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Apocatastasis

13 bytes added, 16:39, September 24, 2008
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. It is based on, among other things, St Paul's letter to Timothy in which he says that it is God's will that all men should be saved (1 Timothy 2.4).
For [[Origen]], this explicitly included the [[devil]]. In effect, Apocatastasis 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 Among Catholics 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'?'' (1988), expressed a qualified version of apocatastasis in which we may "hope" that all will be saved. Keeping in mind the conciliar condemnation of Origen, Orthodox theologians who tend towards universalism (the belief that all will be saved) usually argue that all may be saved.
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