The hope that God will restore all things is not a modern invention. Clement of Alexandria taught it. Origen built it from the whole canon. Gregory of Nyssa proclaimed it and was later honored as “Father of Fathers.” Isaac of Nineveh taught it and now stands in the Roman Martyrology. The hope crossed cities, languages, methods, and centuries. Its opponents wrote against it because it was alive inside the church.
The essays below trace this history: from the patristic evidence for early church universalism to the political forces that suppressed it at the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 AD. The story of how this hope was lost — and why it is being rediscovered — is far more complicated than most Christians have been told.