The Great Divide and the Salvation Paradox

David P. Griffith

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666731736, 9781666724509
• eBook ISBN: 9781666724592
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The church in its first centuries split on whether Christ saved everyone or a few, Universalism versus Exclusivism. In the sixth century, the church settled the issue seemingly and held that Universalism was heresy. This book reviews this history as well as what provoked it--Scripture, on its face, gives two contradictory accounts of salvation's extent: everyone is ultimately saved and everyone is not. In contrast to both Exclusivism and Universalism, the book takes Scripture's two accounts of salvation's extent as true--that is, as a paradox. This is the approach the church has taken with other scriptural paradoxes. Saying one God is three, or one Son is both God and man, appeared to be contradictory too, but, to embrace Scripture entirely, these were seen as paradoxical. The Trinity modeled how one can be three, and the hypostatic union modeled how one can be two. For the paradox of salvation's extent, the answer lies in the individual's divisibility in the afterlife, one can be two. That is, in ultimate salvation, each individual can be both saved and unsaved.

1

Prolegomena

The ancients used to say: Animals are instructed by their organs. I will add: Men are too, but they have the advantage of being able to instruct their organs in their turn.

—Goethe, 17 Mar. 1832 letter18

This first chapter strives for a shared beginning on how to approach salvation’s extent by obtaining agreement on several preliminary issues through either convincing or concession. To that end, the issue that every chapter explores, which is salvation, is defined, because meaning is inseparable from understanding. Then the unruly understanding with which the second half of this discourse works, which is a paradox, is upheld because, if true paradoxes are not profoundly true, there has been a misunderstanding, and what the salvation paradox abuses, as it does particularly in chapter 6, which is an individual, is explained because, no matter how annoyingly selfish we are, individuals are the selves we are. This first chapter also justifies what abuses the individual as will be seen in chapter 7, which is a model, because, whether explicit or implicit, a model is always our best entrance into a new understanding. Finally, this first chapter recognizes the authoritative resources to be used throughout the discourse, which are Scripture and any other truth, because not to admit one’s starting point is to conceal it. While the issues are several, what unites them beyond their pertinence to salvation’s extent is that their affirmations have been dependably true everywhere except for the occasional scholar.

1.The Issue Is Ultimate Salvation

“There is only one way,” Socrates observed, “for those to begin who are to take counsel wisely about anything. One must know what the counsel is about, or it is sure to be utterly futile. . . . [S]ince we are to discuss the question, . . . let us first agree on a definition.”19 All sorts of learners have concurred openly with this approach,20 including Calvin: “I certainly am dull enough to refer everything to the definition as the hinge and foundation of the whole discussion.”21 This is because meaning, which is what a definition aims at, and understanding, which is here the aim, are i...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Prolegomena
• Chapter 2: Decease, Decrease, Increase
• Chapter 3: Scripture’s Salvation Paradox
• Chapter 4: The Responses
• Chapter 5: Unconvincing Treatments
• Chapter 6: Divisibility’s Coherence
• Chapter 7: Preserving the Paradox
• Chapter 8: Christianity’s Divisible Individual
• Chapter 9: Systemic Truth
• Concludings
• Bibliography