If you haven’t seen it, Steve Gregg’s book “All You want to Know About Hell” is probably the best resource I know of for going deep into the textual issues relating to the nature of Hell in the biblical materials. There are strong textual arguments for the traditional view and the annihilationalist view as well as the universalist view and I’d be careful of reaching firm conclusions without looking at some of the more in-depth arguments that are necessarily beyond the scope of a blog post.
An underrated benefit of universalism is that it dodges all kinds of silly ethical situations where the best thing you can do for somebody who you know to be in a state of grace, but who could conceivably defect in the future, is to kill them.
Interesting read. A lot of this relies pretty heavily on how the scriptures are interpreted; do you have a recommendation for the best version of the Bible in terms of maintaining the original meaning from the source materials? I know this is probably pretty hard just because there isn't a single definitive original of the Bible like there is for the Quran, but just the best we can get would be good for me
From what I've read, the YLT based the New Testament on only the Textus Receptus so it's not the most reliable. I used to like it back in high school too for some reason.
Scholars tend to prefer the NRSV, the new NRSVUE, and for a more conservative Christian perspective on translation the ESV. These are all based on the RSV. Most translations are considered fine but these are considered the best by scholars.
I've never heard of Protestants and Catholics disliking different translations, but yes the ESV was made by Reformed evangelical scholars as far as I'm aware. I think it's likely a marketing difference if anything as I don't think there are too many controversial translation differences that I know of.
This is excellent as usual. I'd just make one comment on this:
"If you found out that your child was an going to reject God, that would be worse news than them being a genuinely Christian serial killing child rapist. "
I think that being a serial killing child rapist *is* rejecting God. I come from a tradition (Catholic) where the accepting or rejection of God is not about what you think, but what you do. When you reject somebody's dignity in that way, you reject God. That's why I think there are many Christians who believe the correct things while rejecting God, and plenty non-Christians who accept Him by responding appropriately to his Logos.
Just a thought. What do I know? Thanks for writing this.
Here’s another consideration that would strengthen section 3.
Suppose someone were deserving of infinite punishment. Then they would deserve to experience or undergo an infinite amount of hardship for what they’ve done.
But we are the kinds of beings whose lives unfold in successive temporal moments. We are also incapable of infinitely rich psychological experiences; there’s only so much suffering (a finite amount) that any being like us could possibly experience or undergo in a single moment.
Taken together: even if someone deserved infinite punishment, God could never achieve justice by punishing them with eternal hell. This is because there would never actually be a future time at which the sinner had actually experienced or undergone infinite suffering. Any finite amount of suffering plus any finite amount of suffering is still a finite amount of suffering. Even if time went on forever, each new moment would just add more finite suffering on top of all the finite suffering that came before it.
"Some will not be redeemed. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully “All will be saved”. But my reason retorts, “Without their will, or with it?” If I say 'Without their will' I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say 'With their will', my reason replies 'How if they will not give in?'
"The Dominical utterances about Hell, like all Dominical sayings, are addressed to the conscience and the will, not to our intellectual curiosity. When they have roused us into action by convincing us of a terrible possibility, they have done, probably, all they were intended to do; and if all the world were convinced Christians it would be unnecessary to say a word more on the subject. As things are, however, this doctrine is one of the chief grounds on which Christianity is attacked as barbarous, and the goodness of God impugned. We are told that it is a detestable doctrine—and indeed, I too detest it from the bottom of my heart—and are reminded of the tragedies in human life which have come from believing it. Of the other tragedies which come from not believing it we are told less. For these reasons, and these alone, it becomes necessary to discuss the matter.
"The problem is not simply that of a God who consigns some of His creatures to final ruin. That would be the problem if we were Mahometans. Christianity, true, as always, to the complexity of the real, presents us with something knottier and more ambiguous—a God so full of mercy that He becomes man and dies by torture to avert that final ruin from His creatures, and who yet, where that heroic remedy fails, seems unwilling, or even unable, to arrest the ruin by an act of mere power. I said glibly a moment ago that I would pay 'any price' to remove this doctrine. I lied. I could not pay one-thousandth part of the price that God has already paid to remove the fact. And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is Hell.
"I am not going to try to prove the doctrine tolerable. Let us make no mistake; it is not tolerable. But I think the doctrine can be shown to be moral, by a critique of the objections ordinarily made, or felt, against it."
I'd recommending reading the chapter (or the whole book, really) to see what you think of Lewis's attempt. One of his main points is the will of the damned themselves. From Lewis's conception, each person when he dies has a certain kind of character, and there is plausibly a kind of character that will refuse to ever be saved. Satan is the archtype of this in the Christian imagination. You argue that God can make anyone see reason, but I am not so sure. Lewis writes on this, saying:
"...it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man 'wishes' to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free."
Lewis wrote a whole other book on this idea, "The Great Divorce". It is well worth reading.
Of course Lewis's spiritual father, in many respects, was George MacDonald who famously held your own view of universalism, and Lewis had great respect for MacDonald. I do not consider universalists to be outside the Church. The Nicene Creed only requires belief in the judgement of the dead, and your version of universalism preserves that judgement.
I'm not so sure. You say that God can make people see reason, but I don't know if that's true. Sometimes people see reason, but choice evil out of spite, or pride. There may be some souls it is impossible to save.
God can make people see reason and equip people to be motivated to follow the demands of reason, for failure to follow reason is, by definition, weakness of will.
What do you mean by "equip people to be motivated to follow the demands of reason"? I agree that failure to follow reason is weakness of the will, or at least weakness of character, but how do you conceptualize God correcting that?
Or, as Lewis puts it (forgive me for quoting him so much, but he's a much better thinker and writer and than I am) "In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does."
Could God not dispose us psychologically to not be weak willed, so that instead we do what we in fact ought to do? He could: he would just need to cure our defects of rationality which, being omnipotent, he could do.
I don't think our weak wills are a deficit in rationality, I think they're a deficit in character. There are lots of people that are essentially the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog: they know that what they're doing is irrational, but they prefer to do it anyway.
I guess I'm not sold on the idea that God could "dispose us psychologically to not be weak willed, so that instead we do what we in fact out to do". Why not do that right now, to everyone? Why should I have confidence He will do it in the world to come if he is manifestly not doing it in this world? Why does Jesus lean so heavily on telling us to be better people if God will just turn us into better people after we've died? Why do demons exist? In the Christian tradition, the devil was an archangel, a creature whose intelligence and abilities were far beyond our own and who had direct evidence of the existence of God, yet chose to rebel against God anyway. I suppose we can just assume that the devil must not really exist, but do we have good reason to believe so?
I'm not opposed to your idea of universalism, but I do have these doubts.
Wittgenstein’s argument against universalism was that it stripped life of its seriousness. I agree. The doctrine of hell is the reason tyrants and the wicked should fear, as well as religious Pharisees, petty suburbanites, and those who live inauthentic lives, only climbing social ladders. What we do matters, and hell is the doctrinal implication of that belief.
Universalists agree hell is real and bad, they just deny it goes on forever. One should fear suffering rather than having the infinite joy of a relationship with God.
Nice article! Though I'm not so sure this is the slam dunk you think it is, particularly if you're coming from the "I'm an atheist but think christians should believe z" angle. I think the best "defence" of infernalism will point out that probably none of the individual NT authors (and maybe not Jesus himself!) actually held the universalist view. This is granted even by universalists, like Dale Allison and Doug Campbell, who get to their universalism in more eclectic ways (that I endorse btw), like sachkritik, canonical readings, etc. Your approach doesn't strike me as "atheist looks at what the christian teaching was about x", it's more "atheist looks at what a more consistent evangelical-style exegesis (that looks at the bible as a unified quran-like text) might yield about x".
If one is not a literalist, then they should regard the bible as having only prima facie weight. If that's so, then they should defer mostly to the overwhelming philosophical case for universalism.
Yeah I forgot about that for a minute there hehe; I think my point still applies for all non christians though. And I basically agree w/ what you say here on your response. Am mainly questioning what you said about there not being an argument against Christianity since it implies ECT. I think one could make such an arg, given that the consensus view on NT authors is that most or all do not affirm universalism. And things don’t get much better when delving into historical Jesus research
I don't see how any Christian could reconcile universalism with Matthew 12:31 (although admittedly it alone doesn't support the typical infernalist either):
'And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. '
You find similar verses in the other synoptic gospels.
Another problem I'm surprised you didn't mention in the, "A sin against God is an infinite crime," section: Even if we do accept this implausible account of the severity of sin and the implausible view of desert that says that therefore it's good for people to be punished infinitely, it would follow that praising God, enacting God's will, or performing a good deed that God approves of, is infinitely good. The argument that infernalist Christians make, usually as an attempt to explain Jesus's sacrifice, is self-contradictory. They say that because we sinned against God, we committed an infinite offense, and because we're finite beings, we can never make up for it ourselves. But if finite beings can commit infinitely bad offenses, then surely they can also perform infinitely good deeds. The argument relies on two opposite assumptions, the assumption that actions committed by finite beings can be infinitely grave if they affect an infinite being, and the assumption that they can't be, period.
I seemed to have arrived late to this discussion. I disagree with much of the essay, but I appreciate your work nonetheless! I do think it would have benefited from at least a cursory glance at annihilationism.
Suppose that Christianity is true and there exists at least one true christian person who truly loves their neighbour. Such person is to go to Heaven after death, and be perfectly happy. Now lets assume that Hell exists and some people go their and experience eternal torture. That means that our true christian in heaven is happy while some of their loved ones are eternally suffering. This is a contradiction. Therefore there is no people in Hell who suffer eternally, or there has never been any true christian. I would go as far as to claim that even temporary suffering of your loved ones is not compatible with perfect happiness, therefore Hell doesn't exist at all.
Back in my Christian days, I thought to be this true christian who would love everybody and therefore make the concept of Hell incoherent, of course, I immediately realized that there has already been at least one true Christian - Jesus himself. And that's how his sacrifice that absolves other people from sin works.
I don't think Luke 16 is any evidence. It's a parable for one, not meant to be taken literally (do you think all the parables are literal stories?) based on a circulating story at the time, and even if taken literally, it doesn't suggest that the genuinely repentant can't cross over or that people remain in hell forever.
Apologies, I see you do discuss this - I commented before finishing. It does however seem to presuppose infernos as opposed to the inferno just existing for the sake of the story
There are a few very small universalist denominations, but most mainline Protestant denominations will accept universalists (at least in the United States). Evangelical Protestants (in general) are less accepting of us.
Some Catholics and Orthodox communities accept universalists, some don't, and they have debates amongst themselves about whether or not it's heresy.
If you haven’t seen it, Steve Gregg’s book “All You want to Know About Hell” is probably the best resource I know of for going deep into the textual issues relating to the nature of Hell in the biblical materials. There are strong textual arguments for the traditional view and the annihilationalist view as well as the universalist view and I’d be careful of reaching firm conclusions without looking at some of the more in-depth arguments that are necessarily beyond the scope of a blog post.
An underrated benefit of universalism is that it dodges all kinds of silly ethical situations where the best thing you can do for somebody who you know to be in a state of grace, but who could conceivably defect in the future, is to kill them.
Interesting read. A lot of this relies pretty heavily on how the scriptures are interpreted; do you have a recommendation for the best version of the Bible in terms of maintaining the original meaning from the source materials? I know this is probably pretty hard just because there isn't a single definitive original of the Bible like there is for the Quran, but just the best we can get would be good for me
Generally if you're looking up verses, Young's literal translation is pretty good.
From what I've read, the YLT based the New Testament on only the Textus Receptus so it's not the most reliable. I used to like it back in high school too for some reason.
Scholars tend to prefer the NRSV, the new NRSVUE, and for a more conservative Christian perspective on translation the ESV. These are all based on the RSV. Most translations are considered fine but these are considered the best by scholars.
Best I remember it's mostly conservative Protestants who like the ESV, I think conservative Catholics and Orthodox generally dislike it.
I've never heard of Protestants and Catholics disliking different translations, but yes the ESV was made by Reformed evangelical scholars as far as I'm aware. I think it's likely a marketing difference if anything as I don't think there are too many controversial translation differences that I know of.
I've heard conservative Catholics say negative things about it, but I can't remember what or why. It may be that they aren't representative.
Probably. There are Catholic versions of the ESV according to Wikipedia. Scroll to alternate editions/versions or something like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Standard_Version?wprov=sfla1
Dynamite essay
I don't quite know what that means, but sounds cool!
in other words, this is very nicely done haha
Oh, thank you!
This is excellent as usual. I'd just make one comment on this:
"If you found out that your child was an going to reject God, that would be worse news than them being a genuinely Christian serial killing child rapist. "
I think that being a serial killing child rapist *is* rejecting God. I come from a tradition (Catholic) where the accepting or rejection of God is not about what you think, but what you do. When you reject somebody's dignity in that way, you reject God. That's why I think there are many Christians who believe the correct things while rejecting God, and plenty non-Christians who accept Him by responding appropriately to his Logos.
Just a thought. What do I know? Thanks for writing this.
Yeah, I should have said having done serial killing in the past.
It’s the tiniest detail. I thoroughly enjoyed this paper and sent it to quite a few friends.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Here’s another consideration that would strengthen section 3.
Suppose someone were deserving of infinite punishment. Then they would deserve to experience or undergo an infinite amount of hardship for what they’ve done.
But we are the kinds of beings whose lives unfold in successive temporal moments. We are also incapable of infinitely rich psychological experiences; there’s only so much suffering (a finite amount) that any being like us could possibly experience or undergo in a single moment.
Taken together: even if someone deserved infinite punishment, God could never achieve justice by punishing them with eternal hell. This is because there would never actually be a future time at which the sinner had actually experienced or undergone infinite suffering. Any finite amount of suffering plus any finite amount of suffering is still a finite amount of suffering. Even if time went on forever, each new moment would just add more finite suffering on top of all the finite suffering that came before it.
Good point.
I heard it from Eric Reitan
C. S. Lewis wrote about Hell in his book "The Problem of Pain" (full PDF here, courtesy of Canadian copyright laws: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-problemofpain/lewiscs-problemofpain-00-h.html#chapter08)
"Some will not be redeemed. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully “All will be saved”. But my reason retorts, “Without their will, or with it?” If I say 'Without their will' I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say 'With their will', my reason replies 'How if they will not give in?'
"The Dominical utterances about Hell, like all Dominical sayings, are addressed to the conscience and the will, not to our intellectual curiosity. When they have roused us into action by convincing us of a terrible possibility, they have done, probably, all they were intended to do; and if all the world were convinced Christians it would be unnecessary to say a word more on the subject. As things are, however, this doctrine is one of the chief grounds on which Christianity is attacked as barbarous, and the goodness of God impugned. We are told that it is a detestable doctrine—and indeed, I too detest it from the bottom of my heart—and are reminded of the tragedies in human life which have come from believing it. Of the other tragedies which come from not believing it we are told less. For these reasons, and these alone, it becomes necessary to discuss the matter.
"The problem is not simply that of a God who consigns some of His creatures to final ruin. That would be the problem if we were Mahometans. Christianity, true, as always, to the complexity of the real, presents us with something knottier and more ambiguous—a God so full of mercy that He becomes man and dies by torture to avert that final ruin from His creatures, and who yet, where that heroic remedy fails, seems unwilling, or even unable, to arrest the ruin by an act of mere power. I said glibly a moment ago that I would pay 'any price' to remove this doctrine. I lied. I could not pay one-thousandth part of the price that God has already paid to remove the fact. And here is the real problem: so much mercy, yet still there is Hell.
"I am not going to try to prove the doctrine tolerable. Let us make no mistake; it is not tolerable. But I think the doctrine can be shown to be moral, by a critique of the objections ordinarily made, or felt, against it."
I'd recommending reading the chapter (or the whole book, really) to see what you think of Lewis's attempt. One of his main points is the will of the damned themselves. From Lewis's conception, each person when he dies has a certain kind of character, and there is plausibly a kind of character that will refuse to ever be saved. Satan is the archtype of this in the Christian imagination. You argue that God can make anyone see reason, but I am not so sure. Lewis writes on this, saying:
"...it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man 'wishes' to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free."
Lewis wrote a whole other book on this idea, "The Great Divorce". It is well worth reading.
Of course Lewis's spiritual father, in many respects, was George MacDonald who famously held your own view of universalism, and Lewis had great respect for MacDonald. I do not consider universalists to be outside the Church. The Nicene Creed only requires belief in the judgement of the dead, and your version of universalism preserves that judgement.
I think I rebutted Lewis's arguments in the above post!
I'm not so sure. You say that God can make people see reason, but I don't know if that's true. Sometimes people see reason, but choice evil out of spite, or pride. There may be some souls it is impossible to save.
God can make people see reason and equip people to be motivated to follow the demands of reason, for failure to follow reason is, by definition, weakness of will.
What do you mean by "equip people to be motivated to follow the demands of reason"? I agree that failure to follow reason is weakness of the will, or at least weakness of character, but how do you conceptualize God correcting that?
Or, as Lewis puts it (forgive me for quoting him so much, but he's a much better thinker and writer and than I am) "In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: 'What are you asking God to do?' To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does."
Could God not dispose us psychologically to not be weak willed, so that instead we do what we in fact ought to do? He could: he would just need to cure our defects of rationality which, being omnipotent, he could do.
I don't think our weak wills are a deficit in rationality, I think they're a deficit in character. There are lots of people that are essentially the scorpion in the story of the scorpion and the frog: they know that what they're doing is irrational, but they prefer to do it anyway.
I guess I'm not sold on the idea that God could "dispose us psychologically to not be weak willed, so that instead we do what we in fact out to do". Why not do that right now, to everyone? Why should I have confidence He will do it in the world to come if he is manifestly not doing it in this world? Why does Jesus lean so heavily on telling us to be better people if God will just turn us into better people after we've died? Why do demons exist? In the Christian tradition, the devil was an archangel, a creature whose intelligence and abilities were far beyond our own and who had direct evidence of the existence of God, yet chose to rebel against God anyway. I suppose we can just assume that the devil must not really exist, but do we have good reason to believe so?
I'm not opposed to your idea of universalism, but I do have these doubts.
Wittgenstein’s argument against universalism was that it stripped life of its seriousness. I agree. The doctrine of hell is the reason tyrants and the wicked should fear, as well as religious Pharisees, petty suburbanites, and those who live inauthentic lives, only climbing social ladders. What we do matters, and hell is the doctrinal implication of that belief.
Universalists agree hell is real and bad, they just deny it goes on forever. One should fear suffering rather than having the infinite joy of a relationship with God.
Where does Wittgenstein say that?
Conversations with Wittgenstein by Drury!
Thanks!
Nice article! Though I'm not so sure this is the slam dunk you think it is, particularly if you're coming from the "I'm an atheist but think christians should believe z" angle. I think the best "defence" of infernalism will point out that probably none of the individual NT authors (and maybe not Jesus himself!) actually held the universalist view. This is granted even by universalists, like Dale Allison and Doug Campbell, who get to their universalism in more eclectic ways (that I endorse btw), like sachkritik, canonical readings, etc. Your approach doesn't strike me as "atheist looks at what the christian teaching was about x", it's more "atheist looks at what a more consistent evangelical-style exegesis (that looks at the bible as a unified quran-like text) might yield about x".
I'm not an atheist! I'm a non-Christian theist.
If one is not a literalist, then they should regard the bible as having only prima facie weight. If that's so, then they should defer mostly to the overwhelming philosophical case for universalism.
Yeah I forgot about that for a minute there hehe; I think my point still applies for all non christians though. And I basically agree w/ what you say here on your response. Am mainly questioning what you said about there not being an argument against Christianity since it implies ECT. I think one could make such an arg, given that the consensus view on NT authors is that most or all do not affirm universalism. And things don’t get much better when delving into historical Jesus research
I don't see how any Christian could reconcile universalism with Matthew 12:31 (although admittedly it alone doesn't support the typical infernalist either):
'And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come. '
You find similar verses in the other synoptic gospels.
Another problem I'm surprised you didn't mention in the, "A sin against God is an infinite crime," section: Even if we do accept this implausible account of the severity of sin and the implausible view of desert that says that therefore it's good for people to be punished infinitely, it would follow that praising God, enacting God's will, or performing a good deed that God approves of, is infinitely good. The argument that infernalist Christians make, usually as an attempt to explain Jesus's sacrifice, is self-contradictory. They say that because we sinned against God, we committed an infinite offense, and because we're finite beings, we can never make up for it ourselves. But if finite beings can commit infinitely bad offenses, then surely they can also perform infinitely good deeds. The argument relies on two opposite assumptions, the assumption that actions committed by finite beings can be infinitely grave if they affect an infinite being, and the assumption that they can't be, period.
I seemed to have arrived late to this discussion. I disagree with much of the essay, but I appreciate your work nonetheless! I do think it would have benefited from at least a cursory glance at annihilationism.
Suppose that Christianity is true and there exists at least one true christian person who truly loves their neighbour. Such person is to go to Heaven after death, and be perfectly happy. Now lets assume that Hell exists and some people go their and experience eternal torture. That means that our true christian in heaven is happy while some of their loved ones are eternally suffering. This is a contradiction. Therefore there is no people in Hell who suffer eternally, or there has never been any true christian. I would go as far as to claim that even temporary suffering of your loved ones is not compatible with perfect happiness, therefore Hell doesn't exist at all.
Back in my Christian days, I thought to be this true christian who would love everybody and therefore make the concept of Hell incoherent, of course, I immediately realized that there has already been at least one true Christian - Jesus himself. And that's how his sacrifice that absolves other people from sin works.
“On this account, rejecting God is infinitely worse than being Hitler or Stalin or Mao.”
They sinned against God too!
Luke 16 is difficult man. But I do sympathise with universalism, truly. And struggle with the Luke 16 view
I don't think Luke 16 is any evidence. It's a parable for one, not meant to be taken literally (do you think all the parables are literal stories?) based on a circulating story at the time, and even if taken literally, it doesn't suggest that the genuinely repentant can't cross over or that people remain in hell forever.
Apologies, I see you do discuss this - I commented before finishing. It does however seem to presuppose infernos as opposed to the inferno just existing for the sake of the story
Can you elaborate?
Luke 16 seems to presuppose the inferno even though its purpose is not to support the inferno view
Which Christian denominations, if any, are universalist?
Another good source on this is the book "That All Shall Be Saved".
There are a few very small universalist denominations, but most mainline Protestant denominations will accept universalists (at least in the United States). Evangelical Protestants (in general) are less accepting of us.
Some Catholics and Orthodox communities accept universalists, some don't, and they have debates amongst themselves about whether or not it's heresy.