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BARTH, ORIGEN, AND UNIVERSAL SALVATION This page intentionally left blank BARTH, ORIGEN, AND UNIVERSAL SALVATION Restoring Particularity TOM GREGGS 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York # Tom Greggs 2009 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2009 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group ISBN 978-0-19-956048-6 13579108642 This book is dedicated to my parents, Jackie and Paul Greggs, with much love and as a tiny token of my gratitude to them. This page intentionally left blank Preface. Universalism, Separationism, and the World Today In an age in which terror is carried out reputedly in the name of God, and in which political rhetoric can conjure apocalyptic imagery and echo separationist views of eschatology, applying them all too easily to present groups within society,1 the need for the Christian theolo- gian to confront the question of the scope of salvation is pressing. As a servant discipline, Christian theology must be alert to the reality that the separationism that underscores unhelpful theo-political thought and speech comes from within faith communities,2 and that articulations of Christian particularity in certain ecclesiastical rhetoric can be responsible for prejudice, superiority, and enmity with regard to the other, who can come to be seen as a damnable being destined for all eternity to be alienated from God. It is to this age, in which Christianity finds itself confronted by secularity and religious plurality, that the present book wishes to speak. Positing an alternative to these versions of separationist accounts of salvation is no easy task. Separationism has been and remains the dominant and majority version of traditional, mainstream Chris- tianity’s view of eschatology. Separationists claim that their position is consistent with the whole tenor of the Bible; for them, to suggest otherwise involves a denial of the revelation of Jesus Christ and Holy Scripture.3 They ground their position on literal readings of apoca- lyptic imagery from the synoptic gospels (such as that present in the 1 The effect of separationist eschatology on governmental policy (especially for eign policy in the USA) is recorded in Jimmy Carter, Faith and Freedom: The Christian Challenge for the World (London: Duckworth, 2006), 113 15. 2 For the implications of fundamentalist theology for governmental, educational, social, and ethical issues, see Martyn Percy, Words, Wonders and Power: Understanding Contemporary Fundamentalism and Revivalism (London: SPCK, 1996). 3 See Nigel M. de S. Cameron, ‘Universalism and the Logic of Revelation’, in The Best in Theology Vol. 3, ed. J. I. Packer (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 1989), esp. 153 and 166; and David Fergusson, ‘Eschatology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Christian Doctrine, ed. Colin E. Gunton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 241. viii Preface Sermon on the Mount) and from the book of Revelation.4 Through- out the medieval period such imagery was embellished and became part of the psyche of the Christian believer,5 and forms of this imagery continued to be utilized to persuade people to convert to Christianity or to maintain a morally upright life.6 However, even the strongest versions of separationism are clear that one should not simply equate the empirical church with the entirety of those who are saved. In theory at least, separationism can extend salvation beyond the Christian church (and may indeed not include certain members 4 These are clearly not the only, nor necessarily the best, readings of scripture around these themes. See also, Gerald O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Uni versalist: The Biblical Hope That God’s Love Will Save Us All (London: SPCK, 2008), chs 2 5; and Thomas Johnson, ‘A Wideness in God’s Mercy: Universalism in the Bible’, in Universal Salvation? The Current Debate, ed. Robin A. Parry and Christo pher H. Partridge (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003). 5 The reader is referred to such famous portrayals of hell as Dante’s Inferno. See Dante’s ‘Inferno’: The First Part Of ‘The Divine Comedy’ Of Dante Alighieri, ed. Tom Phillips (London: Thames & Hudson, 1985). 6 We see this particularly in elements of traditional evangelical preaching. John Wesley proclaimed: ‘What a guard may these considerations be against any tempta tion from pleasure . What is the pain of the body which you do or may endure, to that of lying in a lake of fire burning with brimstone?’ (John Wesley, ‘Of Hell’, in A Heritage of Great Evangelical Preaching, ed. Stephen Rost (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1996), 185). Even more emotively, Spurgeon preached: ‘. in hell, there is no hope . They are for ever for ever for ever lost! On every chain in hell, there is written ‘‘for ever’’. In the fires, there, blazes out the words, ‘‘for ever’’. Who wants to say any more about it? I have warned you solemnly. I have told you of the wrath to come! The evening darkens, and the sun is setting. Ah! and the evenings darken with some of you. I can see grey headed men here’ (Charles H. Spurgeon, ‘Heaven and Hell’, in A Heritage of Great Evangelical Preaching, 832 3). While the imagery may no longer be so vivid, much of the sentiment from such pre eminent evangelical preachers as Wesley and Spurgeon is echoed in contemporary evangelical preaching and missiology with its impetus to save the lost. Certainly, the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 strongly opposed universalism, and defended two human destinies (Veli Matti Ka¨rkka¨inen, ‘Evangelical Theology and the Religions’, in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, ed. Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 2007), 201). Indeed, Sanders asserts that the view that ‘unless people hear and accept the proclamation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, in this life (before death), they cannot be saved . has been widespread throughout the history of the church and appears to be the dominant view in contemporary evangelical thought’ (John E. Sanders, ‘Is Belief in Christ Necessary for Salvation?’, The Evangelical Quarterly 60, no. 3 (1988), 242 3). He sees this view as being synonymous with the traditional pre Vatican II Catholic teaching of extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Cf. MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 168 72. Preface ix of the Christian church): the Christian church and those who are ultimately saved are not necessarily synonymous. Certain forms of separationism can even be philosophically consistent with the view that the majority of humanity, many of whom may never have heard the name of Christ, may be saved. The minimal requirement of separationism is not that the majority or even a good portion of humanity may not be saved, but simply this: ‘that some men...will finally not be saved.’7 The extent of the numbers involved on the two sides of the separation to salvation or damnation is advocated to be a secondary issue; but the reality of that ultimate separation is not to be denied. Furthermore, while separationism is derived from apoca- lyptic scenes of judgment in the Bible, it need not necessarily require a commitment to a belief in a physical place known as hell,8 since notions of annihilationism or conditional immortality still allow for the ultimate separation of the saved from the rest.9 Even if hell may have gone off the scene in certain quarters of the church (though by no means all), the idea of an ultimate separation is still firmly and deeply entrenched in many quarters.10 For the present writer, however, it remains insufficient to suggest that separationism may involve more than simply the visible, empirical church, or that the separation might involve not hell but an annihila- tion or a non-universal immortality. Although these re-articulations of separationism arise out of a desire not to adjudicate on the matter of which individuals belong to the saved and which to the damned, in both cases there remains a willingness and a desire to speak in terms of 7 De S. Cameron, ‘Universalism and the Logic of Revelation’, 154, emphasis original; cf. 166. 8 Albeit, clearly many separationists do hold to this. See, for example, Louis Berkof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth, 1958), 735 6. In fact, all too often concerns about universal salvation are dominated by concerns about hell that are not necessary for a separationist account of eschatology.

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