Yes, but that certainly does not equate to any stripe of universalism, narrow or broad, nor is it ‘transactional politics’!
Be careful, you are close to sounding like a providentialist like myself. 
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I always rest on the fact that you cannot even define or understand the concept of predestination unless you also define the concept of free will (i.e. good works). Somehow they are mutually dependent upon one another. It’s like how a child can’t learn the meaning of the world blue unless he also learns the meaning of words like green and red. The fact that the later three combine to make white light poses a mystery that we cannot full comprehend, but one in which we can still walk.
But mercy and justice are reconciled in Christ, and salvation is always personal. (After all, demons believe all kinds of profound theology.)
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Well - I don’t care about the label of ‘universalism’ or whether I happen to fit within it or not. My concern here has mainly been to think rightly about God [and necessarily then also about my fellow sojourners on this planet.] If it is what others call “universalism”, so be it. If not, that’s fine too. As long as I also continue to pray that my theorizing can be elevated to the yet higher concern of obedience, which alone places all such theory under the proper discerning light.
[I did add a qualifying label about ‘salvation’ underneath my last post above.]
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I don’t know when I became a Christian (that makes my salvation suspect to some, I suppose). I grew up (if I grew up anywhere 
) in a Christian home with maybe a strong dose of revivalist theology, and I remember at least three different churches, two baptistic and one conservative Presbyterian that my parents took us to over a number of years. They were both Wheaton grads and my grandparents on both sides were Baptists.
I recognized my sinfulness fairly early and raised my hand more than once at different alter calls. (At which one was I ‘saved’? Maybe it was a three-off event. ) It wasn’t until my parents sent me to a Christian school for just my senior year in high school where it pretty much all came together and I learned the robustness of a Christian worldview. I fondly remember the most influential man in my life, a PhD in ancient Semitic languages (he could translate cuneiform!), teaching for what must have been peanuts. I had him for Bible doctrine and music appreciation and one other course, I think, and would have to call him my mentor. He was also influential in my meeting my future wife, whom I chased around the country for several years, unplanned by me! Anyway, I would call my faith more of a wedge experience than a sledgehammer or a choice.
So, yeah, ‘growing into our salvation’ is a good characterization, not that I didn’t understand, recognize and own my redemption and its true freedom pretty early on.
The family is still a God-ordained metaphor, so I am saved now but I am also being saved – I have been eternally adopted now, but I am still learning obedience. When I cross the little river of death, I will no longer have to be concerned with my sinful nature but will continue to enjoy my Father and siblings and elder Brother and best Friend.
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I appreciate this discussion about Lewis and Macdonald, whose works I like so much that I confess I am tempted sometimes to adopt as my 2nd and 3rd New Testament! So, in “The Last Battle,” (aka “Seventh Lewis”), I am driven by my detail oriented, Golden Retriever/ Beaver personality type, to quote from page 182 after Peter closed the door on frozen, dead Narnia,
“They walked away from the Door and away from the Dwarfs who still sat crowded together in their imaginary stable.”
Knowing that you have sharpened me as iron sharpens iron, I appreciate this discussion about the number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin in Lewisian eschatology.
Emeth, as I recall, means “truth,” and was my first exposure to inclusion theology as a teen; I felt it was vaguely different from the preaching I had heard, but much truer to what I imagined God would be like, if He were like my own parents, who never failed to give me the benefit of the doubt, so that at the end, I truly wanted to please God and them.
I agree that this is the characteristic of a God who wishes to bring all to repentance.
With regard to Paul’s emphasis on faith, it seems Enns thinks that Romans is not about salvation specifically, but about circumcision and eating–against Judaizers, as it were
Thanks
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Is that swishing the sound of your six-shooter flying back into its holster? Now that you have spoken we just need to close up this thread as all settled!
Well, by jove, there indeed it is (on p. 158 in my particular tattered collection - Collier Books publ.)
And thanks for that link to the Enns article too! I remember reading that a long time ago, but it’s worth following up on it again with its linked resources as well. Glad you’re back home again! Tomorrow it’ll be my turn to be on the road for a bit (only unlike you, I won’t be able to dip in here while on the road.) Not that I’m concerned, with the sheriff back in town.
Augustine screwing up things indeed! So there really was a fall … somewhere around 400 AD or so. We could call it “the fall from Paul after which we didn’t understand Romans at all!”
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Did we understand Jesus?
Good point. However, actually, per Rauser and, I think, NT Wright, (I’ll look for the reference in the morning), this was, I think, about the kingdom of heaven on earth, not a question of who would get into heaven…as they point out much of Jesus’ talks and parables were.
Thanks for the discussion!
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This seems apropos, especially the scripture verse, but the prose selection as well (the poetic ain’t all bad, either ):
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Hope you have a good and safe journey. Thank you for the discussion, and I hope I was not too annoying! I enjoy both subjects (Lewis and Enns).
This all seems vastly overstated to me. I never read Augustine’s version or anybody else’s understanding but only what Paul says himself in Romans in a Bible where the word is “because” not “in him.”
This is hardly a change from a theology with a fall of man to one without. At most it simply changes our understanding of original sin.
I wasn’t seriously suggesting anything there - sorry about that, Mitchell. Sometimes we need a sarcasm font, and other times a “tongue-in-cheek” font. That latter applied in my case, with that mostly throw-away line. Though I am taking seriously the scholarship that says Augustine’s misadventure with that verse may have led to some unfortunate theologies that followed.
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@Randy yes you make sense, no matter what name God., God is unconditional love with open arms and we can have a relationship with God
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