My third and (I think) final post on the “soul sort” narrative is up on Jesus Creed. This one is about “election.” This topic ultimately is a deep mystery, upon which I offer my reflections as tentative at best. Here’s the conclusion of the post, but I encourage you to hop over to Jesus Creed and read the whole thing:
We, the Church, have been elected for mission. But this emphatically does not mean that those outside the visible Church are forever outside the reach of God’s grace. Barth’s approach is helpful here: God has already said “yes” to all of humanity in Christ. The eschatological victory over sin, evil and death is sealed. In my view — given what I know of God’s character revealed in Christ – at the final judgment, only those who persistently reject God’s grace will remain outside the Kingdom. Karl Barth, C.S. Lewis, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Leslie Newbiggin, Donald Bloesch, Dallas Willard, and the like, were right: it is wrong to suggest that all people who do not (as far as we can see) have access to the Gospel in this life are simply cast off by God. (Whether God’s salvation encompasses an ongoing post-mortem “harrowing of Hell,” as many Eastern Church Fathers and contemporary Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic theologians suggest, I do not know, though I personally suspect something like this is so. ) Yet, as always, it is not for me to pretend to constrain what God can or cannot do, or to pry too deeply into His mysteries. Judgment and salvation belong to God alone.
Meanwhile, we who know Christ go into the world with great hope and anticipation for the wedding feast to come, as people chosen by God for His mission of redeeming all of creation, trusting that nothing God has done or will do is in the slightest way unloving, unjust, unfair, or wrong, working out our own salvation, and content to leave the mystery of final judgment to our good and beautiful God.
One reply on “Soul Sorting and Election”
Super fascinating David, well done! You blow me away and really challenge my thinking, in a good way.
I like that you’re tentative about this subject, it’s difficult and it’s a real put off when people declare their 100% comprehension of election, etc.
Here’s a thought. Perhaps there is some insight in considering one of the works of Christ on the cross to be a reversal of the Fall and restoration (at some level) to that pre-Fall world. Consider that in the Fall the story goes that God created the “default position” to be that of “you’re ‘in’ unless you reject me”. Neither God nor Adam and Eve didn’t have to do anything to be ‘in’. If we then fast-forward to the post-Crucifixion world, would it be logical to say that a similar “default position” has been restored through Christ’s sacrifice?
This is a totally fascinating view and I’m going to have to do more thinking on the relationship between this view of election, mission, and evangelism. A lot seems to ride on what we view the whole purpose of life is. If it’s just a matter of being on the right side of the sort in the end, then evangelism and election are important, but not so much “mission. If we drift the other way into universalism then mission is important but not so much election and evangelism. So the key, I guess, is finding a balance in this trio of “destination and purpose”. Deep stuff, but so important.