THE MELODY OF THEOLOGY

In his The Melody of Theology Jaroslav Pelikan discusses apocatastasis, or "restoration": 

Origen projected a pedagogical view of history in which "the end is as the beginning."  God would allow free will its fullest possible expression, but would--not by force but by patience--lure it back to its intended goal, until eventually, with their free will preserved intact but now fulfilled, all creatures would come to a universal restoration, an apocatastasis.  And by "all creatures" Origen meant just that: the Devil and the other fallen angels, too, would finally find a place in the renewed cosmos of divine love.

This I find not only a very attractive idea, but also theologically the most logical.  A hell wherein some experience an eternity of conscious punishment makes no sense to me whatsoever.  I cannot see it either as just or as merciful.  Now see where things seem to become a little dodgey.  Pelikan continues:

The issue of apocatastasis as doctrine was perhaps put best by the nineteenth-century Pietist churchman and theologian, Christian Gottlieb Barth (1799-1862): "Anyone who does not believe in the universal restoration is an ox, but anyone who teaches it is an ass."

This is the sort of thing that always gets me:  institutions believing in doctrines with a wink and a nod to the knowing, but clamping down on their clear and public expression.  This smacks of gnosticism to me.  If the doctrine of universal restoration is sound, why not preach it?  Are we to understand the gospel requires truth to be subordinate to efficacious lies?  What a breath of life apocatastasis could breathe into a church rendered lame by the requirement to love God though he be a torturer.