Difference between revisions of "Apocatastasis"
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Revision as of 03:30, September 19, 2006
Also spelled "Apokatastasis."
Definition
Apocatastasis (from Greek: apo, from; kata, down; histemi, stand - literally, "restoration" or "return") is the teaching that everyone will, in the end, be saved. It looks toward the ultimate reconciliation of good and evil; all creatures endowed with reason, angels and humans, will eventually come to a harmony in God's kingdom.
For Origen, this explicitly included the devil. In effect, Apocatastasis denies the final reality of hell, and interprets all Biblical references to the "fires of hell" not as an eternal punishment, but a tool of divine teaching and correction, akin to purgatory. The implication is that hell exists is to separate good from evil in the soul.
In the twentieth-century, this doctrine was reinvigorated especially by Hans Urs von Balthasar, who, in his book Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved