An
interesting argument I just ran into by David Bentley Hart (or his pet dog, I suppose) from a Universalist perspective:
I think there is a very strong point here. It reminds me of some of the stuff I've seen by John Donne. "No man is an island, entire of itself... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
I'm not really a Universalist. I'm mostly just still exploring Christianity's claims in general, but... this is kind of a big deal. I'm not really sure how to get around the apparent fact that if Universalism fails, the concept of salvation becomes incoherent and Christianity as a whole comes tumbling down with it.
This line of John Donne is often misunderstood. It comes from Meditation XVII of his Devotions upon emergent occassions.
It is a call for man to trust to God. The whole work is regarding recovery from an illness and is predicated on the two greatest commandments, to love God and to Love thy neighbour. The idea being that they are associated ideals, hence everything that happens to anyone touches me also. The Meditation ends where Donne says that perhaps someone else's misfortune will do you good.
Here is the next part of the Meditation that is so often ommited:
"Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbours. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security."
I myself don't see universalism here applied or intimated.
To the thread in general (blind post):
I am not a universalist. To me, universalism fails in that it renders all our moral struggles moot and the whole idea of Sin and Justice irrelevant. The answer lies in the nature of our existence in my opinion, although I will be first to admit I do not grasp it all. For the OT speaks of nephesh and ruach, Soul and Spirit roughly though imperfectly, with the nephesh being both living or dead. Likewise we are taught of New Life or eternal life in the NT, yet it seems not that the others ceases in entirety if there is a hell. Nephesh is always coupled to ruach and ruach or the 'breath' that God blows into beings, seems to act as an animating principle.
Here is where the 'dead-in-Christ' of Paul starts to make sense to me. For this is the ruach or spirit grafted onto Christ; our Spirit survives only in Christ as it is derived from God, His breath, not our own per se. So if someone denies God, rejects Him, he rejects his own animating principle, his own existence and is rendered 'dead' - perhaps dead nephesh without ruach to bring it life, a dead soul.
At the Parousia, our ruach is given a new body and reunited to our nephesh; we become a complete being, composite as we are by necessity. Those that denied God, denied their own animating principle, as such have nothing to reunite to their nephesh/soul. They are thus 'dead nephesh' and can thus be swept away as they had chosen to deny the only thing that can secure life as such. Ruach cannot exist on its own, it requires something for it to inhabit/animate, so by denying Jesus, denying being in Christ, you deny it this opportunity. Without the full complement of our existence, we cannot really be said to exist anymore or at least not in like manner.
Back to Silmarien's post:
It is an interesting quandary you posit. It reminds me of Buddhist thinking, how the Self consists of Khandas, 'heaps' of ideas and feelings constantly changing and absorbing or losing elements from what is around us and other people we meet.
I have no problem seeing man as a composite being, consisting of Soul, Spirit, Body, Mind (conscious and subconscious) etc. with elements absorbed from everyone we meet into our conceptions. There is however a central element, somehow connected to this superficial existential flux, that seems to be the active participant. This is impacted, forged or changed by our actions and the events of our lives and I think in this manner it would carry forth elements of others. I do not see why it need carry the entirety of them along though, for all are compositions of various elements and perhaps we merely have taken parts thereof.
The world is a crucible forging sons of God and I fail to see why taking specks of gold from others necessitates appropriating the dross as well.
