Michael McClymond on Universalism

[corpselight]

Good grief, that’s hard to imagine.
However - about 20 years ago, in an evening service at an AoG church - a visiting group from another church took the service and did an extended skit - about 30 minutes - called ‘your descent into Hell’.
They had some elaborate and horrifying sets and costumes, and music, and as we sank into the pit, the leader of the group would shout out:
“As sure as you are settin’ in them there pews (those are the exact words btw), many of you who think you are saved will be making this last eternal trip.”

I started to laugh so Ronda made me leave.

Nice response!

Sobornost, a macabre part of me wants to read those childrens’ books by Furness lol
Awful stuff!

[Sobornost]

Wow Dave - and laughter was the best response Unfortunately Furness the Furnace was preaching to kids I think a major reason why strong ECT became discredited in the eyes of many in the nineteenth century was because of the hellfire preachers paradoxically.

[Sobornost]

But to perfectly honest with Furness sermon I imagine a scene in which the least sensitive kids were not too harmed, but in which others were wetting themselves and soiling themselves, and some were introduced to a deep damage that would maim them and poison their spontaneity for the rest of the their lives. I think sometime when the issue of hell become san abstract question it is hard to remember exactly how hell was preached at the height of the evangelical revivals and how in the end this lead to horrified disgust in the second generation of evangelicals (and in second generation ultra monte Catholics) and even indifference. And even in nineteenth century Britain one commentator pointed out how often evangelical leaders and preachers themselves edged towards universalism in old age - and he added wryly that whether this was due to deepening understanding or senility was an open question.

By the way Arlenite - along with the Decline of Hell I’d strongly recommend Geoffrey Rowell’s Hell and the Victorians as a very useful history source on this subject.

[Sobornost]

Regarding the really horrific dwelling on hellfire in traditional Catholicism – even here the picture is mixed. For example in the native tradition of English Catholicism preaching of hell was very restrained. The really toxic tradition came from the writings of St. Alphonsus Liguori an Italian saint of the 18th century whose devotional writings reek of sulphur. When the Catholic hierarchy was restored in England in the mid nineteenth century many of the parishioners of Catholic Churches were poor Irish immigrants and Italian priests needed to be imported to meet the needs of the numbers bringing Ligourianism with them. But key figures in the actual hierarchy of Bishops who were English – like the convert J.H. Newman, Father Faber who wrote ‘There’s a wideness in God’s mercy’, and Cardinal Manning who promoted the works of Catherine of Genoa, did not approve of Liguorianism.

Geoffrey Rowell has shed more light on purgatory doctrine for me. Before Catherine of Genoa the common Catholic notion was that the soul enters the next world with it’s nature already fixed and so purgatory was indeed seen as a place of satisfaction to God’s wrath for sins not covered by Christ’s substitutionary atonement. However, in Catherin’s understanding of Purgatory there is continuity between this life and the next – change is possible in this life and change is possible in the next. She spoke of souls in Purgatory as having, in a moment of vision and insight, recognized their relationship to God for what it was and plunged into the purgative state to be fitted for the full relationship of love in the bliss of heaven. Pope Benedict was merely referring to Catherine of Genoa in his papal pronouncement on Purgatory.

[Sobornost]

DAVE!!! - you are going to have to change your avatar I’m afraid You see it turns out that Martín Buber wrote his doctoral thesis partly on Jackob Boehme!!! And Boehme influenced the distinction Buber makes in ‘I and Thou’ between the I-Thou (qualitative) and the I-it (quantitative) relationship that human beings can have with nature. I reckon it’s time for a massive bonfire of books

[anon12438761]

Oh no…is the whole world going nuts??? Not B uber!!

[Sobornost]

I’m beginning to feel sorry for Dr McClymond – I think he must have got his beginning definitions of Gnosticism and universalism from the Hansons’ ‘Universalism the Prevailing Doctrine…’ Chapter 7 Three Gnostic Sects -

Three Gnostic sects flourished nearly simultaneously in the Second Century, all which accepted universal salvation: the Basilidians, the Valentinians, and the Carpocratians.

The Basilidians

The Basilidians were followers of Basilides, who lived about A.D. 117-138. He was a Gnostic Christian and an Egyptian philosopher. He wrote an alleged Gospel–exegetical rather than historical–no trace of which remains. As some of his theories did not agree with those generally advocated by Christians, he and his followers were regarded as heretics and their writings were destroyed, though no evidence exists to show that their view of human destiny was obnoxious. Greek philosophy and Christian faith are mingled in the electicism of the Basilidians. Basilides taught that man’s universal redemption will result from the birth and death of Christ. According to the “Dictionary of Christian Biography,” 1 Hippolytus gives an exposition of the mystic Christian sect. Basilides himself was a sincere Christian, and “the first Gnostic teacher who has left an individual, personal stamp upon the age.” 2 He accepted the entire Gospel narrative, and taught that the wicked will be condemned to migrate into the bodies of men or animals until purified, when they will be saved with all the rest of mankind. He did not pretend that his ideas of transmigration were obtained from the Scriptures but affirmed that he derived them from philosophy. He held that the doctrines of Christianity have a two-fold character–one phrase simple, popular, obtained from the plain reading of the New Testament; the other sublime, secret, mysteriously imparted to favored ones. His system was a sort of Egyptian reincarnation grafted on Christianity, an Oriental mysticism endeavoring to stand on a Christian foundation, and thus solve the problem of human destiny. Man and nature are represented as struggling upwards. “The restoration of all things that in the beginning were established in the seed of the universe shall be restored in their own season.”
Irenæus charges the Basilidians with immortality, but Clement, who knew them better, denies it, and defends them. 3

The Carpocratians

The Carpocratians were followers of Carpocrates, a Platonic philosopher, who incorporated some of the elements of the Christian religion into his system of philosophy. The sect flourished in Egypt and vicinity early in the Second Century. Like the Basilidians they called themselves Gnostics, and taught a somewhat similar set of theories. Irenæus says that the Carpocratians explained the text: “Thou shalt not go out thence until thou hast paid the uttermost farthing,” as teaching “that no one can escape from the power of those angels who made the world, but that he must pass from body to body until he has experience of every kind of action which can be practiced in this world, and when nothing is wanting longer to him, then his liberated soul should soar upwards to that God who is above the angels, the makers of the world. In this way all souls are saved,” etc. But while Irenæus calls the Carpocratians a heretical sect, and denounces some of their tenets, he had no hard words for their doctrine of man’s final destiny.

The Valentinians

The Valentinians (A.D. 130) taught that all souls will be finally admitted to the realms of bliss. They denied the resurrection of the body. Their doctrines were widely disseminated in Asia, Africa and Europe, after the death of their Egyptian founder, Valentine. They resembled the teachings of Basilides in efforts to solve the problem of human destiny philosophically. Valentine flourished, in Rome from A.D. 129 to 132. A devout Christian, and a man of the highest genius, he was never accused of anything worse than heresy. He was “a pioneer in Christian theology.” His was an attempt to show, in dramatic form, how “the work of universal redemption is going on to the ever-increasing glory of the ineffable and unfathomable Father, and the ever-increasing blessedness of souls.” There was a germ of truth in the hybrid Christian theogony and Hellenic philosophizing that made up Valentinianism. It was a struggle after the only view of human destiny that can satisfy the human heart.

These three sects were bitterly opposed by the “orthodox” fathers in some of their tenets, but their Universalism was never condemned.

This is available at Tentmakers here –

tentmaker.org/books/prevailing/upd7.html

and the entire extract is worth a read. The thing about Hanson’s book is that it is based on outmoded scholarship and appears at this point to be wildly reckless even with the historical evidence available at the time (you’d think from what is said that Baur for example approved of the Gnostics – but the opposite is the case)

[Sobornost]

I’ve always found the historiography of the American universalist in the nineteenth century a bit strange. Well -

They were reacting strongly against First Great Awakening Calvinism

When it comes to European and British History they get very shaky - obviously the great pond had an influence her in the days before the internet.

Like a lot of ‘liberal’ histories of the time their narratives are predicated on the idea of inevitable progress - and the preaching of hellfire is seen as a barbaric atavism that civilisation is gradually outgrowing (I’ve noticed the same optimistic trajectory in the histories of Christianity written by the Quaker Rufus Jones - but with him the trajectory of progress concerns interior religion replacing external creedalism)

Their purpose is polemical - not to make a case for universalism begin an accepted option within the Christian faith but rather to identify it as the true Christina faith throughout the ages. I note that Farrar the Anglican who was writing at during the same period is more modest in his aims and therefore far more accurate in his scholarship.

And finally the American Universalist historians tend to speculate too much from scant evidence when it comes to the middle ages and to the early church. They were pioneers - in mitigation - but again polemic gets the better of good judgement a lot of the time.

The only common factor with today is that universalism does tend to flourish when strong Calvinism flexes it’s muscles (in the eighteenth century the rise of aggressive Calvinism even pushed John Wesley to the brink of universalism - if not quite over the edge - in his later years). Otherwise none of these things are true of universalism today or of historians of universalism today.

It is foolish to consult these nineteenth histories as completely reliable or in any way influential today.

[arlenite]

And finally the American Universalist historians tend to speculate too much from scant evidence when it comes to the middle ages and to the early church. They were pioneers - in mitigation - but again polemic gets the better of good judgement a lot of the time.

It is foolish to consult these nineteenth histories as completely reliable or in any way influential today.

Sorry I haven’t participated in the discussion lately!

So, I actually went and looked at Irenaeus’ Against Heresies, Book I, Chap. 25 which is Irenaeus’s discussion of Carpocrates, one of the “gnostics” that McClymond uses (shockingly, we have seen, just like the universalist historians of the 19th c. ) to argue that universalism is a fundamentally gnostic doctrine. First of all, it is worth noting that Irenaeus’ primary concerns w/Carpocrates and his followers is all the usual gnostic stuff: libertinism, expanded cosmologies, devil as some sort of savior. Section 4 is the only thing that remotely resembles universal salvation since Irenaeus says that:

In this way also all souls are saved, whether their own which, guarding against all delay, participate in all sorts of actions during one incarnation, or those, again, who, by passing from body to body, are set free, on fulfilling and accomplishing what is requisite in every form of life into which they are sent, so that at length they shall no longer be [shut in the body].

So, all souls are saved. But, is this really the problem for Irenaeus? It doesn’t seem to me that his language indicates that the universal scope is the problem (usually, when remarking on an error, he starts with “They say/describe/deny”). The problem, in the larger discussion, seems to be that Carpocrates and his followers believe that nothing is evil, so you need to experience as many (“sinful”) things as possible, whether in one life or many reincarnations. And, the whole process is led by the Devil! Only after experiencing all (relevant?) possible bodily experiences, you’re released from your bodily prison and can ascend to God. The problem isn’t the fact that all souls are supposedly “saved;” it’s that this whole cosmology and picture of redemption is antithetical to the proto-orthodox beliefs of Irenaeus!

I think it’s likely that McClymond didn’t merely rely on the word of the universalist historians for this, but actually read the relevant heresiologies. Now, I only briefly looked at this one, so the others might not have anything about universalism. But, due to lack of time, I’m willing to give McClymond the benefit of the doubt that the heresiologiests probably depicted Carpocrates and Basilides (and maybe Valentinians) as believing in some sort of universal salvation. A few points worth noting:

1. This does not encompass gnostics generally.
2. These are polemical, heresiological attacks on their beliefs. Thus, we certainly cannot take them as accurate historical statements.
3. If the above case is any indicator, the universal scope of the gnostic salvation is not what Irenaeus (et al) is attacking, but the FORM of salvation, the ethics it fosters, the cosmology it is located in, its elitism, its improper Christology, and its faulty doctrine of God.

But again, I rushed through reading and have not looked at other sources. Perhaps elsewhere the heresiologists condemn the universal scope of salvation in the relevant gnostics. Although, this would be odd, since isn’t there a good chance that Irenaeus was a universalist for humans? And, of course, Clement, the other main source we have describing and attacking Carpocrates, was close if not an actual universalist, right?

[alecforbes]

That is really helpful, Dick. I haven’t seen that sort of historical analysis before and it makes total sense, so thanks.

[Sobornost]

Thanks Steve

But again, I rushed through reading and have not looked at other sources. Perhaps elsewhere the heresiologists condemn the universal scope of salvation in the relevant gnostics. Although, this would be odd, since isn’t there a good chance that Irenaeus was a universalist for humans? And, of course, Clement, the other main source we have describing and attacking Carpocrates, was close if not an actual universalist, right?
User avatar

Well Arlenite - good point about Dr McClymond reading Irenaeus (at the very least). However, as you say according to Dr Ramelli Clement was a universalist and Irenaeus was nearly one (but believed in the annihilation of the devil) - and it seems that for the moment Dr Ramelli is the only person to have seriously researched this stuff. Regarding the cope of Dr McClymond’s assertions - we do know that the Valentians were not universalists and that the Apocryphon of John is not a universalist text (I’ve read it) and that the teachings of Basilides although perhaps less stark than the Valentians - assigned a special place for thee elect Gnostics in the eschaton and a far inferior status to the rest. But fair point - he’s not necessarily ben consulting nineteenth century histories.

I actually wonder whether Irenaeus is suggesting that Carpocrates is speaking of universalism in this extract btw. The normal gnostic typology/anthropology is that the pneumatics take the direst path to liberation because they are already spiritual and merely need to realise this, there is another class of beings - the psychics - who have hope of becoming truly spiritual instead of remaining souls trapped in bodies, and there so a final class of human beings who are the hylicals - that is the majority - who don’t actually have souls. Therefore to say that all souls are sacred is not necessarily a universalist statement. And we’d need to know more about Carpocrates to substantiate this.

It’s good to do some ‘bouncing off’

[arlenite]

I actually wonder whether Irenaeus is suggesting that Carpocrates is speaking of universalism in this extract btw. The normal gnostic typology/anthropology is that the pneumatics take the direst path to liberation because they are already spiritual and merely need to realise this, there is another class of beings - the psychics - who have hope of becoming truly spiritual instead of remaining souls trapped in bodies, and there so a final class of human beings who are the hylicals - that is the majority - who don’t actually have souls. Therefore to say that all souls are sacred is not necessarily a universalist statement. And we’d need to know more about Carpocrates to substantiate this.

It’s good to do some ‘bouncing off’

An interesting possibility! That tri-class system would definitely seem to map onto Irenaeus’s description.

[Sobornost]

I think it’s a genuine hypothesis Arlenite - ‘all souls’ very probably means ‘all people who have souls’ (that is the psychics) rather than ‘all people’ (presumably the word Irenaeus is using for’ souls’ is ‘psychikos’ or something like that ). The Gnostics reinterpreted Paul’s doctrine of election to mean not elect peoples but elect individuals. In the ‘Gospel of Thomas’ the good shepherd leaves the ninety nine to find the largest sheep and when he finds this sheep says ‘You mean far more to me than the ninety nine’. In the Valentinian Gospel of Truth it is spelt out clearly that the hylicals (somatics - bodily people) are without hope, the psychics (mental/emotional people) can go either way - and it will be gratifying to the pneumatics to know that they have brought many of these back from error - and the pneumatics (spiritual people) are already saved and simply need to waken to this.

Perhaps the Carpocratians were simply a little more optimistic about the psychics than the Valentinians were. (Irenaeus wrote in exasperation at Valentinus ‘Iu, Iu, PHeu, Pheu’ - which must be Greek for ‘bollocks!’)

According to Epiphanius, (admittedly normally an unreliable source because of his salivating stories about sexual rites, but still interesting in the following respect) Basilides was asked if the hylicals are human and replied ‘We (Gnostics) are men. All the others are pigs and dogs’ (charming ). So the elitism of Gnosticism was always problematic to orthodox Christians (and there seems room to doubt that even the followers of Basilides envisaged the hylicals having a place in the eschaton - even a very lowly place).

If you or Jason would like to follow this up I can send you the references.

P.S.It has just hit me that the Gnostic ‘metalepsis’ (transgressive/distorting exegesis) of Paul is structured around –

1. Reinterpreting Pauls’ doctrine of election which is about Jews and Gentiles to mean God’s election of some individuals (and rejection of many others)

2. Reinterpreting Pau’ls doctrine of each human being consisting of body (soma) soul (psyche) and spirit (pneuma) as categories for different types of human beings

3. And reinterpreting ‘soma’ (a positive term in Paul meaning ‘living body’) as a synonym of ‘sarx’ another term used by Paul to denote dead, rotting and corrupted and polluting flesh – used as a metaphor for life in all its three aspects lived in separation from God)

[Sobornost]

One last note –

The somatics/hylicals in Gnosticism – those whose only place is in the cosmic dustbin – are actually the poor or at least they include the poor. They are the people who spend their lives, working, eating sleeping defecating, having children etc… and in the classical world these people would include most slaves and all peasants. (I would be a mistake of historical imagination to equate the hylicals with modern day slaves to consumerism I think). It is important to grasp this aspect of Gnostic elitism.

Contrary to this spirit Origen told the pagan Celsus – you cook for refined palettes, we (Christians) cook for the masses. I’ll grant that Celsus was a Neoplatonist, and that Plotinus the main man of the New Platonism accused the Gnostics of thinking very highly of themselves and very poorly of the creation. However Celsus and the Gnostics shared a high handed elitism – and we can see that in his memorable rejoinder to Celsus that Origen completely and utterly disapproved of this.

I don’t think I’ve come up with any startling insight here regarding the salvation of all ‘souls’ in Gnosticism. I’m sure a real scholar of the Gnostic texts has looked at this issue before (and it’s a matter that I can’t follow up since I don’t have the scholarly knowledge of the texts/languages and am reliant on good secondary sources and translations here - Robinson and Quispel). However, I know a couple of people here have some correspondence with Dr Ramelli and it would be good if someone could run the hypothesis past her for an opinion (no need to mention me) because this would help us (and it’s probably something that she would know the answer to without any problems). I think it’s a hypothesis that can be proved or disproved rather than just an idea (in other words it is actually coherent enough and evidence based enough to be tested by someone who knows the field well).

[Sobornost]

Sources for previous 2 posts

See James Robinson Nag Hammadi Library from p. 128 onwards for Gospel Thomas (I give some relevant examples now) -

Logia 49; Jesus said: ‘Blessed are the solitary and the elect for you will find the kingdom. For you are from it, and to it you will return’.

Logia 56 Jesus said ‘Whoever has come to understand the world has found (only) a corpse, and whoever has found a corpse is superior to the world’

Logia 107 Jesus said, ‘’The Kingdom is like a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. One of them, the largest, went astray. He left the ninety-nine and looked for that one until he found it. When he had gone to such trouble he said to the sheep, ‘I care for you more than the ninety nine’ ‘’.

See Robinson pages 42- 43 for the Gnostic typology of the three classes of human beings and their eschatological fates in the ‘Gospel of Truth’.

The quotation from Epiphanius regarding Basilides is from ‘Panarion’ 24:5, and is cited in Giles Quispel, Gnostic Studies 1, p.119

[Sobornost]

And a very important note from Gilles Quispel (one of the most authoritative scholars of Gnosticism):-

It is most significant that Valentinus and Basilides, who wished to be Christians, who were well acquainted with the Bible and in particular with the Gospel of John, never said that God is Love’

Quispel, Gnostic Studies 1, p.133

For a brief wiki article on Quispel’s academic credentials see here -

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Quispel

[Sobornost]

An interesting exception to the stark eschatological dualism of Gnosticism – it seems – may have been the Docetae who seem to have combined the Valentinian system with Manichaeism. According to the Philosophumena (viii. 8-11) once attributed to Origen but now thought more likely to be by Hippolytus, they taught that the distinctions between the classes of humanity made in the classic systems of Gnosis were too hard and fast and that that no Christian (at least) will be excluded from redemption and knowledge of the redeemer (although there will be a hierarchy/gradation in this participation (some will have the fullness of redemption, others will have a moderate measure, others still will only have a very small amount). See the following article for the two paragraphs that I give in quotation next -

earlychristianwritings.com/i … -wace.html

Finally, we have a quite peculiar transformation of the Valentinian system in the doctrine of the so-called Docetae, as preserved in the Philosophumena (viii. 8-11). From the xxxxxxxx, who is small as the seed of a fig-tree but infinite in power, proceed first of all three Aeons, which by the perfect number ten enlarge themselves to thirty Aeons; from these proceed innumerable other bisexual Aeons, and from these an infinite multiplicity of Ideas, of which those of the third Aeon are expressed and shapen in the lower world of darkness as xxxxxx.

The Platonic foundation of the Valentinian system is very perceptible in this its last offshoot, though mixed up in a peculiar way with Oriental Dualism. At the same time these Docetae endeavour to reduce the metaphysical distinctions which they maintain to merely gradual ones. No part of Christendom therefore is entirely excluded from the knowledge of the Redeemer, and participation in His Redemption: all, even those of the lower grades of the spirit-world, participate at least xxxxxx in the Truth. The way in which all, and each according to his measure, attain knowledge of the truth, is, as in the doctrine of the church, Faith. Since the Redeemer’s advent–so we read expressly–“Faith is announced for the forgiveness of sins.”

(the xxxxx text is my addition – these stand for Greek words reproduced in the original that I do not know how to translate and which do not transliterate to EU).

I draw attention to this fragment about the Docetae to underline that in testing out the hypothesis bits of evidence - like the above - may come up which seem to go against it. But this evidence is of one element in Gnosticism and actually it doesn’t go against the hypothesis; it merely suggests (if Epiphanius is right) that in one later sect of Gnosticism the elitist eschatology characteristic of the classic schools was attenuated but not abolished.

[Sobornost]

Here is what the Valentinian Gospel of Truth has to say -

Of the pneumatics

Those whose name he knew in advance were called at the end, so that one who has knowledge is the one whose name the Father has uttered. For he whose name has not been spoken is ignorant.

Of the hyllicals/somatics

Indeed, how is one to hear, if his name has not been called? For he who is ignorant until the end is a creature of oblivion, and he will vanish along with it. If not, how is it that these miserable ones have no name, (that) they do not have the call?

Of the psychics and their evangelisation by the true pneumatic

He has brought many back from error. He has gone before them to their places, from which they had moved away, since it was on account of the depth that they received error, the depth of the one who encircles all spaces, while there is none that encircles him. It was a great wonder that they were in the Father, not knowing him, and (that) they were able to come forth by themselves, since they were unable to comprehend or to know the one in whom they were. For if his will had not thus emerged from him - for he revealed it in view of a knowledge in which all its emanations concur.

See

earlychristianwritings.com/t … ridge.html

Here is what Harold W. Attridge and George W. MacRae have to say about the dating of the Gospel of Truth (The Nag Hammadi Library in English, p. 38):
A Valentinian work entitled the “Gospel of Truth” is attested in the Adversus Haereses (3.11.9) of Irenaeus. Unfortunately the heresiologist reveals little about the content of the work, except that it differed significantly from the canonical gospels. Given the general Valentinian affinities of the text of Codex I, it is quite possible that it is identical with the work known to Irenaeus.

[Sobornost]

Has anyone got any views on this?

[Sobornost]

I’ll take that as a ‘No’ then