Feb. 18, 2024. This post was written a year ago, and for some reason I never got around to uplinking it until today, when I came across it while researching another post on the general subject of hell. Since that time, the link to the summary quoted below of the original podcast on the Sun-Times website has also gone dead. So I’m uplinking the post pretty much as written in 2023 — there are some partial quotes in the summary, including an image of what heaven might be like and Luther’s admonition for us to be “little Christs” to one another, that I want to hang onto — and some information on universalism that’s worth keeping.
In the middle of a free-wheeling discussion of free will and original sin Sunday night in our Sundays@6 parish book study, I mentioned in passing a 2017 interview in which ELCA Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton told a Chicago Sun-Times reporter she’s not sure whether there’s such a place as hell, but if there is, “I think it’s empty.”
Of course the reaction from ELCA’s theologically conservative detractors was swift and derisive. But the doctrine behind Eaton’s remark, known as universal reconciliation or Christian universalism, has broad, if not unequivocal, support, from the Fathers and Mothers of the early Christian church all the way up to the present. Perhaps Karl Barth, the 20th-century theologian, best reflected the ambiguity inherent in the issue when he said, “I do not believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, reconciler of all.”
So there’s more to Eaton’s statement than yet another public figure’s “gaffe” followed by the inevitable “gotcha” stories. Perhaps typically, I remembered the controversy better than I did the substance. So when I looked it up later, I was surprised to learn it there was solid theological foundation to her musing.
Eaton offered her views on heaven, hell, salvation and the nature of Christ in the course of a wide-ranging interview with the Sun-Times’ Robert Herguth, aired in September 2017 on Herguth’s “Face to Faith” podcast. Unfortunately, links in the stories available on the internet to audio files of the podcast are dead, but a Sun-Times summary of the podcast, dated the following March, features this excerpt, alternately paraphrasing Easton’s response to questions:
[Sun-Times] What does heaven look like?
She once had a dream of driving to pick up lightbulbs and taking a wrong turn and coming upon a place where “all the animals were getting along . . . a sense of peace and beauty and wholeness. So that’s what I think it looks like.”
[Sun-Times] Is there a hell?
[Eaton] “There may be, but I think it’s empty.”
[Sun-Times] Why?
[Eaton] “Jesus was clear” in the Bible that after he was “raised up he will draw all people to himself.” [Boldface type in the original.]
While the Sun-Times’ summary is a gold mine of quotes from Eaton on subjects ranging from Martin Luther, who “encouraged us to be little ‘Christs’ to each other and to see Christ in the other,” to professional sports — “Being a Cleveland sports fan for now six decades, I am an example of faith” — it provides little context for her remark on hell.
Luckily enough, an otherwise hostile account of the podcast on the Christian News Network website quotes Eaton in more detail. The article’s tone is abundantly clear from the headline, which identifies the ELCA leader as a “Bishop” in scare quotes, and the lede which baldly states, using more scare quotes:
The presiding ‘bishop’ of the apostate Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) opined in an interview this week with the Chicago Sun-Times that Hell is empty because God doesn’t give up on those who reject Him.
Merriam-Webster defines “apostate,” for those of us who aren’t used to seeing the word used in a contemporary context, as one who commits apostasy, i.e. “an act of refusing to continue to follow, obey, or recognize a religious faith.” But, to their credit, the Christian News Network story includes the following passage:
“Do you think there’s a Hell?” Herguth also asked.
“There may be,” Eaton answered after pausing for a moment, adding, “but I think it’s empty.”
When asked why, she explained it was because Jesus said He would draw all men to Himself and that she doesn’t believe God will give up on people.
“Jesus was clear in John 3 that when He is raised up, He will draw all people to Himself,” Eaton stated. “And if we take a look at salvation history, ever since we got booted out of the garden, it has been God’s relentless pursuit to bring His people to God.”
“Now, people wonder, ‘Well, can you say no?’ I imagine you can say no to God, [but] I don’t think God’s going to give up on us. And if God has eternity, then God can certainly keep working on those folks,” she said. “That might be a little bit of heresy along the lines of origin [sic], but I don’t think God gives up.”
She obviously means the influential third-century Christian theologian Origen of Alexandria, who didn’t quite preach universal salvation but said the idea has merit; as Eaton suggests, he was branded a heretic for it.
(You’d think the Christian News Network would have known who Origen was and caught the error.)
I’ll leave it to others to sort out the theology, but the passage in John that Eaton referred to strikes me as thoroughly ambiguous:
No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him. [John 3:13-17 NRSVUE]
But in the very next verse, the evangelist continues, “Those who believe in him are not condemned, but those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
A (sort of) footnote. When I was refreshing my memory on Origen of Alexandria, I came across an article in Commonweal on the subject of universal salvation by Albert B. Hakim, emeritus philosophy professor at Seton Hall University. Titled “Hell, Population Zero: Daring to Hope that All Will Be Saved,” it traces the idea from Origen in the third century to Barth, Hans Küng and Hans Urs von Balthasar in the 20th century:
Origen became a leading figure in the liberal tradition on universal salvation that included a number of church fathers like Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Gregory Nazianzen. In the centuries that followed, this tradition persisted alongside the predominant doctrine about hell. Certain theologians hung on to the conviction, rooted in the virtue of hope, that somehow salvation belonged to all. According to Hans Urs von Balthasar, it was St. Thomas Aquinas who first made the claim that the virtue of hope, based on faith and nourished by love, would open up salvation not only for oneself but for all universally. This hope-centered brand of salvation theology is supported in recent times by three highly respected Swiss theologians: Karl Barth, Hans Küng, and Balthasar.
Hakim is very much on the side of those who hope for universal salvation, and he finds reassurance in the third chapter of John — “For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.” But, in the end, he’s left with ambiguity:
Barth, Balthasar, and Küng all agonize over the question of universal salvation, which they treat not just as a theological puzzle but as a genuine mystery. Because we cannot answer the question with absolute certainty, it finally has to be left—in humility and hope—to the judgment of a loving God. This is as much of an affirmation as they dare to make.
Links and Citations
Heather Clark, “ELCA Presiding ‘Bishop’ Claims: ‘There May Be a Hell, But I Think It’s Empty’,” Christian News, Sept. 8, 2017 https://christiannews.net/2017/09/08/elca-presiding-bishop-claims-there-may-be-a-hell-but-i-think-its-empty/.
Albert B. Hakim, “Hell, Population Zero: Daring to Hope that All Will Be Saved, Commonweal, Dec. 2, 2015 https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/hell-population-zero.
Robert Herguth, “Top Lutheran bishop: If hell exists, ‘I think it’s empty’,” Chicago Sun-Times, March 7, 2018 https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/3/7/18372814/top-lutheran-bishop-if-hell-exists-i-think-it-s-empty.
Wikipedia pages on Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth, Christology, history of Christian universalism, Hans Küng and Origen of Alexandria.
[Revised and uplinked Feb. 18, 2024]
Ordinary Time 