength to do all those other things, too. But those other things explicitly include bringing the rebel powers under the headship of the Son so that God may fully complete them, too.
That is why some universalists (including myself) appeal to 1 Ephesians, naturally including emphases on the scope that Arminians appeal to (and believe) such as at verse 11 (though Arminians sometimes have trouble accepting the utter totality of scope elsewhere in the chapter); but also including emphases on the certain victory prophesied by St. Paul here in leading those back to righteous loyalty whom God intends to save, naturally including emphases of this sort that Calvinists appeal to (and believe).
The scriptural details here (and elsewhere) are quite complete; and the exegetical argument is similar to forms used by trinitarians when putting together immediate, local and extended contexts (though in this case I’m not sure Paul is giving any extended referential contexts.)
The only way to avoid the conclusion exegetically is either not to discuss all the details (and I notice you didn’t), or to switch over to a metaphysical argument (which I notice you did):
I agree with both clauses, and I am fully prepared to discuss the metaphysics involved here. But because I prefer non-contradictory metaphysical logic, I am not prepared to appeal to the importance of the freedom of the will as any kind of explanation for why God allows or inflicts a final loss of the freedom of the will, especially when that loss functionally prevents any possibility of the person returning to righteousness again.
It is precisely because (as a good Lewisistic theologian by the way) I affirm the importance of the freedom of the will, especially in soteriology, that I do not turn around and deny the freedom of the will later in my soteriology (which unfortunately Lewis had a tendency to do).
It is indeed possible. However, this in itself would not preclude God’s freedom to perpetually act toward saving them from their sins; which would categorically still be Christian universalism (original persistance + scope), not Calv or Arm soteriology, even if there was a permanent ongoing stalemate.
Nor does the technical possibility in itself provide the slightest reason for thinking God will fail to save them after all; whereas God’s omnipotence and omniscience provide maximum reasons for expecting God to succeed eventually after all, if those are accepted (and if not then we have much more fundamental theological disagreements since I’m going to argue their rejection does not even fit supernaturalistic theism, much less trinitarian theism).
At which point, the metaphysical argument so far having failed to nix Christian universalism, and rather supporting it (if even merely supernaturalistic theism is true), we might go back to scriptural testimony to see if there is any prophetic data indicating a coming total success for the scope. And then among other things I’m going to insist on accounting for all of Ephesians 1 again, which provides an example of such prophetic assurance of victory (as Calvinists are well aware).
I fully agree, which is why I don’t turn around and deny the perpetual freedom later. I do deny that the final result will be perpetual sin for some sinners rather than perpetual righteousness; but I strongly affirm and don’t deny the perpetual freedom.
I fully acknowledge that the lack of doing God’s will in sense A does not mean God’s will is being utterly denied, since God willed that a person might voluntarily refuse to do God’s will.
And yet, we are often told to expect that God is going to rectify this eventually and bring those who are not doing God’s will in that sense back to doing God’s will in that sense. Such as in Eph 1, for example.
So the current lack of doing God’s will in some sense, is no evidence that this lack will always continue. Otherwise no one could ever be saved from sin at all. A person is free to rebel as long as he wants; but a person is not free to avoid all inconvenient consequences of rebellion, and one of those consequences is God seeking (sometimes by punitive discipline) to lead the rebel back to righteousness, which God remains even more free to do than humans are free to rebel. I don’t deny the latter, but I certainly don’t use the latter to deny the former within which the latter occurs.
Actually, the Greek at GosJohn 1:12-13 reads that God gives them authority to be children, not to become children: they are children already (as per Galatians 4), but without authority so long as they are immature. It’s a reference to the paterfamilias social habit in Mediterranean cultures of that time, which was borrowed by various scripture authors (and Jesus) to analogize the relationship of rational creatures with God as the one and only truest Father of all persons. (I notice you acknowledge this idea in a later paragraph when speaking of one of Jesus’ two “dragging” statements, the one at John 12:32; but the concept applies back here, too.)
A child can choose not to mature and enjoy the allotment of the inheritance (as the Greek phrase puts it commonly in the Synoptics), and a good father isn’t going to raise the rebellious child to the authority of representing the family, but a good and loving father will keep after the immature child to discipline him or her and teach maturity. A human father might be forced to give up on that eventually due to natural limitations, but God doesn’t have those limitations.
To be a child and to be a son are both rights granted by God to us (and therefore by God’s grace and eternal will), but that also means it is God’s eternal will to lead the misbehaving child into being a proper son or daughter, even if the child is trying to deny his or her Father. They’re free to deny; they aren’t free to have their original and continuing source of existence to be anyone or anything other than God (all three Persons), and they aren’t free to be free of God’s eternal will that they should mature into the inheritance He intends for them (no moreso than they are free to avoid the various inconvenient frictions from this clash of wills, however hot that friction gets, so to speak, or however long it lasts, which will be as long as the child insists on impenitent sin!)
Luke 7:30, and its other Synoptic parallels, is exactly an example of that principle, for the Baptist connects the sin of rebel religious leaders, the leaders of the children who are proud of being heirs, to the coming punishment prophesied in Malachi 3 and 4, which is aimed primarily (though not entirely) at rebel Jewish leaders, and which has an explicit goal of purgatively refining those leaders (to the death if necessary) until they learn to be proper children, and thus proper sons, of God: a goal that is prophesied as certainly to come as the punishment for their impenitent injustice! They won’t escape God’s punitive will for themselves, and they won’t escape God’s purgative will for themselves.
On this I would say the mode of expression of God’s will changes according to the choices of orientation of the object, not God’s fundamental will toward the object.
Admittedly if Arminianism is true, God (the one and only fundamental righteousness, Whose righteousness is the ground of all existence) must utterly change His will to save sinners from sin into righteousness, so that He chooses eventually to stop intending to save some sinners from sin. There are various Arm theories on how that works.
But since this is a metaphysical argument: as a trinitarian theist, not merely a supernaturalistic theist, I cannot coherently claim that God, Who in His own eternal self-existence is a continually acting fulfillment of interpersonal fair-togetherness (the Greek term translated variously as righteousness and justice), can ever act toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons instead while still existing. He would be acting against the ground of His own existence; I grant He is free to do this, and so to cease existing, but I notice that all not-God reality would also cease to exist, including all our past and present history (and future history, too), and indeed never even would have existed, so we would not be here now to discuss whether God ever shall do that. Since we’re still here to discuss the topic, I confidently infer God never shall do so.
But then, so much for any argument that God ever shall do so. To make such an argument tacitly denies trinitarian theism to be true.
We act against the source of our existence when we sin against other people, thus also sinning against God, and God graciously keeps us in existence anyway because we are not our own ground of existence – which I would say testifies something about God’s intentions toward sinners in itself! What we by God’s grace are able to do and still exist, God cannot do and still exist even by God’s grace, since God’s grace is that by which God exists to do anything at all.
In passing, the Greek (and I’m told the Hebrew) of the saying in Psalm 95:11 quoted by the Hebraist at Hebrews 3:11, is a conditional exclamation, “If they shall be entering into my resting…!” The form when used elsewhere in the scriptures (Jesus uses it twice in GosJohn for example) never means the event will never happen, and rather means the event will certainly but unexpectedly happen which will lead to a change of mind or heart by those who see this fulfilled.
(To be fair, I acknowledge it could be a different kind of rhetorical usage, where the speaker means something like “You just see if X ever happens” as a way of saying he expects it never to happen. But it isn’t used that way in any of the other places I’ve found that form, and I think a close contextual argument shows the Hebraist doesn’t mean that either. For one thing, God definitely doesn’t mean that in the case of Moses, whom everyone rightly expects to enter into God’s rest after all.)
In regard to Jer 18, certainly I affirm that God does one thing if a sinner repents, and does another thing if a sinner doesn’t repent; but I deny that God’s fundamental intentions toward the sinner change either way, only the mode of how He works those intentions out in cooperation with the creature. And the context of Jer 18 (and 19) bear this out, even where you quoted it: God is prophesying that despite His continual begging for repentance (through the prophet), Israel isn’t going to repent, and God will definitely destroy them, even though He wouldn’t if they chose otherwise. But His destruction of them will be like the potter destroying and remaking the pottery: I don’t deny that God can deal with Israel as the potter does (destroying the clay pot), neither do I deny that God can deal with Israel as the potter does (remaking the same pot which He destroys). Nor do I deny that God can even do what a human potter cannot, which is remake a pot that has been carried to Gehenna and shattered beyond human ability to repair (as in chapter 19).
In short the question is whether God is more competent than a human potter, or not; can God raise and restore the broken pottery as the human potter cannot do, or is God only limited to remaking the pottery while it is on the wheel as a human potter is limited to doing?
(God says through Jeremiah elsewhere, as well as by other prophets, that He is not only totally capable of fixing that broken pot thrown into Gehenna, rebel Ephraim slain in his sins, but that He will do so and restore Ephraim to grieving righteous Rachel – who won’t be comforted with anything less – as surely as He broke it, the breaking being a sign of what is just as surely to come.)
So I entirely affirm that God’s singular omnipotent will can be and often is expressed into antecedent and consequent parts according to His own good love and perfect justice. But I entirely affirm that the restoration of those slain in sin to perfect justice and good love, is an expression of that singular omnipotent will of (and toward the fulfillment of) good love and perfect justice. God aims at it, God gets it, sooner or later (later being the result of respecting His own gift of creaturely free will).
Which I agree is the only way by which any person not only has the free will to repent and cease sinning, but which is the only way any person has free will, and so is actually a person, at all. I may therefore have a somewhat wider idea of how God works in many different ways through His Word and Spirit – not only through the preaching of the Gospel faithfully. (God does not pull out a dusty grandmother’s Bible to grant free will to a baby for example.)
But in any case, I don’t turn around and argue that God has such a high regard for the importance of creaturely free will that He allows persons to fall permanently into a lack of free will. A person may be freely resolved to do one thing than another, but still remains free to do the other instead. Otherwise the person isn’t a person anymore; and while I acknowledge this occasionally happens, then there is no point to talking about moral judgment of such an entity. Nor do I grant that God allows this to irreparably happen to any person, regardless of how badly the person abuses their free will, or how oppressed the person may be by behaviorial conditioning not of their choosing. I do not even grant this end result is technically possible if trinitarian theism is true (though I might grant it if a lesser theism is true.)
Actually, a good and authoritative father in the paterfamilias situation you’re describing would in fact “drag” the child into maturity (the verb there is stronger than “draw”), and not give up until he gets it done.
But aside from that, of course so far as the mere term “dragging” goes, God could decide to stop the dragging at some point. If trinitarian theism is true I deny God would at some point stop dragging sinners toward being perfectly just (which means righteous and vice versa) and holy, precisely in accordance with the decree of God’s perfect justice, righteousness and holiness, which will not be satisfied with any result of final injustice and unholiness. But I agree that SO LONG AS an agent should freely reject Christ, he should not inherit the life of Christ which is only found in union with him, and that by faith. So what? – soteriology is supposed to be primarily based on what God does about sinners, not primarily on what sinners do about God.
Yet the “dragging” verb doesn’t stand alone at John 12:32. It connects back to a similar statement about dragging made by Jesus previously (in a strongly trinitarian discouse) in 6:44 and its contexts; which involves people given to the Son by the Father being saved by being “dragged” to Him: a topic directly related to them being resurrected on the final Day. Relatedly, all that the Father gives Him shall come to Him and shall not be cast out (v.36), nor shall the Son lose any of the all who have been given to Him by the Father. (v.39)
The disputed question is whether anyone who beholds the Son (which would logically be everyone He raises and judges) and yet doesn’t believe in Him shall be lost.
But then they wouldn’t be coming to Him: because if they were coming to Him they wouldn’t be cast out! So either NOT all people are given to Him by the Father (which could hardly be an Arminian position, although a Calvinist might try it), or else all people that the Father gives Him shall NOT come to Him and some shall be lost who have been given to Him by the Father! Which runs totally against the promise of this verse.
At any rate, not even one person can come toward the Son if the Father Who sends the Son does not draw (drag) him; yet the Son shall still be raising such a person in the final day. (verse 44; the Greek grammatically indicates the same “him” is being talked about for raising as for not coming to the Son.) But Jesus (in verse 45) connects this raising with the prophecy from Jeremiah 31:34 that all people from the least to the greatest shall come to YHWH to be taught by YHWH, “for I will forgive their injustice and their sin I will remember no more.”
So the topic is not about Jesus raising people who will never be given to Him, but instead about Jesus raising people who have not come to Him yet – but they will (eventually, with some dragging), and will be saved.
…then it does not follow that any rejection of this grace will necessarily be perpetual: the grace is given by God, not established by the creature.
Much less does it follow that such rejection of prevenient grace is something God cannot possibly overcome or no one would ever be saved from sin at all.
Neither does it follow that such rejection of prevenient grace necessarily results in God withdrawing such prevenient grace, or again no sinner would ever be save from sin at all.
All we are left with is the technical possibility that the creature may perpetually choose of its own free will to continually sin, over against God’s perpetual choice to lead the sinner to righteousness instead. Such a situation would still be Christian universalism categorically (maximal scope and original maximal persistence of evangelism) instead of an Arm variant (only maximal scope (and probably not even maximal scope!) or a Calv variant (only original maximal persistence).
Why then, in principle, should we bet on the sinner in that case rather than on God?! Because God’s grace is at least temporarily resistible, therefore it must be permanently resistible, therefore it is permanently resistible?!
This is nothing more than treating a possibility as a certainty, unless you meant rather “then X may possibly not ever be saved etc.” The possibility is itself no reason to bet on the sinner instead of God.
If there was scriptural revelation that there would be a never-ending stalemate, that would be a good reason. But (as Calvinists are typically aware) then sometimes there is scriptural revelation that God will in fact accomplish His evangelical purposes and even has staked His own continuing self-existence on it as a pledge of that surety. And sometimes those pledges even contain assurances of maximum evangelical scope (as Arminians typically are aware!) – but even when they occasionally don’t, those assurances of scope can be found elsewhere.
The situation is much like piecing together Christology (and Pneumatology). Over here Christ is identified (through various methods) as being essentially the one and only God Most High; over there Christ is clearly distinct personally from the Father and even subordinate to the Father. Non-trinitarians aren’t pulling their data from nowhere; they use the same data we do. Just not all of it. Mainly because they think it’s metaphysically impossible for both sets of data to mean what we infer they mean (neither confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substance etc.)
So at best there isn’t prima facie uniform scriptural testimony on the topic, meaning at least one set of data is being misinterpreted (Arms say Calv data about limited election and original persistence to victory; Calvs say Arm data about maximal scope; Kaths say they’re both right but are misinterpreting the hopeless punishment data), and/or that one set of data must be interpreted in light of another set of data. And what standard is to be appealed to for which set is to be interpreted in light of which set? I say, as a trinitarian theologian, the standard ought to be that of (a previously established) trinitarian theology.
(Though I would also argue that the hopeless punishment texts have been misunderstood on their own merits.)
True, but I don’t reject the freedom of the human will either, including the continuing God-given freedom to repent and so fulfill the primary will of God: to be a righteous soul never more going out of the Temple of God’s fellowship. Nor do I deny the resistible nature of God’s prevenient grace; I deny that this necessarily means God’s grace will be permanently resisted.
So for example in regard to item one, and your scriptural references, as noted previously Luke 7:30 involves a situation where JohnBapt is referring to a prophecy from Malachi about rebel religious leaders willfully opposing God’s will, and then being punished for that (even to the death) until they learn to do better, which God also promises as sure as the punishment. The resistance to God’s prevenient grace doesn’t result in losing the ability to repent, nor result in any other kind of perpetual sinning.
John 5:39-40 follows verses 19-30 where the express purpose of the judgment by the Son (even the coming resurrection into judgment) is declared to be so that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father (v.23). Nor is this honoring at all intended to be a false or hypocritical honoring: the Greek term means the positive valuing of the object; and moreover, the same verses promise that those who honor the Son, and so who honor the Father in honoring the Son, receive eonian life and come out of the death into life. It is also expressly on this principle, of rebels coming to properly honor the Father (through honoring the Son), that Christ declares His judgment is fair or just: “I do not seek My own will but the will of Him Who sent Me.” “I do absolutely nothing for Myself.” A judging that did not result in those who are being judged coming to honor the Father would be (per Arminianism) failure by the Son, not a triumph of God’s perfect justice; and if it did not have such a goal at all (per Calvinism), it would be (by God’s standards) an unjust judgment. Verse 23 not only expressly explains the goal of the Son’s judgment, but provides the context for understanding what the Son means by just or fair judgment–even when that judgment is, understandably, a “crisis” for the currently impenitent sinner, the one who is still doing the bad things.
The only two ways around this would be, first, to try claiming that “all” here only means “many”, so that the purpose of the Father and the Son in the judgment of the Son is not to bring all to honor the Father and the Son but only some to honor the Father and the Son. Personally I am glad it is not my task to try to explain that the Father and the Son have no intention for some rational creatures to honor the Father and the Son!–how could the Son choose that a rational creature never honors the Father?? That would be rebellion by the Son against the Father! That the Father would choose (and so ensure) that a rational creature would never honor the Son, would be for the Father to ensure that the Son is permanently dishonored. The choice itself is an act (as Calvinists of all people ought to be aware, yet in my experience they appeal to this notion more than Arminians, that if God chooses for only some people to honor Him, He somehow hasn’t chosen for people to dishonor Him).
The second way around it would be to try claiming that “honor” doesn’t necessarily mean positively valuing God. But aside from the verb being a simple modification of the Greek word “to value” (as in the commandment to honor your father and mother), there are very many scriptures (including some here in GosJohn) indicating that God does not accept false honor of Himself (a pertinent example of the exact same term being YHWH’s complaint from Isaiah that people honor Him with their lips but their hearts are far from Him), so such a theory requires for God (in any or all Persons) to be seeking a final result which God (in any or all Persons) does not accept.
Throughout the scriptures the unanimous theme is that those who honor God (whether or not this verb {timaô} or a cognate is used, but especially when this term is referenced) are accepted and saved from their sins; those who dishonor God, including by hypocritical honor, are rejected and punished. God may accept dishonest honor or other dishonor for a time in order to get other things done, but for God to seek to accept final dishonor would be self-contradictory.
In regard to Acts 7:51, human beings resisting God’s saving grace and intentions stone Stephen; but Stephen still prays for God not to hold this sin against them, apparently expecting God will grant this prayer. And one of the super-Pharisees standing nearby holding the cloaks of those doing the stoning, being heartily in agreement with the stoning, and going forth afterward to breath threats and murder against the Church, eventually converted because while he could kick against the goads, the goads kept on digging until he turned around. That man wrote at least a quarter of the New Testament canon by himself; immediate disciples of his wrote more than another quarter; and fellow apostles of his wrote the rest! So St. Stephen’s martyrdom does not seem to be a good example of the hopeless results of resisting God’s saving grace and intentions!
“Saul, Saul, how hard it is for you to kick against the goads”?
But since we are talking philosophy again: if trinitarian theism is true, it is by the freely given and self-sacrificial love of God that existence and free will are “forced” onto rational creatures in the first place, and continually “forced” onto them so long as they exist as rational creatures; moreover, any punitive judgment from God is at least as “forced”, and rather moreso if no repentance is allowed or accepted afterward. Loving human persons forcibly discipline our wives and our children (and wives their husbands and children) to be righteous instead of unrighteous all the time; and the scriptures certainly testify this isn’t only proper for human authorities but also such discipline is proper to God precisely because He loves us. Of course no human is dependent upon, or in a relationship with, another human in the way that God is necessarily and inextricably in relationship with all rational creatures; but while Satan might complain about being “forced” to have an omnipresent and omniscient God, that’s just how the ontology works out.
This complaint is simply self-refuting, for you yourself testify that without God’s loving action which God initiates apart from the natural desire of the creature (and against the corrupted natural desires of the creature), there could never be repentance from sin at all! But that saving attention from God is just as “forced” as any other saving attention from God; nor did God violate your free will in any philosophically unbearable way by doing so.
The sinner might wish to be left alone in his sins with no inconveniences; but that isn’t going to happen in any case, because of God’s love and justice, which (if trinitarian theism is true) are also God’s own self-existent omnipresent and omniscient (and omnipotent) action. The sinner might then complain about being “forced” to bear the results of his sin, but you don’t seem to have any problem thinking there is a philosophical difficulty with that. (The philosophical difficulty would be for the sinner to have no inconveniences from sinning if trinitarian theism is true!
Why think that the foundational interpersonal fair-togetherness which (and Who) continually grounds all reality, including the existence of all not-God reality, including the existence of all free-willed creatures, including the existence of every creature which abuses its free will against this fundamental reality {inhale}, would persistently act toward fulfilling interpersonal fair-togetherness with such a creature, including leading the creature to fulfill fair-togetherness with all other persons, until this perfect interpersonal fair-togetherness Who is Love Itself succeeds in bringing the unloving and unjust to be loving and just?
Because trinitarian theism is true, and the alternatives are demonstrably and principally incoherent to trinitarian theism. That’s why.
Because as a trinitarian theist first, I base my entire case for soteriology upon God’s all-loving nature fundamentally; therefore I conclude God will not cease persisting to love all sinners into being truly loving themselves; and I do not conclude that God was or is being unloving to “force” creaturely existence and necessary relations to God’s independent existence upon creatures.
I realize, because I was there once myself, that your complaint here is based on a concept of divine rape. But the analogy is broken: the rapist victim is being forced by someone he or she isn’t necessarily dependant on for continual existence (and property characteristics) to be depersonalized into being a tool of someone who from his or her actions isn’t interested in fulfilling fair-togetherness with that person. It would be more accurate to argue that rape is a sin, and is only a sin, by being an abused and degraded mockery of God’s actual relationship to creation. But that leaves God’s actual relationship to creation exactly where it is, and where it must be if trinitarian theism is true.
At the very least, there is no point making such a complaint about disciplinary love being forced, and then trying to appeal to a scriptural basis for any kind of divine punishment, especially a hopeless punishment: regardless of the goal, the infliction will be just as “forced”. (And there is less than no point for some non-universalists to take the route popularized by Lewis, honor him though I do, and try to deny God actively punishes anyone for their sins, while complaining that universalists aren’t sufficiently scriptural! Just to head that option off at the pass.)
Some universalists do (in the sense you’re talking about), taking a more Calvinistic / compatabilistic approach to free will (if not outright determinism). But so far am I from rejecting the freedom of the human will, I refuse to reject the freedom of the human will (or any creaturely will) to repent of sin.
Of course, since you refer to Col 1:15a, I shall note in passing that Jesus freely sacrificed Himself on the cross to reconcile all rebel creatures to God, whether things in the heavens or things on the earth; and that if we are reconciled to God through the blood of the cross, how much moreso (per Rom 5:10) shall we be raised up into His life! The scope is total; the result is certain: all shall eventually come to receive the abundance of grace and the abundance of the gift of righteousness (since I know what the Arminian reply to that from citing Rom 5:17 is going to be. That the gift has to be received to be saved into the life of the Giver, does not obviate the promise those who are reconciled shall be saved into that life.)
Definitely not going to happen here (but I appreciate that in covering the potential options you have to be thorough.)
In conclusion, you have not even remotely established that some sinners will certainly perpetually resist the prevenient grace of God; and the mere technical possibility of it is no reason to believe it may happen, but even if it did Christian soteriology should be primarily about what God is doing concerning sin and sinners not primarily about what sinners are doing concerning God.
Nor have you even remotely established that God certainly will cease acting toward saving some sinners from sin.
Nor have you even remotely established that it is functionally or principally impossible for God to save all sinners from sin – unless perhaps supernaturalistic theism, thus also ortho-trin, is false after all and we should only be talking about a Mormonistic God for example upon whom all creatures along with all reality do not continually exist in ontological dependence, therefore who could be feasibly said to be “forcing” various states and relationships upon other creatures amounting to rape. I reject anything less than supernaturalistic theism, though, so such objections point back to a more serious underlying theological problem.
I agree that God’s grace is resistible and that humans have free will and that God values human free will and isn’t going to simply violate it; which is why on one hand I agree that God isn’t going to simply poof rebel creatures like puppets into doing whatever He wants, but which is also why on the other hand I’m not going to believe that God enacts or allows humans to permanently lose their free will. (You don’t seem to be arguing for that, but many Arminians and even some highly inconsistent Calvinists do.)
My high theological regard for the free will of rational creatures, however, does not translate into a conclusion that rebel creatures can be finally free to sin without inconvenience from God; nor does that translate into a conclusion that God loses His own free will on the matter; much less that it translates into the omniscient and omnipotent God being incompetent to save sinners from sin after all. A lack of free will (if I ever lacked such a thing, since free will is a characteristic of a rational soul) didn’t stop God from leading me to salvation; and my abuse of my free will doesn’t stop God from disciplining me in various ways with a goal of leading me to finally stop sinning. It didn’t functionally or in principle stop God; it doesn’t functionally or in principle stop God; and since the principles (and functions) don’t change it isn’t going to ever stop God, even if God has to keep at it into the eons of the eons.
C. S. Lewis also wrote in the same book (TPoP), a few chapters earlier, an extensive argument to the effect that if we expect God to stop leading us to be righteous, despite that leading being inconvenient to us, then we’re really asking for LESS LOVE from God, not MORE. God has to flat out just give up on Lewis’ soteriology because sinners have defeated Him. But Lewis wasn’t comfortable with that “bolted from the inside” claim either, because he was well aware of extremely abundant scriptural testimony about God inflicting punishment on impenitent sinners (including post-mortem), whether annihilation or eternal conscious torment. (That Lewis preferred annihilation is nothing to the point: God still forces it on sinners.) And he was also extremely well aware that if those sinners continue to exist, God continually “forces” (if you must put it that way) those sinners to exist, and to exist within God’s omnipresence and omniscience, and to exist in modes of inconvenience to their sin when they would certainly prefer otherwise. (Which is probably why he preferred annihilation of sinners, but that’s still “forcing” the final result.)
Or perhaps it is. Or perhaps trinitarian theism is true, in which case it certainly must be.
But if it isn’t, then what’s stopping it? God? Then so much for your own appeal to God’s supreme love; and so much for trinitarian theism being true. Sinners themselves? Then so much for the idea that where sin exceeds grace hyper-exceeds for not as the sin is God’s grace – and so much for even supernaturalistic theism being true.
Either way, so much also for your appeal to the importance of human free will (unless now human free will is to be elevated ontologically over God), upon which your whole metaphysical argument has been based so far.
I agree with each of your positions, and I guarantee the salvation of all sinners from sin – because I affirm more (not less) than those three positions. I affirm God’s omniscient wisdom and power in figuring out how to lead sinners, as rational creatures given free will by God, to share in the benefits of Christ by being united to Christ. (“How then can anyone be saved?!” “With man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible!”) I affirm that where sin exceeds grace hyper-exceeds. I affirm that even sin requires the grace of God to exist, and so depends upon the grace of God for existence (even though abusing the grace of God).
And I affirm that, because trinitarian theology is true (not any lesser theism), God originally persists in acting toward saving whomever He intends to save from sin. Just as for the same reason I affirm that, because trinitarian theism is true (not any lesser theism), God intends and acts toward saving all sinners (not only human sinners) from sin.
