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.
April 20th, 2008 17:29 pm
In my mind God’s grace is just that -grace. Forgiveness with no strings attached. A true Gift Something that we humans cannot understand. We don’t give gifts to people who don’t deserve them or if we do then we expect some sort of gratitude, turning the gift into a payment.
Now, that doesn’t mean someone, for whatever reason, could not refuse God’s gift of mercy and grace. And what happens to them I don’t know and I think Jesus even suggests that we not concern ourselves with the fate of others. But I think that there are no passages in the Bible that spell out what ‘damnation’ is. There are so many metaphors and similes used that it could be anything at all, including annihilation. If Jesus in the Gospels shows us the nature of God then I cannot see him deliberately creating a place of eternal torment. As Christ said on the cross,”Father forgive them”.
Just my take.
April 21st, 2008 14:51 pm
Christian:
You’re right – grace is grace, and is by definition unmerited favor. There’s nothing we can due to obtain it. We can reject it though, and refuse all that God offers, and that entails consequences.
My biggest concern with the universalist approach is that it renders faith irrelevant. If I know that every who ever walked the planet is ’saved’ then my actions and my faith mean nothing. At that point I can choose to help others and live a Christlike life, or not. The end is the same, so it just doesn’t matter. In that case, universalism is just an extreme form of predestination. I don’t care much for the Calvinist/Arminian-style wrangling, but at bottom, I would rather that my actions, right or wrong, stand for something.
April 22nd, 2008 08:44 am
The issue also comes back to the idea of sin. What do you do with it in a universalist construct? Is there such a thing as sin in this view? Back in Ezekiel (chapter 33 or thereabouts) the watchman is given his instructions – if he fails to give warning and those under his charge are lost, their blood is on him.
The Great Commission is a positive command – go to the ends of the earth and make believers of all men. That includes muslims, hindus, and atheists. A true universalist would say that those folks are doing just fine, thank you very much, and don’t need ‘the Word’. A believer would share the Gospel, and not just the fun social justice parts.
April 22nd, 2008 09:45 am
I think your comparison of Universalism with Calvinism is spot on. The interesting thing is that there are both Universalists and Calvinists who, contrary to ‘common’ sense, continue to evangelize. I’ve heard people from both camps say that is because of what Jesus says in Matthew 28. That makes works for me if it works for them.
But what is the best way to go about evangelizing? Is it preaching? Handing out tracts? Going door to door? Telling people that God is for social justice? Or is it working on the front lines for justice (not so much fun), working for the poor and downtrodden, both in this country and even among our ‘enemies’ Then, when asked why, we can tell them that it is because the love of Christ compels us.
And who are the lost? Are they only among the Muslims, Hindus, atheists (Jews?). Of are there perhaps millions sitting in the pews each Sunday who have yet to encounter Christ? Are there men and women in the pulpits, on the radio and television, who would not recognize Christ if they met him on the street?
April 22nd, 2008 09:58 am
And who are the lost? Are they only among the Muslims, Hindus, atheists (Jews?). Or are there perhaps millions sitting in the pews each Sunday who have yet to encounter Christ? Are there men and women in the pulpits, on the radio and television, who would not recognize Christ if they met him on the street?
Christian:
Yes to all of the above. What’s the best way to evangelize? Sometimes it’s preaching, sometimes streetcorner witnessing, always through the example of Christ in us and always through the leading of His Holy Spirit. If the last two are missing, then the rest is meaningless.
April 23rd, 2008 05:49 am
Always be ready to give to witness, You never know what The Holy Spirit
is up to. Look at Jonah
4Then Jonah began to go through the city one day’s walk; and he
cried out and said, “Yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”
5Then the people of Nineveh believed in God; and they called a fast
and put on sackcloth from the greatest to the least of them.
April 24th, 2008 10:33 am
Is there any point in getting out of bed? Does faith or actions matter?
Of course. Because life is a gift and relationship with God is the whole point – not just the end result. For me, its not about heaven and hell — its about relationship with God. Period Amen.
In my mind the downfall of our faith is that we’ve reduced it to heaven and hell (for the most part..or the crucial part)…and there is so much more to scripture.
TIA for allowing me to share my limited thoughts.
Janice
Janices last blog post..Pedro and his right to…..
April 24th, 2008 11:02 am
Janice,
In one of Peter’s epistles, he goes through a litany of bad things that are going to happen in ‘the day of the Lord.’ He brings it home with a question: how then are we to live? That’s one of the most important questions asked in Scripture. We come at life with our own biases and conceptions of what Scripture means (and what life means, for that matter). So what? What do we do with it?
I would take exception to your statement that its about relationship with God. Period Amen. The Great Commission isn’t to go forth and have a nice life, or even have a nice relationship with God. It’s a positive command to meet people where they are and share the Christ-like life we are supposed to be living. Somewhere along the way, we need to get across the point that the lost (whoever they may be) have a need to turn away from the direction they’re going and to the direction of the relationship with Christ. Fundamentalists, and to a lesser degree evangelicals, get it wrong by focusing almost exclusively on the sin, and not on the Christ-like life. Christianity is a totality. You can’t do it part way and expect to please God.