SermonIndex Audio Sermons
SermonIndex - Promoting Revival to this Generation
Give To SermonIndex
Discussion Forum : Scriptures and Doctrine : Tracing universalist through church history/ heresy?

Print Thread (PDF)

PosterThread
lightwalker
Member



Joined: 2007/4/27
Posts: 52
Missouri

 Tracing universalist through church history/ heresy?


Here is a link to this site.
http://www.tentmaker.org/tracts/Universalists.html

I am going to list some of the comments from the early church fathers.Did you know that this was one of the early doctrines and was only condemend later on about 500 years after the resurection?

Clement of Alexandria (c150-215)

Second head of Catechetical School at Alexandria




"[Clement and Origen were] men eminent for their information in every department of literature and science.”-- Socrates Scholasticus c. 380

"Clement, a presbyter of Alexandria, in my judgment the most learned of men…[He has produced] notable volumes full of learning and eloquence using both Scripture and secular literature." -- St. Jerome

"Perhaps nothing in the whole range of early patristic literature is more stimulating to the modern reader than (Clement's) great trilogy of graduated instruction in the Christian life.” –H.B. Swete

"[Clement was] the first systematic teacher of Christian doctrine, the formal champion of liberal culture in the Church." –J. Patrick

"I do not know where we shall look for a purer or truer man than this Clement of Alexandria... He seems to me to be one of the old Fathers whom we should all have reverenced most as a teacher, and loved most as a friend." –Frederick Denison Maurice

"There are very few of the Christian fathers whose fundamental conceptions are better suited to correct the narrowness, the rigidity and the formalism of Latin theology. It is his lofty and wholesome doctrine that man is made in the image of God; that man's will is free; that he is redeemed from sin by a divine education and a corrective discipline; that fear and punishment are but remedial instruments in man's training; that Justice is but another aspect of perfect Love; that the physical world is good and not evil; that Christ is a Living not a Dead Christ; that all mankind from one great brotherhood in him; that salvation is an ethical process, not an external reward; that the atonement was not the pacification of wrath, but the revelation of God's eternal mercy. That judgment is a continuous process, not a single sentence; that God works all things up to what is better; that souls may be purified beyond the grave." –F.W. Farrar commenting on Clement of Alexandria


Gregory of Nyssa

(c 335-390)


One of the Cappodician Fathers



From the time he was thirty-five until his death, Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus and Diodorus of Tarsus, were the unopposed advocates of universal redemption. Most unique and valuable of all his works was the biography of his sister, described in our sketch of Macrina. His descriptions of her life, conversations and death are gems of early Chrstian literature. They overflow with declarations of universal salvation.

Gregory was devoted to the memory of Origen as his spiritual godfather, and teacher, as were his saintly brother and sister. He has well been called "the flower of orthodoxy." He declared that Christ "frees mankind from their wickedness, healing the very inventor of wickedness."

He asks: "What is then the scope of St. Paul's argument in this place? That the nature of evil shall one day be wholly exterminated, and divine, immortal goodness embrace within itself all intelligent natures; so that of all who were made by God, not one shall be exiled from his kingdom; when all the mixtures of evil that like a corrupt matter is mingled in things, shall be dissolved, and consumed in the furnace of purifying fire, and everything that had its origin from God shall be restored to its pristine state of purity."

"This is the end of our hope, that nothing shall be left contrary to the good, but that the divine life, penetrating all things, shall absolutely destroy death from existing things, sin having been previously destroyed,"

"For it is evident that God will in truth be 'in all' when there shall be no evil in existence, when every created being is at harmony with itself, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord; when every creature shall have been made one body. Now the body of Christ, as I have often said, is the whole of humanity."

On the Psalms, "Neither is sin from eternity, not will it last to eternity. For that which did not always exist shall not last forever."

His language demonstrates the fact that the word aionios did not have the meaning of endless duration in his day. He distinctly says: "Whoever considers the divine power will plainly perceive that it is able at length to restore by means of the aionion purging and atoning sufferings, those who have gone even to this extremity of wickedness." Thus "everlasting" punishment will end in salvation, according to one of the greatest of the fathers of the Fourth Century.

I could go on but you get the Idea...


_________________
Melody

 2007/6/4 8:09Profile





All sermons are offered freely and all contents of the site
where applicable is committed to the public domain for the
free spread of the gospel.