Neal Punt reviews another soteriological Absolute Universalist book by Gulley and Mulholland (2004) — I will enteract with Neal's thawt later on

Dr Neal Punt allows his readers to reproduce his email essays and reviews with full notice of his authorship and accessibility on the Internet.  www.evangelicalinclusivism.com

Neal's book referenced A Theology of Inclusivism.  My comments regarding this review will be coming later.  But I ask that Dr Punt distinguish my view (1.) My soteriological near-universalism is not at all that of Philip Gulley and James Mulholland (as Neal represents them — I haven't read the title that Dr Punt explores for us); and (2.) any view of the soteriological universalist problematic shoud keep in mind the Interim State where all who die are kept in existence "asleep in Christ" until the Great Judgment.  If you believe, as does Dr Diogenes Allen of Princeton Theological Seminary, speaking of Simone Weil's outlook, "much happens after death," then you have an open doctrinal locus that is kept open despite the effort of funamentalizing efforts to foreclose it.  Some speculation and reference to science (information theory, Dr Andrew Basden) and literature (William Shakespeare, Hamlet).

Hamlet:
"To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub."

Hamlet (III, i, 65-68)This is part of Hamlet's famous soliloquy which begins "To be or not to be", and it reveals his thoughts of suicide. He has learned that his uncle killed his father, the late King, and married the king's wife, his mother. This foul deed has driven Hamlet nearly mad, and he seeks both revenge and the escape of death. He has been disconsolate since learning of the murder, from the ghost of his dead father. In this scene, he ponders suicide, "To die, to sleep-/No more." But he is tortured with the fear that there might not be peace even in death. "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, /When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, /Must give us pause." Hamlet's moral and mental anguish is at its height in this soliloquy, which is the emotional centerpiece of the play.

Shakespeare, having read well the Geneva Bible and well acquainted with Calvin's understanding of 'soul sleep," had his character Hamlet cawt on the horns of the Scholastic dilemma of going immediately to Hell due to his contemplated suicide, and at the same time wishing to die.  In that context, Shakespeare explores an analogue between dreaming in this life and dreaming in the Interim State.  Dreaming in the Interim State is only possible if you concieve the Creator our Lord Jesus Christ ascended and all powerful constituting us in our forensic dispersement as wavicles of information (a subphysical reduction of our human being and meaning in death) that the Lord reconstitutes in order to present us with dreams into which He comes to evangelizing us, rebuke us, confess us (uiltimately before the Father before the Great Throne of Final Judgment), we perhaps repenting, teaching us (Xristos paidogwgos, St Irenaeus [1st Century AD - circa 202]), achieving the conversion of the many one-by-won and the purging of the Christians dead in the Lord, sleeping in Christ all of them.

But I have a more detailed critical appreciation of Neal's review, yet to come

— Owlb

Review of Gulley and Mulholland

by Dr Neal Punt

Comments about the book:

If Grace Is True, Why God Will Save Every Person by Philip Gulley and James Mulholland (Harper Collins, 2004)

This book serves a good purpose in that it challenges Christians to reconsider the so-called “universal” claims of salvation and the concept of hell as used in the Scriptures. According to the note on the cover of the book Christianity Today makes this same observation about this book.

Other than this useful purpose I find little to commend this book. Dr. Lewis Smedes said of my work: “You are…saving us from presumptuous universalism. Your mission is needed and can only do us much good.” Few books make as many presumptuous claims as a basis for their message as this book (If Grace is True) does. I call your attention to some of the critical assumptions found throughout this book.

Together with all other Universalist treatises this book assumes that all persons are created as children of God. It records emotionally charged accounts of how we love our children and what we will do for them. From these accounts it draws the conclusion that God will also do whatever is necessary to save all his children.

We do not need an entire book to tell us that if every person is “a child of God” every person will be saved. That Bible assures us that if this premise is valid the conclusion is irrefutable.

Parents never abandon their children except for the fact that those parents are either sinful or weak. God, the Holy Father, with his unlimited resources will never forsake any of his children. Even though a mother may "have no compassion on the child she has borne," God will not forget any of his children (Isa. 49:15). It necessarily follows: "If we are children, then we are heirs… co-heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17). On this basis this book repeatedly draws the conclusion that: “God Will Save Every Person.”

There are only two ways to be part of God's family: through natural generation ▬"Christ alone is the eternal, natural Son of God" and; by adoption ▬"we are adopted children of God.” Even sinless human beings require adoption into God's family.

Biological ancestry does not make someone a member of God's family! "Do not think you can say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham" (Matt. 3:9). The stuff we are made of, whether Abraham’s (or Adam’s) physical descendants or stones, does not make us or prevent us from becoming children of Abraham with God as our Father. "If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed" (Gal. 3:29).

Nearly everything presented in this book is based on the assumption that all persons are children of God because they are God’s natural children (share the same nature) or they have been adopted into God’s family. Evidence for this proposition is totally lacking in this book.

Although the Scriptures do not tell us that all persons are children of God they do give us the right to assume that all persons are children of God¹ unless we have specific and irrefutable knowledge to the contrary². Readers not aware of these possible exceptions may be wrongly impressed by the generosity of God as presented in this book.

A second presumption found throughout this book is that we are compelled to accept the traditional view of hell or to recognize hell as the purging process by which God causes even the most obstinate sinners to experience God’s forgiving love and so be transformed by “true grace.” Hell is either everlasting (unending) conscious torture of body and soul or the means God uses to assure that every person will become a purged recipient of salvation.

Given the false dichotomy described in the preceding paragraph rational human beings will necessarily conclude that hell must be the means that God uses to make certain that every person will come to know and be transformed by “true grace.” The presumed need to make this Hobson’s choice is presented as an argument for accepting the contention of this book that “God Will Save Every Person.”

The word “annihilation” is used on page 164. However, it is not presented as the biblical connotation of the word “hell” as portrayed in the Scriptures and held by an ever growing number of Bible believing Christians³. There is no discussion of hell as unending death (extinction) of body and soul. As such hell is the exact opposite of heaven. Heaven is the unending joyous conscious life in the presence of God.

A third assumption found throughout this book is that we have the right and the ability to “weigh” the claims the Bible makes about who God is and what he doesⁱ. We must evaluate God by how we “experience” him in our life. In the person and life of Jesus Christ Christians have come to know God to be a God of infinite, unconditional, love and grace. Whether we are aware of it or not this is how we “experience” God in all of life’s situations. Non-Christians have their own experience of the God of infinite love and grace by which they must weigh whether the claims they hear about God are true or false.

Any portrayal of God that questions or contradicts the view of an infinitely loving, forgiving and gracious God must be discarded as untruth. According to this book, Christians and non-Christians have never experienced a God of wrath or a God who threatens judgment. Therefore any record of a God who displays wrath or threatens a penalty for deliberate willful transgression of God’s will, must be dismissed as unworthy of the God who has revealed himself as a forgiving God of love and infinite grace. To quote the title of the book If Grace Is True, Why God Will Save Every Person.

With such a standard we can dismiss what Jesus says for example in Luke 13:1-3. Even when we hear of such deaths as recorded in this passage resulting from a crime committed by despot, it would be well to remind ourselves that if we willfully defy God’s will and do not repent we may also perish. Although we may have heard about such a God no one has “experienced” such a God who threatens judgment for willful disobedience. Therefore we may know that such a portrayal of God is untruth.

By this standard we must not only reject what Jesus has said about a God who threatens willful disobedience but must dismiss as untruth what the Bible says about the very nature of Jesus. No need to accept the divinity of Jesus. The God of infinite grace can simply forgive sin without any payment for transgression having to be made. Because no one “experiences” a God who punishes sin we do not need a Savior who is both divine and human. So also doctrines of atonement and the Trinity can and must be dismissedⁱⁱ.

The author of this book does believe that Jesus had a unique role in God’s plan of salvation. It was not because by his life and sacrificial death that Jesus overcame the power of death and thereby gained the victory over death. Jesus was put to death by an angry multitude who would not accept the message of God’s forgiving grace that required no sacrifice for sin.

But, having been put to death because he proclaimed a God of infinite love and grace who, without any payment for sin, forgave the sin of all mankind. Jesus was put to death by a the rebellious multitude for proclaiming this message of true grace. To show that the message of infinite love and grace that Jesus proclaimed would finally be victorious God raised Jesus from the deadⁱⁱⁱ. Hell is the final cleaning process which some rebellious sinners will experience until they “repent.” This repentance is simply a turning from rebelling against to fully accepting the God of infinite grace that includes them.

Another assumption found in this book is that all persons, even though conceived and born in sin, stand in an identical relationship and respond to sin in the identical way that God does. As sinners we can forgive others without demanding a payment for every transgression committed against us. So also a thrice holy God before whom even the angels sing “holy, holy, holy” can overlook sin by simply dismissing its guilt and not require any payment as a result that sin. God, in relationship to sin, was made in the likeness of man.

With the concept of accepting God only in terms of the way we truly experience him as a God of infinite love and grace in our lives we are left with a God of our own making.

Cordially, Neal Punt

The footnotes below make reference to the book A Theology of Inclusivism and to the website www.evangelicalinclusivism.com. Free access to and permission to quote from this website is hereby granted if the source is acknowledged.

1 Book Ch. 1; Website Ch. 1

2 Book Ch. 3; Website Ch. 3

3 Book Ch. 19; Website Ch. 19

4 p. 30 also page 51 and on many of the following pages.

5 pp. 125-127

6 p. 130

7 p. 139

3

1

2

i

ii

iii