annihilation/conditionalism

Someone asked me if I considered conditionalism as well as universalism.

I hadn't really thought about it. I used to be a 5 point Calvinist until the night C. Baxter Kruger preached at my church and I became convinced that Jesus Christ died for the sins of the entire world. With the L knocked out of TULIP, I slid into universalism. Conditionalism greased the way because those brave theologians proved exegetically that hell is not eternal.

I prefer universalism to conditionalism because:

1. Quite a few church fathers and a lot of the early Christians believed in universalism. How else could the message that salvation is by grace alone through faith be good news unless it included all those who have not heard because they could not hear. The Protestant Reformation resulted in so many universalist congregations that Catholic church historian Harnack said the reformers were "apocatastatists at heart".
2. All the passages about hell, punishment, damnation, condemnation can be read as remedial correction as well as finite in endurance. If Jesus Christ atoned for all of our sins, it seems odd that some people would be resurrected just so that they can be punished before being snuffed out permanently.

Nevertheless, a lot of my friends are conditionalists and I can live with that position. Universalism is a pretty scary step for nearly all Evangelicals and I think it's because universalism has always been linked with liberal theology, heresy and unitarianism for the last 2 centuries. It's time to re-ground and re-present universalism as biblically solid orthodox doctrine, a theological task ably taken by Thomas Talbott,  Jan Bonda and Gregory MacDonald (which is a pseudonym).

So now, if a Christian were presented with 3 biblically sound doctrines: exclusivism, conditionalism, and universalism, why would anyone not choose universalism? Does it not best represent God as revealed by Jesus, our God who chose to call Himself "The Lord saves" when he came to dwell among us as a man?

Comments

[Michael Caron]

Caroline, currently I'm studying Baxter and I've got so many questions. First off though, what do you mean by the word "apocatastatists" in the above post? I can't find that word in any dictionary.

[Caroline]

Hi Michael;

Origen's universalism was called apocatastasis which was originally a Greek idea of the universe returning to its orginal state. If you google "apocatastasis", you'll find a wikipedia article and an entry from the Catholic Encyclopedia. Don't read the wikipedia article as it's heavily written by me and I used the Catholic Encyclopedia as a source ;). Their article is the better one.

[Harold Berciunas]

there is a fourth option. I think there is a univeralism that can be rejected. Jesus died to redeem all, yet with the function of the will, some humans will reject the gift. Amazing to think that anyone would reject it, but I suppose it happens. (Perhaps the unforgivable blasphemy of the H.S.?)
Grace and Peace,
Harold