Scot McKnight argues that “universalism” is the biggest challenge facing evangelicalism for 3 reasons:

1. universalism suggests personal conversion is not finally necessary
2. it calls into question the importance and even necessity of evangelism as a form of Christian activism
3. it weakens the atoning significance of the death of Jesus if it is understood as that which separates the believer from the non-believer

Surely these aren’t impossible hurdles for someone who embraces a Christian universalism. To be fair, he doesn’t take up the point of a specifically Christian universalism, and he addresses this in comment #8. But, as others did (I wrote this post before reading the comments), I’ll make the evangelical universalist response:

1. It suggests no such thing, as “every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.” The Christian universalist only denies that death is the final chance to personally convert.
2. It most certainly does not call these things into question, as the only one who saves and heals is still Jesus. Jesus is still the only redemption and motivation for activism.
3. A doctrine that says Jesus’ death will eventually save all is definitely not a “weaker” doctrine as one that says He will only save some. Apart from that, I’m not sure what he’s saying about the separation of believer from non-believer. That separation still exists and is not weakened anymore than it is by the difference between a believer and a non-believer who will convert next week.

As I explore this whole question of who will be saved, bad arguments on both sides need to be dissected.

I’m hoping to find time soon for a post on C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce, which I recently re-read.

Here comes a big statement that I figure I’ll make whilst this blog is still struggling back to life and has few readers: I don’t think becoming a universalist makes one a heretic.

Take a deep breath. Another. Another. Good. Let me proceed.

I mean specifically a Christian universalism. It’s the minority position by far in church history, but orthodox theologians have believed that God would in Christ reconcile all to himself in the end. “Every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.” Some version of universalism, or at least the acceptance of its possibility, was held by Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome, and many others. St. Basil and Augustine both noted that the belief was “widespread” and held by “very many.” Annihilationism has been held by no less than John Stott. N.T. Wright and C.S. Lewis both put for ideas both about there being far more saved than we imagine, and about any unsaved completely losing their humanity altogether (ceasing to be human, which I take to be a form of annihilation).

We’re not talking about fringe folks here. These are undoubtedly Christians. This is one of those things that makes me stop and revisit beliefs I’ve always had, and ask difficult questions about those beliefs. I intend to chronicle some of those questions soon. In the meantime, some brief notes about a book I just read on the subject.

To be clear: I am not saying that I am a universalist. But I am very interesting in reading arguments for universalism. I came across the book If Grace is True: Why God Will Save Every Person, by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland, so I grabbed a copy from the library and starting plowing through. I was hoping for a solid argument for Christian universalism. I did not find it here.

This book is a pick-and-choose theology that is illogical, poorly argued, and based on the simple belief that “God whispered to” the author and told him something, and now everything else needs to fit. By just over halfway through the book, he’s completed jumped the shark by ditching Jesus as the means of salvation, as well as his divinity, while continuing to appeal to Jesus and the Scriptures (certain selected ones) to make his case.

A simple disclaimer about theology: If you’re just some random guy in the 21st century, and you think that because God whispered to you, you can just begin picking and choosing what parts of 2,000 years of Christian theology are valid and which are not, you’re not credible. And you’re too arrogant to be listened to.

If there is any possibility at all that an argument can be made for Christian universalism, it must remain Christian. Jesus still has to be the one to do the saving.

I haven’t picked up a book of theology in a very, very long time.

These days I find most of my theology in story. (If you want to know what stories I’m reading, find me on GoodReads.) Honestly, I’m just weary of theology. I’m not bored with it. I’m tired. Exhausted. Worn out. I’m sick of everyone thinking the finer points of their theology are the articles on which the church will stand or fall. I’m fatigued by the rehearsing of the same old topics, with the same old arguments, and the mindless reassertions of something you heard someone else say with conviction, and the refusal to honestly grope with an opposing point of view.

Theology causes my brain pain these days. I know what you’re going to say before you say it. I already know that you think five-point Calvinism (or whatever) is essential to true Christianity, and I already know why you think it is, and I already know all the verses you’ll use, and all the counter-arguments you’ll use, and how you’ll reason from each text, and I bet I know most of what you’ll say word for word. You’re making me tired, and you haven’t even started talking yet.

I know that some of this is just my own crankiness. I know that some of it is the insecurity rooted in the simple fact that over the past few years, my theological position on things has changed more times than I’d like to admit. I once set myself up as a biblical guide for others to follow. It was all a lie; I’m a wandering star.

But I also know there are others out there like me. Some of you are hurting because you can’t ask questions. (Those questions are dangerous.) Some of you are in pain because your confusion is not allowed. (It’s lack of faith.) Some of you ache inside because you can’t make some theological positions that have been forced into your head make much sense with reality anymore.  There are so many manifestations of this.

• You’re not allowed to ask about evolution. All that science is a lie of the devil to get you to disbelieve Genesis and therefore cast doubt on the whole Bible.
• You’re not allowed to ask about power, race, and gender. Those are “liberal” concerns.
• You’re not allowed to deeply struggle inside about the concept of God’s eternally tormenting his creation in a lake of fire. If you do, it’s because you’re not willing to accept the “hard” truth. You’re just a pomo hippy or something.
• You’re not allowed to long for an ancient worship that is rooted in 2,000 years of church history. You’ll lose relevance in our culture.
• You’re not allowed to question the lunacy going on at the front of your church. You might blaspheme the Holy Spirit.
• And whatever you do, don’t ask about the homosexual couples who are better examples of committed, sacrificial love than 80% of the Christian marriages you know. You’re on the road to accepting immorality if you bring that up.

Insert your own. You get it. I’m downright exhausted with the games we play with our theological discussions.

I get the danger of losing the orthodox faith altogether. I really do. But when the rules of theological conversation put honest questions – raw, difficult, real life questions – in the penalty box, I say the game is rigged so that one team wins and the other loses every time.

And the problem with this is that it hurts real people. I’m not going to be afraid of the questions I ask or the subjects I bring up. I’m not going to be scared by the threat that I might “lead someone astray.” It’s better to have everyone face the tough questions and find Jesus in the answer than to suppress them and forfeit huge parts of the fallen human experience and struggle.

Finding the answer in Jesus is the goal of it all. The gospel – you know, that good news for broken and hurting people – is not just a “foundation,” or a starting place. It’s the beginning, middle, and end of all theological conversations. If we don’t end up at the gospel of God’s unfailing love in Jesus, we didn’t have a theology conversation. We had a debate about rules and regulations, and we’ve become Pharisees.

So I’m going to pick up theology books again. (I’m going to start with Eugene Peterson.) But I’m going to pick them up looking for Jesus, not looking for better and stronger points to win arguments. I’ll share what I find – as well as the tough questions I want to ask – in these Letters from the Perilous Realm.

“…the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.” (C.S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle,” God in the Dock)

Yesterday, on the Christian liturgical calendar, a new year began: it was the first Sunday of Advent. Sadly, Sophia, for the first time ever, so overslept that we missed Sunday morning worship. (Yes, we’ve missed for several other reasons as well; but she’s at least been the reliable alarm clock, until now.)

Every year I hope for this season to be full of life-transforming meaning, and every year, I feel like I barely grasp hold of some fleeting thoughts about the season before we’re suddenly unwrapping presents, shouting Happy New Year, and back to work.

What I’m hoping for, what I’ve missed year after year, is an Advent and Christmas season which is “eye-opening.” St. John said Jesus’ coming into the world “enlightens everyone.” Jesus himself said that our eye is the lamp of the body; a good eye results in a body filled with light.

In other words, we have a vision problem. We don’t see the God, ourselves, or the world rightly. The Pharisees didn’t see it rightly. Herod didn’t see it rightly. We don’t either. Philip Doddridge recognized the need for a transformed vision when he penned his Advent hymn, “Hark the Glad Sound, the Savior Comes”:

He comes from thickest films of vice
To clear the mental ray,
And on the eyes oppressed with night
To pour celestial day.

Advent is remembering the darkness that preceded the light, the oppressive night that preceded the celestial day. It’s about the gaining of a transformed vision – the kind of thing that turns upside down the way we look at the world and the way we live in it. I’m praying this is not another Advent that goes by in a blur, for blurred vision is all that will result.

Once a unifying Logos or belief in a reason outside ourselves is abandoned, all we have left are feelings and desires. If we cannot let the world or our place and meaning in the world be defined by the Logos, then we will define it entirely within the context of our own desire.

And this is where we get the modern and postmodern foundations for reality – not in a reality that exists without us, but in a reality that is defined by what I feel and desire. So we no longer speak of ourselves and human beings with sexual desires to be brought into accordance with who we really, objectively are. We are not human beings with sexual desires; instead, we are straight or we are gay or we are bisexual. Something we feel strongly, something we desire, has become the very definition of our existence.

Because we all now agree that this is how reality is defined, any argument can be dismissed or any criticism deflected with a very simple combination of words: “You don’t even know me.”

I think my dog Moses just had his first experience chewing tobacco.

I was trying to put together thoughts for a lecture I’m giving on Harry Potter in a couple of days at the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University, and I decided to go outside, smoke a cigar (Oliva Serie V), and hope to catch a few earlier Leonid meteors from the limited view I have on the front porch of my house here in the city. No such luck with meteors, but several ideas for Friday’s talk came to mind.

Moses was sitting with me on the porch, and about halfway through my cigar, I heard him chewing on something. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure it was the end of the cigar that I’d snipped off.

It’s been almost a decade since the last time I waited up for meteors. I’m thinking about what would have happened if a soothsayer had approached me at that time and said, “A decade from now, you’ll be smoking a cigar and watching this same meteor shower from the front porch of your city street.” I’d have shouted “False prophet!” I’m sure.

Here’s the deceptive thing about the Fallen human condition. I’m no longer the legalist I was then. But the pride that serves as a foundation for legalism doesn’t go away when the pharisaical rules are stripped away. Instead, I can be proud that I’m smoking and drinking and cussing, and thanking God I’m not like those Pharisees, who think they’ll be accepted for their rule keeping. And so, paradoxically, I’m being just like the Pharisee in my quest not to be like the Pharisee.

What was Jeremiah saying about the deceitfulness of the heart?

Moses – the OT one, not my dog – is an interesting character. A decade ago, under that meteor shower in my parents’ backyard, if you’d asked me about Moses, I’d have told you all about how he’s an example of what might happen if you sin. Well sure, he’s that. He got all the way to the Promised Land, and then botched it with anger and disobedience. The funny thing about the New Testament, though, is that when it retells the story of Moses, it doesn’t mention that incident. It seems like that’s a pretty defining incident in Moses’ life, but that’s not how the NT talks about Moses.

Grace is a pretty radical thing, and it tears down our pride, whether that pride is a foundation for our moralism or our celebration of liberty from legalism. At the end of Moses’ life, despite all the lessons he’d learned, he screwed up, and he’s accepted and loved. At the end of my life, having traded legalism most likely for other, more subtle forms of prideful behavior, I’ll probably screw up like Moses did. I’ll be accepted, too. That, and only that, is the antidote for pride and the prescription for humility.

Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em. Just don’t be prideful about it. We need grace every bit as much as the Pharisee.

John Gardner, from On Moral Fiction:

[E]ven at its best, criticism – including the criticism set down by poets and novelists, composers, pinters, sculptors, dancers, and photographers – is easier than authentic art to grasp and treat as immutable doctrine. Depending as it does on logic and scheme, on arguments well argued, criticism uses parts of the mind that are more readily available to us than are the faculties required by art.

Quoted by @JaredCWilson on Twitter today:

“We trust not because ‘a God’ exists, but because this God exists.” — C.S. Lewis

“We must not try to decide what is God’s will by prying into His secret counsel, when He has made it plain to us by external signs.” (John Calvin on 1 Timothy 2)

“Whenever there is any question of forgiveness of sins, we must flee to Baptism and from it seek a confirmation of forgiveness. For as God reconciles us to himself by the daily promises of the Gospel, so the belief and certainty of this reconciliation, which is daily repeated even to the end of life, he seals to us by Baptism.” (John Calvin, Antidote to the Council of Trent)

(HT to Mark Traphagen via Twitter)