Friday, August 18, 2017

The Universalist’s False Dichotomy





In this post I will be looking at part of Robin Parry’s motivation and argument for being a universalist. I’m not picking on Parry because he is an especially “bad” universalist or because his arguments are weak.  Just the opposite!  Out of the universalist material I have read, I find the arguments in his book, The Evangelical Universalist, to be the least weak.

Parry is humble and open in the way he presents his material.  Early in the book, he explains that it was “philosophical problems with traditional Christian teachings on hell” (The Evangelical Universalist, pg. 6) which started him down a path which led to him embracing universalism. After explaining these philosophical problems, Parry goes on to develop a Biblical metanarrative which he believes points to universalism.  He uses the metanarrative to suggest possible interpretations of texts which are difficult for his view.

I see problems at every stage of the book.  I think his interpretation of difficult texts is wrong and his metanarrative is flawed. However, in this post I want to start where Parry started.  With the philosophical problems which motivated the rest of the argument.

Here, near the beginning of his case, I see a key error.  This error echoes throughout Parry’s book.  I suspect something similar is true for many other universalists.  The error I’m speaking of is the error of a false dichotomy.  At a key point, Parry sets up a false dichotomy between eternal conscious torment (ECT) and universal reconciliation (UR).  He fails to consider a third alternative:  conditional immortality (CI).  I’m not saying Parry did this intentionally.  Most false dichotomies are more subtle than the one in the cartoon below. While being more subtle, they can still lead to errors.





Parry’s Philosophical Problem with Hell

For Parry, the problem that motivated his journey to universalism is that he could not find a way to explain why, if God is all powerful and also truly loves all people, God would not save all people.  To his credit, Parry considers a range of traditional answers to this difficult question.  He looks at the way Calvinists answer this question and finds it unsatisfying.  He then goes on to look at the way freewill theists (those who “lean Arminian”) answer the question.  Parry explains the freewill answer this way:

The basic freewill theistic way to defend the traditional doctrine of hell is to deny that God can always get his will done.  God’s will, says the freewill theist, is that all people freely (in a libertarian sense) choose to accept the salvation God offers in Christ.  God does love and desire to save all. However, he will not force his salvation on people. He wants them to choose it freely. Thus, God must respect the free choices of those who reject salvation and who, by default, choose hell (The Evangelical Universalist, pg. 23, the italics are Parry’s own emphasis).

I basically agree with this explanation.  I would word it a little differently.  For example, I would not say that God must respect free choices of sinners, but that He chooses to do so for good reasons. I would also argue that God gets what He wants most, even though some things do happen which are contrary to what He wants. However, Parry is not satisfied with this explanation.  He goes on immediately to point out what he sees as a fatal flaw:

There is an objection that applies to all freewill theists’ attempts to justify a traditional doctrine of hell that is worth making at this stage.  It could be argued that an all-loving God will try all that he can to elicit freely a positive response to the gospel; but, if all else fails, he would be justified in not leaving people free in a libertarian sense with respect to their salvation.  This is preferable to allowing them to suffer in everlasting torment (The Evangelical Universalist, pg. 23).





Parry suggests that God has to choose between the following two options when considering what to do with those who will not freely choose to love Him and trust Jesus as their Lord and Savior:

1.  Torture them forever.
2.  Use His power to override their freewill so that even though they have lost their freewill, at least they are not being tortured forever.

If those were the only two options, I would agree that Parry had discovered an incredibly difficult philosophical problem for Christians who are not universalists.  In fact, I do believe Parry has correctly identified a difficult problem for Christians who believe in eternal conscious torment.  But Parry has presented a false dichotomy.  There’s a third option. An option which is clearly and repeatedly taught in Scripture.  Here are the three options:

1.  Torture them forever.
2.  Use His power to override their freewill so that even though they have lost their freewill, at least they are not being tortured forever.
3.  Cause the unrighteous to perish (John 3:16), have their bodies and souls destroyed (Matthew 10:28), and be burned to ashes (2 Peter 2:6) so that they are completely dead (Romans 6:23) and can no longer feel or think anything.

Option three is often referred to as either Conditional Immortality (CI) or annihilationism.

Now, we still have to ask why God might choose option #3 over option #2.  I can think of some  good reasons.  I present these cautiously.  While I’m totally convinced that the Bible teaches that God will, in fact, permanently annihilate the unrighteous after judgment, the Bible does not explicitly and directly state all of God’s reasons for doing so. However, it is easy to see at least two good reasons based on Bible truths:

1. God’s whole design for people involved making us in His image. An important part of being in God’s image includes the ability to love as God loves.  And that kind of love requires free will (I explain why I believe love requires free will in another post, here). Since removing people’s free will would remove their ability to love, and since loving is a massively important key part of God’s design for people, God may be justified in annihilating people rather than turning them into loveless robots.

2.  God is just.  His justice is an expression of His love.  If you slapped me hard in the face, I might get a little angry.  If you slapped my wife or daughter hard in the face, only the grace of God might restrain me from punching you.  What I’m saying is that God gets really angry, justly angry, at those who hurt his children.  He has promised to pay back those who hurt Christians (2 Thessalonians 1:6).  Thus, annihilating the unrighteous (which may include some temporary conscious suffering) is entirely in line with God’s character.

Thus, I see Parry as making an important error in his philosophical reasoning early on.  I believe this error, this false dichotomy, may have started a type of chain reaction which led to other errors.

I’m fully aware that there is more to universalist arguments than the faulty philosophical reasoning I have addressed briefly here.  I have addressed some other universalist errors in other blog posts:

1.  I discuss the fact that Universalism has the wrong ultimate goal here.

2.  I explain why Universalism is not realistic here.

3.  I discuss the rather obvious fact that ashes can’t repent and explain why this is a major problem for Universalism, here.

4.  You may find many resources providing a biblical case for annihilationism at the Rethinking Hell website.



Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .

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