Some thoughts I recently shared a few months ago at the Evangelical Universalist Forum:

One of my favorite ways to introduce universal reconciliation in Christ and to compare and contrast it with other soteriologies--Calvinism and Arminianism in particular--is to use Thomas Talbott's propositions as described in his book The Inescapable Love of God and his essays in the edited book Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate.

Specifically, Talbott has us consider the following three propositions:

1. God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally in the sense that he sincerely wills or desires the redemption of each one of them.
2. Because no one can finally defeat God’s redemptive love or resist it forever, God will triumph in the end and successfully accomplish the redemption of everyone whose redemption he sincerely wills or desires.
3. Some human sinners will never be redeemed but will instead be separated from God forever.

As Talbott points out, what is interesting about each proposition is that all three have ample biblical support. But, as Talbott goes on to point out, you cannot logically endorse all three. You have to accept two of the propositions and reject a third. And depending upon which propositions you either accept or reject you end up with either Calvinism, Arminianism, or Universal Reconciliation.

It ends up looking like this:

1. Calvinism: Adopts Propositions #2 and #3. God will accomplish God's plans and some people will be separated from God forever. This implies a rejection of Proposition #1, that God wills to save all humanity.
2. Arminianism: Adopts Propositions #1 and #3. God wills to save all people and some people will be separated from God forever. This implies a rejection of Proposition #2 as God will fail to accomplish something God wills (i.e., to save all people).
3. Universal Reconciliation: Adopts Propositions #1 and #2. God wills to save all people and God will accomplish God's purposes. This implies a rejection of Proposition #3, that some people will be separated from God forever.

If you are long time reader I've walked you through Talbott's propositions a few different times over the years. In this post I want to talk about the ancillary hypotheses associated with Calvinism, Arminianism and Universal Reconciliation in association with Talbott's propositions.

First, to clear up the jargon. The definition of ancillary is "providing necessary support to the primary activities or operation of an organization, institution, industry, or system." Something ancillary is in the background working in a support role.

An ancillary hypothesis, then, is a theoretical notion that works in the background to support some theoretical model. Theories, as they grow more complex, are often confronted with contradictory data or logical inconsistencies. In the face of that, theories often add ancillary hypotheses to fill in the gaps or to strengthen up the logical connections. In this post our theoretical models are Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universal Reconciliation.

Specifically, after you adopt two of Talbott's propositions and reject a third you're left with a logical conclusion but are without a mechanism.  For example, Calvinism rejects Proposition #1, logically implying that God doesn't want to save all people. Well, that seems strange. God doesn't love everybody? Could you explain what you mean by that? What's the mechanism here?

Arminians, by contrast, reject Proposition #2, logically implying that God's will to save all people will be thwarted. Well, that seems strange. God's sovereign and omnipotent will can be thwarted? Could you explain what you mean by that? What's the mechanism here?

Finally, Universal Reconciliation rejects Proposition #3, logically implying that people won't be separated from God forever. Well, that seems strange. Hell isn't eternal? Could you explain what you mean by that? What's the mechanism here?

The point being, after you accept and reject Talbott's propositions there are some residual questions, issues that need to be resolved. Why doesn't God love everybody? How can God's will be defeated? How can hell not be forever?

To answer these questions you need some ancillary hypotheses. Mechanisms that explain how the three propositions might work together given how you've accepted or rejected them. These ancillary hypotheses aren't found in Talbott's propositions--that is why they are ancillary--and we could imagine a variety of potential mechanisms to make the various propositions work together. But generally speaking, the accepted ancillary hypotheses are these:

1. Ancillary Hypothesis of Calvinism: Election
2. Ancillary Hypothesis of Arminianism: Free Will
3. Ancillary Hypothesis of Universal Reconciliation: Duration of Hell

In order to explain why God doesn't will to save everyone, Calvinism posits the ancillary hypothesis of election, where God restricts God's saving actions to only a few, the elect. In order to explain why God doesn't always get what God wants, Arminianism posits the ancillary hypothesis of free will, the exercise of which gives humans the ability to thwart God's efforts to save them. And finally, Universal Reconciliation posits an ancillary hypothesis about hell, arguing, in most formulations, that hell is finite in duration.

Election, free will, a finite hell. These are the ancillary hypotheses sitting behind Talbott's propositions. They are not contained in Talbott's propositions, but they function in the background to to make each theoretical model work.

And here's my observation about all this. Each of these ancillary hypotheses are hotly contested. And no wonder as ancillary hypotheses tend to be the weakest links, the bits of post hoc speculation and jury-rigging needed to make the system work.

And that goes to my point. Is the doctrine of, say, election any less controversial and contested then, say, a universalist speculating about the duration of hell? To say nothing of free will.

As I see it, all three ancillary hypotheses are equally speculative, equally debatable and equally problematic. Which is yet another reason why I don't think Universal Reconciliation is any more "heretical" when compared to the more accepted soteriologies. I think everyone is on equally shaky ground.

Last week it was my honor to participate in a talkback with filmmaker Kevin Miller after a viewing of Hellbound?.

As I mentioned yesterday, I am using posts this week to work back through some of the Q&A Kevin and I hosted, the queries we fielded and some of our answers regarding "universal reconciliation in Christ" or "evangelical universalism."

Today's post is about universal reconciliation in Christ and the atonement.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions about evangelical universalism, that is dismisses the atonement. Specifically, Kevin and I were asked, "If everyone gets to heaven then what's the point of Jesus dying on the cross?"

This question is really strange because so many people think it's a legitimate criticism when, in fact, it is one of the most easily answered objections to universal reconciliation in Christ. It's so easily answered that I wonder if the people raising the question have taken two seconds to think about it.

To be sure, I don't want to criticize someone who has just encountered this conversation for the first time. Many young people are just getting introduced to these topics and discussions. So most haven't really taken the time to think it through.

But pastors with graduate degrees don't get a pass on this! They should know better. So let me be clear. Any pastor who makes the claim "universal reconciliation in Christ negates the cross" is either 1) being thoughtless (I edited here my harsher descriptions) or 2) willfully attempting to mislead people.

Because this is really very simple and rudimentary.

To show this, let us just assume that penal substitutionary atonement is true. Let's just assume the most conservative view of the atonement.

In this view God is both a God of grace and a God of justice. And in order to satisfy God's justice God demands the punishment of sinners, their very lives. But being a God of love God takes on this punishment, Christ substitutes himself in our place taking on the just punishment that we deserve. And in this way both God's love and justice are reconciled in God's extension of grace to a sinful humanity.

Let's assume all that is true. The basic idea is this. The atonement is necessary because God cannot forgive humanity without the just punishment of sin being meted out. Basically, God's extension of grace requires an atonement. Jesus provides that atonement. Thus all humanity can be forgiven by God.

Now, just take a second to ponder all that and ask yourself, how does any of that affect universal reconciliation in Christ?

Answer: it doesn't affect it at all, not one whit.

And why is that? Because if the atonement is necessary for God to forgive humanity then it is necessary no matter if it was one or one million people being saved. If the atonement is necessary then it is necessary. The numbers of people being saved is irrelevant. The number being saved many be few or many. One person or every person who has ever lived. But the math has nothing to do with the necessity of the atonement.

Because the atonement, commonly understood, has nothing to do with the number of the saved but with the inner life of God, the means to reconcile justice and love. The atonement, commonly understood, is about that tension in the heart of God and has nothing to do with the number of the saved/elect.

In short, whenever you hear a pastor raise the issue of the cross in relation to universal reconciliation in Christ you've got either a competence or a dishonesty problem on your hands.

Because this is really very, very simple.

Theologically, this isn't 1 + 1 = 2, but it's pretty close.

Awhile back I wrote this reflection for the forum I host at the Evangelical Universalism Forum:

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.

Last post in this series.

Many of my readers subscribe to universal reconciliation, that all of humanity will, in the end, embrace and be embraced by the grace of God. Given this, it's fair to ask how universalist accounts balance the tensions of grace.

I think the main point to make is that visions differ here. 

For example, you could posit the view that, since God loves all of humanity, always has and always will, there isn't much work for Christ to do in regards to atonement. Jesus' death on the cross is simply unnecessary, since God loves everyone already. Since no one is ever at risk, no one ever needs saving. 

Given this view, what then is the death of Jesus all about?

Many would argue that the death of Jesus makes the love of God visible within history, and exposes our rejection of that love. The cross, then, demonstrates God's love and persuades us to love. This is the moral exemplar view of the atonement. The cross shows us how much God loves us and teaches us how to love.

Stepping back, if you held a view like this, then your creation theology would be, in my estimation, carrying the weight of grace. Beyond a moral pedagogy, soteriology is simply not needed.

This is, in fact, why many people object to universalism, that it diminishes or nullifies the atonement and the work of Christ. However, you can believe in both universal reconciliation and the atonement. In this view, Christ is doing more on the cross than making the love of God visible. Christ is actually repairing the damage of sin and defeating the cosmic powers holding humanity captivity. Christ makes a way where there was no way. In this particular variety of universalism, soteriology carries as much grace as any traditional view of atonement. You can believe, for example, in both universal reconciliation and penal substitutionary atonement. To be clear, this isn't a common view, but there is no incompatibility between these views. The only issue is if you believe the offer of grace extends post-mortem. That's really the only issue between traditional views of atonement and universal reconciliation: Does death stop the soteriological clock? Traditional views of the atonement say, yes, the clock stops at death where you fate is fixed. The offer of grace is time-stamped. Universalist views of the atonement say, no, Jesus defeated death and holds the keys of Hades. Time never runs out on God, the offer of grace persists post-mortem.

The point to be observed is that, even in universalist visions of salvation, soteriology can still carry the weight of grace. Because of the fall, existence now demands saving grace. You still have to accept, by faith, the atoning work of Christ. As Acts 4.12 says concerning Christ: "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

In summary, universalist accounts of salvation balance the tensions of grace differently. Some accounts will front-load grace and marginalize the atonement. Soteriology is put to the side. But other views of universal reconciliation place as much weight upon soteriology as any traditionally held views of the atonement. People are lost until they accept Christ. Full stop. The only issue is how death affects God's offer of grace, if it terminates at death or persists. 

In 2010 I wrote the following post about how, for those of us who believe in universal reconciliation and apocatastasis, today, All Souls Day, just might be our defining holy day:

Yesterday, November 1st, was All Saints Day, the day when we remember the "faithful departed" now in heaven. We remember these saints as spiritual examples and as sources of encouragement for our own journey. They are where we want to be. They are who we want to be.

Today, November 2nd, is All Souls Day, a holy day linked with All Saints. Specifically, on All Saints we remember the saints who have attained to the Beatific Vision (what we often call "heaven"). On All Souls we remember the saints who dwell in torment because they have fallen short of attaining the Beatific Vision. These saints are undergoing a time of purification in purgatory. However, prayers and good deeds done in the name of these saints is believed to shorten their time in torment. This is what we do on All Souls, pray for those in torment to hasten their purification. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

The theological basis for the feast is the doctrine that the souls which, on departing from the body, are not perfectly cleansed from venial sins, or have not fully atoned for past transgressions, are debarred from the Beatific Vision, and that the faithful on earth can help them by prayers, almsdeeds and especially by the sacrifice of the Mass.

All Souls was established by St. Odilo of Cluny at his abbey of Cluny. The legend goes that one night the monks at Cluny took in a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land. While at the abbey the visitor told the monks a curious story. On a ship heading home from the Holy Land the pilgrim told of a storm that wrecked his boat on a desolate island. There on the island the pilgrim met a hermit who told him that there was a deep crack in the rocks of the island. This crack was so deep one could hear, if you listened, the continuous groans of the tortured souls in purgatory. One night, while listening at the crack, the hermit overheard demons whispering deep in the bowels of hell that the prayers of the faithful could shorten the time a soul was in torment in purgatory. More, of all these prayers the demons expressed fear and admiration for the prayers of the monks of Cluny. The prayers of Cluny, the demons said, were the most powerful prayers in rescuing souls from hell.

Obviously, the monks of Cluny were excited to hear this news about the efficacy of their prayers. Consequently, from that day on, praying for the souls in purgatory became a large part of Cluny monastic life. Eventually, this practice of praying for the souls in purgatory spread throughout Europe and became incorporated into the liturgical calendar as All Souls Day.

Now to be clear, All Souls Day doesn't endorse universal reconciliation. The idea is to pray for the faithful departed. But there are three things about All Souls Day that resonate with those who subscribe to the vision of universal reconciliation.

First, the key theological notion involved in All Souls Day is the key theological notion behind universal reconciliation: Post-mortem sanctification. The whole notion of purgatory is the natural response to the theological problems associated with the belief in eternal conscious torment. So while purgatory isn't the same thing as universal reconciliation it is motivated by the same suite of theological issues.

Second, in Latin American countries All Souls Day has expanded to include all of the dead. Prayers are offered on Día de los Muertos for all the departed, not just the faithful. In this we see an evolution within All Souls Day where the scope of salvation is generalized to all souls.

Finally, the deep motive behind All Souls is hope. We are asked to pray today for the salvation of souls long or recently departed. I have no idea if our prayers will be as effective as the prayers of Cluny. Or if they will be effective at all. Regardless, the prayers represent a hope. As Karl Barth once said, we can't be sure if universal reconciliation is true, but it is our Christian duty to hope for it.

Today, then, through our prayers for all souls, we can fulfill that obligation.

Last week it was my honor to participate in a talkback with filmmaker Kevin Miller after a viewing of Hellbound?.

As I mentioned Monday, I am using posts this week to work back through some of the Q&A Kevin and I hosted, the queries we fielded and some of our answers regarding "universal reconciliation in Christ" or "evangelical universalism."

Today's post is about love, power, eschatology and universal reconciliation in Christ.

The best conversation I had was actually after the Q&A, a talk with Caleb who had read my series "On Warfare and Weakness" (see the sidebar for those posts).

You'll recall that in that series I work with the notion (leaning heavily upon John Caputo) that God, being love, is a weak force in the world. Caleb's question had to do with how I reconcile that notion--God is a weak, non-coercive force--with a vision of universal reconciliation in Christ. More specifically, if God is a weak, non-coercive force how does "love win" in the end, especially if evil is a coercive and violent force that will overwhelm the weak force?

Because it seems that if God is going to "make everything right" in the end some sort of top-down exercise of power is going to be needed at some point. Because if love is weakness then won't evil just keep dominating?

How does love win if love is weakness?

It's a great question that I told Caleb I'd been struggling with. As you'll recall, in the "On Warfare and Weakness" series I bracketed questions of eschatology and focused on the quotidian, everyday existence. But my thoughts about universal reconciliation in Christ pull me into eschatology so I need to make some connections.

Here's the question to be answered: Is force required to bring about the eventual reconciliation of all things in Christ?

Talking about this afterwards Kevin had a great analogy. He said that whenever people ask him if God has to force people into heaven to make universal reconciliation work his response is often "Does anyone have to force you to watch a sunset?"

The beauty of a sunset, any kind of beauty, is very powerful and forceful. But it's not a coercive force. It's something that breaks your heart and moves you. It doesn't push you. It draws you.

The idea that floated through my head was that love is like the sun and the human heart a vast iceberg. Love melts us.

So I do think there are ways we can think of God drawing us, moving us, melting us in ways that aren't acts of force and coercion. And if so, then the weakness of love may be powerful enough to win in the end.

But there is a catch I mentioned to Caleb. Love is slow. Everything we've just described is going to take lots of time. How long to melt an iceberg, to soften the hardest human heart? It's going to take a long time.

The point being, love requires patience, an almost infinite patience. And if you can't wait, if you want to fix stuff now, well, yes, you're going to have to use force. You're going to have to start knocking some skulls together to make the Kingdom come.

And I think that's the key connection. If God is the weak force of love your eschatology has to extend the timeline of God's salvific work almost indefinitely. Love, to remain non-violent, will require a lot of time. Because if there is a time-limit love will have to shift to force to make everything work out alright in the end. If you put love on a schedule you'll end up with coercion. "Hurry up" is always going to marginalize love and produce violence.

Which is why I think soteriological systems that have timelines, like the moment of death or Judgment Day, are inherently violent. In these systems love hasn't been given enough time to do its work, thus God has to step in with force to get the Happy Ending to come in on schedule. In these visions God has to knock some skulls together to make the Kingdom Come. Because of the soteriological deadlines love is rushed and abandoned for violence.

And what I think all this means is that the belief that God is love almost demands the infinite patience of a universalist eschatology. Grace--the slow, non-coercive unwinding of sin--is expressed temporally.

Love wins in the end because love is infinitely and gratuitously patient.

Most Christians, I'm assuming, won't be asking the question being asked in this post. Most Christians are fine with Judgment Day producing two different eschatological outcomes, eternal salvation or eternal damnation. And if that's your view, we've already covered the novelties of this series, the notion that everyone on Judgment Day, even the justified, will be judged according to their works. 

But a lot of my readers subscribe to universal reconciliation, if not dogmatically then hopefully, embracing the view that all created souls will, ultimately, be reconciled to their Creator. And if you hold to that view, even if hopefully, you'll be pondering how Judgment Day fits into this scheme.

I think the first thing to say, and I've said this for years, is that many of those who subscribe to universal reconciliation are perfectly comfortable with hell. One only needs change their view of eschatological punishment from retributive to rehabilitative/purgative. And with that change, Judgment Day really poses no problem. 

And if you ponder this series, the view that, in the words of Paul, "each will be judged according to their works," it works really well with a purgative view of judgment and hell. One of the big problems with classic visions of judgment is the binary outcome, 100% saved or 100% damned, which obliterates the moral continuum we know exists between people. But judgment "each according to works" keeps the continuum in view. For example, we've entertained in this series Paul's vision in 1 Corinthians 3:

According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

To be sure, there is an exclusivist claim here. Christ is the necessary and only foundation. Those subscribing to universal reconciliation will have to deal with that claim. (A common way is to look at Philippians 2.10-11: "Every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.") Still, the vision we've entertained in this series, that salvation can be "through fire" and involve "loss," fits really well with purgative views of hell. 

My point here is that the view of judgment entertained in this series--"each according to their works"--actually makes things easier for visions of universal reconciliation rather than harder. Which, in my view, is another attraction of judgment based upon works.

As a part of the lively Internet discussion surrounding the publication of Rob Bell's Love Wins, I started a series of posts entitled "Musings about Universalism." There were ten essays in all, most of which were focused on a Frequently Asked Question about the doctrine of universal reconciliation. I'd like to gather all ten essays into one location so that I can archive the posts on my sidebar and allow others to link interested parties to this page rather than having readers dig through the blog archives.

As I expect this post to have a long shelf life, and to set the mood, readers who missed it might like to start with the provocative Love Wins video that stirred up so much discussion on the Internet prior to the publication of the book:

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

One clarification about my language below. "Universalism" is a vague and broad term. When I use the word "universalism" I'm referring to the Christian doctrine that "all things" will be reconciled to God through Christ so that God will be "all in all" (Col. 1.19-20; 1 Cor. 15.28).

Question 1:
How did you end up adopting the doctrine of universal reconciliation? And how does that doctrine relate to the Arminian and Calvinistic approaches?

Answer: I grew up in an Arminian tradition, believing that it was God's will to save all humanity. I've never wavered in that belief. Eventually, however, due to problems I had with free will, moral luck, and the death-centered nature of Arminian theology, I adopted a Calvinist belief--a strong view of God's Sovereignty. Those two beliefs--it is God's will to save everyone and, as Rob Bell puts it, "God gets what God wants"--combined to create a sort of theological version of 1 + 1 = 2 leading me to the doctrine of universal reconciliation.

Continue reading...

Many of my long time readers found me in the early years of this blog because of my writings defending universal reconciliation. Newer readers might be unaware of these posts since I haven't written about this topic a lot lately. But nothing has changed, I still believe that God will, in the end, reconcile all things to Himself.

In the early years of this blog, my colleagues in theology and Biblical studies thought I was bonkers when I shared my views. Rob Bell did come out soon after with Love Wins, but that wasn't vindication. If anything, it made things worse. Rob Bell and Love Wins represented everything that goes wrong with progressive, liberal theology. It was assumed that I believed in universal reconciliation because I was "progressive." It didn't matter that some pretty less-than-liberal heavy hitters flirted with or endorsed universal reconciliation, from the church fathers to Karl Barth. There's more to this view than is typically assumed. You just can't dismiss it with a wave as a capitulation to modernity, liberalism, and humanism.

All that to say, the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has just published That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation. I seriously doubt that my colleagues can accuse David Bentley Hart of being a squishy, progressive, "love wins" theologian. As Hart makes clear in the book, universal reconciliation has nothing do with with liberalism. The point is, rather, for me at least, the simple yet courageous recognition that Christianity is incoherent without universal salvation.

If you don't buy that and don't want to read the book, you can dip into a bit of Hart's argument in his article God, Creation, and Evil: The Moral Meaning of creatio ex nihilo (an essay reworked as a chapter in That All Shall Be Saved). And if you don't want to read that article, here's the gist of it: If God created the vast majority of humanity knowing that He would torture them for all eternity, well, then he'd be a monster.

A God that creates ex nihilo, only to end up torturing the majority of His creation for eternity, strains the theological definitions of omnipotence and omnibenevolence past the point of breaking. So I'll say it again: Christianity is incoherent without universal salvation.

The issues here are real, but it takes some theological courage to admit and face those issues directly, honestly and squarely rather than dismiss them as a modern product of liberalism and humanism.

I'd like to follow up on yesterday's post. 

In discussions about the possibility of universal reconciliation one of the things I've noticed is how little the prophetic imagination is utilized in making the case. Of course I may have missed this in other thinkers and treatments, but I haven't seen many defenders of universal reconciliation make much use of the Hebrew prophets.

Most of the defenders of universal reconciliation use either reason or New Testament work to make the case. By reason I mean arguing for universal reconciliation based upon argument or philosophical appeals. For example, arguments about human freedom or a proper definition of justice. By New Testament work I mean things like Greek language work on the word translated as "eternal," unpacking what Jesus was referring to by "Gehenna," or appeals to universalistic texts like 1 Corinthians 15.28.

But what you don't see a lot of are appeals to the Old Testament prophets. Yet in my estimation this is, perhaps, the very best location to see how God's judgment, punishment, and wrath are temporary rather than permanent. 

This is vitally important because, at the heart of the debate, sits our image of God. We can debate free will, definitions of justice, the meaning of the word "eternal," what Jesus meant by Gehenna, or what God being "all in all" might imply. And while helpful, none of these debates get to the crux of the issue: What is God like?

Our best answer to that question is the story of the Old Testament which culminates in Jesus. Specifically, God does punish Israel for her sins, a terrible wrath is poured out. And at that point, with Israel's exile, it really does seem like the story reaches its sad, final conclusion. There's nothing in the story to suggest a different ending. But then, out of nowhere, a song of hope breaks out. This inexplicable narrative turn, this rupture in the story, is ground zero for what will eventually come to be known as "grace." On the far side of God's wrath we hear the words, "Comfort, comfort, my people." We get an answer to the question posed to Ezekiel in the Valley of Dry Bones: "Can these bones live?" The crazy, unexpected answer is, "Yes!"

My point is that when you deeply internalize this vision of God you come to realize a profound truth: With God there is always hope. Even, as Ezekiel learns, after death. Skeletons pose no problem for God. That is the prophetic imagination. Yes, wrath and punishment. But after that, hope. In reading the prophets what you start to appreciate is that what you assume to be the final act in our drama--getting exactly what we deserve--isn't really the end. Not with God. And if you carry that imagination forward into the New Testament you look at things differently. It's a huge paradigm shift, knowing hope exists on the far side of hell. Knowing that dead bones still have a future with God. 

And you know this not because of any argument or philosophical debate about Greek words or definitions of justice. You know this because you've seen this story before. You're now reading the New Testament knowing what God is like. So, yes, you do see language in the New Testament about punishment and wrath. But as a student of the prophets bumping into hell is wholly expected. And yet, you look at that language differently. You've seen the tide of wrath turn before. You know the end of the story isn't really the end. So you expect it shall happen again. For God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. With God there is always hope. 

Dear Friends,
As the year comes to a close it's my tradition to do an end of the year wrap up for the blog. It helps new readers catch up and regular readers find posts they might have missed...and to reminisce a bit. For my part, I like to gather my favorite posts in one location.

Welcome to all of you who've joined us this last year. You can find past reviews here: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.

Experimental Theology 2011 Year in Review

1. Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality and Mortality
This year saw the publication of my first book. Thanks to all of you who have read the book and to those of you who have posted reviews on your blog or at Amazon. Though the book isn't perfect, I'm proud of it. I don't think there is anything quite like it in the theological world. I've had people like Walter Brueggemann and Stanley Hauerwas say they learned a lot from the book and many people have told me that the book was "life changing." This summer I'll be speaking on the book at Streaming and the Theology and Peace Conference.

2. Universal Reconciliation
This was the year of Rob Bell's Love Wins so I wrote some more about universal reconciliation this year. The most trafficked post I wrote about universalism this year was Universalism and the Open Wound of Life, where I again point out that universalism, for me, has more to do with theodicy (the problem of suffering) than soteriology (the problem of salvation).

This year I also wrote a series of posts working through various objections to universalism. I pulled those posts together into Universal Reconciliation: Some Questions and Answers. Finally, this year over at Two Friars and a Fool I had a exchange with Daniel Kirk from Fuller Theological on the topic of universal reconciliation as the "best ending to the Christian story."

3. Stories from the Prison Bible Study
Throughout the year I've shared stories from the Monday evening bible study I help with at a local prison. The most popular stories where On Fear and Following: Reading the Beatitudes in Prison and John 13: A Story from the Prison Study. The former essay will appear in 2012 as a chapter in a book edited by my friend Richard Goode concerning the work and influence of Will Campbell. Look for And the Criminals With Him from Wipf & Stock this spring. The latter essay, on John 13, may be one of the most powerful things I've shared on this blog. Many readers have let me know that they've used that story in worship services, sermons, or church publications.

4. The Gospel According to Lady Gaga
Statistics-wise, the most popular post I wrote this year was The Gospel According to Lady Gaga. The post begins with some humorous autobiography but slowly morphs into a prophetic cry.

5. The Bible
I write a lot about the bible on this blog, sharing insights about biblical texts and reflecting on biblical hermeneutics. Interesting posts about biblical texts from the past year included The Exclusion and Inclusion of Eunuchs, Cheap Praise and Costly Praise, "My Heart is Overwhelmed": Universalism and the Prophetic Imagination, Easter Shouldn't Be Good News, The Deeper Magic: A Good Friday Meditation, and "Jesus Stopped."

Posts about hermeneutical issues that got a lot of attention were "Biblical" as a Sociological Stress Test and On Christian Communion: Why is Killing Okay But Not Sexuality?

6. Jesus Would be a Hufflepuff
Go figure, but the second most popular post I wrote this year, in response to the last Harry Potter movie coming out, was Jesus Would be a Hufflepuff. The post is silly but it does highlight a lot of what I do here: The quirky theological connection. (See also: On the Moral Example of Jack Sparrow.)

7. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: On Disenchantment and the Demonic
Speaking of quirky theological connections, my favorite post of the year was this analysis of the demonic in Scooby-Doo. I continue to think a lot about the Powers and the demonic. Another popular post on this topic from this year was Tales of the Demonic.

8. Autobiography
From time to time I like to write autobiographical posts. I think it helps readers get to know me better. Four of the better ones from last year were Adventures in Looking Like Jesus (Or a Crazy Person), Get On a Bike...And Go Slow, What I Learned on Palm Sunday With the Greek Orthodox and Growing Up Catholic: A Lenten Meditation.

This year readers also got to put a face with a name by watching my conversation with Rachel Held Evans on blogging.

9. Are Christians Hate-Filled Hypocrites?
Last year I was startled to find myself quoted in Bradley Wright's book Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites...And Other Lies You've Been Told. In the book I'm quoted as saying:

"Christianity" has essentially become a mechanism for allowing millions of people to replace being a decent human being with something else, an endorsed "spiritual" substitute.

Was I wrong in saying that? Read the post to find out.

10. Provocations
From time to time I write posts geared to provoke (the most famous example being my The Bait and Switch of Contemporary Christianity which blew up again in the final weeks of this year). Some provocations from this year: Marriage as a Spiritual Failure, Your God is Too Big, The Satanic Church, and The Poetry of a Murderer.

11. Ghostbusting
This year my ghostbusting adventures continued. The story of my students and I "busting" the Anson Light made it into local, regional and national news outlets. (I even did a local radio show about our adventures.)

12 Poems
I continue to post poems from time to time. Here were my favorites from this past year: Seeing Like My Dog, Dharma, Amnesia, Morning Office, Incarnation, and The Territory of Our Bleeding.

13. The Slavery of Death
Finally, I like to do original work on this blog. I like to actually do theology on this blog as well as write about theology. Actually, I don't do proper theology but work at my particular theology/psychology mash up.

This year the best of this sort of work was found in my The Slavery of Death series (which is still ongoing though nearing its end). The series is, at root, a psychological meditation on Christus Victor, about what it might mean to be freed from the slavery to the fear of death (Heb. 2.14-15). When the series is over I'll gather it into a Table of Contents, but if you'd like to catch up these posts, if read in order, will allow you to trace the main moves of the argument:

Christus Victor: "To break the power of him who holds the power of death"
"He who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil." (Part 1)
Christus Victor (Part 2)
On Sarx and Soma (Part 4)
The Dynamics of Sin and Death (Part 5)
Ancestral Sin (Part 6)
"In this world we are like Jesus" (Part 7)

Death & Resurrection: "To free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death"
The Pornography of Death (Part 11)
The American Culture of Death Avoidance (Part 12)
The Children of God and the Children of the Devil (Part 13)
Eccentric Identity (Part 14)
To Live as Death Where Not (Part 15)

...

Thanks to all of you who came here to read in 2011 and to those of you who regularly share your own thoughts and insights with all of us. I've been blessed by your online friendship and conversation.

Finally, one thing to look forward to in the coming weeks is the publication of my second book The Authenticity of Faith: The Varieties and Illusions of Religious Experience. (A preview can be found here on page 19 of the online ACU Press catalog). In the Acknowledgements of the book I've written the following:

I would also like to thank the readers of my blog Experimental Theology where early drafts of this material first appeared. I’m blessed to have one of the most intelligent and thoughtful readerships on the Internet. A warm thank-you to my readers for your many helpful comments, feedback, and encouragement. You were the first to let me know that this material deserved a wide audience.

See you in 2012!

Grace and peace,
Richard

For those of us who believe in universal reconciliation and apocatastasis, today, All Souls Day, just might be our defining holy day. Theologically speaking.

Yesterday, November 1st, was All Saints Day, the day when we remember the "faithful departed" now in heaven. We remember these saints as spiritual examples and as sources of encouragement for our own journey. They are where we want to be. They are who we want to be.

Today, November 2nd, is All Souls Day, a holy day linked with All Saints. Specifically, on All Saints we remember the saints who have attained to the Beatific Vision (what we often call "heaven"). On All Souls we remember the saints who dwell in torment because they have fallen short of attaining the Beatific Vision. These saints are undergoing a time of purification in purgatory. However, prayers and good deeds done in the name of these saints is believed to shorten their time in torment. This is what we do on All Souls, pray for those in torment to hasten their purification. From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Continue reading...

The other day I came across the song "Unstoppable Love" by Jesus Culture. It's definitely a song from the worship genre of contemporary Christian music. So if you don't like this genre you might not like the song, musically speaking.

What struck me about the song, especially given the song's popularity in evangelical circles, is that, well, it's a song that beautifully expresses the theology behind universal reconciliation. Seriously, if you sing this song you believe in universal reconciliation.

From the chorus of "Unstoppable Love":

God, You pursue me, with power and glory
Unstoppable love that never ends
You're unrelenting, with passion and mercy
Unstoppable love that never ends

No sin, no shame, no past, no pain
Can separate me from Your love
No height, no depth, no fear, no death
Can separate me from Your love

God's love is unstoppable, unrelenting and it never ends. Not even death can stop it. I don't know how this song, theologically, avoids being a song about universal reconciliation.

Well, I guess you can sing this song if you endorse the doctrine of election that God's love is "unstoppable" for the very few people whom God elects, the belief that God's love is "unstoppable" if God happens to love you. And if not? Sucks to be you!

But if you believe what 1 Timothy 2.4 says, that God "desires all people to be saved," and that God's love is "unstoppable," I don't know how you avoid the inevitable conclusion of universal reconciliation.

For those of you interested in the conversation regarding universal reconciliation, particularly from an evangelical perspective, I want to make you aware of the Evangelical Universalist Forum featuring Gregory MacDonald (Robin Parry) and Thomas Talbott. Parry and Talbott are two of the leading thinkers regarding universal reconciliation having written two of the "must read" books on this subject--Parry's The Evangelical Universalist and Talbott's The Inescapable Love of God.

I was honored when the good folks at the EU Forum asked me to join the forum as one of their Featured Guests alongside Parry, Talbott and others.

I'm just getting started at the EU Forum with a few threads up about neuroscience, the prophetic imagination, and how proponents of universal reconciliation read the bible. There's also a place where people can ask me questions.

If you're interested in the conversation concerning universal reconciliation the EU Forum would be a good place to hang out.

For Protestants one of the more obscure parts of the Christian tradition is the Harrowing of Hell.

The word "harrowing" comes from Old English word hergian which means to plunder, seize, or capture.

The Harrowing of Hell refers to Jesus' decent into hell to break down the gates of hell to release humanity from the captivity of the Devil.

The Harrowing of Hell appears to be referred to, if only obliquely,  in a couple of passages.

For example, in his Pentecost sermon in Acts 2 Peter describes Jesus as having gone to "the realm of the dead":

Acts 2.27, 31
because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,
you will not let your holy one see decay.

Seeing what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay.

What did Jesus do there in the realm of the dead? Passages in 1 Peter and Ephesians are used to answer this question:

1 Peter 3.18-20a
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago...

1 Peter 4.6
For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to men in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit.

Ephesians 4.8-10
This is why it says:
"When he ascended on high,
he led captives in his train
and gave gifts to men."
(What does "he ascended" mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.)

The Ephesians text is ambiguous. Perhaps descending to the "lower, earthy regions" is simply a reference to the Incarnation and not the Harrowing of Hell. But 1 Peter seems to describe Jesus preaching the gospel to the dead, to "spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago."

I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the import of the Harrowing of Hell in these texts for theologies of universal reconciliation.

Specifically, in many doctrinal systems death is believed to end your moral and spiritual biography with God. Your status--Saved versus Lost--is set and fixed at death. After death your relationship with God is set in concrete, never to be changed.

But the Harrowing of Hell, one of the oldest doctrines of the church, suggests otherwise. Death did not end the moral biography of the "spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago." Death did not permanently fix an eternal fate. Christ's salvific pursuit of sinners continued after death.

For many theologies of universal reconciliation this is a key point of dispute with those who endorse eternal conscious torment, and even annihilationism. Is your relationship with God eternally fixed at the moment of death? Does God's salvific pursuit of sinners continue after death?

According to the Harrowing of Hell God pursues us, even after death.

In discussing the doctrine of universal reconciliation in Christ one of the objections you often hear is that this doctrine rejects the cross of Jesus, rejects the atoning work of Jesus's death. This is a huge misunderstanding.

The issue, in my opinion, boils down to this: Is forgiveness actual or potential?

Ponder the relationship between God and those who, at this moment, stand in a place of rebellion toward God. Are these people, in light of Jesus's death for them, already forgiven? Or is God currently withholding forgiveness, waiting for the person to respond and repent? In the former forgiveness is actual--the death of Jesus created a new state of affairs, a new reality, a reality where the wall of enmity between God and humanity has been eradicated. In the latter view forgiveness is potential--you're not yet forgiven. The death of Christ, in this view, merely opens up the possibility for forgiveness. But as things stand right now you are not forgiven.

This contrast--Is forgiveness actual or potential?--goes to the heart of the debates of what is called the "New Perspective" on Paul. Some of this debate swirls around how we render Paul's use of the phrase Pistis Christou.

What we all agree on is that pistis means "faith" in Greek and that christou means "Christ." So far so good. But in the Greek there is some genitive ambiguity concerning how the two nouns--faith and Christ--are to relate to each other. Martin Luther, and those who followed him, translated Pistis Christou as "faith in Christ." But a growing number of scholars (e.g., Richard Hays, N.T. Wright) have argued that the proper translation of Pistis Christou should be "faith of Christ."

Theologically, the translational differences go to the issue of the actual versus potential nature of forgiveness. In Martin Luther's rendering--faith in Jesus--forgiveness is potential. Forgiveness is contingent upon the act of faith. You need to believe and then, once you've done that, you are forgiven. By contrast, the New Perspective rendering--faith of Jesus--focuses upon the faithfulness of Jesus in creating a new reality. Because of the work of Christ on the cross the wall of hostility and accusation between God and humanity was finally and decisively broken down. Forgiveness becomes our new reality. A new world has been created. Everyone has already been forgiven in Christ. The call is to recognize this reality and live into it. To trust (have "faith in") what the faithfulness of Jesus has accomplished for us "while we were yet sinners."

All this to say that the doctrine of universal reconciliation is richly informed by the New Perspective in seeing forgiveness as a currently existing reality.

Because of the atoning death of Jesus on the cross forgiveness is actual. Because of the cross a new reality has been created between God and humanity. Faith is recognizing that reality and rejoicing in it.

I was recently involved in an email conversation with someone who was wondering about the issue of free will and coercion in how we might think about universal reconciliation in Christ. Specifically, the most common argument you hear objecting to universal reconciliation in Christ is the assumption that this vision must involve some act of coercion on God's part. The objection is that if everyone is eventually reconciled to God then at some point God would have to force certain people in some form or fashion.

I've written about this issue at great length on this blog. Specifically, in 2011 I wrote a post describing how volitional integrity is a key and central aspect of how I envision reconciliation in Christ. I even go on to describe how God might go about achieving this volitional integrity, using the movie Groundhog Day as a thought experiment.

///

Let's start with a vocabulary note:

Vocabulary Note:

When I talk about "will" and "choice" I use the word psychologists use a great deal: volitional.

vo·li·tion
noun
1. The act or an instance of making a conscious choice or decision.
2. A conscious choice or decision.
3. The power or faculty of choosing; the will.

Again, whenever I talk about universalism I invariability get this question: Doesn't universalism imply that God has to force people into accepting and loving God? That is, if everyone is eventually reconciled with God how does God overcome our willful, and even hateful, rebellion?

This is a good question because we want the movement into salvation to protect the volitional integrity of the individual. We don't want God to force, coerce, or override the will of the person. We want the individual to make this choice of her own free will.

And by "free will" I don't mean "causally unconstrained." I mean free will as the philosopher Harry Frankfurt describes it, as a state of volitional unanimity:

When we are doing exactly what we want to do, we are acting freely. A free act is one that a person performs simply because he wants to perform it. Enjoying freedom of action consists in maintaining this harmonious accord between what we do and what we want to do.

...Just as we act freely when what we do is what we want to do, so we will act freely when what we want is what we want to want--that is, when the will behind what we do is exactly the will by which we want our action to be moved. A person's will is free, on this account, when there is in him a certain volitional unanimity.

So, what we want in the "free choice" of salvation is volitional unanimity and integrity. When a person chooses God we want them to want to choose God. And if God interferes with this, if the person feels she is choosing something she doesn't want, we lose volitional unanimity and integrity. The person feels violated and coerced, volitionally speaking. The choice isn't felt to be "free."

Thus, one of the virtues of the views espoused by people like C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce and Rob Bell in Love Wins--a view often called "separationism" as the person eternally makes the choice to stay separated from a Loving God--is that they work hard to protect volitional unanimity and integrity. God doesn't force or coerce a choice. The door of salvation, as Lewis says, is locked from the inside. And if you want to open it, well, you have to want to open it. The choice, as they say, is yours.

In light of this, universalism seems problematic as many think the view implies that God, seeking universal reconciliation, would have to use force to overcome willful human rebellion and sin. That God would have to kick the door down and drag you out kicking and screaming. Against your will as it were.

So how should a universalist answer?

First, let me address any Calvinist readers. Specifically, if you are a Calvinist you aren't allowed to raise this particular objection about universalism. And here's why.

If you are a Calvinist you believe that salvation comes via God's election. That is, in one moment you are a depraved, evil and rebellious human being. The next moment, after God's amazing grace "elects" you, you are a new creature, a friend and child of God. The point is, if you're a Calvinist you really shouldn't be quibbling about volitional integrity with universalists. Glass houses you know. You have your own problems on this score.

Look at it this way. Universalists could simply adopt the Calvinistic mechanism of salvation (God's election) wholesale. The only difference, in that case, between the Calvinist and the universalist, would be the arithmetic. The number of people who get to experience God's grace. But the mechanism of salvation would be identical in both cases.

So if a Calvinist ever asks a universalist the question "How can God save everyone without forcing them into salvation?" the universalist can respond "The same way God 'forces' the elect--by an act of Divine grace. We don't disagree about how salvation happens. We just disagree on the math."

So, dear Calvinists, let me step past you to address my Arminian brothers and sisters, who, by privileging human choice over Divine election, have actual concerns about volitional integrity. How can a universalist allay the concerns of Arminians?

There are a host of answers, so I'll just give you the ones that work for me. Basically, we just need to think of salvation as less an ultimatum than a process of education.

For a lot of Christians salvation is basically the process of posing an ultimatum to the human will: Choose Christ and live or deny Christ and go to hell. Basically, evangelism is a threat with a choice. An ultimatum.

I think this view of salvation is so popular because it has a lot of rhetorical oomph. It fits the contours of contemporary Christian evangelism, revivalism, and altar calls. The evangelist makes a powerful emotional appeal and the audience has to Decide. Come forward and be saved. Or sit there and be lost. The same model works well in a smaller bible study context where you peer over your bible at the poor sap going to hell and make the sales pitch: Accept Jesus or not?

I think most people are fully aware of the problems with this view of salvation. So I don't want to get into all that here. Suffice it to say I see salvation as less an ultimatum posed to the human will than Incarnational practices aimed at the acquisition of virtue. Moral education if you will. Salvation is about becoming Christ-like.

When framed like this I hope we can see how worries over volitional integrity go away. For example, most parents are trying to shape the character of their children and few of them would consider what they are doing a manifestation of "force." The same goes for how God treats his children. Our moral biography with God, in this life and the next, is about moral education, training in virtue, and spiritual formation.

Okay, but what about if a person is willfully rebelling? How can God "educate" that person?

Well, the same way all good teachers work with difficult students. You focus on trust, allow natural consequences to unfold, and persuade. Think about this using therapy as an example: How does a therapist get, say, an addict to give up his addiction when the addict is in denial about it? Psychologists routinely assess where a person is in the stages of change tailoring interventions to suit the motivational situation. God could do the same thing.

But what would that look like? I hesitate to give specifics because such thought-experiments are wildly speculative. I'd hate to float an idea and have people think "That's what Richard thinks is going to happen when we die." I don't know any such thing.

Still, it might be helpful to float an idea or two to expand our our theological imaginations. So, two quick ideas. First, when working with hard cases God's moral education could be direct and aggressive. Think of The Christmas Carol and Scrooge's experiences with Jacob Marley and the Three Spirits of Christmas. Scrooge wasn't forced into repentance, volitionally speaking. He was simply allowed to see things that helped him connect the dots, morally speaking.

But if the aggressive approach in The Christmas Carol is too in your face, think of something more slow and subtle like what we see in the movie Groundhog Day. In the movie Bill Murray's character is able to reach the same conclusions as did Ebenezer Scrooge, only more slowly. Murray's character was given the time to follow every moral path toward its inevitable outcome. Finally, at the end of this process, simple natural consequences bring about repentance, change, and virtue. Again, no force is used. All that is needed is time.

Which brings us to what I think is the key issue in this discussion. Time.

If moral education has an enemy it is time. Death in particular. Death arbitrarily lengthens or shortens your moral history with God. But universalists believe death has been defeated. This simply means that God gets to keep working on you. Some of us are pretty hard cases. And we're going to need some time. Parents know exactly what I'm talking about. Some of your kids are responsive and obedient. Others are a handful, to say the least. It's hard to get through to them. And we fear perhaps we'll never get through to them. But we hope that years, even decades down the road, a turn will happen. That after the rope gets played out the bottom will be reached and a change will come.

Sometimes, like the Prodigal Son, we need to hit rock bottom in the far country to come to our senses. And that change of heart isn't forced on the Son by the Father.

It's just the natural outcome of the Father stepping back and letting the consequences play themselves out.

And waiting.

Because the Father has all the time in the world.

In the comments to yesterday's post Keith asked me a question about how the Reformed and Arminian traditions view "total depravity." I'd like to share the thoughts I offered Keith and connect those to the doctrine of universal reconciliation.

Do Arminians believe in total depravity?

Yes and no. If by total depravity we mean that "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3.23) then Arminians do believe in it. But this isn't really what we mean by total depravity. Romans 3.23 is speaking to universal sinfulness, which is a bit different.

The issue goes to how the Reformed and Arminians view the human will. According to the Reformed humans are totally depraved, even our wills. Our will is broken, non-functional, and sinful. Thus, even if we were "able" to choose God that choice would be a sin, a form of selfishness, wanting/choosing God for the wrong reasons. In short, humans are incapable of "choosing" God. Or at least choosing God in a way that would be holy. The human will is depraved, unholy, stained with sin. Martin Luther called this "the bondage of the will."

Thus the doctrine of election. If we can't choose God then God has to choose us, God's will has to make the choice because we can't do it.

Arminians see this a bit differently. Arminians believe in free will (in contrast to Luther's "bondage of the will") and, thus, see human choice as morally neutral. That's the key difference. The apparatus of choice is morally neutral. More, the apparatus of choice is functional. Consequently, humans have the capacity to freely choose God. And in a way that isn't morally contaminated. Consequently, there is no need for the doctrine of election. With the will functional and morally neutral the initiative can sit on the human side. The point here is that the will isn't "totally depraved" as it is in Reformed thinking.

Now it's at this point where the Reformed counter with a very strong argument. The counterargument from the Reformed is that if human choice is allowed then that choice is a "work" and, thus, cause for boasting. This negates grace.

This argument makes sense. If I can be blamed for my choice to reject God (as Arminians believe) why can't I be praised (and boasting is just self-praise) for my choice to accept God?

That's a strong argument.

So what are our options? The doctrine of election? The belief that God picks some (regenerates the will of the elect) and doesn't pick others (leaving their wills depraved and in bondage)?

Seems like there is no good choice here. Grace gets screwed either way. In the Arminian view grace is screwed because humans have a cause for boasting. In the Reformed view grace is screwed because God limits grace to the few.

It's a real pickle.

That is, unless, you endorse the doctrine of universal reconciliation. Grace actually wins in universalism. On both scores. First, God's love extends to all. Second, because humans are finite and broken creatures God will have to decisively intervene within our biographies to move us toward perfection. God doesn't "regenerate" the will in an instant. Rather, the process is more like parenting. Coaching, punishing, supporting, prompting. In universalism "becoming perfect like our Heavenly Father is perfect" is the goal. But it's a developmental process.

But the key is this. You can't look back at that process and say, "I could have done this on my own." Because you couldn't have. The Divine Initiative is what saves you.

You have to stand in heaven and say, "There is no cause for boasting. I'm here because of grace."

In the series of posts I just finished reflecting on John Barclay's book Paul and the Gift I used Barclay's perfections of grace to comment on different soteriological positions, mainly comparing and contrasting Calvinism and Arminianism, but also mentioning Universalism.

What I'd like to do in this post is show how Barclay's perfections of grace map onto Thomas Talbott's propositions as described in his book The Inescapable Love of God and his essays in the edited book Universal Salvation?: The Current Debate.

Long time and regular readers will have seen Talbott's propositions before, but if you're new to them Talbott has us consider the following three propositions:

1. God’s redemptive love extends to all human sinners equally in the sense that he sincerely wills or desires the redemption of each one of them.
2. Because no one can finally defeat God’s redemptive love or resist it forever, God will triumph in the end and successfully accomplish the redemption of everyone whose redemption he sincerely wills or desires.
3. Some human sinners will never be redeemed but will instead be separated from God forever.

We start by affirming that each proposition has ample biblical support. But as Talbott points out, you cannot logically endorse all three propositions. You have to accept two of the propositions and reject a third. And depending upon which propositions you either accept or reject you end up with either Calvinism, Arminianism, or Universal Reconciliation.

Following Talbott, the various soteriologies end up looking like this:

1. Calvinism: Adopts Propositions #2 and #3. God will accomplish God's plans and some people will be separated from God forever. This implies a rejection of Proposition #1, that God wills to save all humanity. (The limited scope of salvation is implicit in the doctrine of election.)
2. Arminianism: Adopts Propositions #1 and #3. God wills to save all people and some people will be separated from God forever. This implies a rejection of Proposition #2: God will fail to accomplish something God wills, to save all people. (An appeal to human freedom is usually used to explain this failure.)
3. Universal Reconciliation: Adopts Propositions #1 and #2. God wills to save all people and God will accomplish God's purposes. This implies a rejection of Proposition #3, that some people will be separated from God forever. (Opinions differ in how this happens, but often a purgatorial view of divine justice is posited.)

So how does Talbott's propositions map onto John Barclay's perfections of grace?

Recall one of the main arguments of Barclay in Paul and the Gift. All of these soteriologies believe in grace. The differences between the soteriologies are found in which perfections they include in their theology of grace.

To recap, Barclay argues that grace can be perfected--as a vision of "pure" grace--in six different ways:

1. Superabundance
Grace is "perfected" if it is lavish and extravagant.

2. Singularity
Grace is "perfected" if it flows out of a spirit of benevolence and goodness.

3. Priority
Grace is "perfected" if it is unprompted, free, spontaneous and initiated solely by choice of the giver.

4. Incongruity
Grace is "perfected" if it ignores the worth or merit of the recipient.

5. Efficacy
Grace is "perfected" if it accomplishes what it intends to do.

6. Non-Circularity
Grace is "perfected" if it escapes repayment and reciprocity, if it cannot be paid back or returned.

And in my series I made an argument for a seventh perfection:

7. Liberality
Grace is "perfected" if it is given to more rather than fewer recipients.

As should be obvious, Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universalism all believe that grace displays the perfections of superabundance, singularity, priority and incongruity. God's grace is lavish (superabundant), loving (singularity), unprompted (priority) and poured out upon sinners (incongruity). All four of these perfections are found in Calvinist, Arminian and Universalist theologies of grace and salvation.

Where the views differ, as hinted at in Talbott's propositions, is in how each theology various perfects efficacy and liberality. Summarizing:

1. The Perfections of Grace in Calvinism
In Calvinism efficacy is perfected but not liberality. Grace accomplishes what it sets out to do (perfection of efficacy), but saves only the elect (no perfection of liberality).

2. The Perfections of Grace in Arminianism
In Arminianism liberality is perfected but not efficacy. Grace is given to all of humanity (perfection of liberality) but the gift of grace fails to accomplish its goal in saving all of humanity (no perfection of efficacy).

3. The Perfections of Grace in Universalism
In Universalism both the efficacy and liberality of grace are perfected. Grace is given to all of humanity (perfection of liberality) and grace will, eventually, accomplish the goal of saving all of humanity (perfection of efficacy).

If you go back to Talbott's propositions you can see how they are teasing out how efficacy and liberality are being variously perfected (or not) by the different soteriological positions.

Grace abounds, but is perfected in different ways.