I appreciate very much the dialogue generated by the Emergent Movement. However, you have helped me see many dangers and pitfalls in the tolerant and gentle language of several Emergent writers. I was curious if you had finished another book and found your blog by googling your name. Now, I am enjoying going back and reading your blogs. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us through your book and this blog.

Your brother, Carlin Brooks

The Roman Catholic Church encourages the belief in a third option, often called “Universalism.” For example, the Second Vatican Council maintained the doctrine that all will be saved in the Apokatastasis or Final Restoration of All Things.

The following is taken from the constitution Gaudium et Spes (1:45, 2:57).

While helping the world and receiving many benefits from it, the Church has a single intention: that God’s kingdom may come, and that the salvation of the whole human race may come to pass. For every benefit which the People of God during its earthly pilgrimage can offer to the human family stems from the fact that the Church is ‘the universal sacrament of salvation’ simultaneously manifesting and actualising the mystery of God’s love.

For God’s Word, by whom all things were made, was Himself made flesh so that as perfect man He might save all men and sum up all things in Himself. The Lord is the goal of human history, the focal point of the longings of history and of civilization, the center of the human race, the joy of every heart and the answer to all its yearnings. He it is Whom the Father raised from the dead, lifted on high and stationed at His right hand, making Him judge of the living and the dead. Enlivened and united in His Spirit, we journey toward the consummation of human history, one which fully accords with the counsel of God’s love: ‘To reestablish all things in Christ, both those in the heavens and those on the earth’ (Eph. 1:10).

… Moreover, by the impulse of grace, he is disposed to acknowledge the Word of God, Who before He became flesh in order to save all and to sum up all in Himself was already ‘in the world’ as ‘the true light which enlightens every man’ (John 1:9-10).”

The following early Fathers of the Church are said to have taught that all will finally be saved.

Pantaenus; Clement of Alexandria; Origen; Athanasius; Didymus the Blind; Macarius of Egypt; Gregory Thaumaturgus; Ambrose; Ephraim; John Chrysostum; Gregory of Nyssa; Gregory of Nazianzus; Jerome of Bethlehem; Evagrius Ponticus; Titus of Bastra; Asterius of Amasea; Cyril; Methodius of Tyre; Pamphilius Eusibius; Hillary of Poitiers; Victorinus; Macrina the Younger; Dionysius the Areopagite; John Cassian; Maximus the Confessor; Proclus of Constantinople; Peter Chrysologus; Diodorus of Tarsus; Stephen bar Sudaili.

Hans Urs von Balthasar argued in favor of the doctrine; he has been called Pope John Paul’s favorite theologian and he founded a theological journal with Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.

In his encyclical Redemptoris Missio, Pope John Paul II expresses forcefully the same position defended by Balthasar. “If Christ desires the salvation of all and if there is a ‘real possibility of salvation in Christ for all humanity,’ hope for all is simply part of what it means to follow Christ.”

I personally share this Hope - for if one such as I can be saved, then there is this same hope for all humankind. Without this Hope, Christ would have sacrificed Himself for naught. With the Grace of God shed abroad in all creation, all things are possible.