Appendix B
The Boundary Between the Biblical Hope and Its Counterfeits
This appendix is the boundary reference for the entire book. Every chapter carries a Boundary callout that draws a line between the universalism this book defends and the versions it refuses. Those callouts point here. This is the place where you can see, at a glance, exactly what the book holds and what it does not.
The need for this line is simple. The word "universalism" covers too many things. Some of those things are deeply biblical. Others are deeply wrong. If a reader hears only the word and not the distinction, the whole case falls apart before it starts. So this appendix lays it out plainly: what we affirm, what we refuse, where the major figures fall, and why the difference matters.
The hope this book defends is not new. It is old. The early church knew it. Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and others all held some form of the restoration of all things (Greek apokatastasis, "restoration"). As David Burnfield has documented, the list of early church leaders for whom a case can be made that they supported the doctrine of the final restoration is longer than most readers expect.15 This is not a modern invention. It is a recovery.
I want to be direct about where this line comes from. Two of the best recent critics of universalism, James B. De Young and Michael J. McClymond, have done the church a real service. Between them, they have cataloged nearly every way universalism has gone off the rails. De Young exposes the tendency to set God's love against His holiness.1 McClymond traces the gnostic, kabbalistic, and esoteric roots of much universalist thought across two millennia.2 I use their work gratefully. I use it against their own conclusion. The universalism they rightly defeat is real. But it is not the one this book holds. The Bible they appeal to is the very ground the larger hope stands on.
In his Appendix G, "Types of Christian Universalism," McClymond identifies several distinct lineages: gnostic-esoteric, Origenist, Böhmist, Christocentric (both purgationist and non-purgationist), and plurocentric.3 His taxonomy is careful and learned. This appendix draws on it freely. McClymond uses the map to argue that universalism as a whole is tainted by its worst versions. I use the same map to draw a different line. The biblical, creedal, Christ-centered hope stands apart from the counterfeits. The critics' blows, however well aimed, do not reach it.
The following summary is the heart of this appendix. The left column names the doctrinal marks of the universalism this book defends. The right column names the versions it refuses. Every Boundary callout in every chapter rests on this distinction.
Read those two columns side by side. The left column is orthodox Christianity with one conviction added: that God will, in the end, bring every person to free saving faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing is subtracted from the gospel. The cross is real. Faith is required. Judgment is severe. Sin is sin. The right column names six ways universalism has traded away the gospel to reach its conclusion. The whole book argues that you do not have to make that trade. The hope stands on the gospel itself.
Each of the following carries the label "universalism," and each teaches that all are finally saved. But they reach that conclusion by very different roads, and most of those roads abandon something the Bible will not let us abandon. Here is what each gets wrong.
This is the claim that all the world's religions are roughly equal paths to God, and that Christ is one savior among many. Its clearest modern representative is the philosopher John Hick, who argued that the different religions are culturally shaped responses to a single divine Reality.4 For pluralism, there is no unique cross, no exclusive Christ, no single gospel. Everyone is saved because every sincere path leads home.
This is the deepest error on the list, because it makes the cross unnecessary. If a Buddhist, a Muslim, and an atheist can all reach God on their own terms, then Calvary was a tragic waste. The New Testament does not allow this. Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6, ESV). This book takes that claim at full weight. Every person who is saved is saved through Christ, by faith in Christ, because of the cross of Christ. The hope is not that all roads lead home. The hope is that God, who knows every heart, will bring every wanderer to the one road that does.
The Deepest Line
The single sharpest distinction in this appendix runs between pluralism and the biblical hope. The pluralist says Christ is optional. This book says Christ is everything. The pluralist says the cross is one symbol among many. This book says the cross is the hinge of the universe. These two sentences cannot both be true. This book chooses the cross.
McClymond traces this lineage carefully, from the second-century gnostics through the Jewish Kabbalah to the modern esoteric tradition.5 The core teaching is that the human soul carries a "spark of the divine." It fell from God, entered a body, and will one day return to God by nature. Salvation is not a gift of grace. It is a built-in feature of the soul. As the early twentieth-century mystic Sadhu Sundar Singh put it, the divine spark "cannot be destroyed." Every sinner, he said, must finally "return to Him in Whose image they have been created."6
I refuse this as firmly as McClymond does. The Bible does not teach that we carry a piece of God inside us that guarantees our return. It teaches that we are creatures, made by God but distinct from God, fallen and in need of rescue. The rescue comes from outside us, through the cross and by faith. If the soul could save itself by its own divine nature, the Incarnation was pointless and the gospel is no gospel at all. McClymond also traces a related lineage through Jakob Böhme and argues that Böhme's esoteric cosmology is the hidden root of modern universalism. Robin Parry has responded carefully in A Larger Hope? Volume 2, showing that while Böhme did influence some later universalists, Böhme himself was not a universalist, and the connection is far thinner than McClymond claims.19
This is the vague, popular sense that "everyone is basically fine" and "a loving God would never really punish anyone." There is no real doctrine of sin here. No cross. No judgment. No need for repentance. God is a kindly grandfather who looks the other way.
De Young is right to attack this version. He warns, in words borrowed from Oswald Chambers, against "the pleasant view of the Fatherhood of God" that assumes God will simply forgive because He is nice.7 I share the warning. The God of this book is not nice. He is holy. His love is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). His judgment is real and severe. The purifying fire this book describes in Chapter 17 is not a warm bath. It burns away evil because God will not leave His children enslaved to it. That is the opposite of sentimentalism. It is holy love at full heat.
Antinomian means "against the law." This version says that because everyone is saved, nothing you do matters. Sin has no consequences. Holiness is optional. The moral law is cancelled. Several strands of this appear in history. McClymond identifies an "ultra-universalist" tradition that taught something startling. All consequences of sin, they said, were abolished the moment Christ died. Future punishment of any kind became "inconceivable."8 Even within the nineteenth-century Universalist Church in America, the rank-and-file members rejected this view. They saw it as destroying what they called "the moral connection" between present choices and future outcomes.9
This book agrees with that rejection. The New Testament is clear: "Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap" (Galatians 6:7, ESV). The universalism I defend holds the moral law, calls for repentance, demands holiness, and teaches that sin brings real, severe judgment. What it adds is this: the judgment is not the end of the story. The fire purifies. The rebel, at last, repents. But the fire is real, and the road through it is painful. See Chapter 29 for the full answer to the charge that this view guts morality.
This is the most sophisticated counterfeit, and the one that requires the most careful handling. It says that universal salvation is not just true but metaphysically necessary. A rational will, fully informed, cannot refuse God. The possibility of final refusal is not merely unlikely; it is logically incoherent. The most brilliant recent case for this view comes from David Bentley Hart in That All Shall Be Saved (2019).10
I part from Hart here, and only here. See Section IV below for a full explanation of where Hart stands. But the reason for parting is simple: this book keeps libertarian free will. A genuine "yes" to God requires a possible "no." If the "no" is logically impossible, then the "yes" is not freely given, and love without freedom is not love. The universalism I defend holds that God's love and wisdom are so great, and His knowledge of every heart so complete, that every person will in fact freely say yes. But I will not say they must, as though the laws of logic force the outcome. I hold the hope with deep conviction. I do not hold it as metaphysical necessity.
Is This a Real Difference?
A critic might ask: if you believe every person will in fact say yes, how is that different from necessity? The answer lies in what grounds the confidence. Hart grounds it in the nature of the rational will. I ground it in the character and knowledge of God. God knows what each person would freely choose in any situation (this is middle knowledge, discussed in Chapter 29). He composes the most persuasive possible appeal for every soul. The outcome is certain not because freedom is an illusion, but because God is that good and that wise. The "no" remains possible in principle. It simply never becomes final in practice.
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) is a denomination that grew from the merger of the American Universalist Church and the American Unitarian Association in 1961.11 In its current form, it has abandoned the Trinity, the unique deity of Christ, the authority of Scripture, and in most expressions any distinctly Christian theology at all. It has become, as McClymond's history shows, a post-Christian movement focused on social justice, interreligious dialogue, and inclusive community.
The name is the problem. When most people hear "universalism," many think first of this denomination. That association has done real damage to the biblical hope. It has made the word sound like a synonym for "anything goes." This book reclaims the word. Christian universalism, as the early church knew it, is not the rejection of the gospel. It is the gospel's final victory: every knee bowing, every tongue confessing, every creature joining the praise (Philippians 2:10-11; Revelation 5:13). That is a long way from the UUA. The two should never be confused.
The following table places the major voices this book engages. The "stance" column names the figure's actual position, honestly labeled. The "note" column says, in a sentence, how this book uses or responds to each one. This is a reference tool, not a full treatment; see the chapters named for the arguments.
A Word About Honesty
This table labels each figure by what he or she actually holds, not by what is convenient for the argument. Several of the postmortem-hope thinkers (Walls, Beilby, Jonathan, Manis) are not universalists. They are used as sources for specific arguments (optimal grace, postmortem opportunity, the divine-presence model), and they are labeled as what they are. The critics (De Young and McClymond) are labeled as critics. No one is enlisted as a witness for a position they do not hold.
| Figure | Stance | How This Book Uses the Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Robin Parry | Evangelical universalist | The premier evangelical, Scripture-first case for the larger hope. Load-bearing across both Part One and Part Two. See especially Chapters 4, 5, 10, and 18. |
| Thomas Talbott | Philosophical universalist | The "inconsistent triad" argument; the strongest philosophical case that divine love, divine power, and final loss cannot all be true. See Chapter 2 and Chapter 28. |
| David Bentley Hart | Orthodox universalist (necessitarian); a source, not a counterfeit | Exegetical, linguistic, and patristic arguments used gratefully; parted from on metaphysical necessity. See Section IV below and Chapters 7, 18, 19. |
| George Sidney Hurd | Biblical universalist | A direct, verse-by-verse rebuttal to De Young. The single most useful reply source for Part Two. See especially Chapters 4, 5, 27. |
| Gerry Beauchemin | Biblical universalist | An accessible, NKJV-based biblical case; especially strong on the "Pillars" (the fire, the "all" texts, God's will). See Chapter 17 and Chapter 18. |
| Hunter Coates | Biblical universalist | A recent, holistic case for the hope. Supporting voice across Part One. |
| Ilaria Ramelli | Patristic scholar; universalist | The most thorough modern study of the early church's witness to the restoration of all things (Greek apokatastasis). See Chapter 1 and Chapter 13. |
| Origen of Alexandria | Early-church universalist (qualified) | The most famous ancient defender of the restoration. His hope was real, even if some of his speculative framework (preexistent souls) went beyond Scripture. As Burnfield documents, universalism was taught before Origen by Clement of Alexandria. The common claim that Origen "invented" universalism is incorrect.18 The hope is older than its critics claim. See Chapter 1. |
| Gregory of Nyssa | Early-church universalist (canonized saint) | A fully orthodox Cappadocian Father who held the restoration. As E. H. Plumptre observed, Gregory taught universalism "with as much confidence as when he is expounding the mysteries of the divine nature as set forth in the creed of Nicaea," with "no apparent consciousness that he is deviating" from church teaching.17 His witness shows that universalism lived inside the creedal mainstream, not outside it. See Chapter 1. |
| Figure | Stance | How This Book Uses the Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Jerry L. Walls | Non-universalist (free-will theist; allows final loss) | Optimal grace, purgatorial transformation, and the divine-presence model. Used for his arguments, not enlisted for the universalist conclusion. See Chapter 17 and Chapter 29. |
| James Beilby | Non-universalist (argues for postmortem opportunity, not universal salvation) | The biblical and theological case for a saving offer after death. See Chapter 24. |
| R. Zachary Manis | Non-universalist (the divine-presence model of hell) | The model in which hell is God's unveiled presence, experienced as torment by those who refuse it. See Chapter 17 and Chapter 25. |
| Sharon Baker | Universalist-leaning (restorative justice) | The cross, the fire, and restorative justice. See Chapter 17 and Chapter 26. |
| Figure / Movement | Stance | Why This Book Refuses It |
|---|---|---|
| John Hick | Religious pluralist | Denies the uniqueness of Christ and the necessity of the cross. The farthest point from the biblical hope. See Section II.1 above. |
| The ancient gnostics (Basilideans, Valentinians, Carpocratians) | Gnostic-esoteric universalists | Salvation by nature (the "divine spark"), not grace. McClymond rightly traces this strand through Kabbalah to the modern esoteric tradition. See Section II.2 above. |
| Bulgakov's self-expiation | Purgationist universalism that eclipses grace | Sergius Bulgakov rejected the idea that Christ's death paid for human sin, insisting that every sinner must fully "expiate" their own transgressions. This, as McClymond observes, shifts the burden of salvation from Christ to the sinner and empties the cross of its meaning.12 |
| Unitarian Universalism (the denomination) | Post-Christian moralism | Has abandoned the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and the authority of Scripture. Shares a name with Christian universalism but almost nothing else. See Section II.6 above. |
| Figure | Stance | How This Book Engages the Figure |
|---|---|---|
| James B. De Young | Traditionalist (eternal conscious punishment) | The most thorough recent exegetical case against universalism. This book states his readings at full strength and answers them text by text throughout Part Two. See especially Chapter 2 (on love vs. holiness) and Chapters 18–28. |
| Michael J. McClymond | Traditionalist (historical-theological critic) | The most formidable theological and historical case against universalism. His taxonomy of types (Appendix G) is drawn on in this very appendix. His "eclipse of grace" thesis (§12) is answered in Chapter 29. Treated with respect throughout. |
Hart requires special treatment because he falls in an unusual place. In McClymond's taxonomy, Hart belongs in the Christocentric category, and McClymond groups his work among the "New Theologies in the New Millennium."13 Hart is fully orthodox. He confesses the Trinity, the Incarnation, the bodily resurrection, the real atonement, and the authority of Scripture. His exegetical and linguistic work on the Greek text of the New Testament is among the finest in recent scholarship. His patristic learning is vast. This book uses him as a source, gratefully and often.
The one point of parting is real but narrow. Hart argues that a rational will, fully confronted by the Good, cannot refuse it. Final refusal, on his account, would not be a free act but an irrational spasm, and irrationality is not freedom. The result is that universal salvation becomes not just overwhelmingly probable but logically certain.14
If a rational creature, one whose mind is entirely unimpaired, is allowed without coercion to make a choice between a union with God in bliss that will utterly fulfill his or her nature in its deepest yearnings and a separation from God that will result in endless suffering, only one truly free choice is possible. A fool might thrust his hand into the flame; only a lunatic would not then immediately withdraw it.
David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, Fourth MeditationHart's case rests on what the seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor called the "natural will" (Greek thelēsis physikē, "natural willing"). This is the will's built-in movement toward God as its true end. It stands against the "gnomic will" (Greek thelēsis gnōmikē, "deliberative willing"), the fallen, wandering will that can stray from the Good. Hart argues that the gnomic will exists only as a defect. When it is healed, the natural will remains, and it can only choose God. Hunter Coates, in Grace Abounds, calls this "classical free will" and traces it from Plato through the Eastern patristic tradition, showing how it connects to the universalist hope.16
I find this argument brilliant and not easy to answer. But I do not follow it. My reasons are set out in Chapter 2 and Chapter 30. They come down to one thing: I keep libertarian free will. Real freedom includes the bare possibility of a final "no." God does not override that freedom. He does something better. He knows what each person would freely choose in every possible situation. This is what theologians call middle knowledge (discussed in Chapter 29). With that knowledge, He composes the appeal that wins a free "yes." The outcome is certain because God is that good, not because freedom is an illusion.
Where the Lines Cross
Hart and I agree on far more than we disagree. We agree that the New Testament, read honestly, teaches the restoration of all things. We agree that the Greek word aiōnios does not mean "eternal" in the way the tradition has assumed (see Chapter 18). We agree that the patristic witness is far friendlier to the larger hope than most people realize. We agree that the God of the Bible does not consign His children to endless torment. We part on one philosophical question. Is the final victory of God's love certain because God is wise enough to win every free heart? Or is it certain because the rational will has no choice? That is a real disagreement. It does not make Hart a counterfeit. It makes him a fellow traveler with a different philosophy of freedom.
Here, then, is the boundary that governs every chapter of this book. It is stated one final time, as plainly as I can put it.
The Boundary: Biblical Universalism vs. the Counterfeits
This book defends a biblical, creedal, Christ-centered universalism. It is the conviction that God will finally bring every person to free, saving faith in Jesus Christ, so that "God may be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28). It reaches this hope through the cross, through faith, through the authority of Scripture, and within the historic Christian creeds. It holds the hope with conviction but with honesty about the one open question: real freedom means a real possible "no," and the author will not pretend otherwise.
This book refuses every universalism that reaches its conclusion by abandoning the gospel. It refuses the pluralist version, which discards Christ. It refuses the gnostic version, which replaces grace with nature. It refuses the sentimental version, which ignores sin and judgment. It refuses the antinomian version, which cancels the moral law. And it refuses the necessitarian version, which removes freedom. It treats the Unitarian Universalist denomination as an entirely different thing, sharing a name but not a theology.
The critics are right about the counterfeits. This book says so plainly. But the biblical hope is not a counterfeit. It is the gospel's own voice, saying what the great texts of Scripture say. Every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess. Every creature will join the praise. And God will be all in all.
Every Boundary callout in every chapter points back to this box. When a chapter asks, "Which universalism is this?", it is asking whether the text or theme under discussion fits the left column or the right. The answer is always the same. The hope this book defends is the one on the left: biblical, creedal, centered on Christ. It has nothing in common with the counterfeits except the word "universalism." And the word belongs to the hope, not to the counterfeits. The Bible used it first.
When anyone speaks of Christian universalism, a first question ought to be, what sort of Christian universalism? … Christian universalists today might not be aware of the full variety of viewpoints … that have taken shape over the last two millennia, many of which still exist today.
Michael J. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, Appendix G, "Types of Christian Universalism"McClymond is right to ask. And the answer this book gives is one he would not accept, but one I believe the Bible demands. It is the universalism that is not gnostic, not esoteric, not sentimental, not antinomian, not necessitarian, and not post-Christian. The universalism that stands on the Bible, confesses the creeds, holds the cross, and trusts the God who said He wants all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). As Steven Harmon concluded after careful study of the early universalist Fathers, one may argue that "in its basic outlines universalism contradicted neither creed nor council."20 That is the universalism this book defends. And that is the hope the next twenty-six chapters have set before you from Scripture itself.
↑ 1. James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism: A Comprehensive Guide to the Faulty Appeals Made by Universalists (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock / Resource Publications, 2018), Preface, "The Heart of This Book: How Do the Love and Holiness of God Relate?" De Young identifies this as the central question of the entire debate: universalism, he argues, "assert[s] that God's supreme attribute is love and all the rest of his attributes are subjected to it." This book answers that charge directly in Chapter 2.
↑ 2. Michael J. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018). McClymond's central thesis is that universalism, across its history, recurrently "eclipses grace" (§0.10, §12). The gnostic-kabbalistic-esoteric genealogy is developed especially in his Introduction (§0.1–0.10) and Chapters 2 and 5.
↑ 3. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 2, pp. 1127–33, Appendix G, "Types of Christian Universalism." McClymond identifies gnostic-esoteric, Origenist, Böhmist, Christocentric (both purgationist and non-purgationist), and plurocentric lineages. His taxonomy also notes earlier efforts by Robin Parry and Laurence Blanchard to map different forms of universalism.
↑ 4. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004). Hick's "pluralistic hypothesis" argues that the major world religions are culturally conditioned responses to a single ultimate divine Reality, which he calls "the Real."
↑ 5. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 1, ch. 2 (gnostic, kabbalistic, and esoteric roots) and V 2, Appendix A (gnosis and Western esotericism: definitions and lineages). McClymond's argument is that "the second-century Alexandrian milieu lies in the background of Origen's thought no less than in the theologies of the Basilideans, the Valentinians, and the Carpocratians" (V 2, ch. 12).
↑ 6. McClymond quotes Sadhu Sundar Singh in his discussion of the gnostic-esoteric type in Appendix G, V 2, p. 1128. Singh's language of the "divine spark or element" that "cannot be destroyed" is a clear instance of the spark-of-the-divine teaching.
↑ 7. De Young, Exposing Universalism, Conclusion, quoting Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, November 20, "The Forgiveness of God." Chambers warns that putting forgiveness "on any other ground" than "the tremendous tragedy of the Cross of Christ" is "unconscious blasphemy." De Young endorses this warning and applies it directly to modern universalists.
↑ 8. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 2, pp. 1129, 1132 (Appendix G, "Christocentric Non-Purgationist Universalists"). The "ultra-universalist" position held that "all divine punishment, judgment, and wrath were wholly swallowed up and forever abolished when Jesus died on the cross." McClymond also discusses this internal debate in V 1, ch. 6 (Anglo-American universalists).
↑ 9. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 1, pp. 16–17 and V 2, p. 1031. The restorationists within the American Universalist Church argued for a "moral nexus" between earthly choices and postmortem outcomes. They saw ultra-universalism as antinomian. By the late 1800s, the purgationist (restorationist) view was dominant.
↑ 10. David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). Hart's argument that a fully rational will cannot finally refuse the Good is developed especially in his "Fourth Meditation." His case is philosophical, exegetical, and patristic, and this book draws on his linguistic and historical work extensively; see Chapters 7, 18, and 19.
↑ 11. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 1, pp. 16–17. McClymond notes that by the early twentieth century, many members of the Universalist Church "were no longer certain if there was an afterlife at all." The 1961 merger with the Unitarians completed the denomination's departure from its original theological commitments.
↑ 12. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 1, pp. 24–25 and V 2, pp. 1030–31 (§12.3, "The Problem of Grace in Christian Universalism"). McClymond discusses Bulgakov's rejection of "simple forgiveness" and his insistence on full self-expiation. Bulgakov's position, McClymond argues, is "a stark reminder of how purgationist universalism contrasts with the message of salvation by grace."
↑ 13. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, V 2, ch. 11, "New Theologies in the New Millennium." McClymond treats Talbott (§11.3), Parry (§11.4), and several other contemporary figures. Hart's work, published in 2019, appeared after McClymond's volumes (2018), but Hart's earlier theological and linguistic writings are treated in McClymond's discussion.
↑ 14. Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, especially the "Fourth Meditation." Hart's argument depends on the Platonic-Christian premise that the will is naturally oriented toward the Good and that any departure from the Good is a failure of knowledge, not a free choice. If this is so, then full knowledge of God would remove every ground for refusal. The author's reply is developed in Chapter 2 (the one open question) and Chapter 30 (the resolution).
↑ 15. David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years, ch. 2. Burnfield draws on Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 11, for a list of early church leaders who supported the doctrine of apokatastasis. The list includes Bardaisan, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Didymus, St. Anthony, St. Pamphilus Martyr, Methodius, St. Macrina, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Evagrius Ponticus, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, St. John of Jerusalem, Rufinus, and (initially) both Jerome and Augustine.
↑ 16. Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds (forthcoming), ch. 11, "Free Will and Universalism." Coates distinguishes libertarian free will (LFW), defined as the power of contrary choice, from what he calls "classical free will" (CFW), the view that freedom is the power to choose the good that is in our nature to choose. He traces CFW from Plato through Maximus the Confessor, noting that for Maximus, the "gnomic will" (the deliberative, wandering will) exists only as a consequence of our fallen nature and will pass away, while the "natural will" directed at God is the true and abiding center of human willing. Coates argues that universalism is compatible with both views of freedom.
↑ 17. E. H. Plumptre, "Eschatology," in A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines, vol. 2, ed. William Smith and Henry Wace (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1880), 194. Quoted in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 2. Plumptre's observation is striking: Gregory taught the restoration with the same confidence as he taught the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, and with no sense that he was departing from the church's received teaching.
↑ 18. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 2, "Objection 11: Wasn't Origen Considered a Heretic?" Burnfield documents that Clement of Alexandria taught universalism before Origen, citing Steven Harmon, Every Knee Should Bow: Biblical Rationales for Universal Salvation in Early Christian Thought (Dallas: University Press of America, 2003), and Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 1. Burnfield also notes that the common claim that Origen was "condemned as a heretic" in 553 is historically contested; the anathemas of the Second Council of Constantinople targeted a set of speculative Origenist doctrines (preexistence of souls, spherical resurrection bodies), not the doctrine of final restoration as such, and Origen's name may have been added to the documents later.
↑ 19. Robin A. Parry, with Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), Conclusion: "Is Jakob Böhme the Father of Modern Universalism? A Response to the McClymond Model." Parry acknowledges McClymond's scholarly contribution in tracing Böhme's influence on later universalists, but shows that Böhme himself was not a universalist and that his philosophy of eternal dualism within God arguably resists rather than generates the universalist conclusion. Parry argues that the evidence indicates the exact opposite of McClymond's thesis on this point. The biblical and Christocentric strands of modern universalism have their own independent roots in Scripture and patristic thought.
↑ 20. Steven Harmon, Every Knee Should Bow: Biblical Rationales for Universal Salvation in Early Christian Thought (Dallas: University Press of America, 2003), as cited in Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, ch. 2. Harmon also notes that it is possible for a theologian to read the biblical story as ending in the salvation of all creation and to remain true to Scripture, "so long as this reading of the story also has a place for the reality of judgment and its eternal implications." The early church universalists, Harmon argues, "avoided this pitfall through their emphasis on the 'refiner's fire' as the key biblical image communicating the purpose of eternal punishment."