DOES LOVE WIN?

I could no longer ignore the ongoing debates surrounding the concept of universalism in my cyber life, so I hope to join the DIALOGUE (not the damaging skirmish among people with poisonous pens/keyboards). This is admittedly an initial, pre-emptive response, waiting for fuller development until Rob Bell’s book “Love Wins” makes it to my library. My only intention, for now, is to show how “Love Wins” can lead to universalism, in the general context of the relationship between love and salvation. I offer three models of understanding how Love is supposedly to win.

Firstly, there is a non-coercive Love leading to salvation. The liberal theologian Hastings Rashdall promoted this view, calling it Moral Influence Theory. Rashdall quotes Peter Abailard’s commentary on the epistle to Romans:

“Now it seems to us that we have been justified by the blood of Christ and reconciled to God in this way: through this unique act of grace manifested to us—in that his Son has taken upon himself our nature and persevered therein in teaching us by word and example even unto death—he has more fully bound us to himself by love; with the result that our hearts should be enkindled by such a gift of divine grace, and true charity should not now shrink from enduring anything for him.”

Basically, the argument is this: By dying on the cross, the amazing depth and width of Christ’s love is manifested, “with the result that our hearts should be enkindled,” leading for us to finally say “Yes!” to God. The rhetoric is this: “Who would not be moved by such a display of selfless love?!” Of course everyone knows that this model of “non-coercive, but powerfully persuasive love” winning the hearts of everyone is highly idealistic. The painful reality is that the world seems to be rejecting this wonderful display of affection, rather than being moved to following Christ. In short, this seems to be a failed model for love to win in the end. I hope this is not the model that Bell is promoting.

The second model is more of a coersive love triumphing over everything and everyone, but it could have two forms. The first variant of “Love wins” is strictly tied to the concept of God’s sovereign power, or of God’s Omnipotence. This means that in the end, it is the Will of God to save everyone that will be realized, with or without the consent of contingent human freedom. Because God is All-Powerful, his Love will triumph over all. Hmmmm… Need I explain the fallacy of this model?

The second variant is grounded in the nature of God as Love. This means that if God’s nature is Love, then to allow hell to exist or to allow people to eternally suffer is contrary to God’s nature; hence, God will ultimately be true to his nature as Love and redeem everyone. This model is a bit more difficult to refute, and I suspect that Bell’s main arguments are grounded in this model. But the weakness of this line of thought is that it compromises the freedom of God, and impiously imprisons God using God’s own nature as the limiting cage. What it misses is that God’s Love and Freedom are tied together, that is, that God’s Freedom is his Freedom to Love. Furthermore, this model seems to postulate an eternal higher moral principle called “Love” that God has no choice but to obey. Again, this model is self-contradictory.

(There could be other foundations for universalism, such as universal election, single predestination, Christocentricism, etc., but I only sought to discuss Bell’s two words: “Love Wins”. As I hinted, the two models above are self-collapsing. But if I discuss universalism in terms of the vicarious Person and Work of Christ, my responses would be radically different.)