Christian universalism
Christian universalism is a school of Christian theology focused around the doctrine of universal reconciliation – the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God. "Christian universalism" and "the belief or hope in the universal reconciliation through Christ" are typically understood as synonyms. However, reconciliation and salvation may be viewed as different concepts entirely, as posited by John Murray in the 18th century, who believed everyone already to be saved, yet still awaiting reconciliation after death.
The term Christian universalism was used in the Christian Intelligencer in the 1820s by Russell Streeter—a descendant of Adams Streeter who had founded one of the first Universalist Churches on September 14, 1785. Some Christian universalists claim that in Early Christianity, this was the most common interpretation of Christianity.
As a formal Christian denomination, Christian universalism originated in the late 18th century with the Universalist Church of America. Their membership has been consolidated with the American Unitarian Association into the Unitarian Universalist Association on May 15, 1961. There is no single denomination uniting Christian universalists, but a few denominations teach some of the principles of Christian universalism or are open to them.
Beliefs
In his Plain Guide to Universalism, Christian ultra-universalist Thomas Whittemore writes, "The sentiment by which Universalists are distinguished, is this that: at last every individual of the human race shall become holy and happy. This does not comprise the whole of their faith, but, merely that feature of it which is peculiar to them and by which they are distinguished from the rest of the world."The remaining central beliefs of Christian universalism are compatible with Christianity in general:
- God is the loving parent of all people.
- Jesus Christ reveals the nature and character of God and is the spiritual leader of humankind.
- Humankind is created with an immortal soul which death does not end—or a mortal soul that shall be resurrected and/or preserved by God—and which God will not wholly destroy.
- Sin has negative consequences for the sinner either in this life or the afterlife.
Views on hell
Christian universalists disagree on whether hell exists. However, they do agree that if it does exist, the punishment there is corrective, remedial and does not last forever.Purgatorial hell and patristic universalism
Purgatorial universalism was the belief of some of the early Church Fathers, especially Greek-speaking ones such as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa. It asserts that the unsaved will undergo hell but that hell is remedial according to key scriptures and that after purification or conversion all will enter heaven.Fourth-century Christian theologian and bishop Diodorus of Tarsus wrote: "For the wicked there are punishments, not perpetual, however, lest the immortality prepared for them should be a disadvantage, but they are to be purified for a brief period according to the amount of malice in their works. They shall therefore suffer punishment for a short space, but immortal blessedness having no end awaits them... the penalties to be inflicted for their many and grave sins are very far surpassed by the magnitude of the mercy to be shown to them."
Ilaria Ramelli, a scholar of the early Patristic history writes, "In the minds of some, universal salvation is a heretical idea that was imported into Christianity from pagan philosophies by Origen". Ramelli argues that this view is mistaken and that Christian theologians were the first people to proclaim that all will be saved and that their reasons for doing so were rooted in their faith in Christ.
Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart makes the case on the basis of the earliest Christian writings, theological tradition, scripture, and logic, that if God is the good creator of all, he is the savior of all, without fail. In his book, That All Shall Be Saved, he calls opponents of the school, who believe that some or all people are condemned to eternal damnation, "infernalists". However, it has been argued that this term is pejorative.
The Restorationist Controversy
In 1803, to fulfill State requirements on their churches' legal status, the Universalist General Convention adopted the Winchester Profession. So long as one believed in an all-powerful and all-loving God who could and would save all of humankind, that was enough to be a universalist.These vague guidelines led to the Restorationist Controversy, a de facto schism within the convention from the 1810s to 1840s. Ultra-universalists believed everyone experienced immediate salvation after death. However, the majority of Christian universalists, the universal restorationists believed that finite postmortem punishment exists after death with verses such as. As a result, the first Christian Universal Restorationist denomination, the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists was formed in 1831, lasting until around 1841. Since then, universal restorationism has remained the majority belief among Christian universalists across centuries.
Eternal hell in Christian history
Christian universalists assert that the doctrine of eternal Hell was not a part of Christ's teachings nor even the early church, and that it was added in. According to Christian annihilationist theologian Edward Beecher, in the first four centuries there were six main theological schools, and only one of them advocated the idea of eternal hell, while another believed in the absolute annihilation of the wicked.Origins of the idea of hell as eternal
Christian universalists point towards mistranslations of the Greek word αιών, as giving rise to the idea of eternal hell. Dr. Ken Vincent writes "When it was translated into Latin Vulgate, became aeternam which means 'eternal'." He also states that the first written record of the idea of an eternal hell comes from Tertullian, who wrote in Latin. However, the first person to explicitly advocate for an eternal hell had actually been Greek-writing Tatian, not Tertullian.The second major source of the idea of hell as eternal was the 4th-century theologian Augustine. According to author Steve Gregg, it was Tertullian's writings, plus Augustine's views and writings on eternal hell, which "overwhelmed" the other views of a temporary hell. First Augustine's views of hell were accepted in the early Latin Church, up until the Reformation Augustine's view of hell as eternal was not questioned.
Mistranslation of the Greek word
About the word as having connotations of "age" or "temporal", the 19th-century theologian Marvin Vincent wrote:More recently, universalist theologian David Bentley Hart has undertaken a study of the term, noting how aionios has a wide number of meaning: in addition to the traditional rendering of "eternal" and "age-lasting", it can also mean "of the Age to Come" or "having its source in Eternity", with Eternity intended not simply as something which never ends, but as the perfect, unchanging and always-existing trascendental reality which lies beyond the cosmos, which the Greeks called the "Aion" and the Christians identified with God.
For instance Hart's translation renders Matthew 25:46 as:
Arguments against the idea of eternal hell
Author Thomas Talbott states that if one believes in the idea of eternal hell or that some souls will be destroyed, one must either let go of the idea that it is God's wish and desire to save all beings, or accept the idea that God wants to, but will not "successfully accomplish his will and satisfy his own desire in this matter".Author David Burnfield defends the postmortem view that God continues to evangelize to people even after they die.
History
According to the New Schaff–Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, over the first five hundred years of Christian history there are records of at least six theological schools: four of these schools were Universalist, one taught conditional immortality, and the last taught eternal Hell. However, the Encyclopedia also notes that most contemporary scholars would take issue with classifying these early schools as Universalist.An important figure in early American Christian Universalism was George de Benneville, a French Huguenot preacher and physician who was imprisoned for advocating Universalism and later emigrated to Pennsylvania where he continued preaching on the subject. De Benneville was noted for his friendly and respectful relationship with Native Americans and his pluralistic and multicultural view of spiritual truth which was well ahead of his time. One of his most significant accomplishments was helping to produce the Sauer Bible, the first German language Bible printed in America. In this Bible version, passages teaching universal reconciliation were marked in boldface.
Other significant early modern Christian universalist leaders include Elhanan Winchester, a Baptist preacher who wrote several books promoting the universal salvation of all souls after a period in Purgatory, who founded the first Universalist church in Philadelphia, and founded a church that ministered to enslaved African Americans in South Carolina; Hosea Ballou, a Christian ultra-universalist preacher and writer in New England, his relative Adin Ballou, a Christian universal restorationist who founded the first Christian socialist community in America and Hannah Whitall Smith, a writer and evangelist from a Quaker background who was active in the Holiness movement as well as the women's suffrage and temperance movements.
The Unity School of Christianity, founded in 1889 by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, has taught some Universalist beliefs such as God's total goodness, the divine nature of human beings, and the rejection of the traditional Christian belief that God condemns people to Hell.
In the early 20th century, some Primitive Baptists in Appalachia started espousing Universalist ideas. By 1924, these churches branched off to form the Primitive Baptist Universalists. They are often known as "No Hellers" and believe that temporal punishment and separation from God during life is the only hell.
The Universalist Church of America gradually declined in the early to mid 20th century and merged with the American Unitarian Association in 1961, creating the modern-day Unitarian Universalist Association, which does not officially subscribe to exclusively Christian theology. Christian universalism largely passed into obscurity for the next few decades with the end of the Universalist Church as a separate denomination. However, the Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship remains as an organization for Christians from the Unitarian Universalist tradition and liberal Christians interested in Unitarianism and Universalism.
Some Christians from a Pentecostal background who were involved in the Latter Rain Movement of the 1940s and 1950s came to believe in the ideas of Christian universalism on their own, separately from the Universalist Church tradition. They emphasized the teachings of universal reconciliation and theosis. These ideas were spread primarily through newsletters and traveling evangelists from the 1950s to 1980s, and were not typically identified by the term "Universalism". The only significant organization representing these beliefs that emerged within the Charismatic tradition was the Home Missions Church, a loosely organized network of ministers and house churches founded in 1944.
In May 2007 the Christian Universalist Association was founded at the Universalist National Memorial Church. The founding board of directors included thirteen ministers from diverse denominational backgrounds such as Quaker and Eastern Orthodox as an ecumenical organization promoting a revival of Christian universalism.