Exposing Universalism

A Comprehensive Guide to the Faulty Appeals Made by Universalists Paul Young, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and Others Past and Present to Promote a New Kind of Christianity

James B. De Young

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781532642876
  9781532642883
• eBook ISBN:
  9781532642890
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In recent decades universal reconciliation (UR) has sharpened its attack on evangelical faith. By their fiction and nonfiction, and by film (The Shack), universalists such as Paul Young, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, and others are propagating the idea that the love of God trumps all other attributes of God including his holiness and justice. From this starting point universalists believe that all people are born as children of God, that all are going to heaven, that all must embrace God's love. Those who reject God in this life will repent after death and escape hell. Even the devil and his angels will repent from hell and go to heaven. Universalism is an old idea. Christians have confronted UR since the third century and refuted it as heresy--heresy because UR believes that faith in Jesus is unnecessary. Thus, the death of Jesus Christ as an atonement for sin becomes unnecessary. Through his acquaintance with Paul Young, De Young is increasingly concerned that Young and other universalists are misleading many. In this book De Young challenges all the arguments that universalists make--their appeals to the Bible, to logic and reason, and to church history--and shows that they are unconvincing.

Section 1

Refuting the Appeals of Universal Reconciliation

Introduction: The Four Appeals of Universal Reconciliation

I’ve discovered that universalists present their case for universal reconciliation under four major considerations. Each of these comprises a separate part of this section one. The first appeal is to biblical language, seeking to redefine terms such as “age” or “eternal,” “hell,” “gehenna,” “torment,” “punishment,” and others, so that there is no such thing as everlasting torment in hell.

The second appeal is to reason and emotion. Here the thrust of the argument is that it is unreasonable to believe that God could send to endless torment those who have either not heard the gospel or have heard it and rejected it. It is unfair and violates a sense of justice if a person must have to spend an eternity in hell for committing a sin over the short span of a human life. In addition, the appeal to emotion means that God is unloving, he is more inhuman than humans are, if he takes pleasure in hurting, in tormenting people and angels who have rejected him. This portrayal of God shows that he is an impotent, bully kind of deity. Universalists attribute this portrayal of God to evangelical theology.

The third appeal of universalism is to history. Universalism claims that it, not exclusivism (people must be saved by believing in Jesus as the only way to escape an eternity of suffering in hell), was the predominant belief of the early church for the first five hundred years. Politics and stupidity then took over, and the traditional view of hell prevailed until the Reformation. With the latter came a new freedom to discover again the doctrine of universalism. It has had its followers among the Anabaptists and among those who follow Arminian theology. In the centuries that followed universalism first opposed the rationalism that sought to destroy evangelical faith in Europe. But soon it found rationalism to be its ally and it came to prevail in Europe. Universalism was in America from the very beginning and continues to grow steadily. Several times universalism has defined its creed, and these declarations set the standard against which to recognize universal reconciliation. I cite all of these creeds.

The fourth and most serious appeal is to specific texts of Scripture. For Christians this is the most important source of doctrine. Universalism appeals to texts to teach that God wills all to repent and to be saved, that Jesus has died for all, that atonement and reconciliation have already been made for all, that all will confess Jesus as Lord. If all people do not realize this salvation before they die, then God will use the corrective fires of hell to convince people and fallen angels to repent. God’s love to draw all people does not end with their dying. At some point in the future even hell and the lake of fire will cease to exist. Obviously the name “universal reconciliation” derives from these sorts of texts that incorporate the term “all” or “reconciliation.”

Part 1

The Appeal to the Language of the Bible

Chapter 1

The Meaning of the Word “Age”

One of the first appeals that universalism makes for its case is to define the terms used in Scripture that are associated with life after death. The arguments from the language of Scripture concentrate on redefining several sets of words: (1) ōlam, aiōn, aiōnios; (2) hell, sheôl, hades, gehenna, lake of fire; and (3) torment, punishment, burning, brimstone, judgment.

The proponents of universal reconciliation claim that the first (1) set of words, representing the Hebrew word for “eternity,” and the two Greek words for the same, cannot mean “eternity” but are limited in their scope of time. They refer only to an “age” or “ages,” an indefinite period, but not endless time or timelessness or eternity.

The Strategic Significance of Aiōn in the Defense of Universalism

The discussion regarding the meaning of aiōn is one of the most serious and far-reaching. This is witnessed by the fact that the universalist John Wesley Hanson devoted an entire book to this matter—to try to prove that the term cannot mean “eternal,” especially in the three passages where “eternal torment” occurs.1 Other universalists paved the way for his extended treatment as they too wrestled with this term.2

Hanson’s research laid the groundwork for many that have followed. Most recently, Rob Bell employs the same kind of arguments in his attempt to define aiōn, devoting several pages to the meaning of the word.3

To this day universalists cite Hanson’s work as though he had proven his case.4 His arguments are among the most persuasive on the meaning of aiōn. It is hard to imagine anyone improving on the thoroughness of his study.

Hanson’s writing is exhaustive, comprehensive, and persuasive to the casual reader. But to the careful reader his work is unconvincing. In the end he fails to prove his points about the noun and the adjective forms of aiōn. His work is filled with special pleading, assumptions, and much argumentation from silence. While a large section is devoted to church fathers he misrepresents them and church history.

In the following paragraphs I will support my judgment of his work. I take up Hanson’s arguments in detail as among the best defenses of universalism. While I cannot be exhaustive and touch on every point I want to be detailed enough to show that Hanson is far from proving his case. In devoting this kind of attention to his work I will have confronted the most exhaustive defense of the bedrock of universalism—the denial that the suffering of the wicked is eternal. On the definition of aiōn the whole case for universal reconciliation stands or falls, at least as far as Scripture is concerned.

For the reader who does not wish to wade through the following extended discussion there is a summary of the refutation of the arguments of universalism discussed in this chapter near the end of the chapter. It involves twelve points.

Hanson devotes the first half of his book to show that the OT literature, especially the Greek OT, and pagan sources prior to the NT used the term aiōn to mean not endlessness or eternity but an indefinite amount of time. In the second half of his work Hanson argues that when Jesus and the Apostles appeared they continued this meaning and, with no intimation that they were giving the term a new meaning, they must have meant the same thing. The Greek OT (known as the LXX or Septuagint) was their Bible.

The Claims of Universalists Regarding “Age” and a Biblical Response

What are Hanson’s claims for the OT era? Regarding the Hebrew word ōlam, Hanson claims that it is “manifestly incorrect” to render it by “eternal” or “everlasting” (12). Also, by its own intrinsic force the Greek word aiōn cannot denote “endless duration” (13); “interminable duration” does not reside in the word (14). On the basis of the history of the use of this word the doctrine of endless punishment cannot be found in the Bible (14). Rather the idea of “eternity” is a derived meaning (13, 28). The basic idea of the word is a period o...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Section 1: Refuting the Appeals of Universal Reconciliation
• Section 2: Correctly Interpreting the Bible
• Bibliography