That’s fine. I was just showing that it’s not really about atheism and Christianity both being true.
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And indeed, I did! I listened to all three lectures of his and will keep those in mind for future recommendations. He has a delightful blend of self-deprecation, but also gentle and humorous challenge for opponents. I like how he acknowledges the many “hell texts” (the ‘10-pack’) as being there, being real, and needing to be taken seriously - not ignored. Also, how it isn’t the end of any argument to merely show that so-and-so (e.g. Paul or Isaiah) was or was not thinking this way. We need to ‘own our own theologies’ for our own context and developed in the light of the gospels, epistles, and prophets; but they are still our theologies, and as such remain very, very fallible.
Thanks again for the link.
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That doesn’t necessarily follow. As an example, consider bark dust: It’s a byproduct of turning trees into lumber. Loggers don’t cut trees down in order to get bark dust, they cut them down for making lumber (or paper), but bark dust is a result of their labor.
So a pagan poem isn’t necessarily breathed out by God.
There’s an ancient teaching method going on there: the Israelites were supposed to look at the instruction God gave them and recognize the differences between that and what other peoples did, and grasp that the point was to be more faithful, more merciful, etc.
He seems to hold a variety of strong omnism, modifying it in a way that makes it conceivable to call it Christian, saying “So it does not mean I think Hinduism is correct, it just means I think it’s just as correct as Judaism”. But the problem with that is that it is incompatible with Judaism because it is incompatible with the Old Testament; that requires holding that the Old Testament is wrong on some major themes, which in turn by his stated principle requires holding that Hinduism is wrong on major themes. That doesn’t indicate a basis for any confidence in what either religion has to say! and thus isn’t actually compatible with the New Testament.
That said, soft or weak omnism is fine; it just says that truth shows up all over in human thought, something that would seem to follow from Paul’s point that things about God are clear via nature.
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Nothing about faith is necessarily. It’s all speculation and it’s all what we believe we see in scripture. Christianity could turn out to be be wrong and Shintoism could turn out to be the one and only true faith that the created revealed to his only chosen people in Japan.
So while it’s not necessarily true that just because the poem is inspired by God, it’s not necessarily true that it’s not and I believe the evidence and logic falls on it being inspired by God along with the sources it came from. To me that’s what fits best with the story of the Bible, various clues I see and makes the most sense as compared to god kept hidden away, revealed himself to Jews a few thousand years ago and the faiths that developed before that was all just fake and so was everything after it.
To be clear and I tell this to people more and more…. When you say Judaism, and when you says Old Testament and when you say New Testament…. What you mean is your personal interpretation of these things. However, I don’t feel a need to defend the position and as more and more time goes, the less and less I really care about anyone else’s personal beliefs on things that step into the realm of magic/supernatural. I’ll state my position a few times, and I’ll counter a bit, but it’s rather pointless and below what I’m willing to sacrifice more than 10-15 minutes of my day on.
The New Testament is incompatible with the old. We just trust my faith that Jesus supersedes it all. I just extend that to all faiths.
I am a Unitarian Universalist and a paid-up member of Biologos. I am glad to see a discussion of Universalism here. I would like to add some observations.
One of the best representations of Universalism in America is Hosea Ballou’s “A Treatise on Atonement”
https://www.danielharper.org/treatise.htm
The Wikipedia page mentions Rev. Ballou’s belief that believing in a wrathful God also hardens the heart of those who believe this way.
Note that Ballou was an ultra-universalist: the is no hell. On the other hand, the Restorationists believe that we suffer for our sins, but that hell is a stop on the road to eventual reconciliation.
Personally, I would agree with the Restorationists. For example, in Dante’s Inferno, it ends with the protagonist and his companions descending to the Center of Hell, at which point they climb up to Purgatory, implying a type of Universalist Restoration.
From Dostoevsky, “The Brother’s Karamazov” Chapter 78:
https://www.online-literature.com/dostoevsky/brothers_karamazov/78/
This legend is about Paradise. There was, they say, here on earth a thinker and philosopher. He rejected everything, ‘laws, conscience, faith,’ and, above all, the future life. He died; he expected to go straight to darkness and death and he found a future life before him. He was astounded and indignant. ‘This is against my principles!’ he said. And he was punished for that…
that is, you must excuse me, I am just repeating what I heard myself, it’s only a legend… he was sentenced to walk a quadrillion kilometres in the dark (we’ve adopted the metric system, you know): and when he has finished that quadrillion, the gates of heaven would be opened to him and he’ll be forgiven-"
“And what tortures have you in the other world besides the quadrillion kilometres?” asked Ivan, with a strange eagerness.
“What tortures? Ah, don’t ask. In old days we had all sorts, but now they have taken chiefly to moral punishments – ‘the stings of conscience’ and all that nonsense. We got that, too, from you, from the softening of your manners. And who’s the better for it? Only those who have got no conscience, for how can they be tortured by conscience when they have none? But decent people who have conscience and a sense of honour suffer for it. Reforms, when the ground has not been prepared for them, especially if they are institutions copied from abroad, do nothing but mischief! The ancient fire was better. Well, this man, who was condemned to the quadrillion kilometres, stood still, looked round and lay down across the road. ‘I won’t go, I refuse on principle!’ Take the soul of an enlightened Russian atheist and mix it with the soul of the prophet Jonah, who sulked for three days and nights in the belly of the whale, and you get the character of that thinker who lay across the road.”
“What did he lie on there?”
“Well, I suppose there was something to lie on. You are not laughing?”
“Bravo!” cried Ivan, still with the same strange eagerness. Now he was listening with an unexpected curiosity. “Well, is he lying there now?”
“That’s the point, that he isn’t. He lay there almost a thousand years and then he got up and went on.”
And that may well be what happens.
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Having been a Unitarian Universalist since 1984, I find that a toxic anti-Christianity is very out of place. Having been a member of three congregations, I have never seen or experienced such a thing.
As for a lack of belief, I know many UUs with strong beliefs. When I first joined, most UUs were Religious Humanists (half of the signators of the first Humanist Manifesto were Unitarian ministers). This has changed, with many more people believing in a Supreme Being or Force.
Personally, I am a Pantheist, a member of the World Pantheist Movement. In that, my beliefs are very similar to the religious beliefs expressed by Albert Einstein. I consider Pantheism part of Religious Naturalism. At the last UU General Assembly in Pittsburgh, I attended the organizational meeting of the Religious Naturalist UUs - we are starting to be more active.
Why am I posting in BioLogos then? Because I admire Francis Collins and the work of BioLogos. He is doing God’s work, and so is BioLogos. I believe that all sincere followers of their chosen faith, if they follow the dictates of their heart, then they show forth the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. And the world will be a better place for it.
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Thanks for your informative post on UU. Certainly gives a better idea of what it represents than most of us have who are on the outside. We have a lot we can learn from one another.
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I am glad that I have provided an informative post. In today’s troubled times, where so many people are searching for spiritual nourishment, I hope that those of us of sincere, open, and loving faith can combine to light the darkness and bring hope to a broken world. Thank you at Biologos for what you are doing!
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Unitarianism is incompatible with the Nicene definition of Christianity. Universalism is not, since there is no mention of this issue in the earliest creed. And I think we can find church fathers who like this idea. However, it looks to me like the one which is less compatible with the Bible is universalism. And the one I find more incompatible with my experience of the realities of human behavior is also universalism.
The best thing about Trinitarianism is that this quite clearly not a God made in the image of man. That is one of the more frequent criticisms I hear made of theistic religions. And then there is the rather compelling idea of the incarnation, that God would become a human infant – it says loads about the values, priorities, and engagement of God with human beings.
Thus both Unitarianism and universalism have serious drawbacks in theological considerations.
As for the Unitarian Universalists, my impression is that these are quite the intellectuals. But perhaps this is because in Salt Lake city their church sits right next to the University of Utah and many of its members are faculty.
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You made the assertion but gave no reasons.
The most difficult aspect of Universalism is the implied belief that we can (and have) decided what God would do. The easiest aspect of U is that if we follow Christ, repent of our sins and our evil desires (habits), have faith in Christ, then we can have confidence and hope that Christ would bring us to the Father.
There are many theological debates and yet one gospel.
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There was two Nicene creeds. One around 325ad and the other around 380ad. It was just a council of men, not spectacular about them, that gathered and according to their own personal agendas and interpretations came together with a concept so that anyone who disagreed could lose power through being accused of being heretics. But the creed is no more magically superimposed on everyone than the southern Baptist conventions are imposed on others. Even when these creeds are made, other beliefs existed and some rose and fell in dominance depending on location and time.
It’s like when a catholic argues where the catechism says blah blah by pope blah blah…. It holds next to no value to me.
It’s like yeah…… I’m sure God has been deciding for the last 1200 years until recently to just choose European men as his mouthpiece on earth lol. Same for current majority beliefs. What “everyone” accepts now as the without a doubt truth may not even be a dominant belief in 1,000 years.
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That’s true of all non-universalist positions as well! Calvin is perhaps the most stark example with his double predestination notion.
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Except that they were the successors of the Apostles to whom Jesus gave a promise that the Spirit would lead into all truth.
It was adopted by the entire church, by teachers Paul told us were gifts to the church by the Spirit.
Except that’s just all made up.
If you want to play that game, why should you expect anyone to take you seriously? After all, you’re just all made up.
It’s not a game.
Apostles never said anyone was going to be there successors. Apostles never lined out anyone for the next few hundred years.
It was just a group of dudes like any other that decided what was ok with their boys club. That’s it. There were not divinely led, and they could not preform magic and neither can anyone today. Popes are just dudes exactly like pastors. They are not super-Christians. It also ignores everything we seen with Judaism. Pharisees and Sadducees were different sects with different beliefs. Jesus never said one was right over the other.
There is zero proof any of those guys were apostolic successors or that they had a specific access pass to the will or God.
All of that is just purely fiction. It’s not rooted in the Bible, history or anything other than a long line of mostly dudes saying these other older dudes before me said those dudes older than them blah blah.
The signs of the apostles were laying on of hands, healing the sick, raising the dead and so on. None of those people in 300ad could do that anymore than anyone here today can do it. No one has magical words or hands to do those things. Not even in Florida. Or at your church or mine. Not a single person claiming it can go to st Jude’s and a dozen kids dying on the spot.
From the horse’s pen:
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