Apoctastasis

I just finished a chapter in a book I am reading that explained the notion of apoctastsis, and also read Augustine's counters to it in his 'City of God,' and am so interested in the idea that I felt it worthy of a blog.

Apoctastasis, when referring to the Christian aspect of the idea, is the notion that even after the 2nd coming of Christ, God will still allow for souls in Hell to repent.

The most famous individual to propound the notion of apoctastasis was Origen of Alexandria, in his book 'Against Celcus,' written around 254 CE. He argued that everything was made from the Father, who is all-good, and everything that has eminated from Him contained some of His good, even the Devil. And since God could not allow for a good being, even if that creature was mostly evil, to exist eternally in damnation. That is the main reason why Origen was never canonized: the other Church Fathers who followed after him (especially Augustine, who devoted entire chapters in his book 'City of God' to denouncing Origen's 'blasphemies'). Origen believed that, everything that ever existed in Hell would eventually see the err of their ways, and return to God, devoting themselves to the good, and purging themselves of the evil within them. Essentially apoctastasis argues that Hell is more of a Purgatorial state, rather than a place of eternal torment. (Note: within this idea, and timeframe in general, Hell does not exist as the fire and brimstone place of pain that we now view it as. It was more of a place where the individual is completely separated from God's love, a thing that we cannot experience on Earth, as Earth is a paradise that exists within the realm of God's love.)

I personally view this as the best answer to theodicy (the theological/philosophical question of how evil can exist within the realm of a kind and loving diety) that I have yet come across. Going under the assumption that God is truly all-loving, as proclaimed within Abrahamic religious beliefs, then I fail to conceive of a notion of a never-ending place of eternal torment. I simply cannot wrap my mind around it. And again, yes, I realize how odd it is that this is what I do in my spare time, but hey, I find it all fascinating.