Universalism among the Early Church Fathers

Although Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants today typically treat universalism as a heresy, there was a time in the early centuries of Christianity's spread when universalism was a fairly mainstream doctrine.

The story of early Christian universalism is closely tied in with the story of Alexandria. In the third and fourth centuries, Alexandria was one of the great (perhaps the greatest) centers of orthodox Christian theology. Clement, Origen, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, the luminaries of the Alexandrian school, were all universalists. Most of Origen's contemporaries seem to have considered him a great and orthodox theologian, and in fact he coined the term homoousios that became so central to the Nicene Creed. Only after Alexandrian influence waned did two sixth-century church councils posthumously declare him a heretic. The conquest of Egypt by Islam sealed Alexandria's irrelevancy. With the decline of the East, Rome looked to a Westerner named Augustine as its theological father-- Augustine, the great champion of exclusivism and predestination.

But during the heyday of Alexandrian influence, no one was denouncing universalism as heretical. In fact, so great an orthodox thinker as Gregory of Nyssa very explicitly and publicly taught the doctrine. It was privately held, it seems, by the likes of Gregory of Nazianzus, Macrina, Basil, Jerome, and Eusebius of Caesarea. These thinkers generally didn't think universalist doctrine should be promoted-- after all, the threat of hell is a powerful motivator for people to behave ethically-- but they were universalists nonetheless. Many more proponents of universalism could also be named, though these for the most part eventually shared in the condemnation and obscurity that was the Alexandrian school's final fate.

The general public believed in universalism, too. Jerome claimed that "most people" were universalists. Augustine said it was "very many". Basil made it "the mass of men". These assertions seem to be borne out by artwork in the Roman catacombs that shows Jesus carrying over his shoulder not a lamb, but a goat.