David Congdon, "Paul, Evangelicals & The Problem of Universalism"

David is quickly becoming a blogger that I keep returning to. Like a bad habit. Here are his thoughts about the aforementioned title. He's got a book coming out on Universalism, and he works at IVP. He's a charming fellow. Go check him out.

Congdon:

1. The Problem: Rom. 5:12-21

Few passages have exercised such a profound influence on the shape of Christian theology as Rom. 5:12-21. Moreover, as William Barclay notes, “no passage is more difficult for a modern mind to understand”[1]—though, of course, not only modern minds. The famous so-called Adam-Christ typology in these verses has vexed interpreters for centuries, particularly the universal dimension of “πάντας ἀνθρώπους” (Rom 5:12). In his treatise, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” Augustine states that Paul does not mean “that Christ removes to life all those who die in Adam.” He then offers this interpretation:

[Paul] said “all” and “all,” because, as without Adam no one goes to death, so without Christ no man to life. Just as we say of a teacher of letters, when he is alone in a town: This man teaches all their learning; not because all the inhabitants take lessons, but because no man who learns at all is taught by any but him.[2]

Calvin, for his part, offers the standard Protestant interpretation in his commentary:

[T]he benefit of Christ does not come to all men, while Adam has involved his whole race in condemnation; and the reason of this is indeed evident; for as the curse we derive from Adam is conveyed to us by nature, it is no wonder that it includes the whole mass; but that we may come to a participation of the grace of Christ, we must be ingrafted in him by faith.[3]

Augustine and Calvin reflect the general consensus of the Christian tradition, which has insisted that passages such as Rom. 5:12-21 and 1 Cor. 15:21-22 are not to be interpreted as favoring a universal salvation.

Recently, the issue has become more acute among English-speaking Protestant evangelicals, who have been unimpressed with the options historically available to them: (1) a so-called Arminianism which locates salvation anthropologically in the free decision for Christ, and (2) a so-called Augustinianism-Calvinism which locates salvation in the decretum absolutum of double predestination. Two notable examples of this ongoing conversation include Universal Salvation? The Current Debate,[4] which takes its cue from the work of philosopher Thomas Talbott, especially his book, The Inescapable Love of God,[5] and The Evangelical Universalist,[6] a recent pseudonymous publication that seeks to offer a biblically grounded position on universal salvation. In these works, as well as in other articles, Rom. 5:12-21 is a central passage. While patristic theologians like Origen[7] and Gregory of Nyssa[8] and modern theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar[9] are frequently mentioned, Karl Barth is often at the center of these discussions both as a theologian and as an exegete. Barth is often accused of (or praised for) being a universalist, generally with reference to his later theology post-Church Dogmatics II/2.[10] Few, however, consider Barth’s exegetical insights into Rom. 5. By first examining the arguments for and against a universalist interpretation of Rom. 5:12-21, I argue that while Barth’s interpretation of Romans does justice to the central concerns of each side in his formulation of a dialectical anthropology in the “shadow” of a “consistent eschatology,”[11] there are certain aspects to the Pauline text itself which Barth does not touch upon that are important in the debate over universalism.

Footnotes:

1. William Barclay, The Letter to the Romans (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), 78.

2. Augustine, “On Marriage and Concupiscence,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1.5 (New York: Christian Literature Publishing, 1886), Book II.46, 302.

3. Commentary on Rom. 5:17.

4. Robin A. Parry and Christopher H. Partridge, eds., Universal Salvation? The Current Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

5. Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God (Parkland: Universal Publishers, 1999).

6. Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2006).

7. See Origen, On First Principles, trans. G. W. Butterworth (London: SPCK, 1936).

8. See Gregory of Nyssa, The Catechetical Oration of Gregory of Nyssa (Early Church Classics), trans. J. H. Srawley (London: SPCK, 1917); On the Soul and the Resurrection (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2.5), trans. W. Moore (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988). See also M. Ludlow, Universal Salvation: Eschatology in the Thought of Gregory of Nyssa and Karl Rahner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

9. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope ‘That all Men be Saved?’ with A Short Discourse on Hell (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).

10. Oliver Crisp, in particular, has presented a cogent argument for why Barth’s theological positions in the Church Dogmatics necessitates universalism. Of course, on purely logical grounds, Crisp is entirely right. But of course Barth’s concern for divine sovereignty and his rejection of human logic as the highest value in theology prevents him from drawing the conclusion of universalism. See Oliver D. Crisp, “On Barth’s Denial of Universalism,” Themelios 29:1 (2003), 18-29.

11. See Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909-1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 207-40. 

For my part, Romans 5 is quickly becoming the standard text by which Universalists stake their claim. Talbott offers his opening argument based on the exegesis of Romans 5, though it should be noted that Robin Parry builds his (cogent and compelling) case around Colossions 1:15-20.

Also, having just read David's opening, I'll confess that I simply don't know what to do with Romans 5. I will read through the remainder of his arguments and see what happens.

Something else I am considering (and this would have to be explained via a scholar like Parry, Talbott and Condgon) is Paul's use of 'anthropos' in Romans 5. Is he referring to simply humanity (or specifically a human being) or is it more specific? 'Anthropos' seems to have a wide lexical use, and doesn't necessarily mean the "historical" Adam. Could it just mean "human?" Or is Paul singling out the "original" human, Adam? We shall see what happens. I'm loving this so far.

Fan boy moment: I also own Barth's commentary on Romans. I shall read his section on Romans 5 and see what comes about.

For the entire post, enjoy it here.

--Nick

Evangelicals and weak views on Baptism

As someone who has no interest in the baptism debate, this was a nice little post to wake up and read.

Robin Parry:

It has always seemed to me that evangelicals have a very take-it-or-leave-it approach to baptism. Indeed, so much so that when we preach the gospel the message is reduced to "repent and believe the gospel" and baptism does not so much as get a look in.

I suspect that the reason is that evangelicalism has always been transdenominational and evangelicals from different denoiminations have differing views on whether babies can be baptised. We have decided to set aside such issues for the sake of evangelical unity. As a result you will never hear the likes of Billy Graham say, in NT fashion, "Believe and be baptized."

But because baptism is now politely removed from evangelical understandings of how one responds to the gospel evangelicals struggle to know what to do with it.

 For the rest, enjoy it here.

--Nick

Deconstructing "Hellbound?"

I'll confess, I'm generally not a fan of documentaries. I had to sit through several of them while at Biola, and I always found time to twiddle my thumbs and pretty much ignore everything else.

Well, Hellbound? is the first documentary that both moved me and annoyed me to no end.

Allow me to explain.

Rob Bell's Love Wins brought about a major shift in the tone of evangelicalism. Some reacted, some reconsidered. But a conversation began, starting with a multitude of books and blog posts denouncing Rob Bell. Even the SBC got involved, affirming their commitment to eternal conscious torment. So, clearly, a differing view of hell sparked enough of a debate to warrant intelligent conversation on the topic of eternal damnation.

Writer/Director Kevin Miller takes us on a journey that deals with his own personal struggles with eternal conscious torment, and the idea that God would send/allow some to go to hell. His encounters involve laymen such as the "God hates fags" protestors outside the 9/11 memorial, to famous and controversial pastors such as Mark Driscoll and Brian McLaren. They all offer varying ideas, some of them quite extreme and others predictably toeing the traditional party line.

However, after setting the stage with what is at stake, the film takes a far more intellectual route, dealing with philosophy of religion, ethics, retributive justice and the meaning/s of the word "hell" in Scripture. Kevin marshals ample resources in the form of Brad Jersak, Sharon Baker and Michael Hardin. Greg Boyd makes several appearances to offer his clear perspective on things, but Robin Parry (one of my favorite scholars) has some a very wise perspective he offers. The interview is revealing, and quite profound in it's implications.

Though the film is somber and serious, there are some amusing moments in regards to prominent pastors screaming, and some charming anecdotes from Michael Hardin. It doesn't smack of the cheap editing tricks of "Religulous" but some/many may find them offensive anyway.

What annoyed me most about Hellbound? is the same thing that annoys me when I watch the evening news or listen to talk radio. Like I was, you will be tempted to yell at the screen and start arguing with a computer monitor. Hearing distinctions between theologies that I don't find compelling in the slightest really grated against my instincts. But this is to be expected.

You will be provoked, you will be challenged, and I do think you may be changed. The topic of hell can be extraordinarily divisive, but it would be a debate amongst Christians to conduct in love and respect. There is something in here to offend everyone, but none of it is intended to undermine or disrespect. Hellbound? offers much respect towards each view, though it does not shy away from revealing it's own conclusions on the matter. 

Like "Lord, Save Us From Your Followers," "Hellbound?" isn't interested in simple answers to complex questions. Indeed, many of the scholars and pastors interviewed are skeptical or hopeful or pessimistic about the state of the afterlife. You run the gamut between conservative evangelicals to progressives like Franky Schaeffer, and all have much to say on this topic. The finale of "Hellbound?" is deeply unsettling for some, but it is also moving and forthright.

The media hype about Rob Bell's Love Wins is nothing compared to the potential that Hellbound? is going to offer evangelical and progressive Christians. If Love Wins was a firestorm, Helbound? is a tactical nuclear strike and it's fallout will be felt for quite a long time.

Be open, be honest, and be prepared to have your buttons pushed.

I will post a more in-depth review once the film is released on September 21. You can check out the website for the film HERE.

--Nick

Kevin Miller, "Why I reject Free Will -- But Embrace Choice"

I've interviewed writer/director Kevin Miller for The Christian Manifesto, and I found this blog post quite interesting. Check check check it out. ;)

As regular readers of this blog know, my investigation into the doctrine of hell has made me rather skeptical of the notion of free will. That is, I find it virtually impossible to conceive of how a being that is neither omniscient nor omnipotent can ever make a choice that is not to some degree constrained by fear, ignorance, deception or bondage to self-destructive desires. Therefore, I can’t accept the idea that any of our choices are free in the sense that most people imagine them to be. Instead, I see our decisions as the product of a complex web of influences and experiences, most of which we are not consciously aware. So the notion that God would condemn anyone to an eternity in hell as punishment for decisions made under such circumstances seems the height of injustice.

Now, you might want to challenge this assertion by arguing that history offers overwhelming evidence that human beings are free to do pretty much anything their minds can dream up. For example, you might argue that I’m perfectly free to commit murder right now, just as millions of people before me have done. And I would have to agree with you that, yes, despite various hockey-related injuries, I am physically capable of taking the life of another human being at this moment. But this is where the agreement ends, because to my way of thinking, ability does not equal freedom.

Think about it: Could the decision to carry out a murder ever be considered a free choice? If so, we would have to point to someone like Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik as a paragon of freedom. But I don’t see anyone doing that. Instead, the more Breivik describes his motives, the more we realize the depth of his depraved thinking. His killing spree wasn’t an example of freedom in action. Instead, his actions merely confirm that murder is always driven by one or more of the following factors: fear, ignorance, deception, self-destructive desires or mental illness. I would argue that the same can be said for virtually any destructive or self-destructive behavior you can imagine. None of these acts are the product of a free will. Instead, they are symptomatic of a will in bondage.

A few other objections typically come up at this point:

1) If our choices aren’t free, then they aren’t actually choices. Everything we do is determined. We’re just playing out a script.

No rational person can deny the fact that human beings make choices. We make hundreds of them each day. So jettisoning the idea of free will does not require us to ditch the idea of choice. Instead, it’s a matter of asking what might be influencing or even determining our choices. Once again, I’m suggesting it’s virtually impossible to answer that question in an ultimate sense or to come up with an example of a choice that isn’t somehow constrained by fear, ignorance, deception or bondage to self-destructive desires.

Think back to the story of the Fall in Genesis, for example. The decision to eat the forbidden fruit was the direct result of deception—which was made possible by ignorance. When the serpent initially tempted Eve by casting aspersions on God’s motives, apparently she didn’t know enough about God to counter his accusations, so she trusted the serpent more than God and ate the fruit. You could also say that the serpent played on the couple’s self-destructive desire for autonomy—ironically, upon their desire to be “free” agents unconstrained by God or each other! As soon as they realized what they’d done, fear entered the picture, prompting yet more irrational behavior. Would you really want to call any of these decisions free?

Another example, one of the most important choices we ever make—the decision to get married. What motivates this decision? And what motivates the choosing of a particular spouse? At the most fundamental level I can say that you probably don’t recall choosing your sexual orientation. Instead, for as long as you can remember, you were simply attracted to one gender or the other—or in some cases, both. (And this is to say nothing about whether sexual orientation is a product of nature or nurture. Either way, the choice was out of your hands.)

Second, I can say your choice of a spouse was definitely constrained by ignorance of all the potential people you could have married—seeing as you probably didn’t take the time to speed date with every potential candidate on the face of the earth. I’m not sure if I want to comment on how fear, deception or self-destructive desires might bear on such a decision, but I’ve already demonstrated that even though this choice isn’t completely free, it’s still a real choice. You made a decision. You got married. For better or worse.

Incidentally, by rejecting free will, I’m not going to the other extreme and arguing that every choice we make is done in a state of complete bondage. Clearly, some choices are better than others. The freer you are from fear, ignorance, deception and self-destructive desires, the better your choices will be. So it’s not an either/or case here—total freedom vs. total bondage. It’s a matter of recognizing that all choices are made along a continuum of freedom. As psychologist Richard Beck puts it, rather than talk about free will vs. no free will, it’s better to think about it in terms of strong vs. weak volitional capacity.

2) If our choices aren’t free, then they don’t really matter.

Try telling that to your spouse! Even if our choices aren’t free, they still matter, because every decision we make affects not only ourselves but others as well. This is why I find abandoning the notion of free will so helpful, because instead of diminishing the consequences of our choices, it actually gives us a far greater understanding of their meaning. Rather than see ourselves as islands floating out in the middle of the ocean, we are able to dive down deep where we see that even islands connect to the mainland eventually. The appearance of separateness is merely an illusion. In the same way, we are all connected through a chain of cause-and-effect that stretches back into the past, forward into the future and in every direction in the present. There’s nothing we can do that won’t somehow enhance or disrupt the flow of energy and information across this vast web of relationships. With so much riding on every decision, there’s even more reason to ensure we are making the best possible choices—creating the best possible causes—so that our actions produce the most constructive effects. That means doing everything we can to minimize the distorting effects of fear, ignorance, deception and bondage to self-destructive desires. The less bearing those influences have on our decisions, the freer our decisions will be.

Alternatively, if you want to hold onto the notion of yourself as a free agent—an “un-caused cause,” so to speak—then you’re really seeking the same thing Adam and Eve were after when they ate the forbidden fruit. You’re also arguing that you can make decisions that are completely independent of your history and your environment—in other words, decisions that are completely isolated from the two biggest shapers of your identity. That hardly seems rational, because what exactly is motivating those choices then?

Also, seeing as you’re arguing that you are capable of making choices that are completely independent of your history and environment, then everyone else must be in the same boat. That means you also have to argue that your choices couldn’t possibly influence or determine the behavior of others, which is essentially a denial of reality.

3) If our choices aren’t free, then we don’t bear any responsibility for them.

I’ll concede this objection in part, but only to prove a larger point. It’s true that once we begin to see ourselves not as autonomous agents acting independent of our environment but as interconnected nodes in a vast network of influences, the notion of holding individuals solely responsible for their behavior begins to break down. Instead, we start to see sick individuals as the product of a sick system. This isn’t to excuse individual acts of deviance. It seems reasonable to hold those closest to the deviant act most responsible for the deviant behavior. But I fear we have gone too far in the opposite direction, where our entire legal apparatus has become a systematic denial of responsibility for the welfare of our fellow human. When someone commits a crime, rather than ask how our actions or indifference may have helped create an environment conducive to the deviant behavior, we focus almost exclusively on seeking retribution against the offender. By vilifying individuals, we can conveniently look past our own moral failings, which pale in comparison to the monstrous behavior of the offender, thus enhancing our sense of self-righteousness.

This leads us back to the traditional Western doctrine of hell. Rather than recognize the interconnectedness of humankind and the complexity of causation that goes into each and every decision, it seems to be premised on the notion that human beings are isolated monads who will be held solely responsible for their actions in some eternal sense. As I’ve sought to demonstrate above, such a doctrine is very difficult to square with reason and experience. And that should motivate us to ask whether or not we’ve interpreted the Bible correctly on these matters.

As I’ve no doubt illustrated more than once, I’m not much of a philosopher, but I do recognize a good argument when I see one. Perhaps the best version of the argument I’ve tried to make above is put forward by philosopher Eric Reitan in the book Universal Salvation? The Current Debate. Eric’s contribution is called “Human Freedom and the Impossibility of Eternal Damnation,” and its by far the best rebuttal of the free will defense of hell I’ve ever read. I can’t recommend this book or Eric’s chapter enough, so I’ll leave you with a taste to whet your appetite:

In order for a choice to qualify as truly free, the person making the choice needs two things: First, a full and adequate understanding of the nature of the choice (as [Thomas] Talbott puts it, freedom from all ignorance and deception); second, freedom from any bondage to desire (more precisely, bondage to sinful desires that the person is powerless to resist). But anyone who understands the options and is free from bondage to desire would have no more motive to reject God’s offer, and every motive to accept it. Furthermore, we never freely choose what we have no motive to choose and every motive not to choose. Hence, it is incoherent to speak of someone freely choosing damnation. Anyone who does choose damnation must therefore lack genuine freedom. God could save them by removing their ignorance, deception or bondage to desire—thereby restoring (not interfering with) their freedom.

Miller/Hellbound?

Check out the entire book of Universal Salvation. Eric Reitan and Jerry Wall's responses to Talbott, and his concluding remarks in return are worth their weight in the $19 I paid for them. Of course, reading Marshall and Talbott spare was a treat as well.

--Nick

Is Rob Bell a Universalist?

No.

It's been over a year, so I figured addressing this would be a nice circular return to form.

He's an Arminian inclusivist who believes in the possibility of post-mortem salvation, and hopes that all people will be saved. Universalism seems to demand a specific level of certainty. Meaning all will eventually be saved. Keith DeRose contacted me and offered a unique and challenging perspective, in that "hopeful" universalism seems to be a personal preference or feeling, rather than an objective view of the data.

Instead of certain, I offer "highly probably" universalism as the best way to define "certain" universalism. "Hopeful" universalism will be termed "possible" universalism from this point forth.

I think Thomas Talbott, Eric Reitan, Robin Parry, Jurgen Moltmann, George MacDonald and Keith DeRose are "highly probable" universalists.

I think Rob Bell is not a universalist, but he believes it is possible. Possibility does not seem to grant universalism. It merely presents it as an option. That is all Rob Bell did. Presented an option and stepped back.

Rob Bell is not certain of whether or not all will be saved. He has said that the afterlife in regards to heaven/hell is speculative. But he hopes all will be saved, and he is open to think it is possible. But he is not certain, and since he cannot be certain, to tag him with the label is simply incorrect. Most "highly probable" universalists will correct you on the label as well.

No need to read anymore into his book. If you want universalism, read the above mentioned gentlemen. Besides Rob Bell, of course. The literature offered by the above gentlemen (particularly Moltmann and MacDonald) is quite compelling.

Arminian.

Inclusivist.

Postmortem salvation.

And I think only one of those labels (arminian/inclusivist/postmortem salvation) is incorrect. I'll be like Bell and maintain some level of certain cheekiness by not saying which one.

And

That's

How

This

Blog

Post

Ends.

--Nick

C.S. Lewis & George MacDonald, "The Nature of Christian Faith" part II

This article was offered for free by author Thomas Talbott on his website. It is from the anthology "All Shall be Well; Explorations in Universal Salvation and Theology, From Origen to Moltmann," edited by Robin Parry (or Gregory MacDonald, as he was known).

This post will cover pages four through nine, and continue in the essay written by Thomas Talbott on my favorite deceased theologian, George MacDonald.

Universal Salvation in the Theology of George MacDonald (1824-1905) by Thomas Talbott

Although MacDonald was never shy about challenging the prevailing theological doctrines of his day, sometimes with a surprising degree of harshness, he also denied that the proper purpose of teaching was to persuade others to conform their thinking to the teacher‘s own thinking. Instead, the sole purpose should be to acquaint people with the living Christ of the New Testament. As MacDonald himself put it: "I believe that no teacher should strive to make men think as he thinks, but [should instead strive] to lead them to the living Truth, to the Master himself, of whom alone they can learn anything, who will make them in themselves know what is true by the very seeing of it. I believe that the inspiration of the Almighty alone gives understanding. I believe that to be the disciple of Christ is the end of being; that to persuade men to be his disciples is the end of teaching."(13)

These words also illustrate the extent to which MacDonald adopted a Christocentric approach to revelation. Like Karl Barth whom he anticipated in this regard, he seems to have distinguished sharply between the incarnate Word of God, which is the light (or the true revelation) that comes into the world and enlightens every person, and the words of any human witness, such as John the Baptist, who might testify to the light.(14) As the incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ is the ultimate and final revelation from God, and everything else, including everything else in the Bible, must be interpreted in light of this ultimate and final revelation that, sooner or later, will enlighten every person. Faith is simply the obedient response to this revelation, and, as such, it can also be a reliable source of knowledge under the right conditions. In that one respect, at least, MacDonald‘s understanding of faith was similar to that of John Calvin, whose overall theology he passionately rejected. For even as Calvin held that "the only true faith is that which the Spirit of God seals in our hearts,"(15) so MacDonald held that "the inspiration of the Almighty alone gives understanding"; and even as Calvin held that certain convictions sealed in our hearts by the Spirit of God are "self-authenticating," so MacDonald held that "the Master" enables us to "know what is true by the very seeing of it."

By faith, for example, "we understand that the world was created by the word of God"(16) and we can know this, furthermore, without having to infer it from other propositions or from some body of evidence. Or, to express the point in a way familiar to contemporary philosophers, at least some of the truths known by faith are properly basic in Alvin Plantinga‘s sense.(17) In no way, however, did MacDonald identify saving faith with the possession of correct doctrine. Faith may be a source of knowledge, but it just is an obedient heart or a disposition to obey; and it "is the one terrible heresy of the church," MacDonald lamented, "that it has always been presenting something else than obedience as faith in Christ."(18) In particular, Christians too often confuse faith in Christ with an acceptance of certain theories or abstract doctrines about his nature and work, and they just as often confuse an absence of "correct" doctrine with an absence of faith. But like Kierkegaard, MacDonald held that an acceptance of correct doctrine is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition of saving faith.

It is not a sufficient condition, because accepting a particular theory carries no guarantee of obedience; and besides, "to hold a thing with the intellect," he insisted, "is not [even] to believe it [in the relevant sense]. A man‘s real belief is that which he lives by."(19) And neither is an acceptance of correct doctrine a necessary condition of saving faith, because one can have an obedient heart, a willingness to submit to the "true light, which enlightens everyone,"(20) without giving assent to any particular theory about the nature of Jesus Christ and his redemptive work. MacDonald even went so far as to suggest that an atheist might be closer to the Kingdom of God than a professing Christian: "It is better to be an atheist who does the will of God, than a so-called Christian who does not. . . . The doing of things from duty is but a stage on the road to the kingdom of truth and love."(21)Indeed, our theological opinions and theories, however correct they may be, might be the very thing that prevents us "from being Christians. For when you say that, to be saved, a man must hold this or that [theory], then are you leaving the living God and his will, and putting trust in some notion [such as a theory of atonement] about him or his will."(22) But our task, MacDonald contended, is simply to follow in obedience the one who died on our behalf and rose again in triumph; it is not to haggle over humanly devised theories about the way in which the death and resurrection of Christ successfully reconciles us to God.

Accordingly, a set of incorrect theological opinions, honestly and humbly held, could no more condemn someone than a set of correct opinions, held apart from a transformed heart, could successfully save someone. But if that is true, then in what sense, exactly, is faith also a source of knowledge? MacDonald‘s rather nuanced answer includes an appeal to Philippians 3:15–16, wherein Paul wrote: "Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything [my emphasis] this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained." Commenting on this text, MacDonald wrote: "Observe what widest conceivable scope is given by the apostle to honest opinion, even in things of grandest import!—the one only essential point with him is, that whereto we have attained, what we have seen to be true, we walk by that."(23) So faith (or an obedient heart) is indeed, MacDonald contended, the principle instrument through which God imparts spiritual understanding and a knowledge of himself. But whatever light now dawns in our understanding, whatever ultimate truths we now discern (however faintly), and whatever obligations we now acknowledge, we must allow that to penetrate our hearts and to transform us. We must, in other words, own up to whatever light we have. When we follow that light in obedience and thereby submit to it, the Spirit will inevitably enable us to see farther and wider.

We thus approach what I (and many others) have found to be the single most refreshing aspect of MacDonald‘s approach to religion. He recognized that we must all proceed from where we now are in our respective spiritual journeys, and he saw no virtue in trying to suppress honest doubt or in ignoring moral qualms concerning, say, a widely accepted interpretation of the Bible. Such bad faith, as he saw it, is the very antithesis of a genuine faith in Christ. "Do not try to believe anything," he thus exhorted, "that affects you as darkness. Even if you mistake and refuse something true thereby, you will do less wrong to Christ by such a refusal than you would by accepting as his what you can see only as darkness."(24) Granted, what a given person sees as darkness at a particular time may depend on a host of cultural and individual factors, perhaps even on a confusion of one kind or another. Even MacDonald‘s own teachings, he would have acknowledged, may affect some as darkness. But with respect to any genuine revelation from God, it "is impossible," he believed, that "you are seeing a true, a real thing—seeing it as it is, I mean—if it looks to you darkness."(25)

Imagine yourself, by way of illustration, a simple peasant with no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, little knowledge of the Bible‘s historical background, and no access to scholarly works on the Bible. Imagine further that, even though you believe in your heart that racism and slavery are terrible evils, you should find yourself utterly unable to refute, exegetically, your pastor‘s racist interpretation of the curse of Ham or his appeal to Paul in support of institutional slavery. And imagine, finally, that your pastor should then play his trump card: an appeal to original sin in an effort to knock you off your moral convictions, as if sin would more likely corrupt your deeply rooted moral convictions than it would his interpretation of Scripture. How should you then respond in the face of your pastor‘s seemingly superior knowledge of the Scriptures and his injunction to bow humbly before them (as he interprets them, of course)? MacDonald‘s counsel on such matters was clear: Hold on to your moral convictions, treat them as part of the light that the Word of God has brought into the world, and do not "let your cowardly conscience receive any word as light because another calls it light, while it looks to you dark. Say either the thing is not what it seems, or God never said or did it. But, of all evils, to misinterpret what God does, and then say the thing as interpreted must be right because God does it, is of the devil."(26)

To be continued.

--Nick

Footnotes:
12 "The Child in the Midst." In Unspoken Sermons, 15. Unspoken Sermons was originally published in three series in 1867, 1885, and 1889 in London by Longmans, Green & Co.
13 MacDonald, "Justice." In Unspoken Sermons , 536.
14 See John 1:1– 9. Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations from the Bible will be from the New Revised Standard Version copyrighted in 1989 by the National Council of Churches in the United States of America.
15 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion , Bk. 1, Ch. viii, Sec. 5.
16 Heb 11:3.
17 See Plantinga, "Warranted Christian Belief", ch. 8. According to Plantinga, ―gospel truths resemble self "evident propositions" in the same respect that "perceptual and memory beliefs" resemble them. That is, "They are evident, but don‘t get their evidence from other propositions; they have their evidence in themselves (and not by way of inference from other propositions" (Ibid., 262). 

18 "The Truth in Jesus." In Unspoken Sermons , 393.
19 Ibid., 390.
20 John 1:9.
21 MacDonald, Paul Faber, Surgeon , 25.
22 "The Truth in Jesus." In Unspoken Sermons , 390– 91.
23 Ibid., 410.
24 From Rolland Hein‘s edited version of "Light" in George MacDonald: Creation in Christ, 42. I choose this edited version because MacDonald‘s use of "thee," "thou," "thy," and some older linguistic forms in the paragraph from which the quotation is lifted could be distracting to some readers.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.

Robin Parry's "All Shall be Well," a review

Howdy folks. For those looking for a historical perspective on the Christians who believed in Universal Salvation, look no further. This is the definitive book.

And here is a review of it.

Theological Scribbles

--Nick

"I Deny the Resurrection. . ."

Listen on. Very thought provoking perspective by Peter Rollins. Much thanks to Robin Parry for posting this little gem:

Theological Scribbles: "I Deny the Resurrection. . . "

Not what you thought, huh. The power of a provocative title. ;-)

--Nick