Jan 30, 2023
What are the consequences of affirming that God is infinite,
absolute love?
That could be said to be the underlying question of Father Aidan Kimel's book
Destined for Joy: the Gospel of Universal Salvation
(which was the theme of episode
57) where he lays out his vision of, and reasons for believing
in, universal salvation.
In this episode we interview fr Aidan and discuss how he came
to embrace universalism and what the deepest or best reasons for
universalism are according to him.
Themes we discuss:
- the need for a "hermeneutic of God's unconditional love" when
reading Scripture,
- how universalism may be said to continue a trajectory of
progressive revelation within Scripture, in so far as it can be
said that the seeds of universalism are planted in Scripture but
come to fruition in the deepening reflection on the consequences of
God's love as revealed in Scripture.
- whether the universalist analysis of human free will is
compatible with a category of culpable moral wrongdoing.
Rough overview of the conversation (the time marks are
approximate):
1-18 minutes: general introduction and a summary
of fr Aidan's road to embrace universalism.
18 minutes: Peter asks whether the experience of
holding funerals was an impulse for fr Kimel to move towards
universalism (as it has been for Peter)?
24 minutes: Peter asks how fr Aidan views and
interprets the "Gehenna-texts"?
28.30: Erik asks about fr Aidan's experience
of whether preaching universalism changes a congregation?
32: Christoffer brings up the philosopher
Bernard Lonergan, who talked about conversion as a form of
"paradigm-shift": believing that God is unconditional love is a
quite radical existential and psychological paradigm-shift if we
would really embrace it, and not just "think" it.
35.30: How does the universalist analysis of
free will relate to the category of culpable moral wrong-doing?
41:30: Purgatory as a both liberating and
painful experience.
44.30: Arguments for universalism in
Scripture?
51.30: The notion of "progressive revelation" and
how that relates to the development of universalism.
58:30: Most interesting proponents of
universalism in Church history?
Links:
Father Aidan Kimel's blogg: Eclectic Orthodoxy.
His book: Destined
for Joy: The Gospel of Universal Salvation
Some universalists mentioned in the conversation:
Origen
(185-253)
Gregory of
Nyssa (335-395)
Isak of
Nineveh (613-700)
Julian of
Norwich (1342-1416)
Thomas
Talbott (contemporary theologian who wrote the book
The Inescapable Love of God)
David
Bentley Hart (contemporary theologian, who has written an
afterword in Kimel's book, and the book
That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell and Universal
Salvation).