The Reconciliation of All Things

For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all
(Romans 11:32 ESV)

Recently there has been a resurgence of interest in the ancient idea of universal salvation.  As a starting point I recommend an essay by Bishop Kallistos Ware, an Orthodox bishop in Great Britain, entitled “Dare We Hope for the Salvation of All?"

Luther did not subscribe to a “universalist" view that all men would definitely be saved, or that there were multiple pathways to God.  At one point he even lectured against a straightforward interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:4 “God desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth".

On the other hand, Luther holds open the possibility of salvation after death in a letter to Hans Von Rechenberg when he says:

It would be quite a different question whether God can impart faith to some in the hour of death or after death so that these people could be saved through faith.  Who would doubt God's ability to do that?

Above all Luther stressed that salvation, whenever offered, would be through faith in Christ and not through any other means.

I believe that a perspective on this issue in modern context would include the following key points:

1. As Lutherans we do not believe in a predestination to damnation
2. God is an infinitely loving and just God - it follows that his ultimate plan for salvation (which has not been revealed to us and cannot be ascertained by human reasoning) is not arbitrary or unjust
3. It is within the power of God to offer his grace and love to those who have not accepted it during this life - this is a matter for Him alone however it could be a means by which His grace may operate in ways we don't know about
4. Finally, it is through Christ that we are saved - God may continue to extend his grace after death but “the way, the truth and the life" remain the same

In his essay, Bishop Ware points to an alternative to universal salvation called “conditional immortality" which is worth considering:

“I am He who is," says God to Moses at the burning bush in the Septuagint version of Exodus 3:14; “I am the Existing One" (ego eimi ho on). God is Being and Reality, and He is the sole source of all existence. Evil, on the other hand, is in the strict sense non-being and unreality. Evil and sin have no substantive existence, for they are not a “thing  that God has made; they are a distortion of the good, a parasite - not a noun but an adjective...

Existence, then, is good, for it is gift from God; and everything that exists, by the very fact of existing, retains some link with God, who is the only source of existence. From this it follows that nothing that exists can be entirely and utterly evil. To posit something totally evil would be a nonsense, a contradiction in terms; for such a thing would be altogether unreal and could not actually exist. Even the devil, because he exists, still has a continuing relationship with God. Thus where there is existence, there is hope - even for the devil.

A possible conclusion from this line of argument is not universal salvation but conditional immortality. At the end God will indeed be “all in all", not because all rational creatures have been saved but because at a certain point the radically wicked have simply ceased to be. Cut off from God, the unique source of existence, they have lapsed into non-being. At the end-time, that is to say, there will be a resurrection to eternal life, but no resurrection to eternal death; or, rather, there will be resurrection to a death that is final but not continuing, for it will entail annihilation.

This seems to me to resolve many of the issues involved.  As Christians we do not believe in a Manichean universe where good and evil are balanced and offsetting. Rather everything exists in relation to the ultimate good and eventually all things will either be reconciled to God or cease to exist.