This is the second of our tapes of Robin Parry’s interviews with Ilaria Ramelli in 2019 on behalf of Gospel Conversations. It focuses on the book that she had just then published, “A Larger Hope;Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich.” She does not summarise the book in a blow by blow way but rather gives us the big themes, which is really interesting. One of her stunning themes is that the whole Patristic theology was built on the foundation of Origen - without him, she says, Patristic thought would have collapsed. This does not mean they agreed with him wholeheartedly, anymore than great philosophers agreed with everything Aristotle said - but it does mean that Origen did for theology what Aristotle did for philosophy; he built a coherent foundation for it on which others could build.
I have appended an introduction to help digest her arguments, and I also did something else in the intro - I read out some of the opening comments in the Foreword by Richard Bauckham. I think that this Foreword is pretty significant and a sign of the times because Bauckham, as far as I know is not a Universalist, but he is one of the most notable Biblical scholars in the world. Clearly he admires Ilaria a lot for her academic and intellectual credibility, and clearly he does not consider universal salvation a heresy, but rather a topic deserving of inquiry and one that is growing in interest rapidly.
That is one of my major contentions - not so much that ‘universal salvation’ is ‘right’ (which I think it is) but rather that the Christian church has become increasingly dogmatic on too many topics that are consequences of our core beliefs not intrinsic to them. As a result a lot of Christian cultures are not very attractive to seeking people - or doubting and inquiring Christians. Dogmatism paints everything into black and white categories, so it does not leave any grey space for ambiguity and discussion. Actually let me go further - the ‘grey’ space is where we grow. Dogma gives us the landscape and the borders of our inquiry, but inquiry into grey space is where we go deeper into the forest of our faith and start to see the depth, texture and nuances. So I applaud the open mindedness of Bauckham and really sense that people like him are opening up the grey space for us all.
I also finish off Ilaria’s talk with a postscript in which I announce that - quite concidentally - I have stumbled across a great talk by Robin recently which he has give us permission to post on Gospel Conversations. We will post it next. Robin’s talk is really instructive on the topic of grey space because he traces the different pathways that led some significant evangelical thought leaders of the last few centuries to embrace Universal Salvation. Like all of Robin’s material, it is a delightful mix of erudition and calm intellect all expressed in accessible language.
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