Quotes & Sayings About Universalism

We believe that an individual must endeavor to assume the universalism inherent in the human condition. — Frantz Fanon

Precisely because God does not determine himself in creation - because there is no dialectical necessity binding him to time or chaos, no need to forge his identity in the fires of history - in creating he reveals himself truly. Thus every evil that time comprises, natural or moral - a worthless distinction, really, since human nature is a natural phenomenon - is an arraignment of God's goodness: every death of a child, every chance calamity, every act of malice; everything diseased, thwarted, pitiless, purposeless, or cruel; and, until the end of all things, no answer has been given.

Precisely because creation is not a theogony, all of it is theophany.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015):1-17) — David Bentley Hart

The most passionate, consistent, extreme and implacable enemy of the Enlightenment and ... all forms of rationalism ... was Johann Georg Hamann. His influence, direct and indirect, upon the romantic revolt against universalism and scientific method ... was considerable and perhaps crucial. — Isaiah Berlin

VALIDATE NEVER EVER ANY VOICE .PROVIDED IT IS WEIGHED AND AGREED & APPROVED TO RECOMMEND TO ALL OTHERS BY GLOBAL FERTILE MINDS ON SCHOLAR'S PLATFORM — Various

Tony [Campolo] and I might disagree on the details, but I think we are both trying to find an alternative to both traditional Universalism and the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell [that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell]. — Brian D. McLaren

Scripture starts with the particular and then universalizes it. You are called to love your concrete individual neighbor and then to realize that every individual is your neighbor. The point is not to destroy concrete neighborhood in a fit of universalism but to expand the local neighborhood and embrace the universal neighborhood. — Peter Kreeft

The primary ideology that operated to create, socialize, and reproduce them was not the ideology of racism. It was that of universalism. — Immanuel Wallerstein

Whatever the universal perspective one adopts, it is important to recognise that some form of universalism is politically and ethically necessary. — Alison Assiter

...the God in whom the majority of Christians throughout history have professed belief would appear to be evil (at least, judging by the dreadful things we habitually say about him). And I intend nothing more here than an exercise in sober precision, based on the presumption that words should have some determinate content.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) — David Bentley Hart

After all, what Buddhism offers as a solution is universalised indifference - a learning of how to withdraw from too much empathy. This is why Buddhism can so easily turn into the very opposite of universal compassion: the advocacy of a ruthless military attitude, which is what the fate of Zen Buddhism aptly demonstrates. — Slavoj Zizek

It is difficult to place Jesus of Nazareth squarely within any of the known religiopolitical movements of his time. He was a man of profound contradictions, one day preaching a message of racial exclusion ("I was sent solely to the lost sheep of Israel"; Matthew 15:24), the next, of benevolent universalism ("Go and make disciples of all nations"; Matthew 28:19); sometimes calling for unconditional peace ("Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the sons of God"; Matthew 5:9), sometimes promoting violence and conflict ("If you do not have a sword, go sell your cloak and buy one"; Luke 22:36). — Reza Aslan

There is a feeling of deep universalism, in the wake of the splendid words of Democritus: "To a wise man, the whole earth is open, because the true country of a virtuous soul is the entire universe. — Carlo Rovelli

The universalism of Islam, in its all-embracing creed, is imposed on the believers as a continuous process of warfare, psychological and political, if not strictly military ... The Jihad, accordingly, may be stated as a doctrine of a permanent state of war, not continuous fighting. — Majid Khadduri

All this shows that, as in the case of Theophilus, so also in that of Jerome, much of the Origenist controversy of that day depended on political considerations and on contingence. Much also rested on gross misunderstandings and even the lack of direct reading of Origen's works, or, even worse, according to Origen's and Rufinus's denunciations, the deliberate alteration of these works. (658) — Ilaria Ramelli

There is a way to flow and cooperate with universal laws which can be beautiful and kind. — Bryant McGill

The unavoidable conclusion that, precisely because God and creation are ontologically distinct in the manner of the absolute and the contingent, they are morally indiscerptible.
(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) — David Bentley Hart

America thrives on identity politics, left and right. But France is opposed to the idea. Since the Revolution, the French have enthroned the idea of universalism. All of us must be equal before the law as abstract individuals, and that extends to the arts. — Edmund White

Universalism as an ideal is as old as nay, is probably much more ancient than the Christian ideal. — Arthur Keith

The way in which these two practices contain each other is that it has always been possible to use the one against the other: to use racism-sexism to prevent universalism from moving too far in the direction of egalitarianism; to use universalism to prevent racism-sexism from moving too far in the direction of a caste system that would inhibit the work force mobility so necessary for the capitalist accumulation process. — Immanuel Wallerstein

That the majority of people do not embrace salvation in this life does not mean that their experiences now do not lay a foundation for a later acceptance of it. — Gregory MacDonald

We Unitarian Universalists have inherited a magnificent theological legacy. In a sweeping answer to creeds that divide the human family, Unitarianism proclaims that we spring from a common source; Universalism, that we share a common destiny. — Forrest Church

Not all paths lead to God, but God can lead any path to himself. This God will dine with anyone. — Ricky Maye

When we write stories that are happy, with little conflict or inference of sin, then we are creating portraits of the world that perpetuate a sort of "soft universalism," the idea that no one is truly lost but rather that all are actually saved. — Gene C. Fant Jr.

The force of universalism is in you Basques, not in the Spanish state — Slavoj Zizek

She liked the idea of a place belonging to the cows, no ownership of human ego. — Aporva Kala

I have great hopes for the possibility of a dynamic universalism that respects all our people. — Anthony Braxton

There is a false ecumenism, as sentimental and vague as you please, which for all intents and purposes abolishes doctrine; in order to reconcile two adversaries, one strangles them both, which is certainly the best way to make peace.
[...]
Objectivity toward the perspectives and spiritual ways of other peoples is too often the result of philosophic indifferentism or sentimental universalism, and in such a case there is no reason to pay it homage; indeed one may well ask whether objectivity in the full sense of the word is really involved. The Christian saint who fights Muslims is closer to Islamic sanctity than the philosopher who accepts everything and practices nothing. — Frithjof Schuon

Properly told, stories are able to operate on two levels. On the surface, they deal with particulars involving a range of facts related to a given time and place, a local culture and a social group
and it is these specifics that tend to bore us whenever they lie outside of our own experience. But then, a layer beneath the particulars, the universals are hidden: the psychological, social and political themes that transcend the stories' temporal and geographical settings and are founded on unvarying fundamentals of human nature. — Alain De Botton

Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see. — Robert Dallek

In our time, Universalism as such, like a spinster lady late in life, took a husband, and although they agreed to hyphenate their married name, by now the offspring of that union often simply call themselves by the husband's name, and in time may not recognize her name at all. — Max Coots

Good, modern, civilized Western white men are so easily cowed by charges of bias and privilege that they work tirelessly to outdo each other with social displays of moral universalism - by cucking themselves in every way imaginable. Western — Jack Donovan

The culmination of every supreme nationalism is a consummate universalism. — Nicos Hadjicostis

Real success is found in radical sacrifice. Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God. The purpose of our lives transcends the country and culture in which we live. Meaning is found in community, not individualism; joy is found in generosity, not materialism; and truth is found in Christ, not universalism. Ultimately, Jesus is a reward worth risking everything to know, experience, and enjoy. — David Platt

From the earliest days of Unitarianism and Universalism, these traditions have advocated for the compatibility of science and religion. Both traditions encourage the use of reason, the search for truth, and the improvement of human nature and society through learning and the discoveries of science. Some, especially those called humanists, eschew Biblical revelation and supernaturalism and believe that science and technology will eventually solve all the major problems facing humankind. — Mark W. Harris

A man who thinks a great deal about himself will try to be many-sided, attempt a theatrical excellence at all points, will try to be an encyclopaedia of culture, and his own real personality will be lost in that false universalism. — G.K. Chesterton

[I suspect] that in the drive toward the liberal universalist notion of human rights that characterized the last fifty or so years, there has been an accompanying oversensitivity that, in practice, keeps us atomized and more likely to be manipulated and have our rights impinged upon. — Darren O'Donnell

The EU Constitution is something new in human history. Though it is not as eloquent as the French and U.S. constitutions, it is the first governing document of its kind to expand the human franchise to the level of global consciousness. The language throughout the draft constitution speaks of universalism, making it clear that its focus is not a people, or a territory, or a nation, but rather the human race and the planet we inhabit. — Jeremy Rifkin

I don't believe in universalism, but I do believe in Jesus Christ, the reconciler of all — Karl Barth

I am definitively not a 'universalist'".

~R. Alan Woods [2012] — R. Alan Woods

Adam Smith's was a real universalism in intent. Laissez Faire was intended to establish a world community as well as a natural harmony of interests within each nation ... But the "children of darkness" were able to make good use of his creed. A dogma which was intended to guarantee the economic freedom of the individual became the "ideology" of vast corporate structures of a later period of capitalism, used by them, and still used, to prevent a proper political control of their power. — Reinhold Niebuhr

Nowhere is Universalism welcomed and encouraged by a people; everywhere governments have forced and are forcing Universalism upon unwilling and resistant subjects. — Arthur Keith

The language of intrinsic human rights represented a significant advance beyond the previous language of world religions in terms of its universal applicability and its thiswordliness. — Immanuel Wallerstein

Civilization, we shall find, like Universalism and Christianity, is anti evolutionary in its effects; it works against the laws and conditions which regulated the earlier stages of man's ascent. — Arthur Keith

This much is certain, that we have no theological right to set any sort of limits to the loving-kindness of God which has appeared in Jesus Christ. Our theological duty is to see and understand it as being still greater than we had seen before. — Karl Barth

The first theological insight I learned from Gregory of Nyssa - and I suspect the last to which I shall cling when all others fall away - is that the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo is not merely a cosmological or metaphysical claim, but also an eschatological claim about the world's relation to God, and hence a moral claim about the nature of God in himself. In the end of all things is their beginning, and only from the perspective of the end can one know what they are, why they have been made, and who the God is who has called them forth from nothingness.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) — David Bentley Hart

It would be impious, I suppose, to suggest that, in his final divine judgment of creatures, God will judge himself; but one must hold that by that judgment God truly will disclose himself (which, of course, is to say the same thing, in a more hushed and reverential voice).

Even Paul asks, in the tortured, conditional voice of Romans 9, whether there might be vessels of wrath stored up solely for destruction only because he trusts that there are not, that instead all are bound in disobedience only so that God might prove himself just by showing mercy on all.

The argumentum ad baculum is a terrifying specter, momentarily conjured up only so as to be immediately chased away by a decisive, radiant argumentum ad caritatem.

(from Radical Orthodoxy 3.1 (2015): 1-17) — David Bentley Hart

Some teach "universalism" - that eventually everybody will be saved and the God of love will never send anyone to hell. They believe the words "eternal" or "everlasting" do not actually mean forever. However, the same word which speaks of eternal banishment from God is also used for the eternity of heaven. — Billy Graham

Nationality is a good thing to a certain extent, but universality is better. All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal. Their roots are in their native soil; but their branches wave in the unpatriotic air, that speaks the same language unto all men, and their leaves shine with the illimitable light that pervades all lands. Let us throw all the windows open; let us admit the light and air on all sides; that we may look towards the four corners of the heavens, and not always in the same direction. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow