I’m running a bit behind schedule today (Monday 5/23); so it may be this afternoon or even tomorrow before I put up the next part.
The good news is that this is not (yet) because it’s that long–my initial impression is that it’ll be shorter than previous entries. (And there was much rejoicing! )
The bad news it that this is because I am lazy-- er, wait, no scratch that…
The good news is that this is because I got distracted (…yes, that’s better, let’s go with that then, shall we? )
One thing I was distracted with was learning that one of my favorite early-20th-century Christian authors, G. K. Chesterton, grew up in what amounted to a Unitarian Universalist household, although of the non-dogmatic sort; it was from this that he fell away into agnosticism. But he continued to respect more doctrinally chewy universalists like George MacDonald (though he seems to have still classified MacD as “vague” as to doctrine, which tells me he wasn’t reading closely enough even in his later years when he wrote concerning his final conversion to Roman Catholicism. )
I may write up something on this eventually; he still doesn’t talk much about universalism, but his ‘three stages of conversion’ is interesting and reminds me of what happens when people become Christian universalists (or indeed just about anything else–in GKC’s case, Roman Catholic, though first it was high Anglican.)
The other thing I’ve been distracted with, was editing up and posting a Cadre Journal entry this morning on A Trinitarian Argument From Salvation – which some readers here may recall eventually arrives at (and at least suggests) universal salvation.
(A slightly earlier version of the argument, as well as a similar argument from trinitarian theism to universalism, instead of from salvation to ortho-trin, may be found in this thread.)