Well, happy 4th of July to everyone in the States. There's no vacation for the Ask Pastor John podcast. No way. We have too much to talk about, but we do have our own fireworks because today we're in the middle of a conversation about universalism, the distorted theology that says that everyone will be saved in the end.

It has, this doctrine of universalism has a very long and vast history that stretches back decades and centuries and millennia. And that story is now told in a massive two volume, 1400 page book titled The Devil's Redemption, A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism from Baker Academic. The author of that book is our guest again, Michael J.

McCliman, who joins us from St. Louis. Michael, it's good to have you back. You know, on Monday we were talking about universalism and how the threat remains very relevant today. And you mentioned that the doctrine of God is at stake in universalism. And you even said after writing the book that it was a surprising thing for you to see how many other doctrines universalism distorts.

So pick it up here. What are some implied theological entailments of Christian universalism and what are some of the ways that theology gets skewed in Christian universalism? Well, if we could start with just with the doctrine of God, to my surprise, I found that from ancient times onward, beginning with the Gnostics of the second and third century, and then Jewish and Christian Kabbalah, and some of the so-called esoteric views and modern esoteric theories, is that there was a concept of God.

First of all, that God is not independent of the world. God is dependent upon the world, or that God created the world in order to evolve in and through the world. It's almost like God was a spirit in need of a body and the world became his body and that God is enriched.

And in the beginning, God is incomplete. By creating the world, he completes himself. It's almost like God and the world are married to one another. And this is a view that sometimes, I mean, there are different terms for it. This may sound like process theology to some. Some use the term panentheism.

But actually, it's an ancient view that goes all the way back to the early centuries of the church. But this is a view that is unworthy of God. It is unworthy of God. It is inconsistent with the fundamental biblical and creedal principle of creation from nothing. Creation from nothing implies that everything that exists other than God is radically dependent upon God's will.

So to use a mathematical equation, you could say the world minus God equals nothing. If you took God away, the world would cease. God minus the world equal God. God is not diminished by the disappearance of the world. But there's some modern theologians that disagree with that. They think that if the world were taken away, God would be deficient and lacking.

So we need to recover, actually, a sense of the freedom and lordship of God. And I think this has some deep connections culturally with a rejection of authority and the idea. I mean, there's some modern theologians who speak of human beings as co-creators of the world with God. And if you look in all Scripture, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, the word creation never has any grammatical subject to it other than God.

God alone creates. It's a prerogative of God. So it's a great mistake, exegetically speaking, to begin to think and speak of ourselves as creators alongside of God. >> Adam: Amen. God is perfect bliss in himself in the absence of creatures. >> David: Right. >> Adam: Yeah. And you know, I love to ask my kids this question.

Like, why did God make everything that he made? Because it's the kind of question that really diagnoses a lot of things and leads to some really great conversations with them. So I'll pose the same question to you, because you take this up in the book, actually, as one of those theological things that gets mixed up and muddled in universalism.

It's a hard question to get right, but how do you answer it? >> David: It is a difficult question to grapple with because there seems to be a paradox. This is sometimes called the full bucket paradox. If God's bucket of glory was absolutely full, then why would God need—God could not add anything to his own glory by creating the world.

And so it would seem that there's no purpose in creation. And so one way to think of that visually is imagine that bucket full of water, but you put a hose in it and turn the hose on, and suddenly the bucket overflows. So one way to understand this is the world is an overflow of the goodness, not a result of deficiency within God.

Like God was lonely or God was lacking, but no, God was so full of goodness that that goodness overflowed. And you get this sense in some of the classic theologians like Augustine, who says, "Because God is good, therefore you exist." And this is very much Edward's theology. He even uses the image of a fountain overflowing.

Obviously, that could be misinterpreted. He doesn't have an impersonal idea of God. God is a personal creator, but he's struggling for language to kind of express the inexpressible because we are very much at the limits of what we can say or imagine when we begin talking about God's reason for creating.

>> Adam: Amen. Yeah, and yet without creation becoming an accident of some sort of divine mistake, but creation emerging with a plan and a goal for creation settled right from the beginning. >> David: Right. >> Adam: Yeah, so universalism distorts God and his purposes. Give us specific examples of how universalism distorts grace.

>> David: Well, the great irony is that the effort to extend grace to all persons ends up undermining grace to any persons. And that's not, it's counterintuitive. That requires some explanation. People could read the book for the fuller explanation. Because you'd think, well, if one certain number of people receive salvation, a thousand receive salvation, and then 5,000 people being saved is five times better, and you'd think, well, why wouldn't we just extend that in our mind indefinitely to everyone?

But when you look at the reason, the rationale given by the different universalist thinkers for salvation, you end up in just about every case undermining the principle of grace. There's the idea that I am saved because I am divine. That's the hardcore Gnostic idea. We have the divinity within us.

I use the analogy of the helium balloon in someone's chest. The moment they die, that balloon sort of leaves, you know, and it escapes, it ascends heavenward. Well, if salvation happens that way because of a natural property that we all have as human beings, this divine element within us, then obviously there would be no need for a Savior.

There'd be no need for grace. There's another version of universalism, I'm saved because I'm human. And I think that they're both esoteric thinkers. I think there's even an element in Karl Barth's idea of like an eternally realized incarnation, that Jesus Christ is eternal. This is a very abstruse point in the interpretation of Barth's church dogmatics.

But if God and humanity have always been joined together in some sense, well, then we would be saved just because you're human. Again, why would there be a need for faith, repentance, obedience? And wouldn't God be almost obligated then to save everyone? Wouldn't salvation be entitlement? There's another version of universalism that I'm saved because I suffer.

That's the idea of a kind of purgatory after death where everyone expiates their own sins. The Russian theologian, Sergei Bulgakov, said there is no free forgiveness. This is like a direct quote. Everyone expiates without remainder all of their own sins. It's a shocking statement. And he's considered an outstanding Russian theologian of the 20th century, but my gosh, what was the cross for?

I mean, this teaching is directly in competition with the idea of an atoning death of Jesus on the cross. So the only other version of universalism that's left to try to preserve grace is just say that God just reverses everything, every choice we've made. That everyone at the moment they die, even the mass murderer, as he's shooting down his victims and suddenly he's shot dead, he just goes immediately to be with God.

God just changes his character at the moment of death. But that's sometimes called ultra-universalism because it holds that everyone goes immediately to be with God. But that's a view that's so radical it undermines all the significance of our moral and spiritual choices in this life. It even seems to make the present life kind of a charade.

And many universalists, therefore, have been purgationists. They believed in postmortem suffering because they just thought, "We can't believe that everyone is ready to be with God in heaven." So that's the dilemma that the universalists can't resolve. Either you hold to ultra-universalism, which empties our moral choices of meaning, or else you suffer to make expiation or atonement for your own sins.

In that case, you undermine grace. There isn't a good answer in terms of universalism. Yeah, this distortion of grace is very significant. And your book has guts. And by that I mean you refuse to avoid the reality of God's wrath. In your book, I counted nearly 800 explicit mentions of God's wrath, His judgment, and vengeance.

Oh, I didn't realize that. Yeah, it's all over. And I read a lot of books, and this emphasis is atypical, to say the least. So how much of universalism thriving in Western Christianity is—how much of that is the result of God's wrath simply disappearing from contemporary Christian music and disappearing from the sermons and the books of influential preachers and authors and theologians?

Well, I think that's a very good point, Tony. I think that what happened—I mean, to talk about the American evangelical context from the 1980s, James Davison Hunter talked about what he called an "ethics of civility" to the younger generation. These were people who were in their 20s back then, and they'd be in their 50s and 60s, they'd be in leadership positions.

The ethics of civility, the number one rule is do not offend. Don't offend people. Well, hell is a deeply offensive doctrine. And it'd be deeply offensive to many people attending churches. I mean, if the minister got into the pulpit and expounded Matthew 25, "The sheep and the goats literally applied it," said, "Some of you are sheep, some of you are goats." I mean, imagine the reaction in our churches.

You can imagine how much more offensive it is to those outside of the church. So I think we have to recover the willingness to speak of both sides of what Jesus taught about that there are not only benefits from being Christian, but there are consequences that follow from hearing about Christ and then deliberately rejecting the gospel.

We have to be willing to speak of that. The Hebrew prophets, you know, they spoke of the consequence of turning away from the Word of God as well as the consequence of following it. And that idea of the two ways that there are outcomes and consequences that follow on either side are important.

At the same time, we keep the emphasis on love. You know, Scripture does not say, "For God so hated sin that he gave his Son," but "For God so loved the world." And so love is the actuating motive of the Father sending the Son. And how does God show his love?

It says, "He so loved the world that he gave his Son." The Son, Jesus, is himself the living expression, embodiment of the Father's love for us. That was Michael J. McClymon from his office in St. Louis, Missouri, talking with us about his new 1,400-page magnum opus titled "The Devil's Redemption," a new history and interpretation of Christian universalism, now out from Baker Academic.

So grateful for his labors. What an accomplishment. Well, Pastor John returns on Friday to field a question over whether or not he adds to the gospel. And specifically, does John Piper add joy to the gospel? It's a good and fair question, and it's on the table next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

Have a wonderful Independence Day celebration, and we will see you back here on Friday. 1 John Piper, 1 of 1 1. John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 2. John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 3. John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 4. John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 5. John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 6.

John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 7. John Piper, The Devil's Redemption 8.