Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Barth, Origen, and Universal Salvation offers a bold new presentation of universal salvation. Building constructively from the third- century theologian, Origen, and the twentieth-century Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, Tom Greggs offers a defence of universalism as rooted in Christian theology, showing this belief does not have to be at the expense of human particularity, freedom, and Christian faith. Examining Barth's doctrine of election and Origen's understanding of apokatastasis, Greggs proposes that a proper understanding of the eternal salvific plan of God in the person of Jesus Christ points towards universal salvation. The relationship between the work of the Spirit and the Son in salvation is central to this understanding. Universal salvation is grounded in the person of Christ as himself historic and particular, and the Spirit makes the reality of that universal work of Christ present to individuals and communities in the present. The discussion includes creative suggestions for the political and ecclesial implications of such a presentation of salvation.

This study offers an in-depth examination of Porphyrian soteriology, or the concept of the salvation of the soul, in the thought of Porphyry of Tyre, whose significance for late antique thought is immense. Porphyry's concept of salvation is important for an understanding of those cataclysmic forces, not always theological, that helped convert the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity. Porphyry, a disciple of Plotinus, was the last and greatest anti-Christian writer to vehemently attack the Church before the Constantinian revolution. His contribution to the pagan-Christian debate on universalism can thus shed light on the failure of paganism and the triumph of Christianity in late antiquity. In a broader historical and cultural context this study will address some of the issues central to the debate on universalism, in which Porphyry was passionately involved and which was becoming increasingly significant during the unprecedented series of economic, cultural, political, and military crises of the third century. As the author will argue, Porphyry may have failed to find one way of salvation for all humanity, he nonetheless arrived a hierarchical soteriology, something natural for a Neoplatonist, which resulted in an integrative religious and philosophical system. His system is examined in the context of other developing ideologies of universalism, during a period of unprecedented imperial crises, which were used by the emperors as an agent of political and religious unification. Christianity finally triumphed over its competitors owing to its being perceived to be the only universal salvation cult that was capable of bringing about this unification. In short, it won due to its unique universalist soteriology. By examining a rival to Christianity's concept of universal salvation, this book will be valuable to students and scholars of ancient philosophy, patristics, church history, and late antiquity.