Soteriology
Discipline Overview
Abbreviations used in this article: NIS = Number in Scripture (Bullinger); FoT-W = The Feast of Tabernacles (Warnock); EaM = Evening and Morning (Warnock); Moses = Moses and the Way to Sonship (Noordzij); AIC = The All-inclusive Christ (Nee/Lee); KoL = The Knowledge of Life (Nee/Lee); CJ = Creation’s Jubilee (Jones); ROAT = The Restoration of All Things (Jones).
The Question Behind the Questions: Whom Does God Save and How?
Soteriology — the doctrine of salvation (σωτηρία, sōtēria) — ultimately asks about the scope and nature of God’s saving activity in the world. Does salvation concern some, or all? Is it liberation from guilt alone, or the transformation of the whole of existence? And toward what end does it reach? Classical systematic theology distinguishes a series of soteriological sub-questions: the extent of the atonement, the doctrine of election, the order of salvation, justification, sanctification, and the final consummation. How these sub-questions relate to one another depends largely on the answer to a question that precedes all others: what is the goal of salvation?
Three traditions give a distinct answer to this prior question. Eternal conscious torment (ECT) holds that God allows the majority of humanity to be lost forever, saving only the elect. Annihilationism — also called conditional immortality — concludes that those who do not believe perish: salvation or annihilation are the two outcomes. Apokatastasis (ἀποκατάστασις πάντων — literally: the restoration of all things) holds that salvation ultimately encompasses the entire creation: God saves all, in order, through corrective judgments that restore and sanctify.
This article stands under the sign of the third position. Apokatastasis is not merely one possibility among others, but the canonical endpoint of the biblical doctrine of salvation: the point at which God’s sovereignty, the scope of Christ’s atoning work, and the teleology of Scripture converge. Below, the five authors studied — Ethelbert W. Bullinger, George H. Warnock, Cees & Anneke Noordzij, Watchman Nee & Witness Lee, and Dr. Stephen E. Jones — are woven as voices into this argument. They approach soteriology from different angles — numerical pattern, feast theology, kenotic sonship, pneumatic incorporation, and covenant law — but they converge on one conviction: God does not lose his creation.
The Extent of the Atonement: Limited, Unlimited, or Universal?
The most fundamental question in soteriology concerns the scope of Christ’s sacrifice: for whom did Christ die? The Calvinist tradition — summarized in the acronym TULIP (Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, Perseverance of the saints) — answers with the doctrine of limited atonement: Christ died effectively only for the elect. Arminianism rejects this and holds that Christ died for all, but that the atonement only becomes effective through individual faith. Both positions, however, leave a critical question unanswered: what happens to the majority of human beings who are born and die beyond the reach of the gospel?
The Adam-Christ Argument
Jones, whose soteriology is the most systematically developed on this point, exposes the problem through a structural argument. In 1Cor. 15:22 Paul writes: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.” Jones’s foundational argument is simple and forceful: “If Adam’s sin affected all men, and Christ’s righteousness affected only a tiny fraction of men, then Jesus could hardly be compared to Adam. Surely Adam’s power is not greater than Jesus’ power!” [CJ, ch. 5]. In Rom. 5:18 Paul formulates the same parallel: “So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.” Jones reads the “all” in both clauses as identical and unrestricted. If Adam’s sin knew no exceptions, neither does Christ’s righteousness.
Col. 1:19-20 is the text to which Jones most firmly returns: “For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” Jones underlines: “Paul first defines ‘the all’ (ta panta) as the created universe, both in heaven and on earth, including not only visible things like people but even the invisible authorities. Then Paul says that it was the Father’s good pleasure to reconcile all these things through the blood of Christ. Can anything be clearer?” [CJ, ch. 5]. John 12:32 — “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself” — adds that Christ’s sacrifice has a universal drawing power that ultimately excludes no one.
The Objective Reach of the Cross
Warnock approaches the extent of the atonement from within his feast theology — but reaches a similar starting point: “That full and complete Atonement was made for the whole human race by Jesus Christ on the Cross, there is no doubt whatsoever.” [FoT-W, ch. 7]. Here Warnock stands closer to Arminianism than to Calvinism: the atonement is objectively universal in scope. Where Warnock and Jones diverge is in the question of how this objective scope is realized. For Warnock, the atonement requires subjective appropriation through faith: those who do not receive the sacrifice remain outside the effectiveness of the cross. Jones, by contrast, sees this appropriation as a matter of sequence, not of definitive exclusion: believers are justified now, but others will be justified at the Great White Throne, “saved yet so as by fire” (1Cor. 3:15) [ROAT, ch. 4]. Both authors share the starting point of a universal objective atonement; the difference is eschatological, not soteriologically principled.
Noordzij and Nee/Lee address the extent of the atonement less explicitly as a doctrinal question, but lay the foundation for the same conclusion. Noordzij cites Eph. 1:10 — “all things summed up in Christ” — as the cosmic goal of redemption [Moses, §Introduction], and places Rom. 8:21 as its culmination: the whole creation will be liberated from bondage to decay. Nee/Lee sees the all-encompassing nature of Christ as the Land: “There is no other type in the Old Testament but the land of Canaan which shows Him as such. Everything is in Him and He is in everything.” [AIC, ch. 3]. Bullinger grounds the universality of redemption in the absolute uniqueness of God as Savior (Isa. 43:10-11): “Before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me. I, even I, am the Lord, and there is no savior besides Me.” [NIS, Part II, ch. I]. God’s identity as the only Savior implies a saving work whose scope corresponds to his creative work.
Election and Predestination: The Third Way Beyond Calvin and Arminius
The doctrine of election (predestination) is the most contested terrain of soteriology. Calvinism teaches sovereign election: God determined before the foundation of the world who would be saved. In the versions developed by Augustine and Calvin this tends toward double predestination, in which the reprobation of the non-elect is as absolute as the election of the chosen. Arminianism rejects this as incompatible with God’s justice and love: election is based on God’s foreknowledge of human faith. Molinism — named after the sixteenth-century Jesuit Luis de Molina — seeks a middle way through the concept of middle knowledge (scientia media, God’s knowledge of what every free creature would do in every possible situation): God actualizes the world in which the most people freely choose him, without undermining their freedom. All three positions fall short: Calvinism makes God the author of eternal loss; Arminianism reduces divine sovereignty to reactive approval; Molinism explains much but lacks the biblical certainty that God’s saving work is fail-proof.
The Third Way: “First,” Not “Only”
Jones introduces a third way that escapes both horns of the dilemma: “The God of the Bible has merely predestinated certain ones to be saved first. The others are predestinated to be saved later.” [CJ, ch. 11]. Election is a matter of sequence, not category. God chooses who will be saved first, not who will ever be saved. Jones explains this through 1Tim. 4:10-11 — “God is the Savior of all men, especially of believers” — emphasizing that “especially” (malista: “above all”) denotes priority, not exclusivity: believers are first in sequence, not the only ones in scope [CJ, ch. 5].
This also does justice to the Jacob-text of Rom. 9 — the classic Calvinist proof-text for election. Regarding the example of Jacob and Esau, Jones writes: “God chose them before either of them had done either good or evil. God says this to prove that election is not ‘of works’ but ‘of Him that calleth.’ Election therefore means that God is causing, and man is responding to that causal force.” [CJ, ch. 11]. Esau’s “rejection” is not eternal exclusion but a temporary position in the sequence of salvation.
In this context Jones employs a distinction between two Greek words for God’s will. Thelema denotes God’s desire or wish: the publicly revealed will that people are called to obey. Boulema denotes God’s resolute plan — his sovereign direction that employs even resistance for his purposes, as in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. “Man is judged only on the level of his obedience to the thelema of God, for this is the level of his authority. God takes full responsibility for that which He does according to His boulema plan.” [CJ, ch. 11]. This distinction functions as Jones’s answer to the theodicy question: human freedom and divine sovereignty are not competitors but operate on distinct levels. In this way Jones holds together strong predestination and universal salvation without contradiction.
Noordzij approaches election from a different angle: God determines each person’s specific place and calling within the redemptive plan, but this is a differentiation of function, not of eternal destiny. “God assigns the members each of them their place in the body, just as He has willed.” [Moses, §A particular calling]. The typological line Israel → one tribe → the firstfruits is a zoom lens for a specific calling, not an exclusion. The chain of Rom. 8:28-30 — foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, glorification — ends for Noordzij not with the salvation of a few but with the liberation of the entire creation (Rom. 8:21). Those who are glorified earlier are instruments of liberation for those still in bondage.
The Order of Salvation: How Does God’s Redemptive Activity Work?
The ordo salutis — the order of salvation (literally: “order of salvation”) — is the systematic description of the successive stages through which God accomplishes his saving work in the believer. The classical Reformed order of salvation moves from the external calling through regeneration, conversion, faith, and justification to sanctification and glorification. How the five studied authors understand these stages differs — but those differences are nuance within a shared framework, not mutual contradiction.
Calling, Regeneration, and Monergism
Bullinger opens with an axiom shared by all authors: salvation begins with God. “Salvation and redemption began with God. It was His word which first revealed it. It was His will which first devised it. It was His power alone which accomplished it. Hence: ‘Salvation is of the Lord.‘” [NIS, Part II, ch. I]. This strict monergism — the teaching that salvation originates entirely from God, not from any human cooperation — functions as the foundation of the order of salvation. Warnock concurs: “Man is in no sense ‘free’ either as the seed of Adam or as the seed of Abraham. Only the Son can make one free, and this is the only true freedom that man can have” [EaM, ch. 1]. Freedom is not the starting point of salvation but its fruit.
Nee/Lee elaborates most fully what happens at regeneration — being born again of the Spirit (John 3:3-6). Regeneration is not merely forgiveness of sins but a constitutive transformation: God plants his own life into the human spirit. “As soon as he receives the Lord as his Savior, God’s Spirit enters his spirit and plants God’s life therein, thus regenerating him.” [KoL, §How Regeneration Takes Place]. The result is threefold: the regenerate person becomes a child of God (relational), a new creation (constitutive — bearing God’s elements), and one spirit with God (pneumatic: 1Cor. 6:17). Warnock describes regeneration as the sprouting of a seed — real, but not yet fruit: “It is really just the sprouting of the seed. It is a rebirth in the inner man.” [EaM, ch. 5]. This seed-model implies that the order of salvation does not end at regeneration but begins there.
Conversion, Faith, and the Call
Calling and conversion are inseparably connected to regeneration in all authors, but their emphasis differs. For Nee/Lee, regeneration is accompanied by the Spirit’s conviction of sin (John 16:8) and conversion: “God’s Spirit works in him and causes him to feel that he has sinned and is corrupt; hence he is convicted of sin, righteousness, and judgment.” [KoL, §How Regeneration Takes Place]. Conversion (metanoia — literally: change of mind, turning) and faith are the human side of a divine initiative. Noordzij places the order of salvation explicitly within the chain of Rom. 8:28-30 — “for whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son (…) and whom He called, these He also justified” [Moses, §A ministry of redemption] — and connects the individual calling with the universal destiny of creation.
Justification: Sola Fide and Its Universal Scope
Justification — dikaiōsis, the forensic acquittal of guilt whereby God’s righteousness is formally credited to the believer (imputation) — is for Warnock unshakeably sola fide, by faith alone. He states explicitly: “He is not saved by works, and it is entirely unscriptural to teach holiness as the means of salvation.” [FoT-W, ch. 2]. Justification rests on the imputation of Christ’s righteousness: “We have God’s righteousness in Christ by imputation, just as we have Adam’s sin and death by imputation.” [EaM, ch. 2]. Here Warnock stands in Reformed territory, rejecting the Roman Catholic teaching that combines faith and works as the means of justification.
The New Perspective on Paul (NPP) — an influential exegetical movement associated with E.P. Sanders, James Dunn, and N.T. Wright — rereads Paul’s polemic against “the works of the law” not as resistance to moral achievement but as rejection of Jewish boundary markers that distinguish Jew from Gentile. In this reading, justification is primarily a matter of covenant membership rather than individual guilt-forgiveness. None of the five studied authors follows this framework explicitly; they read Paul’s doctrine of justification in the Reformed line of personal acquittal by faith. Jones, however, adds a radical extension: justification is universal in scope. Rom. 5:18 teaches “justification of life to all men” — the same all who died in Adam. “If anything is proved here it is this: the two ‘all men’ are equal in scope. If Adam’s sin affected all men, then Christ’s act of righteousness results in life for those same all men.” [CJ, ch. 5].
Sanctification: Growth, Crucifixion, or Appropriation?
The question of sanctification — hagiasmos, the process of being made holy — shows the richest mutual dialogue among the studied authors. Three models deserve distinction: the progressive sanctification of the Reformed tradition (gradual growth in holiness through the Spirit), the definitive sanctification of Nee/Lee (Christ as the “Land” fully present and waiting to be appropriated), and the vision of full sanctification in Warnock (a level of conformity to Christ not yet attained).
The Feast Model: Warnock and the Overcomers
Warnock uses the three annual feasts of Israel as a model of the order of salvation and sanctification: Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Passover represents justification — liberation from Egypt through the blood of the Lamb. Pentecost represents the outpouring of the Spirit and empowerment for service. The Feast of Tabernacles represents full sanctification — the experiential appropriation of the complete atoning work of the cross. The church has not yet reached this third feast: “Real victory over sin and the carnal nature is still ahead for the Church of God.” [FoT-W, ch. 7]. The goal is full conformity to the image of God’s Son: “This divine ultimate we must state here and now to be nothing less than full conformity to the image of His Son, where He abides in us in all His fullness, and His Love is perfected in us.” [EaM, ch. 4].
Within this schema Warnock introduces the category of overcomers — a term he draws from the exhortations in the letters to the seven churches (Rev. 2-3): “To him who overcomes” the letters promise a special share in the fulfillment of salvation. Overcomers are believers who are first to fully enter the way of Tabernacles — they take possession of the promised land spiritually while the rest of the church still waits in the wilderness: “Thank God, however, for the assurance that some are going to possess the land! God is not going to close this dispensation until some really enter in and possess their heritage in Christ Jesus.” [FoT-W, ch. 1]. This overcomers theology differentiates within believers a vanguard that advances ahead of the church as a whole. It is an internal distinction, not a separation between believers and unbelievers.
Warnock sees in grace the power for total victory: five times in Rom. 5 Paul uses the expression “much more” regarding the power of grace over the sin of Adam. “Are we going to honor the power of Adam and Satan above the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit?” [EaM, ch. 2]. Partial victory is for Warnock equivalent to defeat: “Anything less than total conquest… anything less than a complete and final possession of the heavenly realm… anything less than complete conquest spells defeat.” [EaM, ch. 2]. This high sanctification perspective does not undermine justification but presupposes it as the necessary starting point.
The Land Model: Christ as All-inclusive Reality
Nee/Lee offers a model structurally parallel to Warnock’s feast model — Egypt (Passover-Lamb), wilderness (Manna), Land (Canaan) — but with a different emphasis. The Land is not a future to be attained but the fully present reality of the all-inclusive Christ waiting to be inhabited. Christ as Redeemer is not the same as Christ as all-inclusive: “We must realize that Christ as the Redeemer is not the all-inclusive One. We are told in the Scriptures that Christ is all and in all, that Christ is the all-inclusive One.” [AIC, §Christ as Redeemer]. Sanctification is the daily, practical appropriation of Christ as this Land: “We must possess Christ as everything to us, not just in words or in doctrine, but in practical reality.” [AIC, §Sanctification].
The path of sanctification in Nee/Lee proceeds structurally through a dialectic of valleys and hills — an Old Testament image of the Land which has both valleys and hills (Deut. 8:7): “All the valleys are the experiences of the cross, the experiences of the death of Christ, and all the hills are the experiences of the Lord’s resurrection. A valley is the cross; a hill is the resurrection.” [AIC, §Cross and Resurrection]. Sanctification is organic growth, not a one-time step. And the final goal of the sanctification path is not achievement but rest: the soteriological endpoint of Heb. 3-4. “The lamb was not the rest. The manna was not the rest. But the land is the rest.” [AIC, §Rest].
The Kenotic Way of Self-emptying
Noordzij describes sanctification as a kenotic way — kenosis is the theological term for the self-emptying or self-humbling of Christ (cf. Phil. 2:7), which is also asked of his followers. The life of Moses is the archetype: forty years of having one’s proud self-confidence broken in the wilderness, until he became the most humble man on earth (Num. 12:3). “Those who follow the Lamb wherever He goes have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal. 5:24).” [Moses, §His humiliation]. Gal. 2:20 is the anchor point: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” This is not a perfectionist sanctification teaching that claims to have already reached the goal, but a path of suffering toward sonship: salvation is freedom, but that freedom costs the self.
What connects Warnock’s feast model, Nee/Lee’s practical appropriation, and Noordzij’s kenotic way is that all three understand sanctification as a progressive movement that brings the believer increasingly from the initial experience of justification toward the fullness of Christ. The apokatastasis framework adds a cosmic dimension to this: the sanctification of individuals is the exercise of the royal priesthood of the sons of God, through whom creation is ultimately liberated (Rom. 8:19-21).
The Perseverance and Assurance of Salvation
The question of the perseverance of the saints runs through soteriology as a permanent line of tension. The Reformed tradition teaches the perseverance of the saints: the elect cannot be definitively separated from God (Rom. 8:38-39). Arminianism holds that this fails to reckon with human decision-making capacity: faith can be abandoned, and with it salvation.
Warnock takes an intermediate position. Justification rests on God’s work in Christ and is irrevocable. But the full salvific reality — the experience of Tabernacles — depends on faithfulness in the journey. Those who die in the wilderness, never entering Canaan, do not reach the destiny of sonship: “The first generation that came out of Egypt by Moses failed to enter in because of unbelief, and God decreed that they would die in the wilderness.” [FoT-W, ch. 1]. This is not definitive loss of salvation but the forfeiting of the destiny to which one was called.
Jones offers from the apokatastasis position a structural clarity. The Great White Throne — the end-time seat of judgment in Rev. 20 — is not the final annihilation of the unbeliever but the second phase of salvation: the Passover for those who missed the first opportunity. Jones grounds this in the precedent of Num. 9:10-11 — the “second Passover” provided for those excluded from the first through uncleanness or distance. God built into the Mosaic law a structural principle: those who miss the first opportunity receive a second. “This does not mean that He forces anyone to be justified; rather, He will make everyone willing and desirous of being justified. Some will be justified in their lifetime; most will be justified at the Great White Throne.” [ROAT, ch. 4]. Assurance of salvation depends not on the individual believer’s perseverance but on the steadfastness of God’s covenant faithfulness that releases no one.
Judgment and the Temporality of Punishment
At the heart of apokatastasis lies an exegetical thesis about the nature of God’s judgment and the meaning of the word aiōnios (αἰώνιος), traditionally translated “eternal.” The ECT position reads “eternal punishment” (Matt. 25:46) as ontologically endless suffering. Annihilationism holds that the punishment consists in annihilation. Apokatastasis chooses a third way: the punishment is age-abiding (aiōnios = “belonging to an age”), corrective, and restorative.
The Philological Basis
Jones supports this philologically. The Greek noun aiōn means “age” or “period.” Its adjectival form aiōnios means “age-abiding” or “belonging to an age” — not “ontologically endless.” Jones cites Dr. F.W. Farrar: “Since aiōn meant ‘age,’ aiōnios means, properly, ‘belonging to an age,’ or ‘age-long’; and anyone who asserts that it must mean ‘endless’ defends a position which even Augustine practically abandoned twelve centuries ago.” [ROAT, ch. 3, citing Farrar, Mercy and Judgment, p.178]. The Cambridge Bible Commentary (A.W. Argyle) formulates it for Matt. 25:46: “Age-abiding punishment, i.e., punishment characteristic of the Age to come, not meaning that it lasts for ever.” [ROAT, ch. 3]. Augustine’s influence on the Latinization of aiōnios as ontologically endless has, according to Jones, made a philologically incorrect reading normative, fundamentally distorting the biblical doctrine of divine justice.
Restorationism Versus Universalism
This is not merely a lexical question but a theological judgment about the nature of sin and punishment. Sin is for Jones temporary: “Because it had a beginning, it also will have an end. The whole idea of ‘restoration’ implies that history is the process by which God is showing us the results of sin before finally restoring all things under His feet as it was at the beginning.” [ROAT, ch. 6]. The dualistic cosmology — an eternal heaven over against an eternal hell — is a Platonic contamination that the early church officially adopted in the fifth century: “This was one of the greatest tragedies of all time in the history of Christian thought.” [ROAT, ch. 6].
Here it is crucial to distinguish between Restorationism and classical Universalism. Classical Universalism denies God’s judgment: God does not punish, He always forgives. Jones explicitly rejects this: “This booklet shows the difference between Universalism, which denies all divine judgment, and Restorationism, which teaches that the judgments of the law are corrective and restorative.” [ROAT, back cover]. God does punish — but his punishments serve restoration, not eternal destruction. The judgment is real and it is just; it is, however, not eternal and not eliminatory. This is the apokatastasis as the studied authors defend it: a position with backbone, not a spiritualist doctrine of soft grace without reckoning.
Warnock converges on the same point by a different route. His “much more” of grace (Rom. 5 — repeated five times) is a powerful argument: grace is more than sin, not equal to it or smaller. “Are we going to honor the power of Adam and Satan above the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit?” [EaM, ch. 2]. Whoever takes this seriously can scarcely maintain a judgment that perpetuates the power of sin in eternity rather than overcoming it.
Apokatastasis in the Christian Tradition
Apokatastasis is not a late-modern invention but an early Christian conviction. Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185-254 AD) systematically developed the ἀποκατάστασις πάντων of Acts 3:21 — “whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things” — in his Peri Archōn (On First Principles): all rational beings are, through judgment and purification, ultimately restored to their original unity with God. Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-395 AD), one of the Cappadocian Fathers and a recognized church father, defended a similar universal restoration perspective in his Oratio Catechetica: judgment is purifying in nature, and God’s goodness requires the ultimate restoration of all that has strayed from him.
The reception history of this view is ambivalent. The Second Council of Constantinople (553 AD) condemned the “Origenist” teaching of universal restoration as heresy — partly under pressure from Emperor Justinian, who wanted a uniform ecclesiastical-political system. This condemnation marginalized apokatastasis for more than a millennium. Jones notes that the 553 decision was partly a matter of ecclesiastical power politics: Origen’s teaching of the pre-existence of souls — a separate and problematic doctrine of Origen — became confused with his restoration teaching, and the condemnation swept both under one judgment [ROAT, ch. 6].
The studied authors situate themselves within an alternative line of Christian thinking that does not regard the historical condemnation of 553 as binding for biblical interpretation. They do not stand alone in this tradition: over the centuries thinkers such as Evagrius Ponticus, John Scottus Eriugena, Maximus the Confessor, and in modern times Karl Barth (in his doctrine of universal election in Christ) and Jürgen Moltmann have defended related restoration perspectives. The apostolic testimonies — Col. 1:20, 1Cor. 15:28, Rom. 5:18, Acts 3:21 — remain decisive, not the conciliar condemnation of one specifically articulated version of the restoration doctrine.
Consummation: Glorification and Cosmic Restoration
Apokatastasis finds its most programmatic biblical foundation in the conclusion of 1Cor. 15: “Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power (…) so that God may be all in all.” (1Cor. 15:24,28). Jones: “‘God may be all in all’ means the fullness of the Holy Spirit will be in all men — NOT some in all, or all in some, but all in all.” [CJ, ch. 5]. This is the teleology of salvation: not merely the personal salvation of individual believers, but the comprehensive renewal of creation.
The Glorified Sons as Instruments of Liberation
Noordzij connects individual glorification directly to cosmic liberation. The glorification of the sons of God in Rom. 8:30 is not the end but the instrument: they are the firstfruits who “will liberate the creation from bondage to decay into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21) [Moses, §A ministry of redemption]. The chain foreknowledge → predestination → calling → justification → glorification (Rom. 8:28-30) does not end with the saved but reaches through them to the entire creation. The individual path of salvation and cosmic redemption are one movement, not two separate narratives.
Warnock describes glorification as the manifestation of the sons of God: “This time the purpose of God is to bring forth in the earth other sons, like unto His very own Son, and bring them back unto the heart of the Father in yet a greater fullness!” [EaM, ch. 5]. The glorified bear the nature of Christ — his obedience, his cross, his resurrection — and thereby become the complete manifestation of what the new creation is. For Nee/Lee, the consummation is the full realization of the all-inclusive Christ in and through his believers: “That is the goal; that land is the goal of God. We have to enter in. It is our portion.” [AIC, ch. 5].
The Covenant-Theological Guarantee
Jones works out the certainty of the restoration of all things through a covenant line that runs through the whole of Scripture. Five covenants lay the foundation. The Noahic covenant is made with “every living creature that is with you” (Gen. 9:9-10) — the broadest covenant in Scripture, encompassing the entire universe. The Abrahamic covenant promises that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Acts 3:25). The Mosaic covenant establishes God’s righteous standard — not as a ground of exclusion but as a corrective mechanism. The Davidic covenant promises an eternal throne under which all nations will bow (Ps. 66:4; 67:4). The New Covenant completes the covenant sequence through the blood of Christ, with Col. 1:20 sealing the all-encompassing reconciliation. Jones concludes: each covenant presupposes and completes the previous one; the Noahic covenant guarantees that no creature falls outside God’s plan [ROAT, ch. 8].
The most vivid argument Jones draws from the Old Testament law of redemption. The go’el (literally: redeemer) is the nearest kinsman who has both the right and the obligation to buy back what the family has lost (Lev. 25:47-48). Christ as go’el possesses the creation-right over the entire creation: “You can purchase anything, but you can redeem only that which you once owned.” [ROAT, ch. 7]. Universal redemption rests in Jones ultimately not on sentimental love but on property right: “Yes, He really is my Redeemer, because I was a part of creation, which He owned by right of creation.” [ROAT, ch. 7].
This is the strength of apokatastasis as a soteriological position: it is not a wish that softens the biblical seriousness of judgment and justice, but an assertion grounded in the biblical notions of law, ownership, covenant, and the absolute sovereignty of the Redeemer. God does not lose his creation — not because he does not take it seriously, but because he has purchased it by right and blood, and it is his.