Part 1
How can we overestimate the influence of The Bible, for good and bad, on civilization? Fundamentalism breeds tribalistic intolerance and cruelty and hatred of The Other. We can interpret evil gods from the Bible as Alfred North Whitehead and Dan Barker can attest.
But as Rufus Jones writes, there are two strands of Christianity: eschatology, coming to God for rewards and avoiding punishments, and fundamental ends of life, coming to God because such an act is the greatest thing a human can do; it is the reason we are here. The latter, Rufus Jones observes, is equivalent to Plato’s eternal ideal of beauty. There is clearly real religion in Christianity, but there are competing threads within it.
Jerry Walls has wrestled with the competing threads with great rigor as he as examined forms of Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universalism. His beliefs have evolved as his conclusion that purgatory is a possibility, as C.S. Lewis later believed, seems to open the door to universalism.
Ironically, I’ve avoided Walls for many years even though Thomas V. Morris, in an email, recommended his Logic of Damnation when I told Morris hell was my stumbling block to faith.
I say that reading Walls has been ironic because Walls agrees with Nietzsche that we must “not despise the body and devalue the world of physical creation.” For me, the Christian faith bifurcates the flesh and the spirit. I am personally freaked out about the body and its desires in the Christian context. This is deeply ingrained as I’m sure it is for many.
Even more shocking, Walls’ concept of joyous faith equates faith in God with a dance. “God is the God of the dance.”
For me, Christianity has always been about the misery and tyranny of an evil God of hell, a God I’ve never been able to free myself from. But here is Walls, perhaps a believer in hell or evolving into some kind of universalist, who sees God as the God of the dance. I’m suffering cognitive dissonance here. But I want to be shaken up. I want an ax to break my frozen ocean.
Regarding free choice, Walls champions it by pointing out that we must choose to bear fruit to remain with Jesus. We must choose to be obedient to Jesus to show our love for him. Walls agrees with universalist Rob Bell who writes, “Love demands freedom. . . . We can have all the hell we want.” I think of these words when I think of my wristwatch torment (used to be a fun hobby; what happened?), my inclination for sitting in front of YouTube and pissing my life away as I become a numb dehumanized zombie living in my bubble, my self-imposed hell. Many of us are broken people vulnerable to many addictions, often trading one addiction for another and find ourselves descending into many self-made hells.
Walls argues we have freedom to conquer our addictions through God’s love. He writes “that hell is possible precisely because God is love.” We can choose to reject God’s love. This makes me think of Dale Martin’s skepticism about human freedom. We’re so crazy, I would say, we need a divine intervention, not so much freedom.
But for Walls hell is about freedom: “The freedom to reject the love of God remains a plausible explanation for why eternal hell is possible.”
Walls points out that Thomas Talbott, a universalist, argues that no reasonable person would choose hell. Only an irrational person would choose hell and if we are irrational, then arguing that free choice necessitates hell is wrong and absurd.
Walls writes in an explanation of Talbott’s case: “So the idea that persons might freely choose to remain in hell forever is utterly incoherent. It makes no sense at all if carefully examined.” We can choose evil in the short term, but that is not the same, Talbott argues, as choosing evil forever in hell.
Walls observes the Prodigal Son chose hell for a while, but not forever. For Talbott, “it is necessarily true that all will be saved.”
When talking about hell, Walls explains Talbott’s universalism, that there are two versions: “as a forcibly imposed punishment rather than as a freely embraced condition.”
It appears that Walls and Talbott agree that “repenting” to escape hell is not true repentance.
As an aside, as long as you associate the Christian God with the evil god who takes away “the greater reality,” as described by Alfred North Whitehead, you will never be a true convert. But as you know, submitting to selfish hedonism isn’t the answer either.
Walls asks if true repentance is “inevitable,” as Talbott argues.
Walls suggests that we can acclimate to our self-made hell from our ever-hardening heart.
Like Talbott, Bradley Jersak, Sharon Baker, and C.S. Lewis, Walls seems to reject the “penal substitutionary” theory of atonement, which I have always found so primitive and odious. As Walls explains it: “This is the view that Christ was punished in our place and thereby satisfied the justice and wrath of God, allowing us to be forgiven.”
The death on the Cross, for C.S. Lewis, is more of a radical response to the human race’s propensity for digging a hole and going their own way. I’m thinking of the Steely Dan song “Deacon Blues” in which the narrator romanticizes a life of hedonism, drinking, depression, and nihilism ( how I love that song; there's a real hunger for being grounded, but the song makes me wonder if the notion of being grounded is an illusion or a chimera).
For Lewis, only a perfect person like Christ could repent perfectly and this perfect repentance is what we need to unite with God. We can only go through the perfect surrender to God if God becomes a man.
This is a fascinating if not creative interpretation of the death on the Cross. I’m sympathetic to it though it doesn’t cancel my understanding that the Cross is about a sacrifice to sacrifice a God who is compelled to burn us forever otherwise. But such imprinting inside me may be, tragically, a Straw Man God. I really struggle with this.
Part 2
Walls explains that entering heaven or hell is less based on what we do and more on what we are or what we’ve become. This idea comes in part from C.S. Lewis such as Lewis’ The Great Divorce.
Developing on Lewis’ ideas on salvation, Purgatory becomes plausible as an act of love, not justice. Just as we clean up and salve a neglected messy stray dog at the vet before giving the dog back to its owners, souls must go in for a service, as it were, so they are clean and healthy, not stinking of disease. The cleaned-up person is both healthy and happy. Holiness is happiness.
For Walls, C.S. Lewis and others, “Hell is the misery of choosing persistently to resist that [God’s] love.”
Walls does not close the door on the possibility that Purgatory is a “post-mortem process.”
Walls emphasizes that “It is simply fundamental to Christian theism that an intimate relationship with God is the greatest possible good; indeed, it is the one thing most essential to happiness and satisfaction.”
Coming to God in truth is expressed in Rufus Jones’ Fundamental Ends of Life and Tony Banks’ beautiful song “Afterglow.”
Part of this intimate relationship is embracing suffering like Jesus, Paul, and others did. To repeat Catholic Stephen Colbert, “Suffering is a gift of God.”
While not dogmatic about Purgatory, Walls speculates that perhaps it exists for those with “last-minute” conversions or repentance. Purgatory is a “completion” of the repentance that began just before death.
Walls later writes that purgatory is “not a second chance” but only “for those who die in a state of grace.” But a few lines later, Walls speculates that some may die without grace but they will not “die obstinately unrepentant.” Walls asks, “Are all who die without repenting ‘obstinately unrepentant’?”
Walls further asks, What if God knows person X would repent had person X lived beyond a premature death? Walls seems to be opening the door to post-mortem salvation.
Walls rejects the arguments that passages from Hebrews 9:27-28 and Luke 13:23-30 preclude postmortem repentance.
Reading Walls and others, it occurred to me that some Christians can jump around or evolve, as one would have it, from Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universalism, or variations of these. There may be no fixed point. But clearly, though, the type of Jesus we imagine, and Heavenly Father, is influenced drastically according to which type so that a Calvinistic God bears no resemblance to a Universalist God. Here I’m reminded of those, including atheist philosopher Elizabeth Anderson, who say the Bible is a sort of Rorschach test, a sort of reflection of who we are inside. I’d argue it’s not that simple but more of a tension resulting from a symbiotic relationship between the person and the worlds created by the Bible.
Are Walls and Thomas Talbott dabbling in “theological novelties” with their expressed yearnings for Universalism? Their arguments that postmortem repentance can happen and in Talbott’s case is an inevitability?
But postmortem repentance is no novelty. We have a history of theologians who have argued for it, from Origin St. Gregory, Scottish theologian P.T. Forsyth, Donald Bloesch. Christ descends into Hades and saves lost souls, according to “patristic sources.”
Bloesch writes in defense of postmortem salvation: “It is my contention that a change of heart can still happen on the other side of death. Nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even sin and damnation (Rom. 8:38-39) and God’s love goes out equally to all (Matt. 5:45; John 3:16).”
Does the above lead us to Universalism?
If this is true, then no one will go to hell? So why not just do our thing since eternity is not really at stake?
Walls addresses this objection. Many think it’s not fair that they repented and got saved while reprobates will eventually get saved anyway. Walls writes that if everyone got saved it would not be a bad thing but the most desirable thing. He writes, “I find myself in the somewhat odd position that I would be delighted if one of the things I have given the most energy defending in my career turned out to be false.” Walls continues to write of hell: “That is to say, I only believe it is true because I believe Scripture teaches that some persons will in fact freely and persistently resist the grace of God and be lost.” He soon after writes: “Certainly in principle all could be saved, since Christ died for all and God sincerely desires all to be saved.” Here Walls sounds like Talbott, and I love them both for this position, because “the other god” has depressed and oppressed me for decades.
Walls further says God needs not damn souls to be glorified as Calvinists and even Christian comedian Thor Ramsey, modern hell apologists argue.
But for Walls not all are saved. He says “Scripture teaches that some will decisively reject his love” and that their fate is eternal hell.
But hell won’t afflict those for lack of an opportunity to be saved. For Walls postmortem conversion is “an implication of the idea of optimal grace.”
As many others have said, including Sharon Baker, how we imagine God in terms of an opportunity for postmortem conversion, or not, deeply affects our different conceptions of God. One God is more gracious and loving than the other, the latter concerned with being justified in sending people to hell. The latter God offers “minimal grace” whereas the former God offers undying, bountiful grace.
Bloesch, Bradley Jersak, and others have pointed out that “The gates of the holy city are depicted as being open day and night (Isa. 60:11; Rev. 2:25)” and “the gates of hell are locked only from within” (C.S. Lewis).
When we’re prisoners of hell, Jesus Christ can free us (Rev. 1: 18). “Even when one is in hell one can be forgiven.”
Conclusion
I am grateful for Jerry Walls' book. It showed me, among other things, that there are 4, not 3, forms of Christianity:
One. Calvinism, predestination of a limited elect.
Two. Arminianism, free will with a limited number of saved and many who by their free will must go to eternal hell.
Three. Arminianism Plus, a term I give to Jerry Walls' book: free will but the possibility of postmortem conversion and salvation evidencing God's more bountiful love and grace than evidenced in the two forms above.
Four. Universalism, the belief that God's love makes it inevitable that all will be saved either in this world or the world to come. While Universalism is the most desirable, it is no panacea as many will feel nothing is at stake if they're going to be eventually to be saved "no matter what" and this can lead to problems as we can see in this City of God post about a pastor who ran into huge problems when he preached universalism.
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