I’m still offering to explain the role of Erasmus in the promotion of non sectarian universalism (via Origen) and to do a digest about universalism in other monotheistic religions (Mike mentions Islam and Judaism in his lecture and talks - IMHO he’s misinformed or at least only partially informed on both - and if he wants to ask questions about these I am happy to answer (I also know about Zoroastrianism and Mahayana Buddhism which verges on incarnational theism in its Bodhisattva doctrines -regarding universalism) 
Go for it, dude, I’d be very interested to read it.
Ditto!
At the risk of being overly simplistic, I thought I’d post something that struck me about this topic today.
It seems to me that it is impossible for Universalism to have come from Gnosticism, let alone possible for this to be proved. The reason is simply this: Gnosticism at its core is about secret knowledge as the way to salvation. If anything, universalism is its opposite, claiming (broadly speaking) that no knowledge; special or otherwise, is necessary to salvation. (Except perhaps knowledge of the Father and Son, but still; this is not secret knowledge by any stretch, and such knowledge does not originate with us). Trees can only produce fruit after their own kind; not opposite fruit!
Well put, Mel! Clement, Origen, and the other early opponents of Gnosticism tagged them on much the same points.
I think people get confused because the early orthdox (and proto-orthodox) Christian universalists also stressed coming punishment, and this was again over-against the Gnostics ;who thought most of humanity were doomed trash, but (despite some poetic code language for learning secret password phrases) didn’t really think that the overgod cared about ‘punishing’ them per se – the overgod, to them, had no concern about morality at all, nor about dealing with creation and creatures at all, thus much less about enforcing moral judgments at all.
What ABOUT the Pharaoh of the Exodus? It is true that Pharoah wasn’t initially inclined to free the Israelites. But it clearly states that it was GOD who hardened Pharaoh’s heart from the beginning. And I’m not sure if the hardening of hearts is God’s modus operandi on a nomal basis, but it sure was in this instance, geared toward His ultimate purpose of delivering Israel. Nor do I know the mechanics about how God is able to harden someone’s heart, but then the implication is that if God can harden a heart, He can just as well UNHARDEN it.
There are other instances in scripture where by God induces his will (directly or indirectly) upon certain figures. Take Saul, for example. After his rebellion, God delivered an evil spirit to vex him.Then several chapters later, Saul strips off his clothes and prophesies, apparently as a preventive measure to protect David from Saul’s wrath. We also have the strange case of Nebuchanezzer, who’s heart was made like a beasts and was made to eat grass like a cow for a time, until afterward, when he got his right mind back, actually REPENTED before the Lord in a REVERSAL of hardening of the heart.
Excellent assessment. May I have your permission to reproduce this in a paper I am writing?
Would very much appreciate a copy of the Word document of the ‘Michael McClymond on Universalim’ thread. Thanks.
I would strongly encourage you to read Robin Parry’s first response to Michael McClymond’s book here.
Also Thomas Talbott has also written an excellent response here.
Hi - thanks for the links - I was able to get them before the system flagged them.
I think there’s a rule that the moderator has to waive any brand-new member before you can post certain things. That will happen very quickly, and I hope you will post and comment a lot in the future!
@JasonPratt
I can get them now by clicking on “View hidden content” in kenanada’s post which now says:
Weird. What actually flagged the links was the system, not “the community” or “users”! – yet that’s how the system explained it to viewers.
The system seems to have considered two posts linking off to pdfs elsewhere, posted at about the same time in different threads, as suspicion of spam. It was the second post that threw the trigger.
The system then threw no less than 32 flags at moderators (including myself) over those two posts (probably half and half split between them).
Anyway, I made sure they were legitimized. And the new member should be back to normal.
Incidentally, the new forum doesn’t hold new users’ posts until ad/mods have approved four or five or six of them or whatever. We might be able to recreate that functionality if we need to, but it’s not in place right now.
To the Evangelical Universalist Community at This Website–
This is a brief note to all of you here who discussed my TEDS lecture from around 2012 or 2013 so patiently and exhaustively. The 470+ contributions that you posted on this website are a substantial discussion of that brief lecture. The two-volume book The Devil’s Redemption runs to about 540,000 words, and so it offers perhaps a hundred times more material to consider than early lecture.
Some of you, I believe, have interpreted my thanks to those who had commented at this website in the acknowledgments of The Devil’s Redemption as snarky and insincere. If this is the case, then I’m not aware of it. It was not intended that way, because the earlier comments that I read online were indeed helpful to me. I was simply trying to give credit where credit is due. And some of you gave me more careful feedback on the work-in-progress than my own PhD students did. And so again I say: Thanks! If scholarship is sound, then it has to show itself as such by passing the test of stringent criticism. What sort of researcher would I be if I did not welcome criticism from evangelical universalists and other fellow-travelers at this website?
Robin Parry and I got to meet and talk at a recent meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. I enjoy speaking with Robin, and I find him an illuminating conversation partner across a wide range of topics. We are on friendly terms. I have not had the opportunity to meet either Thomas Talbott or Ilaria Ramelli, but would welcome the opportunity to do so.
For those strongly interested in the topic of Christian universalism, I hope that you find it possible and worthwhile to read through The Devil’s Redemption in its entirety. A wide range of universalist thinkers exist outside of the better known patristic authors (e.g., Origen) and English-language authors (e.g., George MacDonald). These others include Syriac, French, German, and Russian writers.
I would like to know if there are parts of my argument in The Devil’s Redemption that are factually incorrect.
All the patristic citations in the book (other than those to Syriac–which my colleague Professor Jeff Wickes reads, but I do not) refer to Greek or Latin sources as well as to English translations of those sources. You may let me know if something is factually wrong (michael.mcclymond@slu.edu). Please supply the page number so that I can follow up whatever you email me.
Because of my time limitations (and the new research and writing projects that beckon for my attention right now) I will not be able to come back to this website often, but I will regularly be checking the email address given above. If, for whatever reason, you need to send me something with a hefty attachment (i.e., more than 20 megs), then you can send that to michaelmcclymond@gmail.com
If your immediate reaction to the lecture or to what you have heard about the book is that I am wildly off base on an interpretive level, then please read first the whole of the work, and then, after reading it through, let me know where the interpretation is mistaken. I am offering a narrative of the development of Christian doctrine that conflicts with what many or most of you presently believe. Any factual corrections I would welcome. You don’t need to read everything I wrote to note a factual mistake.
Christ is risen!
Easter blessings to all,
MM
Michael,
Thank you for your gracious request. FWIW, I only read the sections where you critiqued authors whom I have read. And my chagrin at what I thought was a failure to engage their actual views was exemplified by Thomas Talbott’s detailed response concerning where he believed his views were misrepresented. His reading of what his actual views are all paralleled my own understanding from reading all of his work, and they matched my initial reactions as to where your interpretations were incorrect.
I don’t know how to avoid concluding that you covered so much ground that you were not able to do justice to the many writers whose views you summarize, and thus to be skeptical that I would be getting an accurate reading of other authors whose views I have not already scrutinized.
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He is risen indeed! May all creation honor and glorify Him!
I shall just ditto Bob’s post in its details and move along, since I have other things to do; but I appreciate the Easter outreach blessings.
Hi Michael – He is Risen Indeed!
I’m don’t often post here anymore, and I don’t know Robin Parry (although I really liked his book ‘The Biblical Cosmos). But simply from my own point of view – and it is merely a private opinion - I think there are many factual errors and misunderstandings of both primary and secondary sources in your two volume work. I don’t think this is simply a result of the latitude of interpretation. I think you have misread texts for perfectly noble reasons - but you have still misread them. I can’t go into every instance - because I’d have to write a couple of volumes of refutation. But for starters I’m not at all convinced that the texts you imply are evidence for Gnostic universalism in the second century actually demonstrate universalist teachings at all.
IS THE ‘PISTIS SOPHIA’ A UNIVERSALIST TEXT?
I’ll give you one example – in volume 1 Section 2.3 you clearly imply that the Pistis Sophia is somehow Universalist. Note the following extracts:
‘’Say to those who will abandon the teachings of the First Mystery: woe to you for your punishment is severe beyond all men. For you will remain in great frost, ice and hail in the midst of the dragon and the outer darkness, and you will not be cast into the world from this time henceforth forever, but you will perish in that place. And at the dissolution of the All universe you will be consumed and become non-existent forever’’ (P.S., Book III, c. 102, p. 260)
This woe oracle against apostates is immediately preceded by the Saviour’s statement that those who ‘’teach erroneous teachings and all those who learn from them’’ will be punished severely and then annihilated. Later in Book III the Saviour also says that those who receive the Mysteries and then fall again into sin and are unfortunate enough to die in their sins without repentance will also be consumed and come to nothing (see P.S., Book 111, c.121 p.308).
In both Book III and Book IV the ‘Saviour’ teaches that there is always hope for the person who has committed every possible sin but then discovers the mysteries of light, can become one of the elect and ascend to the heavens free of sin. However, the elect are limited in number:
‘’… when the number of perfect souls exist I will shut the gates of light. And no one will go within from this hour… [after this even those souls who find the mysteries of light] will come to the gates of light and they will find that the number of perfect souls is completed… Now those souls will knock, at the gates of light, saying: ‘O Lord, open to us.’ I will answer and say to them: ‘I do not know you, whence you are.’ And they will say to me ‘We have received from thy mysteries, and we have completed the whole teaching, and thou hast taught us upon thy streets.’ And I will answer and say to them: ‘I do not know you, who you are, you who do deeds of iniquity and evil up until now. Because of this go to the outer darkness.’’ (P.S. Book III, c. 125, pp. 315- 16)
In Book IV the ‘Saviour’ teaches that the following categories of sinners face both torment and then annihilation:
The murderer who has never committed another sin will be punished by tormenting demons in the places of frost and snow will be judged and then be lead to the ‘‘outer darkness’’ to await the time when the ‘it will be destroyed and dissolved’’; (P.S., Book IV, c.146, p. 378)
The continual blasphemer will be dragged around by the tongue, punished with fire and then taken to the outer darkness to await being ‘’destroyed and dissolved’’; (c. 14 pp. 379-380)
The pederast is tormented by demons then taken to the outer darkness to be ‘destroyed and dissolved’ (P.S., c.147 pp. 380-381).
Those that make a dish of lentils mixed with sperms and menstrual blood and then eat it declaring: ‘we believe in Esau and Jacob’ – are judged by the Saviour to have committed the sin surpassing all others. These will be taken directly to the outer darkness to be consumed and perish in ‘the place where there is no pity’ (P.S., c. 147 p. 381)
See, Schmidt, Carl, Macdermot, Violet, Pistis Sophia, Leiden, Brill 1978.
That’s one of many examples. I hope this is useful Michael.
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DID THE HISTORIANS OF THE UNIVERSALIST CHURCH OF AMERICA CLAIM LINEAGE WITH THE ANCIENT GNOSTICS?
You make the claim in at least two places that the American Universalist Historians were happy to claim lineage from the Gnostics. You speak about this as a ‘datum of history’ – and claim that this ‘datum’ forms part of your argument that Universalism is derived from Gnosticism – albeit a small part. And you strongly imply that this is a hushed up wrong by contemporary Christian Universalists.
I think this is an error of fact on your part because you have mixed up the actual datum of historical evidence with your interpretation of this evidence.
First, it strikes me that if these Universalist historians did in any way claim any lineage with Gnosticism (if they did) it proves nothing because they were in no position to judge whether or not this was true. There was hardly any evidence available to them of actual Gnostic writings at this time.
Second, the two most important historians – Hosea Ballou 2d. in the 1820s and John Wesley Hanson in the 1890s - do not make the claim that Christian universalism was an outgrowth of Gnosticism. Rather, they claim that the Church Fathers mention that Valentinus, Basilides and Carpocrates were universalists; but add that these Church Fathers do not condemn them for having been universalists; they condemn them for other reasons (Carpocrates is condemned for recommending depraved immoralism, for example). The unwitting testimony that Ballou and Hanson took from this is that the Church Fathers were not concerned to condemn Universalism as such – not that the Gnostics were part of their Christian Universalist lineage. (I note that you have not discussed Hanson in this connection - but it would be helpful if you did; because he is the most important of the three historians and the one most universalists know about).
Third, it is only Richard Eddy, writing in the 1880’s, who actually seems to to claim lineage with the Gnostics (this is implied because he skips directly from the Bible to the Gnostics in his genealogy of universalism. (by way of contrast to Hanson who goes to great pains to look for evidence of universalism in the sub-Apostolic era, not all of which convinces today). And unlike Ballou 2d. and Wesley Hanson, Eddy was not writing a scholarly history of Christian universalism. Rather he makes his claims about Gnosticism in a brief introduction to a book about the History of Universalism in the USA. Moreover Eddy remarks that Valentinus, Basilides, and Carpocrates give us the first evidence of Universalism after the New Testament because these men taught the salvation of ‘the entire race’ through a cycle of progressive reincarnations. The phrase ‘salvation of the race’ shows that Eddy was actually influenced by Spiritualism and/or Theosophy in his speculations. Eddy’s dabblings in Blavatsky’s Theosophy was not something that Ballou 2nd or Hanson had in common with him.
Fourth, Wesley Hanson and Richard Eddy were following Ballou in seeing the Gnostics Valentinus, Basilides and Carpocrates as Universalists – but Ballou’s reading of the Church Fathers was fauk=lty.
• There is no evidence from Iranaeus – his main source -that the Valentinians were Universalist. Moreover, the Valentinian texts that have been discovered in the 20th century are not in any way Universalist; I’ll say more in a later post).
• Regarding Basilidies – Clement speaks about him having taught ‘Apocatastais’/Restoration – but only for the elect of whom Basilides thought there were very few. Clement was the only source available to Ballou about this. Hippolytus (the relevant portions of which were discovered a decade or more after Ballou was writing) tells us Basilides taught that most beings would be excluded from the Pleroma of Bliss but would find a place for their own lower level of existence somewhere in the Cosmos. However, this would not be a torment for them because a great forgetting of the Pleroma would overtake the rest of the cosmos so no one would suffer from gnawing envy for what they had lost. That’s not really universalism as far as I can see – but he’s first in your list of Gnostic Universalists in an Appendix to vol. 2.
• Regarding Carpocrates – I’ll leave him for another post; as with the Valentinians.
Fifth, it is fair to say that all three historians doubted the more lurid charges brought against these Gnostics by the heresiologists. The reason why they are cautious about tales of depravity - for example - is because they were writing in a solid Protestant tradition that saw every movement that had been suppressed or persecuted by the Catholic Church as possibly a proto-form of Protestantism. The memory of how the Catholic Church misrepresented and persecuted the early Protestant Reformers was a big part of their historical narrative. Indeed, at the time of the Reformation French Calvinist historians lauded the Cathars as proto-Calvinists. And this tendency in Protestants history writing probably reached its peak in the early twentieth century when von Harnack lauded Luther as the true successor of Marcion.
But the point I’d like to emphasize here is that there is a big difference between evidence/datum and interpretation. And I think here you are over interpreting the evidence.
All the best
Dick (Richard)
Notes –
Number 1.
I found the following illuminating concerning the Cathars and Lutheran and Reformed historiography.
‘’In the famous bull ‘Exsurge, Domine’ of June 1520, Leo X sought to undermine Luther by associating him with heretics of previous centuries… Luther’s Catholic contemporaries … tried to demonstrate that Luther was part of a continuous tradition of wicked dissent which reached back to the Manicheans but could be traced through the preceding centuries in the form of Waldensians, Albignesians [Cathars], and Hussites, among others … For their part the Protestants had initially been concerned to counter the accusations of novelty, arguing that a true (although invisible) Church had always existed… The Lutheran Matthais Flacius Illyricus provided a concrete formulation for a continuity with the past … [He] emphasised the similarities between the Waldensians and the Protestants, while at the same time distinguishing the Cathars from the former; even so, he presented the Cathars as part of the same process in that both seemed to be denying the apostolic validity of the Catholic Church and rejecting priestly intercession. On this basis, at the synod of the Reformed Churches held at LA Rochelle in 1607, the French Protestants commissioned a history from Jean-Paul Perrin, pastor of Nyons … He claimed that Waldensians and Cathars did not differ in their beliefs, and that both were falsely accused of Manicheanism by a Catholic Church intent on crushing and discrediting these proponents of the true faith. By this he was able to construct a formidable martyrology for Protestants … Only [in the mid-eighteenth century] did Protestant writers begin to turn upon Cathars, in the word of Arno Bost, ‘with the complete aversion of disappointed love’ (from ‘Protestantism and Catharism’ in Malcolm Barber’s, ‘The Cathars’, London and New York, 2013)’’
I think that this sense of a true but invisible supressed intitially by Catholicism also informs the Universalist historians in their view of the Gnostics and they inherited this from earlier Protestant historiography. Likewise I think that if these historians had had access to the Berlin and Nag Hamadi codices they might also have turned upon the ancient Gnostics ‘with the complete aversion of disappointed love’
Number 2.
My brief discussion of Basilides here has been informed by reading the relevant parts of the Ante Nicene Fathers and by the essay on Basilides by Birger A. Pearson in ‘A Companion to Second-Century CHirstian Heretics (Marjanene and Luomanene Eds.), Brill, Leiden – Boston, 2008).
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WAS SIMON MAGUS A UNIVERSALIST?
Hello again Michael 
While I think on it: you drop strong hints that Simon Magus - whom the heresioligists named ‘The Father of Heresies’ - taught universalism in a couple of footnotes in Devil’s Redemption. If that were true it would be something of a coup for you - so I’d like to unpack my thoughts about the merits of this now.
No writings of Simon have survived. Our sources about him are secondary ones (and hostile ones too): the Book of Acts, the writings of the hersiologists, specifically Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Epiphnanius (our major secondary sources for his belief system), and the biographical material about him mixed up with legend in the Pseudo Clementine literature
You rely on a work by a contemporary scholar April DeConick’s thoughts in her book, ‘The Gnostic New Age’ for your comments on Simon. I think that a perusal of the more contemporary sources would have helped you get a better picture of Simon - as I hope to show.
Yes DeConick does claim that Simon taught universalism in contrast to other Samritan sects of his time that had merely a local reach. She also claims that ‘Helen of Troy’ – the woman he had rescued from a brothel – was viewed by Simon as a symbol of degraded humanity whom Simon was setting free though his hieros-gamos (sacred marriage) to Helen.
From my readings of the herisiologists I have no issue with the factual basis of her assertions. It is at true that hostile sources tells us that these things were facts about Simon. Of course its impossible to find our whether the hostile sources are completely accurate without our finding writings by Simon himself. But even with this proviso - the same hostile sources tell us other things that give the lie to any idea that Simon taught Apokatastasis.
Yes, Irenaeus and Hippolytus write of Simon’s plan to redeem ‘humanity’, but they both also strongly suggest that the ‘divine humanity’ that Simon will manage to save consists only of those who respond to his message and carry out his rituals. Only these people – ‘those who are his’ and ‘his own particular adherents’ - are to be preserved from destruction at the dissolution of the material cosmos:
‘On this account, he pledged himself that the world should be dissolved, and that those who are his should be freed from the rule of them who made the world’. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies I, 23)
‘But, again, they speak of a dissolution of the world, for the redemption of his own particular adherents’. (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 6, 14)
And now to Epiphanius. I understand that specialists on Simon Magus think that in their attacks on Simon both Hippolytus and Epiphanius quoted directly from ‘The Great Declaration’ - a work purporting to be by him. Some scholars think this work was a forgery – but DeConick asserts that she thinks it genuinely reflects Simon’s theology. So – since I am no Simon scholar - I will have to give DeConick (who is your source) the benefit of the doubt. She certainly gives Epiphanius, a comparatively late source about Simon, an equal worth with Irenaeus and Hippolytus (which she must be doing on the basis that she thinks Epiphanius had access to ‘The Great Declaration’ I guess?).
Epiphanius completely dismantles any idea that Simon was a Universalist
‘’This man offers certain names of principalities and authorities too, and he says that there are various heavens, describes powers to go with each firmament and heaven, and gives outlandish names for them. He says that one cannot be saved unless he learns this catechism and how to offer sacrifices of this kind to the Father of all, through these principalities and authorities. This world has been defectively constructed by wicked principalities and authorities, he says. But he teaches that there is a decay and destruction of flesh, and a purification only of souls — and of these (only) if they are established in their initiation through his erroneous “knowledge ”.
(Epiphanius, Panarion 4, 2)
DeConick does not use this passage but she does paraphrase the following one from the Panarion which again puts paid to any idea that Simon believed in Universal restoration.
''He (Simon) claimed that the Law is not God’s but the law of the left hand power, and that prophets are not from a good God either, but from one power or another. And he specifies a power for each as he chooses — the Law belongs to one, David to another, Isaiah to another, Ezekiel to still another, and he attributes each particular prophet to one principality. All of these are from the power on the left and outside of the Pleroma; and whoever believes the Old Testament is subject to death’’.
(Panarion 4,5)
So Simon Magus the Samaritan, according to Epiphanius, taught that the Jewish prophets were beyond salvation because they came from ‘outside the Pleroma’ (the realm of the fullness of the Divine Mind) and that all who believed the Old Testament (worshipping the creator God and practising the Torah) are subject to death. When April DeConick paraphrases this she interprets the phrase ‘subject to death’ to mean that anyone found obeying the Torah in Simon’s communities were executed. Whether her interpretation is correct, or whether the ‘death’ spoken of is actually ‘spiritual death’, this passage strongly suggests that all practising Jews and perhaps Jewish Christians too are lost – a non-universalist idea that was later to be reiterated by Marcion.
The evidence suggests to me that it is untrue that Simon Magus was a Universalist in the strong sense of believing in universal restoration. He was a Universalist in the weak sense perhaps – he thought his message was to be proclaimed to all humanity rather than simply to the Samaritans. However, he did not envisage salvation for those who rejected his message. I rest my case on Simon.
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Hi Qaz – just come back for a little visit here
I had no idea what the ‘genetic fallacy’ is – but unabashed, I looked it up:
Description: Basing the truth claim of an argument on the origin of its claims or premises.
Logical Form:
The origin of the claim is presented.
Therefore, the claim is true/false.
Example:
Lisa was brainwashed as a child into thinking that people are generally good. Therefore, people are not generally good.
Explanation: That fact that Lisa may have been brainwashed as a child, is irrelevant to the claim that people are generally good.
OK so using Devil’s Redemption as our example, the ‘genetic fallacy’ description would pan out thus (?)
Universalism has its origins in the deep structures of Gnostic/Esoteric myths – as opposed to the Bible or the traditions of orthodox, Trinitarian Christianity. Therefore Christian Universalists today are heretics
Explanation: The fact that evidence shows that Gnostics were universalists and that Christian universalism in the past has flourished in the context of esoteric traditions like Christian Kabbala, and Bohmenist Theosophy, is irrelevant to the orthodox credentials of evangelical universalists and other Christian universalists today.
I think my view of the Devil’s Redemption is that the evidence actually doesn’t point to a Gnostic origin of universalism. Yes – that is my view (for what it’s worth)