Richard Bauckham 'Universalism a historical survey'

[Alex_Smith]

Richard Bauckham ‘Universalism a historical survey’ Themelios 4-2

A short (six pages) review of Universalism through church history. (You may remember Bauckham from ‘The Christ Files’ documentary.) In this short survey he shows the primary beginning of Universalism in the theology of Origen and then traces it’s development through history noting that the liberal German scholar Schleiermarcher gave it prominence in the modern era. Worth the read.

s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/j … uckham.pdf

[JasonPratt]

Thanks Alex (and Luke!)

I wonder when this article was written? Baukham’s own exegesis of RevJohn (in his book on that topic) ended up being expressly universalistic in parts; a fact he repeatedly acknowledged and then kind of went back on for no clear reason in the text. (It helped, if one wants to call it ‘helping’ , that he either didn’t notice or avoided calling attention to several key portions of the text which would have strengthened the exegetical case in RevJohn even more.)

[URPilgrim]

Bauckham “eternal punishment firmly asserted in official creeds”

He footnotes only the Athanasian Creed (4th or 5th century?)… Fourth Lateral Council (1213CE)… etc… etc…

Firmly asserted he says… correct me if I’m wrong, but I do not recall ETC ever being firmly asserted in any early creed… pre 451 Chalcedonian creed.

Sorry… I didn’t get pass the first paragraph.

[Alex_Smith]

1979. A searchable index of all editions of Themelios is here: thegospelcoalition.org/publications

Glad to hear ECT/P has be “widely abandoned” since 1800.

Given it was written in 1979, it unfortunately doesn’t take into account more recent conservative universalisms.

I’m glad he at least acknowledges there’s a range of types of universalism.

Not sure how he can claim “the final unity of all things with God is more Platonic than biblical in inspiration.”, straight after quoting 1 Cor 15:28, “God shall be all in all”??

Here’s a big error, “mainstream orthodoxy has always regarded this life as decisive for a man’s fate and hell as the final destiny of the wicked.” I’m fairly sure you’ve seen the long list of examples of Church Fathers and theologians who believed in some postmortem salvation!

Glad he acknowledges that the, “father of the fathers”, Gregory of Nyssa was a universalist and that ECT/P is mainly just a Western idea.

On the 1st page he claims there weren’t many universalists, but then on the 2nd page he says that it was “not uncommon”?

Glad he acknowledges the doubts around the condemnation of Origen’s universalism.

He makes some interesting comments on p3. I like the sounds of “Schleiermacher represents a ‘Reformed’ universalism”.

p4 continues with some excellent insights e.g. “the redeemed would be severely marred by their sympathy for the damned.”

Not sure how he can make those assertions about aionios on p5 without backing them up! I assume that’s now outdated by modern research, such as:
gorgiaspress.com/bookshop/sh … df7582728a

I’m not a liberal universalist, so I won’t try to defend his comments against them

I’d forgotten that was Barth’s angle, quite interesting to make predestination Christocentric.

I love this quote, “If there is either eternal punishment or annihilation for some, then either God is not perfectly good - since He does not desire the salvation of all His creatures - or His is not omnipotent - since His purpose has finally failed in the case of some. Only universal salvation can vindicate the omnipotent good God in whom Christians believe.”

[URPilgrim]

I finally finished reading the article It was a good one

You make some good observations Alex that agree I with also.

Yes, your last quote you point to is a good one.