Importantly and controversially, according to Erskine in The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel (1828), our forgiveness does not depend on our faith in the gospel. Rather, God, in his love, has already forgiven all people through the finished work of Christ.362 This message is the gospel. So forgiveness does not depend on our believing the gospel; instead, we believe the gospel because the fact that God has already forgiven us is revealed to us. Faith is our holistic existential response to that revelation—a joyful and transformative trust in the forgiving Father. The gospel declares our forgiveness and our faith in it changes us: “it is the enlightened belief in this pardon which heals, and purifies.”363 While forgiveness is already the objective truth for all people, it is only effective to salvation in our lives when we subjectively grasp hold of the fact in faith. Thus, all people are currently forgiven, but not all people are currently saved.
Election
Election was an issue that could not be ignored in Calvinist Scotland, but Erskine’s radical reconfiguration of it in The Doctrine of Election (1837) proved highly contentious. According to Erskine, the subject of election is Christ’s sinless humanity and the subject of reprobation is Adam’s sinful humanity. So God elects a way of being human—i.e., Christ’s way of filial trust and submission to the Father. Each one of us finds our hearts pulled in two directions: toward the old reprobate humanity in Adam and toward the new elect humanity in Christ. Faced with this inner conflict we must choose Christ, not Adam; the Spirit, not the flesh. Whether we share in Christ’s election or Adam’s reprobation depends on our choices.364
Educative punishment and universalism
Judgment there is, but it is corrective, not retributive. God’s primary aim in punishment is education, training in goodness and holiness. “The purpose of God in sending affliction is not to destroy but to correct,—that is, to educate.”365 And knowing us completely, he knows exactly what kind of training we each need: “He meets my need, according to His full understanding of me, by a course of circumstances chosen for my own personal education by His fatherly love and wisdom.”366 This idea, of course, flows out of his core belief that God is our Father and his purpose in creation is to form us in his image. “Man being the chief work of God . . . , his education—his moral and rational development—is the highest purpose of God that we can conceive.”367 Again, “education must have been the purpose of creation.”368 And: “I contend that the revelation of God as the Father necessarily involves the belief that education is the purpose with which he created us . . . [Contrary to those who see God as a Judge who puts us on probation,] we are tried that we may be educated, not educated that we may be tried.”369
For Erskine, it is the case that:
in God mercy and justice are one and the same thing,—that His justice never demands punishment for its own sake, and can be satisfied with nothing but righteousness and that His mercy seeks the highest good of man which certainly is righteousness, and will therefore use any means, however painful, to produce it in him. If men could understand that God’s purpose in rendering to them according to their works is to instruct them in the true nature and character of their works, that so they may apprehend the eternal connexion between sin and misery, between righteousness and blessedness, and thus be led from sin and take hold of righteousness, they would also understand that it is in mercy that He deals thus with them, and that in fact the purposes of mercy can in no other way be accomplished.370
It is in this context that Erskine’s universalism comes into focus. His early works hint in the direction of universal salvation with their doctrine of God’s universal Fatherhood, Christ’s universal indwelling of humanity, universal election in Christ, Christ’s universal atonement, universal pardon for sin, and so on. As early as 1830, some had begun to express the opinion that Erskine was on a road that led inevitably toward the “heresy” of universalism. Erskine himself seemed to fumble his way toward this wider hope.371 It was his notion of educational punishment, extending beyond this life into the postmortem state, that allowed him to affirm total salvation without requiring that God ignore human freewill. Instead, God teaches us until we see the truth of sin and its consequences and grasp the unconditional grace of God offered in the gospel.
The assurance that the righteous Creator can never cease to desire and urge the righteousness of His creature is the eternal hope for man, and the secure rest for the soul that apprehends it. For if this be His purpose for one, it must be His purpose for all. I believe that it is His purpose for all, and that He will persevere in it until it is accomplished in all.372
God’s purpose of unchanging love, which will never cease its striving till it has engaged every child of man to take Him in this contest [against sin].
In coming to this conclusion, it is manifest that I am constrained to adopt the assurance that the purpose follows man out from his present life, through all stages of being that lie before him, unto its full accomplishment. . . . [T]he ruling power in the universe, the only absolute Power . . . is a Being whose nature is righteous love, who is therefore the enemy of all sin, and who will never cease His endeavours to extinguish it, and to establish righteousness throughout His moral creation.373
Punishment for sin is motivated by the purpose of education, not retribution. This confidence is important, for then “I cannot but trust Him, and feel myself safe in His hands, eternally safe.” But if I think that I am on probation now with a final judgment after death and my eternal destiny then forever fixed, “I should say that trust in Him becomes impossible.”374 Any confidence I have before God would then be self-confidence—confidence in my goodness or my faith—rather than God-confidence. But I am not good enough—so I face God in terror. I may call God Father, but how can I trust in his love or feel secure in his hands if I see him primarily as an impartial retributive Judge?
Contemporary developments in geological sciences impressed on Erskine God’s very great patience in shaping his creation and informed his understanding of the ways of the Father: “We are evidently in the midst of a process, and the slowness of God’s process in the material world prepares us . . . for something analogous in the moral world; so that at least we may be allowed to trust that He who has taken untold ages for the formation of a bit of old red sandstone may not be limited to threescore years and ten for the perfecting of a human spirit.”375 In other words, why imagine that death is the point at which God ceases to educate us?
The notion that God deals sin a final blow by punishing it in hell forever or annihilating sinners did not impress Erskine: “that is not the victory of good over evil, but the victory of strength over weakness. The victory of good over evil is the conversion of all evil beings into good beings.”376 This is what necessitated an eschatological universalism, for anything less would amount to the failure of God’s purpose in creation.
Right theology and spiritual formation
Erskine’s focus on spiritual and ethical transformation, which proved to be one of the tributaries that fed the later holiness movement in Britain, gave an important place to right theology. For in order to make any progress in moral or spiritual life “I must have . . . a confidence in His purpose to make me and all men LIKE HIMSELF. This is the confidence I must have in God if I am not to fear Him, or hate Him, or despise Him.”377 It is our childlike trust in the gospel that saves, because the revelation of God’s Fatherhood and his loving purposes (which witnesses with our spirits) melts our hard hearts and leads to transformation in us. Salvation is the name for that transformation away from sinful living and toward righteous, God-related living. Thus he could speak of “the dynamic efficiency of the doctrines [of Christianity] in producing spontaneous obedience.”378 This effect is not the result of our increased effort, which will get us nowhere, but the awakening by God of “a principle of love” within us.379 The reverse side of this is that if our conceptions of God and his purposes are warped, as he believed they were in the
Calvinism of his day, then the right kind of faith will not be awakened in us, hampering God’s work of salvation in us. “We cannot love a law or an abstraction, nor can we love a Being whose mind and purpose towards ourselves we cannot apprehend and trust.”380 Instead of filial trust, we will look at God with terror and insecurity as the one who will torment us forever if we are not among his chosen few (and how can we ever be sure that we are?). Such are the laws of the spiritual order—we need a true and inner revelation of the Father, through Christ, by the Spirit if we are to be rescued from the power of sin.
Erskine’s radical and eclectic theology was unsurprisingly treated with great suspicion and outright hostility in his homeland of Scotland. As his universalism became more overt, even some of his friends expressed disquiet. Nevertheless, he was to impact the thought others who came to have universalist sympathies, whether implicit or overt, both those who knew him personally (such as F. D. Maurice, George MacDonald, Charles Kingsley, Edward Pumptree, Julia Wedgewood, and Emelia Gurney) and those who only knew his works (such as Samuel Cox and Thomas Allin). The next chapters will explore the thought of some of those who came under his influence, beginning with those in the Church of England.
349. On Erskine see Foster, “Representation and Substitution in Thomas Erskine of Linlathen”; Needham, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen; Horrocks, Laws of the Spiritual Order; Horrocks, “Postmortem Education.”
350. Pfleiderer, Development of Theology, 382.
351. See Horrocks, Laws of the Spiritual Order, 235–37. Erskine was friends with one of Schleiermacher’s students, Augustus Tholuck (1799–1877), Pietist revivalist, a professor of theology in Berlin, and apparently a universalist (Horrocks, Laws of the Spiritual Order, 238–39).
352. See Erskine, “Bible in Relation to Faith.”
353. Though sometimes Erskine does speak of being united with Christ in his body through faith in the gospel.
354. Inspired by Law, Erskine also read Jakob Böhme in German, though Law provided the interpretative framework for his reading of Böhme.
355. This emphasis led Julia Wedgewood (1833–1913) to write that in Erskine’s theological reading of Paul, “the apostle [Paul] took the place of Newton of the spiritual world, declaring to us the one mighty principle corresponding to gravitation in the visible universe, which kept all things in order” (Wedgewood, Nineteenth-Century Teachers, 71).
356. Erskine, “Divine Son,” 39–40.
357. Erskine, Unconditional Freeness, 16.
358. Letter to Monsieur Gaussen, Dec. 7, 1832, Letters, 1.294.
359. Horrocks, Laws of the Spiritual Order, 60–61.
360. Erskine, “Father Revealed in the Son,” 244.
361. Erskine’s friend John McLeod Campbell later developed a similar, but much fuller, doctrine of the cross in his controversial classic The Nature of the Atonement (1856).
362. Don Horrocks explains: “Christ’s death historically had uniquely achieved full pardon for a new humanity by representing them as its Head and accepting the righteous divine condemnation of death for the old fallen flesh” (Laws of the Spiritual Order, 107). This forgiveness, however, does not mean that the penalty for sin is removed. We must still face the penalties for we need them as part of God’s loving educative process of refinement.
363. Erskine, Essay on Faith, 139.
364. Erskine’s doctrine of election is strikingly similar to the one William Law sets forth in The Spirit of Love (1752/54). Law was a major influence on Erskine. Another theologian with universalist inclinations who influenced Erskine’s work was the Baptist John Foster (1770–1843), a fierce critic of the doctrine of eternal punishment.
365. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 71.
366. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 50.
367. Erskine, “Divine Son,” 28.
368. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 51.
369. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 59.
370. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 72–73.
371. According to Don Horrocks, his first unambiguous statement of it was in a letter to his cousin, dated 2 January 1827 (Letters, 1.92).
372. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 54–55. Italics mine.
373. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 69–70. Italics mine.
374. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 59, 60.
375. Erskine, “Purpose of God,” 53. Cf. Letter to Mr. Craig (1863?), Letters, 2.242.
376. Letter to an unknown correspondent, n.d., Letters, 2.237.
377. Erskine, letter to Professor Lorimer, 5 August 1858, Letters, 2.215.
378. Erskine, “Spiritual Order,” 15. This transformed life, says Erskine, is the real evidence of the truth of Christianity.
379. Erskine, “Spiritual Order,” 18.
380. Erskine, “Spiritual Order,” 23–24.
12
Universalism in Great Britain II
Romantic Explorers in the Church of England
Universalism and the Church of England
The doctrine of eternal torment had been coming under increasing pressure since the seventeenth century, and in the nineteenth century the tide of popular and theological opinion turned increasingly against it. Several factors were at work here.
First of all, the growth of the British Empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, combined with regular reports from the rapidly increasing number of Protestant missionaries across the world, made Christians back in Britain more aware than at any previous time in history just how many non-Christians there were in the world. Given that traditional theology consigned most or all such people to eternal torment, many began to feel increasing discomfort with the notion that God would send so many people to hell. In addition to this, there was a growing body of evidence, from the accumulated experiences of many of these missionaries, that preaching hell was not only ineffective in bringing about conversions, it was often positively counterproductive.
Second, the nineteenth century witnessed changing views on punishment. Since the seventeenth century, there had been various significant modifications in British law to the kinds of punishment that were deemed appropriate and the kinds of crimes for which they were applicable. In 1689, the English Bill of Rights had excluded “cruel and unusual punishments,” meaning torture, and this trajectory continued through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The number of crimes for which one could in theory be executed dropped dramatically, from 220 at the start of the nineteenth century to five by 1861; public executions were stopped in 1868, in spite of their popularity. Some notable Victorians, such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Fry, made the public more aware of the terrible conditions in prisons and applied pressure for prison reform. There was also the growing influence of Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism. Bentham had argued that the punishment of criminals needed to be justified in terms of its utility—its ability to serve a desirable goal. This led to growing pressure to consider punishment not merely as retributive or a deterrent, but also in terms of how well it helped to rehabilitate criminals. Once people started thinking in such ways, questions about hell were immediately raised. Clearly eternal torment with no hope of deliverance was useless in terms of rehabilitation. Indeed, it seemed to be very “cruel and unusual.” Furthermore, on reflection, it even seemed to violate the most basic instinct of retribution itself, the very theory on which it was based. The retributive theory of punishment asserted that the punishment should be proportioned to the crime. But how could an infinite punishment be a proportionate response to a finite set of sins?
Third, the nineteenth century was a period of growing religious doubt: the fast-advancing sciences and developments in Germany in the critical study of the Bible s
erved to make old sureties less secure. There was also a growing religious agnosticism, especially amongst certain intellectuals.381 The doctrine of hell was an obvious target for such critics of religion, and this too set believers on the back foot. The secularist Austin Holyoake, for instance, argued that the doctrine of hell “brutalises all who believe in it”382 and that it was useless as a tool of moral improvement. Christianity was being accused of being immoral, and some were rejecting the church because of its theology of hell. This provoked some Christians to feel that rethinking hell was a matter of missional urgency.
Some of the growing disquiet over the doctrine of hell is captured in the following words from the highly regarded Florence Nightingale (note the clear universalist direction of her thought):
I can’t love because I am ordered. Least of all can I love One who seems only to make me miserable here to torture me hereafter. Show me that He is good, that He is loveable, and I shall love Him without being told.
But does any preacher show this? He may say that God is good, but he shows Him to be very bad; he may say that God is “Love,” but he shows him to be hate, worse than any hate of man. As the Persian poet says; “If God punishes me for doing evil by doing me evil, how is he better than I?” And it is hard to answer, for certainly the worst man would hardly torture his enemy, if he could, for ever. And unless God has a scheme that every man is to be saved for ever, it is hard to say in what He is not worse than man; for all good men would save others if they could. . . .
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