WTHELLY

An Introduction to why Universalism doesn't work and Hell has GOT to exist

What is Heaven?

Before refuting universalist¹ ideas, I wanted to mention that because Heaven is an eternal union with the Triune God, it is inherently relational. Heaven is not just our life on earth minus the pain or something like that. Nor is it some Mormon idea of creating any kind of world you want. Heaven is ultimately about the divinized life that begins with baptism continuing through eternity.

“Damnation is essentially nothing more than persisting forever in morally evil attitudes incompatible with being in a personal relationship with God, failing forever to consummate supernatural personal union with the deity.”²

Another important note: the joining of the Church to Christ is often shown as being something extremely intimate like marriage,³ and this is something that really should happen with consent. Therefore those that really reject God and hate him shouldn’t be forced into eternity with Him. We should be able to freely choose Christ, not merely under the pretense of avoiding punishment, but out of love.

Personal beef

If everyone does go to Heaven, I would be pretty (and understandably) upset. Yes, I am going full “worker in the vineyard” on this one. What would be the point of all the suffering and offering it up if what I do actually doesn’t matter at all?⁴ Why would God allow wars and terrible violence in the world—is an eternity of goodness really the good that God draws out of evil? This just feels so wrong and unsatisfactory in every way. Although Universalists don’t suggest we live life like it is meaningless, what are we to do if it is true? Am I supposed to live life just “knowing” that all of it is meaningless?

I know that technically, an eternity of good “outweighs” any finite harm. But if everyone goes to Heaven, why did God permit sin? What good did he draw from the sin? If all are saved, why didn’t God create a different world with a different state of affairs?

With these viewpoints already showing some cracks in Universalist armor⁵ I want to point out the major flaw in the thoughts surrounding Universalism.

Problematic View of God

Just to do this with one [immense and well-defined] arm tied behind my back, I’m not even going to appeal to Scripture to refute the idea of universalism. Ultimately, the problem is that Universalists must appeal to either the nature of God or man to hold their view. One cannot feasibly have some blind faith in the likelihood of all created persons spending eternity with God. There has to be something inherent to either God or man that gives one confidence in order to have a universal view of this sort.

“Therefore, the hope for universal salvation is not a hope that all men may receive the grace of God by which they will be saved if they consent, but that God will chose to overcome all human resistances effectively.”⁶

Universalists are not annihilationists.⁷ This seems to show that they are not merely worried about human suffering, but something else. It seems that, as with those in the Dare We Hope crowd (a subject for another day), God cannot be compatible with such shortcomings.⁸ It seems that we often lose sight that we are responsible for our sin.⁹ God is not responsible for preventing us from sinning or from rejecting him. These people view God as failing when we fail. They claim that God’s love is too good and perfect to be resisted. However, this view seems to put us in a situation where either suffering is meaningless or God uses physical and moral evil as the very means for everyone’s salvation and not by preventing us from sinning either. Universalism in the world we experience entails this necessity for sin and suffering to attain Heaven.¹⁰

1. Universalism is the view that everybody (and I mean everybody) goes to Heaven.

2. Fr. James Dominic Rooney, Not a Hope in Hell, Introduction. (free at academia.edu along with some other HEAT https://hkbu.academia.edu/JamesDominicRooney

3. Ephesians 5 type beat

4. IDGAF if I get another crown or “treasure," bruh what does that even mean in the proper context of what Heaven is? Yeah I know I’m not as holy as the Immaculate, Ever-Virgin Mary, but my life is not finna be spent trying to get as many grace points as possible to have the best seat I can at the table of the wedding feast.

5. armour if you’re WEIRD

6. https://www.academia.edu/21048440/Von_Balthasar_and_Journet_on_the_Universal_Possibility_of_Salvation_and_the_Twofold_Will_of_God p. 658.

7. People who think that hell is not eternal, and those who would go there under a classical view are actually destroyed and cease to exist. I don’t know the history of it, but it seems to be a cope to reconcile an all-good God and eternal punishment.

8. PLEASE read this article comparing the views of Von Balthasar and Servant of God Charles Journet: https://www.academia.edu/21048440/Von_Balthasar_and_Journet_on_the_Universal_Possibility_of_Salvation_and_the_Twofold_Will_of_God

9. This is the only thing that we are able to do without God. Sin is the only thing we can boast about as something we did fullstop. All good things are done because God is way too good. Hopefully there aren’t any Calvinists reading this.

10. Interesting theory.