I’m still in the process of formulating what I want to say, but I have been wondering how a post-mortem idea of reconciliation is any different than a works based theology. Won’t I have to become good enough to get into heaven? If not, it seems that an evangelical universalist is saying that the ones going to hell are those who’ve refused to accept God’s grace.
It has nothing to do with works. It is a submission in obedience to the will of God. A godly life has good works as part of it’s fruit. If you submit in obedience to the inspiration of the God’s spirit and submit to the corrections, testings and trials that he sends to change us and enable us to overcome, judging yourself now so that you won’t be judged later, then you become one of the elect. Those who don’t do go to the Lake of fire, not hell in the traditional sense. There they are purged of their carnality. Not a pleasant experience, but they are eventually reconciled back to the Father.
You seem to have misunderstood the entire process. Submission in obedience is no different a requirement for any Christian, The difference is that for an educated universalist, we appreciate the experience more because we understand the purpose of it a little more. Therefore are generally more willing to submit. It is hard to walk a walk of faith if you don’t understand why you are going through it. Many Christians see it as punishment or a loss of God’s favour, but universalists understand it is God chastising us as sons. So that we can put on Christ. That is the entire point of creation. 
As I understand… IF there is yet more sin to be paid for beyond the grave and so beyond what Christ paid for, then in contradiction of Heb 2:9 & 9:26 He could not have “tasted death” and thus “put away sin” for “everyone”. Further, Paul says “he who has died is freed from sin”. I believe it.
Again, IF there is still yet more payment to be made for sin by any man then surely that devalues the efficacy of Christ’s cross?
Hi Nimblewill
Have you considered it this way?
‘Salvation’ has three ‘modes’ or ‘stages’ - ontological, noological and sacramental:
Ontological salvation is the salvation we all have, all of us, already. It was won for us all by Christ, the Lamb slain “from the foundation of the world”.
Noological (from the Greek for knowing) salvation is that which we ‘gain’ when we come to faith in Christ - when we hear the gospel, understand that we are saved and come to believe in that salvation.
Sacramental salvation is what we attain to and are confirmed in forever in heaven, in the presence of God.
Now I suppose that the ‘traditional’ and currently most prevalent view of the gospel is somewhat similar to the above, except that it puts a defining weight on noological salvation. We must come to faith in this earthly life, or we are lost forever, even though Jesus died to bring salvation to all people.
Under Christian Universalism, however, everyone is already saved, already ‘home free’ if you like. But until we come to believe in and accept that salvation, we will not actually experience sacramental salvation. And that can happen either during our earthly lives, or in some future mode of existence after death. It makes no ultimate difference whether we come to saving faith in this life or the next. Hence the whole post mortem salvation debate is something of a red herring.
As for salvation by works, then I would argue that we are only truly saved by a combination of faith and works. No good works will ever save us on their own - that was achieved for us by Christ, as I have said. But only by assenting to our salvation - noological salvation - will it be actualised; and the natural fruit of that will be good works.
As to whether or not faith itself is a work, then that’s a tricky one. My favourite theologian, Robert Farrar Capon, says most definitely not. And yet he is insistent that we must believe in order to be saved. And if I read him correctly I think he would go so far as to say that we can effectively continue to refuse to believe forever (although I think this is impossible).
All the best
Johnny
PS I first learned this view of salvation from a guy called Drew Costen, who blogs as the Christian Heretic. He’s well worth a read.
i think Jesus says the work we have to do is to believe in He who sent Him…i can’t remember where that is from, though.
so that’s a conundrum…
i don’t think Universalism puts any more emphasis on this apparent dichotomy than standard ECT does, though…so this is a question for all Christianity that teaches salvation by faith NOT works, not just UR.
is putting trust in God and resting in Him work? if you define that trust as having to fit a creed, it may do…but if it’s just childlike trust, it doesn’t have to be.
John 6:29: “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
Faith or works? You tell me 
.
thanks, that’s the one!
i think when the Bible talks about faith it really means trust…trust is not work. it can be hard work LEARNING to trust, but trust is restful.
faith however has been co-opted by many to mean ascribing to a creed that ultimately men have put together, no matter how good their intentions were. that can definitely become a form of works…or possibly something along Gnostic lines of thought, which are dangerous for this very reason.
We’re either choosing to cooperate with God, or we aren’t; and if we aren’t, we may be choosing to act against fair-togetherness between persons instead.
So long as we insist on choosing that, we’re sinning. Someone may be choosing to cooperate with God without realizing what they’re doing exactly and still be working in good faith, like the mature flock in Matt 25; and I gather that the problem with the baby goats was one of their intentional attitude toward the least of Christ’s flock (like themselves!–but whom they refused to recognize themselves as), not an accidental misunderstanding about facts. Otherwise they’d be penitently learning to adjust to the real facts in that scene.
Nevertheless, if Jesus (and God more generally elsewhere, setting aside Christology variants) repeatedly testifies that people who “do the good things” get rewarded post-mortem and those who “do the bad things” get punished post-mortem (and both those quotes are literal translations of scriptural phrases in relation to judgment); and if true love involves active choices to supportively cooperate with persons (as in the Trinity for example); then those who hold to their “bad things” are going to be punished so long as they hold to them, and possibly still disciplined for teaching and training purposes even if they repent: because cooperation with God, and with our fellow creatures, is important to the life of a child of God as a child of God.
Cooperation, being an action, is certainly a work; and that applies to faith, too: being faithful, including being trustworthy, is a choice and thus a work. If anyone is looking to be saved from their sins (or even from punishment) without having to cooperate with God, then they’re expecting something contradictory, and it isn’t going to happen. We cannot be saved from not-cooperating-with-God without coming to cooperate with God.
If trinitarian or some other high Christology theism is true, then cooperating with God means sharing with what Jesus does on the cross – and NOT trying to act separately from Jesus on the cross, as if we could save ourselves by crucifying ourselves (literally and/or figuratively) apart from God, but following the lead of God in cooperation with God, which includes acknowledging our proper reality and role as creatures of God.
And now we’re getting into why “salvation by works” is properly denounced: we cannot convince God or make God save us, nor can we do it ourselves apart from God or as if we and God are both creatures in ontological parallel. Nor can we appeal to some standard beyond God or more fundamental than God as though God is obligated to save us by that higher standard.
On this point Calvinistic and universalistic Christian schools of thought agree (at least in principle if not always coherently in theological practice), over-against Arminian schools of thought: no one, including us, has to convince God to act to save us from our sins, or to keep acting to do so if God voluntarily acts first. That means the Son doesn’t convince the Father to save us either, which would be an incoherent proposition if trinitarian theism is true anyway. We don’t convince God to save us by saying the sinners prayer or following the Roman road or being baptized at any age or taking sacramental communion or “just trusting in Jesus”, or any other action or set of actions, no matter how complex or simple. Nor is there any possibility of us being saved from our sins unless God loves us with saving love.
On that point Arminianistic and universalistic Christian schools of thought agree (at least in principle if not always coherently etc.) over-against Calvinistic schools of thought: God loves all sinners with saving love. The assurance of God’s saving love certainly applies to you (whoever is reading this), not maybe you.
But whichever school of Christian thought is true (only one of those assurances, or only the other, or both), God is saving us from uncooperation into willing cooperation, and that’s a choice on our part whether that choice is looked at from a libertarian direction (as Arminianistic Christians tend primarily do) or from a compatiblistic direction (as Calvinistic Christians tend primarily to do, although both sides can and sometimes do agree that both types of freedom apply importantly.)
Or as one apostle puts it, works without faith (and hope and love) are useless or worse than useless; and as another canonical author puts it, faith without works is dead. And they’re both right, and both are encouraging both ‘faith’ and ‘works’: It isn’t an either/or situation. The problem only comes in when we get an idea about works, including about the action of faith, that supercedes God somehow.
Putting it another way, we aren’t supposed to forget to work out our own salvation, because that’s the responsible thing for a person to do; but we also aren’t supposed to forget to do so with fear and trembling, for it is God Who works within us. A child who doesn’t act in cooperation with his father is a rebel child (“I go sir!” but went not); and a child who doesn’t act in cooperation with his father is a rebel child.
And our Father in the heavens wants us to be good children, toward Himself and toward our fellow children.
i liked that, Jason. thanks!
Thanks to all! I’m just trying to work through this.
Jason Said
I’ve done both, I guess.
I still think that this gets into works. Can a person choose to cooperate with God and not have a Bible or someone to teach him.
Thanks Johnny, this is what I lean toward. If I connect the quotes from both of my last posts however it seems that we are saying that I get rewarded for coming to a noological understanding of salvation and this “seems” to make God out to be a respecter of persons, privileges, and placement.
Well, they aren’t mutually exclusive results. 
The scriptures seem to teach so, though strictly speaking the Holy Spirit would still be empowering and leading (thus teaching) them. But I suppose you mean “other creatures” by “someone”.
I believe that salvation is by grace through faith, whether in this life or the life to come. God chooses when to save us, this life or the life to come. Judgment and punishment of sin is remedial whether in this life or the life to come; it’s for our good. We shall all face the judgment and give an account of what we’ve done in this life. Every good act we’ve done is rewarded, and we’ll be chastized for the evil practices, habits we’ve had, chastized so as to deliver us from evil. All of this is done so as to reconcile us to God and with one another! And judgment is rooted in the love, mercy, and righteousness of God. Through judgment He will make things right!