{"id":9774,"date":"2014-06-26T12:12:03","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T16:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=9774"},"modified":"2014-06-26T12:32:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T16:32:09","slug":"universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html","title":{"rendered":"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will<\/em> be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without casting God as the Great Brainwasher in the Sky, merrily crushing our ability to resist<\/a>. \u00a0I\u2019m excerpting the post below, but I recommend reading the whole thing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For a lot of Christians salvation is basically the process of posing an ultimatum to the human will: Choose Christ and live or deny Christ and go to hell. Basically, evangelism is a threat with a choice. An ultimatum. \u2026<\/p>\n

I think most people are fully aware of the problems with this view of salvation. So I don\u2019t want to get into all that here. Suffice it to say I see salvation as less an ultimatum posed to the human will than Incarnational practices aimed at the acquisition of virtue. Moral education if you will. Salvation is about becoming Christ-like. \u2026<\/p>\n

[I]t might be helpful to float an idea or two to expand our our theological imaginations. So, two quick ideas. First, when working with hard cases God\u2019s moral education could be direct and aggressive. Think of\u00a0The Christmas Carol\u00a0and Scrooge\u2019s experiences with Jacob Marley and the Three Spirits of Christmas. Scrooge wasn\u2019t forced into repentance, volitionally speaking. He was simply allowed to see things that helped him connect the dots, morally speaking.<\/p>\n

But if the aggressive approach in\u00a0The Christmas Carol\u00a0is too in your face, think of something more slow and subtle like what we see in the movie\u00a0Groundhog Day. In the movie Bill Murray\u2019s character is able to reach the same conclusions as did Ebenezer Scrooge, only more slowly. Murray\u2019s character was given the time to follow every moral path toward its inevitable outcome. Finally, at the end of this process, simple natural consequences bring about repentance, change, and virtue. Again, no force is used. All that is needed is time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I like Beck using the framing of education, because it seems to me that truth, generally, has the same kind of coercive power that people fear in God. \u00a0I can willfully try to deny the Pythagorean theorem or the basic goodness of someone against whom I am holding a grudge, but I\u2019ll end up crying out \u201cHow all occasions do inform against me!\u201d<\/p>\n

In order to hold on to a falsehood, I\u2019d have to relinquish the whole rest of the world, to prevent it from correcting my error. \u00a0It\u2019s hard to believe, given enough time, I wouldn\u2019t eventually crack. \u00a0But, again, crack isn\u2019t quite the right word, since it implies destruction. \u00a0I really mean something more like \u201crelax\u201d or \u201cuncramp my fingers and allow them to move again, instead of contorting them into claws.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you get into the mathematics of credence and probability, there\u2019s a fun result called Aumann\u2019s Agreement Theorem<\/a> which says that, ultimately, two people using Bayesian reasoning, and sharing all their evidence with each other\u00a0aren\u2019t<\/em> free to agree to disagree. \u00a0If they\u2019re reasoning honestly, they\u2019ll eventually come to consensus (not necessarily in the middle).<\/p>\n

Usually, people don\u2019t see Aumann as an assault on the will. \u00a0If I don\u2019t stay on the path that the theorem leads me down, then I\u2019m not\u00a0free<\/em>, I\u2019m just\u00a0lost<\/em>. \u00a0But, once we head into moral matters, rather than disputes about numbers and physical data, the compulsion to come to agreement feels weirder. \u00a0Personally, it feels natural to me to wind up yielding to reality on questions of ethics, just as I would on questions of physics.<\/p>\n

The entire process of having errors slowly (or not so slowly) worn away reminds me a little of the aphorism \u201cGutta cavat lapidem non vi,\u00a0sed saepe cadendo<\/em>\u201d (which I learned in Latin class and then taught to all the middle schoolers in the ceramics class I TA\u2019d, so they could say it while they were wedging<\/a>). \u00a0The phrase means \u201cThe water hollows the stone, not by force, but by often falling.\u201d<\/p>\n

That still sounds a little bit like a story of domination and destruction, since it\u2019s not really\u00a0necessary<\/em> to the\u00a0telos<\/em> of the stone to be hollowed. \u00a0But it is part of our being to be\u00a0hallowed<\/em>, so I think the adage works very well if you change \u201chollows\u201d to \u201ctransfigures.\u201d \u00a0That\u2019s one reason I liked using the phrase to set my rhythm for wedging, where, by kneading the clay, I worked all of the air bubbles out, until the clay was an undivided whole that could be shaped and fired without danger of explosions.<\/p>\n

In fact, I like the wedging metaphor beginning to end. \u00a0(I don\u2019t want my moral imperfections to shatter me and throw off shrapnel in the direction of everyone else). \u00a0The homogenization\/reformation process of wedging isn\u2019t an end in itself. but prepares the clay to receive more delicate, complex, and beautiful shapes. \u00a0Without submitting to transfiguration, clay can\u2019t become a pot (like mine below) and people can\u2019t become saints.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Note: The Catholic Church neither teaches nor condemns universalism. \u00a0It falls into the category of things we don\u2019t know definitively, and theologians have taken different positions, both in the present day and over time. \u00a0So, when I say I favor universalism, I don\u2019t mean that it follows as inexorably from Catholic dogma as the Pythagorean Theorem does from Euclid, but that, were I placing a bet, it\u2019s where I\u2019d put my money.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without casting God as the Great Brainwasher in the Sky, merrily crushing our ability to resist. \u00a0I\u2019m excerpting the post below, but I recommend reading the whole thing. For a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":9776,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-9774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parsing-catholicism","tag-soteriology"],"yoast_head":"\nUniversal Salvation without Undue Coercion<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Unequally Yoked\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-26T16:12:03+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-06-26T16:32:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2014\/06\/Knead-Clay-Step-3.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"670\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"443\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html\",\"name\":\"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-06-26T16:12:03+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-06-26T16:32:09+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\"},\"description\":\"Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/\",\"name\":\"Unequally Yoked\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\",\"name\":\"Leah Libresco\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"caption\":\"Leah Libresco\"},\"description\":\"Leah is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option. Her further writing can be found at leahlibresco.com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/author\/leahlibresco\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion","description":"Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"follow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion","og_description":"Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html","og_site_name":"Unequally Yoked","article_published_time":"2014-06-26T16:12:03+00:00","article_modified_time":"2014-06-26T16:32:09+00:00","og_image":[{"width":"670","height":"443","url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/84\/2014\/06\/Knead-Clay-Step-3.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Leah Libresco","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Leah Libresco","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html","name":"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website"},"datePublished":"2014-06-26T16:12:03+00:00","dateModified":"2014-06-26T16:32:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464"},"description":"Richard Beck has a great post up today explaining how we can believe that, ultimately, everyone\u00a0will be reconciled to God and join him in Heaven without","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2014\/06\/universal-salvation-without-undue-coercion.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Universal Salvation without Undue Coercion"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/","name":"Unequally Yoked","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464","name":"Leah Libresco","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r","caption":"Leah Libresco"},"description":"Leah is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option. Her further writing can be found at leahlibresco.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/author\/leahlibresco"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}