A summary of J. A. T. Robinson’s version of a Christian Universalism. I am dusting this passage off from an old post I once wrote using this same quotation. I just listened to a podcast with Larry Chapp and Jordan Daniel Wood on the topic of Universal Salvation. As far as I can get is to hopeful, but not dogmatic. Ultimately, since Scriptural teaching seems, at the very least, ambiguous on certain matters, and some would say, at best, quite clear on this particular matter, one way or the other, I think it is best to repose on God’s freedom and wisdom, conditioned by His triune life of koinonial interpenetrating love. In other words, I would not be surprised if ‘all shall be saved’ indeed, in keeping with who I know God to be personally through my encounter with Him, afresh anew, moment-by-moment in the Gospel; but I don’t think Scripture clearly teaches this either.

In light of the above, let me share Trevor Hart’s synopsis of Robinson’s bases for holding to his style of Christian universalism, which will give you something to ponder while I sleep. His reasoning is rather similar to Scottish theologian P. T. Forsyth’s when it comes to Christian universalism vis-à-vis the character of God. Here is Hart on Robinson:

The essence of Robinson’s universalism consists in fact in the confident assertion that ultimately all will be saved because all will in time come to choose the salvation offered through Christ’s atoning death and resurrection. Thus there is no suggestion that any will be saved other than through faith in Christ, since salvation itself consists precisely in the free choice of life through the death of Christ and the rejection of that hell which is the deserved fate of human beings. Thus, he contends, ‘there could be no greater calumny than to suggest that the universalist either does not preach hell or does so with his tongue in his cheek’. On the contrary, both hell and judgement must be preached with integrity as existentially real alternatives to salvation. ‘Only the man who has genuinely been confronted by both alternatives can be saved. To preach heaven alone . . . is to deny men the possibility of salvation. For salvation is a state of having chosen; and in the moment of choice . . . , both alternatives are existentially as real.’ It is thus that Robinson is able to make sense of the biblical dualism between the saved and the lost. This is, as it were, a perfectly true and necessary account for the person facing the choice between salvation and its alternative. ‘From below’ hell and judgement are indeed realities, since no person can reject Christ and face anything other than eternal death. Thus we must not be too dismissive of Robinson’s ‘kerygmatic hell’ as it has been called. It is kerygmatic not in the sense that it belongs only to the kerygma and not to the real world (a view which would rob the kerygma of its integrity, turning its dark side into an empty threat), but rather in the sense that it is absolutely necessary that the kerygma should present what is the only real alternative to choosing life in Christ. Being saved involves rejecting this dark alternative to life in all its fulness; and that which is rejected is indeed real enough. It is because Robinson is equally convinced that all will in fact make this choice under the compulsion of divine love that he speaks of universalism as the ‘truth as it is for God’ (i.e. from above), and biblical dualism as the all too real scenario facing human beings in their existential viewpoint prior to this decision of faith. All will choose life: but the choice is only a real and significant one precisely because neither the reality of hell nor the urgency of choice is in any way lessened. Thus Robinson concludes that the divine love ‘will take no man’s choice from him; for it is precisely his choice that it wants. But its will to lordship is inexhaustible and ultimately unendurable: the sinner must yield.’[1]

Here is how I ended this old post: So for Robinson, God’s love in Christ is going to win! It’s important to note, that this indeed is an “Evangelical” and “Christian” form of ‘universalism’; faith in Christ is still required, it’s just that his love is so compelling that all “eventually” will respond (and in their response, their true human freedom is finally realized — per Robinson). This is in contrast to John Hick’s ‘Pluralist Universalism’ — the other kind that Hart is sketching — that avers that all will be “saved” with no need for Christ (it will just be based upon, basically their habituation in the “light” their particular “tradition” provided for them). There are, Scriptural and Dogmatic problems for Robinson’s proposal; I may try to work through Hart’s work on those (in response to Robinson’s view) in the next post (we’ll see). Anyway, I think, at least, it’s important to note that Bell is not presenting something novel with his recent and dramatic book; Robinson, at least (if not others like Origen, Maximus et al) beat him to the punch — and in much more rigorous ways (and then of course there are more recent proposals like that of Greg MacDonald’s which I hope to get to in the next month or so).

Clearly, I was responding to Rob Bell’s book Love Wins when I wrote the post featuring the passage I just shared from Hart on Robinson. I’ve told you what I think, what Robinson thinks, and what Forsyth thinks. Now you get to think about it, and let me know in the comments. Pax

[1] Trevor Hart, “Chapter 1, Universalism: Two Distinct Types,” in, Universalism And The Doctrine Of Hell, edited by Nigel M. de. S. Cameron (UK: The Guernsey Press Co. Ltd., 1991), 21-2.