Note - We are grateful to Brett Baughman, a Protestant scholar, for his work in compiling patristic sources and researching the history of universal salvation in the Church. For more information on this topic, we encourage you to visit his excellent website here.
We are frequently asked if we are a part of the Unitarian Universalist tradition, or if we believe that "all religions are the same." While we honor and respect our UU siblings under God, Christian universalism is a much older tradition which was held by the majority of the undivided Christian church for several centuries, particularly in the Christian East. Though there is no longer consensus in the major Orthodox churches on the matter, it is a widely held belief among many Orthodox Christians that all persons shall one day be reconciled to God in Christ. Rather than offer a full defense of the doctrine of universal salvation, we will simply offer a few remarks here that may encourage the curious and concerned, and direct those who wish to learn more to Baughman's site above, or to the other sources we reference.
Universal reconciliation, or apokatastasis in Greek, was taught and held in various forms throughout the first millennium of the Christian church. Origen is the most famous (and at times the most controversial) proponent of this doctrine, but four out of the five Catechetical Schools of the 4th century (ancient centers of catechism and Christian teaching) taught some form of universal salvation in Christ. These were the schools at Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea (north of Jerusalem), and Edessa. The school at Asia Minor taught a form of annihilationism, that the wicked or those unreconciled to God would simply cease to exist. Curiously, the only school who taught the "eternal conscious torment" of the unsaved in Hell was the school at Rome.
Key to the Orthodox idea of universal salvation is the belief that the "fire" referenced in various contexts to refer to Hell is a purifying and a refining fire rather than an everlasting torment. The Greek word aionion, often used in reference to "everlasting fire" in the Scriptures, more properly refers to something which belongs to an age, specifically the age to come. If we accept the belief that eternity and the domain of God are outside of time, then an everlasting duration would be meaningless. Therefore, it is more proper to translate the term as "fire of the age to come" rather than "everlasting fire." Many of the saints believed that whatever this might be, to be consistent with God's mercy it would have to have a corrective and healing purpose, rather than being an unending punitive vengefulness. Consider these two quotes from Sts. Isaac the Syrian (7th c.) and Clement of Alexandria (2nd c.):
"It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which He knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them—and whom nonetheless He created."
"It is essential, certainly, that the providence which manages all, be both supreme and good. For it is the power of both that dispenses salvation— the one correcting by punishment, as supreme, the other showing kindness in the exercise of beneficence, as a benefactor."
It is clear from these and other patristic sources that the belief in a God who will eventually reconcile all things to God's self is not only not heretical, but is more consistent with the God who "does not desire the death of a sinner, but that they should turn from their wickedness and live" than the doctrine of eternal conscious torment. For this reason, we joyously stand on the faith of the early Church and offer it as a balm to the wounds that so many have suffered at the hands of harmful theologies which seek to separate God's beloved children from God's love.
For more information on Christian universalism, see the link above or visit our Resources page.