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David Bentley Hart has recently argued that universal salvation is a metaphysically necessary outcome of God's act of creating rational beings. A crucial premise of Hart's argument is a compatibilist view of free will, according to which God can determine human choices without taking away their freedom. This view constitutes common ground between Hart and the tradition of classical Thomism, which emphasizes the non‐competitive relation between human freedom and God's universal causality. Unfortunately, Thomistic compatibilism undermines the so‐called Free Will Defense, which is often considered to be the only viable way of responding to contemporary criticism of the doctrine of hell. Can the existence of hell be reconciled with God's goodness given a Thomistic conception of rational freedom? This question is of interest not only to followers of Aquinas but to anyone who rejects a 'zero‐sum competition' between freedom and grace, and who also believes that divine revelation confirms the possibility of perdition. The present article proposes an alternative to the Free Will Defense—called The Thomistic Autonomy Defense—which aims to block Hart's arguments for the necessity of universal salvation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the discussion on Patristics constituting a crucial resource for rethinking the practice and direction of systematic and philosophical theology in the modern (and postmodern) condition. Topics include crux of the debate about universalism concerning about reassessing the place of Origen in the history of Christianity; and constructive account of the incarnation and Christology calling the prologue to theology.

A literary criticism of the book "The Devil's Redemption: A New History & Interpretation of Christian Universalism" by Michael J. McClymond is presented. It mentions that McClymond's tome presents two arguments, one historical and one constructive, for tying universalism to gnosticism. It reveals that former maintains that universalism is in its origin a gnostic phenomenon.

The article discusses theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar's arguments concerning universal salvation as well as his proposal that everyone may experience the suffering Christ in the mysterious event of death. It discusses the trans-temporal character of Christ's descent to hell affecting the temporality structure of human death and Balthasar's temporal perspective on the death and descent of Christ.

Through an analysis of the Scriptural treatment of usury, a constructive theological analysis of the question of the friend-enemy distinction as a political category, its relationship to a Christian conception of universalism as determined by being in Christ, and the nature of faithful citizenship is forged. This essay argues that usury is a paradigmatic instance of the friend-enemy distinction as defined by Carl Schmitt and as such is primarily a political act. The article closes by analysing Schmitt's reading of Jesus' commandment to love enemies and suggests that after Christ, the friend-enemy distinction ceases to be political and becomes missiological instead. The implication of this missiological conception is then related back to the on-going question of usury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Christian universalism. Responding to the charge that this universalism arises from an overly optimistic view of humanity that fails to take seriously evil and sin, or that it has an overly optimistic view of the omnipotence of God's love which impugns God's righteousness and undermines God's justice and holiness, the article advocates a pessimistic approach to Christian universalism, grounding the argument for universal salvation in the sin and unbelief of the Christian. The article draws on Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer to support this case, and concludes by pointing to non-absolute actualistic anthropology as a means for making sense of the Christian life alongside the co-sinfulness of the Christian and the non-Christian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an interpretive, critical overview of Peter Ochs' Peirce, Pragmatism and the Logic of Scripture, and raises four thematic criticisms. The first considers Ochs turn to language, and its implications for pragmatism and understanding Peirce. The second interrogates the tension between Ochs' particularism and Peirce's universalism. The third concerns the relation between science and religion implied by Ochs, and its adequacy in relation to Peirce, pragmatism and modernity. The final question regards the scope of the community of inquirers Ochs seems to have in view, in light of pragmatism's seemingly more general concern with an inclusive democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]