The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Universalism and Arminianism

Hello everybody! I hope you are good.

This week a doubt came into my mind about if Universalism is compatible with Arminianism. I’m recently considering Universalism but at the same time I am convinced that the Bible teaches libertarian free will, preventive grace, and all the points of classical Arminianism and I would like to know if it is compatible with universalism. I feel like it is, because universalism is a view about the final destiny of all humanity and I think that it is compatible. I only want to know for sure that it is, thank you very much and a God bless you!

Hi again, Mataís!

The key difference between Arm and Kath (katholic, universalistic) soteriologies, is not about free will, or anything actually deriving from created free will – I defy anyone to have a stronger (theologically consistent) belief in the reality and importance of creaturely free will than I do! :wink:

The key difference is that Arms (whether Protestant, Roman Catholic, or EOx) must offer explanations for why God either chooses to give up seeking to save some sinners from sin, or else is ultimately defeated in saving some sinners from sin. Arms have a wide variety of such theories, at least one of which routinely shades into Calvinistic soteriology (God never even intended, much less ever acted, to save rebel angels from their sin. As Calv apologists like to point out, most Arms believe this. You might have heard about that side of the dispute when you were Calv. :laughing: )

God’s regard for creaturely (human and otherwise) free will, provided only by God at all, can explain why God treats us as rebel children rather than malfunctioning puppets which only need repairing to behave correctly (thus why God doesn’t simply poof us into being good). But that same regard for creaturely free will cannot be a reason for why God would choose to stop seeking the salvation of a sinner, thus (or in some other way) locking the creature into having no ability to repent. In other words, God’s protection of a creature’s free will cannot be used to explain a theory where God permanently destroys a creature’s free will! (This is especially damaging to Arminian annihilationist theories.)

On the other hand, to claim that creaturely free will permanently defeats God’s own freely intended preferential choice and action to save sinners from sin (perhaps requiring God to give up at that point), involves proposing a theology that ultimately isn’t even supernaturalistic theism but rather some kind of paganism! – we’re only talking about a fellow creature then (even if a supremely powerful one compared to other creatures), not yet about the real God Most High! (You may recall this being a key complaint from Calvs about Arminian theories of final divine salvific defeat.)

At the very most, creaturely free will could only result in an ongoing stalemate, where God still (freely!) acts forever toward saving the sinner from sin but happens to never succeed. Technically that’s still universalism, though: soteriology is supposed to be primarily about what God does, not about what sinners do.

Thus the conceptual differences:

Arm == God acts to save all sinners from sin, but for some reason eventually stops acting to do so.
Calv == God never stops acting toward saving some sinners from sin until He gets it done, but never even intends (much less acts) to save the other sinners from sin.
Kath == God acts to save all sinners from sin, and never stops acting to do so until He gets it done.

It doesn’t take a very robust faith to believe and trust that God in His omnicompetence will succeed in saving whomever He intends to save from sin; but that’s more a question of whether God has promised and/or revealed He will surely get that salvation done, so it’s more of a scriptural assurance. Again, you may remember several such scriptural assurances from when you were Calv. :slight_smile: They apply to universal salvation just as well.

I totally ripped off your answer JP, because it addresses very clearly the conceptual framework that a few of my friends are wrestling with. Yeah yeah I gave you credit :smiley:

Thank you very much for your response, it was very helpful for me. God bless you!

Arminianism is equally compatible with any of the following three eschatological scenarios:

  1. Every single person is saved.
  2. Every single person is damned.
  3. Some persons are saved, some are damned.

Think about it. Who’s to say that every single person WON’T use their free will to accept Christ? How could anyone possibly say that some free agents CANNOT choose Christ? Such a statement would be a denial of free will.

If anyone ever tries to tell you that free will precludes universalism, ask him a simple question: “Is there any person to whom God did NOT grant the freedom to choose Christ?” If he says “Yes”, then he does not believe in free will. If he says “No”, then he thereby acknowledges that universalism is compatible with free will.

So what are the basic differences between universalism and arminianism? One could be that in arminianism God has two wills: he wants all to be saved freely, and to get salvation you have to believe the gospel. In universalism God has only one will: all humanity will be ultimately saved. Is this correct?

The foundational difference between Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universalism can best be summed up using the following statements about God. All 4 statements have significant scriptural support.

  1. God is Sovereign over all.
  2. God is Love over all.
  3. God is Savior of all.
  4. God is Judge of all.

Because Calvinists believe that 1) God is sovereign over all, and 4) that God’s judgment results in some people being saved and others being lost, they do not affirm that 2) God loves all, or that 3) God is savior of all.

Because Arminianists believe that 2) God loves all, and 4) that God’s judgment results in some people being saved and others being lost, they do not affirm that 1) God is sovereign (they affirm that man is sovereign, man chooses), or that 3) God is savior of all.

Because Universalists believe that Judgment makes things right, reconciles all to God, we affirm all 4 perspectives of God. God is Sovereign. God is Love. God is Savior. and God is Judge. Thus universalism is the most biblical.

Also, I don’t see in scripture or in life experience that man is sovereign, that man has ultimate “free-will”. We are born dead in sin, separated from God, consumed by evil from within and without. We are spiritually dead, slaves of unrighteousness and need saving and life. Only those who are set free and brought alive (saved) truly have free-will.

No, I would not put it that way. Universalists certainly believe that God “wants all to be saved freely, and to get salvation you have to believe the gospel.”

There are two basic differences between A) a universalist who believes in free will and B) an Arminian who believes that some people will go to everlasting Hell:

  1. The universalist believes that every single person will freely choose Christ. The Arminian believes that only some persons will freely choose Christ (with those who do not going to everlasting Hell).

  2. The universalist believes that God is not somehow OK with anyone being in everlasting Hell. The Arminian believes that God is somehow OK with some people being in everlasting Hell.

How could God be sure that every human being will ultimately choose Christ freely?

Foreknowledge. The Omniscient One would certainly never create a person whom He knew would land in everlasting Hell. :slight_smile:

I think one of the inconsistencies between libertarian free-will and Arminianism IS the matter of libertarian free will.

Although Arminianists CLAIM to believe in free will, while Calvinists do not, the fact is that this claim is inconsistent with their belief that God is able to peer into the future and thus know in advance every decision that will ever be made by free-will agents. But this idea implies that those decisions are settled NOW. However, this present settlement is inconsistent with the future free-will choices of those agents. For example, if it is NOW a settled fact that I will purchase a new quad tomorrow, then I will be unable to refrain from buying that quad tomorrow, and thus will not have the free will to abstain. And so it would be with all future “decisions”.

If it were foreknowledge, then every event is already settled, and that is inconsistent with free choice as I indicated in my post above. I am a free will theist who believes that the future choices of free will agents cannot be known (because they do not yet exist).

I think the reason that God can be sure that every human being will ultimately choose Christ freely, is that He will continue to work unrelentingly with the lost with whatever it takes, and as long as it takes, to influence them to freely make that decision. This may be a combination of God’s aministration of the discomforts of hell together with the revelation of his total love for them.

Rebels can hold out for a long time, and many have continued to rebel throughout their lifetimes. But what is a lifetime? 80 years? 100 years? 120 years? Would these rebels be able to hold out for 1000 years of treatment? How about a million years? A billion years? One thing is clear to me. They would unable to hold out for an infinite number of years. After all they are fininite creatures. If they could hold out forever, they would have wills as strong as that of God.

So God knows that ultimately all things will be reconciled to Him. That is his great plan of the ages!

Btw, you’re welcome, Dave! :smiley: Tom Talbott uses a similar comparative phrasing of course, though like many people I had figured it out before reading his version.

Sherman’s three-or-four-of-four comparison makes excellent sense, too. :ugeek: :sunglasses:

In the sense of prophetic revelation, foreknowledge certainly counts. But so does omnicompetent skill: God keeps at it until He gets it done, even if that takes the eons of the eons because He is respecting and valuing the free will He gives the sinner.

God even occasionally vouches His own self-existence on His evangelism succeeding (as you might recall Calvs pointing out occasionally).

Persons can be free to abuse the gifts of God; but they are not free to not need God for those gifts (including existence); and are not free to be free from God’s omnipresence; and are not free to be free from God freely acting toward saving them from their sins. Nor are sinners are free to sin without being actively inconvenienced by God sooner or later in various ways.

Free will is real and great and precious, but free will doesn’t free a person from a lot of things.

Only if God is being imagined (tacitly or explicitly) to exist only as a creature within a natural history.

Otherwise this idea implies only what it says and means, that God is equally present and presently knowledgeable of all actual facts that ever happen in a created system. I’m not acting any less freely if God (or for that matter any created rational agent) sees me acting right this moment than if God (or any created rational agent) doesn’t see me acting right this moment. I wasn’t any less free in my past choices, I won’t be any less free in my future choices.

But neither does my libertarian (as well as complimentarian) freedom of will amount to the freedom exercised by the one and only self-existent ground of all reality. I’m not free to act without God seeing me, for example, nor free to act without relying on God’s provisional upkeep of my abilities to act, nor free to act without natural interrelations within the created system I exist within (including without being at least partially conditioned by the reactions and counterreactions of that system), nor free to act apart from other contributions rational agents are contributing to the system (up to and including God Himself as the contributing founder of the not-God system).

Come to think of it, I’m not free to act without effects of the consequences of my previously chosen actions either, no more than I’m free to act without creating effects of my actions which are going to affect the natural system and other rational agents operating within the natural system.

If God has foreknowledge of future free choices of human beings this choices are contingent and certainly known by God. It means that this actions could have been different. You say: “if it is NOW a settled fact that I will purchase a new quad tomorrow, then I will be unable to refrain from buying that quad tomorrow, and thus will not have the free will to abstain”. I think that you are right when you say that if God foresees that you will do X then X will happen, but it doesn’t mean that X is necessary. It is certainly known by God and it is contingent because you could have chosen to do Q instead of X and God had had this knowledge. So although God knows with certainty what I will do, I could have done otherwise. And this is, I think, consistent with genuine human freedom. If I’m wrong please correct me.

God bless you :slight_smile:

I hate having to disagree with Paidion, but (as Aristotle said when disagreeing with his mentor, Plato) “Dear is Plato, but dearer still is truth.” :slight_smile:

St. Symeon the New Theologian (who lived in the Roman Empire about a thousand years ago) explained that God’s foreknowledge of something no more causes that something than does His knowledge of something. Consider: God knows that I am right now typing a forum post. He is not causing that. He simply knows it. That is true of every single action. No action is past or future to God, for He is not a creature within time. Rather, time is a creature of God.

Further, we can know that God knows the future because we know that He knows even things that could have happened, but didn’t (“counterfactuals”). Christ said: “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” (Luke 10:13)

Those words of Christ illustrate that God knows even things that never happened. How much more so does He know things that will happen.

Shifting gears…

Another thing to remember about free will is that it requires intellect. Insanity precludes free will. When a madman, foaming at the mouth, starts biting off his own fingers and other peoples’ fingers, we don’t say, “What an interesting use that man is making of his free will.” Rather, we hold that his free will is in abeyance; that he is therefore not responsible for his assaults; and that he is operating on the level of beasts. If biting fingers off is an example of free will being negated by insanity, how much more so if someone were to “choose” Hell rather than Christ? That would NOT be free will in action. That would instead be the absence of free will. It would be, quite literally, insane.

That last paragraph in particular was very well put. I’m staying out of the main debate. :smiley:

Jason, you are not able to see a marked difference between the past and the future? All past events have occurred. They have been settled by past choices. On the other hand, no choices have yet been made in the future. Nothing is settled. Everything depends on future rational choices.

In the present, you many have intentions for the future or predictions for the future. But there are no statements about the future (involving free will actions which have present truth value). Those actions will be settled only when the free will agents act. They cannot be settled prior to those actions.
There is a great deal of difference in someone seeing your action at this moment and “seeing” your future action. How CAN anyone see your future action, since your choice has not yet been made. Even if you now INTEND to perform an act in the future, you could change you mind at the last moment. If it is NOW true that you will fast all day tomorrow, then how can you choose to eat anything tomorrow? For if you do eat anything tomorrow, then it is NOT now true that you will fast all day tomorrow. So clearly, the proposition that it is NOW true that you will fast all day tomorrow, is logically contradictory to the proposition that you will eat something tomorrow. So how can one rationally suppose that the idea that statements about the future which have present truth value is consistent with freedom of choice?

X isn’t necessary? That is tantamount to saying that you might not do X. But if you don’t do X, then God didn’t forsee that you will do X.

I have never heard of anyone claiming that God’s knowledge causes people’s actions.

If that is the case, how can God be aware of any temporal sequence. How can He deal with anyone within time? What’s the use in praying for something to happen, if God can’t do anything about it, since the consequences of the problem are already settled.

He is not a creature; right. But He exists within time.

No. It was not necessary for God to create time. When He performed his two acts—the begetting of his Son, and the creation of the first creature, this naturally resulted in time existing. For time, in my opinion is but the “temporal” distance between two events.

When you construct an equilateral triangle, you don’t have to do a separate construction to make it equiangular. That happens as a natural consequence of constructing an equilateral triangle. Similarly, when God performed his first two acts, time automatically began; He didn’t have to create it.

If God forsees all future events, then surely He would never change his mind, but it is recorded in scripture that He did.

Jonah prophesied, “40 days and Ninevah shall be destroyed” But because of Jonah’s warnng, the Ninevites repented. So Yahweh changed His mind and didn’t destroy them.

  • When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. (Jonah 3:10 ESV)

At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it. (Jeremiah 18:7-10 NRSV)*

Oh, I know this is explained away by many of those who cannot accept these words as descriptive of God—cannot believe that God truly interacts with people, but who have been convinced by Greek philosophy {which made its way into Christendom) with its idea that God is unaffected by people’s choices. People who hold to that view of God’s character, will affirm that such passages are but figurative language of some kind, or declare they are anthropomorphisms or such. But there is nothing in the passages to indicate they are not actual reflections of the character of God.

Spiritualizing scripture or declaring them to be figurative language seems to be one of the commonest devices used by people og passagesehich are not in harmony with their theological prejudices.