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Atheism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam
Read / Write Comments | By Vexen Crabtree 2002 Sep 21
Universalism is the belief that all people can be saved, and that all people enter into heaven independent of their religion and knowledge gained during life. It is the only logical way in which God can be considered all-good and all-powerful, excepting the fact that it created evil and suffering in the first place.
I think it is Bertrand Russell who said that God could never condemn a person to an eternity in hell by pointing out this would be "infinite punishment for finite sins". It seems incredibly unethical and immoral for such a thing to have been created by God.
It is more moral that if someone is making bad moral choices in life, then God will be patient and persistent with them for all time. As God is eternal there is no time limit: Eventually all people will choose heaven. God can pluck people out of Hell and bring them to heaven. No-one will spend an eternity in Hell if God is moral. God's power is absolute and God's patience is infinite.
It is more moral if those who do not accept God are destroyed rather than punished. Between two choices, God will always choose the better one as God is perfect. If one option causes less pain than another, God will choose the one that causes less pain. If someone chooses never to be with God (we are assuming God cannot force people to enter heaven of their own free will), then God has 3 choices:
Numbers two and three are both better than number one. God will never choose number one. No-one spends an eternity in Hell. At the end of time all people will be in heaven. For some people number three will be an option. At some point all people will change their minds and then God can forgive them and save them. Number 2 may be an option if a person is never going to change their minds, but it very unlikely that anyone can be more persistent than God when God has infinite patience. Over infinity, therefore, all people will be saved.
If evil itself exists, when all people are in heaven evil will have been completely destroyed. If we personify evil as Satan, then if Universalism is true Satan is destroyed (option 2). If a single person remains in Hell forever then evil will never be destroyed by God, and God will never achieve complete victory over death. God, however, is perfect by definition so by definition it cannot be true that anyone spends eternity in Hell.
If everyone goes to heaven then God's creation is perfect. Universalism is a belief that God is all loving and moral and that God is positive and effective. It's a belief that all life does have a purpose, that suffering is nullified in the end. It is a belief that in the end God will be completely victorious.
“Universalism has been beneficial in my own conception of God. It causes me to marvel at God's power and love, not God's 'limitedness to save' or wrath. I feel even more gratitude, trust, and wonder of God! How marvellous are God's works!”"Why I am a Universalist" by Christian Rev. D.R.Deinsen, M.Div.
If God is perfect, then it holds that Universalism is true as a God who saves everyone is better than a God that does not.
Universalism combined with reincarnation seems consistent with a loving creator. It will send us back to Earth to try again rather than sending us to hell to be punished, until, eventually, everyone is saved. It is more loving, more perfect, if a God is infinitely patient with us, until every last living being has attained heaven. Of course, this is a highly problematic situation as long as the population of the Human race increases at a great rate, but, this website is largely concerned with monotheism, and reincarnation is generally a feature of atheist religions such as Buddhism or polytheistic ones.
When we love or care for someone we feel hurt and suffer then they hurt or suffer. If there is a hell, and someone we know is there, then it will cause us suffering. Our suffering will continue as long as we know they are in hell. Therefore Christians who are not universalist are caused angst and stress when they are in relationships with non-Christians, the lack of belief in universalism causes division [Deinsen's argument]. There are three conclusions we could draw from this but none of them are acceptable to most monotheists, I will present them then explain how they can be avoided.
The first one is contradictory to the concept of heaven and cannot be true. The second is dubious, as God would have to lie to us. The third is not so bad, but it is still not a nice possibility and seems to deny some basic part of our Humanity (caring for others). The only valid and good resolution of this problem is:
This is such a perfect answer to the problem. There would be no suffering in heaven and God could show us that all we care for are happy. It is logically impossible for God to grant a single person eternal happiness unless all people are granted the same, because everyone is cared for by someone. It could be said that there may be some people who are cared for by no-one. This isn't true if God loves us all. If God loves us then he cares for us and our pain causes God to suffer. The pain of those in Hell must be intolerable for God... but as God is in heaven, God is in bliss. Therefore there can be no beings in Hell: All beings go to heaven.
The vast majority of the people in the world live in cultures or communities where nearly everyone is the same religion. Millions of people die - for example children and young adults - without actually obtaining enough wordly knowledge to make a reasonable estimate of what religoin they think is true. This was especially true in previous centuries, where a Christian could call all Muslims or Jews devil-worshippers and not be afraid that anyone would actually know any of them personally in order to object.
“The Chinese, Japanese, Hindus, Tartars, Africans, Eskimo, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Polynesians, and many other peoples, are substantially ignorant of the Bible. All the Bible societies of the world have produced only about one hundred and twenty millions of Bibles, and there are about fourteen hundred million people. There are hundreds of languages and tongues in which no Bible has yet been printed. Why did God allow, and why does he still allow, a vast majority of his children to remain in ignorance of his will?”
Human civilisation has existed for over 7000 years, and the human species for somewhat longer, but religions come and go over time. The fact is, most people must have remained not only members of the 'wrong' religion, but, actually without any exposure to whatever the true religion is. How can this be?
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Notice that for all possible answers to this question, it doesn't matter what beliefs a person actually had while they were alive. The only sensible conclusion, if there is a good god, is:
“If mentally disabled people are accepted by God into heaven despite them not being to conceive of God in a normal way then atheists and members of 'wrong' religions can be said to suffer from mental disabilities (intellectual or emotional) preventing them from realising the true God, and God must accept these people too. If God rejects people because of their intellectual or mental shortcomings then God is immoral.”
“It seems there is good reason to believe in some form of "spiritual imprisonment" or "purgatory" (temporary "hell") for those who, upon death, have thus far chosen separation and rebellion from love and truth. The doors are always open in this realm and God/Reality continues to seek and persuade people, through persistent love, to accept love, truth, goodness, etc. There are likely trials and suffering (like earth but of a different type, ie of the soul, not physical) here as people "sort out" their destinies. Also, this temporary holding place likely functions as a context for divine or karmic retribution to right the injustices committed in one's lifetime. Eventually all beings are wooed by God's intense and persistent love for them however. Everyone is reunited to their Source of Being. God doesn't give up until all are convinced.”"Why I am a Universalist" by Christian Rev. D.R.Deinsen, M.Div.
Because people feel guilty for the things they've done wrong some people some say that some people are not ready to go to heaven. When this is the case I agree with Deinsen that it appears a form of temporary Hell would allow that person to sort out their destiny until they enter heaven. In an email conversation with Deinsen in 2001 we agreed that in some criminal cases people have specifically wanted to be punished when they done something wrong. People sometimes own up to doing to wrong so that they may be forgiven. Many times when a person has done wrong (maybe to a friend) then they honestly want to make it up, to pay for it.
Universalism has long been a feature of Christianity. Modern fundamentalist Christians who deny that anyone else is saved are at odds with the beliefs of many of the very earliest Christians.
The great Christian Origen in the third century, for example, preached universalism during centuries when Christianity was more varied and interesting. He held in particular that fallen beings, and the Devil, would all be saved eventually. He was condemned by the Council of Constantinople in 543CE but his 'heresy' of Universalism lived on, despite Christian intolerance of all things nice that culminated in the dark ages. The Anabaptists held this view too.
Read / Write Comments
By Vexen Crabtree 2002 Sep 21
Ingersol, Robert. G.
"Complete Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersol (1900)" (1900). Kessinger Publishing, 1998.