In essence, Universalists core reasoning is this: if God loves everyone He has created, then He does not desire for anyone to go to hell, therefore nobody will. However, Universalists fail to look at the rest of the picture. God does not desire for anyone to go to hell, but He is a God of complete and holy justice, meaning, some of us will end up in hell. Although, in His love for us, He sent His gift of mercy, all we have to do is accept it. Picture it like this, imagine you’re having a party and you’ve invited 100 people. In preparation for the party, you go out and buy 100 cans of soda for the 100 guests. The day of the party arrives and guests arrive, and before the long the party is over, when cleaning up you notice that you have several cans of soda left. For all of the cans to have been, everyone would have to pick up and can and take it. To tie this back into my point imagine you, the host, are God, the party guests are mankind, and the cans of soda, the gift of eternal life. You being the host offered the soda just as God offers eternal life, but just as the party guests had to take the can, mankind has to accept and take the gift eternal life; unfortunately few do. The reason for this is most often because of the hindrance of pride in the fact that if one accepts this gift, it means they are a sinner or because of the blinding effects of some other form of earthly sin from anywhere to materialism to self-pity, but as this is not what this paper is about, I won’t be examining the reasons. All in all universalism fails to look at the big picture and instead focuses only on God’s unfailing love, but not his resolute justice.
Dualism- ” the doctrine that reality consists of two basic opposing elements, often taken to be good and evil” Princeton Wordnet. When you boil down dualists beliefs, you find this core maxim: good and evil are always at battle in an endless war, neither stronger nor better than the other, and both completely independent, existing from all eternity. Neither of the powers, gods, or spirits has the right to call itself the true God and each one thinks the other is wrong and it is right. The difference is that one supports hatred, thinking it is the completely accurate way to live, and the other love, also thinking this position is right. Now, what exactly do we mean when we label one power “good” and the other “bad” or “evil”? In all actuality, when saying this, we are saying that simply prefer one to the other, or, that no matter what each spirit thinks or what mankind values at the moment, one of them is wrong. If we mean the first reason, then we must simply put “good” and “evil” on the shelf, for if true “good” meant whatever ever viewpoint or values we prefer at any particular moment, then “good” cannot be called “good”, because true “good” does not change on the whims of humanity. Based on that, we must mean the latter reason, but if we call the powers “good” and “bad” because of this we have introduce a law or standard to the universe that binds each and everything residing in the universe. Using this standard we place a hierarchy over the forces, marking one stronger more powerful than the other, but ultimately the Being who forged the standard is the true God, and the “right” force is only in a positive relation to Him, with the “wrong” force being in a negative relation. The facts are clear, dualism, while appearing strong, has no real strength and is full of logical fallacies.
Pantheism- “the doctrine or belief that God is the universe and its phenomena (taken or conceived of as a whole) or the doctrine that regards the universe as a manifestation of God” Princeton Wordnet. Pantheists’ beliefs have two major differences between Christianity these being: that God is beyond “good” and “evil” and two, that God animates everything in the universe. Now, to address the first tier. Mankind in general calls one thing “good” and another thing “bad”, but according to Pantheists, that is merely our obstructed human perspective. Pantheists hold the belief that the wiser one gets, the more “good” and “bad” fades, that everything is “good” in one way, and “bad” in another aspect. The belief the before one even begins to breach the divine, the distinction would have faded away completely. You might call a murderer bad because he kills people , but you may very well call the executioner as bad because he kills the murderer. It all depends on your point of view. You must realize that God is separate from the world, in the way that He is completely holy, and many things in the world are not holy, meaning that God could not exist in them. If confronted with cancer or a starving nation the Pantheist would respond such as “if we could only view this from God’s view, we would see that there is good in this”, but a Christian responds “Do not speak this condemned nonsense!” God does not and cannot exist in everything in the world. Moving on to the second response of God being manifested in everything. Pantheists believe that God animates the universe, as a soul animates a body, that God almost is in fact the universe. Now of course, Christian belief is quite contrary. Christians believe that God only created the universe. C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity illustrated the contradiction like this: Just like an artist paints a painting, now you may say “he put a lot of himself into it” meaning his passion and inspiration, or that the beauty came from his head, but you do not mean that he himself is the painting. If the painting burns up or is torn, the painter does not die, this is the Christian view, but from the Pantheist’s point of view the painter would die. Not only is the Pantheist view to idealistic and optimistic, but it simply cannot exist and is quite obstructed.
When compared to three giants of philosophy and theology, Christianity holds strong. By using the simple words of the Bible you’ve seen the discrediting of Universalism, ultimately showing that, because of God’s just nature, not everyone will be going to heaven whether he wants us to be with Him there or not, but we must first accept the gift provided by Him. With logic you’ve seen the numerous fallacies residing within Dualism. It now seems preposterous to even entertain the thought of two equally powerful forces in a never-ending war. And with the words of another philosopher you’ve seen the overly-idealistic nature of Pantheism, not to mention the absurdity of God residing in every substance and creature in the universe. When comparing other philosophies to Christianity, there is no competition.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Princeton Wordnet
2. The Bible, NIV
3. Mere Christianity, CS Lewis
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=christianity
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=universalism
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=dualism
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=pantheism
