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The Journal of Theological Studies Advance Access published online on October 25, 2005
The Journal of Theological Studies, doi:10.1093/jts/fli100
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org available online at www.jts.oxfordjournals.org

Original Papers

Universal Salvation in the Eschatology of Sergius Bulgakov

Paul L. Gavrilyuk 1

1 University of St Thomas


  Abstract

Bulgakov's deeply original and controversial eschatology remains largely unexplored in modern scholarship. Following the universalist insights of Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, Bulgakov construed hell as a state of self-inflicted torment necessary to purify the resurrected individual from evil. His arguments against the eternity of hell are as follows: the permanence of hell entails the eternal dualism of good and evil; the grace and mercy of God cannot be permanently resisted by free creatures; perpetual punishment is not commensurable with the finite crimes committed in time; the idea of perpetual retributive punishment leads to an anthropomorphic and unworthy image of a vengeful God; the ontological and moral unity of humanity does not allow for the eternal separation of humankind into the two separate groups of the saved and of the permanently damned. This article lays out Bulgakov's vision of the universal salvation; investigates the roots of this vision in patristic thought; places Bulgakov's proposal in the context of the nineteenth-twentieth-century Russian eschatology; and offers a critical evaluation of Bulgakov's arguments against the eternity of hell.


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