Addendum: Catholic Universalism in the Eighteen and Nineteenth Centuries
While belief in a final restitution slowly increased among Protestants, it remained very marginal within Catholicism until the twentieth century, when a form of “hopeful universalism” became acceptable. What we do find before this shift is individual Catholics who express hope for a wider mercy. However, such views gained nothing of the traction they began to gain in sections of Protestantism.
In the eighteenth century, for instance, Andrew Michael Ramsey (1686–1743), known as the Chevalier Ramsey, espoused universal salvation. Ramsey was a Scottish convert to Catholicism who lived the majority of his life in France and was a learned and celebrated author. He had studied under François Fénelon (Catholic archbishop and theologian) for six months and was linked to the influential Catholic mystic Madame Jeanne Guyon (1648–1717), herself sympathetic to the idea of universal salvation.267 He also became interested in the Philadelphians during a visit to London around 1708.268
Despite his mystical bent, Ramsey also had very logical and mathematical inclinations and sought to present a rationally acceptable case for the faith. In The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (1748/49),269 he makes a case for (among other things) the larger hope.270 His proposition LVIII states that “God’s ultimate design in creating finite intelligences could only be to make them eternally happy in the knowledge and love of his boundless perfections (a); almighty power, wisdom and love cannot be eternally frustrated in his absolute and ultimate designs (b): therefore, God will at last pardon and re-establish in happiness all lapsed beings” (1.430).271 He proceeds to defend this proposition at some length. Again:
As God however, cannot be eternally frustrated in his designs; as finite impotence, folly, and malice cannot for ever surmount infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; as the sacrifice of the Lamb slain cannot be for ever void and of no effect; reprobate souls and angels cannot be ever inconvertible, nor God unappeaseable, nor moral and physical evil undestructible. All stains, blots, and imperfections in the work of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness must be for ever washed out; otherwise God would not have an absolute empire over the heart; he would not act according to the laws of eternal wisdom; he would not love essential wisdom, goodness, and justice. Wherefore infernal punishments must at last cease, and all lapsed beings be at length pardoned and re-established in a permanent state of happiness and glory, never to fall again. This is the end and consummation of all things, and the design of all God’s promises and punishments. If he does not accomplish this end sooner by converting all lapsed beings, it is not because he will not; but because he cannot do it in a permanent and efficacious manner without doing violence to their liberty, destroying their free natures, and thereby frustrating for ever the eternal designs of his wisdom, which were to make intellectual beings happy by love and by free love, their supreme felicity. (1.491–92)
The reference above to God’s soliciting a free response raises a standard objection. What if we choose to resist God forever? But, argues Ramey, God can win us over without violating our freedom. How? Because we are created to desire happiness and that happiness is only found in rightly relating with God, who made us for himself. To resist God leads to our unhappiness and no creature can continue to choose against its own deepest created nature and desires. Indeed, hell is the natural consequence of our choosing to defy God, who is in reality our own deepest inclination. However, finite creatures cannot resist the infinite God and their own created desires, buried as they may be under sin, forever (1.430–31). Even those in hell will be released as soon as they turn back to the divine source (1.435).
God will be all in all so God’s providential plan “cannot be bounded and partial, it must be extensive and universal; it must embrace all beings, all times, and all places” (2.325). Ramsey explicitly endorses Origen’s theology, though he seeks to purge the Origenian heritage by arguing that Origen never endorsed the preexistence of souls decried by the fifth ecumenical council. On this matter, Ramsey was arguably a more nuanced interpreter of Origen than some of the Cambridge Platonists (of whose work he was aware).
As McClymond observes, Ramsey’s case for universalism is a priori, arguing from first principles to theological conclusions, and it bypasses a discussion of Scripture and de-emphasizes Christology.272 This does not invalidate his arguments for universal salvation, which may still be effective and have a continuing place in a universalist apologetic, but it would make them inadequate for a Christian theology of universal salvation.
In the nineteenth-century Catholic Church, the possibility of universal salvation was discussed more by philosophers and poets than by theologians.273 However, there were some exceptions. For example, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Doctor of the Catholic Church, seems to have flirted with a hope for universal salvation. In a Christmas comedy for her fellow nuns, Les anges à la crèche de Jésus (The Angels at Jesus’ Crib, 1894), she imagines a debate between the infant Jesus and the angel of the final judgment. The latter obviously insists on the necessity of the punishment of sinners (“Oublies–tu donc, Jésus, beauté suprême! / Que le pécheur doit être enfin puni?”), but Jesus remarks that it is not the angel who will judge everybody, but Jesus himself, whose blood purifies sinners (“Celui qui jugera le monde / C’est moi, que l’on nomme Jésus. / De mon sang la rosée féconde / Purifiera tous mes élus”). Jesus adds that he loves all souls very deeply and that in the end every soul will be forgiven (“j’aime les âmes / Je les aime d’un grand amour . . . toute âme obtiendra son pardon”).
Given the minimal amount of work on universalism among Catholics before the twentieth century, and the fact that scholarship has yet to devote much attention to what little interest there was, our focus for the rest of this book will be on Protestantism.
250. Another Congregationalist minister with a unitarian bent, Jonathan Mayhew (1720–66)—the man who coined the revolutionary slogan “no taxation without representation”—had also come out against eternal torment and in favor of universalism, but an early death limited his impact on this score.
251. “It was this [1 Cor 15:21–28] indeed that first opened to me the present scheme, serving as a key to unlock the meaning of many passages in the sacred writings” (Salvation of All Men, 197, cf. Chauncy’s preface).
252. It is possible that he published the book when he did for fear that Murray would tarnish the reputation of universalism if a more “credible” version was not available.
253. It is perhaps no surprise that his work solicited a book-length response from Jonathan Edwards the Younger (1745–1801) entitled The Salvation of All Men Strictly Examined (New Haven: 1790).
254. The following in-text citations in this section on Chauncy are from The Salvation of All Men, unless otherwise stated.
255. It seems to me that the influence of John Locke, whose biblical interpretations Relly cites on various occasions, may be felt here: “the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness” (Essay concerning Human Understanding. 1689. Book 2, ch. 21). This sentiment found its way, via Thomas Jefferson, into the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 and was very much “in the air.” But we should not overlook the more distant Aristotelian and Thomist roots to the notion.
256. Chauncy argues that the “all creation” in the passage primarily intends all rational creatures. But even if the reference is broader, embracing nonrational and inanimate created things, he maintains that it still includes rational creatures as well.
257. Lum, Damned Nation, 29.
258. Arian Christology was experiencing something of a resurgence in mainstream churches in both Britain and America in this period.
259. One suspects that there was a certain social and intellectual snobbery to this, with Chauncy being a part of the estab
lishment (his father was a prosperous merchant, his grandfather a London minister, his great grandfather was the second president of Harvard; and his mother was the daughter of a supreme court judge in Massachusetts) and well-educated, while most of the universalists were on the social margins and uneducated.
260. Marini, Radical Sects, 68.
261. Marini, Radical Sects, 74. Rich’s account is found in Rich, “Narrative of Elder Caleb Rich.”
262. While the Brethren (German Baptists) remained as a distinct group (and still exist), many of them moved to join Universalist Societies.
263. Murray in particular could sometimes get tetchy about those who differed from him theologically. For instance, he regarded Rich’s theology as “impious” and “blasphemous,” and his preaching careless. Murray’s initially warm response to Winchester too cooled somewhat when Winchester remained stuck in his non-Rellyan ways.
264. Following Russell Miller, we might see 1785 as the first official appearance of universalists as a “sect” and 1794 as the start of universalism as a denomination. Miller, Larger Hope, ch. 4. See too Bressler, Universalist Movement in America.
265. Rush, an eminent member of Philadelphia society, had moved from Calvinism to universalism under the influence of Winchester (who was a friend), Stonehouse, Siegvolck, and Chauncy.
266. However, the Articles do not explicitly rule out unitarian interpretations of their content. This may have been a deliberate fudge, given some of the friendly relations between the universalists and various unitarian thinkers, such as J. B. Priestly.
267. As evidenced throughout her commentary on Revelation. See her discussions on texts in Revelation about judgment, hell, and the ever-open gates in the new Jerusalem, in Guyon, Jeanne Guyon’s Apocalyptic Universe. Guyon believes that divine punishment/destruction/annihilation is restorative and not God’s final word. Of those in the lake of fire (Rev 21:8) she writes: “Jesus Christ places the cowardly and the faithless in the ranks of the worst criminals that are excluded from his grace, at least as long as their crimes remain. The worst sinner can convert and become the greatest saint. But those with these vices are not in God’s interior kingdom without leaving the vice” (161, italics mine). One can thus exit from the lake. She sees those once excluded as as entering into the new Jerusalem, having been transformed by Christ: “The pearls which are the twelve gates show the purity of the interior voice that gives entry to all and receives the different persons. The exterior of the church has uniformity of faith and sentiments in one wall. Through the gates will come Jews, Turks, barbarians, infidels, heretics, schismatic, bad Christians, false Catholics, impious, and atheists. All will come from different countries and laws and religions without the doors changing for their reception. They will be received not only in the wall, which is the exterior of the church, and therefore the same devotees of today. But they enter into the same city, that is to say, they participate in his Spirit, they become all interiors. All will be led by the Holy Spirit and all will be placed in the truth” (167). Her vision of God’s ultimate triumph requires the salvation and deification of all people: “All must be reduced to unity, so that Jesus Christ reigns throughout the universe and that he consummates the divine marriage with human nature. Then there will only be the will of God” (139).
268. McClymond, Devil’s Redemption, 423.
269. The book sets out to argue that natural reason leads us to embrace a version of classical theism and that this is fully consistent with revealed Christian religion, which is also most reasonable.
270. His works were read and appreciated by Protestant universalists, despite their anti-Catholic sentiments.
271. The following in-text citations in this section on Ramsey are from Philosophical Principles, unless otherwise stated.
272. McClymond, Devil’s Redemption, 422–27. Though McClymond overstates his case when he says that the “universal return to God, as Ramsey envisages it, will take place by human initiative and is not dependent on a divine-human mediator or savior figure” (424); again, Christ “seemingly played no role in his understanding of human salvation” (426). The passage quoted above uses the following argument for universalism: “the sacrifice of the Lamb slain cannot be for ever void and of no effect.” So the accusation of Ramsey’s bypassing the savior is at least something of an exaggeration. That said, he does develop his case for universalism in a way that merely glances in the direction of Jesus. This contrasts with Jeanne Guyon, one of his inspirations, whose vision of universal salvation was deeply biblical and Christ-centered.
273. See Müller, “Die Idee,” 12–14 (on France); 15–16 (on Italy).
Part III
The Nineteenth Century
Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Universal Salvation
9
The Enlightenment, Hosea Ballou, and Denominational Universalism in America
The universalist movement of the eighteenth century was, for the most part, trinitarian in its view of God. There were deviations from this—John Murray was a modalist (though he may not have been aware, and probably wouldn’t have cared that his views deviated from Christian orthodoxy),274 George Stonehouse seems (idiosyncratically) to have been binitarian, and Charles Chauncy was a unitarian, with an Arian Christology (as were more than a few Congregationalists). But, while their works were read, Chauncy and Stonehouse were never part of the movement in America and their views on the Trinity were unusual for universalists. More representative was Elhanan Winchester, whose doctrine of God and of Jesus was that of mainstream Christian orthodoxy. Yet, by the end of the first decade of the nineteenth century, the new Universalist denomination was almost entirely unitarian in its theology.275 How did this happen?
It is not easy to trace the shift in any detail, but the most important factors seem to have been the New England (and New York) context within which the movement grew and the influence of Hosea Ballou.276 Regarding the former, unitarian theology was already gaining traction within the established churches in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, and at Harvard, the oldest college in the area. The idea was out there and had some respectability. Regarding the latter, Ballou was a very popular preacher in the movement and in 1795 he preached his first unitarian sermon, making a break from the trinitarianism of his youth. He now considered the doctrine of the Trinity to be contrary to both reason and Scripture and had no qualms about ridiculing it and developing a unitarian alternative. Ballou’s influence in the denomination—especially after the publication of his most important work, A Treatise on Atonement, in 1805—was huge, and very quickly other preachers and churches fell into line with this new theology. Some, like John and Judith Murray, fiercely kicked against this change of theological direction, but to no avail.277
Interestingly, a similar shift took place back in England.278 In 1794, Elhanan Winchester had left his church in London in the pastoral care of William Vidler (1758–1816), a Calvinistic Baptist minister from Sussex, who had converted to universalism through reading Winchester’s work. Vidler, like Winchester, had been trinitarian. However, he was converted to a unitarian view of God by Richard Wright279 some time between 1798 and 1802, and he enthusiastically led the Parliament Court congregation down that road. The move was very divisive and split the congregation, resulting in the trinitarians leaving. Vidler brought the church into the General (i.e., Arminian) Baptist network in 1802. That entire branch of Baptists was shifting in universalist and unitarian directions, and by 1815 its General Assembly reported on “the success of Unitarianism which, with the exception of Baptism, may surely be called the cause of the General Baptists.”280 This strand of the British Baptist tradition gradually faded and died away.281
Thus it was that universalism, which in Christian circles had almost always been trinitarian before this point, became associated in the minds of many with unitarian theology.
The ground for the theological shift was prepared by the movement’s focus on individual Spirit-filled believers interpreting Scripture for themselves and its ultra-reformational hostility to the authority of church tradition. This did not automatically lead to unitarian theology, but it opened people up to unconventional interpretations of the Bible and an indifference toward—even a mischievous delight in—denying orthodox doctrine in the pursuit of a “pure” Christianity.
Parallel with this anti-traditional mode of Christianity was the anti-traditionalism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which extoled the authority of reason as the route to truth. The Enlightenment’s focus on reason had impacted earlier universalists,282 as it had Evangelicals more generally, but with Hosea Ballou there came a notable shift in emphasis from a focus on Scripture and spiritual experiences to one on Scripture and reason. Ballou held fast to the inspiration and authority of the Bible to his dying day, but he also placed a great stress on rational argument. The Bible must be interpreted, he said, in the light of reason. And to him the doctrine of the Trinity was patently irrational.
This focus on the importance of reason had a major impact on denominational universalism and was to shape its direction from the very start, and not merely in relation to the Trinity. More than anyone else, it was Ballou who directed the movement in this way.
Given the huge importance of Hosea Ballou, we shall use his story and theology as a convenient window through which to view changes within the wider Universalist denomination.
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