Universalism for the first 500 years of the church

It has been said that Universalism has been getting noticed in recent years after being labeled as hearsay in the 5th Ecumenical Church Council of 553 AD. Let’s see why this occurred.

Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 AD. This gave room for the Roman Emperor to have authority in the Christian Church. It was the Roman Emperor who condemned Universalism as a heresy in 553 AD. Therefore no one could be ordained as a priest or bishop who believed in Universalism. This is how it has been silenced for so many years because anytime the subject is brought up, someone always reminds us that it has been labeled as a heresy by the Ecumenical Council of Churches in 553 AD.

The thing is that Universalism WAS the gospel of the church for the first 500 years. They had local church councils and four Ecumenical Councils before and no one was labeled as a heretic in those meetings for believing in Universalism because the members were mostly Universalists themselves. In 544 AD Roman Emperor Justinian wrote a letter requesting a local council of churches, as stated in his letter, to label Origin’s theology as heresy, which among other teachings included Universalist teachings.

Universalism, more specifically known as Universal Reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:17 – 20), was popular during this time because in the second century after the New Testament had been canonized, six theological schools were established. Five of them were in Greek locations, which meant that they taught the New Testament Scriptures from the Greek texts. Four of them taught Universalism and one taught annihilation. The sixth school was in Africa, a Latin area, and taught the Scriptures from the Latin texts. They taught that Hell is eternal.

To further compound things, St. Augustine came into the church and could not read Greek but rather studied the Scriptures from the Latin Version. He had a Pagan background and was familiar with Platonism. This is possibly where he learned of the immortal soul concept that is foreign to the Bible. He brought many new doctrines into the church, so much so, that he was referred to as the Father of Western Theology. When the Protestants left the Roman Catholic Church, they took with them many of these same doctrines of Western Theology. Some of these doctrines that he brought into the church were: original sin, Hell is eternal and Predestination by God. The Greeks of the church split off to form the Greek Orthodox Church.

The gospel taught today is far from this gospel taught for the first 500 years. It now contains the notion of humans having or being immortal souls and threats of eternity in Hell if the person doesn’t accept Christ as his or her Savior. The Universalist gospel did not teach that when one dies he has a soul that is immortal and does not die with the body and therefore has to continue life either in heaven or Hell. Today, Christians seem to have their minds set on getting to heaven somewhere up there when they die. The others will have to of necessity enter a hell of extreme punishment for their sins. This is partially because it is believed that the punishment for sin is punishment for each individual sin committed in this life. The Scriptures teach us that the payment for sin is not punishment for each individual sin but death. Without a resurrection death would be punishment forever. The gospel of Christ is the good news that Jesus, the Incarnate Son of God lived a perfect sinless life thereby condemning sin in the flesh and then died on our behalf for the payment of death for our sins. His death paid the penalty for our sins and by believing in this we will one day at the Second Coming be changed from motal flesh and bone to spiritual immortal flesh and bone bodies, or if dead at tat time will be resurrected with new spiritual immortal bodies of flesh and bone to live forever in this Kingdom of Heaven on earth.