The Evangelical Universalist
Gregory MacDonald
Top 10 Best Quotes
“have been supposing that God loves everyone and wants to show mercy on all. Indeed, I have hinted that I believe that if God did not love and try to save everyone, he would be less than perfect. Calvinists will not agree to this. God has to be just, they maintain, but he does not have to be merciful. He has to punish unforgiven sin, but he does not have to forgive sin. This is a common view among theologians, but it ought to be seen as problematic for a Christian view of God. To subordinate divine love to divine justice so that God has to be just but does not have to love is odd for a Christian who confesses that God is love.”
“The traditional theologian will not allow that it is possible for those in hell to find salvation; but, I ask, how is that teaching compatible with the kind of divine love revealed in the biblical story? How could God be love if he draws a line at death and says, “Beyond this point I will look for the lost sheep no more; and even if they try to return, I shall turn them away.” It seems to me that such a God would not be behaving in a loving way. In conclusion, I suggest that the problem is not that the universalist sentimentalizes God’s love and forgets his wrath but, rather, that the traditional theologians underestimate God’s love and unhelpfully disconnect it from his justice.”
“Clearly punishing the perpetrators of horrendous evils in hell forever and ever is not going to overcome horrendous evils in the lives of the victims, and it would certainly not be a display of God’s goodness to the criminals. Eternal conscious torment contributes nothing to God’s purposes of redeeming creation. In fact, it would “only multiply evil’s victories.”
“most of us never even think to question the way that we have had biblical texts explained to us unless something problematizes that interpretation.”
“it is a little ironic that Packer, as a five-point Calvinist, faces an exactly analogous objection. If God will save the elect anyway, so the objection runs, why bother proclaiming the gospel to them? They will be saved one way or another. Packer’s response, and I would agree with him, would be that the way God saves the elect is through the proclamation of the gospel. But if that response saves Calvinism, it will save universalism also; and if the criticism damns universalism it damns Calvinism too.”
“is thus, on the one hand, the Messiah representing the nation of Israel and, on the other, the second Adam representing the whole of humanity. In his representative role nobody is excluded. Christ”
“as the Bible says, that “as in Adam all die even so in Christ should all be made alive.” As was the first, even so was the second. The “all” in one case could not in fairness mean less than the “all” in the other. I saw therefore that the remedy must necessarily be equal to the disease, the salvation must be as universal as the fall. —Hannah Whitall Smith1”
“When you see that a person you love has irrationally chosen to do irreparable harm to himself or herself (in the case of the traditional doctrine of hell such harm amounts to suffering unbearable torment forever and ever), is freedom so sacrosanct that you are not justified in interfering with it?”
“What we find in Colossians, then, is a theology that locates the origin of creation, the revelation of God, and the salvation of world in Christ. It recognizes the massive rupture introduced into the world through sin, and it sees the solution to this problem in the death of Christ. It requires a response of obedient faith to share in Christ and in the inheritance of eternal life. It offers no hope of a nice God letting everyone into heaven no matter how they live or what they believe. However, in spite of that, it holds before us a confident hope in the salvation of the whole creation. It is God’s covenant purpose that his world will one day be reconciled in Christ. For now, only the Church shares in that privilege, but this is not a position God has granted his people so they can gloat over the world. On the contrary, the Church must live by gospel standards and proclaim its gospel message so that the world will come to share in the saving work of Christ. This is the outline of the evangelical universalist theology I wish to commend to the reader.”
“What kind of universalism is found in the Old Testament? One in which ultimately all humanity without exception acknowledges the universal sovereignty of Yahweh and worships him.”
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