I’ve said before that most Calvinists enter the predestination door by way of Arminianism. That’s the path I, Jonathan Edwards, George Mueller, and R.C. Sproul took.
Arminians believe that God does not choose whom He will save. He loves everyone equally and everybody gets a fair shot at salvation. Those who don’t choose to will spend eternity in hell, but that’s their choice, not God’s.
That is, morally speaking, a more palatable belief system.
But Arminianism still doesn’t answer what I think is the deeper issue which both the predestination (Calvinist) and free will (Arminian) positions face. Calvinist pastor Tim Keller points to the deeper issue (though he doesn’t have an answer for it) as he tries to address an objection to predestination in the following way:
If you believe in election, doesn’t that leave you with the problem of why God doesn’t choose to save everyone?
Yes, but the same is true for Christians who don’t believe in election. Election doesn’t create the problem, it only leads us to think about it. To deny the doctrine of election does not help you escape the issue. All Christians have this problem, and so we cannot object to election by appealing to it. The person who does not believe in election has the same problem:
(a) God wants everybody saved.
(b) God could save everyone.
(c) God does not.
The question still remains, therefore: Why not? That is the ultimate mystery, but abandoning the doctrine of election does not answer it.
Though I disagree with him on one of his presuppositions, Keller has a point here. Arminians are faced with the same dark question that Calvinists are. It’s the question that drove me from Arminianism to Calvinism to see if I could find an answer I could live with in the first place.
If God knew the end of everything would be unending misery and wretchedness for most of creation, why would He set the wheels in motion in the first place?
I never found a good answer to that question.
Many say it’s wrong for me to even ask it.
To that, I say, God gave me a conscience and a desire to know Him. I want to know His character, and I can think of very few better ways to understand someone than to know why they make momentous choices.
In my heart, I find the act of creation with the Arminian or Calvinist end in mind to be the most selfish thing ever done. It sickens me to think that the God I worship would start up this whole thing knowing that the end would be mostly a nightmare.
I can’t get around it.
No matter how many people tell me I shouldn’t ask the question, it’s there.
But there is an answer. It just isn’t in the Calvinist OR Arminian position.
“Wait!” you say. Those are the only two ways to be a Jesus-loving, Bible-believing Christian!
That’s certainly what Tim Keller thinks. Remember, he said, “All Christians have this problem …”
And it’s what I thought. I believed it so much that it took a life-threatening depression to get me to look beyond it.
What I found when my back was against the wall was something that both made me incredibly uneasy and thrilled me at the same time. I was uneasy because I thought I was leaving the Christian camp. But I was wrong. The Christian camp is much wider, historically, geographically (I knew nothing about the Eastern Orthodox church) and culturally, than I thought it was.
In the winter of 2014, I knew I could no longer survive with the Arminian or Calvinist perspective. The thought of never-ending torment for most people was just too dark to be a reality I could cope with. And, atheism was just as dark. Meaninglessness is almost as terrible of a prospect.
In desperation, I dug deep. And I found a treasure.
What I learned was that throughout church history, and especially in the early church, there have been many believers who held, based on scripture, that hell would NOT last forever. They held that it has a redemptive purpose and that conversion after death is not only a possibility, it’s a reality we should embrace.
How could they make such a claim from scripture? Well, a few things would need to fall in place.
First, the passages which talk about never-ending torment would have to be explained in a different way. Good news there. The current translations we have been given are particularly biased when it comes to this topic. More on this below.
Second, there would have to be some positive declarations in scripture that post mortem redemption is a reality. And, thank God, they’re there!
Third, there would have to be some evidence that orthodox Christians throughout history have recognized this as a reality. And, as Sarris points out in the video above, this is true!
Tackling all of those topics in depth would take many books (they’ve been written, I promise), so I won’t cover them in too much detail here. But I think I can give you enough of a glimpse to whet your appetite
1 – Never-Ending Torment?
To start with, look at Matthew 25:46, where Jesus is talking about separating the sheep from the goats. Your translation will say something like:
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” (NIV)
The problem is with your English translation.
In the Greek, you’ll find something different. What you would find with a literal translation is that the words we have translated in our contemporary Bibles as “eternal punishment” (aionios kolasis) actually mean “corrective punishment of the age.”
Let that sink in. The word our modern Bibles translate as “eternal” actually means “of the age.” Aionios basically means eon. Another way of saying it is “age-enduring” meaning it doesn’t last forever. It lasts for an age.
And the word we have translated punishment is not retributive, but has the benefit of the recipient in mind. The origin of the word wasn’t actually moral in nature. It meant pruning a bush to make it stronger.
Do you have butterflies yet?
2 – Redemption Beyond the Grave
Is the fate of every human sealed at death?
If so, we wouldn’t find passages of scripture that point to the ultimate restoration of all humans. All humans are obviously not Christians at death. So, you would expect to see some proclamations of the restoration of all things in scripture.
Guess what? They’re there.
“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” – John 12:32
“For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.” – Romans 11:32
“For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” – 1 Corinthians 15:22
The list is much longer. These are just a few that you’ve probably been reading all your life and never recognizing as something more wonderful than you ever imagined.
3 – Evidence of Universal Hope in Christian History
If the hope of post-mortem redemption were a reality, you’d expect to see devout Christians throughout history who have recognized it and embraced it.
Watch this short video:
A number of questions and objections probably just popped up in your mind. I promise you there are good answers for them. Biblical answers. GOOD answers. By using all caps I’m emphasizing both the validity of the answers and the nature of them.
The end is GOOD, not horrific.
God is GOOD, not the monster some would make Him out to be.
To answer all of the questions and objections that have just popped into your mind would take many books. The good news is, they have been written. The historical corpus is deep and the current library of books is growing.
Here are a few to get you started that are easy to access freely on the web:
Another Perspective on Keller’s Three Propositions
Let’s return to the propositions which Tim Keller outlined above.
(a) God wants everybody saved.
(b) God could save everyone.
(c) God does not.
Tom Talbott is the author of The Inescapable Love of God and he states these three propositions with a little more clarity.
(a) It is God’s redemptive purpose for the world (and therefore his will) to reconcile all sinners to himself;
(b) It is within God’s power to achieve his redemptive purpose for the world;
(c) Some sinners will never be reconciled to God, and God will therefore either consign them to a place of eternal punishment, from which there will be no hope of escape, or put them out of existence altogether.
Talbott then goes on to state, as does Keller, that these three propositions cannot at the same time all be true, even though each has “prima facie” (at face value) evidence in scripture. (In other words, you can find statements in scripture to back all three up.) So, a “The Bible says it and that settles it” perspective doesn’t really settle it.
Calvinists like Keller believe that (b) and (c) are correct. God could save everyone, but does not. So, that leaves you with the result that proposition (a) is incorrect—he doesn’t want to save everyone.
Arminians believe that (a) and (c) are correct. God wants to save everyone but does not. So, proposition (b) must be incorrect—he must not be able to save everyone.
Christian Universalists believe that (a) and (b) are correct. God wants to save everyone and is able to accomplish it. Therefore, proposition (c) is incorrect—he saves everyone.
I will note here that I have heard Calvinists argue that their perspective is correct because it has more backing in scripture. In other words, Calvinists can come up with a longer list of scripture references to back up their perspective than Arminians can. It comes down to sheer numbers for some of them.
That kind of argument is certainly one way to look at it. But it comes far from being a valid argument to base one’s worldview on in my mind. And I’m not even sure which side would win that argument. I’ve seen enough of the arguments from all sides to know that they have plenty of scriptural proof texts to make a strong case.
Numbers just won’t settle it for me. When I look at the positions as a whole, the consistency with which they are applied (both throughout scripture and philosophically), their revelations about God’s character, and an understanding of the word “gospel” (which is truly good news?), I find the Christian Universalist perspective to be the strongest.
So, which perspective will you embrace?
I highly recommend reading The Inescapable Love of God to explore these ideas and their respective arguments from scripture more thoroughly.
George MacDonald
I would have a difficult time overstating how much of my transformation I owe to George MacDonald. In fact, I wrote a piece called George MacDonald Saved My Life a few years ago.
MacDonald was the Scottish pastor and author whom CS Lewis called his “master.”
During my darkest days in Feb 2014, I turned to MacDonald’s books to escape a life-threatening depression. He was my introduction to the concept of post-mortem redemption.
And, I would agree with Lewis when he says: “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself!”
During the last five years, I have read MacDonald almost continuously. I’ve launched a George MacDonald Quotes website, contributed to a lot of discussions on the George MacDonald Society Facebook page, and contributed to The Works of George MacDonald website.
I would encourage you in the strongest possible terms to give MacDonald’s works a look.
Start by reading Unspoken Sermons.
And see Michael Phillips’ writings about MacDonald as well.