The Case Against "Christian Universalism"

[Michie]

Mike Pohlman at the Gospel Coalition has posted a very helpful list of resources to counter the idea of "Christian Universalism." I have reproduced it below because it is worth your time to check it out. "Christian Universalism" is universalism with a veneer of Christianity. It is the belief that, in the end, Jesus will redeem all mankind unto salvation regardless of what they have believed.


We recently had an email inquiry to The Gospel Coalition asking for resources on “Christian Universalism.” And because we all learned in school why we should ask questions (i.e., other people probably have the same one), we are posting our recommendations here. (This list, of course, is not exhaustive and can be added to by our community in the comments below.)

Books
•Faith Comes by Hearing: A Response to Inclusivism (IVP Academic, 2008)
•Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal Punishment (Zondervan, 2004)
•Let the Nations be Glad: The Supremacy of God in Missions, 3rd Edition (Baker Academic, 2010)


Audio
•Sermon: “Hell Isn’t Worth It” (Mark Dever)
•Sermon: “The Echo and Insufficiency of Hell” (John Piper)
•Sermon: “The Final Judgement” (Ligon Duncan)
•Lecture: “What Happens to Those Who Have Never Heard the Gospel?” (Mark Rogers)
•Q&A: “If Hell is real, how can God be loving?” (John Piper)


Video
•Q&A: “What is the importance of believing in Hell?” (Sandy Willson)
•Q&A: “How should pastors preach about Hell?” (John Piper)


Articles/Q&As
• “Is Universalism Biblical?” (Ron Rhodes)
• “Are those who have never heard of Christ going to Hell?” (R.C. Sproul)


Conference
•1990 Bethlehem Conference for Pastors: “Universalism and the Reality of Eternal Punishment” (Sinclair Ferguson, John Piper, Greg Livingstone, Tom Steller)


TGC Confessional Statement
•Section 13:
The Restoration of All Things We believe in the personal, glorious, and bodily return of our Lord Jesus Christ with his holy angels, when he will exercise his role as final Judge, and his kingdom will be consummated. We believe in the bodily resurrection of both the just and the unjust—the unjust to judgment and eternal conscious punishment in hell, as our Lord himself taught, and the just to eternal blessedness in the presence of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb, in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. On that day the church will be presented faultless before God by the obedience, suffering and triumph of Christ, all sin purged and its wretched effects forever banished. God will be all in all and his people will be enthralled by the immediacy of his ineffable holiness, and everything will be to the praise of his glorious grace.

The Case Against "Christian Universalism"

www.reformation21.org

 

[ozso]

Have you taken into consideration that some of those people probably also refute Catholicism?

 

[Michie]

Have you taken into consideration that some of those people probably also refute Catholicism?

Yes. But this is one thing they are right on and Catholicism agrees.

 

[Der Alte]

Have you taken into consideration that some of those people probably also refute Catholicism?

That is rather a vague objection. "Maybe this,""could be that,""possibly something else."

 

[PuerAzaelis]

At its most unfortunate, this exaggerated adoration of God's sheer omnipotence can yield conclusions as foolish as Calvin's assertion, in Book III of the Institutes, that God predestined the fall of man so as to show forth his greatness in both the salvation and the damnation of those he has eternally preordained to their several fates. Were this so, God would be the author of and so entirely beyond both good and evil, or at once both and neither, or indeed merely evil (which power without justice always is). The curious absurdity of all such doctrines is that, out of a pious anxiety to defend God's transcendence against any scintilla of genuine creaturely freedom, they threaten effectively to collapse that transcendence into absolute identity - with the world, with us, with the devil. For, unless the world is truly set apart from God and possesses a dependent but real liberty of its own analogous to the freedom of God, everything is merely a fragment of divine volition, and God is simply the totality of all that is and all that happens; there is no creation, but only an oddly pantheistic expression of God's unadulterated power. One wonders, indeed, if a kind of reverse Prometheanism does not lurk somewhere within such a theology, a refusal on the part of the theologian to be a creature, a desire rather to be dissolved into the infinite fiery flood of God's solitary and arbitrary act of will. In any event, such a God, being nothing but will willing itself, would be no more than an infinite tautology - the sovereignty of glory displaying itself in the glory of sovereignty - and so an infinite banality.

This is why I say that, within Ivan's arraignment of God's design in creation, one can hear the suppressed but still prophetic voice of a deeper, truer, more radical and revolutionary Christianity. For if indeed there were a God whose true nature - whose justice or sovereignty - were revealed in the death of a child or the dereliction of a soul or a predestined hell, then it would be no great transgression to think of him as a kind of malevolent or contemptible demiurge, and to hate him, and to deny him worship, and to seek a better God than he. But Christ has overthrown all those principalities that rule without justice and in defiance of charity, and has cast out the god of this world; and so we are free (even now, in this mortal body) from slavery to arbitrary power, from fear of hell's dominion, and from any superstitious subservience to fate. And this is the holy liberty - the gospel - that lies hidden but active in the depths of Ivan's rebellion.

David Bentley Hart. The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (Kindle Locations 756-771). Kindle Edition.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

An amusing parallel, Catholic means Universal.

 

[Michie]

An amusing parallel, Catholic means Universal.

Not when you know the Catholic meaning of universal Church. And it does not mean everyone goes to Heaven.

 

[ozso]

Yes. But this is one thing they are right on and Catholicism agrees.

A lot of subjectivity can be involved in making such a determination.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Not when you know the Catholic meaning of universal Church. And it does not mean everyone goes to Heaven.

Still funny, a cross linguistic joke lost in translation.

 

[Michie]

Still funny, a cross linguistic joke lost in translation.

Depends on your bent in humor I guess.

 

[Michie]

A lot of subjectivity can be involved in making such a determination.

Not really. There are always the infallible teachings of the Church.

 

[ozso]

Not really. There are always the infallible teachings of the Church.

But that goes back to reformation21.org who wrote The Case Against "Christian Universalism". Obviously with a name like reformation.org, they don't consider all of the teachings of the Church to be infallible.

Their TGC Confessional Statement Section 13 stipulates they believe in "eternal conscious punishment in hell". Whereas many Christians, including Catholics, who aren't universalists, do not believe in eternal conscious punishment in hell. And even among those who do believe in it, there are several different beliefs as to what kind of punishment is involved.

Even among Christian Universalists, based on scripture and translation of Koine Greek, there are differing beliefs as to what kind of punishment is involved. Plus while they say it's not eternal but for an age, how long is an age? Is an age so long that it's practically an eternity?

 

[Michie]

But that goes back to reformation21.org who wrote The Case Against "Christian Universalism". Obviously with a name like reformation.org, they don't consider all of the teachings of the Church to be infallible.

Their TGC Confessional Statement Section 13 stipulates they believe in "eternal conscious punishment in hell". Whereas many Christians, including Catholics, who aren't universalists, do not believe in eternal conscious punishment in hell. And even among those who do believe in it, there are several different beliefs as to what kind of punishment is involved.

Even among Christian Universalists, based on scripture and translation of Koine Greek, there are differing beliefs as to what kind of punishment is involved. Plus while they say it's not eternal but for an age, how long is an age? Is an age so long that it's practically an eternity?

Does not matter. On this topic they are correct according to the teaching of the Church. Whatever they get wrong on other topics is not what we are talking about. On this topic, correct.

 

[ozso]

Does not matter. On this topic they are correct according to the teaching of the Church. Whatever they get wrong on other topics is not what we are talking about. On this topic, correct.

So doesn't matter who anyone is or what all they teach, just as long as they teach against universal reconciliation.

 

[ozso]

An amusing parallel, Catholic means Universal.

Well of course universalism or similar was first taught by Catholics such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. In those early times it was known as Apocatastasis.

 

[Michie]

So doesn't matter who anyone is or what all they teach, just as long as they teach against universal reconciliation.

No I never said that. It’s just that they are correct on this topic.

 

[ozso]

No I never said that. It’s just that they are correct on this topic.

They may not be correct. On CF I rarely see correct statements made about it by those who speak against it. I'm sure some if not many may not care about accuracy and truthfulness, as long as it's being denounced. But I don't think that's the right approach.

I don't go into unversalist threads much anymore, because I end up defending it, because of how incorrect many are about it.

 

[PuerAzaelis]

Plus while they say it's not eternal but for an age, how long is an age? Is an age so long that it's practically an eternity?

For God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone.

 

[Der Alte]

For God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone.

The single Greek word translated ""might show mercy" is in the subjunctive mood. The subjunctive is the mood of possibility and potentiality. The mercy might not be forthcoming, it depends on the potential recipient. See e.g.

Matthew 7:21-23
(21) Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
(22) Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?
(23) And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.​

Jesus, Himself, speaking, He does not say that everyone will be shown mercy and everyone will enter the kingdom of heaven.
Rather Jesus, Himself, says "Not every one shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. Many [NOT a few] will say to me in that day, [Judgement day] Lord, Lord, have we not in thy name done many wonderful works? Then Jesus will say to the many, "I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." When Jesus says NEVER He means never, not someday by and by.

 

[Michie]

For God shut up everyone in obstinacy so that he might show mercy to everyone.

God shows mercy to everyone. He died for all. But not accept the gift. Scripture is full of these warnings. Not sure what so hard to understand here.