Cassara Introduction to a Treatise on Atonement

Here the author is extoling the virtues of Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement.  In this work, he gives a history Ballou and suggest that Ballou’s emergence was cause by, rather than the cause of the revitalism of Universalism that had started with Murray, deBenneville, Winchester and Chauncey.

By the time it got to Ballou, the move was underway to contradict the claims of salvation of the Calvanists, specifically as they contradicted Romans 5:18.

The force behind the Treatise and as well behind its rejection by the more conservative Christians at the time was its faith in the human spirit, expressed by Jesus in his sacrifice.  People, apparently found it hard to believe that they should not be punished.  This emerged from the application of reason (aka actually reading the bible with an open mind) that led to rejection of many then-standing doctrines.

Ballou was very good at scriptures in his later years and used scripture more openly than did other objectors due to reason (Allen).  He also wrote this very young (didn’t know that, actually).

Interestingly, the author posits that originally, the Treatise may have been meant to contradict a then-foundational book to the Universalists, written by James Relly and integrated into the teaching of Murray himself. 

For Ballou, God is not ugly, it is beautiful and humans don’t have only limited free will in that they can’t reject God (makes sense). 

The mop story is great.

He then goes on to explain how Ballou, through time drifted away from some of the tenents of the Treatise, which all seemed to me to be minor points that didn’t injure the original logic to a point of needing further inquiry.