The Evangelical Universalist Forum

In a nutshell, universalism has...?

Evangelical Universalism
#11

What can you say? What do you think about all of this? In your view based on experience is ultimate terror compatible with love? Is being terrified compatible with trust? Is it an inspiration for universal compassion?

What do you think of the different varieties of Eternal Conscious Torment on offer? Would you be happier with the softer variety – that if we create or own hell by turning away from God and God respects this and leaves us shut up in or egocentricity? Or would you prefer a version that argues that God creates most people specifically to torment them of eternity at which both we and God will laugh if we happen to be among the elect?

Should we choose our faith in terms of which one provides the surest insurance policy against hell? Are any versions of Christianity or other religions such as Islam that posit eternal torment in some of their varieties more coherent, more reasonable, more compassionate because they teach a strong doctrine of hell? Do they enable us to live more abundantly?

Can you think of any examples from your own experience or from history where a strong belief in hell has had a terrible and distorting effect on how people acted towards their fellow human beings? How would you guard against this?

Is safety from eternal damnation the heart of faith? Is it the essence of Love? Can we have any faith without risk?

What does it mean to affirm that God is Love and true Love casts out fear?

Thinking back to the times you have loved deeply - can you describe what happened in a nutshell?

What canst thou say?

Blessings

Dick

#12

Hi Blue,

I’m not sure what exactly you mean by this. I prefer to proceed as if universalism is true, because I’m personally convinced that it is – that God loves all and will save all.

What does it mean to proceed as if universalism is just speculation? What do you mean when you speak of “the risk of being wrong”?

Sonia

#13

Thanks all for the replies.

Basically, one can make claims from intuition. One can claim to ‘just know’ this or that belief is true by faith. But any Christian would be justified in rejecting such a person’s view unless the Bible itself could demonstrate what they say. Not hint at it, not make it a definately “maybe”. Not even a “more likely than not”. Of course 100 Percent certainty is a pretty hopeless expection in these matters, but one needs to strive very hard for “beyond reasonable doubt” on a subject like eternal hell verses remedial hell.

And if you can’t do a good enough job at that (whatever that is), then risking the eternal fate of people’s souls by spreading universalism would be a bad idea. You can’t fight probability. Its just common sense! So you’d have to go about your affairs as if universalism is just a theory. A good one perhaps, but too far from proof to be treated as truth.

I suppose this matter needs to be pushed more to front-and-center than most issues in Christianity today. If you think about it, its probably the most important issue ever.

I just don’t see why any of you would take the risk of preaching universalism. What if you’re wrong? You can’t afford to be.

#14

It seems to me like you are just trying to hedge your bets. That you are not convinced enough to actually live a christian life but you want the benefits of slipping in the back way through universalism without making an effort yourself. I’m not inclined to encourage you in that way. You need to understand that universalism doesn’t mean that there is no judgment at all. This couldn’t be further from the truth. We all bear a responsibility to Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary and the righteousness of God and there is no getting around that. I would rather face God’s judgments now while I live than bear them in the Lake of Fire. Better to be a mature fully formed ‘huios’ son of God with the mind of Christ than not. “You gotta serve somebody”. :mrgreen:

#15

Hmm … I guess I don’t think I’m putting anyone’s eternal fate at risk. Perhaps that’s partly a result of coming from a Calvinist background. I have always believed that God is the author and finisher of our faith. It is God who changes hearts of stone to hearts of flesh and causes people to turn to Him. If anyone didn’t get saved, it was because God chose not to save them.

Now I am convinced that God does intend to save everyone, and that He will.

But even apart from the Calvinist ideas, I don’t see how universalism is an idea that would cause people to be in danger.

I don’t believe or tell others that this means it’s okay for us all to go out and live selfishly because we know it will eventually turn out fine. The Bible is clear that we will all be called to account for what we do and say, and justice will be done. The gospel Jesus preached is: “Repent! The kingdom of heaven is at hand!” Universalism does not change this. Paul’s version of this is: “He is now calling all people to repent for he has set a day when he will judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed.”

The call is to all men to turn to God.

Universalism is the faith that God really does love all and is committed to the restoration and reconciliation of all. It does not endanger anyone’s faith.

As you have probably experienced yourself, fear of everlasting hell does not necessarily produce faith in God – I’m not sure it can. Speaking for myself, that fear was a hindrance, not a help.

Sonia

#16

Hi Blue Raja (great handle, by the way :smiley: )

Your posts bring to mind the story about WC Fields, an avowed atheist who was apparently caught reading the Bible by a friend who visited him in hospital when he was dying (after a life of alcoholic indulgence). When the friend asked him what he was doing he replied, “checking for loopholes”. :laughing:

In a nutshell, UR to me is encapsulated in two very simple, very short and oh so very true Biblical statements (as pointed out by James earlier) - 1 John 4:8 and 1 Corinthians 13:8: " … God is love; … love never fails".

Now many ‘traditional’ Christians do not accept UR because they believe the Bible doesn’t teach it. They’re wrong. The Bible quite patently does teach that all people will ultimately be reconciled to God. The trouble is it also appears to teach things that contradict that view. I say appears, because careful study shows that such interpretations are highly dubious at best, usually relying on dodgy translations.

For me, the Bible is just a book. A special book, sure. But a book written by flawed, sinful human beings. And as such it is full of the error to which we are all prone. (And incidentally, nowhere does the Bible claim itself to be literally true, or even true at all.) Yes the Bible points us to God - or more importantly to Jesus, who is God - but just as much so, if not more, does our God-given conscience point us to God.

And my conscience is unequivocal: God, if he exists at all, cannot be less merciful and loving than I am. In fact, he cannot be less loving and merciful than the most merciful and loving human being who has ever existed. And since plenty of human beings - including lots of us here - are Universalists, God must be one too :slight_smile: .

I was an orthodox, ECT Christian for many years before I became a Universalist. And for all that time I knew in my heart that something at the heart of my theology stank very badly indeed. And the only way I could keep that smell out of my nostrils was by putting a peg on my nose - deliberately ignoring the stink, in effect. It is impossible - impossible to truly and honestly believe that God is love and love never fails, at the same time as believing that he will condemn unrepentant sinners to eternal torment in hell. Anyone who says otherwise is either deluded, a liar or very wicked indeed.

Shalom

Johnny

Practical Barriers to Universalism
#17

Hi Blue Raja –

Hope all is well. I’d add a similar take on this to dear Johnny’s. The trouble is, as I see it, is that avoidance of hell is actually not the cornerstone of the Gospel nor the scope of the biblical message – that’s not just intuition at all (you are talking here about the sort of intuition that a gambler has when he places a bet). My balance of Christian faith is – I hope –the result of honest reflection on the Bible, on experience, on the lives of those who were great lovers of Christ and bore good fruits, on history etc. I’ve never seen it as a matter of hedging bets even when I was terrified of hell (as I truly was when I was a younger bloke).

If the Gospel of Christ can really be reduced to hedging bets about Hell then I start to see it as being a bit like a Game of Monopoly. I know that those parts of Christianity who do emphasise avoidance of hell as central, and also emphasise the vital importance of being doctrinally correct to avoid hell split into smaller and smaller sects over smaller and smaller points of doctrine, And who can blame them given the centrality they give to eternal hell in their teaching. So you could redesign the Monopoly board, taking away the London locations and replacing these with the name of various sects in sectarian Christianity. You’d have to invest in various different doctrinal options as you went along. Bet the wrong throw of the dice would send you to straight to hell rather than to jail. Well that would be a poor and very silly gospel. Indeed Pascal was a very intelligent man, a devout man, a peculiar man and a great (and alarming) masochist. I think he took a wrong turn by inventing his ‘wager’ argument – there must be better metaphors for the serious business of having to choose in life and to make deep and lasting choices too.

I Christ our Hen :slight_smile:

Dick

#18

I should clarify what I insinuated about Pascal - he of the wager, and a brilliant mathematician who probably did much to invent the science for probabilistic statistics and designed a primitive computer. He was a Jansenist - a very severe sect within French Catholicism beloved of the French aristocracy (pre-Revolution) with a theology similar in some respects to sectarian Calvinism.

I don’t think his wager gave him much peace. He used to wear a spiked belt the wrong way round next to his flesh and if he started to enjoy his food he would give it a bash to mortify himself. He also used to sit on a seat with low spikes on it and if anyone came to see him and he started to enjoy a conversation he’d press his bottom down on the spikes. So - brilliant man as he was (and he was also a brilliant satirist against the Jesuits) it seems to me that probably his belief in hell was not a liberation for him. Even within ECT versions of Christianity surely Grace rather than Hell must be the staring point of any healthy theology.

#19

Egads, poor Pascal :astonished:

I agree that the whole point of Christianity was not supposed to be a “ticket out of hell”! the fact it has turned into that for many, or at least is the starting point for what eventually evolves into a relationship with God, is a sad thing. When did we turn from He shall save us from our sins to He shall save us from a place quite like some Pagan afterlives, full of misery…
Isn’t there enough hell in our sins for that to be enough?

as to preaching universalism…if i “preach” (using words), i would simply say the same thing i always would have said…God loves you, Jesus died for you. the key difference is now i don’t have to edge around the bit i’m embarassed about: the bit that makes NO SENSE AT ALL: Hell. Now i can just preach love that was willing to die, with no hidden threats. my message, where i feel called to give one in a verbal sense (which is rarely, as most in England have an understanding and would reject such preaching out of hand) is now far more consistent.

#20

To be fair to Pascal, the popular notion of the Wager isn’t what he meant by the Wager. :wink:

What he meant was that if a person had looked over everything and the evidence was, to that person, so finely balanced that they couldn’t make a decision one way or another on the evidence, then they should make a decision based on pragmatism: if it’s true or false which way would be less risky and/or more beneficial to me? To be as safe as possible I should bet that way.

He didn’t mean that we should make a conservatively safe bet no matter what we thought of the evidence.

The popular notion of the Wager has some practical application, too, but that wasn’t what Pascal was talking about. The last three Roman Catholic Popes, seem to have been convinced that Christian universalism was probably (or even certainly) true, BUT it was better to conservatively bet for safety in case it wasn’t.

This is distinct from what was called “the doctrine of reserve” back in the early Patristic days, when theologians and bishops who privately and among themselves thought Christian universalism was true (not all of them did), preached and wrote in language that would sound like hopeless punishment was coming to some sinners, because they thought uneducated people would misunderstand the meaning of Christian universalism and think they could just go around sinning however they wanted without consequence to themselves.

To which I’d say the solution is to make clear in preaching that impenitent sin is going to be punished into the eons of the eons for however long the person insists on holding to it, and that God cannot be fooled by insincere repentance.

Which is why I make sure to do that. :slight_smile: I can’t outright prevent people from misunderstanding me, but no one ever got the idea from me that there was no wrath of God coming to sinners.

Anyway, Blue:

Anyone who wants to believe universalism in order to escape punishment, never got that from me, and (I would say) has the wrong attitude toward God’s salvation even if they converted to Christianity. I don’t recommend anyone come to believe universalism without intense study on the matter anyway (I could say the same about becoming a Christian at all), and no one could come to universalism from the direction I recommend without having first come to accept that what we primarily need saving from is our sins.

Now, if it’s a question of gnostic belief, which set of doctrines among all sets will save us, then we’re ultimately screwed anyway even if we get the right set, because a god (or even a God) who judged on that basis has no intrinsic interest in promoting fair-togetherness between people. At best we’d be talking about an intellectual tyrant.

If some kind of gnosticism isn’t true (even an ‘orthodox’ Christian gnosticism, which ought to be against gnosticism, insert irony as appropriate :wink: ), how am I risking people’s souls by preaching that God acts continually and competently toward saving all sinners from sin until He gets it done?

If I’m wrong about “all people”, then the people God never intended to save were hopelessly damned already, and were never going to be anything other than hopelessly damned; whereas the people God intended to save were never going to be threatened in the long run by anything I did anyway. So I’m certainly not putting anyone at risk of final perdition either way in that case.

If I’m wrong about “continually acting”, then even Christians are at risk of final perdition regardless of what I preach, and regardless of how ‘Christian’ they may be at any point before death. The only relatively safe path is for people to try to be as ethically good as possible, to convince God to not change His mind about them (or to convince Him to try saving them in the first place!?) And I preach that people ought to repent of their sins and commit to doing what is ethically good (following the basis of goodness which would be true if trinitarian theism is true). So they’re as safe as they’re going to be in any case.

If I’m wrong about God being competent to save a sinner from sin, then the problem isn’t with me at all, but with God and/or whichever sinner is stronger than God. But then in the long run we’re all probably screwed anyway.

Back when I debated TFan a couple of years ago, I ended it with an evangelical appeal instead of summarizing my arguments (since I’d already been doing those for 3 hours). So here’s what I say when I’m making a relatively quick evangelical appeal to non-Christians. (TFan did, too, much more briefly, and in an Arminianistic fashion, which I thought was really funny since he’s a Calvinist, but I appreciated his effort anyway. :slight_smile: )

Practical Barriers to Universalism
#21

:blush: Yes I was being a touch unfair there Jason (at least about what he meant by Wager). Pascal was also a very peppery satirist - he’ll have to forgive me because all satire is unfair. And Blue should forgive me too - because both of us are making caricatures here :sunglasses:

That’s a wonderful broadcast Jason - you’ve have a really kind and strong voice. :smiley:

#22

Hi, Blue Raja

I haven’t read all these posts, so please forgive me if I’m repeating anyone’s previous words. Scanning through the things you’ve said, I think you probably lack a basic understanding of the various doctrines of the Christian church regarding judgment. You sound like you come from an Arminian background. So did I, though a few years ago I’d never heard of Arminius. I’d heard of Calvin, but all I knew about him was that he was one of the reformers.

Briefly, Arminians believe (with various, erm, variations) that people determine their own destinies with regard to salvation. We choose freely whether to accept or to reject God’s free gift of salvation, offered through Christ Jesus. Arminians have been forced to add all sorts of embellishments to this doctrine to give a reasonable chance to people who have never heard the gospel, mentally incompetent folk, young children and infants who die before the (invented) “age of accountability,” & etc. & etc. In the view of the Arminian, God would love to save everyone; He loves every single person and desires intensely for each one to repent, BUT God will not abrogate our “free will” and therefore He is relegated to lose some of those He loves to hell, as He MUST condemn sinners who have not freely received the salvation offered through Jesus.

Calvinists believe (in many flavors of course) that God has chosen some people to be saved. He WILL save these people and “free will” can be, well, damned. God is sovereign and no one’s “free will” could possibly trump His free will to save these chosen ones, nor His free will to damn those He has chosen not to choose. God provisionally loves all people in this life, but when the unsaved die, that love ends. He will torment them in eternal hell with delight, as their “just” suffering underscores and illustrates His sovereign justice and hatred of sin.

So, the Arminian believes:
God loves all people
God desires to save all people
Some people will spend eternity separated from God (either in hell, or because they’ve been annihilated)

The Calvinist believes:
God loves some people
God desires to save those He loves
God WILL save those He loves.

The Arminian God is all loving and fails to save some of those He loves.
The Calvinist God is all powerful. He saves those He loves and damns those He hates.

In Calvinism, you really have no choice, so as Sonia pointed out, our preaching universalism doesn’t make any difference to God. He will do as He chooses. In Arminianism, it all boils down to us choosing life and God can’t do much for us either way.

That’s why I figure you’re Arminian – or at least you’ve been exposed to Arminianism and not so much to Calvinism.

Universalists believe the Calvinists are right. God is all powerful and can save whomever He wants to. With the Calvinist we affirm that He WILL save all those He loves. We believe the Arminians are also right. God loves all people and WILLS that all people should be saved. Both the Calvinists and the Arminians have irrefutable scripture for these doctrines I’ve mentioned. They are both right. The only thing they’re wrong about is the “death deadline.”

For centuries the church has taught that “the tree lies where it falls.” If you die unsaved, you will remain so for all eternity. There is scant scriptural support for this idea, however. Two or maybe three verses at the most (again, imo). I’m at a motel en-route back from my vacation, or I’d list them for you, but imo, they aren’t very convincing. I was literally shocked at the lack of scriptural support for a doctrine I had believed all my life had ample grounding in scripture. It just DOES NOT HAVE IT. Without our artificially imposed death deadline, God’s hands are no longer tied. He can have all the time He needs to persuade people, and He is very persuasive. I’m not talking about torturing people with literal or figurative flames either, but rather about changing hearts with patience and love, whatever it takes and however long it takes.

Now some universalists (often the more Calvinistic ones) believe that God unequivocally saves everyone more or less painlessly and quickly. I don’t think scripture supports this. You mention passages about God’s anger and His chastisement and you’re right (imo). God IS angry with the wicked, and He is NOT okay with the wicked remaining wicked. Moreover, while I do believe He can and will do all that He desires, I do NOT believe that even God can do anything in any other way than the “way it must be done.”

Logically, you can’t hang the siding on your house until you’ve built the walls. You’re not powerless to hang the siding, but you DO have to build the walls first. God cannot make free-willed, and righteous people without training them to freely choose that which is good and loving, from their own hearts. In order to do that, we must agree that it’s wrong to cause suffering to other people and to our Father in heaven and to ourselves. Some learn this lesson easier than others, and that is what hell (however you define it and whenever you experience it) is for. I’ve learned not to judge hurting parents of wayward children by BEING such a parent. I’ve learned not to judge drivers who drive badly by on occasion driving badly myself and suffering the consequences. I am no better than anyone else. I see this over and over. Perhaps Hitler (to use the perennial example) must learn that it is wrong to torture people, by literally feeling their pain. This is purgatorial universalism, and I believe scriptures uphold it.

Now as Jason pointed out, there is no way to explain this doctrine to you in a “nutshell,” but if you will take the time to seek God, search the scriptures, and contemplate for yourself, you’ll come to the conclusions you come to. No one else can make this journey for you, and it is a long one. BUT, if you want to be free from fear, there is no other way.

The good news is this. Jesus died to save sinners FROM THEIR SIN. (Not their sins, but their SIN – their slavery to sin.) He did not fail. As scripture says, He is the savior of the world. Sin leads to death. He died the death for us, and we can (in Him) also die this death to the world system and be spiritually raised with Him. THEN and only then can we learn to live by HIS life and not in the power of our own strength (of which we have none). It isn’t about fear; it’s about freedom. Sin’s penalty is death, but the gift of God is Life (And this is aionian life; that they might know You and Jesus Christ whom You have sent). Knowing Him is life. Until you know Him, you have no life – but everyone will eventually come to know Him.

It isn’t about knowing the right “facts,” but about knowing Jesus. You can’t skate along not seeking Him and expect to inherit eternal life – you have to follow Him. If you don’t follow Him, you won’t get to where He is going (until you change your mind and start following Him, which you eventually will do). As George MacDonald said, “No one ever GETS home without GOING home.”

Love, Cindy

#23

Good post Cinders :smiley: That’s the Gospel for you.

#24

That’s a great outline, Cindy. :smiley:

#25

a) The single verses might be vague, but together the case for universalism is very strong I think - the verses that seem to teach “eternal” damnation are also vague and indeed few in number (though often the opposite is claimed)

b) I think one shouldn’t focus on the words aion/aionios, God does NOT save all men because ‘aeonian’ punishment is limited BUT because God is the savior of all men, ‘aeonian’ punishment cannot be endless, it works that way, not the way round. It is not up to universalists to proof that aionios never means eternal, but up to infernalists to proof that aionios always means eternal, which is not the case; they have built their doctrine on this very word, not the universalists

c) This is true but overwhelmingly applies to the Old Testament which teaches no postmortem punishment at all, if taken 100% literally, these verses suggest the annihilation of the wicked rather than conscious torment. I understand them as a mere earthly death penalty that does not equate annihilation and does not prevent their ultimate salvation

#26

Meant to say thanks for that earlier – may I return the compliment on your new avatar profile photo! :smiley:

For full disclosure, I was reading from a prepared finale, which always makes me sound more professional than I am :wink: (and even then I stuttered at least ten times, I should have slowed down :angry: ) – but one of the things I learned in broadcast communication is that a lot of professionals make sure to write out and work from prepared material as much as possible, even on the radio when it sounds like they’re winging it off the cuff, because that sounds more professional. :laughing:

My opening arguments, and my rebuttal, were also both prepared material, so it’s all the stuff in between that required serious speaking talent. Which I doubt I sound nearly as good at. :wink:

But anyway, thank you for the compliment. :slight_smile:

#27

Well, thats a LOT of replies! I honestly didn’t expect so many. :blush: I wish I could make a detailed reply to everyone, I really do. Suffice to say to the posters here that I appreciate all of your input and support. Thanks all around!

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: I guess I’m really an agnostic. It feels like I always was one, even when I felt like a believer in my younger years due mostly to the fear of hell. A fear which, btw, I fully admit still lingers on. But to someone who is not a Christian, be they agnostic, atheist, hindu, muslim, jew or any other metaphysical perspective, Christian universalism may or may not look like so puzzling a view that it makes the Christian faith seem inauthentic. I don’t know, because universalism is typically debated among Christians themselves. But if one did not believe the Bible or Christianity to be of divine origin, I think there is a good chance that they would see the universalism vs. annihilationism vs. hell debate to be a sizeable red flag saying that this religion is not true. Why would such a crucial topic be so intensely debated, when a book authored by God ought to be clear and literal on the matter? In fact, it almost looks like a typical case of societal evolution.

Christianity was very diverse in the first few hundred years of its existence (even more so than it is today). This is would be expected since it was a loosely organized belief, with little structure or authority in it to force a dogma on people. But then huge numbers eventually came to believe. Yet it was still well before the modern era. And in the ancient world, the concept of ‘human rights’ – free conscience, punishment fitting the crime, love over fear and such – was an ideal considered by most people to be, at best, a beautiful suggestion. Many more would have thought such beliefs to be the ravings of lunatics. And society was still mostly kept in line through authoritarianism and brutality; you just couldn’t get many people to even fake ‘just getting along’ like we do now :laughing: That is the story of most of human history; being kind, understanding and truly, authentically civilized is quite the recent occurence. And now Christian Universalism is becoming popular. Its a beautiful worldview. But historically accurate? It really seems like a skeptic’s ‘ultimate proof’ that the Bible has lots of contradictions or vagueness because its written by many different flawed mortals over long periods of time, and people really do just re-interpret it to suit whatever the prevailing ideology is. Even annihilationism almost comes accross as some politically correct version of hell.

I hope not to sound offensive or anything, but honestly, could you really fault someone for passionately suspecting that to be true? Because I’m starting to. I’ve been reading more about universalism and it really is starting to look like that. If you look at this as an outside observer, and try your best not to have a stake in the fight, the great debate over one’s eternal fate starts to look like a mere product of flawed, diverse human opinion in which numerous views are justifiable, and some consensus usually comes about only when the values of society demand it.

Maybe I’m wrong. I don’t know how this will effect my lingering fear of hell. But I just can’t understand why a divine book wouldn’t be more clear, why universalism comes along when people are free and how one would argue to other skeptics that its not just seeing whatever patterns one wants to see.

#28

Hi Blue Raja

Thanks for sharing your honest opinions with us. It’s only by being honest about our doubts and fears, I reckon, that we will ever get anywhere near the truth - wherever that may lie.

I share a lot of your scepticism. As I said in my earlier post, I think the Bible is quite patently riddled with error, and with doctrinal paradoxes - Universalism vs eternal damnation being one of the deepest, most polarised, and most serious, in some respects. (After all, what more can ever be at stake for a human being than their eternal soul?)

But look at it this way: what if Universalism is indeed true, is - as many of us here believe it to be - the ‘golden thread’ of hope running throughout history? If so, then ultimately (and that is an important qualification), nobody will ever have lost anything by believing the wrong doctrine. If God - as I personally believe - is one day going to bring about the most glorious apokatastasis, restoring all things to perfection and eternal bliss, in the process somehow (in a way I can’t begin to explain or understand) ‘undoing’ all the bad and pain and suffering, then what any given individual believes at any given moment in history is not important. What matters is the ‘end game’.

And what if that ‘end game’ could only be achieved through a progressive revelation of the truth - a progressive revelation which preserves our freedom, a freedom many of us have abused greatly, including by subscribing to harmful, erroneous doctrines?

Now you might argue that the Holy Spirit could simply convict us all of the truth of Universalism, and banish all the erroneous doctrines at a stroke. I would argue that He is indeed doing that. But in a way that truly preserves our freedom to think otherwise. One day all people will come to believe in, and be united to, God. But that must happen of their own free will. And until that day comes, many people will continue to believe in error.

At least that’s how I see it :smiley: .

Shalom

Johnny

#29

TBR, no offense taken, I understand. I do want to point out a couple of notes, though.

1.) Universalism didn’t just appear in the past couple of centuries. It was around, though a minority, during the first several Christian centuries (at a time when Christians themselves were often not especially “free”!), and was held by Christian authorities who not only exercised strong formative influence on trinitarian orthodoxy but also on how new Christians were instructed in the faith. Even by the mid-400s, Augustine complained that most Christians, broadly speaking, were more merciful about hell (he wasn’t specific about the details of this majority and may have had various ideas in mind, although he was also replying briefly to Christian universalism) than he thought was accurately true. There is strong evidence that even Augustine started out a Christian universalist at his conversion, and made his initial arguments against his former Manichaeism precisely on those grounds, though for some reason he changed his mind and became vociferously anti-universalistic not long afterward (possibly in reaction to more serious problems perceived to be true about Origen, whose legacy as the greatest scholar in Greco-Roman history still loomed strongly.)

Even among non-universalists, Christian authorities in the pre-Imperial (and to some extent even in the early Imperial) phases of Christian development did routinely emphasize such things as free conscience, punishment fitting the crime, love over fear and such. And many non-Christians did regard such beliefs to be the ravings of lunatics. The trinitarians of the 400s had a hard object lesson from the previous century, too, since the majority of that century had involved Arian instead of trinitarian Christians acting with highest political support in oppression against trinitarian religious authorities. Starting in the 380s with the return of an orthodox Emperor to the throne, trinitarians began to reply in kind to keep ultimate political power from ever shifting again. And the principles of Christian universalism became increasingly inconvenient for any Christian authority (universalistic or non-universalistic) to hold. (To be fair to the Arians, the temptations of secular power on a level inherited through the Roman Imperial system, would have been hard for anyone to resist using ruthlessly, and by the nature of things those who did so would be more likely to pull ahead quickly; so a solidly trinitarian Imperial court in the 300s wouldn’t necessarily have behaved any better than they did from the late 300s onward.)

2.) I think you acknowledge that the natural human condition trends toward competition and domination against opposition over resources. Survival of the fittest and might making right, non-morality and non-rationality, are pressures on all human people. From a standpoint of social evolution, it shouldn’t be surprising that human ideals will tend to lean increasingly in that direction even when opposed, since opposition after all might most easily involve application of such principles! – and so the vicious circle perpetuates.

In other words, regardless of how beautiful and good any religion might potentially or ideally be, crap will tend to accrue, weigh it down, and point it back into a variation of natural human behavior.

But here’s the thing: you yourself are distinguishing morally between better and worse behavior. And while that might very well only be a subjective taste of yours due to your own socio-environmental pressure, the objective fact of the matter is that one kind of behavior fits a reality where at bottom only non-reasoning, non-moral application of power to cause effects constitutes fundamental behavior; and the other kind of behavior fits a reality where at bottom rational and moral fair-togetherness between persons constitutes fundamental behavior. Humanity may mix those two concepts in various flavors and to various degrees and in various modes, but the concepts are notionally distinct.

And however you came to be there, you’re judging (at the moment) in consonance with the idea that fundamental reality is a unity of fair-togetherness between persons, and therefore that subordinate reality ought to match up with that, and so should be critiqued for failing to do so.

The misbehavior of Christians only counts as misbehavior according to the standard proposed and defended by a particular set of Christians, those who believe that the one and only fundamental reality is an actively mutually supportive interpersonal relationship. Misbehaving Christians are misbehaving by their own standard (or the standard of that large subset anyway, which became the ‘orthodox’ belief even on a merely sociological notion of orthodoxy.)

But if reality isn’t fundamentally something of that sort, then people who behave differently from that may be behaving more in line with what reality fundamentally is, and so are not in fact misbehaving. But then your moral critique against them will not only fall to the ground, it will be an example of real misbehavior against the principles of whatever reality fundamentally is instead!

In short, your critique of non-universalism as not being “beautiful” etc., and your critique of Christians misbehaving just as badly as various non-Christians in various ways (ways which are coherent with the non-rational, non-moral application of power to cause reactions to the power), only makes sense if trinitarian Christian universalism is in fact true. :slight_smile:

Put another way: one thing I occasionally hear, even once from my Christian but non-universalistic brother, is that Christian universalism is “too good to be true”. But that statement literally makes no sense. If fundamental reality is something different, then Christian universalism is at best ‘bad’ in the sense of being in error. We cannot have an idea of the good which is actually superior to whatever the principles of fundamental reality really are.

But if people routinely fall short of measuring up to fundamental reality (and even aside from ethical failure any non-omniscient entity is going to fall short of that mark sometimes), then it should not be surprising that there is dispute among humans about what the truth of fundamental reality is and how we ought to behave. We aren’t the Borg; we do all have free will and are all in a position where we each have to do the best we can with what we’re provided, and we aren’t always going to get things right, and when that happens we’re naturally going to be at opposition with one another, and so the temptation comes in to act in ways which don’t aim toward the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons.

The question is whether we are acting more or less in communion with fundamental reality by acting toward fulfilling non-fair-togetherness between persons, or toward fulfilling fair-togetherness.

#30

Hi Blue Raja –

Hey I hope I didn’t annoy you when I was doing the reducing to absurdity shtick with you above :blush: . I wasn’t trying to trip you up. I just wanted to make you think outside the box that’s all :slight_smile: .

People from other metaphysical perspectives have the same debate about universalism! Judaism. Islam, Hinduism and (in a sense) Buddhism all have universalist traditions within them as well as non universalist traditions. The same was true of ancient Zoroastrianism.

Perhaps the concept of human rights (as you list them) has evolved out of the mustard seed of the Gospel. Gregory of Nyssa the ancient universalist Church Father was the first Christian to argue systematically for the abolition of slavery – and he did so on universalist grounds. There has been a tradition of universalism within Christianity throughout its history – sometime stronger sometimes weaker but it has always been there (it’s not a new thing). One of the things that appeals to me about universalism is the witness of the lives of universalists of the past.

Blessings

Dick