Caroline's Blog

It may not be so easy after all

I wrote that it was easy to be a universalist; one just have to believe in the possibility of post-mortem conversion.

But now I am thinking it is not so easy because universalism calls for the re-conversion or re-evanglization of the Church. It seems like such a tiny change in theology to say that perhaps physical death is not a barrier to God's plans for a person but doing so seems to require a change in how we do everything from the kid's programs to the senior's programs.

I once taught Beta, which is a continuation of Alpha. Beta is based on Neil Anderson's Bondage Breaker, which is a great book, but Beta as taught by Anderson was extremely modern and foundational. Being postmodern, I had to tweak every chapter to fit my worldview. Universalism calls for such tweaking from the way I read my bible to the way I talk to people.

Great theologians like Martin Luther or Karl Barth have issued the call of refromation in their times. We are reformed and ever reforming. Semper reformada. I hope someone just like them will rise up under the banner of a universalism that is both trinitarian and biblical and be that voice in the desert.

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?

It's easy to be a Universalist

You just have to believe in the possibility of post-mortem repentance and conversion.

The way I see it, God's grace and mercy and gift of salvation came to me while I was dead in my sins.  (Eph. 2:1 and Col. 2:13) He had to give me the gift of faith as well before I could respond to His grace and mercy and offer of salvation. Does that opportunity end upon my physical death? I don't think so. Sodom was a city completely destroyed by God and Jude said it burns with eternal fire. But Jesus once scolded Capernaum saying Sodom would have repented if he had performed these signs and wonders there,  thereby showing that God knew what would have turned Sodom around. And Ezekiel in an eschatological prophecy said God will restore Sodom just as He will restore Jerusalem because He has made atonement for them. (Ezk. 16:53-63)

Today I went to a T. F. Torrance Society meeting and heard Dr. Victor Shepherd say that true freedom is not libertarian freedom where we can freely choose A or B but true freedom is not being hindered in any way from choosing to conform to God's will. That got me wondering about my free will. I'm a born again Christian so I know I'm going to heaven. But what if I had a persistent sin like unforgiveness? Would I be instantly glorified upon death with my will perfectly made aligned with God or would God require that I repent of my unforgiveness and align my will with His?

I blind-sided the panel with my question of post-mortem repentance and conversion and so I shall wait while they digest these heretical ideas.  Lance, who was sitting beside me, was egging me to push for more but I thought it enough for one morning. Dr. Shepherd mused whether, when Christ gathered all of humanity, some would slip His grasp. He thought yes but I could almost hear the people next to him, all rabid Trinitarians, say No! Never!

When one is a Trinitarian the way Karl Barth or T.F. Torrance was/is, one is a very tiny step away from Universalism. I heard Andrew Purves (?) in a conference on the Incarnation of Christ say we must come as close to Universalism as possible without crossing the line. To which I must ask, why not?

This has been a very interesting journey.

back online

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.