The History of Hell: Colten Barnaby

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. There are things you probably feel pretty confident in when it comes to Christian belief. Maybe who Jesus is, why he died for your sins, what sin is and where sin can lead you. But do you know why you believe from your perspective instead of one of the other perspectives out there? We're going to gently challenge that a little bit today. Hi, I'm Kristen Mockler Young, and this is Becoming Church, the podcast where we discuss how the message and movement of Jesus is not just about becoming Christians, but about becoming a church. Each week we explore the intersection of faith, culture, and everyday life through the lens of Jesus. And today we are talking about sin, hell, salvation, and how they're all connected with Colton Barnaby, who is a wise and knowledgeable teacher, and he is going to bring all kinds of evidence for what he believes about these things. Now, I also want to remind you that the point of this podcast is to help you understand why you believe what you believe, not to convince you to believe what anyone else believes. Hosting my guests does not mean that I'm 100% in alignment with them on all things, although I like to think that I'm a good enough interviewer that you also can't always tell where I land. I do believe, though, that curious people with interesting perspectives are often worth exploring. So listen, ask questions, and ask Holy Spirit to help you process as we talk about the existence of hell with Colton Barnaby. Well, hey, Colton, welcome to the Becoming Church podcast. [00:01:40] Speaker B: Thank you for having me, Kristin. I'm excited. [00:01:42] Speaker A: Love to have you here. We were just chatting before we hit record about, you know, finding theology and God and things like Pete the Cat. [00:01:50] Speaker B: Yes, yes. A little bit of, you know, I try not to delve too much into the post Eric lit when Pete the Cat genre era. But, you know, I. There is some. Something to be said in Pete the Cat construction. Deconstruction. [00:02:05] Speaker A: Yes. Listen, I am all about finding deconstruction reconstruction themes in highly unexpected places. So I can't wait to read it. It's going to be so good. Well, I want to introduce you to our listeners. So why don't you give us kind of a general overview of your background in Christianity, Growing up, seminary, all the things. [00:02:26] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Grew up in Philadelphia. In North Philadelphia. You [00:02:30] Speaker A: were born and raised. [00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah, born and raised. Playgrounds where I spent most of my days. It's true. Yeah, I definitely grew up in like, not so great part of a section of Philadelphia in a neighborhood called Kensington in North Philly. It's. It's the poorest neighborhood in Philly. New York Times put out an article recently calling it the Walmart of heroin and methadone. It's basically like an open air drug market. In the show the Wire, they have like a neighborhood called Hamsterdam where the police just let everyone do drugs. They don't arrest anybody. The author, the producer, said they based that off of Kensington in Philadelphia. And so the DA won't prosecute any drug charges unless it's connected to another charge, like a violent crime or something. So you walk down the street and people are just shouting out what they have. You know, people go there to do. To do drugs. And there's some good reasons for that, right? There was a guy. Now I'm getting really into it. There was a guy called the Kensington Strangler who was going into all of the old textile factories that had been abandoned after, you know, we shipped all of the jobs overseas. And people were going in there and, you know, if you do crack, they call it a crack house. If you do heroin, they call it a shooting gallery. And so they were just kind of filled with people strung out high. And he was going in there and. And killing people. And so they said they kept boarding these places up and people kept getting back in. They said, this is more dangerous. We'd rather have them be high out on the street. One of the reasons, and so grew up in that context, the son of a Pentecostal pastor, a holiness oneness, Pentecostal pastor, United Pentecostal Church and Paw Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. Fourth generation. So it was this weird mix of really being in the world, but not of the world. Right? Because in our tradition, you know, holiness standards, like women can't cut their hair, they can't wear pants or makeup or jewelry. You're not allowed to watch tv. I didn't go to the movie theater until I was like 17 years old. Sneaking. Sneaking out to do it, being. Being rebellious. You know, going to watch Jet Le, the one [00:04:30] Speaker A: I was gonna say, you have to remember what the movie was. Okay, okay. [00:04:33] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Now, the cool part was my dad snuck with me and he took me to see it and he was like, we can't tell anybody about this, son. You know. And so I did have, like, because of the environment we were in, we, my family personally cared less about the letter of the law. Like, my dad always taught me and my grandfather that it was more about, you know, personal conviction. There are some convictions that apply to everybody but our church. Even though the people who were really involved followed those kind of holiness Standards. It was full of people that were in off of the street. You know, people are falling over, falling asleep on methadone, passing out in the middle of the service. Girls are coming in after working the ave all night, doing sex work, showing up in the outfits that they were doing the sex work in. And it was this interesting environment of. I remember a time, Kristen, when there was a girl who was a sex worker and she came to the altar because in Pentecostal churches, you know, you have a real altar call. None of this, you know, raise your hand if you want to accept Lord Jesus and say this prayer stuff right now, you got to be filled with the Holy Ghost speaking. Yeah. You know, if the altar isn't covered in bobby pins from, you know, dancing and shaking it out, then we even have church type thing, right? And this girl is in the altar. What we would say, like travail, kneeling in the altar, but she's bent over in like a micro skirt. And there was a guest preacher in town from our denomination that was not, you know, used to anything like that. And I was standing next to my grandfather, about 8 years old, and he said, brother Barnaby, what are you going to, you got to do something about this. What are you going to do about this? And my grandfather said, I'm going to look the other way. What are you going to do? I'm not going to stare at her. And so I was raised in this really strict environment, but also by a family who was kind of like pushing at the edges of it all of the time. And I think it was because of that context. I ended up going to university at Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, where I got two degrees in political science and church history, early church history. And that kind of blew my whole world up. You know what? A lot of people start their deconstruction questioning their faith in a way that maybe leads that like, you know, leads them away from the faith. My deconstruction, like my college rebellious phase, was becoming a trinitarian, reading early church fathers. And but it had the similar effect because what I had been taught, this doctrine was so important, and this is what the apostles believed. Now I'm reading the early church fathers, some people who maybe even knew some of the apostles or were students of people who knew the apostles. And their witness to what the scriptures mean was vastly different than what I was taught. So that was kind of the first little block I stayed to get my master's in church history. Didn't get it. I, I, I finished all of the courses with a 4.0. But during my thesis defense, I had to drop out. I was fired from the church I was working at as a youth pastor for six years. Ended up getting a job selling cars. Thought, I'll go back. My wife was teaching first grade in Oklahoma, which is 48th in teacher pay, and I had $180,000 in student loans. Some of them were private student loans. And so I couldn't. You couldn't push them off. You know, there was no income based repayment for those ones. And so I had to work. And I never ended up getting to go back and finishing it. Then I spent the next 15 years of my life in sales as a financial advisor, which I think shocks a lot of people. And yeah, it wasn't till this last year that my therapist was like, Colton, you've got to get over this debilitating fear of rejection. I felt I had so many convictions that I had held theologically and politically for a long time. But because of the environment I was in, and I was no longer in, like, academia, in an environment where people talked about this kind of stuff, I was on staff at a Hillsong church here in Chicago at time, in addition to being a financial advisor. I done that for about four years, the last four years. And then I was afraid to let anybody know what I really thought. I didn't want to be rejected. I wasn't afraid of being rejected by strangers in a sales situation, but by the people I loved the most. He said, you just got to put yourself out there. And so I started posting content on the Internet and it became a whole thing. And it's resulted in me now talking to you. That's kind of the whole background and development. [00:09:10] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So I have to know, and if this is too personal, we'll cut it. But I'm like, okay. You said you lost your job or you were fired as a youth pastor. [00:09:19] Speaker B: Youth pastor, yeah. [00:09:20] Speaker A: And I'm assuming you're no longer on staff with at Hillsong Church, so. [00:09:25] Speaker B: No. [00:09:25] Speaker A: Did either of those job endings have to do with a differing of beliefs? [00:09:33] Speaker B: Yeah, probably more so the second one, but the first one, I wouldn't say so much beliefs. I still attended that church for the next six years after they fired [00:09:45] Speaker A: me. [00:09:47] Speaker B: And I do think that some of it was. Even though the church was pretty progressive for Oklahoma, it was still in Oklahoma. And not all of the parents sending their kids to the youth group were appreciative of, you know, [00:10:01] Speaker A: some of my tapes, [00:10:02] Speaker B: my Pete Rollins inspired sermons, you [00:10:04] Speaker A: know, [00:10:06] Speaker B: and yeah, some of the takes. Right. Like when Their kid asks, is my gay friend at school going to hell for being gay? Some of them just want you to say yes rather than, you know, no. And. But ultimately, I think it was just because I wasn't very good at my job, and they needed somebody better at it, really. And so the next one, though, yeah, there was a staff meeting where a woman who'd worked at the church for a long time, who was an elderly black woman. This is right during Black Lives Matter. And Covid, the heat [00:10:39] Speaker A: of all [00:10:39] Speaker B: of that, asked a question in a. In a Q and A staff meeting about, I don't know how to feel comfortable worshiping in an environment where so many people are supporting somebody like Donald Trump and policies that I feel like put my grandson's lives in danger. And the pastor, his answer was basically like, I don't know. He didn't have an answer. It was like, yeah, I don't know what to say to that. And then he said, does anybody else have any thoughts? And so I raised my hand, and I was like, you know, if you don't feel safe, then if a community really loves you, they'll want you to go worship in a place where you feel safe. But also, if it's not an issue of you feeling safe but uncomfortable, sometimes we're called to worship together with people that are different than us, and you get to decide which one of those it is for you. For me? I said, you know, me and Pastor Kent, you know, Pastor Ken is more conservative, you know, and these guys never want you to say that. Well, now they're becoming more comfortable saying it. Yeah, but, like, there was a period of time where kind of the cool, progressive, hip pastors, especially in urban spaces, wanted to be politically ambiguous. Right? [00:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:51] Speaker B: And so he didn't want me to say that, but then I said, but, you know, I. And in contrast, me, I'm. I'm a, you know, LGBTQ affirming Marxist. Right. So we're able to still love God because Christ is the unity that binds us together. And that was my last staff meeting. [00:12:05] Speaker A: Okay. They're like, hey, we just so happen to not need your position anymore. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:12:12] Speaker A: You know, coincidence. Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, listen, I. I hope this doesn't sound patronizing. I always feel like. I always hope it doesn't sound patronizing when I say this to people that I don't hardly know. But I am proud of you, genuinely. Like, I know what. I know the cost that it takes to say things out loud. I mean, obviously, your job, you had bills to Pay and all of that, but I just. I think a lot more people are starting to find their voice, and it is because of people like you, other people that I've had on the show who are courageous and willing enough to count the cost and say, hey, you don't have to agree with me, but let me just put out another perspective that maybe you hadn't considered before. [00:12:54] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, absolutely. [00:12:56] Speaker A: And I feel like we should be able to do that. [00:12:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. You know, I think I kind of view my audience, or the audience in general, in five categories. Like, when I'm making content, there are people who are might who strongly agree with me. Then there are people who kind of softly agree with me. Then there are people who are genuinely so confused and undecided. They're so torn. Then there are people who soft disagree with me, and then there's people who strong disagree with [00:13:24] Speaker A: me. [00:13:24] Speaker B: And I try to make content for those three people in the middle. I try to make less content. That's chumming the water and rallying the base and getting everyone fired up on, you know. You know, hey, I debated Doug Wilson recently, and I think some people were upset that I didn't. I wasn't harsher to Doug Wilson, but I was like, I'm not. I don't care about Doug Wilson. I care about, like, the people that are listening to this, and I don't want to distract them. I want to talk about the argument that I'm making and hopefully plant some seeds for change. Because [00:13:54] Speaker A: there [00:13:54] Speaker B: are some people in those three categories that are in that audience. And yeah, some people, I think in those, the soft and the undecided already want to agree. They already are, like, leaning in that direction, and they need someone to give them permission, not just because I said do it, but to show them that there is room in the tradition, there's room in Christianity for this thing that you want to believe that you know in your heart is right, but that you've been conditioned to believe would put you outside of the bounds of being faithful. [00:14:28] Speaker A: Well, because they've seen it, right? Our identity, our belonging is tied to what we believe in the community that we're in. So, yeah, I do think that a lot of people are secretly wanting to believe differently or question. They are afraid to because they're like, well, everybody around me is doubling down in what they think they know. And so I love that. I love that we at our. At our church, too, we kind of have a similar thing. We're like, you know, it's a bell curve, and we don't we don't go for the extremes. We know we're not for the extremes [00:14:57] Speaker B: on [00:14:58] Speaker A: either side, and that doesn't mean that we are like, in the middle, ambiguous on things. [00:15:03] Speaker B: Sure. [00:15:04] Speaker A: But yes, you, you talk to the people that are willing to listen and don't worry about the extremes are going to find their own thing. Like that's. They want a very specific thing, and we can't all be that, nor do I think we should all be that. [00:15:16] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. And there might be even things that you have the position that is considered extreme, but that doesn't mean you have to deliver it in a way that's alienating to people who are seeking. [00:15:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Well, on that note, you put out a reel recently that I was fascinated about. And you debunked the five major arguments of hell as eternal conscious torment, which I know is going to make some people nervous, because I think choosing heaven or Hell. Right. We feel like we're given that choice is one of the first things we're taught as early as early Christians. [00:15:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:49] Speaker A: I often think it's actually used to help kids to quote unquote, take that first step into Christianity. Right. Because it's like, well, you don't want hell, do you? Okay, well, I guess you want Jesus. Before we get there, before I let you explain that, Colton, will you kind of break down for people that have never done any kind of deep dive on this, break down some of the terms maybe that you're going to use? Okay. Just so people understand what you're talking about? [00:16:15] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think, you know, the first one is, you know, eternal conscious torment. When we try to think about what happens after this, that's the. That's the kind of default after this life. That's the default understanding that people have, which is just a hell where you go and are tormented in a way that you are conscious of forever. Then there's a position that other people have called annihilationism, which I think some people find some solace in and I think is as morally repugnant as. As eternal conscious torment, where you just kind of cease to exist. Right. Like, you're not going to be punished forever. Eternally. You just. But you don't go to heaven either. You're not saved, you're not redeemed. You just fade into ether, into nothingness. Yeah. And then there's what we might call universalism. Now, broadly speaking, universalism means something different. And I think sometimes when people hear that word, they associate it with this sense of all religions are the Same. [00:17:17] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:17:18] Speaker B: they're, you know, we're all. We're all believing the same thing. I think that that is culturally appropriative in a lot of ways and insensitive, right. To other faiths, right. To try to collapse them in. Right? There's Carl Rahner had this really. He's a Catholic theologian who had this somewhat innovative idea, but that's actually just rooted in Christian tradition called the Anonymous Christian, which I think is an interesting step, right, Saying that, hey, there actually might be some Buddhists or Muslims or atheists who are following this other faith, but they're just calling Christ a different name, right? You see this in C.S. lewis's the Chronicles of Narnia in the Last Battle, where this young calorman soldier who represents, right, The. All the faith religions outside of Christianity and the Narnians represent Christianity [00:18:06] Speaker A: representatives, [00:18:07] Speaker B: fights against the forces of Aslan, who is Christ in the story his whole life. And he worships this God named Tash that the Aslan that the. The basically is like the devil, [00:18:18] Speaker A: right? [00:18:19] Speaker B: He ends up. When Aslan creates new Narnia, like the New Jerusalem, he ends up in New Narnia. And he's scared because he thinks he's about to be judged. But Aslan tells him, hey, all of these things that you did, the hungering and thirsting after righteousness, the taking care of widows, the. The pursuit of justice and truth and beauty did in the name of Tash, you were doing in the name of me. Because all of those things are so far away from Tash, and they're. That is my identity. I am love, I am truth. And so even if you saw through a glass darkly, so to speak, even if you didn't recognize me for who I am, this is who I am. Because there [00:18:57] Speaker A: was a connection. Yeah, [00:18:58] Speaker B: it was. Yeah, that was the connection. Language, words are just symbols that we use to point to a thing. And it's not different if I call, if I'm talking about a chair in English or if I'm talking about a chair in Hindi. We're both talking about the same thing using different words. So it's very similar concept to that. And so universalism in the Christian context is none of those things necessarily. It is just the belief. The Christian universalism is the belief that God is ultimately going to reconcile and draw all men, like Jesus says, all men unto himself, all people to himself. And so those are some of the big terms and the Greek word in the early church that they used for this, because this is not a new progressive modern liberal, you know, bleeding heart sentimental development. This. The doctrine of Christian, of universalism is ancient and the early church called it apocatastasis. So that's another word that might come up. [00:20:01] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that's. I think it's helpful for people that, like I said, have just only ever believed in like, no, we go downstairs under the ground into like fire with a pitchfork guy. Brutal. Yeah. Colton is clearly full of resources and church history and I highly encourage you to listen to this episode again, write them all down and do the work that yourself of studying everything that's out there as you form or reform your beliefs. Now, if you're the kind of person who feels a little overwhelmed by academia or history, my book the Other side of Certainty is a great starting place for anyone who is just starting to reevaluate how sin and freedom work together, how the salvation of Jesus might be bigger than you initially understood it to be, and how you can arrive at the place where you can come out from under the a fear that convinces you that you need to have all of the right answers. You can get to a place where not knowing isn't so uncomfortable and actually leads you to a deeper understanding of God. There are questions at the end of every chapter to help you really walk through your own wrestling in your own time. Grab the Other side of certainty from bookshop.org or Amazon using the link in the show notes. All right, before we jump right into it, I do want to ask you, why do you think so many people are afraid or straight, refuse to even consider thinking about the afterlife differently? [00:21:30] Speaker B: Well, I think it's because of fear. Right? Like, you know, when you have a long standing history of. Of being afraid of hell, it's hard to break out of that, even if you have the intellectual answers for it. I was well into my 20s, no longer believing in the Rapture, still finding myself hit with anxiety when I would call three or four people in a row and none of them answered like, wait a [00:21:54] Speaker A: minute, [00:21:54] Speaker B: what's going on? You know, because trauma lives in the body and we feel that in our nervous system in a way that's so deep to us that the idea of questioning it feels like a violation that in and of itself could rest or wrestle, wrench away from us the promise of redemption and send us to a place where we're going to be tortured forever. And I think this is really hard for people to overcome because it's so. It's so deep and it also, I think, Kristen, because even the most, we are saved by grace. Alone by faith alone and not. Not through works type. Christians still, at the end of the day, have a workspace salv. They just don't. They're not being honest that intellectual work is work and that the ability and the process of being able to ascent to specific propositional truth claims through the use of your intellect is actually work that you have to do. And so for many people, they believe that, like, having that affirming all of the right doctrines is also necessary for your salvation. And so I think those two things together create a really powerful challenge to people's desire to. To break out of thinking about that, even when they have answers and suspect that it might be different. [00:23:24] Speaker A: Oh, I mean, it's connected for sure. Right? Because, yeah, it's the fear of, like, well, if I don't know what the right answers are, well, then I do have a fear of going to hell, or if I'm not making sure that I prove it to everyone else, [00:23:36] Speaker B: that [00:23:36] Speaker A: I'm doing all the right things or that I have all the right answers, then maybe I'm going to hell. And yeah, I guess if we remove that idea of punishment too, it really just throws people. They're like, but what do you mean? Like, what do you mean? [00:23:48] Speaker B: Yeah, well, then what is this whole thing even for? Why do we even talk about Christ? Right. Which is a problem. You know, Jonathan Edwards, who famously preached the sermon sinners in the hands of an angry God. Sadly, that's the picture that most people have of Jonathan Edwards, who's actually referred to in theological circles as the theologian of beauty, which a lot of people are surprised by. Jonathan Edwards had one of the most beautiful theologies and cosmologies in the history of Christianity, one of the most important American theologians in history. And he wrote, you know, after that sermon, there was a wave of that kind of preaching that took hold of America. And he wrote later on about the concern that he had that people were committing to Christianity not out of a love of God and a faith beauty, but out of fear. And he suggested that that's not even. You haven't even. That's not even a genuine faith, [00:24:43] Speaker A: right? Yes, [00:24:44] Speaker B: yeah. [00:24:45] Speaker A: Yes, I've, I have. I was going to say thought that forever, but that's not true because I lived in black and white Christianity for a really long time. But yes, that's something that I've realized. If we are shaming people, kids, teens, adults, whatever, into, or guilting them into a relationship with Jesus, it's not a real relationship. It's not actual faith. And then, no Wonder people get to a certain point where they deconstruct or whatever and decide, this is not for me anymore, because I don't know if it was ever real to begin with. And I don't fault them for that. [00:25:17] Speaker B: Oh, no, not at all. [00:25:18] Speaker A: They're like, well, this is what I'm handed. And so I guess this is what it is. And I think that's on the church or I think that's on, you know, whoever. For going like, we manipulated you into this for. For data points or numbers or whatever it is. [00:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah. You know, the official catechism of the Catholic. Catholic Church after Vatican II talks a lot about that, actually about the responsibility that the church has not to lead people astray with false doctrine or with leading people into fear. That actually moves them away. And there's like a line in there that says that the church is that probably responsible for the majority of the rise of the atheist movement itself. [00:25:57] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. What was that? I need to look that up. [00:26:01] Speaker B: It's somewhere in the Vatican ii. It's somewhere. Somewhere from Vatican II in the. It's part of the official canon of the Catholic Church. I'll send it to you later. [00:26:09] Speaker A: Okay, perfect. Perfect. All right. Well, in the words of Dan McClellan, like, all right, let's hear it. [00:26:15] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:16] Speaker A: Let's walk through your first. Your five arguments. And so the first one is, you said that universal salvation, you know, is modern liberal nonsense. [00:26:25] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:26:26] Speaker A: first argument. [00:26:27] Speaker B: Yeah. That idea, which is kind of like what's put out there. Right. Like, hey, you progressive Christians just, you know, you can't handle the truth of Scripture. And so you're inventing new things. The truth is that, you know, if you want to toss out anybody who. And the theology of anyone who argues for universal salvation, you're going to have to get rid of the doctrine of the Trinity because you go back to people like Gregory of Nyssa, who was foundational in Estab, what we now understand as the doctrine of the Trinity. Both him. Right. And members, you know, it's. They were this powerhouse family, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa and their sister Macrina the younger. There was like two or three other brothers that are all saints. It's pretty wild. Were you believed in the doctrine of universal salvation and argued for it, like, quite vociferously. And Basil, who, you know, is. Is controversial in this space. And this is interesting because in some places he talks about it, and it seems like he is. Believes in universal salvation. And in others, he admits that the majority of Christians in the fourth century in their Day believed that hell was not eternal. Now isn't that interesting, by the 4th century, the majority of Christians did not believe it was the, the plural, the, the, the majority opinion. And then he laments that almost. And then in other private letters we see that he ended up teaching the doctrine of eternal conscious torment because he was a, he believed that that fear was helpful to people in giving them a reason to believe. Isn't that interesting? Not because of any, not because he thought it was doctrinally true, but because he thought, you know, it's, it's useful in controlling people, basically. [00:28:21] Speaker A: But even [00:28:22] Speaker B: before, before him, I mean, the tradition of universal salvation goes through all out now. It wasn't that all Christians believe this way. The church of antiquity had a real plurality, like there were people teaching something closer to what we call annihilationism today. Universalism, eternal conscious torment was there. Both in the early Christian world and in the first century world of Judaism. These ideas were really developing. Even the idea that there are specific places where different locations that people might go in the afterlife was relatively new at that time. Before that you had Sheol, which is just the place of the dead where everybody went. And it was just kind of this vague. But you have all of these categories, outer darkness, the lake of fire, that really represent different things. And today we kind of just read them all together. So yeah, you're going to have to get rid of a lot of stuff. Now a lot of people will point to Origen, who was an early church father that was incredibly important, who is actually the teacher of the teacher of Gregory of Nyssa's mother, who taught his sister Macrina. [00:29:35] Speaker A: And [00:29:35] Speaker B: by the way, Macrina the Younger, the daughter of her mother, Macrina the Elder, was so theologically and philosophically adept that Gregory of Nyssa and her brother Basil, they referred to her as their teacher. She was their older sister. Anytime when they referred to her, they referred to as the teacher. And these [00:29:52] Speaker A: are [00:29:52] Speaker B: the people who created the doctrine of the Trinity as we have it today. Right. Like you wouldn't have what we have now. It was fracturing at the time. That's why they had to have that Council of Constantinople. So you're gonna have to get rid of them. Now. Origen, it comes to that line. A lot of people point to him and they'll say, well, Origen was condemned at the 5th Lateran Council for his universalism. And so we can ignore all of that. But Kristen, none of that's true. He was [00:30:19] Speaker A: not [00:30:19] Speaker B: condemned at the 5th Lateran Council for universalism. That's just. That's just a lie. He was. There was one condemnation. There were some anathemas issued that had to do with his doctrine of the pre existence of souls and other aspects of his cosmology which were even more rooted in really radical originist monks at the time. A century later, that wasn't even really connected. And that's really what was being condemned. They couldn't condemn Origen for universalism because if they did, then they would have to condemn Gregory of Nyssa for origin. And Gregory of Nyssa in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church has the title the Father of the Church Fathers. So if you, you know, that's the caliber of people in our. In our history that we're talking about that held firm to this hope of universal salvation. [00:31:08] Speaker A: Colton, this might be a really obvious question or a really obvious answer, but why do you think with all this history, right. All the history, like you said, foundational, like Church fathers, why do people ignore that and just go, no, no, no, this is new. This is modern. This is just liberal nonsense. [00:31:26] Speaker B: It's one. Because what we already talked about, the default, like fear and sense that they have. But then also since really Augustine, we have this long standing more Latin in Christianity that, you know, was built on Latin texts that had poor renderings of the Greek on specific things. Right. That just kind of create the default reading. Right. Like when Augustine, who didn't read Greek, didn't know Greek. Is reading a Latin transit, a Latin translation? He's not reading. When Jesus talks about, you know, in Matthew, when he talks about being cast out into, you know, eternal suffering. [00:32:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:09] Speaker B: Or eternal punishment. He's reading eternalis. Right. The Greek word there is aionios, which has a stronger connotation in the context of meaning not eternal, but of the age. And the word punishment is also different because the. The word punishment that it's used there in the Greek actually has more of the connotation of chastisement. And so in the Greek, what was really. And this is why the Eastern Church fathers were so much more universalist than the Western church later that would develop more in the Latin tradition. They're reading the original texts in the original language, and it's not like their understanding even of the original language is so much better than our best scholars today because it was their default language. They're not like having to do a translation. So they're reading it and they're seeing Jesus say that they will experience the chastisement of the age to come, not eternal punishment. And so because most of Western theology has been built on a bedrock of readings from Augustine that were rooted in translations that weren't really all that. That great. It's hard. There's centuries now of theology built on that that you feel like you would have to cast away in order to. To get into this and really believe it. It. [00:33:28] Speaker A: And two, I mean, I'm hearing you say a lot of it just comes down to ignorance is not the right word. Just like a lack of knowing, like a lack of knowledge. Most of us are not. Most people are not in seminary. They're not digging back that far. And so instead of researching, they're going, oh, well, this person, which you and I both do, but this person on the Internet said this. And so, like, okay, that's what we're using to form our beliefs. [00:33:50] Speaker B: Right. And you know what? I think that progressive Christians, especially in the influencer space, bear some responsibility, just like Christians bear responsibility on the right for terrifying people and making them leave for doing shoddy work. Right. Like, you know, you learn something, and then you spend time in it and develop it, [00:34:13] Speaker A: and [00:34:13] Speaker B: then you teach it. A lot of people jump straight from learning a fact to that that confirms the bias that they already want to have, [00:34:20] Speaker A: and [00:34:21] Speaker B: then they make content that just isn't that strong. And there's nothing that bothers me more than seeing somebody make a video or an argument for something that I agree with. And they're using not a great argument because that might get somebody excited. And then all it takes is somebody who knows just enough to come and squash that to not only send that person reeling back into the thing that that video was helping them escape from, but then also make them suspicious of arguments like [00:34:48] Speaker A: this? [00:34:50] Speaker B: And so, you know, a lot of people have heard just vaguely like, well, the Bible doesn't have the word. Hell isn't in the Bible. It's Sheol and Gehenna. But then, you know, that's not enough. And so if that's what you built it on, if you have a weak foundation for belief in universal salvation, you know, it. It's. It becomes really easy to dismiss and assume that there's not much more meat on the bones. [00:35:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Before we get to your second one, Colton, what would you recommend to somebody that's like, okay, I do want to do a better job of learning and understanding, but I am not going to seminary and getting all that debt that you have. Like, what would you suggest that they do? [00:35:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say learn to sit in. And this is really hard, but we have to learn how to sit in Uncertainty without. Without even feeling like you have to jump into affirming the things that you want to believe. Right. Like, it is okay, and it's okay to go, this is what I believe, But I can't 100% explain why and give yourself the time. You know, like, I always tell people that I didn't deconstruct. Right. Like, the. The concept of deconstruction is very foreign to me. You know, it's a relatively new, like, concept that was kind of coined, I think, like, around 2013, 14. [00:36:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:36:14] Speaker B: I think some people mistakenly think that it's like, postmodern deconstruction, Which. Which it's not. That's not what Derrida means by deconstruction. And deconstruction. Deconstruction in the postmodern sense is actually doing deconstruction to the word deconstruction. It's a little [00:36:26] Speaker A: ironic, [00:36:27] Speaker B: but for me, I had this strong benefit of going to seminary where I and undergrad studying theology, where I spent eight years being able not only to read and learn, but to read and learn from being guided by a plurality of voices that had different opinions. Like, you know, even at Oral Roberts University, I had Catholic professors and Pentecostal professors and Baptist professors and United Church of Christ professor professors and Methodist professors. And so I got to, you know, not just be indoctrinated, but actually learn. And so I would say there are great scholarly lectures. I would say if you hear something from an influencer that you really like, go onto YouTube and see what you can find from someone who's, like, a real scholar in that area and really sit with it. I would say avoid debates that you might see me on from time to time where you're debating, like, where it's like an apologist debating somebody else. You know, one of the things I learned in at Oral Roberts University is that apologetics is not theology. It's kind of like most real theologians don't even respect it as, like, a thing. It's just kind of silly. But that. That idea of learning to sit in uncertainty, I think is so important. You know, the. The. The psychoanalyst Wilfred beyond, one of the most important psychologists of the 20th century, talked about the difference between belief and knowing. He talked about knowing not in the sense of having facts or information about somebody, but about being the relationship between the knower and that which is known, whether it's a person or a concept. And he said, what happens is when to truly be in knowing with somebody feels scary. Like, I can have a bunch of facts about my wife. We've been, we've been together for 16 years, right? I know so many facts about her, but I could write all of them down and you wouldn't know her the way that I know her. But what's, what's scary about that is I've been married to probably six or seven different women and my wife's been married to probably 10 or 15 different men over those, over those 16 years, even though it's the same me and the same her, because we change and develop. And so to truly be a knowing with somebody, or what, what beyond called to be in K, he used that as the symbol for that kind of knowing is to be in a place where you don't feel safe and secure. So so many people reach for belief instead. And where you try to concretize it and establish it. No, this is what it is. And beyond said, once you do that, you actually collapse. K. You cease to know somebody. If I decide, no, my wife is the woman that I married and that's who she is, then as she changes and develops, I'll cease being and knowing with her. Now, it's not that God or the truth changes, right, the way that people change, but certainly our understanding of it changes. This is what we call the apocalypse of Christ or the revelation of Christ, which is that that word apocalypse, apocalypse and revelation come from the same root that Christ is being revealed to us, that the whole story of Scripture is infinite God revealing himself to finite creatures who see through a glass darkly. Even Moses, right, only saw the backside of God passing by. And it's not until we have Jesus that we're given a full revelation of God. God of the character and nature of God. And now for us, we're reading second and third hand accounts written a century after Jesus time. So our access to that is so limited. But that's why the scriptures tell us in Acts that Jesus says, I'm ascending the comforter. [00:40:05] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:40:05] Speaker B: right. Who will lead you and guide you into all understanding. And so that is, that is a process. The Holy Spirit is here to lead us and to guide us into understanding. And once you assume we've got the understanding locked down, you are now believing in an idol. You are now worshiping another thing. And I love Meister Eckhart's prayer, the great Christian mystic, theologian. God rid me of God, right? God, the eternal God who is infinite, rid me of the God I have created in my head and tried to trap you into. And so we have to become comfortable sitting in this space of hey, like Even the best theologians today, who can give you the best defense for the thing that you want to believe, don't have it figured out. Even the ones who are closest to the truth aren't really there. Gregory of Nissa talked about it as a practices, an eternal procession that even on the other side of glory, even in the eschaton, we haven't reached the fullness of God because it's infinite. And so what eternity is, is this continual procession deeper into the life of God, which is love. Love and all of the things that we talk about, not just our doctrines, but even like human love, is but a mere participation in the love that is God, which is so much deeper and more than we could possibly comprehend. [00:41:29] Speaker A: Yeah, well. And as soon as we think we know it, as soon as we think we can explain it, contain it, the whole thing, then what is the need for our faith anyway? Right. [00:41:36] Speaker B: Exactly. [00:41:37] Speaker A: What is it? Kind of useless at that point. [00:41:40] Speaker B: And that's why beyond talked about, you know, he didn't like belief all that much, but he loved faith because faith is the ability to step into the unknown and to be comfortable knowing that you don't know. And if that feels hard, just know. Even if you don't. Aren't doing that actively in your brain. That is already where you are. It is already where you are, no matter how confident you are. We will get to the other side of eternity someday and realize that it was all just a shadow of a truth so much deeper. And this is why the greatest church fathers all talked about how our. All of our language for God is analogous. It's only an analogy. When we say God is love, that means something so much more than what we could conceive of as love. Simone Vale, the great Christian mystic theologian, said, there God. God exists. God does not exist. What is the problem? And then said, I'm certain that God exists in the certain in the way that I'm certain that love exists, but I'm also certain that God does not exist in the sense that nothing I can conceive of when I say that word could exhaust the reality of what. What God might be. [00:42:52] Speaker A: Yeah, that is. Wow, that is so. I'm gonna, like, think about that quote, I think, for the. For the rest of the day. But you explained it so well. I think that's. Listen, we're gonna make people think today, Colton, and I love it so much. It's my favorite thing. All right, let's make sure we keep going through. We kind of took a tangent, but it was necessary. And I loved it your second argument against, you know, eternal conscious torment is the idea that justice demands punishment. Talk to me about [00:43:19] Speaker B: this. Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people think when they hear universal salvation that what that means is everybody is just going to be saved no matter what. There is no judgment. There is no lake of fire. There is no chastisement. But that's not what Christians mean by universalism. When we talk about universalism, what we mean is that the judgment has a purpose. God's judgment is just judgment, which means if it doesn't actually bring about justice, then it's not God's judgment. And so when we try to compare, we think in legal terms and using our legal system as like an analogy, or we think justice is done when someone is locked away or sentenced to death or whatever for whatever crime that they committed. But real justice is restorative. And we have to keep in mind that the thing God is redeeming. We have this tradition from Luther in the west that we are all, from Augustine, this damnable idea of original sin, that we are all just these pathetic sinners. Luther talked about it as we are heaps of dung. And God's grace is like snow that coats us. Us. But that would have been unrecognizable to the early church. The early church viewed it much more like we are actually balls of snow, pure white snow. Why? Because what we are is the image of God. [00:44:49] Speaker A: Yes, Right. [00:44:50] Speaker B: That is what we are. So to say that we are at our core dumb or bad or wrong is to come is to say we were not made in the imago day. But sin is like, if you want to use Luther's poop analogy, which worked great when I was a youth pastor. Right, right. We're covered in. We're balls of snow that get covered in poop. And God's grace comes away and washes the poop away. You know, that's. That's what it actually is. And so God's justice is God redeeming God being victorious over the power of sin and death. If sin and death win a little bit in the end, then God doesn't win. Paul says that the Christian story ends with God being all in all. And we see over and over again in, like in Revelation when it talks about the lake of fire, that the things that are cast in the lake of fire that are ultimately destroyed, it says the final enemy that's destroyed in the lake of fire is death, which is what brings about sin. And so for Christians that believe in universal salvation, we believe judgment is real and Severe and morally necessary. Right. That's why you have Matthew 25:46. That's why you have Romans 2, 5, 8. That's why you have Hebrews 10:10. And it's just that it believes biblical judgment is purifying, that God's fire burns away the impurities. And so if we have impurity and we're cast into the refiner's fire, we're cast into that lake of fire. It will be painful. Right. Like Gregory of Nissan, his sister Macrina have this text called on the soul and Resurrection. And they talk about the wheat and the chaff. Right. That's when, when it gets burned away. And that pain that comes comes from the wheat having the chafe burned off of it. And so the more attached we are to sin, the more we are attached to love of things other than God. In order for us to be fit for blessedness, that has to be burned away. So it's not this idea that like, oh, it doesn't matter what you do, everything, you know, everything's fine. No, God's judgment is ordered towards salvation. And it's not pointless suffering for its own sake. [00:46:59] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and God's whole plan, if we look at Jesus, is restoration. It's always been restoration. So, yes, it's not to burn up the entire wheat, it's to burn off the things that are keeping the restoration from happening. [00:47:12] Speaker B: Yes. [00:47:12] Speaker A: So, all right, I'm going to jump ahead to. I'm going to combine two here. For time's sake, I'm going to jump ahead to. Free will requires the possibility of eternal conscious torment. [00:47:22] Speaker B: Yeah, this is the, you know, and this is a relatively new argument that people are banding about for hell. And it's kind of because all the other ones are crumbling and so they're like trying to attach. Well, if we have free will, you know, God is a gentleman. He's not going to force us into relationship with him. We have a free will, but we're mistake. We're importing secular categories once again onto the Scripture, which is what they always want to say that progressive Christians or Christians that believe in universal salvation are doing. It's actually them that are doing it. See, the problem is that we don't have free will. And I don't mean that in the Calvinist sense. What I mean it is that right now our wills are afflicted by a sickness called sin. And, and that. That perverts us and distorts us from our true nature, which is to be participants in the divine nature. Right. Like, like, like it says in Scripture, becoming partakers of divine nature, that is the core of who we are. When we. The question was about will. If we want to trick ourselves into thinking that we have free will right now, it's just silly. The point is that Christ frees our will, never forces us into salvation. You know, the early church fathers, that judgment that I talked about, the ones that believe in universal salvation, they said that might go on for ages. Like, you could be in the lake of fire for eons, for ages and ages, until you are ready to move back towards God. But the idea is that as God's fire purifies us, it redeems our will, and it frees our will, will. See, freedom is not the ability to choose, you know, like, in. In this kind of, like, capitalist sense of, like, picking menus from an option. It's the ability to move uninhibited towards one's true nature. That's what real freedom is. When. When a drug addict and I grew up seeing this my whole life, continues to constantly make decisions that blow up their life, put them in immense pain. It's not because they're acting out of a free will. They're acting out of a will that is in bondage to this addiction. [00:49:41] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. [00:49:42] Speaker B: And so when we choose things other than God, when we. When we attach ourselves to sin, we attach ourselves to our wealth, to mammon. This is why God's saying you can't serve two masters. Right? We are not actually acting out of free will. So the idea isn't that God is going to just override our will, but that God's love outlasts sin. And if you don't believe that, by the way, then you believe that sin has an eternal deed in. In a deed that lasts into eternity, coexistent with God, in which God therefore cannot be all in all, and then in which death and sin are not destroyed in the lake of fire, but those are the things that God destroys. And so that's what I think people misunderstand about the idea of will. God is freeing our will so that we can move towards our true nature, which is as image bearers that partake in the divine nature. [00:50:37] Speaker A: Okay, I want to clarify and tell me if I get this wrong, I'm gonna try to take what you just said and put it in, like, one sentence. [00:50:43] Speaker B: Yeah, [00:50:43] Speaker A: you're not saying that we don't have free will as in we are like robots. Like, God is like, not puppeteering us, but more so that the free will that we've been given has been tainted by sin. And so it's actually, like, leading us more. Right. Then. Then we would. Precisely. But then we would. Okay, [00:51:00] Speaker B: our. Our lack of free will is not because God is controlling us. Our lack of free will is because sin is controlling [00:51:05] Speaker A: us. Yeah, yeah. [00:51:07] Speaker B: And so to say that somebody would eternal. I mean, think about it like this. Would somebody choose somebody. People choose all the time to make decisions that hurt themselves. Right. Like, I can choose to. To put my hand on the hot stove, but could I really choose to put my hand on a hot stove and keep it there until my hand burned off? If somebody was capable of that, would we say that they're acting out of freedom or psychosis? [00:51:29] Speaker A: Psychosis, for sure. Yeah. [00:51:31] Speaker B: Right. And so. So the concept of, like, eternally choosing forever to burn in a lake of fire is not somebody acting out of a freed will. [00:51:39] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a excellent example. Thank you. That was great. All right. We are quickly running out of time. So I do want to kind of combine a few things here, right? Just the idea of. Of Jesus, and if everyone is saved, you know, why did Jesus die? And so, Colton, I want you to explain that and also kind of let us know, too, like, how does this change what you believe or what people maybe believe about the salvation of Jesus if they think about hell in a different way? [00:52:08] Speaker B: Great question. So I think, like, first I want to say that, like, Christian universalists don't believe that everyone gets saved without Christ, but we believe Christ saves everybody. Right. And. And there is, like, just a fundamental misunderstanding of what salvation is and what it's about, and it's Christological in nature as well. It comes from a lack of poverty, of understanding of the meaning of the Incarnation. I like to go back to St. Irenaeus, right, one of the earliest church fathers, his doctrine of recapitulation, where he talks about. And this is somebody who's, you know, trained by a student of John the Apostle, right? So, like, we're so close to the apostles here, and that's the lineage that this teaching is coming from, of learning how to read and understand Scripture, that it's not the case, that in what he's arguing that Adam and Eve were perfect and that their perfection was corrupted, but that they were not made perfect, but made innocent, to grow into perfection, to grow into that apactasis, deeper into that eternal procession into God's own life, but that at some point in. In the cosmic world, you know, that, you know, the story of Adam and Eve not really being like, a literal story that tells, like, the historical details of what happened, but conveys the theological truth behind it. [00:53:33] Speaker A: Yeah, [00:53:34] Speaker B: we chose things that are other than God and began to love those things, and it created a separation. Irenaeus says that Christ came to recapitulate humanity, to capitulate, like Cap, to recap, to put a new head on humanity, to be the new human. That God came down, became a human, so that. That he could be the first human who is truly what we are all to become. This is the early church doctrine of theosis or deification. Right. That, you know Athanasius. Right. The early church father who defended the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Nicaea and was, you know, banished and exiled four times for it. It over that time said that God became man so that man can become God. Not that we become, in the Mormon sense, like our own little gods ruling our own, like planets or whatever, but that we can become fully brought in to God's own life and become partakers of that divine nature. So Jesus is almost like a time traveler. I love this. German theologian Jurgen Moltmann talked about it as prolepsis. Like a prolepsis is like almost like a vision of the end. Now think about it as like a sacrament. A sacrament is the moment, a moment of kingdom, reality, breaking into our current reality, the thing that is already breaking into the world that is not yet. When we experience healing in this world, it's. It's a sacrament. [00:55:14] Speaker A: Right. [00:55:15] Speaker B: Ultimately, our bodies will be healed. We experience healing now as a foretaste of what is to come. Come the Eucharist. Receiving the body and blood of Christ is a foretaste of the marriage supper of the lamb. It is a small breaking in of the kingdom. Jesus was a breaking in of the ultimate reality of humanity into our current world. And by doing that, became the new head of humanity that we can move into and become. Like, this is what it really means to become Christ. Like, not just to take on our best analogies for what it means to be like Christ, but to actually become what Christ is. And so that I think is. Is. Is fundamentally important to understanding. And I want to get back your question. It was specifically about why. Because you kind of had a two part question, like, why do we even do all of this? And then what does that change about, like, our idea of [00:56:10] Speaker A: salvation? Yeah, [00:56:11] Speaker B: yeah, like that. That's what. That's the work that Christ is doing, right? Like, yeah, becoming the new head of humanity, like the first human, the way that we will be in our resurrected bodies, so to speak. [00:56:22] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and I See salvation as, like, salvation happened. It is happening. It will happen again. And I think when we can think about it that way, it makes a lot more sense as opposed to this. Just like one and done. Check the box. And now, you know. So let me ask. You're in [00:56:36] Speaker B: the club. [00:56:38] Speaker A: Yes. Let me ask you this, Colton. If you were doing your good christian evangelism out on the street today and you had to succinctly, you know, explain the gospel to someone without mentioning hell, what would you [00:56:52] Speaker B: say? That's a great question. Well, I probably wouldn't do this on the street, but if I was in a conversation with somebody [00:57:02] Speaker A: hypothetically [00:57:03] Speaker B: and I was saying, you know, let me teach you about the gospel, right, I'd say the gospel is this message that there is a new king in town and that the powers and principalities and the rulers of this dark age have been unseated. That, you know, it's interesting. The word gospel comes from this greek word evangelion, which we normally just interpret to mean good news. But it wasn't just like a vague sort of good news. Right. Like it had a political meeting meaning in the greek context, in the roman context that paul is drawing on when he uses this word is actually kind of like a military term and a government term. When one emperor would die, whether, like defeated on the battlefield and a new emperor or new king is taking that or an emperor would just die and their successor takes over, they would proclaim the euangelion, they would proclaim the gospel, which is the message essentially, the king is dead, long live the king. Right. And they would actually, like inscribe it on stone to proclaim that. And then they would send out heralds throughout the kingdom because there's no twitter, there's no Instagram, there's no 24. 7 cable news to spread this message. [00:58:10] Speaker A: And [00:58:11] Speaker B: there would still be in far out provinces, rulers and principalities operating under authority that no longer existed. [00:58:19] Speaker A: And so [00:58:19] Speaker B: heralds would have to go out to proclaim the gospel. Hey, your power has been undone. There is a new king is coming, and he's going to establish his rule and his reign in the domain that you are now seeking power over. But sometimes they're stubborn and they want to hold on to what they have. And so the message of the gospel is that the powers of sin, the powers of death, the powers of domination and control, they. They have been defeated decisively by Christ's victory on the cross. That what christ came to do was not only to become a human but to enter into death and be the first of a new kind of resurrection. Resurrection happened before Jesus. Lazarus was resurrected. There's all kinds of resurrection stories. What makes Jesus's resurrection story interesting theologically is it's not this claim that he died and was resurrected back into the old life like Lazarus, who still died later on. [00:59:11] Speaker A: Right? [00:59:12] Speaker B: Jesus enters death. He goes in there. When you read the passage of scripture about the harrowing of hell, he takes the keys of death and hell and explodes through the back wall, right? Destroying sin and death's capacity to hold us in bondage at all. And he gives those keys to his church. Not because the church is the community of the people who are the only ones that will be saved and rescued if Christ defeats the powers of sin and death. Everyone is rescued, right? Like there's a difference in a jailbreak. If I. If I go into the jail and I go, you, you, you, you, you come out with me, then, yeah, those are the only ones saved. [00:59:50] Speaker A: But [00:59:51] Speaker B: if I go in and I go, hey, we're putting some, you know, plastic explosive on this black wall, some C4, and we're blowing it out. Anyone and everyone can rush out of there. And the church is the community that has been given the keys to say, hey, make sure that they can ever lock this thing back up and go free everybody, and be heralds and proclaimers of the gospel. [01:00:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Well, that goes perfectly into my last question for you, Colton, which is for the listeners, the people that are listening right now, how can they become the church to the people around them, like, in their everyday life? How can they blow out that back wall? [01:00:25] Speaker B: That's a great question. I think to be the church, right, Means to be like the called out community who even despite the way the world looks today, despite the fact that already we're talking about we live in the not yet. And so it doesn't seem real, it doesn't seem true. It doesn't seem like it could be possible. But we are the people who not only as a. We are. To be the church means to be a colony of the kingdom of heaven now. And so in every way that we can, to live as though we believe the thing that we're proclaiming, which means that, like, whenever we encounter anything in our world that is contrary to the way the kingdom of heaven is run, we live that way. So a lot of people, for example, want. You know, I like. I'm a socialist. I like to talk about what I believe the church should do, right? Which I think is different. Like, to be a Christian socialist. I don't Even think you necessarily have to be about making the government socialist. But you and your community, I think, should live in a way that mirrors how the church lived in the Book of Acts. So what does it mean to be the church? Well, the book of Acts, the first thing it tells us about the way the church lived was that they considered no possession their own and instead held everything in common that they gave, that they sold all of their possessions and gave it to the apostles, each according to their need to be distributed later on in Acts 11 to each or to be distributed each according to their ability and then later on in Acts 11 to be. To pardon me, to be collected according to the ability we have to give and then to be distributed according to our need that we exist in the community. But people want to say, yeah, but that's just not possible because we live in a fallen world. Well, that argument is essentially say you don't believe the gospel because what it specifically says is that great grace as because of the faithful witness of Christ's resurrection, great grace came upon the community, making it possible for them to live that way. And so we're to be the community of the called out ones. A peculiar people who look at the way the world is run and say, I'm not going to live based on those rules. I'm going to live based on my belief that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not. That Jesus is Lord and Trump is not. That Jesus is Lord and Biden is not. Not. And to whatever end the rulers of this world want to pull you away. You have to make a commitment that goes. No, I'm going to be committed to living as a member of this called out community so that we can be faithful witnesses in an age of people who are beset by the troubles of sin and death, that, hey, this is not the final world. In the end, God will be all in all. [01:03:03] Speaker A: Preach. Brother Barnaby. I love it. Thank you. Thank you. That was brilliant. Yes. And listen, I think too, if we're, if we're going to go, that's impossible. Like, then remember the Holy Spirit within you like it's supposed to be. It's not supposed to be easy. We're supposed to have to rely on the power of God to do these things. So. [01:03:22] Speaker B: That's right. [01:03:23] Speaker A: Thank you. And this has been so great. [01:03:25] Speaker B: Would it be okay, Kristin, if I just left people with a couple of things that I think are important for them to have as tools that they can look into after this conversation? [01:03:32] Speaker A: Yes, yes, I would love it. [01:03:34] Speaker B: I think the 32nd case for universal salvation in Christian Scripture is to understand that God creates human beings for the purpose of communion with God, not for an everlasting destiny with alienation. Look at Genesis 1, Acts 17, Ephesians 1. God then wills all the salvation of all people. That's what God wills. First Timothy 2, second Peter 3. Christ comes to save the world, not just to make salvation hypothetically available to a part of it. Look at John 3, look at John 12 and John. For then Christ's work is described in explicitly universal terms that all are made alive, that all things are reconciled, that every knee will bow, and every tongue confess. That all men, that when I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto me. First Corinthians 15, Colossians 1, Philemon 2. Sin and death are the enemies that God destroys, not, not permanent features of final creation. First Corinthians 15, Revelation 21, Revelation 22. Right. And then lastly I say that I already kind of talked about judgment being real and the Christian story. But the Christian story doesn't end with an everlasting dualism between heaven and hell, but. But with God becoming all in all. First Corinthians 15, Ephesians 1 and Revelations 21. Go look into all of those passages. And when you read other texts that, that feel hard to get universal salvation from, think about Scripture this way. You have to read if you have a scripture that looks like universal salvation, like a lot of the ones I just went over, and one that looks like universal or that looks like eternal conscious torment or annihilation, you have to find a way to read those two in which one doesn't make nonsense of the other, and you can read all of the passages that you have for eternal conscious torment from the universalist perspective in a way where universalism still makes sense of those Scriptures, but you cannot make sense of any of the passages I just quoted if you're interpreting them through these other Scriptures. All. If you read any of those texts as eternal conscious torment, it makes nonsense of all of these others. [01:05:48] Speaker A: Okay, thank you for that little Bible study there at the end. I think that's brilliant. And I will encourage people like you said earlier to sit with that and to give it time and to be able to say, I don't know and I'm not certain about these things, but to wrestle through it with Holy Spirit and see where you land. [01:06:05] Speaker B: That's right. [01:06:08] Speaker A: If you're willing to do the work to figure out what you believe about sin, salvation and the afterlife, I encourage you again to go back and write down all of those scriptures that Colton rattled off there at the end. Again, not with a goal of telling you what to believe or even getting you to a concrete answer, but to help you practice discerning the voice of God as you let Holy Spirit Spirit lead you and reveal things that you hadn't previously known. I would love for you to share this episode with someone who is looking for thought provoking conversations like these. After we stopped recording, Colton said that this was one of his favorite interviews that he's ever done because he got to actually dive deep into a topic instead of just kind of talking generally about his faith story. That's what I think makes this show different from all of the other faith podcasts out there and I would love for you to help me spread the word about it. People are way more willing to listen to you someone that they know and trust than they are to me random podcast hosts trying to convince them that my own show is worth listening to. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. Share this episode and keep becoming the church to the people around you.