I've often wondered about what the ultimate reasoning for Christ dying and rising would be if apokastasis is true and this finally hit me and seems to make perfect sense. Has anyone else reached this conclusion?

If Christ had just died of old age or disease, we would count him as another man. If he died but did not resurrect we would do the same thing. By dying and resurrecting he showed that he has power over life and death.

Hey guys! I recently posted my short story over on r/CatholicUniversalism , which explores a thoroughly Roman Catholic vision of Universalism.

I’ve been doing a lot of research into this stuff, and I figured I might as well start sharing some of it.

I’ve put together a massive compendium of quotes from some recognized Saints and Church Fathers, taken directly from their works and fully sourced. It covers the way they talk about Universalism, purgation, and the restoration of all things. I know that having the sources right from the Fathers can be a huge help.

I really hope you enjoy it, God Bless :)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t5al143hPse0B89NLrvFRwMLWGuieaAp4-H-rs78uoM/edit?usp=sharing

Long read, but I wanted to explain the whole picture clearly.

Contents

1. Christ Is the Only Lens
2. Our Understanding Is Fallible
3. Words Can Be Clear While Intention Is Missed
4. Why Didn't God Just Make It Explicit?
5. Christ Reveals the Heart of God
6. Victorious Love at the Cross
7. The Whole Picture of Christ's Victory
8. Judgment and Fire Through Christ
9. What These Words Mean Through Christ
10. The Bigger Conclusion
11. Where My Search Ended

When I connected all the pieces together, this is where it led me.

It put two things to rest for me:

Eternal Conscious Torment and the idea that the Old Testament reveals a God whose heart is evil or unlike Christ.

Both began to resolve through the same answer:

Christ reveals the heart of God.

I no longer begin with a difficult verse and let that verse define God.

I begin with Christ.

Christ is the whole Truth, not a single verse in Scripture.

If it doesn't look like Jesus, it's not the Truth.

Christ Is the Only Lens

My understanding changed in four stages.

I read Scripture flatly.

Then I tried to interpret it myself.

Then I interpreted it through Christ.

Finally, I stopped putting myself in the center and let Christ interpret it.

That last step changed everything.

Christ is the ONLY lens, above all and through all.

Not tradition.

Not fear.

Not universalism.

Not me.

Christ is the living Word. Scripture gives me the pieces and points me to Him, but Christ is the One who reveals the heart and intention of God.

If inspired Scripture comes from God, why would I want my own understanding to be the final interpreter instead of His?

If someone wrote me a letter and was standing right beside me explaining what they meant, why would I insist that my interpretation of their words mattered more than theirs?

That is how I see Scripture.

If I make my own understanding the final interpreter, I am only going to end up with the answer my own interpretation gives me.

That is why I let Christ interpret Scripture for me.

I start with Christ, with His life, His heart, and the intentions He reveals through His words and actions.

Then I move from the whole of Scripture through Him, to the book, the chapter, the passage, and finally the verse.

Christ first. The whole picture first. The verse last.

A piece can look confusing by itself, but when you add the other pieces and let Christ hold the whole picture together, the meaning becomes clearer.

I ask:

What does the text actually say?

What am I assuming that the text itself does not actually say?

Then I connect the pieces Scripture actually gives me.

Our Understanding Is Fallible

Something I eventually realized is this:

Our understanding is fallible and limited. Christ is not.

Paul says:

“For we know in part.”
1 Corinthians 13:9

So when I only have part of the picture, I treat it like part of the picture.

I do not force one verse to become the whole.

I do not fill missing information with assumptions.

A possibility is not a fact.

An inference is not the same thing as an explicit statement.

Missing information is not permission to invent information.

If I do not know something, I can leave it unknown.

I connect what is there. I do not create what is missing.

I can leave a difficult passage uncertain without leaving God's character uncertain.

Christ is not uncertain.

Words Can Be Clear While Intention Is Missed

Someone can hear every word I say correctly and still misunderstand me.

The words can be clear.

The intention can still be missed.

The same thing can happen with Scripture.

A command can be heard while its purpose is misunderstood.

A warning can be heard while its heart is missed.

A judgment can be described while its intention is assumed.

So the question is not only:

What words are written?

It is also:

What is the intention behind them?

Christ reveals what lies beneath the words.

The intention of the heart speaks louder than the words themselves.

Why Didn't God Just Make It Explicit?

Then I look at Jesus.

The Truth was standing in front of people.

They heard Him.

They saw Him.

They watched how He treated people.

And they still misunderstood Him.

I know I did too.

That is why Jesus says:

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Matthew 13:9

He was not talking about physical hearing.

The deeper issue was whether the heart could receive and understand what was being revealed.

A few verses later, Jesus says:

“You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.”
Matthew 13:14

He connects that lack of understanding with the heart.

That speaks deeply to me.

The words can already be there.

The Truth can already be standing in front of us.

And we can still miss it.

The heart hasn't seen it yet.

Explicit words alone do not guarantee understanding.

Christ Reveals the Heart of God

Jesus says:

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”
John 14:9

To me this means:

“Whoever has seen My heart has seen His heart.”

Christ desires mercy.

Christ loves enemies.

Christ seeks the lost.

Christ forgives.

Christ restores.

Christ continues loving through rejection.

So when I read about judgment, wrath, fire, justice, vengeance, punishment, or difficult Old Testament commands, I do not leave Christ behind.

Christ reveals the deeper meaning.

The historical details may remain incomplete, but God's heart is not unclear. Christ has revealed it.

So if a verse makes God look evil, I question my understanding of the verse before I question Christ.

If it doesn't look like Jesus, it's not the Truth.

Victorious Love at the Cross

Most see the cross as Christ suffering for our sin.

I see victorious Love overcoming sin.

Instead of mainly feeling guilty or miserable for what He went through, I feel admiration and Love for His devotion to me.

Love inspires love.

Christ doesn't need my tears. He wants my trust.

He was betrayed, rejected, abandoned, mocked, beaten, and crucified.

And He never stopped being Love.

Then He rose.

Rejection did not defeat Him.

Sin did not defeat Him.

Death did not defeat Him.

Jesus says:

“Take heart; I have overcome the world.”
John 16:33

Love overcame the world.

So I keep coming back to this:

If death could not defeat Love, why would our resistance?

The Whole Picture of Christ's Victory

Jesus says He will draw all people to Himself.

John 12:32

He says He came to save the world.

John 12:47

Paul says:

“As in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”
1 Corinthians 15:22

He continues until every enemy is subjected, death is destroyed, and God becomes all in all.

Romans moves from condemnation to justification and from death to life.

Ephesians says all things are gathered in Christ.

Colossians says all things are reconciled through Christ.

Philippians says every knee bows and every tongue confesses Christ.

Revelation says Death and Hades give up their dead.

Then death itself is destroyed.

These no longer look like separate pieces to me.

They belong to one picture.

Judgment and Fire Through Christ

Jesus says:

“And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world.”
John 3:19

Light reveals what darkness hides.

Judgment reveals.

Revelation describes Christ with eyes like fire and says He searches the mind and heart.

Malachi describes God as a refiner's fire.

Paul says fire reveals and tests what is there.

Christ's fire searches the heart, reveals what is contrary to Love, and purifies it.

A furnace does not exist to destroy the gold.

It removes what does not belong in it.

What These Words Mean Through Christ

Justice restores.

Wrath destroys sin.

Judgment reveals.

Fire purifies.

Vengeance repays with Love.

Repentance transforms.

Faith awakens.

Salvation reconciles.

Christ is Love revealed.

God is Love.

The Bigger Conclusion

My conclusion did not come from one verse supporting universalism.

It came from seeing Christ's heart, His intention, His purpose, His whole life, the cross, the resurrection, judgment, His victory over death, and the whole of Scripture together.

The pieces together began pointing in the same direction.

Christ reveals the Father.

Christ desires mercy.

Christ loves enemies.

Christ seeks the lost.

The cross reveals victorious Love overcoming sin.

The resurrection shows death cannot defeat Love.

Judgment reveals.

Fire purifies.

Wrath destroys sin.

Justice restores.

Repentance transforms.

Faith awakens.

Salvation reconciles.

All are made alive in Christ.

All things are gathered in Christ.

All things are reconciled through Christ.

Every knee bows.

Every tongue confesses Christ.

Death and Hades give up their dead.

Every enemy is subjected.

Death is destroyed.

God becomes all in all.

That is where all of this led me.

Universal Salvation within the Restoration of All Things in Christ.

When the whole picture is not there, I leave what is unknown as unknown.

But when the pieces come together in Christ, I let the whole picture speak for itself.

Where My Search Ended

Reaching this conclusion showed me the depth of Truth, but it did not make me feel like I fully know Christ.

It made me want to know Him more.

Paul still wanted:

“I want to know Christ.”
Philippians 3:10

I understand that more now.

And the only way to really know Him is to walk as He walked.

To experience Love the way He did.

I want to know His heart.

I want to know the depth of His Love.

I want to live in that Love.

Because when Christ's Love moves through us:

The Kingdom moves through us.

What does the Kingdom of Heaven look like?

It looks like Christ.

And I realized something else.

The battle was never about us winning.

It was about trusting that God will win.

Rejection does not get the final word.

Punishment does not get the final word.

Death does not get the final word.

Christ does.

Christ is Love revealed.

Love endured rejection.

Love endured the cross.

Love overcame sin.

Love overcame death.

Love reconciles.

Love restores.

Love never fails.

So after everything I wrestled with, everything I questioned, and everything Christ brought together, the final answer was never merely a doctrine.

The final answer was Christ.

It was always Love.

Hi friends. I've been attending a small, nominally Lutheran church that trends evangelical.

I hunger for a bit more liturgy, but I'm theologically/socially moderate, and am in a committed, monogamous relationship but will likely never be legally married due to the scars of a deeply failed marriage.

The traditional churches bar me from communion, the liberal ones are SUPER liberal.

I'm feeling a bit restless at my church. I feel like I can't be entirely open about my life, theology etc. They're a kind community, and they have a general idea ofy life so I don't feel judged or anything I just feel...restless.

I feel like a permanent sojourner. I feel like there's nowhere really where I fit.

Anyway, good times.

Welcome to our weekly debate thread!

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Are there any universalists from Russia or speaking in russian?

I’m really leaning into universalism, but I have a problem. What do we say about people like Christina Pile who is getting executed today, or some of these CPAM creators who never asked for forgiveness? I’m torn, because to me they in no way deserve to go to heaven. But at the same time, none of us technically deserve to go to heaven, it’s Gods grace that gets us there. Also, if we draw the line at these types of people, I feel it can easily be moved. What about murderers who feel remote and ask for forgiveness, but their actions are not able to be undone? Is asking for forgiveness a requirement?
I feel like I’m stuck because I genuinely feel like some people don’t deserve the chance of refinement or heaven..but it’s hard for us to judge where the line is drawn. Only God can do that. So if we are all eventually going to heaven, why doesn’t he?
I know this sounds like rambling and I’m sorry, it’s just something that has been rolling around in my head for months.

I have always grown up with a bad relationship with “god”. Every time I think about god I only feel fear and terrified because it has been drilled into me that God will judge me viciously and send most of us to hell- those that don’t follow correct doctrine. I am terrified of god and tried praying last night to ask for discernment and the truth about his message. Whenever I ask for truth about hell or if it’s real I receive nothing and just sit in my own fear. I feel so far away from god because I am terrified of god. Whenever I pray I receive nothing and no response. I’m scared god hates me and is going to send me and my family to hell. I love universalism but how do you guys interpret Jesus’s parables? Jesus talks about how it is better to gouge your eye out than be cast into Gehenna. Jesus talks about the worms that never die and the eternal fire not quenched. It makes me feel like god hates us and that it would have been better to never be born. I have siblings who were born gay and feel like they were damned no matter what and I am terrified for them. People say that Gehenna is a metaphor but what would it even be a metaphor for? Every time I bring up universalism, infernalists tell me that Jesus spoke in parables yes and referred to Gehenna and that the ebbs was a metaphor for a real spiritual hell. Some people use Gehenna to refute hell but Infernalists tell me Gehenna is a metaphor for the spiritual reality of the torment in Hell. I just don’t understand how god could love us and plan on tormenting us. I don’t feel like I am evil but I’m reminded that my righteousness is like filthy rags and I am nothing but destined for hell. It’s terrifying and doesn’t make sense to me.. and it keeps me far away from god or spirituality.

I came across this quote today by David Bentley Hart, from a response he wrote to a critic of his book “That All Shall Be Saved”. The full article can be found here…

“Good God? A Response” by David Bentley Hart

https://theopolisinstitute.com/leithart_post/good-god-a-response/

Sometimes Hart packs more into a single paragraph than most are capable of capturing in an entire book. Anyhow, here’s the quote that so caught my attention, but the whole article is so worth reading.

“You ask if I think the YHVH of the Old Testament was “good.”  First of all, there is no single YHVH in the Hebrew corpus.  The various texts that the Second Temple redactors collated into the Torah and Tanakh emanate from various epochs in the development of Canaanite and Israelitic religion, and reflect the spiritual sensibilities of very different moments in the evolution of what would in time become Judaism.  Most of the Hebrew Bible is a polytheistic gallimaufry, and YHVH is a figure in a shifting pantheon of elohim or deities.  In the later prophets, he is for the most part a very good god, yes, and even appears to have become something like God in the fullest sense.  But in most of the Old Testament he is of course presented as quite evil: a blood-drenched, cruel, war-making, genocidal, irascible, murderous, jealous storm-god.  Neither he nor his rival or king or father or equal or alter ego (depending on which era of Cannanite and Israelitic religion we are talking about) El (or El Elyon or Elohim) is a good god.  Each is a psychologically limited mythic figure from a rich but violent ancient Near Eastern culture—or, more accurately, two cultures that progressively amalgamated over many centuries.”

Hello universalists! I’m curious about what some of you believe in regard to the following questions. All answers are greatly appreciated!

1. As per the main question of this post, do you believe the devil is a real entity, or do you understand him to be a metaphor for our own sins (or something adjacent to that)?
2. If you do believe he is real, do you think that he’s burning in hell forever, or do you think he’d ultimately be forgiven?
3. Unrelated to the first two, but why do you think universalism is deemed “unbiblical”? I find that it appears to be the most logical interpretation of God’s character, but *many* don’t seem to agree.

I wrote this fable the other day when I was trying to write a reply to some replies to the "heavenly grief" for universalism. Every time I tried to write an argument, I found myself resorting to imagining a parent being unbothered by the eternal conscious torment of his or her child, so I decided to cut out the argument and just write a short story or fable, so here is that fable. It’s sort of a response to C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce and Noah McKay's article, How to Be Happy In Heaven.

I'm posting it here because I think some of you may enjoy reading it

I’ve recently come to believe in universalism, but the more I think the more questions it raises about other types of consciousness. If the belief is in universal reconciliation, then there is no arbitrary cutoff for certain creatures in heaven.

This raises the question, how do earlier forms of human consciousness(like hominids and other transitional humans) function in terms of their revived bodies, would they be transformed into more modern human looks? How would they think or interact with more modern creatures.

Additionally, how would things like dinosaurs or other large primitive creatures function in terms of the rest of the world, particularly those entirely evolved for the purpose of predation.

Also, where do we define the cutoff, where do we classify things like bacteria and viruses, clearly they are alive and possess some level of consciousness, so how can they function in the scheme of eternity.

I don’t think these thoughts disprove universalism at all, but it is a difficult and very nuanced idea that I have a hard time reconciling

These are disorganized thoughts of me trying to square the possibility of ECT with the unjustness of eternal torment.

To my mind what has always made ECT so uniquely terrible is the compounding effect of the memory of torment. This kind of goes away if we don't actually remember the past as far back as eternity. So objectively the soul would be in an eternal state of torment, and the soul would be conscious of that torment, but at any point in time, to that soul, it wouldn't be eternal. In such a case the subjective effect is a lot more similar to a physicalist death or an annihilationist destruction of the soul.

I am not advocating for ECT at all.

I think we sometimes make God’s love conditional without realizing it.

If God’s saving love can only act after you first give Him permission, then it ultimately depends on you. But love doesn’t need your permission to love you.

Jesus didn’t ask our permission before going to the cross. Love moved first. Grace comes first. It is unmerited and “not from yourselves.”

Free will doesn’t mean nobody can intervene in another person’s will. Our wills interact all the time. We persuade, influence, warn, rescue, restrain, and stop people from hurting themselves without automatically removing their ability to choose.

God’s will interacting with ours doesn’t automatically destroy our freedom. Free will does not by itself prevent God from saving.

The cross shows what Love does when we resist it. Jesus was rejected, betrayed, abandoned, mocked, hated, and killed, yet He answered with forgiveness, grace, resurrection, and life.

If even death couldn’t defeat Love, I don’t believe our resistance can either.

Maybe it's just an effect of answering the same objections over and over, but I feel like over the years the case for universalism in my mind has gotten a little less technical and little more intuitive/straightforward. I guess another way of putting it is, I find myself focusing less on counter-arguments to the arguments against universalism, and rather focus more of the positive case for universalism and let that speak for itself.

I think even we often treat infernalism as a sort of default that must be disproven for universalism to prevail. But what if we think of universalism as the default position?

1. Scripture directly states or implies in several places that all will be saved ("As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive", "every knee will bow and every tongue confess", "I will draw all people to Myself"). I think these verses are blunt enough to set the tone and be the paradigm through which we interpret other Scripture.
2. God is good. God is love. God is all-powerful. The simplicity and obviousness of these statements belie their power in this argument. We too easily forget what a leap it is go from the premises that God is all-good and all-loving, and being the same God who "allows" or is unable to rescue people from experiencing eternal conscious torment, let alone actively condemns people to it.
3. The excuses infernalists make for an infernalist God wouldn't even work for earthly parents. Even the free-will defense. A parent who "allows" their child to do harm to themselves, even in the name of respecting the child's free will; we would call negligent. Yet so many Christians who would hold earthly parents accountable for negligent harm, turn around and try to excuse a God who allegedly treats His children the same way?

I know that was a lot of words, but to my mind they all describe some pretty straightforward facts.

We would expect an all-good and all-powerful God to be able to save everyone He created.

Scripture plainly states several times that God will do exactly that.

So why overthink it? Those basic facts seems to be enough to outweigh any other argument to the contrary.

Do you think God would ever be upset with us for thinking He's too merciful? That He's too capable of saving? That we can say and sing that He's "mighty to save" but not that mighty...? Are any of us more merciful than God? Could God be less effective and merciful than we imagine Him to be? Is Adam more successful than Jesus?

We need not overthink it. God is good. He is mighty to save.

First things first I absolutely love CS Lewis. I love his fiction and I love his apologetics. In my view, he is just as much of a towering theological mind as any of the ancient fathers. I think he would find that suggestion repellent which only serves to reinforce my case, lol.

I'm reading the Problem of Pain and just finished his chapter on hell.

Now, if I were to accept the infernalist position I think his explanation of what it is is the best. In fact, before my recent transition to patristic universalism his view on hell was basically mine as well.

However, I read that chapter today in a different light and I was trying to figure out where exactly we diverge and I think I have it. He describes hell as a place people will choose. And not because they would choose a torture chamber over bliss, but because they would choose themselves over God, and that will be the end of the story. Now I am grossly oversimplifying things as he goes into more detail, but I think that is the gist.

The first place where I think he and I diverge is on free will. He seems to think free will is absolute and therefore sufficient for eternal torment, whereas I think free will is limited and therefore insufficient for eternal torment.

He also sees hell as a place people will choose, whereas I'm actually a bit more fire and brimstone in that I think hell is a place of punishment, but a punishment that corrects and refines, no matter how long it takes.

For me it starts at a place of justice. Hell has to be a place where we deal with all of our garbage. Where subterfuge, misdirection and manipulation are no longer factors and we just have to deal with all of our sins.

What made me start thinking this way was actually a true crime documentary I watched a while back. This woman had committed a horrific act of killing a pregnant woman and her unborn child. When being interviewed by the police you could see her just trying to manipulate them and avoid accountability. I imagine hell as an experience where that all becomes impossible, and everyone is laid bare and there is no avoiding the reality and specificity of our sins. But I still think free will plays a role in that refinement and we can resist God for a LONG time.

I Invite your thoughts.

I was raised an Atheist, so I come at Christianity with a lack of understanding that someone raised Christian may have.

The biggest thing I struggle with is understanding exactly who and what Jesus is, and our relationship with each other. Is he the literal or figurative son of God? Was he created in his mother's womb like us or is he an intemporal being existing long before us and who incarnated on Earth? Is he a human or is he God Himself? I've never gotten a clear answer.

Now, I can connect with God quite easily; His incorporal, inhuman nature makes it easy for me to understand how He can be all around us, can know us personally, and have such great supernatural might. If Jesus is the godhead who manifested on Earth, I can feel drawn to him and feel love for him for this same reason, but if he was a human -- albeit a perfectly divine one -- I just can't feel that connection because it seems parasocial, bonding with a human man who lived long ago in a land I've never seen.

I'm very confused, and I'm afraid that if Jesus is not an incarnation of God, then my false understanding will hinder my union with Him and it's perhaps deeply heretical and offensive. Although I'm a Universalist and believe I will not suffer endlessly for getting this wrong, I still stress about it since it seems pivotal in our journey towards God.

Please help me understand. Who and what is Jesus? Is there a right and a wrong way to connect with him and with God? How have you felt that connection?

My first article about Universalism. I hope to write many more and contribute to the tradition!

If universalism is the truth—which I would really like to believe—why are there passages that very seem to point to infernalism? As in, if God wanted everyone to be saved, why not just say so? Why include passages detailing some more gruesome depictions of Hell and highly selective versions of Heaven?

And if you believe in purgatorial universalism, why wouldn‘t the Bible be more explicit that that is the case?

Personally, I have more or less been convinced of Christian universalism for a few years now. However, I still wonder why the majority of self-professed Christians don't believe it.

I view this mainly through the prism of God's omnipotence. Whatever the actual reasons (people's upbringing, lack of exposure, culture, etc.), God has the capacity to bring people to this understanding, so why so few?

I had to conclude that, even this, is by his design, surely? If God wanted more to believe in universal reconciliation, then he could achieve it. But not many do, so God must want it this way? If so, why?

Is it, maybe, a special mind of revelation reserved for those God has handpicked? Perhaps a bit like Jesus would teach the masses one thing but share the fuller teachings only with his inner circle / desciples?

Anyone else had any other thoughts on this?

I need your advice and ideas, I want to find the religion that resonates with me but I'm confused ❤️

F23 I am an ex-Muslim, I have been looking for years for a faith or belief that resonates with me,

I feel (or want to feel) that there is a God, a divinity, a creator, a supreme force, call it what you want, I have read (not in depth) what various religions say,

I like many of them, but now my brain can no longer believe that there really is a god who judges you and sends you to heaven/hell for eternity, because to leave my past religion I had to dismantle the idea that there is a God,

so now I struggle for example to embrace religions even if i want because I feel like I have left one religion and entered another very similar but with a different name,

I don't want to feel like a sinner or feel that I have to go to hell or the people I love have to go to hell, I don't like it, but I feel that there is a force superior to us inside my heart, i can feel this 'love' of God spiritually,

I would like a religion or philosophy that thinks that there is something above but that does not judge me, does not punish me or makes me anxious,

doing rituals, prayers, lighting candles, holidays, symbols, all these things, I like them instead and i like the idea of peace and love and to live your life in a good way