People often make a distinction between being a hopeful versus a dogmatic universalist.
You're a hopeful universalist if you desire, wish or hope that universal reconciliation in Christ be true but just can't bring yourself to believe it to be true, likely because of how you read the bible. You're a dogmatic universalist if you are convinced that universal reconciliation in Christ is true, likely because you have come to believe that the bible does, in fact, support universal reconciliation in Christ.
People often ask me if I'm a hopeful or a dogmatic universalist. And my answer is that I'm both. I'm both hopeful and dogmatic.
Which might seem paradoxical, so let me explain that.
Truth be told, I'm really not a dogmatic universalist. Why? Because I'm not dogmatic about anything. I struggle with too many doubts. There are days when I wonder if God exists. So how can I, if I'm wavering on that big question, feel dogmatic about a very particular vision of the afterlife? You have to get the cart before the horse.
So why do I argue so vociferously for universal reconciliation in Christ? Because I think universal reconciliation in Christ is the only view of the afterlife that gives the Christian faith moral, biblical, intellectual and theological coherence. I'm dogmatic about that, about how universal reconciliation in Christ is the only view that makes sense when you really investigate the other options. In light of that, I'd say I'm more of a polemical universalist than a dogmatic universalist. I'm polemical in that I argue--strongly--that universal reconciliation in Christ is the only view that makes Christianity morally, biblically and theologically coherent and that all the other options--e.g., eternal conscious torment, conditionalism, and annihilationism--make Christianity morally, biblically and theologically incoherent (if not monstrous). I'll argue that deep into the night and into the next day. That's the polemical part. But being polemical--arguing the merits of your view against the weaknesses of alternative views--isn't the same as being dogmatic. Because at the end of the day, do I know if any of this is really true? I don't.
And that is what makes me a hopeful Christian universalist. Because of my doubts, I'm not dogmatic that any of this is true.
But I sure hope it is.
