There were a number of fathers in the early church (the first four centuries C.E.) who believed in apokatastasis, “universal restoration” (Acts 3:21). They believed that the real meaning of the resurrection of Christ was that God’s love was so perfect and so victorious that it would finally win out in every single person’s life. They were so sure about this that their thought partially gave rise to the mythology of purgatory as a place—in the dying process or shortly after death, God’s infinite love can and will still get at you! They felt that no soul could resist such a love once it was revealed to them. (Most Catholics forgot that the original folk belief in purgatory represented an overwhelming sense of God’s always-victorious love and mercy. Like many great mysteries, it deteriorated into its exact opposite, a place of punishment—which is all a worldview of scarcity can devise.)
.. ‘O good Lord, how can all be well when great harm has come to your creatures through sin?’ And here I wanted, if I dared, to have some clearer explanation to put my mind at rest.” And he said, “Since I have brought good out of the worst-ever evil, I want you to know by this; that I shall bring good out of all lesser evils, too.”