To Hell with Them? Part 6

What is eternity? What does the Bible have to say about it? Well, what might seem cut and dry to us isn’t necessarily as clear in the biblical text. I want to highlight briefly here are the key terms often translated as eternal or eternity in Scripture might not mean what we assume in our […]

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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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Origen and the Eschatological Creation of the Cosmos

Originally posted on Eclectic Orthodoxy:
by Fr John Behr, Ph.D. After using for several decades G. W. Butterworth’s translation of Origen’s On First Principles (the standard translation used in the English speaking world for the better part of a century), I became convinced that not only was a new translation needed but a new critical…

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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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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

As I continue with the series of Christian Universalism (apokatastasis), I want to point out this excellent article by Fr. Kimel over at Eclectic Orthodoxy. Only when we begin to grasp some of the historical reasons why Universalism, which according to credible sources was the majority position in the early church, has been rejected. While […]

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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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The Harrowing of Hell

This post is related to the ‘To Hell With Them? series (Part 1 and Part 2) I am working through. However, I will take a more aesthetic approach here and share a brief but important section of my upcoming novel The Damned May Enter that deals with the Harrowing of Hell. In the Harrowing of […]

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To Hell with Them? – Part 2

All shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well By the purification of the motive In the ground of our beseeching.   TS Eliot, FOUR QUARTETS – Little Gidding III (For the 1st entry in this series see: To Hell With Them? – Part 1) From the outset I must make it […]

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To Hell with Them? – Part 1

  Oh yet we trust that somehow good Will be the final goal of ill, To pangs of nature, to sins of will, Defects of doubt and taints of blood;   That nothing walks with aimless feet, That not one life shall be destroy’d, Or cast as rubbish to the void, When God hath made […]

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