Ramelli on Universalism

Ilaria Ramelli is a superb scholar, and if you are at all inclined to look into the subject of Christian Universalism, she would be among the first I would recommend consulting. Her most recent volume, A Larger Hope?, Volume 1: Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich is a highly accessable summary of her […]

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In Defense of Origen and Christian Universalism

“When people dismiss early Christian universalism as an aberration in Christian theology, dreamed up by Origen in the third century under the influence of paganism and later discerned to be heretical they err on several counts. First, they fail to appreciate that Origen’s theology of apokatastasis was primarily a synthesis of much earlier Christian ideas, […]

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A Reformed Case for Universalism

Originally posted on Eclectic Orthodoxy:
by Jedidiah Paschall I am neither a scholar nor the son of a scholar. In truth, I am a son of a plumber, a Bible College dropout typically content to work away at fiction and poetry. This is not to say that I have not studied these matters carefully or…

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Until the Fire and the Rose are One

For many of us, I suppose there are a handful works of literature that captivate us so utterly that our lives are forever marked by them. My first poetic love was Lord Alfred Tennyson who was the first to teach me even as a high school student to hope that no soul would be forever […]

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Theotokos and the Beatles

    When I find myself in times of trouble Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom “Let it be” And in my hour of darkness She is standing right in front of me Speaking words of wisdom “Let it be” – Paul McCartney, The Beatles  – “Let It Be” *Note: For the […]

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To Hell with Them? Part 5

” – They who will give an account to him who is ready to judge the quick and the dead. Because it was for this that the good tidings were proclaimed to the dead, that though judged in the flesh according to human beings they might live in the spirit according to God.” 1 Peter […]

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Opera of the phantom

Originally posted on AnOpenOrthodoxy:
The pages of my copy of Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite are like the layers of a Monet landscape, comments on top of comments scribbled in various mediums (pink and yellow highlighter, pencil, black ink, blue ink – whatever was nearby) from multiple visits made to re-read its wonderful reflections. Just…

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To Hell with Them? Part 4

Baptism with Fire and St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Resurrection: “…He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.” (Matthew 3:13) The fires of hell are a reality that cannot be dismissed in any honest reading of the New Testament. However, as I have stated throughout this series on Universal Salvation, the issue […]

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Apocatastasis: The Heresy that Never Was

Originally posted on Eclectic Orthodoxy:
When first presented with the universalist hope, many Orthodox and Roman Catholics immediately invoke the authority of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), citing the fifteen anti-Origenist anathemas: “Apokatastasis has been dogmatically defined by the Church as heresy—see canon 1 … case closed.” Over the past two centuries, however, historians have…

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To Hell with Them? – Part 3

As I continue to work through this series on Christian Universalism, I think it is important to reiterate that the classic doctrine of Universalism (termed in Greek as apokatastasis) as developed by the Church Fathers and later Christians in the broad-stream of orthodoxy (Eastern, Catholic, Protestant) do not deny the existence of hell. Rather, the […]

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