The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Why isn't UR obvious?

Evangelical Universalism Arguments for Evangelical Universalism
#1

In thinking about the other thread, “Have you seen a conservative evangelical convinced of UR?”, I started wondering why UR isn’t immediately obvious to the vast majority of mainstream Christians. I’ve heard here that because we have been taught wrong for so long that ECT has become part of our meme that we never considered the alternative.

Or is it that God has kept this knowledge from the majority because the idea of ECT is more effective in getting people to Christ, even though there is a misunderstanding? If you ask most Christians about how they became a Christian, I would wager that most of them came to Christ because of a concern for their souls in going to Hell. That the threat of Hell drove them to get saved.

Now two things can happen with that: either 1) the saved person continues to grow in Christ and finds the love of God beyond the theory of salvation from Hell, and therefore matures to what God desires in their life or 2) the saved person has his ticket to heaven, and wham bam thank you ma’am, he’s off to live his own life. I can testify that a majority of folks who have been saved through the various ministries in our church or not seen again, or if they do visit our church, they aren’t there for long. Neither is there a good track record on the saved/baptized ratio. Yet it seems that in the New Testament, most everyone gets baptized. What are we doing wrong?

Still though, most people do get saved from the threat of ECT than anything else. It’s only after a more throrough study of the bible that most people on this forum come to UR.

UR is not obvious. But did God intentionally make it inobvious because ECT is a more effective way of **getting our attention **rather than emphasis a relationship with God through Christ? Has He figured that human nature would respond better to immediate danger than the long term relationship that would benefit the seeker?

I guess what I’m getting at, in relation to the other thread, is I would sure like to see a study on the evangelistic efforts of UR in winning souls to Christ. Is there any effective way to present the UR gospel so that people respond? Would it be more effective that presenting ECT for an immediate emotional response?

Biblical Literalism - the Proper Way
#2

Dondi, I believe that the reason that UR is not widely known and accepted is because ECT is and has been for generations an assumed “fact”, one that was not questioned in the Reformation, one that is only reinforced by English translations, especially the KJV. I mean, it’s difficult to NOT believe in ECT when one sees the word “Hell” in the KJV 64 times and the NKJV 32 times. It’s all over the place. This coupled with the traditional view of the Lake of Fire, and the many passages that warn sternly of the judgment of sin and wickedness and ECT seems to be an “irrefutable fact”! Even translations like the NIV and NASV that correct the mistranslation of Sheol and Hades, still mistranslate Gehenna and thus have mistranslate Jesus as warning of Hell. Hell is an “assumed fact”, part of the “Christian” worldview, a subconscious level paradigm! And challenging any subconscious level paradigm is very difficult, impossible without significant study and reflection! One also must remember that most people who come to faith in a particular denomination, rarely change denominations. It’s like how being born and raised in a specific culture predisposes one towards certain beliefs, attitudes, and actions.

Of course, there is also the present reality that the evil Principalities and Powers, Rulers of this “present evil age” are doing all they can to suppress the truth, to hide the light under a basket.

#3

While I agree that the Reformation and the KJV played a part in elevating Hell, the idea of eternal punishment goes back well farther primarily with the Catholic Church. But early church fathers like Ignatius, Clement, and Justin Martyr taught it as well. And these figure were immersed in the Greek translations.

#4

As to the “benefits” of teaching ECT, I just don’t buy that line of reasoning. Apparently even some of the church fathers who believed in UR bought into it, thinking that the threat of ECT would motivate people, believers and unbelievers alike, to live more godly and avoid sin. I believe that ECT perverts the image of God, casts a basket over the light of God’s love, and fills people with fear. It doesn’t empower people to live righteously; grace does that. It actually locks people into sin through fear, causing some to be legalistic and others to just give up and be licentious. It’s the love of God that draws us to repentance. It is the Good News that is the Power of God unto salvation - NOT Bad News!

Also, by mistranslating Judgment to be about vengeance and retribution, instead of remediation, and as the separation of believers and unbelievers - it nullifies the power of these scriptures on judgment to call both unbelievers and believers to repentance. Believers say, “Well, these do not apply to me because I’m a believer, so I need not fear judgment because I’m saved by grace.” Unbelievers say, “Well, I don’t believe in God anyhow, so I don’t care what these scriptures say. Not only that, but shoot, I’m a better person than most Christians anyhow.”

I believe that it is the TRUTH that sets people free. The truth is, “what we sow, we shall reap” whether we are believers or not! The truth is that Judgment is based on how we actually live, what we actually do with what we’ve received from God, and especially how we treat others! And if we are selfish and wicked, we’ll face the fire of God’s judgment and it’ll burn the hell out of us - whether we’re believers or not, in some ways especially if we’re believers; for if we’re believers we should know better and should be empowered by grace to live better! To whom much is given much is required!

The doctrine of Hell also significantly HINDERS Christians from sharing their faith in Christ. Why? Because no one likes to be the bearer of bad news! And let’s face the truth; Hell is Bad News! “If you don’t turn, you’re going to burn”, is Bad News. “God loves you, BUT if you don’t…you’re going to Hell”, is Bad News! It’s no wonder that 90-95% of Christians are not active in sharing the “gospel”, because the traditional “gospel” is not “Good News” at all, no matter how one wraps it!

The doctrine of Hell also seems to empower Christians to be unloving towards others. Instead of seeing others as family, believers in Hell see others as not-family and often as the enemy. Hell has been used as justification for all manner of evil from the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of William Tyndale, to the woman who killed her children so as to insure them going to heaven!

Most people can readily see that Hell is irrational and unjust. It just doesn’t make sense for an all-powerful, all-loving, all-wise God to create beings only to torture them endlessly. And it is certainly unjust to create someone as slaves of unrighteousness only to torture them forever for being unrighteous! And then to torture them for 10000000’s of years, endlessly, though their sins were only momentary. Where is the “eye for an eye” in that? Endless torture for one sin, hmm, is simply not just. That’s worse than the evil father who locks his 4 year old son in the closet for years because he spilt his milk! Is it any wonder that many people have a hard time putting their faith in a god who would be so evil!

So, to put it bluntly, I believe that the traditional doctrine of ECT terribly hinders the building of the kingdom of God and the development of emotionally and spiritually healthy disciples of Christ!

#5

Yes, I didn’t mean to imply that it was new with the KJV, but that the KJV and the Reformation are foundational aspects of much of evangelical Christianity. And I was addressing specifically why English speaking evangelicals today find it so difficult to even consider the possibility of UR.

Yes, but if one looks at the Hebrew and Greek text of scripture, neither Sheol, Hades, or Gehenna imply ECT. And to me it’s especially important that the OT doesn’t warn of ECT, especially in the Torah. So if the concept of Hell (ECT) does not come from the Jews, then where did it come from? I believe it came primarily from Greek and Roman mythology, though the Egyptians also had a type of Hell in their mythology also. (I don’t know about the Babylonians or Meades and Persians.) ECT was a Greco-Roman cultural myth that was read into scripture; it did not come from scripture. The Gentile, Greco-Roman reading of Gehenna, that Jesus warned of especially in Matthew which was written to the Jews, would have “naturally”, based on their cultural bias, been assumed to have meant ECT.

And the Roman Church would have especially been motivated to promote the doctrine of Hell as a means of controlling people, which goes along with the Roman cultural bias of controlling people through fear, overwhelming force, and terrible punishment. The authoritarian structure of the Roman Church also flowed out of them being Roman, not from scripture. It’s amazing how much our culture filters our world-view. World powers like Rome and Egypt often use the threat of some form of radical punishment in the afterlife to control their people.

#6

I could argue equally that the idea of an immortal soul came from Greco-Roman philosophy as well, at least as far as Hellenistic Jews and early Christian writers are concerned. And the argument can be made that many scriptures found in the OT speak of the finality of death, as far as consciousness goes anyway (Ecclesiates 9:5, 12:7, Ps. 146:4, Ps. 117:17, Job 10:21-22)

#7

Yes, and whether or not the soul is immortal apart from God is certainly debatable. And if not for the scriptures that affirm the salvation of all humanity, and if I only considered what scripture says concerning the punishment of sin, I’d likely be an annihilationist myself. For me though it was scripture that convinced me of UR. In short, UR seems to me to be the most biblical systematic theology.

As I’ve thought through the Calvinist/Arminianist debate I’ve simplified things differently than what I’ve seen presented before. There is significant scriptural support for each of the following statements (if one takes the passages at “face value” and based upon their literary context).

  1. God sovereignly elects, predestines, and calls some of humanity.
  2. God self-sacrificially loves all humanity.
  3. God powerfully saves all humanity.
  4. God righteously judges all humanity, rewards righteousness and punishes evil.

Calvinism affirms 1 & 4, but denies 2 & 3 because they believe 4 to be ECT. Arminianism affirms 2 & 4, but denies 1 & 3 (because they believe 4 to be ECT. Universal Reconciliation affirms 1, 2, 3 & 4 because we believe 4 to be remedial and redemptive. In order for their to be reconciliation we all must face the reality of the evil we’ve participated in. For UR salvation is truly by grace for us all.

So like I said, to me UR is the most biblical systematic theology. And it was my study of scripture concerning Hell that actually freed me to believe in UR.

#8

I am currently working on a website to do exactly this. I think the UR gospel will be far more attractive than ECT. And it will make far more sense. I’ve found that almost all the web presentations of UR that I can find are aimed (with good reason) at Christians. I want to make a site specifically aimed at anyone, including Christians and unbelievers. But mainly targets unbelievers. Anyway, I have the ideas in place, and the basic plot of the site. All I need now is time to do it!

#9

That sounds awesome, please keep us posted with how you go.

I agree with Sherman, I don’t think we need ECT at all, not as preliminary threat for immature Christians or anything. I think people need to be told that Hell is extremely painful and that sin is very destructive and doesn’t get you anywhere, in fact the more you do it, the more you will need to undo, either here or in Hell.

I think part of the problem is most people are sheep and don’t question what they are told (I realise that often we don’t have the time & energy, and that we are also told to respect those in authority, which makes it harder). Rob Bell has helped here by getting people to at least ask the questions. Another issue is the lack of knowledge/understanding of any biblical alternative (which is why I distribute Talbott’s & Parry’s books, and one of the reasons for this site).

For those in paid ministry, they might be consciously or unconsciously aware that they could loose their reputation, career, and friends, if they became an EU. (I pray for those who are struggling with this and this is another reason for this site) So far I’m glad I haven’t seen too many that reject it out of a hardness of their heart.

I hope and pray that the Spirit will open people’s eyes as we lovingly tell as many people as possible the truth and patiently debate/wrestle with the leaders of leaders of the churches around the world e.g. the Anglican Synod, the Presbyterian General Assembly, some of the members of the Gospel Coalition.

#10

That does sound really neat Rline! I like your idea!

I’m also in agreement with others that ECT is not an effective way to motivate others to turn to God since it undermines who God is. I think we should be fearful of judgement, but for real reformation we probably need a God that we can really trust. Rob Bell was saying in an interview Roofus posted that the message he’s been sharing of Love Wins is very inspiring and people find themselves excited about knowing God and participating in His kingdom. I know ,for a lot of us, when we first realized God really loves us all (has our backs) that was way more motivating in our walk with Him than our fear of hell. Of course, most people that believe in Jesus don’t fear hell since they’ll be off the hook. Maybe ECT is good for a one time confession, but not good for long time service? I don’t think a one time confession is much of what God wants anyway!

#11

Maybe it is obvious, and people are simply unable to see it. I was completely blind to it. Now it’s as obvious to me as the sun in the sky. I have no rational explanation for why I couldn’t see it before.

Sonia

#12

True. Me also. And perhaps pushing the envelope a little bit more, is it possible that “the gospel” is not

“God loves you but you’re a sinner your sin had to be punished Jesus died on the cross in your place if you trust in him you won’t go to hell otherwise you will go to hell forever”,

but rather

“God is the saviour of the world, the whole world, and nothing less than the whole world”.

Is it possible that the experience many of us have of “I can’t believe how I couldn’t see it before” might actually have been spiritual blindness, than in fact our eyes had not yet been opened to the true gospel, and that (oh boy, this is pushing it) we had in fact previously received another gospel?

Don’t flame me…

#13

ECT not an effective way? I bet if your polled the general population of evangelical Christians thay would say that it was* the *motivating factor in bringing them to Christ. It certainly was for me at the tender age of 13. Once people started believing that they were no longer going to hell they could grow in the confidence of the Lord in living the Christian life. They no longer have that stigma of hell hanging over their shoulder.Whether or not it undermines God doesn’t seem to keep Christians from worshipping and serving God in their heart regardless.

Moreover, ECT is also the motivating factor in soul-winning. No one wants to see their friends and loved ones burn forever in a Christless hell. Certainly it has motivated compassion for those going out door-to-door and street preaching in efforts to get people saved.

Fact is, the majority of the people on this forum that have turned to UR were at one time ECTers.

Can a UR gospel have the same impact and effectiveness as the ECT gospel? I should like to see a results comparision somehow. Probably the biggest obstacle in making effective the UR gospel is getting rid of the paradigm of hell as most people view it.

#14

rline,
I see you’ve started a new topic for this here: The gospel
So, I’ll take my reply over there.
Sonia

#15

I’ve been going over the evidence for a few months straight now, as well as posting on this site daily, reading tons of stuff and I’m still frustrated. The bible did NOT make it obvious. Well, let me clarify. On one hand it seems quite obvious with some verses, but on the other hand the bible seems to contradict itself with other verses. I’ve been going over the “eternal” scriptures for the umpteenth time and they are just not very clear. On the one hand, the explanation makes quite a bit of sense when I read those 2 authors who explain about aionian and aidios. On the other hand, when I read some of the verses the actual context seems to say eternal. Here is a good example:

2 Corinthians 4:18
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are** eternal.**

compared to this:

2 Corinthians 4:18
while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are [of the ages?/age-abiding?/for a period of time?/for an age?] eternal?

I try to be really honest with this whole thing and not fool myself and the first translation makes a lot more sense than the second. That doesn’t mean that the second translation isn’t true, it’s just that I read stuff that imply that there is NO WAY any of the “eternal” verses can be read as eternal in any way, as if it is totally obvious at a casual glance and that just isn’t true to me. For whatever reason, God made it so that it was not obvious. I don’t know why. I have some thoughts but they are still in their infancy.

#16

Hi Chris,
It took me many months of intense study before I could say I was sure of UR. There was a lot of back and forth, rewriting thinking patterns, forgetting how I arrived at conclusions and restudying over and over again. It’s a whole paradigm shift–like when they figured out that the planets revolved around the sun, not the earth. It shatters the foundations of your worldview and remakes them in another shape. Now that my thinking patterns have been reshaped, UR is obvious to me, based on the character of God and the entire flow of the testimony of scripture.

I appreciate very much your desire to do justice to the scriptures and read them honestly, and I share that.

2Cr 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen [are] temporal; but the things which are not seen [are] eternal.

I think your difficulty with this verse may be in the translation of πρόσκαιρος as “temporal”, when it actually means “for a season”. Our word temporal means having to do with time, and if you make “eternal” the opposite, it seems to mean “endless” or not having to do with time.

The things which are seen are only for an short season, but the unseen things are lasting and of the ages.

Compare also to the previous two verses.

It’s akin to Jesus’ teaching us not to lay up treasures on earth, for those things perish, but to lay up our treasures in heaven.

Sonia

#17

I’m leaning towards “that which is beyond sight” but maybe Talbott’s take on “eternal” would sit better with you? From memory it’s that “eternal” is more about the quality than quantity, i.e. something related to God, see Talbott on Matthew 25:41, 46?

I agree so passages can be “unnecessarily” frustrating (i.e. if I was the author of the Bible I wouldn’t have put them in there :mrgreen: ). I comfort myself that God has our best interests in mind, i.e. somehow it’s better for humanity that they are included :confused:

#18

Hi dondi –

It’s an interesting question to be sure. At other times and places I’ve engaged in this very same question but in regards to

  1. the existence of God and
  2. God’s participation in creation

So, why isn’t it obvious that such a foundational reality as God is not more obvious?
And why isn’t it more obvious that God is creator?

But over time, all three of these things have in fact become very obvious to me! And isn’t that enough?

I mean when I fell in love with my wife all those years ago and if someone had come along and asked me to prove my love or if they asserted that it wasn’t at all obvious to them that I wasn’t “in love” with her for selfish and shallow reasons I would have laughed in their face! All that mattered was that it was obvious to me!!

And you see this sort of think where and when people are persecuted for their faith in Christ.

But I do know what you mean and do share that frustrated feeling that what is so clear to me is mocked outright by others whose faith I’ve never doubted!

As to the need for the negative (ect) as motivation, it’s easy to argue both sides it seems… God thunders and roars on Sinai likely because that’s the only thing that would hold their attention. Hell may be enough to render someone “scared straight” but if, after years and years of needing to constantly be scared straight, it seems it’d lose it’s effectiveness! Eventually the motive morphs into a freely given love!

I do find it interesting that Paul, in Romans 2, says don’t you know that it is the kindness of God that brings repentance?? So it seems as if the need for the negative motivation should be very temporary. And it’s important to recognize that the need for negative motivation may be a reflection of the immaturity of the individual. That is to say I see it as a sign of Christian maturation when the motive morphs into one of love and appreciation and gratitude towards God.

At any rate, I need to think about this some more…

TotalVictory
Bobx3

#19

Amen, I think that’s a good summary of the tension in scripture on the issue.

#20

dirtboy, it’s helpful to me to recall that words have different meanings, uses, and nuances. Here, it seems to me that a good translation for aionios is “eternal” as a reference to that realm that transcends-time. The spiritual world transcends time, I believe; I don’t understand that, but trust that such is the case. Judgment is a present and future reality. The kingdom of God is a past, present, and future reality from our perspective; but from God’s perspective I think it just “IS”. It’s as if we live on a time-line, but God is above that time-lime and can interact on that time-line whenever He wants to.

To me, the most compelling reason against ECT is the sparcity of biblical evidence for it. For example, if ECT was a possible threat, such would have been warned of repeatedly and specifically in scripture; but it’s not. Shoot, the OT doesn’t even have a word that can be correctly translated as Hell. And though Tartarus would have been a good Greek word to convey the concept of ECT, it is only used once in scripture, and that was not for humans and even seems to be temporary “until judgment”. Also, if ECT was true, then it would have been natural to translate the Hebrew Ga Hinnom as Tartarus instead of just transliterating it as Gehenna. And instead of Luke saying the rich man was in Hades, he’d have said he was in Tartarus - IF ECT was true; it seems that he was careful to not do such though. Something so important, paradigm shifting as ECT would surely have been specifically and repeatedly warned of in scripture, but it is not. Judgment is warned of, terrible punishment of sin is warned of, condemnation and shame is warned of, destruction is warned of, separation and chastizement are warned of, but there is little evidence that ECT is in God’s plans for anything He’s created.

Sadly though, ECT is an assumed, subconscious, foundational paradigm that most Christians are programed with from birth (spiritual and even physical). And such foundational paradigms are difficult, almost impossible to change. It really takes a lot of work, and a lot of breaking to do so for it effects everything, how we view God, how we view others, even how we view ourselves! This is especially true for those raised from childhood in traditional ECT Christianity, and those who came to faith in Christ with ECT mixed into the Gospel, the good news of God’s love for us.