Perspectives on Pluralism, Universal Salvation and the Love of God

Universalism is the belief that after death everyone will have salvation no matter what their religion, denomination, actions, or beliefs. It is unorthodox in mainstream Christian churches because scripture seems to contain explicit passages about hell for those who have not “accepted Christ as their personal savior.” The idea of universal salvation has come into the foreground in recent years due to globalization and subsequent contact with those of other faiths. In the past, it was easy to dismiss other religions located across the world, but people can no longer ignore the plurality of religion. They begin to question the “unique” belief structure that their society has built: whose god is true? Would God send most of the world to hell because they were born in the “wrong” time and place or haven’t repeated a formula for salvation? What makes me more enlightened than other earnest people of another tradition?

 

Those who question the traditional doctrine of hell see the inconsistency between a God who is on one hand loving and on the other damning. The topic of universal salvation is hotly contested within the religious world. Eastern religions have no problem affirming that God is at work universally, in whatever tradition one is born into. They liken the religions to alternate paths leading to the same summit, or different lamps with the same light. Monotheistic traditions are more apt to hold on to the particularity of their religions; they believe letting go of exclusive claim on truth undoes the whole basis of their religion. Christianity uses three boxes to outline possibilities about the fate of non-Christians: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. Exclusivism emphasizes acceptance of Christ and holds that explicit belief in him is the only escape from hell. Inclusivism says Christ is the only Truth, but salvation is available to others in spite of their religion because God knows their hearts. Pluralism holds all religions to be equally valid paths to God; each contains part of the truth of the divine but not the whole puzzle.

 

The smartest theologians and philosophers cannot agree on the issue of universal salvation, yet it haunts us. People cannot reason their way to God without trusting their experience as well. The infinite cannot be placed in human categories or understood by finite minds, so it is ridiculous to base our opinions solely on “fact.” Those who want to build an airtight case based on the “facts” in the Bible forget that it was written from people’s human experiences of the divine! Every religion was born from an intimate encounter with the Beyond, and humans have gradually built belief structures around that encounter. If we don’t let the power of experience transform rigid belief, we deny the holy spirit’s ability to speak to us. The Bible is a collection of stories where God spoke to a person in order to bring change. There are scripture passages that both support and deny the universalism idea-- we could argue the point indefinitely. There does seem to be one repetitive theme amid passages about hell, however; God is love, is infinitely patient, and wills that everyone be saved. If he desires the salvation of everyone, I believe he will accomplish it. The other alternatives are God as executioner or God enslaved to a “divine justice system” where God wants to save us but is somehow bound by law. Many justify their belief in hell by claiming God gives humans the free will to choose their fate. He does not send them to hell. But in this model, death would have the final victory over God. We are allowed to reject God’s grace, but we cannot separate ourselves from his love. An analogy for this is a child who runs away from home. Her parents cannot take care of her, but she still can’t stop them from loving her. Once a person eventually grasps the depth of God’s love for them, it is nearly impossible to reject grace. Perhaps it happens in life, perhaps after death. When the crowd crucified Jesus, we rejected the grace of God. But God didn’t accept our rejection; he revealed in the resurrection that he has nothing to do with death or violence or the order of this world. He loves us enough to show us a new path of love and reconciliation.

 

Based on an experience of God I had recently, I am convinced that God does and will do the most loving thing in every situation, no matter what it may be. I am not convinced one way or the other about “doctrines” of heaven and hell; are they literal places? Perhaps hell is a place of refining, holy fire where the “false self” is consumed by God’s love. Perhaps it exists figuratively on earth in the evil we commit, in the times we reject God’s grace and in the painful process of being drawn nearer to the divine and further from selfish ambition.  In this model, salvation is fluid—a process of being humbled and called away from the things that burden our planet-- violence, war, and oppression. It is not an altar call or a single sinner’s prayer. Perhaps hell is exactly as traditionalists envision it, but without finality. It’s even possible that there is no afterlife, although that is hard to conceive. I don’t know for certain about inclusivism or pluralism either, only that God is bigger than we know, and his work is not limited by our human constructions of religion. God wills that all creatures come to a closer understanding of him, and works tirelessly like a shepherd searching for their lost sheep so that we might draw near. God does not discriminate against Greek or Jew, Christian or Hindu. His love covers all. I believe he whispers, “Come. Follow me,” so gently that eventually we want to, universally. 

  Sarah Grimes

The Wife

Resolutely she dropped

her clod of earth onto the coffin lid. A life

ended, not finished. Cut short before the work

could be completed. Now, she the Wife

must carry on, despite the stifling heat of day.

 

Gone is the sense of awe

at the sight of wealth and gold

like a fools paradise she watches as it fades away.

 

Down he sinks like a stone cast into the sea

soon invisible to the eye in the gently waving reeds.

Into that realm she will not follow; here among the known  

pleasures and petty pastimes of earth she must abide.

  Hannah Baker

Dan Russ on Cizik and Chivian

In the spirit of “critical loyalty,” I offer the following reflections on the convocation presentations of Richard Cizik and Eric Chivian. I emphasize loyalty because I affirm their passion to address the very real problem of environmental degradation including global warming, and I am grateful for their willingness to forge a friendship and, hopefully, cooperation for creation care between the scientific community and Evangelical Christians.

However, I was disappointed in three aspects of the presentations. First, Chivian’s cogent and compelling description of his work on both the nuclear and environmental issues clearly explained in layman’s terms the current state of the environment and the urgency to attend to healing it. However, like most scientists, his presentation lacked the humility of the mea culpa that confesses that modern science and scientists are major contributors to creating the environmental crisis. Without their discoveries and often-blind manipulation of the natural world, we could not have damaged creation as much as we have. I know that most of the damage that they have helped create arises from unintended consequences and, in my opinion, a bit of hubris that what we can do we should do. I also think that some of this blindness arises from the hyper specialization of modern sciences that precludes or ignores the need for scientists to be educated to think systemically, historically, philosophically, politically, and ethically. In short, while I know and regret that many evangelicals and others distrust scientists because of the debate over origins, many thoughtful Christians distrust them because they were an integral apart of our unsustainable uses of fossil fuels, plastics, and atomic energy, to name a few. I hope and trust that this shortsightedness and narrow-minded education is changing, but not unlike Wall Street, why do we think the folks who were very responsible for creating the mess should be trusted to clean it up? Even if they can justifiably blame government, military, and industry for abusing their scientific discoveries, what prevents current and future scientists from losing control of their work to future politicians, military leaders, and industrialists? Scientists should be honest enough to face as one of the “brutal facts” of our current crisis their responsibility in helping create it.

My second concern is that Cizik almost addressed Chivian’s quote of Carl Sagan that we are a dot at the edge of the galaxy and there is no one and nothing out there that will help us. Obviously, if Christians buy into such a cosmological and metaphysical naturalism, we deny not only the Creator but also the incarnation. For some reason, Cizik started to address this and then interrupted himself with a digression. Christians bring to this partnership with secular scientists—remember that there are believing scientists—something that the secularists cannot offer: hope. We do not believe we are alone in the universe and merely the top of the food chain. So we can embrace all of the good science and good public policy that can heal creation right alongside our secular partners and affirm to that creation that life is larger than “the planet” and the world is not an accident of time and space and chance.

Finally, I was disappointed that Cizik’s presentation was scattered, because his part of the story is important. What he did say about Evangelicals ignoring or even opposing the environmental movement rings true, but the way he did so sounded more like an impassioned and poorly prepared sermon than like a cogent and compelling discourse. Indeed, the contrast with Eric Chivian’s remarks reinforces Professor Karl Giberson’s concern that too few Christians in the sciences or who write and speak about scientific issues are as articulate as their secular counterparts.

These criticisms are intended not to diminish either the substance of their cause or the courage they have shown in leadership. I hope and pray for their success and that their tribe will increase.

Dan Russ, PhD - director of Center for Christian Studies and author of Flesh-and- Blood Jesus

THE GRAND OLD PARTY

THE GRAND OLD PARTY is in a grand old mess. With the defeat of John McCain in November, the Republican Party has been thrown into a tumultuous identity crisis. The Republican Party is faced with a choice: stay mired in uncertainty about their role in society or unify under some rallying banner to once again challenge the solidarity of the Democrats. That rallying banner will be defined by those who actually comprise the party and after 2008, that make-up may be shifting.

As a New Hampshirite and a white male attending a private Christian liberal arts college, I should have loved John McCain. And I did, voting for him on January 8^th to help him win the New Hampshire primary and rise from the ashes of a crumbling campaign. But McCain started to take on a distinctly different tone after the Republican convention. As PBS’ Frontline put it “Mr. Outsider was trying to become Mr. Insider.”  That shift rankled me; the reason why I voted for McCain in the primaries was precisely that he was an outsider, that he often spoke out against party bureaucracy, that he wasn’t an establishment candidate.

The self-described “foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution” actually tended to act more akin to Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Progressivism. Like Teddy Roosevelt, McCain had been a reforming thorn in the side of his own party. He was often co-sponsoring unpopular legislation with conservatives and heard publicly speaking out against Republican corruption or White House mismanagement. His blend of progressive, reform-minded, genuinely compassionate conservatism made perfect sense in light of Roosevelt’s legacy. Despite a July New York Times article detailing Theodore Roosevelt as McCain’s conservative model, the electorate as a whole never seemed to grasp this key model behind McCain’s story, and his own campaign never capitalized on that revealing rationale behind McCain’s brand of conservatism. What did get highlighted was the fact of—not the reasons for—McCain’s gadfly role in the GOP. And this is, ironically, what catapulted him onto the national stage and through his first two primary victories. The nation, as a whole, seemed sick of partisanship and especially of Bush. They were looking for change, nationally and even in the Republican Party. So outsider McCain won the spot for the inside position.

But by the waning days of summer, McCain found himself in trouble. He had gotten his candidacy by being a Maverick, now he was trying to adapt his message to invigorate the party base and keep the moderates. It wasn’t working. Competing against a well funded and highly moving candidate, McCain was struggling. And so McCain, along with his seemingly incoherent campaign, was left to resort to tactics that were, or at least were painted as, volatile and capricious. Advertisements run by the Obama campaign entitled “Erratic” and “Robocalls” began to attack the McCain campaign for reversals and diversionary schemes. As McCain the Candidate seemed to be slipping further and further from McCain the Maverick, these attack ads stuck in our minds and laid the groundwork for a migration of independents, moderates, and compassionate conservatives to the Obama ticket.

And so we faced the fractured McCain persona on November 4^th. I was left with a black felt-tip pen, mulling my options in my local high school gym voting booth for a long time. Was I really going to cast a vote against my primary favorite? But as a Christian, a moderate, and someone who aligns more with compassionate conservatism (as a political philosophy not as an election ploy crafted by Karl Rove), could I really vote for someone willing enough to pander to party fundamentalists that he appointed Sarah Palin as his Vice President? In the end the McCain I knew, the McCain New Hampshire knew, the Maverick, wasn’t really on the ballot. A lot of people came to that realization, maybe subconsciously, maybe gladly. I was a bit more saddened.

As I watched election night coverage and McCain giving his concession speech, I was struck by how liberated he seemed talking to that Arizona crowd. It mades sense, for in losing the campaign and ending his candidacy McCain was really freeing himself from the constraints that mavericks don’t live with easily. I sat for a while and wondered where this will go and what the Republicans are going to do next. Will Sarah Palin really become the face of the party, bringing fundamental conservatism and Reagan back? Or will the Republicans realize that their “base” was never really the far right, but the compassionate conservatives, the independent-minded moderates, the Rooseveltian progressives, the voters that gave Bush the presidency in 2000 and McCain the nomination in 2008? Faced with an energized and rejuvenated Democratic Party, The Grand Old Party better figure out soon what direction they are taking at this crossroads if they want to have a “Grand” 2012.

  Jon-Daniel Lavallee

D’Souza and Christian Apologetics (?)

Denish D’Souza v Christopher Hitchens hosted by Kings College, Manhattan

http://www.isi.org/lectures/flvplayer/lectureplayer.aspx?file=v000187_cicero_102207.flv

(a response to the debate by Kirk Vanacore)

Hitchens is a prominent, if not the most prominent, face of atheism. And it seems that D’Souza is attempting to be Hitchens’ antithetical persona: the face of Christian apologetics. His latest book, “What’s So Great About Christianity,” is a converse argument to Hitchens’ “God Is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything” and recently he opposed Hitchens in a public debate (linked above) on the benefits of Christianity. During the debate, Hitchens articulately presented a distorted view of Christianity and God and, unfortunately, D’Souza matched his inadequacy by skewing the history of Christianity and failing to acknowledge its devastating shortfalls. Moreover, his approach to Hitchens was an insufflate representation of our faith.

D’Souza argued that Christianity has been and remains a force for good in the world, crediting it with the concept of human dignity and the creation of liberal democracy. While Jesus did speak of man’s dignity and the early church was known for valuing and caring for unwanted children, the values behind liberal democracy are not intrinsic to Christianity. The Bible speaks of equality among in the church, but it did not advocate for political self-determination. As Hitchens points out, the Medieval Church upheld serfdom. D’Souza’s emphasis on the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trails betrays his bias as he fails to mention atrocities with higher causalities such as the Crusades or the Thirty Years War. The Thirty Years War was fought by post-Reformation religious factions who placed political ambitions under a banner of religion and subsequently killed an estimated thirty percent the Holy Roman Empire’s (Germany) population. Furthermore, he downplays the executions of the Spanish Inquisition in a utilitarian manor – as if the 2,000 murders were understandable, if not acceptable, carnage. (Not to mention the number tortured and forced into conversion.) He even suggests that the ends of the Inquisition – the spread of Christianity – justified the means.

Despite the sins of Christendom, Christianity contributed positively to the world. Christians have clothed the homeless, visited prisoners, fed the hungry. In addition, many advancements in science, art, literature and philosophy were made by Christians and funded by the church. The problem with D’Souza’s argument is that the greatness of Christianity hinges upon its truth. If Christianity is not true, than it is nothing but a fantastic story – a work of fiction through which we can derive, at most, inspiration – and it’s authors would simply be a hodgepodge of Hesiods and Homers to whom we would own only literary credit. The product of these stories would simply be a mixed bag of goods and evils. Furthermore, all of the good, and the bad, would be no more meaningful than any other religion, philosophy or way of life – including Hitchens’ secularism. Because of his failure to substantiate the truth Christianity, D’Souza fails at apologetics.

D’Souza opens the debate by saying that he would “try to answer [Hitchens’] attack by using the same tools of reason and skepticism and science and evidence that is the banner under which the atheist march.” While the Bible does instruct us to defend our faith, it presents a very different approach than answering anthem with logic and reason. Peter explains that we should “always be prepared to give an answer to anyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (1 Peter 3:15, NIV), but he prefaces this statement by explaining that we must “live in harmony,” “love as brothers,” “be companionate and humble” and not “repay evil for evil” (3:8-9). We are to incite questions about our hope and holiness and answer “with gentleness and respect” (3:15). Peter does not instruct us attack the non-believers philosophy, but to live with provocative hope. Hitchens describes the religious as people living in fear of God’s disapproval. And while this is distortion of the truth, the fact that Hitchens’ critique of Christianity resonates among the masses reveals that we have work to do. I would suggest that the appropriate answer to Hitchens will not be found in debates, but in the peculiar lives, lived with unworldly hope.