I’ll say it again at the outset. I’m not a universalist.
But some of my friends are … some of my evangelical friends, some of my
Orthodox friends. So I ask them questions about that. This is not flirting (as Lewis and Barth were
accused of), but simply being fair.
In the name of ‘discernment,’ I’ve encountered a LOT of name-calling,
dismissiveness, intentional misrepresentation and caricaturing. “Earth to
Matilda!” – that’s not discernment. We
can and must do better than that. Surely we could at least build bridges (from
both ends of the chasm!) long enough so that listening could displace lobbing.
In this article, I’m trying to address fairly and critique
carefully three brands of universalism, which I’ll call popular universalism, Reformed
universalism and apokatastasis.
Although I personally self-identify as a ‘hopeful inclusivist’ (cf. Kallistos
Ware and Hans Urs Von Balthasar), I think it’s important to fairly distinguish
and assess these points on the universalist spectrum, for they represent quite
a broad range and some extremely different convictions about Christ, redemption
and human response.
It’s also an important exercise for me: can I fairly
represent a view to which I don’t hold with both enough charity and accuracy
such that the universalist (in this case), can say, “Yes, that was fair.” Or at
least, “not exactly, let me explain.”
