Just surfing the blogs this afternoon, I came across Simon’s blog, the lost message. He is attempting to wrestle with the texts and implications on universalism. It follows on from an earlier posting of his and some fruitful discussion. For those who are interested, it may be a discussion worth following if only it can develop more than it has. Hopefully it does. It’s certainly a topic that Forsyth had heaps to say about.

Thomas Erskine once wrote: ‘I cannot believe that any human being can be beyond the reach of God’s grace and the sanctifying power of His Spirit. And if all are within His reach, is it possible to suppose that He will allow any to remain unsanctified? Is not the love revealed in Jesus Christ a love unlimited, unbounded, which will not leave undone anything which love could desire? It was surely nothing else than the complete and universal triumph of that love which Paul was contemplating when he cried out, ‘Oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’

These words express something of Forsyth’s hope and vision that God’s sanctifying activity may leave none untouched. It seems to me that one of the problems with the traditional doctrine of hell is its inability to provide for us a vision of creation which in its finality is without evil. Despite all God’s best efforts to sanctify the creation and turn rebels into enchanted sons and daughters, hell, at least in its more popular presentations, remains as the big black line across a page that God has made clean.