A Larger Hope?
Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century
by
Robin A. Parry
with
Ilaria L. E. Ramelli
A LARGER HOPE? UNIVERSAL SALVATION FROM THE REFORMATION TO THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Copyright © 2019 Robin A. Parry. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Cascade Books
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-0040-0
hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8800-2
ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-0041-7
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Parry, Robin A., author. | Ramelli, Ilaria, 1973–, contributor
Title: A larger hope? Universal salvation from the Reformation to the nineteenth century / Robin A. Parry, with Ilaria L. E. Ramelli.
Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019 | Series: A Larger Hope? | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-4982-0040-0 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-8800-2 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-4982-0041-7 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Universalism | Restorationism—History of doctrines | Universal salvation—Biblical teaching | Hell—Christianity | Salvation—Christianity
Classification: BT263 P31 2019 (print) | BT263 (ebook)
Manufactured in the U.S.A.11/02/17
Table of Contents
Title Page
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries Chapter 1: At the Radical Fringe of Reformation and Counter-Reformation
Chapter 2: Seventeenth-Century Troublemaker
Chapter 3: Platonists and Puritans
Chapter 4: Mystic and Prophetess
Part II: The Eighteenth Century Chapter 5: From Continental Europe to America
Chapter 6: Pietist Universalism in Britain and America
Chapter 7: Calvinist Universalism
Chapter 8: Homegrown American Universalism
Part III: The Nineteenth Century Chapter 9: The Enlightenment, Hosea Ballou, and Denominational Universalism in America
Chapter 10: Romantic Universalism in the Continental Mainstream
Chapter 11: Universalism in Great Britain I
Chapter 12: Universalism in Great Britain II
Chapter 13: Universalism in Great Britain III
Chapter 14: Universalism in Great Britain IV
Conclusion: Is Jakob Böhme the Father of Modern Universalism?
Bibliography
A Larger Hope?
A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich, by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli
A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century, by Robin A. Parry, with Ilaria L. E. Ramelli
To Peter Hiett
and Brad Jersak
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Professor Ilaria Ramelli for the valuable research and material that she contributed to this book and for the inspiration that she always is. Much gratitude is also due to Dr. Anthony Cross, who managed to supply many rare and hard-to-access books for me for the research in this volume. I literally could not have written this work without his assistance. Finally, I want to acknowledge my eagle-eyed editor at Cascade Books, Caleb Shupe. His work was exemplary.
Material on Elhanan Winchester in chapter 6 is abbreviated from my “Between Calvinism and Arminianism: The Evangelical Universalism of Elhanan Winchester (1751–1797).” In “All Shall Be Well,” edited by Gregory MacDonald, 141–70. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011. Material in chapter 12 is in part drawn from my “Introduction to Thomas Allin (1838–1909)” in Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant, edited by Robin A. Parry, ix–xxxvii. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015. Thanks are due to the publisher for permission to reproduce sections of those essays.
Introduction
This is not really a history book. It does contain a reasonable amount of historical information, but its primary goal is not to relate the “story” of universalism nor of any of the characters that might play a role in such a story. Neither is it chiefly an attempt to understand the fortunes and forms of the idea of universal salvation through the kinds of interpretative lenses that historians may employ. There is a tale to tell, and this book certainly provides windows through which to view that tale, but the task of telling it must belong to someone else. That task faces the challenge confronting any such endeavor, namely that most of the information we would love to have available in constructing it is long since gone. “History is at best a beggarly gleaner in a field where Death has gathered a bountiful harvest.”1 It may be, however, that this work might inspire a professional historian to write such a history of universal salvation or historical studies of some of the characters examined here. That would be very gratifying.
Instead, what this volume seeks to offer is a series of explorations into the theological ideas of certain interesting, but mostly long-forgotten, people. I have tried to situate those people in their historical worlds and to sketch certain biographical background information on them in order that readers might be able to go some distance toward situating their ideas in the right historical, cultural, and personal contexts. Ideas do not float around in space—they are embedded and embodied in contexts. I have also sought to highlight the key connections—at least, as far as I have been able to from the available evidence—between the different people studied here so that we can trace lines of influence as the universalist idea passes from one generation to another, or as it apparently gets spontaneously reinvented in one generation, and then in another. Some of the historical dimensions do come into the foreground at times, especially in the eighteenth century, where tracking lines of influence does require us to paint on a larger canvas, creating an interconnected triptych linking Continental Europe, Great Britain, and America.
I also need to explain in advance that some of our characters are treated not as main subjects of investigation, which they could have been, but as background linking-figures who can help us to better situate the main people selected for study. For instance, Johann and Johanna Petersen could easily be the subjects of detailed attention, but instead are treated more briefly as background for understanding the universalist groups within Radical Pietism. The work of Paul Siegvolk (a pseudonym), however, is taken up for closer inspection as an influential and representative work of early Radical Pietist belief in universal salvation. Others, such as Benjamin Rush, really draw the short straw—merely playing the cameo role of “interesting character who converted to universalism.” Rush is a fascinating man, and in his day was both respected and influential; he could easily have been given more attention. But he did not make any theological contributions to universalist thought, so I pass him over in almost total silence. Choices have to be made, and I picked up on those which I felt gave a good flavor of belief in universal salvation in all its diverse configurations.
It is not my intention to assess the merits and demerits of the different theologies, though on occasion evaluative comments will slip out. For the most part, I simply describe what my different subjects taught and leave it to readers to assess those teachings as they see fit. Nor am I interested in passing judgment on the saintliness or otherwise of those I study, but again, occasional comments may m
ake an appearance, though such comments mostly describe how some others in their day saw them, not how I do. The people included in this book—be they saints or sinners, profound theologians or somewhat inept Bible readers—are there simply because they had something interesting—maybe great, maybe small—to say about universal salvation. Speaking personally, I find myself warming to some of these people and feeling rather uncomfortable with others, both as people and as theologians. However, while I would have no qualms about offering sustained theological engagement with any of them, that would be a task for a different book, and not one I have plans to write. So here, for the most part, I simply set out what they thought and the impact those ideas had.
We pick up the fortunes of belief in final restoration in the Reformation period. In volume 1, Ilaria Ramelli charted the fate of this theological proposal from New Testament times into the Renaissance. By way of review, it would be useful to first sketch out the basic contours of what we might call the patristic doctrine of apokatastasis, as a background to the book that follows.2
The Patristic Doctrine of Apokatastasis
Those in the Origenian tradition told the story of the cosmos as a great arc: God’s creation of rational intelligences (logokoi), their fall, and the long process of God’s restoring them to their earlier condition (apokatastasis). The beginning (archē) thus prefigures the end (telos), and the end will be like the beginning; but not exactly like the beginning, for the end will be better. Adam was created immature, and in the end, humans will be mature, never to choose evil again.
Creation
In the beginning, God created the rational intelligences (logikoi), which existed in unity, harmony, and the contemplation of God. All things were good and had a destiny (telos) in union with the divine.
Origen envisages a twofold creation: first a creation of logokoi in the image of God (Gen 1:26), and then a creation of the logikoi as materially embodied souls (Gen 2:7). So, the logikoi existed prior to the creation of the material world. The exact nature of this preexistence in Origen’s theology is debated. Is this the literal preexistence of disembodied souls (Henri Crouzel, Michael McClymond)? Did the intelligences have spiritual bodies (Ilaria Ramelli)? Did they preexist only in God’s foreknowledge (Marguerite Harl)? Did they preexist in God the Son prior to the creation of space and time (Mark Scott)? Were these preexistent logikoi existent beings or potential beings?3
Fall
First some of the angelic beings chose to rebel against God, and then they incited the logikoi to rebel (the fall of humanity). The fall of the logokoi was not something that occurred in a single moment of time, but was a long, drawn-out “event.” Laziness and negligence of God led to the gradual loss of the knowledge of God, and as creatures drift from the knowledge of God they fall away from goodness.
The fall of the rational intelligences saw a transformation of their bodies into mortal, heavy, corrupt, sexually differentiated(!), material bodies, subject to death: this was the “second creation.” Now, some care is necessary here, for it is easy to misunderstand this idea. The Origenian views was not that the material creation was bad. Christ himself was the creator of this second creation. Material bodies are good, not evil, but they are temporary and must perish in the end because they are mortal. Mortality and death were actually a divine mercy granted in order to stop sin being immortalized in our souls.
Evil as non-substantial
A critical element in this tradition was the idea that evil has no substance; evil is not a thing, but a lack of goodness in a thing. This, of course, does not mean that evil is insignificant. What it does mean is that God did not create evil and that no creature has an evil nature. Rather, evil is rooted in the will of creatures. The significance of this understanding of evil for universalist eschatology will become clear soon.
Free will
Origen was strongly opposed to the idea that either our nature or the stars determined human actions, for this would remove the responsibility for our actions from us. It would also make God responsible for evil. No, we choose to do evil of our own volition.
However, people do not freely choose evil knowingly; they choose it because they mistakenly think it to be good (or they are under the influence of some freedom-restricting, nonrational compulsion). The notion of a fully informed choice of evil is, on this ethical intellectualist view, incoherent. That is why Satan had to deceive the woman and the man to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree.
Salvation involves the deliverance of our wills from the lies that bind so we are liberated to choose the Good. This requires education and illumination, enabling us to understand aright and therefore choose right. Thus, God does not force our wills, but instructs them, leading us toward salvation. Really, true freedom is the freedom to choose the Good. And in the end, when we are perfect, we will remain free, but will never choose evil.
Jesus and our salvation
How will God heal our broken souls? Our nature is healed through the Word-made-flesh. According to the Origenians, there is only one human nature in which we all participate. This whole nature was embodied in the two heads of the human race: Adam, who corrupted it, and Christ, who healed it.
Incarnation
Christ’s incarnation is fundamental: “Christ has become the body of the whole of humanity, that, through the body that he was kind enough to assume, the whole of humanity might be hidden in him” (Hilary of Poitiers, On Psalms 51.16). “Flesh was taken up by the Logos to liberate all humans and resurrect them from the dead and ransom all of them from sin” (Athanasius, Ep. Adelph.). If Christ had not assumed our flesh, he could not have healed it.
Crucifixion
Christ’s death too: “That corruption may disappear from all forever, thanks to the resurrection, . . . He has paid for all, in death, all that was owed” (Athanasius, Apoll. 9.3). “He died for all . . . to abolish death with his blood . . . he has gained the whole humanity” (Athanasius, Letter 10.10.23). Origen similarly affirms that there is “no salvation for anyone except in the blood of Christ” (Hom. Josh. 3.5).
Resurrection
But the cross is only salvific because of the resurrection: “The whole creation was restored through the Lord’s resurrection” (Origen, Comm. Rom. 4.7.3). “Because the totality of the whole human nature forms, so to say, one living being, the resurrection of one part of it [Christ] extends to the whole, and, in conformity with the continuity and unity of the [human] nature, passes on from the part to the whole” (Gregory of Nyssa, Or. Cat. 32). “Just as the principle of death, becoming operative in the case of one human being [Adam], from it passed on to the whole human nature, likewise the principle of the resurrection, from one human being [Christ], and through it, extends to the whole of humanity” (Gregory of Nyssa, Or. Cat. 16). Jesus’ resurrection is the resurrection of the whole human race in his humanity.
Understanding divine punishment
Punishment as corrective
In line with the view that evil choices are choices based on misperceptions of reality and that liberation of the will requires education, a particular educative interpretation of divine “punishment” was advanced: “God does not punish [timōreitai]—since punishment is the retribution of evil with further evil—, but corrects [kolazei] for the sake of those who are corrected, both in general and singularly” (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. 7.16.102.3). Origen says, “The Word of God is a physician of the soul and uses the most diverse, suitable, and seasonable methods of healing the sick” (Origen, Philoc. 27.4). Sometimes God even prescribes “very unpleasant and bitter medicine as a cure for ills; . . . in the last resort the ill is burnt out by fire” (Origen, Princ. 2.10.6). This leads toward a particular understanding of hell.
Hell is not forever
Hell, in accord with the view of divine punishment maintained in this tradition, is purifying. The fire burns away sin, not sinners: “Indeed, this fire of the corrective punishment
is not active against the substance, but against habits and qualities. For this fire consumes, not creatures, but certain conditions and certain habits” (Didymus the Blind, Comm. Ps. 20–21, col. 21.15).
The fires of hell are, in fact, the burning conscience. The fire symbolizes the internal condition of guilt: “every sinner kindles for himself the flame of his own fire, and is not plunged into a fire which has been previously kindled by someone else or which existed before him” (Origen, Princ. 2.10.4). In this sense, hell is self-inflicted. God permits us to wound ourselves in this way so that we can learn.
Hell, understood as purifying fire, is therefore not forever, for that would utterly defeat its purpose. “Our Lord has freely forgiven many persons in their sins . . . but of the most serious sin retribution in Gehenna will be demanded . . . But not even this sin will be able to prevent a person from being justified. God, after giving retribution in Gehenna, will reward this person in the kingdom” (Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron 10.4). “[T]he apokatastasis that we expect to come to pass in the end, in the kingdom of the heavens: the restoration of those who had been condemned to Gehenna” (Gregory of Nyssa, De Vita Mosis GNO VII/1 57.8—58.3).
The unity of the divine attributes
Another foundational building block underlying this theology was the affirmation that God’s love, justice, and mercy must not be set in opposition to each other; rather, they inhere in each other. “[I]t is proper to the wise neither to subvert justice nor to separate the good purpose inspired by love for humanity from the Judgment according to justice, but to join both these elements together in a fitting way, rendering to justice what it deserves, without parting from the goodness of the purpose inspired by love for humanity” (Gregory of Nyssa, Or. Cat. 26.64). Nowadays, one often hears people claim that while God is loving, he is also just, as if the two stood in some conflict. For the church fathers, God’s love is just and his justice is loving. So, talk of divine justice and “wrath” must never be set up in opposition to divine goodness and mercy. Consequently, while God certainly destroys sin, he does so in a manner fitting for God’s goodness. The implications of this for hell are spelled out most clearly by Isaac of Nineveh:
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