New Book Excerpt: The Possibility of Christian Universalism

As I mentioned in my last post, I will occasionally be posting some very brief excerpts from the book on hell I'm working on with John Kronen (hereafter referred to simply as That Damned Book), if and when they work as blog posts. I offer the first of these today.

First, some context: "Christian universalism" refers to a version of Christianity which rejects the doctrine of hell (DH) in favor of the doctrine of universalism (DU)--the view that ultimately all created persons are saved--but which, in other ways, preserves core Christian teachings. Some critics of this view argue that the doctrine of hell is so bound up with core Christian teachings that it would be impossible to be a universalist AND a Christian.

Early in That Damned Book, John and I briefly touch on this subject in the wake of pointing out that a number of our arguments for universalism are based on premises likely to be shared by a number of theistic religious traditions. In other words, we offer arguments for universalism that do not invoke or make use of any distinctively Christian teachings. Here's what we go on to say:

This last fact might cause some Christians to worry—perhaps sharing C. F. W. Walther’s view that one cannot be a universalist without denying the necessity, if not the fact, of Christ’s Atonement. But this worry is unwarranted. One may be convinced that a good God wants to save all, can do so, and hence will, without so much as considering the specific steps God might take or need to take in order to do so—and hence without considering whether the means He used (or had to use) are those Christians affirm.

As such, an argument for universalism that makes no reference to the Incarnation or Atonement does not thereby rule out the belief that universal salvation is achieved (indeed, can only be achieved) through the Incarnation, life, passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. Such arguments may still be compatible with the Christian doctrine that every human being is saved through Christ’s redemptive work.

Of course, not everyone embraces Christ in this life, even in the implicit sense of placing their trust in an “anonymous” Christ. Hence, universalists cannot hold (as so many conservative Christians do) that sinners need to perform the subjective act of placing their trust in Christ before death in order to be saved. But this does not mean that universalists have to deny the role of Christ’s Atonement in human salvation. First of all, one might take it that we are saved by what God does for us through the Atonement, regardless of what we subjectively do in response. But it is even possible for universalists to treat subjective faith in Christ as necessary for salvation so long as they hold that there is no time limit for performing this act of faith, such that it could emerge for the first time after death. This possibility is central to several key arguments we develop here.

Admittedly, the idea that one can be converted after death is contrary to what most of Christianity taught up until about the 18th century. But the discovery of the New World and the vast empires of India and China produced a gradual shift in the Church’s thinking. Beginning, arguably, with certain 17th century Jesuits, Christian intellectuals began to hold that those who had no way of knowing Christ during their lives could be saved as long as they did not reject the grace given them. And many otherwise conservative Christian thinkers now hold that all will be given an adequate revelation of Christ, at least at death if not before.

But Walther’s worry that universalists must deny the necessity of Christ’s saving work is related to another worry, expressed by Jerry Walls, that also deserves preliminary mention. Walls worries, in effect, that if the doctrine of hell is set aside, Christianity becomes trivialized. He claims that, in traditional Christian theology, hell “is the alternative to salvation,” a fact that lends “a sense of urgency and moral seriousness to the quest for salvation” and also highlights “the majesty and glory of God’s work to save his fallen children.”

But it is entirely compatible with DU to hold that, apart from God’s saving work, our fate would be horrific. That is, universalists can agree with Walls that the alternative to salvation is hell—that eternal anguish is what we would endure but for God’s saving work—even if they think no one actually endures this alternative. Furthermore, many universalists hold that there are those who do endure this alternative, although not eternally: while all are ultimately saved, some of the most recalcitrant sinners actively resist God’s saving grace for an extended time, enduring a finite “hell”—that is, an immediate experience of what it means to exist in the “outer darkness” apart from God—the experience of which ultimately breaks down their recalcitrance.

On this view of things, none of the “urgency and moral seriousness” attached to the quest for salvation needs to be set aside, let alone any sense of “the majesty and glory” of God’s saving work. A rescue boat that comes to the scene of a shipwreck is no less worthy of praise because it succeeds in saving all the passengers rather than only some. It is what they are saved from, not how many of them are saved, that determines the relative importance or triviality of the saving work.