The real impasse in the debate over Rob Bell

Mark Galli’s book, God Wins—a response, obviously, to Love Wins—was the topic of discussion last week. The book has been available on Kindle for a few weeks, though it doesn’t appear in print until August 1. In it, Galli explains why he thinks “love wins” is an insufficient understanding of the gospel, because it bypasses the question of God’s judgment and wrath. Hence, “God wins.” One almost wants to ask Galli whether he’s forgotten 1 John 4:8. But that’s a cheap shot. Since I haven’t read the book yet—and since I’ve already written a few thousand words on Galli in my series responding to his deeply misguided and misinformed review in Christianity Today—I defer to the recent blog posts by Roger Olson, a man I highly respect and deeply admire.

Olson, a friend of Galli, wrote about God Wins on July 7. There he made a number of ambiguous remarks that were clearly an attempt to praise the qualities of the man while criticizing the claims of the book. He begins by stating that “Mark is a serious evangelical scholar with an irenic approach to controversial material.” He then goes on to say, “I get the sense that Mark felt things that I did not feel and that I felt things Mark (and others) did not feel.” And later: “I think that may be because Mark is a member of a denomination struggling with rampant liberalism in which conservatives (by which here I mean people who value traditional, orthodox, biblical Christianity) feel embattled. I, on the other hand, have been beset by fundamentalists and aggressive neo-fundamentalist heresy-hunters.” The rest of the review is just filler: Mark is a great guy, but he’s approaching this book from a perspective I do not share. Translation: his criticisms of Love Wins are not really about Bell; they are instead about Galli’s own issues within his ecclesial context.

Olson followed up that review of God Wins with another post on “Why I defend Rob Bell’s Love Wins (and other controversial books).” In this fascinating post, Olson puts forward the claim that what is really driving a book like God Wins is the whole Calvinism-Arminianism debate. He then states:

I think SOME evangelical Calvinists are so allergic to both Arminianism and liberalism that they tend to lump them together and not see their differences.  There’s something in American evangelical Calvinisms’ DNA that makes it see a trajectory from Arminianism (or anything like it) to liberalism.  I deny that trajectory and, in fact, tend to think it is the other way around (if anything): Calvinism leads to liberalism.

Olson compares Love Wins to the books related to the open theism controversy. He observes that the attacks made against both by Calvinists are the very same arguments used by Calvinists against Arminianism. What happens in these debates is that the particularities of open theism and Bell’s “open eschatology” (if I may put it thus) are lost amidst polemics about divine sovereignty and human free will. In Olson’s words, “the crux of the debate has to do with two different interpretations of 1 Timothy 2:4,” and “the deep, inner logic of the attacks on Love Wins” are rooted in “Reformed assumptions about God rather than out of Arminian assumptions about God.” Olson then makes a very interesting comment that warrants further reflection:

Simply to respond that God Wins is to raise some questions from the Arminian side.  In what sense does God win?  Does God get everything he wanted?  Does God want hell–antecedently as well as consequently?  If you say no, then why does hell exist?  It has to be because of free will and that has to be because of God’s loving self-limitation.  If you say yes, then that raises a host of questions about God’s goodness.  There don’t seem to be alternatives.  Either God wanted hell antecedently, in which case God is a monster, or God only wants hell consequently (to the fall) and that means God doesn’t exactly “win” in every sense, right?  But love can still win IN THE SENSE that love wants free response and not coerced or programmed response.

There is much here worth examining in detail, but in the interests of brevity, I will summarize my thoughts with the following points. These are not meant to be exhaustive. They only hit on some of the key issues for the sake of further discussion.

1. The Calvinist-Arminian debate is an old one, but it seems blissfully unaware that there are serious alternatives to this rather stale binary opposition. It might seem a bit obvious, since it’s been suggested many times before, but a really compelling alternative is that of Karl Barth. Why? Well, it all comes down to understanding what we mean by freedom. The problem with both Calvinism and Arminianism is that freedom—whether the freedom of God or the freedom of the human being, respectively—has been defined in the abstract. The Calvinist freedom of God (i.e., the absolute sovereignty to determine the elect and the reprobate) and the Arminian freedom of humanity (i.e., the free will to determine one’s eternal identity in response to the gospel message) are both known prior to and apart from how God has actually exercised freedom in the person of Jesus. In other words, both are metaphysical conceptions of freedom. They are abstract notions not determined by the concrete particularity of God’s self-revelation. Now it may be that both sides simply don’t care; they like their metaphysics and cling to it tightly. That could very well be the case. But it’s important to point out just what is being assumed on both sides. In both cases, Christ is not definitive for what divine and human freedom means theologically.

2. Of course, to lift up Barth as a possible solution to the debate is not new, nor is it very persuasive to hard-core adherents of both positions. I suspect Calvinists and Arminians want their abstract conceptions of freedom, not because they care about the debates over metaphysics but because they are both deeply afraid of what it mean to go a different route. To put it directly, both Calvinists and Arminians are afraid of universalism. Calvinists need an abstract divine freedom (that is, an abstract decision of predestination) because their commitment to irresistible grace and the efficacy of God’s election means that a divine freedom determined by Christ’s reconciling promeity would result in the salvation of all people. Arminians need an abstract human freedom because their commitment to God’s universal desire for all to be saved (see Olson’s reference to 1 Tim. 2:4 above) would mean, again, that all humans would be saved were it not for our ability to thwart God’s will. But maybe—just maybe!—the problem is the presupposition by both sides that the salvation of all people is absolutely prohibited as a possible option in theology. Maybe our abstract commitments to a non-universalist eschatology and to certain notions of what freedom means for God and for human beings are at the root of the problem. Maybe we should let the reconciling mission of Christ determine what we can say about freedom and eschatological consummation.

3. In other words, the following claim by Olson is a false binary: “Either God wanted hell antecedently, in which case God is a monster, or God only wants hell consequently (to the fall) and that means God doesn’t exactly ‘win’ in every sense, right?” The answer is no and no. I agree with Olson that God would be a monster for willing hell in advance. The old doctrine of double predestination is indeed a diabolic position to hold. But the Arminian alternative fares no better. Is a God who sends people to hell really much worse than a God who is impotent in the end to save those who reject the gospel (or never hear it in the first place)? The former is a God who is sovereign but cruel; the latter is a God who is weak but loving. The former is protologically monstrous, while the latter is eschatologically monstrous. But it’s unacceptable either way. If all are not finally saved, then God cannot be said to have “won.” And a God who does not “win”—who does not fully and finally accomplish God’s own perfect will—is simply not the God attested in scripture.

4. We can put the problem another way: for both Calvinists and Arminians, love and justice have been defined in the abstract, i.e., apart from God’s concrete self-communication in Christ. Thus both pit love and justice in a competitive relationship. Calvinism grounds the competition in God’s eternal predestination—so that God determines where love will “win” and where justice will “win.” Arminianism grounds the competition in the conflict between a loving God and a sinful humanity: God loves everyone, but this loving divine will is overpowered by a human refusal of this love that, according to the rules of the game, forces God to exact justice. If we begin with Christ, however, it turns out that love and justice are non-competitively related, since it is precisely the love of God for all that God’s cruciform justice serves to accomplish. Justice is simply the form that God’s love takes in the event of the cross. The notions of love and justice are not theologically meaningful independent of and prior to the actualization of God’s just love in the concrete reality of Jesus Christ. The attempt to define them in advance and then figure out how they relate theologically results in this intractable debate.

5. This whole debate also seems to take for granted the notion that eschatology refers to something “beyond death,” that is, beyond each person’s individual perishing. Maybe that’s something we need to reconsider as well.

On the new universalism: a response to James K. A. Smith

Thanks to the likes of Rachel Held Evans, Rob Bell, Gregory MacDonald/Robin Parry, and many others, the debate over universalism is all the rage today. In a recent blog post, Calvin professor James K. A. Smith has weighed in on this new development. He begins with the following promising description:

This ain't your Grandma's universalism (if your Grandma was, say, a Unitarian). The (relatively) old universalism was a liberal universalism of "many-roads-to-God-who-is-a-big-cuddly-Grandpa" (or, more recently, Grandma). Such a universalism was generally embarrassed by Christian particularity and any claims to the divinity of Christ. Instead, Jesus was a kindly teacher like so many others pointing us all to that great kumbaya-sing-along in the the "beyond." 

In contrast, the "new" universalism is an evangelical universalism, a Christocentric universalism. If all will be saved, they will be saved in Christ, because of the work of Christ as the Incarnate God who has triumphed over the power of sin and death (the new universalist Christ is a victor, not a redeemer).

We can let the overly simplistic typology slide for the moment. The notion that there are two universalisms—a liberal Unitarian version and an evangelical christocentric version—is historically dubious at best. I’ve been reading the new special edition of John A. T. Robinson’s 1950 classic, In the End, God . . . , and I’ve been struck by how evangelical this text really is. Robinson is (in)famous for his provocatively liberal work from 1963, Honest to God (which has gotten a far worse reputation than it deserves, in my opinion), which questions the traditional realist conception of God. But his earlier work is badly in need of new readers. It is a perfect example of how the liberal-evangelical binary is entirely unhelpful. Robinson really breaks those stereotypes, and Trevor Hart’s new introduction very helpfully shows why T. F. Torrance’s rejection of Robinson’s universalism was mistaken on basically every point. Robinson is just as christocentric—and in some ways, even more so—than the new evangelical universalist. I recommend this work highly. Nevertheless, Smith’s basic point is valid: the new universalism is centered in Christ in a way that pluralistic forms of universalism (such as that of John Hicks) never were. The particularity of Christ’s claim to be the way, the truth, and the life is firmly upheld. That much Smith gets right, and it’s a crucial observation.

But problems emerge already at this point, for what could Smith possibly mean by the statement that “the new universalist Christ is a victor, not a redeemer”? Is there an either-or here? Does Christ-as-redeemer require rejecting universalism? How is the triumph over sin and death not an act of redemption? This is the first of many theological problems with Smith’s post. The ambiguities and assumptions continue to mount from here. See what Smith writes next:

The question, then, is just what compels one to be an evangelical universalist? Some resort to prooftexting, operating with a naive, selective reading of Scripture. I'm going to do the evangelical universalist a favor and ignore such a strategy, only because I think it can be so easily refuted. (Many of these evangelical universalists would pounce on such selective prooftexting in other contexts.) 

No, the motivation for evangelical universalism is not really a close reading of the Bible's claims about eternity. Instead, it seems that the macro-motivation for evangelical universalism is less a text and more a hermeneutic, a kind of "sensibility" about the very nature of God as "love" (which includes its own implicit sensibility about the nature of love).

The problem with Smith’s emphasis on psychological motivation—and the implied notion that universalism is a pathological condition—has already been dissected by Halden. I want to raise the issue of Smith’s bifurcation between exegesis and hermeneutics. Notice that he says evangelical universalism is motivated by a “hermeneutic” rather than “a close reading” of biblical texts. This, of course, is naive at best. Every act of exegetical interpretation is itself already an exercise in hermeneutical understanding. The close reading of scripture is inseparable from a hermeneutic that guides this reading, even if it is never actually articulated or reflected upon by the exegete herself. What the evangelical universalists ought to “pounce on” is not the claim that they are proof-texting—which is frankly just silly and is not borne out by any of the representatives of the new universalism—but rather the even more egregious claim that their position is not grounded in the text at all but remains at a macro level of abstract analysis.

The truth is that the opponents of any kind of Christian universalism are more often than not the ones engaging in proof-texting. They tend to be the ones who point to Matthew 25 or (if they really aren’t paying attention) John 14:6 as if these are somehow knock-down arguments against all versions of universal reconciliation. The non-universalists are equally guilty, if not more so, of a “naive, selective reading of Scripture.” When you take into account works like The Inescapable Love of God and The Evangelical Universalist—as well as the collection, “All Shall Be Well,” to see that universalism has a long history in the church—it becomes plainly obvious that there is deep textual analysis going on, at a level that many of their opponents simply cannot match. So that whole charge is a moot point, and Smith should not have raised it in the first place. It’s a cheap shot that he then condescendingly leverages, by way of doing the universalist “a favor,” into rhetorical brownie points, in the form of an ironically supercilious ethical appeal (“I’m so magnanimous that I will overlook this flaw to make my opponent’s case appear stronger”).

In fact, not only are non-universalists often guilty of proof-texting passages about hell and eternal judgment—but Jamie Smith himself is guilty of such proof-texting a little later in his post. In the context of discussing why one’s personal hopes have to be governed by the authority of scripture, he relates a hypothetical situation regarding his hope for marriage in the afterlife. He then cites the following statement from Jesus, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matt. 22:30). Talk about proof-texting! Smith just quotes this passage and says that his hope has to be disciplined by the truth of scripture. But where’s the exegesis? Where is the careful analysis that contextualizes this passage? Where is the hermeneutical reflection to ground one’s interpretation? Answer: it’s non-existent. This is a perfect example of what I criticized Mark Galli for in his review of Rob Bell’s book in Christianity Today: shifting the goalposts. Like Galli, Smith seems to think that he is “above” such criticisms, that he can attack proof-texting when it leads to universalism (even though none of the universalists I know actually engage in such proof-texting), but he can freely do it himself because he is maintaining some “orthodox” position on salvation and damnation. This is a recurring problem among conservatives. They allow themselves more liberty because of what appears to be a misguided sense of moral and intellectual superiority, while those who propound “radical” views are placed within far stricter limits. (There’s an analogy here to various disparities within the American justice system, but that’s another topic for another time.) The delicious irony here is that many of the universalists already recognize these higher standards and freely place themselves within them in order to bolster their argument!

But we’re not done here. Look at how Smith uses the word “hermeneutic”: as a “sensibility.” This is a subtle instance of begging the question, in that he has loaded his description of the universalist position in such a way that his critique is already included within it. Where is the argument that the theological hermeneutic of the new universalists is merely a “sensibility” (which reads with an air of snobbish disdain) that God is by nature “love.” (Why the scare quotes on “love”? As if only sentimental, bleeding-heart liberal universalists make such silly statements, and not the author of 1 John?) Is there any proof that the new universalists do not have a robust theological hermeneutic? Is it really true that they do not have a consistent, clear way of understanding how competing passages ought to be interpreted? Is it really just a matter of personal feeling about who God is? If Smith’s outlandish claims are to be even remotely acceptable, he has to actually make some concrete arguments. Making abstract assertions about a general group of scholars and pastors, with no actual argumentation in sight, is irresponsible. One could more justifiably charge Smith with being guided by a “sensibility”—a sense that these universalists are just woolly-minded liberals with no real theological sophistication. It’s always a lot easier to attack inner feelings, motivations, and sensibilities than actual texts. With the former, there’s no way to disprove your statements. Of course, there’s no way to prove them either.

The rest of Smith’s post is full of more assertions about  “imagination” and “hope” as the two strategies or sensibilities determining the new evangelical universalism. One says that “I can’t imagine” so-and-so being in hell, while the other says that “I hope” this is how things turn out. Halden has already deconstructed the first notion as a bogus charge, since the implied converse—“I can’t imagine so-and-so being in heaven”—is “no less anthropocentric and Feuerbachian than the (imagined) argument it is designed to counter.” It’s also worth pointing out the strange path that Smith has taken in this post. He began by saying the new evangelical universalism is not like the old liberal universalism because it is “christocentric.” And yet now he is leveling the charge of being “Feuerbachian” at the new universalists. You can’t get much more liberal than that!

This further reinforces the oddness of the whole piece. Smith begins and ends by stating that the new universalism is not the old one. Fine. But I challenge anyone to lop off the beginning and the end and read only the main content of the post. I doubt there is anyone with any knowledge of the subject-matter who would not summarize the thesis as: the new universalism is exactly like the old one. It appears to me, rather, that the qualifications at the start and end of the post are more examples of a rhetorical posturing on the part of Smith in the attempt to win a favorable hearing among readers. But the whole thing is a sham, because he does not actually provide any material support for this qualification in the body of the post. In fact, he seeks instead to undermine it at every turn. So he draws the reader in by making this distinction between old and new, only to subtly tear that distinction down with no actual argumentation or textual analysis to back it up.

For example, he states up front that the evangelical universalists are christocentric: all are saved in Christ. That is true. But if that’s the case, then why is there absolutely no reflection on christology and soteriology anywhere in the post? Why does he then claim that certain personal sensibilities are what drive the new universalists? Does he think that their christocentric claims are disingenuous on their part? Does he think that all universalist claims are inevitably based on psychological motivations, regardless of what they may say about Christ and scripture? Or does he simply find the reference to Christ meaningless in itself, such that Smith is simply unable to understand what christocentrism even means in this case? One has to wonder where the pathology really lies here.

The other charge, regarding hope, is even more befuddling. First, has no one told Smith that to hope for everyone’s salvation is not actually universalism? This would seem to be a rather elementary point. The very definition of universalism is the knowledge that all will be saved. To not know is to not be a universalist. Would Smith accuse Hans Urs von Balthasar of being a universalist simply because he affirmed that we can indeed hope (but no more) for the salvation of all?

But the real error of Smith—what makes it clear that he has no grasp of what it means to be christocentric—is how he handles the nature of universalist hope. He writes:

I'm firmly committed to the particularity of Christ, the evangelical universalist will emphasize. I just hope that God's salvation is not so particular that he only saves some. And it is precisely God's love and mercy that make me hope in this way.

This betrays a fatal misunderstanding of the new evangelical universalism. Smith, putting words in the mouth of a universalist, sets up a completely erroneous competition between the particularity of Christ and the hope for universal salvation grounded in God’s love and mercy. It is precisely this kind of thinking—which places John 14:6 in conflict with Rom. 11:32—that the new universalism seeks to overturn. Only the old universalism could place hope for salvation in conflict with Christ’s particularity. The new universalism makes them coterminous: it is precisely Christ’s particularity that grounds our hope for all to be saved, because Jesus Christ himself, crucified and risen, is the love and mercy of God. He is the concrete actualization of God’s judgment against sin and God’s mercy and grace unto new life. In the same way that Christ does away with all competitive conceptions of love and justice—since the judgment of sin on the cross is the eternal love of God for the reconciliation of the world—so too does Christ abolish all competitive conceptions of particularity and universality. For the evangelical universalist, the universal hope that God is “making all things new” is posited not in spite of but rather only because of the particular claim that Jesus is the exclusive source of salvation. Jesus is the new reign of God irrupting into the world for the sake of its radical—and radically inclusive—transfiguration.

So when Smith says, “Let's stop making this just about passages that mention ‘hell;’ [sic] at issue here are all passages that discuss judgment,” I can only respond: Yes, let’s. It is the claim of Christian faith that all such judgment has to be understood in and through the particularity of Jesus as the once-for-all judgment of God for the reconciliation of the world. Jesus is himself the hermeneutical key for understanding the biblical texts about judgment and hell. To extract these texts from the larger canonical-messianic context is thus to engage in the kind of selective proof-texting that Smith rightly disparages. Understanding these texts christologically—i.e., christocentrically—is not to replace exegesis with a hermeneutic or sensibility; it is instead to read these texts rightly, that is, theologically, within the broader scriptural witness to God’s covenant action in Christ for the sake of the world. Because, to repeat my earlier point, there is no such thing as exegesis without a hermeneutic, no interpretation without a method (however implicit) for making sense of a text.

The question is not whether a person is submitting to the authority of scripture. That much, I think, we can all agree is essential. The question is rather: which hermeneutic is operative in one’s theological reflection and biblical interpretation? The evangelical universalists have a very clearly christocentric hermeneutic. It may be articulated in different (not always compatible) ways, and it may be employed for different (not always compatible) ends, but the basic hermeneutical conviction remains the same: Jesus Christ is the subject-matter of Christian faith, and we only know God’s love and God’s justice in him, in the particular event of his crucifixion and resurrection. Our knowledge of divine mercy and divine righteousness is grounded solely in the saving-event of Jesus Christ. All other sources for such knowledge have to be subordinated to this critical norm of our faith and mission. It is the reconciling self-disclosure of God in Christ that makes one a universalist—and that alone. No other reasons are finally determinative, and therefore no other reasons are worth addressing. Smith’s entire post is a distraction from the real conversation about universal salvation. He misses the point altogether, and the result is an abstract attack on “straw men” of his own fabrication.

Where is the meaty, substantial debate over atonement and the efficacy of Christ’s death? Where is the discussion of passages like Romans 5? Where is the historical-grammatical analysis of the Greek words for “hell” and “eternal”? Where is the hermeneutical debate over theological presuppositions? Where is the nuanced discussion of divine and human freedom? Where is conversation about the relation between christology and pneumatology? Where is the analysis of the logic of hell and damnation? Where is the theological reflection on the nature of God as attested in the canonical biblical witness and its relation to questions of eschatology? Where are any of the actual questions driving the dialogue about universal salvation today? When compared with the real issues in the debate, Smith’s post appears misinformed and superficial. It hovers in the realm of the hypothetical and fictional, and never actually touches the concrete conversation “on the ground.”

Here are suggestions for future critics of the new evangelical universalism:

1. Lay bare your hermeneutical presuppositions. When you confront the conflict between universalist and dualist texts in scripture, what drives your interpretive conclusions?
2. Explain the relation between Christ and salvation. Is there a difference between reconciliation, salvation, redemption, and other concepts? In what sense is Jesus our savior? What is the relation between past, present, and future? Is salvation finally realized in the cross and/or resurrection, in a pretemporal act of election, in the present-tense decision of faith, in some future eschatological act of God, or in some other way?
3. Get your terminology and distinctions correct. Christian universalism is different from pluralistic universalism, but evangelical universalism is not the only version of Christian universalism. There are various ways of articulating a Christian universal salvation, and the evangelical model is not the only “new universalism.” If this is news to you, then start to read up on the debate before you make pronouncements that might come back to hurt you.
4. Stop with the overly simplistic and superficial dichotomies—for example, exegesis vs. theology, text vs. hermeneutic, love vs. justice, particularity vs. universality, grace vs. judgment, etc. These are the theological equivalent of biblical proof-texting. They are a sign of, to borrow from Eberhard Jüngel, an “unwillingness to read and an inability to think.”
5. Recognize the distinction between the old and new universalisms—but don’t treat it as a meaningless distinction. Recognize that the differences are crucial, that the basis for the new universalist claims is not the same as before. But at the same time, open yourself to seeing ways in which even the older liberal universalists were a lot more biblically- and theologically-nuanced than perhaps you were led to believe. Not every liberal universalist is a Unitarian, in case that’s news to you.
6. Finally, for the love of God, please stop breaking out the old rusty hatchet that claims universalists are unwilling to be disciplined by scripture or that they do not recognize the authority of scripture. This is bogus and frankly offensive. It impugns the faith of brothers and sisters in Christ and shuts down any possibility of meaningful dialogue.

Beyond Binaries: A Response to Mark Galli, Part 5

Read: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Having analyzed the details of Mark Galli’s review of Rob Bell, it’s time to step back and assess the big picture. First things first, it cannot be emphasized enough that Galli’s review is without question the best review I have yet seen. In fact, it is precisely because it is so good that I have felt compelled to respond to it. Most of the blogosphere has been dominated by superficial engagements that have already ruled out the possibility of a universal hope for salvation prior to any actual historical, exegetical, or theological inquiry. What distinguishes Galli’s review is the far greater knowledge that he brings to the table. Unfortunately, in the case of Bultmann, for example, it still remained on a fairly superficial level. This series of posts has been an attempt to probe the matters raised by Galli in a more thorough and critical manner. The goal has never been to criticize Galli himself; rather, my intention has been to engage in a critical conversation with his review for the purpose of facilitating an ongoing dialogue that needs to take place within evangelicalism today.

In this concluding post I want to review the ground that I have covered and pick up bits and pieces along the way that I either overlooked or held off discussing until now. I will treat these under the headings of the previous sections of this review: (1) universalism, (2) the cross and atonement, and (3) liberalism, evangelicalism, and orthodoxy.

I. Universalism: Love and Justice

Near the conclusion of his review, Galli writes the following:

Most Christians grasp that to demythologize one doctrine is to make the others less coherent. They recognize that a Christianity that teaches about "a God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross" (H. Richard Niebuhr's classic summary of liberalism) does not reflect the thickness of biblical revelation nor lived reality. And they see that when all is said and done, there is no painful contradiction between the love and justice of God. That in the end, not only does love win, but justice, too.

First, to get on my academic soapbox for a moment, if Niebuhr’s famous quote is the definition of liberalism, then Bultmann is most definitely not a liberal. Neither is Schleiermacher for that matter. Demythologizing has nothing whatsoever to do with the neutering of the gospel and the watering down of the faith. These kinds of statements completely misconstrue the theologians of the past, effectively denying their significance for the future. For our sakes, they deserve better. (Soapbox over.)

What I am more interested in is the final statement about love and justice. He speaks of there being no “painful” contradiction between the two, such that both love and justice win in the end. This, unfortunately, does not go far enough. If liberalism is defined as love without justice, then (Galli’s) evangelicalism is love and justice. But neither of these are adequate. Theology properly recognizes that if God is love and if God is just, then Christian faith must speak of love as justice and justice as love. The problem with so much of the traditional literature about love and justice is that it treats these as reified objects that compete with each other. “Love wins” is taken to mean that “justice loses.” Galli wants to say that both win, but what does he mean by this? He says that there is no painful contradiction, but does he still not have some kind of contradiction? It’s not painful because love and justice are being applied to two sets of people—those who are saved, and those who are not. By splitting up humanity in this way—either through double predestination or through allowing human beings to decide for themselves—he allows love and justice to counter each other, but in a painless way.

The problem is that love and justice are not “things” that exist “out there.” To say that “love wins” or that “justice wins” are simply two ways of saying the same thing: God wins. But it’s precisely because love and justice are defined by God’s being and act that we cannot separate them. God’s gracious action in Jesus Christ is the event of love and justice. God is just precisely in submitting to death on a cross, and God is love precisely in carrying out this act of divine justice on behalf of all humanity. This is what Galli seems to have missed altogether. He seems to think that universal salvation requires a God who does not judge. But that is entirely untrue. It is the judgment carried out in Jesus Christ that makes universal salvation both possible and actual. If Jesus does indeed stand in our place, as Galli clearly wants to say, then there is absolutely no reason why the judgment of sin on the cross cannot be—and perhaps even should be—understood as being effective for all people. Love wins at the same time that justice wins, because love and justice—being two aspects of the same christological event—are finally identical.

II. The Cross: Substitution and Ontology

I want to return to the problem of substitution. I think there are some serious theological issues that are simply not on the radar for people like Galli. Perhaps the most crucial one is the question of ontology. In my discussion of substitutionary atonement, I briefly raised the question: what does substitution mean?  Is it an ontological connection between Jesus and the rest of humanity? This is, I think, a question that needs to be addressed.

The “orthodox” position is based, by and large, on an ancient ontology. The ancient church of the early ecumenical councils presupposed a substance ontology in which divinity and humanity were essences that had certain properties and could be treated like substantial objects. In the case of God, the divine nature was ascribed certain properties presupposed by classical Greek philosophy (e.g., uncreated, immortal, impassible, etc.). In the case of humanity, the human nature was understood to be something in which all individuals participated. It had an opposite set of properties (e.g., created, mortal, passible, etc.). We have to remember that when the church was figuring out what to say about the two natures of Christ, they were presupposing this Greek ontology. Their understanding of salvation was a deification in which the human nature came to participate in certain properties of the divine nature (e.g., immortality and impassibility). The Chalcedonian Formula was constructed to ensure (a) that the two natures qua natures remained absolutely separate due to the metaphysical antithesis between divine impassibility and human passibility, and (b) that the two natures qua person were in unity, in order to preserve the eschatological possibility of a future deification in which humanity came to participate in divinity. These were the concerns of the church at that time, and they cannot be understood apart from the ontology that they presupposed.

Within such an ontology, the language of Christ as substitute makes a lot of sense. In the incarnation, the Son assumes a human nature or essence in which all other human beings necessarily participate. There is a common ontological essence that unites every particular person. By and large, it is this abstract philosophical essence that is presupposed when speaking of substitution. But the question is: are we obliged to adopt this ontology simply because it was so important to the church in the past? Is this ontology itself essential to the gospel? Can we think of Christ being “in our place” in a new way today? Can we think about Christ in a postmetaphysical manner that dispenses with substance ontology altogether? These are the kinds of questions that Galli entirely overlooks. By identifying substitution as the biblical position without giving any attention to ontology, he gives the impression that Greek metaphysics is itself the biblical position; conversely, he implies that to think differently about substitution (i.e., to rethink our relation to theological ontology) is intrinsically a liberal move that is no longer faithful to Scripture.

This is a crucial issue. I think evangelicals need to spend a great deal of time critically examining to what extent they have baptized and deified a past philosophical ontology. Unlike Roman Catholics who are quite explicit about their baptism of Greek philosophy, evangelicals have no such commitments. We need to strictly differentiate between the gospel and all philosophical conceptualities. While theology is necessarily always appropriating philosophical concepts for the sake of bearing witness to the gospel, those concepts are always dispensable. The subject-matter of Christian faith is infinitely translatable from one conceptuality to another. If we do not make this distinction, we run the risk of idolatrously deifying a philosophy as itself the gospel and so making the message of Jesus Christ a sacrificium intellectus.

III. Towards a Missionary Orthoheterodoxy

What is orthodoxy? What is heterodoxy? Are we really so sure that we know what these words mean? Evangelicals have traditionally avoided rigid doctrinal formulations out of a pietist concern for an authentic faith that responds obediently to the message of the gospel. For this reason, evangelical organizations have generally had very limited statements of faith. They tend to be limited to (1) the affirmation of the triune nature of God, (2) confidence in the authority of Scripture, and (3) belief in the divinity and saving significance of Christ. Beyond these fairly general statements, most evangelicals are unwilling to lay down a specific doctrinal law to which one must assent. This is an impulse that stems from the Reformers themselves.

It is for this reason that I am deeply concerned about the rush to define orthodoxy in a way that restricts the circle of evangelicalism. In many cases, this results in ironically having to exclude some of our evangelical ancestors in the faith from evangelicalism. But what really concerns me is the missiological problem that I raised in the previous post. The attempt to nail down what orthodoxy means according to specific doctrinal formulations inevitably requires that the mission of the church be one of mere diffusion. It identifies the gospel with a particular cultural form, i.e., with a particular conceptuality rooted in certain cultural, historical, political, and philosophical presuppositions. The gospel is then turned into a worldview, one that is universally valid in advance and in the abstract. I firmly believe that Christian faith must distinguish itself from every worldview in as strong a manner as possible. The result of confusing the gospel with a worldview is always some form of legalism. An ethical worldview results in an ethical legalism that makes conformity to a universal moral code the measure of faithful obedience to God. A doctrinal worldview results in a doctrinal legalism that makes intellectual conformity to a universal dogmatic code the measure of “right belief.” Either way, the gospel has been distorted. The good news of God’s love becomes the old news of a past culture or a static system of belief.

In the end, I want to propose an orthoheterodoxy. By this I mean we need to be able to “think differently” (hetero-doxy), but in the “right” way (ortho-doxy). Orthoheterodoxy captures what I referred to in my earlier post as the relation between indigenization and pilgrimization. The gospel must continually become indigenized within specific historical contexts. It is this ongoing process of indigenization that constitutes the diverse history of the church community. Despite the infinite variety of cultural forms—and here just think about the amazing array of contexts into which the gospel has been culturally and linguistically translated—there remains a singular message of divine judgment against sin and divine grace and mercy through Jesus Christ. This message, captured in the kerygma of the cross and resurrection, is what we must proclaim again and again, and in ever new ways. This gospel cannot be constrained to one particular form; it must not be frozen in one time and place. If we believe that the Word is living and active, and if we believe that Christ is truly present with us in the Spirit, then we must confess the freedom of the gospel to indigenize itself in new contexts and to radically transform them in light of a hope that is far greater and more glorious than anything we can imagine. To “think differently” means to think from one context to another, from past to present, from one situation to the next. But we must engage in this work of missionary translation responsibly, always allowing the kerygmatic message of God’s grace in Christ to be our critical norm. It is this norm that illuminates our reading of Scripture (clarifying which passages are to be privileged over others) and funds the infinite diversity of the Christian community. In holding rightly to this norm, we must also think freely and differently. That is the task of evangelical Christianity today.

Beyond Binaries: A Response to Mark Galli, Part 3

Read: Part 1, Part 2

2. The Cross. Mark Galli turns from the problem of universalism to the doctrine of atonement. This is a very complicated and important issue, and he is right to emphasize its importance. I cannot defend Bell here, but I can assess the arguments that Galli uses to criticize Bell’s understanding of the cross. The first two paragraphs read:

Bell asks questions of other doctrines that are even more problematic. Take his understanding of Jesus' death. Like many contemporaries, Bell notes the many biblical metaphors that describe what Christ's death accomplishes—a ransom, a reconciliation, an acquittal, a sacrifice, and so forth. He's most taken with the idea that in the resurrection, "the powers of death and destruction have been defeated" and that this "inaugurates a movement to … renew, restore, and reconcile all things." But he is vague about how this happens. While clearly favoring the one metaphor—defeat of death—he says the point is not to "narrow it to one particular metaphor, image, explanation, or mechanism. … The point, then as it is now, is Jesus." 

Yes, what happened on the cross is richer than any one metaphor can comprehend. Yes, the point is Jesus. But when Bell suggests that Jesus (and similarly, the whole New Testament) doesn't say "how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him"—well, it's hard to know what he's talking about. What is Romans 3-8 if not an explanation of such? Does the fact that there are a variety of ways of understanding that "mechanism" mean that some of the explanations aren't fuller and more inclusive? In fact, as we've argued in the pages of the magazine, there are strong reasons for substitutionary atonement being the controlling biblical metaphor, and the other metaphors only make sense in light of it.

Here we have an issue of the history of doctrine and biblical interpretation. Galli is perfectly within his rights to argue that Paul’s letters favor substitutionary atonement as the “controlling metaphor.” But it is quite problematic to suggest that Bell simply hasn’t been reading his Bible carefully enough. Just because one chooses to elevate certain passages in Paul does not mean it is self-evident that substitutionary atonement is the correct position. The ancient church was dominated by the view of Christ’s death as the “defeat of death,” as a cosmic victory over the powers of evil—the very view Galli cites Bell as advocating. Moreover, the Greek church has always been dominated by an emphasis on the incarnation as the atoning event, in which the assumption of flesh is already the act of deification that the cross and resurrection then complete. We see this especially in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria, for example. The Greek fathers made the Gospel of John their controlling text, where it is not the sacrificial work of Christ on the cross that is atoning, but rather the person of Christ himself as the Word made flesh. The cross is his glorification, not a debt-paying sacrifice. It is because of these conflicting metaphors about atonement that the church never gave a conciliar statement about the atoning work of Christ. There is no dogma of the atonement. Instead, as Robert Jenson puts it, we are left with “an inherited heap of proposals.”

My point here is that Galli is expecting Bell to provide something that the church has never felt capable of deciding one way or the other in the past: viz. an explanation of the “mechanism” by which atonement is achieved. Despite his conviction that Rom. 3-8 provides this mechanism, it is by no means self-evident to a large number—perhaps the majority—of Christians throughout history. Moreover, Bell’s emphasis on the “defeat of death,” if Galli has cited that accurately, is itself just such a mechanism! That is the classical theory of Christus Victor. Perhaps Bell is vague in his description of it, or perhaps he does not remain inconsistent with that insight. That may be the case, though we should remember that this is a pastoral text, not an academic monograph. Nevertheless, Christus Victor, whatever its problems, is a theory of the atonement. One gets the impression from Galli that only substitutionary atonement can lay claim to being a true theory of the atonement, while everything else serves as merely a multifaceted metaphorical buttress.

Galli cites Mark Dever to support his case. This is an interesting move. Dever isn’t exactly a scholar of the atonement, and it shows. The article contains no serious theological reflection on the atonement. Instead, it lists some of the main arguments against substitutionary atonement—to which, by the way, he never actually responds—then proceeds simply to cite a long list of passages from the NT that have substitutionary overtones or implications. He then notes a couple opposing arguments against the use of these texts and makes some brief replies. The article concludes by then arguing that substitution is “the center and focus of the Bible’s witness.” In other words, the “argument” that Galli claims has been provided in the pages of CT comes down to little more than a list of proof-texts that have substitution language in them. There is no serious reflection on hermeneutical presuppositions or on the actual dogmatic content of the atonement.

(As a side note, Dever doesn’t even defend substitution adequately when he attempts to do so. He mentions the case of the railroad tracks, in which the Father is portrayed as shifting the train to run over his son so as to spare the rest of humanity. It’s a compelling image that seeks to portray substitutionary atonement as divine child abuse. Dever’s response is that this image is “inadequate because it does not include the Holy Spirit.” What does that mean? How would the Spirit change the picture? No, the correct response is that the analogy presupposes a false view of the Trinity as three independent subjects. The atonement is always wrongly conceived where the Father and the Son are viewed as two subjects on analogy with two human beings. In such a view, the cross will always be abusive. Instead, we have to see that the Father and the Son are a single divine subject. It is one and the same God who sends and who suffers and dies. This was Thomas Aquinas’s correction to the Anselmian tradition, and it is the kind of dogmatic reflection on the cross that Dever conspicuously fails to provide. But without such reflection, we never get beyond who has the longer list of proof-texts.)

Finally, the term “substitutionary atonement” itself is remarkably ambiguous. One could quite justifiably respond to Galli with Galli’s own criticism of Bell: “he is vague about how this happens.” What kind of substitution? Is substitution being conflated here with satisfaction? Those two terms are not coextensive. Here is a bit from George Hunsinger on Anselm:

Anselm’s critics are incorrect if they associate the view of “penal substitution” with Anselm. While penal substitution became a predominant idea in post-Reformation Protestant theology, two things need to be remembered, namely, that penal views of the atonement are not necessarily substitutionary, while, in turn, substitutionary views are not necessarily penal. In one respect Anselm represents the first option; Athanasius represents the second. ... Anselm’s view of the atonement thus involved penal elements without being substitutionary. By contrast, for Athanasius, who was following a Greek patristic tradition, Christ’s death was substitutionary but not penal. (The Eucharist and Ecumenism, 295-97)

Dever is not sensitive to these concerns, and essentially lumps substitution, sacrifice, and satisfaction together. The lack of careful distinctions and the lack of attention to historical accuracy plague his essay, and so also Galli’s assessment of Bell.

But that’s not the only reason why substitution is ambiguous in this review. How exactly is Christ functioning as a substitute? Are we speaking about the humanity of Christ as ontologically united with all humanity? That is certainly a classical way of construing it. But then what is the basis for the ontological unity—is it some human essence shared by all, is it an ontological conception of divine imputation? Or is the substitutionary aspect achieved by the mediating power of the Spirit? Or is it some kind of cultic event, as in ancient Israel when the priest laid hands on the sacrifice and so identified the animal as the representative for the people? Substitution can itself be understood in a number of ways that conflict with each other. But let’s probe the matter even further. Is substitution effective apart from our response of faith? Does the atoning work on the cross achieve the actuality of reconciliation or merely its possibility?

See, the ironic thing is that substitutionary atonement actually provides the single best argument for universalism! If, as Paul says, all humanity stands under the wrath of God, and if Christ is our representative who takes on the sins of the world, then it follows that his substitutionary death is the liberation of all humanity from their sin and guilt. Galli cites Romans 3-8, which is doubly ironic because Rom. 5 is one of the most universalistic passages in all of Scripture and it operates on precisely the logic of substitution that Galli is commending (cf. my series on “Paul Among the Evangelicals”)! Christ stands in the place of Adam: “just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Rom. 5:18). Traditionally, evangelicals (i.e., those who reject the Calvinistic doctrine of limited atonement) will back up and say that Jesus only makes reconciliation a possibility. But not only does this conflict with many of the NT statements, especially in Romans; it also weakens the logic of substitution. What kind of substitute is Jesus if we have to actually complete the substitutionary bond ourselves? Does Jesus completely stand in our place or does he not? Too often the evangelical position seems to say that Jesus is only potentially our substitute; to finish the job, we have to assist him, in which case we have to save ourselves. At the end of the day, there are only two (theo)logically satisfactory options: either limited atonement or universalism. And of those two, only one makes the best overall sense of the biblical witness. (And it’s not the first.)

I’m tempted to stop, but there’s still much more about Galli’s review that warrants our attention, especially since we haven’t quite reached the part that supports his identification of Bell as a liberal. Reading on, we discover that Bell describes Jesus as “the source, the strength, the example, and the assurance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires.” Galli pounces on this. He calls it “the classic exemplar model of atonement,” which is “a standard of liberal Protestantism.” Here we have to stop and reflect for a moment. Why is Galli so quick to label this as a particular theory of the atonement, when he overlooked the fact that three paragraphs earlier he had cited a passage from Bell that describes the Christus Victor theory? Galli did not mention that Bell stands in a long and ancient line of biblical interpretation regarding the “defeat of death,” and yet he immediately lumps Bell in with Protestant liberalism the moment we encounter the notion of Jesus as exemplar. Even if that turns out to be an accurate description of Bell, it is not a charitable assessment. It comes across as if Galli means to suppress Bell’s connection with the ancient church in order to emphasize his liberal heritage. This becomes more apparent in the third section of the review, which I will address tomorrow.

As if recognizing that he might be reading too much into Bell, Galli steps back a bit: “Again, Bell says Christ's death and resurrection have cosmic, universal effects, but it was never clear to this reviewer how or why they have these effects. To be fair, he says he doesn't reject substitutionary atonement outright. But in this book, he apparently thinks it unimportant or uninteresting.” We encounter the same problems noted above. Why is Bell required to explain “how or why” Christ’s death has these effects? Simply mentioning substitution does not provide an explanation. The only way to really do so is to write a systematic theology, or at least a dogmatic inquiry into the atonement. But that isn’t the purpose of this book. If Galli wants a systematic treatment, he’ll have to look elsewhere (or wait for my book coming out in a few years from Wipf & Stock).

Would it be great if Bell could have provided such a text? Of course! But then we would be expecting him to act as an academic theologian, and not as the pastor that he is. I am uncomfortable with Galli’s review at this point because it seems that there is a double standard. Dever, and many others, are able to “pass the evangelical test” with hardly any theological reflection whatsoever, mostly just a list of verses. And yet when Bell proposes to look at things differently, he is asked to provide logical, systematic explanations—quite beyond what Dever or Galli offer regarding substitutionary atonement. Now, to be fair, many others have indeed provided systematic accounts of substitutionary atonement, but still others have provided systematic accounts of other theories and ways of interpreting the cross.

These factors lead me to the uneasy conclusion that there seems to be some kind of doctrinal legalism at work here. If a theologian espouses substitutionary atonement (even just using the term will suffice), then that person is evangelical. But if another person seems to make substitutionary atonement marginal (even by simply remaining silent or elevating other ideas), then that person has to be scrutinized and is quite probably outside the circle of evangelicalism. Am I off-base here? Is this an accurate reading of Galli? I’m quite willing to be proved wrong, because I think Galli has the very best of intentions. He’s certainly been the most reasonable voice amidst a cacophony of accusations against Bell. But I remain deeply unsettled by this review, precisely because it seems to make one’s explicit defense of substitutionary atonement (though how it is to be understood remains unclear) the mark of one’s evangelical identity. I realize there is anxiety today about just what “evangelical” even means, and perhaps this is an effort to provide some kind of definition. But there are numerous—one might even say, disastrous—problems that attend such a move. For the sake of the future of evangelicalism, I hope we do not feel the need to do what the early church never could, viz. declare one theory of the atonement to be the “orthodox” position.

Finally, this section of the review ends by transitioning to the problem of liberalism more fully. The real basis for Galli’s claim seems to be that Bell finds the sacrificial metaphor for the cross “culturally irrelevant.” We no longer live in a culture that practices animal sacrifice and blood offerings. To continue to think in such terms about the cross results in missing the point of the story altogether. As Galli cites him, Bell then interprets the death and resurrection of Christ in a more symbolic way: “For Bell, the Cross is ‘a symbol of an elemental reality, one we all experience,’ and the Resurrection is not a new concept, but ‘something that has always been true. It’s how the world works.’ He’s referring to that pattern of death and rebirth.” If this is really how Bell conceives of the cross, then I too would have some concerns, but my focus is just on the review itself. What I find interesting is that Dever’s article, the one cited above, also mentions the irrelevance argument. The source there is the book by Joel Green and Mark Baker, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross (InterVarsity, 2000). Here are two professors from Fuller Seminary and Fresno Pacific Seminary—both evangelical institutions. Are they liberals for questioning the relevance of the sacrificial logic for theology and proclamation today? Even if sacrificial imagery is central to the NT, does that require us to keep that same imagery in our explanations of the cross for today? Is revelation being defined by and confined to a specific set of textual metaphors? What does this mean for our doctrine of revelation? What biblical hermeneutic are we operating with when we interpret these passages? And how might a doctrine of mission influence the way we look at this problem?

These are some of the questions to which I will return in tomorrow’s post, when I take up the liberal/evangelical divide directly.

Beyond Binaries: A Response to Mark Galli, Part 2

Read: Part 1

1. Universalism. Galli rightly acknowledges that there are passages in the NT which lean in a universalistic direction. He also acknowledges that Bell does not use the word “universalist” and nowhere clearly identifies himself with that position, though he does say, “it’s hard for me to believe that Bell doesn’t espouse universalism.” The problem here is that Galli does not seem to be as conversant in the history of this idea as he ought to be. In response to Bell’s “arresting” (Galli’s word) question, “Will God get what he wants?” Galli goes on to say:

It's rhetorically compelling, but he misleads at points. He says this theme has a "long tradition" and "an untold number" of devout Christians have believed it. Well, only a tiny minority of Christians have espoused it in 20 centuries. The church has consistently rejected it because the arguments for it have never been compelling. Bell doesn't wrestle with counter-arguments, other than to suggest that to believe in eternal judgment is to believe that history is tragic and that God doesn't get his way. But of course, proponents of eternal judgment think no such things.

Galli is certainly correct to say that proponents of eternal judgment (hereafter EJ, though I will have occasion later to criticize the choice of this terminology by Galli) have theologically robust ways to respond to Bell’s universalist-leaning questions. But this paragraph, and the rest of the section, misses the target for several reasons.

First, the paragraph sidesteps the arresting question by Bell. It’s understandable why Galli would move to discuss universalism and its standing within the tradition. But that’s not the immediate point of Bell’s question. Bell is asking about the nature of God. I don’t know how Bell develops the question, but I can think of some ways. For instance, a bone of contention within American evangelicalism is whether individual human freedom decides whether one is finally “saved” or not. The Reformed position has traditionally upheld divine sovereignty over against human freedom, hence the positing of a double predestination in eternity as the theological explanation for belief and unbelief in time. The evangelical position associated with the likes of Charles Finney rejected the Reformed doctrine of election because it wasn’t “useful” in facilitating conversions. Election went the other direction; the human person was the one who “elected” God. The problem then is that faith becomes a work. Jesus only accomplishes part of our reconciliation, and we have to supply the other half.

We have here the classic monergism-synergism debate, the well-known tension between divine sovereignty and human freedom. I cannot say where Bell himself falls on this debate, but I can say that his question is the right one. He is gesturing (and perhaps the book makes this more explicit) toward the claim that the sovereign power of God has to be united with the loving will of God. The two must not be placed at odds with each other, or else we have God against God. This leads to the uncomfortable but logical conclusion: according to the EJ position, either God wants to save all but cannot, or God does not want to save all and can. The former is the view of most American evangelicals (i.e., non-Reformed); the latter is the Reformed position. The problem is that each results in a view of God that more and more people today find irreconcilable with the biblical witness. The former is powerless against the human will; the latter hardly seems to be the God of love attested in Scripture (i.e., love and justice compete with each other). Bell’s question remains the right one: if God desires all to be saved, as we find proclaimed in the Bible, then does it really make theological sense to say that God cannot accomplish God’s own will? The majority position among evangelicals today seems to be the “argument from freedom,” viz. that God’s love compels God to give us the freedom to reject God. But this quickly unravels. If God knows what is best for us, then is it really loving for God to “respect our freedom” by letting us damn ourselves to hell for all eternity? Is this not the mere projection of a modern notion of respect for individual autonomy onto the being of God? It seems to me that Bell is attempting to move beyond this stale binary opposition between divine sovereignty (divine justice without love) and human freedom (divine love without power). Whether Bell’s attempt is successful or not is another question, but it seems that Galli has missed an opportunity to explore the issue in a more nuanced way than is often the case.

Second, to say that universal salvation (hereafter US) is a “minority” position is true, but surely something is not true just because it is in the majority! I’ll certainly grant that “majority rules” is generally how orthodoxy was decided in the past, but that does not oblige us to imitate our ancestors in the faith. Here and elsewhere, Galli comes close to espousing what I criticized in my response to Colson, viz. a doctrinal legalism that defines one’s “orthodoxy” (a word to be assessed later) based on whether one affirms a set of dogmatic statements held by others in the past. That kind of thinking leads almost inevitably to the conviction that Scripture plus Tradition constitutes the norm for Christian faith and practice. But that is a decidedly un-Protestant way of thinking. I do not think this is Galli’s position, or that he intends to go down this path—though I honestly cannot say, not knowing him personally—but this is the danger that I perceive in some of his statements scattered throughout the review. I will return to this point at the end of the series.

To be sure, Christians have to have some faith in the church of the past, since without the church there would be no canon and no creeds. Galli could quite justifiably respond that though Scripture alone is normative, we are dependent in some way upon the general contours of those who have gone before us. And we depend especially upon those thinkers and leaders in the church who have defended the truth of the gospel against error. Without that, we lose the ability to make distinctions between truth and false, between what accords with the gospel and what does not. But the question is to what extent are we free to critically assess the past. Can we make the judgment today that past judgments by church leaders and councils were, in fact, themselves in error? Surely the Reformers felt free to do so. Just because the rejection of US is the majority report in church history, does this make EJ the only correct view? Do we have the freedom to look afresh at the biblical text and discover a new word for us today, even if that word breaks with the majority? It would be a strange kind of evangelicalism that declared an unequivocal “no” to that question.

Third, it’s not only the questionable doctrinal limitations that Galli seems to place on Christian faith; it is the apparent lack of awareness about those who have actually espoused universalistic views in the past. As the new book, “All Shall Be Well,” edited by Gregory MacDonald/Robin Parry (of The Evangelical Universalist fame), demonstrates rather nicely, the position of Christian universalism does indeed have a long pedigree in the church. I’ll grant that Origen and Gregory of Nyssa do not a “long tradition” make, but neither are they insignificant. Nor are they the only ones, by any means. There are many within the Eastern church that espoused universalist views. And even if most of the proponents of US appear in the modern era, it would be a great injustice to these major theological voices to imply that they are all liberals. Galli does not actually make that connection, but based on where he goes in the rest of the review, that is certainly the strong implication. More on that point later.

Fourth, Galli goes on to argue that the refusal of Scripture to decide one way or the other regarding US and EJ “should give us pause.” I am deeply sympathetic with this view. It is the one that holds someone like Hans Urs von Balthasar back from outright affirmation of US. And yet it strikes me that Galli has not entirely heeded his own advice. For nowhere in the review do we hear of the need to refrain from advocating EJ. He rejects a “barbless universalism” that “risk[s] sentimentalizing the gospel,” but then proceeds to advocate “warning [people] of the eternal rewards and consequences of following Jesus.” If both tendencies are present in Scripture—the universalizing and the particularizing, so to speak—then it stands to reason that there ought to be caution on both sides. Here I would say that no church should make either US or EJ part of its doctrinal statement, since both positions find support in Scripture. To declare either as the “orthodox” position that ought to be held by all is to be unfaithful to the complexity of the scriptural witness. Galli, it seems, is quite willing to espouse EJ, but this is no better in the end than any outright universalism. 

Here is a modest suggestion. Proponents of both US and EJ need to acknowledge that there is textual support for each side in the Bible. This means, especially, that proponents of EJ need to stop pretending that they have a monopoly on the meaning of the biblical text, just because their position is the majority report. Both sides need to acknowledge that, beginning with either the US or EJ texts, one can offer cogent explanations for the other set of texts. Neither side has a self-evidently knock-down argument in their favor. Galli gestures towards one by appealing to Jesus, which is a common EJ tactic. But this is theologically fruitless. For starters, that is precisely the argument that Unitarians and other non-Trinitarians used in the past, because Jesus makes a strong differentiation between himself and the Father. Moreover, Jesus offers no soteriology, no doctrine of the atonement. The appeal to Matthew 25—which is done so often and usually in a very irresponsible manner, and Galli is to be praised for not mentioning the passage—is empty of any force. One cannot take its parabolic description of a separation between sheep and goats literally without also taking literally Jesus’ words about what divides the two groups: doing good works, such as feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. The result is—horror of horrors!—precisely the kind of works-righteousness that the NT largely condemns, not to mention the Protestant Reformers and their descendants. Finally, the appeal to Jesus just doesn’t work because the gospel accounts on their own do not make the Christian faith. Christianity is inconceivable apart from the Pauline epistles, which are also the earliest texts we have. 

The attempt to make the words of Jesus (as narrated in the gospels) the norm is, in the end, historically and hermeneutically naive. We have to think canonically and theologically. The mere fact that Jesus is recorded as speaking of hell or Gehenna is by no means a knock-down argument. Galli’s question—“If universal salvation is true, why does Jesus not showcase it?”—is thus a bit silly. We could turn this around quite easily. For example, if the doctrine of the Trinity is true, why does Jesus not showcase it? Or, if the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is true (as Galli claims), then why does Jesus not showcase it? Galli quickly appeals to Romans to justify his belief in that doctrine, but why is he able to use Jesus against Bell on EJ while appealing to Paul for the atonement? Why can’t Bell appeal to Paul for US, since it is the Pauline witness that is decisive here? Galli is guilty of what might be called “shifting the goalposts.” He isn’t playing by the same rules. Bell is being asked to justify his position based on what Jesus says, when Galli allows himself more biblical liberty. While this appears to be intellectually disingenuous, I don’t think Galli has any dishonest intentions. It seems to be more of a blindspot.

Back to my modest proposal. Let’s decide to acknowledge that people on both sides have valid and biblically-based reasons for holding to their position. That much is the necessary first step to a generous and honest conversation about this crucially important topic. Then, I wish to suggest, let’s acknowledge that individual theologians—since they do not speak for the church, but seek instead to think critically and reflectively about the church’s faith in Jesus Christ—are free to explore a theology that adopts either US or EJ. Let’s allow for both without impugning the evangelical faith of the other. That’s not to say each side cannot demand exegetical rigor and theological sophistication from the other. (On that point, I actually think advocates of EJ have much to learn from advocates of US!) It only means that EJ proponents need to recognize that there are good evangelical reasons for holding to US—as Gregory MacDonald, among others, has demonstrated. The problem with Galli’s review, which I will explore in more detail later, is that he identifies Bell as a “liberal.” There’s a lot of baggage that goes with that word. Often it functions in evangelical circles as code for “here is someone who may have good intentions, but he is outside the circle.” Galli is much better than that. He does not succumb to the temptation of writing Bell off simply because he leans in a universalist direction. For that reason alone, Galli deserves our thanks. The basis for the identification of Bell as a liberal only then becomes clear in his discussion of the cross and the atonement in the next section, to which I now turn.

Beyond Binaries: A Response to Mark Galli, Part 1

Let me be clear: despite appearances, I am not trying to pick on Christianity Today. They often do a fine job of walking that moderate evangelical line. And I am a huge supporter of Books & Culture. But it just so happens that they have published some pieces recently that have hit a nerve and warrant responses. Last month it was Chuck Colson, this month it is the review of Rob Bell’s controversial new book, Love Wins, by senior managing editor, Mark Galli.

First, a disclaimer: I have not read Bell’s book. My response to Galli is thus not a response to his portrayal of the book. Others who have actually read the text may offer their own responses to his presentation of Bell’s claims. For my purposes here, I will simply trust that he has represented Bell fairly and accurately.

Galli’s review is an attempt to avoid the empty rhetoric and hasty judgments that so characterized the recent online firestorm (e.g., “Farewell Rob Bell”). In this task, he is largely successful. Galli begins by embracing Bell’s concern to stress the cosmic scope of the gospel and the fact that Jesus cannot be confined to our safe religious boxes. As Galli puts it, “This stuff will preach.” But fairly quickly Galli changes his tune. He compliments Bell for being a “master” of asking questions that challenge “traditional doctrines.” But it’s a somewhat backhanded compliment; the implication—which later becomes explicit—is that Bell can challenge orthodoxy, but leaves one without a substantial or satisfactory alternative. This is essentially Galli’s thesis. Bell asks good questions, but doesn’t provide (the right) answers.

Whether this is accurate cannot be evaluated here for reasons stated above. What I wish to address is the way Galli goes on to locate Bell in the tradition of Protestant liberalism over against orthodox evangelicalism. It is this overly simplistic binary that I will interrogate, along with some related issues. I will follow the order of Galli’s review, beginning with (a) the question of universalism, moving to (b) the cross and the atonement, and concluding with (c) the liberal/evangelical divide.

The Case for a Christocentric-Missional Universalism

This will be old news for many, but I figure it is worth pointing out for those who might be interested. I wrote an essay for Testamentum Imperium on election and universalism, and in it I offer my most mature argument for universalism. The first half is a critique of double predestination, which I view as the only other viable alternative to universalism, and the second half is an exegetically-based argument that focuses primarily on Romans 5 and the Pauline distinction between reconciliation and salvation.

The key difference between this essay and my blog series on universalism is the emphasis on mission. To get a sense of my argument, here is a passage from my conclusion:

The form of Christian universalism offered here is certainly not pluralistic (“all religions lead to God”). It is rather strictly christocentric in nature: Jesus Christ alone is “the way, the truth, and the life.” No one may come to God except through him. The difference from traditional evangelicalism is that everyone will come to God through him, because everyone has come to God in him. At the same time, I am proposing a universalism that does not diminish the importance of the church’s mission of proclamation in the least. In fact, it seeks to make such activity truly meaningful within the Reformational emphasis on sola gratia. Here there is no compulsion to “get as many saved as possible,” as if we have the responsibility to “get people into heaven.” There is no need to scare people into salvation. Instead, when our reconciliation to God is our starting-point, we are able to go forth in joy and gratitude for what God has done for us already. We are able to preach truly “good news.” We are able to say with a straight-face, “God loves you precisely as you are”—not “God loves you” insofar as you repent of your sins or say this prayer or join this church. There is no soteriological instrumentalization, either of Jesus or of the church’s mission. Instead, we are able to proclaim the glorious news that sin and evil will not and cannot have the last word, because the powers and principalities have already been conquered by Jesus Christ. Death has been defeated, evil destroyed, and hell emptied. There is nothing left to do but acknowledge this fact with grateful hearts, giving thanks to God by going forth with this word on our lips as we proclaim what God has done.

[Download the .pdf here.]

Christopher Morse on God’s eternal rejection of hell

“By identifying the coming judgment as the coming of Jesus Christ, Christian confession entails the refusal to believe that what is ultimately defeated and rejected is ever other than the opposition, in whatever personal and corporate form of denial, betrayal, and crucifixion it takes, to being loved into freedom. . . . The eternally ‘rejected,’ the ‘unsaved,’ and the ‘lost’ is all that is within us and within the world which denies, betrays, and crucifies the love that comes to set us free. . . . Christian faith refuses to believe that the grace of being loved into freedom ultimately stops coming or ceases to be. . . . When such grace is confessed to have ‘descended into hell,’ then hell is acknowledged to have no dominion that can prevail. There is in the proclamation of the gospel no basileia of hell that is at hand, but only a basileia of heaven. Hell has no eternal dominion. If what God eternally rejects throughout all creation, with the fire of a love that remains unquenchable, is every opposition to our being loved into freedom, including our own, then the hellfire and damnation of Judgment Day is precisely the one true hope of all the earth. The old question of whether or not grace is ‘irresistible’ only becomes a problem when theology forgets Who it is whose judgment is confessed to be coming. What else is the Crucifixion if not the resistance to grace? What finally does a Resurrection faith refuse to believe, if not that the resistance to grace is ever its cessation?”

—Christopher Morse, Not Every Spirit: A Dogmatics of Christian Disbelief (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press, 1994; 2nd ed., 2008), 340-41.

Paul among the Evangelicals, §4: Barth on Rom. 5 (4.3)

4.3. Barth’s Contribution to the Evangelical Debate

Barth’s potential contribution to the question of universalism in Rom. 5:12-21 is at least threefold: (1) focusing the debate on the theological issues at stake, rather than on purely textual interpretation; (2) the reintegration of the wrath and grace of God within the overarching concept of divine righteousness; and (3) the critique of the “human, historical, subjective side.”⁶⁵ I will briefly look at each of these in turn.

Regarding the first, Barth’s commentary explodes many of the stereotypical divisions between universalist and non-universalist interpretations of the Pauline text. For example, Barth accepts the interpretation of Rom. 5:18-19 which says that Paul speaks of those “in Adam” and those “in Christ.” In speaking in this way, Barth at least formally agrees with some non-universalists who use this interpretation as an argument against universalism. Barth, however, sees in this interpretation grounds for his dialectical universalism, in that all creaturely life is “in Adam” and “in Christ”: “There is no man, who as a man and as he really is, is not—in Adam. . . . In the light of [Christ’s] act of obedience there is no man who is not—in Christ.”⁶⁶ The universality of Barth’s interpretation certainly falls on the side of the universalists, but his rigorously theocentric conception of faith and his emphasis on rejection and condemnation—as divine acceptance and reconciliation—is quite foreign to much, if not all, of the evangelical universalist literature. Since the text in question is not itself decisive, Barth thus focuses the debate on theological questions, without simply resorting (as many do) to other texts which one does believe to be decisive.

Second, Barth’s integration of wrath and grace is another testament to his ability to resist oversimplification. The wrath and grace of God are both manifestations of the righteousness of God, and because all are brought under the aegis of divine righteousness, the wrath and grace of God are not poured out upon different groups of people but the same group—all men and women. In his later works, particularly in Church Dogmatics II/2, Barth would give this inchoate insight a christological grounding such that the wrath and grace of God are concretely located in the person of Jesus Christ as the actualization of God’s wrath against sin and God’s gracious justification of sinners. The dialectical anthropology developed in Romans is later replaced by a christological dialectic, in which the antithesis of divine and human nature is established in the dialectically structured being of Jesus Christ.⁶⁷ But the basic insight is the same: the No of God serves the Yes of God; there is not a No to some and a Yes to others on the basis of a decretum absolutum or some meritorious work of faith which distinguishes certain individuals from others.

Third, in his comments on Rom. 5:20-21, Barth engages in one of many rigorous critiques of religion. He is well aware of one potential criticism of how he handled the previous verses: viz. that he developed an entirely non-historical interpretation of Adam and Christ which has little if any contact with the everyday confessing Christian. Barth’s exegesis, one might say, has no traction. Barth responds by suggesting that such a criticism trades in the figures of Adam and Christ for a “third figure—Moses!” In other words, the concern about the subjective dimension of Christianity ends up domesticating “the dialectical balance between sin and righteousness,” turning the “vast, objective, invisible, new world” into a healthy religion where everything is visible, concrete, manageable, and—most importantly—possible.⁶⁸

Certainly, this is a rebuttal to which many of Barth’s hypothetical evangelical interlocutors are vulnerable, in that they tend to subsume the objective dimension within and under the subjective. Of course, there is another sense in which the later Barth would come to disagree quite strongly with the position taken here in Romans II, and this is no where more evident than in his interpretation of Rom. 5:19. The verse speaks of Adam’s disobedience in contrast to Christ’s obedience, the former leading to the “many” becoming sinners and the latter leading to the “many” becoming righteous. Barth gives virtually no attention to the aspect of obedience within the text,⁶⁹ an element which has become central to debates on the interpretation of πίστις Χριστοῦ.⁷⁰ Barth’s rejection of the “concrete, comprehensible, and historical”⁷¹ dimension of religion stems from his concern about the dangers of a subjective emphasis, one that ends up distinguishing between humans and thus relativizing the more primal distinction between God and humanity. His concerns are not abandoned but maintained when Barth later grounds the subjective dimension in the obedience of Christ,⁷² such that the objective history of Jesus Christ is established as the ontic and noetic basis for our own subjective history.⁷³


To see the outline of the series, click here.
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65. Romans, 183.

66. Ibid., 181, 182.

67. Cf. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 370-71.

68. Romans, 183.

69. It is interesting to note that even in his later study, Christ and Adam, Barth still gives almost no attention to the place of obedience in the text. Of course, he speaks clearly of the work of reconciliation which Christ has accomplished, but the category of obedience makes almost no appearance in the text. This is most definitely not the case in Church Dogmatics Vol. 4, where Barth defines faith as the “humility of obedience” and speaks at length about Christ’s obedience as the defining characteristic of his existence, not only as the incarnate Jesus, but also (and as a result) as the eternal Logos.

70. See Richard B. Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ: The Narrative Substructure of Galatians 3:1-4:11 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002).

71. Romans, 184.

72. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956), 194-96.

73. Cf. ibid., 629-30: “It happened that in the humble obedience of the Son He took our place, He took to Himself our sins and death in order to make an end of them in His death, and that in so doing He did the right, He became the new and righteous man. . . . As the One who has done that, in whom God Himself has done that, who lives as the doer of that deed, He is our man, we are in Him, our present is His, the history of man is His history, He is the concrete event of the existence and reality of justified man in whom every man can recognise himself and every other man—recognise himself as truly justified.”