47 versus 4

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As I said previously, on Sunday for a sermon on Romans 5.12-21, I preached on the church’s doctrine labeled apokatastasis, popularly known as universal salvation.

You can find the sermon here.

As Al Kimel writes, “Apokatastasis is but the gospel of Christ's absolute and unconditional love sung in an eschatological key.The response to the sermon surprised me and has convinced me that it’s worth pressing further into the possibility of an apokatastasis made available by the Son’s rectifying faithfulness; consequently, ’ve been rereading David Bentley Hart’s wonderful, cutting book, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation.

I’m prejudiced in favor of the book’s argument; David was my first theology teacher at UVA. His influence upon me, not long after I became a Christian, has abided and may prove permanent. If nothing else, DBH’s book gives Christians permission to return to the New Testament and see, maybe for the first time, that which it names quite clearly: that the God who created all that is ex nihilo as sheer good gratuity, the God who is all and in all, is the God who desires the salvation of all.

“This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” – 1 Timothy 2.3-4

Apparently, to many who worship the God who just is Love, to assert that God desires the salvation of all constitutes a “treacherous absurdity.” It’s a betrayal of the Gospel, I’ve been told in the not so hushed tones of all caps messages, to suppose that the triune God who announced his creative aim in Genesis 1 (“Let us make humankind in our image…”) will not forsake his endeavor until it has reached final consummation, that in the fullness of time humanity will finally bear the full glory of God’s image. Evidently, it’s better to confess that God-with-us may be our Alpha but he is not our End. At least, not for all of us.

It’s amazing to me that those most vested— presumably— in protecting the gravity of sin, the majesty of salvation, and the authority of scripture ignore what scripture itself testifies about it and the nature of the God revealed therein.

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Spurred by David Bentley Hart, I actually counted up the verses on salvation and damnation. The New Testament contains no less than forty-seven verses which affirm the ‘all-ness’ of God’s salvation. This is compared to the four oft-cited but decidedly cryptic verses which may (or as easily may not) suggest eternal torments for the wicked.47 vs. 4

What was obvious to the ancient church fathers, the totality of God’s salvific aim, has become so hidden it now sufficiently smacks of heresy.

A hero of mine, Karl Barth, famously said that as Christians scripture does not permit us to conclude that all will be saved but that as Christians we should hope and pray that all will be saved. Barth’s is a more generous sentiment than I hear from many Christians today, but despite his reticence DBH argues that the logic of the gospel requires us to say more.

The logic of the gospel requires us to bolder than merely “praying for the salvation of all.”

If God desires the salvation of all, Hart argues rather irrefutably, it is a logical absurdity to assert that the transcendent God will ultimately fail in accomplishing his eschatological will. Indeed it is a theological maxim that God’s will that something be so is simultaneous to its being so.

The belief in an eternal hell where some are forever excluded from the “all-ness” of salvation echoed by scripture— that is the absurdity which begets still other absurdities like the Calvinist notion that God predestined some to salvation and others to perdition.

Just as God cannot act contrary to his good nature, so too God cannot fail to realize the good he desires. To say, as scripture does, that God desires the salvation of all is to say simultaneously and necessarily, as scripture implies, that all will be saved, that all things will indeed be made new.

Consider the counter:

If not, if we in our sin (or, worse, in our “freedom”) thwart God’s will and desire, casting ourselves into a fiery torment despite God’s sovereign intention, God would not be God.


Or, to put it simpler if more baldly, we would be God.


Or, still more pernicious, evil, as that which has successfully resisted God’s creative aim though it is no-thing, would be God.


Evil would God.Thus the belief in an eternal hell betrays the fact that it’s possible for perfect faith to be indistinguishable from perfect nihilism.

It’s clear how offensive the “all-ness” of God’s sovereign saving love can strike the moral ear. For that “all-ness” must include our enemies too. To suggest instead that even if Christ came for all and died for all only some will be saved better conforms to our calculus of justice, but it is a moral calculus that is not without remainder, for it makes of evil an idol and of (the once transcendent) God a liar.


Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all. For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. – Romans 5.18-19


For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. – Romans 11.32


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Published on August 09, 2024 07:34
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