The Evangelical Universalist Forum

God's responsibility in our soteriological confusion

Evangelical Universalism Arguments against Evangelical Universalism
#1

Hi everybody. I would consider myself a universalist, but perhaps not a assured one, so I hope you can help me (help myself) in reinstilling my utmost confidence in the idea. :smiley:

A problem I face, which is similar if not identical to the problem that turns many people from revealed religion to deism, is God’s responsibility in our religious confusion. Naturally, I am assuming that God is maximally good. Also, I am assuming that most that subscribe to universalism have a relatively classical conception of God in which God is omnipotent. Assuming these, it is hard for me to reconcile the diversity in soteriological views (e.g. Calvinism, Arm., Molinism, universalism, annihilationism), for they, for the most part, all issue from well-meaning, intelligent, sensitive Christians with a decent, if not excellent, knowledge of the Word. I see much debate centering around swaying (or lovingly persuading) one person of Theological View A to another of Theological View B, but little about the role of God in this.

There are various answers to this question. Some puzzle me, such as: God’s hiddenness preserves human freedom. In this case, the hiddenness would be the ambiguity of the Word. This doesn’t satisfy me, esp. the closer I get to universalism, for what motive would God have in wanting God’s message to be obscure? Naturally, the Bible is the product, albeit an inspired product, of human hearts and minds, which are susceptible to error and pained to make themselves clear in the written medium. Yet, God knows that most of us, unless we are tending to Quakerism, depend on the Bible for our information. You would think that something as important as the ultimate redemption of humanity could be made less equivocal, even if God had to metaphysically cheat, so to speak, our freedom (of course, for deterministic universalists, God’s allowance of Biblical ambiguity becomes more mystifying).

Of course, a proponent of universalism can retort that this current confusion doesn’t ultimately matter since all will be redeemed; yet, I know
many universalists, and I assume some universalists here, are far from “No-Hellers” in the sense that God still has wrath for sin and that the afterlife could still be eons of purgatorial or refining agony for many. Then why would God subject so many to this long purification when much of it, I feel, is due to the ambiguity of the Word? And perhaps God is not wanting to punish non-universalists (or universalists depending on where you think chips fall), but if the afterlife has anything like C.S. Lewis’ self-punishment depicted in The Great Divorce, then the Bible as being a potential blueprint for avoiding self-punishment needs to be clear for God to be maximally good and omnipotent.

I’m guessing my chief premise, that the Bible is ambiguous, is most debatable and many here will say that Calvs, Arms, are sensitive and well-meaning, just not good students of the Bible. This might be true. However, there have been extremely intelligent endorsers of all the major views, and excusing Calvin’s theocratic punishments as largely theologically motivated, none of them have obvious moral failings worse than the rest of this or obvious psychological justification for their viewpoints (but maybe I am choosing to be naive :smiley: ). Doesn’t, then, this put the responsibility for the confusion on God’s shoulders and isn’t this confusion more problematic for universalism than the other soteriologies?

Thanks for considering!

#2

Hi Prince Myshkin! Good to have you here (and I love your username. The Idiot is one of my favorite Dostoyevsky novels and the prince is one of my favorite characters of his :smiley: )

Boy, there’s a lot packed into your post, but I’ll try and address some of your points, at least from my point of view. There is certainly a great diversity amongst universalists regarding some of your points and I’ll be interested in seeing what others have to say.

First and perhaps most importantly, “what are the consequences of our soteriological confusion from a universalist standpoint?” I would agree for the most part with you when you say that from the universalist’s viewpoint “….this current confusion doesn’t* ultimately* matter since all will be redeemed…” Universalism ‘covers a multitude of sins’. :smiley: This is, in fact, one of the points that brought me to the universalist perspective. If ECT or anihilationism is true and is dependent on a “right” understanding of scripture, why isn’t the Bible more clear and why aren’t all Christians out witnessing with every free moment to keep people from Hell or annihilation? Reading the work of several universalists (particularly George MAcDonald) I began to see that 'the reconciliation of all" was the only acceptable outcome for creation. If our eternal state is not dependent on understanding the Bible properly, if the stakes aren’t so high then some ambiguity in ‘the Word of God’ can be accepted.

Secondly, I realized that ‘correct theology’ is not what ‘saves’ us from our sins, but faith in Christ (and, yes, there is a tension between faith and works in the Bible including the teachings of Jesus that cannot be ignored, but I won’t go into that) Faith in Christ is not merely intellectual assent to certain theological propositions, but having the faith to obey what he taught and live your life in that manner. I think this faith is really independent of whatever soteriological viewpoint a believer may hold. A Calvinist, an Arminian, a Molinist, a universalist can each have this type of faith.

As far as this goes:

I think most people here would think of the ‘purgatorial or refining agony’ as coming not from God’s wrath, but his love. He wants us to be really and truly rid of our besetting sins. The pain and agony would be more like that a heroin addict goes through in rehabilitation in the throes of withdrawal than the pain a malefactor experiences when whipped for his crime. Personally, I think we all may have to experience some of the “purifying fire” and will be glad of it.

Does bad theology have consequences? Obviously it does… Bad theology was implicit in the crusades, the inquisition, witch trials, the Fred Phelps of the world, Christians more concerned about dancing and R-rated movies than loving their neighbor. Yes, theology matters! Is this at least partially the result of ambiguity in the Bible? Yes, I think so and, yes, why that ambiguity exists is a legitimate question— but not as difficult as explaining why wrong belief might result in eternal hell or annihilation.

Those are my thoughts…

P.S. We’d love to hear more about you where you’re coming from in the “Introductions” section of the forum. Tell us a bit about yourself there!

All the best,

Steve

#3

To what Steve said, I would add (perhaps in a slightly different vein) that I don’t see eschatological punishment for sin being due to various unclarities and confusions. As Lewis said (whom I still follow despite having come to his Teacher’s universalism :wink: – but also thus following MacDonald), people are punished not for some alien law they knew nothing about, but according to what they themselves know to be wrong when faced clearly with the wrong and then refusing to give it up. We are not punished for any sin that is past, but for the sin we currently will not come out of. (Lewis and MacDonald were following other Christian teachers in interpreting St. Paul this way from Romans 2 especially.)

That really doesn’t have anything to do with soteriological confusion, or any other doctrinal confusion; largely because it has nothing to do with the idea of being saved by doctrinal assent (which is the root heresy of gnosticism). Consequently, the confusion doesn’t risk post-mortem punishments.

What the various confusions do accomplish from the divine perspective, as I agree with Lewis in his Screwtape Letters, is providing a potential hot-bed of charity between the disagree-ers! (Though infernal enemies would have their own reasons to propagate it of course.) The world routinely stands astonished whenever opponents, despite their opposition, show honor and charity to their opponents; it often leads one or both opponents, as well as spectators, closer to God in various ways.

It is on this theory, incidentally, that I base my expectation that competitive sports won’t cease in the age (and ages) to come. :slight_smile: (Including sports derived from what would otherwise be war, minus the suffering of innocents caught in the crossfire.) I might be wrong about that, and I expect they may look quite different from what is available now, but I won’t be surprised if I’m right.

#4

As long as proponents of differing soteriologies keep a perspective and show Christian humility, there should not be problems just because there are those differences.
We just finished a short study of Colossians - and we listed the things Paul said about Christ and the Father. Absolutely mind-blowing. The vision is so large and so rich in meaning that I would be surprised if there weren’t different ways of seeing the same thing, because no one way could possibly capture the whole truth.
The problems arise when we see an aspect of the truth and don’t have the humility to sweeten our opinions.

Salvation by works? Romans 2:6,7 6 He will repay each one according to his works:[c] 7 eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor, and immortality;

Salvation by faith? - We all know those scriptures

Salvation by character? - an odd take but a fruitful one from Wm Ellery Channing, that includes both the above approaches as well, just seen a little differently.

Salvation by all these things? George MacDonald, I think, has elements of all these in his theodicy and theology.

That all works together.

$.02

#5

This is really fascinating, Jason! I’d love to read a full exposition of this at some point. (Maybe a future post?) I love speculation about the afterlife/eternity. Might be able to see Peyton Manning play in ‘the ages to come’? :smiley:

Ignore me, everyone. Sorry for going off topic… :wink:

#6

I hope so! – he played for UTK after all while I was there (though we barely overlapped). We had several record-breaking quarterbacks during my college years; one of them went on to graduate school at Knoxville and was in my brother’s business fraternity, so Bro got to play flag football on a team quarterbacked by (at the time) the best qb in UT’s history. Hardly anyone remembers him or the other qbs now thanks to Peyton, though… (even I forgot his name. :laughing: )

#7

Thanks for your ideas! I like Jason P’s NFL (or flag football if we’re to be cultivating charity) conception of the afterlife. It would address Mark Twain’s objection to Heaven as boring. :smiley:

DaveB: Along the lines of your thoughts, have you heard or read that Luther supposedly held both universalism and, not “Calvinism” (for Calvin hadn’t invented it yet :smiley: ), but a view close to Calvin’s. Of course, maybe he forgotten everything he had written or preached, but, if he did simultaneously hold both of these views, what would it mean, if not contradiction? Can the whole truth appear to us as contradiction? For instance, most universalists find God’s omnibenevolence and eternal Hell to be hopelessly contradictory, but Luther might not have.

Any more clues as to God’s rationale for universalism obscurity? Jason P’s idea is not bad, except that the losing side(s) endure terrible pain. Perhaps universalist heaven is not free from pain, b/c of sympathy for the struggling. Yet, why is there such a disparity in the amt of time it takes for some to reach universalism? Can God be all-loving and allow this disparity? Is this the same objection as “if universalism is T, then why does God allow any suffering or confusion?”?

By way of an introduction (one new post a wk, right?), you can gather that I have found and still find atheism tempting (definitely deism) tempting, but really, really want universalism to be true!

#8

The search for ‘proof’ has ‘proven’ to be largely unsuccessful. Philosophers have come to a ‘draw’ - unable to prove or disprove the existence of God. This should maybe give us pause when we are looking for demonstrable proof, one way or the other - if there was such, chances are it would have been found

The discussion these days centers around whether we are JUSTIFIED in our claims that God does/does not exist. Aside from demonstrable proof, whether empirical or logical, can amass our reasons for believing and show that we are, at least, justified in our belief - that it is coherent, saves the appearances, makes for human dignity, provides grounds for scientific inquiry and has logical cohesivensss, and has explanatory power for the phenomena we observe and experience. (Some of those overlap).

If you took a look at the little study we did on Colossians in the thread “darkness to light” you will see the mind-blowing claims the apostle Paul made about the entire universe. I think those claims meet the criteria of justification above. There’s much more to it, of course.

George MacDonald’s father told him once that ‘all a man can do is choose to believe’ and I think that is true. Our job is not to fail at being Luther, but to succeed at being ‘us’, if you see what I mean, and making our choices as best we can, with God’s help. I think it’s best, in other words, to understand the NT especially, the big picture, before we make a life decision based on perceived difficulties in translation, etc.

God bless you in your searching!

#9

I don’t know if I am searching for “proof” per se - more like plausibility, which I guess is related to justification. I think universalism has great explanatory power and cohesiveness, for it avoids what I find find to be the biggest contradiction; namely, why does an all-loving God permit (or cause) any of God’s creatures eternal suffering? Yet, there are other logical difficulties with universalism which make it difficult for me to respond to them with fideism. This problem of religious confusion bugs me for appears inconsistent assuming universalism. If God is so good as to ensure the redemption and eternal bliss of all creation (at least sentient, and then why not everything :smiley: ), then why dilly-dally them with a confusing Bible? I suppose Christ has shouted forgiveness from the rooftops, but then the message is inevitably obscured. God needs modern prophets like Moses (maybe some here fit that bill :smiley: ) & Christ needs to come again - not for Parousia yet, but to give the message all over again to our generation b/c we’ve bungled it up. If I were God :smiley: , and wanted to be in loving relationship, I would be unmistakably clear about that. Some of the New Atheists claim they would believe if they had great empirical evidence, such as the stars configured to read “God exists”, and obviously this is unreasonable to ask on behalf of God since it would be sort of coercing belief. Yet, I think that clarity and love must coincide, and that the more you love somebody (esp. when you’re a perfect being loving imperfect sons and daughters), the less you want to be ambiguous about that. This to me gives strength to the religious confusion objection.

Think of human families, don’t we call a family dysfunctional when love is suppressed or repressed? How is it any different for the divine family, unless we’re going to give God different rules (and then I think we’d be espousing Calvinism - e.g. we are worms, God is God, so we cannot penetrate God’s reasoning).

Simply stated, I feel like Thomas Paine, who wants very badly to be an evangelical universalist, but feels that deism is more honest. Has this been a phase for any here? I can bring myself to believe in universalism (after all, it is the most reassuring soteriology to believe :smiley: ); yet, I would love to be able to justify it as well, especially as I have Cal,Arm agnostic fam/friends who I would love to witness to if I felt more secure in my faith - my rationally held faith :smiley:

#10

Um… what? Where did my idea even slightly entail that whoever loses between universalists and non-universalists per se must endure terrible pain?!

Granted, I do think many of the warnings of coming eschatological punishment (especially in the Gospels) are aimed at those who expect God to be unmerciful to sinners, but even then I don’t regard the difference as being one of doctrinal error but an attitude of the heart – and the scriptures warn against that attitude clearly enough for anyone who cares enough to hear it.

(And it’s okay to have an Introductory thread, too; that doesn’t count against the one new thread a week rule. :slight_smile: Alex forgot to say so at first, but he quickly added the exception.)

#11

As for a rationally held faith: on my line of approach, Christian universalism is just about the last inferred conclusion, since there are a ton of other positions to decide between first (including deism, or putting it another way mere supernaturalistic theism, and other kinds of supernaturalistic theism.)

A merely deistic God wouldn’t give a hoot about saving sinners, or anyone else, from sin or from anything else; but some people can only see good enough reason to be deists instead of something more, and I certainly never ask anyone to believe more than what they find reasonable to believe. :slight_smile: If the most you can be right now, or ever, is a deist, then walk according to that light and be looking for more light thereby.

Meanwhile, some people have found my vastly huge book on sifting through various metaphysical options helpful (plug, plug :mrgreen: ) – others not. It’s available as a free pdf or doc download in my signature link for Sword to the Heart. I don’t argue anything from scriptural evidence (though I mention some parallels with Judeo-Christian scripture on occasion), so it isn’t the kind of book that requires believing the scriptures first or believing in God first or whatever. (I talk at some length about why I don’t go those routes early on, including because it isn’t at all helpful for a sceptic. And because Christians don’t accept such tactics either when some other religion is being argued for!)

As my teacher Lewis used to say, if it’s helpful, great, otherwise leave it alone. :slight_smile:

#12

Prince - it might be helpful if you would specifically state what ARE the ‘logical problems’ with Universalism. Most of us here are Universalists, and I think between all of us we might be able to untie the logical knot.

I had LOTS of questions, unanswered, before I got married. Questions that could only be answered by GETTING married!! What a pickle. I had to follow my heart - and other parts, admittedly - and make the committment. That was the only way to know. Best choice I ever made. The questions were long ago laid to rest.

I think it was C.S. Lewis that mentioned something about having to make a committment, to be a Christian or a Communist - a person has to walk through that door, and THEN things fall into place. It’s a big step. It involves the whole person, not just the intellect, not just the emotions.

Atheists would not ‘believe’ even IF the stars were re-arranged!! It would be a trick, an hallucination, a dream. Their faith is not based on empirical evidence; it is a belief that is chosen.

#13

Jason P. I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to caricature your viewpoint. I think that non-universalists endure, or will endure, a lot of psychological and spiritual pain, regardless of God’s disposition to them. However, I don’t follow you when you write that a Deistic God isn’t concerned about pain or redemption. I am not an expert on Paine or Deism, but Paine’s Age of Reason, seems to have a more robust and compassionate conception of God than just an indifferent Watchmaker (which some might construe as Deism). I think it is more of an Arm conception, since Paine talks about conscience/reason giving us the knowledge of good and evil and the knowledge of God (so we have to act according to those dictates), but I think salvation and God’s sympathy would still be possible in such a scheme. And I have heard of Christian Deist universalists - or have I?, some here might know if that is an option.

(Logical Problems with Univ. - hopefully related to the subject of the thread):

  1. How can a universally loving and saving God be so if God has made or allows universalism to missed by the majority? (i.e. through ambiguity of the Bible)
  2. Does universalism bear a greater burden of proof, since it has the most pleasant outcome? (This is why the religious confusion prob. bugs me, assuming that univ. bears a greater burden of proof, then problems like these weigh heavy against IMO)
  3. If Deism is plausible, or a step one takes b4 reaching Christian Universalism, then doesn’t Christian Universalism violate Occam’s razor (esp. since the intermediate step - Christianity - is fragmented into mostly disparate theologies and denominations)?
#14

Prince,

You have a pilgrimage many of us can relate to, and much to offer here. You appear to argue that a loving orthodox God contradicts allowing “religious confusion” to exist, or allowing many who don’t recognize universalism. I resonate with you emotionally. Despite whatever God may exist, it’s obvious that multiple perceptions abound, and the purpose of allowing us to go through ignorance and travail is puzzling and troubling. Yet I am less sure that it’s logically impossible or that there is a better alternative. Isn’t it possible that freely traversing this very kind of world where such claims are not transparent facilitates a development in our character and identity that has value?

In arguing that Deism may be more plausible, I’d need your definition of it, and why confusion must reign with it.

Bob

#15

Oh, okay, I think I understand now: you didn’t necessarily mean terrible pain in the age to come / resurrection /whatever as a comparative result of holding X belief now (where universalists would be in terrible pain for various reasons as a result of discovering they were wrong, but hopeless punishment advocates would be in terrible pain as a result of discovering they were wrong.)

Re: Deism, there are of course various grades (and hardly any fixed points of doctrinal reference other than the transcendence of God compared to Nature shared by any supernaturalistic theism). Someone could be a supernaturalistic theist who didn’t follow a variety of one of the Three Big Theisms per se, while still holding that God acts in Nature and cares about what’s going on (and so for example also acts as judge).

“Deism” however is generally used among philosophers as a handy term (which after all is only another way of saying “theism”) for designating a historically identifiable category of supernaturalistic theism where the idea is that God creates Nature but then doesn’t have anything more to do with it. This kind of theism categorically rejects miracles as a result, including attempts at trying to help people within the natural system (also thus rejecting ideas like Christ being the incarnation of God Most High somehow), which also leads to rejecting the idea of certain humans having special inspiration (and special authority) from God to teach religious matters. It isn’t that God cannot interfere with Nature (which would be cosmological dualism, although sometimes the proponents have slipped into that eventually), He just has no intentions of doing so, and so He doesn’t. In even mor minimal versions of this “nominal deism” (as I call it for convenience) God has no interest in ever acting to judge human souls, whether to reward or to punish, no moreso in the next life (if there is a next life) than in this life, and indeed no interest in the creation at all after having created it.

I had forgotten that someone could reject all that disassociation and so still believe in a God Who expects created persons to do one thing and not another and so Who acts (at least a little) toward fostering one kind of behavior instead of another, without holding to a particular established religion along the same line, and for want of a better word also call themselves a Deist. Sorry. :slight_smile: In my line of work it’s easier to consider ideas in discreet sets of concepts for critical appraisal, and their ideas are subtly but distinctively and crucially different from the ideas of someone who insists God doesn’t act in Nature in any fashion whatever.

#16

Hmmmmm… Not surprising. Have they come to a draw concerning Zeus too? (on the same grounds).

#17

Hi Prince,
I’ll throw out some ideas regarding your logical problems and see what you think.

I’ll answer first with another question—" How can a universally loving and saving God be so if God has made or allows *his existence to be *missed by the majority?" Not very helpful, perhaps, but my point is just that the ‘hiddenness’ of God himself and not just the hiddenness of meaning in the Bible is a problem and I think the two go hand-in hand in some fashion. I have no ultimate answer but I think ‘epistemic distance’ as presented by John Hick in his exposition of ‘Irenaean theodicy’ is helpful. I think Bob’s comment, “Isn’t it possible that freely traversing this very kind of world where such claims are not transparent facilitates a development in our character and identity that has value?”…echoes John Hick, as well as Thomas Talbott the Christian universalist philosopher who presents a very Irenaean view in his work and specifically addresses Irenaeus in this paper at one point:willamette.edu/~ttalbott/Determinism.pdf

I’m not sure that it follows that universalism (or the universalist God) bears a greater burden. I think I see your reasoning, but correct me if I’m wrong… If God (say the Calvinist God…) is really not all-loving and really couldn’t give a rat’s behind about his created beings or has already predetermined their fate, then it wouldn’t be surprising that the Bible is not completely clear—(No. 1., God doesn’t care. No. 2., it makes no difference what humans believe–their fate is sealed.) On the other hand, a universalist God would not want his creatures to suffer unnecessarily psychologically and would thus be more explicit in his Word regarding his plans for universal reconciliation. But what about the Arminian God? He’d really better be explicit as the eternal destiny of his humans is dependent on their own choices. It’s all up to them and he’d better make sure they’re well informed to make that ultimate choice! So the Arminian God bears the greatest burden of proof, IMO.

I’m not sure. You may be right, and yet, from a practical standpoint, if someone had come to believe in Deism (potentially Theism) as the first step from a logical philosophical standpoint, the next step would be to look at the world around and see if there was any evidence of God acting in our world. Christianity, I think, has better evidence for the truth of God acting in the world than other religions and would be worth examining carefully. The world is messy and humans are messy. It’s not surprising that a religion in the real world has so many sects, but that doesn’t eliminate the possibility that there is real truth in this religion as a whole —and much truth in most of the sects. I think the step from pure philosophy to ‘the real world’ might negate Occam’s razor or at least mitigate against it given the categorical change.

Finally, I do agree with Dave. Logic and reasoning will only take you to the edge of the pool or bring the glass to your lips. At some point you have to ‘dive in’ or ‘taste and see’. :smiley:

Enough for now,

Steve

#18

Paidion - right. Some of them cannot ‘prove’ they are not dreaming. Or that they are not in someone else’s dream. And on it goes…

#19

Are you asking why God a God of X-characteristics would allow His X-set of character and characteristics to be misrepresented by creatures (whether they do so accidentally or on purpose)? Or something more specific?

On my accounting, God gives everyone enough information (in various ways) to know they ought to be at least slightly charitable to their enemies, and this is what He’s basically after (so far as enemies exist for whatever reason). So He judges according to how people walk in regard to what light they have. He doesn’t have an ego or pride, and doesn’t regard the passage of time has having the same importance we do, so He gets around to filling in the details when He gets around to it.

If you mean ‘why does God allow anguish rising from false beliefs’, that’s a somewhat different question than my previous guess as to what you’re asking. I’m inclined to go with the answer of Job – the innocent suffer in this case as in many cases for the sake of the guilty, because God loves the guilty, too, and is trying to get the guilty to learn something from the experience. Not being a tyrant, God suffers with the innocent for the sake of the guilty. (And suffers with the guilty for the sake of the guilty. :slight_smile: ) The Incarnation has a lot to do with this idea eventually.

Occasionally people (including once my own brother) have said to me regarding universal salvation, “If something is too good to be true it probably is.” I don’t think they realize they’re talking about the One Who Is Goodness and the source of all that is good, or they wouldn’t ask how something could even in principle be too good to be true about God! It might be false for other reasons, but not for that reason.

So an objectively good outcome cannot be in principle any kind of evidence against the idea being true, because we’re talking about God. And we’re certainly talking about an objectively good outcome (not an outcome mistakenly believed to be good), because we’re talking about all currently non-good persons eventually choosing, for good reasons, to be good and never again be bad.

Why would this theory, from such characteristics, require a greater burden of proof than a theory that despite the goodness of God there will be final irrevocable permanent evil due to an evil person never at last repenting and becoming good? If anything, the nature of the question in regard to God would seem to me to require more of a burden of proof the other way around, and that’s assuming we even allow that the proposition of final evil isn’t self-contradictory to the notion of ultimate goodness being the ground of all reality. Which frankly I’m not prepared to allow. (For good reasons. :wink: )

I understand the principle of setting up one’s self to ensure that all surprises will only be pleasant ones, so on that principle if things turn out badly after all at least we won’t be disappointed. But that decision, though it may be rationally entered upon, is based on comforting one’s own emotions pre-emptively. It isn’t primarily about searching for and discovering the truth. (Although granted there could be similar ultimately emotional reasons, for want of a better word, to bet in favor of universalism. But such emotional reasons are a potential block to the truth either way.)

Having said all that, I’ll add that regardless of the topic I consider all propositions about truth to equally carry burden of proof; which (somewhat paradoxically) means I regard all propositions to carry a greater burden of proof for the persons who hold them in opposition to mutually exclusive options held by other persons. In other words, I recognize a greater burden of proof upon myself for my beliefs whatever they are than for other people regardless of their beliefs whatever they are. That’s the only way I know how to proceed as a responsible thinker in charity to other people.

So yes, as a practical matter i hold myself to a greater burden of proof in favor of Christian universalism (or any other belief) than I hold other people to for their beliefs (whether Christian or non-Christian, universalistic or non-universalistic, or whatever). That was also true before I became a universalist, although I think I can accurately say that for whatever reason I’ve become even moreso since becoming a Christian universalist. At any rate I’m not much interested in foisting the burden of proof for my beliefs off my shoulders onto anyone else. This sometimes leads to some (understandable) confusion when my standard for changing my beliefs about something I regard as important is greater than what an opponent proposing an idea would regard as feasible for themselves to hold their beliefs: they’re running into the burden of proof I hold for my beliefs and may mistakenly think I hold them to the same standard for believing whatever they believe. I don’t; but neither am I going to settle for their standards of belief if they happen to be less than mine.

(Obviously this precept varies depending on the importance I regard a belief, and also on my perception of relative expertise. I know very little about how televisions work, and most of what little I know I learned back in college in regard to cathode ray tubes, so no one has to try very hard to convince me of various beliefs about how televisions work if they seem experienced enough to have any idea at all – and if their logic seems valid to me. Everyone has the right, and I’d say the personal responsibility, to check so far as they can tell how well the logic of an idea holds up. I may not be able to verify the claims about the data, but I can check how well what they’re saying adds up.)

The Razor is an editorial tool for paring off unnecessary details of a hypothesis. It isn’t a tool for simply discarding complex theories in favor of simpler ones: sometimes the simpler theories are false. The proper question is whether there are good reasons for the details, and whether the details are relevant to the theory. The truth or falsehood of the details themselves is somewhat incidental to the application of the Razor: there may be good reasons for detail X to be true but it may not matter to the theory. (Thus Laplace in his famous reply to Napoleon Bonaparte, for example, wasn’t denying the existence of God, which as a devout Roman Catholic Laplace firmly believed, but only that God’s action was necessary for his theory as such.)

As a practical topical example, I came to Christian universalism directly as a result of a deduction from coherent orthodox trinitarian theory (be that deduction right, or wrong due to invalidity and/or data problems), and I regard ortho-trin (as a doctrinal set) to be very important to any soteriological theory held by people who believe ortho-trin to be true. Not only should trinitarians be careful to avoid contradicting trinitarian theism by explicit or implied positions of their soteriology, but the true soteriology should follow from the principles of the theism. (Obviously I don’t hold non-trinitarians to that standard.)

However, I very quickly discovered (starting with myself as a non-universalist) that practically no theologian of my experience regarded ortho-trin as being a necessary component of either a theory of salvation or even a moral theory! (Supernaturalistic theism, yes, for moral theories at least, but not ortho-trin.) I still find that true today, on an extremely regular basis. Those theologians in effect regard the particular doctrines of ortho-trin (and in practice often even more basic supernaturalistic theism!) to be unimportant to soteriology, and so we end up conflicting over their attempts to Razor off details of the hypothesis that I regard as important to the overall theory. But that doesn’t mean they think ortho-trin is false (despite inadvertently denying various precepts of it in order to keep a non-universalistic position. :wink: )

Anyway. Christian universalism only violates Occam’s Razor compared to a basic supernaturalistic theism (for example) if the extra details between deism and CU via ortho-trin are unnecessary. But the importance or unimportance of the extra details (or their falsity, since if false they can only be unimportant at best to a theory) should be inferred, not assumed in a question begging fashion, by either side.

#20

alecforbes: Thank you for considering those problems.

I think that God’s hiddenness is metaphysically necessary - to a degree - to preserve human freedom (or its illusion, or its co-existence with determinism and/or divine foreknowledge), but I am unsure how to weigh this necessity against its price in evil and suffering - to the extent that suffering is profitless to our growth and therefore evil. If this is “the best of all possible worlds”, then human freedom, as accomplished by God’s epistemic distance, must have supreme value. I guess all this is to hit the bedrock of the Problem of Evil in some shape and, certainly, universalism addresses it (I’m supposing that most universalists are such because of the POE) better in terms of ultimate destiny than Calvinism and Arm.

Yes, it would seem that Arminianism, if T, would have the most need of a straightforward revelation from God for God to be loving and just. That raises another question, which is awfully germane I think: are most universalists determinists or hold to our ability to choose for/against God? Maybe determinists, since you’re arguing that Arm is more unlikely given religious confusion? I suppose everybody could eventually chose God w/o divine coercion, but it is unlikely given our human stubbornness that sometimes likes to have its own way, just for that sake, regardless of the consequences (but, that possible psychological truth aside, there are some, many, that due to religious confusion and geographical accident might never receive Christ w/o divine intervention).

I am sorry to both alecforbes and Jason P for overnuancing “Deist”. Thomas Paine, I believe, was far too cynical of the clerics biblical scholars and just general theists of his day (though we owe Paine a debt for his, and other Deists’ honesty and audacity - else ideas like universalism would less likely to be confidently aired now). Yet, I think Paine, and for that matter, Quakerism, make wonderful sense from a justice standpoint. God will judge us according to hearts, not on account of any knowledge or holding of a particular revelation. Paine wrote, “I believe in one God; and hope for happiness in the afterlife”. Not anywhere close to dogmatic universalism, but an instinct that a fair and loving God could never subject God’s creatures to permanent unhappiness. I agree that a next logical question is, if God indeed exists as the Deist finds, then has God intervened in the natural world? And, certainly emotionally, Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection hit me like an existential hammer. Still, I would be lying if I claimed that this emotional response answers the logical difficulties I am outlining. But you’re saying that the emotional response can be valid even in the face of uncertainty. Paine thought that uncertainty makes the emotional response null and even dangerously seductive:

*…But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe … Can we conceive any thing more destructive to morality than this? *

Paine seems very cynical here, but his pt that happiness should be the product, not the catalyst, of truth, appears to me largely correct. And I would think that most here came to universalism as much b/c it makes logical sense that an omnibenevolent God wouldn’t overpunish then because it made them happy. It was the logical conviction that brought the happiness - not vice versa? (or at least they were inextricably linked) OMG, I sound like Spock :smiley: