There Is No Such Thing As Trinitarian-Universalism

The trend today among many who oppose a Trinitarian approach to theology is to link Trinitarianism to Universalism as if they are one and the same. Thus, when others fail to investigate the matter for themselves but simply take this flawed premise as truth, those who deplore the views of Universalism immediately indict Trinitarianism as guilty-by-association.

I myself have been called a Universalist many times because of my Trinitarian views. Some (but not all) who have brought this charge against me have done so with an inflammatory sense of urgency and with impassioned emotion that might sway those who haven’t studied the topics for themselves. When somebody in a theatre screams, “Fire!” people seldom pause to ascertain whether or not the building is indeed burning. If they rush out of the theatre only to discover afterwards that there was no fire, they wouldn’t appreciate the false alarm. However, the problem when somebody screams, “Heresy!” is that even after people have fled the building, few take the time afterwards to investigate whether or not the alarming cry was grounded in reality and truth.

Charges that try to combine Trinitarianism and Universalism come from those who are either are uninformed or misinformed about these two viewpoints. While most biblical perspectives share some similarity, as do these, they are also very different in other ways. There is no such thing as a Trinitarian-Universalist. There are Universalists who believe in the Trinity (Christian Universalism) and there are those who don't (Unitarian Universalism). The soteriological viewpoint called "Trinitarianism" is not a Universalist position. To use the phrase, "Trinitarian Universalist" reflects either a lack of academic investigation or scholastic integrity. It’s sloppy at best and dishonest at worst. Even a cursory study of the two fields of study would readily reveal stark differences.

Mention the name, Thomas F. Torrance, and the subject of Trinitarianism will immediately come to the minds of those familiar with both Torrance and Trinitarianism. Torrance is among a handful of contemporary theologians who have articulated Trinitarian thought in the clearest way and in a way most faithful to the ancient Church Fathers who espoused this view.

Back in the 1940’s, there was an interesting dialogue and debate between TF Torrance and renowned New Testament scholar J.A.T. Robinson. The following quote from Torrance was a response to Robinson’s compelling defense of the Universalist viewpoint.

“All that Dr. Robinson's argument succeeds in doing is to point to the possibility that all might be saved in as much as God loves all to the utmost, but it does not and cannot carry as a corollary the impossibility of being eternally lost. The fallacy of every universalist argument lies not in proving the love of God to be universal and omnipotent but in laying down the impossibility of ultimate damnation. Dr. Robinson has cited passages from the New Testament which would seem to him to point in the direction of universalism, but what of those many other passages which declare in no uncertain terms that at the last judgment there will be a final division between the children of light and the children of darkness? What of the shuddering horror of the words: "It were better for that man had he never been born", which came from the lips of Omnipotent Love? There is not a shred of Biblical witness that can be adduced to support the impossibility of ultimate damnation. All the weight of Biblical teaching is on the other side.”

Torrance continues later in the article:

“The doctrine of universalism gains its plausibility not from itself, for it is inherently and inevitably inconsistent, but from the inconsistency of the position it attacks. That is very apparent in Dr. Robinson's essay which attains its force in criticism of a position where God's righteousness and love, or His omnipotence and love, are thrown into false antithesis. That has long been the difficulty with the traditional doctrine of predestination and reprobation as a double decree. In actual fact, however, the Biblical doctrine of election is the very doctrine which expresses the universal action of God's grace in such a way that, far from dissolving the personal elements of choice and decision, it establishes them. It is the doctrine of election therefore which is the great truth that is partly apprehended and yet obscured in the error of universalism.

(Unversalism) commits the dogmatic fallacy of systematising the illogical. Sin has a fundamentally surd-like character. Somehow evil posits itself and cannot be rationalised. The New Testament teaches that when it speaks of the mystery of iniquity, and of the bottomless pit (abyssos). Evil is fundamentally discontinuity. No explanation involving only continuity or coherence can ever approach the problem, for that would be to draw the line of continuity dialectically over discontinuity. The doctrine of the atonement teaches us that no matter how much we think about it, here our reason reaches its limit. It cannot bridge the contradiction between God and man in guilt. The contradiction is resolved only by an act of God in which man in contradiction to God is reconciled and yet the terrible bottomless reality of sin is not denied. That act of God is ultimately eschatological so that just how the contradiction is dealt with in atonement is yet to be revealed at the Parousia. That is the relevance of apocalyptic, but apocalyptic is the antithesis of universalism. Universalism is the doctrine that rationalises sin, that refuses to admit in its dark fathomless mystery a limit to reason. Universalism means that the contradiction can be bridged by reason after all, and constitutes therefore the denial of atonement and the anguished action of Calvary. The Christian faith which has looked into the limitless depth of the “Eli, Eli lama sabachthani,” and considered the great weight of sin to discover that only by act of God can man get across the gulf, will accept the way of humility where the Cross makes foolish the wisdom of this world.

It will learn the disciple of suspending judgment in order to avoid foisting a false and abortive unity or a closed system of thought upon the actual facts of existence. The irrational mystery of evil is the other rock upon which universalism as a unitary interpretation of existence inevitably suffers shipwreck. True dogmatic procedure at this point is to suspend judgment, for here that is the most rational thing reason can do. Whether all men will as a matter of fact be saved or not, in the nature of the case, cannot be known. The doctrine of universalism gains its plausibility not from itself, for it is inherently and inevitably inconsistent, but from the inconsistency of the position it attacks. That is very apparent in Dr. Robinson's essay which attains its force in criticism of a position where God's righteousness and love, or His omnipotence and love, are thrown into false antithesis. That has long been the difficulty with the traditional doctrine of predestination and reprobation as a double decree.

In actual fact, however, the Biblical doctrine of election is the very doctrine which expresses the universal action of God's grace in such a way that, far from dissolving the personal elements of choice and decision, it establishes them. It is the doctrine of election therefore which is the great truth that is partly apprehended and yet obscured in the error of universalism.”

Torrance continues:

“Election is the love of God enacted and inserted into history in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so that in the strictest sense Jesus Christ is the election of God. He is the one and indivisible act of divine love. There is therefore no decree of predestination which precedes this act of grace or goes behind the back of Jesus Christ, for that would be to split the act of God into two, and to divide Christ from God. Jesus Christ is wholly identical with God's action, that which was, and that which is, and that which shall be, the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

And to conclude Torrance’s response to Robinson:

“The Incarnation of the Son of God means therefore that the eternal Word of God has become event in time, and that through the Cross the eternal decision of God has invaded the sphere of our temporal relations. Just because the love of God is not only act in time but a Person, Jesus Christ, the eternal election of God has become encounter, acutely personalised in the midst of our choices and decisions, demanding response and decision. Election is not therefore some dead predestination in the past or some still point in a timeless eternity, but a living act that enters time and confronts us face to face in Jesus Christ the living Word of God. Precisely because this Word is also eternal it is always contemporary with us, travelling, as it were, through time. The great fact of the Gospel then is this: that God has actually chosen us in Jesus Christ in spite of our sin, and that in the death of Christ that election has become a fait accompli. It means too that God has chosen all men, in as much as Christ died for all men, and because that is once and for all no one can ever elude the election of His love, as no one exists except by the Word of God by who In as much all things were made and in whom all things consist, and in as much as this is the Word that has once and for all enacted the eternal election of grace to embrace all men, the existence of every man whether he will or no is bound up inextricably with that election—with the Cross of Jesus Christ. Every man's being is bound up for ever with the one and indivisible act of God's love in Jesus Christ. How could it be otherwise? The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are the final reality of our world upon which everything else depends. All things are summed up in Him, things visible, and invisible, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. The whole universe revolves round the Love of God in Jesus Christ and all its motion depends entirely upon Him.”

If you’ve come this far in your reading of this blog, that tells me that you have the aptitude for understanding Torrance’s point, whether you agree with it or not. Trinitarianism is not Universalism. So, in the interest of scholastic integrity and in the name of Christian harmony, please don’t postulate publicly that it is.

What do I believe? I believe that, in Christ, our Triune God has adopted all of humanity into Himself. I believe that this objective reality is factual whether or not it ever becomes an actual, subjective experience to a person. I believe that the proclamation of the gospel is to announce the good news of what has been done by our sovereign God, not what could be done if a frail human will only let Him. I believe that apart from personal faith in Jesus Christ, a person will not inherit the kingdom of God, neither now nor in eternity. I believe there are aspects of the afterlife that cannot be known and defended as dogma because of the apparent ambiguity we experience when we try to filter infinite reality through our finite ability to understand. I believe there are paradoxical statements in Scripture that we can embrace without the necessity of reconciling every detail of biblical truth in our own understanding. I believe that there is no place for loving brothers and sisters to vilify those whose understanding is different from our own. I believe that we can discuss and debate with passion yet maintain an attitude of loving respect for each other that is obvious to any onlooker. I acknowledge that I do not have perfect understanding of anything but teach through “a glass darkly” and believe this is the attitude we all need to possess.

Finally, where I am wrong, I am sincerely wrong. I am wrong after years of study, prolonged periods of prayer, intense interaction with respected colleagues and friends, moments of agonizing doubts and exhilarating certainty. As best as I know my heart, I am teachable, but I am where I am and sense an internal mandate to be true to myself, to what I believe to be my calling and to the message I believe has been entrusted to me by Him. I ask foes and friends alike to pray for me. None of us have cornered the market on the truth. May we each be open to learn and to change so that our souls and actions may increasingly be conformed to the image of the One who unites us all together.

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The information in this blog from TF Torrance came directly from the article cited at the bottom of this page. Copyrights forbid me from publishing the article in its entirety but it is available for sale at:
https://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3282104&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0036930600004713
T. F. Torrance (1949). Universalism or Election?. Scottish Journal of Theology, 2, pp 310-318 doi:10.1017/S0036930600004713