Universalism

Volume 4, No. 2, January 1978 (Universalism: A Historical Survey (Richard J Bauckham))

Luke 3:6 “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ””

1 Timothy 4:10 “For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.” (see below)

4:9–10. Spiritual growth and nourishment and disciplines for godliness do not exist in a vacuum. They must be grounded in the living Christ. Paul underscored this idea by stating, This is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. This is the thing for which the apostles and followers of Christ labor and strive. They had one purpose in their work. They committed themselves to one urgent and pressing goal—the spread of the gospel.

Their hope was not in performance, legalisms, or mere talk. The touchstone of faith for all who believe is that hope is placed in the living God, who is the Savior of all men. The God we follow is living, interactive, and present in our lives. Our confidence rests in a God who is ever-living.

Since only God is the Savior of all people, only one message brings hope to the human condition. If there is only one way by which people can be saved into a new realm of God’s rule and righteousness, then it is imperative that we tell others about this way.

Although God is the Savior of all, not everyone will be saved. Abiding trust is the requisite for such salvation. He is the Savior especially of those who believe. There will be those who refuse, some who cling to idols. They will fulfill Jonah’s ancient and prophetic voice, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs” (Jon. 2:8).

Knute Larson, I & II Thessalonians, I & II Timothy, Titus, Philemon, vol. 9, Holman New Testament Commentary (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), 206.Universal HOPE is very different than universal SALVATION

21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. 22 Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. 23 And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. 24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Ro 11:21–24. The history is a complex one, partly because the issue of hell and universalism is closely interconnected with other difficult and debated theological issues, such as predestination and free will, the validity of retributive punishment, the authority of the Bible, and (most centrally) the nature of God, the meaning of and the relationship between His love and His justice. (this is the MAIN issue)

The most famous and influential advocate of universalism in the early church was Origen, whose teaching on this point was partly anticipated by his predecessor Clement of Alexandria. Origen’s universalism6 belongs to the logic of his whole theological system, which was decisively influenced by his Platonism and depended on his hermeneutical method of discerning the allegorical sense of Scripture behind the literal sense. Richard J. Bauckham, “Universalism: A Historical Survey,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 49.

Origen’s scheme conforms to a Platonic pattern of understanding the world as part of a great cycle of the emanation of all things from God and the return of all things to God. Despite the appeal to such texts as 1 Cor. 15:28 (‘God shall be all in all’: this has always been a favourite universalist text) the final unity of all things with God is more Platonic than biblical in inspiration Richard J. Bauckham, “Universalism: A Historical Survey,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 49.

The Platonic pattern of emanation and return was widely influential in Greek theology and provided the same kind of general world-view favouring universalism as Darwinian evolution was to provide for some nineteenth-century universalists. In both cases universalism is achieved by seeing both this earthly life and hell as only stages in the soul’s long upward progress towards God, whereas mainstream Christian orthodoxy has always regarded this life as decisive for a man’s fate and hell as the final destiny of the wicked. Richard J. Bauckham, “Universalism: A Historical Survey,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 49.

Origen’s universalism was involved in the group of doctrines known as ‘Origenism’, about which there were long controversies in the East. A Council at Constantinople in 543 condemned a list of Origenist errors including Apokatastasis, but whether this condemnation was endorsed by the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) seems in doubt. At any rate the condemnation of Origenism discredited universalism in the theological tradition of the East. In the West, not only Origen’s heretical reputation but also Augustine’s enormous influence ensured that the Augustinian version of the doctrine of hell prevailed almost without question for many centuries. During the Middle Ages universalism is found only in the strongly Platonic system of John Scotus Erigena (dc 877) and in a few of the more pantheistic thinkers in the mystical tradition, for whom the divine spark in every man must return to its source in God.

There are two Biblical ways of looking at salvation. One says that only Christian believers will be saved: the other says that all men will be saved. Since the latter is more loving, it must be true, because God is love.’ This argument (though the words are mine) is regularly used by university teachers of my acquaintance to persuade undergraduates to accept ‘universalism’ in its most common form—the belief, that is, that God will save all men individually. It explicitly plays off passages of scripture which appear to support it (Romans 5:12–21, 11:32, 1 Tim. 2:4, 4:10, John 12:32, etc.) against those which quite clearly do not (Romans 2:6–16, Matt. 25:31–46, John 3:18, 36, 5:29, etc.). I have argued against this view elsewhere, at a more systematic level. Here I want to look in more detail at the biblical evidence.

The proponents of universalism admit very readily that their doctrine conflicts with much biblical teaching. What they are attempting, however, is Sachkritik, the criticism (and rejection) of one part of scripture on the basis of another. We leave aside the implications of this for a doctrine of scripture itself. More important for our purpose is the fact that the great majority of the ‘hard sayings’, the passages which warn most clearly and unmistakeably of eternal punishment, are found on the lips of Jesus Himself. This is the point at which the usual argument comes dangerously close to cutting off the branch it sits on. It says ‘God is love’: but we know that principally (since it is not self-evidently true) through the life and death of Jesus Christ. We cannot use that life and death as an appeal against itself—which is precisely what happens if we say that, because God is love, the nature of salvation is not as it is revealed in the teaching of Jesus and in the cross itself, the place where God has provided the one way of salvation. (If there were other ‘ways of salvation’, the cross would have been unnecessary.) I begin here because we need to be reminded of the uncompromising warnings which the evangelists place on the lips of Jesus Himself (and if they were creations of the early church, they are quite unlike anything else that the early church created). Nor is there any tension between statements of God’s love and warnings of God’s judgment. If this is a problem for us, it certainly was not for them: compare John 3:16–21. Perhaps this is why many advocates of universalism abandon the attempt to argue their case from the Bible at all. N. T. Wright, “Towards a Biblical View of Universalism,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 54–55.

If we were to maintain, on the basis of the word ‘all’ in Romans 5 and 11, that Paul was a universalist, we would do so in the teeth of (eg) Romans 2:6–16, 14:11–12 and such other passages as 2 Thessalonians 2:7–10. Nor will it do to say that Paul had not thought through the implications of Romans 5: the epistle is far too tight-knit for that. Chapter 5 as it stands is flanked by the long section on justification by faith (3:21–4:25) and the presentation of ‘being in Christ’, of baptismal participation in His death and resurrection, and its results (chapters 6–8). On the one side, faith as the sine qua non of justification: on the other, membership of the professing community as the assurance of salvation. Nor can Romans 5 be detached from this context, as though it (or at any rate vv. 12–21) were a separate excursus put in here but unrelated to the context. It is a careful bridge-passage, taking up and making more precise the themes of chapters 1–4 (universal sin: the law: grace: the righteousness of God seen in the obedient life and death of Jesus Christ: the resultant justification and life which, in chapters 1–4, are for believers) and so arranging these themes that they can be used again throughout chapters 6–8, in the anthropology which leads from man-in-the-flesh to man-in-the-Christ, man-in-the Spirit. Man-in-Christ enters the sphere of Christ delineated precisely by 5:12–21: indeed, 6:15–18, with its personifications of ‘obedience’ and ‘righteousness’, can only be understood if 5:12–21 is presupposed. Whatever 5:12–21 is asserting, it simply cannot contradict chapters 1–4 and 6–8.

But if that is so, ‘all’ in this passage simply cannot mean ‘all individual human beings without exception’. If Paul had meant that, he should have torn up the letter and begun again from scratch. We can, however, find an alternative explanation without either forced exegesis or special pleading. Again the context is the clue. The point Paul has been making all along since 1:5 (see particularly 1:16–17, 2:9–11, 3:21–4:25) is that all men, Jew and Gentile alike, stand on a level before God. All alike are in sin; all alike can only be justified through faith. Chapter 4 in particular stresses that Abraham’s true family are not just Jews according to the flesh, the possessors of circumcision and the law, but the worldwide community of the faithful. That point being established, Paul can move on in 5:12ff. to show how Christ’s faithful people enjoy the blessings that flow from Jesus’ undoing of the sin of Adam. But his eye is still on the difference between Jew and Gentile—or rather, on the fact that this distinction has been done away in Christ. That is the significance of the references to the law in 5:13–14, 20. Within this context, the correct gloss to put on ‘all men’ in vv. 12, 18 is not ‘all men individually’ but ‘Jews and Gentiles alike’. If further definition is required, it appears in v. 17: ‘those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness through the one man Jesus Christ’.

N. T. Wright, “Towards a Biblical View of Universalism,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 55–56.

If we were to maintain, on the basis of the word ‘all’ in Romans 5 and 11, that Paul was a universalist, we would do so in the teeth of (eg) Romans 2:6–16, 14:11–12 and such other passages as 2 Thessalonians 2:7–10. Nor will it do to say that Paul had not thought through the implications of Romans 5: the epistle is far too tight-knit for that. Chapter 5 as it stands is flanked by the long section on justification by faith (3:21–4:25) and the presentation of ‘being in Christ’, of baptismal participation in His death and resurrection, and its results (chapters 6–8). On the one side, faith as the sine qua non of justification: on the other, membership of the professing community as the assurance of salvation. Nor can Romans 5 be detached from this context, as though it (or at any rate vv. 12–21) were a separate excursus put in here but unrelated to the context. It is a careful bridge-passage, taking up and making more precise the themes of chapters 1–4 (universal sin: the law: grace: the righteousness of God seen in the obedient life and death of Jesus Christ: the resultant justification and life which, in chapters 1–4, are for believers) and so arranging these themes that they can be used again throughout chapters 6–8, in the anthropology which leads from man-in-the-flesh to man-in-the-Christ, man-in-the Spirit. Man-in-Christ enters the sphere of Christ delineated precisely by 5:12–21: indeed, 6:15–18, with its personifications of ‘obedience’ and ‘righteousness’, can only be understood if 5:12–21 is presupposed. Whatever 5:12–21 is asserting, it simply cannot contradict chapters 1–4 and 6–8.

But if that is so, ‘all’ in this passage simply cannot mean ‘all individual human beings without exception’. If Paul had meant that, he should have torn up the letter and begun again from scratch. We can, however, find an alternative explanation without either forced exegesis or special pleading. Again the context is the clue. The point Paul has been making all along since 1:5 (see particularly 1:16–17, 2:9–11, 3:21–4:25) is that all men, Jew and Gentile alike, stand on a level before God. All alike are in sin; all alike can only be justified through faith. Chapter 4 in particular stresses that Abraham’s true family are not just Jews according to the flesh, the possessors of circumcision and the law, but the worldwide community of the faithful. That point being established, Paul can move on in 5:12ff. to show how Christ’s faithful people enjoy the blessings that flow from Jesus’ undoing of the sin of Adam. But his eye is still on the difference between Jew and Gentile—or rather, on the fact that this distinction has been done away in Christ. That is the significance of the references to the law in 5:13–14, 20. Within this context, the correct gloss to put on ‘all men’ in vv. 12, 18 is not ‘all men individually’ but ‘Jews and Gentiles alike’. If further definition is required, it appears in v. 17: ‘those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness through the one man Jesus Christ’. N. T. Wright, “Towards a Biblical View of Universalism,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 55–56.

It begins with God’s promise to Abraham, that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. God has chosen to save the world through Abraham’s family, and supremely (of course) in the true seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ (see Galatians 3 and Romans 4). For Paul, the cardinal sin of the Jews was that national pride and ‘boasting’ which turned the vocation of being a light to the Gentiles into a racial privilege. This universal promise is based on the fact that God is one, as was (and is) confessed daily by the pious Jew in the ‘Shema’ (Rom. 3:29–30: cf. Deut. 6:4ff.). Thus, any suggestion that there is more than one way of salvation is not merely an attack on the uniqueness of Jesus Christ (as we see, for example, in the work of John Hick), but also contains the implication that there is more than one God. N. T. Wright, “Towards a Biblical View of Universalism,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (1978): 57–58.