A Greater Hope
Leon J. Podles on Pondering the Destiny of All Mankind
What is the fate of those who die alienated from God? The general Christian tradition consigns them to eternal torments in hell. Indeed, the general tradition is that almost the entire human race is lost, and that the number of those in heaven are comparatively few, a very little flock.
There has been a recent softening of this teaching to allow more opportunities for salvation, and there is an even smaller tradition which claims that God, in the end, saves everyone. This latter opinion is called universalism. Recently, various Christians have put it forward, with varying degrees of insistence, from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s tentative Dare We Hope “That All Men Be Saved”? to David Bentley Hart’s dogmatic That All Shall Be Saved.
Gregory & Macrina
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Leon J. Podles holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Virginia, has worked as a teacher and a federal investigator, and is president of the Crossland Foundation. He is the author of The Church Impotent (Spence), Sacrilege (Crossland Press), and Losing the Good Portion: Why Men Are Alienated from Christianity (St. Augustine Press). Dr. Podles and his wife have six children and live in Baltimore, Maryland. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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