Dear All–
The lecture I gave in 2012 was somewhat early on in my research and writing process. At this point I have already written over 300K words and I’m needing to shorten my chapters prior to publication. There’s no way that I can give you guys everything in advance. I am drawing on some 1000-1500 different primary and secondary sources–including all the ones that you have mentioned in your posts (including the recent book on Bohme–I had part of that in manuscript before it was published). In terms of doing the research, I have been looking at dozens of universalist authors who haven’t been mentioned in either Ramelli’s The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis or Parry’s All Shall Be Well. Many of them have not been translated into English. In my opinion one of the problems in the pro-universalist literature has been a tendency to start with a rather limited database (i.e., the “good” universalists–or the ones that one happens to like).
One really has to look at a range of Christian universalists to understand the complexity of the different views and their many divergences and differences from one another. There has been a tendency to ignore both the German-language and the French-language universalists of the 1700s and 1800s–almost all of whom were Bohmists. Calling them Bohmists or esotericists isn’t a slur; they regarded themselves as Bohmists, and as Christians, and as universalists. So the obvious question is: How do these German and French authors fit into the picture? I think you may be surprised if you read my book to see that there is a Christian universalist movement that is much bigger than you might think it is. My work is not narrowing but enlarging the field of discussion. I’m sure I won’t convince everyone with my arguments, but I do hope that my readers and reviewers won’t choose to ignore evidence that doesn’t fit their preconceptions. (Of course I’m trying not to fall into that trap myself.)
If someone says, “I am a Christian universalist,” then my question is: “Which of the various types are you?” A purgationist (i.e., one who believes in post-mortem punishment) endorses a very different theology than an “ultra” (i.e., one who denied post-mortem punishment). This is a major rift among universalists that has never been resolved, and perhaps never will be. The “ultras” (e.g., Moltmann) are so taken up with what has already happened when Christ went to the cross, then it seems like blasphemy to affirm that anyone–no matter how sinful–would need to suffer after they have died for crimes committed during the earthly life. The “purgationists,” like Parry, deny that the mass murderer (who. let us say, is shot down by the police as he is gleefully killing his victims) will go immediately into the blissful presence of God. So how to resolve this debate? it was never resolved during decades of controversy in the nineteenth century. Note that Talbott, at the end of his chapter on The Inescapable Love of God, makes the amazing statement that some people are saved without every being forgiven at all. They persistently and permanently reject God’s offer of grace, so they suffer torment until they have fully paid for their own sins. So, for Talbott, there seem to be two DIFFERENT ways of salvation. One can be saved by grace, or one can save oneself through one’s own suffering. This passage in Talbott highlights one of the difficulties, I believe, in all forms of purgationism, i.e., the tendency to think of salvation of salvation as coming in two antithetical ways. There is a great irony here. Talbott in seeking to extend grace to everyone, ends up saying that some people are saved without grace at all. Is that defensible? What do you think? Yet, if we reject postmortem purgationism, then are we ready to accept the radical implications of ultra universalism? Note that most of the rank-and-file universalists of the 1800s (not the elite authors) thought it was morally corrosive to say that people can commit horrific crimes and never repent and then go immediately at death into God’s blissful presence. Yet that is the implication of the ultra view, is it not? (Maybe the elite people expect that good breeding keeps people in line. They don’t have to fear the fire–whether of the temporary or the permanent kind.)
Here’s something else to consider: Origen was not the first self-professed Christian universalist. The story doesn’t start with Origen–or with Clement of Alexandria for that matter. If you go back to the most important universalist historians of the nineteenth century–Hosea Ballou, Richard Eddy, and John Wesley Hanson, then you will find that all of them looked to the gnostics of the early second century as their forbears. They mention Basilides, Valentinus, and Carpocrates. Twenty-first century universalists seem one and all to have ignored this. So there is another obvious question: Is there any link between the sort of universalism that these “gnostics” taught and the sort of universalism that Origen taught? Is that possible? (Yes, “gnostic” is a complicated term–but still in use among scholars. See David Brakke’s The Gnostics, and Birger Pearson’s works for a vindication of the term. And see the work by scholar of gnosis, Michael William’s Rethinking Gnosis, for a rejection of the idea that gnostics were all soteriological elitists and determinists. This is one of the problems with Ramelli’s argument, by the way. She is following the earlier literature but ignores Williams). If you can read German, then you should by all means read Holger Strutwolf, Gnosis als System, published in the 1990s, which is wholly devoted to the connection between Valentinian thought and Origen’s thought. (Ramelli never acknowledges this book by Strutwolf.) Sorry guys–the gnostic-esoteric idea is not some kind of fundamentalist slur. There were early Christian gnostic universalists, and they preceded Origen, and–if Strutwolf is correct–then Origen has taken the gnostic framwork and adapted it and made it more orthodox. But the fall-and-restoration-of-souls motif goes back to Plato (in a non-universalist form) and then it gets adapted (in a universalist form) in early second century gnosis. The bottom line in Origen is that you really cannot grasp his eschatology of final salvation for all without also considering his protology of preexistent souls that sin and “fall” into material bodies. We might say that universalism was first born in second-century Alexandria, and then reborn among the English and German Bohmists in the 1690s and early 1700s. There’s good evidence to back that up.
There’s a deep theological problem for christocentric universalism generally, and this relates to the failure to account for the Spirit’s historic coming on Pentecost. The Christ-did-everything-for-us-on-Good-Friday-Holy-Saturday-and-Easter point of view leaves out something essential. There is no church prior to Pentecost. The Holy Spirit must come and “seal” (see Eph. 1) a particular group of people, in a particular time, and a particular place. The church is constituted by the Holy Spirit. So there are in effect two foundational narratives–the Good Friday to Easter and Ascension narrative, and the Day of Pentecost narrative. When the Spirit comes, the Spirit does not come on all humanity. On Pentecost we do not have comprehensive universalism (for all people without exception) but what I would call representative universalism. There are people “from” all nations (see Rev. 5:9 and 7:9). Think of this: If the Holy Spirit is God, then we have no more right to ignore the work of God the Spirit than we have to ignore the work of the God the Son. Christocentric universalists–including such brilliant thinkers as Barth and Balthasar–would seem to be bi-nitarian rather than tri-nitarian. Robert Jenson–not mean theologian–says that large parts of Barth’s Church Dogmatics are implicitly bi-nitarian. Balthasar in his Theology of History moves from Christ’s Friday, Saturday, and Easter work to “universalized presence” of Christ and the church age. He never even mentions Pentecost, and instead sees the foundations of the church in the forty days’ appearances of Jesus. Once again, we have bi-nitarianism rather than tri-nitarianism. This could help to explain why christocentric universalism devolved over time into unitarianism during the 1800s. (The universalists merged with the unitarians in 1961, but the denomination had become increasingly unitarian in outlook from 1805 onward–when Hosea Ballou published his treatise attacking atonement theology.) Q: Why did christocentric universalism become unitarian? A: It was never more than bi-nitarian. So it was moving the direction of unitarianism from the beginning.
Okay–I know I’ve included a lot of provocative statements in this posting. But my book will have a lot more argumentation and documentation to back up some of these claims. But I expect you all have some thoughts on this.
Best,
MM
. I actually grew quite fond of you when watching your lecture - I like you when you crack a joke; you are sweet and funny 
You’ve certainly opened up a very interesting discussion - but its a discussion to be peer reviewed by others (and others more competent than I ) and you’ll get that.
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), i’m happy to discuss (where my knowledge is up to the task, which is a rare occurance…though i may have the odd question to ask that might help push things along) and agree to disagree, if at the end we still don’t agree.
). If the book sells well among people who already agree uncritically with it anyway – well there’s no harm in that. Truth has nothing to fear from error and we have a free press. Obviously if it has wider influence then he’ll get some response – and right to reply is only fair.