The Alpha of Universalism
In addressing his pagan hearers “in the midst of the Areopagus,” the apostle Paul said: “The God that made the world and all things therein, he, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is he served by men’s hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and he made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” In writing to the Christian church at Corinth, the same apostle said: “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple are ye?” In his address to the pagans and in his letter to the Christians does the apostle Paul teach the same truth, and are his statements equivalent in meaning? Is the pagan and the unbeliever a temple of God just as truly as is the Christian? We refer to this question again because of the teaching which is being persistently urged upon us that “a man is a temple of God, even though God is not permitted to dwell in his rightful place, which is the inner apartment, the inner man or heart.” An argument is based upon what is called “The Universal Fatherhood of God” which runs somewhat as follows:— The prophet asks, “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?” To these questions there can be only an affirmative answer. God is a universal father, since “he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” “For we are also his offspring.” . . . If a man who begets a child and never cares for it is still its father, how much more truly is God the father of those whom he creates, to whom he gives life, who live, and move, and have their being in him. He is truly the God and Father of all, above all, through all, and in you all. It is very true that God dwells in some men in a far more complete and intimate manner than in others. Those who love him, believe and obey him, are his children in a much fuller sense than are others. While it is true that the extent to which God is immanent with men depends upon their attitude toward him, no man can totally disconnect himself from God, no matter how he may hate him or how rebellious he may choose to be. To be in God’s universe is to live in him. Nor may we say that while all men live in God, he does not live in all men. . . . Those who have refused to acknowledge God, and have adopted the devil as their father, still live in God, and are the recipients of his love, of his gifts, and of his life. God ministers to them in temporal blessings, and serves with them in all they do, for he is their only source of strength. He ministers to them in the flesh, while they, through the flesh, serve the enemy of righteousness. The conclusion from this argument is made to be that every man, the blaspheming sinner as well as the most devoted saint, is the temple of God, and this argument is designed to prove the universal application of the inspired statement in the letter “unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,” where it is said, “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God?” We regard this teaching as subversive of the truth of the gospel, and as it appears so plausible that it may confuse some minds, we shall give it some consideration. Let us note the different steps in the argument: God is a universal father because he created all, and “giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.” And because of “the universal fatherhood of God, and his immanence with his earthly children,” every being in his universe lives in him; and when we consent to the claim that every being lives in God, we must not4deny that God lives in every being. Then comes the conclusion, that every man is the temple of God, even those who “have adopted the devil as their father,” being no exceptions to this conclusion. If this line of reasoning proves that every man is a temple of God, regardless of his character, it also proves that evil angels, and even Satan himself, are temples of God. It is just as true that God gave and still continues life and breath to the hosts of evil angels, as that he gives these gifts to men; and if the statement that “no man can totally disconnect himself from God, no matter how he may hate him or how rebellious he may choose to be,” is one step in the argument to prove that every man is a temple of God, it certainly must be admitted that other rebellious beings, even Satan himself, who are dependent upon God for their existence, are also temples of God. And inasmuch as the same scripture which reminds the members of the church of Corinth that they are the temple of God also declares that “the Spirit of God dwelleth in you,” and that “the temple of God is holy,” it must follow as a further consequence that the Spirit of God dwells in the evil angels, and that all of them, including the great rebel leader, are holy. These conclusions are so clearly contrary to the truth that it is evident that the argument is fatally defective somewhere. Let us then look at it a little further. In this line of reasoning which claims to prove that all men are the temple of God, there is a mingling of truth and error. There is a failure to distinguish between the relation which God sustains to all living creatures as the Creator of all, and the relation which he sustains to those who through faith in the gospel have been “created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” As a consequence of this failure, there is a mixture of terms and a confusion in the argument, which ends in a false conclusion. A more careful analysis of the argument may enable us to see just where this confusion is brought in. The original creation is spoken of as a birth in the Scriptures. In the ninetieth Psalm, “A prayer of Moses, the man of God,” we read: “Before the mountains were brought forth [“were born,” Spurrell, Dr. Kay, and Polychrome Translation] or ever thou hadst formed [“gavest birth to,” margin] the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.” As the creation was a birth, so the Creator was a father. As he was the creator of all, so he was the father of all. “Have we not all one Father? Hath not one God created us?” “For we are also his offspring.” All created beings were intended to be temples for the indwelling of the Creator, and so they would have been if sin had never existed. Since the entrance of sin, life and breath have been continued to rebellious angels and fallen men by the same Creator, but sin made such a change in their relation to God that they ceased to be his temple. Sinful man became “alienated from the life of God,” and “without God in the world.” The rebel angels refused pardon, and can never be again the temples of God. Through the gift of Christ to take the flesh, the privilege is offered to the human family of again becoming the temple of God. This is accomplished by the new birth,— “the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Thus we read: “He came unto his own, and they that were his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” “If any man is in Christ, there is a new creation.” Conversion is not evolution. The difference between the sinner and the saint is not simply that of the degree in which God dwells in them. This is a very common teaching in these days, and it follows at once that evil is only undeveloped good, and the next step is that all men are holy—which is only another way of stating that all men are temples of God, since “the temple of God is holy.” With Whom Does God Dwell?
There is a mixture of terms and a confusion of the argument when the truth that God is the source of all life and father of all, by virtue of being Creator of all, is perverted to mean that he, as a consequence of this, sustains the same relationship to all men, irrespective of their faith in Christ, and when the fatherhood of God by virtue of the original creation is substituted for the fatherhood of God by virtue of the new creation or the new birth. The conclusion that all men are temples of God can not be legitimately drawn from the fact that God is father of all by virtue of being the creator of all. The children by the old creation must become children by the new creation, before they are temples of God. A man must change his attitude toward God, and accept the provisions of the gospel, before he is a temple of God. God does not dwell in the unregenerate man in any such sense as to make him his temple, although that man lives and moves and has his being, his existence, in God. To all created beings—animals, the members of the human family, and angelic hosts both good and bad—God gives life and breath. All have their being, their existence, in him, but there is a vast difference between this and that indwelling of God in them which constitutes them his temple. This is plainly shown by such scriptures as the following: “For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.” “Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” “Christ [was faithful] as a son, over his house; whose house are we, if we hold fast our boldness and the glorying of our hope firm unto the end.” A distinction is here clearly made between different classes of men. It is those who are of a contrite and humble spirit, with whom God dwells, and whom by his indwelling he makes his temple. It is those who love Jesus with whom the Father and the Son will make their abode. It is those who hold fast their boldness and the glorying of their hope firm unto the end, that constitute the house of God, the church in which he dwells, his temple. Such persons are entitled to the honor of being designated as the temples of the living God. But those who persist in their rebellion against God, and do not accept the gift of his Son, become “a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird.” What a confusion of good and evil to claim that such persons are at the same time the temple of God! The argument may be summarized, and the contrast between the truth and the perversion of the truth may be indicated, as follows: God was the creator of all; he was, therefore, father of all; all created beings, of whom he was the father, were intended to be the temples of God; because of sin man ceased to be the temple of God; God continued life and breath to men, and offered them the privilege of restoration through the gospel; believers in Christ again become temples of God, and the fatherhood of God is thus grounded in redemption; of such believers it will be said, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them.” On the other hand, those who refuse the gospel are not temples of God, even though through the long-suffering of God they are the recipients of life and breath and all that they have, from God. The argument when confused by a5mixture of terms, runs as follows: God is the creator of all; he is, therefore, the father of all; since he is a universal father, all men are his temples; although men have hated him and rebelled against him, he is still their father, and (substituting now, by a wrong use of terms, the fatherhood of God based upon creation for the fatherhood of God grounded in redemption) because he is still their father, they are still his temples. It is an easy step from this teaching to the conclusion that all men will in some way be saved. To return to the question at the beginning of this article: we think it is clear that when the apostle Paul was seeking to make known to the men of Athens “the God that made the world and all things therein,” and said that “in him we live and move and have our being,” he was dealing with the relationship which God sustains to all his creatures by virtue of being the Creator of all. We think it is equally clear that when the same apostle wrote “unto the church of God which is at Corinth, even them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus,” and said, “Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” he was dealing with the relationship which God sustains only to those who have been born again, “created in Christ Jesus.” To make no distinction between these two relationships, and to make a sinner, as well as a saint, a holy temple of God by virtue of “the universal fatherhood of God, and his immanence with his earthly children,” is the alpha of universal salvation. The very expression, “the universal fatherhood of God,” is a favorite one with those who reject the divinity and the atoning work of Christ, the eternal Son, and who, by a perversion of the truth that “God is love,” and by an argument based upon a false idea of the universal fatherhood, claim that all men will finally be brought into harmony with God by the evolution of the good in them, either in this life or by a future probation. The claim that God dwells in all men, resting upon the fatherhood of God by virtue of his being the Creator of all, overlooks the change which sin has made in the relationship between God and man, minimizes the need of a Saviour, and prepares the way for setting aside the whole gospel plan of salvation. That fatherhood of God which grows out of the original creation is not the fatherhood to which the apostle Paul has reference when he says: “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” And again when he says: “But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” The apostle Paul teaches “a conditional moral and spiritual fatherhood and sonship. In the divine family this sonship is by grace, and not by nature, not from Adam but from Christ, not based on creation, but grounded in redemption.” There is a wide difference between the fatherhood of God which is thus grounded in redemption, and the fatherhood of God which is based upon the original creation. It is only those who have been born again, it is only those who have been “created in Christ Jesus,” it is only those who are “sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus,” who are temples of God by virtue of the fatherhood of God; and this fatherhood is not one of physical relationship, but “of a real moral and spiritual relation of sonship that involves a participation in the moral character of the divine Father.”