A Larger Hope 2

by Robin A Parry

  Stonehouse, while one of the more scholarly proponents of universal restoration, was not its most influential teacher. He was not really socially connected with fellow Restorationists and he exerted most of his influence through his weighty publications. Nevertheless, his works were read and admired by others with similar sentiments on both sides of the Atlantic. Among his admirers was a young Baptist preacher named Elhanan Winchester, and it is to Winchester that we now turn. It is time to move the story back across the ocean to America.

  Elhanan Winchester: An American Universalist in the Pietist Tradition

  The story

  Pietistic universalism, in both its German and British forms, proved to have a significant impact in America through, among other things, the conversion of Elhanan Winchester.

  Elhanan Winchester Jr. was born in 1751 just outside Boston. Raised as a Congregationalist, at the age of nineteen (1769) he experienced “conviction and conversion” in a New Lights revival and made “a public profession of religion.” His conversion followed the common Evangelical pattern of protracted anxiety over his sin followed by a revelation of divine grace:

  I had such a view of CHRIST, as to make me cry out, “Glory to God in the highest! This is salvation; I know this is salvation. . . . I saw the fullness, sufficiency, and willingness of Christ to save me and all men, in such a manner as constrained me to venture my soul into his arms; and if I had ten thousand souls, I could have trusted them all into his hands. And O how did I long, that every soul of Adam’s race might come to know the love of God in Christ Jesus! And I thought I could not be willing to live any longer on earth, unless it might please God to make me useful to my fellow creatures. (UR III.A2)202

  Note the universalist instincts inherent in his initial conversion experience (cf. de Benneville). He soon came to suppress these so as to conform to the Calvinist theology he had been raised with.

  Winchester soon moved to join the Baptists and served as a revivalist preacher and minister at Reheboth (1771) and Bellingham in Massachusetts (1772–74), and Welsh Neck, South Carolina (1774/75–79). These churches served as bases from which he launched out on several itinerant preaching tours. He was also successful in evangelism back at his own church in Welsh Neck. In 1779, he was the key player in a local revival amongst both whites and local slaves (being a longtime vocal opponent of slavery). He led about a hundred slaves and 139 whites to Christ and baptized them, though this was not welcomed by all: “Many of the white people were exceedingly averse to the slaves being Christianized; many would not suffer those belonging to them to come and hear me, though the poor creatures begged it upon their knees. . . . My life was sometimes threatened, but, by the grace of God, I feared not the menaces of men, nor the rage of devils.”203 It was, he wrote, “a summer of great success, and I shall remember that happy season with pleasure while I live.”204

  In September 1779, Winchester left on another extended preaching trip up north, intending to return, but it was not to be. On his return from New England to South Carolina in October 1780, he stopped off in Philadelphia. There, the Baptist church, destitute of a pastor, sought to secure his services. In the end he was persuaded and never made it back to Welsh Neck.

  It was not long after taking on the pastorate in Philadelphia that Winchester embraced belief in universal restoration. His journey from hyper-Calvinism to universalism took place over a two-year period and involved several elements. Central to it was Paul Siegvolk’s The Everlasting Gospel. Winchester’s first brief encounter with universalism was at the beginning of 1778 in Welsh Neck. He called to see a friend, who put a copy of Siegvolk’s book into his hands. Winchester’s friend did not know what to make of the book, so he asked Elhanan to explain it. Winchester dipped into it here and there for perhaps thirty minutes and quickly got a feel for what it was arguing. “I had never seen any thing of the sort before in my life; and I seemed struck with several ideas. . . . But, as I was only desired to tell what the author meant, when I had satisfied my friend in that respect, I laid the book down, and I believe we both concluded it to be a pleasant, ingenious hypothesis; but had no serious thoughts of its being true; and for my part, I determined not to trouble myself about it, or to think any more on the matter.”205

  Sometime later he was visited by an acquaintance from Virginia, and among his books Winchester found a copy of The Everlasting Gospel. He read a little more of it this time, but “as yet had not the least thought that ever I should embrace his sentiments; yet some of his arguments appeared very conclusive, and I could not wholly shake them off, but I concluded to let them alone, and not investigate the matter; and therefore I never gave the book even so much as one cursory reading.”206

  During his twelve-month preaching tour between South Carolina and Pennsylvania (1779–80), he would stay with friends, often fellow-ministers, and would sometimes engage them in discussions of Siegvolk’s arguments. Winchester would play devil’s advocate and defend the universal restoration to see what kind of responses and rebuttals they would propose. To his surprise, even the most able ministers were at a loss, not knowing what to say. And the defences of endless punishment that were offered served not to sooth Winchester’s doubts about the traditional theology of hell, as he had hoped, but to increase them. Nevertheless, he continued to resist the doctrine with all his might and, he said, “sometimes preached publically against it with all the force I could muster.”207 Yet it had gotten under his skin. He describes himself as “half a convert” by the time he arrived in Philadelphia in 1780.208

  Winchester’s public ministry in Philadelphia was very successful, but his growing convictions with regard to universalism were about to create a crisis. A private discussion on the issue was leaked to a minister friend, who promptly cut off all links with him. Seeing the brewing storm, he determined to work out once and for all what he thought about the question. The deciding issue was this: was it biblical? He shut himself up in his room, read the Scriptures, and prayed for enlightenment, seeking to be open, as best he was able, to whatever he felt God revealing to him. The outcome of this was that “I became so well persuaded of the truth of the Universal Restoration, that I was determined never to deny it, let it cost me ever so much, though all my numerous friends should forsake me, as I expected they would, and though I should be driven from men.”209

  A second book that significantly shaped Winchester in his early explorations was George Stonehouse’s Universal Restitution. A more personal influence was George de Benneville, who lived locally and whose acquaintance Winchester made soon after his conversion to universal restorationism, and the community of the Brethren eight miles away in Germantown. These people deeply impressed Elhanan with their piety. So Winchester was a home-grown American convert to the Pietist version of universalism, both in its German and its British versions. He in turn would promulgate and popularize this theology in the newly founded United States of America, and later in Britain.

  The upshot of his full conversion to what was seen by many as a heterodox view was that the Baptist church split, with Winchester and his followers being forced out. They formed their own congregation, the Society of Universal Baptists, meeting in the University Hall in Philadelphia. Winchester led the church from 1780 to 1787. During this period, he and de Benneville went on several preaching tours together. However, in July 1787, Winchester announced to his congregation that he felt called by God to go and preach in England. Within forty-eight hours of the announcement, Elhanan had sailed!

  In London, he preached in various nonconformist congregations while his “friends” grew in number. Eventually his supporters took the Chapel in Parliament Court to provide Winchester with his own preaching base. By all accounts, he would regularly receive four hundred to five hundred congregants. As in America, he went on preaching tours. In February 1790, he wrote of the many doors that were opening up for preaching the message—especially among Baptists and Presbyterians—across England. The
subscribers that supported the publication of some of his books bear testimony to his widespread appeal beyond the bounds of the city. This was also where Winchester’s publishing ministry took off, with numerous theological works coming to press. In 1788, the year after his arrival in London, he published his most celebrated book, The Universal Restoration.

  One of the most striking aspects of Winchester’s ministry was his unwavering insistence on considering all his “opponents” as siblings in Christ to be treated with humility, gentleness, and respect. By temperament Winchester hated controversy, and by religious conviction he believed that it was wrong to seek to win arguments while in the process failing to love those with whom one was in disagreement. “I have no great opinion of controversial writings in general; the combatants more commonly seek after victory than truth. . . . Writing on controversy is sometimes attended with many bad consequences, such as alienating the affections of Christians from one another.”210 He added, “For my own part, I by no means wish to contend with any man—and as far as I know my own heart, never yet did; and I hope I never shall write from any principle but love, and a desire to do good to mankind, within the very small circle of my acquaintance.”211

  He left London in May 1794 to sail back to America. No sooner had he landed than he began preaching again in various locations all over New England and surrounding areas. Writing to a friend in London, he wrote, “I have the greatest door open that I ever saw, insomuch that I am surprised at the alteration since I was here last. I have preached in a great many meeting-houses of different denominations, and to a great number of people, as often as eight or nine times a week, and with greater acceptance than I ever did.”212

  Winchester’s health had never been good, and the more he exerted himself the worse it got, until in February 1796 he suffered a severe haemorrhage of the lungs. The doctor managed to stop the bleeding, and a few days later Winchester started preaching again! He preached regularly for several months until he was confined by disease to his deathbed, dying on April 18, 1797.

  Theology

  Winchester, like the Piestists who influenced him, was a premillennialist, fascinated with unfulfilled prophetic promises, a subject he preached and wrote on at great length.213

  The heart of Winchester’s universalist biblical hermeneutic is an attempt to find a way of holding firmly to all the diverse teachings of the Bible—not “in any wise to explain away or weaken, the force of either the threatenings or promises, set forth in this wondrous book” (UR.IV.A14). The Bible speaks both of some in hell and of universal restoration so, reasons Winchester, both those teachings must be true. Therefore any understanding of hell that excludes the promise of universal salvation cannot be accepted.

  Central to Winchester’s case was what he took to be positive promises of universal salvation. For instance, Ephesians 1:9–10 pictures the goal of creation as the gathering together of “all things” in Christ; Colossians 1:19–20 speaks of Christ reconciling all created things to God through the cross;214 Revelation pictures “every creature in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” worshipping the Father and the Son (Rev 5:13); Romans 5:18–20 claims that all those who died in Adam (i.e., every human being) will be made alive in Christ and that grace will undo all the damage that sin has done.

  One slightly less conventional argument of Winchester’s, which he deployed in several publications, is based on his reading of John’s Gospel. It can be set out as follows:

  1. Major premise: the Father has given all into the hands of the Son (John 13:3, cf. Matt 11:27; Luke 10:22).

  2. Minor premise: all that the Father has given to the Son will come to him and will not be cast out (John 6:37), but will be raised up at the last day (John 6:39–40).

  3. Therefore, all will come to the Son, will not be cast out, and will be raised up at the last day.

  One aspect of this argument that is open to dispute is the interpretation of the texts in the minor premise in the light of the text in the major one. The texts in the minor premise had often, as Winchester was well aware, been used as an argument for a Calvinist theology. It is the major premise that allows one to suppose that those given by the Father to the Son are not a limited group, as Calvinists claimed, but all people (UR.IV.A2). Winchester saw his argument brought together in John 17:2–3: “For thou [the Father] hast given him [the Son] power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to all that thou hast given him.” He further reinforces his case by appeal to John 6: “If all shall be taught of God [John 6:45]; and all that are taught shall come to Christ [John 6:45]; and none that come to him shall be cast out or rejected [John 6:37]; if all these premises are true . . . how very naturally the conclusion follows, viz. that all shall be finally brought home to God” (UR.IV.A2). As further support, he brings in John 12:32: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth [on the cross], will draw all unto me.” Christ will see the travail of his soul and be satisfied (Isa 53:11).

  Winchester saw the positive case for universal restoration as founded on several theological principals (UR.III.A1). First, God is the universal and only creator of all—that all creatures are made by him and for him. Second, the universal love of God—he loves all that he has created (Wis 11:24). Third, Christ died for all (Heb 2:9; 1 John 2:1–2; 1 Tim 2:5–6; 2 Cor 5:14–15). Fourth, that God is unchangeable and so his love for his creatures cannot waver, no matter how heinous their sins may be and no matter how much he may hate that sin. Fifth, that God’s purposes are unchanging and that those purposes are to gather all things together in Christ (Eph 1:8–11).

  But what about the biblical teachings on hell? It is no surprise that in several publications Winchester engages in extended discussions of the Hebrew and Greek words translated as “eternal”/“everlasting” as applied to the eschatological punishment of the wicked. Winchester, like universalists before him, argued that the Hebrew and Greek words normally only indicate “an age”—a complete, albeit often long, period of time—and not eternal duration.

  However, the traditional theology of hell was not simply founded on the use of the word “eternal,” but also upon certain descriptions of judgment. For instance, gehenna is described as a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched (Mark 9:43–49). Winchester drew attention to various fires in the Bible that are described in just as strong terms as the fire of gehenna but which went out long ago. For instance, Jeremiah 17:27 speaks of an unquenchable fire in the gates of Jerusalem (cf. Ezek 20:42–48); and Isaiah 34 speaks of Edom being consumed by an unquenchable fire that burns unceasingly, day and night, with smoke that rises forever. To take the texts literally would require us to say that the prophets were wrong, but this is to misunderstand the language. It indicates a fire that will not be quenched until it has completed its task rather than a fire that will not ever be quenched. We should, he believed, understand Jesus’ words similarly.

  Winchester’s discussion of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus in Luke 16—a classic text used to support traditional views of hell—is interesting. Here a great gulf separates Hades from paradise and no one can cross it. But Winchester deployed a theological trump card: Christ can pass the impassible chasm. “With man is it impossible; but with God all things are possible. And I believe, that Jesus Christ was not only able to pass, but that he actually did pass that gulph, which was impassable to all men, but not to him” (UR.II.A5). He went on to employ the theological motif of Christ’s “descent into hell” to support this claim (discussing at length the biblical foundations of the motif along the way, e.g., 1 Pet 3:18–20; 4:5–6).

  For to this end Christ both died, rose, and revived, that he might be Lord, both of the dead and living.” Rom xiv.9. . . . It seemed necessary, that our Saviour should visit men in all situations, that he might redeem them. . . . It was not only necessary that he should die, to vanquish death, and to redeem us from its power; but it was equally needful for him to go into those places, where s
pirits were confined in the regions of darkness, that he might gain universal dominion, spoil principalities, and redeem the captives whom he had bought with his blood (UR.II.A5).

  So the gulf in Luke 16 can be crossed through union with Christ. It might indeed be “impossible” for the rich—like the man in Luke 16—to enter the kingdom; but with God nothing is impossible (Mark 10:27).

  Winchester developed his theology of hell in light of the wider scriptural pattern of punishment followed by restoration—a motif that recurs across the Bible. He noted that “God frequently threatens the greatest judgements, and promises the greatest mercies, to the same people and persons” (UR.IV.A3). Indeed over and over again we see those who are living under divine wrath, in what seems a hopeless state, being redeemed. “I could justify this observation by hundreds of passages wherein God threatens his people with judgements the most severe, and declares—that his eyes shall not pity, nor his arm save; that he will visit their transgressions upon them, will utterly cast them off, and will not have compassion on them at all; and then such promises of mercy break out as are sufficient to astonish every one with their greatness” (UR.IV.A3). Even the judgment that serves as a paradigm of hell itself—Sodom, which was destroyed with eternal fire (Jude 7)—was to be restored (Ezek 16:44, 53–63). Punishment is indeed “a just retribution,” but it is also intended as a corrective for the good of the one punished (UR.IV.A16).

  For Winchester the theo-logic of the issue forces a choice between Calvinism, Arminianism, and Universal Restoration. “Either God created some to be miserable to endless ages [Calvinism], or must be frustrated eternally in his designs [Arminianism], or all must be restored at last [Universalism].” (UR.II.A3). One of the appeals of universalism to Winchester was that it offered a way to affirm and hold together key aspects of both the Calvinist and the Arminian systems—“to embrace them [both] in one grand system of benevolence.” He articulates this most clearly in his sermon, The Outcasts Comforted. We can summarize his theological points in the table below.