Friday, June 7, 2024

Feminine perspectives on Universal Salvation.

 I recently obtained Sarah Apetrei’s book The Reformation of The Heart: Gender and Radical Theology in The English Revolution.  It’s about the often overlooked significance of many Women during the Religious chaos of that period including how on some subjects they were more radical than their male counterparts.   

And the Chapter titled Salvation is about Universal Salvation.  Mentioning women like Lady Eleanor Davies, Elizabeth Attaway, Anne Yeman, and Anna Tarpnel (and also mentioned Elizabeth Bathurst, Lady Anne Conway and Jane Lead a generation later).

I think a similar tendency may have existed in other eras too.  Yes the vast majority of known documented Universalists are Men since Men have usually been more allowed to publish and publicly teach their ideas to begin with. 

However it’s important not to forget the arguably greatest Universalist Theologian Gregory of Nyssa,  depicts his OneeSan Macrina The Younger as his chief spiritual mentor especially on this subject.

Julian of Norwich was a medieval English Mystic who might be the best precedent for it in the English speaking world prior to the Revolution.  Some women have also had a role to play in the modern revival of consideration for the topic.

I hold the controversial view that Mary of Bethany and Mary Magdalene were the same person and was the Beloved Disciple, making her the Author of the Fourth Gospel and perhaps also the Epistles commonly attributed to John, at least the First of them which I think was originally an appendix to the Fourth Gospel which I prefer to title The Dissertation on the Word of Life.  

I can build my argument for Universal Salvation independent of those books, but some of the most Emotionally Powerful verses come from them.  Emphasizing how God Loves the Whole World, that none can pluck us out of Jesus hand in 10:28-29, that He will Draw all men unto him in 12:32, that we are Saved because God first loves us, in 1 John 4:19.

There may already be a lot more known then I’m already aware of. 

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