Thank you for your interesting comments concerning the issue of ultimate universal salvation as opposed to eternal damnation for some. I noticed that your view is that we all ought to have the choice to damn ourselves, so to speak. Our freedom of choice is a very modern and western idea, grounded in individualism. It might actually not be so traditional.

Consider verses such as, “All the days ordained to me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”(Psalm.139:16b). Or, “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.”(Ephesians.1:4-5)

The Reformers were also ambiguous about free will. I believe that Luther wrote that, of his own will, he would not have chosen salvation without the grace given to him by God. I also believe that Calvin subscribed to an election that was essentially irresistable. A Christian universalism would simply expand the elect to include all.

The other subject that Origen brought up in the second century is that God’s grace does not necessarily end with death. He believed that grace continues after death. Southern Baptist Clarence Jordan gives an example of God being in hot pursuit of someone and, bam, he gets hit by a freight train and dies. He hasn’t accepted the propositional doctrine of salvation yet. Does he go to hell for eternity? Jordan says, “What kind of God is that? A God whose purposes can be voided by a freight train? I can’t fit that in.”(IF GRACE IS TRUE, Gulley and Mulholland)

Admittedly, this is a very controversial issue. Some folks–many in my own church–would be downright scandalized by the proposition that hell is not eternal. Think of it, they are more comfortable with the idea of the people who are not in the club simply being consigned eternally into hell.

They are scandalized by that much grace. One woman asked her pastor, “What if I believe everybody will eventually be saved and I end up going to hell for it?” To which he replied, “What? You think God will damn you because you believed he has infinite grace?”

God Bless.

One phrase of yours continues to stretch me: and that has to do with what hell really is, and what is it’s purpose. Of course, part of the reason for the problem was presented by C.S. Lewis. In The Great Divorce, he puts it into the mouth of George MacDonald to say that ,

the difficulty with describing hell is that the thing one is attempting to describe is so nearly nothing.

I see it not so much as punishment as the natural consequences of one particular choice, that of preferring to cling to something other than the Light, Love and Truth He is and has for us. If, and the question implicit in that “if” remains, I reject God in favor of anything, at some point He has to hold my choice as effectual. Will any hold out for infinity? I don’t know. But it must be possible for me to do so, or humanity becomes a puppet rather than a self-giving lover. I suppose that any time being pursued by God across the ages may be referred to as a purgative state, as purgatory, although that comes a bit too near to salvation by something other than the merits of Christ for my taste.

My vision of true hell is that state of existence remaining after God, and all his attributes save existence itself, have been withdrawn. And that withdrawal as a final salute to His imparted attribute of “causality,” wherein He gave us the authority to make decisions that bring about real change in the universe, in this case, the decision being a demand that reality not be what Reality is. Or, that “I AM be as I AM NOT”
Purposefulness being one of the attributes of God, I cannot therefore assign purpose to true hell. It is utter meaninglessness.

The second question raised, will anyone actually make such a horrible choice, or will God pursue and correct and woo until all are won, I would like to think positive. But I cannot, and for two reasons. The first is that “thinking positive” is a cover to my real desire that all this rhetoric about judgment and eternal consequences is way overstated. What I really want is reassurance that if I bump along reasonably well, and let others do the same, well then, God will somehow work it all out in the end. That is a very pleasant faith, and is in fact the highest point of our American civil religion. It has very little in common with the religion of the Bible. That faith is so tempting that when one of it’s teachings attracts me in contrast to the traditional teachings of Christendom, I need to become very suspicious.
The second reason to reject the positive outlook of universal salvation is that Jesus does not seem to have believed nor taught it. Was he being hyperbolically severe when He taught so often about those left, or cast outside, in order to persuade us to flee an end would never actually come to that? Well, possibly. But again, when the plan reading of scripture convicts and warns me, and the comfortable reading involves great effort at “interpretizing” the words of Jesus, I think the smart money is on the plain reading.

Well, long day and a late night.
-Blessings!

As you can imagine, being in an evangelical church, I need a “safe place” to explore these various ideas! My wife says–only half-jokingly–that I may get us both excommunicated!

There is an interesting book titled, IF GRACE IS TRUE–WHY GOD WILL SAVE EVERY PERSON, by Gulley & Mulholland.

I hope that a few more people will read ON THE NATURE OF SCRIPTURE because, however one feels, the time has come for the subject to receive a reconsideration as Christianity enters what Phyllis Tickle calls a Second Reformation (see, THE GREAT EMERGENCE, by Philllis Tickle). It might also be good to visit the Emergent Village website, read some blogs, and listen to some podcasts posted on that site.

God Bless.

As to your post, I think we are on substantially the same page. My own roots are Baptist, then grafted on to Episcopal stock; first in the “renewal” or charismatic branch, in recent years more of the evangelical wing of that church. As you are likely aware, we are now in great agony relating to some of the same issues you raise. I find myself over the last decade or so describing myself as somewhat of a “reformation Anglican” meaning that I find great wisdom in the understanding and teaching of such men as Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley.

As to the authority of Scripture, I take it as absolute that the Bible I hold in my hand contains the message God wants me to read, understand and absorb. I suppose this means, in part, that my view of inspiration applies as much to the editors, and those who recognized and defined the canon, as it does to the authors of the original autographs. Mostly, it means to me that, although I place a very high value on Scripture, I place a pretty low authority on *my understanding* of Scripture. I think that is one of the correctives to the worst of the inerrancy problems.
As to reading the Bible as narrative, as story, I agree that it is a much-needed method. I discovered it only a few years ago, when our entire parish read through the entire Bible “cover to cover” in 90 days, then repeated the program a bit slower, in 180 days. But the narrative approach does not invalidate verse-by-verse exegesis. Both are needed.

Well, back to work for me, I invite you to stop by my place and perhaps leave a thought or two. And welcome again!