Will Everyone be Saved? (Everyone??)

[00:00:01] Will Everyone be Saved? Everyone? [00:00:04] By Bart Ehrman There has been an extraordinary range of views in Christianity about who will be saved, whether people have any say in the matter, what it requires, whether salvation can be lost, and most everything else connected with this central teaching of the religion. [00:00:22] It may seem odd that disagreements among Christian thinkers would involve the very core message rather than other issues of less significant centrality. But, well, there it is. [00:00:32] In my previous post, I pointed to passages in the Letter to the Hebrews that seem pretty clearly to indicate that a person could well lose their salvation. [00:00:41] At the extreme other end of the theological spectrum was or is the view that in fact everybody will be saved. [00:00:49] That's a view more commonly thought to reside on the margins of Christendom, but it's always been around, and it's getting stronger now than ever, and can easily be traced again back to the New Testament, all the way to its most revered author, the Apostle Paul. [00:01:04] It can be debated if Paul genuinely believed in universal salvation, but there are certainly some passages that seem like it. [00:01:13] In his letter to the Romans, for example, Paul contrasts the judgments that came to be inflicted on the entire human race because of the sin of the first man, Adam, with the salvation to come with equal universal force through the righteous act of redemption of the second Adam, Christ. [00:01:30] And so as condemnation came to all people through the transgression of one person, so too the righteousness that leads to life comes to all people through the righteous act of one person. [00:01:42] That's Romans 5:18. And here righteousness and life come come not to some, but to all. [00:01:50] He also later indicates that God imprisoned all people in lives of disobedience so that he might show mercy to all. And that's Romans 11:32 again, all as many as are disobedient are saved. Or as Paul says in the book of Philippians, when Christ was exalted at his resurrection, God gave him the divine name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus in the end every knee will bow of those in heaven and on the earth and under the earth. And that's Philippians, chapter 2, verse 10 not some knees, but every knee. [00:02:26] Indeed, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, at the end of time all things will be subject to the lordship of Christ, who will then subject all things to God himself, so that God may be all in all, it says 1 Corinthians 15:28. [00:02:44] Everything then will return to submission to God. [00:02:48] Surely that means all living creatures, including sinners. No? [00:02:53] That was certainly the view of the greatest Theologian of the Christian Church of the first three centuries, Origen of Alexandria, who lived circa 185. [00:03:04] Origen was massively learned and extraordinarily prolific. He was a one man publishing industry who produced a fantastic number of treatises and commentaries and homilies. [00:03:15] And the most systematic expression of his thought comes in a work called On First Principles. [00:03:21] One of his thoughts was that in the end, everyone will submit to God's sovereignty and be saved. And that includes the most wicked of humans and the demons, even the devil. [00:03:32] God will literally be all in all. [00:03:37] The backdrop of Origen's view of the end of things, universal salvation, comes in his understanding of the beginning of all things. [00:03:46] In the first book of On First Principles, Origen explains how all sentient beings originally came into existence in eternity past, before the world began, God created an enormous number of souls whose purpose was to contemplate and to adore him forever. [00:04:04] True adoration, of course, requires freedom of the will. Beings need to choose to adore God if their worship is to be a true honour. [00:04:12] That means all souls must also have had the capacity to choose not to worship God, that is to do evil. [00:04:19] None of these created souls was inherently evil, however, and none, not even the soul that was to become the devil, was incapable of good. [00:04:29] As it happened, virtually all the souls failed in their task. Only one soul, the soul of Christ, determinedly remained connected with God without flinching. [00:04:39] All other souls fell away from the contemplation of God. Some fell in a very big way, none more than the devil. [00:04:46] Others fell somewhat less and became demons. Others fell into human bodies, and yet others became brute animals or even plants. [00:04:55] This very bad situation played itself out over the course of many ages in the history of the world. [00:05:01] Ultimately, though, Origen maintained that since God is sovereign over all, his sovereignty will be recognized by all. [00:05:08] Otherwise he's not really the Lord God Almighty, but only relatively mighty and only partially sovereign. [00:05:17] Some humans here in this fallen realm realize that they need to return to God, and so do so in this life by faith in Christ, God's means of restoration. [00:05:27] They then are saved at death. [00:05:29] Others don't do that and so well, and so God will bring them back for another chance. [00:05:35] Origen was one of the very few Christians who argued for reincarnation. [00:05:41] His logic for it was theological. God wants all people to be saved, but people have to have the free will to choose God or not. And, and if they choose not, then they are given another chance to choose again. They're reincarnated. And if they don't choose correctly, then well they are brought back again. And it goes on that way for age after age after age, until finally everyone gets will be of their own free will, but it will result in the will of God. [00:06:08] As Origen says, in one place we believe that the goodness of God through Christ will will restore his entire creation to one end, even his enemies being conquered and subdued. [00:06:20] That's on first principles. 161 in support of his view, Origen quotes the words of Paul that at the end God will place all of Christ's enemies under his feet in subjection to him. [00:06:35] That's from First Corinthians 15:25. [00:06:38] In Origen's understanding, the word subjugation, when used of our subjugation to Christ, implies the salvation of those who are subject. And again, that's from On First Principles. 161 There were other early Christian authors who held to the idea of universal salvation, including a number of prominent theologians whom he later influenced. And before he was declared a heretic for his views, especially his idea that even the devil in the end will be saved, all of them thought that their views were supported by Scripture and and especially by the writings of Paul.