The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Michael McClymond on Universalism

Mike and all - I think we can start again now in better understanding and not hold you to the lecture and affirm that it has in the end been very positive in opening up dialogue (because you’ve also shown a willingness to engage in dialogue with us :slight_smile: Bless you :slight_smile:

Yes - I am well area of Patriarch Scholarios’ views since you’ve pointed them out to me. I think that obviously he knew Origen in garbled form and after the views of his detractors. Also there is the issues raised by later scholars like Romanidies about the Orthodox Church actual being rather captive to Western Augustinianism at this point and about the wide tolerance and influence in Orthodox eschatology at this time of the Aerial Toll House speculations that actually have their roots in real Gnosticism.

I’m not sure that Dr Ramelli is extreme; IMHO she I simply making the case - through extensive knowledge and research in the primary sources - regarding who the tradition of apocatastasis was very influential in the Early Church, has earlier roots that hitherto suspected, and has been widely misrepresented to date. It seems that she is also a Christian universalist but her open scholarship is still extremely useful to all comers. Hanson - of the American Universalist Church - now he is extreme and polemical - but Dr Ramelli is a really fine scholar and she plays the game with scholarly apparatus to open up her conclusions.

Mike I don’t think that even when the many distortions of Origen have been cleared away - any of us here are suggesting for a moment that we return to his early Christian Platonism - he was teaching when Christina doctrine was still in it’s developmental phase and made a major contribution to this by ‘chancing his arm’. Eramsus did not advocate this either - he saw the great moral worth in Origen’s teaching of the Way of Christ and of his scriptural exegesis but viewed the metaphysical speculations as time bound and not relevant to his (Erasmus’) day (and Erasmus did not have access to the original Origen to the extent that we have today - but he still intuited that Origen and Athanasius were basically on the same page in spirit).

Christians’ from the Augustinian tradition today - by the same token - do not assent to all of Augustine’s protology and eschatology (if they are aware of what this is). ‘So what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander’ - as we say in England :laughing:

All very good wishes

Dick

A note to all here –

Well we have to be canny in this world – but my opinion - for what it’s worth - is that Mike is a gentleman who, as we’d say in England, ‘would not cheat you at cards’ :smiley: So we can proceed now in an orderly fashion and enjoy the stimulating conversation (and from now on we comment on what Mike is saying now rather than the lecture and small seminars – or else we will be showing ill courtesy). Its good to clear all of this up and put it behind us 

A note to Mike –

We’ve all worked very hard to get responses in to you from busy people who are also very accomplished scholars. Jason and Tom have responded very carefully to you now – and possibly have even forgiven me for my mad cap ways :smiley: – Professor Ramelli has also responded to your concerns which is great :smiley: And Arlenite – who is no mean scholar himself– has also done some excellent posts- as has Sonia from the point of view of a very articulate and intelligent Universalist stating what they believe as a universalist today. I know Alex has also been working very hard trying to recall all and sundry from their summer breaks. So they are to be thanked warmly by all of us.

So a note of thanks to them would be nice – and it would take any steam that’s still in the situation out of it. You are not in hostile territory here Mike 

As for Robin (Parry) – well I don’t know Robin from Adam. I know that in your talk - which we shall not mention again (promise this is the last time and I’ll just respond to current questions now) - you made a lot of his initial anonymity as a universalist – I never quite understood that myself; but I think it had to do with the stresses and strains of being an English and fairly conservative evangelical (which in American terms means that he tends towards being a liberal/open Evangelical I think) and also to do with certain scruples about his Publishing House. But Robin – apparently – is very interested in debating with you when your book comes out – so that’s a result too (and I hope the debate or at least a version of it takes place here). Robin can explain his initial anonymity when he debates with you I guess – and we all make mistakes (if it was a mistake). 

Love to all

Dick

And I’d just like to mention my dear friend Steve Hammond (alecforbes) who is my kindlier angel and has done much to restrain the more acerbic expressions of my tiresome English wit there. Mike - of you ever want to discuss George MacDonald, Steve has read all of his writings and just about everything that has been written about him - so he’s your man and he’s is loving kind and very circumspect.

By the way, I understand and agree about not being able to pull down the YT, due to not owning the rights to the video. As for factual corrections to various claims in the video, we ought to be adding a link over here in its comments. That’s possible, right?

The historical fact is that Origen was president of the Alexandrian catechetical seminary in his day, and was widely (though not strictly universally) praised till near the end of the 4th century (though his fans, with Athanasius’ blessing, had to write a defense showing the Arians were wrong to be appealing to him), and his methods were applied as the standard source for centuries in going after non-trinitarians.

He started being marginalized (a little) when Epiphanius and, more importantly, Jerome started going after him (or rather after prevalent Origenian sects of his day whom they blamed Origen for); but mostly he was marginalized after Justinian’s epistle/anathema list and the EcuCouncil.

The problem is that your video makes him seem very much more marginal than that, pre-Justinian. And you do that in ways which are more than a little irrelevant, like implying opinions long after Justinian represent how Origen was thought of generally by proportion before Justinian.

For example. The explicitly 15th century Patriarch of Constantinople is not at all representative of attitudes toward Origen before Justinian’s attack. But even you acknowledge that the medievalists gave him a mixed reception, including appreciating his exegetical contributions. (Also, not incidentally, his trinitology contributions where they could get hold of older copies of his work.)

Well, she doesn’t cite 15th century Patriarch opinions when assessing his marginalization or not before Justinian. She does cite a lot of contemporary sources. Is it extreme to cite contemporary sources about his influence before Justinian, and to ignore medieval resources outside the scope of her survey?

No doubt! – though we dispute, on the basis of the evidence, what you’ve been calling the whole package. But most of us aren’t Catholics, so there’s one example; most of us don’t accept young-earth creationism either, maybe not a literal Adam and Eve, like Origen demonstrably did.

Except Origen himself demonstrably did not believe this about human beings.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY??! First, giving so little attention to the HS would imply the Spirit by proportion is rarely mentioned, which is demonstrably false. Second, in the very chapter of the very book you cited Balthasar not only gave the HS a lot of attention (despite his general topic being Christological) but when he did he talked about the importance of the Spirit’s work in significant ways.

Do I really have to transcribe that chapter in detail? Things like this (multiply repeated) are why people who can check you on some of your claims have proportionately no confidence where we can’t check you yet.

You know, because you’ve studied it thoroughly, right, that in the VERY FIRST SENTENCE OF THE VERY FIRST PARAGRAPH of the chapter you cited, Balthasar, starting a section titled “On the Role of the Holy Spirit”, introduces his topic by talking about how, since he has argued that Christ becomes the norm of history by recapitulating it in His Incarnation, “we must now consider the difficult problem of how this norm is applied”. His solution starting in the FIRST SENTENCE OF THE SECOND PARAGRAPH is to appeal to the action of (his own italics) The Holy Spirit.

And he keeps going on that theme from there. Within the context of the Incarnate action, of course, so he still talks more about that comparatively, but he often comes back to how the action of the Holy Spirit applies the work of Christ in the lives of Christians (and in leading people to Christ) from the 40 Days onward until today. He even cites Ephesians on the role of the Spirit in sealing the Church as Bride to Christ (although by reference to Ephesians 5, not Eph 1.)

He talks about the Spirit much less in that book outside the chapter you referenced as an example of how little and how trivially he talks about the Spirit, but he never mentions the Spirit trivially. He has a notable tendency to refer to Ephesians, too, when discussing the Spirit, maybe more often than any other text aside from GosJohn.

You clearly didn’t look very hard in the very chapter you cited. Fernseed, elephant.

Balthasar doesn’t claim that, where I’ve read him, certainly not in the actual book of his you cited.

Pentacost doesn’t stop with Pentacost; your complaint seems to be rather that Balthasar takes Pentacost far too far (as might be expected in a theory of Catholic sacraments). But all he’s saying is that the Son keeps on baptizing new Christians with the Holy Spirit in a repetition of Pentacost.

Balthasar explicitly honors this, and explicitly does so as a trinitarian theologian.

Moreover, at no point have you even slightly described the supposed “strength” of including the Holy Spirit in support of non-universalist accounts of salvation.

Are the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit faithful to one another in their personal relationships? Or not?

If so, then it ought to be pretty obvious, that if the Persons of God can “encounter” each other (as the one and only substantial ground of all reality no less!) and yet can be faithful to one another (as the one and only substantial ground of all reality no less!), then “faith” in encountering God after death is just as possible for creatures who don’t even have the Trinity’s advantages of the Persons utterly knowing one another.

Now admittedly, if gnosticism was true, then “faith” would only mean assent to doctrinal beliefs as keys to get past certain barriers between the soul and salvation. In which case your challenge would be a problem. But that isn’t a problem for those of us who aren’t gnostics, if (as we think) gnosticism isn’t true, and so who don’t accept the doctrine of salvation by doctrinal profession. Insert irony as appropriate.

I wish I had thought to put it that way myself! :laughing:

Well OK Jason – here’s sauce for the gander then… :slight_smile:

Mike I know you are a gentleman at heart because at least you have not brought up Origen’s self castration :slight_smile: – and neither Jason nor I plan on following suit :laughing: so don’t try and hold us to it :laughing: . I think we have to see this act in the context of his time. One rumour is that he did it having read Jesus injunction – ‘If your right hand causes you to sin cut it off’ too literally. But this is false – Origen went to great pains in his Commentary on Matthew to sate that this was not to be taken literally, and Erasmus in his Paraphrase on Matthew has Jesus speak - as if Origen - explaining his own words (which is a humorous and jarring note to a modern person and detracts from Jesus pithy Rabbinical style -but was well meant by Erasmus). One thing that Erasmus does grasp from his knowledge of New Testament Greek and his reading of Origen - is the Pauline tripartite division of man as having soma (body) psyche (soul/mental and emotional life) and pneuma (spirit) - Erasmus perhaps over eggs this - because Paul only makes these distinctions once. But Erasmus - the great student of Origen - had a positive view of the body from this and is gentle in his moral teaching about how to treat the body - and understands the distinction between ‘sarx’ and ‘soma’ is seems.

So why did Origen castrate himself? Well he didn’t rush at himself with a knife as some 18th century Deist scoffers portrayed him as having done. Castration was a common and relatively safe operation in the ancient world. Some see his reason for being castrated as to do with him being a charismatic teacher of men and women and wanting to avoid any hint of scandal. Others (Peter Brown in ‘The Body and Society - Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity’) see it as an attempt to realise the state of asexual unity in himself that Adam and Eve enjoyed in their spiritual bodies prior to the Fall (according to the view of his day). In this respect he was a Christian Platonist and a man of his times meshed in an overly ascetical world view (at a time when bodies were far more vulnerable than they are today).

If we look at Augustine – the picture is just as alien to Christians today (including most Calvinists I would think). We all know that Augustine turned the doctrine of First Sin into the doctrine of transmitted Original Sin - at least according to Eastern Orthodox Christians (and Jews), and they have much scriptural evidence to back this up. I don’t think this cause too much problem with conservative Protestants – but the mechanism by which original sin is transmitted should make them think twice. According to Augustine original sin is transferred through ‘concupiscence’ – the desire that goes with the sexual act pure and simple. Adam had a different type of body before the fall – at least in how it functioned. When had had sex with Eve it was accompanied by complete absence of desire and so it was done as if he was urinating. Only after the fall did he experience an erection. I’m not sure conservative Protestants today want to think in these terms. Augustine’s speculations are basically Stoic here. The Stoics saw the highest virtue as begin ‘apatheia’ – an untroubled absence of desire and passion; and this informed their view of therapy and medicine.

Augustine’s sexual pessimism is central to the symbolic allegory that overlays details of biography in his Confessions. As a baby he greedily and lustfully guzzles on the milk from his mother’s breasts already a born sinner and infected with concupiscence. As a young boy his first vile crime is stealing apples from an orchard (this is the fall from Eden). As a young man in a public bath he is troubled by an involuntary erection when disrobing before bathing (but this is actually an allegory of what he saw as the function of baptism; not primarily as dying and rising with Christ into the Body of Christ but as washing away the stain of original sin that is sexually transmitted). In the City of God Augustine argues that prostitution is the way of the Earthly City of regulating concupiscence – and following this the Catholic Churches in the Middle Ages regulated the brothels and benefitted from the income of prostitutes.

And then of course we have Augustine’s story of Alypius – the new Christian persuaded by his false friends to attend the gladiatorial games. He trusts in himself to exercise self control and blocks his ears up. But with the first spit of blood and the roar of the crowd he unblocks them, is caught up in the frenzy of blood lust, and loses his apatheia. Here Augustine speaks as a Stoic like Seneca before him – it doesn’t bother him that the barbaric games are still taking place in the nominally Christian Empire (the games that were once the terrible scene of Christian martyrdom). The only thing that worries him is that Christians should not give in to their passions by attending these games and should not trust their own self control – here apathiea becomes not only an absence of passion but an absence of compassion IMHO.

Augustine was also sure that God damned children who died in the womb or died before baptism and he wasn’t even sure that catechumens who died before they were actually baptised escaped everlasting damnation and torture. On this point I think Julian of Eclanum was right – he argued against Augustine that God could not possibly want children to suffer quoting the later prophet who stated that the son should not pay for the sins of his father. Augustine upheld his new doctrine of original sin by quoting the Torah (out of context)– ‘ The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon their children…’ An early example of a battle of the clobber texts.

Augustine also believed in purgatory and had no developed doctrine of PSA (which did not come until Anselm and did not attain ties modern form before Calvin – well that’s what many extremely competent scholars argue anyway; there are elements of satisfaction theory in Augustine’s doctrine of atonement but no full PSA

Augustine was a great scholar and leader said many profound things. I think some of his influence on the Church and on theology has not been too wonderful. But as with Origen and modern Origenists, a modern Augustinian is going to take an historical view of their model and not subscribe to him on all points. When he was first converted from Manichaeism - as Illaira Ramelli has shown - he embraced the doctrine of apocatastasis. Bu tit seems that his earlier dualism reasserted itself in his sexual pessimism allied with stoicism and later Platonism. And also - as Manichean he would have beloved that the damnation of many was actually a tragedy that the god of light was powerless to prevent. The mature Augustine believed the Manichean doctrine with one important modification - suffering and eternal torment were the will of God how is all powerful.

All the best

Dick Whittington

Hi Jason  – regarding Origen and young earth creationism I have consulted his first Homily on Genesis -

IN THE BEGINNING GOD MADE HEAVEN AND EARTH. What is the beginning of all thing except our Lord and ‘’Saviour of all’’ Jesus Christ ‘’ the firstborn of every creature’’? In this beginning, therefore. That is his Word, ‘’God made heaven and earth’’ as the evangelist John also says in the beginning of this Gospel: ‘’In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him and without him was nothing made.’’ Scripture is not speaking here of any temporal beginning, but says that the heaven and the earth and all things which were made were made ‘’in the beginning,’’ that is, in the Saviour

The implications of the last sentence (which underpin the rest of the Homily) are fleshed out in an article on the very scholarly Biologos website. I give the relevant bits here and the link -

For full article see:

biologos.org/questions/early-int … sis#note-4

Erratum

Mea culpa – my riff on Augustine and prostitution was from dim memory unlike the other stuff. I’ve checked now – and while I don’t have primary source references I do have tow scholarly secondary source references. The quotation I alluded to actually comes from St Thomas Aquinas - but he appears to be echoing a statement by Augustine (which I think must come from The City of God)

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

‘‘Prostitution in the towns is like the cesspool in the palace: take away the cesspool and the palace will become an unclean and evil-smelling place’’.
(Salgado, Gamini. The Elizabethan Underworld, p. 51)

St. Augustine (354-430)

‘‘Suppress prostitution, and capricious lusts will overthrow society’’.
(Dr. William W. Sanger, The History of Prostitution, p. 91.)

And here is Augustine on sex before the Fall

(City of God, Book 14, Chapter 26).

To be fair to Augustine, and similar Patristics (and scholastics for that matter – Pascal also comes to mind), the concept they’re trying to oppose is the common depersonalization of persons into animals by sexual reaction. Even where both persons aren’t trying to enslave or otherwise abuse the other, including by using the experience (and even themselves!) like a drug, it’s reaaaaaaaaly difficult at best (and they would argue impossible) not to treat the other person, at the climax, as a thing for one’s own convenience.

The principle objection can be easily misunderstood, unfortunately, especially with the language they tended to use to make the objections. Lewis used to point out that the Fathers tended to think that procreation would actually be more pleasurable for both parties, not less, under ideal circumstances of proper and full charity for each other; but one could easily get the impression from their language that they thought pleasure itself was the problem. And admittedly there must have been a huge temptation to hurl themselves way off the horse on that side. Clearly there were lots of problems in their attempts at living according to the underlying principle they were aiming for.

I think that is true of Origen Jason - but I think Augustine fell down on the other side and, for example, on becoming a Christian he told his concubine and the mother of his child Adeodatus to go to hell. Also I think in his view of prostitution we see a terrible anti feminism that was creeping into Christianity at this point and which Clement and Origen just do not know at all. I wouldn’t want to scoff at Augustine - my point is that we cannot return to him like we cannot return to Origen - and with good reason. C.S. Lewis was able to be sanguine because he was seeing the sexual pessimism tradition in an historical perspective. His ‘The Allegory of Love’ is grounded in his knowledge of Chartres School Platonism of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and how this specific revival of Christian Platonism was actually world affirming - something he clearly approves of :slight_smile:

I find it noteworthy that we know the name of Augustine’s Mum – Monica – and of his son – Adeodatus – but we do not know the name of his concubine.

Augustine’s attitude towards women is founded in his protology – and that is my point for Mike who has asked whether or not universalists today accept Origen’s protology. There is much evidence to suggest the high status of women in the Church of Alexandria – Clement speaks with high praise of a Pythagorean woman who when attacked covered up her arms. Her attackers taunted – ‘You arms are beautiful’. But she replied, ‘Yes , but they are not for public display’. When a lynch mob had been stirred in Alexandria to kill Christians, young Origen – incredibly brave – assembled the Christians– both men and women – in the Forum and gave them the martyr’s kiss on their forehead to show that they were worthy of this vocation.

And of course we have the example of lion hearted Perpetua – the brave mother who steeled her Christian confessor and her fellow Christian men for martyrdom. In the arena when she was tied to a stake and attacked by the beasts her hair fell down and she managed to pin it up again (in Roman tradition a widow let her hair fall lose, while a bride pinned her hair up). Augustine saw her martyrology as suspect – she died a mother with a child rather than as a virgin. Her pre martyrdom dreams gave her hope of the post mortem salvation of her pagan bother who had died aged nine of face cancer (she dreamed of him drinking from a baptismal font which cured his facial deformities and this gave her good courage); Augustine liked this even less.

The anti women stuff kicked in quickly. Tertullian argued that Eve was the gateway of Satan (like Augustine he also came form North Africa). The post Origenist Jerome argued with vitriolic bile against Jovinian, an ascetic who had made the modest suggestion that the vocation of a celibate ascetic was not superior to that of a married couple. Jerome replied that he had only loved one woman in his life and he had found her physically disgusting. This is the context for Augustine the former libertine who despaired of the goodness of creation.

Augustine’s Confessions mark a turning point in Western Culture. The book is very beautiful and you can see a passionate and intelligent mind at work. However, we see here the introspective conscience in full flow for the first time in its ‘full glory’. Krister Stendhall in his essay ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ make the point – that many scholars see as sound – that in Paul sin is about what we do to other people. The burdens we carry around privately are frailty which our sense of self can feel justified against because of God’s love for us and in that we do not give in to them publicly. But for Augustine sin becomes introspective – it’s all about what goes on in our minds; and in order to have peace of mind it may be the case that we act unjustly towards others. Or the over scrupulous may be driven to despair.

My secondary sources for the discussion above are:

Peter Brown – ‘The Body and Society’ (excellent – and actually gives quite a sympathetic, historically nuanced discussion of Augustine’s views of sex and women)

The seminal essay ‘Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West’ – that has greatly influenced the new studies in Paul by E.P. Sanders. Tom Wright etc – can be found in ‘Paul Amongst Jews and Gentiles’.

And also, despite the fact that she gets bad press here – in some way justifiably so because she overegged the importance of the Gnostics and romanticised them in her first ever book seemingly to make a splash – I’d recommend some stuff by Elaine Pagels –

For good primary source materials on women and the Alexandrian Church see the chapter on God as Father/ God as Mother in ‘ The Gnostic Gospels’.

Also ‘Adam Eve and the Serpent’ gives a fine discussion of both Jerome’s controversy with Jovinian and Augustine’s controversy with Julian of Eclanum – again lavishly illustrated with primary source quotation.

My thoughts on ‘The Confessions as Allegory’ and on Augustine’s view of Perpetua have been informed by two scholarly articles in the Time Literary Supplement – I can fish these out if anyone is interested.

Dr. Pagels’ actual scholarly work isn’t much problem – one of my best friends got to take a course on Gnosticism under her at Harvard, btw. (Which amused me greatly for several reasons.)

Her popular propaganda mush is the problem, and this has continued beyond her first splashy book.

Meanwhile, back on topic, is there anything in Dr. M’s posts so far we haven’t thoroughly covered yet? I need to go back and look…

I’m still offering to explain the role of Erasmus in the promotion of non sectarian universalism (via Origen) and to do a digest about universalism in other monotheistic religions (Mike mentions Islam and Judaism in his lecture and talks - IMHO he’s misinformed or at least only partially informed on both - and if he wants to ask questions about these I am happy to answer (I also know about Zoroastrianism and Mahayana Buddhism which verges on incarnational theism in its Bodhisattva doctrines -regarding universalism) :slight_smile:

Go for it, dude, I’d be very interested to read it.

Ditto!

At the risk of being overly simplistic, I thought I’d post something that struck me about this topic today.

It seems to me that it is impossible for Universalism to have come from Gnosticism, let alone possible for this to be proved. The reason is simply this: Gnosticism at its core is about secret knowledge as the way to salvation. If anything, universalism is its opposite, claiming (broadly speaking) that no knowledge; special or otherwise, is necessary to salvation. (Except perhaps knowledge of the Father and Son, but still; this is not secret knowledge by any stretch, and such knowledge does not originate with us). Trees can only produce fruit after their own kind; not opposite fruit!

Well put, Mel! Clement, Origen, and the other early opponents of Gnosticism tagged them on much the same points.

I think people get confused because the early orthdox (and proto-orthodox) Christian universalists also stressed coming punishment, and this was again over-against the Gnostics ;who thought most of humanity were doomed trash, but (despite some poetic code language for learning secret password phrases) didn’t really think that the overgod cared about ‘punishing’ them per se – the overgod, to them, had no concern about morality at all, nor about dealing with creation and creatures at all, thus much less about enforcing moral judgments at all.

What ABOUT the Pharaoh of the Exodus? It is true that Pharoah wasn’t initially inclined to free the Israelites. But it clearly states that it was GOD who hardened Pharaoh’s heart from the beginning. And I’m not sure if the hardening of hearts is God’s modus operandi on a nomal basis, but it sure was in this instance, geared toward His ultimate purpose of delivering Israel. Nor do I know the mechanics about how God is able to harden someone’s heart, but then the implication is that if God can harden a heart, He can just as well UNHARDEN it.

There are other instances in scripture where by God induces his will (directly or indirectly) upon certain figures. Take Saul, for example. After his rebellion, God delivered an evil spirit to vex him.Then several chapters later, Saul strips off his clothes and prophesies, apparently as a preventive measure to protect David from Saul’s wrath. We also have the strange case of Nebuchanezzer, who’s heart was made like a beasts and was made to eat grass like a cow for a time, until afterward, when he got his right mind back, actually REPENTED before the Lord in a REVERSAL of hardening of the heart.

Excellent assessment. May I have your permission to reproduce this in a paper I am writing?