The Evangelical Universalist Forum

God's responsibility in our soteriological confusion

Evangelical Universalism Arguments against Evangelical Universalism
#21

Greetings Prince Lev Nikolaevich Myshkin

What a great discussion you’ve started here. No messing around worrying about the true meaning of aionios and other such trivia. You cut straight to the philosophical chase. I like it! :smiley:

I’d agree with what Steve (alecforbes) and you have said about the necessity of epistemic distance for both Arminianism and Universalism. (There’s no point trying to adduce epistemic distance as necessary for preserving human freedom under Calvinism, of course, because under that odious theology there is no human freedom.)

I have had long discussions with my good friend Andrew (posts here under the handle WE ARE ALL BROTHERS), as well as with Steve and others, about whether or not this divine ‘concession’ to human freedom is ‘a price worth paying’, given the vast extent of pain and suffering in creation. It’s something, as I’m sure you know, that Dostoyevsky treats at great length in The Brothers Karamazov. The position I have come to, after great deliberation, kind of echoes Ivan Karamazov’s - “its not God that I don’t accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket”. Sort of. By which I mean I do ‘accept God’, but when it comes to the suffering of the innocent, I find all theodocies inadequate, but the Universalist theodicy - under which all things are restored and reconciled to God in the eschaton, and all pain and suffering is somehow translated into glory - the least inadequate.

I hate labels, and profess no denominational allegiance. I describe myself as a ‘hopeful dogmatic Arminian Christian Universalist’:

  • ‘hopeful’ because I hope that God exists

  • ‘dogmatic’ because I believe that if God does exist, Universalism is necessarily true

  • ‘Arminian’ because I believe in genuine free will (as necessary to theodicy, among other things)

  • ‘Christian’ because I believe Christ as attested in the Gospels is the Son of God (I think ‘religion’ - orthodox ‘Christianity’ - stinks)

  • ‘Universalist’ because I believe, as implied above, that it is logically impossible for God to damn any of his creatures eternally

Welcome to the forum. Look forward to getting to know you better.

All the best

Johnny

#22

My impression is that most Christian universalists (historically and here on the boards) agree that the ability to choose for or against God is real and important, and so aren’t determinists. We do have some differences between ourselves over whether people only have capabilities (only compatabilistic freedoms) or whether one of those capabilities is a more robust libertarian-type of freedom. This plays out in a pretty standard disagreement similar to Calv/Arm disputes. The former tend to think that people will (and even can only) certainly choose the good once their capabilities for doing so are finally unimpaired (both the authors on the masthead have tended to go this way for example, and the later patristic universalists also seem to have done so); the latter tend to think that people are capable of willfully choosing directly against what they themselves agree to be true and good, screwing up their capabilities as a result (I tend to go this way for example, and the older patristic universalists also seem to have done so). One way this disagreement plays out is that the former tend (though not always) to believe there won’t be post-mortem punishments (even if the rectification process may be unpleasant for a while, like medical treatment); the latter tend to believe there will be post-mortem punishments (not merely curative restorations) for persons who impenitently continue to sin.

I will observe that if the latter position is true, this would naturally contribute to the level of doctrinal confusion.

Me, too. :wink: As I explicitly wrote when criticising emotional grounds for choosing for or against universalism: “But such emotional reasons are a potential block to the truth either way.” I strenuously agree with Paine on this point, happiness should be the product, not the catalyst, of truth.

However, I might reply to Paine that the idea that fidelity only (or most importantly) involves being mentally faithful to one’s self, makes fidelity null and even dangerously seductive. It would be better to say in regard to the inward man that mental lying is unfaithful to the truth, and that fidelity involves being personally trustworthy in regard to another person – otherwise what does it matter whether someone is unfaithful to the truth so long as one’s self benefits from that unfaithfulness? If the truth is impersonal, it isn’t like the truth is going to care one way or another. (Or even if the truth is personal, on some deistic theories!)

#23

"Supposing truth is a woman? " That line from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil has stuck with me for some time. "Truth " may not be arrived at only by a typically male, straightforward approach.
It may be , in the words of Walter Kauffmann, “as elusive and coy as a woman pursued by a fumbling man. Through most of history we’ve only fumbled with truth, with a pathetically simplistic, straightforward and naive notion of truth.”

I suggest that Paine’s approach to truth is a drastically reduced picture of the way human beings actually do search for the truth. Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge and Kuhn’s theory of choosing between paradigms point out that reduction as well.

Polanyi called the enterprise the “Art of Knowing”. We do often ‘know’ something in non-rational ways; it is possible to find the solution to a problem and THEN find the evidence - science is full of that sort of thing. An aesthetic approach to truth is just as warranted as any other.

My personal acceptance of EU was along those aesthetic and Kuhnian lines. Starting with a typical Pentecostal church, I tried putting the ‘grid’ of that particular system onto the world, and found it did not fit. Much later, the Calvinist TULIP doctrine had its way with me for a while. But as Kuhn points out, revolution in thought often comes in a huge paradigm shift, as with scientists who accept a certain working theory, and, over time, as factual outliers (outside the accepted theory) crop up and are irritating and then finally are irrefutable, a different model emerges that explains the larger picture.

With Calvinism, the outliers became for me unbearable. That ‘grid’ did not fit the world nor anything I FELT could be true of the good God. I arrived at at a universalist understanding BEFORE I found the facts to back it up. When I finally read Talbott, it was like a confirmation of what I already knew.

Paine would pooh-pooh that approach; but I think the approach is the way we humans generally go about finding the truth - it’s a whole-person thing. That’s why I compared it to marriage as well.

A quote from somewhere:
Against both subjective relativism and objective absolutism, Polanyi located “personal knowledge.” Individual appraisals, he said, are not an imperfection of knowledge but a necessary coefficient. When the Copernican revolution supplanted Ptolemaic cosmology, it did not, as is often claimed, signal the displacement of man from the center of his universe. Instead, Polanyi says, we “abandoned the cruder anthropocentrism of our senses—but only for a more ambitious anthropocentrism of our reason.” Try as science might to establish a neutral vantage point, it merely replaces old prejudices with new, equally human biases. Science invariably privileges humanity; it is preoccupied with man’s place and purpose.

#24

God has consigned all to disobedience so that He may have mercy on all. Romans 11:32

#25

Hi Prince,

Thought I’d come back to the thread and add a couple more thoughts.

Yes, there are a variety of opinions amongst universalists regarding ‘free-will’. I think Tom Talbott’s discussion makes the most sense to me (and the link above just happens to be a discussion of free-will.) I’ll post the link again:willamette.edu/~ttalbott/Determinism.pdf I do incorporate post-mortem ‘punishment’ or correction into my views as I think it accords more with how we see God working in our lives on earth and makes the virtues we gain something that is part of our character and not just the result of God waving a ‘magic wand’ in effect—just as actually falling in love is preferable to a “love potion”. Removing epistemic distance, I believe, would result in* anyone* turning to God, but I hold that possibility as a ‘fail-safe’ of sorts.

I agree with this as well, but how do we know truth? Enlightenment style reason can only take us so far. In the case of atheism and theism, there are reasonable arguments, and good evidence for both. As George MacDonald pointed out so often, the best way to know Christ and his Father is to obey and follow what he taught and see for yourself. MacDonald wrote in a time when the Cerberus of science (geology and Darwin particularly), biblical criticism and biblical archaeology all converged on the church shaking its foundation and that of Christianity itself. MacDonald was an intelligent and wise man who did not ignore these developments but met them with eyes wide-open, with honesty and faith and incorporated these developments into his theology which remained very Christ centered.

In Rethinking George MacDonald: Contexts and Contemporaries, Jocelyne Slepyan wrote a very interesting essay discussing MacDonald’s novel Thomas Wingfold, Curate (1876). She argues that the novel was MacDonald’s response to his friend John Ruskin’s spiritual crisis which “ultimately formed around questions of knowing truth, particularly as the basis of his faith came from proofs from nature, from the authentic claims of Scripture and from the witness of the church.” Wingfold, the protagonist in MacDonald’s novel, is challenged by another character, George Bascombe, who “…serves as the evangelizing atheist and stimulant to Wingfold’s journey”. Wingfold questions himself and his faith and eventually poses himself the question " ‘if there be a God, how am I to find him?’ and could the Jesus of the Bible be he?" Wingfold with the guidance of a mentor approaches the New Testament to assess the internal validity of the claims and the man/God it presents. As Slepyan says:

I mention this George MacDonald novel and the essay to point out that a spiritual response (if not purely an emotional one) to the story in the gospels was felt to be good enough evidence to have faith in Christ and follow him. I’m not sure if you’ve read MacDonald but he is no mean thinker and his thoughts are always worth reflecting on. He was no fan of thorough-going systemic theology but was absolutely certain on particular points, one being universalism. The novel Thomas Wingfold, Curate is one of his best. If you read Dostoyevsky or Dickens and enjoy them, you might like his novels as well (at least you’ve proven your patience with 19th century authors :wink: ) Jason is not a fan of his novels because of their “picarousity” as he terms it. :laughing:

All the best,

Steve

#26

MacDonald was reacting to enlightenment style 'knowing" as was Nietzsche as I quoted above. There are appropriate uses of the word ‘know’ depending on the situation. Kierkegaard was all over that subject.

#27

Very true, Dave. :smiley:
I agreed with you way up thread as well and thought I’d throw out another example.

#28

I’m glad you did. :smiley:

#29

True, I don’t like the picaresque-y parts of MacD’s novels (which is purely a matter of taste, since I find the genre boring – insert irony here as applicable :wink: ); but I generally like his theological parts which are not the same thing.

May I point out that my remarks about fidelity to truth in criticism of Paine’s quoted stance (which might not be indicative of all his thought elsewhere, btw), mesh perfectly well with the idea of truth as a courted beloved? Courting someone isn’t supposed to be primarily about being faithful to one’s own self. (Or anyway, all kinds and degrees of horrors demonstrably crop up when that happens, although someone primarily concerned with being faithful to himself might easily not care much about that. I expect we’ve all seen examples of that in real life.)

#30

No, you may not point that out. Wait, you already did… :sunglasses:

The ‘art of knowing’ is a fascinating subject to be sure.

#31

Hello my prince.

I am not an Evangelical and consider the authors of the Biblical Canonin the same way i consider other Christian authors.

I believe there are irreconcilable contradictions within the Bible which explain why many well-meaning Conservative Evangelicals disagree.

In order to build up a theology, Evangelicals always have to choose which verses to interpret literally. This initial choice determines all other verses they will have to** distort**.

Why did God not give us an inerrant book?

Well I don’t know. I think this has a lot to do with freedom.
But religious confusion has led to so many atrocities that I am not satisfied with this answer.

#32

What are the irreconcilable differences to which you refer? Specifically?
I guess more to the point is, which are the differences that to you make a big difference? I’m not talking about strange customs and ideas we read about it the OT - “don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk” e.g. - but mainly, what in the NT is the basis of your reference? Since revelation is progressive, it stands to reason that we look to the fullest revelation first, and then see what light it sheds on the old.

#33

Hi Lothar, Dave

I echo Dave’s question, Lothar. While I’m not an inerrantist, not by a long chak, neither have I found that there are ‘irreconcilable’ differences or contradictions in the Bible - at least, none of any import. I think any apparent serious difficulty can be worked out, with enough thought and guidance from the Spirit.

So come on Lothar, try us out, see if we can’t square those circles for you :smiley: .

Cheers

Johnny

#34

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?

I think the reason God obscures himself is because the ramifications further his purposes which are that in this age our main purpose is to learn. The way we mostly learn is by contrasting things like good vs evil or love vs hate or light vs darkness. To learn this way we have to have these things present and partly because of God’s obscurity these things happen mostly unfettered.
If you look at the garden of Eden scenario dispassionately , without believing any presuppositions , i think it is pretty clear it went the way God had purposed it to go.

#35

Amen Amen :smiley: but await the opening of the thread before comment
Michael in BCN

#36

Hmm . . . I’m not so sure about that. I believe Father gives us genuine (not make-believe) choices. Now I see the Garden as a “true myth” ala CS Lewis, but as it is a TRUE myth, we can speak of it as though it were an historical account for the most part. The way I see it, Adam and Eve had a true choice. They maybe didn’t have ALL the knowledge to make a cogent decision but I think they had enough. They had God saying, don’t eat from this tree because if you do, you’ll die. They had a history with God, having spent at least a few evenings walking with Him in the Garden. They had Satan (as a snake, the most cunning of the Garden’s inhabitants) weighing in with declarations that God was holding out on them – He was lying to keep them from having something that would be very, very good for them. And of course they had that beautiful golden tree, decadent with intoxicating fragrance and blushing pink fruit (okay, so I’m ad libbing a little :unamused: :laughing: ) and they had a choice.

Believe the Father who had made them, who walked with them in the cool of the evening, who loved them and provided all they needed, or believe the snake that Eve found lolling around on the branches of the forbidden tree? They could have chosen to trust their Father – really, I believe they could have chosen that. It wasn’t a make-believe scenario God set up for them. Instead of trusting Father, they decided (as most children will from time to time) to trust their own judgment and go with what they WANTED. Eve wanted that beautiful fruit and the knowledge it represented and Adam . . . well, perhaps he wanted the fruit too, and we’re fairly sure he wanted Eve (who had eaten the fruit already and didn’t appear to be in any distress). Eve had been deceived by the snake. She wasn’t there when Adam learned from God that the fruit was off-limits, so she had only her husband’s warning as opposed to the direct word of God. BUT Adam WAS there when Eve fell for the snake’s lies and apparently he didn’t say anything . . . . hmmm. Adam, we learn from Paul in a letter to Timothy, was NOT deceived, but he went ahead (for whatever reason) and ate the fruit anyway. I’m not sure what to make of this. Why? Why did he do it???

It’s a great story and if I don’t check myself I’ll get carried away retelling. The point is, I believe Adam and Eve did have a choice – a real and not a fabricated choice. Sure, God, being as brilliant as He is, knew what they would choose and didn’t interfere (But he couldn’t have, could He? Not and say they had always been free to choose as they wished.)

If they had chosen the Tree of Life instead, I think things would have gone much differently for this world of ours, but they would still have had to grow into maturity. They would still have needed the knowledge represented by the TOKOGE but they would have gotten it from God and thus not compromised their dependence on and trust in Him – and perhaps would not have made knowledge into a rival god, as we have done today and have been doing through all known history.

If the Garden is parable/true myth, then we know there was already plenty in nature to push back against their own desires and comfort, and cause the necessary pain to help them to develop a sense of self and otherness as well as to learn what is good and what is bad. They could have gotten that knowledge in the presence of and with the benefit of their Father’s wisdom, but they figured, “I can do it myself!” as every child has said from that time forward. :wink: It’s good for the child in a sense, but it isn’t the greatest good. The greatest good from that vantage point would, I think, have been to learn with their Father’s guidance, but our Father is great enough to make the bad choice come out well – better even than a good choice may have come out – though a much more painful and a much longer road to travel, with many tears and regrets but ending, ultimately, in joy and life and light.

So, my $0.02. :wink:

#37

. The way I see it, Adam and Eve had a true choice. They maybe didn’t have ALL the knowledge to make a cogent decision but I think they had enough. They had God saying, don’t eat from this tree because if you do, you’ll die. They had a history with God, having spent at least a few evenings walking with Him in the Garden. They had Satan (as a snake, the most cunning of the Garden’s inhabitants) weighing in with declarations that God was holding out on them – He was lying to keep them from having something that would be very, very good for them. And of course they had that beautiful golden tree, decadent with intoxicating fragrance and blushing pink fruit (okay, so I’m ad libbing a little :unamused: :laughing: ) and they had a choice.

Hi Cindy,
Yes i think Eve had a choice in that God didn’t make her sin. According to Jesus sin is what is in our hearts and Eve simply looked at the tree and lust of the eyes and flesh and the pride of life manifested. She didn’t conjure it up, these passions were already there and took only a gaze at the tree to come up to the surface. According to John these are the sins of the world.
You mentioned that God had a history with Adam but the only mention of the Lord God walking in the garden is after they sinned. As for this tree of the knowledge, God could have put it anywhere but he put it right in the middle of the garden as opposed to a far off corner. As for Satan, how did he get to that spot? Did he sneak past God or was it by design? Satan was called a serpent but according to Paul he could appear as an Angel of Light, so who knows how he appeared to Eve?
Lastly do you think God knew what would happen. Could he have stopped it, could he have evicted Satan, could he moved the tree? I’m simply saying that this encounter was part of God’s purposes for man IMO.

#38

Hi Cindy and Steve

Very curious that God made the choice so very obvious to his children, and yet unlike Nature, his children made the wrong choice, and despite His many warnings (OT NT and All Saints) we contine to do so as the world’s most voracious predators, endangering ourselves and Nature itself, while, within His garden, all other inhabitants have evolved countless means of preventing such carnage and destruction, except ironically from His own children !! It is held that God gave the others no choice, but they sure have been a lot more clever than us at survival!!

Try reading rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/ … .1932.full

Linking the Evolution and Form of Warning in Coloration in Nature.

Michael in BCN

#39

Howdy, Prince Myshkin.

This sentence in your post immediately jump out at me: “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.“ My immediate response is that intellectually responsible movement from revealed religion to deism is impossible, as deism is philosophically incoherent. Once we understand what it means for God to be Creator, we cannot ontologically distance him from the world. Deism is only possible when one has forgotten the classical doctrine of creation and has begun to think of God as an inhabitant of the cosmos.

The question you raise about the diversity of soteriological views is part of a larger problem—the diversity of all theological interpretations of Scripture. It is not obvious, for example, that Jesus Christ is homoousios with the Father. It took three centuries for the Church to achieve dogmatic clarity about this.

John Henry Newman wrestled with these kinds of questions in his important Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. This is, I think, essential reading. I also strongly commend Richard Swinburne, Revelation. Sola scriptura evangelicalism is incapable of resolving these kinds of questions. One needs a more catholic understanding of Church and dogma.

Over two thousand years have passed since the resurrection of Christ. This sounds like a long time … but maybe we are still in the early days of the early Church.

#40

I have good news and bad news. God has clarified the soteriological confusion. It’s not what we wanted to hear. :slight_smile:

Onion interview with the Almighty