A few days ago I attended a 5h conference put on by the network that my Christian Reformed Church is apart of. I went along with about two dozen others to an elective titled Responding to the New Universalism. The 70 minute elective was run by a local Presbyterian Minister (I’ll call him Fred as I don’t know if he’d like me to use his name) and turned out to be largely a critique of Evangelical Universalism, as defined by Robin Parry (aka Gregory MacDonald) in his book The Evangelical Universalist.
In this OP I’ll just try to fairly present most of the discussion (unfortunately it wasn’t videoed so you’ll just have to take my word that the tone was fairly gentle/gracious, although still serious - hopefully both come across in my summary). In further posts I will attempt to respond to his concerns. Feel free to also comment and explain how you’d respond.
In Fred’s favour, he had dialogued with Evangelical Universalists (including myself), had read the book and quoted from it a number of times in order to try to portray it fairly. Furthermore he helpfully explained that there are many forms of universalism, some so obviously abhorrent that there’s no need to respond to them.
His first and longest quote was
, Parry"]Anastasia is an evangelical Christian. She believes in the inspiration and authority of the Bible. She believes in all those crucial Christian doctrines such as Trinity, creation, sin, atonement, the return of Christ, salvation through Christ alone, by grace alone, through faith alone. In fact, on most things you’d be hard pressed to tell her apart from any other evangelical. Contrary to what we may suspect, she even believes in the eschatological wrath of God—in hell. She differs most obviously in two unusual beliefs. First, she believes that one’s eternal destiny is not fixed at death and, consequently, that those in hell can repent and throw themselves upon the mercy of God in Christ and thus be saved. Second, she also believes that in the end everyone will do this.Fred then quoted from chapter 6, paragraph 6 of the Westminster Confession of Faith,
He asks us to compare this to
, Parry"]I argue that it is legitimate to understand the biblical teaching about hell as compatible with an awful but temporary fate from which all can, and ultimately will, be saved.
I appreciated that, at this point, Fred said it’s great that Robin is trying to be biblical and attempting to construct a biblical theological picture of the judgement of God - trying to deal with the Bible in the way most Evangelicals do.
Fred said it’s pretty clear confessionally we have a problem because of WCF’s use of “eternal” - that’s not to say Anastasia isn’t a Christian, but it is to say we must proceed with caution.
Fred doesn’t think Anastasia is disingenuous but kind of naive, in that she hasn’t thought through all the implications of what she believes and that there’s actual serious damage done to her doctrinal framework - distorting things he thinks really matter.
As an aside Fred suggested “Evangelical” in the title of the book fits with the broader US/UK definition of “Evangelical” but not the Australian definition, which is a lot narrower, due largely to the Sydney Anglicans.
Fred then began the core of his presentation, “Seven modifications [by EU] to Reformation doctrines, and why those matter”.
1. God is more glorified the more people are saved, and God is less than fully glorious if a person remains under His judgement. God would save everyone if He could, and He can, so He does.
, Parry"]In light of the biblical emphasis on the supreme value of love, it seems plausible to think that a being that loves all is greater than a being who loves some but not others.
Fred thinks we need a more nuanced picture of love and recommends Don Carson’s book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. Secondly we need God, God doesn’t need us - the aseity of God - He’s not made more glorious by our being in existence and He’s unmodified by anything we do. Thirdly Paul doesn’t have a problem with some being made for destruction.
2. When people are in hell they will eventually turn to God, with His help, because God knows what it would take to turn each person to Christ, so He can set the conditions in hell to see that everyone does turn to Him freely. i.e. Hellfire opens the eyes.
Fred thinks Parry implies the core of humanity’s problems is a lack of education, rather than the need for regeneration.
, Parry"]The only way for God to keep the damned continually choosing to resist him forever is by shielding them from the real consequences of their actions, thus denying them the possibility of making a fully informed decision.
, Parry"]I understand hell to be a post-mortem situation in which God brings home to us the terrible consequences of sin, and this makes sense for someone who has lived a sinful life and needs such an education.He said he thinks Parry misses the Reformation discussion of the bondage of the will.
It changes God’s involvement in our lives and perseverance of the saints. Personal autonomy takes away from God’s sovereignty and makes God the educator not regenerator.
3. God’s judgement is always educative or restorative for the person being punished, it’s never purely retributive, for such could not be an act of love. i.e. Love abhors pure retribution.
, Parry"]If we think of hell as the state in which God allows the painful reality of sin to hit home, then we can understand both the terrible imagery used in Scripture to portray such a fate and the urgent warning to avoid the wide road that leads in that direction. … [In hell] the natural consequences of sin take their course, and it becomes harder and harder to fool oneself into believing the seductive lies of sin anymore. In this way hell is educative and points us towards our need for divine mercy.
Fred says this goes against Penal Substitutionary Atonement (“the Son taking the wrath of the Father that we deserved” “the penalty due on our sin”) because how is that not pure retribution i.e. Christ has no need for education or restoration. The Cross wouldn’t make sense anymore and that’s a big deal, this view does profound damage.
4. The traditional doctrine of hell is not only unloving but it’s also unjust, for temporal sin cannot be deserving of eternal punishment.
, Parry"]What possible crime is a finite human capable of committing that would be justly punished in this way?
Fred pretty much just restates Anslem’s approach (God’s infinitely big so any offense against Him is infinitely big), although mentions Parry tries to rebut this.
Fred makes an interesting statement, “We are so close to our friends and family, is it possible that the reason that we can’t see it as just, initially, is because we’re too close?” He goes on to explain that one way to respond to this is to ask ourselves if we deserve ECT - and he thinks that sometimes we can see that we definitely do. i.e. the reason we don’t see that others deserve ECT is that we don’t know the depths of their sin as much as we know the depths of our own. We can’t answer the question for our loved ones as we’re so invested in them. We don’t want to be harsh and condemn them to hell.
He thinks Robin’s argument is using an animistic view of sins plural, rather than an entire disposition of sin, as rebellion against God - everyone has become worthless.
5. God’s covenant with His chosen people may be extrapolated to the rest of humanity on the basis of God’s explicit commitment to the entire world in creation.
I didn’t understand his issue with this, as he just made a statement about wanting to continue to use the word universal without being seen as implying universalism.
6. The judgement of Christ’s Judgement Day is not finally decisive for one’s eternal destiny. This life doesn’t afford everyone the necessary conditions for faith in Christ to arise.
, Parry"]What possible reason would God have for drawing a line at death and saying, “Beyond this point I will show no mercy to those who repent and turn to Christ”?
Fred does not see that in the New Testament - by very definition Judgement Day is nothing if not decisive.
7. On a traditional doctrine of hell after Christ’s return the Universe will be divided permanently into a symmetrical dualism of Heaven and Hell - so has God really won a victory, how is that united under Christ.
Fred doesn’t think that’s how the Bible presents it, the way the Bible talks about the future is that you have one New Creation, the real real is Heaven come to Earth. He says he’s not saying Hell doesn’t exist, but it’s just not a parallel to Heaven, not a mirror image.
So Fred asks, can someone be a Christian and one of these new universalists? Audience thought that yes, you could be but:
]it raises a whole lot of issues, it would make it harder to be a Christian because it affects every part of Christianity, because hell is essential to Christianity, it’s a central as heaven, you need it for Christianity to work./]
]you won’t have a good understanding of God, you miss the glory of God, you don’t have a good understanding of sin, the true nature of sin, sin becomes merely breaking of the law as opposed to a disposition & therefore you’ll attempt evangelism as a re-education process - which is the way the world tries to fix things & it doesn’t work./]
]it would probably result in you falling away - it will cause people to say Christianity too hard so don’t bother and just wait for God to sort everything out./]
]it totally changes how you read your Bible - how confronting would it be every time you read all the passages on eternal judgement/]
Fred addresses further concerns:
a) Parry leans towards us freely choosing rather than God electing - God’s much more hands off than in Calvinism. But he’s not quite an Arminian, as he thinks it’s a dynamic election along the way.
b) Parry wants to see the whole Bible hold together in unity, and that’s a good thing. However, Parry makes an interesting move, “If I can come to a text and find a possible non-universalist understanding of it or a universalist understanding of it; I’ll go with the universalist understanding of it (because of lavish love of God draws us in that direction)”. Fred thinks that’s unwise because firstly universalism doesn’t deserve that kind of interpretive power - only things like the Trinity deserve that. Secondly the context usually makes things so obvious that it almost never requires a coin toss. If that’s the framework Parry’s using, of course he’d find universalism all along the way, for example throughout Isaiah.
c) Parry’s answer to “Why isn’t there universalism in the OT?” is that the OT didn’t have enough of a post death discussion but it anticipates universalism with it’s concern for all humanity.
Fred thinks the OT does show there’s good death & death under God’s judgement e.g. “then such & such king slept with his fathers” vs “he went down to Sheol”.
d) Parry says Jesus held back from teaching plainly on universalism for rhetorical effect e.g. if people thought they could get out of it later on, that’s not a particularly strong message.
Fred wants to push back on this with, “Does Jesus avoid rocking the theological boat in other areas to make me think He would hold back from preaching a difficult truth? No, Jesus is happy to be bold.”
e)
, Parry"]offering ways of reading the texts that go beyond what their authors had in mind.He doesn’t think Parry means conservative theological synthesis, but something more creative, building upon the trajectory of where Scripture is going and taking it further than what the authors were actually teaching. Fred’s uncomfortable with that.
f) Parry talks plenty about Calvinists but never quotes Calvin! He should’ve engaged directly with the giant. On the other hand the theologians Parry does line up are generally people Fred wouldn’t unreservedly latch onto, he’s uncomfortable with where their centre of theology is.
Fred’s conclusion:
What’s to be gained from this new universalism? It’s going to bring pastoral clarity to how we preach hell. Because they put the objections so well, if we cannot respond to them in our teaching and preaching about the devastating judgement of God then we’re not meeting our congregations & the concerns they’ve got. Don’t avoid the difficult topics. Teach on hell & teach on it well, and have EUs help us bring pastoral clarity on the objections that will, and in a sense should, come for our cultural setting.
Fred’s hunch is that EU isn’t the next big thing, although it will no doubt have traction for a little while to come. It will have some popular attraction because the objections are well put, but it doesn’t have the kind of clout to to be the next big thing.
Fred says we care about the Gospel and faith in the Gospel, we care if someone is evangelical in the narrower Australian sense. Do they believe the Gospel or not? EU is a belief which undermines the Gospel.
Fred says that if they were in his church he wouldn’t care if they were a universalist but would care if they were a Christian.
He says we care about maintaining gospel unity in the context of gospel ministry so how closely can we associate and work with someone who has this view? Can I let them run a small group in my church? Am I going to let them teach Sunday School? What ministries can they do? He says that’s not an easy discussion to have.
Fred says let’s not be put off our game, the love of God, His universal concern for the world, the justice of hell - these things we have to teach.
His advice for when people are rattled in our congregations by EU, is to sure up their faith in the Gospel, rather than having a “turf war over there”. When the rattled person comes to you, ask them how does passage relate to Jesus, his death and resurrection. What does that Bible passage actually say in context?
He finished with a prayer that God would save our loved ones, indeed many, many, many people.
i.e. both relate a lot to Jesus and the Gospel, both are systems trying to better understand/represent Jesus and the Gospel. [tag]Luke[/tag] what do you think he meant by the question?
It seems like this is what bothers him the most. It shakes up too much of what he has traditionally understood. Who can blame him? It really, really does. For me, it felt like the rug was being pulled out from underneath me.
I used to have a lot to do with Fred, he was one of my best friends for about 20 years, sadly not so much since I became an EU 
I certainly hope that EU takes off in Tasmania and Australia, as I think it would remove some obstacles to Christianity, be more God honoring (not saying you have to be an EU to be God honoring - it’s just I think EU is closer to the truth & therefore more honoring), and fill Christians with more joy.