Many people reject Christian Universalism out of hand as heresy, as something outside the bounds of orthodox Christianity. Whether I would have labelled it as “heresy” or not, I certainly saw it in the past as an option no genuine Christian could take. I’ve been researching universalism quite a bit lately, and I must say I’m now convinced otherwise. The following thoughts are for the most part, taken from “Towards a better understanding of universalism”, the first chapter, written by Thomas Talbott, in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate. I’ve sprinkled in some of my own thoughts and rewordings, but the ideas are mostly Talbott’s.
Consider the following three propositions:
1. God’s love for everyone means that he sincerely desires the redemption and salvation of every single human.
2. Because of God’s sovereignty and his irresistable grace, God will triumph and successfully redeem all those he sincerely desires to redeem.
3. Some humans will never be redeemed, but will instead be forever separated from God.
Two things are important to note about these three propositions:
a) One can find, prima facie (on first sight), support for all three of these propositions within scripture.
b) These three propositions are exclusive in that one can believe any two of them, but not believe all three. Believing any two of these statements requires that the other one is false.
So knowing that one of these is to be rejected, which one do we reject? Calvinists reject Proposition 1. The Calvinist believes that God predestined some to salvation, and also predestined the rest to Hell. In the Calvinist view, God does not desire all to be redeemed. The Arminian rejects Proposition 2. For the Arminian, the free will given by God means that God will not achieve his desire of redeeming every human, as some will not find his grace irresistable and will reject God. The Universalist, on the other hand, rejects Proposition 3. The Universalist accepts that God desires all to be saved, and also accepts that God will be triumphant in all his purposes in the end, and therefore must reject the third proposition, that some humans will find themselves separated from God for eternity.
I find this to be a good framework to see how universalism works and is different than Calvinism and Arminianism. However, it doesn’t quite demonstrate that universalism is not heresy, because if Proposition 3 is the most important of the three propositions to hold, then it could be argued that universalism is heresy. However, my experience is this:
a) Calvinists will not maintain that the doctrine of Hell is more important than that of God’s sovereignty – his ability to accomplish all his purposes. Arminians will not maintain that the doctrine of Hell is more important than that of God’s universal love for all.
b) Calvinists in general do not consider Arminians to be heretics, and Arminians do not in general consider Calvinists to be heretics.
If a Calvinist will not see an Arminian as a heretic despite the Arminian denying that God achieves all His purposes, and if an Arminian will not see a Calvinist as a heretic despite the Calvinist’s denial that God’s love for all entails that he desires all to be saved, then it only follows that neither Calvinists or Arminians can view a universalist as a heretic. The Universalist is denying a doctrine that the Calvinists and Arminians do not see as more important than other doctrines that they do not see as heretical to deny, so calling a Universalist a heretic is inconsistent.
Here are a few of my own thoughts that come out of this:
1. We should not be so quick to kick universalists out of our circle, whether that be Christianity, or evangelicalism, or whatever circle that may be (with the obvious exceptions of Calvinism and Arminianism.) We need to look deeper into someone’s theology than just the universalist label before we tell them, “Farewell.”
2. Universalism is not merely using a half dozen “universalist” texts as the lens to read all other scripture, but is instead a combination of affirming a doctrine that Arminians agree with, also affirming a doctrine that Calvinists agree with, and then coming to the inevitable conclusion that comes from it. In other words, universalism is a belief that (like Arminianism and Calvinism) takes into account large, over-arching themes of scripture, as opposed to one that just looks at a few pieces of scripture out of context, or one that just takes our human desires and projects them onto our image of God, as it is often portrayed to be like.
3. A surface level reading of scripture will not provide an answer to this debate. We cannot just do a battle of proof-texts and come up with the answer. We necessarily have to bring in philosophy, theology, tradition, and reason, to help us resolve it. To just say, “But the Bible clearly says this” is to not understand the problem.
I should clarify that the point of this post isn’t to defend universalism as true, but to demonstrate how it theologically fits in with competing doctrines. I find this particular framework incredibly helpful as I investigate universalism further, and just wanted to share.
Hidden Irony 
May 29, 2011 @ 17:02:03
Hey James,
I won’t engage the many points (some good and strong perhaps, and others not so much), but will keep this comment to one point.
This argument presupposes that the way Christianity has understood the biblical narrative and has formulated its theology has not “taken into account large, over-arching themes of scripture” and that we have always “just looked at a few pieces of scripture out of context”. At least that is the way your argument seems to be framed. If that is so, I respectfully suggest that it is a strawman argument.
I’ve been working on an article tracing a few of the dominant themes running through the biblical narrative, and I would suggest that what we see is precisely the opposite of what you have argued. (See, for example, N.T. Wright’s Climax of the Covenant.)
May 29, 2011 @ 18:56:09
“I’ve been working on an article tracing a few of the dominant themes running through the biblical narrative, and I would suggest that what we see is precisely the opposite of what you have argued.”
I don’t believe I’ve argued for the truth of any particular dominant theme. However, that is besides my point, which is that Universalism is based more than merely taking a handful of “universalist” texts and then viewing other scriptures through the lens of those few texts. One may disagree with those themes, but I don’t think one can look at universalism in any charitable way and see it in that light.
May 29, 2011 @ 18:24:23
Hi Derek,
I don’t believe my argument presupposes that Christianity has just looked at scripture in piece-meal fashion in the past. Where do you see that? I state three themes, and describe how Arminianism, Calvinism, and Universalism accept two of the three overarching themes, and rejects (or at least strongly modifies) the other one.
My main point is that there is a symmetry between the three views – I am unsure how you came away thinking that I was trying to claim an assymetry.
May 29, 2011 @ 23:30:13
In the quote I gave I took it to say (paraphrasing): “ya, unlike the traditional view, universalism takes all the themes into account and doesn’t proof-text”. While it was a positive comment about universalism, I took it as a back-handed statement about the traditional view. I now know that was not your intent, my apologies.
May 29, 2011 @ 23:44:43
No problem, Derek. Sorry if it was confusing. I’m feeling like perhaps I’m having trouble getting my ideas across. I found it odd that you thought my argument presupposes that the traditional view doesn’t take into account over-arching themes, when in fact, it presupposes the exact opposite and (in my view) only works if that presupposition is true.
Anyways, I’m glad things are clarified.
May 29, 2011 @ 23:48:48
I just reread that point you responded to and realized that it really could be read in the back-handed way you interpreted. So I apologize! I’ll see if I can edit it to make it a bit clearer.
May 29, 2011 @ 18:29:34
Quoting Matt O’Reilly:
“The Fifth Ecumenical Council, which is known as Constantinople II and met in 553, took up the issue of Origen’s teaching on apakatastasis, which is the belief that all humanity (and some would include all demons) will one day be reconciled to God and enjoy salvation. The council condemned this teaching as heresy and pronounced anathema, a curse, on all who teach it. So, according to our technical definition…, the answer to our question is yes. Universalism has been condemned by an ecumenical council as heretical teaching. Strong words, I know. But I submit that they are fair words from an historical perspective.”
http://www.mattoreilly.net/2011/03/is-universalism-heresy.html?m=1
May 29, 2011 @ 18:55:28
Hi Dave,
I responded to your post on Facebook, but for completeness, I’ll respond to it here as well:
Some good thoughts, David. I have a couple thoughts in response.
1) apakatastasis is always dismissed as heresy in conjunction with other Origenist beliefs (such as the immortality of the soul.) Some have argued thus that universalism itself hasn’t been declared heresy. I’m not sure what to think of that, but I’d put that out there.
2) Heresy is a difficult to define term, and different people define it differently. It’s also somewhat fluid. Anabaptists where burned at the stake for their heresy of believer’s baptism and separation of church and state (two intertwined issues at the time) by both Protestants and Catholics. Neither of those views would be considered heretical anymore. My point is just that with many issues, arguing about heresy either way will prove problematic, especially with different people’s views on what the word means.
May 29, 2011 @ 19:00:12
Thanks Jim! (Also on fb.) I agree with the problem of how to define “heresy.” But it was your question.
Perhaps you should have chosen a different title?
May 29, 2011 @ 20:24:03
Haha, quite possibly, Dave. As I said on facebook, “heresy” is one of those hot button words that grabs people’s attention though. 🙂
I’m not sure how I could rename it – I could use the word “legitimate” instead of “heresy” but I’m not sure that word has any clearer meaning than “heresy”.
My goal though is to clear up some misunderstandings about universalism and get people to at least think about how it fits alongside other views, rather than just an argument about heresy.
May 30, 2011 @ 02:14:41
Talbott’s three propositions pose a false trichotomy aimed at trapping gullible thinkers in an intellectual ambush of flim-flam arguments and huckster interpretations intended to fleece the feeble minded of their orthodox faith.
Talbott puts forth three propositions that he says lay out the options for thinking about this subject and that one can accept two but not all three of them. However, each proposition is an over-simplification aimed at setting the parameters of discussion within an artificial set of options, so that Talbott can lead us to his own conclusions. Consider:
1. “God’s love for everyone means that he sincerely desires the redemption and salvation of every single human.”
Rejected: This proposition limits what God’s love can mean for every single human being, for humanity as a whole, for the cosmos, and for God’s ultimate glory. It overlooks that fact that love may drive One to have higher desires, unfathomable to finite-minded human beings. It ignores the fact that God is directed not only by his love but also by his wisdom, which is not our wisdom, and which leads to ways that are therefore not our ways. While there is no question that God loves every human being, and that he desires every human being to be saved, it is also the case that God has many other desires. To presume that this one desire trumps all others is naïve and rooted only in human pride, arrogance, and human-centered selfishness. It also presumes to know what is best and/or most appropriate for every human being and for God’s glory. Only God knows that. No one can make inferences by which to bound God’s options. And no one can say that God may not have made (and endured) some vessels intended for destruction (cf. Romans 9:22-23).
2. “Because of God’s sovereignty and his irresistible grace, God will triumph and successfully redeem all those he sincerely desires to redeem.”
Rejected: Once again the possibility of God’s other desires and priorities are ignored. What if, for example, God places higher priority on free will than his own sovereignty, as some Arminians might argue? We can debate what should be of higher priority to God, but we do not in fact know what that should be because we do not possess God’s wisdom. Only God can decide this. As the all-sovereign God he alone has that right. As the all-wise God he alone has that ability. While most Calvinists may advocate this second statement, and it appears to be aimed at them, yet even if Calvinism is assumed, we cannot also assume that the redemption of all those God desires to redeem will come to pass. The possibility of God having higher and better desires remains. In the end, the Calvinist does not believe that God saves all those he desires to save but rather saves all those he CHOOSES to save. His choices and his salvation are rooted in grace, not in obligation. For if mercy ever becomes an obligation, either from logic or “fairness” or the demands of human standards, then it ceases to be mercy. Mercy is, by definition, free of all obligations. A God trapped by obligation is not a God of love or of mercy; he is rather a cog in a system of duty. Talbott’s propositions seek to trap God into such an obligation. While humans may fall into the intellectual trap set by Talbott, God never will.
3. “Some humans will never be redeemed, but will instead be forever separated from God.”
Again rejected: To accept this proposition is to presume a knowledge we don’t have. The scriptures do warn us that this can and may happen. But like Jonah’s message of warning and doom to Ninevah, we just don’t know how the end of the story will turn out. Yes, there are end-time prophecies and the vision of Revelation depicting humans and angels being cast into eternal torment and destruction. But as in the case of Jonah’s warning, God’s mercy opens the possibility of other endings. To say otherwise, is to make God a prisoner of his own predestination. He promises eternal life to all who will come. He also promises destruction to all who reject him. But for grace to be free, it must truly be free of meeting our expectations. And in order for God to be sovereign, he must be free from compliance to human judgment. Letting God be God means leaving the judgment to him, acknowledging his sole right and unique ability to condemn, sentence, absolve and pardon.
A friend of mine says that a God who sends his children off to eternal torment is a moral monster. I say this ignores that fact that only those who believe in Christ’s name have the power to be children of God (John 1:12) and that God alone has the right to identify who is and is not his child. My friend says God is still a moral monster if he sends anyone to hell, even if they are not his children. And I say there truly is a moral monster exposed by this debate. But that monster is not God. It is the monstrous ego of a human being who presumes to judge God and set limits on what God can do, what his love can do, and what conclusions his wisdom may come to. The monster is the pride of finite and fallen mind imposing judgment on the infinite, transcendent One for whom and by whom all things were made—the One who gives life to all and who bears with much patience vessels of wrath, even though they test and torment Him day and night with their ingratitude, rebellion, and sinful pride. Not only does he endure them with loving patience, but he holds out his arms day and night inviting all who would come to him for salvation to come. Those who come to him discover the glorious beauties of his love. Those who do not come, judge him with darkened minds and seek the shadows where they presume to mask their sinful ways.
I warned you I don’t have much patience with Talbott’s straw man approach to this question. His subsequent treatment of Scripture is even more taxing on my limited propensity for charity in this matter. I confess this as my weakness and am embarrassed by it. I also apologize for my terseness where conciseness was my goal. Thanks for listening.
May 30, 2011 @ 08:14:17
Hi Dave,
Thanks for your thoughts!
As I mentioned on Facebook, Talbott isn’t trying to boil down all of theology into these three statements. Your argument is that there is more to God than these 3 statements say, and Talbott would agree. It would seem to me that you are presenting a strawman argument, by arguing against things that are simply beyond what Talbott is arguing about. Saying that God’s love is more than about who gets “saved” is absolutely 100% true, but it’s not revelant to the argument.
Also, in all fairness to Talbott, I reduced down his argument a bit. You can certainly believe none of these statements. It is not contradictory to reject every one, or to be agnostic about some. But if you *do* accept two (as classical Arminianism and classical Calvinism do, and if it helps, change “desire” to “choose” on option 2), then accepting the other one is, logically impossible. So agnosticism on these points is certainly acceptable, but would lead you to something that’s not quite Calvinism, Arminianism, or Universalism, but perhaps a modified version of one of those.
By the way, I personally found a greater appreciation for Calvinism from this argument. I’m Arminian, and I used to have a *very* negative attitude towards Calvinism, but Talbott’s approach helped me see better how all three views can be seen side by side. I really just don’t see how it’s trying to “put down” other views. If it does, then blame me, rather than Talbott, for my poor wording, as I’ve paraphrased everything he wrote, and some of the thoughts are my own.
May 30, 2011 @ 08:16:04
“In the end, the Calvinist does not believe that God saves all those he desires to save but rather saves all those he CHOOSES to save.”
I could be wrong, but from my interaction with Calvinists, they would strongly disagree with this – the idea that God has to choose differently from his desires would, from a Calvinist perspective, diminish his sovereignty. It’s an interesting thought though – I think I’ll investigate it further, as I’ve never heard this before.
May 30, 2011 @ 08:19:52
Hey Dave,
Here is Talbott’s 2nd proposition:
“Because no one can finally defeat God’s redemptive love or resist it forever, God will triumph in the end and successfully accomplish the recemption of everyone whose redemption he sincerely wills or desires.”
So Talbott adds the word “wills” in there, which would cover your “desire” vs “choose” issue. I suppose I probably should have just add his propositions verbatim, as it’s clear he’s thought about it from more angles than I have. 🙂
May 30, 2011 @ 21:15:36
Another very well-written and clearly stated post – fascinating stuff!, James! I really appreciate the approach you’ve taken to this topic.
As for point #3… “A surface level reading of scripture will not provide an answer to this debate. We cannot just do a battle of proof-texts and come up with the answer. We necessarily have to bring in philosophy, theology, tradition, and reason, to help us resolve it. To just say, “But the Bible clearly says this” is to not understand the problem.” …I think this is probably true for more issues than most Christians would like to think!
-Josh
May 30, 2011 @ 21:22:30
Thanks Josh.
I completely agree. I think a lot of people think it’s possible to read the Bible and understand it without any layer of interpretation or reasoning. We are always bringing a combination of our biases and reasoning skills to scripture, whether we think we are or not, and so “Sola Scriptura” doesn’t practically mean “just scripture”, as if we don’t need to reason through what scripture says to understand it.
May 31, 2011 @ 14:28:28
“Calvinists in general do not consider Arminians to be heretics, and Arminians do not in general consider Calvinists to be heretics.”
In what universe is this true? It has certainly not been my experience. Calvanists believe that Arminians have ‘become their own saviors”. Some of them refuse to even be seen in company with Arminians for fear of pollution or being guilty by association. Arminians believe that Calvanists have written themselves a ‘license to sin’.
May 31, 2011 @ 14:39:03
Hi Cord,
I know many Calvinists and many Arminians. None of them would accuse those in the other camp of heresy. Do you consider them (them being whoever is in the other group for you) to be heretics?
And I did say, “in general.” While perhaps you can go online to certain forums where you can find angry Arminians and angry Calvinists all too happy to throw the word heresy around, I don’t think you’d find the average layperson or a typical Biblical scholar using that term to refer to those in the other camp. But perhaps I’m wrong, and I just happen to hang out with a lot of loving, tolerant people. I’m certainly open to that possibility.
At the very least, my point stands that if you’re an Arminian and do not see Calvinism as heresy, or if you are a Calvinist and do not see Arminianism as heresy, then it is inconsistent to view Universalism as heresy.
Peace,
James
Jun 05, 2011 @ 19:59:04
Dave@ “The possibility of God having higher and better desires remains.”
Rejected: There is no higher desire than to see goodness in all things. Arguing about God’s thoughts being so far above mine that I just can’t comprehend what that higher and better desire would be is sophistry at its core. God gave me reason and a conscience, and since his gifts are good and perfect, neither of them will fail me if properly used, not even when thinking about him and his desires. St. Paul tells us to keep our minds set on the things above. You would render his words useless. Your only argument throughout this entire exchange has not even been a real argument. Rather, it’s been a desire to turn one away from thinking altogether.
Your friend who thought God to be “moral monster” is closer to God with that argument than you with your non-argument. It’s closer to God because it embraces moral goodness, so much so that he desires that God himself be good. God-given reason tells any thinking human that we cannot say the phrase “God is good” unless he is held to a standard of goodness—the same standard that all beings everywhere are held to. If not, he is indeed a moral monster and can be nothing else. Even the bible warns us about those who would call good evil, and evil good. To say that God can be held by any other standard of goodness than that which he holds us by is to call good something other than good—the very thing the bible tells us not to do.
If you don’t learn to stand for goodness, you will never find friendship with God. To utter some nonsense (I say nonsense because it literally does not make sense) about God’s motives and sense of goodness being beyond mine is in my opinion a deliberate falsehood told to enable God to do, or allow, unspeakable evil to humans (and possibly other beings) in a hellish afterlife.
“A lie for God is a lie against God” ~ George MacDonald.
God’s goodness is no different than mine or yours. It’s just thicker.
Jun 06, 2011 @ 17:14:33
Thanks Charles for your perspective.
Thickness definitely appears to be a problem.
Jun 06, 2011 @ 18:06:19
Unfortunately Dave, that’s the kind of devlish sarcasm in place of intellectual honesty we’ve alll come to expect from the fundamentalist Catholic sector. Here’s another great example from Richard Elliott Friedman:
The Five Books of Moses
It is one of the oldest puzzles in the world. Investigators have been wrestling with it practically since the Bible was completed. As it happens, it did not start as an investigation into the authorship of the Bible. It simply began with individuals raising questions about problems that they observed in the biblical text itself. It proceeded like a detective story spread across centuries, with investigators uncovering clues to the Bible’s origin one by one.
It began with questions about the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These books are known as the Pentateuch (from Greek, meaning “five scrolls”) or the Torah (from Hebrew, meaning “instruction”). They are also known as the Five Books of Moses. Moses is the major figure through most of these books, and early Jewish and Christian tradition held that Moses himself wrote them, though nowhere in the Five Books of Moses themselves does the text say that he was the author. But the tradition that one person, Moses, alone wrote these books presented problems. People observed contradictions in the text. It would report events in a particular order, and later it would say that those same events happened in a different order. It would say that there were two of something, and elsewhere it would say that there were fourteen of that same thing. It would say that the Moabites did something, and later it would say that it was the Midianites who did it. It would describe Moses as going to a Tabernacle in a chapter before Moses builds the Tabernacle.
People also noticed that the Five Books of Moses included things that Moses could not have known or was not likely to have said. The text, after all, gave an account of Moses’ death. It also said that Moses was the humblest man on earth; and normally one would not expect the humblest man on earth to point out that he is the humblest man on earth.
At first the arguments of those who questioned Mosaic authorship were rejected. In the third century A.D. the Christian scholar Origen responded to those who raised objections to the unity and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. The rabbis of the centuries that followed the completion of the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament or the Holy Scriptures) likewise explained the problems and contradictions within the boundaries of the tradition: contradictions were only apparent contradictions. They could be explained through interpretation—often very elaborate interpretation—or through the introduction of additional narrative details that did not appear in the biblical text. As for Moses’ references to things that should have been unknown to him, they were explained as owing to the fact that Moses was a prophet. These tradition-oriented responses to the problems in the text prevailed into medieval times. The medieval biblical commentators, such as Rashi in France and Nachmanides in Spain, were especially skillful at seeking explanations to reconcile each of the contradictions. But, also in the medieval period, investigators began to give a new kind of answer to the old questions.
Six Hundred Years of Investigation
At the first stage, investigators still accepted the tradition that Moses wrote the Five Books, but they suggested that a few lines were added here or there. In the eleventh century, Isaac ibn Yashush, a Jewish court physician of a ruler in Muslim Spain, pointed out that a list of Edomite kings that appears in Genesis 36 named kings who lived long after Moses was dead. Ibn Yashush suggested that the list was written by someone who lived after Moses. The response to his conclusion was that he was called “Isaac the blunderer.”
The man who labeled him Isaac the blunderer was Abraham ibn Ezra, a twelfth-century Spanish rabbi. Ibn Ezra added, “His book deserves to be burned.” But, ironically, ibn Ezra himself included several enigmatic comments in his own writings that hint that he had doubts of his own. He alluded to several biblical passages that appeared not to be from Moses’ own hand: passages that referred to Moses in the third person, used terms that Moses would not have known, described places where Moses had never been, and used language that reflected another time and locale from those of Moses. Nonetheless, ibn Ezra apparently was not willing to say outright that Moses was not the author of the Five Books. He simply wrote, “And if you understand, then you will recognize the truth.” And in another reference to one of these contradictory passages, he wrote, “And he who understands will keep silent.”
In the fourteenth century, in Damascus, the scholar Bonfils accepted ibn Ezra’s evidence but not his advice to keep silent. Referring to the difficult passages, Bonfils wrote explicitly, “And this is evidence that this verse was written in the Torah later, and Moses did not write it; rather one of the later prophets wrote it.” Bonfils was not denying the revealed character of the text. He still thought that the passages in question were written by “one of the later prophets.” He was only concluding that they were not written by Moses. Still, three and a half centuries later, his work was reprinted with the references to this subject deleted.
In the fifteenth century, Tostatus, bishop of Avila, also stated that certain passages, notably the account of Moses’ death, could not have been written by Moses. There was an old tradition that Moses’ successor Joshua wrote this account. But in the sixteenth century, Carlstadt, a contemporary of Luther, commented that the account of Moses’ death is written in the same style as texts that precede it. This makes it difficult to claim that Joshua or anyone else merely added a few lines to an otherwise Mosaic manuscript. It also raises further questions about what exactly was Mosaic and what was added by someone else.
In a second stage of the process, investigators suggested that Moses wrote the Five Books but that editors went over them later, adding an occasional word or phrase of their own. In the sixteenth century, Andreas van Maes, who was a Flemish Catholic, and two Jesuit scholars, Benedict Pereira and Jacques Bonfrere, thus pictured an original text from the hand of Moses upon which later writers expanded. Van Maes suggested that a later editor inserted phrases or changed the name of a place to its more current name so that readers would understand it better. Van Maes’ book was placed on the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books.
In the third stage of the investigation, investigators concluded outright that Moses did not write the majority of the Pentateuch. The first to say it was the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century. Hobbes collected numerous cases of facts and statements through the course of the Five Books that were inconsistent with Mosaic authorship. For example, the text sometimes states that something is the case “to this day.” “To this day” is not the phrase of someone describing a contemporary situation. It is rather the phrase of a later writer who is describing something that has endured.
Four years later, Isaac de la Peyrere, a French Calvinist, also wrote explicitly that Moses was not the author of the first books of the Bible. He, too, noted problems running through the text, including, for example, the words “across the Jordan” in the first verse of Deuteronomy. That verse says, “These are the words that Moses spoke to the children of Israel across the Jordan. . . .” The problem with the phrase “across the Jordan” is that it refers to someone who is on the other side of the Jordan river from the writer. The verse thus appears to be the words of someone in Israel, west of the Jordan, referring to what Moses did on the east side of the Jordan. But Moses himself was never supposed to have been in Israel in his life. De la Peyrere’s book was banned and burned. He was arrested and informed that in order to be released he would have to become Catholic and recant his views to the Pope. He did.
About the same time, in Holland, the philosopher Spinoza published a unified critical analysis, likewise demonstrating that the problematic passages were not a few isolated cases that could be explained away one by one. Rather, they were pervasive through the entire Five Books of Moses. There were the third-person accounts of Moses, the statements that Moses was unlikely to have made (e.g., “humblest man on earth”), the report of Moses’ death, the expression “to this day,” the references to geographical locales by names that they acquired after Moses’ lifetime, the treatment of matters that were subsequent to Moses (e.g., the list of Edomite kings), and various contradictions and problems in the text of the sort that earlier investigators had observed. He also noted that the text says in Deuteronomy 34, “There never arose another prophet in Israel like Moses….” Spinoza remarked that these sound like the words of someone who lived a long time after Moses and had the opportunity to see other prophets and thus make the comparison. (They also do not sound like the words of the humblest man on earth.) Spinoza wrote, “It is…clearer than the sun at noon that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, but by someone who lived long after Moses.” Spinoza had been excommunicated from Judaism. Now his work was condemned by Catholics and Protestants as well. His book was placed on the Catholic Index, within six years thirty-seven edicts were issued against it, and an attempt was made on his life.
A short time later, in France, Richard Simon, a convert from Protestantism who had become a Catholic priest, wrote a work that he intended to be critical of Spinoza. He said that the core of the Pentateuch (the laws) was Mosaic but that there were some additions. The additions, he said, were by scribes who collected, arranged, and elaborated upon the old texts. These scribes, according to Simon, were prophets, guided by the divine spirit, and so he regarded his work as a defense of the sanctity of the biblical text. His contemporaries, however, apparently were not ready for a work that said that any part of the Five Books was not Mosaic. Simon was attacked by other Catholic clergy and expelled from his order. His books were placed on the Index. Forty refutations of his work were written by Protestants. Of the thirteen hundred copies printed of his book, all but six were burned. An English version of the book came out, translated by John Hampden, but Hampden later recanted. The understated report by the scholar Edward Gray in his account of the events tells it best: Hampden “repudiated the opinions he had held in common with Simon…in 1688, probably shortly before his release from the tower.”
~~~
Thick indeed.
Jun 06, 2011 @ 18:59:48
Charles, No sarcasm intended. It was a confession. Sorry to mislead you.
By the way, I do not regard myself as a fundamentalist or a Catholic. But I suppose such categories are relative to where one starts on the theological spectrum. I’ve often found it amusing that Tillich regarded Barth as a fundamentalist and a biblicist, but many conservatives saw Barth and Tillich as hard to distinquish apart–in their day.
You seem to have some very strong and developed ideas. I was once like you. Today I find that age, exprience, and study have taken away many of my answers and even a few of my questions. What you have called my non-arguments and rejections of reason, have actually come at the end of a long process of reflection and life. I find with each passing day that the God I know and love is not content to be tamed or kept, nor does he live in our suburbia. We do not know from whence he comes, nor where he is headed. So is everyone who is born of his Spirit, even more so those borne of his Spirit (Paraphrasing John 3:8).
Perhaps sometimes reason comes to conclusions that seem like a rejection of reason, I suppose, as when Luther called reason a whore, or when Paul or Isaiah both lamented and celebrated the amazing vastness of God’s thoughts and ways being beyond ours. For me, with each passing day, I come to identify with Paul and Isaiah more, and find myself less able and/or less interested in efforts to corner God. And so with them, I celebrate the final conclusion of all reason and argumentation:
“Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and[a] knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments,
and his paths beyond tracing out!
‘Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?’” – Romans 11:33-34
And:
“Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD,
or instruct the LORD as his counselor?
Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge,
or showed him the path of understanding?” – Isaiah 40:13-14
The obvious answer to all these questions is: “No one.” Yahweh is subject to none and accountable to none. He is led by none and predictable by none. He defines wisdom; it does not define him. He defines right and wrong because his character is their standard. He does not conform to righteousness, love, or truth; they conform to him because he is their author. His decisions are beyond our judgment and our judgmentalism because he is the judge, not us. He is infinite; we are finite. He sees what we do not see and cannot imagine. No one can tell him what the supreme desire is that he should have, nor can we extrapolate from what we know him which of all the things he will do or think or conclude. When he kills a man, it is not like us killing a man. For he is the origin and destination of all life and the one to whom all lives are accountable. He alone can exonerate and redeem; he alone can judge and condemn. And as all things were made for his pleasure and honor and glory, there is no one who can criticise or correct his choices.
And so, while we may think we know what he will do–and I certainly have my suspicions and opinions. In the end we will all marvel, even when we are shown wrong. And we will all confess his greatness, even where it defies our expectations. Knowing this leads me now to not postpone that admission.
I can only wish for you the peace and contentment that comes in resting here. I am confident you will come to it eventually.
Jun 06, 2011 @ 23:14:50
Dave,
I’m a Christian, but not a Biblican. I don’t worship any bible or breach the bounded scope of honorificabilitudinitatibus by likening it to the very words of God (something the bible itself never claims to be except in a couple of places). As such, I don’t hesitate to call out a biblical writer when I believe they’re wrong. When I see claims such as God having no beginning or end, or having no other gods before him (depending on how that statement is meant), I cannot help but shake my head in amazement at the human race and the lack of common sense that seems to accompany the vast majority of the religious world.
Obviously God himself cannot know these things and wouldn’t be silly enough to claim to. Can you remember a time before you were born? Of course not. All we know is existence. If there was a time before God existed, he could in no way know it or have a memory of it. Nor can he know if he will have an end. Even God is held within the constraints of both theoretical and physical possibilities. He could know more know if he has a beginning or end than he could make a rock so big that he couldn’t lift it. One is a theoretical absurdity, the other a physical one.
We may, like Chesterton, see the finger of God in all manner of paradoxes, and true it is that, “the riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” The universe if chock full of paradoxical events and riddles galore. Nonlocality, quantum potential, “spooky action at a distance” within quantum entanglement, the “double slit experiment”, the “measurement problem”, or the mere fact that you could walk out of a wormhole before you ever walked into it on the quantum level where space/time events forego locality. It is indeed a strange world where it appears that _almost_ anything can happen. One cannot help but wonder if the mystics from nearly every religion are correct when they claim that everything we are, and everything we know, exists within the mind of God. And indeed, Chris Lanagn’s fine paper—The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe—does suggest a mind at the bottom of the well. Who can help but picture a God not so different from the sleeping Vishnu who dreams the world into being. Perhaps Epimenides was being quite literal when he said (speaking of Zeus), “in him we live and move and have our being.” Paul seems to have thought he was right.
However, even if all this is true and the whole world that we know is merely a reflection of God’s very thoughts, God does not deal in absurdities. A basic law of physics is that all energy has matter, and all matter has energy. The very fact that God _thinks_ is a form of energy, therefore God must be made of some kind of matter and exist within some kind of space—a space that he did not, and could not, have created. A space that must have been here before him just as some kind of space must have been in our universe before rapid expansion took place. The universe could not expand into nothingness. It may have taken its own space with it, but there must have been a previous space in which to move. But I’m getting off-track. The point is that there is at least one thing that God could not have created, and that is the very space in which he exists. If space predates God, what else might predate him? What other beings might have existed within that space? Perhaps beings that he is not aware of? Perhaps there were other gods before him chronologically. Could God himself have been created and his creator never made his presence known to him? If so, our God could not know it. Perhaps someone is dreaming him into existence too.
There are a good many things that even God cannot possibly know. But I believe we can say with all surety that God does not deal in absurdities. According to the Chinese, even the Creator must follow the Tao. Things like goodness, trustworthiness, and kindness must be the same everywhere at all times and for all beings. (See Cs Lewis’ _The Abolition of Man_.) They believe this because anything else would be absurd. I believe it as well, and for the same reason.
There are many things both in the bible and in other books where God is said to have done things that are simply evil. They can be nothing else. It is far better to acknowledge the truth of this than to invent incredible ways around it and make the church as a whole look foolish in the process.
“Neither let thy cowardly conscience receive any word as light, while it looks to thee dark. Say either the thing is not what it seems, or God never said it. But of all evils, to misinterpret what God does, and then say the thing, as interpreted must be right because God does it, is of the devil. Do not try to believe anything that affects thee as darkness. Even if thou mistake and refuse something true thereby, thou wilt do less wrong to Christ by such a refusal than thou wouldst by accepting as His what thou canst see only as darkness…but let thy words be few, lest thou say with thy tongue what thous wilt afterward repent with thy heart.” ~ George MacDonald
Gotta go; I’ve got my own flock to tend.
Jun 07, 2011 @ 00:30:40
Charles,
You “quote” a lot of impressive thinkers to make points I dare say none of them would agree with. You appear to have a god of your own devising who doesn’t make much sense to me. Nor does he sound to me like much of a god at all. But I prefer Yahweh and will continue trying to know him. I believe he is the true and living God, eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, who alone redeems us by the sacrifice of his Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ, risen from the dead and reigning in heaven until he comes again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Of his kingdom there will be no end. I hope to see you there so we can laugh together over all the silly misconceptions we held in this life. But if I don’t make it, I’m sure we will both confess him righteous and just and full of mercy, with gratitude, praise and adoration for him on our lips and in our hearts.
Peace.
Sep 21, 2011 @ 15:36:50
James,
I truly appreciate these words. They are exactly the thoughts in the forefront of my mind every time I read another cutting lambaste of Rob Bell. We are far to quick to label our christian brothers and sisters heretics just because they read the bible different than we do. Your article needs to be read far and wide in christendom!
I may not totally agree with Rob Bell’s theology but I have been blessed by him none-the-less. We need to be stimulated in our thought so that we search out what we believe. As long as we seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our study, we cannot go fatally astray. There will be many Calvinists, Armenians, and Universalist in the kingdom. And I will be friends with them all!!!!!
Thanks again,
Brent King
Sep 21, 2011 @ 15:57:17
Thanks Brent!
Yes, I do not agree completely with Rob Bell’s theology either, but I agree wholeheartedly with his attitude towards his faith and how he is clearly trying his best to follow Jesus. And in the end, I think that’s more important.
As for universalism, I have to admit, I’ve become convinced. But it definitely wasn’t Bell’s book, which I found to be pretty poorly argued, but it was actually mostly through reading “The Evangelical Universalist”, by Gregory MacDonald, and oddly enough, by reading the anti-universalism chapters in “Universal Salvation? The Current Debate” that convinced me in the end. I was Arminian before, and I actually have a greater respect for Calvinism through my reading up on Universalism, based on the fact that it takes one of their major premises that I list above and affirms it. It also cuts through a lot of Arminian / Calvinist debates, like free will, which in a universalist light, is not an issue one hangs their theological hat on.