Apokatastasis Again

If you remember the Rob Bell controversy from a few years ago, you will realize that some ideas never die, but get recycled in various forms down through the ages. Some debates are never concluded because their subject matter would seem to foreclose such tidy conclusion. And some names, it seems, are forever going to be associated with the adjective "controversial" or, worse, "heretical." The debate over the universal nature of salvation is one such debate, and Origen is one such name. A recent hefty tome looks afresh at the whole issue of what it means to hope that all things might be restored in Christ: Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of  Apokatastasis : A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena (Brill, 2013), 912pp.

About this book we are told:

The theory of apokatastasis (restoration), most famously defended by the Alexandrian exegete, philosopher and theologian Origen, has its roots in both Greek philosophy and Jewish-Christian Scriptures and literature, and became a major theologico-soteriological doctrine in patristics. This monograph—the first comprehensive, systematic scholarly study of the history of the Christian apokatastasis doctrine—argues its presence and Christological and Biblical foundation in numerous Christian thinkers, including Syriac, and analyses its origins, meaning, and development over eight centuries, from the New Testament to Eriugena, the last patristic philosopher. Surprises await readers of this book, which results from fifteen years of research. For instance, they will discover that even Augustine, in his anti-Manichaean phase, supported the theory of universal restoration.