This is part 11 of my Actual Good News series of articles on the topic of biblical soteriology (the study of salvation).
Please note that I’m including many of my scriptural references in the links (which are are the underlined words throughout the article), and they also link to studies with extended details that I couldn’t fit into the article, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references.
Even though the last article in this series proved definitively that everyone will eventually experience salvation and reconciliation, there are still a number of objections to the doctrine which you’ve no doubt heard, or perhaps even raised yourself at some point, and we‘re now going to take a look some of them so you can know how to answer them whenever they’re used to try to argue against what Scripture actually says about salvation.
For example, one common objection is: “If it’s true that everyone will get saved, why is it that almost no churches teach this?” Well, while it’s technically a statement connected with Israel’s specific type of salvation, I would suggest that Jesus’ reference to the strait and narrow can be seen as a trans-dispensational (or trans-administrational) truth. Because, honestly, there’s no way that a religion with as many followers as the traditional Christian religion has — about a third of the human population of the planet at the time this article was written — can possibly be the “narrow way” that few find, so a better question would be: “If never-ending torment in hell is true, why is it that almost all churches teach it?” (And I’d also suggest that this goes for nearly every other popular, “orthodox” teaching within the Christian religion as well.)
Another extremely common objection is simply that the doctrine of the salvation of all humanity has been declared to be a heresy, thus it can’t be true, but this is largely based not only on the assumption that the council which supposedly declared this had the authority to make such a declaration, but also on the assumption that it actually didmake such a declaration to begin with, and many people believe it actually didn’t make such a declaration at all, but rather condemned something else altogether, and that the idea that the doctrine of the salvation of all was condemned at that time is based on a misunderstanding of what was actually condemned (although I’m not going to get into the details of that debate here because it doesn’t matter to those of us in the body of Christ, since we base our theology entirely on what the Bible says rather than on council meetings of Christian denominations we’re not a part of and that weren’t recorded in Scripture, but there are Christians who have gone into detail on it if you’re curious to learn more about this assertion). All that said, as I discussed in the first part of this series, the actual definition of “heresy” isn’t “false teaching” anyway, just as the word “orthodoxy” doesn’t mean “truth.” In fact, as I explained there, the meaning of the Greek word which is transliterated as “heresies” in the KJV is simply “sects” (or “divisions”), and not “incorrect doctrine” at all, and “orthodox” only means “that which is commonly accepted,” and there’s always been plenty of commonly accepted error out there. As I mentioned in that article, Galileo was technically put on trial as a heretic by the very religious organization (the Roman Catholic Church) that supposedly also condemned the doctrine of the salvation of all humanity as a heresy, because he taught that the earth isn’t the centre of the universe, but he was still quite correct that it isn’t. Meanwhile, Rome considered their view that our planet is the centre of the universe to be the orthodox one, but they were entirely incorrect. And if they could be wrong about that official teaching and declaration of heresy, they could be wrong about any official doctrine they teach, which really means that everything they consider to be “orthodox” should be considered suspect. It’s also important to keep in mind that, if you’re an evangelical or some other form of Protestant Christian, the entire existence of your denomination has been officially declared to be heretical by the Roman Catholic Church. But even if your own denomination has also declared the doctrine of the salvation of all humanity to be heretical, the fact that it is true, as already proven from what we’ve covered in this series so far, once again reminds us that just because something is “heretical” doesn’t mean it’s incorrect, and something being “orthodox” doesn’t make it true. And again, never forget that both Jesus and Paul were considered to be heretics by the orthodoxy of their day, so consider yourself to be in good company whenever someone calls you a heretic.
It’s also often asserted that, “If everyone gets saved, then Jesus died in vain.” This is a very strange, yet also extremely common, claim you’ll hear from many Christians who just aren’t thinking things through particularly carefully. Because the truth is, if Jesus didn’t die, then nobody would get saved. Really, this assertion is no different from saying, “If only a few people get saved, then Jesus died in vain since some people will not suffer without end in hell.” Either way, we (should) all realize it’s what Christ did that saves us, and recognize that this statement is a sign of lazy thinking.
Some Christians will also claim that a sin against an infinite God requires an infinite punishment, because sin would affect an infinite being more than it would affect a mere human. This assumption isn’t made anywhere in Scripture, however, which means they have no basis for believing it in the first place, especially because Scripture actually appears to say the exact opposite, in Job 35:5-8 where Elihu (the one friend of Job who wasn’t condemned by God for his words) said, “Look unto the heavens, and see; and behold the clouds which are higher than thou. If thou sinnest, what doest thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what doest thou unto him? If thou be righteous, what givest thou him? or what receiveth he of thine hand? Thy wickedness may hurt a man as thou art; and thy righteousness may profit the son of man.” So no, our sin doesn’t actually affect God — who is far above being able to be harmed by anything we can do — at all.
Many Christians also like to object to the salvation of all by saying things along the lines of, “You’re putting too much of an emphasis on God’s love, all the while forgetting His judgement, justice, and wrath. The justice of God demands that the wicked be punished for their sins without end, which means that if people who don’t choose to receive the gift of Christ’s sacrifice in order to experience salvation aren’t punished without end, then God’s justice hasn’t been satisfied.” There are a number of problems with this assertion, however, the first of which is simply that none of us have forgotten about the judgement, justice, and wrath of God at all (as everything you’ve read in this series so far should really make pretty obvious). It’s just that we also understand that an attribute such as His justice and wrath can never outweigh His very essence, which is love. And if love is His very essence, then, at least in the long run, everything He does must ultimately be beneficial for (and work out in the best interests of) all the creation He loves, which means His love can’t ever take a back seat to an attribute like His justice or wrath, but rather they will always have to be influenced by His love (which always perseveres and never fails, if it’s a scriptural form of love) for all of His creation. And since allowing any of His creation to suffer without end in fire with no hope of escape could not be said to be an expression of His love for said creation (except in the most horrifically twisted of religious minds), we know that His justice could not allow this to happen because it would conflict with His love towards all of His creation. Of course, some Christians will try to argue here that God defines words such as “love” differently than we do, since “His ways are higher than ours,” but A) Scripture already defines “love” for us, and B) if we aren’t using words in a way that we can actually all understand them, there’s no point in even using these words in the first place, and we might as well just stop studying Scripture altogether. And really, if “love” can somehow actually include never-ending torture in a fiery “hell” for some of those it’s directed towards, I don’t even want to begin to think about what “heaven” might actually include for those of us who are headed there instead, but to say it might not be pleasant would likely be an understatement. There’s a second major problem with the popular claim that God’s justice isn’t satisfied if we don’t have to choose to receive the gift of Christ’s sacrifice in order to experience salvation as well, though. You see, if someone claims that our salvation is dependent upon God’s justice being satisfied (which it indeed is), then when His justice is satisfied, we’d also have to be guaranteed salvation, since it would be unjust of Him to punish someone without end if His justice has been satisfied. And since we now know from what we’ve learned in the last article that Christ died in order that the penalty for our sins would be justly set aside by God, meaning so that everyone will be justified, resurrected (if they’ve died), and even made free from ever being able to die or sin again, all apart from anything that we ourselves have to do (and not so that the penalty could potentially be set aside, but only if we ourselves choose to believe that His sacrifice was enough to satisfy God’s justice, which is essentially what most Christians insist we have to believe in order to be saved), if someone insists that the salvation of all humanity isn’t guaranteed simply because of Christ’s sacrifice, they’re ultimately telling us that they themselves really don’t believe Christ’s sacrifice actually was enough to satisfy God’s justice after all, but rather that an action on our part is also required on top of Christ’s sacrifice in order to satisfy God’s justice. The problem is, this would mean that they want us to choose to believe something they themselves think isn’t even actually true, in and of itself, somehow making what they believe to actually be a lie become true by choosing to believe it to be true (since the idea that what Christ did was enough to satisfy God’s justice would be a lie if it isn’t true on its own, meaning enough to guarantee us salvation apart from us having to also do something to make it true). Basically, what they really believe (even if they don’t realize it and will likely deny it) is that justice is actually served by us doing the right thing (such as choosing to believe the right thing) rather than by Christ’s death for our sins, which means that we must provide our own justice — either by being punished without end ourselves or by doing that right thing which they believe is required to satisfy God’s justice ourselves — because apparently what Christ accomplished didn’t actually satisfy God’s justice at all, at least as far as their theology is concerned. And if any of them do happen to admit that God’s justice actually was satisfied by what Christ accomplished, but then also try to insist that people still have to choose to believe it in order to experience salvation anyway, it would mean that their objection isn’t actually about God’s justice at all, and that they’re simply using claims about God’s justice as a distraction from the real issue, which is that they want people to have to at least do something in order to gain salvation, even if it’s just something as seemingly simple as having to choose to believe the right thing. But the truth is, if anyone at all doesn’t get saved simply because of what Christ earned through His death — which is the general salvation of anyone who has ever sinned or who will ever sin — then God actually would be unjust, because He wouldn’t be giving His Son what He now deserves (and He’d also be treating us unjustly as well, because if His justice has been satisfied, there’s no basis for inflicting the penalty — which we now know is actually just permanent death, and not inescapable torture in fire — upon us any longer). So if anyone ever tries to use the excuse that, “God is love, but He’s also just,” in order to try to object to the idea that everyone will be saved, you can agree with them, and then explain that it’s because He’s just that everyone has to eventually be saved.
Some also argue that teaching the salvation of all humanity undermines evangelism — saying things like, “If the salvation of all is true, it doesn’t matter whether you believe now or not, so why bother to evangelize at all?” — as well as undermines the necessity of believing the Gospel — making similar statements along the lines of, “If the salvation of all is true, it doesn’t matter whether you believe now or not, so why bother to become a Christian?” From one perspective (the most narrow of perspectives), yes, that could be said to technically be true. But from a broader perspective there are still very good reasons to believe now, as well as to evangelize. For one thing, if it is true, isn’t it better to believe (and teach) the truth rather than a lie (especially since the Bible so heavily condemns false teachers who teach lies)? Even beyond that, though, belief in this doctrine helps bring serious peace of mind that almost no Christians truly have (over the years I’ve interacted with many Christians who are still terrified that they’re going to suffer without end in a place called hell). But on top of all that, there’s another really good reason to believe this, and this is the fact that only those who do believe it get to join the body of Christ (since, if you don’t truly understand what it means that “Christ died for our sins,” can it be said that you actually believe it, and if you don’t actually believe it, how can it be said that you’ve joined the body of Christ?). However, I suppose someone who says this is implying that, if it’s true that everyone gets saved, then there’s less urgency to preach the Gospel, or even for people to become Christians. Whether this is true or not comes down to what one means by evangelism, as well as whether “becoming a Christian” is really all that important in the first place, and, really, what the Gospel about how we’re saved actually even is. From the perspective of those of us who believe what I’ve written in this series, we see the idea of having to become a Christian in order to be saved as religion rather than good news. To put it simply, we see religion as anything which teaches that God will only look kindly upon us if we do the right thing(s) before we die. The good news which Paul primarily taught, on the other hand (that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day), is not a religion at all, but is instead the announcement of the end of religion (simply put, it’s a proclamation, not a proposition). Religion, at least to those of us in the body of Christ, consists of all the things (believing, behaving, worshipping, sacrificing, etc.) that the religious think they have to choose to do (and then actually do) in order to get right with God, but no action (which would include choosing to believe something specific, and then actually believing it) on our part can ever take away our sins or make us immortal. Thankfully, everything necessary for salvation from sin and death has already been done, once and for all, by God through Christ. And while God calls members of the body of Christ to proclaim Paul’s Gospel to those He calls us to proclaim it to, believing it has no effect on one’s ultimate salvation, because our ultimate salvation was already guaranteed some 2,000 years ago by Christ’s death for our sins, burial, and resurrection, and God doesn’t intend to bring everyone to a knowledge of the truth in this lifetime anyway (while He’s guaranteed salvation for everyone through Christ’s actions, He only elects certain people to join the body of Christ — or perhaps to join the Israel of God instead — in this lifetime). So if someone doesn’t believe the Gospel, they won’t have the peace of mind we have that God in Christ did indeed save all of us already (at least proleptically speaking, or from an absolute perspective), and they might also miss out on living in the kingdom of God during one or two of the impending ages (missing out on “everlasting” — meaning age-pertaining, or eonian — life, in other words), but I’d also suggest that one’s concern that they might not become believers if they think the good news I just presented is true is actually not a concern at all because, if someone truly believes that they don’t have to become Christians simply because of what Christ accomplished, not only have they already believed the actual Gospel Paul taught (since, if they actually believed they could avoid “converting,” so to speak, because the above is true, then they’ve technically actually already believed Paul’s Gospel before they even realized it, at least presuming they also understand what death actually is) rather than the “gospel” the Christian religion teaches, but they’re now in the body of Christ as well. So, perhaps that does undermine “evangelism” from a traditional Christian perspective, but not from the scriptural perspective that those of us in the body of Christ come at things from. And, of course, there may also be certain rewards to be had in heaven for evangelism after Christ comes for His body, which would also be incentive to evangelize. That said, wanting to share good news is human nature. There’s a reason I wrote this series of articles in the first place, after all (not to mention why I share it so widely and never charge for it), and belief in the salvation of all humanity has never stopped any of us from wanting to let everyone know this good news, or from actually sharing it.
Another variation of that objection is, “If you’re right, then I’ll miss out on some stuff, but I’ll be okay in the end,” and some even add, “However, if I’m right, you’re going to burn in hell for eternity.” It’s interesting how some Christians believe it’s more important to accept a doctrine because it might have a worse possible outcome than accepting its alternative might have, regardless of whether that doctrine is correct or not, but I’m far more interested in truth than I am in worrying about unfounded threats (and if we needed to choose a theology based on it having the worst possible outcome if we don’t believe or follow it, some religions have even worse end results for those who don’t follow them than the traditional version of Christianity does, so this argument doesn’t help their case the way they might think it does). The real truth, however, is that, if I’m wrong, I’ve still believed the Gospel (since the facts still remain that A) I believe there’s nothing I can possibly do to save myself from sin and death, and B) my faith is solely in Christ’s death for our sins, along with His subsequent burial and resurrection on the third day, for salvation), so that isn’t actually the case at all. And so, if I’m wrong, I’ve actually only been teaching that God is better than He really is, since I’m claiming He’ll actually succeed when it comes to accomplishing His will that everyone be saved; whereas if I’m right, those who make this claim have actually spoken terrible blasphemy, accusing God of doing horrible things to the creation He supposedly loves by torturing them in fire with no chance of escape (or at least of giving up on the majority of them, letting nearly everyone cease to exist completely, never to enjoy consciousness again, if certain other Christians are correct). This truth is lost on those who are lost, however, thanks to their slavery to the demonic teachings of the modern Christian religion, because if most of humanity were to suffer consciously in the lake of fire without end, all this judgement would do is torture the majority of people who ever existed nonstop, which would serve no purpose at all other than to stand as a never-ending reminder that Satan, death, and “hell” won the ultimate victory after all (a Pyrrhic victory though it might be for Satan, a defeat of God in the battle over souls it would remain nonetheless — and the same would go if those who understand that the punishment is simply permanently ceasing to exist but who also believe that some people will “experience” that punishment were right, by the way; it would mean God still lost to Satan, death, and “the grave” in the struggle for souls), and that God was a failure in ridding creation of sin and evil (simply quarantining sin and evil to a small corner of the universe does nothing to eliminate sin and evil from existence, and the only thing it would really change is to add infinitely more suffering to the universe than it currently has, just in a more compressed area, which would actually be far worse than what we have today), ultimately making Him and Jesus A) monsters (only the most horrific of monsters could force, or even allow, someone to be tortured without the possibility of escape; the worst person to ever live could never do anything like that, but many religious Christians want to accuse God of doing something that would make Hitler look like a saint in comparison, since all he was able to accomplish was temporarily torturing and killing millions of people, but even he couldn’t torture anyone without end), and B) the biggest sinners of all for “missing the mark” (which is literally what the word “sin” means, as we learned in an earlier article in this series) by failing to accomplish their goals. (And don’t try to bring up satisfying God’s justice as a possible purpose, because we’ve already determined that Christ’s death for our sins was all that God’s justice required, and for Him to require anyone else to suffer too wouldn’t be about justice at all, since His justice was satisfied by Christ’s death, regardless of whether someone believes it before they die or not.) And honestly, if we’re going to worry about a “Pascal’s Wager” sort of scenario here, I’d much rather err on the side of accusing God of being too good and too loving and too successful than accusing Him of being the exact opposite.
Some Christians also like to say, “Those who believe everyone will be saved just want an excuse to sin,” but if someone truly understands and has believed what I’ve written in this series, then they’ve already believed the good news that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day, and hence have already been saved, so it makes no more sense to say this about us than it does to say it about any traditional Christian who believes they’ve been saved themselves (especially a Christian who believes in OSAS, meaning “Once Saved, Always Saved”).
On a similar — yet somehow even worse — note, some Christians claim that, “If there isn’t a place of never-ending torture in a place called ‘hell’ for sinners, then there’s no point in being good in the first place,” and some even go on to assert that, if they believed it was true that everyone will experience salvation in the end, they’d be out there robbing and raping and murdering people. (Seriously, I’ve had multiple Christians say this to me.) I have to hope they’re just using hyperbole there, although if they’re being serious, and the threat of never-ending torment in a place called “hell” is the only thing keeping them civilized, then perhaps it is a good thing that they don’t believe the truth about this topic, because that’s a seriously disturbing admission about who they really are and what they wish they could actually be doing. But regardless of their sincerity in making these statements, they really aren’t thinking things through. I’ll start with the second claim first, which is to point out that very few believers in the salvation of all are out there committing the crimes these Christians are telling us they apparently wish they could — and, if they believed the salvation of all was true, supposedly would — indulge in. However, presuming they aren’t actually being honest about how their belief in never-ending torment is keeping them from acting out some twisted desire to steal from and hurt others, perhaps the bigger admission that Christians who resort to these sorts of arguments are making is that they don’t trust God’s grace at all. This is actually a bigger topic than just how it applies to the topic of the salvation of all, and I don’t have the time to really get into all the problems connected with this fact right here, but the bottom line is that most Christians really don’t trust God’s grace in the slightest and are always trying to add at least a tiny bit of law to it (just to be safe), even though mortal humans trying to perform religious law always leads to more sin, not less (and not just specifically the Mosaic law, but any religious rules at all, which is what the Mosaic law itself ultimately is), and so this ends up with the exact opposite result of what they’re hoping to achieve through their attempt to shoehorn religious rules into salvation. And as far as the first claim goes, for those Christians who haven’t forgotten that salvation isn’t based on “being good” anyway, since our good works can’t save us, this statement is about as logical as saying, “If criminals eventually get out of prison, then there’s no point in avoiding crime in the first place.” Aside from the fact that the threat of life sentences in prison (and even the death penalty, depending on where you live) doesn’t deter the criminals who do commit major crimes from the actions that result in these sentences, you don’t find most Christians out there living lives of crime (or, if they are, most of them are hiding it pretty well), so we can assume they’re just not thinking things through when they say these things (and, just as with the last objection, any Christian who believes in OSAS and makes these claims forgets that they could then be out there committing the horrific crimes they tell me they wish they could be committing, since they’re guaranteed to still remain saved regardless, according to their own soteriology, so they aren’t being consistent with these assertions at all). Besides, almost no Christian actually believes someone should remain in prison for the rest of their life over a petty crime like shoplifting or jaywalking, so the idea that people should then be tortured without end in “hell” for the same — or even lesser — infractions of the secular law really makes no sense at all (and if someone really believes that sin is actually so serious that it requires someone to be tortured in fire without end, the idea that “the punishment should fit the crime” would be an entirely erroneous idea when it comes to their take on the judicial system as well, since they already believe that every immoral action — which includes breaking the secular law, in most cases — does deserve a much worse punishment than just a fine or a period of time in prison, even when it comes to extremely minor offences, so they should really be arguing for life sentences, the death penalty, or maybe even torture, for every crime, if they wish to be consistent, since they believe that we all deserve far worse consequences than that for committing these actions).
Another very common objection I hear all the time is that Jesus didn’t preach the salvation of all humanity, and that if it were true, He would have mentioned it. Well, if you’ve read all of the articles in this series from the beginning up to this point, you already know why this is a bad argument, of course, but I’ll elaborate anyway. Simply put, Jesus couldn’t have preached the salvation of all humanity, and this is for the very same reason I explained in the first article of this series as to why there had to be two Gospels. Because His death for our sins (and subsequent burial and resurrection) is the basis for the salvation of all humanity, had He taught the salvation of all humanity publicly during His earthly ministry, the spiritual powers of darkness sometimes referred to as “the princes of this world” would have almost certainly put two-and-two together and realized that Him dying for our sins and God raising Him from the dead would be the only possible way that all humanity could not only miss out on eventually remaining dead permanently, but even be made immortal (these are highly intelligent beings, after all), and they would have then avoided their plan to have Him killed, resulting in nobody being saved at all. (And this also means that those of you who are believers in the salvation of all humanity and use parts of the Bible such as the book of John to try to argue that it is indeed scriptural really need to stop using these Circumcision writings for that purpose, because those passages you’re using as “proof texts” can’t actually mean what you think they do, since the sort of salvation being referred to in those books isn’t connected with Paul’s Gospel or the salvation of all at all, so please stick to Paul’s epistles for your arguments.)
And while there are likely more objections than just these which I could cover here (and if I come across them, I’ll likely try to come back and add them to future updates of this article), I’ll wrap this list up with a classic: “God is a gentleman who won’t coerce people into salvation, or force anyone to go to heaven against their will” (some even go so far as to compare the idea Him saving people without them first specifically choosing to be saved to rape; and it’s odd how many Christians seem to have this obsession with using sexual assault in their objections to the salvation of all humanity, and so perhaps they’re telling us something about themselves there and actually are as interested in participating in this crime as many of those who make that previous objection about what they’d do if they believed in the salvation of all seem to imply). Well, if you’ve read everything I’ve written in this series up to this point, you already know that we believe only members of the body of Christ will end up living in heaven (with everyone else eventually being resurrected to live on the New Earth), so right off the bat that’s a straw man argument. But regardless, we don’t believe God will force anyone to be saved against their will anyway, but rather that He gives people the will to want to be saved in the first place. And since Paul told us that everyone is going to experience salvation in the end, He’ll certainly make sure that everyone is willing to enjoy immortality and sinlessness/perfection by the end of the ages. And those who still insist that God just wouldn’t force someone to experience salvation without having to specifically choose to experience it, aside from the fact that this isn’t an assertion found anywhere in the Bible (this is just an unfounded assumption certain Christians make in order to try to hold on to their preferred soteriological doctrines, as well as in order to not have to give up their fetishization of “free will”), most of these people do believe that God will instead force people to suffer in fire without end, even though nobody would actually choose that either. This means that, at the end of the day, it seems as though these Christians don’t actually care if God forces people to experience something against their will at all, so long as He doesn’t let them enjoy what’s to come against the will of the Christians who want people to have to choose to do something specific in order to avoid experiencing suffering instead, the way they think they did.
And with all that being said, let’s move on to the final article in this series where we’ll look at the so-called “proof texts” we’ve all heard used to support the doctrine of never-ending punishment in hell, in order to finally determine what they’re actually talking about once and for all.
Please click here for Part 12 of this series.