Verses Against Limited Atonement and Irresistible Grace

I think Calvinists might as well take a marker and black out these verses and all others like them, because no amount of spin-doctoring is going to reconcile them with their doctrines.

Limited Atonement

"[Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world." 1 John 2:2

"[God] wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Tim. 2:4)

"The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Pet. 3:9)

"As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways!" (Ez. 33:11)

"I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." (Jn. 12:32)

"As in Adam all died, so in Christ all will be made alive." (1 Cor. 15:22)

Irresistible Grace

"The Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God's purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John." (Lk. 7:30)

"You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit!" (Acts 7:51)

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matt. 23:37)

"All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations." (Isa. 65:2)

Passages could be brought against all the TULIP doctrines, but if L and I cannot be true, then the rest follow.

Grace, Part II: Is Salvation a Human Choice?

I again use Grace Kelly to personify grace

So far, I have laid out that salvation and humanity’s coming-to-God is possible because the Spirit resides within us. However, there has still been talk of a required human response to God’s work in order for it to take effect, which still leaves the question of Philippians 2:13 open:  if “it is God who is at work in [us], enabling [us] both to will and to work for his good pleasure,” how can we say we choose God with our own free will? How can we say it is all God’s grace when it requires our response? I will begin this discussion with 3 foundational thoughts: 

First, as we have already seen, the breath of God in Adam’s nostrils gave him more than just life—that is, more than just mere being. It also gave him more than the presence of God’s Spirit within him; it equipped him with everything he needed to be a servant and lover of God.  To re-use a quote from Origen, he equipped Adam with “all the desires and all the impulses with which [he could] work towards virtue and make progress, and also planted in [him] the power of reason with which [he could] recognize what [he] ought to do and what to avoid.”(25) Included in this equipment was free will. He endowed Adam with the ability to choose to love him or hate him, embrace him or reject him.

Secondly, God sustains all things (Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:16). Paul said in Acts, “In him we live and move and have our being” (17:28). As Karl Barth notes, “It is on the free will of God that everything depends.”(26) Reality itself, then, is God’s grace. God’s breath in Adam’s nostrils reveals that the fact we breathe at all is God’s grace.

Finally, we are told that every perfect gift comes from the Father (Jas. 1:17). He is responsible for all the good, not only of that which he has directly provided, but of the good we have accomplished. Therefore, we should not boast in anything we do, for we branches do not support our root, but the root supports us (Rom. 11:18). 

The answer to our question, then, is that because of everything with which God has provided us, we cannot refer to any good that we accomplish as our own doing. He gave us the breath of life, the capacity for good, the ability to reason, the free will, the influence of his Spirit, etc. We might also add that he himself is goodness, and so nothing good can find its origin in us because all goodness is God’s self-communication.  

Consider this analogy. Let us say a man opens up a bank account for his son and places billions of dollars in it. Then he gives his son a debit card and the PIN. If the son purchases something, can it really be said that he pays for it? Can it be said that he makes himself able to use the money? No. His father gave him the money, and his father gave him the ability to use it (the debit card and PIN). That being said, the Son cannot just walk around and experience the benefits of the money he has in his account; he has to use the card his father gave him in order to experience it. But even the using of the card is attributable to his father, because he gave him the card.

Likewise, God has given us salvation and has given us everything we need in order to experience it and engage in relationship with him. We must make the decision to engage, but God is ultimately responsible for the decision because he is responsible for everything that brought us to the decision.

Origen

Heschel says that in establishing a relationship with God, the “initiative must be ours, yet the achievement depends on Him.”(28) Indeed, yet, God is even, in part, responsible for the initiative. Not that he himself made the decision for us, but he gave us the ability to make the initiative. He gave us will power. Again, he gave us every single thing we needed in order to choose him. As Origen said, “God does most of the work.”(27) But even the work we do is something for which God is responsible, even if indirectly.(28) 

“God is at work in us” does not mean that God is the one doing all the work. It means he is “enabling us to will and to work.” He is drawing us to him, luring us to him, and giving us what we need to come to him. Philippians 2:13 is referring to the supernatural existential at work, that divine immanence in us that is responsible for all the goodness we manifest, including our choice to follow God. Again, it does not do the work for us, as the Calvinist doctrine of irresistible grace implies, but it influences and entices us to embrace Christ. When and if we do, God is the one responsible, for he gave us reason and free will, and he gave us the Spirit to influence that reason and free will. And everything he gave us is a manifestation of his grace.(29) We play a part, and indeed a vital one, but it is most definitely nothing of which we can boast, for God is ultimately the one responsible.

Conclusion 

This study, rather than thinking of salvation as either the work of grace or a human choice, has embraced salvation as both the work of grace and a human choice. It emphasizes both the biblical teaching of God’s grace and providence, and the biblical teaching of human choice and moral responsibility. 

We need not believe that we have no part in our salvation in order to say with confidence that grace is the all-determining factor. I have often heard from Calvinists that because they know how sinful they are, they know that they could never choose God, so he had to have chosen them. A human can do nothing for God without grace, they say, so salvation must be solely the work of God’s grace and we must not have anything to do with it. This conclusion is understandable, but, as we have seen, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of God’s grace. Our free choice to serve and love God is itself a manifestation of grace, for such a choice would not be possible without it. God’s grace is the equipment with which God empowered humanity, and it was indeed sufficient in enabling humanity to walk freely to him. Thus, we can affirm with Paul that when we work out our salvation, it is God who is at work in us, enabling us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 

Notes:
(25) von Balthasar, 195.
(26) Barth, 74.
(27) Heschel, 129.
(28) von Balthasar, 196.
(29) If this is true, one could then ask, “Doesn’t that mean God is indirectly responsible for evil?” Since this is not relevant to the topic of my paper, I will not spend too much time answering this question, but it is important to at least respond to, even if in a small way.
First, evil was not created when man sinned. Evil entered into this world through humanity’s sin, but its origin was found in Satan, before the earth was created. We do not know the nature of evil’s actual origin; all we have are the bits and pieces we find in some biblical and apocryphal books. For an overview, see Elaine Pagels, “The Social History of Satan: From the Hebrew Bible to the Gospels,” in The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995), 35–62. The question then becomes, “Is God responsible for evil’s entrance into this world?” No. Evil is not of God, and he was not responsible for its origin. He is also not responsible for Satan’s influence on creatures. The reason why he is—at least indirectly—responsible for the human’s choosing of him is because he has not only given them the ability to choose him, but he has done everything they need in order for them to choose him. Because he has not provided evil, and he has not provided the devil’s influence, but has only given humans the ability to choose to reject him, he is not responsible in any way—even indirectly—for humanity’s sin.
(30) As Origen says, God “gives everything as grace.” See von Balthasar, 196.

Grace, Part I: Is the Doctrine of Total Depravity Totally Depraved?

I chose this picture because nothing says
'grace' like Grace Kelly

The relationship between God’s providence and the human will has been the subject of much theological debate throughout Christian history, particularly as it regards to salvation. If God’s work “depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy” (Rom. 9:6) and if it is true that grace does not depend on works (11:6), then how can we say that humans choose God out of their own volition?(1) How can we say that the choice is ours when we are told that “it is God who is at work in [us], enabling [us] both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13)? Calvinist doctrine states that we cannot, that salvation is not at all based on the human’s response to God but solely on God’s choice of whom to save—his elect. Furthermore, it states that humanity is totally depraved and unable to choose God, and that it is God’s grace alone which brings the elect to him.

I, on the other hand, contend that the most balanced and accurate response to the question states that the human’s free choice to enter into a relationship with God is a manifestation of the reality of grace, because God equipped the human with everything necessary in order to walk freely to him—and that this divine equipment was a bestowal of grace, and thus, everything accomplished by its work finds grace as its origin.

Humanity in the Pre-Cross and Post-Cross Periods

We must begin with a discussion of what occurred at the Fall, so that we can understand what occurred on the Cross. With these, we can more accurately discuss the nature of grace and human will, and their roles in salvation.

Jonathan Edwards describes well the view of the Fall I wish to oppose here:

When man sinned, and broke God’s covenant, and fell under his curse, [the divine principles of the Spirit] left his heart: for indeed God left him; that communion with God, on which these principles depended, entirely ceased; the Holy Spirit, that divine inhabitant, forsook the house.(2)

Thus, Edwards believed the Fall made us totally depraved. Greg Forster defines the doctrine of total depravity in the following way:

Calvinism says that everything in our fallen nature is hostile to the perfect goodness of God--to 'goodness' in the absolute sense. This is not because our nature contains nothing that is good in any respect, but because everything in us is spoiled by our sin. In other words, Calvinism is saying that we are born as slaves to Satan. . . . We are born with every part of ourselves participating in, and hence defiled by, a state of freely chosen rebellion against God.(3)

Thus, to Calvinist doctrine, the Fall left us completely unable to move toward God without him doing all the work. Such is the Calvinist understanding of the Fall, and the doctrine of total depravity. This interpretation, however, runs counter to the Hebrew understanding of God’s ruah. God breathed his breath into Adam’s nostrils (Gen. 2:7), which was very significant to ancient Hebrew anthropology. Harold Knight provides that this “essential quality of the divine” was “the acceptable explanation of all that was striking or unusual in human conduct,”(4) such as, wisdom.(5) It meant that “God’s Spirit [is] in the human person”(6) and was understood to be a “permanent indwelling in man”(7) and “a core human characteristic.”(8)

Therefore, to the ancient Hebrew mind, the Spirit of God did not forsake the house, as Edwards put it. Rather than making humans totally unable to move to God, the Fall made humans conflicted; it assured that they would thenceforth be engaged in a constant inner battle between good and evil. The Fall established that life would be a long stream of existential choices between stepping towards God or stepping towards total depravity. Humanity’s constant movement towards depravity is what made the Cross more and more necessary.

What strikes me as odd about the doctrine of total depravity is that it is maintained even after the Cross. Christ brought us salvation, but Calvinist doctrine says that it can only be obtained by those upon whom God has bestowed it. Since humanity's corruption makes us unable to move to God, we cannot choose salvation; it can only be given by God’s irresistible grace.(9) 

The predicament in the pre-Cross period was not that humanity was rendered incapable of moving to God, but that the seed which God had planted in humans became perishable in the Fall (1 Pet. 1:23). In the event that humanity strayed far enough from God, that seed would cease to exist. If humanity chose to follow depravity long enough, we would eventually lose our ability to choose God at all, for we would have trapped ourselves in a depraved mind. Thus, if salvation was going to spread throughout the world, it was going to require further action on God’s part.

Enter Jesus Christ, who came to undo what Adam and Eve did (Rom. 5:12–21; 1 Cor. 15:20–49). The Cross re-established the image of God that humanity was created to be, and planted an incorruptible, imperishable seed in humans (1 Pet. 1:23). He placed inside us the Holy Spirit, God’s indwelling presence (Rom. 8:23; Jn. 14:17). Therefore, humanity is not in a state of total depravity. On the contrary, Christ perfected humanity’s state of being (Heb. 10:14), and created all people anew (2 Cor. 5:17). In this state, humanity is not doomed to slip into total depravity, but, as Karl Barth says, “[all of humanity’s] mistakes and confusions and sins are only like waves beating against the immovable rock of his own proper being.”(10) Sin no longer has the power to destroy the image of God and the seed of the Holy Spirit held within us.

Origen beautifully states that, “God has given human beings all the desires and all the impulses with which they can work towards virtue and make progress, and also planted in them the power of reason with which they can recognize what they ought to do and what to avoid.”(11) Christ established in the hearts of humans everything we needed in order to choose God and be saved. As Vernon Grounds puts it, “God working through Jesus Christ and by his Holy Spirit enables a man to be and do what otherwise tantalizes him as merely an impossible possibility.”(12)

Grace and the Supernatural Existential

What, then, of the choice? Is it our own? Norman Geisler provides that the general Calvinist response to this question is that “if God’s choice to save was based on those who chose him, then it would not be based on divine grace but would be based on human effort.” He sensibly states of this claim that it “flies in the face of the whole biblical teaching on grace.”(13)

The simplest definition of God’s grace I can think of is divine help. And for all of human history, we have been in need of it. H. Wheeler Robinson states, “It is emphatically recognized that man is totally incapable of good without grace, and that no element in him can be, so to speak, isolated from the corruption of his fallen nature.”(14) Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel echoes this understanding, stating that, “for all our aspirations we remain spiritually blind unless we are assisted. Without [God’s] love, without His aid, man is unable to come close to Him.”(15)

Karl Rahner

There is truth to the doctrine of total depravity, but human depravity is not “total.” We are, as I said above, in a constant state of existential conflict between the Spirit of God and our sin nature. Because we are faced with a constant barrage of evil influence, and because we have been made frail by our choice of sin, we have always needed the assistance that Heschel spoke of, that divine aid, that grace. And this grace is not only expressed transcendently in what God does for his creatures, but it is expressed immanently in what God does within his creatures. There is in human nature a divine immanence at work, which Karl Rahner referred to as the “supernatural existential,” imparted to humanity by God’s grace, as God’s grace.

This grace, Rahner explains, “makes it possible for [the spiritual movement of mankind] to reach God in himself. Naturally, therefore, grace divines man and bestows upon him a share in the holiness of God.”(16) He further describes grace as the self-communication of God, and that this self-communication “stamps and determines man’s nature.”(17) Such is the supernatural existential. Henri De Lubac describes it as the “divine element which man’s effort cannot reach . . . but which unites itself to man, elevating him . . ., penetrating him in order to divinize him, and thus becoming as it were an attribute of the ‘new man’ described by St. Paul.”(18) It is “God’s gift [that] has been implanted in the depths of man’s nature.”(19) This supernatural existential, this divine immanence, paved the way for humanity to freely enter into relationship with God. The Cross altered human nature, restoring the image of God. Christ breathed God’s breath back into humanity, and solidified his Spirit inside all, making it forever possible for us to reach God.

Rahner goes on to say that the Cross made humans “subject to the universal salvific will of God, . . . redeemed and absolutely obliged to tend to this supernatural end. This . . . is an objective, ontological modification of man, added indeed to his nature by God’s grace and therefore supernatural.”(20) The Cross established an objective reality: the reconciliation and perfection of all of humanity. Christ has made us his own (Phil. 3:12); though we sin, we have been deemed saints (Rom. 1:7).

Thus, Christianity is about subjectively experiencing this objective reality: “We, then, who are perfect, let us think on that!” (Phil. 3:15);(21) “Let us live up to what we have already obtained” (v.16, NIV). This subjective experience can be described as the affirmative response to God’s initiative, to his Spirit dwelling inside us: “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls” (Jas. 1:21). In our subjective experience of salvation, we make ourselves vulnerable and malleable to the Spirit. The kingdom of God is within us (Lk. 17:21), and we must say ‘Yes’ to the Spirit’s work so that the kingdom can be manifested in our lives.(22) 

Jesus said, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn. 14:6). He also said that “No one can come to me except drawn by the Father who sent me” (6:44). And he also said that when he is lifted up from the earth, he will draw all people to himself (12:32). No one can come to the Father except through the Son; no one can come to the Son except by being drawn by the Father; and the Son is in the business of drawing all people to himself, through the work of the Spirit, who resides in us (Jn. 14:17; 1 Cor. 2:10–13).

Notes:
(1) Scripture quotations are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
(2) Jonathan Edwards, “God is Not the Author of Sin,” in Readings in Christian Thought, 2nd ed., ed. Hugh T. Kerr (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990), 203-204.
(3) See Greg Forster, The Joy of Calvinism: Knowing God's Personal, Unconditional, Irresistible, Unbreakable Love (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 35-39.
(4) Harold Knight, The Hebrew Prophetic Consciousness (London: Lutterworth Press, 1947), 9.
(5) Tremper Longman III states that “wisdom [was not understood as] the result of human effort, but rather [as] a gift . . . the gift of the spirit of God.” See “Spirit and Wisdom,” in Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament., eds. David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 109. John Levison echoes this understanding, stating that, to the ancient Hebrew mind, “wisdom belongs to the providence of the spirit within, of the influx of life that all humans receive.” See Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdman’s Publishing, 2009), 66. He adds that “the language of filling [with the spirit] is not about a particular experience at a particular moment with an eye toward a particular task. . . . [Rather], filling is actually about fullness, about the expansiveness of the spirit within.” See 65–66.
(6) Richard E. Averbeck, “Breath, wind, spirit and Holy Spirit in the Old Testament,” in Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament., eds. David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), 36.
For more on an Old Testament understanding of the Spirit of God, see Presence, Power and Promise: The Role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament, eds. David G. Firth and Paul D. Wegner (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2011), Wilf Hildebrandt, An Old Testament Theology of the Spirit of God (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), John R. Levison, Filled with the Spirit, Leon J. Wood, The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), and Christopher J. H. Wright, Knowing the Holy Spirit through the Old Testament (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006).
(7) Knight, 31.
(8) Levison, 67. Also see p. 81.
(9) For a more thorough overview, see R. C. Sproul, “Humanity’s Radical Corruption,” in What is Reformed Theology? Understanding the Basics, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1997), 117–138. Also, Edwin H. Palmer, “Total Depravity,” in The Five Points of Calvinism, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1972), 11–28, and, David N. Steele, Curtis C. Thomas, and S. Lance Quinn, “Total Depravity or Total Inability,” in The Five Points of Calvinism: Defined, Defended, and Documented, 2nd ed. (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2004), 18–26.
(10) Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, Vol. 4.1:57-59 of Church Dogmatics, eds. G.W. Bromily and T.F. Torrance, trans. G.W. Bromily (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), 89.
(11) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen, Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), 195.
(12) Vernon Grounds, “God’s Universal Salvific Grace,” in Grace Unlimited, ed. Clark H. Pinnock (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 1975), 24.
(13) Norman Geisler, “God Knows All Things,” in Predestination & Free Will: Four Views of Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, eds. David Basinger and Randall Basinger (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986), 66.
(14) H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, 3rd ed. (Edingburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1926), 194.
(15) Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1983), 129.
(16) Karl Rahner, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, Vol. 16 of Theological Investigations, trans. David Morland (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 40.
(17) Karl Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Vol. 6 of Theological Investigations, trans. Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 394.
(18) Henri De Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature & Grace, trans. Richard Arnandez (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1984), 41.
(19) Ibid., 85.
(20) Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, trans. Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 161.
(21) This is Karl Barth’s translation of the verse. See his Epistle to the Philippians, 40th anniversary ed., trans. James W. Leitch (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 111. I believe it to be the most accurate translation given the message of the context and the statement in the following verse.
(22) See Rahner and Vorgimler, “Grace,” in Theological Dictionary, 196.

Universal Reconciliation Q&A

"I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland."
Paul Simon

I recently wrote a blog (here) advocating the doctrine of universal reconciliation. I knew there would be plenty of challenging questions in response, so I wanted to take some of them and respond to them here.

(I want to add to this, so please send me a question if you've got one to add.)

Yes, God is love, but he is also just. Though he wants all people to be saved, he also desires justice.

I have a few things to say in response to this.

First, universal reconciliation doesn't remove justice from the picture. Was justice not served when the prodigal son ended up fighting with pigs over food after demanding his inheritance and abandoning his father? In the same way, justice will be served when those who have chosen Hell on earth will get what they wanted. God's wrath is letting them have it (click here for a more thorough explanation of this view of God's wrath).

Secondly, what happened when the prodigal son returned?
In that day, it would have been the custom to make the son sit outside the home for days to prove that he was genuine in returning home. But when the son in the story returned, was the father so concerned with justice that he made him do this? Or did he run out to him (in that time, N. T. Wright provides, running was thought to be "undignified")(1) and embrace him? Did the father stop his son and ask him all kinds of questions to see if he was worthy of returning?

The son had a whole speech planned, and in it he was merely going to ask the father if he could become a slave in his house. The father wouldn't have it. He was just so happy that his son was returning.
Does this seem like a father that is super concerned about justice when it comes to his children?
Many say universal reconciliation is too human, but in this case, even the son himself was only expecting to be made a slave! In this case, the human version of justice wasn't good enough for God!

Finally, Jesus is a testament to the fact that [human perception of] justice is not God's main concern. He says something very interesting in John 12: "If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world" (v.47; also see Jn. 3:17). He then adds, "The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge" (v.48). He is implicating God the Father here (see vv.49-50). However, elsewhere Jesus tells us that "the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son" (Jn. 5:22). So, the Father is not the judge, but hands judgment over to the Son, and the Son does not come to judge the world but to save it! Yes, there is judgment. Yes, there is justice. But "mercy triumphs over judgment" (Jas. 2;13). Ultimately, God's purpose is to save the world and not condemn it forever and ever, so Jesus will have mercy on those who reject him in this life. Timothy Jennings says beautifully, "biblical justice is delivering the oppressed, not punishing the oppressor!"(2)

(I elaborate more on this topic in another blog, here)


Can't "all people" simply refer to all races, cultures, and groups rather than literally every single person who ever lived?

In some cases, you can look at it that way, like when it says "all nations" or "all the ends of the earth." However, it is not more valid to interpret it this way. For other verses, I don't think you can avoid it by saying that it refers to all kinds of people. For example, when Psalm 65:2 says all people will come to God, the Hebrew words there don't mean, literally, "all flesh," same as 145:21.

In John 12:32 and 1 Cor. 15:22, the Greek text doesn't actually say "all people," but only says "all," and the Greek word for all literally means all, every kind of, each and every one, the whole.
 I don't see how you get past that.

If the Greek and Hebrew words for "forever" don't actually mean forever, wouldn't that also mean that God's love doesn't have to go on forever, since the same words are used to describe God?

I get this one a lot. It's a good point, but it stops short of disproving universal reconciliation because of two things:

1) I didn't say the Greek and Hebrew words for eternal can't mean forever. The reason these words don't have to mean forever is because they don't refer to an actual duration of time, because the biblical writers didn't think about forever and ever. They thought in generations and ages. Hell and God are similar in the sense that they are both beyond ages and generations, and their ends are not in sight to humans. When it says God's steadfast love goes on "forever and ever," it's really saying that it goes on and on and the end of God's love is not in sight.

I know what you're thinking. Wouldn't that mean that God's love can end?
No, and this leads to my second point:

2) These are not the only words used to describe God. Other words were used to describe God's everlasting characteristics. For example, God's love is said to never end. Nowhere does it say that Hell will never end.

Consider this illustration: the sun is huge.  Its circumference is 2.715 million miles long. We use words like enormous, gigantic, and humungous to describe how big the sun is, because it's so big we can't actually conceive of how big it is. The universe is also  enormous, gigantic, humungous. It goes on for billions upon billions of light years.

While the sun is enormous, it does have an end. The universe doesn't (well...maybe it does, but I'm not going to get into that; you get the point). Likewise, how long God lasts and how long Hell lasts can both be said to be olam or aion, it can also be that God can last forever while Hell ends at some point, because the words used to describe them doesn't actually specify a duration, just like the word humungous doesn't specify an actual size.

I should also add that this problem with these Greek and Hebrew words still comes up no matter what you believe about Hell. The Hebrew word olam (which is "supposed" to mean forever) is used by Jonah to describe how long he was in the belly of the fish (2:5-6). If it can be used to describe a period of 3 days, this word clearly doesn't have to mean forever.

If Hell is not forever, wouldn't that demean the atonement?

Maybe it would, if the only reason Christ died on the Cross was to save people from an everlasting Hell. But I don't believe this was the only reason, nor do I believe that this is the central reason.

Christ died on the Cross so that God could be in an intimate relationship with his creation. Throughout the Old Testament, God is trying everything he can to be in relationship with his people. All of human history is God in search of man. Jesus is a continuation of that story. The Cross is the greatest point in human history where we can see God in search of man, and I believe that story will continue even after death.

The atonement is many things. Let's not make it just about saving humanity from a never-ending Hell. It's so much more than just that.

I should also add that the doctrine of universal reconciliation doesn't take any of the horror out of Hell. One of the reasons for the atonement was still to save people from the horrible place in which they would experience all the consequences of their own sinful choices. It's not like Hell is any less terrible because it doesn't last forever and ever.

Consider this illustration: let's say all of humanity signed up to get addicted to cocaine at a certain point (it's a silly example, but sin is also silly). When God saw this, he sent Jesus to give them a way to avoid this doom. Some didn't accept his invitation, so they still headed to cocaine addiction. Sure, there's always rehab, but forcing oneself to submit to rehab while addicted to cocaine is incredibly hard, and the process of rehab isn't any easier. It doesn't take a Christian to tell someone to avoid cocaine. Why do most people avoid it? because they know that, though it promises euphoria, it leads to a terrible experience of which it takes what feels like a lifetime (here would be a good place for the word aionios) to break free.

Hell, like a cocaine addiction, is an awful fate no matter how long it is. Thank God he gave us a way out!

Isn't universal reconciliation an altered form of Calvinism's irresistible grace? Wouldn't the idea that God will eventually win all people over contradict free will?

I have a few things to say in response.

One, I am not saying that as long as there is a Hell, God is going to be turning up the heat, if you will, on his love so that he will become irresistible to people. I am saying that as long as there is a Hell, God is going to continue to do everything he can to save people from it. But as long as people have free will, they can reject him.

I will use an example to illustrate my point: let's say I find out that my friend Matt hates me. I can choose to ignore that fact and go on living my life forgetting that I love his friendship. But I do love his friendship, so instead I pursue him and am absolutely determined to find reconciliation. If I finally get to the point where Matt chooses to be my friend again, it wouldn't be because I overrode his free will, but because I pursued him long enough. In the same way, whenever God finally reconciles all people to himself, it will not be because he obliterated their free will with his love, but because he pursued them long enough.

Two, forever is a very long time. I don't think the day after judgment day God is going to win everybody over. Some will insist on Hell for a very, very long time. I just don't think God is ever going to stop pursuing those people.

Three, what I stress in universal reconciliation is not that everyone is going to be saved, but that God is never going to stop pursuing people. I stress this because I have no idea when everyone is going to be saved, and if it weren't for Scripture, I wouldn't believe it. It is because Scripture tells of a day when all people, all flesh, everyone will come alive and worship God that I believe that some day God will succeed in drawing all people to himself.


Have a question to add? Send it to me! 

Notes:
(1) N.T. Wright, After You Believe (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 12.
(2) Timothy Jennings, The God-Shaped Brain (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2013), 188.

Is God a Universalist?

"I am not a universalist because there are some people that I don't want to see again. But God may be."
Jurgen Moltmann

Which Universe Do I Live in?

Before I get into a defense of Universalism, I should clarify which form of Universalism I am defending.

I don't believe that all roads lead to God, or that it doesn't matter how people live in this life because they will all be in Heaven when they die. Nor do I deny the existence of Hell.

I believe in Universal Reconciliation, which states that as long as there is a Hell, God will be trying to reconcile all of its inhabitants back to himself. In this, Jesus is the one way to salvation, but eventually everyone will choose to say Yes to him.

Is Universalism in Scripture?

Any Bible-believing Christian must at least recognize that Universalism is something God wants.

1 Timothy 2:4 says that God "wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth."

We are told in 2 Peter 3:9 that God "is patient with [us], not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance."

Similarly, in Ezekiel 33:11, God says, "I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live." So, at the very least, Unversalism sounds just as wonderful to God as it does (or should) to us.

But can we go further than that and say that all people will actually be saved?

The Psalmist of Psalm 65:2 says to God, "to you all people will come."

Psalm 86:9 says, "All nations whom you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and they shall glorify your name."

Psalm 145:21 says, "all flesh will bless his holy name forever and ever."

Isaiah 2:2 says that "all nations will stream" to "the mountain of the LORD's temple."

Then, in 52:10, we are told that "all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of God."

Jesus says in John 12:32 that "when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself."

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, "as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive" (15:22).

He tells us in Philippians that, "at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord" (2:10-11).

The writer of Hebrews quotes what God revealed to the prophet Jeremiah, that "No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest" (8:11).

So it appears there are actually several places throughout Scripture that support Universalism. How then do we reconcile these verses with verses that talk about Hell?

Is Hell Forever?

The Greek and Hebrew words that are translated 'forever' or 'eternal' or 'everlasting' do not actually fit the description of these English words. The Hebrew word olam and the Greek words aion and aionios do not have specific durations. They do not mean "absolutely unending."

They denote time-independence, describing an age that is not bound by time and cannot be measured. It cannot be measured because the end is not known or in sight. These words mean "until the vanishing point" or "beyond the horizon."

The punishment one experiences in Hell is described in Scripture as something that is perpetual, ongoing. However, its actual duration is unknown. Thus, it does not have to be taken to mean forever.

And why should we limit God to that one thing? Why limit God to "All unrepentant sinners will go to Hell when they die and will be there forever and ever"? Does this not make us like Jonah, who, after he prophesied to the Ninevites, sat and waited for God to destroy them? He limited God to that one option. But God, when he "saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened" (Jon. 3:10).

Forever is a long time. Why decide for God that billions of years from now he is still going to be in Heaven thinking, "Yah, they still deserve it. I'll let them continue to suffer"? Why not let God decide how long Hell is going to last? This is what the biblical writers did. The words they used implied that people would be punished but they left the end of that punishment up to God.

Is God a Universalist?

The parable of the Lost Sheep is one of the most powerful explanations of the Father's heart that we have in Scripture. Every time I read it, I see something new and experience a little piece of the Father's love in the most magnificent way.

As an aspiring theologian, I often think about the theological implications of this parable. What does it tell us about God? Recently I have asked, what does it tell us about God and the doctrine of Hell?

But before we go there, let's look at some other parts of Scripture that tell us about the character of God.

Psalm 30:5 tells us that God's "anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime."

It is revealed in 1 John 4:16 that "God is love" and in 1 Corinthians 13:8 that "Love never fails."

Similarly, in Lamentations 3:22 we are told that "the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end."

A few verses later, we are told that "no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love" (vv.31-32).

This is similar to what James says, that "mercy triumphs over judgment" (2:13).

God tells us in Malachi 3:6, "I, the LORD, do not change."

Simarly, James tells us that "there is no variation or shifting shadow" in the Father of Lights (1:17).

So, now let us return to the parable.

God is the kind of God that leaves the 99 sheep to rescue the 1 that ran away (Lk. 15:4-7). He searches for it "until he finds it" (v.4). And "when he finds it" (v.5), he rejoices and throws a party. This is God's attitude toward sinners who run away from him.

Let us put these pieces together.

God is love. God's love never fails. (The Greek words that are used to describe punishment after death do not have to mean forever, but the Greek and Hebrew words for never are quite clear.) Though his anger comes, though he brings grief, mercy triumphs over judgment. He will show compassion because his love is unfailing. 

This is the way God is. He does not change. Though we are inconsistent, God remains the same.

What about after people die? Does God stop being the God who leaves the 99 to rescue the 1? Does his love cease? Does he stop trying?

In the Old Testament, God struggles with his people. He often threatens destruction and brings punishment, but he always ends up bringing restoration and promising ultimate reconciliation and victory. This is because, as Abraham Joshua Heschel says, "God does not delight in unleashing anger"(1) but, rather, his anger is used "to bring about repentance; its purpose and consummation is its own disappearance."(2) Ultimately, he pours out his love on his people; "It is a love that transcends the most intense anger, a love that abides in full recognition of human weakness."(3)

In the New Testament, this is beautifully revealed through Jesus, who tells us that God is not indifferent to sinners, but searches for them until he finds them. He runs to them when he sees them and embraces them as much as he can, knowing that when they sin and run away "they know not what they do" (Lk. 23:34).

Will this change once they die? Or will God keep seeking sinners even after they have chosen Hell?

Heschel said that, "All of human history as described in the Bible may be summarized in one phrase: God is in search of man."(4) I don't think this is a search that will ever end until God finds all of his creations and can embrace all of them.

So how do we reconcile the Universalist parts of Scripture with the Hell parts? We can affirm both. Yes, people will go to Hell if they choose it with their lives now (click here to see my blog about the nature of Hell for more explanation).

But, eventually, it will be that all people will come to God, all people will worship and glorify and bless his name, all nations will stream to his temple and experience salvation, all people will be drawn to Christ, all will be made alive in Christ, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord, and everyone will know him.

Yes, I think God is a Universalist.


Notes:
(1) Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 369.
(2) Ibid., 367.
(3) Ibid., 380.
(4) Heschel, God in Search of Man (New York: Farrar, Starus and Giroux, 1983), 136.

Concerning the Nature of Faith and Works

"For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified."
Romans 2:13

"Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves."
James 1:22

"Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!"
Luke 11:28

Throughout Christ's teaching, there is an emphasis on one's righteousness. Indeed, the essence of being Christian is imitating Christ (Eph. 5:1; Phil. 2:5). However, since the Reformation, the term 'works' has become a scary word for many Christians. We do our best to avoid implying works-based salvation. We often think of works as penance or things we must do to earn salvation or to earn God's favor. Unfortunately, practicing good works can be and has often been perverted into something we must do to earn God's love--what one of my professors calls 'natural human religion'. That being said, performing good works is an important aspect of Christianity and a well-rounded philosophy of it must be established.

The Nature of Faith

James says, “Faith without works is dead” (2:14, 17-24, 26). Rather than advocating works-based salvation, he is describing something natural. The nature of faith needs works to survive. Works fuel faith. Psychologically, this is perfectly natural. A belief, if not fueled by some sort of application in one’s life, will fade. It will die. Likewise, if faith is not actively applied to one’s life, it will disappear. Not because it isn’t good enough, not because God didn’t give the person enough, but because the person did not provide the means necessary for the faith to thrive. As Douglas Moo aptly suggests, “[it] is not that works must be added to faith but that genuine faith includes works. That is its very nature.”(1) Thus, we could say that we are justified by our faith, and our faith is justified by our works. As Moo adds, “Perfect faith is produced through successive acts of obedience.”(2)
Martin Luther struggled with James' concept of faith needing works to survive, almost to the point of disregarding the book as part of the canon. Ironically, he brilliantly conveyed what I am trying to say here:

O it is a living, busy active mighty thing, this faith. It is impossible for it not to be doing good things incessantly. It does not ask whether good works are to be done, but before the question is asked, it has already done this, and is constantly doing them.(3)

The Nature of Works as Participation

Works, rather than “things I should do or else I am not a good Christian,” are acts of obedience to God. They are contributions to God's Kingdom.
Furthermore, performing good works, rather than acting out of obligation or guilt, is actively participating in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. . . . And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. . . . And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. (Jn. 14:15, 21, 23)

Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. (15:9b-10)

Works make us vulnerable to God’s work and influence. By obeying God, we say ‘Yes’ to his grace and we open up our hearts for him to enter in and transform our being. With works, we let him have his way in the molding of who we will become. By performing the works of his Kingdom, we involve him in our lives. Thus, by our works, our relationship with him is made stronger. “Draw near to him and he will draw near to you” (Jas. 4:8); not that God isn’t already Immanuel, “God with us” (Matt. 1:23)—not that anything can objectively separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38–39), but subjectively we can be distanced from him. Thus, when we subjectively engage him, our hearts and minds become more intimate and personal with him.

Our work has the power to embrace or reject God's work. Thus, we can see how natural it is for James to say that faith without works is dead. Faith is the substance of things hoped for (Heb. 11:1), but if the thing hoped for is not close to our hearts and minds, and not being manifested in our lives through our active engagement of it, what happens to the faith? It naturally dies.


The Nature of Works as Subjective Experience

The second thing we must discuss in relation to the nature of works is what the Cross accomplished for humanity. That is, salvation for all (1 Jn. 2:2), for each and every person who ever was and is and is to come. This was the objective reality accomplished on the Cross. Thus, our true nature is hidden in Christ (Col. 3:3). In Christ, we are a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), we are sinless, perfect, complete, and wonderfully Christ-like. As Paul says, “We, then, who are perfect, let us think on that!” (Phil. 3:15).(4) However, there is an absolutely essential subjective experience of that reality that is required in order for it to take effect.

First, one needs faith. One cannot experience what Christ accomplished on the Cross without faith. One must have faith in the new creation Christ has made him/her. In order to actually experience the benefits—if you will—of the Cross, one must believe in one’s new nature as a sinless, perfect image of the Amazing Creator. This cannot just be something with which one agrees (especially since it is such an absurd concept; me—perfect?). This cannot just be an idea that one believes and sticks on a shelf but is never actualized. One has to take upon that new nature and embrace it. One must begin to manifest the new creation that he/she really is.
This is where works come in. Works are subjective manifestations of the objective reality we have in Christ. Paul says, “Let us live up to what we have already obtained” (Phil 3:16). We have obtained perfection in Christ; "Therefore, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

This is why Paul says, "whatever does not proceed from faith is sin" (Rom. 14:23). Faith in Christ means faith in what Christ accomplished for the one's entire being. Christ established in all people a nature from which works flow like rivers. Thus, when we sin, it is only because we do not have faith in our perfect nature in Christ. If we had perfect faith, we would always manifest the new creation and would never sin.
It is not unlike when Morpheus was trying to free Neo from the limitations of his mind. It was only the matrix that was telling him what he couldn't do. In reality, he could jump from building to building (a leap of faith, if you will), best Morpheus in combat, and stop bullets in mid-air; but he had to be opened up to that reality and embrace it so that it was made manifest in his life.

We should stop living in the pre-Cross period. We should stop living in the old, dead flesh. We must stop living in the matrix. Let us obey God's commandments so that we can embrace him with our lives and manifest the truth of our perfection in Christ. This is why works are so essential to the Christian life and why faith without works is dead.

Notes:
(1) Douglas J. Moo, James, reprint ed. (Downers Gover: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 103.
(2) Ibid., 116.
(3) Martin Luther quoted in Ibid., 117.
(4) This is Karl Barth’s translation of the verse. See his Epistle to the Philippians, 40^th anniversary ed., trans. James W. Leitch (Lousiville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 111.

Is Homosexuality Sinful?

Does the Bible teach that homosexuality is a sin?

There are 5 references relevant to this discussion: Lev. 18:22; 20:13; 1 Tim. 1:10; 1 Cor. 6:9; and Rom. 1:26–27. I will briefly go over each of these and then try to establish a conclusion.

Lev. 18:22: You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.

20:13: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.

For Jacob Milgrom, it is quite clear what these verses are saying: "the Bible allows for no exceptions; all acts of sodomy are prohibited."(1) Victor Paul Furnish, on the other hand, raises some questions:

No consideration is given to what the circumstances or character of a male same-sex relationship might be. Is it consensual? Has one party, perhaps an adult male, forced himself on the other, perhaps a boy? Has one party purchased the sexual favors of the other? Nor is consideration given to whether the relationship is good or just or loving.(2)

Terence Fretheim observes that people in that time had

developed a habit of sexually abusing strangers who came into town to demonstrate who was in charge. If such violence against strangers is the concern that led to the laws in Leviticus, this would help explain why the punishment--death--for such behavior (Leviticus 20: 13) was so severe. It may also help explain why only male-male behaviors are forbidden.(3) 

Furnish, however, suggests that the phrasing of the verses implies that "male same-sex intercourse violates the honor of both partners; the penetrated male dishonors himself by submitting as only a female should submit, and the penetrating male dishonors himself by dominating another male."(4)

I think Fretheim's view is valid, but as we can see it is complicated by the specific wording of the verses. However, cultural context is key to understanding these verses. If the only form of homosexuality known to the ancient Hebrews was of an oppressive kind, would the wording be different? To me, there is no clear choice between Fretheim's view and that of Furnish.

One's conclusion here is also complicated by the New Testament's transformation of a lot of Hebrew Bible laws. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is an example of a teaching that was nullified by the truth of Christ. It should also be considered that Gentiles were among those deemed unclean in the ancient Hebrew ideology as well. In Acts, the Christian community has to learn that those who were once thought to be unclean are no longer to be regarded as such. Could homosexuality be a similar case? For a clearer understanding, we must look elsewhere. 

1 Tim. 1:9-10: the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient . . . the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality . . .

1 Cor. 6:9: the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God . . . neither the sexually immoral . . . nor male prostitutes, nor men who practice homosexuality.

I am discussing these verses together because they use the same Greek word: arsenokoitai. Gordon Fee provides that this word is "a compound of ‘male’ and . . . [a] vulgar slang for ‘intercourse’" and is rarely used in the literature of the time.(5) "What is not certain," he says, "is whether ‘male’ is subject (= ‘males who have intercourse’; for male prostitutes of all kinds) or object (= ‘intercourse with males’; therefore male homosexual)."(6) Rubin Scroggs and John Boswell believe the former to be the more probable.(7) Thus, they conclude that this word does not refer to homosexual behavior, but male prostitution, specifically (at least for Scroggs) the prostitution of young boys.(8)

1 Cor. 6:9 uses another word, however, that is relevant here: malakoi. Fee states that this word most likely refers to "the younger, ‘passive’ partner in a pederastic relationship—the most common form of homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world."(9) He states further that it is difficult to put a finger on what exactly the word is supposed to mean in this context, but he believes 'male prostitute' is the best guess.(10) Furnish recognizes this as a possibility, stating that we could "take malakoi as a reference to ‘male prostitutes’ (e.g., NRSV) and arsenokoitai as a reference to males who pay to have sex with them. But it is equally possible, and probably better, to take the words as referring, respectively, to the ‘receptive’ and ‘aggressive’ males in any homoerotic encounter."(11)

As far as these verses are concerned, it is not clear whether homosexuality is forbidden or if they are referring to male prostitution. Therefore, our conclusion cannot be made here and we must now venture to the most significant reference to homosexuality in Scripture.

Rom. 1:26–27: women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Douglas Moo provides that, "Paul generally uses the word ‘nature’ to describe the way things are by reason of their intrinsic state or birth, and in these cases there is no clear reference to divine intention."(12) However, he adds that,

In keeping with the biblical and Jewish worldview, the heterosexual desires observed normally in nature are traced to God’s creative intent. Sexual sins that are ‘against nature’ are also, then, against God, and it is this close association that makes it probable that Paul’s appeal to ‘nature’ in this verse includes appeal to God’s created order. Confirmation can be found in the context.

Thus, when Paul says that same-sex relations are contrary to nature, he is saying that they are contrary to the way God intended things to be. James D. G. Dunn echoes this understanding, stating that Paul’s use of nature meant, "to live in harmony with the natural order and its divine rationality."(13) Joseph Fitmzyer agrees, saying that Paul’s understanding of homosexuality is that it "is a way in which human beings refuse to acknowledge the manifestation of God’s activity in creation," because ‘nature’ refers to "the order that is manifest in God’s creation or . . . the order seen in the function of sexual organs themselves, which were ordained for an expression of love between man and woman and for the procreation of children."(14)

Furnish thinks this reading is the most accurate considering the context. He states that Paul "apparently found same-sex intercourse to be an especially apt illustration of the moral confusion to which idolatry leads: when the creature has been exchanged for the Creator (v. 23) and the truth about God has been exchanged for a lie (v. 25), who can be surprised that ‘natural intercourse’ will be exchanged for ‘unnatural’ (vv. 26-27)?"(15)

On the other end, Scroggs believes that Paul here is referring to pederasty and that the example of homosexuality in Paul’s day bears no resemblance to "the model aspired to by the gay community today."(16) He suggests that the word ‘unnatural’ could have been chosen because of the apparent injustice in pederasty: "Perhaps he was impressed by the lack of mutuality, the physical and emotional humiliation suffered by youths who were forced into slavery or who accepted the degradation of the prostitute."(17)

However, Scroggs’ reading is not likely. Dunn states that, "Paul’s indictment seems to include all kinds of homosexual practice."(18) Fitzmyer agrees, stating that, "Paul is clearly referring here to the conduct of active male homosexual persons and is merely echoing the OT abomination of such homosexual activity."(19)

Application

After thoroughly reviewing these passages, I must conclude that the teaching of Scripture is that homosexuality is not what God intended for humanity, and so I am compelled to lean towards that understanding. While I resist making an unwavering, concrete stance on this issue, I will continue to [hesitantly] recognize homosexuality as a diversion from God's created order, because that is what Scripture teaches.

In any case, we have seen that these verses are not as clear as they are made out to be, and this issue in Scripture is a very minor one compared to others. At the very least, practicing homosexuality or believing that homosexuality isn't sinful are not damnable. Scripture shows us that God is used to stooping to humanity's level, accommodating for the sake of the relationship. God knows better than anyone what all people go through, and, empathetic towards us, his grace abounds and can and will cover a multitude of sin and deception for all of us. As Richard Hays says,

Can a soldier be a Christian? Probably so, but my understanding of the gospel requires me to urge that person to renounce the way of violence and to follow Jesus in the way of costly refusal of violence as a means to justice. . . . Just as there are serious Christians who in good conscience believe in just war theory, so there are serious Christians who in good conscience believe that same-sex erotic activity is consonant with God's will.(20)

Jesus said it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven (Mark 10:25), but that doesn't mean all people who accumulate wealth and indulge in lavish living should be alienated from the Christian community and are banned from the kingdom of heaven. "All things are possible with God," Jesus said (v.27).

That being said, I do think gay Christians need to be open to the possibility that homosexual activity is sinful. As hard as thought would be to come to terms with, at the end of the day Christianity is a commitment to selflessness. God’s nature is revealed in Christ’s kenosis, his self-emptying:

    Though he was in the form of God,
    he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
    but made himself nothing,
    taking the form of a bond-servant,
    being born in the likeness of men.
    And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death,
    even death on a cross!
    Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name
    Phil. 2:6–9

This is the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and since Christianity is about engaging their embrace and participating with them, we are called to be of the same nature (v. 5). We must be self-emptying and self-sacrificing. We must demean our own desires. This does not mean that we should never pursue things that we desire, but we should never let our desires lead us, for that is idolatry

It would be sinful for me to pursue another woman after committing myself to my wife, no matter what my desires told me to do. Woody Allen said, "The heart wants what it wants." This is true, but as Christians we are called not to be bound to what our hearts wants, and we all have things in our inherent nature that we must deny for the sake of the kingdom of God.

So how should Christians approach this issue?

First of all, Christians must approach it with empathy. I cannot imagine how hard it would be if someone told me that my attraction to my wife is sinful and I need to either change my sexual orientation or commit to celibacy. We have to recognize that most homosexuals have had an attraction to their own sex for as long as they can remember. We have to imagine being in their position and we have to come to understand how hard it would be for them to embrace self-denial and celibacy.

I think part of the problem is our social construct of a reproductive temporality, in which it is basically assumed that getting married and starting a family is just what one does in life. This mindset is heavily engrained in the modern church, but it is not Scriptural. Many of the Bible's key players, including Paul, didn't get married and have families, and as Hays says, "1 Corinthians 7:8-9, 25-40, commends celibacy as an option for everyone."(21) Henri Nouwen, a devout Christian who struggled with homosexuality all his life, even believed that celibacy is a gift.(22)

Sexuality and reproduction in our culture are raised to a level of importance that is not shared by Scripture. Part of dealing with the church's approach to homosexuality will be shedding our expectations that women will become wives and mothers and men will become husbands and fathers. Due to this, celibacy in our culture is dominantly viewed as strange. Being single when over 30 years old is considered a problem, as "it is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18). A culture that sees celibacy as strange or against God's will cannot expect gay people to embrace celibacy, for celibacy in our culture is in itself alienating (for example, a single person hanging out with a couple is a "third wheel"). So, we offer two options to homosexuals: be outside the church and be alienated by it as the people of the church condemn you for your sin, or be inside the church and experience alienation because of your celibacy.

We must shed our family/reproductive social construct, with our expectations for people to grow up, get married and have kids. Removing this obstacle will take some of the pressure off of those who are attracted to their own sex (as well as others who cannot or don't want to get married and start a family), as they are essentially trapped in a queer temporality (in which one cannot reproduce). If we are to encourage celibacy for homosexuals, we need to create an environment in which celibacy is not so unusual, and we need to stop discouraging celibacy in general.

Thirdly, we need to stop focusing on standing against homosexuals in the gay marriage debate (I have written on this several times; the collection of my thoughts on the matter can be found here).

Also essential is that if we do regard homosexual activity as sinful, we should not self-righteously condemn it over and above other sins, especially if we aren’t willing to condemn our own sins in the same manner, and also because the Bible condemns many other sins much more than homosexual behavior (selfish accumulation of wealth, for example).

Just read Romans 2:1. Immediately after describing the sinful state of humanity, where the passage about homosexuality resides, Paul says, "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things." It is a horrendous tragedy what many homosexuals have been put through because of certain Christians.

Another vital step is to lovingly embracing homosexuals with open arms. If we say homosexual activity is sinful, we still can't pressure homosexuals to change immediately. We should encourage them to walk with the Lord, and then trust God to help them along the way. The way of Jesus is a mustard seed transformation from the inside out. We shouldn't give homosexuals an ultimatum ("change or leave"), and we shouldn't expect to "love the gay out of them." Most Christian homosexuals will struggle with homosexuality their entire lives.

Hays suggests that it might help if one thought of homosexuality the way one thinks of alcoholism:

a considerable body of evidence suggests that some people are born with a predisposition to alcoholism. Once exposed to alcohol, they experience an attraction so powerful that it can be counteracted only by careful counseling, community support, and total abstinence.(23)

But most important is that we should ask Jesus how to approach them. Let Jesus and his example determine the way you embrace homosexuals. If he wants to use you as an instrument in the transformation of a homosexual, then he will make it known to you. Otherwise, as far as Christian homosexuals are concerned, know that we are all in this Christian walk together, and remember your own sins as you walk with them.

UPDATE: I have recently developed further reflections on this issue; please read my new blog "Does Paul's Teaching on Homosexuality Apply Today?" (click here)

For further reading, I highly recommend the follow chapters:
Victor Paul Furnish, “Homosexuality?” in The Moral Teaching of Paul, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 55–93.
Richard B. Hays, "Homosexuality," in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperCollins: New York, 1996), 379-406.

Notes:
(1) Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17–22, Vol. 3A of The Anchor Bible, eds. William Foxwell Albright, and David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 1566.
(2) Victor Paul Furnish, The Moral Teaching of Paul, 3rd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2009), 62.
(3) Terence Fretheim, 2001, "The Old Testament and Homosexuality: What is God doing?" The Lutheran, p. 54.
(4) Furnish, 63.
(5) Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1987), 244.
(6) Ibid.
(7) Robin Scroggs, The New Testament and Homosexuality: Contextual Background for Contemporary Debate (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), 107, and John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 345.
(8) Scroggs, 116.
(9) Fee, 243. Scroggs states, “There was no other form of male homosexuality in the Greco-Roman world which would come to mind”—that is, pederasty. See p. 116. This, however, is not true. As Fee notes, it was simply the most common.
(10) Fee, 244.
(11) Furnish, 80.
(12) Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), 115.
(13) James. D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, Vol. 38A of Word Biblical Commentary, eds. David A. Hubbard, and Glenn W. Barker (Dallas: Word Books, 1982), 64, emphasis mine.
(14) Joseph Fitzmyer, Romans, Vol. 33 of The Anchor Bible, eds. William Foxwell Albright, and David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 276, 286.
(15) Furnish, 87.
(16) Scroggs, 109.
(17) Ibid., 117.
(18) Dunn, 65.
(19) Fitzmyer, 288.
(20) Richard B. Hays, "Homosexuality," in The Moral Vision of the New Testament (HarperCollins: New York, 1996), 401.
(21) Ibid.
(22) See Michael Ford, The Wounded Prophet: A Portrait of Henri J.M. Nouwen (Doubleday: New York, 1999), 141.
(23) Hays, "Homosexuality," 398.

Existentialism and Anonymous Christianity

"It is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified. When Gentiles, who do not possess the law, do instinctively what the law requires, these, though not having the law, are a law to themselves. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness; and their conflicting thoughts will accuse or perhaps excuse them." Romans 2:13-15

How is one justified for salvation? Scripture tells us it is by faith (Gal. 2:16, 3:11, 24; Rom. 3:28, 5:1, 10:10; Acts 13:39). But what does it mean to have faith? James tells us that "a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone" (Jas. 2:24) and that "faith without works is dead" (v.26; see my blog on faith and works here).

Jesus also emphasized actions as an essential part of being a follower of God, saying, "only those who do the will of my father" will enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 7:21), and that in order to love him one must obey his commandments (Jn. 14:21). Furthermore, he promises that "he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him . . . we will come to him and make our home with him" (vv.21,23).

He said Christians will be recognized by their fruit (Jn. 14:20), and Christ-like fruit is defined by love (Jn 13:35). "Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 Jn. 4:7-8).  

Paul said that "God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life" (Rom. 2:6-7)

So how much does one need to know in order to be saved? Can people serve God without knowing it, and, by doing so become saved?

Preface: Existentialism focuses on one's subjective, personal experience of the world. A friend of mine and a Kierkegaard scholar once defined it to me as, "the study of how you are the decisions you make." While this was said to me flippantly, it does reflect a central aspect of existential philosophy; that is, the grand significance of one's decisions. In speaking of existentialism and Christianity, I am focusing on one's subjective, personal experience of the Gospel, and how one's decisions contribute to that experience.

The notion that people can serve God and obtain salvation without knowing it is possible because of the ability God has given us. "Behold," Christ says, "the kingdom of God is within you" (Lk. 17:21). Though it is through faith that we are saved, it is by grace that we have faith. And grace, Karl Rahner explains, “makes it possible for [one's spiritual] movement to reach God in himself . . . grace divines man and bestows upon him a share in the holiness of God.”(1) Rahner calls grace the self-communication of God. This self-communication, he says, is  

offered to all and fulfilled in the highest way in Christ . . . [and] constitutes the goal of all creation and . . . even before he freely takes up an attitude to it, it stamps and determines man’s nature and lends it a character which we may call a 'supernatural existential'. . . . This means positively that man . . . already experiences the offer of grace – not necessarily as grace, as a distinctly supernatural calling, but experiences the reality of its content.(2)

What he is saying is that grace has reworked and redefined human nature. The "supernatural existential" Rahner refers to is the indwelling grace within humans that enables them to choose God existentially--meaning, through their decisions. This was made possible by Christ, who objectively accomplished salvation for the entire world (1 Jn. 2:2). As Rahner says, "man is already subject to the universal salvific will of God, he is already redeemed and absolutely obliged to tend to this supernatural end. This . . . is an objective, ontological modification of man, added indeed to his nature by God’s grace and therefore supernatural."(3)

Objective salvation includes, however, the need for subjective participation in it in order for it to be effective in one's self. Through our decisions, we either choose salvation, manifesting the objective truth that Christ established, or we choose to step away from God. This is why "whatever is not from faith is sin" (Rom 14:23), because faith means subjectively embracing the objective reality that Christ accomplished on the Cross; in rejecting that reality, one embraces lies and, consequently, sin.
The Trinity is in the business of drawing all of humanity to them (Jn. 12:32). The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are constantly trying to reconcile all people through self-communication(4) so that everyone might experience the love that is contained within the Holy Union. As Clark Pinnock says,

The Spirit embodies the prevenient grace of God and puts into effect that universal drawing action of Jesus Christ. The world is the arena of God's presence, and the Spirit knocks on every human heart, preparing people for the coming of Christ; the Spirit is ever working to realize the saving thrust of God's promise for the world. From the Spirit flows that universal gracing that seeks to lead all people into fuller light and love.(5) 

With this understanding, we can see that when God says to Paul in Acts 18:10, "I have many people in [Corinth]," he is referring to the people that have been choosing him with their thoughts and actions without necessarily knowing the Gospel message. They had responded positively to the Spirit of God. They had said 'Yes' to God; they accepted divine grace.(6)

This understanding leads us to the possibility of the anonymous Christian, a belief that has been embraced throughout church history. Origen believed it to be true, stating, 

Emeth, from C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle

It can happen that a person who lives under the law, even though he does not, because of the common belief [of his people], believe in Christ, nevertheless does what is good, practices justice, loves mercy, observes chastity and continence, acts modestly and gently and practices every good work--such a person . . . cannot be lost."(7)

 Similarly, John Wesley believed that we have reason to hope that, although they live among "heathen," many people are "quite of another spirit, being taught by God, by his inward voice, all the essentials of true religion."(8) 

C. S. Lewis thought it was even possible for there to be "people in other religions who are being led by God's secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it."(9) He wrote the character Emeth (the person in the picture at the top) in his book The Last Battle as an archetype of such a person. Emeth grew up a worshiper of a god named Tash. He also thought Aslan, the God of Narnia and the Christ-figure, was the enemy. He ends up realizing the true evil nature of Tash and crossing paths with Aslan. "Alas, Lord," he says, "I am no son of Thine but the servant of Tash." Aslan then answers him:

"Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. . . . I take to me the services which thou hast done to him, for I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. . . . unless the desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek."(10)

Consider also a real life example. Richard Wurmbrand wrote about a Russian lady officer he approached on the street to talk to her about Christ. "Do you love Christ?" she asked, and he said "Yes! From all my heart." She fell into his arms and started kissing him, and then exclaimed, "I love Christ, too!" Wurmbrand found out that "she knew nothing about Christ--absolutely nothing--except the name. And yet she loved him."(10)  There is no limit to what the Spirit can accomplish, even with those who have no knowledge of the Gospel.

God is a god that will find every reason to bring people up to him (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10-15). But don't get me wrong, there is weight on what a person knows (or does not know). As Christ said, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be required" (Lk. 12:48). To whom much knowledge of Christ is given, much is required. Likewise, to whom little knowledge of Christ is given, much is not expected. As my grandfather likes to say, "You know what you know and that's all you know!" Many people don't know about Christianity or the Bible, and God knows that. God is "the God of all nations," says Abraham Joshua Heschel, "and all men's history is His concern."(12) God is gracious enough to make provisions for those that have little knowledge of him. Many people "know not what they do" (Lk. 23:34), and God understands that. He knows everyone's heart and the fruit that each bears, and he will judge accordingly.

Most Christians know the saying of Christ that "He who is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30 & Lk. 11:23). But elsewhere Christ also said, "He who is not against us is for us" (Mk. 9:40).(13) If people do not know Christ, then they are not against him, unless they go against him with their thoughts and actions. But if they are for him in their thoughts and actions (for he would know if they were) then they are indeed with him. If the fruit of their hearts point to God, then they are for him, and bringing them up to Heaven is not a violation of their free will (see the section "The Power of Choice" in this blog to understand what I mean here).

I contend that this is exactly what the Romans passage at the top means. In fact, I think you could take what Paul is saying about the law and apply it to the Gospel. It is not the hearers of the Gospel, but the doers of the Gospel that are justified and righteous in God's sight. Those who do instinctively what the Gospel requires are a Gospel to themselves, because they show that what the Gospel requires is written on their hearts (which was what God wanted to accomplish with the New Covenant; Jer. 31:33).

To conclude, those who do not hear the Gospel message can do the will of the father, and by doing so be granted admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 7:21). They can persistently pursue glory, honor, and immortality in their actions, making them worthy of eternal life (Rom. 2:6-7). By their Christ-like fruit, they will be known (Jn. 14:20). Paul says "those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God" (Rom. 8:14). They, by responding affirmatively to God's grace, can be led by the Spirit to God's embrace. They, through obedience to Christ's law written on their hearts and through their love and service to others, can existentially love Christ. Christ revealed that to abide in his love means to obey his commandment to love others (Jn. 15:9-17). Indeed, Christ says "whatever you [do] for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you [do] for me" (Matt. 25:40). By being led by the Spirit through their affirmative response to God's grace, by loving Christ through obeying his commands, The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit will be revealed to these anonymous Christians (Jn. 14:21). The Trinity will come to them and make a home with them (v.23).
 
And this is all possible because of God's grace and his universal salvific purpose to draw all humanity to himself through his self-communication, the ever-working Holy Spirit and his son Jesus Christ, who accomplished everything we needed in order to come to his arms.

Notes:
(1) Karl Rahner, Experience of the Spirit: Source of Theology, Vol. 16 of Theological Investigations, trans. David Morland (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 40.
(2) Rahner, “Anonymous Christians,” in Vol. 6 of Theological Investigations, trans. Graham Harrison, 390–398 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), 394.
(3) Karl Rahner and Herbert Vorgrimler, Theological Dictionary, ed. Cornelius Ernst, trans. Richard Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965) 161.
(4) On the Trinity's self-communication to humanity, see Rahner, "God's Threefold Relation to Us in the Order of Grace," in The Trinity, trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2010), 34-37.
(5) Clark H. Pinnock, "An Inclusivist View," in More Than One Way? Four Views on Salvation in a Pluralistic World, eds. Dennis L. Okholm, and Timothy Ross Phillips (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), 104.
(6) See Rahner and Vorgrimler, 196.
(7) Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen, Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly (Washington D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984).
(8) John Wesley, "On Faith," in Vol. 7 of The Works of John Wesley, 3rd ed. (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1986), 197.
(9) C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1967), 176.
(10) Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Collier Books, 1970), 164-165.
(11) Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (Bartlesville: Living Sacrifice, 1967), 25.
(12) Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001), 40.
(13) This is actually the logical conclusion to be made from the first statement. Mathematically, the contra-positive statement is always equal to the conditional statement. Conditional: "If you are not with me, then you are against me." Contra-positive: "If you are not against me, then you are with me."