To be honest, most of them are too hard for me to follow – at least the ones I’ve seen. Jason had one with a guy named TFan, but I couldn’t get through it. Reading philosophy and listening to it are two different things. I sometimes have to read a paragraph several times before I get it (or hope I get it). Obviously you can’t do that very easily when listening to a debate. I appreciate your sharing the one between Talbott and WLC with me. I think you said somewhere that you thought WLC more or less won because the objective had been for Talbott to prove that a sinner could/would not hold out forever and would eventually of his own free will relent. I think I agree with you – I don’t think it would be possible to prove that. I think it’s reasonable to expect that God would win the stand-off, but to prove it? Probably not. As you’ve noted already, I don’t think proving this is essential, as our freedom is limited in any case and God is within His moral rights to finally apply whatever pressure is necessary to end the stalemate. I know I’d want Him to do that for me or anyone I love.
But that’s slipping back into another discussion we’re already in the midst of elsewhere! I’m going to look at some, since you’ve asked. I’ve only read non-universalist books, but the debates are undoubtedly a good idea.
What’s worse, that was mostly a scriptural debate! But I know what you mean.
Lotharson,
I have an extremely strong belief in free will – it’s the lynchpin of my whole systematic theology (as it was for Lewis) – and I don’t believe Jesus was wrong on any important matters. The destruction imagery He used from the OT was often paired in the OT itself with salvation after the destruction, and even when not obviously paired with it referred to destructions that would have to be taking place before the resurrection of the wicked. Most annihilationists don’t think Jesus was wrong on the important matter of the resurrection of the wicked to eonian judgment, but that eliminates a lot of OT citations from referring to annihilation per se, even if anni was testified elsewhere.
Most of us, myself included, think our Lord mentioned a very serious and real danger of punishment for sin, including post-mortem punishment; and I certainly agree He was aiming those warnings primarily at religious bigots (up to and including the apostles themselves), but they were being demonstrably bigoted about expecting God not to save those-sinners-over-there from their sins.
That in itself is strong evidence that I had better watch out against interpreting Jesus’ warning about their punishment as being hopeless if inflicted, or I’m putting myself in the same place as the people He was (mostly) aiming His judgment warnings against.
You say “God won’t do one thing: forcing an unwilling sinner to be with Him, for this would spurn the true nature of love.” But then God forces the sinner to cease existing, because there isn’t anywhere the sinner can live apart from God’s omnipresence; and either God expends force convincing the sinner to agree to cease existing (if not to repent of sin), or God eventually forces cessation of existence on the sinner, either way of which means God is sanctioning a final unrighteousness. How is any of that any more of “the true nature of love” than disciplining the child to lead the child back to love and justice in communion again with God and with his fellow creatures?
I can be as confident that final salvation from sin will occur, as I can be confident that God sees me finally righteous without violating my own free will on the topic.
More importantly, and more pertinently, I can be as confident of that as I am confident that God is essentially love, actively fulfilling interpersonal relationships in and as His own self-existence, without which I myself would not exist. God isn’t going to stop doing that, because then the ground and source of my own existence would cease existing and I wouldn’t be here myself to even consider the topic.
You say,
Are you saying God did something spurning the true nature of love by getting Paul? If so, you might as well concede God can and at least might do so again. If not, then what is your complaint if God does the same for anyone or even everyone else?
But I strongly doubt you really think God “got” Paul by raping Paul into the faith.
The proper analogy isn’t of a man raping a woman until she submits (even in pleasure) to his will, but of a man trying to cure his wife of a crippling addiction to heroin, or of freezing to death; with the important difference that God has a far more important relationship to any of us already, including in our very existence, than any man could have with any woman (or vice versa) regardless of the question of whether the woman needs saving from something that’s destroying her.
And one point of that difference is that whenever we sin we’re abusing the grace of God granted to us, thus inflicting abuse on the ground of our own existence, which God voluntarily bears. We aren’t the victims of God when God saves us from sin; God is our victim (even though voluntarily so) and so are any other persons (ourselves included) we’re also sinning against, who are beloved of God. Yet instead of authoritatively allowing us (or directly causing us) to poof out of existence for acting against the ground of our existence the moment we sin even the smallest sin, which even the smallest sin would otherwise immediately result in, the ground of our existence graciously chooses to keep us in existence anyway.
I am sorry to verge near to insult on this. But I cannot stress strongly enough how utterly wrongheaded it is to complain about the idea of God saving sinners from sin by painting sinners as victims of God’s salvation. It is the absolute reverse of any coherent theology. It is also, by the way, horribly ungrateful, because God has done in principle exactly as much for you already – although at least you aren’t complaining about that yet (perhaps because you’re the one to benefit from God’s gracious persistence in your favor instead of someone else).
I’m of the opinion that ‘free will’ indeed DOES exist… that God can override it in no way diminishes nor negates the reality of it.
Quite contrary to the WILL of an obstinate child who deliberately pushes headlong towards the edge of the cliff the LOVING father will by all means possible circumvent their child’s will and save them, even if in the process they remain kicking and thrashing.
Hello Jason, thanks for your long and thoughtful response.
I am currently listening lots of sermons from a German Evangelical and universalist Church gemeinde-hasenheide.de/ and I am truly overwhelmed by their intense love and** unshakable hope**.
My passion is so great that my MP3 player contains only their sermons!
Yet I cannot embrace their theology owing to the reasons I mentionned above.
I wrote two reviews of conversations about heaven and hell [My review of a debate about Heaven)
and would be very glad to learn your own thoughts on my thoughts, preferably on the linked forum post (for avoiding cluttering the present discussion )
It is the story that people believe that holds them within a viewpoint. Rather than challenging line item views… try to retell the story. I don’t believe it is enough to say “everyone is saved in the end”. That is not a story. As a suggestion, one way to begin a story is to begin with John 3:16. Tell the story to the Calvinist that the world God the Father in His Sovereign will so loved and sent Jesus Christ to save… are the reprobate. Turn the whole story around to show the truth, start at the beginning, utilizing points of Calvinism.
Calvinists would believe that the Sovereign will of God the Father is being fulfilled in a compact with God the Son, carried out by the Holy Spirit.
Start with the story that God the Father sent the Son to save the reprobate in His Sovereign will, and this is the compact that God the Son fulfilled.
When God says “the world” in John 3:16, it is the same word used for “world” representing the reprobate in a number of areas.
I would do that and some other things in speaking with a Calvinist, for example. I would start there and tell the story. Then, I would challenge them on the atonement not in a direct challenge, but in telling the story of the destruction of Satan on the cross. I would start with John 3:16, then move to the atonement, and then tell the last day.
And only after telling the story and framing, thereby, the Sovereign will and love of God the Father in a story context, then I’d try line by line.
That’s what I would think to try with a Calvinist.
The scripture declares to speak gently and respectively… which I would take to mean as persuasively.
Yes, the Calvinist notion that limits “the world” of Jn 3:16 to mean “the elect” alone makes an absolute mess of the text. Try reading it according to that view and it becomes illogical and nonsensical…
*For God so loved the elect that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever of the elect believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. *
"Yes, the Calvinist notion that limits “the world” of Jn 3:16 to mean “the elect” alone makes an absolute mess of the text. Try reading it according to that view and it becomes illogical and nonsensical…
For God so loved the elect that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever of the elect believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life."
John would have been extremely sloppy if he intended to teach Calvinism while using words which are not only ambiguous but actually suggest quite the contrary.
“Consequently, just as condemnation for all people came through one transgression, so too through the one righteous act came righteousness leading to life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man many will be made righteous.”
WHEREAS he could have chosen words making clear that while all fall in Adam, only the elects will inherit eternal life.
Nevertheless I think it is wrong to think that he necessarily meant universalism.
For he might very well have thought that such an universal offer of salvation might be thwarted by libertarian free will.
Jesus clearly warned the hateful bigots of his time that if they did not repent they would be blotted out of existence, utterly burnt by an unquenachable fire completely and irremediably consuming chaff, reduced to ashes and soot like Sodom and Gomohra before ** finally being no more**.
I should add that if Jesus believed in a future restoration of these bigots, he would have been very sloppy too not having mentionned it in that context.
My understanding around such annihilation is that it was pertinent solely to Jesus’ “this generation” audience i.e., approx. Ad30-70, and that this spoke of the cessation of tangible existence only. Thus to be blotted out of ‘the book of life’ for example was a mere euphemism for saying ‘being blotted out of the land of the living’, that is quite simply, to lose one’s life albeit according to a divine judgement as per “you will die in your sins”. That wasn’t to say they weren’t forgiven, BUT in terms of knowing/experiencing such forgiveness IN THIS LIFE well that was something disobedience had forfeited.
I just got done reading everyone’s posts and to be honest I was a little shocked on the beating the Calvinist position took in comparison to the other theological positions. As you all know, those who believe in eternal punishment come from every orthodox position. Annihilation is also infiltrating many of these camps, as can be attested to John Stott’s stand before his death, which is a bit more tolerable, but still lacking. Universalism and those who believe in it are still the “odd man out” as I can bear out.
John Calvin, Theodor Beza, Martin Luther and etc. did not come to believe their views “standing around stacking BB’S”. I have read Calvin’s “Institutes” and Luther’s “Bondage of the Will” and the average Arminian and Palagian could not “hold a Candle” to their arguments as Erasmas and others knew all too well. I myself would have been considered a “High Calvinist” (supralasarian view and etc.), yet God was able to crack a hard shell nut like me.
As I have written elsewhere at this forum, I still believe God is totally sovereign in our coming to faith in Jesus. The difference now, is that I am able to look at all those Universalist type verses and not have a fatalistic view on those who will not come to faith in the age they were birth in from their mother’s womb. I am able to see an unfinished work that God will someday in a future age bring to a spiritual birth in His Son. My whole world view changed when the blinders were lifted and I good see that The Fathers love was greater than I could have ever imagined. I no longer spend hours worrying about the problem of evil and a loving God, because when it is all said and done, love really does win, even to those hundreds of thousands of Filipino’s who died from a typhoon recently. Whom I am sure many did not know Jesus, but are nonetheless in the Father’s loving arms.
Christ alone, George
Hi and welcome to the forum! I used to be a Calvinist myself - all the way down to thinking the fall was ordained and Satan was created evil. But I eventually saw that if there is absolute sovereignty and no such thing as free will, God is the author of evil. Where does it come from if he determines every will, if not himself? This either eliminates the notion of evil altogether and everything becomes “good” (for if an evil is necessary to produce a greater good, it would be evil to not do said evil, rather than do it), or it makes God somehow metaphysically dependent on evil (why does he have to have a universe with evil in it? why is it more pleasing to himself to have a creation blemished rather than one perfectly clean?) Also, if there is no such thing as free will, how is this any different than a functional pantheism? Is not the whole notion of personhood destroyed if absolutely everything is an extension of God’s will and power? So Calvinism in the end actually makes God evil in his nature to some degree - by him either desiring it or being dependent on creating it - and it destroys the notion of self. The first notion is blasphemous to me and the second contradicts the strongest and most constant immediate experience of my existence (there is nothing more obvious to me than that I exist. I do think Descartes proved that.)
That, to me, is the end of all the arguments against total divine determination. I have never seen them answered and I do not believe they can be answered. Would love to hear your thoughts on the matter though.
Thank you for your greeting. Calvinists tend to place logic over mystery, i.e. God is omniscient so of course He knew Adam and Eve would fail in the Garden and etc. I am still on the hyper-Calvinist (high) understanding ; believing that the Fall was predetermine and that Satan was probably created evil. I believe that Satan is but a tool that He the Lord uses as an instrument (Isaiah 54:16). In the Garden where everything was proclaimed to be good (Gen. 1:31), we have the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Evil in this verse is the Hebrew word “RAH” which means bad, evil, unpleasant, giving pain, unhappiness and misery. Then we have Isaiah 45:7 using the same word and the Lord through Isaiah’s pen is saying unequivocally He created evil (RAH).
God the Father in my estimation can create evil and the conduits of evil, Satan and man (Proverbs 16:4) and still not be evil in His essence. Also, being God He can set up the whole scenario of the drama of mankind through the ages with evil as a contrast and a tool for understanding mercy , love and holiness if He so chooses, which He does.
In regards to freewill, even the behaviorists say that our freewill really is not free. We are a product of our environment (teachers, where we were born, our parents faith or lack of faith in religion and etc.) and our biologically parents (genetics). Imagine being born an Afghanistan female at about 17 years old (illiterate) into a Muslim family and you just got traded by your father to an older Muslim man for six goats. What are your chances of through your freewill of becoming educated, and a Christian? Well I believe that Scripture also attests that whatever spiritual freewill we may think we have prior to regeneration of the heart, is enslaved to sin and prefers darkness (1 Cor. 2:14). When we are in the next life, I am convinced we will give all the glory to God for our righteous decisions and good deeds we made in this life. See 1 Cor. 4:7 and James 1:17.
Grace, George
I suppose that if i were to write a story that contained a villain that caused my protagonists misery that eventually caused them to become stronger and better and more mature people, that doesn’t make ME evil.
I still admit to struggling with that in the real world, though…fictionally that work BECAUSE it’s fiction, and i’d only think of doing that because it reflects the tiny bit we know about the real world.
If anyone has read/watched Ender’s Game, they may see a reason why i struggle with this (i won’t say what it is, unless people don’t mind spoilers).
“I suppose that if i were to write a story that contained a villain that caused my protagonists misery that eventually caused them to become stronger and better and more mature people, that doesn’t make ME evil.”
What you wrote is how I see the paradigm in respect to God the Father’s plan. The hero-propitiation Jesus the Son of God steps into history, and becomes the solution to all of mankind’s woes.
Peace, George
SPOILER ALERT!!!
basically, Ender is a boy chosen because of children’s instinctive expertise with video games, making them the best hope for humanity as they are put in charge of intersteller battle ships that are to be used to save humanity from a species of alien that attacked many years ago.
Here’s the spoiler.
There is a general, played by Harrison Ford, who is unscrupulous in his desire to save humanity from this threat.
the very end of Ender’s training (and that of his team) involves a simulated attack on the alien fleet. Ender, knowing it to be a simulation, is brutal. He sacrifices transport ships full of simulated troops in order to get their doomsday weapon in range for a decisive strike that should destroy the whole enemy species.
his only moment of doubt is when they first face the alien fleet, and they don’t instantly attack.
Naturally, you may see this coming, but it turns out the final simulation was NOT a simulation. It was totally real. Ender has sacrificed thousands of human ground troops and committed genocide against an entire species. When he realises this is, he is devastated. But none of it is truly his fault. He’s been told it’s just a simulation and acted accordingly.
There is a twist afterward where he finds a surviving ancient alien, who grants him forgiveness and gives him an egg which contains a queen (they are basically giant insects) which he knows he has to take somewhere safe to give that species hope.
It turns out that their first visit to humanity on earth was not an attack, but because they didn’t communicate with words, it was misunderstood, and humanity fought back…with devastating losses on both sides.
[/spoiler]
My problem echoes Ender’s here from the other side, because this is not a story. It is not a simulation. Stories come out of this reality, and help us give it shape and meaning. If this were a simulation, all we’d have to do is get it right, and all would be ok…but we’d each be the only real person in our respective universe. We have real consequences here. A story teller can do what he likes with his characters, or what he likes to the bad guys, but in real life nothing is that simple. people can’t just be sacrificed to add a sad but poignant bit to a story…and a villain is never a simple bad guy…there is always more to it. the better the story, the more it illustrates this, but it is still not real, and the consequences thus also cannot be real.
i can respect your point of view George, that God is no more guilty of creating evil than the writer of a story, but for me i can’t quite believe that’s all there is to it. however, if Universalism is true, it is probably a decent stab at a Theodicy that can give us hope, as this great Story Teller knows how to wrap everything up in a happy way for His characters.
Not sure i’ve conveyed that clearly, but hope it makes sense.
I want to just share my views a little more thoroughly here and respond to some of the things you’ve said - not because I’m trying to convince you you’re wrong but because I think there are some on this forum who could benefit from it and because there are others who share similar views of my own. This will help you get a better understanding of some universalist theodicies.
About free will. To me this is an essential part of what it means to be a human and, from a Christian point of view, like God. I think without freedom people lose their humanity and personality. In a way, they lose their “selves” or their own unique causation - their own “this is me” in the world; you could even say their own “soul” if you like. Here’s a thought experiment I’ve found helpful. If you could put a computer chip in your wife’s brain that made her love you perfectly, would you do it? Or if you could put one in your kid’s and he would never make a mistake in school or never disobey you - if indeed the possibility of him doing anything that was disagreeable to you was entirely removed from them - would you do this? If you wouldn’t, why is that?
Free will is a vague term, however. Let me quickly address some points of frequent confusion.
It does not mean an uncaused cause, nor does it equate to this in the end. There is no preceding cause of a free willed act like there is in a set of dominos or in a material set of causes. It is an originating event. To try to ask “what caused the free choice” is simply to beg the question and assume that free will does not exist and that every cause is preceded by a prior cause. But that’s what’s being denied in the first place. It’s no discredit to the argument that it says that nothing prior to the free willed choice caused it. It is an assertion - a belief - just like the materialist determination view (which has damning practical consequences I believe.)
There are, of course, influences on our will. But influence - e.g. in the form of desire, grace, physical/psychological phenomenon, and various things you mentioned - may be present to the nth degree without actually determining anything. Gravity is always influencing us. Would anyone say it determines our acts though? Our freedom is present in varying degrees, depending on the force and amount of influences on us.
Another point, just because we have free will doesn’t mean we’re always exercising it or even that we’re always able to. There must be an opportunity, and that can be absent in some circumstances. It can be taken away if a man’s house catches on fire. There is precious little freedom in his decision to jump out the window. It can also be removed from the alcoholic in the middle of his 9th drink. I don’t believe at that point the man has control of his addiction. I think rather it’s the other way around. But what is of significance here is that our free choices are what oftentimes remove freedom from us. The junkie can’t put down the pipe after he’s been smoking for a half hour. But the next morning when he sobers up, can’t he throw the thing away or check himself into a facility?
I think there is a certain “room” at which God must be from us to allow us to exercise the sort of freedom he finds valuable. I don’t think this freedom is to last forever, though. I think it’s meant to serve as a means by which we become like God - more specifically like Jesus - by “becoming” his sons and daughters. In other words, I think there is a time in which we are fully “built” and freedom gives way to perfection. But I do not think God could have made us like that because in the very idea of perfection there is the notion that it is an “I” or a “person” who has become like Jesus.
This brings me to my second point.
The cause of evil. If God plans all evil and determines it, then it seems to me he is committing evil. Now I know the rebuttal is that he does this for a greater good (I used to hold this), which is the “contrast” it brings about. But we’re forgetting that the Christian God is supposed to be omnipotent. Why does he need evil in his creation to bring more good? Why is it part of his value system - why must it be there? If I told you I had to have one rotten egg in my carton, wouldn’t you look at me like I was nuts? Or put it like this. Imagine God painting a picture and saying to himself, this picture would look much better if there was a horrible spot here and there.
The heart of the matter really goes to question of God’s nature. Is he split down the middle regarding what is evil and what is not? If certain things really ARE evil, then he cannot approve of them. And yet if he created them on purpose, then he is creating what he doesn’t approve of. But if he created them and approved of them in the first place then they’re really good. If God is infinitely perfect and simple and doesn’t have some sort of schizophrenic complex, and if he determined absolutely everything, wouldn’t that mean that nothing that happened was outside or contrary to his will? But then that would mean there is no such thing as evil!
But some say God’s hand is forced to do certain evil things in order to bring about greater goods - he wishes it was otherwise but not even HE can make it such. But just what is this higher value system that God is here appealing to and where does it come from? Doesn’t saying that sort of create another God? So again, I think in the end this amounts to either saying there is no such thing as evil or that God is its author.
I don’t believe God can foreknow contingent acts - e.g. free willed acts - absolutely. I don’t think this detracts from his knowledge because there is nothing to know (except their possibility, which God knows perfectly), nor from his omnipotence because I don’t think God can do the self contradictory (determine a free act or know a thing causally before it happens).
I do, however, believe that God can predict prophecies based on already made free decisions of men and angels. I also think God has determined some things absolutely and others he has left open. (He determined to perfect the universe before he created it, for instance.) I think Jesus was able to predict Peter would deny him because he knew Peter’s heart at the time, and since it is God that must act to bring light to a man’s conscience (or regenerate him, as you say), God had determined not to do so until Peter did deny him. This was not a decision made in a vacuum without regarding Peter’s free choices nor was it made at the time of God’s “decrees”. It was based, I believe, on the fact that Peter already had poorly exercised his freedom (as I believe all hardening is) and as such was used to remediate Peter through guilt and shame, not to determine him to evil.
There are innumerable ways in which man’s freedom affects his own psyche and God’s relation to himself. Sometimes I do think God causes an influx of overwhelming grace where he, as Talbott says, shatters our illusions, or as the Calvinists would say, where he regenerates us and pricks our hearts irresistibly. But I think these moves on God’s part are only small means to a larger end. CS Lewis says somewhere in Screwtape that all Christians start off with the sweet smell of the Gospel. But that scent fades quickly. The scent itself was not the end. It was only there so that when the hard work came there was something to go on.
I don’t see how mercy, forgiveness, or justice can have any meaning in a world that God has totally determined. It would be like me holding my child’s hand and making him color outside the lines. When I let go and he held the picture up to me and I punished him, would I be just? Ah, but I punished him so that he could see the contrast in what it means to be saved from my wrath. I was unjust with him before, and I saved him from my own unjust self. But I’m the same person doing all this to him. Wouldn’t he rather me just not do any of it? Could he even trust or love me? Who’s to say I won’t turn around and smite him later? Further, does it even make sense to say I forgave my son for an act that I caused myself?
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. A lot to chew on I know, but I just wanted to put them out there for you (and whoever else) to see.
I’m going to look at some, since you’ve asked. I’ve only read non-universalist books, but the debates are undoubtedly a good idea. 
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