A Larger Hope 2
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The importance of tradition was even more in focus for those nineteenth-century Anglicans who refused to shut out the possibility of the redemption of all, people such as Frederick W. Farrar, Edward Plumptre, and Thomas Allin. As good Anglicans, holding a deep respect for the catholic tradition, they invested considerable effort in demonstrating the presence of universalism in mainstream church history. Allin in particular argued in great detail that apokatastasis was far more widespread among the church fathers than is usually imagined. The recovery of the larger hope in the early church is a major factor behind the revival of hopeful universalism among some Orthodox and Catholics in the twentieth century and beyond—the likes of Sergius Bulgakov or Hans Urs von Balthasar. For them, unlike some of the characters in this book, tradition was perhaps the key provocation toward openness to universal salvation.
For Allin, the situation was starker still. He felt that eternal hell, although having been embraced by large parts of the church, was actually incompatible with the central creedal core of the tradition, generating impossible conflicts within Christian theology. In his mind, universal salvation was necessary precisely in order to preserve the core elements of the tradition, protecting them against the erosion caused by hell. Everlasting hell was the cuckoo in the nest of orthodoxy, an alien intruder threatening the tradition.
It was definitely the case that reflection on certain traditional doctrines and their implications played a large role in the rise of universalism and in many of the journeys we have followed. For some, this may have involved a more parochial doctrine, such as the critical role that the penal substitution theory, important in the classical Reformed tradition, played in driving James Relly into a kind of Calvinist universalism, or the way that reflection on the Reformed doctrines of predestination and election took Schleiermacher in creative new directions. Evangelical tradition also factored in the way that those like Elhanan Winchester played off Calvinism and Arminianism against each other—he argued that each theological tradition had its undesirable implications (Calvinism creates problems for God’s love, while Arminianism creates problems for God’s sovereignty and victory). Universalism affirmed the best insights, while rejecting the problematic aspects, of both traditions: the perfect via media.
For many, the traditional catholic Christian teachings about divine love, creation, fall, the work of Christ in his incarnation, death, and resurrection, God’s final defeat of evil, and so on, played a critical role in their move to universalism. The perceived difficulty created for such catholic theology by attempting to assimilate the doctrine of eternal hell into it played some role for most of those whose stories we have considered.
So we end this volume hopefully with a better understanding of the diversity of the phenomenon of Christian universalism, of its roots, motivators, and theological shapes, and of its strengths and weaknesses.487 The twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw some further significant changes in both the theological contours and fortunes of the hope for the salvation of all. Reformed theologians continued to make a contribution, but their impact was considerably bigger, especially after Karl Barth, who—whether or not one considers him to believe in universal salvation—made a game-changing move in his doctrine of election, the ripple-effects of which have not faded with time.488 Alongside that change some notable Catholic and Orthodox theologians, including a couple of popes, affirmed versions of hopeful universalism. This significant change was shaped by a major twentieth-century rehabilitation of Origen among patristics scholars.489 As his brand was detoxified, his theology became more influential within churches holding a high view of tradition. Unrelated to all that, there was also a flowering of debate among philosophical theologians that marked several new directions in the development of the doctrine.490 That philosophical discussion overflowed somewhat into the more popular streams of Christian thought, mingling with other changing cultural influences, such that the twenty-first century has begun to witness a growing openness to universal salvation even in constituencies considered among its greatest opponents—the Evangelicals.491 The story of belief in universal salvation becomes especially interesting and complicated with the arrival of the internet and social media, enabling rapid global dissemination, cross-fertilization of ideas, and the connection of like-minded Christians. At the end of the nineteenth century, belief in “the larger hope” was a little stream, but if one was to track it through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, one would see it become a small (but growing) river. That is a story that needs telling.492
486. Perhaps, however, we should exercise some caution in speaking of this as the story of a single stream. It may possibly be better to consider it as several different streams—flowing in the same vicinity and containing similar elements in the water—that combine and divide in complex ways.
487. I have not tried to assess many of the strengths or weaknesses, but hopefully readers will now have enough data to make their own such assessments intelligently.
488. Some of the universalist Reformed thinkers influenced by Barth in this regard are Jacques Ellul, Jürgen Moltmann, and Jan Bonda. Barth was also influential on the Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar’s hopeful universalism. Balthasar, in turn, has exerted huge influence on many sections of post-Vatican II Catholicism. There is arguably also a Barthian influence in the universalism of J. A. T. Robinson, and certainly in what we might refer to as the “hopeful universalism” of T. F. Torrance (though he himself would strongly have objected to that language).
489. One of the most significant pioneers of this recovery is Catholic patristic scholar Ilaria Ramelli, herself a convinced universalist.
490. Directions exemplified, for instance, in the work of John Hick, Marilyn Adams, Thomas Talbott, Eric Reitan, and David Bentley Hart, with other notable Christian philosophers like Alvin Plantinga declaring as hopeful universalists.
491. At which point I ought to footnote my own book: MacDonald, Evangelical Universalist. But my turn-of-the-millennium Evangelical universalism had twentieth-century precursors in the likes of the British Pentecostal minister A. E. Saxby (see his God in Creation, Redemption, Judgment, and Consummation), Saddhu Sundar Singh, various little-known British Brethren universalists, and my own immediate inspiration, philosopher Thomas Talbott.
492. McClymond, Devil’s Redemption, vol. 2 provides considerable detail on important parts of it, albeit with a view to offering a strong theological critique.
Appendix
Is Jakob Böhme the Father of Modern Universalism?
A Response to the McClymond Model
I. Introduction
Michael McClymond’s massive two-volume work The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism is one of the most significant analyses and critiques of Christian universalism ever published.1 It is very impressive in both the breadth and depth of its scholarship, and usually fair-minded in its attempt to understand carefully the ideas it criticizes. As such, no academic attempt to engage universal salvation in a Christian context can afford to ignore it. While I find the theological critique inadequate to the task of undermining Christian universalism per se (both because I reject its core thesis and because I think the specific theological accusations against universal salvation do not stand up), there is a lot in McClymond’s book, including his critiques of various specific universalist theologies, with which I concur.2
Despite the length and detail of the book, the central thesis at its heart is very simple: universalism does not arise from biblical or Christian theological instincts, but is an alien import that first emerged and flourished in heretical gnostic sects and was subsequently planted into Christianity by Origen. (McClymond argues that Origen’s theology of apokatastasis was considered very controversial from the first, was never more than a minority report, and was subsequently condemned by the church.) The modern revival of universalism from the late s
eventeenth century onwards similarly drank deeply from the wells of esotericism, especially from the poisoned well of Jakob Böhme, whose heterodox theology lies somewhere behind many, perhaps most, modern versions of universalism. “Böhme laid the foundation for much of modern universalism” (DR, 22, italics mine), and his teaching “contained the seeds of later universalist thinking” (DR, 200). “With only slight exaggeration, one could say that Christian universalism during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a series of footnotes to Böhme” (DR, 445, cf. 7). Indeed, the twentieth-century Russians who were sympathetic to universalism were also deeply indebted to Böhme (DR, 685–747), so “one might speak of a Böhmist era in Christian universalism, roughly from 1700 to 1950” (DR, 445). Thus, despite the Christian language with which universal salvation dresses itself in an attempt to appear at home in the church, its origins and underlying theological structure are, according to McClymond, antithetical to orthodox Christianity. He hopes that once we see the dubious origins of the universalist idea, in both its ancient and modern versions, we will be enabled to see why it is so problematic. In this debate, argues McClymond, universalism is a Trojan horse—everything is at stake (DR, xxiv).3
In this appendix I have no intention of attempting an analysis of McClymond’s book as a whole—that would be a massive undertaking! I will say nothing about his thesis that patristic universalism came from ancient Gnosticism, a thesis that Ilaria L. E. Ramelli has strongly criticized in the first volume of this series (and in more detail in various academic studies). Nor will I offer a response to his analysis of twentieth- and twenty-first-century universalist texts, including my own.4 And I will not offer a critique of his theological case against universal salvation, though I think that this is the area where his book is most vulnerable.5 Rather, my focus here is on a matter directly relating to this volume of A Larger Hope? Namely, his core claim about the pivotal originating role of Jacob Böhme in the rise of modern universalism. I shall suggest that, while Böhme does have a part in this story, it is not that of foundation-layer or seed-planter.
II. Jakob Böhme and the McClymond Thesis
Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) was not the kind of man anyone would expect to exert much of an influence of the world of his day—he was not of noble birth, nor university-trained, nor ordained into the Lutheran church in which he was raised.6 Rather, Böhme worked as a cobbler in a village in Upper Lusatia (in what is now Poland). A mystical experience in 1600, which lasted only a matter of minutes, was the transforming event that he felt gave him insight into the inner meanings of the cosmos. However, it was not until 1612 that he began to write his first book, Aurora, and between 1619 and his death in 1624 he published numerous other works that blended theological, esoteric, mystical, alchemical, and biblical themes. Böhme’s publications put him in conflict with the local Lutheran clergy of his day. However, those publications went on to exert a very widespread and long-lasting influence.7 He is probably one of the most influential thinkers you’ve never heard of.
Böhme’s writings are notoriously ambiguous and difficult to interpret, and various divergent interpretations of them have arisen.8 Some interpreted him as an orthodox Lutheran, and many sought to present a way of reading him that was compatible with Christian orthodoxy. (William Law was one such reader.) Others more interpreted him as a gnostic-like cosmic dualist, who saw good and evil as eternal cosmic principles, both rooted in God’s eternal being—a notion hard to reconcile with orthodoxy!9 I have no dog in this fight, but for the sake of argument I shall assume a worst-case scenario—that Böhme was indeed heterodox. There are certainly many prima facie problematic aspects in his thought for orthodox Christians, even if there is also much that they might find helpful.
McClymond’s thesis is simply that modern universalism was (to a very considerable extent) forged in the fires of Böhme’s esoteric theology, without which it would not have arisen, and it was passed on among those who continued to revere Böhme’s writings, indicating how closely connected it is with his heterodox thought. McClymond shows how many, perhaps most, of the key universalists from the late seventeenth century through to the early twentieth century (and even later) have some connection, in one way or another, with Böhme’s writings.10 He writes that “Böhmist universalism (ca. 1700–ca. 1950) centered on a dialectic of a divine self-differentiation and divine self-reconciliation” (DR, 1008). And “it should not be surprising that the shift towards a conflictual or Böhmist conception of God should also involve a shift in the direction of universal salvation” (DR, 1022). There is, he alleges, a direct link between the eternal dualism within God that we find in Böhme and belief in universal salvation. I shall argue that the evidence indicates the exact opposite.
III. Response
McClymond has done a service to scholarship to bring out the subtle influence of Böhme’s writings on many seventeenth- to twentieth-century universalists. It is of interest and worthy of note. However, it is my contention that he has misunderstood and overplayed the nature of that influence.
1. Böhme was not a universalist
The first issue that needs to be grasped is that Böhme himself was not a universalist. McClymond writes that “[p]erhaps surprisingly, Böhme did not believe that hell would ever end” (DR, 477). However, it is not so surprising. His belief in eternal hell was arguably no mere accident but an integral aspect of his system of thought.11 How so?
For Böhme, reality at its most fundamental level—in the one God—is a duality, a conflict. In God, the origin of all reality, we find the conflicting principles eternal mercy and eternal wrath held in a perfect and unified balance.12 These eternal binaries are interpenetrating but distinct principles in God, yet they have a single root, which Böhme called the Ungrund (a German word meaning “groundless”).
The Ungrund is the mysterious, ineffable, Absolute, which is undifferentiated, pure potential. The Ungrund “desires” to manifest itself and to know itself, but it can only do this if there is another to whom it can reveal itself. Thus, to know itself it must first negate itself in order to open up the space for an other to whom it can self-manifest. Thus, the Ungrund’s originating “will” to self-assertion generates a duality within God whereby God can know Godself and thereby become personal.
The Ungrund is not aware of anything—it does not think anything; it does not know anything. It moves unconsciously, stirring itself with a libidinous desire to relate to itself and thus know itself, driving towards self-differentiation and thereby self-knowledge. In the Ungrund there is no conflict, but as it self-differentiates in order to know itself it bifurcates into a dark principle (wrath) and a light principle (mercy).
The dark principle tends inwards towards narcissistic, self-centered contraction; the light principle tends outwards in altruistic, self-giving expansion. The conflict between the two gives rise to a third principle of balance as the two rival principles are held in perfect tension. The first principle is prior: it is the self-assertion, the self-love that is the origin of the divine personality; the second principle is what holds it in check. Love requires both principles: without the dark principle of narcissism there is no self to give to others; without the light principle of self-giving altruism, narcissism becomes evil.
For Böhme, the narcissistic dark principle (wrath) is God the Father from whom the light principle (mercy), God the Son, is generated as its necessary opposite. The Spirit is the principle of balance that hold the two together as perfect love. This is a highly unusual spin on Augustinian trinitarian theology!13
As creation originates in God, so the light and dark in God necessarily permeate everything in creation. Evil in creation arises from the sad reality that these principles are not held in balance as they are in God. God himself has no evil in him because his darkness is balanced by his light in a perfection of goodness. Lucifer, however, in his freedom, embraced narcissism without altruism, self-assertion without self-giving, and thereby becam
e corrupted, evil. Evil is, in effect, a dis-order, a loss of balance—the first principle (wrath/self-love) overwhelming the second (mercy/other-love). It is a form of psychosis and necessarily degrades our personhood.
Eternal heaven and hell reflect the eternal light and darkness, mercy and wrath within God. Those like Lucifer who embrace the darkness without the light can only exist in hell, facing the wrath of God. To eradicate hell would risk messing up the balance at the heart of Böhme’s theology.
Now McClymond is well aware that Böhme did not believe in universal salvation and, being a good scholar, is very open about this fact (e.g., DR, 7), but I shall argue that he has not fully appreciated its significance for his thesis.
McClymond helpfully discusses numerous problematic aspects of Böhme’s thought, from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy (DR, 459–79). But what we need to be very clear about is that universalism was not one of them. More than that, universalism is neither a deduction nor an induction from his ideas.
One searches McClymond’s analysis of Böhme in vain for a convincing exposition of how Böhme’s teachings led to a belief in universal salvation. Section 5.4 is intended to perform this task, so it is worth paying it closer attention. What it shows is that the rejection by Böhme’s admirers (e.g., Hans Martensen, William Law) of his metaphysical grounding of evil in God and his everlasting dualism of wrath and mercy led to a view of God as pure light. And this theology pointed to universalism. Sure, but this is not a theology derived from Böhme. It is an orthodox fix to such a theology. So if anything, this argument points in the exact opposite direction from McClymond’s thesis.