My talk at St James Institute on 'Hope and Hell'
Sunday afternoon April 6
This Sunday afternoon I have been invited to give a talk at the St James Institute on “Hope and Hell: How I came to a Larger Vision of Redemption”. I will base the talk on a paper that I wrote recently for a friend, an Anglican Minister from the Sydney diocese which is well known for its conservative theology. My friend, to his credit, was genuinely inquisitive since he respected me and wondered what I believed and how I got there. Here is the link to their website if you would like to come. St James Institute
I put a lot of thought into the paper. One of my main points was that I am not doctrinaire about ‘universalism’ - what I am ‘doctrinaire’ about is the fact that this topic, like several others, is undiscussable. The modern world is increasingly characterised by dogmatism and fundamentalism - and not just in religion. We harden debates into rival positions and deny ourselves the space to explore. That is a recipe for stultifying growth and for fostering antagonism. In contrast the Church Fathers lived in what Von Balthasar called the ‘free republic of the mind’. It was a humbler, more open culture of inquiry.
I attach here a copy of the paper I wrote and also the program for the St James Institute seminars. You will see some interesting talks in their program which is a monthly event - including a talk by our upcoming Gospel Conversations visitor, John Behr. His talk is modestly entitled ‘The Future of the Cosmos’!
If any of you who are Sydney siders would like to come this Sunday, you would be most welcome - l went recently to hear Matthew Anstey talk on his project to translate the Psalms (a great talk) and really enjoyed the convivial inquiring atmosphere.
And my Anglican friend’s reaction to my paper? He read it within an hour and got back to me quite excited. He said that though he did not agree with me on everything, he agreed on most of what I wrote and he could see that I was not a heretic! That is high praise from a Sydney Anglican!
‘Hope and Hell: My Journey - How my thoughts evolved on the matter of ‘universal salvation’
Thanks for sharing - looking forward to reading this in detail.
And also looking forward to John Behr's presentation in August - hopefully this will become available at some point as well.
KR from the Netherlands
Daniel Zollinger
PS minor typo I just noted: Balthasar instead of Balthazar (last page, 4d).
Not sure whether you might be downplaying the explicitness of early church universalism? If something is obvious, in the sense that only by it does anything else really make sense, it doesn’t need to be made explicit. To say that the non-explicit fathers leaned in that direction is quite a specific subtractive claim. I would say the same for Paul. “Explicit” is really a bit of a subjective term. I regard 2 Corinthians 5 - the absolutely exhaustive extent of the atonement, as explicit. Anyone who doesn’t require christology and soteriology to be mutually coherent regards it as irrelevant.