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that God was always in control of his creation. A frank necessitarianism undergirded his profoundly pious view of life. For him, as for Edwards, determinism and freedom were intertwined aspects of theism.114 I cannot but think it incorrect to suppose that God ever gave any creature agency to perform what he never intended should be done, he wrote with characteristic straightforwardness.115 True piety meant com- plete trust in divine power and love because humanity could not always see the good in God s design.116 Ballou did not accept the biblical account of the fall of man or the doctrine of original sin, which seemed to him opposed to reason and common sense. He nev- ertheless declared that the disposition to sin was a key attribute of created human nature. Quoting Saint Paul s epistle to the Romans, Ballou characterized sin as the Calvinism Improved 27 inevitable product of the conflicting laws of flesh and spirit. In their sin, people envisioned God as an enemy who needed to be pacified, who required atone- ment. 117 Blinded to its own need for atonement, for reconciliation with God, hu- manity had imputed the human frailties of anger and vengeance to an infinitely good divinity. Atonement signifies reconciliation, Ballou explained, and it was man who was the unreconciled party. Where there is dissatisfaction, it presumes an injured party, and can it be hard to determine which is injured by sin, the Creator or the sinner? 118 The unchangeable God of love did not require appease- ment, Ballou asserted, but people did need to be reconciled to the loving rule of God. Ballou s understanding of atonement was what most clearly separated him from his eighteenth-century Universalist predecessors and what made his teaching not simply Calvinism improved but an original, full-fledged synthesis of Calvinist piety and Enlightenment rationalism. Although Ballou portrayed the Trinity as an illogical notion ( it amounts to the amazing sum of infinity, multiplied by three! ), he explicitly proclaimed Jesus as the Savior of mankind. The Almighty committed power into the hands of Christ, who, as Mediator, is entrusted with the work of reconciliation. For Ballou, Christ is a man, but he is, more importantly, God s representative, the anointed one. Jesus was no mere moral exemplar; he is Lord and the Captain of our salvation. 119 Jesus brought to the world the spirit of God s love, revealing the victory of spirit over flesh and of love over sin.120 The atoning grace bestowed through Jesus was the certain knowledge of God s love and its power over sin and death; it was redemption. To the extent that he emphasized the need for such grace in conversion and sanctification, Ballou clearly remained in the evangelical tradition.121 He believed that, without divine redemption, men and women would engage end- lessly in the pursuit of an elusive happiness, trapped and driven by their carnal state of being. Atoning grace, he asserted, produces all which the Bible means by conversion, or being born under the Spirit, and brings the mind from under the power and constitution of the earthly Adam to live by faith in the Son of God. 122 Ballou acknowledged that God did not grant his grace equally to all in this life. His attempt to deal with such apparent divine partiality followed a well-worn path: one simply had to acknowledge that God works in his own time and way for the good. At death, all would experience a change from sin to holiness.123 The assurance of God s grace, an assurance that Ballou believed to be at once rational and spiritual, allowed the converted to appreciate God s divine beauties and excellencies and to obey God s laws because they are joyous and not grievous. 124 Again, Ballou s conception recalls in some respects early Puritan communal eschatology, in which the most crucial event in the life of each person is not death but the effectual calling or conversion of each person which turned him once and for all from death to life. 125 For Ballou, conversion to the belief in universal salvation was the one true safeguard against mortal selfishness. With his sanguine assertions that God wished to happify mankind and his often irreverent remarks about traditional religious beliefs, Ballou has often been interpreted as a rather typical turn-of-the-century enlightened believer. The influ- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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