I might throw this in as well: I have adopted Thomas Kuhnâs paradigm (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions).
Say you are satisfied with a theory. Then an anomaly pops up. Then another. Soon, if enough anomalies show up, then all of a sudden your theory must enlarge to include what are not now anomalies but parts of the new theory. Fascinating book.
For Kuhn, this explains why there are scientific revolutions, not just the incremental addition of knowledge brought about by normal science.
My understanding of God - and maybe your experience is somewhat the same - has been to adopt a point of view, at one time charismatic, then Presbyterian, then Calvinism - and stick with it as long as I could, staying intellectually honest - but having to change the model under the force of what I perceived to be anomalies that mitigated against it, enough that I had to adopt a new model. EU, as I interpret it, provides that model. Will that change? I donât know, so far no little pesky âfactsâ appear to conflict with the core EU principles in the forumâs Statement of Faith. Iâm happy with it.
Thanks for your well thought reply Cindy. Here is the part where more clarification is needed:
Who is Christ? What did he do (or what is he doing) to save us? How can I trust in Christ without knowing what he has done (or is doing)? I donât think we can answer these questions without doctrine. Doctrine teaches us what Christ Jesus did for us. However,neither Rome nor the various flavors of Protestantism answer the questions of what Jesus did for us the same.
Additionally, wouldnât one think that the church of Galatia knew that Christ died for them? Since the apostle said that they were turning away from what had been preached to them, then it is evident that they had been originally taught to trust in Christ. Yet, they were adding additional requirements, namely, the requirement of circumcision. They were moving to a âJesus plusâ gospel, which, according to the apostle, is not the gospel. Maybe they would even say they were trusting in Christ, but it appears that they were adding additional requirements and thus the apostle anathematizes those who were teaching the church additional requirements.
The interesting thing about this is that these are the words (in Galatians above) of the same apostle who said literally nothing about hell. So, what then is âanother gospel?â (Just pointing out that this passage is often used as a âclobber verseâ against universalists and/ or anyone else who doesnât hold to the mainstream evangelical view). I also wonder even about the usefulness of labeling one group âChristianâ over and against another. Jesus was not a Christian after all, unless weâre prepared to claim he was a follower of himself!
LOVE the goat, Dave. Only you would go looking for a goat in a boat!
I could give you my answers for that. I donât think thatâs your point though. Of course correct doctrine is important. Otherwise why spend so much time pursuing it? I didnât mean to give the impression I donât care a fig whether Iâm right or wrong about things like the atonement, our eternal destiny, what it means for Jesus to save us (and from WHAT Heâs saved us). I spend a great deal of time and thought, study and prayer on getting my doctrine as right as I possibly can. Ultimately though, I know Iâm sure to be wrong about many things. If only by looking back at how many things Iâve discarded outright and changed my mind on and rethought . . . yeah, Iâm wrong about lots of things. Do I think Iâm going to hell for that? No. Our Father isnât like that. If He is, weâre all in a hole too deep to crawl out of. If God is evil, we are all smoked.
If theyâre adding stuff (circumcision, Sabbath keeping) to whatâs essential, then that isnât primarily trusting in Christ. Itâs true that the various branches of the church have interpreted the meaning of the atonement & etc. in different ways. I do believe that every true heart that longs for Jesus will find Him. We may have incorrect doctrine and still have a heart thatâs right with God. Of COURSE itâs better to have true doctrine than false, and of COURSE itâs worth the searching of a lifetime to do our best to find that true doctrine. That said, I believe that ANY person truly seeking God will find Him and not another. It really isnât about doctrine; itâs about love and trust. Thereâs a lot more to this than I can understand, but hopefully that more or less answers your question as to what I think about this. Whether or not Iâm right is a whole 'nuther thing.
I feel like weâve had a thread on that article already (back in discussion on Robâs LW), but durned if I can find itâŚ
Oh well. Since Iâm also feeling a bit recuperative today, Iâll take a stab at it (despite also feeling sure Iâve commented on his article before. At least itâll be more easily found now.)
Iâm not sure if he actually intended to have it backwards, but inadvertently or not he has it backwards: God doesnât wait for us to freely offer love to God before acting to save us from our sins, and without Godâs primary action toward that end none of us would be able to love anyone much less repent of our abuses of Godâs grace. Iâm even more a believer in the importance of free will to love than Roger in some ways (which Iâll get to in a minute), but the Calvinists arenât just pulling Paulâs statements from Romans 5 (for example) out of their butts. We donât earn Godâs salvation from our sins. We can earn various secondary rewards, but not Godâs primary intentions toward us.
As for âa leap of optimistic hopeâ: technically, Christian universalism (like any of the other soteriology options) ought to be about what God does, not primarily about what sinners do. If God persistently acts toward saving all sinners from sin until He gets it done, then thatâs universalism, not Arminianism (which lacks the persistence for various reasons) nor Calvinism (which lacks the scope). Whether God ever succeeds or whether thereâs a never-ending stalemate, does not lead to a different category of soteriology.
However, if God reveals in the scriptures that He eventually succeeds, then there would be a way to believe His success is true beyond optimistic hope. Obviously RO doesnât believe God reveals this, but in principle there can in fact be a âway to believe that true other than a leap of optimistic hopeâ.
And even if the scriptures didnât reveal that (although I find they do), just how much faith in God vs His opponents does it take to trust that an omni-competent entity will succeed in His primary goals?! â especially where that goal (as even the scriptures testify, such as in Isaiah 45) is essentially connected to Godâs own self-existent reality?! â a reality where Godâs own self-existence involves the fulfillment of fair-togetherness between persons.
I could perhaps imagine a non-trinitarian thinking that Godâs accomplishment of fair-togetherness between persons is at best only a leap of optimistic hope (although in my experience non-trinitarians tend to have more of a trust in Godâs competency than that), but why in the world would a trinitarian teacher and apologist ever doubt that God can achieve that result??
The answer is that most trinitarian teachers and apologists kind of forget theyâre trinitarians, or that trinitarian theology matters, when talking on other God-related topics; and this is one more example of that trend. I realized I myself was doing it 14 years ago this winter, and I cannot keep count of how many times Iâve noticed it since then.
But even ignoring the importance of trinitarian theism to soteriology (which no trinitarian ever should do), and even ignoring the competency factor of an omni-competent entity (which any theist who affirms omni-capabilities should at least be wary of doing): if we cannot trust God to save sinners from sin, then why in the world would we ever trust God to save us from our sins?!
And of course, many Arminians do not trust God to even save themselves from sin: âhardshellâ Arminians (to coin a term) believe that someone can lose their salvation right up to the point of death. Even âsoftâ Arminians, who incorporate an analogue to Calvinistic assurance, could worry that theyâve said and/or done the âright thingsâ to convince God to persist in saving them from sin until He gets it done. (Catholics have their non-Protestant varieties of this non-assurance, too. e.g., can a properly confirmed Roman Catholic ever sin in such a way as to go to hell instead of purgatory? Some say yes, some say no.) When Arminians convert to Calvinism, this worry about assurance of salvation is typically the reason! â just like a worry over Godâs intentions toward themselves (if God intends to save everyone from sin, then I cannot possibly be deluded to think that God acts toward saving me) is typically the reason why Calvinists convert to Arminianism.
He doesnât explain here why Christian universalism is supposed to be illogical (as to whether itâs unbiblical, thatâs a whole other question); but obviously Iâd say itâs illogical for a trinitarian theist to doubt that God can and will accomplish fair-togetherness between persons.
For that matter, someone who holds the notion that God punishes no one but just leaves sinners alone to punish themselves behind doors they lock to keep God out, has NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER complaining that someone elseâs interpretation of scripture is âunbiblicalâ. Roger may think there are âeasyâ Arminian answers to various scriptural evidences for universal salvation, but I challenge him or anyone else to point to any serious Biblical exegetic case for God wistfully waving off sinners into an unhappy never-neverland of their own. Roger may think universalists are ignoring or straining their interpretations of what Biblical punishment is like, but he knows at least some of us are actually keeping Godâs punishment in the account! Whereas he himself rejects the idea of a lack of punishment by God, not only as unbiblical but as a far more serious error than any universalism which recognizes punishment for sin.
Yet the kind of sad passive defeat of God by active sinners who only punish themselves with their sins, which Roger accepts (or accepted back near the start of July 2011) is nothing other than an overt denial that God is actively punishing those sinners. Granted, Lewis (whom we both revere â and Iâm fully willing to challenge anyone in the world to a comprehensive knowledge of Lewisâ theology, too) occasionally went that way himself, which is why an increasing number of theologians try to follow suit. So did I in my final years as an Arminian, not least because I thought Lewis was arguing sensibly there. But for Lewis, or me, or anyone else to insist on Point A (over-against apparent testimony from St. Paul for Point B, as Lewis admitted) as Biblical testimony from Jesus, and then to take a position directly contradicted by the same evidence which the same person is appealing to for establishing Point A, is ludicrous.
Agreed, although Christian ultra-universalists donât tend to deny Godâs wrath against sin: they just think God has already expended all His wrath, for example by punishing Jesus instead. (And, um, maybe Jerusalem. Iâm not an ultra-u. )
Whereas the Eastern Orthodox and various Anglican and related communions even allow confident affirmation of it so long as it isnât taught as dogma (what must be believed to be counted in communion). But how could the RCC permit hope for it while regarding it as heresy?!?!
So, so much for âaccording to all major branches of Christianityâ, unless the two largest and most ancient branches are not to be regarded as Christian, nor one of the oldest Protestant branches. But Roger clearly regards them as such. They regard it as heterodox, not as heresy. (To be fair, the RCC, post-schism, clearly regarded it as heresy until the mid-20th century, since rejecting it was part of their requirements for accepting former EOx members into Roman communion. Fortunately, Iâm not an RCC, or not yet anyway, so I donât have to worry about just how infallible the infallible church and its infallible teaching authorities has to be. )
Um, except that it is proof. They arenât technically wrong to do so, even if they ignore the place where he disagrees universalism is true, and even that someone should hope for it.
Well, at least he realizes that a doctrine where God authoritatively overrides or permits the final overriding of free will, is simple error and confusion! Until he proposes it.
Then someday heâll come to see that final perdition necessarily involves the final override of the free will of the sinner, either imposed or authoritatively permitted by God instead of Him continuing to seek the lost. To claim (with Lewis) that God allows a sinner to destroy their own free will out of Godâs supreme respect for the free will of the sinner, is nonsense. (Which is why Lewis sometimes defaulted back to the theory that God doesnât even allow that, He just canât manage to defeat sin sometimes and quits when Heâs beaten.)
Perhaps that realization has even already happened, seeing that this article was written at the end of July 2011.
Oh, yay, I did add some comments to that thread of Rogerâs after all. (Although I donât seem to have talked about the issue of God negating free will through final perdition.) Thanks, Johnny! Weird; I know I did a search for âOlsonâ on site⌠maybe I searched for âOlsenâ instead⌠that seems likely since I persistently mis-spelled his last name in my comment above. Will go back and fixâŚ
One thing he said which at the time struck me as âWHA?â and I meant to look up, but I donât think I did, was Gregory Nyssa not being recognized as a doctor. Why this would make any difference I donât know, since having the title FATHER OF ORTHODOXY and ORTHODOX OF THE ORTHODOX seems more unique than âdoctorâ or âteacherâ, and would seem to imply the lesser in the greater. But I also seem to recall him being in the list of doctors, and even the last doctor recognized by both ancient Catholic branches.
Mental note to check on that again, although if anyone else does so first I wonât mind.
After I wrote my notes above on ROâs article, I kept remembering I forgot to kvetch about something that bugs the urbanity out of me when a certain class of theologians try it; but I also kept forgetting to add it.
Iâve gone back and added it, now, but Iâll print it here below for convenience of anyone tracking the thread by subscription. I added it after my comment replying to Rogerâs assertion that any kind of Christian universalism (even the kind he thinks isnât pernicious error) is âillogical and unbiblicalâ. (I retorted that at least my position doesnât require the kind of illogic on free will which his position does.)
Happy New Year! â and yes, Gregory of Nyssa is considered a saint by both the RCCs and the EOx (so I donât know who Roger was talking to about that). In fact, his whole family seems to have been canonized, including Macrinas (his sister and his grandmother), one of whom is regarded as having essentially founded Christian nunneries, and both of whom were Christian universalists. Indeed, Gregory essentially credited his universalism to his grandmother in his most famous writing on that topic! â who in turn had been converted by Gregory Thaumaturgus (also a saint), himself converted to Christianity by (and a devoted follower of) Origen.
They do not give him the title of âdoctor of the churchâ per se (though I swear I recall them both doing so), but that hardly matters when he has unique titles of his own. His two relatives Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzen (also both saints) were however accorded the title doctor, and both had at least universalistic sympathies (with GregNaz being arguably universalistic himself, just not as public about it as his friend Nyssus.) An argument for St. Athanasius (also a doctor) can be made as well. St. Ephram the Syrian is a well-known universalist honored as doctor in both the RCC and EOx. St. Theresa of Lisieux, the most recent doctor recognized by the RCC, also taught universal salvation. Pope Benedict in an encyclical once called St. Maximum the Confessor (another well-known universalist) âthe great Greek doctor of the churchâ, though Benedict retired before declaring this an official recognition.
The Chaldean Catholic, and the Syro-Malabar Catholic Churches recognize Nyssa as a doctor of the church (along with some Isaacs known to be universalists).
The Eastern Orthodox Church doesnât actually put the same weight on the title as the Catholic Church(es), so its lack of calling THE FATHER OF ORTHODOXY and THE ORTHODOX OF THE ORTHODOX âdoctorâ doesnât mean much. They do recognize three saints with the title of âtheologianâ, though: John the Evangelist, Gregory Nanzianzus, and Symeon the New. Of those, at least one (Symeon the New) is regarded clearly as a universalist; arguably so for Nanzianzus (and the apostle, by universalists anyway. )
The Armenian Orthodox Church, among some others already mentioned, also recognizes as doctor the author of the texts attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, who regularly followed Origenâs arguments on the topic.
The surviving remnants of the Church of the East naturally recognize Nestorius as a doctor, also Theodore of Mospuestia (each once condemned for Christological problems but recently rescinded by central Catholicism/Othodoxy with Theodore recognized once again as a champion of trinitarian orthodoxy) and Theodoreâs teacher Diadore of Tarsus (who was never condemned by central orthodoxy for anything). The latter two at least are well-known Christian universalists, probably also Nestorius.
The Anglican Church doesnât use the title âdoctorâ preferring Teacher of the Faith instead. Among others already mentioned they include Macrina sister of Nyssus, and Irenaeus (who taught the full eventual salvation of all human sinners, though the annihilation of rebel angels).
So, no, depending on which communion is meant by âthe churchâ (assuming the oldest trinitarian groups who promote the title or an equivalent â most Protestant groups donât), being a Christian universalist (arguably or certainly) is no disqualification for being formally recognized by the title âdoctorâ or the communionâs equivalent.
Notably, neither RCC nor EOx (nor most of the other communions, with Irenaeus being an exception for the Anglicans) recognize someone as âdoctorâ before Nicea; and the RCC seem to have a rule that the title cannot be granted to a martyr (or rather âdoctorâ and âconfessorâ cannot both be awarded to a person). This wouldnât affect Nyssa who died in peace at an old age, but might disqualify some other patristics (such as Maximus the Confessor) who would otherwise be granted the title of doctor (as Benedict seems to indicate).
Yesterday I made an article recommendation in a comment I posted to Professor Roger Olsonâs *âHow serious a heresy is universalism?â * I include here a copy of my comment, and make the same reading recommendation to each of my friends at The Evangelical Universalist, in the strongest possible terms:
Dr. Olson, I donât know if, on the face of it, you will consider this an egregious error or a simple error, but since I now believe the Lord is âonly good all the time,â I also see that God does not kill. Hebrews 2:14-15 says Satan has âthe power of death,â not God. God gives life, Satan death (John 10:10). We canât get the question of universalism right before we get the question of Godâs nature right. Right?
I had a powerful conversion to Christ, out of sex, drugs, and rock and roll (shy introvert though I was), and, like you, became a proud Arminian. But in later years, as I began to struggle with depression and suicidal thoughts, I worried more and more about losing my salvation and going to an eternal hell.
I would like to share an article with you and your readers that I believe does a very good job, in a Bible-based fashion, in disclosing Godâs non-violent nature. It is truly mind-blowing, and the most important single article I have ever read.
I grew up thinking (at least subconsciously) that God is bipolar, or maybe even schizophrenic. He was loving and gracious, but could become angry and violent. For example, did God kill almost everyone in the Genesis Flood? Or did Satan?
In years past, I could never have read the following article, for fear that I might possibly be misled by seducing spirits, and end up losing my soul.
The article is "SATAN: Old Testament Servant Angel or New Testament Cosmic Rebel?" Author Richard Murray is a criminal defense attorney outside Atlanta, and holds a Masters of Practical Theology from Regent University. Here is the link. Thank you for taking the time to consider this uncommon viewpoint.
Thank you so much, Sobornost. Geoff Glenisterâs series âSatan: Lifting the Veilâ appears very high quality to me.
I certainly agree with his statement, *âAt the heart of the question of understanding the Devil/Satan/Lucifer is the question of our understanding of what âspiritual warfareâ is, and how we are supposed to wage it.â
*
But I passionately believe we have all been getting this wrong, and that Murrayâs article provides the light we seek.
For those of us who recognize God has never been angry, or violent, or bipolar, it seems the standard place to camp has been with the Girardians.
But like Richard Murray, I recognize Lucifer/Satan as a literal person, like Michael or Gabriel, with a personality and a will.
Richard Murray has debated his friend Michael Hardin about this issue. (See Murrayâs FB page at facebook.com/richard.murray.1840 )
I truly appreciate your taking the time to consider Murrayâs article âSATAN: Old Testament Servant Angel or New Testament Cosmic Rebel?â at the Clarion Journal. It opens up a whole new way of reading the Scriptures, and of clearly seeing God as âonly good all the time.â
Iâve read the article Hermano and found it very interesting (I first read it last year). Iâm worried that it may be a little too clear cut (I opt for a Girardian perspective myself and see a gradual shift actually within the OT). Btu there is much food for thought in the article and Iâm still thinking about it
I see in the tack that Murray is taking the idea that the understanding of satan in the OT was not as complete as the picture we have in the NT, and all that makes sense to me. I still donât understand how this necessitates a view of satan as a personal being. I see Hardinâs approach as; the satan is part of us, rather than part of God, which was the OT view.
âAnother easy example. 1 Samuel 16:14 says âan evil spirit from the Lord troubled him [Saul].â Now, bracket the word âLordâ with [Jesus OR Satan]. We know all evil spirits are of Satan as the ruler of demons. God never sends evil spirits on anybody. Let no man say this, including Samuel. Jesus always cast evil spirits OUT of men, never INTO men. This is really a great example where the word âLordâ is OBVIOUSLY talking about âSatan,â who again, the Old Testament saw as a servant of God rather than an enemy.â
But, donât we have a similar example in the NT where God says he will send a powerful deception on those in disobedience so they will believe the lie?
Thanks!
Will go back and fixâŚ
