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Contact Person:
Marilyn Piety, Professor of Philosophy, Drexel University
marilyn.piety@drexel.edu
Title: Two Early Christian Universalists
Presenters:
Mark Lama, Independent scholar
Dr Chris Tilling, St Mellitus College
Moderator: Marilyn Piety, Drexel University marilyn.piety@drexel.edu
Responder: Lee C. Barrett, Moravian School of Theology
barrettl@moravian.edu
This session explores the implicit and explicit universalistic themes in the writings of Paul and Gregory of Nyssa and Macrina, showing that such themes were not uncommon in early Christianity. This first paper meditates on both eternal destruction and universal language in Paul, considers the ways in which they can be construed as contradictory, and then provides an account of the self in Paul as polydetermined, to resolve the exegetical conundrum. The second paper argues that for Nyssa and Macrina the mutually attractive force between divine nature and human nature establishes an "argument from necessity" for the eventual restoration of all human beings to goodness.