Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Our scripture reading for today comes from 1 John chapter 1, verse 5.

1 John 1:5

This is the message we have heard from God and proclaim to you that God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.

May we hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.

So we are continuing our summer sermon series, looking at what the Bible actually says about a whole host of topics.

Today we're going to be looking at what the Bible actually says about universal salvation.

Now, as pastors, you might know this if you're familiar with the disciples of Christ.

Emily and I, as pastors, we speak to the church, but not for the church.

And what that means is that we are part of this conversation together.

As disciples, we recognize that not all of us always share the exact same beliefs.

There's some things that Emily believes that I don't necessarily believe, some things that I believe that Emily doesn't necessarily believe.

And really, when you think about it, down through the ages, a lot of people have had various beliefs about a whole host of theological topics and a whole host of topics in general.

And the disciples are committed to the idea that love holds us together even in the midst of the differences of belief that we might have.

And there's this phrase from William Sloan Coffin that names this really well.

He said that our unity is not based on uniformity of opinion, but on mutuality of love.

And so our unity, it's not based on all of us believing all the same things.

If that was the case, we'd be a church of one, you know, like we'd all have our own separate churches.

But we believe that love holds us together, it transcends our differences.

And so we've engaged in a lot of different theological topics, uh, taking a look at what the Bible says uh about them.

And we're gonna be looking at a big topic this morning uh on universal salvation.

Um that's why I've invited the Reverend Dr.

David Hartman to be with us this morning.

Uh, you might know David from his coffee nook persona uh as kind of like he he puts on this like uh this persona of like a kind of a it's almost like righteous gemstones, like the Christian fundamentalist pastor or church member, I'm not sure which.

It kind of depends on the situation, but it's drenched in sarcasm.

Um so you might know him from that sarcastic personality, um, but he also um is deadly serious when it comes to the topic of universal salvation.

Uh in fact, he wrote a book titled Grace Saves All.

Uh David is a public theologian, he's a retired disciples of Christ pastor.

Um and and so um I've invited him to share with us some this morning uh about what the Bible actually says about universal salvation because it is a topic that he is a specialist in as a public theologian.

Uh he also has a podcast called Grace Saves All.

So the podcast has the same name, uh has the same name as the book.

And I'm gonna be asking him some questions, but if you want to ask him some questions as well, just text them to the number on the screen.

It's the church number.

Uh go ahead and and text it to us, uh, and then I will go through those as we are sharing in conversation.

So um, David, I'm gonna come sit over here in just a second, but I want to begin by asking you a couple of just very basic questions.

Okay.

First, what is Christian universalism and what does the Bible actually have to say about it?

Okay, so what is Christian universalism?

Imagine uh two circles, and in this circle, imagine universal salvation, and that's where you have a God who deeply and intimately loves every single one of us and will not be content until we all are delivered from whatever sin or evil that has attached itself to us in this life and is fully committed to each one of us so that we would all finally not just be forgiven of our sins, but would would come into the full wholeness of the incredible, eternal, loving spirit that we're all created to be.

So imagine that's universal salvation.

Now, in this circle, uh this other circle, imagine that's Christianity.

And that has to do with uh uh usually believing in a God.

God um usually has Trinitarian ideas.

You've got the Bible in there, church, pastors, children's sermons, you know, that whole that whole thing.

So now imagine these two circles and imagine them like in a Venn diagram, imagine them overlapping with each other.

That area of overlap I call Christian Universalism.

So it's the overlap between the idea of universal salvation and Christianity.

You could be a universe, but somebody that believes in universal salvation and not be Christian.

You could just believe that there is a loving God who is calling all of us by whatever spiritual tradition or not or not tradition, that's just calling each one of us home by whatever way, and that Christianity is no more special than any other path.

That would I would call that like a pluralistic universalism.

Uh so Christian universalism tries to maintain a distinctly Christian um outlook, but also the understanding that God's ultimate commitment to each one of us uh will not finally fail and that we'll all be finally uh brought home.

Okay, so that's Christian universalism.

And what does the Bible Okay well in my book um the the book I have the book Grace Saves All, and this is a my copy that I'm giving to Brentwood Christian Church today.

So if anybody would like to, you know, would like to borrow this.

Also, the first 30 episodes of my podcast are me just talking through uh the basics of um what Christian Universalism is.

Patreons begin at$100 per month.

Right.

Oh, yeah.

And I don't ask, I haven't asked for any money on the podcast.

I make no um I make no plea for, you know, send me money, I won't be able to do this.

That's only in his righteous gemstones persona when he's pleading for money.

Uh so the first point that I have is that I believe that God is a loving parent to all.

And so there's scripture that um well, the scripture that we had today uh from 1 John, that's where we get God as love, but we also have God is light, in whom there's no darkness at all.

Um in 1 Corinthians, what is love?

Love is patient, love is kind, you know, love never gives up.

I think that tells us something about God's um about God's nature.

Um like in Acts 17, it says that uh God is not far from any one of us, for in him we live and move and have our being, as some of your own poets have said we are as offspring.

So that's Paul talking to the to the to the folks um in in Athens.

In other words, so my first point, I believe God is a loving parent to all.

My second point, I believe that God sincerely desires the salvation of all.

And uh I won't go through uh all of these scriptures, but first Timothy 2, 3 through 4 says God desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.

2 Peter 3, 9, 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 everybody to come to repentance.

Um my third point is that in is that God in Christ has covered the sin of all.

And uh I think that if you look at, especially if you look at some of Paul's writings, especially the fifth chapter of Romans, he lets us know that whatever has gone wrong in in this world, whatever Adam has involved, if Adam has involved humanity in sin and death, that Christ has come and involved us in righteousness and life.

And so that there was a sense in early Christianity that the gospel was the good news of a great victory.

This we you talked about this a little bit last week, that there had been a great victory on behalf of humanity by Christ.

Uh God in Christ had delivered humanity from the power of sin and death.

So uh my third point, I believe God in Christ has covered the sin of humanity.

My first, my fourth point is that God is sovereign over all.

Um in Isaiah, it says that God is the one who knows the end from the beginning.

So God isn't just all-powerful, God knows the end from the beginning.

So that whatever is happening in the creation ultimately is known to God, and that God will not be surprised or defeated in God's ultimate intentions.

And then my last point is that God will be all in all, and that's uh 1 Corinthians 15, 28, where Paul makes that declaration that at the end or the consummation of creation, God will finally be all in all.

So uh I could some other passages uh uh according to John's gospel, uh Christ says, if I'm lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.

I I the Luke 15, where you have the parable of the prodigal son and the shepherd who goes after the one lost sheep, we get the idea that there is nobody that is not going, the shepherd is not willing that one is lost, the good father is not willing that to let go ultimately of even the most you know rebellious son.

So I think I see um just a lot in the character of Christ.

I can find a lot in scripture that has to do with God's love and God's ultimate intentions for humanity.

So that's the positive case for it.

I'll stop there.

All right, so we've got some good questions coming in.

Um so one, if we are all being saved, what are we being saved to?

Is it heaven or something else?

And this next one's really hard.

If it is heaven, what does that look like?

Okay, so I would say that Western Christianity, as it developed, became a very legalistic religion.

And it was all about like a legal system where you're where ultimately the ultimate goal is to be declared not guilty.

And so what you want is salvation is being declared not guilty and not having to go to hell.

Uh and but Eastern Christianity had much more the idea of theosis, so that the point of salvation was not being delivered from hell, but the point of salvation was union with God.

They called it theosis.

So what we are being delivered from is the power of sin, death, and evil from uh ultimately preventing us from experiencing full union with God.

And God is light and love, and God is love and light in whom there's no darkness at all.

So ultimately that's where we're headed.

And what do you do in heaven?

People are concerned about that because wouldn't anything, no matter how wonderful, ultimately become tedious?

And what is it that we're going to be doing there?

The early church, Gregory of Nyssa, had uh, I think spoke eloquently about the idea of epictasis, and that's just the Greek word for stretching out or unfolding.

His idea was that if God is infinite love and light, that there is no way that we could ever be uh we could ever understand all of that, that God's love and light and beauty would always be moving out in front of us.

So that uh I don't think what whatever heaven is, it is a continual movement towards that which is true and good and beautiful.

I think that's what we're transcendentally oriented towards.

And I'm I'm I just believe that God would not create a God of infinite love and wisdom would not create a an eternally tedious existence for us that we would ultimately just be bored with uh out of our minds.

So those are my thoughts about that.

There we go.

Um so this next one's kind of a two-part question, uh, and I'm putting two questions into one from from the texts that have come in.

Uh so there's a a Bible passage, uh I I think it's uh in First Timothy or 2 Timothy.

Um God is the savior of everyone, especially of those who believe.

And and so if the Bible says God is the savior of everyone, then how do people argue against universal salvation?

And the second part of the question, though, uh is does the Bible say things about selective salvation?

So are there verses that are in opposition to one another?

Well, the that passage that uh that about the salvation uh about the early Christian community, at least some of them thinking that God is the Savior of all people, especially those who believe.

So there was even a sense of the wideness of God's ultimate salvific plan within uh early Christianity.

And uh if if you look at the New Testament, you can even see that among early Christians there was a diversity of opinion about what it all, you know, what it all meant.

And there are certainly some judgment passages which look quite severe.

Um and I think the judgment passages in in our English translations of the New Testament look a little more severe than they look in uh the Greek translation.

So for instance, um Matthew 25 has that the separation of the sheep and the goats, and at the end there, the one group goes into eternal life in most of the most of your Bibles, and where does the other group go?

Eternal.

Well, it doesn't say hell, it says eternal punishment, and that's where we get the idea of an unending, an unending hell.

In the Greek, they go away uh into Aeonian Colossus.

And Aonian No we we already know what that means.

Well, Aonian, yeah.

Aonian was the Greek word for ages.

Uh so like if I said I haven't seen you in aeons, they go into an Aonian Colossus or eternal life is to know God.

Well, Aonian life is to know the life of God.

So uh and colossus is a word that has its roots in horticulture where you trim off a diseased branch.

There's another word in Greek, Timoria, which has to do with retribution or revenge.

And so early Greek uh fathers such as Gregory of Nyssa, Origen of Alexandra, Andrea, read that the the wicked go away into Aonian Colossen, and they read it as well, they go into God's correction, God's ages of correction, and they believed that at the end of the ages, as they read Paul, that all would be corrected and that all would be uh reformed.

So um not everybody was convinced of universal restoration in early Christianity.

However, Augustine, who was not convinced about early about universal, Augustine, who did not read Greek, he was a Latin theologian, um, he was convinced that um that hell was going to last forever, basically.

But he wrote in his In Caridian on faith, hope, and love, and in Caridian is a fancy word, uh Latin word for handbook, but he wrote that in his day the vast majority of Christians did not agree with him uh about this, but they thought that God's mercy, that God would not forget to show his mercy, and he did not question their Christianity, nor did he think they were disregarding the Bible.

They just put emphasis in different places than he did.

So there was quite a sentiment among early Christians and some very uh prominent early church fathers that God's that God in Christ, yes, God would finally judge sin, God would purify the world, and God would purify each one of us, however we needed to be purified, but that finally God's victory in Christ meant that not only would all humanity be ultimately restored, but all of creation would be restored.

And so the word that they had for this was apocytastasis, the restoration of all things, not only all humanity, but the entire creation.

Um, so that connects to the next question.

If you say that God saves everyone, does that include people like Hitler?

Yeah, uh it does.

It includes it includes everyone.

Um, that because we are all in this together and we cannot be saved, I don't think that we can be saved separately from each other because what we are, we're a connection of relationships.

Hitler uh was an infant at some point.

He learned, you know, however evil he became, he he he was in a society that taught him things.

He was in Germany, and Martin Luther was, you know, the big name in theology in Germany.

The last book that Martin Luther wrote was The Lies of the Jews, in which he was very harsh about the Jews and you know named them as antichrists.

And so he learned from the medieval church, he learned from his church that Jews were antichrists.

Well, I mean, that was the world that he he grew up in.

And so if we ask how did we get Hitler, well, one of the ways we got him was through medieval Christianity, which was full of anti-Semitism.

Um and it's still around today.

So uh yeah, I would say that uh that we all we are all in this together, that any one of us could be the worst of us.

Um yeah, everybody.

All means all.

So so one of the things that often is a follow-up to that question, the what's like the what's the point of account?

Is there a level of accountability then?

Like what shouldn't there be some sort of accountability?

Yeah, so that's a question that people have.

So the early church fathers, like uh like I talked about Gregory of Nyssa and Origen, both believed that there would be ages and ages of time that God would use in order to gradually purify God's children from what evil or sin had attached to them, and that God would not rush that process.

So I'm an expert on parenting.

Um really, we've never had any kids.

Um none of my theories have ever been disproven.

But but I have watched, I I take I I tell people I took the ultimate form of birth control, youth ministry.

And so what I did was but I've watched, I've observed families, and what works for one kid does not work for the other one.

And these kids are born with sort of personalities, and the parents just have to learn individually what works for each one of them.

So I'm just believing that God is like a good parent.

Some some children come around pretty quickly, others take a long, long, long, long time.

And so I just think God having wisdom, it's kind of like the parable of the prodigal son.

You know, the the father and the prodigal son had the wisdom to know what the rebellious son needed.

And so he sent, he, you know, allowed him to go off on his journey.

So I think that God allows us to go on whatever journeys we need to go on and knock our heads against whatever walls we need to.

Um, but finally, I think God is a redemptive genius who knows how to bring all of us home in a way that doesn't defeat us but sets us free from whatever we think uh has been benefiting us.

Okay.

Is your book similar to what we might read from Rob Bell and Love Winds?

My book is much more uh affirmative on the necessity of Christian universalism than Rob Bell's book.

Rob Bell wrote a book called Love Winds, and in that he just sort of asked the question, like, when did we lose our hopefulness?

When did Christianity become so pessimistic?

There used to be a time when Christians thought God would save everybody.

Here's how they thought about it.

Why don't we even think about why don't why don't we think about these things anymore?

Uh I I don't know if it's true or not, but it Christianity used to have a much more optimistic feel to it.

So that was what Rob Bell's book.

My book is it's Grace Saves All the Necessity of Christian Universalism.

And the argument that I make there is that the consummation of creation is the revelation of the moral character of God.

There's anything in the creation that is finally unresolved or poor or pitiable, that doesn't just tell us something about the creation.

That tells us about God.

That tells us about who God is.

So if all are not saved, if the creation, if the creation is not restored, then I think God is not.

Like in the scripture that we had this morning, God is not a being of light in whom there's no darkness at all.

It seems like we've got some darkness in the creation if there's somebody that gets left out or left behind, or sin finally consumes their whole their whole life.

So the argument that I make is that Christianity, that the only form of Christianity that is not ultimately morally confused is Christian universalism.

All right, so we have a whole host of questions that we have not been able to get to that have come in.

Yeah.

And we have three minutes left.

So I want to use this as a time to mention that on the first Wednesday of September, we're going to have uh our next Brentwood 102, formerly known as Reconstruct.

It's going to be in the coffee nook uh at six, uh I think six o'clock p.m.

six to seven thirty uh p.m.

Uh, the first Wednesday of September, and we're gonna continue this conversation uh with David, and so we'll be we'll be able to get to all of the questions uh that have been asked.

And so I'm just gonna share all of these questions with you, uh, and then I'm gonna let you respond to as many of them as you can together or separately, in I'll give we'll give you one extra minute.

Yes, the light lightning round of lightning rounds.

Okay.

Um, so so here we go.

You ready?

Yeah.

I'm gonna ask them all at once.

Okay.

Some Christian denominations believe that salvation depends on accepting Christ as your personal savior on a particular date and time, while others teach that it depends on a ledger balance analysis at the end, good acts versus bad.

Is there a biblical basis for either approach?

Answer in ten seconds.

Well, uh, in Christian universalism, every every knee will ultimately bow, every tongue will ultimately confess.

Uh it we will none of us will be saved without faith, but that faith will ultimately come to us by grace.

All right, next lightning round.

How do people react to this teaching?

Do people really want to get rid of hell?

Um are we okay with everyone being or being condemned more than wait?

No, sorry, I messed that up.

Okay, how do people react to this teaching?

Do people really want to get rid of hell?

Uh we are okay with everyone being condemned more than being saved.

I think a lot there's a lot of good folks who just grow up in congregations where that's a necessary part of it, believing in a hell, and it gives them some comfort to think that they're being saved from hell, and then they if they hear, well, there is no eternal hell, then they might wonder, well, why am I doing all of this?

Uh so I think it's hard for some people to wrap their their heads around heads around that.

But I think ultimately what you find out is that Christianity is about receiving the fullness of life that Christ has to offer both now and eternally.

Once you understand that, then I don't think you're too worried about that.

Okay, again, 10-second answer.

Does Christianity require individual consciousness after death?

Uh, and so what if sin falls away upon death?

Well, I don't think sin falls away upon death.

I think that we carry the sins that we have with us, and I do believe that there is judgment and purification in the life to come or the ages to come, um, how however that happens.

What was the first part of the question?

Uh does Christianity require individual consciousness after death?

It doesn't require it.

I mean, there are some people who are quite uh they think that Christianity is really about the here and the now and about love in this moment, and they don't really want to think about much more than that.

That's okay.

There's some people who think that, you know, for there to be a happy ending to this story, that'd be if we're love beyond our wildest imagination, isn't there a God who is waiting to receive us like parents who are getting ready to have a child or looking forward to that child?

It isn't God looking forward to being with us and for us all being mature and together, and and wouldn't that all be wonderful?

And so that for people like me, that means something.

Other people are just like, well, I don't know, I don't care.

Okay, so this next one raises a whole host of other questions that has to do with the problem of evil, yeah, which is a real problem.

Ten seconds.

If God is sovereign enough, powerful enough to save all, would not wouldn't God have the sovereignty, the power to prevent evil?

Great question.

And I think that Christian universalism offers a possible theodicy, although I think the question of theodicy is very hard to answer.

All I can say is that ultimately I can hope by faith that God certainly has a reason to put us through this moral gymnasium of life where there's actual true suffering and evil and death, and that there's something about not just growing us individually, but as a human family, and that it's not that we're just each learning lessons, but that as a human family, we're ultimately headed towards a time when we will all be reconciled with God and with each other, and we'll all understand what that means in a way that we couldn't understand it if we hadn't gone through all of this.

Okay, we only have two more ten-second uh answers.

What is the difference between universal salvation and predestination?

Well, predestination generally has to do with Calvinism, in which there's only a certain people, certain few that are let to be saved.

So last question.

Are there any Christian denominations that espouse Christian universalism?

There are some small, like Christian Universalist groups.

There's not there used to be a Christian universalist denomination in the United States in the late 1800s, late 1800s.

It it subsumed into the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Uh so right now there's not a specific Christian Universalist denomination.

I tell people that the Christian Church Disciples of Christ is one of the few denominations that I know of that allow would allow a person to hold this theology and welcome that without requiring all people to.

So if you're looking for Christian Church Disciples of Christ, we actually happen to be one.

Right.

Um and would you all join me in thanking David for sharing with us this morning?