Without eternal punishment, the strength of the Church would probably collapse. In Christianity there is the idea that not everyone will be saved, that some will purge their souls, and that others will be damned forever. And the allegories of hell are terrible. But from Christianity there are important voices that maintain that, in the end, all men will be saved and will return to friendship with God. Catholic, evangelical, and – pardon the expression – orthodox orthodoxy, has disavowed this version, because then, they argue, there would be no difference between being good or bad, since the final destination would be the same. But there are strong theological arguments to support the so-called Apocatastasis. Let’s see.
Does God want all men to be saved? Or does he want some yes and some no? The immediate answer is yes, that God wants everyone to be saved. And there is the biblical quote from the First Epistle of Saint Paul to Timothy: “[Dios] He wants all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy, 2:4). There is no doubt about it: God wants us all to be saved. To hold otherwise would be heretical.
So much so that God became flesh and came into the world: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy, 1:15); “The Father has sent the Son, the Savior of the World (1 John, 4:14); “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17). And so, dozens more appointments. God wants so much that we all be saved, that he sent his Son so that the world would be saved by Him.
So far, everything in order. But an almost insurmountable complication arises, put on the table by the very fathers of the Church. Is God omnipotent? Yes or no? According to Christianity, God is omnipotent. If God is omnipotent and he wants everyone to be saved, aren’t they going to be saved? If God wants everyone to be saved, but it turns out that many are damned, then his will is ineffective. And what kind of omnipotence would be that in which the will is ineffective? It would not be omnipotence; it would be fickle. If God is omnipotent and he wants everyone to be saved, then everyone will be saved, otherwise God would neither be omnipotent nor would he be God.
At the Apocatastasis or Restoration, all, sinners and non-sinners, even Satan and demons, will once again be One with God. The typical argument to refute this is that God loves man so much and respects his freedom so much that he does not mess with it, even if man is lost. But the same fathers of the Church who supported the Apocatastasis took this into consideration: God created, in his great goodness, spiritual beings endowed with freedom; freedom is the cause of all evil, not God. God is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. Evil cannot forever rule the world, otherwise Christ’s redemption would be absurd. If Christ redeemed the world, this necessarily means the Apocatastasis. If Christ had partially redeemed the world, then he would have imperfectly redeemed it. At the end of time, everyone, even Satan, will return to friendship with God, and the beginning will be like the end.
So remember: God wants us all to be saved; God is omnipotent. Isn’t God going to achieve what he wants?