Destined for Joy: The Gospel of Universal Salvation

 

Destined for Joy: The Gospel of Universal Salvation by Father Aidan (Alvin) Kimel

This was one of the heaviest books that I’ve read in quite some time. The author, Father Alvin Kimel (a retired Orthodox priest) has one of the most extensive websites on the internet on Universal Salvation. For those who may not know, Universal Salvation is the belief that one day, eventually, all will be saved and reconciled to God.  This book is essentially a cherry-picking of the masses of material out there that Father Kimel has collected.  If you’ve read everything on his website, my guess is that it essentially contains all that is in this book.  However, I’d be willing to bet the most mere mortals wouldn’t have the time nor the stamina to consume all of Father Kimel’s writings, musings, and collections.

He's a very deep writer. At times I felt as though I wasn’t reading a book, but rather taking a semester-long advanced college course. It’s not that he simply covers a lot of bases, but his writing style is extremely learned and many of the chapters made me feel like an 8-year old who barely knows how to add and subtract and suddenly found themselves in an advanced Trigonometry class.  Don’t misunderstand me, the topics and chapters are very good, it’s just that the average reader won’t be able to consume this volume, say, over a long weekend.

Here is just a small sampling of some of the words Father Kimel uses in this work that made me thankful I had a dictionary handy:

tautologous, polity, locus, radix, inculcate, colloquial, impenitent, proleptic, polysemy, exegete, lexical, preterition, paradigmatic, anchorite, adamantine, shewings, merveyle, sunder, puissant, and nonextant.

Some of these words aren’t even IN the dictionary.  Anyway, if you’re familiar with the definitions of such words, it’s probable that you’ll have an easier time than I did when it comes to finishing each chapter in a somewhat timely fashion.  When one, such as myself, though, has to consistently stop and consult a dictionary on numerous occasions, it tends to slow down the journey somewhat. I also had to reread several sentences throughout to ensure I understood what was being written.

We then come to the fact that Father Kimel quotes numerous long (and longer) passages from many of history’s finest theologians.  So we get to read many selected passages from the works of Isaac the Syrian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, George MacDonald, Basil of Caesarea, John of Damascus, Robert Farrar Capon, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Gregory of Nyssa and Origen of Alexandria.   In fact, there’s an entire (very long) chapter on the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 A.D. and provides extensive evidence that, whereas Origin and his Universalist musings have widely been stated to have been condemned, Father Kimel gives us detailed information that this was not, in fact, the case.

My biggest critique of this book is that when Kimel refers to all of these theologians and their writings, he’ll quote extensively from their work, sometimes multiple pages worth for each referral.  These quotations are in small print, and one must ensure their brain stays attuned when reading through such heavy material.  I feel Father Kimel may have done the reader a better service to his readers by giving a summarization himself of each point and not quote his sources in such a tedious fashion.  

His goal, however, is to leave no stone unturned and he succeeds amazingly.  The author is not one who I would want to get into an argument with trying to prove the point of infernalism or an annihilationism.  Kimel covers an awful lot of real estate in this book. The chapters don’t necessarily progress in any sort of linear fashion, but the material is so well-written (and extremely encouraging) that we really don’t mind.

I just might argue that if you could only have one book that supports the hope of Universal Salvation, this is probably the book that you would want.  Of course, it would be helpful to have all of the articles on Father Kimel’s website as well.   You may just need a few decades to adequately read and digest them all.