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Christian universalism, or the theory of universal salvation, is increasingly popular among religious thinkers. A small group of scholars has put forward the contentious claim that Kierkegaard was a universalist, despite that he refers in places to the idea of eternal damnation as essential to Christianity. This paper examines the evidence both for and against the view that Kierkegaard was a universalist and concludes that despite Kierkegaard's occasional references to the importance of the idea of eternal damnation to Christianity, there is reason to believe that Kierkegaard may have been a universalist, both in terms of the substance of his thought, including two unequivocal statements in his journals that he believed everyone would eventually be saved and in terms of his rhetorical style which prioritizes the effect his writings would have on the reader over the literal truth of the views they present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrine of universalism, which asserts that all will find salvation in the life to come, can be critiqued on the grounds that it appears to underplay the real and lasting significance of suffering and injustice in this life, potentially placing its adherents in an improper relation to suffering and sufferers. In this essay, I engage with this problem, first, through examining how Karen Kilby's critique of conceptual clarity might problematize the doctrine. I argue, however, in this essay's second part, that the conceptual clarity we might first see is not the full story of universalism. In seeking a fuller story, I approach universalism from the perspective of its practical implications, here borrowing from ideas explored by Simeon Zahl, taking up his call to attend to the concrete outworking of doctrine in human experience. Two possible 'affects' of universalism are suggested, which, in a third part, I argue might nurture in the believer a heightened sensitivity to the wrongness of death and the problem of sin. Universalism, examined from the perspective of its practical implications, problematizes in this life some of the suffering that it might appear to resolve in the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper argues that, despite appearance to the contrary, Kierkegaard's writings offer promising argumentational resources for addressing the problem of evil. According to Kierkegaard, however, in order to make use of these resources at all, one must necessarily be willing to shift the battleground, so to speak: from a third- to a genuine first-person perspective, namely the perspective of what Climacus dubs Religiousness A. All (yet also only) those who seek deliberate self-annihilation before God—a God in relation to whom they perceive themselves always in the wrong—shall discover the ideal that an unwavering and in fact unconditional thankfulness (namely, for being forgiven) is to be considered the only appropriate attitude towards God and as such both necessary and sufficient for coming to terms with evil and suffering, at least in the life of someone making that discovery. I will argue that Kierkegaard's (non-)pseudonymous writings provide reasons, at times unwittingly, for adopting the perspective of Religiousness A; however, I will also and ultimately argue that the principle of infinite thankfulness as a corollary of that perspective flounders when it comes to making sense of (the eschatological implications of) the suffering of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text will consider the pluralist-universalist perspective proposed by Protestant theologian John Hick and how it offers salvation and the Orthodox response offered by Dumitru Stăniloae's eschatological theology, which nuances and offers a pertinent response to the universalist disputes of the 20th century. The common ground from which the two theologians build their vision is that every human ontologically falls within the boundaries of the same God. Thus, Dumitru Stăniloae starts from the idea that all mankind of different faiths knows, to some extent, the Son of God, the Logos who created before the Incarnation, since the Logos "is the true Light that enlightens all man, who comes into the world" (John 1, 9), and John Hick is of the opinion that all these faiths are nothing but various soteriological spaces in which man can find salvation. What differentiates the two is the way they develop their eschatological vision. John Hick is of the opinion that in today's world a pluralistic consciousness is absolutely necessary, God's love has a universal purpose, He cannot restrict this redemptive encounter with humanity. On the other hand, Dumitru Stăniloae is of the opinion that salvation is acquired through asceticism, since nature is a divine gift that needs to be processed, and the ascetic's effort is also doubled by the love of God that welcomes him. In his conception, man does not acquire salvation as a universal gift, even though God's love desires it, and he is even able, by virtue of his freedom, to refuse this communion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This article investigates how seven literati of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties, whose works deal with geography and world history, interacted and negotiated with Jesuit narratives in Chinese on the "discovery" and evangelization of America. The main objective is to elucidate the differences and similarities between the two sides' perspectives on these events, highlighting the role that the encounter between the universalisms of Confucianism and Christianity played in these interpretations. Methodology: A textual, comparative and historical-contextual analysis is employed, framed by Nicolas Standaert and Pingyi Chu's theoretical perspectives on the Sino-Jesuit encounter as a case of cultural exchange. In it, knowledge was negotiated through the selection of textual elements and the restructuring of conceptual frameworks. In doing so, narratives about the "discovery" and evangelization of America in Chinese works are contrasted with Jesuit descriptions of these events and the contextual factors that determined both the creation of these narratives by the Jesuit mission in China and the reactions of Chinese scholars to them are investigated. Originality: This pioneering study examines the reception of early Chinese accounts of Euro-American contacts. It seeks to contribute to the field of Chinese and global intellectual history by discussing how a foundational event of the European worldview was re-signified from various perspectives by Chinese scholars interested in incorporating the «discovery» narratives into their works and integrating them into the path of Confucian universalism. Conclusions: The narratives about these events were discursive spaces where disputes and convergences between the civilizing projects of Christianity and Confucianism took place. The way in which Chinese scholars integrated them into their works reflects how the transmission of the Christian worldview was subjected to local frameworks that reinforced ethnocentric ideas. Inevitably, this led to the emergence of alternatives to European interpretations of American history in late imperial China. The latter challenged the European ethnocentric gaze, primarily grounded in the "discovery" and evangelization of America, and shows how Chinese scholars used their narratives to defend their civilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines and defends an 'Integral Advaitic' theodicy that takes its bearings from the thought of three modern Indian mystics: Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo. Their Integral Advaitic theodicy has two key dimensions: a doctrine of spiritual evolution and a panentheistic metaphysics. God has created this world as an arena for our moral and spiritual evolution in which evil and suffering are as necessary as good. The doctrine of spiritual evolution presupposes karma , rebirth, and universal salvation. The doctrines of karma and rebirth shift moral responsibility for evil from God to His creatures by explaining all instances of evil and suffering as the karmic consequence of their own past deeds, either in this life or in a previous life. The doctrine of universal salvation also has important theodical implications: the various finite evils of this life are outweighed by the infinite good of salvation that awaits us all. After outlining this Integral Advaitic theodicy, I address some of the main objections to it and then argue that it has a number of comparative advantages over John Hick's well-known 'soul-making' theodicy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of Tanizaki Jun'ichirō's essay "In'ei raisan" in relation to the Kyoto School and its relevance to the critique of total transparency in the twenty-first century. Topics include the essay's challenge to universalist understandings of modernity, its connection to critical transparency studies, and the implications of total visibility and its impact on human agency and governance.

The paper looks at some of Anselm's major works that are united by a common 'theological program.' Its chief rule--to think of God "fittingly" and, namely, as the "being greater than which nothing can be conceived"--inspires not only Anselm's philosophical theology but also his atonement theory and moral philosophy. The paper suggests reevaluations of the Proslogion-argument (1) and of the philosophical background of Cur Deus homo (2) and proposes an alternative to Anselm's soteriology by reconsidering the possibilities of his concept of freedom (3). Anselm's definition--"the ability to preserve rectitude of the will for the sake of rectitude itself" (De libertate arbitrii)--provides the means to understand the Christian hope for universal salvation in a way that is not at odds with the notion of human freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of realism in Foucault, despite being insistently elaborated, remains elliptical - in part thanks to its association with a set of propositions we could call fictionalist. By reading the texts where Foucault addresses the interarticulation of fiction, universalism and facticity, the article proposes a non-realist reading of his work, which is marked by the refusal not of the real as an object, but of its ontological evidence. Initially, it presents the insufficiencies of the interpretations that demand an ontology, such as Paul Veyne's, as well as of those that replace it with the exceptionality of creation, such as Michel de Certeau's, and the most promising approach to the reading proposed by Giorgio Agambem.. Next, it examines in detail the question of literature as a methodological paradigm, especially in Foucault's references to the work of René Char. Finally, it shows in which sense the enunciation of archeogenealogy's discourse is closer to Fichte's (non)realism - in its unlikely encounter with Blanchot - than to Hegelian dialectics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

James Cone's assertion that Christ is Black seems at odds with Karl Barth's retrieval of Kierkegaard's "infinite qualitative distinction" between God and creation. Both were concerned with the sociopolitical implications of theology. Barth saw the impulse to make some human capacity the prompt or measure of divine revelation as directly implicated in the rise of German nationalism, while Cone laboured to understand what the protestant liberalisms and neoorthodoxies of his graduate education could possibly mean for Black victims of White racism. In claiming that Christ is Black, did Cone not breach the infinite qualitative distinction between God and humans – is Cone's Black Christology triumphalist? I argue, rather, that Cone's Black Christology not only escapes the charge of triumphalism, but actually resists triumphalism more successfully than Barth's because of its grounding in Christ's incarnational identification with oppressed humanity within history; a grounding which implicates Cone's subject position without necessarily valorising it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay defends human rights as universal human rights. It argues that this does not imply uniformity, but opens up space for heterogeneity through equal rights for all. It also shows how universalism and particular specificity can be reconciled. To enable this, human rights practice requires cultivating the art of empathic listening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay articulates a structural feature and difficulty in the notion of universal humanism: the mechanism of inner exclusion. First, by discussing the historical paradigm of membership in "Israel," a conceptual–theoretical description of inner exclusion comes into view. There then follows a comparative analysis of inner exclusions in three discourses: schematic universal humanism, exemplified in the art installation United Bears, Kant's universal experience of sublime, and the Palestinian Talmud (PT) approach to the divine law. The PT model suspends the impulses of the universalization, let alone the unification of law. This suspension is excluded from within in Kant's universalism of a fully citable law. The applied result of this essay is that historical inclusion of the Jews in universal humanity ignores the conditions that enabled their exclusion from humanity in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Margery Kempe establishes the authority of her body and pleasures on the grounds of her "singularity," leading her to defend a stance on universal salvation from an expansive conception of Heaven that is surprising in its acceptance of sexual gratifications. Drawn in part from Richard Rolle's self-authorizing singularity that unites the term's meanings of both solitude and exceptionality, Kempe's term is fitted to the circumstances of her own social, worldly life. She presents her achieved solitude not as a turning away from the world, but instead as the world's rejecting her, and specifically her eccentricities. Her life story proposes that the more singular she is, the more people will resist her; and the more that people resist her, the more surely her singular life is confirmed as God-inspired. Her singularity thus brings about the will of God, and her singular life affirms her material body as a glorified body in a realization of Heaven on earth. From her embrace of singularity, Kempe discovers a revaluation of bodily pleasure and a reimagining of community that results in her insistence on a Kingdom of Heaven open to everyone, a community based on the celebration of singularities—however queer—rather than on conformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opening lines of this article emphasize that lasting peace in the world can never be built on ephemeral human foundation but only on the unchangeable foundation of Jesus Christ. A biblical incentive for peace can be found in the Pauline concept of Christ’s reconciliation ministry/sacrifice as an act of new creation. This article underlines the Letter to the Ephesians, particularly the passage Ef 2,14-16, which is pertinent, given that besides emphasizing vertical reconciliation between God and men, it also emphasizes horizontal reconciliation between two hostile groups of Jews and Gentiles that results in the creation of a new being of the Church, that represents a new reconciled humanity in which the old ethnical and racial divisions that lead to conflict and wars to this very day diminish in value. The first part of the article underlines the meaning and origin of the important Greek expressions that are used to depict the process of the new creation, such as καινὴ κτίσις, »new creation«, in the authentic Pauline letters and καινός ἄνθρωπος, »new man, new humanity«, in the Letter to the Ephesians and in deutero-Pauline letters. There are three different applications of the motif of the new creation that are not necessarily mutually exclusive when applied to the individual convert, community of faith (the Church) and the entire world. There are two significant characteristics of the new creation: reconciliation and rejection of the worldly human standards in order to lead an authentic new life in Christ. The second part offers certain traits of the concept of peace and reconciliation in the Pauline literature with a special emphasis on two Greek terms employed to denote reconciliation: (ἀπο)καταλλάσσω, »reconciliation«, and ποιέω εἰρήνη, »to make or establish peace«. This chapter emphasizes the connection between the two connected motifs of the new creation and reconciliation. Once again, a special emphasis is given to the passage Eph 2,14-16, as it is the only Pauline and New Testament passage overall, in which the subject of creation is not God the Father, but Christ himself. The final third part addresses further meaningful characteristics of the imagery of the new creation, such as the development of the Pauline theology of reconciliation and vocabulary from individual and communal application in the authentic letters towards a wider application to the entire creation in the deutero-Pauline letters. Finally, the topic of reconciliation as an act of creation reminds us that in the Church, which remains the new creation of Christ, the first stage of God’s universal plan of salvation for the whole humanity and the entire creation has already been realized. In the light of the wars that are being waged at this moment and throughout the world, this means that we as Christians and as members of the Church, are invited to testify that God is the only true source of lasting peace that can only occur in Jesus Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examines Saudek’s novel Diplomats (1921) from three perspectives: first, with regard to the (biographical) circumstances of its creation and publication; second, in the gradual development of its concrete form and fields of meaning; third, with an emphasis on the ways in which it was realized. The middle part of the study is the most dominant, evoking (in excerpts and comments) specific elements and constraints of Saudek’s novel structure — centred on the feminist intermingling of the story of Pygmalion with Christ’s (or apostolic) gestation, in accordance with a tendency of the period to bring together the national and universal horizons of salvation, and to confront the temporal connections and confrontations with stimuli from the outside world. To understand their present and future, the main protagonists of the novel are constructed as initiates in the art of graphology, able to identify the handwriting of famous writers. They believe, moreover, that they can recognize the ‘handwriting of history’: that is, the contours of what is to come. At the same time, they do not want to remain mere contemplative readers of this historical nature, and they go in search of someone who can change the course of the world to meet their ideal, namely that of a peaceful world. They find this in the figure of T. G. Masaryk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus, Matarazzo continues, in Chapter Three, to look at conceptions of divine judgment in, what he labels, "optimistic soteriologies": those of Sergei Bulgakov, Hans Urs von Balthasar, J. A. T. Robinson, and Marilyn McCord Adams. In Chapter Five, Matarazzo makes an effort of crafting such a position as he suggests and outlines a concept of divine judgment described as a salvific event of "absolute recognition". In this well-written book, James Matarazzo invites the readers to a critical and constructive exploration of nothing less than the concept of divine judgment in Christian theology. [Extracted from the article]

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]

This article investigates the textual productions of the Cao Đài religion through the annotated translation in English of the earliest Cao Đài text published in Vietnamese on October 15, 1926. With the title Phổ Cáo Chúng Sanh – Đại Đạo Tam Kỳ Phổ Độ (Universal Manifesto [of the] Great Đạo of the Third Era of Universal Salvation), this publication and our translation aim to highlight the translingual practices at play in the production of Cao Ðài exegetic and spirit-medium texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores one of the great paradoxes of imperial China: the rise of religions that required qijia (family abandonment) in a society that privileged a patriarchal family system. Grounded in the case of Quanzhen Daoism, the article examines representations of qijia in poetry, hagiographies, inscriptions, and plays to explain the distinctive ways in which this nonscriptural tradition of renunciation configured its relationship with families. It demonstrates that there existed ambivalent, even contradictory, attitudes toward the issue of family, particularly that of parents, in different genres of Quanzhen texts. This ambivalence speaks to irreconcilable family-monastery tensions as the Quanzhen order transformed from a local movement with a few ascetic elites to a nationwide monastic order in the early thirteenth century. In thirteenth-century qijia narratives, Quanzhen apologists deployed flexible renderings of filial piety to validate personal and universal salvation—instead of familial salvation—as the principal goal of a Quanzhen monastic career. Neither the Quanzhen ideology nor its monastic institution truly addressed the interests of natural families. As such, the Quanzhen tradition contrasts sharply with the medieval Buddhism and Daoism, whose apologists conceptualized the family-monastery relations to harness the family interests to the needs of the churches. Despite posing a direct challenge to the patriarchal family system, Quanzhen Daoism developed into one of the two major Daoist schools after the thirteenth century. Its success resulted from the Quanzhen order's salvationist contribution to the crumbling northern Chinese society under Mongol conquest, as well as its initiatives producing texts to promote pro-Quanzhen narratives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The theme of suffering is intimately tied to the possibilities of the blood as redemptive in theology. Potentially considered a universal pathway to salvation and racial transcendence for people of African descent, "Da Blood of Shesus" asks: Is there redeeming power in the blood for people of African descent? Turning to Womanist and lyrical theologians to postulate an African theological framework which explores redemptive suffering not glorified as inevitable and intricate to the historical Black experience and the church. Lyrical theologians affirm Jesus' redemptive power of the blood in Hip Hop portraying the ways in which the cross reveals the attributes of God. Womanist theologians challenge the "classical" interpretation of redemptive suffering, illuminating the ways it contributes to Black oppression and wretchedness. Arguably, Womanist and lyrical theologians conjointly point towards liberatory and alternatives to examine redemptive suffering for people of African descent by offering sites to scrutinize and nuance the blood as an indispensable pathway to redemption. An African theological perspective decenters the logics of anti-Blackness proposing suffering is inevitable to Black life and the historical Black experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While this article does not presume to answer the old question "Was Socrates of Constantinople a Novatian?", it does offer a hitherto-unnoticed observation that may bear on the question. Socrates, as has been noted, is very reticent to use the term "catholic" in describing the church in his Historia ecclesiastica. This is unlikely to be a stylistic quirk, as a comparison to the history of Sozomen shows. No one yet has connected his reticence to the Novatian Sympronian, who objects to the same term on theological grounds in letters exchanged with Pacian of Barcelona. Given Socrates' reluctance to use the term and Novatian's rejection of the same term, we may well have more evidence suggesting that Socrates was at the very least sympathetic not only to Novatians as a community but to their theological positions as well. In any case, the resistance of both Sympronian and Socrates to the notion of a "catholic" church stands in contrast to the usual interpretation of late antiquity as a period of growing universalism. The article also discusses whether it is even valid to ask whether Socrates was a Novatian or whether this question falls into less useful confessional dichotomies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the south facade of the chapel of St. Margaret of Antioch in Kopčany (Slovakia), there are two stones with engraved symbols. On one of the stones, the signs X, X in a rectangular frame and a schematically depicted face surmounted by three crosses are engraved. On the second stone, only the signs X and some simple lines are carved very indistinctly. Only the signs on the first stone are the subject of the analysis. The sign X can be interpreted as a Christogram. The rectangular frame around the second sign X can be interpreted as a symbol for the whole world or universe. The face with the three crosses can be considered an image of Christ. The signs as a whole composition probably symbolize Christ, his sacrifice, salvation through his death on the cross, the universal effect of salvation and saving from eternal death and perdition. The symbols had probably a protective function for the church and for the community of the faithful who used the church as well as for the buried in the cemetery. For these symbols, their meaning and function can be found analogies made in similarly reduced form and dimensions from the early Middle Ages (6th–10th centuries) in the territory of France, Germany, Switzerland or Austria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Karl Rahner and Robert Barclay, God's offer of life extends to all and can be accepted apart from the expressed Christian faith. In sketching this phenomenon, Rahner and Barclay present substantially different models, detailing transcendence in the arena of history and the action of the inward Light, respectively. This paper addresses these idiosyncrasies while identifying a crucial area of agreement: the divine foundation of both propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jane Lead, a prominent visionary known for her feminist theosophy in the Philadelphian Society, illustrates in A Fountain of Gardens her visions that explicate divine knowledge to secure individuals’ enlightenment and universal salvation. This present research aims to scrutinize the figurative visions in the series of spiritual journals to examine how Sophia Wisdom initiated Lead into a profound understanding of her relationship with God and the celestial kingdom. Writing about her visionary experiences, Lead extensively employs metaphors to render the divine revelations more accessible to her readers. Her visions present a clear view about the connection between humanity and divinity, the means to achieve spiritual perfection, as well as the mystical union between one’s soul and Heavenly Wisdom. Depicting a propitious world under the governance of divine wisdom, Lead conflates Virgin Wisdom with Christ into an androgynous celestial being that can restore humans to a prelapsarian state to endorse women’s spiritual identity—receptive to divine inspiration and qualified for the ministry. Such a depiction conforms to some early modern female mystics’ pursuit of gender equality in the Christian belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author critiques the book "Divine Democracy: Political Theology After Carl Schmitt" by Miguel Vatter. Topics include the author's doubt about the possibility of a democratic political theology on the grounds that Vatter would like to construct it, a discussion of the scientific and polemical meanings of Carl Schmitt's political theology and Vatter's claim that theorists are united by their common debt to an idea of divine democracy that rests on cultural legacy of Christian universalism.

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.

Cheng Xuanying's Expository Commentary to the Daode jing presents the Laozi as the origin of Daoism—a Daoism which, by his time in the seventh century, included many beliefs and concepts coopted from Buddhism. The commentary is representative of chongxuan xue (Twofold Mystery philosophy), which is characterized by the integration of Buddhist concepts and methods into the interpretation of the Laozi. Taking the integration of the Buddhist concept of the bodhisattva as universal savior of limitless compassion, this paper investigates the "why" and "how" of this cooption. The question of why Cheng Xuanying wanted to read the Daode jing as a testimony to Laozi and Dao being a compassionate, universal savior is addressed with a contextualization of the commentary in its time and location: early Tang Chang'an. Next, the paper discusses, in detail, the hermeneutic tools Cheng Xuanying used to achieve his reading. Cheng Xuanying integrated his commentary and the original text of the Laozi in a complex structure, combining the kepan technique, interlinear interpretation, and added structuring comments, in addition to what might be termed "strategic citations". This paper analyzes how he worked with these means to construct arguments and specific readings of the Laozi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his new book Divergent Religious Paths to Convergent End? Perspectives of Religious Studies and Sino-Christian Theology, Lai Pan-chiu addresses the issue of religious diversity. He raises a significant question, namely whether religions have a convergent ultimate end or not. To answer this question, he articulates a theory of multi-dimensional salvation. This article argues that Lai's theory effectively explains the complexities inherent to religious diversity. The theory claims that religions have some common soteriological goals, which nevertheless do not belong to the category of ultimate salvation. This theory however does not adequately answer the question of whether religions have a convergent ultimate end or not. Moreover, this article argues that, in terms of a Sino-Christian soteriology, Lai should further discuss whether Christianity and Chinese religions have a convergent end or not, especially given the inherent contrast between Christian monotheism and Chinese polytheism. This article also argues that Lai may incorporate other issues such as multi-dimensional salvation, universal salvation, and the ethics of hope into his discussion, so as to explore the possibility that religions have a convergent ultimate end. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In God's Final Victory: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism, we argue that for every version of the doctrine of hell there is a version of the doctrine of universal salvation that, granted traditional Christian teachings, is more philosophically defensible. This article explores whether a parallel case can be made for preferring universalism to annihilationism. While assuming for the sake of this article that the chief arguments for favouring universalism over the doctrine of hell, developed in God's Final Victory, are strong, we argue that a comparably strong parallel case for favouring universalism to annihilationism can indeed be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article retrieves Freud's Paul as a forgotten predecessor and untapped critic of the "return to Paul" in contemporary political theology and continental philosophy. Given that Sigmund Freud published Moses and Monotheism in 1939 having barely escaped from Vienna, the text's reception has justly been dominated by the question of Freud's identification with Moses and the relationship between psychoanalysis and Judaism. However, I argue that this narrow focus has obscured the more fundamental problem of the connection between religion and Freud's enigmatic notion of "historical truth," which he works out not through Moses but through Saint Paul. To do so, I first show how Freud's genealogy of monotheism is modeled on the pathogenesis of hysterical symptoms. I then trace how Freud deepens his investigation into the etiology of symptom-formation until he arrives at the notion of historical truth and the archaic heritage that transmits it. Lastly, I demonstrate that Freud presents himself less as a Pauline figure than he does Paul as a proto-analyst. Through this staging, I contend that Freud parochializes the claims of Christianity as symptomatic of a more archaic historical truth that psychoanalysis alone is able to access. Freud's Paul demonstrates that it is not a question of whether but how ostensibly modern secular discourses inherit the theological traditions in which they are imbedded. Reading Freud as a philosopher of religion ultimately offers an indictment of any philosophy or emancipatory politics naively modeled on theological universalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342-ca. 1416) was a fourteenth-century English mystic. She received sixteen private revelations from God. In the Thirteenth Showing, God revealed that "sin is necessary, but all shall be well." This paper explores and develops the theme of universal salvation in Julian's Revelations of Divine Love. It introduces the readers to her reflections on God's manifestations, with the focus on God's compassion for all creation. In view of the dynamic tension between Julian's visions of all shall be well and the teachings of the Catholic Church on human sin and the eternal fire of hell, two developments are presented. First, reference is made to the thought of St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) for a deeper comprehension of Julian's reflection on sin, bearing in mind the different contexts of Julian and Augustine. Then, this paper brings Julian's loving and joyful trust in the love of God for all things into dialogue with the contemporary calls of Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) and Karl Rahner (1904-1984) for Catholics to hope for universal salvation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work seeks to illustrate the relationship that exists between the spirituality of Latin American origin, developed by the foremost theological authors, with the category of culture of encounter promoted by Pope Francis. Specifically, I would like to develop the hypothesis that there is a coincidence between the category "culture of encounter" with the most characteristic and recognized theological-spiritual roots of Latin American theology. By means of its emphasis on the mystery of the incarnation and the reign of God, a process that led her to discover not only the dignity of the excluded, and the preferential option for the poor as a guarantee of the universal offer of salvation, but also a certain understanding of others that allows them to appreciate themselves as neighbors is achieved. Characteristics that contribute to the task of Christians with other citizens in the construction of the common good, peace, integration and justice--facets that constitute some of the elements of the culture of encounter. To this end, I systematize the contributions of Gustavo Gutiérrez, Segundo Galilee, Jon Sobrino, Leonardo Boff, José María Vigíl and Ignacio Ellacuría, based on their most characteristic texts where they explain the spiritual foundation of their analyses, which are indeed biblical. These authors developed a theological-spiritual foundation that demonstrated a relationship between contemplation and commitment, enabling the recognition of the Other (movement of God in his Incarnate Son and the sending of the Spirit) and of the others (movement towards the various Latin American presences) in their concrete cultural reality. This process supported their understanding of the other/different as neighbor. Enabling the other/diverse to not be shifted into adversary, or stranger, but understood rather as a valid interlocutor. In this way, there developed in the theological-pastoral reflection of Latin America a spiritual underpinning that allows the disciples not only to enter into dialogue, but also to go out to meet the other who is seen as neighbor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching ecumenism in the context of global Christianity raises the question of how to approach the themes of "catholicity" and "conciliarity." This article addresses some of the challenges and possible paths in relation to this topic. At a time when universalism is often (and rightly) denounced, can or should there be room for a sense of the church's universality or catholicity? Or is universality always an instrument in the service of hegemonic (mostly Western) quests for domination? The paper seeks to show how universality entails a mutual, ongoing dialogue in which all parties involved may set the agenda and contribute. This connects to conciliarity or synodality, a much‐discussed theme in Roman Catholicism, in the Orthodox world, and among Protestant churches worldwide. The article presents some of the challenges the churches have been and are facing as they seek to become more authentically synodal churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When did the first genocide take place in history? In theory, a universal crime transcends time and space. In practice, the moral imagination demands a specific origin story. In this article, I explain how and why Raphael Lemkin chose to locate genocide's archetypal origins in the early Christian martyrdom at the hands of the ancient Romans. That choice emerged from a dramatic public confrontation with Catholic antisemitism in interwar Poland. Haunted by the charge of Jewish moral parochialism, after the war Lemkin fashioned a cosmopolitan narrative for his discovery of genocide. Today, scholars are consumed by debates about the historical and conceptual relationship between the Holocaust and other genocides. Yet we cannot move forward in that endeavor until we retrieve Lemkin's Polish Jewish past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article informs about vivid and structured attempts at representing a Christian afterlife. Topics include Purgatory does add complexity to the picture, insofar as it is a post-mortem temporal state towards eternal beatitude; and form of judgement in the sense of condemnation, would be to read it at odds with a fundamental aspect of Christian teaching.

Postcolonial theories announce an "exit": the departure from the West as the world's centre of gravity and from Eurocentric hegemonic claims of superiority, turning away from the universal, and placing unheard voices at the centre – those who are excluded from academic, public, and political discourse. Such stories and histories of the margins do not simply represent "other" stories from the "periphery." Rather, the stories of the margins are constitutive for the history of Europe and the invention of European modernity. Today's manifestations of global Christianity are no exception to these dynamics. There are various models of alternative universalisms and conceptions of unity, where the crucial questions are: who defines the unity of the churches and has the monopoly over interpretation and – related to this, but a little more radically – whether such a formulation of unity must necessarily repeat Western grammar or whether there are not entirely other grammars and epistemologies of unity. Postcolonial theories and postcolonial practices in particular offer promising perspectives in dealing with these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the influence of German thought on Baron Friedrich von Hügel's philosophy of religion. It mentions activities of the British scholar in the networks of Catholic modernism are placed within the broader framework of the international discussion on religion around 1900. It also mentions religious universalism was shaped to a great extent by the encounter of German intellectuals from a liberal Protestant background.

Tash Aw's 2019 novel We, the Survivors narrates the story of a convicted killer, Ah Hock, whose life serves as a lens to refract contemporary Malaysia's postcolonial history and its ethnic and class politics, as well as its location within the circuitry of global capitalism. This article examines Aw's representation of migrancy, class, and inequality in contemporary Malaysian society, reading the text as a critique of global capitalism through its tactical employment of a universalist idiom that appropriates Darwinian ideas about survival, evolution, chance, environment, and competition. The text also reflects on the ethics of novel-writing since Ah Hock's oral testimony is ostensibly mediated by a more privileged character. Aw locates his novel in the pivotal space between national specificity and general universalism while asking critical questions of his own position within the transnational literary marketplace, thereby underscoring the urgent need to re-world the world created by global capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern Neo-Confucianist Tang Chun-I paid great attention to Nicholas Berdyaev’s Theosis with his concept of “God-man” as the core. In Tang’s eyes, Berdyaev combined humanism with religion, which stood in opposition to the traditional belief in God-man isolation, and thus affirmed the universal value of humanity. It is close to Tang’s own Confucian humanism. However, on the other hand, Berdyaev failed to fully affirm human value, and clung to Jesus as the one and only mediator of salvation, which some might think tends to the theory of exclusive salvation. Tang’s interpretation also differs somewhat from Berdyaev’s understanding of freedom, God-man (and Man-god), humility and universal salvation. He also omitted Berdyaev’s eschatological frame of Theosis. Tang’s interpretation is originated from his idea of the immanent transcendence of human, which is due to his insistence on the Confucian theory of the original goodness of human nature, plus his adoption and transformation of both Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophies. Tang’s understanding and interpretation is constituted by the grounding myth of ontotheology. Moreover, the criticism of Tang from Chinese Christians was also confined to onto-theology. Therefore, the Christian-Confucian dialogue needs to overcome these different understandings of onto-theology in order to deconstruct the dualism of transcendence and immanence. Only in this way might Theosis gain its methodological significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Pillar and Ground of the Truth Pavel Florensky presents an account of hell, or 'Gehenna', that synthesises two seemingly irreconcilable claims: that God will save all people, and that some people will reject God forever. In insisting that both claims are true, and by recasting standard categories of final judgement, purgation and human identity, Florensky produces a novel contribution in contemporary debates about hell and universalism. I begin by surveying his account, then address two key interpretive questions raised by his critics, and conclude by situating his account within modern western conversations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]