I’d like to be a universalist. Or, at least, something more like a universalist than I am now. The more I ponder the ramifications of the traditional idea that anyone who doesn’t put faith in Jesus going to Hell, the more I hope that there’s more than one loophole.
My thoughts have been pushed on this recently by a few different interactions.
I have continued reading Rachel Held Evans’ Evolving in Monkey Town. In this book she chronicles her own 
struggles with the idea of God sending people to Hell. They began when she was in college and saw on TV the murder of an Afghan woman.
The injustice of it was searing. And, the reality struck Evans deeply that this woman was not a Christian, was a Muslim because of her upbringing. Is the God of justice going to meet her in judgment, this victim of injustice, and condemn her to hell for all eternity? Was her abuse and murder only the beginning, a foretaste of what’s to come?
A second factor has been an e-mail conversation with someone who wanted to know a bit more about what I meant by saying that Romans is Paul’s theodicy project. For my work on Romans, that was confined to a very narrow question: the question of God’s faithfulness to the Jewish people in accordance with what God had promised in scripture.
But that doesn’t make for a very compelling answer to the global questions of the presence or absence of a just God. Is the gospel good news, he asked me, for a girl who is imprisoned, a victim of sex trafficking?
Again the question comes to us how the gospel is actually good news for someone who has experienced nothing but injustice, whose life is defined quintessentially by her status as a victim. Is the gospel good news if it means that such a victim, upon death, will meet a judgment that makes her life of perpetual rape seem like paradise in comparison.
A third strand of thought has been stirred by my reading through Revelation. That book ends with a few surprises.
One of the startling
scenes at the end of the book is this: the kings of the earth bring their glory into the great city of God–into which nothing impure can enter (Rev 21:24).
In the book of Revelation, everything is black and white. There are the people who follow the Lamb and there are the people who follow the beast and there is no waffling in between. Those who follow the beast, who are enriched by the great Prostitute, mourn her death and then become a feast for the birds of the air.
But here we are, at the end. A surprising parade enters. People who, based on the logic of the story shouldn’t be there. But not only are they still alive, they are priests, bringing the gifts of the peoples to God.
A few thoughts on all this:
- I trust that the God of all the earth will do what is right. I will hope and trust that the God who is just will be the justifier of the one who has suffered unjustly here on earth. Although I can’t say that any one person or category of people will “be saved” in the end, I anticipate that I will be surprised at the company of faces gathered before the throne worshiping God in the end. Revelation encourages me to hope for such surprises.
- Once upon a time, I had two categories of universalist. One was what I called the “Duke Methodist” (sorry, Duke friends, it’s a story about my past) type of universalism due to the way I heard some Div students undermining the importance of sin. This sort of universalism was the “we’re not so bad, so surely no one could end up in hell” universalism. The other was what I called “Barth universalism” (though I know Barth wasn’t a universalist). This sort of universalism was the “Christ’s work is so big that it clears out hell” universalism. Any hope we have of a surprising embrace, a unexpected inclusion, will have to be closer to the latter. There is only one way to the Father and it is through the Son. But I anticipate being surprised at some of those whom the Son chooses to bring before the Father, claimed as his own.
- It is important not to undermine the significance of setting ourselves against the purposes of God or of rendering to other “gods” the worship that only the true and living God is due. There is a grave possibility of aligning ourselves against the work of God in the world. Of course, as I read through the biblical texts I discover that this possibility often lies closer to hand for those who should be insiders than for those who are distant from God’s people.
Commenting to follow the comments. Thanks for posting the hard questions, the ones a lot of people think about but are afraid to ask (aloud).
Though I think you’re right that Barth really isn’t technically a universalist, the gospel in the way he frames it does mean that it is good news for the kind of tragic life you’ve talked about here. It is not potentially good news actualized by our personal faith, but is the proclamation of a new actuality which creates a different situation for humanity universally. Its not universalism because it acknowledges exactly what you’ve acknowledged in point 3, that we live under the real possibility of opposing God in the new reality he has created and thereby falsifying it in our lives, but it has universal reach. In becoming human, Christ has bound himself to humanity its sin, binding sin to himself in his crucifixion and thus crucifying it in his own body, and rising triumphantly over it – this has set all of humanity on an entirely new basis in himself, one in which by his resurrection from an unjust death all injustice is shown not to have the last word.
Great thoughts, Daniel. Curious comment about the two categories of universalists though. The expressions of universalism or quasi-universalism I encountered among my classmates at Duke seemed closer to the Barthian view that you described. Which isn’t surprising, if you think of the “Duke school” as a Barthian reaction against Protestant liberalism.
I think you’re right. That label was based on an early impressionistic reaction.
Daniel,
At the risk of seeming to plug my own blog (which I should be able to defend myself from, seeing that it’s pretty much dead at this point), did you ever read this post of mine on Hell? I think we have some of the same thoughts, and same resistances to universalism.
One thing a friend of mine pointed out is that the assumption that those who die in ignorance are saved has a whole different set of problems. The old protestant missionary went out with assurance that the souls of the heathen were damned, and thus went with a message of inestimable value and hope (even though such a scheme raises serious doubts as to the justice and goodness of God). But assuming that God will spare the ignorant means that the missionary goes out bringing new opportunities for damnation – that those who hear now have the opportunity to reject the gospel that they never had before. Thus he’s actually making things worse.
I rarely seem to be able to comment on these posts in a way that doesn’t risk the charge of “tangent!”, but anyway here goes.
If you’re familiar with it, what do you think of C.S. Lewis’ conception of Hell (and Heaven, to some extent) in The Great Divorce? I don’t think you’re ever going to read a big speech on predestination from Lewis, but even Paul seems to hint at a sort of universalism in his bit in Romans about people being judged by their own standards, even if they are not acquainted with “the Law”, or “the Gospel”. (“They are a law unto themselves.”)
Anyway, in The Great Divorce Lewis explores the role of the individual will in causing that individual’s experience to be “heaven” or “hell”. I.e., he leans toward a subjective interpretation of one’s “final destination”. (The Great Divorce is one of the most wondrous books I’ve ever read, and yet one of Lewis’ more obscure books, apparently.)
Joel, I took Lewis’s point to be the opposite in the Great Divorce, that Heaven and Hell are not just states of mind or products of subjective interpretation but entirely opposite, ‘divorced’ objective realities. The residents of hell might not recognize their experience as hell, but that is what it really is, while those living in heaven know exactly that they are in heaven and that those coming off the bus have come from hell. From the vantage point of either of those polar eternal destinations, in retrospect one’s earthly experience will be understood through a subjective interpretation though, residents of heaven looking back on earth as the beginning of their heavenly lives and residents of hell looking back on earth as the beginning of their damned lives. What’s really unique about Lewis’s vision is that those in hell continually choose to be there, preferring their misery to the intolerable burden of dealing with other people.
I don’t think in Great Divorce Lewis was trying to lay down any teaching about what heaven or hell actually are, or who or who isn’t in either one. I take it as more of an allegorical commentary on human nature. People are in “hell” (right now, on earth, not just in an afterlife) because they pursue hell, and don’t have the strength of character to pull themselves out of it, even though they have the choice to do so.
I defer to my friends who seem to know more than I on this point.
Like Rachel Evans, Barth, and obviously yourself, I think that the population of whatever Hell may end up being will more than likely be considerably less populated than what many conservatives might espouse.
But more so than who will eventually be consigned to “Hell”, I find myself questioning more and more what the nature of Hell itself will end up being, if there even actually ends up being an eternal Hell at all.
Most of our conception of Hell seems to me to more of a Catholic creation which was in turn heavily influenced by the Greek ideas of the afterlife rather than being based upon ironclad scriptural interpretation.
N.T. Wright recently did a series of interviews about Hell for 100huntley.com in which he elaborated somewhat on what he wrote about the subject in “Surprised by Hope” (the videos are available on youtube). In essence he seemed to be of the opinion that Hell was simply eternal separation from God, and he downplayed the Dante-esque pictures of Hell that are so common throughout much of Christendom.
What are your opinions, if any, on the “nature of Hell?”
JESUS CHRIST, he said sarcastically.
I suppose that God, being the author of language and all, should have had little trouble saying what’s what about “hell.” And even about how to “be saved.” But instead of clarity we have “the Bible,” and people are still debating what it means concerning both “hell” and “what one must do to be saved.” (What beliefs are most essential, and where exactly do works enter the picture? Will God forgive us as we forgive others as Jesus taught people to pray? What about James? What about the synoptic road to salvation compared with the Pauline and Johnnine roads? Will the sheep and goats be separated on the last day based on how they treated the least of my brethren? Is it necessary to hear the words of Jesus and DO them too as in the sermon on the mount? Instead of simply calling on the name of the Lord? How necessary is baptism?) Yeah, the Bible, that really speaks “clearly,” NOT.
AND on “eternal separation” views of hell. Aren’t there people on earth right now, who, according to theology, who “are not saved,” and hence “separated from God?” (As it says in John, chapter 3, “He who does not believe is condemned already.”) Is that really so bad here and now? I suspect that Wright’s notion of “eternal separation” however is something much worse, not at all like living on a relatively planet with animals and plants and friends and family, all mingling together. But how much worse? Probably hellishly worse. Jesus in the Gospels warns about such a place constantly and about the God who can send both body and soul there, and why it’s better to tear off one’s own organs or limbs rather than go there. The picture’s even worse in Revelation where people are tossed into a lake of fire whose smoke rises forever. So why not just call hell HELL? I guess because Wright’s such a wiz at trying to make Christianity sound “believable.”
But it’s not. Personally, I saw no reason to continue staying in the fold. I couldn’t believe the Bible, and still can’t believe the Bible. In fact, I no longer believe a systematic biblical theology exists IN WHICH ONE MIGHT “BELIEVE.”
As I’ve seen it, that the sorts of realizations you have come to about things not being so clear or simple are rather common. I’m sure they happened to earlier generations as well, but maybe it’s the proliferation of information technology that has huge numbers of people owning up to it in public and trying to figure out what’s next.
Rachel’s story in Monkey Town is much the same–and a story of her journey toward putting something back together. I think that her book (and this blog and other recent movements and books) testify to people facing quite similar struggles to yours and yet holding on to Jesus as one who came to act and speak for the God of love. I hope you’ll keep coming around and listening in on those conversations.
Peace.
Hi, I thought I’d add to the conversation with what seems to me as a plausible way of looking at Hell. I’m starting to think of my position as “Calvinist Psuedo-Universalism”.
What if we view the human soul in a more composite nature, modeled after the Old Testament nation of Israel? The soul that is saved or not saved becomes analogous to the Promised Land, and the various beliefs and attitudes that control our thoughts and actions correspond to the people (especially Kings and Prophets) of biblical Israel over the millenia. We’d have to employ a new figure of speech, similar to the use of hyperbole often found in the apocalyptic books of the bible. A couple hyperbole examples are: Isaiah19:1, Isaiah 34:9 (Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch and her soil into brimstone; her land will become burning pitch.). Here’s the new figure of speech: quite often you find statements made towards a person that is actually made towards an evil belief or attitude being presently expressed. An example is Mat 16:23: But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me, because you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but on man’s.”. I would submit that Jesus is not talking to the fallen angel who is controlling the person Peter, he’s talking to Peter’s current satanic attitude of unbelief. You could also apply this to Rev 21:8: But to the cowards, unbelievers, detestable persons, murderers, the sexually immoral, and those who practice magic spells, idol worshipers, and all those who lie, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur. That is the second death.”
If we extend that figure of speech – talking about a belief or attitude as a person – we can have a sort of Calvinist/pseudo-Universalist take on salvation: The only beliefs and attitudes and actions within us that are truly good are those authored by Christ himself, put into us before time began. Likewise only those souls who have Christ within them, whether a conscious Christian or a mistaken Hindu, for example, who truly sacrifices because of the genuine Christ-like love towards their child, will have their soul renovated and resurrected by God for eternal life; so the Christian becomes analogous to the Priesthood and tribe of Levites, and the rest of humanity becomes the rest of the tribes. (This may be what is meant in Revelation when it says there will be “no more sea” as the term “sea” in apocalyptic literature refers to the gentile nations.) This leaves open the possibility that while there are some people who are utterly without Christ and will be completely destroyed in the lake of fire, ultimately all Christian souls will briefly have a taste of Hell when their non-Christian attitudes and beliefs are purged from their souls in preparation for eternity.