The Sean McDowell Show - Christian Universalism: 12 Questions

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Can Satan be redeemed? Is Christian universalism a valid option for Christians? These are just a few of the questions I explore with Dr. Michael McClymond, an outspoken critic of Christian Universalism. We also talk about what the church has taught about universal salvation throughout history and offer a biblical, philosophical, and theological critique. The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism by Michael J. McClymond (https://a.co/d/aK4OiSB) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

What is Christian Universalism? You can get different versions of Universalism. Why is it growing in influence today and is it a legitimate option for a Christian to hold? Our guest today, Dr. Michael McClymon, has written a massive two-volume book called The Devil's Redemption in which he looks at the rise and influence of Christian Universalism. What's meant by Universalism or in particular Christian Universalism? If you look at the dictionary, it has more than one meaning, but in the sphere of theology, it has a very distinct definition, and that is simply... Mike, I read both volumes almost in their entirety. Thoroughly enjoyed it. It's fascinating. If I was going to teach a class

on the history of Christian universalism, I would assign both your texts. But tell me from the get-go, I'm curious about the title. Why do you title a book or a two-volume set of books on Christian universalism, The Devil's Redemption? Well, I wanted the title to be provocative. On my view, a good title should raise a question in the mind of someone who hears it. And actually, you know, there was someone on Amazon who apparently only read the title, and their comment was, I think it's awful that, you know, Dr. McClellan is arguing that Satan will be saved in the end. It's the opposite of what you... I wanted to raise the question, like, if we think about evil, the ultimate of evil in the mind of almost everyone

while adolf hitler often gets named but people think of lucifer satan himself so is it possible that evil at its most extreme will ultimately turn back to good and is that the implication of those who say that all human beings will be saved what about the fallen angels and so that there actually is discussion of this historically people say yes the fallen angels will be redeemed too and so i was kind of pushing it to the limit to raise a question got it so you're not saying christian universalism is a satanic devilish version of theology and salvation it could be taken that way but we will get into what you think about it and if you think it theologically lines up. Nonetheless, provocative title. Maybe we just

start with the definition so we're on the same page. What's meant by universalism or in particular Christian universalism? Well, the word, if you look at the dictionary, has more than one meaning, but in the sphere of theology, it has a very distinct definition. And that is simply the notion that all human beings, and again, you could talk about all intelligent, you know, volitional agents, which include angels as well as humans, will finally be saved. But universalism then leaves open this question about how that will happen, what the process is, and there you can get different versions of universalism. There's actually a book that came out just a couple weeks ago called The Varieties of Christian Universalism, and that's something that I argued in my book, and it now seems that the universalists are agreeing that they don't all agree with one another in terms

of how you get to the destination. So you think like going up a mountaintop, it's like if everyone arrives at the summit, there could be different paths of different sides of the mountain to use an old analogy. Okay, so I wrote a PhD dissertation that went into a 350 page book. I helped my dad update his classic evidence that demands a verdict with a team of researchers. And that's about 700 page book yours is two volumes that is probably i'm looking at this one 1800 pages with footnotes and everything what motivated you to spend so much time probing in probably years of your life looking at the topic of universalism well i i encountered this issue early in my Christian life. This is back in the

70s when I was a college student at Northwestern University, and I was a chemistry major, and I was in natural science. I was in research before I went into theology, but I had a professor who held that the New Testament teaches universal salvation. This is the teaching of the Apostle Paul. And I was the pesky college student in the back. I was always raising my hand up, commenting. And then I later did theological study after I left the field of science at Yale University and wrote an essay there comparing Origen,

or I-T-E-N, an early Christian figure well-known as a universalist with Karl Bard, who suggested that we could hope for the salvation of all. And so those were the early seeds. But I think what happened after that is, I mean, the Rob Bell book in 2011 played a pivotal role, Love Wins. And I remember walking around and seeing a women's group at the local coffee shop, and they were all sitting in a circle, and there were about 10 of them. They had all their copies of Rob Bell open, they're reading. And I mean, I felt a prompting from the Holy Spirit that this was my job to write this. And honestly, I didn't want to write this because

I knew that this would be highly controversial, particularly in the field of academic theology, where there are so many who, some quietly, some more obviously universalists. I mean, David Bentley Hart is a very well-known universalist, but there are a lot of other people that kind of quietly believe that, although they don't. They're teaching seminary, teaching in Bible colleges, some of them, but don't want to really come clean about that. And so I realized this was going to be very controversial, but I could escape that sense of a call to do this. But I had no idea, Sean,

how massive the project would be. And it just, it expanded as I worked on it. And I realized that there, you know, I ended up talking about 130 different thinkers over 18 seconds. I tell my grad students who are doing PhDs under my direction, like don't ever take on a topic where you're trying to cover countries and countries because ultimately the book cites about 3,500 sources in five languages, Greek, Latin, English, French, and German, and about 3,500 footnotes. So it was a massive undertaking. But I felt like it had to be done because there just hadn't been a lot of pushback on universalism. The train sort of started chugging along with Karl Barth's idea

of universal election back in the 1940s. And I found very little deep analysis. And so I felt that needed to be provided. And you certainly provided it. That's for sure. There's no debate about that. Now let's talk about something you cover in the book of whether or not universalism is really growing in the church today. And I mean, on a popular level, somebody like Rob Bell and or on an academic level. And if so, why do you think it's growing? Well, I think universalism. Well, first of all, I do believe it's growing. In fact, if you just look at the number of books coming out, again, that's not a direct measure of how many people are reading the books. But if you look at like Amazon, it's like the old hockey stick, you know, diagram where it goes on a level and then suddenly it

sort of shoots up into the air. There is a huge increase in the number of books defending, promoting universalism about 1999. So it really something seems to shift as the new millennium is beginning. And then there's just this flood of popular literature. There are more and more scholarly academic books arguing the same thing. And I think in my article that's online, people could see opiate of the theologians. I argue that universalism agrees with the cultural moment that we're in right now. Because someone who is a Christian believer who embraces universalism,

as they're confronted face-to-face with their non-Christian neighbor, could be atheist, could be Hindu, Muslim, and that person looks them in the eye and says, are you really telling me that I'm in trouble if I've rejected Christ? The universalists can look at them and say, you're going to be okay. I mean, you don't have to say something offensive about God's judgment and about the eternal destiny, even of hell, of being separated from God if you're a universalist. So it sort of allows the universalist belief, the Christian believer, to still think of himself or herself as a Christian person without having to be kind of in the face of the non-Christian. And also the other thing that I argued in the Opiate of a Theologian's article is that I think there's a lot of make-believe and fantasy in our culture right now. I mean, the way that our political discussions are taking place and just like, you know, like we can rack up debt endlessly and there's not going to be a price to pay for that. So, universalism is the way we would like the

world to be. We'd like to think that everyone gladly receives the good news of Jesus. And I compare it to the triumphal entry moment, you know, that, yay, Jesus, you know, everyone is cheering, they're applauding. What if we just run that film endlessly in a loop? Now, if we read the gospel, we know that the story ends very differently because the mobs later cry to crucify him. And so an unsentimental but realistic reading of the gospel is that there is a human turning away from the light. The sentimental view of love is that when God's love is demonstrated, that everyone will respond. If they haven't responded, it's just we haven't shown God's love properly. But in John 3, it says that this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and men love the darkness rather than the light. And that's the thing that universalists are really really react against they you know the underlying assumption is that no no if people are just given the chance or given enough chances everyone will make the right decision everyone will come and that's not actually what what jesus is saying in that passage. As you see, and I think you're really clear in the book, the gospel itself is really at stake with what position we hold about whether it's universalism or not. Here's a quote that you say. I want to unpack these kind of one by one I think might help folks. You say in the prologue, a Christian affirmation of final universal inclusion or salvation will affect everything

else that one might say about God, humanity, Christ, sin, grace, salvation, and the church. In other words, if you embrace universalism, it affects all these core central doctrines and arguably moves outside the historic Christian church. Before we look at these individually, is that the heart of the point that you're making, that the gospel itself is really at stake? Yes, I think everything is at stake. I think everything is at stake, and when we look at the history of the Universalist movement, which didn't begin in this millennium after 2000. There's an earlier history, and the Universalist Church degenerates and merges with the Unitarians. They gave up the divinity of Jesus after they first gave up the idea of hell and of judgment. So, yeah, everything is at stake. You begin with God. The universe has defined the love of God in separation from the suffering of Jesus on the cross.

If you understand the cross, it's really helpful to put the cross at the center. It is the crux, which is literally, of course, in Latin but we have, it's as if the two poles, the vertical and the horizontal, or the love and justice of God converge at that moment. It's very hard to understand, unless you have a sense of the justice of God, that God's just indignation, opposition to sin and punishment for sinners. It's hard to understand why Jesus has to die this horrible death. I mean, couldn't God have shown love in some other way? And this is a struggle for the universalists. One of the early American universalist leaders, Hosea Ballou, did a treatise in 1805, and it was a treatise on the atonement. And basically what he argues is,

God, he's not a punishing God. He doesn't punish sinners. And therefore, the cross was not a time where God's justice was being affected against sin. God was judging sin. And so what began to happen very early in the history of these 19th century universes, they began saying, well, the cross is not really an atonement. It's just like a moral example for us. Socrates, the Greek philosopher drank the hemlock to follow his convictions. Jesus went to the cross following his convictions. But that's radically changing the meaning of the cross. And then what happens is if Jesus is not our sin bearer who atones for sin on the cross, why does he have to be god why does he have to be divine maybe he's just a human example and that's the way the universalist movement

in america went so you see this theological degeneration happening decade by decade until finally they merge with the unit turns become the uu unitarian universalist so that's that's the outcome of of of this radical shift in theology. I want to make sure folks don't miss this. What you're arguing is that it's not like you remain a Christian and you just add universal salvation to the mix. If you add universal salvation to the mix, it's going to lead naturally to rethinking what we mean by the character of God, his love, and his justice, the nature of sin and how it affects us, the identity of Christ and grace. So it's not an add-on. In a sense, would you say it's fair like J. Gresham Machen, of course,

said liberal Christianity is not a different version of Christianity, it's an entirely different religion. Is that what embracing Christian universalism, at least historically, has led to? Yes. Yeah, you could demonstrate that from the 19th century. And actually, I'm just saying what the universalist historians, some of the people who are members or historians of the universalist movement in the 19th century, they say that, yeah, that the whole theology began to shift. It's like a three-legged stool.

It's like you have the doctrine of Jesus divinity or the doctrine of the Trinity. You have the doctrine of the cross, the atonement, and then the doctrine of hell. And they're all intricately connected. It's like a chess game, you know, where you have a junior player, he makes a move and everyone applauds. He takes someone's bishop and the grandmaster goes like this he puts his head in his head because he sees like five steps ahead there's going to be a checkmate ahead and right right the amateur player didn't see where it was going but but there's no question that like as i say in the book universalism has tremendous curb appeal you're driving up just the initial look wow this looks great universities say you've heard the good news we We're giving you the better news, the very good news. But would you buy a house if you haven't gone into the house

and checked to see if the plumbing works, get into the crawl space, maybe it's filled with termites? And I think the universalist house, although it looks so good from the curb, it's not actually, theologically speaking, a livable residence. It's not hospitable over time. There isn't any, there are individual universalists, and the universalists will point to that, like, well, what about Gregory of Nyssa? Well, Gregory of Nyssa wasn't part of a congregation, you know, around him that all held this universalist view. He privately held this view of universalism, and that was true of origin as well, these early church figures. So I don't see any case where you have a whole congregation that actually embraces universalism where things hold together at all. It seems to be a recipe for the unraveling of the church. So tell me if this is fair. When we look at

church history, there's pockets that appear of Christian universalism pretty early within the first few centuries of the church, even before origin. But these are exceptions. They never make their way into a large denomination, whether that's ultimately Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox, and they don't appear in major creeds and are essentially considered heretical views that were tolerated on some level. Just give me the 30,000-foot view of how prevalent universalism has been throughout the large Christian church. Okay, the 30,000-foot view is that the people who are promoting Christian Universalism today would like to argue that Universalism, first of all, is taught in the New Testament, and then that there is this sort of continuous stream of Universalism through the centuries,

that it was a minority position, but that it existed all through the centuries. And that's not at all what you see. First of all, I would strongly contest the idea that the New Testament teaches universal salvation. I think it does not. And N.T. Wright, probably the world's best non-biblical scholar, wrote a book even longer than my book on Paul and the faithfulness of God. I was with a thousand other people listening to him at the Society of Biblical Literature, and he gets asked, was Paul a universalist? And he said, no, no.

I mean, just flat out. He said that's usually the first question being asked. So it's not taught in Scripture. But very tellingly, there's no zero evidence of universalism in the mainstream of Christianity in the second century up to the time of origin. The first reference to universal salvation, and I've not found anyone to give me any earlier references, is in Irenaeus, he was a second century writer against heresies of the church. He's discussing the Carpal Crotians who had a lot of distorted teachings. They taught that the more we sin, the more God is glorified. I mean, this is

definitely not an orthodox, biblically-minded group, but they taught that in this reincarnation of souls that would cycle around into bodies one after the other, that through that process, finally, all souls will be saved. And that's the exact statement, all souls will be saved. That is about 170 AD, so that's the exact statement, all souls will be saved. That is about 170 AD. So that's the first reference to universalism that I could find in any literature that's actually datable. There's some questions about the Gnostic literature and when that was written, but this is before Origen. But Origen is a figure who really tried to take the universalist message and bring it into some kind of relationship with scripture

but he only can do that by developing kind of complicated uh understanding that before adam and eve were in their physical bodies they were pure spirit beings and that they fell from their unity with god this as you've since you've read the book you're aware this is a key argument all through the book, the threefold unity, diversity, unit. The reason that origin thought that all souls would be with God in the end is that they were with God in the beginning. You have to assume that there's this existence beyond the physical body that you generally call pre-existence. And the contemporary universists, they would like to hold on to the all souls coming into union with God at the end, but they almost all reject the idea of the pre-existence, and they're missing the symmetry

that held origins thinking together. You kind of, origins said the end is like the beginning. So if you believe that all souls were with God and they fell into their physical bodies, I compare it to like the helium balloon in someone's chest okay die it gets released and then it begins rising and if that was true then our souls would be saved because of what we are physically the nature of the soul itself we wouldn't need a savior it'd be the nature of helium is to rise and that's kind of what the Gnostics were saying. It was salvation because the nature of our souls, they are sparks from God, and therefore will return.

This is going to sound kind of like New Age teaching. And there is some overlap there at that point. Yeah, there definitely is. Now, I don't want to know if we want to go into too much depth on this because you hinted at it before, but you talk a lot about the universalists that started kind of even in America, and they were Trinitarian, cross-centered, Bible-quoting Christians. And this kind of seems like a parable of what just consistently happens when somebody opens the door on certain kinds of different theological perspectives, end up where the Universalists did.

So what kind of happened historically and doctrinally from where they started to where they might be today? Well, I mean, there was a desire in the 19th century, just as today, to want to expand the scope of salvation, you know, beyond those who were professing, you know, overt faith in Christ. In the 19th century, the big debate was over post-mortem suffering. And this is where this idea of something kind of like a Catholic purgatory, although Catholic purgatory, according to Catholic teaching, is only for those who've been baptized as Catholic. It's a third state where people make satisfaction for their sins in penitential fire. You know, they're

suffering in fire to be purified. So that was a very common position of the Universists in the 19th century. It still comes up today. It creates a dilemma, though, because the other group of Universus say, wait a second, didn't Jesus say it is finished at the cross? Didn't he deal completely with all of our sin, make full atonement? And saying, if you believe that we make atonement for our own sins through fiery suffering after death, then you're denying grace. But then the argument the other way, the universe has never been able to resolve this issue. It's like, well, wait a second. If everyone goes immediately into God's blissful presence the moment that they die, then that means even the

murderer who is shooting down his victims, laughing gleefully and taken out by a policeman, he goes immediately to be with God. And they said there has to be some moral connection between the choices we make and the outcome. And so the 19th century universities, they were kind of troubled at this thought that it wouldn't make any difference what you did at all morally. It's just like God's just going to negate all of the moral spiritual choices we've made in this life and bring everyone to eternal life. So those are some of the dynamics going on in the 19th century. And, you know, the universalists today have not, they've not resolved it. You know, like Robin Perry calls himself an evangelical universalist, and he's quoting

Moltmann, but Moltmann says, you know, all punishment was taken care of when Jesus died on the cross and said, it is finished. No one will suffer for their sins. Everything's covered. Everything's taken care of. That's sometimes called ultra-universalism. But Robin Perry himself believes that after people die, if they're not ready for heaven, they go through a fiery kind of purgatory-like state. So you can't really have it both ways, you know. And I don't think you can quite resolve that. That's a really interesting tension. You did make a point in your book that jumped out to me.

You said a lot of what motivates stepping into universalism is the problem of evil. And that makes sense. None of us like hell. None of us like hell, none of us like suffering. And so I teach a class at Biola on the problem of evil. And I start by making this point. I say a lot of social justice movements of which I would disagree firmly with are motivated by a desire to overcome the problem of evil. So there's good motivations, but it's misguided in how it plays itself out. Now you make this point. I'm curious if you're going to unpack this a little

bit. You said many modern universalists have a personal animus that motivates their writing. And that would seemingly be a lot of Christian universalists. That's my experience only with a few, but tell me about some of the experience that seems to motivate many that they even state in becoming universalists. Well, I think there is a process of disillusionment sometimes that occurs. I mean, there's a universalist couple that lives in Missouri, Herman, Missouri, and they were missionaries. Actually, they have this universalist website called Tentmaker. They were tentmaking missionaries, and they had a son who did not profess a Christian faith and died suddenly.

And in their grief, they began reading 19th century universalist literature. They became convinced of it. So there really was a personal desire to want to believe that their son was, he was in a good place spiritually after his death, he was with the Lord. So, and I, you know, I found in the more recent literature on universism, a reaction against notions of a sovereign God, a God who is all-powerful, saying that's an oppressive idea, right? And therefore, hell is an oppressive idea,

the idea that God would make decisions, you know, to commit anyone to, you know, to hell eternally that that's a completely unacceptable notion so I think these things there are a lot of things that are sort of bound up in that the sovereignty of God or the authority of Scripture concerned about the eternal status of those that we love that are that are that are near to us so I guess those those might be some of the triggers so to speak. I don't recall you covering this in your book, but I'm wondering if you've thought about a connection between, say, certain kinds of technology and belief in universalism. So,

for example, when people are able to at least have ships and go to the other side of the world, and you start meeting people who see the world differently, when we have planes and we can travel, the television all of a sudden exposes us. And now with the internet, there's just endless people with different beliefs. And it almost seems emotionally hard to think that you're right and these other people are wrong and going to hell that seems so nice and gracious and they're doing their best. Does there seem to be a connection between kind of technological development and belief in universalism?

Does that play a role? Well, certainly the exposure to many different cultures. And if you go back to ancient times, what was the most culturally diverse and intellectually vibrant city of the ancient world would have been Alexandria. Where is Origen coming up with his idea of Universism? You'd walk down the streets of it, there'd be a snake charm on one side, there'd be a philosopher on the other side, there'd be a temple of Serapis, there'd be

Christian communities meeting there. It was this very, very eclectic mix of different cultures. They had the largest library in the world, a million scrolls, much of which sadly was destroyed, destroyed a lot of the knowledge of the world at that point. And the other thing about that is the problem of evil was front and center, because the non-Christian philosophers saying your book, the Old Testament, has this God who judges people and sends fire down from heaven on Sodom and Gomorrah, and how could you believe in a God like that? So Origen himself and the other thinkers in Alexandria were under tremendous cultural pressure to try to find a way to address that. And this is when Origen comes up

with this idea of pre-existence. Well, you know what? There's a reason one person is born poor, another person born fortunate into this world. It's because of this sin that was committed in the pure spirit state that caused one to come into a negative situation in life. So he had actually two ways of addressing, you mentioned the problem of evil. One would be the pre-existence. The other is the post-existence, the idea that everyone ultimately is coming back to God. Those were both ways of addressing the problem of evil. And just one other tangent a little bit to your question. I want to make clear to those who are listening or watching that my engagement is with universalism. There is a position of Christian inclusivism that's not really the primary focus of this book. I think there is a

lot of scope for discussion and disagreement among Christians about those who have never heard the gospel and exactly how God will judge them. Universalism though is a much more radical position because it says that no one, without know, no one, without any exceptions, no one will be lost. Everyone will be safe. So it's like saying, if I make the statement, there are no white crows, you know, it's hard to prove a universal statement like that. Well, there could be, I could go looking for a white crow all through the world and maybe there's one hiding on the other side of the tree. I just didn notice it right so how do you say that they're you know that that um everyone without exception and also if the human will is involved it's like it reminds me of the report on the north north korean election kim jong-un

reported it was 100 turnout that was 100 for himself and everyone laughed because anything depends on human will like all humans are never going to perfectly line up. So is it really credible? I mean, to try to claim that, but that's what universalists say. Now, is there a difference in how Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants are being open to universalism? Because you show, historically speaking, in all three of those strains, largely stand with the united front against it. And universalist beliefs are the exception. But today, are we seeing an openness in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant circles, or is there a difference? There are differences. There certainly is a greater openness in all of the groups that you mentioned. And just to kind of take them one by one we could start with the in catholic world

there's really very little evidence of universalism um prior to vatican ii which would have been that's the major you know major uh council that was held in 1960 so um jacques marathon a french thinker he's confiding privately to his diary, basically, wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone were saved? And he's speculating on it, but he doesn't go public with it because it's completely unacceptable. The official Catholic teaching is that if you die

in a state of mortal sin, you go immediately to hell. You don't go to purgatory, you don't go to heaven, and you will remain in hell forever. So the Catholic doctrine is that you'd have to have no one dying in a state of mortal sin. That's hard to imagine that there was zero people, you know, in that category. Vatican II began to move in a different direction. The idea of the Catholic church was still like the bullseye at the center of the target, so to speak, you know, the means where people were coming into relationship with God. And then you had a circle around that of the Orthodox, I guess, closest to Catholics, the Protestants, and then the Jewish people. Then you could go the outer circles of like Hinduism, Buddhism,

you know, atheism. You could debate which of those is closer or further, but the Catholic Church was what was there. But it's almost like rather than drawing a single line between those inside and those outside, there are different gradations, degrees of being close to God and his truth. And so that kind of, it wasn't universalism, but certainly was opening the door to inclusivism. And then what happened in the eighties is Balthazar, this Swiss theologian wrote this book, Dare We Hope That

All May Be Saved. And that is the book that really opened the Catholic, there was a huge debate back in the 80s, and universalism has been kind of on the table as a possibility or something Catholics have been discussing. In the Protestant world, really the universalist initiatives start on with liberal Protestantism in the 19th century. And I guess it's just pretty recently that, you know, Robin Perry did his book, Evangelical Universalism, or sorry, the Evangelical Universalist. He published it under a pseudonym.

You know, he didn't use this real name. Yeah, yeah. Greg Donald, yeah. There actually are some people in the Pentecostal fold who are beginning to, you know, flirt with, you know, universalism. Or is it actually now is a different, somewhat different case because this massive figure from the early church origin had a great influence on Eastern Christianity through the centuries. But the attitude toward origin was always double-sided that because he was just too important just to completely throw out. He was a major interpreter of scripture. He developed the theory of the contemplative life.

And he was the first to give the spiritual reading in Christian context of the Song of Songs as a story of the love of the soul for Christ and so on. But Jerome in the early church said that for him origin was like a field strewn with weeds and flowers flowers and leave the weeds behind that's how i would interpret origin as well i don't think that there's nothing valuable in origin but the the area that got origin in trouble that led to his name being inserted of the the fifth ecumenical council, 553, he was named as a false teacher because of his view of universal salvation, a suggestion that more than a hint that even Satan is going to be finally redeemed. Well, Satan would become Lucifer again. He would stop being evil. He would go back to his original goodness as God created him as an angel of light or Lucifer. So he suggests that,

and there's huge controversy. Origen is one of the most controversial people, you know, in the history of Christianity. And then what I found that historically the Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox Christians, they always had this ambivalent feeling about origin. It's only very recently. Really, it's the French Jesuits that kind of rehabilitated origin of the 20th century. But now there are Orthodox people saying, oh, we need to reclaim all of origin and reclaim the universal salvation. So that David Bentley Hart is probably the most famous person in that category. He technically is orthodox, but he also has told me personally that he doesn't care what the tradition says.

He's committed to universalism. Interesting. That's a really interesting dialogue we could unpack. But let's talk about, you make this connection between conditionalism and if we allow conditionalism or embrace conditionalism, it seems to logically lead towards embracing universalism. So maybe define what you mean by conditionalism and show why those are connected. Sure. Okay. Conditionalism is the newer term for what up to fairly recently was sometimes called annihilationism. And now annihilation, it's just not a very positive word. It doesn't have a good vibe. Who wants to say I'm an annihilationist? Good point.

You're staring in front of me like the Wicked Witch of the West who has a water thrown on her. So conditionalism or annihilationism is this notion that there will be a final judgment from God. God will separate one group from the other, the sheep from the goats. And then either immediately or at some point, the goat simply ceased to exist. God wills them out of existence. Or one common spin on this is that the fire of hell is a consuming fire, and that those who go into the fire of hell are actually destroyed, and they cease to have any existence at all, like burned to ashes, so to speak. And so in the end, you do end up with a situation where only heaven

is populated, but there is literally no one to be in hell because they've all ceased to exist. This is a view that has always had more appeal for whatever reason in Britain than in the U.S. And in fact, the evangelical alliance was being put together in the middle of the 19th century. This was an issue even then because there were some british scholars who were inclining toward conditionalism they believed the bible but they they wanted to hold this conditionalist view and the americans kind of put their foot down and say no you have to believe in in a you know conscious separation from god eternal separation conscious continued existence and so, but then John Stott, who is a well evangelical British scholar, very highly reputed and a personal chaplain to Queen Elizabeth.

He began to shift the conditionalists to still call themselves and be a part of the Evangelical Alliance there. are pretty similar to the arguments used for universalism. One of them that Stott himself used is he said that he could not picture a final outcome where there were some like holdout, you know, of rebels against God, like in their underground, you know, caverns or, you know, refusing to yield obedience. And he said, wouldn't that be a defeat for God if that were the case? And so for him, again, this is the problem here, Sean, this is a priori reasoning. I'm starting with my own initiative and I'm reasoning downward from those to what seems reasonable. And therefore, you know, if you decide you're eschatology, I like to say, if you start your sentence with, you know, if I were God, then say, well, stop, don't even finish the sentence. You know, if I were God, this is how I would create the world,

right? Because you're not God, right? You know, it's kind of above our pay grade, but stop engaging in that kind of thought. And so that for him made it more, made conditionalism or annihilationism more, more attractive to him. But, but it But what happened, it's kind of a moot point because what actually happened among younger British Christians, and I lived in England twice, I was like a professor at University of Birmingham in England, I found the younger generation that were inclined toward annihilationism had shifted from annihilationism into universalism. So now annihilationism has become kind of a moot point. You wouldn't know this from looking at the literature

because there's still debates going on about annihilationism, but I don't find that they're a very large group. I think there are many more universalists in the younger generation, and they tend to be assertive universalists of the David Bentley Hart type. Not just like this is something we didn't bring up, but the hopeful universalism is a view that we can hope for the salvation of all, but we can't assert it. Well, that middle position is sort of dropping out. And now we're getting the traditional view of particularism, that there are two final destinations, that we can know that from Scripture, and then the David Bentley Hart, the assertive universal position, that everyone will be saved. In fact, David Bentley Hart says, if you're a moral imbecile, moral imbecility, if you don't

affirm that. Very, very sweeping statement. Wow, that's strong. That's really strong. Now, the point that you made between conditionalism and between universalism is kind of a theological a priori about God and his justice and the way he operates in the world. Of course, there's biblical arguments that people will make. Are you finding that a lot of the universalists now, the younger ones, are making these kind of a priori theological claims about God being loving about God caring for the world about his character, biblical arguments, or they making both? Well, the I mean, the arguments are framed, you know, as biblical argument, but there's just so much in Scripture that you have to reinterpret in some way. And it doesn't begin with the discussion of heaven and hell in the New Testament. It begins with the two ways motif. In the second

chapter of the Bible, in the day you eat from it, you shall surely die. It's like consequences follow from choices that are made. Psalm 1 says, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, the way of the wicked will perish. It doesn't mention hell, but it says the wicked will not stand in the day of judgment. There's some idea of distinction, separation. Isaiah chapter 1 says, if you consent and obey, you'll eat the best of the land. If you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. Again, you say, well, maybe that's talking about a this-worldly destiny. Yes, but through Scripture, there's a very clear idea of these different outcomes for the righteous and the wicked, depending on how they respond to whatever revelation God has presented. And the universalists want to set that aside.

And then there are some texts that are just so clear in the New Testament, like in Luke 13, where someone asked Jesus, are there many who will be saved? And Jesus, first thing he says is strive to enter by the narrow gate. So basically, pay attention to yourself. Don't get caught up in the speculation about other people. Pay attention to yourself. But then he said, for truly, I said, you many will strive to enter and will not be able. And if you're a universalist, you have to take a text like that and say, oh, well, it's just a temporary block. You have to add something that's not in the text, say, well, or how about the parable of the wise and foolish virgins are knocking on the door,

the door of the wedding feast is shut, and they can't get in. You have to say, well, that only lasts for a period of time. And then there's another opportunity beyond that. Well, but scripture doesn't say that. And so this all important issue of salvation, you're actually causing your belief to be dependent on some hypothetical further condition that isn't actually directly taught in scripture. and that seems to be like a very dangerous thing well i'm just going to assume that the door to the feast even if it's shut it's going to open again right even though the text doesn't say that i i just because this is what i believe about god he gives endless opportunities he never forecloses as one of

the universes said he never forecloses on that one so the door must open again well that's not what scripture says and there's this this sense of warning and urgency that comes through in the parables of jesus about judgment so you're trained in history you got a phd at the university university of chicago and have taught history in this two-volume book, again, we're talking about the devil's redemption. Yeah, actually, historical theology. So I'm like, I did theology, but I did historical, so it's history of theology, but it was more under the theology than the history category. Excellent. Good. So this book is really, it struck me as primarily a historical look, but through the lens of theology. But when you get to the end, you raise theological and philosophical critiques of universalism. Now, we're not going to do this

justice, obviously. There's so many more arguments here, but you kind of put them in three categories. Let's kind of take them one by one and maybe you can explain to us and why you think this is problematic and concerning for universalism. The first one you call the problem of God. Explain. Yeah. A common view of universalists is that when God created the world, that God had to, in effect, diminish himself to bring himself down to our level so that God was sort of relatable.

And they really have this shifted view of God. And I found this in some call panentheism. Kevin Van Hooser, a well-known evangelical theologian, calls it, well, he has a fancy name, calls it canonic relational ontotheology, which is quite a. Here's my analogy for this. It'd be like if a school teacher, let's say in some school where there's a lot of misbehavior and violence. Let's imagine the school teacher could not expel any student from her classroom, right? So students in the back are, I don't know, they're smoking marijuana in the corner, they're lighting fires in the wastebasket, and she can give them a five-minute timeout on the side of the room, but she can't actually say, out of my room. There is a view of God among these relational theologians that God actually cannot exclude any of his creatures.

He's like obligated to maintain relationship with them. So that's a really, I think it's a non-biblical view of God. Also the idea that creation is God lowering or limiting himself. Martin Luther said that to create is to command. He saw that creation was an expression of divine omnipotence and power, the power of God, also the wisdom of God, and then the goodness of God. He made all things very good. So I think we have at the very outset with some of these relational canonic theologians, we have a distorted image of the nature of God. And then there's also this strange idea, and again, this is getting off, maybe too far off from our main topic, but this drop within God, Jewish Kabbalah taught that there was a left and a right side of God, and they're in conflict with one another.

And God has to reconcile with himself. And as God reconciles with himself, all creatures become reconciled. And so that's a non-biblical idea that evil originates within God. And that's an idea that some modern theologians embrace. There's distance, there's a fall with god and then god has to and like lucifer and christ are like the two sons of god and they have to be united together with one another this is this is esoteric gnostic type of thinking so there's a problem there's a problem with with with the way we think of god it's interesting how much you talk about, you said, Kabbalah, Gnostic ideas,

kind of seeping into how Christians view God rather than in Scripture. That's kind of at the root of this. Now, the second one, which to me was one of the most interesting points in the book, is what you call the problem of grace. Explain that one, if you will. Well, the problem is that grace is God's, you know, we could define it just roughly, as I think many preachers would, God's unmerited favor. God is not obligated to give grace. And the paradox of universalism is by

extending grace to everyone, grace is in effect abolished because grace becomes mandatory. It becomes God's job is to ensure that everyone is saved. And so if that's your view, then grace is actually not, it's not gracious. It's God's, you know, it's God's responsibility. It reminds me, Heinrich Heine, he was a German writer, and someone said something to him about God on his deathbed. His supposed last words were, God will forgive me. That's his job, you know. And that's kind of the idea that in the contemporary culture, it's like it's God's responsibility to save everyone. So the graciousness of grace is lost.

Grace is really something that God freely gives. So anyway, it is an irony that grace would be undermined by the people who think that they're emphasizing it. Yeah, that's fascinating that it would undermine, in many ways, the root of what makes Christianity distinct from other faiths is that it's grace and it's not earned. That gets undermined in a movement that tries to give grace to everybody, really gives grace in a sense in the way it's biblically understood to nobody. You could make that case. So you have the problem of God, problem of grace, and then you have what's called the

problem of God problem of grace and then you have what's called the problem of belief hmm yeah the problem of belief is that we you know the we we don't have a firm promise in Scripture any or the salvation of all biblical hope is not wishfulness to be like I say wouldn't it be nice if there were no people in the world wouldn't be nice if there was no poor people in the world? Wouldn't it be nice if there was, or we read stories right now about violence and loss in Israel. Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was peace between them, right? Do we have a reasonable expectation that peace will break out all around the world? Not if we look at, you know, thousands of years of recorded history. So if we look at the general experience of the world, it doesn't really support

the hope we have. And if we had some texts that really taught the salvation of all, you know, are there, there are some who cite certain verses that, you know, out of context, I think if you look at those in context, there are two or three that are, that are often tied in this connection. So we don't have the clear promise of God. And so this, you know, this idea that all will be saved, ultimately, I would put it in the category of wishfulness rather than biblical hope. And then the tradition of the church is very clear, too, that the, you know, one example is going back to the title of my book, you know, Devil's Redemption, is that churches always, churches throughout history have always prayed for sinners, of even mass murderers, rapists, kidnappers, those who committed all kinds of crimes have always been, had people praying for them. But I defy anyone to show me a liturgical

prayer, like a written prayer that we have in history for the salvation of Satan. It's like it doesn't exist, right? And what that means is that there was just a very clear awareness in every part of the world through the centuries that God has created certain spiritual beings who are never redeemed. They never come back into relationship with God. And so the starting point of some universalists, you see, it kind of undercuts their starting point. God would never create an intelligent being that he would then allow to become alienated from him forever. Well, we know for certain, about as certain as we can be of anything, that Satan is not redeemed in the end. It's thrown into the lake of fire. You know, the first scene he appears in scripture, he's tempting the woman.

And then Revelation, he's thrown, I'm tempted to say, kicking and screaming, right, into the lake of fire. So that there's no, and, you know, there's no hint of any demon. There's, you know, that the demons can be redeemed. There's no sermons given to them. They were asked to repent. Yeah. So there's, when Adam and eve and the serpent you know when the serpent tempts adam and eve to sin then there's there's a hint of redemption that the

the seed of the woman does in genesis 3 15 will crush the head of the serpent and so that the hope of redemption is the serpent being crushed not the serpent himself being redeemed so okay so in universalist not only are we talking about the universal salvation of human beings, but do demons and Satan always come along with this? Or do some just say, nah, Satan's still going to hell, but Christians or human beings are universally saved? Well, I think this is a dilemma for the Universalists, honestly. I think it's a dilemma because there's some who just want to ignore the question. And there really, I guess, there are just a couple of options. Well, that one is to say yes, that Satan and the demons are redeemed in the end. The other would be to say, well, Satanism is a kind of figure of speech. There aren't actual... Oh, okay.

...euthanasia. So I think Robin Perry kind of wrestles with that. I don't see how you say that all human beings are saved, but no angels are redeemed. That seems like an unstable position for the universe, because the same kinds of arguments for universal human salvation would seemingly apply to the angels. So I think it's a problem that's not been resolved, one of a number of problems in universalist theology. So we're going to look at just a couple passages, and I wish we had time to go into way more depth on these, that are cited biblically to support universalism. But you make a

point that it's not just looking at these verses and interpreting them differently. Universalists tend to take a very different interpretive methodology or hermeneutic to the text and thus come up with a universalist interpretation. What tends to be that hermeneutic that is brought to the text you see universalists consistently utilizing? One is rejecting the Old Testament, you know, the Old Testament versus the New Testament. I mean, and this is an old theme in Protestant liberal theology, the angry God of the Old Testament versus the loving God of the New Testament. I think most universalists have much, have difficulty in reconciling their universalist views, looking at the whole of scripture, right?

So a lot would want to limit themselves just to the New Testament. And then there is a tendency to take spiritual readings sometimes, spiritual interpretations. For instance, some of the theologians that inclined toward universalism in the 20th century, John A.T. Robinson, he had this view, this existentialist view that when Jesus talks about the fire

of hell in Gehenna, or would be the Greek word, that he's pointing toward the universal human dilemma of decision that we make moment by moment in all of our lives. It's not about a specific outcome that pertains to you after you die. It's like all of us are every moment standing. I'm thinking of that old REM song, choosing my religion. This are like every single moment choosing my religion. So it's like, well, what does that have to do with the teaching of Jesus? That's like reading a kind of 20th century philosophical movement back into text. But that's another move existentializing. Karl Rahner called it threat discourse, which is a weird way of saying like, well, there really isn't a threat, but it's sort of, I don't know, people are motivated by a threat,

but there isn't actually any danger connected with that. The other move in terms of interpretation or hermeneutics is to say that there are two different Pauls. There's a universalist Paul, and then there's a particularist Paul. And to believe that, you'd actually have to say that like, Paul really was of two minds. Like the great apostle to the Gentiles is author of so much of the New Testament. He didn't even, wasn't even sure himself as to whether everyone would be saved or wouldn't be saved. And it just, it strains, you know, our, you know, credulity to

the breaking point. Yeah. That the apostle would not have this resolved and then if you if you look at that you know the passages i mean romans 5 18 yeah let's look at these go ahead so let me oh go ahead yeah so then as through one transgression there was all condemnation to all men even so through one act of righteousness there was all justification of life to all men full Full stop. Now this is sometimes quoted out of context to favor universalism, but the very next verse doesn't speak of all, speaks of the many. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous. And that should immediately put a question in your mind. Why is it, Paul's speech, you know, kind of seems to be loose in the way he's using vocabulary. Just something like say, well, did everyone come to the party on Saturday

night? Yeah, they were all there. Well, that's a loose way of speaking. There may have been one person who was expected to the party who didn't come. And so there's, it seems to be kind of a looseness. And then even more profoundly, what about the beginning of Chapter 5 of Romans? Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Is everyone a believer? I don't think so. And if the whole theme of the chapter is justification by faith, how does that fit in with the universalist reading of the latter part of the chapter is justification by faith how does that fit in with the universal

universalist reading of the the latter part of the chapter so i i think there's some pretty convincing responses on that i just want to point out to viewers what you did is if if you take this verse individually within itself it seems to lend itself to a possible universalist interpretation but if you look at the book of rom as a whole, and you can even make a case from Romans 1, but of course you stick within the context itself. Let's look at the verses before, those after. Paul is clearly saying something else. Another verse that's used often to defend universalism is Colossians 1.20, which is also Paul, of course. And maybe you want to turn there. If not, I'll read it for folks to have it in the... So they're tracking with us. Colossians 1.20 says,

And through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And the key that people say is whether on earth or in heaven, reconciling all things to himself. So the argument is therefore at some point in the future, there's going to be reconciliation of all things to God through the blood of Jesus.

Well, there's, there's also a good response to this. And it's, it's from basic knowledge of Greek. Anyone who's done a Greek course will understand that something in Greek called the intent clause. So I might say Sean McDowell invested $1,000 of his money in order that he might increase his investment. That doesn't mean that Sean McDowell ended up with $1,200 or $1,500 or $2,000 from his $1,000 investment. That's a clause pointing toward an outcome, right? It's not an assertion that the outcome occurred. So that's what we have here, that the fullness, the Father's good pleasure, all the fullness dwell in him and in the father's intent his good pleasure eudokia is a greek word to reconcile all things to himself having made peace through the blood

of his cross through him i say things whether on earth or things in heaven so this is the intent of god think of the verse that is often quoted in this connection says god desires all men to be saved the knowledge of the truth. That's in 1 Timothy. And then in 2 Peter, there's a verse that says, yeah, that he's not willing that any should perish, but that all might come to repent. Okay, notice that. That's another intent clause, right? That all might come to repentance.

Is that saying that all do come to repentance? No, that's just a very basic grammatical misunderstanding of the syntax in the passage. And that's true, I think, of the Colossians text as well. And then if you look on the other side, you know, in 1 Thessalonians 1, it says it's just unambiguous, and the Universalists themselves don't know what to say about that. And these will pay the penalty of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord, or it could be from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. That's 2 Thessalonians 1.9.

That's so clear. I don't think there's much wiggle room on that one. Well, there's a lot more verses we could look at. We won't do that here, but I think this is enough for people to realize that there is a weight of Scripture talking about the reality of some who are saved, some who are not. And you make the point in the book that the idea, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant circles, there's a place called hell, it's eternal, and some people are going to end up there. Hence, we should pray for people and pray for their salvation and warn people against

such a fate. Historically and theologically, there's such a weight here that to embrace universalism, you're going to have to make some pretty strong biblical arguments that you argue in your book certainly have not been made yet. Let me just bring it back full circle. What's at stake here? Is there anything that we missed moving forward, kind of in this cultural moment where it's becoming more and more acceptable? Pastors in the church, I'm seeing apologists and others embracing this. What's at stake here? And how much should Christians stand firm against and be concerned about this movement towards embracing universalism whether there's one view of universalism says well it's a kind of benign or

you know harmless mistake that some people make maybe they're hoping too much right hoping for too much and actually if we look in scripture we see that false hope can be a very dangerous thing. In the book of Jeremiah, the people in that day, now this is not dealing with eternal outcomes, but there is this threat of the invasion by Babylon. And the people were convinced that this would never happen. God would never allow the temple to be invaded. Jeremiah chapter 7, this is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord. So this sort of nationalist ideology

and Jeremiah is speaking against that. And you see the tragic result of this false belief. And that false belief that Jerusalem was, you know, was never gonna be invaded, there were judgment was never gonna fall on the city despite all their sin. That was reinforced by the false prophets in Jeremiah's day. And Jeremiah says that they speak to the people, they say, peace, peace, but there is no

peace. And I see the proclamation of universalism today in that light. I think it's like the false prophecy of our day. It's saying, peace, peace, there is no peace. It's telling people not to be concerned, not to be attentive to their own situation and circumstance and that of those around them. And the other thing maybe to say, you know, in closing is that this does not mean that those who speak of hell and of judgment are taking delight in the suffering of other people. The Germans have a word for that. They call it schadenfreude. It's delight in someone else's misfortune. We see it every day on the tabloids, you know, where the media stars and Hollywood actors and actresses, you know, they're going through divorces.

And that gets reported because there's a part of us, many of us, I think, that kind of delights in the thought of this. They're wealthy and powerful, but look at how they're suffering. And some think that that's what lies behind this doctrine of hell. And it's like, no, it's the point is that, that scripture makes it clear that there is objective, not subjective, objective danger and risk to hearing about Christ and rejecting Christ. And so you're no more a fear monger in talking about the reality of future judgment than you would be a fear monger if a building catches fire and you're shouting to someone on the upper floor, there's a fire, get out of the building right away. The fire's on the first floor, it's moving on up the apartment building. That's not fear mongering. Or if someone is working with dangerous chemicals and you say a sign to say, you know, the apartment building. That's not fear-mongering. Or if someone is working with dangerous chemicals and you say a sign to say, you know, danger, you know, cyanide kills,

that's not fear-mongering because we all agree that cyanide is objectively dangerous. The problem with this discussion about hell and judgment is that the non-believing world and a significant part even of the Christian world has been affected with the idea that there really isn't any danger or risk. And so we can kind of downplay that risk. And so I think we have to, if we're biblically minded, we have to realize, we have to stay close to what scripture actually says about this. And that means being willing to talk about the reality of judgment. I appreciate that you said if we are biblically minded because at its core it comes back to biblical authority and biblical teaching doesn't it that's the heart of it and if we are bible following christians we've got to bring it back to scripture mike

really appreciate you coming on at some point since your last name name is McClymond and I'm McDowell, you must have some Scottish in you. So we must be related somehow when we go back in the past, which is kind of fun. But you told me really fast, there's only two McClymonds in America. Did I hear you say that? Is it that small? Two Michael McClymonds that I know about. Oh, got it.

The sandwich shop in the Bay Area near my sister who lives there. And so he's got good reviews online. So now if he's my identical twin, then who knows that that would be surprising. Fair enough. Well, there's one other Sean McDowell. I'm aware of you like sell shoes and has a website. And so never met him. If you're out there, we should meet. Actually, there's a third. He used to be a radio show host. But anyways, that aside, I really enjoyed your two-volume set, The Devil's Redemption. And like I said, I read probably 90% of it. It's 1,800 words. And I like to recommend books to my viewers, but I want you to know this is not an easy,

quick afternoon read. This is going to take you hours and hours to work through. Careful detail. It's very readable. And it's kind of a study in church history through the lens of views on salvation and views on universalism. As I said at the beginning, if we ever had a course on universalism, these are the texts that I would apply. Mike, really enjoyed it. We're definitely going to have to have you back to talk about other topics and stay on top of your research. But before those of you click away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other topics coming up. We're going to discuss hell in the future. We're going to come back to universalism again in due time, but all sorts of issues related to worldview and culture.

Make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss it. And if you thought about studying apologetics, we have the top rated full distance program at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University. I teach classes on the problem of evil, resurrection, have an upcoming class on biblical sexuality. Would love to have you in class. And if you're like, I want to study apologetics, not ready for master's, we have a certificate program with a significant discount below. We'd love to guide you through that. Mike, thanks for coming on my friend. Let's do this again. Thank you.