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Monday, July 18, 2011

The use of "rehabilitative" and "retributive" in relation to universalism

While not exhaustive, this google book search for the terms "rehabilitative", "retributive" and "universalism" show us that in the post-Puritan hey-day of early evangelicalism "retributive" was a term more commonly employed than the "rehabilitative" but then almost in parallel with the Industrial Revolution "retributive" fell out of favour and rehabilitative became more common. But what's most fascinating is that "universalism" has a similar upward trajectory to "rehabilitative" and then peaks shortly after "rehabilitative" peaks! This correlation is no doubt due to the fact that Universalism emphasises God's rehabilitative judgement.  (Only printed material is included in the search.)