Universal Salvation?

I believe, within the framework of LDS theology, that the deciding factor was the choice in the premortal life to accept the Father’s plan – that the classic “Heaven vs. Hell” decision occurred at that time.

I believe in the concept of “time and all eternity” and that we have that essentially unending time period to progress toward and achieve the ultimate goal.

I believe that is what a loving Father-God would want – and I believe deeply in full grace and boundless atonement.

There are plenty of statements that support that view, especially from earlier leaders, but I personally believe it because it is what I want to believe: my faith (“the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”).

Pretty much this.

Further, I believe JS was a universalist based on his family background, his concern for his brother Alvin (who some ministers said was going to hell), and several things he and other early church leaders said.

I should note here that while I do believe in universal salvation, I do not believe in the Mormon concept of exaltation as something separate from and beyond salvation.

In my lesson last week, the Stake President said this means that at first we will weep and wail and gnash teeth, but after a time, we will be used to our unexhalted state and settle into our new life. He was firm that once assigned to a kingdom, we are stuck there.

I believe that 1) people with black and white thinking tend to become church leaders. They really do believe that their eternal salvation/exaltation is on the line and this motivates them to be “high performers.” (I also assume that there are also other variables and factors that make people good leadership potential). I also believe that 2) church leaders will use doctrinal reasoning to help motivate members to do what the leader wants/needs them to do.

This second category goes something like this: I need ward members to do XYZ. I will craft a speech that ties XYZ to their salvation, or covenants, or blessings, etc.

I believe a perfect example of this is when a former SP and MP was teaching a SS lesson on church leaders sometimes making mistakes. According to him sometimes leaders receive inspiration/revelation and sometimes leaders are to make their best guess and move forward.

D&C58:26 For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.

I asked if this can also apply to issuance of callings and he was adamant that issuance of callings was possibly the one exception. Callings were always the result of revelation. This seems like such a strange thing to say. I have known multiple bishops that have joked that sometimes callings are inspiration and sometimes callings are desperation. It certainly does not seem to be a written church doctrine that all callings must be revealed/inspired. Why then the resistance? I believe that this former SP and MP had experienced dozens of situations where a person turned down a particular calling and that made things more difficult for the church unit/leader. I believe that he was loath to give people any justification (even doctrinally sound justification) to think that if a particular calling is a bad fit for them then they are justified and empowered to decline.

It is through this lens that I see the debate about progress between kingdoms. The scriptures are not definitive on the topic. For a church that touts that we are all Gods in embryo with unlimited capacity and potential and that we will never be destroyed and will never stop accumulating new experiences – how does it follow that only a small percentage will continue to grow and all others will be somehow stopped in their progression? How is it fair that such an infinitesimally small time period as one’s mortal life will make or break one’s eternity?

I think that the rejoinder to this idea is that, “If everyone shall have eternity to figure things out, how do we motivate people to comply right now?” It is an “ends justify the means” tactic and maybe it works. To the effect that people become motivated to turn their lives around and live better and more productive lives maybe it is helpful.

I find the scriptures you quoted from the D&C funny. God’s saying, “Yeah, sometimes I use hyperbole to scare people straight.”

Yup. If it is good enough for God then it should be good enough for us. right?

Great thoughts. My wife taught this lesson in SS and did an amazing job. I have spent the last 12 years reading all kinds of material and getting exposed to critiques of the BOM and D&C. My wife is new to the faith crisis game and doing a much better job than I did. She opened the lesson asking what universalism was and then had someone read from Alma 1 about Nehor’s universalist teachings. She had never read this in anything by Grant Palmer or the Tanners and just connected the dots from something she read in Revelations in Context preparing for the lesson. Many member reacted strongly to D&C 76, arguing that it was universalism and using Nehor’s teachings as justification of it being false doctrine.

But, in responding to the post, there is a tension in Mormon doctrine between universalism and more of a hard line protestant heaven and hell take on salvation that has plagued us since the beginning. The BOM definitely has an anti-universalist stance and only talks of heaven and hell, although there is a lot on the tension between mercy and justice. We then have D&C 76 which seems to offer a spin on universal salvation (my wife also shocked me by working in Swedenborg, which she’d also read about in revelations in context). We have D&C 137 where Alvin shows up in the celestial kingdom (given in 1836 before we had the endowment or work for the dead).

I think this tension is alive and well in the church, with the conflict between statements saying that one can progress between kingdoms and the whole idea of eternal progression people saying you are stuck in your kingdom after the judgment and will have to pay for your good works or sins in this life (much more the traditional heaven/hell paradigm).

I think salvation weighed heavy on the mind of Joseph Smith and early Christians and isn’t very interesting to younger people today. My view is that if we can’t figure out who should be sealed to who here and can’t explain much about the afterlife, we probably don’t know very much about it and should worry about here and now rather than worry about the afterlife. But, I think the eternal learning/progress idea in Mormonism is one of the most beautiful concepts and get frustrated that people want to sand it down because they are worried people will end up in heaven that didn’t deserve to be there.

This topic is one of the stickiest of all wickets, right up there with free will vs. determinism (with which it dovetails to large extent.)

I think most folks outside of strict Calvinists might admit that your future fate / realm / state is largely determined by what you do, personally, right now in this life. And it usually goes with the idea that if you’re not sure, as no one really is, what the truth is, you err on the side of caution by being ‘good’ and keeping your nose clean (as it were) just to be on the safe side. IMO it’s all questionable and I’d put it under the label of that great recent internet neologism, ‘copium.’ (hope / coping / opium.)

(I could’ve written ‘the life that is apparently currently presenting itself,’ instead of ‘this life,’ but why make this wicket any stickier than it already is)

If I think about this life, I have to admit I don’t know or can’t remember how or why I got here, born in one particular place in one particular time. If it was by some previous efforts or actions of whatever I now call ‘myself,’ how can I learn from past mistakes if I don’t remember them? If it’s totally arbitrary, I feel even more lost. So if you extrapolate that forward I have to confess I don’t know how to do to prepare for a possible future that’s a total unknown.

I like to think no energy or effort is wasted but appears later in some different manifestation. My other great study besides Mormonism is the Asian philosophies with which I’ve become well acquainted over the years. The basic dharmic idea is that psychic (mental) energy preserves itself and creates ‘ripples’ in this fashion, good or bad or mixed, in all directions.

I’ve always envisioned the telestial / terrestrial / celestial realms as realms that one could go up and down or back and forth on over time depending on where one best fit at a given time. You can’t go into a higher level than the one you’re at (just like we can’t conceive of ideas that are way beyond us until we learn to, or why an animal can’t be expected to read or comprehend physics, etc.) I never believed any were a one-time-for-all scheme. Some might do it more quickly or with less suffering than others.

(You might go downwards just because no one is perfect (‘completed,’ in the NT sense, perhaps implying some sort of mystical/occult endowment rite) yet and makes mistakes (hamartia.)

The Buddha said that the number of incarnations (into some realm or other) it could take to attain complete ‘enlightenment’ could be compared to a mountain as high as Everest; once every aeon, a bird flies over the peak carrying a fine silken handkerchief in its beak, lightly brushing the mountain just enough to knock loose a few infinitesimal particles. The amount of time it would take to wear that mountain down to dust would be roughly the number of lifetimes one might expect to have to experience before ‘enlightenment.’ So, a bunch.

I’ve also always felt that there must be many subdivisions within the three major kingdoms, and that the three only represent the broad categories. My readings of Swedenborg (possible influence on JS) also confirm that the ‘celestial sphere’ is much more complex and intuitive than commonly taught.

The irony of the dharmic view of ‘universal salvation’ or enlightenment (terms vary a lot) is that in many forms it does not require any deity as such. Everything just goes along based on cause and effect and natural laws of energy. So no god is ever ‘punishing’ or ‘rewarding’ someone or sending anyone anywhere; it’s all based on your own particular nature.

But that nature can change, so that’s kinda cool. You don’t have to be stuck in some hell-realm for a gazillion years with devils poking your butt with tridents, because there’s an opportunity to evolve out of it.

The downside of the idea of universal salvation in this dharmic view is that if you don’t make any efforts, you don’t get anywhere and no god or even buddha will be able to do anything for you except maybe encourage you (via the scriptures or priests) to get off your derriere.

The irony of the dharmic view of ‘universal salvation’ or enlightenment (terms vary a lot) is that in many forms it does not require any deity as such. Everything just goes along based on cause and effect and natural laws of energy. So no god is ever ‘punishing’ or ‘rewarding’ someone or sending anyone anywhere; it’s all based on your own particular nature.

But that nature can change, so that’s kinda cool. You don’t have to be stuck in some hell-realm for a gazillion years with devils poking your butt with tridents, because there’s an opportunity to evolve out of it.

The downside of the idea of universal salvation in this dharmic view is that if you don’t make any efforts, you don’t get anywhere and no god or even buddha will be able to do anything for you except maybe encourage you (via the scriptures or priests) to get off your derriere.

Fascinating! From what I am understanding of your description the division is not between heaven and hell, saved and damned – but rather a spectrum or gradation from less developed to more developed. Also that the progress is always available but it must come from within.

What an amazing concept!

The Buddha said that the number of incarnations (into some realm or other) it could take to attain complete ‘enlightenment’ could be compared to a mountain as high as Everest; once every aeon, a bird flies over the peak carrying a fine silken handkerchief in its beak, lightly brushing the mountain just enough to knock loose a few infinitesimal particles. The amount of time it would take to wear that mountain down to dust would be roughly the number of lifetimes one might expect to have to experience before ‘enlightenment.’ So, a bunch.

I’ve often thought that some form of reincarnation would make sense in the plan of salvation. Since the whole point is to learn and grow while on earth, salvation for the dead doesn’t seems to fill all the gaps for those who did not have the gospel teachings or didn’t live life as they should.

Most of all, I think reincarnation would allow for universal salvation without compromising on the standard of perfection, and would thus be more fair. Everyone is still required to be righteous and overcome their vices, but they have as long as is necessary to figure it out. Why should life have to be a timed test, especially when some end up getting more time than others anyway?

Fascinating DJ!