I'm baaaaccckkkk
after a hiatus of more than a year. This truly proves that I'm an INTP; I have started and dropped dozens of projects. So why am I dusting off the blog?
Well... this is what's new. I've become a universalist and I've been disseminating heresy throughout the world wide web.
It's been quite a journey becoming a universalist. In hindsight and in brief, I can say that I've never liked exclusivism but I began my new life as a Christian as an exclusivist because I thought that was the only option. I hated the doctrine but it was tolerable because I believe God to be good and wise and I trusted that He knows what is the best. Every now and then, I'd wonder why He made hell necessary when He started with a blank slate. Anselm's defense and other writings sort of made it rational but I still didn't like it.
It all started to change when I read The Last Battle (the last book of the Narnia Chronicles) and my heart grew strangely warm when I read how Emmett, who worshipped Tash and was looking for him, found Aslan instead. And how Emmett, who was expecting death and eternal conscious torment when he met Aslan, found grace and acceptance instead. If only that could be true! But life did follow fiction because I then started reading about inclusivism and annihilation when my mind and heart were open to new ideas. It seems very reasonable and biblical that people who had not professed Christ could be saved or that there might be an end to punishment in hell.
Later, my pastor invited C. Baxter Kruger to speak at our church and Kruger's main message is that Jesus died for the sins of the entire world. Atonement is not limited. When Jesus Christ was resurrected, he ascended into heaven, dragging all of humanity with him, and seated all of us with him at his father's side. Kruger's ministry is called Perichoresis which is the divine dance of love within the Trinity. He said, we're all there right now. After his talk, there was Q&A. My hand was the first to shoot up and I asked, "What about hell?" Yes, that's how my mind works. Skip over half a dozen steps and ask the evening crushing question. If Jesus did it all, then what is the reason for hell? Poor Baxter. I found out later that he is not a universalist and has spent an inordinate amount of his energy deflecting accusations of universalism while defending his trinitarian theology. I even listened to his podcast about why universalism isn't part of trinitarianism.
Fast forward half a dozen years, Talbott's The Inescapable Love of God , Jan Bonda's One Purpose God and Gregory MacDonald's (or whoever he/she is) Evangelical Universalist and I am now a born again Universalist.
So what's a good bible believing Baptist girl to do? Evangelize of course! I've found Jesus and I have good news to share. I found a stub article on wikipedia called Christian Trinitarian Universalism that had 4 warning labels on it: biased point of view, flagged for deletion, should be merged with universalism and something else. It also had stuff that more properly belong to Unitarian Universalism. I rewrote it , renamed it and stripped off the warning labels. I later learned that providentially, wikipedia's Tawkerbot2, which looks for vandalism etc. was offline which is why I could do what I did without being flagged for human scrutiny. I found out later that it was against wikipedia rules of etiquette to just rewrite an entire article but I later came into contact with the man who started the article and he was okay with it. He wanted some things that he wrote to reappear in the article and I was happy to accommodate.
The article contains all I currently believe. That is, it does as of today but no guarantee about tomorrow as wikipedia is open sourced. And then I had to do same for 2 other articles. Editing wikipedia is addictive. I'm inordinately proud (and I should also be ashamed, I know) that if you Google 'Trinitarian Universalism' or 'Universalism', the wikipedia articles are #1 hits. If you Google 'Apocatastasis', it's #2. Got beaten out by New Advent, The Catholic Encyclopedia but they do have the better article. I just have better pictures. That's the power of wikipedia and the internet. I'm neither theologian nor philosopher but I just might be the most read person on this subject.
Next project: rework the theodicy article.
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