Universal Salvation per David Bentley Hart.

I once got a book on Biblioholism, which might be described as being the sort who would get a book like that.  (It had some really interesting stuff on Thomas Jefferson.)  So you can see where I stand on burning books of any sort.  Your anecdote reminds me of the wife in the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough at Last", starring Burgess Meredith as a meek bibliophile surrounded by bibliophobes -- most especially his vicious wife. At one point he asks him to read to her from a book of poetry he had tried to hide -- and he discovers that she had crossed out every word -- and smiled as he discovered this.  (Meredith may have been Serling's favorite guest star, his strongest competitor perhaps being Fritz Weaver.  One episode -- "The Obsolete Man" -- had both.) 

I suppose the key to "salvation for everyone" would be the nature of purgatory.  It presumably must involve severe punishment for the most severe crimes (such as democide by rulers such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot).  One possibility is that the punishment is intended to encourage genuine repentance by villains such as those.  If/when they finally repent, they finally get to advance to heaven.  I think I could go with that, and it would probably match what the Bible says.

I think these two articles are a fair presentation of orthodox Christian belief:

Is universalism/universal salvation biblical?

Why doesn’t god save everyone?

I like this quote from the latter article:



My patient friend, JB, long knows I’ve been on the fence about that idea and have never presented myself otherwise. It’s the one and only question here of import: Did the Creator, in order to fiddle with or fix his creation, make himself human incarnate in order to connect with humanity in a more direct way?

It is at least logically plausible that such thing was needed because, let’s face it, without the Bible and the various traditions, there is about zero evidence of the kind of God Almighty spoken of in the Old and New Testaments. If you entered this world today without those resources, you would not encounter these ideas. No God Almighty hands you a Manual for Life, not does he talk to you in any unambiguous and direct way. As JB knows, I tend (because of these factors) toward natural theology (that which can be discovered or reasonably presumed via logic and empiricism alone).

I’m free to remain on the fence just as my elder brother is free to get off it in the other direction (the Hitchens side). But what if?

To me it’s clear that universalist salvation entirely rejects the central idea of Christianity. I say either believe in it or not. Or fence-sit like me. But the message is very clear: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” There are ample passages that mention what may happen if you don’t.

That’s not very ambiguous. We may certainly criticize many Christians who make an idol of their exclusivity. We might even reach back in history and note how converting people to Christianity (for their own good, of course) often amounted to brutalizing and subjugating those people (this is particularly so in regards to the Spanish).

But despite human foibles, the central question remains. What if? As for the nature of hell, we could rightly assume that God gets to define what that is. But as a teaching device, it’s probably the type of incentive the is the only kind that can reach some people. And if the central message of Christianity is true (“No one comes to the Father except through me”) then we are condemning people to something if we spread this loosey-goosey universalist message that basically says whether you are Hitler or Mother Teresa, it doesn’t matter.

There are aspects of Pascal’s Wager to this. Why not teach that “No one comes to the Father except through me” and that there could be substantial penalties for not doing so? Does the real problem have nothing to do with belief or theology but instead concern modern politics whereby being “inclusive” is the coinage of modern Christian intellectuals?

A logical point. One may presume that “life” is more metaphorical for one worth living. But this gets to the core of the problem here.

We could argue these points forever and we’d ultimately only ever uncover how clever we are at arguing.



The way out of this conundrum so that the Christian idea doesn’t devolve to one of simple superstition or “Jesus magic” is to understand “believing” as a metaphor for fundamental transformation of heart, mind, and spirit.

Human nature being inherently deceitful and limited, those are tough things to determine thus perhaps a necessary area is to talk about faith and acts. And you and I can go down that road all day, and each one of us can prove how clever we are.

Inherent to this subject are things that are mystical, intangible, esoteric, and occult. If one rejects such things as a possibility, then one is an atheist. If one accepts specific beliefs (meeting some kind of minimal threshold), then one is an adherent to a particular religion.

If one is a “universalist,” that would seem to be more a statement reflecting atheistic beliefs that all religion is bullshit, therefore one that doesn’t have the nasty trait of making bold statements about how things work avoids this problem. I do believe a lot of this “universal” and “liberal” stuff derives from the fact that more and more (at least in intellectual circles) it’s an embarrassing (even intolerant) notion to say that my religion is correct and yours is not.

We see that in the Anglican church to a huge extent. And it’s arguable that this current P0pe isn’t Catholic so much as his religion is Leftism. God only knows what the religion of the Jesuits is.

There has always been a fracturing of any religion. The Muslims never will likely resolve the conflict between Sunni and Shia. (And given that Satan is the likely author of that religion, this is considered a feature, not a bug.) Protestants and Catholics will likely much sooner come together than the Muslims ever will because the main conflict is more institutional than doctrinal (at least in my opinion). They believe the same things (more or less). It’s just a disagreement on the orthodox methods to get there.

One of my Christian friends has a saying when it comes to the complexities of this stuff: “Kill them all and let God sort them out.” And he’s not a gun nut nor do I think he’s a conservative. It’s just something he says that I think reflects the reality the we humans are not in the best position to have a handle on this stuff.

As a graphic artist, I am well aware of the name as in Bézier curve by using Adobe Illustrator 88.



This following is a pretty good introduction to that software (and, really, that entire software category). “Quick and Easy” should be taken with a grain of salt. Nothing was particularly quick about it back then. But it did make a lot of things a whole lot easier.



The presenter reminds me a little bit of Star Trek’s “Q”. The 68040 processors were barely able to make that software useable. When the PowerPC processor was finally introduced, it was a major step.

It’s weird to remember that the PowerPC was an Apple/IBM/Motorola venture. Motorola had been producing the 680x0 series of process for the Mac since its inception. The first Macintosh had a 68000 processor. I’m not sure how much use IBM ever made of the PowerPC. Apparently Motorola was the manufacturer and began lagging so far behind, both in production and development of new chips, that eventually both Apple and IBM had to look elsewhere. Apple did an amazing migration to Intel which is what my iMac is running now (2.7 GH Intel Core i5).

Some sitting at home may ask what in Sam Hill does this have to do with universal salvation. I would have thought the parallels were obvious. No? Okay…

Religion is the software we use to run the hardware of our selves. Some say we need no software at all. They prefer the open source operating system, Atheism 3.2. It’s a little tricky to run because, first of all, adherents deny they are running any software at all. But the boot-up process is mostly automatic and transparent which makes it easy.

ChristOS, much like the PowerPC, is an operating sytem optimized for RISC hardware. In the field of computers, that is known as “Reduced Instruction Set Computer,” the idea being that running fewer commands, but doing them faster, is the way to go. With the gazillion-transistor multi-core processor whose complexity is starting to resemble DNA, that’s a system that I think has mostly been relegated to embedded devices. (Atari’s 6502 processor, in various updated forms, is still hugely popular for embedded systems because it is so powerful and you can buy the processor now for literally pennies).

In the case of Christianity, RISC stands for “Redeemer-Inspired Soul Configuration.” It sometimes runs hot but is very reliable. And it’s a truly universal operating system. It runs on whites, blacks, reds, browns, yellows, and everything in between. And unlike Atheism 3.2, there is a user manual.

Those running the operating system (as with any computer) need good virus software. The most dangerous ones out there at the Social Justice virus (which turns ChristOS into PovertyPreventionOS), the Lavender Mafia virus (you don't want to know), and the Earth is 6500 Years Old virus (self-explanatory). But other than that, it’s a pretty robust system.

I have stayed on track, haven’t I?

Great conversation going here, everyone.

Re: giving out passes, we can distinguish between the proscription "not to judge" and the need to administer justice, maintain the public order, establish peace thru various coercive means, including both the soft powers of influence and hard powers of law enforcement and militaries.

By not judging, we'd only mean that, when we do observe behaviors that represent clear failures to cooperate with what's good, just, life-giving & relationship-enhancing, we reserve judgment as to whether those derive from sinful refusals to cooperate or various inabilities (e.g. mental & emotional illnesses, poor formation, deformative influences, etc).

But, wherever those behaviors are coming from, whether refusals or inabilities, even as we leave that determination for God to sort out, it's necessary that we interdict those behaviors, restoratively & correctively, if possible, even killing the perpetrators, when necessary. And, if such punitive measures also take on a retributive nature, beyond even a pedagogical role, that can be understood and tolerated for various reasons.

Hopefully, our ongoing moral development, as individuals, peoples, cultures, humankind, will advance, where the fear of punishment will recede and higher motives will come into play beyond mere reward & punishment paradigms. As realists, we shouldn't naively imagine, for example, that we should be coercively democratizing tribalistic cultures?

Biblical proof-texting is rank fundamentalism, poor exegesis.

Heck, anyone can quote texts out of context, recombine them and prove anything. To wit: "Judas went out and hung himself." and "Go, now, and do likewise."

CS Lewis had a great admonition against "taking something out of its context in the whole and swelling it to madness in its isolation."

That's an interesting juxtaposition, Judas's fate and Jesus's admonition regarding the Good Samaritan and the question of who is our neighbor.  I can think of some people who would make the world a better place by following it.  It would also make a great example of what's wrong with taking things out of context.

I remains squishally agnostic and non-committal on this topic, dear Lynnonymous. But I really am fond of the concept of the narrow gate. When one plays darts (at least to win), one aims for the narrow target of the bulls-eye and not the broad fake woodgrain paneling of the wall that the board is hung on.

When out hiking, I indeed have to be very conscious of staying on the narrow path. This time of year, everything is so dry and the pebbles on the inclines are like a Groucho Marx film where they throw marbles in front of somebody to try to trip them up.

When doing a coloring book, best results are achieved by — yes, you guessed it — staying between the lines. (When we get older, we learn how to creativity break the rules, but that’s another story.)



I used to leap over the gate growing up. It was one of those low mesh-wire gates. You put a hand on one of the posts and sort of leaped over. I’m not sure what the biblical equivalent of this is.

And broad roads do scare me. I like nice two-lane country lanes where the speed limit is 45. Those 8-lane highways going 65 (or more) can get a little hairy. I think the Biblical analogy here is obvious.