Chapter 29
Does "Reconcile All Things" Mean Win Them Home, or Put Them Down?
A student in a seminary class once told me that Colossians 1:20 was the verse that first made him consider universalism. "Through him to reconcile to himself all things." He read it slowly, and it seemed too plain to miss. God reconciles all things. All things. Through the blood of the cross.
His professor had an answer ready. "Reconcile" in that verse does not mean what you think it means. It does not mean every person gets saved. It means God puts down the rebellion. He restores order to the cosmos by destroying evil, not by converting everyone. "Reconcile" can mean "pacify." God wins the war. He does not befriend the enemy.
The whole hope hangs on one word. And the word, I believe, is warmer than the objection allows.
But the objection is not a small one. Derek Tidball, a respected evangelical scholar writing in response to Robin Parry's The Evangelical Universalist, presses the point sharply. McClymond gives Tidball's argument a prominent place in his appraisal of evangelical universalism. Here is the claim: when Paul speaks of God reconciling "all things" or putting "all enemies" under Christ's feet, he is not talking about the conversion and salvation of every person. He is talking about the defeat and removal of evil. God reconciles the cosmos by destroying what resists Him, not by winning it over.1
Tidball's Claim, in McClymond's Appraisal
Regarding the final outcome of God's work, Tidball argues, "the triumph of God and the reconciliation of 'all things' are adequately explained in terms of the destruction of evil and of all that opposes him." For this reason, he says, "to say that the reconciliation cannot take place unless enemies are persuaded by re-education to agree with God puts a particular contemporary cultural spin on what we believe must happen."2
Derek Tidball, cited in McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, 2:997
That is a serious charge. It says the universalist is reading a modern idea into an ancient text. It says "reconcile" can mean something far less than friendship. It says God restores order to the universe by crushing what opposes Him, and that this is all Paul ever meant.
De Young takes the same line. He argues that the reconciliation of Colossians 1:20 "is not salvific, not saving, but refers to subjection and pacification brought about by a triumphant conquest."3 In this reading, "reconcile" works like "pacify." The rebel is put down, not brought in.
I want to grant part of this right away. Some New Testament victory language is about subduing enemies. Colossians 2:15 does picture a military triumph. No serious reader of Paul should pretend that all his language about the final victory is soft. Some of it is fierce. The question is whether the word "reconcile" belongs with the fierce language or with something else entirely.
This objection matters because the Bible really does speak of God destroying the works of the devil. It speaks of putting enemies under Christ's feet, of disarming the powers and making a public display of them. If "reconcile" just means "pacify by conquest," then the universalist reading of Colossians 1:20 falls apart.
De Young presses this connection hard. He links Colossians 1:20 to Colossians 2:15, where Paul says Christ "disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, triumphing over them." De Young calls this "not a salvific triumph, not one that is willingly embraced and that brings salvation and freedom from bondage, but like a military conquest it is one from which none ever escapes."4 And the argument has support beyond Colossians. In 1 Corinthians 15:25, Paul says Christ "must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet." De Young reads this subjection language as conquest, writing that these words depict the final state with some remaining in everlasting subjection.5 Even the "uniting" of Ephesians 1:9–10 is read by the pacification camp as the imposition of divine order, the language of an empire, not a family.6
If this reading is right, the great cosmic-reconciliation texts are not about universal salvation at all. They are about the total defeat of evil. That is a real challenge, and it deserves a careful answer.
Plain Words
Reconcile (Greek apokatallassō): to bring back into right relationship, to make peace between two parties who were estranged. Pacify: to quiet by force, to suppress resistance. Shalom (Hebrew): peace in its full biblical sense, not just the absence of war but the presence of wholeness, harmony, and flourishing. The question in this chapter is whether Paul's "reconciliation of all things" means genuine shalom or mere military pacification.
The first move is the simplest. Look at the word itself.
The Greek word Paul uses in Colossians 1:20 is apokatallassō, which means to restore to a former state of harmony, to make peace between estranged parties. This is not a general word for "victory" or "triumph." It is a relationship word.7 Paul could have said God would "conquer" all things (nikaō), "subdue" all things (hypotassō), or "triumph over" all things (thriambeuō). He uses all of these elsewhere. But in Colossians 1:20, he chose "reconcile." When a careful writer has conquest words in his vocabulary and picks a friendship word instead, the choice itself is evidence.8
And Paul shows us exactly what he means by it, two verses later. In Colossians 1:21–22, he writes:
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. (Colossians 1:21–22, ESV)
Notice: Paul uses the very same word. The Colossians were "alienated and hostile." Now they are "reconciled." Did Christ pacify them by military force? Did He crush them into submission? Of course not. He brought them from hostility to friendship through His death. That is what reconciliation means in this passage.9
The word carries this meaning everywhere Paul uses it. In 2 Corinthians 5:18–19, he writes: "All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them." The whole passage speaks of forgiveness, peace, and a restored relationship. There is no conquest here. There is welcome.10
George Sidney Hurd drives this point home. Reconciliation, he argues, "is exclusively a relational term, referring to the restoration of broken relationships. Only fallen rational moral beings are in need of reconciliation with God."11 That is exactly right. You do not "reconcile" a rock. You do not "reconcile" a conquered enemy left seething in chains. You reconcile a person who was estranged and is now brought home.
Tidball and De Young want "reconcile" in Colossians 1:20 to mean something different from what it means two verses later. But Paul wrote both verses in the same sentence. He used the same word for the cosmic scope (verse 20) and the personal application (verses 21–22). Unless we have strong reason to think he changed meanings in the middle of a sentence, the simpler reading is that he means the same thing both times: enemies made into friends through the blood of the cross.12
The second move concerns the scope of "all things." Who or what is being reconciled?
Look at the structure of Colossians 1:15–20, the great Christ-hymn. Paul begins by declaring that all things were created through Christ and for Christ:
For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. (Colossians 1:16, ESV)
Then, in verse 20, Paul says God was pleased "through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross."
The phrase "all things, whether on earth or in heaven" echoes directly the "all things... in heaven and on earth" of verse 16. This is no accident. Paul is drawing a parallel between creation and reconciliation. The same "all things" that were created in verse 16 are the "all things" being reconciled in verse 20. The scope of reconciliation matches the scope of creation.13
Hurd makes this point with force. "Here Paul does not spare detail in emphasizing that 'all' means absolutely 'all,' including all in heaven and on earth, whether visible or invisible," he writes. "In verse 20 we see that the very same all, whether on earth or in heaven, was reconciled unto Himself at the cross."14 David Burnfield makes the same observation. He notes that some, like Geisler, have tried to limit the "all things" of verse 20 to believers only. But as Burnfield points out, this "ignores the clear parallels with vv. 16, 17, and 18." He quotes the nineteenth-century commentator Vincent: the "all things" in verse 20 "must be taken in the same sense as in vv. 16, 17, 18, the whole universe, material and spiritual."15
If "all things" in verse 16 means everything without remainder, then "all things" in verse 20 means the same. The scope of reconciliation equals the scope of creation; the pacification reading would require us to say that some of the very things God created "through him and for him" will never be brought to genuine peace with their Creator. That is a strange reading of a passage designed to celebrate the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ over all things. The full treatment of the "all" texts is in Chapter 25, but the Colossians parallel makes the point on its own.16
The third move looks at the means by which God reconciles.
How does God reconcile all things? Paul tells us: "making peace by the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20). Stop and consider those words. The instrument of reconciliation is the blood of the cross. This is atonement language. It is sacrifice language. It is the language Paul uses everywhere else for God's saving work in Christ.17
If Paul meant pacification by military force, the cross is the wrong instrument. You pacify by power. You conquer by overwhelming strength. But you reconcile by the blood of a sacrifice. And that is what Paul says God does. He does not say God reconciles all things by the sword. He says God makes peace by the blood of the cross.18 Thomas Talbott presses this point. According to the New Testament, he writes, "God sent his Son in the flesh, not as a conquering hero, but as a suffering servant; and the power that Jesus unleashed as he bled on the cross was precisely the power of self-giving love, the power to overcome evil by transforming the wills and renewing the minds of the evil ones themselves." The cross brings true peace, the kind that springs from within and requires reconciliation in the full redemptive sense.49
The word Paul uses for "making peace" is also worth noting. The Greek term is eirēnopoieō, meaning "to make peace." It occurs only here in the New Testament. But the adjective form, eirēnopoios, appears in Matthew 5:9, in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the peacemakers." As Hunter Coates observes, this word was used by Jesus to describe the "blessedness" of those who abstain from violence. It is hard to see how the verb form in Colossians could suddenly mean its opposite: the necessary cosmic violence that must occur before peace. Some commentators, like Charles Talbert, appeal to Roman imperial language to argue that "making peace" could mean forced pacification, citing Plutarch on Alexander the Great. But God is not a Roman general. The analogy breaks down precisely at the point it matters most.1920
Burnfield makes a connected observation: Paul also uses the language of "making peace" in Ephesians 2:14–16, where Christ is called "our peace, who made both groups into one" and reconciled them "in one body to God through the cross." There, Burnfield notes, the reconciliation is clearly "a blessing and not simply a theological 'setting of things in order.'"21
De Young himself admits that the Colossians' reconciliation required faith. He writes that the exercise of faith was necessary to change the readers from alienated, hostile enemies to reconciled people.22 I agree with every word of that. The conservative biblical universalism this book defends says the same thing: reconciliation comes through faith. The claim is not that faith is skipped. The claim is that every person will, in the end, freely come to that faith. The means of reconciliation remain the cross and faith. Only the scope extends to the "all things" Paul names.23
Now I want to concede something the critic gets right. Scripture really does speak of God destroying things. Death is destroyed (1 Corinthians 15:26). The works of the devil are destroyed (1 John 3:8). Revelation pictures the lake of fire consuming death and Hades themselves (Revelation 20:14). This is real, fierce, and good.24
The question is what is destroyed. Conservative biblical universalism affirms the destruction of evil, death, sin, and the rebellious order. But there is a difference between destroying evil and destroying the persons who are caught in it. A surgeon destroys a tumor, not the patient. God destroys sin, not the sinner. Paul makes this distinction in 1 Corinthians 3:15: "If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire."25
George Sidney Hurd develops this point at length in Extermination or Restoration? He examines the Greek words most often translated "destroy" or "destruction" in the New Testament and shows that none of them, by definition, mean cessation of existence. The word apollumi carries meanings including "to lose" and "to suffer loss," and it is the same word used for the "lost" sheep Jesus came to save. The word olethros means "ruin or destruction." And the word apoleia means, as Vine's defines it, "loss of well-being, not of being."26 These are words for ruin and loss, not for erasing someone from existence.
Robin Parry provides an important test case from Paul himself. In 1 Corinthians 5:5, Paul urges the Corinthians to hand the immoral man over to Satan "so that the sinful nature may be destroyed (olethron) and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord." The same root word that appears in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 appears here, and its purpose is explicitly redemptive. As Parry observes, "Paul could conceive of a destruction that was ultimately good for the person concerned, even if it was painful at the time." The destruction of the man's sinful nature was intended for his own good and salvation.50 This does not settle the meaning of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 by itself, but it shows that Paul's destruction vocabulary operates within a framework where ruin can serve redemption.
In 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, Hurd observes, "the only things which are said to be 'destroyed' are abstract entities such as opposing governments and the last enemy, death." The word used there, katargeō, means "to render entirely idle, useless." Death will be put out of commission. But of the moral beings, Paul says they will become "subjected" (hypotassō) to Christ, the same verb used of Christ's own subjection to the Father in verse 28. If Christ's subjection to the Father is willing, then the universal subjection Paul envisions may be willing too.27
The New Testament is full of this pattern. Paul writes that "our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing" (Romans 6:6) and "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). The old "I" was destroyed. The real person was raised. This is destruction-unto-life, the very pattern that Chapter 36 examines more fully.28
Hurd captures the principle in a striking sentence: "God's destruction is in order to restore, not annihilate. He kills but only in order to make alive with His eternal life." And he points to Psalm 90:3: "You turn man to destruction, and say, 'Return, O children of men.'" First destruction, then restoration. That is God's way with all the children of men.29
The Surgeon, Not the Executioner
God's destruction of evil is more like surgery than execution. The target is the disease, not the patient. When 1 Corinthians 15:26 says "the last enemy to be destroyed is death," it does not mean that God defeats death by killing everyone. It means God wins by abolishing death itself. The same logic governs the reconciliation of "all things": God destroys what is broken and heals what remains.
This is the key distinction the pacification reading misses. It sees "destroy" and "reconcile" as two descriptions of the same act. But they are two different acts aimed at two different targets. God destroys the rebellion and reconciles the rebel. God destroys death and restores the person death held captive. These are two halves of one rescue.
The final move turns the argument back on itself. If "reconciliation of all things" means only pacification, then the result is not peace at all.
Picture the cosmos on the pacification reading. God has won. Evil has been crushed. But somewhere in the universe, souls sit in eternal subjugation, seething with hatred. De Young himself asks, "If universalism is correct, who will serve as the footstool of his throne?"30 But Hurd turns the question on its head. The imagery of a footstool in Scripture often refers to God's own dwelling place: the ark and the temple are called His footstool (1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 132:7). In the New Testament, we who were once enemies are now His temple (Colossians 1:21; 1 Corinthians 3:16). "The references to His enemies becoming His footstool speak of willful subjection, not forced subjugation," Hurd writes. "So, in answer to De Young's question, the glorious answer is, 'we will.'"31
Biblical peace, the Hebrew shalom, is not the absence of resistance. It is the presence of harmony, flourishing, and wholeness. When Isaiah pictures the peaceable kingdom, the wolf lies down with the lamb. He does not picture the wolf chained in a pit while the lamb grazes above. When Ezekiel pictures the restoration, the dry bones live again. They do not stay dead in a corner while the living celebrate.32
Ephesians 1:9–10 confirms this direction. Paul writes that God has made known "the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." The word translated "unite" is anakephalaiōsasthai, meaning "to sum up, to bring together under one head." This is union language, not suppression language. You do not "sum up" something by excluding part of it.33
Paul's own vision of the end presses toward something richer than mere pacification. In 1 Corinthians 15:28, he writes:
When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1 Corinthians 15:28, ESV)
"God may be all in all." That is Paul's picture of the end. Not God in some and absent from others. Not God reigning over a quarantine zone of the eternally hostile. God filling all things with His presence. "All in all" is a phrase that strains toward totality.34
Talbott presses the logical point. The very idea of "reconciliation through subjugation," he argues, is incoherent when applied to personal beings with wills. A ruling monarch may force a subject to bow, but praise and thanksgiving can come only from the heart. If the defeated do not bow sincerely and by their own choice, "then their actions are merely fraudulent and bring no glory to God." Here Talbott recalls Milton's Satan, who, even after God defeats him in battle, finds that "the mind and spirit remains / Invincible." So long as a single will remains in rebellion, at least one power in the universe is not yet in subjection to Christ. There is only one way to bring a rebellious will into true subjection: God must so transform the will that it voluntarily places itself in subjection.51
Hurd makes this point directly. God does not destroy death "by killing, tormenting forever, or annihilating, but rather by making all alive," he writes. The "all in all" of Paul's vision does not mean "all who remain" but all who have died in Adam since the fall.35
A cosmos with a permanent quarantine of the damned is pacified. It is not reconciled. A God who fills "some in some" has not achieved the "all in all" Paul describes. The pacification reading falls short of Paul's own endpoint.
McClymond features Tidball's argument as a significant critique of Parry's evangelical universalism. Tidball's point is strong in one respect: he is right that the Bible includes real conquest language. Christ does triumph over the powers. There is genuine subduing. But Tidball's error is in collapsing "reconcile" into "conquer," when Paul uses distinct words for distinct things. Colossians 2:15 uses the language of military triumph. Colossians 1:20 uses the language of peacemaking. Paul did not confuse the two, and neither should we.36
I also note that Tidball's framing carries a subtle assumption. He says that requiring enemies to be "persuaded by re-education to agree with God" places a "contemporary cultural spin" on the text. But the universalist claim is not that God re-educates reluctant students. The claim is that God, through His unveiled presence, through the cross, through the Spirit, brings each person to a genuine and free "yes." That is not a modern invention. It is what the early church father Gregory of Nyssa taught in the fourth century. It is what Paul himself seems to picture when he envisions God as "all in all."37
Talbott takes on the pacification reading directly, with O'Brien as his foil. O'Brien, he notes, adopted the true premise that only those who have "heard the Word of reconciliation and gladly accepted it" will experience reconciliation in the full redemptive sense. But that premise, Talbott writes, "which Christian universalists also accept, even insist upon, is quite consistent with the Pauline conclusion that someday all will gladly bow before their Lord." The inference that because reconciliation requires willing acceptance, therefore not all will be reconciled, simply does not follow. It confuses a necessary condition of reconciliation with a limitation on its eventual scope.52 The universalist agrees that no one is reconciled unwillingly. The universalist adds that God's grace will one day win every will.
De Young, as Hurd documents, tries several strategies with Colossians 1:20 and arrives at none that is stable. At one point he limits the reconciliation to "inanimate" creation; at another, he expands it to include the animal kingdom but excludes moral beings; and finally, he argues that some will be "reconciled by conquest," calling them "conquered opponents who have refused to exercise faith." Hurd's response is pointed: "That may be subjugation, but it isn't reconciliation, making peace by the blood of His cross by any stretch of the imagination."38
Hurd on De Young's Forced Reconciliation
De Young "presents God's enemies as 'reconciled' while at the same time cursing Him in an eternal lake of fire which is referred to by him as God's footstool. To me that greatly depreciates what Christ actually accomplished by His shed blood upon the cross for all."39
George Sidney Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism
Hunter Coates notes the logical problem with the double-meaning reading. The infernalist must accept that "reconcile" silently means two things at once: joyful union for believers and forced subjugation for the damned. Yet Paul uses the word only once in verse 20 and gives no signal that he is dividing his "all" into categories.40
Robin Parry argues that the scope of reconciliation in Colossians 1:20 matches the scope of creation in 1:16, and that the making of peace through the cross points to genuine relational restoration rather than mere pacification. "The reconciliation of all things brings peace with God," Parry writes, "a notion that, for Paul, clearly expresses salvation." He notes the same connection between reconciliation and peace in Ephesians 2:14–16, where it is "quite clear that the reconciliation is a positive state of affairs for those reconciled." One could hardly imagine, Parry observes, Paul supposing that one of Christ's enemies suffering eschatological punishment was in a state of peace with God.53 The lexical evidence supports the relational reading. Standard Greek lexicons define the katallassō word group in terms of exchange, change, and restoration of relationship. BDAG, the standard New Testament Greek lexicon, defines apokatallassō with reference to the bringing back of harmony. The word does not appear in military contexts in the New Testament. It appears in relational ones.41
Sharon Baker, coming from a different angle, reaches the same destination. In Razing Hell, she argues that divine justice is best understood not as retribution but as reconciliation. "To do justice is to love; to do justice is to forgive; to do justice is to reconcile," Baker writes. "This is a chain reaction in which love forgives, forgiveness reconciles, and reconciliation restores." Colossians itself bears this out: God's reconciling justice "delivers us from the domain of darkness" (1:13), "forgives us and redeems us from sin" (1:14), and "knits hearts together in love" (2:2). If reconciliation is the form God's justice takes, then the reconciliation of "all things" cannot be a euphemism for their destruction.54
Among Pauline commentators, F. F. Bruce, N. T. Wright, and Peter O'Brien all note the relational force of "reconcile" in Colossians 1:20, while disagreeing on its full scope. Even scholars who do not hold universalism typically read the word as pointing to something more than conquest. The question is the scope, not the meaning of "reconcile" itself.42
Yes, it is. And I do not claim otherwise. Colossians 2:15 describes a real military-style triumph over the spiritual powers. But that is a different verse, using different language, about a different subject. Colossians 1:20 uses the language of reconciliation and peacemaking, not of disarming and triumphing. Paul has both registers in his vocabulary. He chose the relational register for the scope of the final outcome. As Parry observes, the defeat of the hostile powers at the cross does not mean they are not saved; rather, "they had to be defeated in their hostility before they could be reconciled. Their defeat at the cross opens the way for their reconciliation."55 The conquest of the powers and the reconciliation of all things are two aspects of one victory, not a single act described with interchangeable words.43
"Reconciliation of Things Need Not Mean Salvation of Persons"
Paul's own application in Colossians 1:21–22 applies the same reconciliation to persons: "you, who once were alienated and hostile." And his "all things, whether on earth or in heaven" in verse 20 repeats his "all things... in heaven and on earth" in verse 16, which includes personal beings (thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities). The cosmic scope includes persons as the crown of it.
It is. But notice what happens after the subjugation. Paul does not stop at verse 25. He goes on to verse 28: "that God may be all in all." The subjugation is a step in a process that ends with God filling everything. Even the language of Psalm 110, which Paul quotes here, is about a reign that continues "until" a goal is reached. The subjugation serves the peace. It does not replace it.44
I want to be honest about one thing. The word "subjection" in 1 Corinthians 15:28 is genuinely ambiguous. It could describe forced submission. It could describe willing yielding. The word itself does not decide. But the endpoint does. "God all in all" is the language of fullness, presence, and communion, not of a prison filled with the hostile. The endpoint shapes how we read the means.45
Talbott adds a related lexical observation about Philippians 2:10–11, a text often read alongside Colossians 1:20. When Paul said every tongue would "confess" that Jesus Christ is Lord, he chose a verb (exomologeō) that throughout the Septuagint implies not merely confession but the offer of praise and thanksgiving as well. As J. B. Lightfoot once pointed out, such implications of praise exist "in the very passage of Isaiah which St. Paul adapts" (Isaiah 45:23). A forced confession brings no glory to God. Only a willing one does.56
And notice one more thing. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, Paul names "the last enemy to be destroyed" as death. Not people. Death. The enemies being put under Christ's feet include death itself. Paul's picture is of a Christ who conquers the forces that hold people captive, not a Christ who conquers the people themselves. The enemy is what enslaves us. The person is what God frees.
I am reading "reconcile" the way Paul uses it everywhere else. In 2 Corinthians 5, reconciliation is the opposite of counting trespasses. In Romans 5:10, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son while we were enemies. In Colossians 1:21–22, reconciliation turns hostile strangers into blameless friends.46 The burden falls on the person who wants "reconcile" to mean "pacify" in verse 20 and "save" in verse 22. Paul had the words for forceful suppression. He chose a different one.
Reconciled, or Subdued?
The pacification reading is right that God really does defeat evil. Evil is not tolerated. It is not accommodated. It is destroyed. The biblical universalism this book defends agrees with every word of that. But "reconcile" means something more than "defeat." It means "restore to friendship." And the instrument is not a sword but the blood of the cross. The version of universalism that says everyone drifts home without the cross is a counterfeit, and the pacification reading wounds it rightly. The version that says God's cross-bought peace finally reaches the "all things" He created is the biblical hope. The objection does not reach it.
To reconcile is to make peace. To make peace by the blood of the cross is to save, not to crush. And the scope of that peacemaking, in Paul's own words, is "all things, whether on earth or in heaven." Evil and death are destroyed; this book cheers that destruction. But the persons caught in evil are reconciled, not exterminated.47
The great hope of Colossians 1:20 is not merely that God wins. Of course God wins. The hope is that God wins by making peace, on the scale of all creation.
I want to be clear about what this chapter does and does not claim. It does not claim that the pacification reading has no biblical support at all. There is real conquest language in the New Testament, and this book takes it seriously. But conquest and reconciliation are not the same act. God destroys the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and reconciles the persons of the devil's captives. He puts enemies under Christ's feet and then wins those enemies over, so that their subjection becomes the willing kind.
This connects to two arguments already made. The "all" texts of Chapter 25 showed that Paul's "all" resists the limiting move. The apostolic-judgment texts of Chapter 33 show that even the destruction language of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 can be read as purposeful ruin, not endless torment. Here we add the missing piece: the goal of God's victory is not a pacified cosmos with a quarantine of the damned. It is a reconciled cosmos where God is all in all.48
The end Paul sees is not a battlefield. It is a homecoming.
↑ 1. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, 2:997. McClymond presents Tidball's comments as part of his broader appraisal of evangelical universalism in §11.4.
↑ 2. Derek Tidball, “Can Evangelicals Be Universalists?,” Evangelical Quarterly 84 (2012): 19–32, cited in McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, 2:997.
↑ 3. James B. De Young, Exposing Universalism: A Comprehensive Guide to the Faulty Appeals Made by Those Promoting a Universalist Soteriology (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013), discussion of Colossians 1:19–23.
↑ 4. De Young, Exposing Universalism, discussion of Colossians 2:15.
↑ 5. De Young, Exposing Universalism, discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:24–28.
↑ 6. Ephesians 1:9–10 uses the verb ανακεφαλαιοω (anakephalaiōsasthai), “to sum up, to bring under one head.” On the pacification reading, this “summing up” is the imposition of divine order rather than the winning of divine friendship. But the word itself means “to gather into a summary,” “to unite under a head,” and its context in Ephesians (the “mystery of his will,” the “plan for the fullness of time”) points to a positive bringing together, not a military suppression.
↑ 7. The verb αποκαταλλασσω (apokatallassō) is an intensified form of καταλλασσω (katallassō), “to change from enmity to friendship.” The απο- prefix may intensify the verb or carry the sense of “back again.” BDAG defines the word in terms of changing from a state of enmity to one of friendship. See Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. αποκαταλλασσω.
↑ 8. Paul’s lexical range includes νικαω (nikaō, “to conquer,” used in Romans 12:21 and throughout Revelation), υποτασσω (hypotassō, “to subject, subordinate,” used in 1 Corinthians 15:27–28), and θριαμβευω (thriambeuō, “to lead in triumph,” used in Colossians 2:15 and 2 Corinthians 2:14). That he chose αποκαταλλασσω in 1:20 rather than any of these conquest terms is itself a statement about the nature of the act he is describing.
↑ 9. The parallelism between Colossians 1:20 and 1:21–22 is widely noted by commentators. Paul moves from the cosmic scope of reconciliation to its personal application in the lives of the Colossian believers without any shift in the meaning of “reconcile.” See F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 74–77.
↑ 10. Paul’s reconciliation vocabulary in 2 Corinthians 5:18–20 uses καταλλασσω (katallassō), the base form of the compound verb in Colossians. The meaning is the same: the change from enmity to friendship through the work of Christ. The “ministry of reconciliation” (verse 18) and the appeal to “be reconciled to God” (verse 20) both show that reconciliation is personal and relational, not military.
↑ 11. George Sidney Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism: A Biblical Response to James B. De Young’s Book “Exposing Universalism” (self-pub., n.d.), discussion of Colossians 1:16–20. Hurd further argues that only fallen rational moral beings are in need of reconciliation with God, which shows the relational, personal nature of the word.
↑ 12. This is a straightforward application of the contextual principle: a word used in the same passage should be understood consistently unless a clear signal indicates otherwise. No such signal exists in Colossians 1:20–22.
↑ 13. The repeated phrase “all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (cf. “in heaven and on earth” in verse 16) ties the scope of reconciliation to the scope of creation. See N. T. Wright, The Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and to Philemon, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), 75–78. The full argument about the scope of “all” (τα παντα, ta panta) is developed in Chapter 25.
↑ 14. Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, discussion of Colossians 1:16–20.
↑ 15. David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: The Good News of Jesus and the Early Church Fathers (self-pub., n.d.), discussion of Colossians 1:20. The reference to Geisler is from Norman L. Geisler’s commentary on Colossians. The Vincent quotation is from Marvin R. Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament, as cited in Burnfield.
↑ 16. The Colossians hymn (1:15–20) is structured as a twin celebration: Christ’s supremacy over creation (vv. 15–17) paralleled by Christ’s supremacy in redemption (vv. 18–20). The scope of the second stanza matches the scope of the first. If the first is cosmic, so is the second. See Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 70–80; Bruce, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, 66–80.
↑ 17. “The blood of his cross” echoes the sacrificial language of the Levitical system and its New Testament fulfillment. See Romans 3:25; 5:9; Ephesians 1:7; 2:13; Hebrews 9:12–14. In every case, “blood” denotes the saving, atoning work of Christ, not a military victory.
↑ 18. The instrument of reconciliation matters. If Paul had written “making peace by the power of his arm” or “making peace by the sword of his mouth,” the pacification reading would fit. Instead he wrote “by the blood of his cross,” which is atonement language. The instrument reveals the nature of the act.
↑ 19. Hunter Coates, Grace Abounds: A Holistic Case for Universal Salvation (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024), discussion of Colossians 1:20. Coates notes that ειρηνοποιεω (eirēnopoieō) is a hapax legomenon in the New Testament, but the adjectival form ειρηνοποιοσ (eirēnopoios) appears in Matthew 5:9. Coates argues it is unlikely that Jesus would classify those who pursue peace as “blessed” using a word whose verbal form suddenly means forced pacification. See also BDAG, s.v. ειρηνοποιεω.
↑ 20. Coates, Grace Abounds, discussion of Charles Talbert’s appeal to Plutarch on Alexander the Great and the Res Gestae of Augustus.
↑ 21. Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, discussion of Colossians 1:20. Burnfield cites Ephesians 2:14–16, where Christ is “our peace, who made both groups into one,” reconciling them “in one body to God through the cross, by it having put to death the enmity.” The reconciliation language is here clearly salvific and relational.
↑ 22. De Young, Exposing Universalism, discussion of Colossians 1:21–23.
↑ 23. Conservative biblical universalism does not bypass faith or the cross. It holds that the cross is the ground of reconciliation and faith its means of application, and that God’s saving pursuit brings every person to that faith in the end. See the full statement of the position in Chapter 1 and Appendix B.
↑ 24. The destruction of death in 1 Corinthians 15:26, the destruction of the works of the devil in 1 John 3:8, and the lake of fire consuming death and Hades in Revelation 20:14 all use genuine destruction language. Conservative biblical universalism affirms these destructions gladly. What is destroyed is the old order of sin and death, not the persons within it. The full treatment of the lake of fire is in Chapter 24.
↑ 25. First Corinthians 3:15 provides a striking image of destructive judgment that preserves the person. The “work” is burned; “he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” Paul envisions a judgment that consumes what is faulty while saving the person through it. This is precisely the logic of restorative, purifying fire.
↑ 26. George Sidney Hurd, Extermination or Restoration? A Restorationist’s Response to Annihilationism (self-pub., 2018), ch. 5 (“Destruction vs. Annihilation”), section “Defining Destruction.” Hurd draws on Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words for these definitions. Kittel identifies four distinct but related meanings of απολλυμι in the New Testament: (1) “to destroy or kill,” (2) “to lose or suffer loss from,” (3) in the middle voice, “to perish” or “to die in a lost state,” and (4) “to be lost.” Vine defines ολεθροσ as “ruin or destruction,” and απολεια as “loss of well-being, not of being.”
↑ 27. Hurd, Extermination or Restoration?, ch. 5, discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:24–28. Hurd notes that the word καταργεω (katargeō) used for the “destruction” of opposing governments and of death in this passage means “to render entirely idle, useless” according to Strong’s. The moral beings, by contrast, are “subjected” (υποτασσω, hypotassō), the same verb used of Christ’s own subjection to the Father in verse 28.
↑ 28. Romans 6:6 and Galatians 2:20 present the cross as the destruction of the “old self” (παλαιοσ ανθρωποσ, palaios anthrōpos) and the “body of sin” (το σωμα τησ αμαρτιασ, to sōma tēs hamartias). The destruction language is real and severe, but the person emerges from it alive: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). This is destruction-unto-life, the very pattern that Chapter 36 examines more fully.
↑ 29. Hurd, Extermination or Restoration?, ch. 5, section “Destruction is the Prelude to Salvation.” Hurd cites Psalm 90:3 as the pattern: God turns man to destruction and then says “Return.” He argues that “many fail to see that death or destruction is a necessary prelude to one’s being saved and restored.”
↑ 30. De Young, Exposing Universalism, 233, discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 and Psalm 110:1.
↑ 31. Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, discussion of Hebrews 1:13 and the “footstool” imagery. Hurd traces the image through 1 Chronicles 28:2; Psalm 132:7; Isaiah 60:13; and the New Testament identification of believers (who were once enemies, Colossians 1:21) as God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16).
↑ 32. Isaiah 11:6–9 pictures the peaceable kingdom as a place of harmony, not mere suppression. The wolf and lamb together, the child playing near the cobra’s den: these images depict positive shalom, a peace in which former enemies are transformed, not merely caged. See also Ezekiel 37:1–14, where the dry bones live again as a picture of comprehensive restoration.
↑ 33. Ephesians 1:9–10. The verb ανακεφαλαιοω (anakephalaiōsasthai) appears in the New Testament only here and in Romans 13:9, where it means “to sum up” the commandments under one principle. The word’s root is κεφαλη (kephalē), “head.” To “re-head” or “sum up” all things under Christ is to bring them into unity under His headship, not to suppress them into silence. See Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary 42 (Dallas: Word, 1990), 32–34.
↑ 34. The Greek phrase τα παντα εν πασιν (ta panta en pasin), “all things in all” or “everything to everyone,” describes a state of total divine presence. As a picture of the eschaton, it is hard to reconcile with a permanent pocket of the excluded. As Burnfield notes, Origen interpreted this “subjection” as the same subjection “by which we too desire to be subjected to him” (Origen, On First Principles 1.6). See Burnfield, Patristic Universalism, discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:28.
↑ 35. Hurd, Extermination or Restoration?, ch. 5, discussion of 1 Corinthians 15:22–28. Hurd argues that God does not destroy death by annihilating, but by making all alive (v. 22). He reads “each in his own order” (v. 23) as pointing to a progressive, individual bringing of each person to life in Christ. See also Hurd, The Triumph of Mercy: The Reconciliation of All through Jesus Christ (self-pub., n.d.), discussion of 1 Corinthians 15.
↑ 36. The distinction between Paul’s triumph language in Colossians 2:15 (θριαμβευω, thriambeuō, “to lead in triumph”) and his reconciliation language in 1:20 (αποκαταλλασσω) is fundamental. These are different words describing different aspects of Christ’s work. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption, 2:997. Tidball’s response to Parry appears in “Can Evangelicals Be Universalists?,” Evangelical Quarterly 84 (2012): 19–32.
↑ 37. Gregory of Nyssa held universal restoration (αποκαταστασισ, apokatastasis) while affirming the Nicene Creed without qualification. His vision was not of a modern “re-education program” but of the overwhelming power of divine goodness finally winning every creature’s willing love. See the discussion in Chapter 15.
↑ 38. Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, discussion of Colossians 1:20. De Young at p. 210 writes: “In 1:20 Paul includes in his words of ‘universal reconciliation’ not only those who believe the gospel (such as the Colossians, explained in vv. 21–23) but also those who are reconciled by conquest and become the footstool of Jesus Christ’s future reign. They are conquered opponents who have refused to exercise faith.” Hurd objects that reconciliation by conquest is a contradiction in terms.
↑ 39. Hurd, A Defense of Biblical Universalism, discussion of Colossians 1:20.
↑ 40. Coates, Grace Abounds, discussion of Colossians 1:20.
↑ 41. BDAG, s.v. αποκαταλλασσω and καταλλασσω. See also Gerhard Friedrich, “αποκαταλλασσω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964–1976), 1:258–59. Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), discusses the scope of Colossians 1:20 at length, arguing for a genuinely universal reconciliation that matches the scope of creation. He notes that apokatallassō “presupposes some kind of rupture in relationship that is then repaired. The damaged relationship, says Paul, between God and a fallen creation is restored in Christ.”
↑ 42. Bruce, Colossians, Philemon, and Ephesians, 74–77; Wright, Colossians and Philemon, 75–78; Peter T. O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary 44 (Waco, TX: Word, 1982), 53–57. All three note the relational force of αποκαταλλασσω, though they differ on how far to extend the scope of reconciliation.
↑ 43. See note 36 above on the triumph/reconciliation distinction. The point here is that Paul’s choice of words is deliberate, not interchangeable. He has both registers available and deploys each where it fits: triumph over the hostile powers (2:15), reconciliation for the created order (1:20). Reading one as a synonym of the other collapses a distinction Paul took care to maintain.
↑ 44. Psalm 110:1, which Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 15:25, says, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The “until” (εωσ, heōs) implies a process with a goal, not a permanent static arrangement. See also the use of “until” in Matthew 18:34, where the servant is handed to the jailers “until he should pay all his debt,” as discussed in Chapter 32.
↑ 45. The Greek word υποτασσω (hypotassō), “to subject, to place under,” has a range of meaning that includes both forced subjugation and voluntary ordering. In Ephesians 5:21–24, the same word describes the mutual submission of believers and the submission of the church to Christ. Context determines which sense is in view.
↑ 46. Second Corinthians 5:18–20; Romans 5:10; Colossians 1:21–22. In none of these passages does “reconcile” carry a military or pacification sense. De Young himself acknowledges that the Colossians “were not reconciled until they heard the gospel and believed it” (De Young, Exposing Universalism, discussion of 2 Corinthians 5:16–21). The relational sense of the word is consistent across Paul’s letters.
↑ 47. The cumulative case this chapter makes is that (1) “reconcile” means “restore to friendship,” (2) the scope of reconciliation matches the scope of creation, (3) the means is the cross, not military conquest, (4) the destruction language targets evil, not persons, and (5) the endpoint Paul envisions is “God all in all,” not a pacified cosmos with a permanent quarantine. Together, these five moves answer the Tidball/McClymond pacification reading.
↑ 48. See Chapter 25 on the universal-scope texts, Chapter 33 on 2 Thessalonians 1:9 and the ολεθροσ (olethros) language, and Chapter 40 for the cumulative case. The reconciliation of all things through the cross is a central pillar of the biblical universalist hope.
↑ 49. Thomas Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), ch. 5, section “And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” Talbott argues that the power of the cross was not the power of conquest but the power of self-giving love, “the power to overcome evil by transforming the wills and renewing the minds of the evil ones themselves.” He notes that “God had no need of a crucifixion to compel obedience; he was quite capable of doing that all along.” In Colossians 1:20, Paul identified the precise kind of reconciliation he had in mind with the expression “making peace through the blood of his cross” and then cited his own readers as examples of that very reconciliation (1:21–22).
↑ 50. Robin Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2019), 163–65, discussion of ολεθροσ in 1 Corinthians 5:5 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9. Parry notes that the word olethros occurs only four times in Paul (1 Cor 5:5; 1 Thess 5:3; 2 Thess 1:9; 1 Tim 6:9), and observes that “Paul could conceive of a destruction that was ultimately good for the person concerned, even if it was painful at the time.” While Parry acknowledges differences in context between the two passages, he argues the 1 Corinthians 5:5 usage shows that Paul’s destruction vocabulary can operate within a redemptive framework. In Pauline theology, “salvation from sin comes through identification with Christ’s death—the believer is one whose old self has been crucified with Christ, has died and been reborn. The new life of the resurrection is not possible without the destruction of the old nature.”
↑ 51. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5, section “And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” Talbott responds to O’Brien’s claim that the powers are “reconciled through subjugation” by arguing that the very idea is incoherent: insofar as the powers include personal beings with competing wills, these could never be entirely subjugated against their will, “for if they should be so subjugated, then their will would precisely not be in subjection to Christ.” He draws the parallel to Christ’s own subjection to the Father in 1 Corinthians 15:28: “If Christ’s will were in conflict with the Father’s on some important issue, if he wanted to act contrary to the Father’s will but simply lacked the power to do so, would he truly be in subjection to the Father? Of course not!” Talbott also cites Milton’s Satan (Paradise Lost, bk. 1, ll. 105–11), whose “unconquerable Will” remains invincible even after God defeats him in battle.
↑ 52. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5, section “And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” O’Brien had written that since “the central purpose of Christ’s work of making peace has to do with those who have heard the Word of reconciliation and gladly accepted it,” it is “an unwarranted assumption” to see Colossians 1:20 as teaching universal reconciliation (O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Biblical Commentary 44, 56–57). Talbott calls this “one more instance of a seemingly persistent fallacious inference”: the true premise that only willing acceptance counts as reconciliation does not entail the false conclusion that not all will eventually accept.
↑ 53. Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed., 51–54, discussion of Colossians 1:20. Parry cites James D. G. Dunn, who comments: “What is being claimed is quite simply and profoundly that the divine purpose in the act of reconciliation and peacemaking was to restore the harmony of the original creation, to bring into renewed oneness and wholeness ‘all things,’ ‘whether things on earth or things in the heavens’” (Dunn, Colossians, 104). Parry argues that “the reconciliation of all things brings peace with God—a notion that, for Paul, clearly expresses salvation. The same connection between reconciliation and peace is found in Ephesians 2:14–16, and there it is quite clear that the reconciliation is a positive state of affairs for those reconciled. The association of peace with God and reconciliation and salvation can also be found in Romans 5:1, 10. One could hardly imagine Paul supposing that one of Christ’s enemies suffering eschatological punishment was in a state of peace with God!”
↑ 54. Sharon L. Baker, Razing Hell: Rethinking Everything You’ve Been Taught about God’s Wrath and Judgment (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010), 101–3. Baker describes “reconciling justice” as “transformational justice” that “pierces the darkness of retributive violence with the grace of God and the message of peace through love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.” She reads Colossians as teaching that God’s reconciling justice “delivers us from the domain of darkness (1:13); it forgives us and redeems us from sin (1:14); God’s reconciling justice unifies us in the perfect bond of peace (3:14); and it knits ‘hearts…together in love’ (2:2).”
↑ 55. Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, 3rd ed., 53–54. Parry writes: “Yes, Christ defeated the opposing powers at the cross. He broke their hold over creation and thus opened the gates of salvation. But it does not follow from this that they are not saved. They had to be defeated in their hostility before they could be reconciled. Their defeat at the cross opens the way for their reconciliation.” He adds that “it is hardly plausible to interpret the reconciliation of the principalities and powers in 1:20 in terms of their eschatological punishment. 1:20 clearly refers to their deliverance.”
↑ 56. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, ch. 5, section “And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things.” Talbott cites J. B. Lightfoot, Epistle to the Philippians (London: Macmillan, 1868), 115, on the Septuagint’s use of εξομολογεω (exomologeō). With good reason, Talbott notes, do the RSV, NRSV, and NASB translate the same verb as “give praise to” in Romans 14:11. Confession that “Jesus Christ is Lord” (Philippians 2:11), if it is genuine praise and not mere compelled utterance, requires reconciliation in the full redemptive sense.