Flames of Love (A Book Review)

by John Borlik | Aug 27, 2021 | Christian Universalism, Main posts

Author Heath Bradley wrote in the Preface to this 2012 book, Flames of Love, “this book is the fruit of wrestling with the spirit of the risen Jesus and refusing to let go until I received a blessing…. It has come in the form of a distinctively Christian vision of universal salvation that still has an integral and biblically-faithful role for the reality of hell… discovering the Bible-honoring, Christ-centered, and God-fearing vision of universal salvation that has been present in the church from the beginning has brought me a great deal of joyful confidence, even though not absolute certainty… the way of thinking about the end of all things that I will struggle to articulate in this book strikes me as the most coherent and compelling way of making sense of how God’s story of redemption through Christ will turn out.” (Pg. ix-x)

In chapter 1, he explains, “In this book, we are concerned with understanding and evaluating a specific Christian vision of God and God’s relationship to humanity known as Christian universalism…. [which is] the belief that ultimately every person will be saved through Christ. This vision of salvation stands in sharp contrast… to the dominant Christian vision of hell … that all people who are not Christians will spend eternity in conscious torment.” (Pg. 2)

He suggests, “Calvinists hold that God can accomplish whatever God wants to accomplish, it’s just that in their view God doesn’t really want to save all people. Arminians hold that God wants to save all people, but unfortunately, God cannot make free human beings choose salvation. Christian universalism simply affirms with Calvinists that God can do whatever God desires to do, and with the Arminians that God desires to save all people. Put those premises together, and you get the conclusion that God will save all people.” (Pg. 15)

He acknowledges, “many [atheists] reject traditional theism out of deep moral convictions; convictions that say that a God who tortures people forever for sin that they couldn’t help avoiding in the first place is not worth worshiping. I think they are on to something, and they are right to challenge a religious response that appeals to divine mystery to justify actions that we would immediately and unequivocally label as evil if attributed to human beings.” (Pg. 21) Later, he adds, “One of the main reasons I am motivated to argue against the everlasting damnation of all non-Christians is that I believe this doctrine… actually keeps many people from fully loving God with all they are, because deep down, to them God is a monster they are scared of, not a Father they adore.” (Pg. 129)

He observes, “while many Christians have this moral intuition that a God of love must care about justice and making things right, they wrongly assume that everlasting hell is the only way that God can bring about this justice… we are not forced to choose between believing in either a god who punishes the wicked forever on the one hand, or in a God who is morally indifferent and nonresponsive to the evil and injustice in life on the other… Indeed, most Christian universalists hold to a very robust and strong vision of divine judgment. Judgment need not be everlasting conscious torment in order for it to be very serious.” (Pg. 31-32)

He points out, “Jesus taught us to think of God primarily on the model of a loving parent. On one occasion he said, ‘Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead of a fish?…’ Jesus is encouraging his followers to compare the character of God with the character of human parents, who… would not do anything to actively harm their children… Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle … write [in  Erasing Hell: What God Said About Eternity, and the Things We’ve Made Up ], ‘… We don’t have the license to define love according to our standards and sensibilities.’ Actually, if we do take Jesus seriously, we do have the license from him to think about God according to our own standards…if we throw away human standards of goodness when thinking about God, then the claim that God is better, greater, and higher than our goodness is rendered meaningless.” (Pg. 41-42)

He asserts, “if these passages [1 Cor 15:22, Rom 5:18, Phil 2:9-11] are easily dismissed in the discussion as not really affirming universal salvation, then what WOULD it take for you to be open to the idea that a biblical author taught universal salvation? If Jesus wanted to reveal to us that God relates to all people with unlimited compassion and unbreakable love, how could he say it any more clearly than to say that God ‘is kind to the wicked and the ungrateful’ [Lk 6:35]?… A thoughtful reader… could easily argue that the apparent universalist texts are just as ‘clear’ as the apparent everlasting hell texts. There is no compelling reason why the everlasting hell texts should simply be assumed to be the clear texts that set the interpretive parameters for the supposedly ‘obscure’ universalist texts.” (Pg. 57-58)

He argues about Hebrews 9:27, “Universalists agree that humans die once and face judgment. There’s no debate there. The important question, though, is just what does the judgment consist of, and could God’s judgment actually make it possible for a person to repent and turn to Christ?… Paul can logically (and theologically) affirm both a response of faith AND an affirmation of universal salvation IF one doesn’t rule out from the start the possibility of salvation opportunities in the age to come.” (Pg. 59) Later, he adds, “There are also no explicit scriptural declarations that a person’s fate is definitively sealed at death… Supporters of the possibility of postmortem conversion will certainly agree … that all people face divine judgment when they die, but they will also affirm that God’s judgment is designed to elicit repentance and foster reconciliation.” (Pg. 123)

After quoting Revelation 21:23-25, he comments, “Throughout the book of Revelation the ‘kings of the earth’ are presented as the ultimate bad guys… their names are not found in the Book of Life, and so they are among those who are thrown into the lake of fire. Yet here we see them making their way into the heavenly city that has gates that are never closed… It is hard to imagine that they would be open so that the inhabitants of the city could leave, so they must be open so that those in the lake of fire can make their way in. Since John is clear that nothing can enter the heavenly city without being cleansed of sin, this could reasonably lead one to conclude that the lake of fire ultimately has a corrective and purifying function.” (Pg. 75-76)

He asks, “if God’s love is relentless, unstoppable, unchanging, unconditional, and never-ending, then why will physical death change all of this?… I can see no reason why a God of steadfast love will stop trying to reach out to a person after their physical death. Many early Christians couldn’t either. For the first four hundred years of the Christian church, many Christians believed that there would be postmortem opportunities for salvation.” (Pg. 84-85)

He notes, “The belief in an age of accountability is ultimately grounded, not primarily in specific scriptural declarations, but in more general scriptural affirmations about the character of God and in our deep moral sense of what is right and wrong. In that sense, it is a doctrine with a similar status as the belief in the possibility of postmortem salvation… While there are no texts that can be used to directly support an age of accountability as most contemporary Christians conceive it, there are several texts that can be marshaled in support of postmortem conversion. Christians who easily and quickly dismiss the possibility of postmortem conversion because of a lack of clear and direct scriptural support, and at the same time hold to a belief in an age of accountability, are … demanding a level of scriptural support for one doctrine that they are not for another.” (Pg. 86-87) He adds that Number 14:28-31 “clearly considers the ‘little ones’ to be anyone under twenty years old, not just infants and children.” (Pg. 88)

He suggests, “Many people argue that since Revelation speaks of the lake of fire burning forever, that it is clear that not all will enter through the open gates… One can just as easily argue the reverse position, namely, that since Revelation asserts that all things will be restored to God, the passages asserting that the lake of fire lasts forever cannot be taken literally. While I would not go so far as to say that Revelation unequivocally and unambiguously affirms universal salvation, it undeniably at least holds up as a possibility… to turn to God after death.” (Pg. 90)

He states, “I think that [1 Peter 3:18-20] teaches the descent of Christ into hell for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel to set people free. That Peter… uses the term ‘gospel,’ and … ‘proclamation,’ a word that is used throughout the New Testament to describe preaching the gospel for the purpose of conversion, all fit together nicely with the interpretation I am proposing. The only detail that seems to throw off this way … is the reference to the generation of Noah… [But] The generation of Noah came to be regarded as the most-wicked generation ever with no chance of finding redemption… In naming this generation in particular, Peter seems to be affirming that there is absolutely no group of people outside the scope of God’s will to save. If there is hope for them, there is hope for anybody!” (Pg. 91-92)

He says God has the power… to change the human will to see the ugliness and destructiveness of sin and to turn away from it and embrace the grace that is freely given by God. take the apostle Paul, for example. On the road to Damascus, as he is on his way to persecute Christians… Paul wasn’t seeking to choose Christ. He had chosen to reject Christ and to try to stamp out those who had accepted Christ as the Messiah.” (Pg. 98)

He contends, “one cannot consistently and coherently let the distinctively Christian claim that God is love be their guide, while at the same time affirming that all paths [to God] are equal… What I want to point out is that one can hold on to the affirmation that Jesus Christ is the exclusive means of salvation, without concluding that salvation is exclusively limited to those who profess Christ in this lifetime… the saving work of Christ is not limited to people who in this life knowingly and intentionally put their trust in Christ… Christ can reach through to people in this life without them necessarily knowing about him…” (Pg. 110, 114, 117)

He asserts, “When exclusivists claim that … God owes us nothing in the first place, they are making an unwarranted logical leap… to infer from this that God then has the right to create billions of people who will experience everlasting torment because they have not heard the gospel message and accepted it in this lifetime is another. To say that God owes us nothing is not the same as saying that God has the right to do anything.” (Pg. 115)

He points out, “While belief in an everlasting hell maybe what has motivated many evangelists and missionaries, I would argue that it is precisely this belief that has largely contributed to a transactional, decision-oriented focus towards evangelism that has made accepting the gospel the minimal entrance requirement for heaven. In contrast, Jesus said evangelism is to be about making disciples by teaching people how to live…” (Pg. 139)

He also argues, “Punishing someone for eternity does nothing to really make things right. Let’s return to the case of Hitler. How can everlasting punitive suffering really make up for the horrendous evil he perpetuated into so many lives?… To think that ‘getting even’ is what heals life’s deepest wounds is a myth… Hitler, for example, maybe given a role to play in the restoration of his victims. We can imagine God enabling his victims to offer him forgiveness, and in turn, God enabling Hitler to feel and see the horror of his wrongs, and then, with God’s help, to repent and do all he can to make reconciliation and restoration possible. This strikes me as a much more biblically shaped and Christ-centered view … than simply consigning Hitler to never-ending punishments where he never realizes and fully agrees with God’s condemnation of his sin.” (Pg. 158-159)

This is a marvelous, surprisingly “philosophical,” and creative explanation and defense of Christian Universalism; it will be a “must-reading” for anyone seriously studying the doctrines of Hell, Conditional Immortality, and Universalism.