I just came across a Tweet from some random person that stated (my paraphrase): “I no longer believe in an eternal unending hell.” He said: “I understand why some still do, but why do so many who do act is if they are excited about it; as if it’s a sign that they were right, and those who rejected Christ were wrong and now will pay for it in an eternity of unending, hopeless torment?”
So, of course, we are referring now to Christian universalism (CU). CU has been growing some serious legs over the last two decades, and even more so over the last five years or so. I am not a Christian universalist. I believe Jesus taught the traditional view of an eternal conscious hell; so does the Evangelical Universalist:
[G]ehenna was a place of punishment and fire but beyond that was generally left unexplained. When we find Jesus drawing on the idea of Gehenna, we must remember that it was not a clearly worked out concept. Beyond its being a place of fiery punishment for the wicked, the details, if anyone wanted to fill them in, were up for grabs. That said, I think that it is quite clear that Jesus’ contemporaries would not have thought the he was a universalist of any variety. To the traditionalist this settles the case, but I think that there is more to be said. I want to argue, first of all, that none of Jesus’ recorded teachings about Gehenna explicitly affirm the notion that it was everlasting; and nothing Jesus is recorded to have said rules out the possibility that some or all of its inhabitants may at some point come to salvation. I am not trying to show that Jesus taught universalism nor that he taught that those in Gehenna could or would be saved, for he did neither. My aim is the much more modest one of showing that what he did teach does not formally contradict universalist claims. This, of course, does not provide any reason to suppose that a universalist interpretation of Gehenna is biblical without substantive additional reasons for embracing such an interpretation. My second task is to show that we do have such reasons. [Gregory MacDonald (aka Robin Parry), The Evangelical Universalist (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2006), 144-45]
That said, I do not glory in the notion of an eternal conscious hell for those who reject Christ; indeed, I detest it! But I am not God, and thus do not fully understand His ways or thoughts. I trust that God is fair, just, gracious, merciful, and most of all loving. As such, I hold out the hope that even post-mortem it might be possible for people to still say yes to Christ, even while in the confines of hell. I don’t think Scripture, or even Jesus taught this, but I also don’t think it would contradict who God is, by way of character, and thus as God is a God of hope, I maintain hope that this seeming impossibility might have a chance to become possible yet future for those who leave this life without being “in Christ” spiritually. Further, I still think Barth’s and Torrance’s objection to CU is the best way to think this: God is free, we are not, except as we participate in His freedom. In my mind, following Barth and Torrance, to dogmatically assert that CU just is true ends up violating and/or foreclosing on God’s freedom to make that ultimate decision by imposing our limited decision upon His.
Some would want to say that I am a hopeful Christian universalist. I would say that I am a hopeful hopeful Christian universalist in the sense that I have hope that God is always already the God of Hope, and in this I repose. I am unwilling to be dogmatic about this because Jesus wasn’t, and in fact seemingly teaches the traditional view of His day in regard to an eternal notion of hell. I understand that there are number of “universalistic” texts that can be marshalled by the CU. But on the contrary, there are just as many particularist passages of Scripture that counterweigh the universalistic texts. Again, I repose in God’s freedom, and the reality that He is indeed the God of Hope.