Carlton Pearson has still got it. The dapper clothes. The voluminous vocabulary. The toothy smile.
And, perhaps most important, Mr. Pearson still has an unshakable conviction in his controversial "gospel of inclusion" ”“ the belief that everyone will go to heaven, regardless of his or her actions on earth. The high-profile pastor lost followers, his church building, money and prestige ”“ especially among conservatives ”“ after he started preaching a few years ago that the gates of heaven are open to everyone, even, theoretically, to Satan. . .
In a 2000 interview with The Dallas Morning News, he said he no longer adhered to the "holiness or hell" credo that is a bedrock teaching of the Church of God In Christ and other black Pentecostal groups. He said he'd been having second thoughts for years about whether one needed to accept Jesus in order to be saved.
Link.
The practical problem with universalism, of course, is that it leads to antinomianism: If there's no ultimate reason to believe or behave a certain way, then do whatever feels right. You might find other, mundane, reasons to behave properly--the Stoics did, after all--but the ultimate reasons for doing so are gone.
As for its theoretical merits, I simply don't get it. The gospels and church tradition seem to condemn unequivocally any such proposition. The formidable von Balthasar, however, flirted with the doctrine (or, more precisely, with the "hope"), so I don't feel qualified to offer much commentary.
