Product Description

Why Everyone Will Be in Heaven

Two pastors present their controversial belief in eternal salvation for all through God′s perfect grace. Long disturbed by the Church′s struggle between offering both love and rejection, they discover what God wants from us and for us: grace for everyone.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #98327 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-01
• Released on: 2004-11-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780062517050
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Traditionally, many Christian denominations have held fast to the belief that those who confess God's saving grace from sin will be rewarded with eternal life while those who reject this grace will be damned to eternal perdition. Such a belief, according to ministers Gulley and Mulholland, fails miserably to acknowledge the real message of Christianity: that God's gracious arms are wide enough to hold every person, regardless of shortcomings or sins. The authors did notalways feel this way, and their little meditation on Christian universalism is as much autobiographical confession as theological treatise. Using stories from their own lives and ministries, Gulley and Mulholland devote a chapter to each of the words in the sentence "why God will save every person." In a seamless voice, they tell of people's struggles to accept teachings of the church that keep them from closeness with God. They also recall events in their own lives where they stood in the way of God's grace operating in personal relationships. For example, when one of their ministerial friends declared his homosexuality, they realized that - despite their former judgmental stance on homosexuality - this person deserved God's love and grace as much as any other. Salvation, they argue, is simply being freed of every obstacle to intimacy with God. Gulley and Mulholland's stirring manifesto on the central role of universalism in Christianity will provoke traditionalists and encourage new ways of thinking about the nature and purpose of the Christian faith.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Gulley, author of the best-selling stories set in fictional Harmony, Indiana, and theologian Mulholland have been friends since they first met at seminary, and they speak as one voice and in the first person--as they take great pains to emphasize: for though they are very different, they have had remarkably similar spiritual experiences. To many people, their book's subtitle and premise that God will save every person, without exception, amount to a controversial stance, to say the least. Some will think theirs is an awfully generous interpretation, and others--those who grew up being assured that some would be saved and most damned--will be appalled. Despite such reactions, including angry outbursts from friend and foe alike, Gulley and Mulholland stick to their guns as they tell their stories and the stories of people they have met with compassion, hope, kindness, and grace--and the lovely conviction of universal salvation. June Sawyers
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"An easy read full of interesting stories and attractive assertions." (Dallas News )

"Gulley and Mulholland have extended and deepened the meaning of God's grace in decidedly thoughtful and lovely ways." (Arkansas Democrat Gazette )

"[T]his loving little book . . . is easily read and understood, a thought-provoker for any Disciple." (DisciplesWorld )

"[A] stirring manifesto on the central role of universalism in Christianity ..." (Publishers Weekly )

"Gulley and Mulholland stick to their guns as they tell their stories...with compassion, hope, kindness, and grace." (Booklist )

"The authors celebrate God's extravagant grace in ways that remind us of the amazing thing we often sing it is." (Ethicsdaily.com )

"One of the most helpful books on this subject to emerge in years." (Crosswalk.com )

"Gulley and Mulholland . . . have honestly faced the church's traditional doctrines of salvation and eternal justice." (Christianity Today )

Customer Reviews

Give it a try
I'd like to recommend this book to all grappling with this very difficult subject. No, it is not likely to convince those firmly committed to biblical inerrancy. But it may help those who are deeply disturbed by the implications of the doctrine of hell to see that there are alternative viewpoints held by other no-less deeply committed Christians. The authors both exhibit a wonderful graciousness, courage and compassion in their writing that is truly exemplary of Christian maturity and love.

One reviewer was put off that the book was substantially anecdotal and emotional. While other books key in on more biblical and philosophical argumentations for Universalism (Thomas Talbott and Jan Bonda as examples), I frankly welcome this approach to the discussion as well. In fact, perhaps a significant missing element in conservative articulations of hell as eternal torment is the lack of emotional coherency. To consign any living, feeling human to such an excessively tortuous existence is truly emotionally gut wrenching to say the least, if not down right ghastly. (And don't overlook the implication of the conservative position that those who are "destined to fry" are not only Hitler and Attila the Hun but the friendly next door neighbor or relative who die unsaved as well.) Perhaps our felt emotional responses have important ways to clue us about truth as well as our intellects or our fidelities to orthodox belief. But both authors are in no way guilty of shallow emotive propagandizing in articulating why they came to their Universalistic convictions.

I write this review as once a believer in biblical infallibility and one who grimly conceded the reality of hell as the destiny for the unsaved after death. However, over the course of my own theological odyssey I have come to the belief that this and really all biblical doctrines ultimately point to the essence of who God is. How one responds to this doctrine very much characterizes how one understands God's nature. Is God's essence consistently, fully LOVE or does it need to be substantially qualified by other attributes such as wrath and retributional justice?

Certainly, one may believe God expresses anger and "wrath" towards human sinfulness but perhaps this is better understood as an expression of his love, somewhat analogous to a parent who would not let their son or daughter commit destructive acts towards others or themselves without "redemptive" discipline and restoration. However, the goal is always redemptive not destruction of the person. Hell as eternal torment surely confuses this and in the end God tragically comes off as a cosmic sadist.

One reviewer described the authors' views of Universalism as "warm-and-fuzzy". However the authors surely contest that viewpoint throughout. One of the most difficult and demanding teachings of Jesus was his call to his followers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them just as God responds in goodness to "his enemies". Hardly warm-and-fuzzy teaching to say the least! But this is precisely the type of love Universalism speaks of God. Warm-and-fuzzy? No. The kind that can in the tortuous pain of crucifixion pray for the forgiveness of one's tormentors? Absolutely!

I'd also like to respond briefly to another common misperception of Universalism. The straw man argument that Universalism paints an image of a God who lets everybody off the hook by winking his eye to sin, thus promoting rampant lawlessness and no need for God or for salvation in Christ, simply demonstrates a lack of understanding.

First, what is the implication of that kind of logic? That it takes the whopping threat of damnation to get people to come to God, accept salvation and want to behave? Isn't the central point of Christian faith that being in relationship with God is the most staggering privilege and joy imaginable, that no life without God can bring the deepest sense of meaning and wholeness that we all crave? Further, learning to love and care for others as God loves is the pathway to the greatest freedom and abundance of life, the most compelling reason to live a godly life not servile fear of threat. Finally, "sin" is often destructive both for the one who sins and the ones sinned against. Universalism in no ways implies God simply winks his eye to sin, unmoved by the plight of humanity enslaved to it or to those who grievously suffer because of it. Salvation is the gracious gift of the hound of heaven who pursues every sinner to turn them from lives that can in the end only offer alienation and misery to lives lived in vibrant connection to God and others. No central tenet of the Christian faith falls of necessity in light of Universalistic belief.

Readers will find the extravagance of God's grace is very much the theme of the book, very often colored by biographical vignettes from the authors' own spiritual pilgrimages. The authors engage us to ask the question of our own experiences of grace, if they will not take us to the same conclusion. This is not a book for discovering tight theological and biblical argumentation and readers will need to research other books to compliment this one.

I found the book, overall, very enriching and encouraging. Because of its simplicity and charitableness, it came as a breath of fresh air in a world bound by an often graceless and retributional mindset. It is with great gratitude to the authors that I highly recommend reading this book with open mind and heart.

Compelling Pastoral Commentary on Universalism; But Short on Exegesis and Ultimately Unconvincing to Conservatives
Philip Gulley and Jim Mulholland have written a compelling pastoral and personal commentary on the love and grace of God. They advocate for Christian universalism: the ancient idea, prevalent among many early Christians, that suffering and death, whether on this earth or in the world to come (Hell), are temporary, and that everyone who has ever lived and will ever live will eventually be saved by God. Their quality of writing, their emphasis on personal experience, their use of anecdote and story, all add up to make an easy and persuasive, or at least stirring and challenging, reading experience.

However, their book was never intended to be an argument reasoned from the Bible, heavy on technical exegesis. Coming from their theologically liberal standpoint, in which they feel little need to find any kind of harmony or even symphony between scripture's universalist and exclusivist passages, its restorationist and Hellish passages, or any other such internal tensions and inconsistencies, this failing on their part is understandable. Those biblical passages which seem to endorse universalism can be harvested; while those which seem not to, can simply be acknowledged and dismissed as human error, without an attempt at explanation for how those passages might fit into God's overall message in scripture.

To be sure, I am not one myself to insist on biblical inerrancy or infallibility - I feel the evidence is against those doctrines, as well as against verbal plenary inspiration. But to not even attempt to show how scripture's exclusivist and Hellish passages fit into God's purpose doesn't sit well even with me. How well will it sit with conservative evangelicals who might otherwise be receptive to the universalist message? The thrust of the negative reviews given this book by conservative evangelical readers answers that question. That Gulley and Mulholland are furthermore ambivalent on the divinity of Jesus and the somehow-atoning purpose of his death, only adds to the problem.

In short, this is a book which will be most convincing to liberal or liberal-leaning moderate Christians, or perhaps people estranged from the Christian faith entirely (having "fallen" from conservatism through liberalism to apostasy). Gulley and Mulholland's beautiful writing, their emphasis on experience, and their skillful interweaving of scripture's universalist passages, will make a strong case to such people. On the other hand, theological liberals are already the ones most favorably disposed to universalism today. Those conservatives who could most benefit from seeing the utter majesty and glory of God's grace, which only universalism underscores, will unfortunately be turned off by the lack of sufficient respect for the entire biblical witness, not to mention the incarnation and atonement as well. A book such as Thomas Talbott's "The Inescapable Love of God" would probably suit such people better.

Scott

How can we deny grace and salvation to God's children?
I grew up in a Southern Christian tradition where those who did not believe in Jesus and beg for forgiveness were to be banished to the fires of Hell for all eternity. Somehow this bothered me. What about all the souls born in the BC years? What about all those who never knew about Jesus? Moslems? Jews? So many other belief systems? What about the mentally handicapped who are not even aware that they need to ask for salvation? Are all those people not God's children too? In fact, one of my ministers told me, people were unworthy in God's eyes until they "come to Christ", "repent of their sins" and are "saved". I failed to see the logic, but still went to church.

Then as I travelled around the world in my 30s and 40s, and discovered that most of the human race was not Christian, and were decent and kind nonetheless, I slowly drifted away from the church.

Years later I found a church that accepted the possibility of universal grace. It was, of all things, Methodist, the same denomination I had drifted away from. One of the Ministers there recommended "If Grace is True". It finally gave voice to what I have felt in my heart for so many years - we are all "saved" by God's perfect love.

To those who would deny this as truth I would ask you to look into your own heart and ask why you think as you do. How do you, a mere human, set the boundaries between heaven and hell? Are you not bothered by the fact that there seem to be so many different lines drawn in the sand by so many different Christian and non-Christian belief systems? I am, and that's why I have come to think that the authors are right.

God is perfect. God is love. Perfect, unconditional, love draws no line in the sand.

Tom Elam