Chapter 32

The Better Hope—An Invitation

“For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” —Romans 8:38–39

Where We Have Been

I want to begin this final chapter by saying something I should have said a long time ago: thank you. Thank you for staying with me this far. I know this has not been a casual read. Some of these chapters asked you to sit with difficult Greek words and long theological arguments. Others asked you to rethink ideas you may have held for years—ideas taught to you by people you love and respect. That takes courage. It takes a genuine love for truth. And it tells me something important about who you are: you are the kind of person who would rather follow the evidence wherever it leads than cling to a comfortable position that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

That’s exactly what brought you here in the first place. You already made one of the hardest theological moves a Bible-believing Christian can make. You examined the case for eternal conscious torment, weighed it against Scripture, and found it wanting. You concluded that the traditional picture of a God who keeps billions of people alive forever in unimaginable agony—not to heal them, not to correct them, but simply to punish them without end—does not reflect the God revealed in Jesus Christ. That was not an easy step. People questioned your faithfulness. Some probably questioned your salvation. But you followed the evidence anyway, because you cared more about getting it right than about being comfortable.¹

This book has asked you to take one more step. Not a step away from Scripture—a step deeper into it. Not a step away from the God you know—a step closer to who He really is. I have tried, across thirty-one chapters, to build a case that conservative biblical universalism—the conviction that God will ultimately, through Christ, reconcile every human being to Himself—is the most coherent, most biblically faithful, and most theologically satisfying account of God’s purposes for the human race.

Now, in this final chapter, I want to gather up the threads of that argument, weave them together, and then invite you to consider whether the picture that emerges is the truest picture of God you have ever seen.

The Biblical Witness: All Means All

Let me start where we started: with the Bible. Because if this case does not stand on Scripture, it does not stand at all. Neither you nor I are interested in a theology built on wishful thinking. We want to know what God has actually said.

And here is what I have come to believe He has said: the New Testament contains a massive, consistent, and deeply intentional witness to the ultimate reconciliation of all people to God through Christ. That witness is not buried in obscure verses. It runs through the heart of Paul’s theology, through the Gospel of John, through the cosmic vision of Colossians and Ephesians, and through the stunning final chapters of Revelation. It is the drumbeat beneath the whole symphony.

Consider what we examined. In Romans 5:18, Paul sets up an extraordinary parallel: “Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.” The “all” on the condemnation side is every human being who ever lived. The “all” on the justification side must be the same—or the parallel collapses into incoherence. Paul does not say “many” or “some” or “those who believe.” He says all.² And in case we missed it, he circles back in Romans 11:32: “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all.” That is not a vague hope. That is Paul explaining the logic of God’s plan. Everyone was bound in disobedience. Everyone receives mercy. And then, overcome with wonder at the audacity of what he has just written, Paul breaks into a doxology: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!” (Rom. 11:33).³

Think about that for a moment. What moves Paul to worship is not the idea that most people will be lost. What moves him to worship is the staggering scope of God’s mercy—mercy for all.

We saw the same theme in 1 Corinthians 15:22: “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” The scope of resurrection life in Christ matches the scope of death in Adam. We saw it in Philippians 2:10–11, where every knee bows and every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord—and Paul connects this to Isaiah 45:23, where the context is unmistakably salvific, and to 1 Corinthians 12:3, where he insists that no one can confess Jesus as Lord except by the Holy Spirit.⁴ That means the universal confession in Philippians 2 is not forced or reluctant. It is Spirit-empowered. Genuine. Joyful.

We saw it in Colossians 1:19–20, where the scope of reconciliation is breathtaking: “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” The same “all things” created through Christ in verse 16 are the same “all things” reconciled through Christ in verse 20. Creation’s scope is reconciliation’s scope.⁵

We saw it in 1 Timothy 2:4, where God “desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And in 1 Timothy 4:10, where God is called “the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe.” That word “especially” (malista) does not mean “only.” If I say, “I love all my students, especially the hardworking ones,” I love all of them. The hardworking ones simply experience my love in a particular way.⁶ We saw it in Titus 2:11: “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people.” Not offering salvation. Bringing it. And we saw it in 2 Peter 3:9, where the Lord delays His coming precisely because He is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”⁷

Taken one by one, you might explain each of these texts away. You might argue that “all” really means “all kinds of people” or that “reconcile all things” doesn’t include people who resist. But taken together, the cumulative weight is enormous. Text after text after text, from multiple authors, in multiple contexts, using multiple formulations, all pointing the same direction: God intends to save all. Christ died for all. Christ is the Savior of all. God will be mercy to all. God will be all in all.⁸

At a certain point, you have to ask yourself: how many times does God have to say “all” before we believe Him?

What about the Hard Texts?

I can already hear the objection forming in your mind, because it was the first objection I raised when I began this journey myself: “But what about the judgment texts? What about Gehenna? What about the sheep and the goats? What about the lake of fire?”

Those are exactly the right questions, and I hope you noticed that this book did not dodge them. We spent entire chapters on Matthew 25, on Gehenna, on the parables of judgment, on Revelation 20–22. We did not wave them away or pretend they don’t exist. The universalist takes judgment with absolute seriousness. More seriously, I would argue, than either the eternal torment view or the conditional immortality view.

Here is what I mean. When you believe that judgment is purposeless—either endless punishment with no redemptive aim, or final annihilation with no hope of restoration—you are saying that God’s judgment ultimately fails to accomplish anything good for the person being judged. The fire destroys or torments, but it never heals. The universalist says something different. The universalist says that God’s judgment is real, severe, and terrifying—and that it works. It accomplishes what God intends. The fire refines. The correction corrects. The discipline produces “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Heb. 12:11).⁹

We examined the key Greek term aionios, traditionally translated “eternal,” and found that it derives from aion (“age”) and fundamentally means “pertaining to an age” or “age-long.” The earliest Greek-speaking Christians understood this. When Jesus spoke of aionios kolasis in Matthew 25:46, He was describing age-long correction—not everlasting torment.¹⁰ And the word kolasis itself, as we saw, is a word for remedial punishment—not retributive vengeance. Aristotle distinguished it clearly from timoria, the word for punishment aimed at the punisher’s satisfaction. Jesus chose the corrective word, not the retributive one.¹¹

We looked at Gehenna and found that it refers not to an eternal torture chamber but to the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem—a place associated with judgment, yes, but a temporal, historical judgment, not an ontological abyss. We traced the Old Testament prophets’ use of destruction language and found that “destruction” in the prophets routinely gives way to promised restoration. Sodom is destroyed by fire (Gen. 19), and yet God promises through Ezekiel to restore Sodom’s fortunes (Ezek. 16:53–55). The same pattern holds across the prophetic literature: judgment is never God’s last word. Restoration is.¹²

And then we came to the final book of Scripture, Revelation, and found something astonishing. Yes, there is a lake of fire. Yes, there is a second death. The universalist does not deny these realities. But look at what comes next. The gates of the New Jerusalem are never shut (Rev. 21:25). The leaves of the tree of life are for “the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). The very kings of the earth who opposed God throughout the book are now seen bringing their glory into the city (Rev. 21:24). And the invitation stands open: “Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift” (Rev. 22:17).¹³

As Robin Parry has shown, in the visionary geography of Revelation there are only two places one can be: inside the city, or outside in the lake of fire. If the gates are never shut, and if the nations are streaming in, then there is movement from the lake of fire into the city. The architecture of the New Jerusalem is the architecture of welcome.¹⁴ Brad Jersak is right: the open gates tell us that God excludes no one from His presence forever.¹⁵

And there is one more thing. Death and Hades are themselves thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). Death is the last enemy destroyed (1 Cor. 15:26). If the second death is itself ultimately overcome—if death in every form is destroyed—then the lake of fire is not the end of the story. It is the instrument of death’s own undoing. And then comes the final promise: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5). Not some things. All things.¹⁶

The Character of God: Love All the Way Down

If Scripture is the foundation, God’s character is the heart. And this is where the case for universal restoration becomes, for me, not just intellectually compelling but emotionally overwhelming.

The Bible does not say that God has love, as though love were one item on a list of divine attributes alongside power, holiness, and justice. The Bible says God is love (1 John 4:8, 16). Love is not something God does. Love is what God is. Everything else we say about God—His justice, His holiness, His wrath—must be understood as expressions of that love, not as competitors to it.¹⁷

Think about what that means. When God judges, He judges in love. When God is angry at sin, His anger is the anger of love—the fierce, protective anger of a parent who watches their child destroying themselves. When God sends fire, that fire is what Isaac of Nineveh, the great seventh-century Syrian mystic, understood it to be: the burning of God’s love itself, experienced as agony by those who have set themselves against everything God is, but experienced as warmth and light by those who have surrendered to Him.¹⁸

God is not two-faced. He does not love you with one hand and torture your neighbor with the other. The same fire that warms the saints is the fire that refines the sinners. And that fire never gives up. It never says, “I have burned long enough. This one is beyond saving.” It keeps refining until it finds what it was always looking for: the image of God, defaced by sin but never fully destroyed, waiting to be restored.¹⁹

The seventh-century Syrian mystic Isaac of Nineveh saw this with stunning clarity. He wrote that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. Not by whips. Not by some specially designed torture. By love. The same love that fills the saints with unspeakable joy is the same love that burns the wicked with unbearable agony—because they have oriented their entire being against the very thing that God is. And yet that love does not withdraw. It does not say, “You have rejected me too many times.” It keeps burning. It keeps refining. It keeps finding, beneath every layer of rebellion and self-destruction, the image of God that was stamped on that person at creation and that no amount of sin can fully erase.

This is what the Hebrew prophets understood about God’s character. Hosea heard God say about wayward Israel: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? . . . My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused. I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man—the Holy One among you” (Hos. 11:8–9). Notice the reason God gives for refusing to carry out His fierce anger: not because He is weak, but because He is God. It is precisely because He is not a mere human that His compassion overrides His wrath. Humans give up on people. God does not.²⁰

Micah asked, “Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy” (Mic. 7:18). Lamentations insists: “For no one is cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to anyone” (Lam. 3:31–33). The Psalmist declares: “His anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime” (Ps. 30:5).²¹

And then there is Jesus. Jesus, who is the revelation of God’s character. Jesus, who told us what God is like by telling us the story of a shepherd who leaves ninety-nine safe sheep to go after the one that is lost—and who does not come home until he finds it (Luke 15:4–7). Not until he has looked for a reasonable amount of time. Not until he has given it a fair chance to come back on its own. He goes “after the lost sheep until he finds it.” As Beilby points out, a lost sheep typically lies down and gives up. It will not find its way back. The shepherd must go to it.²²

Jesus told us the story of a father who watches the road every day for the son who squandered everything—and who, when the son finally comes stumbling home, does not demand an apology or impose a probationary period but runs to meet him, embraces him, and throws a party (Luke 15:20–24). And in case we missed the point, the father tells the older brother: “We had to celebrate, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found” (Luke 15:32).

Here is my question: Is God a better father than the one in the story, or a worse one? Does the heavenly Father watch the road for some of His children, and then eventually stop watching? Does He give up on the son who has been gone the longest? Or is God at least as good as the character He invented to describe Himself?²³

Thomas Talbott puts the matter with crystalline simplicity. Paul was persuaded that nothing in all creation “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). Not death, not life, not angels, not demons, not the present, not the future. Nothing. Talbott asks: if nothing can separate us from God’s love, and if God’s love is the kind of love that relentlessly pursues and eventually prevails, then on what basis would we conclude that any person will be separated from God forever?²⁴

The answer, I have come to believe, is that there is no basis. There is no good reason to believe that the love of God—which is who God is—will fail for even one person He has made.

The Logic of Creation: From Beginning to End

David Bentley Hart has pressed this point with a force I find unanswerable, and I want to share it with you because it was one of the arguments that changed my mind.

The Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo—creation out of nothing—is not just a statement about how the world began. It is a statement about God’s character. If God created freely, with no external compulsion and no internal need, then everything about creation reflects a free choice on God’s part. And if God is good—if God is the Good itself—then His free creative act must be directed toward a genuinely good end.²⁵

Here is the problem. If God created the world knowing that some of His creatures would end up lost forever—whether through endless torment or through annihilation—then in creating, God freely chose a state of affairs in which evil achieves a permanent victory in at least some cases. As Hart argues, the permanent loss of even one person would mean that creation, taken as a whole, is not entirely good. Something God freely made would end in irreparable tragedy. And a God who freely chooses irreparable tragedy is not the God who is the Good itself.²⁶

Gregory of Nyssa, the great fourth-century Father of the Church, saw this with remarkable clarity. For Gregory, the doctrine of creation is an eschatological claim. The end of all things reveals their beginning. The cosmos will have been truly created only when it reaches its consummation in what Gregory called “the union of all things with the first Good.” Protology and eschatology are a single science, a single revelation disclosed in Christ. If the story does not end well for everyone, then the story was never truly good.²⁷

Hart frames the dilemma as three propositions, any two of which can be held simultaneously but never all three: (1) God freely created all things out of nothing. (2) God is the Good itself. (3) Some rational creatures will endure eternal loss. If (1) and (2) are true, then (3) must be false. If God is truly good and truly free in creating, then the story must end with the restoration of all. Any other ending would mean that creation was not, in the final analysis, a good act—and that is something no Christian can accept.²⁸

I know this is a philosophical argument, and I know some readers are more comfortable with exegesis than with philosophy. But think about it in simpler terms. If you are a parent, and you had the power to ensure that every one of your children would ultimately flourish, would you choose instead to create some of them knowing they would be permanently lost? Would that make you a good parent? Now multiply that question by infinity. God is not merely a good parent. God is goodness. And the idea that infinite goodness freely produces irreparable tragedy is, when you think it through, simply incoherent.²⁹

The Theological Coherence: Everything Fits

One of the things that convinced me that universal restoration is true is how neatly it resolves tensions that other views leave hanging. Let me walk you through a few of them.

First: the tension between God’s love and God’s justice. On the eternal torment view, love and justice are at war with each other—God loves sinners but His justice requires their endless suffering. On the conditional immortality view, love and justice reach a kind of truce—God loves sinners but ultimately allows them to be destroyed. On the universalist view, love and justice are the same thing. God’s justice is His love in action, setting things right, healing what is broken, restoring what is lost. Biblical justice—mishpat and tsedaqah—is not about balancing a ledger. It is about making things right. And the only outcome in which things are truly right is the one in which every broken person is finally made whole.³⁰

Second: the tension between God’s power and God’s desire. Scripture says God desires all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4). Scripture also says God accomplishes everything He intends (Isa. 46:10; Eph. 1:11). On any view other than universalism, one of those claims has to be softened. Either God doesn’t really want all to be saved (the Calvinist solution, which denies the sincerity of 1 Timothy 2:4), or God wants it but can’t pull it off (the Arminian solution, which limits divine power). The universalist affirms both claims without qualification: God wants all to be saved, and God gets what He wants. This is Talbott’s famous trilemma, and I have never encountered a satisfying response to it.³¹

Third: the tension between the severity of judgment and its purpose. On the eternal torment view, judgment is purposeless suffering—God inflicts pain forever without any redemptive aim. On the conditional immortality view, judgment is terminal—it ends the person entirely, which means the purpose of judgment is destruction rather than restoration. On the universalist view, judgment is corrective. It is the work of a surgeon, not an executioner. It hurts because healing sometimes hurts. But it heals. Every biblical metaphor for judgment points in this direction: the refiner’s fire (Mal. 3:2–3), the pruning of the vine (John 15:2), the discipline of a loving father (Heb. 12:5–11).³²

Fourth: the tension between the scope of the atonement and its efficacy. Christ died “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). Christ tasted death “for everyone” (Heb. 2:9). If the atonement is truly universal in scope, the universalist asks, what does it actually accomplish? A universal atonement that saves only some is an atonement that partially fails. A universal atonement that eventually secures the reconciliation of all is an atonement that fully succeeds. The cross does not fail for anyone.³³

Freedom, Sin, and the Healing of the Will

I know what the biggest objection is. I have heard it more times than I can count, and I wrestled with it myself for a long time. “But what about free will? If God guarantees that everyone will be saved, doesn’t that override human freedom? Doesn’t genuine love have to include the freedom to say no—permanently?”

It sounds compelling. For a long time, I found it decisive. But then I started thinking more carefully about what freedom actually is.

Jesus said, “Everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). Slavery is not freedom. The person trapped in addiction is not freely choosing alcohol every time they reach for the bottle. Their will has been distorted. Damaged. They are doing what they “want” in one sense, but in a deeper sense, they are doing exactly what they don’t want. Paul captures this perfectly: “I do not do what I want to do, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15).

Now, here is Talbott’s crucial insight. Persistent rejection of God is not an exercise of freedom. It is a symptom of bondage. A person who fully understood what God is—who fully saw the beauty of the Good—and whose will was not distorted by sin, ignorance, or deception, would never freely choose to reject that Good. Such a choice would be fundamentally irrational, like choosing thirst over water when you are dying of dehydration. As Talbott argues, a fully informed, fully free rejection of God is simply impossible, because it would require choosing something that you fully know to be infinitely worse than the alternative.³⁴

This means that God’s work of purification does not override freedom. It restores it. Think of the alcoholic who goes through rehab. When they come out the other side, free from the compulsion, are they less free because they no longer crave the thing that was destroying them? Of course not. They are finally free to choose what they truly want. That is exactly what God’s purifying love does. It does not force the will. It heals the will. It removes the sin-tumor so the person can finally see clearly and choose what is genuinely good.³⁵

Someone might respond by saying, “But some people’s resistance is so deep that God would have to violate their will to save them.” I understand why this feels true. But think about it this way. A surgeon does not “violate” a patient by removing a cancer. The patient may scream on the operating table. The process may be agonizing. But the surgeon is not doing violence to the patient. The surgeon is doing the most loving thing possible: removing the thing that is killing them. God’s purifying fire works the same way. It is painful—terribly painful, for some more than others, depending on the depth of the sin. But it is not violence. It is surgery. And the surgeon never gives up.³⁶

Talbott makes one more point that I find devastating. God’s grace, he argues, is utterly irresistible over the long run—not because God forces anyone, but because the very experience of being separated from God eventually becomes its own irresistible means of grace. When you resist God, you experience the misery of that resistance. And the misery itself teaches you what you need to learn. God does not need to control our individual choices. He only needs to let us experience the consequences of our resistance long enough for the lesson to take hold. And it will take hold. Because sin is finite, but God’s love is infinite. The fire will always outlast the stubble.³⁷

The Witness of the Earliest Church

There is one more strand of the argument I want to draw together, because it was deeply important to me and I think it will be important to you. We devoted two full chapters to the history of universalism in the early church, and what we found was remarkable.

Universalism was not a fringe view in the first five centuries of Christianity. It was held by some of the most brilliant, most revered, and most deeply orthodox theologians the church has ever produced. Clement of Alexandria taught that God’s punishments are remedial and that all will eventually be saved through purification. Origen—the most prolific biblical scholar in the ancient world—taught apokatastasis, the restoration of all things, as a systematic doctrine rooted in Scripture. Gregory of Nyssa, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers and a pillar of Nicene orthodoxy whose trinitarian theology was decisive for the creeds you and I confess, was an explicit and unambiguous universalist. He was never condemned for it. At the Council of Chalcedon, he was honored with the title “Father of Fathers.”³⁸

Gregory of Nazianzus, another Cappadocian Father and one of the most celebrated theologians in the Eastern tradition, expressed universalist hope. Maximus the Confessor, the great seventh-century theologian, taught universal restoration. Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia taught it within the Antiochene school. Isaac of Nineveh, the great Syrian mystic, built an entire theology of divine love as purifying fire that anticipates the restoration of all.³⁹

Here is the pattern that stopped me in my tracks. The theologians who read the New Testament in its original Greek—the ones who spoke Paul’s language as their native tongue—overwhelmingly concluded that the New Testament teaches universal restoration. It was in the Latin West, working from translations, that eternal conscious torment became dominant. And the single most influential figure in that shift was Augustine of Hippo, who by his own admission did not read Greek fluently.⁴⁰

Now, I am not saying that historical theology settles the question. Scripture is our final authority, not the Fathers. But when the native Greek speakers who lived closest to the apostolic age read Paul and John in the original language and concluded that these texts teach the restoration of all things, that should at minimum give us pause. If Gregory of Nyssa—who wrote the definitive defense of the Trinity, who shaped the Nicene Creed, who was called “Father of Fathers”—believed the Bible teaches universal salvation, we should take that very seriously before we dismiss the idea as unbiblical. And we should note that Gregory did not teach universalism as a private opinion held with embarrassment. He taught it with the same confidence with which he expounded the mysteries of the Trinity. There was no sense that he was deviating from orthodoxy. He believed—and said plainly—that this was the teaching of Scripture and of the church.⁴¹

As Ilaria Ramelli has shown in her monumental research, the doctrine of universal restoration was not dreamed up by soft-hearted theologians looking for an easy way out. These were men who lived under persecution. They lived in a world of staggering moral depravity. They watched their brothers and sisters torn apart by wild animals in the arena. They had every reason to want their persecutors damned. And yet they looked at Scripture, looked at the character of God revealed in Christ, and concluded that God’s love will not rest until every last person is restored. That conviction did not come from sentimentality. It came from a deep, fierce, hard-won understanding of the gospel.⁴²

The Problem of Evil: The Only Truly Satisfying Answer

I want to say something about suffering. Because this is not just an abstract theological debate. This is about real people. Your neighbor who died without faith. The child abducted and murdered. The millions who lived and died without ever hearing the name of Jesus. The person you love most in the world who walked away from God and never came back.

Every Christian theological system has to answer the problem of evil: if God is all-powerful and all-good, why does suffering exist? The traditional answers have their strengths, but they all share a common weakness: they require you to accept that for some people, suffering never ends. Either in the ongoing torment of an eternal hell, or in the permanent extinction of annihilation, the suffering of the world is never truly healed. Evil achieves a lasting victory in at least some cases. The broken are never made whole. The story of creation ends with a wound that never closes.

Hart presses this point relentlessly, and rightly so. If God freely created the world knowing that some of His creatures would be permanently lost, then the moral meaning of that creative act is deeply troubled. The loss of even one person represents a final triumph of evil over good in that person’s case. And if we say that the blessed in heaven will simply be happy despite the eternal suffering of others, we are saying something monstrous about the nature of heavenly joy.⁴³

Talbott makes a related point. Could a mother in heaven truly be blessed while her child suffers in hell forever? Could God wipe her memory, as some have suggested, so that she simply forgets her child ever existed? Is that the heavenly banquet—a feast of amnesia? The idea is grotesque. And the alternative—that the redeemed somehow learn to be happy about the damnation of the lost—is even worse. As Talbott observed, if the saved must lose their compassion to enjoy heaven, then heaven has destroyed the very thing that made them Christ-like.⁴⁴

Universal restoration is the only answer that truly solves the problem of evil. Not by denying that evil is real, and not by pretending that suffering does not matter, but by insisting that God is powerful enough and patient enough to heal every wound, restore every broken person, and wipe every tear. Evil is only truly defeated when the victim is healed—not when the victim is destroyed or forgotten. A surgeon who “defeats” cancer by killing the patient has not truly won. A God who “defeats” evil by destroying or permanently tormenting the people He made has not truly won either. Victory means restoration. And God always wins.⁴⁵

What I Am Not Saying

Before I close, I want to be clear about several things I am not saying, because I do not want to be misunderstood.

I am not saying that everyone will be saved regardless of whether they come to faith in Christ. Faith in Christ is necessary for salvation. The universalist affirms this without exception. What the universalist adds is that God is powerful and patient enough to bring every person to genuine, willing faith—whether in this life or beyond it, through the postmortem encounter with the living God that we explored in earlier chapters.⁴⁶

I am not saying that judgment is not real. Judgment is terrifyingly real. The lake of fire is real. The purifying agony of encountering God’s unmediated presence while still clinging to sin is real. No sane person should want to go through it. The universalist takes hell more seriously than the traditionalist in one important sense: the universalist believes that hell actually works. It accomplishes what God intends. It purifies.⁴⁷

I am not saying that evangelism does not matter. If anything, it matters more on the universalist view, not less. Every person you share the gospel with is a person who might be spared the agony of learning the truth the hard way. Every soul brought to Christ in this life is a soul that does not have to go through the refining fire. Evangelism is not less urgent because all will eventually be saved. It is more urgent because you have the chance to spare someone incalculable suffering. Paul believed in universal reconciliation and was still the most tireless missionary the church has ever seen. He believed that everyone would eventually be saved—and he still poured himself out to reach as many as he could as quickly as he could.⁴⁸

I am not saying that sin does not matter. Sin is devastating. It is slavery. It destroys lives. The universalist hates sin just as fiercely as anyone else—perhaps more so, because the universalist understands that sin is not just a legal violation but a sickness that requires healing. Sin matters enormously. But sin does not have the last word. God does.

And I am not saying that I have every detail figured out. I do not know exactly what the postmortem encounter looks like. I do not know how long the purification takes. I do not know the mechanism by which God’s love finally overcomes every last pocket of resistance. There is much that remains mysterious, and there is room for humility. But the central conviction—that God will ultimately reconcile all people to Himself through Christ—I hold with deep confidence, because I believe it is what Scripture teaches, what God’s character demands, and what the earliest and best Christian theologians affirmed.⁴⁹

The Postmortem Opportunity and the Continuity of God’s Pursuit

You already believe in the postmortem opportunity. You already believe that God, in His justice and love, gives genuine salvific encounters to those who never had an adequate chance to respond to the gospel in this life. That conviction is one of the things that distinguishes you from the restrictivists, who claim that everyone must accept Christ before the moment of death or be permanently lost.

But here is what I want you to see: the postmortem opportunity only makes sense on a dualist view of human nature, and it only reaches its logical conclusion in universalism. Let me explain both pieces.

Substance dualism—the view that human beings are composed of both a material body and an immaterial soul—provides the ontological foundation for the postmortem opportunity. If the soul survives the death of the body, if the person is still there between death and resurrection, then God’s relationship with that person continues. There is someone for God to encounter, to love, to pursue. Physicalism—the view that humans are entirely physical—undermines this. On a physicalist view, at death the person simply ceases to exist until God recreates them at the resurrection. There is no intermediate state. There is no ongoing relationship. There is no one home for God to visit. Your commitment to a conscious intermediate state already implies that God’s dealings with each person extend beyond death. As we saw in Chapter 31, the biblical evidence for this is overwhelming: Rachel’s soul departing at death (Gen. 35:18), the rich man conscious in Hades (Luke 16:19–31), Paul’s desire to depart and be with Christ (Phil. 1:23), the souls under the altar crying out in Revelation 6:9–11.⁵⁰

Now here is the step further. If the soul survives death, and if God’s love never fails (1 Cor. 13:8), then on what basis would we believe that God’s patient, relentless, purifying love ever stops working? If the person never ceases to exist, and if God never ceases to love, then the logical conclusion is that God’s love will eventually prevail for every person. The postmortem opportunity is not a one-shot deal. It is the beginning of God’s final, personal, relentless pursuit of each and every soul He has made. And that pursuit does not end until it succeeds.⁵¹

Think of it this way. You already believe God is loving enough to provide a postmortem opportunity. You already believe God is just enough to ensure that no one is condemned without a genuine chance to respond. What I am asking you to consider is this: is God also powerful enough, and patient enough, to ensure that every single person He encounters in that postmortem moment eventually says yes?

I believe the answer is yes. Not because God forces anyone. But because God’s love is the most powerful force in the universe, and because sin—once fully exposed in the light of God’s presence—cannot hold. Sin is finite. God’s love is infinite. The outcome is not in doubt.⁵²

A Word about Humility

I want to pause here and say something that I hope you will take to heart. I have written this book with confidence, because I believe the case is strong. But confidence is not the same as certainty, and I do not pretend to have figured out every detail of God’s plan for the ages.

There are questions I cannot answer. How exactly does the process of postmortem purification work? How long does it take? Does every person require the same amount of time? What is the experience like for the person going through it? What about people who seem utterly determined to resist God no matter what? I have thoughts about some of these questions, but I hold them loosely, because I am not God and I do not have access to the inner workings of the divine plan.

What I hold with confidence is the destination, even if I am uncertain about every step of the journey. I am confident that God’s love will prevail. I am confident that every person who has ever lived will eventually, willingly, joyfully bow before Christ. I am confident that God will be all in all. The details of how He gets there are, frankly, above my pay grade.

And I think this humility is appropriate. As C. S. Lewis wisely said: “Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem.”⁵³ Some day we will see clearly what we now see only through a glass darkly. Until then, we hold our convictions with appropriate confidence and appropriate humility. We trust not in the completeness of our theology, but in the goodness of our God.

The Better Hope

And now I want to talk about hope. Because that, in the end, is what this book has been about. Not just an argument. Not just a theological position. A hope.

I called this book “The Better Hope” because I believe that universal restoration is, quite simply, a better hope than the alternatives. It is a better hope than a world in which billions of people suffer forever in torment that accomplishes nothing. It is a better hope than a world in which God permanently destroys people He made in His own image. It is a better hope than a universe in which evil wins, even partly, even in some cases, even for some people. It is the hope that God’s love is exactly as powerful, exactly as persistent, and exactly as victorious as the Bible says it is.

And it is not just a better hope for the lost. It is a better hope for you.

Think about what universal restoration means for the way you see God. You do not have to live with the cognitive dissonance of worshiping a God who is simultaneously infinite love and the architect of infinite suffering. You do not have to avert your eyes from the logical implications of your theology. You do not have to come up with increasingly strained explanations for how “all” doesn’t really mean “all” or how “reconcile all things” doesn’t really mean “all things.” You can take every verse of Scripture at face value and find that they all point the same direction: toward a God whose love is as wide as creation and whose patience is as long as eternity. You can worship without reservation. You can love God without that nagging feeling in the back of your mind that maybe He is not as good as you want Him to be. He is good. He is better than good. He is the kind of God who finishes what He starts, who loses nothing He has made, and who will not rest until every broken thing is healed.

Think about what it means for the way you pray. You can pray for anyone—anyone—without that tiny, agonizing voice in the back of your head whispering, “It might be too late.” It is never too late. Not for your unbelieving father. Not for the friend who walked away. Not for the stranger who died in a country where the gospel has never been preached. God is not done with any of them.⁵⁴

Think about what it means for the way you face your own death. You know you are going to be with Christ. But on the universalist view, you also know that everyone you love will be there eventually. No one will be missing from the banquet table. No empty chair. No conspicuous absence. The reunion will be complete.

Think about what it means for the way you read the Bible. The “all” texts are no longer embarrassing problems to be explained away. They are the loudest, clearest, most glorious notes in the whole symphony. God wants all to be saved. Christ died for all. God is the Savior of all. God will be all in all. You can let those verses sing at full volume, without turning down the dial.

Think about what it means for the way you share the gospel. You are not delivering a threat. You are delivering an invitation to a party that is already guaranteed to happen. The question is not whether your neighbor will eventually be reconciled to God. The question is whether they will receive that gift now, in this life, and be spared the agony of learning the truth through purifying fire. That is an incredibly motivating message. Not fear-based, but love-based. Not anxious, but joyful. Not desperate, but confident.⁵⁵

Every Prodigal Comes Home

I want to close with a picture. It is the picture that has stayed with me more than any argument or exegetical detail, and I think it is the truest picture of God’s heart that Scripture gives us.

The father in Luke 15 had two sons. One took his inheritance, left home, and squandered everything in a far country. He ended up feeding pigs—the lowest place a Jewish boy could sink. And when he finally came to his senses, he rehearsed a little speech: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.”

But the father never heard the end of that speech. Because while the son was still a long way off, the father saw him. The father ran. The father threw his arms around that filthy, pig-smelling boy and kissed him. The father did not say, “Where have you been? Do you know what you have put me through?” The father said, “Bring the best robe. Bring the ring. Kill the fatted calf. My son was dead, and is alive again. He was lost, and is found.”

That is God. That is who God is. Not the angry judge waiting to condemn. Not the distant king who writes off His failed subjects. The father on the road, scanning the horizon, running toward the son who is still a long way off, throwing a party before the apology is even finished.

And here is what I want you to notice: in the parable, there is only one prodigal. But what if there were a hundred? What if there were a thousand? What if every single child the father ever had wandered off into a far country? Would the father stop watching the road? Would he eventually say, “I have run out of patience. Some of my children are simply too far gone”? Or would he watch, and wait, and run, and embrace, and throw a party for every last one?⁵⁶

I believe the answer is written across every page of Scripture. “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise. . . . Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). The father does not stop watching the road. The shepherd does not stop searching. The woman does not stop sweeping. The God who is love does not stop loving.

And His love wins. Not by force. Not by overriding freedom. But by being so relentless, so patient, so blindingly beautiful that eventually every last resistance crumbles, every last wall comes down, and every last prodigal stumbles home to find the father already running.

That is the better hope. Not that God will save a handful and abandon the rest. Not that God will save most and lose a few. But that the God who created all things in love will redeem all things through love. That every knee will bow—not in terrified submission, but in overwhelmed gratitude. That every tongue will confess—not because it is forced, but because it has finally seen the truth and cannot help but declare it. That the gates of the New Jerusalem will never be shut, because there will always be room for one more, and one more, and one more, until the whole human race is gathered in.

Gregory of Nyssa imagined it as a great procession: all persons moving, at their own pace but in the same direction, from outside the temple walls into the temple precincts, and finally into the very sanctuary of God’s glory—as one. Not some left behind. Not some lost in the darkness. All of them, together, entering the light.⁵⁷

Paul imagined it as the final act of cosmic history: “When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Not all in some. Not all in what’s left. All in all.⁵⁸

John imagined it as a city with open gates and a tree whose leaves heal the nations and a voice from the throne declaring: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

And the author of the Triumph of Mercy, reflecting on Acts 3:21, saw it as the fulfillment of what “God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began”—a restoration of all things, foreseen from the beginning, accomplished through the blood of the cross, and reaching every family that has ever existed on the face of the earth.⁵⁹

An Invitation

I am not asking you to be certain. I am asking you to hope.

I am not asking you to abandon your convictions. I am asking you to expand them. You already believe that God is love. You already believe that Christ died for all. You already believe that God desires all to be saved. You already believe that the postmortem opportunity is real. You already believe that the soul survives death. You already believe that God’s judgments are just and purposeful.

I am simply asking: what if all of those convictions, taken to their fullest and most natural conclusion, lead exactly where the earliest and best Christian theologians said they lead? What if the God who is love really does love successfully? What if the Christ who died for all really does save all? What if the Father who watches the road really does welcome every prodigal home?

What if the hope you have been afraid to hold is the hope that Scripture has been trying to give you all along?

You may be surprised by what happens if you let yourself hold it. I was. When I finally allowed myself to believe that God really will save everyone, something shifted in my heart that I did not expect. I did not become complacent about sin. I did not lose my urgency about evangelism. What I lost was fear. The low-grade anxiety that had hummed beneath my faith for years—the fear that someone I loved might be permanently lost, the fear that God’s plan might end with a wound that never heals—that anxiety lifted. And what replaced it was a deeper, stronger, more joyful trust in God than I had ever known. I discovered that when you stop being afraid of God and start being astonished by Him, everything changes.

I know the cost of believing this. I know that some of your friends will not understand. I know that some of your pastors will be concerned. I know that you will be called a liberal by people who have not done a fraction of the exegetical work you have done. I went through all of that myself. And I will tell you what I found on the other side: a God who is bigger, more beautiful, more powerful, and more loving than I had ever dared to imagine. A God who does not give up. A God whose story ends not with a whimper or a tragedy but with a triumph so complete that every tear is wiped away and every broken thing is made whole.

The gates are open. The invitation stands. The leaves of the tree are for healing. And God will be all in all.

That is the better hope.

Dare to hold it.⁶⁰