Replying to the Scotist on CWOB

Scotist graciously has provided a fairly good clarification of his comments to my recent piece on CWOB. I think he still is accusing me of heresy but at least he’s doing so in a relatively straightforward fashion by which he might readily accuse most of Christendom.

If there is anything clear from Scotist’s argument to this hard-nosed and newly minted Magister Scientiae, it is that the idea of universal salvation has gone too far. While I appreciate the deep compassion of Origen, certain 19th century New England controversialists, and our dear Scotist, I cannot be swayed by appeals to God’s irresistibility or that Christian ethics and Christian hope requires us to believe in the salvation of every ktisis . While this certainly would be a mark of success, we are unprofitable servants and creation has a few warps in the old woof. And as the Article on Predestination and Election reminds us, “Furthermore, we must receive God’s promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth in us in Holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.”

This particular Article (XVII, if you’re keeping score at home) is a most salutary one in that it admits predestination and election as both a blessing and a curse. And the best way to remove this particular curse is to treat all comers as if they were potentially the elect. For Scotist, this means that he would share the Eucharist with all comers in good order. For me, it means that we do not let the past unduly bear on font or table. We are not the authors of the Apostolic Tradition , who would bar unsavory persons from the waters of regeneration, despite the acts of our Lord, who admitted prostitutes and tax collectors to his service. We do not permanently excommunicate anyone and I know of no priest in this Church who would deny the unrepentant but honestly earnest for the Lord from the Sacrament at the last. Even the strictest penitentials of the ancient Church allow for this.

What I cannot admit from the Scotist’s argument is that we are mandated to hope for something that is contrary to the promises of the Holy Scriptures, which bars in sundry places for sundry reasons certain offenders from the New Jerusalem and speaks of actual non-specific people being damned. The Gospels speak of crops burning, outer darkness, and all of the other horrors which Chrysostom relishes in his sermons. Moreover, since most of us fall into the ranks of these offenders, we are clearly offered regeneration in baptism. These offenders we are but no more. We have been washed. We have been sanctified. We have been saved through Jesus Christ. The most universal salvation for which I have evidence is those who have excuse according to the light of nature as Paul says in Romans. I, like the apostles and the Articulators, know of no other name under heaven but Jesus by which we have salvation. But I have faith that the name of Jesus is written throughout the cosmos in every blade of grass and every pulsar.

And despite my vexation with a universe in which some are not brought into the fullness of the light of Christ at the end of things, I have enough confidence in God’s justice and our freedom to realize that this may just be the way things are. Why the Fall, if God is always irresistible? Why the Destruction of the Temple, if God is always irresistible? Why every horror of human being to human being, if God is always irresistible? Why does God limit his irresistibility?

When we offer communion to the baptized, we say nothing about the verity of their election, which is between them and God. Instead, we recognize their potential for election, that these persons have made a choice to subsume their identity to that of Jesus Christ, casting their crowns in the sea and prostrating themselves before the Lamb. We already have recognized the immanence of the eschaton in that by admitting them on account of their potential for election. We have no way of judging the potential of any other class of persons, though we have no grounds to assume any particular person’s state of grace.

Scotist says, “But do we know universalism--say, the doctrine that all are saved at the end of all things--is true? I do not think so. Nevertheless, Scripture leaves room for us to hope that all might be saved.” I claim that we have no such grounds for hope and indeed quite the opposite, nor is such hope incumbent on us. We have been allowed the freedom to choose damnation and to reject God’s Grace, probably because God is equivalently free. So great is God’s love for us. Nor does denial of universal salvation need have any deleterious impact on Christian ethics. We have no justification for conversion by the sword or any analogous tactic of discrimination. We are obligated to allow all the same freedom all sentient beings have received from their Creator.