This week someone who came to the Darkwood Brew Facebook page asked if there are other books that argue for some version of Universal Salvation besides that of Rob Bell, which we might recommend. The answer is “Yes, absolutely!” But before doing so, a little clarification is in order about what Universal Salvation means – and a caveat that Bell does not refer to himself as a Universalist.
In its simplest form, Universal Salvation is a doctrine that asserts that, in the end, God saves everyone. People accuse Rob Bell of being evasive on the question of Universal Salvation (while he insists that he’s not a Universalist, he implies regularly that God may save all people). In my opinion, Bell has good reason not to provide direct answers. Why? Because even in its simplest form, the doctrine Universal Salvation gets a bit complicated.
What does “in the end” mean, for instance? The end of a person’s life? The end of the world? The end of time?
If that timeframe is longer than a person’s life, does this mean a person could be saved post-mortem, i.e., sometime could “get in” even long after they physically die? If so, what would be the condition of salvation? Would someone be saved even if, for some reason, they chose not to be saved?
Not only does every statement about universal salvation open up new questions, but even the best, most theologically grounded articulation of what happens after death is still just speculation, since none of us has ever died and come back to tell the rest of us how it all works.
To me, the safest (though not the simplest) definition of Universal Salvation is that “God has the loving desire, and the absolute ability, to save all that God has created.” The question then becomes, does God get what God wants?
The extent to which the answer to the above question is “yes” is the extent to which salvation is universal.
I am a Universalist according to my suggested definition. But my understanding of universal salvation does, in fact, include an assumption that there is at least one case where God does not get what God wants. Thus, I don’t believe that everyone is necessarily saved.
I believe that if a soul was able to answer the question, “Is your desire to live within my Realm?” with full knowledge of all the implications of their answer, and with complete freewill, and that soul answered “No,” then God, as its creator, would simply uncreate it (“You were created from nothing, and to nothing you shall return.”) After all, if we were created by God, then we were created by God’s choice, not our own. And since God seems to honor our choices by giving us freewill (allowing us to choose against God time and time again, even if it means holocausts are the result), then it is not unreasonable to assume that, at some point, we are even given the chance to say “No” to the one thing we never had a choice in: our own existence.
Of course, I’ve never been dead, so I’m merely speculating. If you’d like to read more on the concept Universal Salvation, I recommend the following books:
Philip Gulley and James Mulholland, If Grace is True
Brain McClaren (our Skype Guest this Sunday), The Last Word and the Word After That
Rick Morley, Going to Hell, Getting Saved, and What Jesus Actually Said (Note, I haven’t read this book yet, but suspect it’s helpful).
Eric Elnes, Asphalt Jesus (Chapter 3), and The Phoenix Affirmations (Chapter 9)
Great post. My own sense is that God’s question “Is your desire to live within my Realm,” is one that God asks in earnest and keeps asking until a soul freely answers yes. I have found God’s love beautifully persistent and so suspect that this persistent love will continue to be active, even as it might have to wait a long, long time to be welcomed in.
I look forward to hearing more of what you have to say on the subject, and to the comments of your DWB guests.
As a pastor who does a lot of feeding of her flock, I’m grateful for DWB and your ministry; your solid, soulful efforts never fail to feed me.
Another excellent book, especially if you like logic and quotes (like my husband), is “The Inescapable Love of God” by Thomas Talbott. He’s a philosophy professor and does a great job of sharing the theology of the early church fathers (which Rob Bell hints at but doesn’t quote) and scripture.
Thanks, Suzanne!
I shy away from the word saved in any of my own sense of spirit or the divine. Saved from what? We are the recipients (along with everything one and everything else in creation) of an amazing grace that to me looks like the like the universe in ways I can’t really grasp. So, I wonder, “Saved from what?” On the other hand, being saved doesn’t protect us from the ravages of random nor intentionally evil occurrences. Maybe we aren’t “saved from,” but “saved to” an experience of the divine that is transcendent, if we are open to it?
Here’s my quantum challenge to the idea of a soul that might choose not to exist. I know it’s a thinking exercise…but it might just be a sort of theoretical proof about how hard it actually is to be separate from the divine (impossible in my thinking). Does it require a soul that decides not to exist at a fixed point in time and space, or one that universally abstains from existence in all dimensions, times, places and circumstances? I’m not sure that’s possible. I don’t think the divine energy of the universe would punish the soul that sometimes regrets having been born or being brought forth. That’s temporary. It would have to be a deeper, permanent desire without beginning or end. The very micro-second the soul became self-reflective in any other way would negate the entire infinitude of wishing for separation. So, I think the divine can’t even have that one option to cause something or someone to cease to exist. I guess at some deep level I believe that the soul can only seek connection.
Can pure consciousness ask to be made unconscious in any sort of way that actually understands the request? Can pure connectedness ask to be made separate in any sort of way that actually understands the request? I don’t think so.
I agree for the most part with your conclusions. We are being bound by time in our understanding, and most of us (especially if we use the word “eternal,” understand that time is not linear spiritually). “Choice” and “decision” in the way we use them always seem to involve linear time and cause and effect. This seems to worldly, too constrained to be a match for God.
More than likely, we would not be “disappeared” but recycled, should we have the ability to say “no” to being in God’s realm. Such is the way of manifestation in almost all that we see around us. Kind of like re-formatting a hard drive, information might be lost, the trace memories of our life or lives might evaporate, our identity may disappear but not the soul which is the manifestation and medium of God’s intention for us.
If we are worried about the lack of consequences implied by universal salvation, then I would simply say that erasure is a pretty serious consequence, especially from a worldly perspective. However, natural consequences are the spiritual law it would seem, and it is we who desire a more dramatic and identifiable moral consequence. I don’t think God works that way. As I have said before, God is the design, more than the designer, and the natural consequence of rejecting the design would be to become a mere thread loosed from a tapestry, not doomed to roam the universe a ghost, but absolved and reabsorbed into that which creates the tapestry.
I had the incredible fortune of having Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a professor in seminary. He said something that changed my view on Hell forever. He said, “Hell is God’s greatest compliment to humanity.”
I assure you, every person in the room suddenly woke up, and sat breathless waiting to hear what was going to come next! He followed that statement with: “Because it means that he takes our choices seriously.”
I believe with all my heart that God wants nothing more than to be with us, and for us to be with God unto the ages of ages.
And, I have to believe that should we choose with our lives not to be with God, then God wouldn’t force us, but would sadly honor our choice.
(By the way, I’m so very honored that Eric recommended my book “Going to Hell” in this post – even without reading it! I hope it’s worthy!)
Great reply, too, Rick! Thanks for the Tutu quote. That’s fabulous.
@Scott’s challenge: Your thinking on the “quantum” level seems entirely rational to me. The only problem is that I think it requires more knowledge of how “this all works” than I can muster up. I only know what it’s like to be human, not some quantum-level consciousness. Thus, to me, the highest level thinking I feel I am capable of mustering can’t go too much beyond lived human experience. What I know from experience is that (a) I have a will; (b) I seem to exercise a certain degree of autonomy with respect to my will, albeit not complete autonomy (social context and genetics affects it more than I probably know, etc); (c) I seem to be able to make choices which are contrary to what I consider to be God’s will; (d) I also seem to have the ability to choose to end my life, though I have not tested this theory through direct experience!
I do believe that on some level I am intrinsically a part of God (which your quantum theory suggests), but I also seem to experience God in a way that suggests, to use the “old” language, that God is “wholly other” as well. These two ideas – of separation and sameness – may seem contradictory, but they were not contradictory to Julian of Norwich and a host of other mystics, both Christian and otherwise. Like them, I cannot argue so much “how” it works, but simply “that” it works.
In any case, to the extent that I do have a will, and that it is free, and that I am capable of standing apart from God even as I am intrinsically a part of God, I do think it is reasonable to assume that I could choose non-existence over existence in a “final” sense. This would not be a punishment. It would simply be an honoring of freewill. But I’m hoping never to make that choice … And I think we make those choices every day, in the here-and-now, in smaller ways, that bring us closer to our true selves [what we were created to be] or further away.
The “how” versus the “that” is very, very helpful. I get particularly uncomfortable when theologies merely turn Jesus into a “how” – a mechanism. Jesus isn’t just an end to a mean. My friend, Gray Temple, used to say that “Jesus isn’t just a hematological function.” He lives and reigns so THAT we might have access to the Fuller Life. How does it all work?…I don’t know.
Another good book is “The Evangelical Universalist” by Gregory MacDonald (pen name for Robin Parry). Another good resource in the discussion forum at http://www.evangelicaluniversalist.com
My expertise in this discussion boils down to a couple of semesters of Greek and generally more experience/knowledge of medieval and early church history than most Americans…so take my input with the grain of salt it deserves.
Bell makes reference to a number of Church Fathers who seem to have supported the idea of Universalism, and even included a quote from Luther. I can’t comment on the Luther quote…it’s out of my area of expertise, but it bears considering that for about the first 19 centuries or so Universalism was a very fringe, heterodoxical idea. That’s not to say that it wasn’t without significant merit. I bring it up only to point out that the Church has, throughout its history, condemned it.
Historically, the Church focused on the doctrine of Universalism that it seems to downplay or even negate the importance of the Cross. What, exactly, did Jesus’ death and resurrection accomplish if all are saved?
As a recovering Calvinist I struggle with this issue. The idea of eternal punishment for a wrong decision in a finite time seems wholly out of character for a God who is the embodiment of reconciliation. But as a historian I’m unwillingly to readily throw away 2 millenia of beliefs crafted by folks much smarter than I.
YMMV.