James K.A. Smith on the new "evangelical" universalism

Old school universalism ("many roads lead to God") has pretty much worn out its welcome among the pantheon of heresies and heterodoxies. But, as James K.A. Smith observes, there is a new form of universalism now emerging (pun intended) and its adherents claim to be of the evangelical persuasion. Unlike their predecessors, these "evangelical universalists" have no objection to the unique claims of Jesus Christ. Their objection is to certain ideas of God which run counter to their "hope" and "imagination."

Let's attend to these two specific sorts of claims. I would note that both of these intuitions are fundamentally anthropocentric strategies--outcomes of what Charles Taylor (in A Secular Age) calls "the anthropocentric turn" in modernity. A couple of thoughts:

1) The "I-can't-imagine" strategy is fundamentally Feuerbachian: it is a hermeneutic of projection which begins from what I can conceive and then projects "upwards," as it were, to a conception of God. While this "imagining" might have absorbed some biblical themes of love and mercy, this absorption seems selective. More importantly, the "I-can't-imagine" argument seems inattentive to how much my imagination is shaped and limited by all kinds of cultural factors and sensibilities--including how I "imagine" the nature of love, etc. The "I-can't-imagine" argument makes man the measure of God, or at least seems to let the limits and constraints of "my" imagination trump the authority of Scripture and interpretation. I take it that discipleship means submitting even my imagination to the discipline of Scripture. (Indeed, could anything be more countercultural right now than Jonathan Edwards' radical theocentrism, with all its attendant scandals for our modern sensibilities?)

2) The "at-least-I-hope" strategy might seem less problematic. Doesn't it just name what all of us secretly desire? Indeed, wouldn't we be quite inhuman if we didn't hope in this way? (Then you get Winner's obnoxious suggestion that any of those who continue to affirm divine judgment are really trying to "guard heaven's gate," taking a certain delight in exclusion, as if they saw heaven as a country club. I won't dignify that with a response.)

But whence this hope? Can our hopes ever be wrong? Let's try an analogous example: I love my wife dearly. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and our marriage has been an incredible means of grace in my life. I can't imagine life without her; indeed, I don't want to imagine life without her. And I want to hope that we will share this intimacy as a husband and wife forever.

But then I run into this claim from Jesus: "At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven" (Matt. 22:30). Should I nonetheless hope that marriage endures in eternity? Should I profess that I can't know this (since Scripture seems to suggest otherwise), but nonetheless claim that somehow hoping it might be true is still faithful? Or should I submit even my hopes to discipline by the authority of Scripture?

The new universalism is not the old universalism. Fair enough. But those of us who reject even the new universalism aren't gleeful about it. We might even wish it were otherwise. But we also recognize that even our wishes, hopes, and desires need discipline.

Unfortunately, the one thing the "new universalists" have in common with the "old universalists" is an aversion to anything remotely resembling discipline. After all, if we're all going to end up in the same place in the hereafter, what's the point of fine tuning our lives in the here and now?