Why I am not a Universalist

As this is a bit of a work in progress, I will be making updates as and when I think of them.

Last Updated: 29th August 2023

Let us begin with St Paul’s letter to Philemon. If you remember, Onesimus, Philemon’s slave has run away to Saint Paul. St Paul urges Philemon to take him back. Verse 15 of this letter says that 

“for perhaps he departed for a season that thou shouldest receive him forever.” 

It is interesting to notice there are two ideas being set in opposition here as the idea of a season is contrasted with the word forever. The Greek word translated “season” is the word hōra and the word translated “forever” is aiōnios. According to the notes on this verse in Dr David Bentley Hart’s own personal translation of the New Testament:

"Paul could mean that Philemon can now welcome Onesimus back as a fellow heir of the Age to come; but it may also be the case that this verse is a play upon Exodus 21: 6, the Septuagintal Greek version of which uses the word aiōn to mean the lifetime of a slave who elects to remain with his master permanently – though in this case, as the following verse says, Onesimus returns as a companion for life not as a slave, but as a brother in Christ."

What we see here is that the word aiōnios has an idea of permanence. In this setting, it refers to the life long relationship of a slave who wishes to remain with his master. This does already suggest that this Greek word which translates as age possesses a sense of permanence, infinitude, or indefiniteness. This would certainly make sense: aiōnios is the word that accompanies zoē to give us the idea of eternal life, though it is more literally translated as “life of the age”. But what is this age? Saint Paul certainly wants to contrast the transience of Onesimus’ desertion to the permanence of his faithfulness upon his return to Philemon. Hōra is contrasted with aiōnios.

If we now go back to II Maccabees i.25 which says of God:

"the only giver of all things, the only just, almighty, and everlasting (aiōnios), thou that deliveredst Israel from all trouble, and didst choose the fathers, and sanctify them…"

This is quite crucial because God here is described as the only being with the property of being truly just, almighty and aiōnios, and this is clearly an expression of his maximal attributes. These are the same words used to describe properties of God search as the eternal glory of Christ Jesus in II Timothy ii.10. The Holy Spirit is described as eternal with the same word in Hebrews 9: 14. It would be imprudent to describe the Holy Ghost in this verse as “the spirit of the age” or, tellingly, Zeitgeist which has highly negative connotations for the traditional Christian. The age is predicated of the Spirit, not the other way around.

Of course the New Testament uses this word aiōnios most in reference to a possible rendering of eternal life. At least that's how we have come to understand it. There is of course controversy over how the word aiōnios is to be understood especially with people who may not have had the metaphysical idea of timelessness. In Unquenchable Fire (p19ff), Fr Lawrence Farley suggests, for the first century people, ages are as infinite to them as millions and billions are to us. We can think of the allotted three score years and ten contrasted with an Age as being something unfathomably long – indeed, an aeon still has that sense of indefinite timelessness in our current language. It seems that St Paul, in using the word aiōnios to Philemon, understands and appreciates that there is a sense of permanence to this word.

Of course, we have important parallelisms in St Matthew xxv in which eternal punishment and life eternal are both inescapably linked by the word aiōnios. If aiōnios only means an indefinite age but with a potential end, then it must mean this potential end would be equally as true for the punishment as for the life.

By way of an example, one might consider the auto-contradictory meanings of the word "cleave" and how they might appear in the sentence "on the left arm the axe cleaved to the sinew, while on the right it cleaved to the bone." There are four possible meanings here but, if the writer of the sentence were trying to convey a meaning of great importance, he would do well to be consistent with his use of the word, possibly using a less ambiguous word to do so.

 This is quite a simple idea and yet very clever people seem to want to argue about the meaning of such a simple statement in order to put forward and indeed force into the text a meaning that is not there. The 1st century Jews certainly see the aeon as being as unfathomable a time just as a talent is an unfathomable and unpayable amount of wealth.

Our Lord also talks about the undying worm and unquenched fire in Mark ix. In Matthew xviii, He also talks about the idea that it is better to enter into heaven maimed than to remain outside of heaven intact. His use of hyperbole enforces the severity of the situation of sin. The Cross itself is testament to the horror of the fate of those who are not saved. If the Lord had meant that the undying worm and unquenched fire were hyperbolic in their duration, then where does He demonstrate the truth of this? Why does He not mention the reconciliation of all to God? If He is the Truth as well as the Life and the Way, why hide the possibility universal reconciliation at all? To lessen the time in Purgatory? Again, the parallelism between the “life of the Age” and the “punishment of the Age” does not make sense here if the life is eternal and the punishment not: either they are both eternal or neither are. It seems that simple ideas are used to confound the intelligent and to reach out to those who are not high-minded and have no proud looks.

The point of analogy and allegory is that they create a picture of the truth in which they render that truth more accessible to our understanding. We might indeed speak of stretching an analogy to demonstrate that the analogy has ceased to reflect accurately the truth it intends to describe. It is clear that Our Lord does talk about preferring the gouging of an eye in order to enter Heaven than to remain intact and not to. This demonstrates the severity of sin. If, in reality, the worm dies eventually and the fire is eventually quenched, then it is conceivable that we might wait it out and still enter Heaven with both eyes to the chagrin of the one who poked his out. There certainly appears to be a lack of justice in this regard. Indeed, the Cross of Christ presents itself as too much for so little.

So what are we to make of the eternal fire, the unquenched flame, the undying worm? This is the fate of the unrepentant whom the Lord never knew. God is love, and love does not insist on its own way, and love is about perfection and achieving perfection. That perfection can only be determined by God: this is the predestination. But if love does not insist on its own way man need not necessarily accept his perfection in God. Where there is sin there is necessarily a separation: where there is one that is leading others astray he is to be ejected from the company. Time and again we see this in the Pentateuch and Joshua, in the Gospels and in Saint Paul right up to the Revelation to St John whose meaning, though often mystical and symbolic demonstrates a clear, final and total end of those who prefer sin to God as evidenced in the Gospels.

That aiōnios has a profound sense of endlessness is surely clear from Holy Scripture because it is always associated with the Age of God, with His Life and His transcendence of Time. In speaking to St Titus, St Paul uses the word aiōnios twice in succession:

"Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; In hope of eternal (aiōniou) life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began (aiōniōn chronōn); But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour;" (Titus i.1-3)

The second verse is perhaps more literally rendered by Dr Hart:

"In hope of the life of the age, which God, who does not lie, promised before the times of the ages…"

Again, the meaning of “before the times of the ages” indicates the limitless scope of God’s existence which is corroborated by St Peter here

"But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal (aiōnion) glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while (oligos), make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you." (I Peter v.10, though Dr Hart’s translation for one reason or another neglects to translate aiōnion here.)

and also

"For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting (aiōnion) kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ." (II Peter i.11)

If, as stated in the II Maccabees, only God has the property of aiōnios in Himself, it stands to reason that it is this property that is shared in His offer of Eternal life and also in the separation from those who are too foolish to put oil in their lamps.

One may also consider passages such as Revelation iv.9-10

"And when those beasts give glory and honour and thanks to him that sat on the throne, who liveth for ever and ever (eis aiōnas aiōnōn), the four and twenty elders fall down before him that sat upon the throne, and worship him that liveth for ever and ever (eis aiōnas aiōnōn), and cast their crowns before the throne..."

If "unto the age of ages" does mean "eternal", it is hard to see how life that is aiōnios is not eternal and thus how the punishment is not eternal. There is a lack of hermeneutic consistency otherwise.

This use of the word aiōnios does render arguments for Universalism rather refutable by Holy Scripture and also in those Greek Fathers who used the term to understand the impact of the Cross and for whom Universalism was not an orthodox belief. You can clearly read this in Fr Farley’s survey which begins with St Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Ephesians xvi.1-2, II Clement viii.2 and xvii.7, the Epistle of Barnabas xxi.3, the Epistle to Diognetus x.7, the Martyrdom of St Polycarp ii.3, xi.2, St Justin Martyr’s Apology xviii and lii, Tatian’s Address to the Greeks xiii, St Iranaeus Against Heresies IV.xxviii, et c. Jurgens' Faith of the Early Fathers lists 38 passages across the duration of the Primitive Church that are not patient of a Universalist apokatastasis. Indeed, St Jerome, St John Chrysostom, St Gregory the Great and St Augustine are very forthright in their opposition to the idea that even Satan himself will be reconciled with God.

St Benedict makes use of this imagery in urging the Christian to take the Christian life seriously so that God

"ut metuendus dominus irritatus a malis nostris, ut nequissimos servos perpetuam tradat ad poenam qui eum sequi noluerint ad gloriam.

as a dread Lord be driven by our sins to cast into everlasting punishment the wicked servants who would not follow him to glory." (Prologue to the Rule)

It is possible that, like Arianism, Universalism may have been ascendant among Christian believers but this is certainly not the case now, even with the atheist use of an Eternal Hell as an argument against the existence of God and believers thus rejecting it. There are a sizeable number of Christians today who accept extramarital sex as being moral, so appeals to dubious statistics is not an argument. You cannot, however, claim that there is no evidence against Universalism either in Holy Scripture or the Church Fathers, and to claim that Universalism is irrefutable is clearly logically flawed since there is an obvious defeater to its position. 

Together with this stands the evidence of the Quicunque Vult which, read in the tradition of the Fathers, states clearly the unending punishment of those who do not keep the Christian Faith. One might object to a purported dubious authority given that it seems to imply the filioque:

"The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son: neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding."

Yet this does not imply a double procession and is perfectly patient of the understanding of the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father as source through the Son in one single procession. To object to the orthodoxy of this Creed is to object to a doctrine that has antiquity across the world, across churches – even Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and Roman. St Vincent’s famous canon may indeed be applicable here that the eternity of Hell is actually more a Catholic Doctrine than even the invalidity of the ordination of women given that more who call themselves Christian, albeit with C. S. Lewis’ repugnance, have received the doctrine and wrestle with it rather than to perform eisegesis in order to remove it completely. If Universalism is a minority position then one must wonder why. It seems to be of a similar size (and no less vocal) to those who claim the ordination of women is traditional based on a modern social philosophy supported by spurious archaeology, patristics and the reinterpretation of Scripture. There is no Oecumenical Council that proclaims against women in holy orders, but it is still an established Catholic doctrine that the bishop, priest and deacon are essentially male.

The Catholic Principles of Scripture, Tradition and Reason are not a three-legged stool, but rather a rope made of cords of unequal weight. Scripture is the broadest cord, followed by Tradition and then Reason. This is important because Human Reasoning leads people astray. Philosophies are things of fashion. To hold a philosophy as being the means to interpret Scripture means that Scriptural interpretation itself becomes a thing of the age and thus loses its Catholic authority. A philosophy becomes a systematic framework for eisegesis unless it is built on that which proceeds from the phronema Christou as determined in Scripture and the Church Fathers.

As a case in point, Origen was a controversial figure (though respected by the Church - one must remember that even St Thomas Aquinas had six of his doctrines declared heretical posthumously) from the outset and his philosophy from which his Universalism grew was always opposed by the Church authorities. At the level of cosmology, Origen's idea that the end and the beginning are identical is rather refuted by the recent findings that the Universe will (if physics is correct) expand forever rather than return to its original state in a Big Crunch. Likewise, human beings will return to God in a different state from which they began, namely, with the knowledge of Good and Evil that they have acquired from the experience of sin committed and sin received. 

With regard to the anathemas against Origen and the much vaunted doubt of their Catholic veracity, there is good evidence that a version of Origen's apokatastasis as promoted by Evagrius of Pontus (again, no villain) was indeed anathematized first at the Synod of Constantinople in 543 and that this was reinforced at the the second Oecumenical Council of Constantinople in 553 according to the renowned historians Fr Richard Price (Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, Liverpool University Press 2009, p270ff) Dr Stephen Need (Truly Divine and Truly Human, SPCK 2008, p120) and Dr Leo Davis (The First Seven Ecumenical Councils, Michael Glazier, 1983 p246) as well as Fr Farley (p177ff), and further, in case of any doubt, these anathemas are upheld in the second Oecumenical Council of Nicaea in 787 (see NPNF II p549-550). Appeals that no specific dogma of Origen is condemned misses the point that the anathemas under Justinian recorded in the sixth century record a wider philosophical system attributed to Origen and promoted by Evagrius, and these were ratified in this eighth century council. Not only were these anathemas well-understood to include the anathemas against the pre-existence of souls and universal reconciliation, but also they were worth ratifying. Indeed, the lack of explicit reference in the anathemas of any particular doctrine of Origen suggests that it is the entire Origenist creation-soteriological system that is at fault, especially as Origen's metaphysics denies individuation of human beings beyond the distinctions of being corporal. If this is so, then this will certainly anathematise Universalism as an eventual reconciliation of all rational beings with God and full access to the Beatific Vision. 

St Maximos the Confessor has recently been described as a universalist, but this is doubtful. He makes an interesting point in his Ambiguum 24 that the will is part of human nature but willing is a personal act. Essentially, in acquiring a full human nature, Christ saves human nature fully as a vehicle by which individuals enter into theosis - the door to the prison is open. Humanity is thus saved but it now becomes the individual acts of will that determine whether an individual enters into Eternal life or not. An individual with human nature is a person and it is persons who are saved. In the process of theosis we can be sure that our human nature will remain distinct from the divine nature and that this will not confound our individual personality. This is in perfect concordance with the tenor of the Fifth Oecumenical Council in which the duophysite doctrine is expounded. Universalism only becomes necessary when individual human identities are abolished in God. It therefore runs counter to the dignity of the human person and the findings of an Oecumenical Council

While there are those who are intent on creating conspiracy theories to deny them, the fact is that these anathemas have existed long enough and expressed an opinion that has become credal in the West but also with consensus in the East. Although I disagree with William of Ockham on many things, the simplest explanations are usually the best. The key thing is that Constantinople II combatted monophysitism and Constantinople III combatted monothelitism in which the human will is regarded as being worth theosis since Our Lord took a human will. If that human will is to be like God's then human freedom of indifference is more valuable than something to be reined in by a "love" that coerces conformity from the "gnomic will". The victory of the Cross, then, includes the fact that Man has a free, informed say in His eternal fate rather than automatically perish in the blindness to God in Original Sin. The old man might say, "I fought great battles for your right to vote," but he what he has achieved is your freedom not only to vote for the candidate you choose, but also whether you choose to vote or not. Christ has opened the prison door for those who would leave into His kingdom. While I cannot make any official judgement, especially as I prefer black to purple, this does suggest strongly that Universalism may have the character of heterodoxy.

As to what the state of “eternal punishment” looks like, Our Lord’s analogy shows that, like Evil, it is a privation. The five wise virgins are admitted to the feast, the foolish are shut out. The goats are, like the famous scapegoat, are cast from God’s presence and not allowed to enter into His rest. The word kolasis as used in Matthew xxv.46 appears once more in the New Testament:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. (kolasin) He that feareth is not made perfect in love. (I John iv.18)

The word, however, does appear in the Septuagint, specifically in Wisdom xvi in which the experience of the Egyptian oppressors is rehearsed and perhaps gives us an inkling as to what Hell is like. In this passage, the word kolasis is used punitively as a just reward for oppressing the Israelites who are spared punishment (verse 2) with a delicious banquet from which the Egyptians are excluded. Likewise, the imagery of the Revelation to St John xxi in which the New Heaven and the New Earth replace the Old Heaven and the Old Earth which pass away shows that there is a distinction between the Old Creation and the New which is prepared for the faithful with the presence of God in mind. This New Creation is precisely the place from which the unrepentant are excluded and it is suggested in being shut out of the New Creation they remain part of the Old and the New becomes as inaccessible to them as illustrated by the parable of Dives and Lazarus, especially when it appears that the gulf between the two is a protection of Lazarus against further abuse from Dives. It seems that this punishment is simply to suffer the logical consequences of one's free actions and the consequences of coveting separation will gain it. In the words of the Rassilon as translated from the Old High Gallifreyan in The Five Doctors, "to lose is to win and he who wins shall lose."

This leads to the possibility that the unquenched fire and the undying worm are generated by the unrepentant themselves and do not have their origin in God. They have their existence as they would have it but, though they strive for perfection, they cannot achieve it because they have lost the telos of their existence. As a mathematical analogy, the terms in the sequence 1, 0.5, 0.25, 0.125, 0.0625... are all positive fractions. The terms in the sequence are formed by successive halving and get closer and closer to 0, but can never reach it. However, close the Old Creation approaches the New, it cannot reach it since it lacks the Beatific Vision. Those who remain shut out have nothing done to them – their punishment is simply a closed door according to the choices they made in their lives as testified by Our Lord’s words in Matthew xxv. Any agony they receive is self-generated through failing to participate fully and freely in the Eternal, burning love that God has for His children. They know they have lost out and thus they weep and gnash their teeth despite being loved by God. Yet they can continue to live eternally outside the door, they can still find their delights in the Old Creation and they can continue to do without that pesky God and His irritating Church. They will always be missing the best thing of all. 

Even if we understand the notion of freewill as being the freedom to perfection rather than freedom of indifference, then it is necessary to question whether Geach's acorn which does not germinate and this does not reach its telos will itself be perfected in the New Creation. 

An incomplete circle fails to be a circle but it succeeds in being an illustration of something that is incomplete. What is also worthy to note is that an incomplete circle is as eternal as a complete circle. However, the existence of an incomplete circle may not have the full perfection and thus good of being a circle, but it possesses another good - that of being a perfect example of incompleteness. The good that it possesses is not the good that would render it perfect in both senses. In the same way, the idea of Hell being a privation of the Beatific Vision of God does not render Hell an evil in itself for it it is possible for it becomes a place in which those who reject God may have their being (which in participating in God is a supreme good) yet remain eternally unaware of God like the fate of the apostate dwarves in C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle. In permitting Hell, God is not necessarily willing Evil but bringing the greatest good possible out of a privative circumstances. Inhabitants of  Hell may be imperfect in one sense but not in another. If the greatest good is Love and Love insists not on its own way then Hell is an act of Love because it fulfills that perfection. This is very similar to the argument of why God permits evil to exist in the first place. God's attributes are not inconsistent with the existence of evil because there is always the possibility of a greater good. There is, therefore, the possibility that the existence of an eternal Hell brings about a greater good for its inhabitants than we know, namely a place of existing without the vision of Almighty God - something which would utterly terrify those who know and love Him on the grounds of the severe existential dissonance that this separation from God would cause. Note that, insofar as people shut out of the visible presence of God have existence, God is still present with them and loving them, their choice to be excluded from His presence turns His burning love for them into a furnace that causes torment - that is the nature of the existential dissonance that consumes those who choose to reject God and thus have their prayers answered by being given precisely what they want - a god of their own making who cannot be the One True God Who Is.

A person inside the eternal kingdom will be as eternal as one who is not. The key issue here that needs understanding is the nature of how progress and perfection work in a timeless setting. That, admittedly, requires further research.

The view of an outer darkness whose inhabitants generate their own misery may or may not be the case but the possibility that the torment is self-generated by a being that was created to be perfected in Love but has chosen to reject that perfection like the perverse child who refuses to eat a good meal and will thus go hungry demonstrates that there is an alternative position to Universalism. If Love will not insist on His own way, then it puts the onus upon the ones whom He loves to respond. The Lord compares Christians to branches and trees that are to bear fruit and that there will be a day when that fruit is tested and those who have not borne good fruit are excluded - cast into the undying fire that consumed Cain on his offering being rejected by God.

My main point is that Universalism is not irrefutable: it can be refuted and this essay serves as a possible refutation for, if it is true, Universalism must be false. It shows that the traditional reading of aiōnios is justified by the threefold interweaving of Scripture, Tradition and Reason and thus the common consensus on the eternity of Hell shared by Orthodox, Catholic and Protestants is justifies. It is a doctrine simple enough for the first century Jew to understand and therefore good enough for the rest of us.

The existence of Hell is disturbing but only if we are looking at what life looks like without God. It is not for us to make the judgement but that must be left to Almighty God.

I am not a Universalist but I do count Universalists among my friends and I am convinced of the depth of their faith and their love which is, after all, the will for the perfection of everyone. I think, while we disagree about its nature, certainly the ministry of Our Lord Jesus Christ bids us take the possibility of Hell (eternal or not) with the utmost gravity. To lighten His words is to trivialise His Cross and endanger souls and no-one wants to do that, do they?

One last thing must be added.  As the "infernalist" St Benedict tells us, we should never despair of the mercy of God. I personally strive to keep my mind in Hell and despair not.