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Anglicanism and the Brothers K. It also assumes that God's love depends on what he does for humanity, rather than being a self-existing attribute of God present from eternity, before man was created. The Psalms speak repeatedly of God's justice. Without hell, what justice would there be for murderers of millions, such as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao?
The fact that often there is no justice in this life requires that a just God impose it in the next. James Fowler, president of Christ in You Ministries , notes, "Desiring to focus on the rosy optimism of the universal perfection of man, sin is, for the most part, an irrelevancy Sin is minimized and trivialized in all universalistic teaching. Universalism was taught by Origen A. It became popular again in the 19th century and is gaining traction in many Christian circles today. Fowler adds that one reason for the resurgence of universalism is the current attitude that we should not be judgmental of any religion, idea, or person.
By refusing to call anything right or wrong, universalists not only cancel the need for Christ's redeeming sacrifice but also ignore the consequences of unrepented sin. As a doctrine, universalism does not describe one certain denomination or faith group. The universalist camp includes members of varying doctrinal categories with differing and sometimes contradictory beliefs. Much of universalism relies on the premise that Bible translations are wrong in their uses of the terms Hell, Gehenna, everlasting, and other words that claim eternal punishment.
Despite the fact that recent translations such as the New International Version and English Standard Version were the efforts of large teams of knowledgeable Bible scholars, universalists say the Greek term "aion," which means "age," has been consistently mistranslated across the centuries, leading to false doctrine about the length of hell.
Critics of universalism state that the identical Greek term " aionas ton aionon ," which means "ages of the ages," is used in the Bible to describe both the eternal worth of God and the eternal fire of hell. Critics say universalists are picking and choosing when aionas ton aionon means "limited. Yet until that point, few official church teachers in Protestant Germany, Britain, or North America publicly affirmed universal salvation—even though privately some may have been universalists.
From the s through the s, universalism was most closely associated with modernist Protestantism. Prior to Vatican II, one finds some private musings on the possibility of salvation for all among certain Catholic intellectuals, even though no official Catholic spokespersons affirm universalism.
Similarly, the tentative suggestions by the British evangelical John Stott regarding conditionalism or annihilationism triggered intra-evangelical debates over the final scope of salvation. Even though we tend to shy away from the term heresy these days, it is correct to describe universalism as heretical? In a culture characterized by moralistic therapeutic deism, universalism fits the age we inhabit. As I argue in the book, universalism is the opiate of the theologians.
Some imagine that a more loving and less judgmental church would be better positioned to win new adherents. Yet perfect love appeared in history—and he was crucified.
Every definition of heresy implies some correlative definition of orthodoxy —of which there are many. I think it's something that a Christian should at least hope for. Plantinga is a dexterous reasoner, and so I might not grasp all the nuances of his position.
We should distinguish between wishing for something and expecting it. There are any number of things I might wish for that I would not expect to occur—for instance, that there might be no violence on earth in the coming year.
I would ask further: On what divine promise is this confident expectation based? Is there such a promise by God to save everyone? That makes little sense: Why would anyone not be included in a supposed hope for all? Your book is an academic tome that cites historical sources and other scholarly works. He was around in the third century and the council was in the sixth century. What was condemned in those anathemas or those curses is that whole system, that network. The monstrous doctrine of Apocatastasis and the restoration of demons and all that, that is condemned is the doctrine as connected into that whole network.
Which means that, in fact, universalism as such is not condemned, just that particular species of universalism. All of this is to say, there is an ongoing debate about that and it matters because it ties into the whole question of whether universalism is heresy. My transcript above is from the video below—edited slightly for readability. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.
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