Category Archives: Christian Universalism

Jesus and Bobby on Christian Universalism

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I just came across a Tweet from some random person that stated (my paraphrase): “I no longer believe in an eternal unending hell.” He said: “I understand why some still do, but why do so many who do act is if they are excited about it; as if it’s a sign that they were right, and those who rejected Christ were wrong and now will pay for it in an eternity of unending, hopeless torment?”

So, of course, we are referring now to Christian universalism (CU). CU has been growing some serious legs over the last two decades, and even more so over the last five years or so. I am not a Christian universalist. I believe Jesus taught the traditional view of an eternal conscious hell; so does the Evangelical Universalist:

[G]ehenna was a place of punishment and fire but beyond that was generally left unexplained. When we find Jesus drawing on the idea of Gehenna, we must remember that it was not a clearly worked out concept. Beyond its being a place of fiery punishment for the wicked, the details, if anyone wanted to fill them in, were up for grabs. That said, I think that it is quite clear that Jesus’ contemporaries would not have thought the he was a universalist of any variety. To the traditionalist this settles the case, but I think that there is more to be said. I want to argue, first of all, that none of Jesus’ recorded teachings about Gehenna explicitly affirm the notion that it was everlasting; and nothing Jesus is recorded to have said rules out the possibility that some or all of its inhabitants may at some point come to salvation. I am not trying to show that Jesus taught universalism nor that he taught that those in Gehenna could or would be saved, for he did neither. My aim is the much more modest one of showing that what he did teach does not formally contradict universalist claims. This, of course, does not provide any reason to suppose that a universalist interpretation of Gehenna is biblical without substantive additional reasons for embracing such an interpretation. My second task is to show that we do have such reasons. [Gregory MacDonald (aka Robin Parry), The Evangelical Universalist (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2006), 144-45]

That said, I do not glory in the notion of an eternal conscious hell for those who reject Christ; indeed, I detest it! But I am not God, and thus do not fully understand His ways or thoughts. I trust that God is fair, just, gracious, merciful, and most of all loving. As such, I hold out the hope that even post-mortem it might be possible for people to still say yes to Christ, even while in the confines of hell. I don’t think Scripture, or even Jesus taught this, but I also don’t think it would contradict who God is, by way of character, and thus as God is a God of hope, I maintain hope that this seeming impossibility might have a chance to become possible yet future for those who leave this life without being “in Christ” spiritually. Further, I still think Barth’s and Torrance’s objection to CU is the best way to think this: God is free, we are not, except as we participate in His freedom. In my mind, following Barth and Torrance, to dogmatically assert that CU just is true ends up violating and/or foreclosing on God’s freedom to make that ultimate decision by imposing our limited decision upon His.

Some would want to say that I am a hopeful Christian universalist. I would say that I am a hopeful hopeful Christian universalist in the sense that I have hope that God is always already the God of Hope, and in this I repose. I am unwilling to be dogmatic about this because Jesus wasn’t, and in fact seemingly teaches the traditional view of His day in regard to an eternal notion of hell. I understand that there are number of “universalistic” texts that can be marshalled by the CU. But on the contrary, there are just as many particularist passages of Scripture that counterweigh the universalistic texts. Again, I repose in God’s freedom, and the reality that He is indeed the God of Hope.

J. A. T. Robinson’s Christian Universalism

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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.

On Barth’s and Paul’s Purported ‘Christian Universalism’ in Sachkritik

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Karl Barth is often said to be a proponent of Christian universalism. The logic is that Barth’s doctrine of election, whether he likes it or not, commits him to affirming some form of a Christian universalism (i.e., the notion that all people of all time will eventually freely submit to the reality that Jesus Christ is Lord; even if that finally only happens in hell itself). But Barth adamantly rejected this supposed necessity of his theological trajectory. As Douglas Campbell writes:

Barth has often been accused of universalism, but he steadfastly denied it (see the final paragraph of CD III/2), and we owe it to his intelligence and subtlety to at least examine his claims in this relation. One of his key points was a denial of any overriding of human freedom by God, although he defines that topic very carefully. This stance certainly excludes crude forms of universalism (and I myself endorse this exclusion). Another key point was his recognition of God’s freedom, which certainly seems fair as well. God acts freely, and so we cannot really circumscribe God’s activity in advance. Barth did point toward the legitimacy of hope, and even prayer, for universal salvation. However, he stopped short of predicting it. (Part of Barth’s repudiation is explicable in terms of his rejection of a form of universalism understood in a “hard” Origenist fashion, as seen also in Maximus the Confessor, which overrules divine agency. These theologians claim that salvation of all must follow on the successful theosis of all—a Pelagianizing account of universalism that Barth was quite right to reject.)

Having said this. [sic] I am not sure that his development of the notion of the ultimate victory of God at length in CD IV/3 did not lead him to a theological location where the denial of universalism would in fact lead to the denial of key christological warrants, even after taking human freedom fully into account. And his christological account of election can also be invoked here in relation to God’s freedom (II/2). God’s freedom is not freedom per se but his free love towards us, which is definitively enacted in the Son prior to the foundation of the world. So perhaps some Sachkritik in relation to Barth himself is in order at this moment.[1]

Before we engage further with the implications that Campbell draws out for us in regard to Barth’s rejection (or not) of Christian universalism, let us address a methodological matter. Maybe the reader has never heard of Sachkritik. In order to offer some insight into this (which has greater development here), I. Howard Marshall writes this on what Sachkritik entails:

I shall continue to refer to the method by this German name, but it will be helpful to note that the possible English equivalents for it include ‘content criticism’, ‘theological criticism’, ‘critical interpretation’, ‘material criticism’ and ‘critical study of the content’.7

It will not surprise you in the least that among the heroes of our tale, or, if you prefer it, the villains of the piece, we must mention R. Bultmann. Here is a comment on his Theology of the New Testament by Markus Barth, who asks how a conscientious exegete can develop a systematic exposition of Paul’s theology that contradicts part of the source material:

[He can do so] only when he feels himself called to Sachkritik on Paul, ‘just as Luther used it, for example, on the Epistle of James’. The victims of Bultmann’s Sachkritik include some Pauline statements on the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, the second Adam, original sin, knowledge. Naturally the hostile crumbs swept to one side by Sachkritik include the statements about creation, predestination and the incarnation of Jesus Christ which Bultmann has demythologized. In any case Bultmann is convinced that he is putting the ‘real intention’ of Paul over against the actual words of the text.… When Bultmann attributes the use of juridical, mythological, cosmological, mystical and idealistic concepts to a ‘superstitious understanding of God, the world and mankind’, he expresses as clearly and simply as possible the criteria for his Sachkritik.

Now we must be clear as to what is going on here. It is not quite the same as the attitude expressed in the words: ‘I want to be free to disagree with Paul.’ In that wish there is expressed a contrast between what Paul said and what I think, and if we disagree, so much the worse for Paul. That is a question of Paul’s authority over against my own authority. We’ll come back to that in a moment. Rather what has been expressed is a contrast between one part of Scripture and another which stands in contradiction to it, or between what a writer actually says and what he really means. According to Tom Wright, we find an example of this in the procedure adopted by proponents of universalism.

The proponents of universalism admit very readily that their doctrine conflicts with much biblical teaching. What they are attempting, however, is Sachkritik, the criticism (and rejection) of one part of Scripture on the basis of another.

That is to say, critics observe or search for places where there are doctrinal contradictions in Scripture and then have to decide which passage they are to follow in preference to the other.[2]

Essentially, as Marshall clarifies further, what the above reduces to is the following: “. . . The result of such analysis is inevitably to force a judgment as to which texts are to be taken as expressing the real intention of a writer or the main thrust of the scripture and how they are to be interpreted. . . .”[3]

All of the aforementioned to note that Sachkritik is a modern (German) development that took place in post-Enlightenment biblical studies. The quest, as it were, is for the exegete to properly identify what the total intention of the biblical author is in light of their whole corpus rather than simply focusing on various texts here and there. That is, there might be something in the thought of the author of Holy Scripture, that is in their respective teaching, that seems to contradict their broader teaching when their whole corpus is taken into account. It is the total teaching that then serves as determinative of how the exegete ought to understand the particular (potentially contradictory relative to the total), and place that into the total teaching of said biblical author. The criteria for this endeavor takes us too far afield to develop further for our purposes. Suffice it to say: What Campbell is referring to in Barth, and the Apostle Paul prior, is how we ought to understand these authors from within the ambit of their total teaching on a particular theological topic; in our current case that involves a doctrine of Christian universalism.

With the above noted let’s return to the question at hand: should Barth be understood to finally be teaching a doctrine of Christian universalism when his total oeuvre is considered? Campbell, seems to think that just maybe we ought to conclude that if Sachkritik is applied to the total theology of Barth, as developed his Church Dogmatics, that Barth’s theology must necessitate in the affirmation of a Christian universalism. But Campbell doesn’t finally take the step of absolutizing this for Barth, even by way of engaging in a Sachkritik.

Prior to Campbell’s thinking on Barth, he has been engaging in an exegesis on Paul’s theology with particular reference to his thinking on eschatological doctrina, such as annihilationism and Christian universalism. Campbell shows that in one sense Paul seems to teach a doctrine of annihilationism; at least as the inner-logic of his teaching is teased out. But when Paul is used to interpret Paul, as Campbell suggests ought to be an interpretive employment we ought to take seriously, as Campbell argues, what we end up with is a Paul who sounds a lot like Barth’s own ending; again, according to Campbell. For Campbell, the Apostle Paul’s total teaching ends up having a christological universalism latent to it. In other words, according to Campbell, Paul’s total theology, even when recognizing that he also has an apparent teaching of ‘annihilation’ present (when it comes to the final judgment), reduces to the notion that all of creation (cf. Rom. 8 etc.) will finally be redeemed. And yet, as with Barth, because of various other passages and teachings in Paul, Paul doesn’t end up with a decisive or absolute Christian universalism. Campbell sees this in a corollary with Barth’s own conclusions; that is, Campbell, I would suggest, sees Barth’s teaching and thinking on these things, largely reflective of the Apostle Paul’s own inner-theological teachings on a doctrine of last and final things in regard to salvation. But this is a sachkritik reading of the Apostle (if not of Barth as well). Some might sense in sachkritik an antecedent in what Luther called an analogy of faith, or what we might call an analogy of Scripture. That is, the deployment of the clearer teachings of Scripture as the means by which we interpret the less clear. I think it would be right to see this, in principle, as an antecedent to sachkritik even if sachkritik finally took shape under different (modern) pressures.

Conclusion

After all of the above is considered what do I think? I agree mostly with Campbell. I don’t think Barth ought to be understood as endorsing a dogmatic Christian universalism; at most I think we see a very hopeful and prayerful Christian universalism in Barth’s theology. I also tend to agree with Campbell on Paul’s teaching in this regard; even if we didn’t have time to directly deal with his development on that, per se. I would always fall back to the Barth of CD III (as Campbell reads him), and emphasize a doctrine of Divine freedom as determinative of all things; including the notion that it could be a possibility that it would be in keeping with God’s purview (and character) to have made a way for people, all people, post-mortem, even while in the gruel of hell, to finally, by the Spirit, bow the knee and confess Jesus as Lord. But I don’t take this dogmatically, and my hopefulness in this is only informed by the fact that God is God and I am not; as such He could surprise us this way, and not be found to have contradicted His Word to us now and then. But this is up to God, and as far as we know now, a doctrine of dogmatic Christian universalism imposes a determination upon God that God Himself has not committed Himself to, per se. If we are going to be ‘good’ sachkritiks the total canonical teaching of Holy Scripture teaches a final judgment of the (spiritually) dead that appears to be a final and unending judgment of the type that the devil and his minions will experience. Jesus taught this, and so I think it is best to temper any notion of a purported dogmatic Christian universalism by the reality that God is God, and thus the only free agent who finally determines these things. But as it stands now, based on the teaching of Scripture, unless of course we are going to step in and read Scripture from a canon within the canon, a dogmatic Christian universalism is not on the table. That is, unless the exegete has already decided a priori that the total teaching of Scripture does in fact presuppose a dogmatic Christian universalism, and then use that presupposition as regulative for how they arrive at their respective exegetical conclusions on these matters. I don’t think that is warranted; again, because of God’s freedom over against ours as His subjects.

 

[1] Douglas A. Campbell, Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2020), 440.

[2] I. Howard Marshall, “An Evangelical Approach to Theological Criticism,” Themelios (Vol. 13:3): na.  

[3] Ibid.

Zwingli, The Pluralist Universalist

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I am just finishing up Bruce Gordon’s excellent book Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet. In it, Gordon, almost in passing, notes that in Zwingli’s final theological confession, his Exposition of the Faith, in his dedication to France’s king, Francis I, he writes the following. You will notice the universalistic intonations of Zwingli’s correspondence; Luther, and the Germans most certainly did. Indeed, in the following quotation, Gordon also supplies Luther’s acerbic response to what I would take, similarly, to be a highly unChristian way to think about the salvation of pagan peoples.  

In his dedication, Zwingli urged the king to rule well, that he might join the heavenly company of exalted monarchs: 

Then you may hope to see the whole company and assemblage of all the saints, the wise, the faithful, brave, and good who have lived since the world began. Here you will see the two Adams, the redeemed and the redeemer, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Samuel, Phineas, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, and the Virgin Mother of God of whom he prophesied, David, Hezekiah, Josiah, the Baptist, Peter, Paul; here too, Hercules, Theseus, Socrates, Aristides, Antigonus, Numa, Camillus, the Catos and Scipios, here Louis the Pious, and your predecessors, the Louis, Philips, Pepins, and all your ancestors, who have gone hence in faith. In short there has not been a good man and will not be a holy heart or faithful soul from the beginning of the world to the end thereof that you will not see in heaven with God. And what can be imagined more glad, what more delightful, what, finally, more honourable than such a sight? 

As Luther and others quickly noted, Zwingli’s words were arresting. Alongside the kings of Israel and France, the blessed included Socrates and the Catos. The virtuous pagans would find their place among the elect. From Wittenberg came the caustic reply: 

Tell me, any one of you who wants to be a Christian, what need is there of baptism, the sacrament, Christ, the Gospel, or the prophets and Holy Scripture, if such godless heathen, Socrates, Aristides, yes, the cruel Numa, who was the first to instigate every kind of idolatry at Rome by the devil’s revelation, as St Augustine writes in the City of God, and Scipio the Epicurean, are saved and sanctified along with the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles in heaven, even though they knew nothing about God, Scripture, the Gospel, Christ, baptism, the sacrament, or the Christian faith? What can such an author, preacher, and teacher believe about the Christian faith except that it is no better than any other faith and that everyone can be saved by his own faith, even an idolater and an Epicurean like Numa and Scipio? 

The list was not the first time Zwingli had expressed himself on the salvation of non-Christians. Against his beloved Augustine, he was adamant that unbaptized infants would be saved. On the noble heathen, he had made his point most emphatically in his sermon on providence in 1530, when he claimed that Seneca was ‘the unparalleled cultivator of the soul among pagans’. He was a ‘theologian’ and his works ‘divine oracles’.  

Salvation was not limited to Israel or the visible Church. Zwingli’s conviction was consistent: God is entirely free in election to choose whom he wills with reasons completely beyond human comprehension. Profound attachment to divine freedom led Zwingli to find God working through the deeds and thoughts of non-Christians. God was the source of all goodness, and faith and goodness were to be found among virtuous pagans as they were somehow part of God’s election. Unlike John Milton later, Zwingli felt no need to explain the ways of God to humanity.1 

Interestingly, Zwingli himself, according to Gordon’s commentary, has no problem imposing his soteriology on God’s freedom; this is precisely what Karl Barth would not do. Barth, like Zwingli, had a high view of Divine freedom, but just because of that, definitionally, Barth rightly saw that a person, like Zwingli, could not foreclose on said freedom; and “make” God’s freedom the cipher by which an array of theological adiaphora might be smuggled into the Divine way. This is what kept Barth et al. from following Zwingli’s apparent universalistic-turn. At most, for Barth, God’s freedom could allow for a hopeful universalism, but not of the sort that we find, ostensibly, in Zwingli’s absolute, and even pluralistic form of universalism (I say anachronistically after Paul Tillich). Indeed, I find this rather striking; Zwingli seems to have an incipient form of what would later come to be Karl Rahner’s anonymous Christian notion. Again, to read modern theologians, and their respective categories, back into someone like Zwingli would be, at best, anachronistic. But at a conceptual level it is interesting that there is at least some inchoate corollary between him and some moderns who would follow latterly.  

I found this nugget interesting, and something I didn’t know in regard to Zwingli’s soteriological imagination. Maybe you’ll find this interesting as well, which is why I’ve shared this. Solo Christo  

 

1 Bruce Gordon, Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2021), 238-39.

 

An Initial Engagemet With David Bentley Hart’s ‘That All Shall Be Saved’: Hart’s Eastern Facing Living Room

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I wanted to engage with David Bentley Hart’s recently published book That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation; this seems to be the thing to do right now, so I thought I should at least say something. I haven’t as of yet read the book, but I have watched a ninety-minute lecture he did where he presented the major themes of the book; with some development. So, my engagement will not be in-depth coverage, but it will be an initial impression based upon what I understand his argument to be. In particular, what I really want to do is deal with his Orthodoxy, and the theory of authority he appeals to in order to make his ‘exegetical’ arguments. As a primer to that, let me share a quote from Jaroslav Pelkian, that Al Kimel shared on Twitter; it fits into the context of DBH’s theory of ecclesial and interpretive authority—indeed, Kimel is friends with DBH, and sporadically shares posts from DBH at his blog. But I think he shared this quote from Pelikan as a help towards understanding the exegetical bases by which DBH is able to arrive at his conclusions in favor of Christian Universalism (what TF Torrance identified as one of the twin heresies; the other being the Calvinist ‘limited atonement’). Here is Pelikan via Kimel:

“The Old Testament achieved and maintained its status as Christian Scripture with the aid of spiritual interpretation. There was no early Christian who simultaneously acknowledged the authority of the Old Testament and interpreted it literally.” – Jaroslav Pelikan

This might strike us as rather enigmatic to the broader discussion on universalism, but it is an important piece of the pie for DBH’s biblical interpretive work to have any force at all. Beyond what I would take to be an overstatement by Pelikan (JND Kelly would dispute this as a sweeping generalization, I think), what is interesting is how this allows for the sort of license that DBH takes with various passages of Scripture that would seem to indicate an antecedent prothesis of what would be developed and picked up on later by the exilic Rabbinic tradition in regard to teaching a concept of an eternally conscious torment understanding of hell. To help illustrate the way DBH thinks about Scripture more fulsomely, let’s take a look at what he recently had to say in response to Peter Leithart’s book review of the book under question:

In short, you want me to account for myself in a way answerable to the hermeneutical practices of communities gestated within a religion born in the sixteenth century.  But those practices are at once superstitious and deeply bizarre.  They are not Christian in any meaningful way.  They are not Jewish either, as it happens.  They are a late Protestant invention, and a deeply silly one.  From Paul through the high Middle Ages, only the spiritual reading of the Old Testament was accorded doctrinal or theological authority.  In that tradition, even “literal” exegesis was not the sort of literalism you seem to presume.  Not to read the Bible in the proper manner is not to read it as the Bible at all; scripture is in-spired, that is, only when read “spiritually.”[1]

We can see how DBH needs to mitigate any possibility for what Calvin might call the sensus literalis (‘literal sense’), when it comes to an engagement with and interpretation of Holy Scripture. DBH needs the text to ‘only’ be opened to an allegorizing or spiritualistic, or maybe Alexandrianizing way of biblical exegesis. In this mode of interpretation DBH has the capacity to insert what would seem to be foreign categories into the text of Scripture, under the guise of these categories being the ‘spiritual’ sense of the text. In this way, and eo ipso Hart can begin an argument for the evacuation of a literal hell, by understanding its function as a spiritual one wherein that only serves as a foil for the reconciliation of all of creation.

But beyond this, and this has to do with DBH’s theory of authority as an Orthodox thinker, the categories and whence he gets his theological soundings from is not Holy Writ, but the Holy Fathers of the Church. It is upon the basis of Apostolic Succession, and the authority inherent to this magisterium, this consensus patrum, that Hart can offer an argument for universalism that negates the concept of a literal, physical, and eternal hell from the pages of Holy Scripture. For DBH, Scripture is not the norma normans, nor is it the principium theologiae; instead Scripture is on the same plane as the patrological tradition, and the consensus of the faithful that has developed within the halls of the Church; in Hart’s case, the east-wing of those halls. This might not, in itself, give him an absolute argument for universalism, but it does allow him the latitude to appeal to an extra scriptura; or he can appeal to the theological furniture available to him in his own Eastern context. Indeed, this is what Hart does. His argument requires the Protestant, as I understand it, to submit to the authority inherent to apostolic succession, and allow the Eastern vector, of an aspect present in that wing of the Church, to present us with the theological foundations by which we arrive at his conclusion for his version of a Christian Universalism.

This is all I’ve got for now (without actually reading his book, and only going off of what I remember from his lecture on his book; and reading Leithart’s review, and DBH’s response). But what is most interesting to me, beyond Hart’s normal rhetorical flourishes (indeed, they can be quite beautiful to the wordsmiths among us), is that his argument really requires that the Christian be already submitted to the Apostolic Succession that Hart takes as normative for his biblical exegesis. In other words, I don’t really see how DBH’s argument can be entertained by the Protestant thinkers in the room. This is not to say that there aren’t a variety of Protestant arguments for Christian Universalism; it is just to say that Hart’s is idiosyncratic to the furniture of his own ecclesial living room.

[1] David Bentley Hart, Good God? A Response, accessed 10-09-2019.

A Brief Contra to the Possibility for Post-Mortem Salvation: With Reference to New Testament Teaching

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I have been having some discussion with a commenter named, Brian, in the following thread. Brian wants to maintain a possibility for post-mortem salvation; a notion most notably propounded by Robin Parry, in his book, The Evangelical Universalist. The idea, according to Brian, is that there is no “time-limit” on when someone can come to Christ. In other words, the idea would go something like this: Sally leaves this world without repentance and reception of Christ as her Lord and Savior; after she has been judged at the Great White Throne Judgment (Rev 20); cast into Gehenna and Outer Darkness; after she has say been there for a million years (based on our current understanding of linear time), she might finally decide to willingly and repentantly bow the knee to Christ; at which point she will be allowed into the New Heavens and Earth. This is ostensibly the position, Brian, affirms while at the same time rejecting Christian Universalism (of the sort Robin Parry endorses and articulates). This is interesting, at one level, just because Brian borrows Parry’s mechanism of the possibility for ‘post-mortem’ salvation, but rejects the conclusion of universalism. But, there is dissonance here when we reduce the logic to its conclusion (reductio ad absurdum). Dissonance in the sense, that inherent to the notion of the possibility for ‘post-mortem’ salvation, is the hypothetical that all people could finally bow the knee to Christ; we might call Brian’s position hypothetical universalism (not to be confused with what we typically associate with this language in reference to the extent of the atonement; cf. Francis Turretin et al.), since it is plausible, on his premises, that all people, given enough time (I mean eternity is a long time) could subjectively and spiritually receive Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Brian gives no reasons for why this couldn’t or won’t obtain; he is seemingly happy with living with the notion that he is not a universalist while at the same time holding, logically, to what obtains as universalist logic.

One biblically based counter-proposal to Brian’s position can be provided for by intertextually reading I Corinthians 15.20-28 alongside Revelation 20.11-15; qualified by a passage like Matthew 25.41. Let’s note these passages, and then provide some commentary with application to Brian’s proposal.

20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. 23 But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. 24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. 25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet.26 The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. 27 For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted.28 Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all. –I Corinthians 15

11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away. And there was found no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, small and great, standing before God, and books were opened. And another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.14 Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. 15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire. –Revelation 20

37 “Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? 38 When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? 39 Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ 40 And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: 42 for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; 43 I was a stranger and you did not take Me in, naked and you did not clothe Me, sick and in prison and you did not visit Me.’ –Matthew 25

My counter-proposal—and one in keeping with the traditional teaching of the Church over the last many millennia—should be apparent by reflecting upon the emboldened verses from each of the pericopes presented.

In I Corinthians 15 we note that the last enemy ‘death’ will be put under Jesus’s feet at his second coming (per the broader eschatological context of the passage). In Revelation 20 we see that ‘death and hades’ are thrown into the ‘lake of fire’; which we, as we think thematically, can understand as the actualization and fulfillment of what the Apostle Paul is referring to in Corinthians. And then we see the Matthew passage qualifying the character of what this ‘fire’ entails; in other words, Matthew helps us to see how long this judgment lasts. The Matthew passage is also important because it ties the plight of “reprobate” people into the same plight as the devil and his reprobate angels. If this is so, as a further complication for Brian’s position, in order to retain logical consistency, he would have to argue that not only is post-mortem conversion available to lost human beings, but it is also available to lost angels, inclusive of the devil himself. But the primary point I want to draw out of the Matthew passage revolves around the language of ‘everlasting fire.’ The Greek word there, translated as ‘everlasting,’ is αἰώνιον from the lexeme αἰώνιος meaning, “eternal (of quality rather than time); unending, everlasting, for all time.”[1]

The burden Brian must overcome is how the New Testament characterizes the state of judgment unregenerate people are placed under in the eschaton. From the critical lexicons the language refers to a ‘for-all-time’ or ‘unending’ state. This minimal coverage militates, decisively, against Brian’s contention that the possibility for post-mortem salvation is a reality. True, some contemporary Christian Universalists like Ilaria Ramelli, Robin Parry, and now, David Bentley Hart have attempted to offer alternative readings to the traditional teaching in this area, but I haven’t found their respective works to undo the traditional reading of these things. Either way, Brian remains with the burden of undercutting even this minimal proposal as I have presented it (rather quickly) here in this post; he has the added burden of how he is able to deploy what I call the ‘universalist logic’ while at the same time repudiating the conclusion that logic leads to (and from) in so called Christian Universalism.

 

[1] Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo M. Martini, Bruce M. Metzger, and Allen Wikgren eds., The Greek New Testament, 4th edition: Dictionary (Germany: Biblia-Druck, D-Stuttgart, 1998), 6.

Barth’s Rejection of Christian Universalism: CD I/2 §16, 37

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Recently I was having a bit of discussion with some fellows about Karl Barth and Christian Universalism. They both claimed or asserted that Barth maintained a Dogmatic Christian Universalist position, while I maintained that he didn’t. I knew he didn’t, and have read him that way directly. Unfortunately, in that moment, I didn’t have a pertinent quote from Barth himself at hand; now I do. The confusion is easy to understand with reference to Barth; he does maintain a doctrine of election that encompasses all of humanity. As such, for Barth, if we want to use this sort of grammar, he believes that the extent of the atonement is objectively (and subjectively, grounded in Christ) universal. Yet while he holds to his unique, but Gospel-faithful (I take it to be) reformulated Reformed doctrine of election, he also maintains the classic position on ‘final salvation.’ Barth believes in what the Bible ‘teaches’ (at least for my money); that is, Barth believes that people who do not come to repentance will be eternally destroyed in outer darkness (e.g. not annihilationism either).

To prove my assertion about Barth let me offer the pertinent quote. In the broader context Barth is indeed talking about justification/salvation, and how that is fully actualized for all of humanity in the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. Following this snippet from Barth, he gets into Pneumatology and his doctrine of the Holy Spirit vis-à-vis salvation. But for our purposes this small quote from Barth should suffice (if not, pick up his CD and read the context for yourself). Barth writes:

It is the truth, even if man is not in the truth. It is true that God is with us in Christ and that we are his children, even if we ourselves do not perceive it. It is true from all eternity, for Jesus Christ who assumed our nature is the eternal Son of God. And it is always true in time, even before we perceive it to be true. It is still true even if we never perceive it to be true, except that in this case it is true to our eternal destruction.[1]

Rather clear, eh? It is true that many of Barth’s followers hold to a dogmatic form of Christian Universalism; and they do indeed attach it to what they think is taking Barth’s theo-logic to its logical conclusion. But Barth himself, as Hunsinger might call him, ‘the textual Barth,’ rejects Christian Universalism (even if he had theological space to remain ‘hopeful’). Barth’s rejection of universalism was grounded in his radical commitment to Divine freedom. Barth believed that if we foreclosed on God, and what he ‘must’ do, in regard to final salvation, that God’s freedom would be squashed, and His identity as God compromised. The press back to this could be: ‘Well, Barth apparently believes that God does indeed damn people to an eternal hell; how is this not a foreclosure?’ Barth might respond: ‘Because God freely chose this, and not that.’

Others might say: ‘Who cares what Barth thinks!’ Tru Dat. Ultimately as Protestant Christians we will hang our hats on what Holy Scripture teaches. In this case, though, I maintain, that Barth is following Scripture’s teaching; and his theo-logic, in my view, is spot on. Divine Freedom is of the utmost; it means that God is God and we are not. We must acknowledge Divine freedom, and allow Scripture’s teaching to curtail the way we see that applied in the economy of God’s life in Christ. Yes, many have been arguing, attempting to from Scripture’s teaching, that the Bible teaches Christian Universalism. But I’ve read all of that, and I don’t think these arguments are successful; nor did Barth (at least the arguments he would have been aware of at his time).

At the finis, I wish all could be saved. But currently, as I understand Scripture’s teaching, along with Barth, I have to conclude that people who die without Christ as their Lord and Savior, in a ‘perceived’ and repentant way, will be eternally separated from the elect life of God in Jesus Christ. In other words, they will not die in union with Christ who is eternal life for them. This means we ought to be proclaiming Jesus from the rooftops, so that faith, which comes by hearing, hearing the Word of God, might penetrate the hearts of those on the broad way, and allow them to enter the narrow way of eternal life in Christ.

[1] Barth, CD I/2 §16, 37 [emboldening mine].

Responding to Jedidiah Paschall’s Case for a Reformed Universalism: With Particular Clarification on Barth’s and Torrance’s Logic as ‘Erroneous’

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Jedidiah Paschall, a friend of the blog, has written a post offering an introduction to an ostensible Reformed Christian Universalism over at Aidan’s blog, Eclectic Orthodoxy. In Jed’s post he offers some critique of both Barth and TF Torrance; it is really an old or overly-rehearsed critique of Barth and Torrance’s theo-logic, but clearly one that still has purchase for folks like Jed and others. Roger Olson, in critique of our Evangelical Calvinism (insofar as that is contingent on Barth’s and Torrance’s categories) has made the same critique; as has Kevin Vanhoozer (even here at the blog), and Robert Letham et al. What I mostly want to respond to is the assertion, by Jed, that Torrance’s logic, when it comes to universalism, is ‘erroneous.’ It really isn’t: that’s what this post will, once again, seek to re-clarify (since I will be reposting a lengthy treatment that responds to this, by appealing to a treatment by George Hunsinger). If Barth’s (and by implication, Torrance’s) broader theological commitments are not appreciated, then folks like Paschall et al. will concluded that they operate with an erroneous logic. But this is petitio principii, since the premise is that if Barth and Torrance don’t operate with the same sort of prolegomenal method and attending theo-logic (situated in a prior metaphysical construal), that by virtue of this, Barth and Torrance’s theo-logic just is erroneous. But this is to think in a circle, and not carefully attend to Barth’s and Torrance’s own approaches, respectively.

Here is some of Jed’s critique:

In the related matter of atonement, which Reformed theolo­gians have classically considered limited in scope, Torrance demands that the atonement, which is grounded in an Athanasian understanding of the incarnation, is unlimited:

We must affirm resolutely that Christ died for all humanity – that is a fact that cannot be undone. All men and women were represented by Christ in life and death, in his advocacy and substitution in their place. That is a finished work and not a mere possibility. It is an accomplished reality, for in Christ, in the incarnation and in his death on the cross, God has once and for all poured himself out in love for all mankind, has taken the cause of all mankind therefore upon himself. And that love has once and for all been enacted in the substitutionary work on the cross, and has become fact – nothing can undo it.

This makes it all the more curious why Torrance, in general agreement with Barth, forgoes logical consistency to both his doctrines of atonement and incarnation when a mere page later he denies universal salvation with equal vehemence:

Objectively, then, we must think of atonement as [a] sufficient and efficacious reality for every human being – it is such sufficient and efficacious reality that it is the rock of offense, the rock of judgement upon which the sinner who refuses the divine love shatters himself or herself and is damned eternally.

It is not entirely clear why Torrance takes with one hand what he gives with another. The whole question of efficacy, as he has already established, is bound up in God’s work in the Incarnate Christ. Efficacy is cannot reasonably called universal if it is not universally accomplished and applied. It would be odd for Torrance to appeal to an Arminian understanding of free will at this point. Torrance’s erroneous logic can easily be cleared up by eliminating this non sequitur and to simply acknowledge that the atoning work of Christ will be universally effective for all in eventual and ultimate reconciliation.[1]

As I noted, the following will be a lengthy treatment offered by George Hunsinger. The treatment directly responds to the charges of Barth’s incoherence (and by implication, Torrance’s). In the original posting of this treatment, I was responding to something Robert Letham had written; something that directly dovetails with Jed’s claim. Here it is:

Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance are both, and often accused of being incoherent in their material theological positions and conclusions. Robert Letham most recently has made this charge against Thomas Torrance in particular (and it might as well have been against Karl Barth as well). Letham writes against Torrance:

It is simply incoherent for Torrance to say what he says about the definitive justification and reconciliation for all people and yet to deny universal salvation. Moreover, if it is possible for people to reject Christ and what he has done, it cannot be definitive and effective for them and cannot have been complete in Christ’s person. It simply will not do to dismiss criticism on this point by the assertion that Torrance’s claims stem from a center in God and that the critics have an uncrucified epistemology; this is to break down rational discourse on the basis of a privileged and precious gnosis.[2]

What seriously bothers me about such claims is that people like Robert Letham, Roger Olson (who thinks us Evangelical Calvinists are incoherent for the same kinds of reasons), et al. totally fail to appreciate and take Barth and Torrance on their stated terms. It is not as if Barth or Torrance have not provided extended treatments of their terms and prolegomena and approach to things, theological; they have! And so for the rest of this post (and it will turn out to be a long post because of this, but I want to have this available online for whenever I hear that Barth and Torrance are incoherent) I will be quoting George Hunsinger at length on Karl Barth; and Hunsinger will be explaining why Barth (and think Torrance as well, for his own related reasons) is not in fact incoherent while those who are making the claim of incoherence in fact are the ones who are incoherent relative to the particular categories of Scripture and God’s life revealed in Jesus Christ. So here we go:

Testing for Incoherence Within the Framework of the Chalcedonian Pattern

The coherentist mode of testing, as it emerged in the survey of rationalism, also plays a decisive role in Barth’s justification of his position on double agency. Directly and indirectly, therefore, it serves to justify his reliance on the conceptions of miracle and mystery in that position. On the exegetical or hermeneutical premise that the terms of the Chalcedonian pattern are rooted in the biblical testimony regarding how divine and human agency are related, the mode of doctrinal testing proceeds as follows. The Chalcedonian pattern is used to specify counterpositions that would be doctrinally incoherent (and also incoherent with scripture). “Without separation or division” means that no independent human autonomy can be posited in relation to God. “Without confusion or change” means that not divine determinism or monism can be posited in relation to humanity. Finally, “complete in deity and complete in humanity” means that no symmetrical relationship can be posited between divine and human actions (or better, none that is not asymmetrical). It also means that the two cannot be posited as ultimately identical. Taken together, these considerations mean that, if the foregoing conditions are to be met, no nonmiraculous and nonmysterious conception is possible. The charge of incoherence (as previously defined) thereby reveals itself to be abstract, in the sense that it does not adequately take all the necessary factors into account. It does not work inductively from the subject matter (as attested by scripture)–as the motif of particularism would prescribe. Instead, it starts from general considerations such as formal logic and applies them to certain isolated aspects of the more “concrete” position. At the same time, the charge may well have implicated itself, wittingly or unwittingly, in one of the rejected couterpositions.

Without Separation or Division: Against Independent Human Autonomy

No independent human autonomy, Barth argues, may be posited in relation to God. The idea of an independent human autonomy posits the kind of illicit “determinism” that Barth finds to be characteristic of Pelagian and semi-Pelagian positions counter to his own. The actuality of human autonomy or freedom or self-determination (and so on) is, it is important to see, not in question. What is in question is the condition for the possibility of human autonomy, freedom, and self-determination. The Pelagian position finds this condition to be entirely inherent in human nature as created by divine grace, whereas the semi-Pelagian position finds it to be only partially inherent in human nature. The Pelagian sees no need, whereas the semi-Pelagian sees some need, for the special operation of divine grace, if the human creature is to act freely in fellowship with God (I/1, 199-200; II/1, 562-63). Neither position survives Barth’s coherentist form of testing, for neither is seen to do justice either to the radicality of sin or to the finitude of the creature. The same basic inadequacy can be restated with reference to other doctrinal beliefs, and these are actually thought to be the more fundamental. Christologically, the counterpositions fail to do justice to the cross of Christ (as it discloses the radicality of sin) and to the necessity of the mediation of Christ (as it overcomes not only sin, but the finitude of the creature, by exalting the creature to eternal life). Theologically, moreover, the counterpositions fail to do justice to the divine righteousness (as it discloses the radicality of sin) and to the divine majesty (as it discloses the essence of creaturely finitude).

In discussing the question of double agency, it is most often the radicality of sin and the majesty of God to which coherentist appeal adverts (although the other beliefs do not cease to be presupposed, of course, and are sometimes invoked). The radicality of sin, as already documented on more than one occasion, is regarded as meaning that we have “completely lost the capacity for God” (I/1, 238). The majesty of God, on the other hand, is characteristically conceived in terms of the “conditioned” and the “unconditioned.” “The creature which conditions God is no longer God’s creature, and the God who is conditioned by the creature is no longer God” (II/1, 580). Or again: “Grace would not be grace if it were not free, but were conditioned by a reciprocal achievement on the part of the one to whom it is addressed” (I/1, 45). Or again: “Grace cannot be called forth or constrained by any claim or merit, by any existing or future condition, on the part of the creature…. Both in its being and in its operation its necessity is in itself” (II/2, 19). That God’s grace is absolutely free in relation to the creature, ant that the creature can in no way condition God, is as axiomatic in Barth’s theology as he believes it to be axiomatic in scripture. Pelagianism and semi-Pelagianism both fail, because they posit a creature who by nature conditions God, and a God who by nature can be and is conditioned by the creature. What is worse, these counterpositions do so even in the face of the radicality of sin. They are therefore judged to be incoherent from the standpoint of doctrinal testing. “What takes place in the covenant of grace takes place wholly for the human creature. A creatura mediatrix gratiarum or even corredemptrix is a self-contradiction” (I/1, 45).

Barth’s position over against these counterpositions may be briefly restated. The actuality of human freedom is affirmed (and by no means denied). But the condition for its possibility in relation to God is found not at all in human nature itself, but entirely in divine grace. In the event of human fellowship autonomy is not at all independent. It is entirely subsequent to and dependent on grace. The missing capacity for freedom in fellowship with God is given and received as a gift–“not as a supernatural quality, but as a capacity which is actual only as it is used, which is not in any sense magical, but absolutely free and natural in its exercise” (III/1, 128). In and through him it is called by grace “out of nothingness into being, out of death into life.” The event of grace on which the capacity for freedom completely depends is thereby a miracle and a mystery. But in and with this complete dependence, it is “real in the way in which creation generally can be in its relationship to the Creator.” Human freedom in all its reality is “encompassed,” “established,” “delimited,” and “determined” by divine grace (II/1, 128). The “mystery of human autonomy” is clearly not “an autonomous mystery” (II/2, 194). It is rather included within “the one divine mystery.” It is, that is to say, included within “the mystery of grace,” within “the mystery of God’s triumphant affirmation and love.” Only in this sense (but certainly in this sense) is it included within “the mystery of God’s omnipotence.” The reality of human freedom takes place, therefore, not as “the second point in an ellipse” (the Pelagian and semi-Pelagian counterpositions), but as “the circumference around one central point of which it is the repetition and confirmation” (II/2, 194). Divine grace and human freedom stand, in other words, in a conceptually asymmetrical relationship rather than in one of conceptual interdependence.

The features of this argument may also be stated in terms of the various motifs. The reality of fellowship is in question by way of the problem of double agency (personalism). The mode of testing for incoherence takes place in terms of the remaining web of doctrinal beliefs (rationalism). The bestowal, by grace, of freedom for fellowship with God is described as a miraculous event (actualism). This event also takes place in such a way that divine omnipotence and human freedom coexist in mutual love and freedom as the mystery of God with humanity and of humanity with God (particularism). Furthermore, the miracle and the mystery of the event are said to be dependent upon and mediated through the saving person and work of Jesus Christ (objectivism). The counterpositions (Pelgianism and semi-Pelagianism) are shown to be incoherent at essential points with the presupposed web of doctrinal beliefs (especially “the radicality of sin” and “the majesty of God”), whereas the position in question is shown in fact to be coherent with it in the mode of miracle and mystery (rationalism, actualism, particularism). Since the web of presupposed beliefs is taken to be in accord with scripture, it follows (granted the assumption) that the challenged position is also in accord with scripture, and that the proposed counterpositions are not (although this could and would need to be argued also on independent exegetical grounds) (realism). Thus all six motifs are in force in one way or another in the mode of testing for the possible coherence or incoherence of the challenged belief.[3]

I submit that after carefully considering these various theological motifs that fund Barth’s and Torrance’s theologies, respectively, that Jed Paschall’s claim about Torrance’s theo-logic being erroneous fall by the way. I realize Jed wants to appropriate the universalist theo-logic present in both Barth and Torrance, while at the same time distancing himself from what he thinks represents faulty logic in their ultimate rejection of an absolute Christian universalism (the position Jed wants to argue for as a Reformed Christian). But, again, in light of Hunsinger’s treatment, and simply reading both Barth and Torrance carefully, one will not arrive at the conclusion that they operate with an erroneous logic; particularly when that comes to the issue of Christian universalism as a theological conclusion.

 

[1] Jedidiah Paschall, Source.

[2] Robert Letham, The Triune God, Incarnation, and Definite Atonement in edited by David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson, From Heaven He Came and Sought Her: Definite Atonement in Historical, Biblical, Theological, and Pastoral Perspective(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013), 454. When Letham writes of Torrance: ‘…It simply will not do to dismiss criticism on this point by the assertion that Torrance’s claims stem from a center in God and that the critics have an uncrucified epistemology; this is to break down rational discourse on the basis of a privileged and precious gnosis….’ What he is referring to is this in Torrance’s writings:

The rationalism of both universalism and limited atonement. Here we see that man’s proud reason insists in pushing through its own partial insight into the death of the cross to its logical conclusion, and so the great mystery of the atonement is subjected to the rationalism of human thought. That is just as true of the universalist as it is of those who hold limited atonement for in both cases they have not yet bowed their reason before the cross of Christ. (Atonement, 187-88)

And this:

 (i) Christ’s death for all is an inescapable reality. We must affirm resolutely that Christ died for all humanity — that is a fact that cannot be undone. All men and women were represented by Christ in life and death, in his advocacy and substitution in their place. That is a finished work and not a mere possibility. It is an accomplished reality, for in Christ, in the incarnation and in his death on the cross, God has once and for all poured himself out in love for all mankind, has taken the cause of all mankind therefore upon himself. And that love has once and for all been enacted in the substitutionary work on the cross, and has become fact — nothing can undo it. That means that God has taken the great positive decision for man, the decision of love translated into fact. But because the work and the person of Christ are one, that finished work is identical with the self-giving of God to all humanity which he extends to everyone in the living Christ. God does not withhold himself from any one, but he gives himself to all whether they will or not — even if they will not have him, he gives himself to them, for he has once and for all given himself, and therefore the giving of himself in the cross when opposed by the will of man inevitably opposes that will of man and is its judgement. As we saw, it is the positive will of God in loving humanity that becomes humanity’s judgement when they refuse it. (Thomas F. Torrance,Atonement, 188-89)

What Letham, as others, fails to appreciate is the very point that Hunsinger (above and below) highlights about Barth’s approach; primarily having to do with the ‘radicality of sin’, and thinking from the grammar and mystery of the Incarnationitself. Torrance, as Letham asserts, is not merely making an ‘assertion,’ but in fact has his assertion squarely grounded within Christian, historical, and constructive theological proposals that are both robust and cogent within a coherent framework of thought. Hunsinger, I believe, defeats Letham’s (and other’s) charge of incoherence against Torrance, and by relation Karl Barth; and for the very reasons that Hunsinger registers in his clarification and defense of Karl Barth. The irony is that Barth and Torrance, if understood through classical patterns of Christian theological engagement are seen to be the coherent ones while those who are critiquing them are the ones who end up being incoherent by engaging abstract patterns of thought that are foreign to the mysterious Self-revelation of God in Jesus Christ. It is not that mystery is being appealed to in abstraction by either Barth or Torrance, instead the parameters of thought for both of them is chastened and cordoned off by the mystery of God en sarkos (‘in the flesh’); and any Christian intelligibility must be thought from within this center, and not a center of our own active intellectual making.

[3] George Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 195-98 nook version. 

A Probing Tribute for My Cousin, Dana: The Reality of Salvation (Universalism & Particularism)

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If evil is to be permanent in any part of the universe, then God is there foiled and the Cross of Christ of none effect…. So long as evil lasts there will be Hell. If evil should cease Hell would be burned out. Now if Christ’s cross means anything it means the destruction of evil everywhere and for ever. The work of the cross is not done while there is a single soul unwon to the mastery of Christ and uninfected by his spirit…. If we believe in the cross then we believe there will come a time when evil shall everywhere cease and sin no longer be.[1] P.T. Forsyth

God loves you so utterly and completely that he has given himself for you in Jesus Christ his beloved Son, and has thereby pledged his very being as God for your salvation. In Jesus Christ God has actualised his unconditional love for you in your human nature in such a once for all way, that he cannot go back upon it without undoing the Incarnation and the Cross and thereby denying himself. Jesus Christ died for you precisely because you are sinful and utterly unworthy of him, and has thereby already made you his own before and apart from your ever believing in him. He has bound you to himself by his love in a way that he will never let you go, for even if you refuse him and damn yourself in hell his love will never cease. Therefore, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour.[2] T.F. Torrance

danaWe have, somewhat, two competing accounts from two different Scottish theologians; P.T. Forsyth and T.F. Torrance. Forsyth presents us with a picture and a belief that in the end all will be eternally ‘saved’ through faith in Jesus Christ; that the cross of Jesus has vanquished evil from existence, and established God’s lovely holiness the world over. On the other hand, Torrance focuses on the same reality, but by emphasizing God’s being for us as the ground of our life, independent, as it were from our positive or negative affirmation of him and his work and life for us at the cross. For Torrance what is important is that God has chosen to be for humanity, in and through the vicarious (or representative) humanity of Jesus Christ, in a way that whatever we choose to do with that reality, we will always be held in position by God’s life of love; and that we will never be able to escape his presence whether we choose life or death.

I wanted to open up this post in the way that I did as I begin this tribute for my cousin, Dana Rook– who took his life (just a few weeks ago, at the writing of this post) just recently as a result of brain trauma he suffered from his time in Afghanistan as an infantryman, he was only 23 years old–to identify a nagging concern that many Christians encounter as we grieve the loss of a loved one, or grieve the loss of any life. For some of us, we might comfort ourselves with the idea that our loved ones were ‘saved’ at an early age, and even though they may have had a troubled time after that decision, the decision still holds. Others of us will look at the lives of our loved ones, and we will be concerned about the state of their lives at the time of their passing; we will try to pry into the depth of their hearts by attempting to access their hearts by an empirical process of reconstructing their lifestyles, words, and posture towards others (so we will look at their personal morality, speech, and profession of belief or unbelief in Jesus Christ at the time of their passing, and attempt to discern their eternal standing and destiny from there). And still others of us will follow the theo-logic offered by P.T. Forsyth, and we will claim that the Christian Scripture, and implications of God’s revealed life at the cross necessitate Christian Universalism (the idea that all of humanity will ultimately be ‘saved’ and hell we be completely emptied of all of its inhabitants; so the idea is that all will be so overcome by the beauty and grandeur of God’s love, that each and every person will ultimately bow the knee to Jesus and confess that he is Lord in a salvific or ‘saving’ way). And yet others will find refuge in the fact of who God is for us (love) in Christ, and hold that God’s presence is inescapable, even in hell (so Torrance). We will hold that the ground of the human life, in general, is Jesus Christ’s humanity, and so in a mysterious way, we will recognize that even if someone chooses (in this life) to reject the love of God in Christ for themselves, that God will never reject his love for them even in damnation; because all of human life is covered (objectively) by God’s pledge of life for them in his Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. This latter view (forwarded by Torrance) could be synthesized with Forsyth’s view of Christian universalism, but Torrance himself did not take this final step.

The reason I am proceeding this way, in thinking of my cousin, Dana, is because he struggled deeply with his relationship to God in Jesus Christ; so deeply that at the end of his life he claimed to be an atheist (but I know firsthand, that he was still battling all of this). And yet, early on in his life he made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, and showed evidence of that throughout his (at least, as far as I know) early teenage years by reflecting on Scripture, memorizing Scripture, and thinking about God’s handiwork in creation and the great outdoors (he loved nature, especially reptiles, as I recently found out). So for some, especially if you are third party (and not family, or a friend), folks might look at the outward realities in Dana’s life at the end of his life, and conclude that he was not ‘saved’; some might try to build an empirical case from looking at his life and argue that based on how Dana was leading his life, that he is not with Jesus. But I think this is very premature!

My view is somewhere between what Forsyth had to say, and what Thomas F. Torrance has written. I hold that God is for all of humanity in his Son, Jesus Christ; and that human being is given its ongoing reality by the vicarious humanity of Jesus Christ. It is this pledge of life where Dana’s life rests, independent (objectively construed) of Dana’s choice (or any of our choices) to be for God in Christ. Dana, nor anyone, can escape the fact that God in Christ (because he is love) did for us what we would (nor could) ever do for ourselves; God in Christ chose all of humanity (in and through Christ’s humanity) to be for him and not against him. Dana’s life is grounded in Christ’s life then for all eternity.

Torrance held to the idea that hell was an eternal reality (as does the traditional teaching of the Christian church).  Forsyth held to the idea that hell was a reality, but a temporary (vs. eternal) reality; and that the cross of Jesus Christ as a demonstration and establishment of God’s holiness in a sinful world ultimately rendered sin, and thus hell, eternally vanquished and annihilated. Torrance’s view leaves the door open for Forsyth’s view though; it is possible for Forsyth’s Christian universalism to dovetail with Torrance’s idea that God’s love is a reality that will never let anyone go. Forsyth sounds pretty dogmatic about his view (but in the end he is not); Torrance is dogmatic in his view, but he finally falls back on mystery a bit. My view, using some of the theological categories offered by Forsyth and Torrance is that God’s love is indeed inescapable, and the cross of Jesus Christ establishes the biblical reality that God’s glory, his holiness will cover the earth like the waters cover the seas. I believe that God’s human being in the Incarnate Christ grounds the human being of each and every person who has ever been conceived; which implies, again, that no human being will ever or could ever be out of the reach of God’s life of love and eternal hope. I believe that consistent with this, then, that even post-mortem (physical death), it is highly possible that God could surprise each and every one of us by bringing all of humanity finally and ultimately into his presence where there is fullness of joy (even if they leave this life without a ‘saving’ relationship with him then).

I believe that no matter what state, then, my cousin Dana was in when he passed from this life, that there is ultimate hope; because God is hope, and Dana’s life, as are all of our lives, is/are grounded in Jesus Christ’s life for us. Dana made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ early on in his life, he walked with Jesus (as Jesus walked with him), for many years following his profession of faith. Dana is in the hands of the God who is hope; even though Dana had fallen on hard times, even in his walk with Jesus, the grace of God continued to fund Dana’s life even into eternity. The point is, is that Dana’s life was not contingent upon himself, it was and is contingent upon God’s life for Dana, in Christ. No matter what way we look at it, Dana is in the hands of a God who is love and eternal hope; who is full of grace and mercy, and who is more present with the broken-hearted than he is with the self-righteous (and he is even present with them).

There is always hope with a God of hope. I personally believe that Dana entered into the presence of God in Jesus Christ at the point that he departed from this earth. He was a brokenhearted kid who Jesus promised never to leave or forsake. Beyond this, if you have a loved one who has passed, and who did not have any kind of relationship with Jesus Christ, I still hold out the possibility that there is ultimate hope along with P.T. Forsyth; and yet I hold this in a hopeful and not dogmatic posture. God is love, God is hope, full of grace and mercy; I have to believe at some level that this is the reality that will endure throughout eternity, and that it will shape God’s life towards his creation without end.

RIP, Dana.

 

[1] Peter Forsyth, “The Bible Doctrine of Hell and the Unseen,” 4 cited by Jason Goroncy, “The Final Sanity Is Complete Sanctity: Universal Holiness in the Soteriology of P. T. Forsyth (1848–1921),” in ed. Gregory MacDonald, “All Shall Be Well”: Explorations in Universalism and Christian Theology, from Origen to Moltmann (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 305.

[2] T. F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 94.

A Word of Wisdom from Bruce L. McCormack: On Universalism and Limited Atonement

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Universal atonement (and Universalism), and Limited Atonement have been part of the ongoing theological (soteriological) struggle between classical Calvinists and Arminians since at least Dort (but prior to Dort, which kbaewould be the logical/chronological coordinate and presupposition of Dort). The battle, on this particular patch of turf, has to do (if you don’t know) with whether Jesus died for all, and thus all are saved; or, if He died for a limited particular elect group of people, and thus this limited group of people are eschatologically ‘saved’. This has been where a major tussle has been (and is being) had over the years between these two disparate attempts to read the Apostle Paul, in particular, theologically/soteriologically.

Bruce McCormack offers a word of wisdom for these two groups, and it is a word (really) that finds corollary with Thomas Torrance as well; although McCormack has his own Barthian way of providing denouement — in one sense, for McCormack, it is not to provide any resolution, but instead to let the two disparate and apparently mutually exclusive poles stay so, but dialectically (and as the occasion for a fruitful way forward beyond this impasse, through a Barth[ian] escapade of constructive vigilance). It is this kind of dialectic resonance that McCormack suggests, and indeed prescribes for these two classically trained brawlers (i.e. classical Calvinism and Arminianism). Here is McCormack’s word of knowledge:

[I] would suggest that there is a better way of dealing with this, the most profound and important of the tensions found in the New Testament. I am certainly conservative enough in my understanding of biblical inspiration to believe that if something appears in the New Testament, it is there because God wanted it there. So if a tension exists, there must be a reason for it. And if I had to guess, I would say that the reason has to do with the fact that those awakened to faith in Jesus Christ in this world are still sinners. If God told us the answer to the problem in advance of the eschaton, we would harm ourselves on the one side or the other. If Hew were to tell us that a universal salvation will be the final outcome, we would very likely become lax, antinomian even. The sense of urgency that is pervasive in Paul’s Christian existentialism would be lost. If, on the other hand, God told us that limited atonement is the true resolution of the tension, we would very likely despair of our salvation. How could anyone be certain that the atoning death of Christ was really intended for him or her? And so I would venture to guess that the tension I have described is divinely intended — in order to protect us from ourselves.

In short, I think it was a mistake for the Westminster Assembly to seek to resolve this question on the side of limited atonement in advance of the return of Christ in glory — just as I think that it would be a mistake for any church today to teach universalism. Again, these are simply the logical possibilities that arise on the soil of the Reformed understanding of the relation of grace and faith. As such, they constitute the walls within which we are to live in this world. All of us will tilt more to one side than the other. And if individual theologians wish to conclude to one or the other — for the sake of exploring implications and relationships among the various Christian doctrines, they should be allowed to do so. That belongs to their unique calling. But churches need to be responsible for all the faithful. And for that reason, I would say, neither limited atonement nor universalism should ever be made church dogma.

We are now in a position to appreciate Karl Barth’s position on the problem of universalism. [Bruce L. McCormack, So That He May Be Merciful to All: Karl Barth and the Problem of Universalism, 240-41 in, Karl Barth And American Evangelicalism, edited by Bruce L. McCormack and Clifford B. Anderson.]

This is a good word, and provides the proper levity and gravitas that should attend this usually hard chargin’ discussion and theological debate. There are enough passages of Scripture on either side of this to make a half-baked argument for either position (i.e. universalism and/or particularism vis-à-vis limited atonement). The desire to find and then prescribe resolution between either of these teachings is only driven by a chosen prolegomena, or theological methodology that front-loads on the side of precision, absolute coherence, and mathematical execution (e.g. scholasticism Reformed).

What professor McCormack is calling for (as we leave him here, prior to his discussion of Barth on such things), is, if anything, that we approach these issues with chastened attitudes, instead of riled up egos that has to have the answer to everything; and everything in the sense set out and required by a certain a priori commitment to a theological methodology, and even material schema that requires a riled up method of rationalist certitude and precision. McCormack is recognizing that Scripture’s disclosure is a fully loaded one that does not cater to specialized meanderings of whatever our pet and chosen theological paradigms might be. And if this is the case, then we need to let the force of this reality impose itself on us, allow it to create the categories through which we think about God (and subsequent things), and understand that our position as Christians, and theologians, is one that is always in an open-ended provisional stance of learning and reforming accordingly; according to the force and power of God’s life revealed in Jesus Christ.

We ought to heed McCormack’s wisdom. And then listen to Barth ;-).