In chapter three, I spoke of God ‘conceiving and executing strategies to persuade people to respond to Him which will eventually be successful and which do not violate their free will in their process’. Clearly, in spite of my rejection of the sovereignty of free will (as per Arminianism), I am still concerned to show that universalism does not compromise genuine freedom. The same is true of most other universalists. For example, Robinson wrote that an:
unswerving insistence on the inviolability of freedom must be maintained from beginning to end if all that follows is not to fall away into self-contradiction and futility.
Even Slagle says that ‘people will never be saved until they are saved’ – in other words, a free response of some sort is ‘required’ before someone can be saved. Does this contradict everything that I have said in my paper?
Clearly, I do not believe that it does. As Talbott points out, the issue is what genuine freedom involves. Quite possibly, he grants, universalism is incompatible with libertarian freedom - ‘according to [which] conception, a person acts freely only when it remains in their power, at the time of acting, to refrain from the action’. However, libertarian freedom is not genuine freedom – or, at least, the only kind of genuine freedom – for Talbott. Rather ingeniously, he uses C.S. Lewis’s account of his conversion to make his point.
The Lewisian view of hell that I critiqued in chapter two is based on a libertarian understanding of freedom. However, when describing his own experience of conversion, Lewis wrote: ‘I say, “I chose”, yet it did not really seem possible to do the opposite’. Indeed, Lewis famously described himself as ‘the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England’ and as ‘a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape’.
Talbott suggests that such a description fits perfectly with the biblical statement that no-one can come to Christ unless they are drawn (or dragged) by the Father and that ‘few first person accounts of conversion sound anything like libertarian free choices’. Yet Lewis’s choice was still voluntary. As he said himself:
You might argue that I was not a free agent, but I am inclined to think that this came nearer to being a perfectly free act than most I have ever done. *Necessity may not be the opposite of freedom *[My (Ravi’s that is) emphasis!]
Lewis used the phrase ‘checkmate’ to describe his experience of being cornered by the ‘Hound of Heaven’. This phrase is utterly incompatible with the libertarian view that - I suggest - doublethink allowed him to hold in spite of his experience. However, it is fully compatible with the image that both Talbott and Hick use to show how universalism does not compromise genuine – albeit non-libertarian – freedom.
Following William James, they use the analogy of a grandmaster playing chess with a novice:
Even though the novice is free at every stage to make his own move, we can predict with complete practical certainty that the master will eventually win… whatever moves the novice makes, the master can so respond as sooner or later to bring the game to the conclusion that he himself desires.
Thus, while we do not know how long it will take God to get each person – and, indeed, every person – to the point of free surrender, we can be confident that He will do this eventually – and that is all that matters to the universalist.
This, then, explains how Slagle and myself can reject the idea that one has to choose God in order to be saved and, at the same time, say that no-one is saved until they voluntarily choose God. In the Arminian paradigm, the human will, not God’s, is sovereign. It has the power to thwart God’s will eternally and, ultimately, is what saves or damns people. In the universalist paradigm, this is not so: God’s salvific will will be done. In a sense, it will be done ‘in spite of us’ and yet, there will be only willing participants in this universal salvation.
Robinson invites us to imagine ‘a love so strong that ultimately no one will be able to restrain himself from free and grateful surrender’ and both he and Talbott are convinced – as am I – that God can and will do ‘for every other sinner… exactly what he did for Paul on the road to Damascus and exactly what he did for Lewis’ and, indeed, exactly what he did for me.
) but hopefully my super-quick summary is a tad quicker to read (though obviously less forceful):
