I’ve only watched a few minutes of his talk, but from that, it seems to me that his understanding of Universalism is little more than, “everyone goes to heaven.” His argument that Universalism reduces Christ to merely the mechanism of salvation is ill-informed at best, and reductio ad absurdum at worst. He then draws a false comparison by saying that God’s love is so far beyond us that we can’t fully understand it, then describes judgment as being part of God’s love using purely human emotional descriptors, and is framing judgement as only punitive, and not restorational.
He then goes on to talk about the exclusivity of the salvation at the cross. That seems to come from reading the Greek* ‘aion’* as eternal, which has been discussed all over this forum.
He starts talking about Jesus being the source of the majority of teachings on hell (which He was), but just before that, he makes it clear that he’s not talking about Evangelical Universalism, but rather Unitarian Universalism, which is an entirely different theology that what many of us agree on here at EU.
I quit watching after about 6 minutes, but it’s clear that he’s just some guy offering some opinions trying to refute something he seems to know little about. The primary thing I would say to answer this guy is to explain Evangelical Universalism to him, then about judgment and restorative justice. Universalism isn’t about being ‘tolerant’ and ‘cool’ and trying to make excuses for Christ’s declarations of judgment, it looks beyond all that to the huge implications of Christ’s victory over death and sin at the Cross.
This guy probably views atonement only through the penal substitution model, too, but since he referred to Universalism and an ancient heresy, but is conflating it with Unitarian Universalism, he probably wouldn’t listen to any thoughts on the other models of atonement.
Personally, after reading Richard Beck’s book* Unclean* I’m inclined to try and understand people’s motives for the beliefs they hold along the fear/disgust versus love/courage continuum, but that’s because I’m more of an amateur psychologist/sociologist than any sort of theologian. There are plenty of real theologians and apologists here that can give you a much better evaluation of how to answer this video than I.
Not to disparage the opinion of any man, even on the internet (which would be very obviously self-refuting 
) – but why did you think this man in particular warranted attention, Nimble? Eric’s report of the first 6 minutes, if accurate, seems to show he has a very (common and ordinary) tenuous and misguided grasp of the topic.
Was Eric’s report inaccurate, or does this fellow become any more challenging later?
Hi Jason!
My analysis of what I watched was probably too harsh, but I think it was accurate as to the explanation he was presenting. I watched it again today, and it doesn’t change too much in the last couple of minutes. Please remove my previous post, if you will, Jason.
All that being said, I’m thinking that this wasn’t something that he had prepared to give as a talk or sermon, but more of participating as answering questions from his audience. I doubt it was any sort of debate rebuttal, just a church leader edifying his membership.
It is a great example of why Christian Universalism must and needs to be evangelical in its outlook. He used the example of Hitler just getting to go to Heaven with no consequences at all. I seriously doubt anyone here could or would agree with that portrayal of EU.
I’m going to just lurk and read here now, and get myself better informed.
If your report was accurate, Eric, I don’t know why we would even want to delete it. 
(It didn’t sound overly harsh to me either.)
Your report was very accurate Eric and I detected no note of harshness. To be honest, I feel like answering this in a harsh manner because I’m a little sick of the boot always being on the other foot. Call Calvinism or Arminianism heresy and the Internet is alight with people crying out for tolerance, respect for differences and a plea for opponents to be fair and educated to the real beliefs of others. Yet it is seen as perfectly acceptable to call universalists heretics, and this frequently comes from the mouths of people who’ve clearly made no effort to understand what universalism is. I get mad in a ‘hear me roar!’ kinda way. Then I think maybe Christ said that if they do it to the master of the house, how much more the servants of that house. So maybe I’m not supposed to get mad at how they treat me/us, but instead keep on loving em (grinds teeth 
)
This particular gentleman gives no sources for what he says. He doesn’t qualify what universalism is. He gives no support for it being an ancient heresy. We are just supposed to take his word for it. He trots out the usual nonsense about wanting perpetrators of genocide to be punished, leaving out the fact that in accordance with his own theology, Hitler et al need only repent on their death bed and they would escape all judgement. He then makes the case that universalists are just trying to make God look more attractive to the world.
Frankly, I just found him irritating. He is disparaging a whole system of theology and group of believers when he clearly knows naff all about it. He makes straw man arguments. He ignores the glaring hypocrisy of his own theology in contrast. I just have little patience with people who publically deride something I am, so badly.
How would I respond to him? In the flesh, with a knuckle sandwich. In reality, I’d explain his straw men, explain the reality of a robust universalist theology, explain his errors as to the historicity of Christian universalism and point out his double standards that he would need to reconcile. i.e. He complains about universalism from a justice perspective, but is perfectly fine with eternal punishment for finite crimes
I appreciate with all your posts and agree with them. I was wondering if he was being dishonest in his analysis or just uninformed. However I believe that if He was uninformed then in some ways he was being dishonest, speaking as if he knew all about universalism. It is true that he was answering the question off the cuff. I just get a little testy when Christian Universalism is so blatantly misrepresented.
I didn’t think he did, I just happened on it and was curious how you folks would respond.
Me too!!! I bet you couldn’t tell. I’m so good at hiding it
I don’t think this guy realises his dishonesty. If he’s like most people, he probably really thinks he knows what universalism is and thus doesn’t realise there is a need to educate himself on the topic. I felt the same frustration when I heard Jason’s debate with turretinfan. It was as though TF hadn’t bothered to prepare because this would be super easy to knock out the water. (Not saying that was what TF did; just that it was how it came across to me. He seemed ill prepared).
When I saw Martin Bashir interview, or rather attack, Rob Bell, I remember thinking how much of his vitriol came from popular ignorance on the topic. The bad part of me wishes I could be some Christian celeb with a controversial book, so I could answer the heresy hunters “Yes, I’m a bonefide universalist! Watcha gonna do about it?!”, blow several raspberries at them and maybe scandalise people enough that they listen for 5 minutes