The Devil's Redemption : 2 Volumes

A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism

Michael J. McClymond

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781540963383
• eBook ISBN:
  9781493406616
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

2018 Book Award Winner, The Gospel Coalition (Academic Theology)

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2019

Will all evil finally turn to good, or does some evil remain stubbornly opposed to God and God's goodness? Will even the devil be redeemed? Addressing a theological issue of perennial interest, this comprehensive book (in two volumes) surveys the history of Christian universalism from the second to the twenty-first century and offers an interpretation of how and why universalist belief arose. The author explores what the church has taught about universal salvation and hell and critiques universalism from a biblical, philosophical, and theological standpoint. He shows that the effort to extend grace to everyone undermines the principle of grace for anyone.

1
Final Salvation

Church Teachings and Newer Views

The creeping paralysis of universalism is rapidly gaining ground throughout Christendom. This dangerous doctrine minimizes the seriousness of sin, impugns the righteousness of God, emasculates the doctrine of the atonement and denies final judgement.

—J. Oswald Sanders1

Hell is so real that it reaches right into the existence of the saints. Hope can take it on, only if one shares in the suffering of Hell’s night by the side of the One who came to transform our night by his suffering.

—Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)2

Of course, God will pardon me. It is his trade!

—Heinrich Heine (attributed last words)3

The reunion with the eternal from which we come, from which we are separated, to which we shall return, is promised to everything that is.

—Paul Tillich4

In 1978 the British New Testament professor Richard Bauckham summarized the development of modern theological thinking on the question of final salvation:

The history of the doctrine of universal salvation (or apokatastasis) is a remarkable one. Until the nineteenth century almost all Christian theologians taught the reality of eternal torment in hell. Here and there, outside the theological mainstream, were some who believed that the wicked would be finally annihilated. . . . Even fewer were the advocates of universal salvation, though these few included some major theologians of the early church. Eternal punishment was firmly asserted in official creeds and confessions of the churches. It must have seemed as indispensable a part of universal Christian belief as the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation. Since 1800 this situation has entirely changed, and no traditional Christian doctrine has been so widely abandoned as that of eternal punishment. Its advocates among theologians today must be fewer than ever before. The alternative interpretation of hell as annihilation seems to have prevailed even among many of the more conservative theologians. Among the less conservative, universal salvation, either as hope or as dogma, is now so widely accepted that many theologians assume it virtually without argument.5

Since those words were written, the trend toward universalism that he identified has continued unabated, and it even seems to be accelerating since the turn of the millennium.

Though Bauckham wrote about the change as happening since the nineteenth century, the change is for the most part a much more recent one. Until the middle of the twentieth century, universalist belief was generally confined to a minority of Christian theologians along with a few self-identified universalist groups. Concerning the official Catholic teaching, Cardinal Avery Dulles writes: “The doctrine of the eternity of hell has been firmly in place at least since the seventh century, and is not subject to debate in the Catholic Church. About the middle of the twentieth century, there seems to be a break in the tradition. Since then a number of influential theologians have favored the view that all human beings may or do eventually attain salvation.”6

This statement is largely true for Protestants as well. While there was plenty of Victorian doubt during the 1800s, and this centered on the doctrine of hell as well as other even more fundamental questions—for example, the existence of God—we do not find many Christian theologians or Christian leaders supporting universal salvation before the mid-1900s. The acceptance of universalism by substantial numbers of professing Christians is thus, from a historical standpoint, a very recent development. Up to the early and mid-nineteenth century, it was generally believed that the doctrine of an eternal hell had moral and social value as an incentive against evildoing. The almost unchallenged place held by the doctrine of hell among Western writers was due, according to D. P. Walker, to “the very strong scriptural authority for the doctrine,” and yet “a more fundamental reason . . . was the firm and almost universal belief in its value as a deterrent in this life.” “It was thought,” writes Walker, that “if the fear of eternal punishment were removed, most people would behave without any moral restraint whatever.” So strong was this conviction regarding the deterrent value of hell that atheists—who believed neither in God nor in hell—were commonly assumed to be thoroughly depraved and socially dangerous persons. “It was claimed that only criminals and debauchees could have motive for questioning the doctrine.”7

The French Catholic Dom Sinsart wrote in 1748:

I do not hesitate to say that the system which limits the punishments of the afterlife has been conceived only by vicious and corrupt hearts. Indeed what motives would a good Christian have in distorting Scripture so as to divert it from the meaning it naturally presents? . . . A good conscience has no motive for inventing quibbles about a matter which does not concern it. It is, therefore, to crime, to stubborn crime, that this opinion owes its existence.8

From the sixteenth century until the eighteenth and even into the early nineteenth century, there was widespread acceptance of the idea that only the wicked or reprobate mind would question the doctrine of an eternal hell. The result of this assumption, as Walker notes, was that “nearly all discussions of hell” were “veiled in a mist of secrecy and dishonesty.”9

This opening chapter surveys Christian teachings pertaining to final salvation in the major strands of the Christian tradition—Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, evangelical, and Pentecostal—and follows this with a treatment of several related themes. Church discussions throughout the centuries have often touched on themes canvassed here: the possibility of a secret gospel of universalism, Christ’s descent to the dead, the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, Protestant and Catholic debates about hell and death, and the question of annihilationism or conditionalism. Chapter 2 presents documentation and discussion of an alternate tradition regarding the question of final salvation, with its own characteristic assumptions, conceptual cohesiveness, and internal issues, which might—for brevity’s sake—be designated with the adjectives “gnostic,” “kabbalistic,” or “esoteric.” Later chapters in the book will draw on ideas that are fleshed out in chapters 1 and 2.

1.1. Mainline Protestants: The Turn toward Universalism

Most ministers and laypersons in the older, established, or so-called mainline Protestant churches—Lutheran, Reformed, Episcopal, Congregationalist, Methodist—no longer argue much about eternal salvation and the possibility of eternal punishment. The general presumption is that everyone, sooner or later, will be saved.10 As early as the 1820s, the founding figure of liberal Protestantism, Friedrich Schleiermacher, challenged the traditional doctrine of hell. Schleiermacher favored a notion of human solidarity, according to which all humanity would together receive God’s grace. Not some, but all, were chosen for eternal blessedness. He reasoned that no one could truly be happy with God if just one soul were excluded from blessedness.11 Schleiermacher’s altered understanding of election was significant a century later. The twentieth century’s most influential theologian, Karl Barth, rejected most of Schleiermacher’s theology and yet embraced a notion of corporate election akin to that of Schleiermacher.12

Particularist views of salvation nonetheless remained strong among Christian laypersons and even among theologians throughout the 1800s and into the early 1900s. In the leading Protestant nations of Germany, Britain, and America, there were few who followed Schleiermacher’s lead into universalism—with the exception of those in the Universal Church, who made universal salvation their distinguishing trait as a denomination (DR 6).13 At the same time, a ferment was brewing in Britain during the nineteenth century regarding the traditional doctrine of hell.14 Doubts about the doctrine of hell began earlier, among seventeenth-century intellectuals, Socinians, Deists, and Enlightenment-era philosophes. Yet it was not until the nineteenth century that significant numbers of Christian leaders and laypersons began to express doubts about hell. In England during the 1850s, F. D. Maurice suggested that it might be possible to interpret the biblical word “eternal” (Greek aiōnios) as meaning something other than “forever and ever,” and hence “eternal punishment” as possibly referring to a period of limited duration. This issue had long been a neuralgic point in technical philosophical and theological discussions regarding the nature of time and eternity (DR appendix J). The popular uproar on this occasion was such, though, that Maurice lost his teaching job at King’s College in London.15 Meanwhile, dur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1. Final Salvation
• 2. Ancient Afterlives
• 3. “The End Is like the Beginning”
• 4. “That God May Be All in All”
• 5. “In Yes and No All Things Consist”
• 6. A House Divided
• 7. German Thinkers
• 8. Russian Thinkers
• 9. Debating Universal Election
• 10. Embracing Universal Hope
• 11. New Theologies in the New Millennium
• 12. The Eclipse of Grace
• Appendix A: Gnosis and Western Esotericism: Definitions and Lineages
• Appendix B: Zoroastrian Eschatology
• Appendix C: Anti-Origenist Declarations in the Early Church
• Appendix D: Ilaria Ramelli’s The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (2013)
• Appendix E: The Sefiroth
• Appendix F: Universal Salvation in Islamic Teaching
• Appendix G: Types of Christian Universalism
• Appendix H: The Cosmic Saga
• Appendix I: Ultra-Dispensational Universalism
• Appendix J: Words and Concepts for Time and Eternity
• Appendix K: Mormon Teachings on God, Cosmos, and Salvation
• Appendix L: Barth and Bultmann on Romans 5
• Bibliography
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Back Cover