“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end. ‘Thy will be done’ ”
(C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 69).
(HT: Nance)
Oct 02 2008
Thought for the Day
Category: faith — Steve @ 10:21 am
Apr 19 2008
Universalism, Salvation, Hell and God
Category: faith — Steve @ 13:05 pm
In no particular order… Here is a definition from the Theological Word of the Day from the good folks at Reclaiming the Mind:
UNIVERSALISM: This is the doctrine that states all people of all time will be saved by being reconciled to God and go to heaven, whether or not faith is professed in Jesus Christ in this life. There are a few variations of this teaching that accept “hell” as a real place, but all Universalists unequivocally agree that no person will ever go there.
My question – if this is a valid description of universalist belief, why bother with faith at all? Why bother with good works, reading Scripture, or even getting out of bed in the morning? If all are saved and there is no hell, then God’s word can’t be trusted and He obviously is not who He says He is. There are a slew of passages from both the Old and New Testaments that speak to God’s righteousness and his judgment. What do universalists do with these? Ignore them? What use is Scripture if you can pick and choose which parts you want to believe and which to ignore?
Evangelicals, and especially fundamentalists, tend to dwell on the righteous anger of God at the expense of His love and His calls for social justice, while universalists take the opposite extreme, emphasizing social justice while minimizing His righteousness and judgment. The more I come to know God, the more I see that God is complete in Himself: He contains all these traits, and more. We trivialize Him and recreate Him in our own image when we emphasize one trait over all the rest.
Tags: faith, fundamentalism, judgment, righteousness, social justice, universalism
