From 1812: John Murray’s Radical Theology of Hope

That Sublime and Never Failing Confidence: John Murray’s Radical Theology of Hope for a Terrified World

John Murray (1741-1815) was born in England to strict Calvinist parents and raised to believe most of humanity was damned. After converting to Universalism, he lost everything and sailed for America in 1770, intending to disappear. Instead, he became the founder of American Universalism, establishing the first Universalist congregation at Gloucester, Massachusetts, and later pastoring the Universalist Society of Boston. A stroke left him paralyzed in 1809. He spent his final years, in his words, ‘helpless as an infant,’ writing the Letters and Sketches of Sermons that would become his testament, still proclaiming that every soul would be gathered home.

A Note on Murray’s Voice: Throughout his Letters and Sketches of Sermons, Murray refers to himself in the third person: ‘the writer,’ ‘his imprisoned spirit,’ ‘he unwaveringly believes.’ This was a common literary convention of the era, particularly in prefaces and personal testimonies. Far from distancing, this style lends a peculiar poignancy to his words: a dying man speaking of himself with dignified restraint, offering his hope as gift rather than confession. All quotations from Murray preserve his original voice.

‘He is especially solicitous to communicate to the sons and daughters of humanity that sublime and never failing confidence upon which his imprisoned spirit, through long days of adversity and through successive nights of sorrow, hath calmly reposed.’

-Letters and Sketches of Sermons (1812)

John Murray’s Dying Gift

By 1812, John Murray was dying. His body had failed him. ‘Helpless as an infant,’ he wrote. Income gone. Medical bills mounting. He had every reason in the world to despair. Instead, he wrote about hope…not the weak hope that whispers ‘maybe.’ Murray wrote about hope so fierce he called it ‘sublime and never failing.’ This hope had carried him through decades of ministry, through years of suffering. And now, with death approaching, it burned bright enough to lead him home.

What Murray offered in his Letters and Sketches of Sermons was not theology for the classroom. It was medicine for terrorized souls. Two centuries later, we still need these words.

The Terror John Murray Confronted

The Christianity of Murray’s day dealt only in fear. The Calvinist establishment taught that God had divided humanity before time began…a small elect chosen for heaven, everyone else destined for eternal conscious torment. And the cruelest part: you could not know which group you belonged to. The best you could do was examine yourself endlessly for ‘signs of election,’ never certain whether your faith was real or demonic counterfeit.

Murray met the casualties everywhere. People with what the era called ‘religious melancholy’…minds broken by doctrines that made God’s love conditional and Christ’s sacrifice insufficient. The gospel, supposedly good news, had become a source of terror. Against this, Murray proclaimed something dangerous: The gospel actually is good news…for everyone without exception.

John Murray Read Scripture Through Love

Murray’s opponents read the same Bible he did. They found warnings of eternal punishment, pronouncements of wrath and declarations of limited atonement. Same text. Different conclusions. How? Murray’s answer…every interpretation requires a framework. The proper framework is God’s self-revelation as love. Start there…God truly is love, not just loving sometimes…and the whole biblical narrative shifts.

The Prophets

Murray read the Hebrew prophets and found a pattern. Judgment, yes. Wrath, yes. But always moving toward restoration. Always. He quoted Jeremiah:

“I have slain in mine anger, and in my fury… Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth. And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me, and I will pardon all their iniquities.” (33:5–8; cf. 32:30–42)

The same God who slays in fury brings health and cure. The same God who hides his face reveals peace. Wrath is real. But it serves restoration. Judgment accomplishes transformation, not annihilation.

Murray found this everywhere: Ezekiel’s promise that God would be ‘pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done’…all (16:63). Daniel’s vision of a kingdom where transgression would be ‘finished’ and sin would ‘end’ (9:24). Moses’ portrait of God bearing Israel ‘as a man doth bare his son’ (Deuteronomy 1:31).

Paul

Murray’s strongest case came from Paul. In Romans 11, Paul writes: ‘God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all’ (11:32). Why had God hardened Israel? Why the blindness, the spirit of slumber? The answer: ‘that he might have mercy upon all.’ The hardening was purposeful. Temporary. Serving universal mercy.

And First Corinthians 15: ‘For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (15:22). Murray would not let his readers miss the parallel. The ‘all’ who die in Adam equals the ‘all’ made alive in Christ. One humanity. First condemned. Then redeemed. The scope of the fall is the scope of the redemption.

John

John’s Gospel declares: ‘Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world’ (1:29). Murray pressed every word. Not some people. Not the elect. The world. Not individual sins but sin itself…the whole condition of human alienation. Christ came to accomplish salvation, not just make it possible. To secure redemption, not just offer it. If Christ died only for some, his work is incomplete, his title as Savior of the world a lie. Scripture says otherwise.

John Murray: God Is Love

Everything Murray wrote rested on one conviction: God is love. Not loving sometimes. Not loving some people. Love itself. If God is love, certain things follow. Love desires the good of the beloved. Love persists through resistance. Love cannot rest until all the beloved are home.

Murray found this love in God’s relationship with Israel. Despite rebellion after rebellion, God never abandoned them. The prophets spoke of divine pathos, wounded love…but always concluded with restoration. A father bearing his son. Not a sovereign tolerating subjects. A parent carrying a child. What parent could be satisfied with some children saved while others perish forever? The suggestion contradicts love’s nature.

Murray pressed the logic. If imperfect earthly parents would move heaven and earth to save a rebellious child, how can we imagine God doing less? Either God lacks the power to save all or lacks the will. Omnipotence eliminates the first. Love eliminates the second.

John Murray: Sovereignty Serves Salvation

Murray did not reject divine sovereignty. He embraced it…with the most robust Reformed language available:

‘With him are the issues of Life and of Death. He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. When he shuts, no man can open; and if he vouchsafe to open the eyes of the understanding, the power exists not which can draw the obscuring veil of darkness. Omnipotence is the attribute of the Creator, the creature can neither do, nor undo.’

Classic Calvinist language. But Murray reached a different conclusion than Calvin. If God has absolute power to save, and absolute commitment to save all, then all will be saved. Sovereignty guarantees universal salvation. The hardening of some serves mercy to all. Temporary blindness gives way to sight. Present judgment accomplishes future restoration.

Murray did not deny divine wrath. He understood it as love’s expression. God hates sin because God loves sinners and sin destroys what God loves. Anger serves mercy. The slaying in fury gives way to health and cure.

John Murray and Hope in the Fire

What makes Murray’s Letters compelling is where they came from. He wrote as a dying man:

‘Condemned to a lingering and greatly debilitating malady, the writer has become, as far as his bodily organs are involved, helpless as an infant; and while his income is greatly and necessarily abridged, the exigencies annexed to his melancholy situation imperiously accumulate many and heavy expenses.’

From that crucible came radiance: ‘That sublime and never failing confidence upon which his imprisoned spirit, through long days of adversity and through successive nights of sorrow, hath calmly reposed’

Tested hope. Proven hope. Murray stood ‘upon the threshold of another and a better world,’ finding that ‘pecuniary hopes and fears are nearly lost in that blissful futurity.’ When everything else was stripped away…health, income, strength…hope remained.

This is what gave Murray authority. Universal salvation was not an intellectual position he defended. It was comfort he experienced. The difference matters.

Hope as Medicine

Murray was a pastor. He counseled people with religious melancholy. He visited the dying. He corresponded with souls tormented by fear of damnation. He watched false theology produce real damage. Those who believed in conditional salvation lived in uncertainty…constantly self-examining for signs of election, never sure their faith was genuine. Those who trusted in universal restoration rested. Confident that divine love would not fail.

This was not preference. It was observable. Theology centered on conditional love produces anxiety. Theology proclaiming unconditional commitment produces peace. The fruit testifies.

Murray’s purpose was explicit: ‘He is especially solicitous to communicate to the sons and daughters of humanity that sublime and never failing confidence… He unwaveringly believes that every possible felicity is in reserve for his species’.  Every possible felicity. For his species. Not some. All.

The Questions

Accept Murray’s conclusions or not, his work forces questions. Do we believe God’s love is unconditional and irresistible? If so, what follows? Can we coherently say God is love while believing most of humanity will burn forever? Or does genuine love necessarily mean determination to save all the beloved?

These are not academic questions. The content of our hope shapes how we live. A gospel of conditional love and uncertain salvation produces fear. A gospel of God’s determined purpose to save all produces peace. Murray lived in that peace. He died in it. His Letters testify.

Benediction

As his Letters concluded, Murray blessed everyone who would read them:

‘He unwaveringly believes that every possible felicity is in reserve for his species; and in humble and devout imitation of his great and adorable Master, while bidding the wandering race farewell, he bestows upon both enemies and friends the ardent benediction of a spirit replete with unbounded love for the children of men, for the offspring of Deity.’

Every person…friend, enemy, believer, skeptic…stood equally as ‘offspring of Deity.’ Beloved children whom God would not lose. Murray blessed in imitation of Christ, who prayed for his executioners and promised paradise to a dying thief (Luke 23:34, 43). Love that embraces enemies. Hope that extends to the most unlikely. Confidence that pronounces blessing on all humanity. Christ’s own spirit. Still available.

In an age of anxiety, John Murray offers peace. In a culture of fear, confidence. In a world where religion traffics in terror, that sublime and never failing hope…tested through long days of adversity and successive nights of sorrow, all the way to the threshold of that better world where all tears are wiped away and God is finally all in all (Revelation 21:4; 1 Corinthians 15:28).

May we hope more fully. Trust more completely. Love more boundlessly. May we live toward that day when God’s love has gathered all things home.

Full text of Letters and Sketches of Sermons can be found here.