The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Won't UR diminish Evangelism

Another common objection to Universal Reconciliation is the ASSUMPTION that the message of UR will diminish one’s motivation to share the Gospel and give one’s life as an evangelist or missionary. There are several problems with this assumption.

  1. To start off with this objection to UR is a common Logical Fallacy; it is an “Irrelevant Appeal to Consequence”. In other words, whether UR actually does diminish one’s motivation for evangelism or not is “irrelevant” to whether or not it is true! Something being true or not is not dependant upon the consequence, whether that consequence is good or bad.

  2. Most Christians are not actively sharing the traditional “gospel” anyhow! In fact, according to survey’s I’ve seen and personal interviews I’ve done less than 10% of Christians have in the last year shared the “gospel” with someone whom they either know is an unbeliever or do not know if they believe. And why do many Christians not share the “gospel”?
    a) Because the traditional “gospel” is not really “Good News”! And no one likes to be the bearer of Bad News! And
    b) Because the traditional “gospel” is exclusive and often puts one in a position of seeming judgmental and negative towards others, us vs. them.

  3. From personal experience, I’ve found UR to be very empowering. It has given me greater faith in the power of the Gospel. I love sharing God’s unconditional love for people, which is truly “unconditional”. And it is certainly Good News, and I love to be the bearer of Good News! And it enables me to not be judgmental or negative towards others because I realize we’re all in the same boat, in need of God’s grace and love for us all.

  4. The traditional “good news” also handicaps missionary efforts because unbelievers must come to a place where they “accept” that their ancestors who died unbelievers are going to Hell. For cultures that respect their ancestors, this is a big pill to swallow. Of course in UR, people can go on respecting their ancestors and will have greater faith that they will see them when they too pass away.

  5. A core doctrine of UR is the Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of all humanity encouraging us to see everyone as “family” and to treat everyone with the love due “family”. This motivates me to gladly share, live, and do the good news of OUR Father’s love with everyone, especially my brothers who do not know OUR Father yet, who have not yet had the revelation of His and Our Love!

It is true that having come to believe in UR, I have “lost” motivation rooted in FEAR; but it has been replaced by motivation rooted in greater Faith and Love! And living in faith and love is much more powerful, I think! And doesn’t scripture say something like “whatever is not of faith is sin (it misses the mark)!”

The fear motivation for sharing the “good” news doesn’t work anyway – not for most people. They fear turning people off to God and bringing hatred and rejection on themselves (with a side dish of “maybe I had that coming”) more than they fear the postulated fate of the unsaved for the sake of their love toward them. I think that really most Christians deep down don’t believe God would do that. If they did believe it they’d spend every possible waking moment pleading with the lost, begging them to come to peace with God before He does something unthinkably horrible to them. And on top of that they’d have a difficult time loving a God they really believed was like that.

Great post, Sherman! And so true. Thanks! :smiley:

I agree. I think that using fear to try and convert people is wrong. I know quite a bit about living in fear and I know that the use of fear to get people to turn to Jesus does not always bear good fruit and lead to a negative feeling toward God. It is the goodness of God that leads to repentance. I think also that the sermon in Acts chapter 2 is really the way to share the good news. They didn’t talk about eternal conscious torment, they talked about Jesus, His life, death, resurrection and ascension and talked about who the people were and what they had done with the chosen Lord and Saviour and told them what they needed to do to be reconciled to God. They didn’t need to use fear. I was listening to an interesting Q&A with Paul Eddy and Greg Boyd about whether salvation can be lost or not. Paul made a good point that scripture says we are saved from our sins, not just from hell. I think that whatever your stance on hell is, it can be agreed that we need Jesus to save us from our sins and from the bondage to evil.

Great insight and information. I question if people 2000 yrs later are commanded to evangelize in the first place, isn’t it a command literally given to those who were eye witnesses ? And isn’t the universal command to love our neighbor the most important command. And if it is, how can any feel superior as if they ’ are among the saved’ to reach the lost, when we all are one, all saved, and all lost to any degree ?

I don’t know why anyone would even say that. It is absolutely absurd!

Do I wish you a Happy Birthday because I am wanting your gift?!

It is indeed a logical fallacy.

UR is the Gospel and I am excited to tell others that they are included and that God forgave and still forgives them without condition! It is absolutely empowering.

The Great Commission in short is to make disciples, teaching them to do all that they were taught to do, which would include the Great Commission to make disciples. Evangelism, communicating the Gospel is part of making disciples, the initial step.

Far beyond any idea of directive though, love for God and others compells us to share the Gospel. People naturally talk about what the Love, thus the more we love God the more we will naturally share our love for God with others. And if we love people, then it naturally follows that we’d share of God’s love with them and His desire to reconcile them. Also, as Christians we’ve been given the ministry of reconciliation, living so that others can be reconciled to God as we’ve been reconciled. It’s all founded in love, love for God, love from God, and love for others! The more we love people, the more we desire to see them reconciled to God and to one another, and thus we give our lives to that end!

It reminds me of what Jesus said concerning obeying the commandments, that those who love him will keep the commandments. For most of my life I misunderstood this to imply that I needed to obey the commandments in order to show my love for Jesus/God. I realize now though that obeying the commandments flows out of love. The more we love God the more we obey Him. Thus we need to inspire one another to love God more, and that love is a result of understanding and experiencing the love of God for us which is most powerfully revealed in the death of Jesus who embraced death with/for us!

Love ! So evangelism doesn’t entail feeling superior ! What an amazing concept… I mean to come across as funny, but amazing how long it took me to see the light. While I still need improvement in love for God and love for my neighbor, it is freeing to know that God doesn’t torment anyone…

Yes, it’s all about love, love for God and love for others. The more we love God and others, the more we will naturally share the “reason for the hope within us”, as Paul says. The Gospel, the Good News of God’s love for us all is the power of God unto salvation.

And yes, sadly, both Arminianism and Augustinianism (Calvinism) have a very strong, us vs. them, exclusive element that results in the “us” thinking/felling they are somehow superior to the “them”. Just this morning a loved one sent me a Chick tract which denounces Catholics. I’m prayerfully considering now as to whether or not to address it and point out it’s many scriptural errors and misrepresentations of Catholics. The tract had such a haughty spirit about it it made me feel sick, literally.

The Gospel though is ultimately inclusive. “We’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But it is “by grace we are saved through faith and even that is a gift of God.” And thankfully, “God gives us all a measure of faith” and Jesus came to reconcile all of creation, even me!

Evangelism, communicating the Good News. I’m often reminded of how my son, when he knows something that is going to make a person very happy, some piece of good news, he has a very hard time containing the information and not spilling the beans. I’m the same way. I love to share with people about what I love - Jesus. And I love to share with people things, precious things that the Lord shows me. I’m learning though that you don’t “cast your pearls before swine else they will trample the pearls and turn and attack you.” It’s very sad but the more a person believes in and focuses on infernalism, the more negative they can be towards others.

I understand that feeling. And sadly , I do recall having that same mindset . I still find that as a human being it is easy to fall into the trap of arrogance. I always liked the quote that ",pride is the only disease that makes everyone sick, except the person who has it",how true that is…

I point people to 2 Cor 5:14-20 if they raise this argument. It places the great commision in the context of the Gospel that saves all mankind:
**14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.**

  1. The same rationale is true for the Doctrines of Grace ie Calvinism.
  2. The “traditional” Gospel is good news beyond our comprehension, whether we recieve it as such or not. It promises us reconciliation to the true and living God who has sworn by His own name that He will repay those who hate Him to their faces. He will judge with perfect righteousness. But for those who call upon Him in true faith and repentance, He will abundantly pardon and bring them into His Kingdom and make them heirs with His beloved Son Jesus. How can you possibly call this bad news?!
  3. God’s love is conditional. He hates the wicked. He honors those who honor him.
  4. History proves otherwise. The annals of church history from its apostolic roots unto this present day are filled with missionaries and evangelists who have transformed cultures and nations by the proclamation of the “traditional” gospel.
    As far as the living pagans who worship or honor their dead ancestors, the Spirit says that they have no hope. 1 Thess 4:13
    “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.”

Matt

BTW, are there any well known UR missionaries / evangelists?

Hi Matt -

Well to my mind Desmond Tutu is a rather good evangelist for UR Christianity.

Blessings

Dick

Also -

I Thessalonians 4:13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope.

Matt - I wonder how much you are reading into the verse from Thessalonians from a Calvinist logic. It seems to me that those who have ‘no hope’ here are those who grieve inconsolably for their dead because they do not know the good news of the resurrection. Your interpretation seems to me to imply – although I could be wrong – that these pagans are reprobate and objectively have no hope of salvation. As far as I can see, the more obvious meaning of the text is that these people have no comforting hope in their hearts because they do not believe/understand or even have not yet heard of the resurrection. So the text could be a spur to share comfort.

Agreed. Appealing to Consequence is a Logical Fallacy. Thus people who say that belief in Calvinism would diminish evangelism are equally as in error.

According to Calvinism, the “traditional” Gospel is only Good News for some, not all. It does not promise reconciliation to all, but to only some. And it assures damnation for some. Thus it is bad news for anyone who is not amoung the chosen.

If God is love, then love is not conditional for it is as aspect of His character. And there are certainly plenty of passages that affirms that God loves everyone, that while we were yet sinners Jesus died for us. “God so loved the world, the cosmos, that He gave…”

Notice that I said it “handicaps” the spread of the Kingdom of God, I didn’t say that the traditional gospel completely stopped the expansion of the Kingdom of God. People respond to the love of God as revealed in the light of the “traditional” gospel though that “good news” be shaded by the doctrine of Hell. The good news of God’s love for us is so powerful and so needed that people respond to it even though the beauty of it be tinted, shaded by the doctrine of Hell.

Considering that UR is not well known or widespread, missionaries or evangelists would be few as well, and “well-known” would be even fewer considering how much opposition is experienced by URs in general.

Dick, that’s the way I understand that passage too. Many people who do not know the Lord have no hope of the ressurection and reconciliation with God for their dearly departed loved ones. In this present evil age, faith in Christ brings us great hope in many things, especially hope for our dearly departed.

Sherman said:

Not to mention bad news for anyone who loves someone who is not beloved of God.

Yes Matt and there’s plenty I could say about your view that only the traditional gospel has worked miracles in the world as history attests – but the Gospel has been preached in many different ways, some of these being Universalist ways, or at least ways that are not consonant with Calvinism and tend towards a more inclusive message.

I give Tertullian as an add example. He was the originator of the abominable fancy and a very severe doctor of the Church – so severe that he eventually separated from the Universal church to follow his own severe inclinations more severely in the Monatanists. He’s not really my cup of tea but one thing I thank him for is that he edited and circulated the Passion of St Perpetua while an orthodox Christian. In this account - mainly Perpetua’s actual words - while she awaits her martyrdom Perpetua has a series of visions which she relates to her fellow Christian prisoners to steel them for their trial by the beasts; and to the end she gives courage to her brothers and sisters in Christ – especially to the faint hearts among her brothers. When she enters prison she is suckling her baby but the baby is taken away which gives her great anguish. Soon after this she has a dream that she is in Hades – the description of the place fits that of the place in Dives and Lazarus and she is aware of the great gulf that separates this place from the company of the blessed. She finds her little brother there – who died of face cancer and still a Pagan when he was eight. But with her prayers her brother drinks from a baptismal font and his horrific tumour is healed and he crosses over to the place of the blessed. What does this suggest? After all it was only a vision. However, even the severe Tertullian did not edit this out (a fact that a couple of centuries later scandalised Augustine). And we see here that an esteemed martyr of the early Church actually did care about her pagan kith and kin when facing death and cared about them deeply - and believed her little brother had not been abandoned.

**Edit -

Ooops - I’ve double checked my facts here. Tertullian is no longer thought to have been the editor of Passio Perpetua - but this does not alter my substantial point about Perpetua herself. See -

tertullian.org/articles/kitzler_perpetua.pdf**

First let me be clear. I believe in the universal reconciliation of all people to God.

Notwithstanding, I see no “logical fallacy” in the eternal-torment view. If you see one, name the fallacy. I have studied logic in the discipline of philosophy at university, and none of the logical fallacies which I was taught, are violated by this horrible position.

The very concept of forgiveness is conditional upon repentance (a change of heart and mind). We cannot forgive anyone unless he repents, because forgiveness is a response to repentance.

Take heed to yourselves; if your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him; and if he sins against you seven times in the day, and turns to you seven times, and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive him. (Luke 17:3,4)

I get the impression from some of the posts that it is believed that all people will be automatically be accepted by God after death. That is the liberal view held by the Unitarian-Universalist Association or Church. I understand that everyone is accepted into that church, including atheists. It is because of this view that I do not call myself a “universalist”.

It is clear throughout the teachings of Christ and the aspostles that judgment (albeit corrective judgment) awaits those who do not continue on the narrow path. The apostle Paul made this abundantly clear in Romans 2:6-10.

*For He will render to everyone according to his works.

To those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality,
He will give lasting life, but for those who are self-seeking and are not persuaded by the truth,
but are persuaded by unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury.

Affliction and anguish for every person who does evil, but glory and honour and well-being for
every one who does good… for God shows no partiality.*

It is true that we should not attempt to scare people into the Kingdom of God, but neither should we minimize the fact of judgment. We read:

… whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:20)

I take this “death” as a figurative way to describe separation from God. Some will be dead to God. They need to become alive to God through Christ. With universal reconciliation, it is still true that people can be rescued from a very uncomfortable and severe correction. It is not the case that every one belongs to one big Family of God. Only those who are under the authority of Christ are part of the Family of God. The others are not yet part of that Family, but some day they, too, will submit to Christ. So until the day that they become Christ’s disciples, they do not belong. Yet we look forward to the day when all will be reconciled and none will be excluded.