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Universalism & Salvation
Or, “Jesus died for your sins, sure! But it’s all good!”
Earlier today, I found out about a fellow named Rev. Carlton Pearson who runs the Higher Dimensions Church in Tulsa. I’m still in the middle of researching the whole thing, but what I’ve found so far has knocked my socks off! So, I thought it only made sense to share it, perhaps even do a few different posts on the whole thing.
Now, the first thing you’ll see if you go to the Higher Dimensions website are some pretty provocative questions, such as:
- Do you think Christ died only for Christians?
- Do you think Christians are too mean?
- Do you think most people are going to go to hell?
- Are you ready to think differently and engage in new thought?
If you think this sounds like an unusual direction of inquiry for the pastor at a megachurch in Middle America to be, then you’re not the only one. Pearson teaches something which he calls the Doctrine of Inclusion, which goes a little something like this:
Pearson says the doctrine “maintains that Christ’s crucifixion and death on Calvary accomplished its purpose of reconciling all mankind to God. … The message man needs to hear, then, is not that he simply has a suggested opportunity for salvation, but that through Christ he has, in fact, already been redeemed to God and that he may enjoy the blessings that are already his through Christ.”
His critics however claim this is dangerously close to the “heresy” of universalism, or universal reconciliation. This teaching, which most mainline Christian churches reject, is that God’s mercy and love are such that at some point in the future, all people are saved no matter what. If you go to Hell or Purgatory at all, it’s only so that you can be reformed. God doesn’t want his creation to suffer for all eternity. Some universalists don’t even believe in Hell at all.
Are you starting to see why Pearson is on so many people’s religious hit-list? Christianity - like most things - is defined in the public eye by whoever screams the loudest. The sad fact is that contemporary Christianity is under the stranglehold of some creepy old men whose vision is quite different from this mentality of “God is throwing a party and everybody is invited!” Would that it were different, but these men seem to believe that the only way (or the right way) to get people to love God is by playing the hellfire and damnation card again and again. The mere possibility that there are other ways of relating to the Christian message seems to me to be an extraordinarily important thing to bring forward culturally.
If you’d like to explore just what these old men claim to find so horrible and evil about universalism, you’re welcome to do so. In fact, here’s a Christian Apologetics site which in no uncertain terms describes itself as, “an examination of the doctrine of universalism and how it is dangerous and wrong.” Whew! Not much room for confusion there, huh? Another site offers:
Universalism is the unbiblical doctrine that states that God will eventually bring everybody who has ever lived into a saving relationship with Him. In other words, it states that everybody will be saved, and that God will condemn nobody to Hell. It is understandable how such a doctrine could gain wide acceptance among today’s pluralistic, liberal society, but as this page will demonstrate, it is nothing more than unwarranted wishful thinking. Universalism is not in any way compatible with Biblical Christianity.
Yawn! Getting Christian Fundamentalists upset over doctrinal interpretation is like starting a fight about which tv series is the best at a Star Trek convention. Shit’s just too easy and the arguing doesn’t get anybody anywhere useful. Which is why Pearson’s whole “doctrine of inclusion” sounds really appealing to me.
In case you think Pearson is just some upstart apostate Christian though, it’s worth looking at his background. He is apparently a 4th generation Pentacostalist minister, brought up in what he calls the “holiness or hell” method of Christianity. He even attended Oral Roberts University. But on his website, he describes a stunningly simple revelation that God revealed to him at the height of his success:
However, in the midst of all my work and my unmitigated commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and my life’s dedication to the ministry of His great Gospel, I have come to a most liberating and encouraging realization, both through Scripture and personal revelation.
This revelation was put best in words, while I was hosting a live national Christian television program and my guest was the great Missionary Evangelist, T.L. Osborn. In the course of this interview with one of the greatest soul winners of the 20th century, he blurts out a statement that burned into my spirit in a way no other single statement has, in my over 45 years as a born-again Christian. The statement was:
“The world is already saved, they just don’t know it!”
According to my subsequent studies of Scriptures to verify this statement as a true and a most powerful and inspiring revelation, I had to face the fact that, not only does the world not know it, but, most of the Evangelical church doesn’t believe it, and therein lies the greatest deception the enemy has ever convinced the world of, second only to his success at deceiving Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
That passage comes from a position paper on his website entitled: “God is not a Christian!” For whatever it’s worth, based on my own experiences with and interpretation of Christianity, the doctrine of inclusion that Pearson is advocating really rings so much truer for me than all this exclusionary crap we hear trumpeted from all corners. It feels much more in-line with the religious/mythological purpose of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. And not to mention that whole thing about how God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, something or other. God loves the world. He doesn’t want to hate it. He doesn’t want to see everybody fail. Pearson puts this particularly well on another page in that essay:
It is almost as if we Christians have been and still are being raised in a home where a mean, intolerant, and abusive father terrorizes the children, threatening them with swift and painful punishment for any and every mistake made during the day, while he is away at work. We run to Jesus in the same manner children living in households with abusive and incorrigible fathers, run to their mothers for protection from him.
These abusive and “impossible-to-please” fathers literally terrorize both the children and the mother, producing what psychologists call “dysfunctional homes,” […]We must ask ourselves, “Do we need Jesus to protect us from God?” Or might we be presenting an inaccurate image of God, who is a warm, longing for and loving Father, who would spare no pains, and in fact didn’t, in order to reclaim His cherished family, the inheritance of His son Jesus Christ, from condemnation, loss and ruin?
But like any abusive relationship, the victim often finds it extremely hard to leave the relationship. They feel very guilty, almost believing they deserve it, that something they did brought it about. They can’t fathom there being any other possibility, or see just how out of whack their perceptions has become.
Towards that end, I thought it would be fun to look in a little more detail at that site warning us of the “dangers” of universalism. On one page, they associate it with “cults” and suggest:
Universalism teaches that all people will ultimately be saved no matter what they believe here on earth. You could deny God, hate Him, blaspheme against Him, join a satanist group and murder people and still go to heaven.
To me, this illustrates an incomplete or juvenile view of love. You must be good and perfect to be loved. But in my eyes, the true beauty and awesomeness of the Christian message is that it speaks of an unconditional love. No matter how bad you fuck up, no matter how much of an asshole you are, God still loves you. For all your flaws, for all your inconsistencies, the vast love remains regardless.
Later on in that page, the anti-universalists offer the following treat:
Let me illustrate this with a Universalist witnessing to a Mormon.
Universalist: “Listen here Mormon, if you continue to believe that you can become a god, that Satan and Jesus are literal brothers, that God has a body of flesh and bones and has a goddess wife, and that you can become a god of your own world, you know what is going to happen to you? You’re going to heaven! So there!”
Mormon: “Sounds good to me.”
So, where is the power of universalism to correct Satan’s lies? Does it carry a warning for those who serve false gods except to say that it isn’t nice to believe such things as Mormon doctrines? But, so what? It doesn’t matter. Mormonism, and other cults, would lead to heaven.
Exactly! It doesn’t matter what you do, because God loves you - even if you don’t love him.
Now, I’m not really sure this is Pearson’s point though, so I don’t want to put any words into his mouth here. That was just sort of a tangent that I went on myself. From what I’ve read, Pearson absolutely upholds the centrality of Christ and the sacrifice on the Cross, and you’d have to go ask him what he thinks of Mormons and other religions. But I think it would be fair to say that Pearson doesn’t consider the matter as open-and-shut as our anti-Mormon, anti-everything author above does. On another page Pearson’s essay, he asks the great question:
Why would Jesus pay the awful and awesome price to save the world and then trust its reality or its realization exclusively to a group of western Evangelicals, who for the most part can’t even agree on the simple subject of water baptism or how and when to take communion, let alone with whom to take it?
I think this is one of the greatest questions I’ve ever seen anybody ask of Christianity, let alone a Pentacostal pastor at a megachurch. If Jesus died for our sins, if he paid the ultimate price on our behalf by himself, through his own sacrifice, then who the heck are all these people trying to stand between us and him? Are they bringing us closer or pushing us away from God’s love?
December 20th, 2005 at 12:11 am
[Note: his site is kind of funky in Firefox with the scrolling. You’ll see what I mean. Try IE if that doesn’t work for you.]
December 20th, 2005 at 12:23 am
Also, I excerpted his section on the history of universalist thought in the early church, where it wasn’t a heresy at all, but the standard of belief. I can’t stand the scrolling interface on his site, so here is the bulk of the section in plain text:
http://www.timboucher.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=1072
December 20th, 2005 at 7:32 am
Apokatastasis
December 20th, 2005 at 8:23 am
Apokatastasis
From the site linked: “This doctrine was explicitly taught by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and in more than one passage. It first occurs in his “De animâ et resurrectione” where, in speaking of the punishment by fire assigned to souls after death, he compares it to the process whereby gold is refined in a furnace, through being separated from the dross with which it is alloyed. The punishment by fire is not, therefore, an end in itself, but is ameliorative; the very reason of its infliction is to separate the good from the evil in the soul.”
Sounds an awful lot like kundalini to me…
“Tummo fire energy shows up as rippling heat shimmers of clear light, warm and healing fire. Tummo is the clear light, heat that burns away the emotional blockages, etc. that are at the root of illness. Transmutation by fire. Tummo fire may show up as coloured, depending on what it is burning off, but in itself it is the clear light, transparent like a heat shimmer. Tummo fire is related to Kundalini heat. It is based in the solar plexus, but can show up anywhere in the body, burning off karma. (Some say it is based in the second chakra, but that is contrary to my experience.)
Kundalini
December 20th, 2005 at 8:40 am
Hmmm. This is probably a better link on kundalini.
December 20th, 2005 at 10:53 am
I’ve been reading your site for a while but this is my first post. I am one of those evil Universalists who believe that as in Adam all died, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (and no, I don’t necessarily believe in a literal Adam), so good for Carlton Pearson. Feel free to check out my own site On Universal Reconciliation if you are curious about some of the reasons we believe what we do.
December 20th, 2005 at 10:57 am
why would a discussion of internal neurogical function in one text be any different from those of another? they are all talking about the same neurology.f
December 20th, 2005 at 11:55 am
this is really amazing! er, forgive me for pulling out the usual old canard, but it sounds like Pearson experienced gnosis without realizing just what it was. gnosticism generally holds universalist philosophy as self-evident.
December 20th, 2005 at 12:02 pm
JP: Yeah I meant to ask you about universal reconciliation in gnostic thought, because I think I remembered you mentioning something similar, but I never “got” it before.
December 20th, 2005 at 1:17 pm
Huh. Sounds like the best view of chirstianity I’ve heard so far. I think the reason this guy is being persecuted by other ‘christians’ is that they are trying to control people, while he is actually trying to spread “good news”.
December 20th, 2005 at 1:21 pm
Amen!
December 20th, 2005 at 1:42 pm
Found this essay years ago but it seems relevant to the current discussion:
http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Prevailing.html#90
December 20th, 2005 at 1:44 pm
Oh cool. Actually, Pearson’s site had a link to the TentMaker site as well…
December 20th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
I guess I’ll be the lone wolf on the comments against Universalism. Just because Universalism is a feel good philosophy for seeker friendly Christians does not make it right. Universalism unwittingly is simply an excuse to practice sin without accountability or responsibility. You know, do what “feels” good because you will go to Heaven anyway. Frankly friends, I just can’t see it as truth.
What I do see as truth is everyone sins - Christian Believers as well as the unbelievers. 1 John 1:9 is closer to Truth than Universalism, in fact some have even called this principle of repent of sin and it is cleansed as cheap grace. Nonetheless, it is more Biblical than Universalism - everyone makes it regardless of righteousness and sin. I can’t buy that one.
December 20th, 2005 at 2:24 pm
Pearson’s is talkin’ roots doctrine here, kids. Roots Zoroastrianism! As the whole concept of a hell with gnashing and grinding of teeth enterered into latter-day judaism (along with the eternal bad-guy satan concept) from Zoroastrianism (or the “Good Faith” as they call it; calling them Zoroastrians is sort of like calling Muslims Mohammedans, but “Parsis” isn’t quite correct and zoroastrian” is common use) and thereby entered into christianity and gnosticism by that same route (there’s even a gnostic gospel attributed to Zoroaster, although it’s fragmentary), it should be good to know that the universalist concept is very similar to the zoroastrian one. In the texts, you fall off the chinvat bridge of judgement, go through a lake of molten fire and–if you were good, it feels like being carried along in a stream of warm milk; if you were “bad” it burns and hurts like a mutha’, but you find that it burns away all the accretions of bad that were in you. And after that judgement at the end of time, everyone ends up in paradise.
So, if anything…these evangelicals are sort of zoroastrian heretics without gnowing it. (”Magi” was the title of the Zoroastrian magician-priesthood and zoroastrianism posits a world savior–or actually three of them–the saoshants–born of a virgin. Why else would the magi, being non-Jews, follow a crazy star to find a baby in a manger? they’d found out that one of the saoshants had just been born! I guess it’s best to just generically call them “wise men” so the inquisitive christian won’t get the itch to go figure out the persian links to the manger story.)
23-skidoo!
December 20th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
[…] “If everybody gets saved, then I’m nothing special!” Finally, somebody responded negatively to my post on the original Christian doctr […]
December 20th, 2005 at 3:05 pm
Eye’ll have to disagree with you, Theway2K. Say, we gno that everybody is going to get to Tony’s house for the big party, but going by a certain path would mean you got mugged, spat on, jerked around and utterly made miserable, before you got there and making different decisions would mean your walk to Tony’s house was considerably less awful, you might still wanna opt for the latter, wouldn’t you? I mean, if all that crappy stuff happened, but Tony’s place was just super super incredibly awesome and the chips and dip and whatnot was so incredible that it kind of healed all the open sores and whatnot, wouldn’t you still kinda be like, “Shit! This is great! I wish I coulda gotten here sooner!” And ya coulda. And you might even say, “Damn, I coulda gotten here with out all the mugging and the beating and the alley cats digging into m’eye crotch!” And again, ya coulda. But eye’m also sure you would be able to appreciate the fact of the torment while it was going on and also appreciate being able to let go of it once you were at Tony’s party. And Tony, well shit, he already gnos all the trouble you put yourself through already and so what good would it do to slam the door in your face or mug you again? What–like so, you’d learn your lesson? That would kinda make Tony an enormous a-hole. And well, if that’s you’re concept of god…why is it so important for you to hold on to that picture of the big G, hmmm? What’s the prodigal son all about if we make dad spit in the wayward son’s eye once he finally makes it back to the party?
December 20th, 2005 at 4:02 pm
[…] to gradually discontinue going to Confession after that. My recent forays into exploring universalist Christian theology have lead me back around again on the subjec […]
December 20th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
A question, because I really don’t know and haven’t the time to look it up online: What is the difference between Universalism, Unitarianism, and the Universal Life Church, which lets every member become a pastor?
December 20th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
Yeah, I’m sorting out those differences myself James. From what I understand with just a cursory investigation, the Unitarian Universalists were formed from the union of two separate churches, the Unitarians and the Universalists. I think the ULC is pretty much unrelated, but I’ll look into the whole thing more sometime soon as I’m curious myself.
December 21st, 2005 at 2:20 am
I feel certain the ULC has no relation to the UU organization, at least in the eyes of the latter. The ULC calls itself an existentialist religion.
December 21st, 2005 at 2:34 pm
Unitarianism (or Unitarian Universalism as it is properly called) is a denomination that believes in the idea that everyone goes to heaven (although that’s a simplified description) and doesn’t necessarily believe that Christ is divine. Universalism (or Christian Universalism as it is more properly called) is not a denomination but rather a soteriological model (meaning a model of how one is saved) which says that everyone is saved by Christ (who is believed to be divine even if not necessarily a part of a “Trinity”). The ULC is not at all related to Universalism or Unitarianism but is a denomination of sorts made so that anyone can call themselves ordained (if I am not mistaken, anyway).
April 27th, 2006 at 12:19 pm
[…] My absolute favorite Christian Anarchist theologial and social philosopher, Jacques Ellul, believed in universalism, the idea that every single person will be saved and that Hell doesn’t exist. I’d known this from a number of texts I’d read, but finding his work in English is exceptionally difficult (with a few glaring exceptions), so it’s with great joy that I found his defense of universalism online! […]
November 30th, 2006 at 4:47 pm
[…] In my recent readings of the Bible, one of the things which I have been keeping an eye out for are passages which support universalist doctrine, or that Christ came to free everybody regardless of whether or not you “believe” in him. I think this is an especially fun topic because the people it most upsets seem to be the more Fundamentalist of Christians who can’t conceive of how all their hard work and identity which they have constructed around being a “good Christian” doesn’t gain them a better hotel room in Heaven. It also seems to highlight perhaps an underlying elitist desire within mainstream Christianity. […]