Universalism? Really?

 

Universalism? Really?

September 30, 2022

 

I have long considered myself to be a universalist. By that I have meant that God loves, forgives, and accepts everyone equally, even the great human monsters of which there have been and are so many. I have contended and taught and preached that God is a God of grace not a God of judgment and punishment. I have believed, and I have said many times, that grace is not grace if it is conditional, that is, if it is not universal, if it depends on anything we do or don’t do. Making grace conditional changes it from grace to reward, from God’s free gift into earned payment. I have said that a system of earned merit and reward is human not divine. I have often quoted Isaiah 55:8-9 for the proposition that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts, and God’s ways are not our ways. I have believed, and have often said, that if you want to know God’s thoughts and ways, look for the opposite of earthly thoughts and ways. The opposite of earned merit and reward is universal grace. Since the human way is of earned reward not free gift, we know that God’s way is not earned merit and reward. We know that God’s way is the free, unearned, unmerited gift of grace, a gift of love beyond our understanding. That’s what I have believed and taught for quite a long time now.

And these days that belief has been so battered by my awareness of past and contemporary human evil that I have experienced that belief being shaken in a profound way. I have felt my commitment to that belief wavering. I have found myself asking: Really? You have said that God does not require anyone to earn grace. You have said that God doesn’t punish sin, God forgives it. All of it. Period. No matter what. But how can that be? Does God not see all the evil in the world? Does God not care about the harm people cause to other people? Really?

My battering today comes from one new example of human evil and one about which I have known a good deal for a long time but that has become more vivid and powerful for me through the work of the great Ken Burns. The recent appearance of human evil to which I refer is the behavior of Russian soldiers in Ukraine. It seems beyond doubt that they have committed an enormous number of war crimes against Ukrainian civilians. They have murdered hundreds if not thousands of innocent people. They have raped women and girls. I want to like the Russians. I have a PhD in their history. I have lived among them doing historical research. I know the greatness of Russian culture both high and folk. I want to like them, but today I can’t. What the Russians are doing in Ukraine has appalled me so much that I have exclaimed: God damn them! God, I would damn them if I could, but I can’t. You can. So do it. But does God damn them? If not, why the hell not? How can God not damn them?

Yet the evil the Russians are committing in Ukraine pales in comparison to the incomprehensible horror Ken Burns describes in his latest PBS documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” As he has done so brilliantly when considering other historical phenomena, Burns makes the horror of the Holocaust personal. Knowing that the Nazis murdered six millions of Jews (and an enormous number of other people too) is one thing. Hearing the stories of particular human beings who escaped but lost loved ones in the German genocide of the Jews is something quite different.[1] Photographs and film of Germans in uniform shooting large groups of helpless people are so much more powerful than mere statistics. The horror of what the Germans did to the Jews and to millions of other people as well can perhaps be explained by considering Nazi ideology, of which they made no secret. Yet that horror is so enormous that it shakes whatever conviction I ever had of the goodness of humanity. Good people don’t force millions of other people into gas chambers, then nonchalantly turn a valve to release the gas that will kill them.

I have a fair amount of experience living with the German people. When I was eleven years old, in 1957-58, only twelve to thirteen years after World War II ended, I lived with my family in an apartment in Berlin, Germany, while my father, a professor of history at the University of Oregon, did historical research. Our landlady was a widow, but her late husband had been a member of the Nazi party. One day she opened a wardrobe that stood in the large entry space of the apartment we shared with her. There hung her late husband’s Nazi party uniform. It wasn’t a stage or movie prop. It was the real thing. She took the armband off the uniform, the armband we’ve all seen in movies, a black swastika in a white circle on a red armband. She tried to put it on me. I guess she thought it would be fun. Yet at the tender age of 11 I already knew at least a little about what that despicable symbol represented. I wouldn’t let her put it on me. I’m quite sure she didn’t understand why I wouldn’t. My family and I saw in her some of how the horror of Nazism had happened. One day she said to us, “Yes, it is too bad what happened to the Jews, but then something did have to be done.”[2] Those words express the sanguine acceptance of the Nazi libel of the Jewish people that made the Holocaust possible.

In later years, though still in my youth, I lived in Germany for two additional academic years. I have enjoyed my time in Germany. I learned a lot living there. I know the towering achievements of the German people is every field of constructive human endeavor from nuclear physics to metaphysical philosophy. I can and do appreciate much of German culture. I cannot forgive the Germans for the Holocaust. I don’t understand how God could forgive them for it either. Yet I have long insisted that God has done precisely that. Today I’m asking myself in a way I never have before, is that right? And if it is, how can it be? I fear I will find the teaching here as difficult as I suspect everyone else will.

The only defensible answers to the question of whether my Christian universalism is right is yes. Yes, God has forgiven even the monsters among us. The answer to how that can be is that the consequences of not doing it are worse than the consequences of doing it. There certainly are negative things that flow from this answer of yes. God forgiving everyone and everything can give the impression that God doesn’t care about the evil things we humans do. We can conclude that it is permissible for us to do whatever we want even if it results in the deaths of hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people. Universalism of this sort leaves us needing to figure out why we shouldn’t just sin abundantly. It leaves us needing to figure out whether there is still some way in which God punishes sin. These are serious consequences indeed of God forgiving everyone for everything. I’ll have more to say about them below.

What are the consequences of God not forgiving everyone for everything? Those consequences are actually far more radical than are the consequences of universalism. Our thinking that God does not forgive everyone for everything turns God from the totaliter aliter spiritual reality that God must be into nothing more than a human being functioning on a cosmic scale. When we say there are things God does not and cannot forgive, we make God be just like us only bigger. I said just now that I cannot forgive the Germans for the Holocaust, and indeed I cannot. But I cannot because I am human not a god. I cannot forgive the Germans for the Holocaust because I operate within what is a nearly universal human system of reward and punishment. We all operate within that system. We live within a moral system that says rewards must be earned and misdeeds must be punished. We call that system justice. Why, for example, do so many Americans object to the government making welfare payments to people in need and why are those payments so paltry? Because the people who receive those benefits have not earned them. Why do so many Americans support imposing severe punishments on convicted criminals up to and including the legalized murder we call capital punishment? Because a criminal has by definition committed a wrong, and justice, we think, requires that we punish that wrong. In this system we think, correctly, that the Germans committed a wrong of nearly cosmic proportions when they carried out the intentional, industrialized slaughter of millions upon millions of people. We conclude from that undeniable truth that the Germans must be punished severely for what they did. In reality of course, the only punishment the Germans received for what they did other than have their country essentially destroyed in war is that, at least in what we came to call West Germany, the people were made to see what they had done. That’s because we in the West needed Germany as an ally against Soviet expansion in Europe. That truth, however, does not obviate the fact that we think the Germans deserve, or at least in past years deserved, severe punishment for horrendous crimes. That’s the human way of doing things. It is also the way we humans expect and perhaps even want God to do things.

When we have God doing things our way, however, we bring God down to our level of being. We make God entirely too human. We make God entirely too small. Sure, this human God we have created operates on a cosmic scale, a scale far larger than any scale on which we can act. But that difference in size does not create a difference in essence. To this way of thinking, God may function like a human being writ cosmically large, but God is still functioning like a human being.

Yet whatever God may be, God is not a human being, not even a human being writ cosmically large. There is a passage in the Bible that expresses this truth clearly and powerfully. I’ve already mentioned it, but it’s worth quoting here. It is Isaiah 55:8-9. These verses have God say,

 

For my thoughts are not your

thoughts,

     nor are your ways my says, says

the Lord.

For as the heavens are higher than

the earth,

     so are my ways higher than your

ways

     and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. NRSV

 

Isaiah is right. God just isn’t like us. That means that when we make God be like us, we make God not be God.[3] It necessarily follows that God forgives everyone for everything. If there is anyone or anything that God does not forgive, then God is operating through a human system of merit and reward, wrong and punishment.[4]

Applied to the question of grace and divine forgiveness of sin, that human system of reward and punishment must have within it some criteria on which to make the distinction between salvation and damnation. What might those criteria be? A person’s intrinsic characteristics such as race, gender, sexual orientation or expression, etc., cannot be the criterion under which God operates, for God created all human beings as equal. See, for example, Genesis 1:26-27. The distinction between those who are forgiven and those who are not forgiven must be based on something the person does that is prohibited or does not do that is required.

The major flaw in that way of understanding how God works is that it is a human way not a divine one. There are, however, other flaws in it as well. People who understand God this way generally consider the criteria for salvation or damnation to exist in one of two categories, i.e., belief and acts. A great many Christians insist that one is saved if one believes in Jesus Christ and damned if one doesn’t. Yet most humans who have ever lived have never heard of Jesus Christ, or, if they have heard of him, they have never had any reason to accept the conservative Christian contention that they had to take him as their personal Lord and Savior or spend eternity in the fiery torments of hell. Most humans who have ever lived have lived in cultures that have had their own systems of symbols and myths through which, if they find it all, they find their connection with the spiritual dimension of reality that we call God. They have, therefore, never had the thought in their heads that they had to accept all of the cognitive beliefs that so many Christians insist they must have in order to avoid damnation. It is inconceivable that a God who is love would damn these people to hell because they lived in a time and/or place where Jesus was completely unknown or where belief in Jesus was never preached as the way to salvation. If God requires belief in Jesus as a prerequisite for salvation, God is an arbitrary monster condemning innocent people for something that in them just isn’t a fault.

Most Christians also insist that sin of which a person is guilty which the person has not confessed and of which she has not repented is a reason for God to cast that person into eternal damnation. This contention fails for a couple of reasons beyond the fact that it is human not divine. It fails first of all because no human being who ever lived but one has lived a life entirely free of sin, that of course being Jesus Christ.[5] Yes, most of the time we are able to confess and repent of our sin, but that isn’t always the case. A person who has sinned may die before being aware that they have sinned and thus have died before having confessed and repented of that sin. Sometimes a person dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a sudden, unexpected death leaving no time for confession and repentance. Moreover, it just isn’t as clear as proponents of this theory assert just what sin is. Conservative Christians point to the Bible and say it tells us what sin is. Yet the Bible is full of contradictions, and many of the things it calls sin are nothing but ancient cultural understandings of sin that make no sense in today’s world. The life conditions and circumstances of people today are so different from those of biblical times that what may have been a necessary moral proscription then is not one now. A person having or not having sinned without confession and repentance simply cannot be the criterion God uses to save some and damn others.

None of the arguments against universalism holds up under even modest critical scrutiny. There are, however, still some big issues that universalism raises that we must address. One is the sense universalism can give that God doesn’t care about human evil. After all, how much can God care about it if God doesn’t punish it? Yet we know that God cares immensely about human evil. In Jesus Christ we see God denouncing evil every chance he got. We see God on the cross taking human evil into God’s own being and demonstrating God’s presence with us in whatever evil other humans inflict us with. In the Bible we see God again and again trying to get us humans to avoid doing evil things. Why would God do that if God didn’t care about human evil? We must simply accept the fact that God not punishing evil does not mean that God doesn’t care about it.

Another issue is how hard it is for us to believe that God doesn’t punish even humans who have committed massive crimes against humanity like Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. How can God save and accept them in the same way God saves and accepts the great human saints or even just us ordinary people? To some extent I am an agnostic on this issue. I do, however, believe certain things about it to be true. God does not condemn even Adolf Hitler or Heinrich Himmler to an eternity of torment in hell. A God of love could never condemn anyone for all eternity.[6] If God does in some way punish them, God does not do it for the sake of punishment. If God punishes them at all, surely God does it only for the sake of correction not for the sake of punishment. I have known people who believe that the punishment sinners of any sort receive after death is the guilt and remorse they feel about their sin when they see divine love in the presence of God. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I suppose it is as good as any theory we can concoct about punishment after death that retains the sacred truth that God is love.

A third great issue we must address is the question of the effect universalism has on people’s motivation for good behavior. This is perhaps the biggest issue universalism raises at all. I have already mentioned it briefly, but it requires greater attention here. Once when I was teaching universal salvation to a group of people from the church I served as pastor one of those good folk said to me, “Tom, you’re taking away every reason to be good,” or words to that effect. This comment, with which I suspect several others in the group agreed, reveals the motivation selective salvation gives people for behaving themselves. That motivation is the fear of damnation if they somehow fail to live up to whatever standard they have been told they must meet in order to be saved. Universal salvation does indeed obviate that reason for avoiding sin. It does not, however, eliminate all reasons for us not to sin. It just replaces the motivation of fear with the motivation of love.

The God of universalism is a God of love. Pure love. Boundless love. Love beyond human understanding. One of the primary purposes of religion in a universalist system is to lead people into a deep, existential awareness of that love. Into awareness, that is, that they stand always and irrevocably in God’s divine love. The Christian universalist knows deep in her being that God has forgiven whatever wrongs she may have committed even before she asks God to forgive her. He even knows that God has forgiven his sin even before he has committed the sin. The Christian universalist knows that not only she but all creation lives immersed in God’s love. He is surrounded by that love every minute of every day. Christian universalists know that God’s love frees them and everyone else to be the fearless agents of God’s love in and for the world that God calls them to be. The Christian universalist knows that God’s love as the greatest gift there is or ever could be.

So how does the Christian universalist respond to God’s love? By sinning abundantly so that grace may abound? By no means! See Romans 6:1-2. The divine love of God evokes a response of gratitude and a commitment to live a life of love in the world to the fullest extent of one’s capability. Universalism doesn’t leave us with no motive for good behavior. It does, however, change what that motive is. Of course, it leaves us free not to respond to love with love, but it trusts the spirit within those who believe not to sin insofar as they are able. And, of course, it assures us all of God’s unshakable love and forgiveness when we sin, even when we sin abundantly.

So, do horrendous things like Russian war crimes or even things orders of magnitude more horrendous like the Holocaust result in a person’s damnation rather than salvation. No, they do not. They cannot. Yes, I know. It is very hard for us humans to accept that contention. Though I have taught and preached universalism for years, I too struggle with accepting it. Accepting it is indeed hard, but as a great mentor of mine once said, there is no simple religion. In faith we encounter and sometimes wrestle with the divine. See Genesis 32:22-30. I too wrestle with the consequences of universalism. I too am human, which means I want to see wrongdoing, especially genocidal wrongdoing, punished. But I am not God. Neither are you, and God is not us. God is not and cannot be bound by our small, human way of doing things. Both all my human logic and my faith in Jesus Christ lead me to the belief that God’s salvation is indeed universal. All of us are saved. Every last person who has ever lived or ever will live is saved. With God it cannot be otherwise. And for that great blessing, let all the people say, “Amen!”

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[1] Years ago I was practicing law in a legal services program that served low income people free of charge. One of my clients was an elderly Jewish woman who other people in my office thought was a bit nuts but who I found quite engaging. One day I was driving her home from an appointment we had. We passed a bus stop. Another elderly woman was standing at it apparently waiting for the bus. My client mentioned that woman by name and said “She’s a Holocaust survivor.” I felt my stomach turn and felt some personal guilt for what that woman had experienced even though I am not German and wasn’t born until after the Holocaust ended. I am, after all, white and a Christian. The people who perpetrated the Holocaust were white, and many of them considered themselves to be Christians. I cannot entirely avoid guilt by association.

[2] None of us responded to what she had said. Today I wish I had responded this way: No, Annamarie, it is not “too bad” what happened to the Jews. It was one of the greatest tragedies in the sordid history humankind. And no, it didn’t “happen to the Jews.” You Germans did it to the Jews. There was nothing passive about it. And no, nothing had to be done. To believe that something had to be done about the Jews you had to believe the great Nazi lie that the very small number of German Jews wielded great power and were responsible for everything that was wrong with the country. That was indeed a lie, and you Germans bought it hook, line, and sinker.

[3] The Incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is an exception to this rule. But in the Incarnation God is breaking the rule. We humans aren’t breaking it. Moreover, in becoming human in Jesus God at the same time both breaks and preserves God’s essence as totaliter aliter. Only God can do that.

[4] There is one other possibility. God could be acting in a totally arbitrary way. I find that notion profoundly offensive and false. I will not consider it further here.

[5] Not every Christian accepts the notion that Jesus lived without sin. Those who don’t say that of course he sinned, he was after all human. If he never experienced an awareness of his own sin, he didn’t experience a fully human life. I won’t consider the merit of this contention here.

[6] I acknowledge that this sentence suggests the hoary Catholic notion of purgatory, something Protestants have never accepted because it isn’t biblical. So be it.