Exactly.
It's just a debate tactic. If you can't prove something is wrong, try to discredit the source, thus casting doubt. Shadow boxing, basically.
Exactly, it's easier to defeat a shadow or a strawman than the real thing but it's a bit pointless to do so.
In an article in the Baptist Times, Robin Parry describes seven strawman arguments used against Christian universalism. To keep it brief, I'll summarise only five of them but first here's his definition from the article of what universalism actually is:
"Christian universalists are (mostly) orthodox, Trinitarian, Christ-centred, gospel-focused, Bible-affirming, missional Christians. What makes them universalists is that they believe that God loves all people, wants to save all people, sent Christ to redeem all people, and will achieve that goal.
In a nutshell, it is the view that, in the end, God will redeem all people through Christ. Christian universalists believe that the destiny of humanity is ‘written’ in the body of the risen Jesus and, as such, the story of humanity will not end with a tomb."
Strawman: Universalists don’t believe in hell
Historically and today, all Christian universalists believe in hell. The Christian debate is not about whether hell will be a reality (all agree that it will) but, rather, what the nature of that reality is. Will it be ECT? Will it be annihilation? Or will it be a state from which people can be redeemed? Most universalists believe that hell is not simply retributive punishment but a painful yet corrective/educative state from which people will eventually exit.
So it is not hell that universalists deny so much as certain views about hell.
Strawman: Universalists don’t believe the Bible
This strawman is that universalists are wooly liberals that reject the clear teaching of the Bible. Surely all good Bible-believing Christians believe that some/many/most people are damned forever? But Christian universalists do believe the Bible. They just interpret parts of it differently than Team Hell.
The problem is this: there are some biblical texts that seem to affirm universalism (eg Romans 5:18; 1 Corinthians 15:22; Colossians 1:20; Philippians 2:11) but there are others that seem to deny it (eg Matthew 25:45; 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9; Revelations 14:11; 20:10-15).
So how do we hold these two threads together? Do we start with the hell passages and reread the universalist texts in the light of them? That is the ECT route. Or, do we start with universalist passages and reinterpret the hell texts in the light of them? That is the universalists approach.
Or do we try to hold both sets of biblical teachings in some kind of tension. Parry suggests there are various proposals for how we might do that, some leaning towards traditionalism, and others towards universalism.
There is also the question of wider biblical-theological themes and their relevance, e.g. biblical teaching on God’s love, justice, punishment, the cross-resurrection, covenant, etc. How do these affect our theology of hell?
So it's not just about finding "proof texts" to win arguments with but about making the best sense of the Bible as a whole. Which best fits the biblical narrative? Universalists believe that the ending in which God redeems his whole creation does, while the Team Hell believes the ending in which God is eternally tormenting/torturing people does.
Parry's point is that this debate is not a debate between Bible-believing Christians and universalist liberals. It's rather a debate between two sets of Bible-believing Christians on how best to understand scripture.
Strawman: Universalists don’t think sin is very bad
Universalists take sin as seriously as anyone else, it's just that they believe that God’s love, power, grace, and mercy are bigger and stronger than sin. Universalists don't have a low view of sin, they have a high view of grace: "Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more."
Strawman: Universalists believe in God’s love but forget his justice and wrath
Christian universalists typically they think that God’s divine nature can't be divided up into conflicting parts in such a way that some of His actions are loving (eg, saving sinners) while others are just and full of anger (eg, ECT).They see all of God’s actions as motivated by ‘holy love’. Everything God does is holy, completely just, and completely loving.
So whatever hell is about it must be compatible not simply with divine justice but also with divine love. Which means that it must, in some way, have the good of those in hell as part of its rationale.
Universalists feel that one potential danger with ECT is that while it makes much of God justice and anger it's not incompatible with his love and so divides up the unity of His nature.
Strawman: Universalists think that all roads lead to God
This is to confuse universalism (the view that God will one day save all people through Christ) with pluralism (the view that there are many paths to God and that Jesus is simply one of them). But Christian universalists deny pluralism. They insist that salvation is found only through the atoning work of Christ. Without Jesus nobody would be redeemed.
Now there is a disagreement between Christians, not only Universalists, about whether you need to have explicit faith in Jesus to be saved. Some Christians, called exclusivists, say Yes and others, called inclusivists, say No. So, for inclusivists you can be saved even if, for instance, you have never heard the gospel. Inclusivists would say that if someone responds in love and faith to the truncated divine revelation that they have received then God can unite them to Christ.
But we need to be careful not to confuse the discussion between exclusivists and inclusivists with the issue of universalism. Many people make that mistake. The former debate concerns how people can experience the salvation won by Christ while the latter concerns how many people will be saved. Two different questions.
I hope this helps clear up some of the common misunderstandings about Christian universalism.
