In short, universalism, for me and many others, is about theodicy. Not #soteriology. The issue isn't about salvation (traditionally understood). It's about suffering. Universalism, as best I can tell, is the only Christian doctrine that takes the problem of suffering seriously. As evidence for this, just note that when a theologian starts taking suffering seriously he or she starts moving toward universalism. Examples include Jürgen #Moltmann, Marilyn McCord Adams, and John Hick. Take suffering seriously and the doctrine soon follows.

I gravitated to universalism in college because the problem of horrific suffering became (and remains) the defining theological predicament of my faith experience. It is the obsessio of my theological world. And while I find the doctrine of hell distasteful, this is due, again, to my theodicy concerns. Is God really loving if he tortures people for eternity? More, isn't "accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior" largely contingent upon where you were born in the world, a manifestation of what philosophers call moral luck? In every case it all goes back to theodicy.

Here's a test you can try on people. Whenever you find a person who doesn't "get" universalism (not that they have to believe it, they just have to "get" it) you'll have person who doesn't "get" the problem of horrific suffering. The two, in my experience, are of a piece.

Even on my own campus, where there are some very sharp theological minds, I am often frustrated by how often people just don't get it. Not the universalism. I'm talking about the problem of suffering. Because if they get the latter they get the former.

I was reminded of this association this week while reading Moltmann's Trinity and Kingdom. In it he writes:

It is in #suffering that the whole human question about God arises; for incomprehensible suffering calls the God of men and women in question. The suffering of a single innocent child is an irrefutable rebuttal of the notion of the almighty and kindly God in heaven. For a God who lets the innocent suffer and who permits senseless death is not worthy to be called God at all...The theism of the almighty and kindly God comes to an end on the rock of suffering...

The question of #theodicy is not a speculative question; it is a critical one. It is the all-embracing eschatological question. It is not purely theoretical, for it cannot be answered with any new theory about the existing world. It is a practical question which will only be answered through experience of the new world in which 'God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.' It is not really a question at all, in the sense of something we can ask or not ask, like other questions. It is the open wound of life in this world. It is the real task of #faith and #theology to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound. The person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer to the theodicy question. And he will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the new creation.

Innocent suffering is the open wound of life and the real task of faith and theology is "to make it possible for us to survive, to go on living, with this open wound."

Now here's the deal. You either get that, or you don't.

And if you don't, well, I'm sure you're a very nice and devout person.

But you'll never understand why I believe in universalism.

~Richard Beck on why he embraces #UniversalSalvation

http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2011/02/universalism-and-open-wound-of-life.html is

The person who believes will not rest content with any slickly explanatory answer to the #theodicy question. And he will also resist any attempts to soften the question down. The more a person believes, the more deeply he experiences pain over the suffering in the world, and the more passionately he asks about God and the new creation.

~Jürgen #Moltmann, Trinity and Kingdom