Ancient afterlife beliefs

  On the eschatological views of Augustine of Hyppo In one of my previous post [1] , I cited the fact that the immensely influential Christian theologian Augustine of Hyppo (354-430) denied that God’s salvific will is universal, i.e. that God doesn’t want the salvation of all. In this post, I’ll try to explain why Augustine was led to think that and how he handled a Biblical passage, 1 Tim 2:3-4 [2] , that seems to explicitly say the opposite. The text I’ll analyse is Augustine’s Enchiridion , from the translation one can find here: https://christgettysburg.org/download/st-augustine-enchiridion-on-faith-hope-and-love-1955-english-translation/?wpdmdl=1160&refresh=66e761b301a401726439859 Augustine raises the question in paragraph 97 of his work: “ Accordingly, we must now inquire about the meaning of what was said most truly by the apostle concerning God, "Who willeth that all men should be saved." For since not all--not even a majority-- are saved, it would indeed appear ...

On the rejection of post-mortem chances of salvation given by many ancient and medieval Christians When one reads a text like Luke 15 , it is hard to not be struck by the beauty of the message: it seems evident that God truly wants the salvation of each sinner. However, in the third parable of that chapter, it is also evident that the ‘lost son’ returned to his father, after coming to his senses. This means that the lost son, which represents a sinner, must come to repentance/conversion (Greek: metanoia ) in order to be saved [1] . At the same time, however, there are indeed many passages in the New Testament that seem to prefigure a final separation between those are saved and enter the Kingdom of God and those are excluded from it (perhaps, the most famous of these is the parable of the sheep and goats, in Matthew 25:31-46 ). Taken both these passages at face value, they seem to be in tension: on the one hand God seems to truly desire the repentance and conversion of all sinners, o...

  Reflections on the implications of an argument often raised against Christian universalism I should clarify that this post isn’t a criticism of Christianity in general but it is a reflection of the implications of a rigidly exclusivist theistic worldview. I want start   from a critique   against a common objection to universalism that is often raised by anti-universalists. The argument IMO implies that if 'evagelization' is truly as necessary as some anti-universalists believe, this would imply that God  doesn't  want the salvation of all. My critique is aimed at those views which accept the following propositions: (1) There is no possibility of salvation after this life (2) In order to be saved, it is necessary for a human being to join a particular religious denomination/community ('exclusivism') (3) There is a creator God that wants the salvation of all human beings/that no human being should be lost forever Let's call 'evangelization'...

  Witnesses of universalism in the writings of the Cappadocians In what follows, I will make a list of references of both pre-modern and recent (20-21th centuries) witnesses of ‘universalist’ [1]  or ‘universalist-leaning’positions in the writings of the Cappadocian Christian philosophers (who lived in the fourth century): Basil of Caesarea, Macrina the Younger, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus.  The purpose of this text is to show that, while scant, there is evidence that in Ancient and Medieval times some have affirmed the presence of the doctrine in these figures – at least in the case of Gregory of Nyssa – or tried to explain it away by suggesting that the texts have been interpolated (which, in a way, is an admission of the presence of the doctrine in the texts themselves) and the latter strategy was probably popular among the later Greek fathers. It should be noted that there is no writing attributed to Macrina the Younger. Her position, however, might be ...