There is one Christian temperament, which might be characterized as apocalyptic, and which demands that there be a point, a wall, into which the wicked must run sooner or later and be permanently defeated. Broken, humiliated, spiritually crushed by the truth they hate, unrepentant sinners are either annihilated or sent to a place of unending punishment.
Then there is another Christian temperament that insists, “God shall be all in all,” and that all is quite literally ALL: this temperament does not wriggle out of ALL in a lawyerly way by saying the damned are not part of ALL, or preach that weaselly nonsense about how God loves the damned and that it is this very love which will torture them forever, since they reject it. (Talk about passive/aggressive!) As Rob Bell puts it, Love Wins. Who knows?–perhaps love wins even retroactively, such that evil will never have existed. Could this be the (granted, quite unimaginable, quite absurd) answer to the problem of evil? Perhaps.
I confess I am, unfortunately, of the former temperament much of the time. I do not know whether the enneagram is reliable or useful, but I am probably a one (and if not that, almost certainly a nine). So I often have the pharisaical and unchristian weakness to desire the unrighteous be crushed rather than that they repent and be forgiven. Fortunately, I also have the critical strengths of enneagram one, and measuring Christianity rigorously against itself, I come to the conclusion that the ALL in ALL (universalist) conclusion is the Christian truth, even if my vengeful heart is not always in it. (I have selfish motives for universalism, I admit, though they are not relevant to the truth. In other words, if universalism is not true, how do I know if I am saved or damned? Infernalism is wretchedly coy on this matter, to be sure.) My beliefs, my deeper understanding, are better than the passions of my angry heart.
Let the infernalists not say we universalists are naïve. This accusation seems to be the position of N.T. Wright in his chapter on hell in Surprised by Hope. This is, on the whole, a very good book, by the way. But his defense of infernalism is pablum. Perhaps I will blog about this at a later date.
I was inspired to write this short post while outraged by some of the latest fascist shenanigans of Trump followers, and my apocalyptic side was triggered quite violently. Let these murderers of the truth be sent screaming hysterical and naked into the fiery pit, says one side of me–but it shall not be forever—says the better part. God shall have them all at his side, eventually, and eternally, whether I want it so or not.
How Christianity tears a believer apart!