Chapter Twenty-Three

“Universalism Makes Christ Unnecessary”—The Mediator Argument

A. McClymond’s Argument: The “Abbreviated John 3:16”

Of all the objections leveled against universal restoration, this one cuts the deepest. It’s not just a theological critique. It’s a charge of functional heresy. McClymond argues that universalism, by its very nature, tends to make Jesus Christ unnecessary. In his view, once you start with the premise that God loves everyone and end with the conclusion that everyone is saved, you have quietly removed the Mediator from the equation. Christ becomes a nice addition to the story, but not the hinge on which everything turns.

McClymond states this directly in the introduction to The Devil’s Redemption. He describes what he calls an “abbreviated John 3:16”—a version of the gospel that essentially reads: “For God so loved the world that he gave eternal life to all.”¹ Notice what disappears in that abbreviation. Gone is the gift of the Son. Gone is the necessity of faith. Gone is the warning about perishing. What remains is only love and a guaranteed outcome. McClymond sees this as the fatal logic lurking inside every universalist system.

He develops the argument further by observing that “another common line of argument for universalism derives from abstract or a priori theological reasoning. This way of thinking starts with God’s love for all human beings and then leaps to the conclusion of eternal salvation for all, while omitting the messy part in between—namely, the incarnation of God’s Son, Jesus’s life and teachings, Jesus’s call for faith, Jesus’s atoning death, Jesus’s bodily resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, and the need for evangelism.”² That is a serious charge. McClymond is saying that universalism skips the entire gospel narrative. It jumps from “God is love” to “everyone is saved” without passing through Bethlehem, Calvary, or the empty tomb.

McClymond reinforces this argument by pointing to the historical pattern of universalist groups drifting toward Unitarianism. He writes that “the unitarian view is conceptually simpler since it requires no mediator nor the mediation of salvation. God exists, and human souls exist. The initial assumption—that God loves everyone—more or less entails the outcome that everyone is saved.”³ In other words, if salvation is guaranteed for everyone regardless of their relationship to Christ, then why do we need Christ at all? The logic, McClymond argues, is relentless. Start with universalism, and you will eventually end up stripping the faith down to bare theism.

He then draws a contrast. Once you affirm “a historically particular mediator of salvation (Jesus), a historically particular basis of salvation (Jesus’s death and resurrection), a linguistically and culturally particular message of salvation (the gospel), and a personally particular condition of salvation (faith in the gospel and repentance from sin), then the notion of a particularist outcome of salvation (some saved but not all saved) becomes much more plausible.”⁴ McClymond is arguing that the very specificity of the Christian gospel—this Savior, this cross, this resurrection, this faith—points naturally toward a limited outcome. A particular means of salvation implies a particular result.

McClymond also finds support for this argument in the extended passage in Volume 2 where he analyzes John 3:16 itself. He notes that the first thing mentioned after God’s love is the gift of the Son. “God so loved the world that he gave his Son.” Jesus Christ is the concrete, historical, personal expression of the Father’s love, and no one enters into the Father’s love apart from Jesus Christ (John 14:6).⁵ The abstractly rational mind, McClymond argues, starts from divine love and proceeds directly to the salvation of all, considering everything pertaining to the mediation of Jesus Christ as “messy and cumbersome—if not unnecessary.”⁶

This is, at its core, a Christological argument. McClymond is saying that universalism cannot hold the center because it pushes Christ to the margins. And if Christ is pushed to the margins, everything falls apart.

B. Identifying the Weaknesses in McClymond’s Argument

I want to be honest about something. McClymond has identified a real danger. There have been universalist movements that drifted toward Unitarianism. There have been thinkers who started with God’s love and ended up with a vague, Christ-less optimism. That pattern is real. I am not going to deny it.

But here is where McClymond’s argument breaks down: he takes a pattern found in liberal universalism and applies it to all universalism, including the conservative, biblical, Christ-centered universalism that I am defending in this book. That is a logical error. It is like saying, “Some people who eat bread get fat, therefore bread makes everyone fat.” The correlation exists in certain contexts, but it does not establish a necessary logical connection.

The Straw Man Problem

The first and most glaring weakness in McClymond’s argument is that he is attacking a version of universalism that no serious conservative universalist holds. Name one. Name a single conservative biblical universalist scholar who says Christ is unnecessary. Thomas Talbott? The entire argument of The Inescapable Love of God is built on the sufficiency and necessity of Christ’s atoning work. Robin Parry? The Evangelical Universalist is relentlessly Christological from start to finish. David Bentley Hart? The whole third chapter of That All Shall Be Saved is a sustained argument about the cosmic scope of Christ’s redemption. Ilaria Ramelli? Her massive historical study demonstrates that the patristic universalists were among the most robustly Christological thinkers in the early church.⁷

McClymond treats the “abbreviated John 3:16” as if it represents what conservative universalists actually believe. It does not. Not one of the major contemporary defenders of universal restoration argues from “God is love” directly to “everyone is saved” without passing through Christ. Every single one of them argues that it is precisely through Christ—through His incarnation, His atoning death, His resurrection, His ongoing mediatorial work—that universal salvation becomes possible. McClymond is demolishing a straw man and claiming he has defeated the real opponent.

The Genetic Fallacy Reappears

We have encountered this problem before in McClymond’s work, and it shows up again here. The fact that some 18th- and 19th-century universalist groups eventually became Unitarian does not prove that universalism logically leads to Unitarianism. It proves only that certain universalist groups in certain historical contexts—shaped by Enlightenment rationalism, liberal theology, and the specific social dynamics of New England Protestantism—followed that trajectory.

But consider: Calvinism has also produced liberal offspring. Liberal Presbyterianism exists. The United Church of Christ, which descends partly from Calvinist congregationalism, ordains openly non-Christian clergy in some settings. Does that mean Calvinism logically leads to theological liberalism? Of course not. The internal logic of a theological position and its sociological trajectory are two different things. McClymond knows this. He would never accept the argument that Calvinism leads to liberalism because some Calvinist denominations went liberal. Yet he makes precisely this kind of argument against universalism.⁸

The Patristic Evidence Demolishes the Claim

If universalism inherently undermines Christology and tends toward Unitarianism, we should expect to find this pattern among the earliest universalists. We do not. We find the exact opposite.

Origen of Alexandria, the most famous universalist in the history of the church, was one of the most Christ-centered theologians of his era. His universalism was built entirely on the saving work of Christ—the Logos who became incarnate, who died and rose again, who continues to pursue every rational creature until all are reconciled.⁹ Origen spent his career fighting gnostic systems that actually did bypass Christ. He was the anti-gnostic par excellence.

Gregory of Nyssa was an unambiguous universalist and one of the three Cappadocian Fathers—the men who gave us the classical formulation of Trinitarian orthodoxy at the Council of Constantinople in 381. Let that sink in. One of the architects of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed—the creed that defines orthodox Christology and Trinitarianism to this day—was a universalist.¹⁰ If universalism inherently degrades Christology, someone forgot to tell Gregory.

Maximus the Confessor, another supporter of apokatastasis (the restoration of all things), was so committed to orthodox Christology that he was tortured and mutilated for defending the two wills of Christ against the Monothelite heresy. He literally lost his tongue and his right hand for insisting on the full humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. And he was a universalist.¹¹

The pattern McClymond identifies—universalism leading to a weakened Christology—is a feature of Enlightenment-era liberal theology. It is not a feature of biblically grounded, creedally committed, conservative universalism. The patristic evidence proves this beyond any reasonable doubt.

The Argument Works Better Against ECT and CI

Here is an irony that McClymond does not address. If the mediator argument proves anything, it actually creates a bigger problem for eternal conscious torment (ECT) and conditional immortality (CI) than it does for universal restoration.

Consider: If Christ “gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6), and if Christ “tasted death for everyone” (Heb. 2:9), and if God was reconciling “the world” to Himself in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19), then on what Christological basis does the particularist claim that most people end up either eternally tormented or annihilated? Who diminishes Christ’s mediatorial work more—the person who says Christ will actually accomplish what these texts describe, or the person who says Christ tried but ultimately failed for the majority of those He came to save?

McClymond wants to protect the necessity of the Mediator. I share that concern. But the way to protect the Mediator is not to limit the scope of His success. It is to magnify it.

McClymond’s Selective Reading of Church History

There is one more weakness worth identifying. McClymond presents the universalism-to-Unitarianism pattern as if it is the whole story of universalism’s relationship to Christology. But it is not. It is one chapter of that story—a chapter drawn almost entirely from 18th- and 19th-century New England and European Protestantism. That is a very specific time, place, and theological context.

McClymond does not give equal weight to the other chapter—the one that stretches from the second century through the eighth century, in which the most prominent universalists were also the most prominent defenders of Trinitarian orthodoxy and Chalcedonian Christology. Origen’s Christology was so high that later generations accused him (wrongly, as Ramelli has shown) of making Christ too central by identifying Him with the eternal Logos. Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian theology shaped the creed we still recite. Maximus the Confessor gave his body to defend orthodox Christology against imperial heresy. These men were not drifting toward Unitarianism. They were building the Christological foundations on which the entire church still stands.

If McClymond wants to use the historical record, he needs to use all of it. And when you use all of it, the picture that emerges is very different from the one he paints. Universalism does not inherently degrade Christology. In its conservative, biblical form, it has historically been associated with some of the richest Christological reflection in the history of the church.

C. The Universalist Response: Christ at the Center, Not the Margins

I want to make a claim that may surprise some readers. Conservative biblical universalism does not merely tolerate Christ as mediator. It does not grudgingly acknowledge His necessity while secretly wishing it could do without Him. Conservative biblical universalism requires a more robust Christology, a more comprehensive view of Christ’s saving work, and a higher estimation of Christ’s mediatorial office than either ECT or CI can deliver.

That is a bold claim. Let me back it up.

But first, let me say plainly what the conservative universalist actually believes, so there is no confusion. We believe that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, who became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. We believe He lived a sinless life, died an atoning death on the cross, and was raised bodily from the dead on the third day. We believe He ascended to the right hand of the Father, where He now reigns as Lord over all creation. We believe He will come again to judge the living and the dead. We believe that every person must come to personal, genuine, Spirit-wrought faith in Him to be saved. We believe there is no other name under heaven by which anyone can be saved (Acts 4:12). We believe all of this without reservation, without qualification, without any secret desire to water it down.

What we add to this is one thing only: we believe that the God who sent His Son to save the world (John 3:17) will not rest until that purpose is accomplished for every person He has ever created. Christ’s work is not merely sufficient for all. It will be effective for all. Not because we are soft on sin, not because we have abandoned the cross, and not because we think Christ is optional. But because we believe Christ is more powerful than McClymond gives Him credit for.

The Scope of Christ’s Work Matches the Scope of His Intent

The New Testament makes sweeping claims about the scope of Christ’s saving work. These claims are not occasional. They are not buried in obscure passages. They are central, repeated, and emphatic. I want to walk through several of them and ask a simple question: Do these texts describe a Christ whose mediatorial work is limited in its ultimate effect, or a Christ whose mediatorial work is as vast as creation itself?

Start with Colossians 1:19–20: “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” The word translated “all things” (ta panta) is comprehensive. It is the same phrase used in verse 16 to describe everything Christ created: “all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” The scope of reconciliation matches the scope of creation. Everything Christ made, Christ redeems. Talbott makes this point forcefully: one could hardly ask for a more specific statement. Paul applied the concept of reconciliation, which is explicitly a redemptive concept, not only to all human beings but to all the spiritual powers as well.¹²

Now consider 1 Timothy 2:3–6: “This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all.” Notice the logic of this passage. Paul does not separate God’s desire from Christ’s mediation. He holds them together. God desires all to be saved—and the mechanism by which this happens is the one Mediator, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself as a ransom for all. The Mediator is not optional here. He is essential. But the scope of His ransom is universal. Every conservative universalist I know affirms exactly this: Christ is the one and only Mediator, and His ransom covers everyone.¹³

Then there is 1 Timothy 4:10: “We have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.” Read that carefully. God is the Savior of all people. Believers enjoy this salvation in a special way—“especially”—but they are not the only ones for whom God acts as Savior. As Beilby notes, some have tried to limit the first phrase (“Savior of all people”) by appealing to the second (“especially of those who believe”). But this argument is flawed, because you cannot limit Christ’s saving work to only believers without explicitly denying the plain statement that He is “the Savior of all people.”¹⁴

Consider Hebrews 2:9: “But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.” Not for some. Not for the elect only. For everyone. The author of Hebrews then continues in verses 14–15 to explain the purpose of this universal death-tasting: “that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” Christ’s death is aimed at the liberation of all who are held captive by death and the devil. That is the entire human race.¹⁵

And then there is 2 Corinthians 5:19: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” The Greek word for “world” (kosmos) in its most restricted meaning refers to the entire planet and all its inhabitants. God was reconciling the whole world through Christ. Not just part of it. Not just the believing portion. The world.¹⁶

Now, the particularist has to do something remarkable with these texts. They have to consistently argue that “all” does not mean all, that “world” does not mean the world, that “everyone” does not mean everyone, and that “all things” does not mean all things. They have to impose restrictions on the scope of Christ’s work that the texts themselves do not contain. And here is the crucial point: it is the particularist, not the universalist, who diminishes the Mediator. The universalist takes these texts at face value. Christ’s ransom is for all. Christ’s reconciliation covers all things. Christ tasted death for everyone. The universalist simply believes that Christ will actually accomplish what these texts say He set out to accomplish.

Christ as the Agent of Universal Reconciliation

McClymond’s “abbreviated John 3:16” critique only works if universalism bypasses Christ. But conservative biblical universalism does the opposite. It places Christ at the absolute center of the reconciliation of all things.

Think about what conservative universalism actually claims. It claims that every human being who has ever lived will, at some point, encounter the risen Christ and be brought to genuine, willing faith in Him. This is not a system where Christ is unnecessary. This is a system where Christ is more necessary than in any other eschatological framework. Under ECT, Christ saves some and the rest are abandoned to infinite punishment—Christ’s mediatorial work reaches only a portion of humanity. Under CI, Christ saves some and the rest are annihilated—again, His saving work is limited in its ultimate effect. Under universal restoration, Christ’s mediatorial work reaches every single person. He is the ransom for all, and the ransom actually works for all. He is the reconciler of all things, and the reconciliation is actually accomplished.

This is a higher Christology, not a lower one.

Robin Parry makes this point with characteristic clarity. The evangelical universalist does not say, “Everyone is saved, so we do not need Christ.” The evangelical universalist says, “Everyone is saved because of Christ—because His death was sufficient for all, because His resurrection conquered death for all, because His Spirit will pursue every last person until the work is finished.”¹⁷ Remove Christ from this picture and the whole thing collapses. Universal restoration is not possible without the cross. It is not possible without the resurrection. It is not possible without the ongoing, active, mediatorial work of Jesus Christ.

The “Messy Part in Between” Is Not Missing—It Is Expanded

McClymond accuses universalists of skipping over the “messy part in between”—the incarnation, the cross, the call to faith, the preaching of the gospel, the work of the Spirit. But the conservative universalist does not skip over any of this. The conservative universalist affirms every one of these realities. What the conservative universalist adds is this: the messy part does not have a deadline.

God became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Yes. Christ died an atoning death on the cross. Yes. Christ rose bodily from the dead. Yes. The gospel must be preached to every person. Yes. Every person must come to genuine, personal faith in Christ. Yes. The Holy Spirit is the one who awakens that faith. Yes. The conservative universalist affirms all of this without qualification.

Where the conservative universalist differs from the particularist is on one question only: Does God’s saving work in Christ stop at physical death? The particularist says yes. The universalist says no. The universalist says that the God who pursues the lost sheep until He finds it (Luke 15:4), the God who is patient and not willing that any should perish (2 Pet. 3:9), the God who loved the world enough to send His only Son (John 3:16)—this God does not give up on anyone, ever. His love, mediated through Christ, continues past the grave.

And notice: the mechanism for post-mortem salvation is still Christ. It is still the cross. It is still the gospel. It is still the Spirit. It is still faith. As Beilby argues in Postmortem Opportunity, the rise of the post-mortem hope was due to Christians who were seeking an orthodox and Christocentric way of addressing the destiny of those who never heard the gospel—one that resisted the narrowness of restrictivism without abandoning the centrality of Christ.¹⁸ The conservative universalist simply takes this Christocentric postmortem hope and trusts that God’s patience and Christ’s love are sufficient to bring every person home.

John 3:16—Unabbreviated and Universalist

McClymond accuses universalists of abbreviating John 3:16. I want to turn this around. Let’s actually read the whole passage—not just verse 16, but verses 16 and 17 together.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

McClymond focuses on the condition in verse 16—“whoever believes.” Fair enough. But look at verse 17. The purpose of Christ’s coming is not condemnation but salvation. And the scope of that purpose is “the world.” Christ came so that the world might be saved through him. The word “through” (dia) is crucial. The world is saved through Christ. Not around Him. Not without Him. Through Him.

The universalist does not remove Christ from John 3:16. The universalist reads both verses together and concludes that God’s purpose in sending Christ was to save the world—all of it—and that God actually accomplishes His purposes. The condition of faith (“whoever believes”) is real. Every person must believe. The universalist simply trusts that God is powerful enough and patient enough to bring every person to that point of faith—through Christ, by the Spirit, in response to the gospel.

So who is really abbreviating John 3:16? Is it the universalist who takes both the condition and the cosmic purpose seriously? Or is it the particularist who emphasizes the condition while quietly downgrading the stated purpose—that the world might be saved?

The Philippians 2 Argument: Every Knee, Every Tongue, Through the Spirit

One of the most powerful Christological texts in the New Testament is Philippians 2:9–11: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The particularist typically reads this text as describing a forced, unwilling submission. The wicked will bow the knee, but only because they are compelled to acknowledge what they hate. They confess Christ as Lord through gritted teeth.

But there is a massive problem with this reading. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3 that “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” The confession that Jesus is Lord is not something that can be forced or faked. It is a Spirit-enabled confession. If every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, and if that confession can only be made by the Holy Spirit, then every person who makes that confession does so because the Spirit has brought them to genuine faith.¹⁹

Talbott makes exactly this argument. He points out that the language of Philippians 2 echoes Isaiah 45:23–24, where God says, “To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear allegiance.” In the Isaiah context, this swearing of allegiance is not grudging submission but genuine worship. Talbott argues that the Pauline vision of every knee bowing and every tongue confessing is a vision of universal, Spirit-empowered, genuine worship of Christ.²⁰

Far from making Christ unnecessary, this text places Christ at the pinnacle of all reality. Every creature, in every realm, will eventually bow before Him and confess Him as Lord. And this confession will be real, because it will be worked by the Holy Spirit. That is the highest possible Christology. That is a Mediator who actually mediates for all.

The Johannine Witness: A Savior for the Whole World

John’s Gospel and his letters contain some of the most explicitly universal language about Christ’s saving work in the entire New Testament. When John the Baptist sees Jesus approaching, his declaration is not “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the elect.” It is: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The Samaritan villagers, after encountering Jesus, declare: “We know that this is indeed the Savior of the world” (John 4:42). And John 12:32 records Jesus’s own breathtaking promise: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Some interpreters try to limit “all people” in John 12:32 to “people from all nations.” But if Jesus meant that, why did He not say it? The straightforward meaning of the text is that Christ’s crucifixion—His being “lifted up”—has a gravitational pull that will eventually draw every human being to Him. This is not a Christ-less universalism. This is the most Christ-centered claim imaginable. The cross itself is the magnet. The crucified and risen Christ is the one who draws. And the scope of that drawing is universal.

Then there is 1 John 2:1–2: “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” John could not be more explicit. Christ’s propitiatory work extends beyond the believing community to cover the sins of the whole world. The Mediator’s work is as wide as creation. Every conservative universalist I know builds directly on texts like these. We do not argue around Christ. We argue through Him and because of Him.

And finally, John 12:47: “If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” Jesus Himself stated His purpose: not to judge the world, but to save it. The question is whether we believe He will accomplish that purpose. The conservative universalist says yes—not because we are sentimental optimists, but because we take Jesus at His word and we trust that He is powerful enough to do what He said He came to do.

The Cross as the Center: Why Universalism Needs Calvary

I want to pause here and make a personal statement, because I think it matters. I have been accused—as most universalists have—of having a “low view” of the cross. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cross of Jesus Christ is the most important event in the history of the universe. It is the hinge on which all of reality turns. Without the cross, there is no forgiveness. Without the cross, there is no reconciliation. Without the cross, there is no hope for anyone—not for the greatest saint and not for the worst sinner.

What the conservative universalist believes is that the cross actually accomplished what it set out to accomplish. When Jesus said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), He meant it. The work was done. The debt was paid. The ransom was offered. And the scope of that ransom was not a tiny fraction of the human race. It was the entire human race. First Timothy 2:6 says Christ “gave himself as a ransom for all.” The author of Hebrews says He tasted death “for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). Paul says God was reconciling “the world” to Himself in Christ (2 Cor. 5:19). The universalist simply believes that the ransom will actually ransom everyone, that the death He tasted for everyone will actually benefit everyone, and that the reconciliation of the world will actually include the whole world.

This is not a diminished view of the cross. This is the highest view of the cross possible. It says that Calvary was sufficient not just in principle but in actuality. It says that when the blood of Christ was poured out, it was poured out for every person who has ever lived or ever will live—and that this blood will not have been shed in vain for a single one of them.

McClymond worries that universalism makes the cross unnecessary. I would gently suggest the opposite: it is the particularist framework that risks making the cross partially unnecessary. If Christ died for all but most are lost anyway, then His death was, for most people, pointless. It accomplished nothing for them. The blood was shed, the ransom was paid, the reconciliation was offered—and it all came to nothing. That is a far more devastating diminishment of the cross than anything the conservative universalist proposes.

Irenaeus and Recapitulatio: Christ Gathering All Things

The early church father Irenaeus of Lyon developed a theology of recapitulatio—the idea that Christ recapitulates, or gathers up and redeems, all of human experience and all of creation in Himself. This is a deeply Christological vision. Christ did not come merely to save individual souls out of a doomed creation. He came to recapitulate all things, to take everything that was lost in Adam and restore it in Himself.

Irenaeus wrote that Christ “has recapitulated his own creature into himself, thus saving it.”²¹ He saw Christ as saving “in his own person, in the end, what had perished in Adam at the beginning.” This is the logic of recapitulation: whatever was lost in Adam is found in Christ. And what was lost in Adam? The entire human race. Every person. If Christ recapitulates only some of what was lost, then Adam’s fall is more powerful than Christ’s redemption. That is a Christological problem of the highest order.

This is essentially the argument Paul makes in Romans 5:12–21. Just as the trespass of one man brought condemnation to all, so the righteous act of one Man brought justification and life to all. But Paul does not leave the comparison as a bare symmetry. He insists that grace is more powerful than sin: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Rom. 5:20). If grace merely matches sin—if it saves exactly as many as sin condemned—then grace is not more powerful. It is equal. But Paul says “much more.” The scope of Christ’s redemption must exceed the scope of Adam’s fall. As we explored in detail in Chapter 14, this is one of the strongest Pauline arguments for universal restoration.²²

The Christus Victor Model and Universal Redemption

One of the earliest and most enduring understandings of the atonement is the Christus Victor model—the idea that Christ’s death and resurrection were a decisive victory over sin, death, and the devil. This model, championed by church fathers like Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa, sees the cross not primarily as a transaction that satisfies divine justice (though it includes that) but as a cosmic battle in which Christ defeats the powers that hold humanity captive.

The question for the Christus Victor model is: How complete is the victory? If Christ is victorious over death but death still claims the majority of the human race permanently—either through eternal torment or annihilation—is that really a victory? Or is it, at best, a partial victory?

Paul addresses this directly in 1 Corinthians 15:25–26: “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Death is the last enemy. And it is destroyed—not merely limited, not merely defeated in some cases, but destroyed. Death is thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). If death is truly destroyed, then its hold on every person must be broken. Christ’s victory is complete precisely when no one remains in death’s grip.

Gregory of Nyssa understood this. In his Catechetical Oration, he argued that Christ’s death was a ransom paid for the entire human race, and that the devil, in claiming Christ’s life, had overreached—because Christ’s resurrection broke death’s power not for some but for all. Gregory saw universal restoration as the necessary consequence of Christ’s complete victory.²³ This is not a Christ-less universalism. This is a universalism that is entirely dependent on Christ’s victory at the cross and the empty tomb.

Paul’s Adam-Christ Parallel: A Christological Argument for Universal Scope

We cannot discuss the mediator argument without returning briefly to Paul’s Adam-Christ parallel, which we treated in detail in Chapter 14. The reason I bring it up here is that it speaks directly to the Christological question McClymond raises. Is Christ necessary? Absolutely. But is His work limited in scope? Paul says no.

In Romans 5:18, Paul writes: “Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” The word “all” (pantas) appears twice. Every serious commentator agrees that the first “all” means every human being without exception. Adam’s trespass brought condemnation to every single person. But then Paul uses the identical word to describe the scope of Christ’s righteous act. If “all” means every human being in the first half of the verse, on what grammatical or logical basis do we restrict it to a subset in the second half?

Paul reinforces the point in verse 19: “For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one Man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.” As the Greek scholar Marvin Vincent noted, the article “the” is used in both cases—“the many”—making it clear that the same group is in view both times. The many made sinners through Adam are the same many made righteous through Christ.³³

And then Paul makes his most staggering claim in verse 20: “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Grace does not merely match sin. It surpasses it. It overwhelms it. To say that Adam condemned all but Christ saves only some is to make sin more powerful than grace. It is to make the fall more decisive than the redemption. It is to say that the first Adam accomplished more than the last Adam. That is a Christological catastrophe.

The conservative universalist takes Paul at his word. Christ’s righteous act brings justification and life to all. Grace abounds more than sin. The last Adam reverses and exceeds everything the first Adam did. And this happens not in spite of Christ but through Christ. He is the mediator of this universal reconciliation. Without Him, the reconciliation is impossible. With Him, it is certain. That is a Christology worth defending.

The Postmortem Encounter: Christ-Centered to the Core

One of the strengths of the conservative universalist position is that it does not leave the mechanism of salvation vague. It does not say, “God loves everyone, so somehow everything works out.” It says something much more specific: every person who dies without faith in Christ will, in the intermediate state, encounter the risen Christ and be given a genuine opportunity to respond with faith.

This is not a Christ-less process. It is the most Christ-centered process imaginable. The person meets Jesus. They hear the gospel. They are drawn by the Spirit. They respond with faith—or they do not. And if they do not, God does not abandon them. The process continues. The fire of God’s love burns, purifies, and refines until every barrier is removed and the person can finally see Christ clearly and respond freely.

Beilby makes the crucial point that the goal of salvation is not merely a decision or a doctrinal affirmation. It is a relationship with God Himself, mediated through Christ. As he writes, “The goal of salvation is not heaven or eternal life, it is relationship with God himself.”³⁴ The postmortem encounter is not a loophole. It is the extension of God’s relational pursuit of every person He has created—a pursuit that runs through Christ from beginning to end.

Even Martin Luther, no universalist himself, acknowledged the possibility of post-mortem faith: “It would be quite a different question whether God can impart faith to some in the hour of death or after death so that these people could be saved through faith. Who would doubt God’s ability to do that?”³⁵ Luther was cautious about building doctrine on this possibility, but he did not deny it. The conservative universalist simply takes Luther’s acknowledged possibility and pairs it with the clear biblical testimony that God desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4) and is patient toward all, not wishing that any should perish (2 Pet. 3:9).

Conservative Universalism and the Necessity of Faith

McClymond worries that universalism eliminates the need for personal faith. This concern deserves a direct response.

Conservative biblical universalism does not eliminate the need for faith. It affirms it absolutely. Every person must come to genuine, personal, Spirit-wrought faith in Jesus Christ. This is not optional. This is not something the universalist quietly sets aside. Faith is the means by which a person enters into a conscious relationship with the God who has already reconciled the world to Himself in Christ.

What the universalist adds is this: God is able to bring every person to that point of faith. For some, that happens in this life through the preaching of the gospel. For others—the billions who never heard, the infants who died, the mentally incapacitated who could never understand—it happens through the post-mortem encounter with Christ. But in every case, it is Christ who saves. In every case, it is the Spirit who awakens faith. In every case, the gospel is the message. The content of salvation does not change. The timing may differ, but the mechanism is always Christ and Him crucified.

Beilby makes an important observation on this point. The rise of the postmortem opportunity as a theological position was driven not by liberal theology but by conservative Christians who wanted to maintain the absolute necessity of explicit faith in Christ while also taking seriously God’s universal love. As Beilby notes, these were Christians “who were anxious to find an orthodox and Christocentric way of answering the question of the destiny of the unevangelized.”²⁴ The universalist simply extends this logic to its fullest conclusion: if God provides a post-mortem opportunity for those who never heard, and if God’s love and the Spirit’s power are as great as Scripture claims, then we can trust that every person will ultimately respond with genuine faith.

Who Actually Diminishes Christ?

I need to press this point harder, because it goes to the heart of the matter. McClymond claims that universalism diminishes Christ. I want to argue that ECT and CI diminish Christ far more seriously than universal restoration ever could.

Under ECT, Christ came to save the world, but the majority of the world ends up in eternal conscious torment. Christ is the ransom for all, but the ransom only actually ransoms some. Christ died for everyone, but His death is effective only for a fraction. Christ is the Savior of the world, but the world is mostly unsaved. This is not a robust Christology. This is a Christology of limited success. It makes Christ out to be a well-intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful Savior.

Under CI, the picture is similar. Christ tasted death for everyone, but most people still end up permanently destroyed. Christ reconciled all things in heaven and on earth, but many of those things are annihilated instead of reconciled. Again, the scope of Christ’s stated intent does not match the scope of His actual achievement.

Under universal restoration, and only under universal restoration, the scope of Christ’s work matches the scope of His stated intent. He ransomed all, and all are ransomed. He reconciled all things, and all things are reconciled. He tasted death for everyone, and everyone benefits from that death. He is the Savior of the world, and the world is actually saved. He destroys death, and death is actually destroyed—completely, totally, for every person who was ever subject to it.

Which view magnifies the Mediator? Which view takes the New Testament’s claims about Christ most seriously? The answer, I believe, is obvious.

The Comprehensive Nature of the Atonement

When we speak of the atonement, we are speaking of something vast. The word itself—atonement—comes from the English words “at one,” expressing the reconciliation brought about by Christ’s sacrifice. But the atonement is not just one thing. It includes redemption, expiation, propitiation, reconciliation, justification, sanctification, and glorification. As one scholar has observed, if any of these accomplishments of Christ’s work can be shown to be universal in scope, then one cannot reasonably argue for a limited atonement from the Scriptures.²⁵

And the New Testament makes exactly this claim—repeatedly. Christ is the propitiation “not for our sins only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Christ is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Christ reconciled “all creation, both visible and invisible, in heaven and on earth, by the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:16, 20). If His propitiation covers the whole world, if He takes away the sin of the world, if He reconciles all creation—then the atonement is unlimited in scope.

No one has ever, nor ever will, experience salvation apart from repentance and faith in the finished work of the cross. The conservative universalist affirms this without reservation. But the provision was made for all. And before Christ delivers the kingdom back to the Father, every knee will have bowed and every tongue will have confessed that Jesus is Lord.²⁶

The Early Church Knew Better

One of the most telling facts in this entire debate is the theological caliber of the universalists in the early church. These were not fringe figures. These were not heretics who drifted away from orthodoxy. These were some of the greatest defenders of orthodox Christology and Trinitarianism the church has ever known.

Ramelli traces the line of transmission from Origen through his disciple Gregory the Wonderworker to the Cappadocian Fathers. Gregory the Wonderworker called Christ “the one who saves all humans, even those who are half dead and deprived of all; he is the Protector and Healer of all, the Logos, the tireless Savior of all.”²⁷ This is robustly Christological language. The Wonderworker transmitted this Christ-centered universalism to the next generation, including Gregory of Nyssa and Macrina.

Athanasius of Alexandria, the great champion of Nicene orthodoxy against the Arian heresy, stood firmly in Origen’s defense and showed sympathies toward apokatastasis. As Ramelli observes, if Origen is to be dismissed as a heretic for embracing universalism, then so should Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa—which is an absurd conclusion that no orthodox Christian would accept.²⁸

The point is simple: the greatest Christological minds in the early church saw no tension between robust, orthodox Christology and universal restoration. They saw the two as naturally connected. Christ’s divinity, His incarnation, His atoning death, His resurrection, and His ongoing lordship were, for them, the very foundation of their hope that all would be saved. Take Christ out of the picture, and universal restoration becomes impossible. These fathers understood this perfectly.

D. Counter-Objections

“If everyone is eventually saved through Christ, why preach the gospel now?”

This is probably the most common counter-objection, and it rests on a misunderstanding. The universalist does not say that the timing of salvation is irrelevant. People who are apart from Christ right now are suffering right now. Sin destroys lives right now. Ignorance of God’s love causes real pain right now. The gospel is urgently needed not because people will miss their only chance if they die without hearing it, but because people are perishing in the present—relationally, spiritually, emotionally. As we will explore in more detail in Chapter 27, the universalist has better motivation for evangelism, not worse. The gospel is genuinely, completely, unreservedly good news: God loves you, Christ died for you, and He will never, ever give up on you. That is a message worth crossing oceans to deliver.²⁹

Furthermore, those who come to faith in this life enter into the joy and freedom of relationship with God now. They do not have to pass through the painful purification that awaits those who resist God’s love. The urgency of the gospel is real. It is just not based on the fear that God might run out of patience.

“But the historical pattern is real—universalism has led to Unitarianism multiple times.”

Yes, some universalist movements became Unitarian. But this pattern is found specifically among 18th- and 19th-century American and European groups that were already heavily influenced by Enlightenment rationalism and liberal theology. The drift toward Unitarianism was driven by those broader intellectual currents, not by the internal logic of universalism.

The proof is in the counter-examples. The patristic universalists—Origen, the Cappadocians, Maximus, Evagrius—were among the most Trinitarian and Christological thinkers in church history. Modern conservative universalists like Talbott, Parry, and Hart are explicitly and emphatically Trinitarian. The pattern McClymond identifies is a historical correlation in a specific cultural context, not a necessary logical entailment. We treated this in detail in Chapter 6, and the argument still stands.³⁰

Consider an analogy. The Reformation doctrine of justification by faith alone was fiercely opposed in the sixteenth century on the grounds that it would lead to antinomianism—if salvation is by faith alone, people will stop trying to be moral. Some groups influenced by the Reformation did, in fact, become antinomian. But does that mean justification by faith alone inherently leads to moral collapse? Every serious Protestant would say no. The abuse of a doctrine by some does not discredit the doctrine itself. The same logic applies here. The abuse of universalism by some liberal groups does not discredit the conservative, Christ-centered universalism defended in this book.

“If Christ’s work is universal in scope, what role does human faith play? Isn’t this just divine determinism?”

Not at all. The conservative universalist affirms that every person must come to willing, genuine faith. God does not override human freedom. What God does is patiently, relentlessly, lovingly pursue every person until the lies that keep them from Him are burned away and they can see clearly enough to choose freely. As Talbott argues, persistent rejection of God is not an exercise of freedom but a sign of bondage (John 8:34). A truly free choice, made with full knowledge and an unbound will, always tends toward the Good. God’s purification does not override freedom—it restores it.³¹

Faith is not coerced. It is enabled. The Holy Spirit, working through the revelation of Christ, brings each person to the point where they can finally see God as He truly is and respond with love rather than fear. That is freedom, not determinism. And it all happens through Christ.

“Doesn’t Talbott actually diminish Christ by suggesting some are saved through suffering rather than grace?”

McClymond raises this objection against Talbott specifically, noting that in The Inescapable Love of God Talbott describes an “alternative strategy” by which some people experience God’s love as consuming fire and are purified through suffering rather than being forgiven in the traditional sense.³² McClymond interprets this as Talbott denying the necessity of grace.

But this reading misunderstands Talbott. The consuming fire is grace. It is God’s love experienced by those who have built their lives on lies and rebellion. The fire does not replace grace; it is the form grace takes for those who have so deeply entrenched themselves in sin that nothing less than the searing reality of God’s presence can break through. It is still Christ who saves. It is still the cross that makes reconciliation possible. The mechanism of purification is different from that experienced by those who come to faith willingly, but the source is the same—the love of God in Christ.

Think of it this way. A doctor might heal one patient with a gentle remedy and another with painful surgery. The healing methods differ, but the healer is the same, and the goal is the same: restoration to health. Christ is the Great Physician. His methods may vary, but He is always the one doing the healing. Always.

“The specificity of the gospel implies a limited outcome. A particular means implies a particular result.”

McClymond makes this argument explicitly, and it sounds intuitive. A specific Savior, a specific cross, a specific message of faith—surely this points toward a specific, limited number of people who are saved?

But the argument does not follow. The specificity of the means tells us nothing about the scope of the result. A specific medicine might be required for a specific disease, but that does not mean only some patients receive it. The point of developing a universal cure is to give it to everyone. Christ is the specific, particular, one-and-only cure for the disease of sin and death. The universalist agrees wholeheartedly. But the universalist also believes that God intends to administer this cure to every patient—not because the cure is generic, but precisely because it is the only one that works, and God is not willing that any should perish.

The particularity of Christ guarantees the necessity of Christ. It does not guarantee the limitation of Christ’s success.

Conclusion

McClymond’s “abbreviated John 3:16” critique is aimed at the wrong target. It describes a version of universalism that no serious conservative biblical universalist holds. The conservative universalist does not bypass Christ. The conservative universalist places Christ at the absolute center of everything—creation, redemption, reconciliation, restoration. Christ is the one Mediator. Christ is the ransom for all. Christ is the reconciler of all things. Christ is the one in whom every knee will bow and every tongue will confess. And these are not mere theological abstractions. They are specific, repeated, emphatic New Testament claims about the scope and success of Christ’s saving work.

The real question is not whether universalism needs Christ. Of course it does. Without Christ, universal restoration is impossible. The real question is whether we believe that Christ is powerful enough, patient enough, and loving enough to actually accomplish what the New Testament says He set out to do. The conservative universalist says yes. And in saying yes, the conservative universalist honors the Mediator more fully, trusts His work more completely, and takes His victory more seriously than any other eschatological framework can.

I want to return to McClymond’s image of the “messy part in between.” He is absolutely right that the messy part matters. The incarnation matters. The cross matters. The resurrection matters. The call to faith matters. The work of the Spirit matters. The conservative universalist agrees with every word of that. But here is the difference: the particularist treats the messy part as a filter that limits the scope of salvation. The universalist treats the messy part as the mechanism by which God accomplishes the scope of salvation. Christ is not the bottleneck. He is the way through.

Christ is not made unnecessary by universal restoration. He is made glorious by it. He is the Lamb who was slain before the foundation of the world. He is the ransom for all humanity. He is the conqueror of death and Hades. He is the one to whom every knee will bow and every tongue confess. And when the last rebel has been wooed home by the irresistible beauty of His love, when the last prodigal has stumbled through the door into the Father’s arms, when the last tear has been wiped away—it will be Christ who stands at the center of it all. Not optional. Not incidental. Not unnecessary. Indispensable. For it is through Him, and through Him alone, that God will finally, truly be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28).