The Logic of Christian Universalism

Most Christians are not universalists. In fact, most believe that God eternally tortures non-Christians. Some hold to a more inclusivist model where the faithful in all traditions are accepted by God because they are doing the best they can given their context. For example, if a person is born in Saudi Arabia and raised a strict Muslim, never really hearing the Gospel, is it fair that god damn that person? Inclusivists say it's not fair. While I believe the inclusivist position is the better of the two, it still has its problems. As I will show, and I'm indebted to Thomas Talbott for this, the logic of who God is leads to the conclusion that God will save all people.

Profesor Talbott suggests a simple exercise in logic, an exercise which distinguishes three different groups of Christians based on their denial of one of the three proposed points, which I have taken some liberties with here, but which lead to the same conclusion. They are as follows:

1. God loves all people and desires their salvation.

2. God is ultimately able to accomplish what God desires.

3. Most people will be separated from God and tortured in hell forever.

The third premise does not seem to follow the first two. The third only makes sense, in fact, if we deny one or both of the other two points. Calvinists escape this logical conundrum by denying that God loves all people and desires their salvation. According to Calvin, God only desires the salvation of some--the elect. Arminians, though they faithfully confess that God is love, deny the second proposition by positing that human freedom stops God from accomplishing God's will, even in the afterlife. Christian universalists, such as myself, affirm the first two propositions and so deny the third. Because we believe that God is love and desires the salvation of all, and because we believe that God can bring God's will about ultimately, we deny that the unrepentant will be eternally lost. They may experience a time of punishment in hell, but not for eternity.

Much of God's will is not accomplished on earth because God has given creation freedom. We can do as we wish without God intervening to stop us. In this sense, we do many things that thwart God's will. Where God desires peace, we make war; where God desires love, we hate; where God desires compassion, we are selfish. However, there is no reason why this logically carries over to the next life. I do not mean that there are not consequences for sin in this life or the next, only that our ability to thwart God's will on earth does not mean that we will be able to do so in the afterlife. While freedom is important, it is not the end all. God is the end all, and all things will be subjected to him, according to St. Paul. Every will will be in alignment with God, and every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Christ is Lord. This is not because God will lobotomize unbelievers so that they do what God says. God is not a "sky bully." Rather, the reality that God is Love in essence, and wants us to be supremely happy--wants what is in our best interest and will provide us with lasting joy--should persuade us toward God. Do we reject a loving parent, a parent that not only wants what is best for us, but brings it about? Any rejection of those who love us, requires valid reasons, but if there are no valid reasons for rejecting God, why would we do so? (I'm assuming here that our various philosophical objections to theism or the problem of evil will be asnwered in an adequate manner). A rejection of God in the afterlife, once the truth has been made known to us, would require such irrationality that we could say that such a person is not actually free, but still clinging to old wounds or stubbornness. The removal of such afflictions does not require a breach of one's freedom any more than a removal of cancer does.

The Cross as a Symbol of Non-Violence

St. Paul wrote that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8),”the ungodly” (5:6) who had made ourselves enemies of God according to our sin (5:10) that we might come to repentance (2:4).

Empowered by the love of God in him, Christ allowed himself to be killed because he desired his persecutors to repent and be reconciled to God, which is why he forgave them with his last breath. Christ could have called down legions of angels to defend him, but faced his death without threats of violence, without responding to violence with counter-violence. Instead, through active peacemaking, he proved his innocence and exposed his killers for the villains they were. Thus the cross should be seen as a non-violent act by which God attempts to bring us to repentance by exposing our guilt in the death of the innocent. This is Christian non-violence, and we see it rooted in the very ideas of the incarnation and crucifixion of Jesus. So why aren't more Christians practitioners of non-violence?

Better an Atheist than a Calvinist

Wesley said that, and he was right. Calvinism is evil. Really, really evil. It's also rooted in a bad reading of scripture, a very, very bad reading. I used to be more tolerant (blame society's liberal influence for that), but I'm becoming more “conservative,” which requires me to reject ideas that I find morally repugnant, like Calvin's thought. For those who don't know Calvin maintained that God, from eternity, determines before a person is born that they will be condemned to hell (This is different from knowing. The second is passive, while Calvin's damning is active) or "saved" to heaven. You would think that this would conflict with the confession that God is Love, wouldn't you? And isn't this is the central Christian confession? God forgives; God opens up the way of salvation to us. Why? Because God is Love. This is exactly what the famous John 3:16 tells us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Pretty clear, unless you're a Calvinist.

J.I. Packer, a reformed theologian, and thus in inconsistent one, tells us that the confession “God is Love” is not the whole truth about God. This is true in that there are other things we can say about God. We can also say that "God is triune" is not the whole truth about God, but it names somethign about God's essence. It tells us something. However, this is a roundabout way of explaining that God isn't really love. I've heard many times that God is “Holy” Love”, which is another way of saying that God isn't love at all. If we cannot draw any parallels between love as we know it as humans and God's love, then there is no point in saying that God is Love. This is, in fact, just what the Calvinists do. Thank God they are wrong.

Of course, we have I Corinthians 13 to tell us what love is. We also know that Christian ethics are rooted in God's very person. We are to be perfect, just as God is (Matthew 5:48), merciful just as God is (Luke 6:36). But if God predetermines who goes to hell, and a person is judged according to the things he or she has done (Ezekiel 24:14, Revelation 20:12), then God must cause sin. This is what Calvinists must say, and have said. “Neither rape, nor adultery, nor theft, nor murder happens apart from the will of God.” If Calvin believed this, no wonder he did the things he did. Calvin was personally responsible for at least one death, that of Miguel Servantes, some one who dared to disagree with Calvin. Servantes sent Calvin a copy of his book, a letter outlining Calvin's mistakes, and a copy of Calvin's work “Institutions,” where the mistakes were pointed out. This outraged Calvin so much, that from that point on, he desired the death of Servantes. (We know this from Calvin's correspondences) Apparently, Calvin forgot to love his enemies, but I guess you don't have to do that when you don't believe that God is Love, but arbitrary power. Calvin's God is formed in the image of kings and emperors, who apply their will without reference to goodness, love, or justice. They do as they please. Calvin reasoned that God must be the same, forgetting to root his theology in the love of God. In fact, he easily brushes off God's love in his theological work. Why? It doesn't fit within his theological framework.

So, in this schema, God's not really love, and determines beforehand who will go to hell and who is lucky enough to go to heaven. Faced with a religion like this, atheism is the right response. Better no god, than a monstrous one. Fortunately, this is not our choice. Calvinism simply isn't Christian. It has nothing to do with Judaism, then or now, Jesus' own teaching on the matter, or Paul's. It's nonsense, and nothing more. God is not the author of evil, for the Bible bears witness to God working against evil, but if God wills evil, then God works against God's self. And as Jesus said in Matthew 12:25 that, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Abe Lincoln said that too, but he was quoting Jesus.) Paul also tells us that love does not delight in evil (I Corinthians 13:6), but if God wills evil, he must desire evil because God only wills what God desires. And if God desire evil, he must see some good in it because no one desires that which they don't think good. This would mean that God delights in evil since surely, we delight in that which we find good, right? Rather, God “causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). Even the unrighteous are loved by God, for God loves those who do not love God, the very basis for our call to love our enemies. If we must love our enemies, how much more does God love them? And if God loves them, Calvinism is nonsense that must be purged from the Church. Jesus was a martyr who forgave, but Calvin was a murderer who had a man brutally killed for disagreeing with him.

The Best of All Possible Worlds?

Enlightment era philosopher Gottfried Leibnitz (1646 - 1716) believed that this is the best of all possible worlds. He was rightly ridiculed by Voltaire, for this is certainly not the best of all possible worlds, but a world of unfulfilled potential, a world of suffering.

We suffer because we are finite creatures in a world where certain interactions cause decay, injury, and death. While finitude is a necessity of being a created being—since only God is without limitations-- and suffering arises out of our finitude, this does not mean that suffering is a necessity. There could, theoretically, exist a reality where beings are both finite and without suffering. This reality, we hope, is heaven. But what about here and now? Why would God create a world full of death? Some attempt to say that God did not create the world this way, but that the world was corrupted as a result of the fall. However, acceptance of evolutionary theory precludes a literal reading of the creation story, nor was the story ever intended by its author(s) to be read as such. So if God did not create a perfect world that then became corrupted by human sin, how did the world become what it is?

Though I am neither a creationist, nor a follower of intelligent design theory, it seems to me that evolution could not happen without the (loosely) guiding hand of God. If adaptation of a species occurred in order to aid that species' survival, it seems that a greater intelligence, or perhaps at least an empowering force, would be necessary to cause that change. Stated differently, perhaps God's Spirit, which guides all life forms and encourages their lives, gives creatures the ability to evolve. However, perhaps this adaptation is still in some way a matter of freedom for the creature itself, whatever that may mean. Rather than God unilaterally imposing God's own design scheme onto the created order, God allows the created order to co-create with God. Thus the creation account depicts God as saying “Let the earth bring forth . . .” God's covenantal nature is such that God empowers creation to participate in the creative process, even allowing it to make mistakes, accounting for the “waste” that scientists generally say accompanies evolution. This would make the evolutionary process both guided and random at the same time, and would account for both the waste and the complexity, the violence and the beauty.

But why change at all? Why not just a creation of single celled organisms? God was not lonely and in need of humans to fill a need in God. Rather, Christian theology asserts that creation exists to participate in the love that God is. It is good that other beings take part in and enjoy God. Perhaps, then God was guiding creation to this point, to the point when it could actively acknowledge and participate in God's love. Perhaps there will be some form beyond us that can manage the task more adequately than we have. Perhaps, as Teilhard de Chardin believed, the resurrection itself is that next form of evolution, though it is most assuredly a different form.

To conclude, creation by nature is finite, and suffering and death arise out of the order that our particular created order has come to be. It seems, however, that there could exist an energy source (like the sun) that feeds, but does not destroy and an interaction of various living creatures that does not require death, but exists in a life giving reciprocity. I cannot speculate what that world would look like practically, just that the suffering of the present age does not nullify the possibility of an age to come where we remain finite, but where suffering is absent. It is possible that the world could be without death. This is good news. Death is not inevitable. However, death still plagues us. We are subject to its inescapable grasp, but it can be minimized and avoided. We can make “earth as it is in heaven” to a degree. Just as the universe's imbalance (a term I am using to describe to the evolution of death) came to be through freedom, even at the simplest level, so we can now choose to do things differently. We can share food with the hungry, clothes with the naked, and water with the thirsty. We can use technology that is sustainable. We can have less children in order to accommodate the “dominion” of humanity to the earth's finite capabilities. All of this we do, not just to preserve life, which is good in itself, but as a way of looking forward toward the promises of God. As we hope for these promises, so we live empowered to alter humanity's course for the benefit of all creatures with whom we share the earth.

Is Homosexual Sex a Sin?

Driving around you may notice a host of Christian bumper stickers, from Jesus fish to "Know Jesus, know Jesus. No Jesus, no peace," etc. One particularly fun one states "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." Putting aside the interpretation of Genesis as a literal/historical event, why make the fuss? I have yet to see any anti-divorce stickers, or anti-adultery ones. They may be out there, but they are far less common. This begs the questions: is being gay more wrong than other sins? In our current more tolerant cultural, we may even ask: is being gay wrong at all? If so why? Why is it really any different than being straight? Yes, there are some obvious physiological differences, but how does that translate into a moral difference? Of course, the matter is not so much about "being" as it is "doing." Sin is not an ontological state, but an action. We enter enter the category of sinner through the doing of sin, a category that St Paul clearly states that we ALL fall into. Yet homosexuality seems to be an obsession for many in the evangelical community, so much so that laws are being passed to give Christians an opt out for dealing with gay couples. Not only is this just bad PR, and hurtful to the people who are being mistreated, but when we understand righteousness as love, and sin as unlove, the rational for putting gay folks in the "out" category disappears. Looking at the nature of sin through the teachings of Jesus, and supplementing them with the work of John Wesley, as well as the more classical privation theory will lead us to the conclusion that gay marriage is a viable option for Christians.

Throughout the life of the Church, Christians have thought about moral theory, evil, and sanctification in several ways. Currently, at least in North American Protestantism, a common, though overly simplified, way of thinking about such things is the command theory. God says it, therefore, do it. This way seeks to remove any rational motivation behind the command. The command is simply a matter of God's arbitrary will. Who are we to question God? This view is popular with those who strongly emphasize the sovereignty of God, such as Calvinists. Serious biblical scholars and theologians have always rejected this way of thinking. It is poorly thought through and shows an unwillingness to think critically. Rather than God's arbitrary will, Trinitarian Christians have confessed that God acts out of love. We are created to participate in the Triune love of God, and all that God does is for our benefit, that we might find greater joy and wholeness in who we are and what we do. God's will is never arbitrary, but extends from God's nature as Love.

In the Gospels, we are given two great commands that provide an abstract for the whole of the Jewish law, love God and love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:28-29). We do this in imitation of God. Because God loves, we love also, and in love we are perfected (Matthew 5:43-48). I John 2:9-11 tells us that we live in the light—we are faithful—when we love others. When we do not love others, we are in darkness. Putting these verses together, we understand faithfulness as loving others is a matter of imitating God. Unfaithfulness is hating—or simply not loving—others. Righteouness/Justice (the same word in Greek) is then a matter of loving others, while sin is constituted by those actions which are not loving others. But what does it mean to love others? Well, the New Testament tells us that it involves caring for orphans, widows, and strangers, that it involves feeding, providing, water, and clothes for those in need, tending to the sick, visiting the imprisoned, praying for our enemies, and giving money to the poor. All of these acts are other-centered. Loving some one means doing what is in their interest, to consider the interests of the other as equal with one's own interests. Why else would Jesus say to love your neighbor as yourself? You must show as much love to the other as you do for yourself. Loving others in a way that takes their emotional, physical, and spiritual well being seriously is what we are called to through faithful Christian living. It is only when we neglect these things, when we do things that compromise the physical, emotional, and spiritual well being of others that we sin, that we miss the mark.

John Wesley, the 18th-century evangelist who founded the Methodist church, was a man ahead of his time in many ways. He jogged regularly; he didn't drink because he thought it a waste of grain that could otherwise feed people, and he was a vegetarian. He was also the founder of an idea that came to be called “Christian Perfection.” This was and still is a controversial idea. He simply believed that through a life of devotion one could completely put off sin, arriving at a place where one no longer sinned. This may seem strange at first—and may even summon ideas of fundamentalists who shun movies, zippers, and dancing—but the idea is quite simple. Wesley said that Christian perfection was reached by perfectly loving others. For Wesley, sanctification, what we often call holiness, is to love others fully and completely. What a beautiful idea, an idea that, unfortunately, seems rather uncommon in the Church. In complete agreement with our previous finding, we see that there is mainstream support for the idea of love as faithfulness, but not just faithfulness, but sanctification. We must be perfect as God is perfect (Matthew 5:48), but such perfection is a perfected love, a transcending of selfishness. To his credit, I believe Wesley did this quite well. He was highly involved in and influential in the abolitionist movement in England, and though he had received great wealth through the sale of his many writings, he gave the money away as quickly as he received it. An English gentleman, he was known to go door to door on Christmas eve and beg for money for the poor, something completely unheard of for some one of his status. We would do well to look to him as a fairly contemporary example of Christian living.

In the days since Kant, many have viewed evil as being radical, as having substance, or being a positive force. Such thinking allows us to say people are evil, for example, a way of thinking that may have evolved out of the Reformed tradition and Calvin's notion of total depravity, that humans are wholly without goodness apart from God's grace, an idea that ultimately makes no sense, but that's another discussion. Prior to the rise of this theory, the church held to the notion that evil is nothing, a lack of good, which is the norm since creation, though fallen, is good, the handy work of a good God. The logic of this argument is simple, every act, everything we do, is motivated by some sort of good end that we seek, whether real or seeming. Desire alone proves this. We do not desire what is not good, though, again, the particular good of a particular action may simply appear good and may actually be bad. In this way, we do not directly will evil, but evil occurs—as something we do, not something we are--when we emphasize a lesser good over a greater good. For example, when we steal we are seeking something good, whether an item that will increase pleasure or money that can be used to buy things that increase pleasure or just help us survive. However, when we emphasize our desire for these things, the good of the pleasure we experience from this object, at the expense of another's good, their own pleasure from an item that they have earned or may need, then the good is deprived and evil occurs. So here, we again arrive at the conclusion that we sin when we fail to consider the interests of others. Let's do another example, if we take a life we are clearly depriving another of his or her good. This doesn't mean we aren't seeking some good in the process. We may be seeking power, wealth, release of anger, or to right a wrong. None of these are inherently bad; however, when we emphasize any of these goods against the good of a person's right to live (by which we are saying that it is right that they live), we do evil. We sin. The same arguments apply to all traditional ways of thinking about sin . . . well, almost all.

All of the preceding discussion has been to lead us to the point where we can say that faithfulness is a matter of considering the interests of others as equal with our own, and that sin is a matter of neglecting the interests of others, harming them either directly or indirectly. The Bible's teachings, as understood through Jesus' paradigm of love, Wesley's extraction of the principle of love applied to sanctification, and privation theory, held by many theologians today, and by nearly all prior to the Reformation all direct us to this conclusion. So what's the point? There is one traditional moral position that does not fit these arguments. When we look at murder, rape, adultery, incest, most theft, lying, and so on, we see that the result is the occurrence of evil and harm of the other. Their may be times though that we steal from those who have more than enough to provide basic survival needs for ourselves or others, or that we lie to protect others from injustice or persecution. There is a sense in which the right thing to do is determined by the context. This is called situational ethics. Though we may at first be offended by the idea that morality is not rigorously absolute, we already believe this. For example, many people who oppose abortion support the death penalty (I do not, however, and think a great argument against it is that Jesus himself was unjustly sentenced to death by the government). The rightness of taking a life for them is determined by the context. It is not okay to kill a baby, but it is okay to kill a murderer. So, given that traditional ethics are supported by the theory we have been developing, why bring it up at all if it changes nothing? Because it changes something important for a specific group of people. You see, homosexual sex does not fit in here. Homosexual sex is no more harmful than heterosexual sex. It does not harm others or neglect their good. When we engage in loving sex within the committed context of marriage (another example of contextual ethics) we are doing something wonderful and pleasurable, something that expresses physically the way two people feel emotionally. And in the union of two, sometimes a new life is made, an expression of love created to be loved. It is very trinitarian. Far from alienating homosexuals, the Church needs to embrace them, even performing illegal weddings, blessed by the Church, but not the state, though we should work for justice in the legal system as well.

The gay community has suffered a lot, probably much of it at the hands of Christians, but it is the Christians, not the homosexual community that has been in the wrong. While I think logic forces us to admit that homosexual behavior constitutes a psychological or biological abnormality (whether people choose or are born, which seems to be some of each), that doesn't mean that it is morally wrong. Of course, gay sex can be exploitative and selfish, but so can straight sex. If sex between a man and woman is not inherently sinful (hint: it's not), then neither is sex between two men or two women. Many will object to this and may call me all sorts of names, but I believe that I proved my point by looking at the Church's own texts, traditions, and leaders. May we seek justice, putting aside prejudice, and embracing the gay community with the love of God in Christ.