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Chauncy, Gordon, and Ferré: Sovereign Love and Universal Salvation in the New England Tradition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Owen L. Norment Jr
Affiliation:
Hampden-Sydney College, Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943

Extract

John Hick has recently observed that within the “spectrum of disarray” in recent Christian theology regarding life after death, some “moderately traditional theologians,” while retaining the idea of an afterlife, have moved to an avowal of universal salvation. In part the importance of this trend lies in the fact that theologians of a universalist persuasion—Hick himself being a notable example—may now increasingly be accounted significant rather than peripheral figures. While universalism has always been an available option for a few, constituting since the early Christian centuries “a small underground stream of belief,” it has usually been strongly opposed by orthodox thinkers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1979

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References

1 Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976) 9293.Google ScholarPubMed

2 Ibid., 200. See chap. 13 for Hick's full discussion of universal salvation.

3 Cf. Smith, H. Shelton, Handy, Robert T., and Loetscher, Lefferts A., American Christianity: An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents (2 vols.; New York, 1960 and 1963) 1Google Scholar. 380–83. For a full discussion of Chauncy, with special emphasis on his role as critic of the Great Awakening, see Jones, Barney Lee, “Charles Chauncy and the Great Awakening in New England” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1958).Google Scholar

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17 The Mystery hid from Ages and Generations, 20. But he did not conclude, as the Universalist John Murray evidently had, that this relieved mankind of the arduous necessity of growth into a moral state appropriate to the gift of salvation. Cf. Wright, Conrad, introduction to the reprint ed. of Chauncy, , Salvation for all Men illustrated and vindicated as A Scripture Doctrine (Hicksville, NY: Regina, 1975).Google Scholar

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19 Ibid., 1. Cf. Salvation for all Men, 24–25.

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22 Ibid., 10–11. Cf. chap. 20, “A Possible Pareschatology,” in Hick, Death and Eternal Life.

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76 See A Theology for Christian Education, 204–8; The Universal Word, 186,238ff., 247, 252, 257–58. In Reason in Religion he suggested the possibility of reincarnation at one point (76) and argued against its adequacy as a Christian view at another point (257–58).

77 The Universal Word, 248.

78 Ibid., 124, and passim.

79 The Christian Understanding of God, 219–20. Cf. Evil and the Christian Faith, 117– 19; Christ and the Christian, 248; Reason in Religion, 255–56; A Theology for Christian Education, 202–9; The Universal Word, 237, 240–42, 258.

80 On Chauncy, see Smith, Handy, and Loetscher, American Christianity, 1. 382–83. Ferré argued in Christ and the Christian (I76ff.) that “moral influence” as such is quite inadequate to characterize the meaning and power of the atonement.

81 Evil and the Christian Faith, 119.

82 Death and Eternal Life, 273.

83 Ibid., 209–10.

84 Ibid., 250–59.