This series is based on a paper I wrote for my Systematic Theology class on Christocentric Universalism. It was called, “Assessing the Biblical, Theological, and Practical Implications of Christocentric Universalism and Exclusivism.” I’ll be posting the sections of the paper over the next 2 weeks. I hope it helps you wade through the weighty topics of the nature of salvation, the character of God, and final judgement. Also, please share your own thoughts to help me continue wrestling.

The Series
1. Introduction
2. Biblical Assessment
3. Theological Assessment
4. Practical Assessment
5. Assessing the Polarities
6. Conclusion

In his book, The Evangelical Universalist, pseudonymous author Gregory MacDonald puts the theological impetus behind Christocentric Universalism in this way: 1) God, being omnipotent, could cause all people to freely accept Christ; 2) God, being omniscient, would know how to cause all people to freely accept Christ; 3) God, being omnibenevolent, would want to cause all people to freely accept Christ; 4) God will cause all people to freely accept Christ; 5) All people will eventually freely accept Christ. This view understands God as a Being who is hyper-sovereign and hyper-loving. Because God desires all people to be rescued and re-created to the way He intended them to be at creation, God is capable of saving all people, and will do so at the return of Christ or thereafter. MacDonald and others counter the Exclusivist—and primarily Calvinist—assertion that God does not love and wish to save all people. While they certainly affirm God’s capability to save all people, they deny that He wants to.

A Swedish theologian, Nels Ferre, cites this same hyper-love as definitive of the character of God as He defends a Christocentric Universalism. Troubled by the idea that those who have not heard the gospel will be eternally damned and lost in hell, he contends that people who insist on teaching and preaching on the concept of an everlasting punishment do not really understand God’s defining characteristic of love. “Heaven can only be heaven when it has emptied hell, as surely as love is love and God is God. God cannot be faithless to Himself no matter how faithless we are; and His is the power, the kingdom and the glory.” Likewise, the logic of the broad New Testament narrative insists God’s sovereign love will have nothing less than total victory of His love and power to subdue all things unto Himself. Interpreting eschatology and soteriology through the lens of the doctrine of God is common amongst Christocentric Universalists. Like Ferre, many believe that the God we find in Jesus, who announced that the kingdom was available to all people and who was predicted to come to restore all things, is defined by love and will therefore eventually restore His beloved Image-Bearers.

No greater theologian has implied a universal salvation, however, than the twentieth-century Swiss theologian Karl Barth. While he never explicitly taught universalism, the logic of his election especially implying universal salvation. Reflecting the supposed reconciliation of ever human in Christ, Barth said that on the basis of God’s decree of election, the only truly rejected man is His own Son. “By permitting the life of a rejected man to be the life of His own Son, God has made such a life objectively impossible for all others.” Barth’s theology centers on the Reformed doctrine of election, though with a twist. He sees Jesus Christ, not humanity, as the objects of God’s election and sovereign choosing. Whereas traditional concepts of election emphasize a chosen group for everlasting life and a chosen group for everlasting death, Barth applies them to one single person, Jesus Christ; Christ is both the elect and the reprobate so that He was elected to die for all and all have died in Him as the reprobate. Negatively, God said “No” to Christ as he bore the punishment for humans as the rejected one; positively, God said, “Yes” to all humanity because He was the elected man. This theology led Barth to say, “His election carries in it and with it the election of the rest. Predestination is the non-rejection of man. It is so because it is the rejection of the Son of God.”

In contrast to Christocentric Universalists, Exclusivists emphasize the need for knowledge of the gospel as a requirement for salvation, the consequence of judged sin, and generally the doctrine of election. Calvinistic Exclusivists wish to maintain that the God is sovereign over all the events of the world and has ordained what will come to pass, even the outcome of salvation for humans through divine election. They insist that those who will be saved are done so exclusively through the predetermined choice of God, through the absolute knowledge of Jesus and His gospel. They believe that a universal salvation to receive Jesus through knowledge of Him is not inconsistent with God’s desire to reveal Himself to a chosen group; though Christ’s provision was universal, only those who respond positively to a revealed invitation to them will be saved. Primarily this revealed invitation is built upon the assumption that depraved sinners are unable to respond to spiritual impulses on their own, thus needing a direct supernatural unveiling in order to find salvation in Jesus Christ. Because humans are so sinful and depraved, they are unable to understand and find salvation from God. Even in general revelation they unable to commit to the special revelation in Christ without an invitation by God’s choosing.

This leads some to believe that those who do not know and believe directly in Jesus cannot be saved, that the unevangelized in distant lands will be lost. Radical sinfulness plagues the human condition, which prevents humans from moving toward God on their own and requires the illumination of the Holy Spirit in order to understand the knowledge of and receive faith in Christ. Consequently, though God is love He is also just and must punish humans for their sin, which we see in Jesus’ and Paul’s teachings on final judgement. Exclusivists response to Christocentric Universalists is that it neither offers a convincing reinterpretation of texts of God’s judgement and wrath nor provides evidence for God’s corrective use of judgement to eventually bring all people to salvation. From their perspective, it makes theological, not to mention biblical, sense that sinful humans will be judged and eternally punished for their condition and choices. It makes sense that the sinful condition of humans precludes them from finding salvation on their own through their interaction with general revelation and a consistent understanding of God’s sovereignty must lead to an election of some, and consequently a rejection of others.