Gospel Conversations podcast

The answer is ‘yes’ - hell was a concept deeply ingrained in the pagan mind. And that is the surprising landscape that Ilaria opens up for us in this next episode in Robin Parry’s interviews with her on apokatastasis. In this interview, Robin asks her about a recent accusation that belief in '‘apokatastasis” was actually a pagan idea that crept into Christianity. Of course, that kind of accusation works well to stigmatise apokatastasis and condemn it to the heresy corner! This critique assumes that such a benevolent view of destiny must have its origins in human optimism not in any revelation. Ilaria dismisses this out of hand - and says that the idea of apokatastasis originated in the scriptures. But in so doing, she makes a brief but intriguing point - that Plato did NOT believe in apokatastasis but in fact believed in hell as ‘eternal conscious torment’. This clip is very short - so I decided to expand Ilaria’s comments. (Plato’s views on hell are found in his Socratic dialogue “Gorgias” which I analysed as a source text in my doctoral thesis some years ago). It turns out that Plato’s views on hell - and divine judgment - are remarkably similar to lots of traditional Christian views. The implications of this are significant: lots of our so-called “Christian” views on heaven and hell are not unique to Christianity but are shared with the pagan world. This is not to say that they are wrong - or right - but it does say that they are common sense ideas that spring from human reasoning not revelation. So in my comments I compare and contrast the shared landscape between Plato’s ‘pagan’ views on hell (and heaven) and typical Christian views. The results are illuminating because they shine the light on what is really unique about the Christian view of human destiny and what seems to be just human reasoning. As Ilaria declares apokatastasis was one of those features that was unique to early Christianity. For the pagan mind, it was just too good to be true, and too wondrous for unaided common sense to apprehend. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

If the scripture is like a land of hills and valleys, then 1 Corinthians 15: 22-28 was the Mount Everest of the terrain. Or so thought Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, according to Ilaria Ramelli. In this short nugget of a talk Ilaria explains with her typically profound mix of big picture and detail, just why the claim that in the end “God will be all and in all” was treated so seriously by Patristic theologians. It is no ordinary claim. By this I mean that it simply does not fit into our normal conceptual landscape of reality - it redraws the whole map of reality. That is how the great minds of the early church treated it - they allowed it to chart out a vision of the end of all things that draws a new map of reality - a map of reality forged and pioneered in the death and resurrection of Christ. Since Ilaria’s talk is so condensed, I have attached a beginning and end bookend to the talk. In the beginning I introduce and expand a couple of the new conceptual frameworks that Ilaria assumes and works with. One is what ‘submission’ means and the second is what she means by extending the term “logos” to the adjectival term '“logikon” - both of which are describing not just the qualities of the Son of God but also of his relationship with creation generally and humanity in particular. At the back end, I append a ten minute discussion of how a typical ‘evangelical’ reading tries to explain away the pretty obvious universalism in this text. I use the commentary notes in my English Standard Version as examples of the ‘yes-but- it doesn’t mean what it looks like’ interpretation of this passage that is quite typical of the struggles that traditional hell doctrines have with the persistent use of the word ‘all’. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

After a slow start we are ready to get going in Gospel Conversations for 2026. We will kick off with this fascinating interview I did with Robin Parry about his personal journal to universal salvation. Robin has led the vanguard for universal salvation since the publication of his landmark book in 2006 “The Evangelical Universalist” which probably did what no other book had quite done in the modern era - it put universalism on the table as a genuine option in the gospel not as a heresy. So it is really intriguing to get the story behind the book, and his journey. I have always been fascinated by seeing how poets or writers actually crafted their works, and developed their ideas. In Robin’s case we get the story - including his early years as an agnostic and his conversion to a pretty fundamentalist form of Christianity. But then he shares the doubts that led to his changing mind. But we get more than that. We also get his feelings about the book and his position - did he feel precarious being out on a limb so far? And in a fascinating section, he explains why the book was so well received in the end - including by its critics. We also get a feel for Robin the person - his lovely combination of measured thought, synthetic thinking and very irenic disposition which has commended him to many including his opponents. So all this makes his journey one for our times, I believe. In the course of this interview, he mentions a couple of key texts - here are the details of you want to get hold of them. Firstly, Eric Reitan whose book “Troubled Paradise” was recently published by Wipf and Stock. It addresses one big issue around hell - how can anyone be happy in paradise if they know others, including their beloveds, are in hell. Secondly he mentioned Al Kimel’s book “Destined for Joy” and in particular the chapter on whether the Fifth Ecumenical council really did condemn Origen and universal salvation as heresies. This book is a profound defence of universal salvation but you need to read the last bit first to grasp its power: the 2012 funeral oration that Kimel delivered on the death (by suicide) of his adult, unbelieving, son. This event made him ‘come out’ as a universalist. Soon we will post the last of the talks by Ilaria Ramelli, and then I will repost a short talk I gave on my personal journey towards cosmic restoration. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

This is our last podcast for the year and it is almost Christmas. It is a short piece by our daughter Sarah which has just been published on the ABC website - in the Religion and Ethics section. Here is the link https://www.abc.net.au/religion/sarah-golsby-smith-teaching-incarnation-christmas-end-of-school/104758846In this piece, Sarah reflects on her year of teaching and finds in that experience a touch of wonder - wonder at the privilege of helping young human beings flourish. She sees these young students as vessels of grace, made in God’s image and at Christmas, as echoes of the ultimate image of God - Christ. Sarah’s experience is a great example for us all - to find the wonder in quotidian moments as we walk the earth. I call these ‘burning bush’ experiences where we see the inner light of some part of creation burst forth and reveal itself. And of course, where greater to see that than in the experience of watching a child learn and grow. Of course, Sarah is hinting at a far broader concept of ‘incarnation’ than just Christ’s brief sojourn on earth - begun at his birth and concluded at his resurrection. She is working with a bigger view that sees Christ’s incarnation as a synecdoche or crystallisation for all the created order. In this view, all of creation is templated after the image of God, and continues to be ‘created’ in that image. And as we see, like Moses, the inner glory of burning bushes, we participate in this living ongoing touch of God in the creation. The great 7th-century mystic, Isaac of Nineveh, saw this as the pinnacle of spiritual growth - he called it a ‘state of wonder’ at the mysteries of God’s involvement, his incarnation, in the created order. Enjoy this talk, look it up and read it on the ABC website. In the New Year we will resume our series on Ilaria Ramelli and Robin Parry with an interview I did recently with Robin on his journey to a belief in cosmic redemption. Of course, Christmas means the incarnation, the core of the Christian faith and the stunning message of God’s participation in our world. But just what does the incarnation mean? Typically it means the 33 year episode of Christ’s life on earth as a discreet event: it has an entry point at his birth and an exit at his resurrection. But great theologians see it more broadly than that. They see the incarnation as beginning with creation, and they see the divine imprint holding all the creation together like gravity might be holding all of our mobility and earthly experience together. So in a sense, this latent divinity in creation was always ready to erupt - and this it did notably in the Burning Bush experience of Moses. But finally, climactically it erupted in the only way possible - by God himself presencing himself with us. This wider view Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to our next Gospel Conversations podcast and apologies that there has been a bit of a lag. We try to keep up a regular feed but life intervenes as I am sure you all would know… grandparenting and sickness etc. Anyway here we are. This is a little unplanned diversion from our Ilaria Ramelli series - but a pretty connected one. On our last episode Ilaria explained her half of the twin books on A Larger Hope which was the early church. Robin Parry wrote the other half which was about more recent history. Fortuitously we found a great video Robin did highlighting some of these experiences of how prominent theologians and pastors ‘changed their minds’ and embraced the doctrine that God in the end will be ‘all and in all’. Here it is - Robin at his gentle, intelligent best. What I like about this talk is that it focuses on journeys not just systematic arguments. Journeys or experiences are a great way to explain points of view and intellectual histories. They give us the human face of knowledge - and are more true to life than systematic arguments in some ways. All of us develop and change our minds, and the circumstances by which we do shine a light on where we end up. As I say in my introduction, Robin’s work as an editor for Wipfandstock has sharpened his ability to evaluate and present succinct arguments - and given him an unusually broad grasp of theological trends. So enjoy this talk. And a taste of what comes next …. I will interview Robin next about HIS journey to a belief in cosmic redemption which will be a nice postscript to this episode. I might ask him which of these earlier journeys he most identifies with in his theological journey. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

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. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Ilaria Ramelli is a formidable pocket rocket of a thinker. She famously wrote the breakthrough defence of the doctrine of ‘apokatastasis’ or universal salvation in her massive 900 page tome ‘The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis’. Her book was a breakthrough because she exploded the myth that most of us grew up with - that the belief in universal salvation (I prefer ‘cosmic redemption’) was always a minority position, and a heretical one in the early church. Ilaria could do this largely because she is a scholar of vast erudition - and in particular in the expansive world of classical thinking not just biblical theology. These tapes are short clips of Robin Parry interviewing her in 2019 before his visit to Australia. Robin intended to use them but we never got around to it. So I thought it was a good time to offer them up now. They are gold because they are short and punchy, and give you a good overview of some big ideas. I introduce the talks with an overview that shows (graphically) how the six talks connect to each other - so you can view them as a coherent structure not just fragments. We attach the first talk at the end of my introduction and will publish the following talks in relatively quick succession. PS - I am afraid I cannot resist adding a somewhat humorous note to this talk. As we all have found, it is difficult to pronounce the word ‘apokatastasis’. It is a multi-syllable tongue twister, and most of us stumble over it. Well, take heart - so does the voice recognition of Descript, the program we use to edit and upload all our talks. It made several vain attempts to get it, and finally gave up, but not before some noble efforts. My favourite one was ‘apple catastrophes’! Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

We have all been waiting for Ben to continue our journey into the amazing Patristic model of the atonement. Here it is. The single phrase that struck me most in this discussion was the ‘friendly God’ - or the ‘philanthropic God’ as the church fathers named their view of God. This is such a contrast to the dark dead end that penal substitution takes us into. I recently heard a sermon where the preacher declared with stentorian severity that we are all born ‘enemies of God’ and that is our state prior to our salvation. Frankly I found that jarring - it just sounded so wrong. But I know that the view is a common one. I don’t think people adopt it deliberately but they are pushed there by the logic of the judicial model of atonement and the harsh, despotic view of God that this entails.That is why this talk is so important. Ben takes us into another world that the early church fathers inhabited. They were not ‘soft’ on sin, or on ‘evil’ - but they fundamentally believed that evil was not a substance but a deprivation. Evil was the absence of God and his life, not a toxic rival to God, with some kind of substantial reality to it. If deprivation is the problem, then the solution has to be the presence of God, and of his life. If only God can put on the cloak of humanity, then he can bring life right up close to death - and once he does that, once the life of God confronts death - it will extinguish death just like turning on a light extinguishes darkness and fills a space with light.This is the thought world that Ben takes us into with masterful eloquence - and a passionate love for the friendly God who has engineered this beyond-our-wildest-dreams reconciliation or ‘at-one-ment’.Gospel Conversations is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

This is a talk that I have wanted to bring to Gospel Conversations for ages. Ben Myers is the Director of the Graduate Research School at Alpha Crucis - the large Pentecostal college/university in Sydney. He has a deep background in literature (his PhD was on Milton) and also a rich grasp of the Patristic era. About ten years ago he gave a wonderful talk at a major evangelical conference in Los Angeles in which he introduced the Patristic model of the atonement. It shook everyone up at that conference in a good way - they were tasting a whole new way of thinking about the Cross and the atonement model of the early church fathers. And - surprise, surprise - it was NOT a model of penal substitution. It was not so much that they disagreed with that model, but rather that it did not cross their minds. They were, theologically, altogether elsewhere. This is that talk - but split into two parts (this is part one) and delivered as a dialogue between Ben and me (a format which Ben prefers). It is a fitting climax to our series on ‘Cross and Creation’. Ben has the unusual gift of erudition and conciseness so I think many of you will find this most enlightening. As a brief postscript, I am starting a second doctorate and Ben will be my supervisor/fellow traveller. In essence I am doing it at my wife’s urging (‘get your ideas down in a disciplined way’) and to take the vision of human creativity that I developed in my first doctorate (on ‘the Two Roads to Truth’) in a business context, and roll them into their theological implications. So Ben and I have a background of some indepth conversations. I will keep you posted on my progress. The broad topic will hover around ‘In an era of Artificial Intelligence, what is unique about humanity and how we think? Towards a theology of ‘rationality’. In this dialogue, I clumsily mention a verse in Job about how God longs to keep us, his beloved, from death. I could not recall the reference during the discussion. It was Job 14:14 - 15 “If a man dies, shall he live again? All the days of my service I would wait, till my renewal should come. You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands.” Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

This Camino talk captures a great conversation on our walk that began with a great question. Great questions are often the pathway to growth – and this is because they usually lift the lid on a topic that we really don’t understand, but skip over with cliches to cover our ignorance up. Anne is not the kind of person who happily just skips over things… I can remember many years ago when she asked Mark Strom after a sermon of his – “When God so loved the world…what does that mean?  Does he love ALL the world, or just the Christians in it?” This time Anne asked me what the idea of ‘participation’ that is so central to Ephesians 1 means.  And let’s face it, Ephesians does not handle participation as if it is some interesting sideshow to salvation – it claims that it is the high point of all God’s purposes. You could not have asked a more important question. So this talk is my struggle to answer it – and I think it came together more succinctly than normal because I was walking and talking at the same time.  Time to draw breath and ponder not just blurb stuff out.A special requestCan I raise another issue entirely with you my friends. We have all been blessed by David Bentley Hart’s talks and ideas.  You may or may not know, but David struggles with poor heath, and the latest episode is a crippling neuralgia in his neck that requires some expensive surgery. His insurance has let him down and he has to pay for lots of the surgery which he can’t afford. He is most embarrassed by this – but his dear brother ignored him and set up a Gofundme page for anyone who might like to help out. Here it is if you would like to do that.https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-david-bentley-harts-spinal-surgery-costs Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe