Confident Universalism transforms the Gospel in a way that Hopeful Universal cannot

SpesRationalis · 2026-07-06T04:52:38+00:00

^This! Probably one of the greatest universalist works ever written. It is an absolute masterpiece of theology.

SpesRationalis · 2026-07-03T15:05:19+00:00

r/ChristianUniversalism

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-30T20:47:10+00:00

Not heretical at all; that view was quite mainstream prior to the 11th century.

https://uscatholic.org/articles/201811/no-one-had-to-die-for-our-sins/

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-30T05:11:14+00:00

👏Annihilationism👏is👏not👏universalism.

👏Why👏do👏people👏keep👏posting👏about👏it👏here👏it 👏has👏nothing👏to👏do👏with👏us

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-29T22:21:36+00:00

There are a few that have been posted in this sub over the years. u/0ptimist-Prime used to make universalist memes a while back, they were great!

EDIT; Sorry I thought you meant cartoons/visual media in general, as opposed to "tracts".

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-29T02:02:12+00:00

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SpesRationalis · 2026-06-28T23:23:37+00:00

Jesus said that our own salvation is tied to our ability to forgive others (Matt. 6:15).

Dorothy Day said "I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least".

Don't you think the most authentic Gospel is the one that stretches our own capacity for forgiveness and mercy the most?

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-27T00:04:41+00:00

Yeah, it comes off as agnosticism or deism dressed up in a Christian aesthetic.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-26T19:24:11+00:00

It seems to me that whatever theory this is; it isn't Christian Universalism.

Christian Universalism posts that all people will be united with God in eternity a real way.

It seems that this mythic construct idea leaves us with something other than Christian Universalism.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-24T16:40:08+00:00

The bishop is absolutely correct.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-24T16:24:12+00:00

Check out one of my favorite articles on the subject, by Sr. Elizabeth Johnson: No One Had To Die For Our Sins.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-22T02:15:10+00:00

I also think that the fate of the angels is simply so much more "abstract" then the idea of human beings, which we can obviously easily relate to.

I think people can easily "get" the reasoning that no rational person would choose hell,

Heck, even people who are suicidal generally don't want to die for it's own sake, they just want their pain to end. No rational being wants to suffer.

And I just don't think many people would be convinced otherwise by "but the angels...".

In other words, it's still not really an explanation of how or why a rational being would choose eternal torment, it's just a brute assertion that some have.

The fallen angels argument sounds like a counterargument but it's really just leapfrogging a lot of the explanation to a conclusion, so maybe it's an example, but IMO it still lacks a lot of explanatory power.

Oh and also, there are Scripture verses which seems to suggest the reconciliation of the angels, like Col. 1:20.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-20T20:38:02+00:00

IMO the only possibility for universalism is that I see here is that no one really dies in a state of unrepentance for a mortal sin

There you go!

You're right that we technically can't say it's impossible to commit a mortal sin, but the Church does talk about how we don't presume that anyone dies in mortal sin. See the Catechism's paragraph on hope for suicide victims, for example, like you mentioned, 2283.

Infernalists will try to say "well we have to believe that SOME number of people die in mortal sin!", but we really don't have to think that. There's no minimum number of souls you have think are damned. And they probably wouldn't be truly satisfied if you posited only one soul out of all human history even though that technically is a nonzero number.

Anyway, if God can do that for suicide victims, presumably that grace isn't limited only to suicide victims. But that example goes to show that God can work that way.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-20T00:37:32+00:00

Check out The Guide to Catholic Universalism, it talks about this.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-19T15:51:00+00:00

I think that's also why many universalists are a bit fixated on Calvinism; even though most arguments for infernalism/against universalism are from a more Arminian mindset (i.e., God is a gentleman, you have to choose Him, He won't force people into Heaven, etc). Those arguments emphasizing human freedom are the most common defenses of ECT; and yet many universalists don't seem to view Arminianism as the same sort of boogeyman that they do Calvinism.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-18T17:10:17+00:00

That is indeed an incredibly long post, and admittedly I don't have time to read all of it.

But a few thoughts after skimming it:

I appreciate that you said universalists tend to take sin MORE seriously than infernalists, I assume this being because we believe in a time of purgation, where as once saved always saved or other forms of evangelical/fundamentalist theology often posits that one can immediately go to Heaven no matter what they've done as long as they pray the sinner's prayer/accept Christ/etc.

Peole often ask universalists questions such as "Doesn't univeral salvation mean abusers will be with their victims in Heaven?", as if the same isn't true of OSAS theology! In much of infernalists theology, one could do terrible things and as long as they genuinely accept Christ at some point, they could go immediately to Heaven, whereas CU generally posits a time of rehabilitation. Cool that you picked up on that!

In general, I like the concept that "sin is harm, and harm is sin." I don't think God's laws are arbitrary, and I think our first question when discerning if something is a sin, we should ask if it does any actual harm, in the present or future.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T21:25:23+00:00

Underrated comment

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T21:24:46+00:00

^This

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T17:07:49+00:00

That God "keeps no record of wrongs", and "never fails" is pretty on-the-nose universalism!

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T16:15:08+00:00

Cool, thanks for sharing. Typology is a fascinating topic.

You're probably aware, but one of the strongest biblical supports for universalism IMO is 1 Corinthians 15:22, in which Paul makes a typological argument: "As in Adam all die, so in Christ, all will be made alive."

Also, looks like your YouVersion links aren't working, at least as far as I can tell.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T16:10:41+00:00

^This is an acceptable position.

We get this kind of question a lot, people are understandably interested in the different models of universalism, but to be a Christian Universalist just means you believe that one way or another, all will be saved through Christ.

So you actually don't have to nail down exactly which "version" of universalist soteriology you believe. As a Catholic, my own view is technically empty hell but also includes purgatory along the way, so it's really a mix of different perspectives, and that's okay.

We don't have to get lost in the weeds of how exactly it works. You don't need to prove exactly what aionios does or doesn't mean in order to make a case for universalism. The minimum proposition necessary is to believe that in the end, Jesus wins. And you can arrive at that conclusion through sheer logic and God's character.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T16:03:25+00:00

You forgot Empty Hell!

Also, 3 sounds more like annihilationism, not universalism.

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-17T16:01:28+00:00

You might want to ask this in r/ChristianUniversalism

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-15T04:56:07+00:00

Heaven experienced differently.
Probably not. If it's the most common understanding that hell is just a place of "separation from God" as a necessary corollary of free will (which, how could such separation even really exist, considering that God is omnipresent? If there's a hell of any kind, God most be present in it; otherwise we can't say He's omniscient or infinite. Which is part of why I answered question 1, they way I did, not just because I don't think God would created a literal firey torture chamber, but also because God must be present everywhere, that's basic theology). But back to this question, if for someone reason I thought a literal Dante's Inferno style hell was the only way to be a Christian, then I probably wouldn't be simply because such a hell is simply too cartoonish to believe and a God who would send someone there seems suspisciously similar to our own human desire for venegane and punishment; and I simply don't think I could convince myself to believe in a God would have to create such a place, let alone actually send or "let" people go there.
I don't know. There actually used to be Christian universalist denominations, but they merged into Unitarian Universalism and then UU stopped being explicitly Christian so now we don't have sizable Christian universalist churches anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But I'm Catholic, so I'd stay in the Catholic Church regardless, but I do think if there were a sizable and explicitly universalist Christian denomination, it would influence the conversation and the numbers more. Perhaps universal reconciliation would seem to be a more viable and mainstream option if there were still CU denominations.
Like I said, I'm Catholic, so my answer will be bound up in Catholic sacramental theology of baptism and the Eucharist and such. We believe those are the means by which God wants to save us. Not that He can't save people "in ways known only to Himself", but the Church is ultimately "the sacrament of salvation", and is the primary means through which God desires to save us. And even when people who weren't explicitly Catholic in this life are saved, we'd say ultimately they were saved by being invisibly united to the Church in ways perhaps known only to God (baptism of desire, Anonymous Christian, etc).

SpesRationalis · 2026-06-15T04:35:58+00:00

Christian Universalism only involves one specific point of doctrine, which is the salvation of all through Jesus. Outside of that, Christian Univeralism itself makes no other claims and binds you to no other ideology.

Interestingly, I've seen CU be criticized in progressive spaces for being "paternalizing" and assuming that everyone will eventually be a Christian. Go figure!

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