"Hopeful" vs "Dogmatic" Universalism: Some Thoughts on Terminology

There's a common distinction today between two broad species of universalism within Christianity: "hopeful" universalism and "dogmatic" (or "confident") universalism. The former holds, roughly, that given broader Christian teachings we have reason to hope that all will be saved. The latter holds that given broader Christian teachings it follows that God will save all--that God has both the resources and the will to achieve this end without thereby compromising  other divine objectives or values.

I suspect, however, that the terminology here may lead to some confusion. The language of hopefulness suggests humility in a way that the language of confidence/dogmatism does not. The latter suggests a certainty  about matters that many will find unsuitable to the subject matter. Many Christians with universalist leanings may gravitate towards the "hopeful" species for precisely this reason.

In fact, I think that those who are drawn towards universalism also tend to be the very people who are suspicious of "dogmatism" in the modern sense of the word, and who have a broad aversion to the kind of unquestioning certainty that characterizes fundamentalism.

On Heresy and Universalism, Part 2

In my last post, I used Roger Olson's recent post, "How serious a heresy is universalism?", as a starting point for exploring how heresy should be conceived. I argued that, from many important theological perspectives including Olson's own, we should not expect knowledge or certainty about the ultimate truth concerning God and reality to be available from our terrestrial epistemic situation.

This is not to say that we might not have some forms of guidance or direction in forming our beliefs, but these sources of guidance would be cognitively resistible: they do not demand (on pain of irrationality) acceptance of a particular worldview or belief system, since a rational person could doubt their credibility or veracity (even though a rational person might very well accept their credibility as well).

I argued that Olson's theological basis for rejecting universalism, when considered in the light of what I regard as a rather compelling Thomistic line of argument, entails that we are in just this sort of epistemic situation with respect to God and ultimate reality. That is, if we accept Olson's theology, we must also accept that our acceptance of that theology is not rooted in knowledge of its truth. It is, to use the traditional if ambiguous Christian language, a matter of faith.

But if this is right, then the nature of God and ultimate reality as such cannot serve as our standard for assessing whether beliefs are heretical or orthodox--because such assessment presumes access to the standard, access that isn't available.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't care about getting our beliefs in tune with ultimate reality. This, after all, is the ultimate goal of all inquiry and debate. But that it is a goal does not mean that it is, right now, an accessible standard for evaluating beliefs. If talk of heresy and orthodoxy is to be meaningful to us now, given the epistemic situation we are in now, then such talk should function as part of a broader epistemic project aimed at achieving the goal of bringing us in tune with the real nature of things. Treating the "heresy" and "orthodoxy" labels as identifying deviance from or conformity with ultimate reality amounts to assuming that the goal has already been achieved--and, as such, may actually stifle progress towards achieving this goal (one stops journeying if one thinks one has already arrived at one's destination).

So is there a "standard of orthodoxy" other than the truth about God and ultimate reality that we can meaningfully invoke in Christian discourse about such matters as universalism, and which may actually contribute to our ongoing quest to deepen our understanding of ultimate truths? Two commonly invoked candidates immediately come to mind: (a) the Scriptures, and (b) the authoritative pronouncements of the early Ecumenical Councils that, among other things, gave Christianity the creeds still recited to this day. A third standard might be a particular theological tradition, or the "weight" of that tradition (in terms of its dominant and pervasive teachings).

With each of these candidates, there are at least two questions we might ask: First, is it an accessible standard that can actually function (with greater or lesser degrees of precision and completeness) to distinguish "orthodox" and "heretical" beliefs? Second, does (or can) evaluation of beliefs in terms of this standard contribute to the aim of moving us towards a deeper connection with truth?

I think it is clear that Scripture, the pronouncements of Ecumenical Councils, and theological traditions are more accessible than ultimate reality. And I think it is clear that they can be put to use as a standard against which beliefs are judged--although Scripture, by virtue of its tensions and complexities and ambiguities, is a much more slippery standard that may require an interpretive hermeneutic in order to be applied effectively (which may mean that what is really operating as the standard isn't Scripture as such, but Scripture as read through a particular interpretive lens). A similar problem arises when attempting to test a belief against a theological tradition.

The deeper question, however, is the second one: Is there--or can there be--value in the project of subjecting beliefs to such a standard of orthodoxy? My instinct is that there can be, insofar as this serves as part of a broader Hegelian project of preserving the internal integrity of a system of beliefs so as to make it possible for it to evolve in the face of the lived encounter with ultimate reality. But that there can be does not mean that subjecting beliefs to standards of orthodoxy is always or even usually helpful in the situations where it is actually done. As such, I think great care should be taken in properly qualifying claims of heresy and orthodoxy. At a minimun, I one should (i) clearly identify the sense of "heretical" or "orthodox" one has in mind and (ii) be clear about the purpose for which one is making these distinctions.

For an excellent example of doing just these things in relation to the question of universalism, I'd recommend taking a look at Robin Parry's series of posts on the topic from June of 2010. At some point in the coming weeks (my start-of-the-semester schedule permitting), I will consider in a more substantive way the question of whether Christian universalism should be judged heretical based on a standard that is of particular interest to philosophers, and which Roger Olson at least implicitly invokes: the standard of coherence.

History of the Universe, Versions 1 and 2

Robin Parry posted a YouTube Video titled "The History of Everything"--essentially a rapid-fire account of the Christian narrative--and as I was watching it I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose this Christian history of the universe against a naturalist's narrative of the origins of our world and the evolution of life.

So I went to YouTube and found Carl Sagan's own rapid-fire account. The contrasts in the narratives themselves are interestingly accentuated by the divergent storytelling styles--one relying on accelerated marker drawings/doodles, the other on majestic photographs and special effects; one voiced by what sounds like an adolescent, the other by Sagan (with his resonant baritone).

So here they are, in case you want the same experience:





Thoughts?

Robin Parry's Concise Reflection on Christian Universalism

Robin Parry uses the controversy surrounding Rob Bell's new book as a springboard for offering a nice (and concise) overview of Christian Universalism, in the form of debunking seven "myths" about it. If you haven't seen it (and if this controversy interests you), check out his essay, Bell's Hells, in the Baptist Times. Parry is the author of The Evangelical Universalist (under the pseudonym "Gregory McDonald) and co-editor of Universal Slavation? The Current Debate (in which I have an essay). Both books are well worth checking out.

It is Finished...Well, Almost...Just in Time for an Evangelical Preacher to Steal Our Market Share

A couple of hours ago, I e-mailed the manuscript for That Damned Book to the editors at Continuum...all except the bibliography, which is close to finished but needs some final touches. I now tend my children at home and feel this sense of...almost completeness. Once my co-author puts the last touches on the bibliography and we can both review it for the inevitable infelicities, life will return to one in which I can pay attention to other things.

And, just as John and I are finishing our manuscript offering a detailed philosophical case for the conclusion that the doctrine of universalism fits more coherently with core Christian teachings than does the doctrine of hell, it turns out that a monstrously popular evangelical preacher, Rob Bell (founder of Mars Hill Bible Church), has now come out as a universalist in his newest book, inspiring outrage among some evangelicals, condescending "I'll pray for your poor benighted soul" condemnation among others, and openness among at least a few.

Of course, Bell's position is hardly new. It was taught by such early Church Fathers as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa. He isn't even the first modern evangelical to defend universalism.  A few years back, Robin Parry published The Evangelical Universalist under the pen name Gregory MacDonald--a wonderfully lucid and compelling case for universalism within an evangelical Christian context, which takes a very careful and serious look at the relevant biblical texts (that's right, universalism isn't unbiblical, as we spend a chapter arguing in our book). Bell isn't even the first pastor of a large and popular evangelical church to come out as a universalist. A popular evangelical preacher in Tulsa, Carlton Pearson, saw his huge church virtually evaporate when he had the courage to admit he was a universalist--only to be declared a heretic in 2004.

He may, however, be the first to make gobs of money from a book defending universalism--almost certainly FAR more money than we will.

The Problem of Evil and the Problem of Hell

A good while back I had an exchange with a conservative Christian critic of my book, who essentially accused me of being inconsistent in my treatment of the problem of evil and what Marilyn McCord Adams has dubbed the problem of hell (I reprinted the substance of my reply on this blog back in January of 2009). I was reminded of that exchange recently, because my philosophy of religion class has been considering the problem of evil and the problem of hell back-to-back.


While the two problems are very similar, they are also fundamentally different. In this post I’d like to consider the problems side-by-side, highlight both their similarities and their differences.

Epicurus offered a classic formulation of the problem of evil in the following terms:

Is (God) willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?

Not long ago, Randy Olds articulated the problem of hell simply by retooling this epicurean argument :

Is God willing to put an end to the torments of Hell, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then how can Hell possibly last for all eternity?

In both cases, there is an argument to the effect that belief in an omnipotent and perfectly good God is incompatible with something else—either the existence of evil, or the existence of an eternal hell.

Now, an enormous difference between the two problems rests in the following fact: The existence of evil is a matter of experience, whereas the existence of hell is a matter of doctrine. That is, all of us have encountered in our lives, either directly or indirectly, cases of cruelty, suffering, pointless death, and the like. There is no denying that children starve by the hundreds of thousands. There is no denying that bifurcating ideologies lead to gruesome atrocities. There is no denying that diseases cut promising lives short, that natural disasters bring untold suffering.

And so, to deny the existence of evil requires that we say of all of these horrors that they really aren’t evil after all. Some theists, confronted with the problem of reconciling evil with their faith in an almighty and benevolent God, do seem drawn to just such a move. When Pat Robertson blamed the Haitian earthquake on a supposed pact with the devil that Haitian rebels had made generations ago, we see the ugliest fruits of this kind of theodicy. Horrors are baptized. Victims are blamed. God is vindicated at the expense of doing violence to human dignity.

Denying the existence of hell requires nothing of the kind. And while some Christians argue that it requires denying the clear teaching of Scripture, even this is a dubious claim—as, I think, Robin Parry (writing as Gregory McDonald) has argued quite powerfully in The Evangelical Universalist.

Another enormous difference between the problem of evil and the problem of hell is that the problem of evil is posed in terms of finite, terrestrial evils—evils that, if God exists, do not have the final word in the lives of those who suffer them. If God exists and is infinite in power and benevolence, then there is reason to hope that even the worst terrestrial evils will being redeemed.

As Marilyn McCord Adams has so powerfully argued, there are really two problems of evil: One is explaining why God would permit evils in the first place; the second is explaining how God can be good to the victims of the worst of those evils, the ones Adams calls “horrors.” Adams offers a compelling account of how God might “defeat” even the worst finite evils, so as to make the lives of those who suffer them well worth living. Her account doesn’t solve the first problem of accounting for evil in the first place, but the point I want to make here is that eternal hell is by definition suffering and sin that endures eternally and so is never redeemed.

As such, it seems that the second problem of evil becomes, in relation to hell, seemingly insurmountable. In effect, the doctrine of hell holds that there are some evils that endure eternally, evils that God either cannot or will not redeem, and so remain forever as a blight on the divine creation.

Seen in this light, belief in the doctrine of hell seems to be a far more serious threat to belief in an almighty God of love than does the reality of any finite evil.

Nevertheless, there are those who seek to cling to the doctrine of hell and integrate it with their theistic faith. The main aim of That Damned Book (my forthcoming book co-authored with John Kronen) is to show that these efforts just don’t work.