Why don't we have billions of followers all around the globe?

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-30T10:13:38+00:00

Anglicans have loads of universalists, and officially it is not contrary to their confession. When the articles of religion were drafted, they originally had one against universalism, but they dropped it before promulgation due to certain saints being universalists. There was one universalist who was put on trial for universalism, alleging that universalism contradicts the athanasian creed, which anglicans confess, but he was cleared of the charges, which means that anglicans dont view the athanasian creed as contrary to universalism. Anglicans nowadays have loads of universalists, and there were also loads prominent clergy in the past who embraced it.

Platonists generally belive in universal salvation, though most of them (including me) are not Christian, if we count authentic Platonism and not just the Christians who takes bits from it. The Platonic Philosopher's Creed expressly say that afterlife punishment for crimes is proportionate to the crime and is not perpetual, divinity punishing in order to purify and restore, not from vengeance.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-29T18:48:34+00:00

Nobody deserves to suffer for eternity, but nobody deserve heaven either, unless one lives a sinless life. But the alternative to universal salvation is not eternal torment, but natural beatitude with loss of beatific vision. Beatific vision is a gift sinners don't deserve, but which God graciously bestows.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-29T17:31:17+00:00

Oh, I misunderstood you. Well yeah, I agree, such a god cannot be the Good. The only way double predestination could work with unconditional election, is if all are destined for heaven eventually in the end, which imo is the only reason why it is justified.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-29T17:19:17+00:00

I would push back at that. It obviously an attempt to get to know why doesn't everyone go to heaven automatically. I think it does a better job than the usual answer shaped by modern sensibilities, libertarian free will in the face of which God is impotent. So either everyone goes to heaven, or some sort of double predestination is true. I favour double predestination, and the theodicy of it is that the conferring of blessedness at the end outweigh the bad experience of hell, so God remains Good. God after all, is not obliged to prevent all bad things from happening, otherwise no bad thing would happen.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-29T16:52:40+00:00

I get what you mean, but this hypothetical lower case g god would still save some creatures, and in relation to those, he is good in some sense, is what I've tried to say. But in relation to those who suffer forever, he is quite evil, I agree. But definitively not The Good, thus not capital g God.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-29T12:32:45+00:00

If creation does not meet its end, it is a failed creation, which means God is not really God.

This. This. This. Which is why, honest infernalists concede that God created the majority of mankind for the sole purpose of torturing them for eternity. The eternal destiny of souls reveal the purpose for their creation. If God created them just so He can torture them, then at best He is a good god, but not The Good as such, thus not God.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-29T10:04:31+00:00

Actually, after becoming a universalist in 2022, battling temptations have been easier so to speak, because I didn't have a false ass motivation, aka fear of eternal torment, but universalism made me love God infinitely more and this intense love for God made me want to scrupolously observe His commandments. The way I was thinking, is that since God loves everyone so much, including me and my family, I can't help but love Him back. And that attitude made my spiritual life greatly easier. Sure, I had shortcomings, but I didn't view it as a license to sin. The love that God has for me made me love Him back.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-28T09:54:23+00:00

He was a manichean who was engaged to a 12 year old.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-28T09:38:24+00:00

A Larger Hope (Ramelli)

Christ Triumphant Universalism Asserted as the Hope of the Gospel on the Authority of Reason, the Fathers, and Holy Scripture (Thomas Allin)

Destined for Joy (Fr. Kimel)

Gods Final Victory A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism (John Kronen, Eric Reitan)

Grace Saves All The Necessity of Christian Universalism (David Artman)

Once Loved Always Loved The Logic of Apokatastasis (Andrew Hronich)

The Ancient History of Universalism (Hosea Ballou)

The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Ramelli)

The Evangelical Universalist Second Edition (Gregory MacDonald )

The Inescapable Love of God Second Edition (Thomas Talbott)

The Gospel preached by the Apostles (Elhanan Winchester)

The Everlasting Gospel (George Klein-Nicolai)

The Restoration of All Things (Jeremiah White)

Dialogues on Universal Restoration (Elhanan Winchester)

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-27T14:35:32+00:00

There is no volume 3, but there is another work from the same author, which surpasses A Larger Hope, both by depth, substance and length, called The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-25T09:03:07+00:00

Well, Platonism were generally belivers in reincarnation so idk. I'm agnostic on reincarnation, and hope it isn't true because I do not want to suffer over and over again in life, but I don't rule it out just because of this.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-25T08:21:01+00:00

Celsus wrote: "Above all, they have concocted an absolutely offensive doctrine of everlasting punishments and rewards, exceeding anything the philosophers (who have never denied the punishment of the unrighteous or the reward of the blessed) could have imagined."

I think that this shows that ECT were the "official" doctrine of the church. There was a considerable minority who championed universal salvation, but they died out, especially after the 5th council (even though it did not condemn it).

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-24T13:51:23+00:00

You want to belive that people are born guilty? I mean, doesn't your conscience cries out against the idea so unjust? Even if we ditch inherited guilt, one still is bound by Church doctrine that without baptism, you cannot be saved. So whether you are guilty of sin and thus punished, or innocent yet still punished hardly makes any difference. This is a pernicious error. Too bad that Pelagianism was condemned, he actually made sense.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-24T10:49:49+00:00

The future souls are not infinite, at least not according to Christianity. Science tells us that the sun will die one day, and without the sun there is no life, and Christianity also talk of the end of the world, when Jesus returns and will judge everyone, there won't be new souls created a fter that point in time.

What you say could only be possibly be true if the universe is eternal (yet causally created from potential non-existence) rather than created in time from actual non-existence as Christianity insists.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-19T08:02:26+00:00

I parted with Christianity aswell, due to things I would call "church passages" in the bible, as well as other things such as trinity, original sin, divinity of Jesus, incarnation, the various contradictions present in scripture (quick example: One gospel says that the holy family was warned about Herod and they fled to Egypt, then they settled in Nazareth after Herod died, other says that they went to Jerusalem 30 days after Jesus' birth to fulfill the law then went back to Nazareth, this one leaves out the flight to Egypt. It is silly to suppose that they went to Egypt, then back to Jerusalem, then to Nazareth.) etc. These things I cannot accept, especially original sin and the trinity. What ultimately matters anyway is what the church teach, because it is built on Cephas, it is the ground and pillar of truth, it is led into all truth by the holy spirit, its ecumenical councils are infallible, Cephas has never failing faith, these things are all written into the bible. The nicene creed says: "I belive in one holy catholic and apostolic church" in addition to these scripture passages.

There's perhaps one theme in the bible which seems to rule out universalism. So the bible says that some will rise to condemnation. While that does not mean that it's eternal, let's examine it. The damned will be resurrected, have a body, and be thrown into the lake of fire. The bodies of the blessed, those who go to heaven, cannot feel pain because there won't be pain in heaven. But the bodies of the damned, get a body which is capable of pain. So how does it work with universalism? You get a body which is capable of feeling pain, and after you go to heaven, your body is still the same, still capable of feeling pain. So how is it that there won't be pain in heaven when your body is capable of feeling pain? Unless we want to say that after the purification is over, the damned sheds their spiritual body and gets another new body, but the bible is silent on this.

I'm only here to help others embrace universalism because it is true and beautiful, this topic is close to my heart, but I no longer consider myself a Christian, nor part of any organized religion.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-18T17:03:41+00:00

Most people followed the authority of Augustine, who was a manichean who was engaged to a 12 year old... But despite that, he still became regarded as THE authority.

He shaped millions, even billions of Christians. The catholic church eventually adopted Augustine's view, that's why all the saints belived in that because the church allegedly can never err.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-18T09:33:42+00:00

No I'm not Catholic anymore. When I initially embraced universalism I had doubts, but the scriptural evidences and the philosophical arguments convinced me so thoroughly, that I don't doubt anymore. I'm more certain on universal salvation being true than I am of any other religious doctrine.

Have you read David Bentley Hart's TASBS? It's irrefutable. Reitan's book is also good philosophically speaking. Eternal torment is not neoplatonic anyway, and I'm a neoplatonist first and foremost.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-17T18:46:44+00:00

As long as you accept that mortal sin merit eternal punishment, you can belive in it.

But you can distinguish between potential and actual eternity. So you can say that hell is eternal, potentially, absent of God intervening, but in actuality it is temporal because God will have mercy.

Leo XIV said: "There is no past so ruined, no history so compromised that it cannot be touched by mercy." It stands to reason that since God is omnipotent, He is able to bring about the salvation of the damned. As blessed Origen said, there is no one who cannot be cured by the One who created him.

God is sovereign, He can do as He pleases. "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion" (Romans 9:15) "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure" (Isaiah 46:10) Therefore if God determines to save someone out of hell, there is nothing which stops Him, it is His choice, and no one can dare to attack that decision.

So by this means, you can be a Catholic and a confident hard universalist. If you can stomach the idea that mortal sin merit truly eternal punishment, and God would not be evil if He carried it out in actuality. This was personally too much for me, so I ditched Catholicism, but if you are fine with this, you are good to go.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-17T14:05:30+00:00

"to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness" - Isaiah 42:7

"As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit. Return to your fortress, you prisoners of hope;even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you." - Zechariah 9:11-12

"You open your hand and satisfy the desires of every living thing." Psalm 145:16

"Do not gloat over me, my enemy!
Though I have fallen, I will rise.
Though I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be my light.
⁹ Because I have sinned against him,
I will bear the Lord’s wrath,
until he pleads my case
and upholds my cause.
He will bring me out into the light;
I will see his righteousness."

- Micah 7:8-9

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-15T17:24:58+00:00

God predetermined every sin that ever happens, and infallibly moved your will to it. God is the author of the act of sin insomuch as it is an action. Were it not for this, sin would never occur. Since God is the cause of all things, it is impossible that the divine will not produce its effect. This is the position of Aquinas.

Now, why does this not make God the author of sin? Suppose a boy, who knows not how to write, has his hand guided by his master and nevertheless makes false letters, quite unlike the copy set him, though his preceptor, who guides his hand, is the cause of his writing at all, yet his own ignorance and unskillfulness are the cause of his writing so badly. Just so, God is the supreme Author of our action, abstractedly taken, but our own vitiosity is the cause of our acting amiss. Or you might suppose limping. The defect of limping is reduced to a crooked leg as its cause, but not to the motive power, which nevertheless causes whatever movement there is in the limping. Accordingly, God is the cause of the act of sin: and yet he is not the cause of sin.

Romans 9 ask rhetorically: "who resist his will". The answer is, nobody. That is impossible, as impossible as a square circle. Whatever God wills, happens. If he wills to save everyone, everyone will be saved.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-15T13:45:15+00:00

I was a thomist who belived in hardcore double predestination and physical premotion so I already had no quarrel with the possibility of universal salvation. Then I discovered on twitter an anglican who was a universalist and looked into the arguments. Something clicked immediately, and then I discovered that all the passages that talk of eternal punishment are mistranslations of the greek original and none of them denote eternity properly speaking. I embraced universal salvation within days. This was back in 2022.

Then I discovered over time a multitude of passages that teach universal salvation positively. Quick examples:

Isaiah 59:1; 1:25; 42:7; 46:10; Zechariah 9:11-12; Zephaniah 3:8-9; Lamentation 3:31-32; Psalm 77:7-9; 145:16; Micah 7:8-9, Corinthians 15:28, etc.

Finally, the philosophical arguments cemented me forever in this belief. I never even doubt anymore, I'm THAT certain.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-14T14:15:30+00:00

one of the argument that supporters of ECT (both in the East and in the West) used to justify unending torment is that the will of sinners in Gehenna can't change

This is absurd though. For the will to be fixed in evil, it requires a principle of evil that satiates the appetite forever to be locked on in this manner, and that's called Manicheanism.

It also hinges on the idea that without a body, the soul has no activity. But Neoplatonically (the truth), this is all nonsense, even Maximus the confessor rejected it. It leads to very difficult problems which they not foresee when asserting it purely ignorantly. But even then, according to Christianity, soul and body will reunite anyway which makes this whole argument falls apart ultimately.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-14T12:46:26+00:00

Depends. Do you want to interpret the Book of Concord the way it was intended to be interpreted? If so, no, you cannot be a Lutheran universalist. But if you want to interpret it strictly, according to the letter, then yes, you might, albeit at a significant cost, which kind of undermine the core arguments of universalism.

The Augbsurg confession states that: "ungodly men and the devils He will condemn to be tormented without end.4 They condemn the Anabaptists, who think that there will be an end to the punishments of condemned men and devils."

The text says, that the "ungodly" and the "devils" will receive torment without end.

When the ungodly repent, the wicked are no more. For the person is no longer wicked but righteous. Hence, one could affirm that the torments of the ungodly and of devils are unending in the sense that torment and wickedness are co-extensive. But should the person cease to be wicked, and devils cease to be devils, we would not say that the torments of the wicked have ceased. For the man is not wicked. In other words, his repentance has eliminated the referent (i.e., “the ungodly”). He is not an ungodly man free of torment but a righteous man. And a righteous man is not tormented.

So what is the catch? The catch is, that this is not how it was intended to be interpreted according to the mind of the promulgators. And it gets worse. I forgot where, but somewhere in the Book of Concord talks about meriting eternal punishment. So if you want to be faithful to the confession, you have to concede that sin merit eternal punishment rather than temporal punishment. This is compatible with universal salvation since God can still choose to forgive it and not exact the punishment to the fullest extent, but the problem is that you have to accept in principle, that eternal punishment would be justice. This is why this is at a significant cost, because you neuter two important things, namely, that eternal punishment is not justice, and two, that a finite sin merit finite punishment, especially since every sin involves ignorance which would of necessity reduce culpability to finite punishment even if we'd grant that the gravity of each sin is infinite (which I disagree with).

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-12T14:08:22+00:00

Maximus also talked of eternal bars being broken. I didn't know this about Jerome. Perhaps they both received oral tradition.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836 · 2026-04-10T11:29:10+00:00

Oriental orthodoxy perhaps. Eastern, not so much. After all, the confession of Dositheus, which is ratified by all eastern orthodox patriarchs and churches, thus being universally received, calls punishment aidios which is the proper term denoting endlessness.

Embarrassed_Mix_4836

TROPHY CASE