Support for Universalism in Scripture, Logic and Love

I describe myself as a universalist. What do I mean by that? First, I don’t mean Unitarian Universalist, although I tried that once and hold them all in high regard. I’m a Jesus freak schooled in primarily UCC theology, a mystic at heart and I currently attend a very loving Lutheran church. I happen to think that everyone is saved by Jesus Christ. Whatever happens to me after death is going to happen to you.

I don’t get to define universalism. There is a wide spectrum of beliefs that fall under that umbrella. Some believe we all just get a great afterlife. Some don’t believe in a literal Heaven, but believe we are all one in God. Some believe you will indeed suffer punishment, perhaps even in a place called Hell, but will eventually be saved. C.S. Lewis famously said that the door to Hell is locked from the inside which strikes me as a universalist notion.

The common thread through these ideas is that God’s purpose in creation cannot be eternal damnation for even one single soul. God’s love ultimately wins.

Scriptural Support for Universalism

Fortunately, we have a lot of scripture on our side. I want to be clear that there is a lot of scripture on the other side as well. It won’t surprise my regular readers that I find conflicting accounts in the Bible. I don’t believe the Bible was meant to be the perfect, infallible word of God – that is reserved for Jesus. So, it seems natural to me that different Biblical authors would have different ideas about our eternal destinies. This is a broad brush, but it’s easy to see why early Christian communities who were being persecuted would want to comfort each other with the idea that evil will somehow be punished. And as I stated above, punishment for sin may indeed still fall into a universalist world view. We just don’t believe that punishment is eternal.

Salvation cannot be earned by dorks like us, it has to be freely given by a loving God.

I’m intending this article as an overview of some of my thinking. It’s shallow. But these verses strike me as so direct that I am unable to see them outside of a universalist bent. There are others that are not as straightforward as these that lend a lot of support, but these are hard to argue against.

1 Corinthians 15:22

for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.

Colossians 1:19-20

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.

Romans 5:18

Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.

Romans 11:32

For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.

2 Corinthians 5:18-19

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

I believe that John 3:16 demonstrates universal reconciliation when read in the proper light, even though many Christians use it to support the opposite. Many Christians were taught that there is a Hell, or that not everyone will be saved, or some will be eternally annihilated or that some will be tortured for all eternity. There is some scriptural support for these positions as well. I simply contend that different authors believed different things and the Bible disagrees with itself all over the place on this issue and many others. That is the simplest explanation for me. Others who want to hold to non-universalist ideas will argue that we should understand the universalist passages above considering the non-universalist passages. Maybe Paul didn’t really mean, “all.” Maybe a parable by Jesus is more literal than the statements above. Well, why not interpret things the other way around? Why not temper the everlasting torture ideas with the ideas clearly stated in the passages above that God’s love and power is ultimately successful for all?

Use Logic and Knowledge of God’s Love

If the Bible isn’t consistent in its ideas of salvation, then how do we know what to believe? The snarky, post-modern provocateur in me wants to tell you that you can’t always be certain of anything. But I think the better answer is that you can trust your logical mind and you can trust in God’s infinite love. Infinite love cannot result in eternal annihilation or torture. Full stop.

If you’re going to interpret these passages, use Jesus as your lens. Jesus taught love, not retribution. Again, I’ll take up sheep and goats and the like another time. Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness applied to all. In his dying words, Jesus asked for forgiveness for his own executioners. He didn’t say, “forgive them if they believe the right things about me.” He said, “forgive them for they know not what they do.” That forgiveness is not up to them, it’s up to God. And do any of us know what we’re doing? Of course not. Salvation cannot be earned by dorks like us, it has to be freely given by a loving God. I don’t see God withholding it to anyone in that case.

Jesus also tells us that God is a loving parent. Being a parent has taught me a lot about love. There is nothing one of my sons could do that would make me want to separate from them. I certainly would not want to torture them for eternity. If you’re not a parent, just imagine the person you love most, your spouse, your boyfriend, your sister, your niece, your best friends. Heck, imagine some people you don’t like, your boss, your landlord, Elon Musk, whomever. Do you want to torture them forever? Do you think your love is greater than God’s love?

OK, fine, but what about this:

John 14:6

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I go into my thoughts here in more detail in the article, Inclusive Fulfilment, but in brief I will just say that this passage might only mean that Jesus did the work, not that some won’t be saved. This is a crude analogy, but if I said, “no one lives without oxygen,” I’m not imagining a situation where someone chooses no oxygen. Again, why not start with a universalist lens when interpreting scripture instead of starting with an exclusivist lens? Sometimes the traditions and culture we were raised in make it difficult to see that our dogmatic biases are taking over our reading. Along those lines, many early church fathers and schools were universalist. Though it started to fall out of favor in the sixth century, the entire history of Christian faith has included many strong universalists or at least thinkers who seemed to be hopeful that universal restoration was the plan all along.

Some Interesting Side Arguments

I’ve had friends caution me during or after Bible study groups where I tend to pontificate on my ideas a little too forcefully. I’ve genericized these arguments as:

• But what if you’re wrong? Isn’t it safer to tell people they might burn in Hell and be wrong than the other way around?
• Then why be a Christian at all if everyone is saved? Isn’t universalism a threat to faith?

I can understand their caution. I also think the arguments work two ways. I think the bigger threat to people joining the faith is eternal punishment. How do we convince anyone that an all-loving God demands eternal punishment for a sinful life that only lasted about 80 years? How can that God be worthy of our worship? How can a loving God call beings into existence – without their consent or request – and then put them to a test that might end up in eternal conscious torment? These ideas are so counter to a loving God that I think they scare more people away than they do convince people. Non-universalism is ultimately illogical and unacceptable to reasonable people.

So why be a Christian at all? Returning to the parental analogy, if you’re a parent I’m assuming you wouldn’t condemn your child to eternal torment for any reason. If you’re sane, you might send them to their room to think things through, but you wouldn’t keep them there forever. Most parents I know won’t spank their children or use violence because we’ve grown past those barbaric tendencies. They certainly wouldn’t hope they could burn them for all eternity. Yet, your children still love you and want to spend time with you even though they don’t think you will torture them if they don’t. I’m a Christian because I’m crazy about Jesus, not because I fear eternal punishment. I love Jesus even more because it doesn’t matter what I do or believe. In other words, universalism increases my love of God and Jesus, not the other way around. I don’t go to church, take the sacrament, pray or sing to avoid Hell, I do it to continue to get closer to God and remind myself what it means to follow Christ.

Some Other Starting Places

I intend to write a lot more about universalism this year and beyond. It’s an enormous and important topic that cannot even be scratched in on blog post. In the meantime, here are some smarter people than I who write wonderfully about universalism. I’ve always had universalist instincts because I simply cannot imagine a God worth worshipping that would send anyone to Hell. But these authors have greatly honed my thinking.

• David Artman: Grace Saves All (both his book and podcast are five-star accessible introductions to universal salvation)
• Thomas Talbott: The Inescapable Love of God
• David Bentley Hart: That All Shall be Saved (bring your dictionary — there are few Christian philosophers more convincing than DBH on matters of universalism and theism and none with such an expansive vocabulary)
• David Burnfield: Patristic Universalism
• Rob Bell: Love Wins
• Bradely Jersak: Her Gates Will Never Be Shut
• Brian Zahnd: Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God
• The YouTube Channel Love Unrelenting is a good place for non-readers to start.