I Am A Universalist
Reading Gutierrez’ “A Theology of Liberation” last week I realised that the best word to describe my view of the Christian Gospel is universalist. I believe in the universality of salvation.
Now, before you swipe my “Bible believing evangelical” credentials (or leper bells depending on your view) from me, let me assure that I still think that Jesus was telling the truth when he said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” I think salvation only happens through faith in Christ.
But the quantitative universal question (who is in, who is out and how many people are saved which is typically how the word universalist is used) is not nearly as interesting to me as the qualitative universal question. I do not know if all will be saved and I am not certain that when 1 Peter says that Jesus went to preach to the captives in hell that this indicates that all humans ever conceived will be redeemed.
But I am certain that the whole testimony of the Bible proclaims that the restored union with God that is the “hope of the Gospel” goes far beyond simply gaining entry to heaven. I think it has universal consequences for the individual, for the community and well, for the universe. If it is true that through the forgiveness of sins the Christian has the primary relationship of their life restored to them, that is, union with God, then that must utterly transform how they approach every other relationship and interaction.
The way that I have understood this in the past is that the Gospel exerts a four-fold reconciliation. At the heart of my being I have been reconciled through Christ, in-dwelt by the Spirit and adopted by God.
This security is the basis for my second reconciliation, the internal one to myself. If the Creator of the Universe sees me as wholly holy and blameless then I must be willing to share grace with myself and accept and forgive myself.
Off the basis of this peace within myself over who I am, I am charged up for the third wave of reconciliation with the Other, the neighbour, any other human being I encounter. As someone at peace with myself and secure in God’s identity for me I ought to be able to embrace even the most tiring and draining of people, say rugby fans, with a new found ability to repent (healing old relationships) and embrace (building new relationships).
Then the fourth-fold reconciliation comes to bear as a community of people who have enjoyed the benefits of reconciliation with God, peace with themselves, renewed relationship with each other, take this new Creation energy and let it loose on the Cosmos. Whether in the ecclesial, political, economic, cultural or ecological environment, the reconciliation of God expresses itself here in regenerative action. As Tom Wright might say, we live in the now shaped by the sure and certain knowledge of God’s certain future. We join in with what God is about.
But the extent of that transformation was always limited for me. In each of those four quadrants I think that the Gospel extends universally, which may even mean infinitely. There is always more internal healing and peace-making to be done and the Gospel is always relevant. There is always more repenting with your neighbours to be done and the Gospel is the only way we can do that. There is always more re-creation to be enjoyed in the wider world and the Gospel sets us up for that in a way that transcends and perfects both hedonism and conservationism. Underwriting all this activity is of course our primary conversion – being captured more fully by the beauty of God.
So I may be warping Gutierrez entirely in this interpretation, warping or perhaps correcting (!) but there is much to dwell on in what he has to say:
Salvation – the communion of men with God and the communion of men among themselves – is something which embraces all human reality, transforms it, and leads it to its fullness in Christ: “Thus the centre of God’s salvific design is Jesus Christ, who by his death and resurrection transforms the universe and makes it possible for man to reach fulfillment as a human being. This fulfillment embraces every aspect of humanity: body and spirit, individual and society, person and cosmos, time and eternity. Christ, the image of the Father and the perfect God-Man, takes on all the dimensions of human existence.”
(The text he quotes is from the 1968 declaration of the Latin American bishops at Medellín)
Your Correspondent, Goes wherever they value loyalty the most.
Zoomtard,
Sorry I didnt get to meet you at Andy´s wedding. I just about got to meet the lovely bride before one of my screaming kids dragged me off.
A thought/question for you.
“Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now[h] receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. 32For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.”
This was the lectionary reading for the Church of Ireland yesterday from Romans 11. What does it mean? I am intrigued by the last bit and the suggestion that God´s mercy is so relentless that it uses our disobedience as part of our salavation. Thought it might have something to do with your interesting post on universalism.
Steven
Actually from todays reading.
Am very tired right now so forgive me if you did describe this and I missed it, but do you / should you include in your description, people who follow the spirit of the gospel and yet reject the icon of Christ? Surely human life is too deep and complex to allow for a purely figurative belief or disbelief to dictate one’s place in heaven? In fact, if the kingdom of heaven can indeed exist on Earth as is indicated, we’ve certainly seen people of all beliefs who seem to partake in many of heaven’s aspects.
That is to say, you (and others through “you”) benefit more from the gospel by recognising its embodyment in Christ, so it makes sense to start off from that point, but maybe others can start at the second and third stages by following its spirit alone? Is that idea unbiblical or is it difficult to say one way or another? This question is part of the qualitative view of things too I would say.
That wasn’t very well expressed, because it looks like I was asking the quantative question about who is in and who is out. Third time lucky and hopefully I’ll construct my question properly now:
Assuming good belongs with heaven and evil belongs with hell, where does the good that is done in and through people who haven’t experienced the source of the wave (reconciliation with God through Christ) you speak of come from? Is there a deeper biblical way of describing what you’ve said here? Jesus speaks of the spirit who sent him, so I think the answer lies there but I’m not entirely sure how. It’s hard for me to think of one without the other.
Im not sure how your previous understanding (the four-fold dimension of salvation) differers from what you are saying now… Only that you maybe each dimension carries on longer than you previously thought??
As for the whose in and out Q . I cant get around “if you confess with your mouth “jeus is lord” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved” . The best muslim atheist what ever who by their actions build things like God’s kingdom will never say Jesus is Lord.
Yeah but in that particular verse it doesn’t say you won’t be saved if you don’t. Come not to condemn but to save and all that.
There are other verses about denying Jesus that are harder to get around though. I hope they mean Jesus in the context of the fact that he is stands for all that is good etc, etc, and not in the context where there is a lack of knowledge of this fact.
The argument about Muslims could also be applied to the Jews before Jesus came, so you do in fact need to get around it. Not saying that you can’t, but you do have to.
Interestingly i think V3 of that chapter actually talks about how the who is in and who is out conversation is wrong!!
What would you think that saying Jesus ISNT lord does for you? and do you recon that saying Jesus ISNT lord is the same as NOT saying he IS lord.
Saying Jesus isn’t Lord is wrong for me, but I’m a Christian so for me it’s a denial of what I’ve experienced, and hence goes completely against the spirit. Even doubting that Jesus is Lord makes it harder to know the reconciliation that comes from Christ, but the interesting thing is that my own state of flux is never reflected in God. In fact God shows continual mercy in renewing the gift that Kevin speaks of here when the second and third waves of its affect on others and myself is dampened.
I think it’s probably a different story for someone who doesn’t have faith in this truth. I think its very obvious from experience that this faith saves me, but others might pysically observe my physical (psychological, etc,) salvation and assume that the cause is purely psychological. Of course I would say it’s spiritual too (both the cause and the effect). I would not experience the effect if I didn’t believe it to be spiritual. If one assumes the ultimat cause to be spiritual and the spirit outlives the body, it is natural to assume the ultimate effect is also spiritual.
Since I am reconciling my body and physical mind to its spiritual author, I will see the spiritual benifit now. Someone who only reconciles their body and physical mind to the aspects of the physical world that reflect its author instead of those that don’t, will also see benifits now but not on so strongly spiritual a level. But given that my spiritual experience is that God, who is continually merciful even when I ignore Him, I would assume that he is even more merciful to those who don’t even know they’re ignoring him because they either don’t believe He is real or believe He isn’t real? After all, I didn’t become a Christian by my own merit.
I think that, coming from a qualitative perspective I would have to assume it will work out because God is good. Is it right to approach a Bible verse in any other way? Is that mis-using it in the same way as some people try to use it as a science text or to prop the leg of a table that rocks? I mean, is it ok to look at a Bible verse in order to quantify the nature of what happens to us, or should we always treat it as an invitation to actually journey towards God? If it’s the latter, I think the verses about denying Jesus take on a different light.
Steven: I was so sorry to realise we had not met. Total bummer. I don’t do exegesis on Romans 9-11 because… well, I can’t.
Jimlad: “but do you / should you include in your description, people who follow the spirit of the gospel and yet reject the icon of Christ” – to which I say you and Richie are having a great old banter and this “quantitative” question is not what I was dealing with here.
Richie: “Im not sure how your previous understanding (the four-fold dimension of salvation) differers from what you are saying now… Only that you maybe each dimension carries on longer than you previously thought??” – yeah you got it: I realise each particular dimension can have universal impact.
[...] comments on an earlier post there was a bit of debate about what happens to people who have never heard about Jesus. I never [...]
But I worded that question badly. I wasn’t originally trying to ask about who was in and who was out even though ended up having a discussion along those lines. You’re talking about the reaches of the gospel on the universe and I’m wondering, since we see similar good affects from those who haven’t experienced the gospel as a specific affirmation of Christ as Lord, is there a deeper stage, before the first stage you mentioned, from which good enters the world? So I’m really asking about the quality and not the quantity.
Interestingly though, after I posed that question I came across the first verses of John again. I think he goes deeper into the quality of the gospel and answers my question, and I didn’t really appreciate that until after you brought the question to my mind.
[...] In that post I wrote: But the quantitative universal question (who is in, who is out and how many people are saved which is typically how the word universalist is used) is not nearly as interesting to me as the qualitative universal question. [...]
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