Reconciliationism: A Forgotten Evangelical Doctrine of Hell, Andy Saville

And now we come to the weightiest datum of all. The theory of sin forever flourishing ignores the message of Christ’s victory over sin and all evil. Every knee shall bow and every tongue confess, those of the lost included. It cannot mean mere outward, hypocritical and forced agreement; what sense would there be in any outward show in the light of that Day, when all the secrets shall be exposed (Rom. 2:16) before the God who is Sprit? Sinners are forced, then, to confess the truth, but they are forced by truth itself, by its overwhelming evidence and spiritual authority; they can no longer refuse to see, they can no longer think otherwise. Through Christ, it has pleased God to reconcile, apokatallaxai, the whole universe, including all rebellious spirits (Col. 1:20). ‘Reconciliation’ does not imply salvation, here, as independent exegetes have recognized; it means the restoration of order, of all within God’s order, ‘pacification,’ as all are brought back into the divinely-ruled harmony. Nothing could be farther removed from divine defeat and sin going on after judgment. .. The main fact about everlasting punishment, the fate of the reprobates, is this: sin shall be no more. Such is the thesis we propose.