If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person (Gulley, Philip)

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Summary: God's Love Will Triumph
Review: This book is an eloquent and persuasive argument for universalism -- a theological term that simply means every soul will eventually wind up in heaven. The authors' case may prove controversial and hard to digest for many Christians, fed from birth the notion that only those who believe in Jesus Christ will be "saved." But the authors' arguments are very persuasive: To say that some will be condemned to Hell for eternity is to suggest that a person's sin or willingness to reject God will ultimately prove more powerful than God's love. If you believe that God's love is the most powerful force in the universe, the authors argue, then you must believe that God's love will ultimately triumph -- for everyone. It is God's will that everyone is "saved" -- a term the authors don't really define -- and to condemn a large percentage of human history to the fires of hell is to pronounce the ultimate failure of God's love. This is a notion that the authors cannot abide. This is an exciting, wonderful book that confirmed many of my own doubts about a "god" who would send billions of his children to hell for not believing in or following Jesus Christ. To the authors, Christ is not so much Savior, but Lord -- a crucial difference.

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Summary: Great book!
Review: This book is an excellent book for those who may have walked away from a God who they believe is unjust in condemning the majority of the world to an eternal hell.

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Summary: A Kinder, Gentler Bible Interpretation
Review: Writing for the general reader, the authors argue that the God of love is incompatible with the doctrine of eternal damnation. Salvation, they argue, is a transformation of the soul, being liberated from self-absorption, which has little to do with embracing any kind of orthodoxy, a Nicene creed, or some canned mantra. While I'm not sure where I stand on the issue of the afterlife, I found the book helpful in showing that biblical interpretation is a sort of Rorschach test. The God we pull out of the Bible often reflects our own biases and temperaments. For example, the authors say that the more mature they become, the more they see the complexities of human behavior, the more they replace their anger with love, the less they can believe in eternal damnation. Thus it is that the God that grows inside their hearts contradicts the notion of eternal perdition. As a result, they have evolved their interpretation of the Bible to exclude the idea of an eternal concentration camp for nonbelievers. They use several Bible passages to support their views and argue that not all scripture is equal. Scripture that defines grace, they assert, has more weight than scripture that defines God as a wrath-hungry Father displeased with his children. If I had to fault the book, the authors are too inclined to pick and choose from the Bible to come up with the God of their experience. As a result, the God of the Bible seems a bit sugar-coated and almost seems like wishful thinking on their part. On the other hand, I do appreciate a theology that rejects the idea of eternal damnation, which seems just as extreme, at the opposite pole, as does the candy-coated version of God.