Against Universalism
Some remarks on an essay by Donald Sensing, Can we really believe in Hell?
If this theology of hell works for you as it does for me, then there are still steps to take.??One is that the prospect of eternal punishment need not figure prominently in the Gospel of love. The center of the Gospel is not that God wrathfully seeks to condemn all who fail to meet narrowly defined criteria. God is love and desires with great liberality all to be saved, even to the extent that in all eternity, God never gives up seeking out his children. But it avoids what my friend David Watson admitted is the pitfall of universalism, that evangelism is really a pointless exercise if everyone winds up in heaven, anyway.
If universalism is true then evangelism is pointless. I am surprised to hear it.
Christians are called on to give witness to their faith. Obedience to this call is reason enough for evangelism. It would take some nerve (or pride) to tell God, “I would have evangelized, had You made the stakes more interesting. Once I realized everyone would be saved, I also realized my efforts weren’t really needed. Why bother?”.
Christians are given the opportunity and the duty to participate in the work of salvation. It seems odd to judge that work pointless on the grounds that God has willed that the work must eventually succeed. Surely evangelists are not so full of themselves? A fit of pique at the thought of a less critical role in the work of salvation is no reason to reject the idea of universalism. It may be a motive, but it is not a reason.
God does not stop being God simply because we die. If God loves us in this life, God certainly loves us in the next. If God wills to save in this life, he certainly wills it in the next. The hard question is not whether God’s will to save disappears after we die - it doesn’t. The hard questions are:
• Why would any of us be more “savable” after death than now?
• Why would God’s grace be more likely to penetrate our resistance to it after we die than it can now?
• Why would someone be more receptive to God after death than before?
One possibility is that the newly deceased would know more than he used to. Consider the materialist who learns at first hand that there is an afterlife, and a God. Insofar as knowledge informs the will, the ex-materialist might be more able to receive grace.
The case for universalism supposes that either human nature or the divine nature, or both, are radically different on the other side of human mortality:
• Persons either become so enlightened in the afterlife that no matter how corrupted by sin they were at death they accept the full grace of God that they had always rejected before, or,
• God is for some reason able to act more powerfully upon the souls of the dead than the full persons of the living.
The newly deceased has changed his world view, by leaving one world for another. That is enlightenment of a sort, and some might well respond by turning to God.
In the afterlife God might act more powerfully simply by acting longer. Over many years, falling water can wear away stone. Who could resist the grace of God for eternity? Another way God might act more powerfully is by acting more openly. In this world God is so hidden that many don’t believe He exists. I don’t.
Posted on September 24th, 2005 by pwyll
Filed under: religion
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Finally a theological post worthy of this blog, as opposed to some of the strawman arguments I’ve read in the past.
Indeed, I agree with the notion that a devout Christian who is concerned about the “pointlessness” of evangelism misses the point. Clearly they have not read the parable of the vineyard owner whose pay to his workers was the same, regardless of when they began to work. Even those who were admited at the end of the day to the vineyard received full pay. How often do we have to be told that God’s ways are not our ways?
As fine a theologian as John Paul II, who has never been accused of being a liberal, has said that we know there is a hell, we simply don’t know if there is anyone in it.
That being said, I must admit to not believing in universalism. At the same time, I don’t believe in the “eternal torture” model of hell. Then what?
Jesus’ image in his parables of what happens to the wicked (not the expanded versions, almost certainly appended by overeager monks doing biblical transcription, but the short versions devoted entirely to presenting a detailed simile or metaphor) is remarkably consistent: The wicked are collected and thrown, like weeds, into the fire.
The weeds do not wail, nor do they gnash their teeth. They are quickly transformed back into energy, with a little carbon left over that can be used by the next, hopefully better, crop.