Universalism, the Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five Hundred Years

Hanson's most ambitious historical work argues that for the church's first five centuries universal salvation was not a heresy but the mainstream hope of Christian teachers. Marshalling extracts from Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and the great catechetical schools, he contends that endless punishment only triumphed as the church absorbed pagan Roman ideas and Augustine's theology. A sourcebook of patristic quotations still cited in discussions of the history of universalism.

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