The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Seattle Christian Examiner - I'm a writer!

Hey all!

I know it’s been awhile but thought I’d pop in once again.

I’ve recently become the (first, evidently) Seattle Christian Examiner on Examiner.com.

Here’s my page: examiner.com/christian-in-seattle/justin-fowler

I plan on eventually talking about universalism but want to establish alot of basics first, as well as establish dedicated readership through writing on relevant topics (it’s the Holidays! :mrgreen:). I think that pretty soon I will be discussing the topic of “Love vs. Justice” where I will establish that God is not equally both just and loving, but that even justice is subservient to love, since without love, as George MacDonald put it, “we can no more render justice than a man can keep a straight line, walking in the dark.”

I think that may be a good foundation to eventually work towards universalism with, eh? :mrgreen:

I’m also planning on doing a short biography on George MacDonald (maybe in parts).

Tell me what you guys think. :smiley:

Congratulations :slight_smile:

I think it’s a great opportunity, although I agree that it would be good to establish your orthodoxy on other topics first so people don’t just write you off. Please keep us posted with how it goes.

Congratulations!

Take your time and aim to write the best column you can rather than climbing straight up on a soapbox :wink:

Congrats on that, btw!

I think MacD would be the very first to affirm in the strongest possible terms that God is equally both just and loving. (And I would be close behind. :laughing: :mrgreen: ) His problem with ‘justice’ was that people have a poor notion of it, so that they end up pitting God’s love vs. God’s justice and trying to resolve in favor of one or the other but not both.

However, there are some universalists who do agree (with most Christians) that God’s love and justice are opposing things; and their universalism is certainly grounded on God’s love being superior to God’s justice. The Church Father Isaac the Syrian comes to mind as a classical example.

You could still make some kind of argument along that line. I just wanted to point out that you’d be making a mistake bringing MacDonald in along that line–not without qualifying that he believed in God being equally both just and loving, and indeed that they were basically the same thing (love being the live action and justice the live result of the action. Not unrelated to the unity of the Son and the Spirit, come to think of it, although I don’t recall he ever put it that way.) This was exactly why he said that without love we couldn’t possibly be just.

Congrats again, Stellar! (I think I already did on facebook.) I’ve enjoyed your articles.

And I agree about not being too quick to get on a universalist ‘soapbox’. George MacDonald set a good example. :sunglasses:

Sonia

I loved the “CHRISTX” article by the way… :laughing:

Thanks everyone! Yeah, you did Sonia, I think. Thank you! :smiley:

:laughing: Thanks. It just came to me, and I had to inject some humor into all that criticism. :laughing:

Hmm, that makes sense, though! I guess when I hear “love conquers all” I’m thinking of love swallowing up all the other qualities. But that’s not necessarily true, since the other fruits of the spirit, and justice (not that justice isn’t one, since only nine were listed) describe what love is like. It seems there are direct correlations between the list of fruits of the spirit and the actions of love in 1 Corinthians 13. I guess I was just visualizing it too hard, trying to make a mental graph of God’s nature. How ridiculous. :unamused: :laughing:

To my mind, though, when people say that God is equally love and just, yet the two have to grapple with each other, they make it sound like he’s a pizza with half one topping and half another. Like, “he loves you so much he wants you to be a part of his kingdom, it’s just that his justice can’t stand even the sight of your sin.” It’s like, umm? I don’t think the division is in God, it’s in us. It’s not like he “wants to love us but can’t help but hate us” it’s that he loves who he made us to be but hates the element of sin that’s gotten into us and changed us. And love and justice are not separate from each other in that respect.

Okay, I’ll reword my thoughts on that one, then. Thanks, Jason! Now people will be able to better see where I’m coming from.

I came across an interesting statement in a book I was reading last night (‘God Where Are You’ by Gerard W. Hughes) which claimed that in Hebrew there was no word for ‘prefer’ and so if you wanted to say ‘I prefer apples to oranges’ you would have to say idiomatically ‘apples I love but oranges I hate’. I don’t know if this is true or not but would make much sense of ‘Jacob have I loved but Esau have I hated’ and by extension of God being described as hating.

I would also suggest that Love can only be said to conquer by eliciting love in return; such that if love never fails and God works evil to good for those that love him and that all will love him eventually (having been conquered by never failing love - including corrective punishment lovingly administered) then all evil will be turned to good and justice is served.

Jeff,
That’s very interesting. I did some poking around on the web and found a corroborating article: biblicalhebrew.com/nt/lovehate.htm

Thanks for sharing that!
Sonia

Congrats Justin! I look forward to reading your material.

Thanks so much for the insight, guys. I posted that link on my Facebook.

Amen, brotha! :smiley:

Thank you, Sherm, I appreciate that!

You guys can subscribe so that it automatically notifies you when new articles come through.

Congratulations, Stellar Renegade! I’m glad there is another voice out their for UR. I’m looking forward to reading your stuff and I always enjoy some humor.

Interesting link, Sonia. That seems to corroborate Talbott’s understanding of the Roman’s passage, that God didn’t really hate Esau at all.

Thanks, Amy.

A couple more articles today.

Congratulations and blessings:) A stellar achievement:)

Thanks Sonia - I shall read it during my lunchbreak. I’m always wary of quoting things like that when the author doesn’t give a reference as to where they got it from.

That entry may deserve to be on our “Recommended Materials” list.

Whilst I too like the article, do we have any evidence/source to back this up? What are the author’s/site’s credentials? :confused:

Just for clarification I was referring to the comment in the book I read rather than the article Sonia pointed out - but I guess it still holds even there.

Hey, guys! My girlfriend’s writing for the Examiner, too. For anyone who loves reading Christian literature:

examiner.com/christian-literature-3-in-seattle/amy-clark :mrgreen: