[tag]tomtalbott[/tag]
Dear All–
Thanks so much for joining the conversation, Dr. Talbott.
Regarding the idea of some people never being forgiven at all, I guess I have to quote your own words, Dr. Talbott. The relevant passage comes in–The Inescapable Love of God (1999). There you argue that some people are finally saved though they are never forgiven by God. Instead of being forgiven they make full payment for their own sins through personal suffering rather than through divine forgiveness. Here is it:
**“They will experience his love as a consuming fire…So in that sense, they will literally pay for their sin; and God will never—not in this age and not in the age to come—forgive (or set aside) the final payment they owe” (Inescapable Love of God, p. 106). **
In the same passage you refer to this as an “alternative strategy,” whereby some people pay the price themselves—i.e., atone or compensate for their own sins by suffering—and so they get saved apart from a Savior. I find this an ironic outcome. In an effort to extend forgiveness/grace to everyone, the argument ends up by denying that forgiveness/grace is necessary. Some are saved by grace, and some are saved apart from grace.
Of course, there is another problem that ensues. I would call this the issue of the “unbended knee.” What if certain creatures–let us say Satan–reject God’s free offer of forgiveness in the many that you have indicated, Dr. Talbott, and choose to pay the price themselves in purgatorial suffering (however long that might take)? Would not Satan at that point be still a rebel against God? He would have endured the suffering required and imposed on him (you present purgatorial suffering as an imposed suffering). Yet Satan would still not willingly have submitted himself to God. So far as I can see, your argument leads to another irony–that “*not *every knee will bow.”
To shift topics…
Because there is a lot of discussion here on Ramelli’s book, let me add here the result of a preliminary survey I have done regarding the overwhelming patristic consensus against the idea of universal salvation. What is stunning is to see the large numbers of anti-universalists, and to find them among the Greek authors and in the Syriac East as well. My book will develop an extensive argument on this, but here is a taste…
Brian Daley’s *The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology *(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991) is the most respected, reliable, and up-to-date guide to this area. What is more Daley’s book discusses not just a few selected figures (as Ramelli does) but basically all the major early Christian authors.
In Daley’s text, those authors and texts indicating a final two-fold outcome of heaven and hell are as follows:
Epistula Apostolorum, Sibylline Oracles (except for one passage), First Clement, Second Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, Ignatius of Antioch, Aristides, Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Hippolytus, Cyprian, Victorinus of Pettau, Lactantius, Apophthegmata Patrum, Aphrahat, Ephrem the Syrian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Apollonaris of Laodicea, Basil, Epiphanius, Firmicus Maternus, Hilary of Poitiers, Zeno of Verona, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Mopsuestia (in Daley’s analysis), Theodoret of Cyrus, Hesychius of Jerusalem, Pseudo-Macarian Homilies, Apocalypse of Paul, Gaudenius of Brescia, Maximus of Turin, Hilarianus, Tyconius, Augustine, Evodius of Uzala (or whoever wrote the Dialogue of Zaccheus), Orosius, Liber de Promissionibus, Salvian of Marseilles, Pope Leo the Great, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, Paulinus of Nola, Orientius, Commodian, Peter Chrysologus, Agathangelos (Armenian), Shenoute of Atripe, Narsai, Oecumenius, Pseudo-Dionysius (in Daley’s analysis), Severus of Antioch, Leontinus of Byzantium (in Daley’s anlaysis), Cyril of Scythopolis, Barsanuphius, John of Gaza, Aeneas of Gaza, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Andrew of Caesarea, Romanos the Melodist, Maximus the Confessor (in Daley’s analysis), and John of Damascus.
In Daley’s study, some authors seem to be “on the fence,” or are difficult to interpret, on the question of universalism—Apocalypse of Peter, Clement of Alexandria, Sibylline Oracles (in one passage), Eusebius, Nazianzus, Ambrose (who seems to oscillate), Jerome (who seems to oscillate, both before and after 394), Isaac the Syrian (two authors probably included under one name).
Then there is what we might call the pantheist or near-pantheist position, which cannot be identified as universalist in the standard Origenian sense: Evagrius, Stephen bar-Sudaili (The Book of the Holy Hierotheos), and perhaps Philoxenus of Mabbug.
The question remains as to who actually teaches universal salvation—in a non-pantheistic sense. The answer seems to be Origen (almost certainly), Nyssa (most likely), Didymus the Blind, and possibly Marcellus of Ancyra (who offered his own unique eschatology).
To summarize then, of the figures that Daley analyzes and whose views seem clear-cut, the ratio is something around 10:1—that is, early church writers who uphold the doctrine of hell and eternal punishment instead of the doctrine of universalism. From the list of names and texts given above we further note that the non-universalists are found not only in the Latin West, but—contrary to the common impression today—among Greek and Syriac authors as well. When we factor in the results of the First and Second Origenist Controversies, and that of the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and it seems that universalism was a minority view that prevailed among some teachers for a time but then was set aside.
Germanos I, Patriarch of Constantinople (in office 715-730 AD), was clearly embarrassed by Nyssa’s expressions of belief in universal salvation, and so—taking a page from Rufinus’s playbook—he claimed that the passages on universalism were interpolated into Nyssa’s writings. No one today believes in such interpolations into Nyssa’s writings. The point is that by the eighth century the doctrine of universal salvation was closely associated with the condemned Origen. Eastern Orthodoxy did not regard Origenist universalism as part of its tradition. At most, it was a private opinion that was tolerated by the church—so long as it was not taught in the church.
A later Patriarch of Constantinople made a revealing, double-edged statement regarding Origen. In the margin of a manuscript of Origen’s commentaries that now resides in the Vatican, George Scholarios, Greek spokesman at the fifteenth-century Council of Florence, the one-time Patriarch of Constantinople and student of both Eastern and Western theology, wrote the following note:
The Western writers say, “Where Origen was good, no one is better; where he was bad, no one is worse.” Our Asian divines say on the one hand that “Origen is the whetstone of us all,” but on the other hand, that “he is the fount of foul doctrines.” Both are right: he splendidly defended Christianity, wonderfully expounded Scripture, and wrote a noble exhortation to martyrdom. But he was also the father of Arianism, and worst of all, said that hellfire would not last forever. (Citing Vaticanus Gr. 1742, fol. Ir; translated and quoted in Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition [New York: Oxford University Press, 1966], 95).
For Patriarch Scholarios, no less than for Patriarch Germanos, universalism was an unacceptable teaching. There was no doubt about that. From the comment above, Scholarios seemed to think that universalism was more theologically objectionable than Arianism—which is saying a lot, given the general opinion regarding Arianian as the ultimate early church heresy. At the same time Scholarios recognized the valuable aspects of Origen’s literary legacy. There was thus both a reception and a non-reception of Origen’s teachings. From the time of the First Origenist Controversy, universalism has regularly been regarded as a part of the non-reception rather than the reception from Origen.
MM
PS–I would perhaps disagree with Daley on Isaac of Ninevah, and put him definitely in the universalist category. But Daley in general is an extremely meticulous scholar–as careful and exacting in his approach as Ramelli is not. I will be publishing a review article on Ramelli. If you are interested I can let you know when it’s coming out next year.
PPS–There is new work on Nyssa by Italian scholars arguing that Nyssa is wrongly regarded as a universalist. If you are interested, Mario Baghos has made his essay available for free download from his Academia webpage. It is called “Reconsidering Apokatastasis in St. Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection and the Catechetical Oration,” Phronema 27 (2012) 125-162. It’s a very careful argument, based on reading of larger contexts in Nyssa’s Greek texts. I think that it raises questions–not sure if I am completely convinced, even though agreeing would I suppose “help” my argument. Essentially Baghos argues that apokatastasis has happened already, and that Nyssa conceives of it as happening in Jesus Christ himself. There is an “already” in addition to a “not yet” aspect of apokatastasis. Participation in this present-tense apokatastasis depends on baptism, faith, and the choice to pursue virtue. Baghos then shows places in which Nyssa expresses tentativeness about everyone consenting to enter into this relationship with God. The essay is almost forty pages–so read it and see what you think. If Baghos is correct, then this whittles down even further and sort of ancient universalist lineage. Unless you embrace the pantheistic outcome presented in Evagrius and bar Sudaili, then the problem with ancient universalism is that there isn’t really very much of it…
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Thanks everyone for taking it in good part. It’s just my little way of saying ‘Yoo hoo everyone this is good; this is important!!!’ 
And thanks to all for responding and not begin too offended.
