"Hell? No": against Thomistic arguments for perdition

    Like many universalists, I find the doctrine of eternal torment utterly abhorrent and contrary to the God of love who was revealed in Jesus Christ. Over the history of Christianity, though, many believers in this doctrine have offered justifications for why eternal torment – despite appearances to the contrary – is actually compatible with the Christian doctrine of God, and possibly even necessitated by it! The most well-known one today is C. S. Lewis’ free-will defense of hell, which I think is incredibly weak, but many other defenses have been given which aren’t so weak.

    In my opinion, the strongest defense of hell is the one associated with Thomas Aquinas and his followers, since it relies on an Aristotelian metaphysical framework which I broadly agree with (see my posts on that topic). This argument has been presented in a modern context by Ed Feser (2016a; 2024) and James Dominic Rooney (2024a; 2024b), and a related argument is given by Wahlberg (2022). In this post, I’ll show that these Thomistic arguments fail to make hopeless damnation for any person plausible. The failure of these arguments points to the plausibility of universal salvation, given certain fundamental Christian (and specifically Thomistic) commitments about God and humanity.

Background metaphysics

    In a previous post on arguments for God’s existence, I tried to show that we can know from reason alone that (1) God desires our good and (2) God himself is our ultimate good. This grounds a solid belief in the fact that he “desires all people to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4). Thomistic infernalists agree with this point. However, they argue that while God desires, all other things being equal, the salvation of each individual person, wider considerations could allow God to permit the hopeless damnation of some people. Specifically, they claim that the post-mortem repentance of a sinning person is a metaphysical impossibility, which even God couldn’t bring about.

    To understand this claim, we have to first consider the relevant metaphysics. For Aristotelians, goodness is defined as the fulfillment of a thing’s “appetite,” which is the actualization of a potential within a thing’s nature. A thing’s potentials are only actualized to the extent that it exists, so goodness is interconvertible with existence, which is also interconvertible with truth (something is only true insofar as it exists in reality). These properties (existence, truth, goodness) are referred to as transcendentals, since they are shared by all being. Whatever is not good (i.e., evil) has no existence in reality; evil is the failure of a potential to be actualized when it should be (Oderberg 2019).

    Moreover, for Aristotelians, what distinguishes rational beings like humans and angels from other creatures is our intellect and will. The intellect is what abstracts universals out of their particular contexts, thus allowing us to understand abstract concepts like triangularity and dog-ness which don’t correspond to any particular, material being. In order to abstract universals from their material contexts, the intellect itself must be immaterial. The will (also called the rational appetite) is what orders our actions toward ends that we choose, according to the intellect. If the will didn’t exist, then we would still be able to know things with our intellect, but we could never use this knowledge to do anything.

    Our intellects are ordered toward (universal) truth; otherwise it would forever be tied down to particular contexts. This would be contrary to the intellect’s ability to abstract universals out of particular contexts. Furthermore, if the intellect were ordered toward anything other than truth – for example, survival – then we could never know something as true, merely as it is good for survival. This view is self-refuting, since someone who claims that the intellect is ordered toward survival is making a truth-claim – that it is true that the intellect is ordered toward survival.

    Likewise, the will is ordered toward (universal) goodness; otherwise it would be tied down to some particular good. In that case, the will would be unable to order the multiple goods associated with human flourishing (friendship, sensory pleasure, bodily health). Moreover, the will can’t desire something that it doesn’t perceive to be good in some way (the “guise of the good”), for then we would be acting toward something we know to be nothing at all in reality. Since the intellect and will are ordered toward (universal) truth and goodness, it follows that the rational natures of humans and angels can only be completely fulfilled by truth in itself and goodness in itself, which is God. However, no created intellect can naturally comprehend the divine nature in itself (what some Christians refer to as the “beatific vision”); this requires God’s supernatural intervention to achieve.

    So far, so good. I agree with all of this metaphysical background, and in the following sections I’ll take it for granted. To sum up: being, goodness, and truth are interconvertible transcendentals; rational beings like humans and angels have an immaterial intellect and will, which are ordered toward (universal) truth and goodness, respectively; therefore rational beings can only be completely fulfilled by God, who (as pure existence) is truth-itself and goodness-itself, and this requires supernatural intervention.

Post-mortem cognition and repentance

    Why do Aquinas and modern Thomistic infernalists hold that repentance after death is impossible? First, let’s consider why Aquinas thought that angels – which in his view are immaterial – could never in principle repent after falling.

It belongs to the angels’ nature to have actual knowledge of everything they can know naturally, as we by nature have actual knowledge of first principles, from which we by a process of deductive reasoning proceed to acquire knowledge of conclusions. But angels do not have such a process of reasoning, since they intuit in the principles themselves all the conclusions proper to natural knowledge of them. And so as we are permanently disposed regarding knowledge of first principles, so the angels’ intellect is permanently disposed regarding everything it knows by nature. And since the will is proportioned to the intellect, it follows that their will is also by nature irrevocable regarding what belongs to the natural order. But it is also true that they have potentiality regarding movements to supernatural things, whether by turning toward them or by turning away from them. And so they can only have the change of moving from the order of their nature to things transcending their nature by turning toward or away from them. But since everything added to something is added to it according to the mode of its nature, it follows that angels persist irrevocably in turning from or toward a supernatural good. (De Malo 16.5)

     This needs more than a little clarification. First, consider how we humans know things by our intellect: we observe things in multiple particular contexts, abstract out information about universals (e.g., that 2 + 2 = 4, that grass is green), and use this knowledge to reason our way to conclusions. This mode of knowledge is essentially embodied because it relies on sensory input. If angels are immaterial, then their reasoning isn’t temporally extended like this. They immediately have whatever knowledge is natural for them to have, including perfect self-knowledge.

    Since the angelic intellect knows all natural things in a single act, the angelic will also chooses its end in a single act. Once an angel chooses its ultimate end, it can’t naturally gain any more knowledge that could cause it to reconsider its choice. Moreover, having perfect self-knowledge, the angel can’t be mistaken about its desires, and must identify with all of them and integrate them all toward its chosen end (Rooney 2024a, 4–6). Therefore, if it chooses an ultimate end other than God, it will be unable to reconsider or desire anything other than what it has chosen.

    But if an angel has all natural knowledge, how could it choose something other than God, if a rational being can only choose what it perceives to be good? Simply put, because it has all natural knowledge, not supernatural knowledge. The angel doesn’t have perfect knowledge of goodness itself (i.e., God), since the beatific vision requires supernatural intervention. Unless it chooses union with God, no angel possesses the beatific vision. If it chooses otherwise, then the (now fallen) angel doesn’t gain the supernatural knowledge that would be necessary for it to reconsider its choice.

    Therefore, even having all natural knowledge, it’s possible for an angel to wrongly choose some derivative (spiritual) good for itself as its ultimate end in place of God. At that point its choice is ‘locked in’ (so to speak) forever. Even God couldn’t alter its choice without destroying its personal identity, since the fallen angel, having perfect self-knowledge, fully identifies with its desires which have been fully integrated toward its perverted end. This is why it is impossible, in Aquinas’ view, for a fallen angel to ever repent.

    What does this have to do with humans? According to Aristotelian anthropology, when a human dies (i.e., her matter and form separate), her form naturally continues to exist immaterially, due to its immaterial operations of intellect and will. Aristotle and Aquinas refer to the form of the living human as her “soul,” although it better corresponds to the Scriptural category of “spirit” (as I argued elsewhere). After her death, the human’s spirit is relevantly like an angelic spirit: it no longer knows via sensory input and discursive (temporally extended) reasoning – since that requires a body – but it instead immediately possesses all its natural knowledge, including perfect self-knowledge.

    In the moment immediately after a person’s death, therefore, her spirit perfectly knows and identifies with all of her desires, and the will integrates those desires to the ultimate end that she chose before she died. Like the fallen angel, her choice becomes ‘locked in’ to the extent that even God couldn’t change it. The basic orientation of the will, either toward or away from God, is fixed at death. For some people, there will be a mixture of good and evil desires (since in our bodily state, without perfect self-knowledge, our desires may conflict). In that case, some desires will have to be modified, but in a state of perfect self-knowledge one’s desires will ultimately be made consistent.

    For those who choose an ultimate end other than God, they will forever suffer evil (in the Aristotelian sense), since their rational nature will forever fail to fulfill its ultimate end. In addition to this terrible privation, they will suffer positive punishment. Consider that a failure to fulfill our nature, by acting in a disordered way, often results in some kind of unpleasantness: sickness results from overeating, a guilty conscience results from violating a moral duty, and so on. This usually serves the good purpose of directing us away from evils. However, for those who have fixed their will against goodness, they are also fixed in a state of unpleasantness that corresponds to the faulty end they have chosen for themselves. Since it’s God who orders things according to their natures, this punishment is “from God” in an ultimate sense (Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles III.140; Feser 2016b).

    This line of argumentation is used by Aquinas and modern Thomistic infernalists to prove the reality of hell and purgatory (for those whose desires are ‘mixed’ between good and evil at death). If people’s wills truly are fixed at death, then universalism might still be true – it’s theoretically possible that God leads each person to repentance just before they die. But this certainly seems unlikely, and ruling out the possibility of post-mortem repentance would strike a massive blow against Christian universalism.

Why the argument fails

    First of all, I disagree with Aquinas that angels are wholly immaterial beings. This doesn’t have much bearing on his argument for hell, since we could simply consider what it would be like for immaterial creatures without conceding that any such beings exist. In fact, I’m perfectly willing to concede that if wholly immaterial creatures did exist, it would be impossible for them to repent after falling – I see no issue with this part of the argument. But because I don’t think angels are wholly immaterial, I disagree that it’s impossible in principle for them to repent (Case 2021). With Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, I hold that all created rational beings, up to and including the satan, can and ultimately will repent.

    I also don’t necessarily agree with Aquinas and modern Thomists that the human spirit is conscious or active apart from the human body. It seems at least as likely to me that my spirit, although it continues to exist after my death, will be no more active than it is during deep sleep or syncope. (That would also account for the metaphor of death as “sleep” throughout the Scriptures.) In that case, the argument for hell fails because a person’s spirit after death won’t be in a state to set its final end, integrate its desires, and thereby become ‘stuck’ in that orientation. However, I’m willing to grant for the sake of argument that the human spirit is relevantly active after death, since I think the argument still fails.

The possibility of new experiences

    First, as Rooney (2024a, 7) points out,

all that is fundamentally required for someone to persist in sin forever is simply that they make up their mind about what they want (where what they want is something incompatible with love of God) and never to encounter any reason sufficient to make them reconsider that decision, thereby prompting a potential new volition.

Both conditions are necessary for someone to persist in sin forever. While the first condition is fulfilled by the perfect self-knowledge of the post-mortem spirit, the second condition is much harder to fulfill. The very logic of the infernalist position requires that people undergo new (if unpleasant) experiences after death, which can form the basis of new knowledge and allow people to reconsider their choice. It seems like it would only be possible for a mind to have all natural knowledge all at once if it were completely atemporal and impassible, such that it could have no new experiences.

    For this reason, the Thomist view of the fixity of the will after death seems like a merely Aristotelian holdover which doesn’t fit well into Christian theology. Aristotle believed that the mind, “when it is separated, is just as it is, and this alone is immortal and eternal, though we do not remember, because this is impassible” (De anima III.5). In other words, the mind after death is totally impassible and has no memories or new experiences. Aquinas and modern Thomists hold this idea in tension with Christian theology, since they believe that the human will is fixed after death and that people have new post-mortem experiences. But these views look like they’re mutually exclusive.

    Moreover, this merely Aristotelian view doesn’t square well with the Christian doctrine of bodily resurrection. Even if the spirit is immutable when it’s disembodied, it will be embodied again in the future, and its re-embodiment will bring new perceptual experiences that should restore its mutability. Ed Feser (2016) argues against this conclusion:

But might not the resurrection of the body restore the possibility of a course correction? Aquinas answers in the negative [De veritate q. 24, art. 11]. The nature of the resurrection body is necessarily tailored to the nature of the soul to which it is conjoined, and that soul is now locked on to whatever end it opted for upon death. The soul prior to death was capable of change in its basic orientation only because it came into existence with its body and thus never had a chance to “set,” as it were. One it does “set,” nothing can alter its orientation again.

    Feser’s (and Aquinas’) argument here is sound, based on his view that human spirits after death (like immaterial angels) gain all natural knowledge all at once. If that’s the case, then being embodied wouldn’t change a thing, since the person would already have all the knowledge they could possibly use to make a choice. But that’s precisely what I’m arguing against here. The human experience is essentially temporal and open to new experiences, so a human, unlike a wholly immaterial being, couldn’t possess all natural knowledge all at once. That’s just not within the realm of logical possibility.

Goodness and evil

    This brings us to an even deeper problem with the Thomistic argument for hell: it implies that good and evil are on an ontological par. The human will can rest in good or evil eternally, depending on which one it chooses. Feser (2018) actually says this explicitly:

If the wills of the damned could change after death, then so too could the wills of the saved. Thus, they wouldn’t truly be saved any more than the former would truly be damned. They would forever be in danger of falling again into evil and facing punishment for doing so. The travails and instability of this life would never end. Hence, no hell, no heaven either.

This argument assumes an ontological equivalence between good and evil. If the human will can’t rest eternally in evil, then it can’t rest eternally in goodness either.

    But this is totally contrary to the fact that evil is nothing in itself, being merely a privation of goodness – which Thomists agree with. This logically leads to the classical doctrine of “the guise of the good,” that people only desire what they perceive to be good in some respect. No one could choose that which they know to be nothing at all in reality. Thomists like Feser agree with this; in fact, they’re some of the strongest defenders of this view in the modern day (e.g., Feser 2014)!

    To be sure, this doesn’t mean that people can’t be culpable for sinning. A person can do something that they perceive to be good in some respect, even if they know that it’s evil in other respects. Someone can culpably sin by voluntarily failing to consider the evil in an action, and only considering the good they perceive therein (Rooney 2024a, 2–3; citing Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 73). However, no one could be perfectly culpable in the way required for eternal damnation – that is, having perfect knowledge of the good and choosing something else as one’s end – it’s simply impossible. Because of the ontological imbalance between good and evil, someone who (culpably or not) chooses evil could always encounter or consider new knowledge that would lead them to repent.

    Rooney (2024a, 8) argues against this conclusion on the basis that the only “decisive” reason that could bring a fallen spirit to repent is perfect knowledge of Goodness itself, the beatific vision, which “constitutes salvation and is not a necessary condition for salvation to occur.” I actually agree with this. However, my argument for universalism doesn’t rely on anyone encountering a decisive reason to repent. As long as there’s a non-zero chance of repentance, over a potentially infinite amount of time, the chance that any individual won’t repent will become infinitesimally small (Reitan 2022).

The “Autonomy Defense” and hell

    Another Thomistic defense of hell has been offered by Mats Wahlberg (2022) in response to David Bentley Hart (2019). Wahlberg and Hart rightly reject the “free will defense” of hell (popularized by C. S. Lewis). According to the “free will defense,” in order for God to create a world with creaturely free will, he had to allow for the real possibility – outside of his control – that some people will reject God and choose evil forever. This defense is hugely problematic for a few reasons:

1. By casting creaturely free will as the freedom to choose evil, this defense implies that God (and the saints), who can’t choose evil, are radically unfree. But this is clearly wrong; God isn’t unfree, but the most free being, since nothing apart from him can constrain his action. Thus, freedom doesn’t imply the possibility to choose evil.

2. It’s incompatible with Jesus’ own statement that “the truth will make you free... everyone who does sin is a slave of sin” (John 8:31-35). This means that freedom is precisely the freedom to choose good, and those who choose evil are thereby unfree.

3. It ignores the metaphysics of good and evil, and the “guise of the good.” Rational beings can only choose what we perceive to be good in some way; moral evil is a result of the failure to (culpably or not) know and/or consider certain facts, and this comes from our finitude. This supports Jesus’ claim that those who do evil are unfree, and undermines the free will defense.

4. According to classical theism, God is the primary mover of all change in the world, and concurrently actualizes the being of everything that exists. God’s concurrent causality is not only compatible with freedom, but is necessary for anyone to do anything freely (Koons 2002; Grant 2010). Thus, there’s nothing contradictory with the idea of God causing someone to freely choose him, and classical theism is incompatible with the free will defense (De La Noval 2024).

5. Even if the free will defense succeeded in showing how someone’s choice to reject God could possibly be forever un-reversed, it doesn’t show that anyone’s choice would be irreversible. That would negate the concern for freedom that underlies the entire defense. But since the irreversibility of the choice is precisely what’s being debated, the free will defense is a red herring.

For these reasons, no Thomist or classical theist (or, for that matter, any Christian) should find the “free will defense” very convincing.

    However, Wahlberg provides an alternative defense of hell – which he calls the “autonomy defense” – that seeks to sidestep these issues. First of all, this defense relies on the Aristotelian-Thomistic concern for preserving creaturely causality. God is the primary cause of all change, but created beings act as real (if instrumental) causes and have causal powers according to their natures. If creatures aren’t real causes, then this is occasionalism – the view that only God is a real cause – which leads to pantheism (that only God is real). Thus, there must be some measure of creaturely autonomy in order for us to say that there is a creation at all.

    Due to our finiteness, every rational creature has the potential to fail to know and/or consider some moral facts, and as a result desire evil. The possibility of sin follows from God’s decision to create rational beings that aren’t himself. “Not even God could create rational creatures that are infallible or indefectible by nature” (Wahlberg 2022, 54). God could supernaturally intervene to remove this possibility of sin in two ways: by providing every rational being with the beatific vision from the start, or by actively and directly frustrating people’s choices to sin. Both of these options, however, deny creaturely autonomy. In order to avoid occasionalism, rational creatures must be able to sin. Otherwise, God hasn’t really created a new being at all; he’s simply play-acting with himself.

    So far, I agree with this argument. I think the concern for creaturely autonomy provides a very plausible theodicy of moral evil which avoids the pitfalls of the free will defense. But Wahlberg goes further: he argues that friendship with God, like friendship with other humans, relies on the autonomy to be or not to be friends. If my friendship with another person is a sheer metaphysical necessity, then – Wahlberg claims – it is “gravely deficient” because it lacks the autonomous self-giving that characterizes friendship. Thus, if (as David Bentley Hart argues) every person will necessarily choose friendship with God, it’s really no friendship at all. There must be the real metaphysical possibility of eternal rejection of God, although this leaves open the possibility of hopeful universalism (Wahlberg 2022, 55–60).

Why I disagree

    There are a couple reasons I disagree with this argument. First, I’m not sure I agree that friendship, even with other humans, relies on the autonomy to be or not to be friends. Suppose that there are two people who are just so compatible that in every possible world where they meet, they’re best friends. Would this make their self-gift to each other any less real and valuable? My intuition says no. Moreover, consider that on some accounts of social trinitarianism, the relationship between divine persons is precisely a metaphysically necessary interpersonal friendship. There are many valid critiques of social trinitarianism, but would anyone say that the divine persons aren’t really friends on such an account?

    Second, even if it were the case that friendship with humans must be autonomous, it doesn’t follow that friendship with God could be autonomous. Wahlberg (2022, 62) responds to this critique:

we all agree that self-determination is a value-enhancing or good-making property of human friendships. It would therefore be very odd if our friendship with God lacked this characteristic. While friendship with God is certainly different from intra-human friendships, it cannot be different in the sense of lacking some fundamental property (compatible with God’s nature) that makes human friendships more valuable than they would be without it.

    However, our relationship with God is so different from our relationship with humans that it could not be autonomous. God, unlike other humans, isn’t a being among beings, the kind of person who we might or might not love. God is the ultimate efficient and final cause of everything that exists, the one by whom and for whom are all things (Rom. 11:36). Simply because we exist, we’re already in a relationship with God, whether we like it or not. As David Bentley Hart (2019, 183) points out, “It is hard to exaggerate how large a metaphysical solecism it is to think of God... as an option that can be chosen out of a larger field of options”.

    Within the “autonomy defense” is hidden the same mistaken assumption we saw earlier: that good and evil are on an ontological par. God is Goodness itself, and to say that someone might ultimately choose God or something else is to say that they might ultimately choose good or not. But this is a mistaken sort of voluntarism that assumes the human will might just latch onto anything whatsoever as its ultimate end. The human will is naturally oriented toward the good, and chooses evil only as a result of some defect (which might be culpable or not). Wahlberg (2022, 67) recognizes this, but simply holds it in “paradoxical” (contradictory??) tension with his autonomy defense.

Conclusion

    Both of the Thomistic defenses of hell that I looked at here are problematic in their own way, but they share the fundamental error of implicitly assuming that goodness and evil exist on an ontological par. If evil has no real existence in itself and is merely a privation of the good, as Thomists believe, then the idea of a human’s will being ‘fixed’ upon evil without even the possibility of repentance is a metaphysical impossibility. The chance of anyone eternally choosing evil without ever reconsidering is incredibly low, and even less credible when we consider that God himself desires all people to ultimately repent and be saved.

    To be sure, it’s logically possible that someone might choose evil forever, just not that they can be left without even the possibility of repenting. The question of whether anyone will choose evil forever is one that likely can’t be answered by philosophy alone; for this we have to turn to revelation. I believe that, whether or not an eternal hell is possible, revelation tells us that this world is not one in which any rational being will abide in evil forever. God will defeat sin and death and reconcile with every person (1 Cor. 15:20-28).

The Restoration of All: Universalism in Early Christianity (part 11)

Summary and Conclusion

    Over the course of this series, we’ve looked at the reception and development of the doctrine of universal restoration over the history of the early church. Most of these posts have dealt with the theologians and fathers of the first five centuries of the church, and their views on the ultimate fate of unbelievers. We can roughly categorize these thinkers into three categories – universalism, infernalism, and annihilationism/conditionalism:

Certain universalists: Clement of Alexandria; Bardaisan of Edessa; Origen of Alexandria; Gregory Thaumaturgus; Didymus the Blind; Macarius of Magnesia; Marius Victorinus; Gregory of Nazianzus; Gregory of Nyssa; Evagrius Ponticus; Diodore of Tarsus; Theodore of Mopsuestia; Theodoret of Cyrrhus; Jerome of Stridon (before his turn against Origen)

Probable universalists: Clement of Rome; Odes of Solomon; some apocryphal writings (esp. Apocalypse of Peter); Dionysius the Great; Pamphilus of Caesarea; Methodius of Olympus; Anthony the Great; Novatian (?); Eusebius of Caesarea; Marcellus of Ancyra; Athanasius of Alexandria; Basil of Caesarea; Ambrose of Milan; Synesius of Cyrene; Paulinus of Nola; Peter Chrysologus (?); Cyril of Alexandria (?)

Certain annihilationists/conditionalists: Arnobius of Sicca

Probable annihilationists/conditionalists: Didache; Epistle of Barnabas; Shepherd of Hermas; Polycarp of Smyrna

Certain infernalists: Tertullian of Carthage; Minucius Felix; Cyprian of Carthage; Lactantius; Jerome of Stridon (after his turn against Origen); Augustine of Hippo; Leo the Great

Probable infernalists: Tatian of Adiabene; Hilary of Poitiers; Epiphanius of Salamis; Theophilus of Alexandria (?)

    There are also some church fathers that aren’t easily categorized within this schema. Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Theophilus of Antioch have statements that point toward annihilationism or conditionalism, but also statements that point toward universalism. Justin Martyr's and Hippolytus’ writings have statements that point toward annihilationism and infernalism. Aphrahat the Persian was a conditionalist with regard to the most wicked dead, and an infernalist with regard to less wicked sinners. Ephrem the Syrian was a hopeful universalist, which means he hoped for the restoration of all people but was not certain of it, as were possibly John Cassian and John Chrysostom. Rufinus of Aquileia was simply unsure of the ultimate fate of the wicked, and admitted as much in his writings against Jerome.

    What’s clear from this is that universalism was a fairly popular view in the first five centuries of the church, and in fact the majority position in the East during the third and fourth centuries. In the first two centuries, most church fathers didn’t have a clearly developed and/or articulated position on the ultimate fate of unbelievers, and the first systematic thinker on this point was Origen of Alexandria, who developed his Christian universalism in opposition to ‘gnostic’ heresies. His influence helped to popularize the doctrine of universal restoration in the East and, eventually, in the West with theologians like Hilary of Poitiers, Ambrose of Milan, Jerome of Stridon, and John Cassian who adopted many of Origen’s ideas. However, the ‘Origenist’ controversy of the early fifth century and the influence of Augustine (who was an anti-universalist) reduced the popularity of universalism, especially in the West where it effectively disappeared.

    In the last two posts, we surveyed the fate of Christian universalism after the fifth century. The universal restoration had some influential proponents in the sixth century, such as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Theodore of Caesarea, both of whom held a radical ‘Origenist’ form of this doctrine. ‘Origenism’ was condemned at the fifth ecumenical council in 553, which reduced the popularity of universalism in the East even further. However, the doctrine of universal restoration was maintained in a non-‘Origenist’ form by the seventh-century theologian Maximus the Confessor. In the Syriac Church of the East, where the fifth ecumenical council was never accepted, Christian universalism maintained a respectable status even into the second millennium. The ninth-century systematic theologian John Scotus Eriugena held to the doctrine of universal restoration, although he tried to reconcile it with Augustinian infernalism. Finally, universalism existed in scattered pockets on the periphery of Christianity up to the Reformation.

The roots of Christian universalism

    The reason that universalism was so popular in early Christianity is, I argue, because it makes sense within the Christian mutation of second-Temple Jewish thought about God’s true enemy. As I showed in a few earlier posts – following the research of N. T. Wright – a major point of disagreement between the new Jesus movement and mainstream second-Temple Judaism was over the nature and identity of “the enemy.” [1] After oppression under several pagan empires, the mainstream of second-Temple Judaism identified “the enemy” with the pagans and pagan empire itself, and believed that the gentiles would be utterly destroyed when God’s kingdom arrived (e.g., Ps Sol 17:21–32; 1QSb 5.23–293; Wis 3:7–8; 5:17–6:5; 4 Ezra 13:3-11, 25-38).

    Jesus turned this picture on its head by identifying “the enemy” not with the gentiles, but with the dark forces that corrupt the pagans, which he also saw at work behind the Israelite leadership of his day. The problem isn’t with the pagans, or rather isn’t just with the pagans; it’s a universal problem affecting Jew and gentile alike. Paul expanded further on this point and identified “the enemy” with sin and death itself: the kingdom of God will arrive not when the gentiles are destroyed, but when “the last enemy, death, is abolished” (1 Cor 15:24–28). [1] “Our struggle,” Paul (or one of his followers) tells us, “is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph 6:12).

    If the enemy is not to be identified with any individual humans or class of humans, but with the sin and death that plague all humans, then God’s victorious defeat of the enemy would imply the restoration of all humanity. The other three options – annihilationism, conditionalism, and infernalism – imply something less than God’s total victory over the enemy: they imply that sin and death succeed in permanently corrupting a part of God’s good creation. These options point to a kind of dualism, where part of God’s creation is evil (or somehow becomes identified with its evil). With this in mind, it’s easy to see why universalism was so popular in the first few centuries of Christianity, even though mainstream Christianity eventually came to accept infernalism in tension with its opposition to dualism.

The patristic doctrine of universalism

    For the early church fathers who taught universal restoration, this doctrine existed within a wider, interconnected theological framework. There were a number of other beliefs that these early patristic universalists shared, especially (1) creaturely freedom of choice, (2) the inherent goodness of God’s creation, (3) the restorative nature of God’s punishment, and (4) the central importance of Jesus Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection.

    Creaturely freedom of choice. Against the ‘gnostic’ groups and Manichaeans who believed that creatures are either morally good or evil by nature, these church fathers held that every creature has the freedom to choose good or evil. This free will isn’t set against God’s sovereignty and providence. For example, John Cassian says that “God’s grace and free will seem opposed to each other, but are really in harmony... God works all things in us, and yet all can be ascribed to free will” (Conf XIII.11, 18). Rather, it’s set against the view that our moral choices are determined by our internal (good or evil) nature.

    The goodness of God’s creation. Also against the ‘gnostics’ and Manichaeans, the church fathers believed that God’s creation is inherently good. Because God is good – indeed Goodness itself – anything that he creates must be good. Therefore, all creatures (even the devil) are intrinsically good in their substance. Evil exists only as a privation, a failure to live up to God’s good purpose, and comes from the misuse of creaturely free will. No one could ever be wholly evil, because evil is a privation, and to be wholly evil would be to cease to exist: a “wholly evil being” is a metaphysical impossibility.

    God’s restorative punishment. The patristic universalists believed that God punishes in order to restore his creatures, against Marcionite ‘gnosticism’ which pitted divine goodness against divine justice. God is good – indeed Goodness itself – so he would not intentionally act to harm any creature. Furthermore, God is impassible, and could not become angry toward anyone (except metaphorically). Thus, everything that God does is intended to restore the goodness within his creatures, and ‘harms’ only their evil – which they may perceive as painful insofar as they identify with their evil.

    Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection. Despite the way their view was sometimes caricatured, these church fathers believed that Jesus Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection were central to the restoration of creation. When he became human, Christ united divine nature with created and human nature; in his death, he recapitulated and nullified all sin and death; and his resurrection guaranteed the resurrection and restoration of the entire creation. Origen is clear that the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ is what guaranteed the universal restoration, and God’s love in Jesus Christ is why no one will ever fall again after all have been restored (Comm in Rom V.12–16).

    The universal restoration. Taken together, these doctrines point to the eventual restoration of all people, and indeed the whole creation. Everything that God creates is inherently good in its substance, but evil is introduced into the creation against God’s good purpose by the misuse of creaturely free will. Since rational creatures always have this freedom of choice, even the most evil people can move from evil to goodness (or vice versa), and God’s restorative punishment always leads us toward restoration. However, even this doesn’t guarantee the final restoration of anyone: only through the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has God chosen to defeat evil once and for all, and to restore and deify the whole creation.

Dispelling myths about patristic universalism

    Having looked at the views of many early church fathers on the ultimate fate of evil and unbelievers, we’re in a position to dispel some myths about universalism in the early church. One idea that’s sometimes spread or encouraged by modern Christian universalists is that Augustine was the first infernalist, which is false. Even though Augustine’s influence ensured that infernalism (and a fairly extreme version of infernalism at that) became the dominant view in the West, the doctrine of eternal torment was around well before him, and was popularized by Tertullian of Carthage at the turn of the third century. Tatian of Adiabene in the mid-second century was also an infernalist, but he later converted from orthodox Christianity to Valentinian ‘gnosticism’ (perhaps unsurprising, seeing as infernalism lends itself to a kind of dualism).

    Another myth spread by some modern Christian infernalists is that universalism was a fringe view in the early church: it was believed by Origen (along with other strange views), and perhaps also by Gregory of Nyssa, but no other major church fathers. This is also false. As we’ve seen, the doctrine of universal restoration was accepted by many church fathers before and after Origen, and became the majority position of the Eastern church in the third and fourth centuries. Origen was the first one to systematize his theology, so his universalism was much more developed than any earlier Christian writer, but he was certainly not the only universalist, and his doctrine of universal restoration was very influential on the later church.

    Finally, I want to dispel the idea that I’ve proven in this series that two-thirds of the early church was universalist (see the list above). This study wasn’t comprehensive, since I was mainly focusing on the reception of the doctrine of universal restoration, and not the views of every writer in the early church on the ultimate fate of unbelievers. The list above isn’t intended to give the correct proportion of belief in universalism, annihilation/conditionalism, and infernalism in the early church, but to show that the universal restoration really was a popular doctrine in the first centuries of Christianity. In fact, the theological heroes of the first through sixth ecumenical councils (that is, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodore of Caesarea, and Maximus the Confessor) were probably all universalists. [2]

______________________________

[1] See my posts “The coming wrath: God’s kingdom at hand“ and “Reading Romans narratively (part 2)“; this is dealt with in much greater detail by N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (London: SPCK, 1996), 446–63; Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 737–72.

[2] The least certain of these is Cyril of Alexandria, who has statements that could be interpreted to support both universalism and infernalism. Theodore of Caesarea was both the ‘hero’ and ‘villain’ of the fifth ecumenical council, since his Christology was vindicated at the first session of this council and his ‘Origenism’ condemned at the second session.

The Restoration of All: Universalism in Early Christianity (part 10)

Late and Post-Patristic Universalism

    The patristic period is generally considered to have ended after John of Damascus (675–749), who was the last great patristic theologian. Although the Christian doctrine of universal restoration didn’t survive well in the period after Constantinople II, there were still some important proponents of this view from the seventh century onward. In my last post, we saw one such proponent (Maximus the Confessor). In this post, we’ll look at several more theologians from the late and post-patristic periods who had something to say about the universal restoration.

John of Damascus

    John of Damascus was a systematic theologian whose views were very influential on later Christianity, especially in the East. He was definitely not a universalist, since he says that repentance is impossible after death – people’s wills are simply unchangeable at that point (Contra Manichaeos [PG 94.1573]). His view of hell is similar to Maximus’, and became the predominant Eastern Orthodox view: God will be present to all people, and will bestow good things upon all of them (even the devil), but the wicked will perceive this as suffering since they desire evil and not good [PG 94.1569–70]. In his words, the wicked “suffer without being healed, without God making hell, but because we lay out hell for ourselves.”

    John Damascene’s views are relevant to the universal restoration because of his testimony about the meaning of the words aiōn and aiōnios:

It must be understood that the noun “aeon” is polysemic, for it denotes many things. The life of each man is called “aeon”; again, a period of a thousand years is called “aeon”; again, the whole present life is called “aeon,” and the future aeon, the endless one after the resurrection; and again, “aeon” is used to denote, not time nor a part of time, but that which is co-extensive with eternal things [tois aidiois], since what time is for temporal things is what “aeon” is for eternal things [aidiois]... God is spoken of as aeonian and pre-aeonian [proaiōnios], for the aeon is itself his creation... Further, aeonian life and aeonian punishment prove that the future aeon is endless. (De fide orth II.1)

This shows that as late as the eighth century, it was still an established fact that aiōn and aiōnios had many meanings and didn’t necessarily mean “eternal.” John actually presupposes that aeonian life and punishment are endless, and concludes from this that the future aeon is endless, rather than arguing the other way around.

Syriac Universalists

    The Church of the East split from the Chalcedonian church in the fifth century over the ‘Nestorian’ controversy, and never accepted Constantinople II’s condemnations of the “Three Chapters” and Origen. They venerated Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia as saints, both of whom were explicitly universalist and were condemned by the Chalcedonian church for allegedly ‘Nestorian’ Christology. For these reasons, the universal restoration was considered more acceptable to Syriac theologians than it was for Eastern Chalcedonians, let alone the Latin-speaking church. Even John of Dara, who was a Syriac dogmatic infernalist, fully admitted that the saints Diodore, Theodore, and Gregory of Nyssa believed in the universal restoration (On the Resurrection IV.21).

Isaac of Nineveh

    Isaac was the bishop of Nineveh from 676 to his death in ca. 700, and he is venerated as a saint by the Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and the Church of the East. Until 1983, we only had the First Part of his work, which is not explicitly universalist. It does describe the torments of Gehenna as “torments of love,” in that the sinners there are not deprived of God’s love, but experience it as torture (I.28); this is in line with Maximus’ and John Damascene’s views. He also says that we should not call God “just,” citing the parables of the vineyard and the prodigal son, and concluding, “Where then is God’s justice, for when we were sinners Christ died for us!” (I.51) We should understand Isaac to be speaking of retributive justice here, since he certainly accepts restorative punishment for sin.

    When his Second Part was discovered in 1983, it revealed that Isaac was an explicit universalist. He says that God’s love is equal for all his creatures, whether fallen or unfallen, saint or sinner (II.38; 40.1–3). God does not feel anger (a passion), nor exact retribution (II.39.2–3, 15–19), so even physical death was instituted as restorative, to transport us to the future world (II.39.4–5). Isaac is “of the opinion that [God] will manifest some wonderful outcome, a matter of immense and ineffable compassion” with regard to Gehenna, because “[i]t is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction for things of which he knew even before they were fashioned” (II.39.6). He cites Diodore and Theodore, “pillars of the church,” to show that this opinion is orthodox and not novel (II.39.7–14). Thus, he concludes,

That we should further say or think that [Gehenna] is not full of love and mingled with compassion would be an opinion full of blasphemy and insult to our Lord God. By saying that he will even hand us over to burning for the sake of sufferings, torment and all sorts of ills, we are attributing to the divine nature an enmity towards the very rational beings which he created through grace. The same is true if we say that he acts or thinks with spite and with a vengeful purpose, as though he was avenging himself. Among all his actions there is none which is not entirely a matter of mercy, love and compassion: this constitutes the beginning and the end of his dealings with us. (II.39.22)

    Isaac goes on to describe the final restoration. In this state, God will bring even demons and sinners “to a single equal state of perfection in relationship to his own Being, in a state in which the holy angels are now... they will be perfected in love for him” (II.40.4). Maybe this is even greater than the state that the angels are in now (II.40.5). “No part belonging to any one of the rational beings will be lost, as far as God is concerned, in the preparation of that heavenly kingdom which is prepared for all worlds” (II.40.7). Most humans will not even have to go to Gehenna, but those who do will be restored when they repent (II.40.8–17). Isaac continues that although Gehenna has a limit, it is the most terrible experience, so we should be careful to avoid laziness and develop virtue (II.41). This concludes his Second Part.

John of Dalyatha

    John of Dalyatha (ca. 690–780) was a monk and writer in the Church of the East, whose works were condemned as ‘Messalian’ (a trinitarian heresy) shortly after his death, but he was rehabilitated several decades later. He believed in future punishment in Gehenna, and expounds the view that hell will be precisely God himself, experienced by sinners as suffering (Letter 50.12–16). The unquenchable fire is Christ himself, who purifies us from iniquity (4.6; 15.2; cf. 10.2; 25.2; 29.2; 43.12; 51.2). John describes future beatitude as “without end,” but not future torment (47.2). In his letter 40, he seems to expound the universal restoration, when all beings, even those who are now immature, will be united and perfected by means of Jesus’ action. After contemplating Judgment and Providence, one realizes that there will be no distinction between righteous and sinner, “but Christ appears wholly in everyone” (49.9).

Solomon of Basra

    Solomon was the bishop of Basra in the first half of the 13th century, and he authored the Book of the Bee, which details the history of the world from creation to restoration. In the last chapter (60), he explains that there is one view of judgment which is terrifying and “well adapted to the simple-minded and transgressors of the law,” and another merciful view, which is “suitable and adapted to the perfect and those of settled minds and the pious.” In support of this second view, he quotes passages from Isaac of Nineveh, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Diodore of Tarsus. This shows that as late as the 13th century, at least some theologians in the Church of the East were still aware of the doctrine of universal restoration and supported it.

John Scotus Eriugena

    John Scotus Eriugena (“the Irish-born”) was a ninth-century theologian who served as head of the Carolingian palace school in France from ca. 850 to his death in ca. 880. His magnum opus was the Periphyseon (“On the Division of Nature”), a work of metaphysics which attempted to synthesize Scripture and the teachings of the church fathers (mainly Origen, the Cappadocians, Ambrose, Ps.-Dionysius, and Augustine) into a coherent framework. Before this, however, he was commissioned by Hincmar of Reims to write a treatise on divine predestination in 850, to counter the monk Gottschalk, who was spreading the view of double predestination (that God predestines both the righteous and wicked to their fates).

    Eriugena’s main arguments against double predestination rest on divine simplicity, which means that God cannot have two separate ‘predestinations’ (De div praed 1.4–3.1), and the ontological non-subsistence of evil, which God did not create, so he can’t be said to have predestined evil (3.2–3; 10.2–5). All evil comes from rational creatures exercising their free will, which humans have essentially at all times, even after the fall (4.6–8.9). Thus, God only has one predestination, by which he predestines the righteous to glory (4.1–5; 11.3–7). Moreover, since God exists beyond time, any talk of him ‘predestining’ or ‘foreknowing’ events is only by metaphor (9). As for punishment, the substance of creatures is good and won’t, indeed can’t, be punished; only the evil wills shall be punished, and they will be punished precisely by their sins (16). The wicked will lack no perfection of nature, only the happiness that comes from grace (19.1–3).

    In his De divina praedestinatione, Eriugena relies primarily on Augustine and Gregory the Great, not any of the Eastern fathers. His Periphyseon shows a much greater reliance on the Eastern church fathers, especially Origen, the Cappadocians, Ambrose, Maximus the Confessor, and Ps.-Dionysius. (Between these two works, he translated some writings of Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus, and Ps.-Dionysius into Latin.) The Periphyseon is divided into four parts, corresponding to the four divisions of nature: Book I on that which is not created and creates (God as Beginning); Book II on that which is created and creates (the primordial Causes/Forms); Books III–IV on that which is created and does not create (the corporeal world); and Book V on that which is not created and does not create (God as End).

    Eriugena argues for an extremely apophatic theology, relying primarily on Ps.-Dionysius (Periphyseon I:451C–524B; II:586C–98A). Nothing can be properly predicated of God except by metaphor; all we can properly say is that God is beyond substance, beyond power, beyond eternity, and so on. The “nothing” from which the universe was created is the superabundant Nothingness of God – not that he lacks anything but that he is beyond any definition (III:680C–88A). Eriugena’s concern for reconciling the Latin and Greek fathers can be seen in his treatment of the filioque, where he attempts to synthesize the conflicting teachings of the church fathers (II:601B–14B).

    Eriugena continues to hold that evil is ontologically non-subsistent, and sin exists only in the will as a privation of good (IV:826A–29B). He quotes Gregory of Nyssa to support the impossibility of anyone resting in evil, and the necessity of eventually turning toward the Good (V:917A–19D). Eriugena’s metaphysics entail the return of all things into their Causes, which means that God is both the Beginning and End of everything (V:867B–72A). According to Maximus, nature is divided in five ways: (1) the division between God and creation, (2) between the sensible and intelligible creation, (3) between heaven and earth, (4) between Paradise and the existing globe, and (5) the division of the human being between male and female due to sin (II:529C–31A; V:893B). These divisions will be undone in the restoration (V:876AB), thanks to Christ’s incarnation and ascension (II:531C–539C). [1] Our bodies and the sensible creation won’t cease to exist, but will be transformed into something greater: the Causes from which they came (II:590BC; V:876B–85B).

    Eriugena is clear that the whole human nature, meaning every individual human nature, will be restored, because Christ assumed the whole human nature in his incarnation (V:921B–22C). And since, as Maximus says, humanity is a microcosm of the entire universe (containing both material and spiritual nature) – “by the incarnation of the Son of God every creature in heaven and on earth was saved” (V:910D–13B; cf. IV:763–86C). He quotes Origen and Gregory of Nyssa to support the restoration of the whole humanity, and concludes regarding the wicked, “their eternal damnation will consist in the total abolition of their wickedness and impiety” (V:922C–23D). Later on he cites many Scripture passages that he interprets to support the universal restoration of humanity (V:1001A–06A). Even the substance of the demons, including the devil, is good and will be restored – on this point he cites Origen, Ambrose, and Ps.-Dionysius – thus “only nature will rise again; evil and wickedness will perish in eternal damnation” (V:927B–35B).

    However, not all will be restored to the same station. There is a difference between nature and grace (examined in V:902D–06C), and although God must restore all beings by nature to their Causes, he only brings some to the height of deification by grace. At the end of the Periphyseon, Eriugena interprets the parable of the ten virgins (Matt. 25:1–13) to refer to the restoration; all will be restored, but only some (represented by the five wise virgins) will be deified, thus “all... shall return to Paradise, but not all shall enjoy the Tree of Life [which is Christ] – or rather, all shall receive of the Tree of Life, but not all equally” (V:1011A–18D). This would have been the case even if humanity had not sinned; just as God created different classes of angels, he created the elect and non-elect humans by grace (V:1012C–15C). But evil and wickedness will most certainly be destroyed, as Eriugena repeats over and over again:

[R]ight reason shows that nothing contrary to the Divine Goodness and Life and Blessedness can be coeternal therewith. For the Divine Goodness shall consume evil, eternal Life shall swallow up death, Blessedness shall absorb unhappiness. (Periphyseon V:926D)

In this argument against the eternity of evil and torment, Eriugena adopts precisely Origen’s argument against the coeternity of life and death (Comm in Rom V.7.8).

    Even so, Eriugena seems to affirm the reality of eternal punishment in one section of the Periphyseon. The torment of the wicked will consist in the fact that although they desire evil, evil will no longer exist anywhere (V:935B–38B). Thus, what is punished is not the nature of the wicked, but their perverted will (V:938B–48D). But how can these punishments be eternal if evil can’t be eternal? The phantasies of the wicked, which lead them to desire evil, are in themselves good, and so can be eternal (V:961C–64A). Eriugena doesn’t answer how anyone could continue to desire evil when wickedness has been completely purged from them. Furthermore, his claim that anyone will be eternally unhappy – rather than simply happy to a lesser degree than the elect, as he suggests elsewhere (see above) – seems to directly contradict his argument that unhappiness can’t be coeternal with blessedness.

    It’s possible that these statements are merely a nod to Augustine, and Eriugena didn’t actually believe in eternal unhappiness. He does suggestively mention that “many” believe suffering will not be coeternal with blessedness, even though the Scriptural statements about everlasting fire “seem to be against them” (II:543B). Whether or not Eriugena was actually a universalist, or an infernalist who inconsistently believed in the universal restoration, his attempted synthesis of the Augustinian and Origenian traditions is very relevant to our study. It’s interesting that in the ninth century, a respected theologian like Eriugena could speak of “the blessed Origen... the great Origen, that most diligent enquirer into the nature of things” (V:922C; 929A).

Later Universalists

    Eriugena can be considered the last patristic supporter of universal restoration. After him, the Origenian tradition died off, until its resurgence in the seventeenth century among the Cambridge Platonists. [2] However, non-Origenian universalism existed on the fringes of Christianity throughout the medieval period. [3] Aelfric of Eynsham, a prolific writer from tenth-century England, testifies in his homily On the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin (184–186) that certain “heretics” believe Mary and the saints will intercede for and harrow the sinners from the devil. The eleventh-century bishop Theophylact of Ochrid, in his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:28, says that “some” interpret this verse to refer to “the elimination of evilness, because God will be ‘all in all’ clearly once sin has ceased to exist.”

    Amalric of Bena was a teacher of philosophy and theology at the University of Paris in the second half of the twelfth century. Amalric’s actual views are unclear, because his writings have not survived, but he was forced by the Catholic Church to recant his views in 1206, and his views along with the views of Joachim of Fiore were condemned at the 1215 Lateran Council. The followers of both Joachim and Amalric believed that they were on the cusp of the “Age of the Holy Spirit” which would be a utopia for humanity. The Amalricians also had a pantheistic tendency, as they claimed that “God is all things” and “all things are One, because whatever exists is God.” Amalric was influenced by Eriugena’s Periphyseon, which was subsequently condemned in 1225 by Pope Honorius III.

    Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) was a theologian, philosopher, and mystic of the Dominican Order. His anthropology and view of the incarnation were influenced by Origen, whom he quotes about fifty times throughout his writings. [4] He was also influenced in his theology by Ps.-Dionysius. Eckhart never develops a clear theory of universal restoration, but his view of hell is that “nothing” burns there, that is, the nothingness of evil which is a privation, and there torments the soul (Sermon 13b). The pain of hell is being separated from God, and to be separated from him even for an instant is to be separated forever (57). But even in hell the soul is inclined toward goodness (32ab), and those in hell retain the “nobility of nature” and existence, so those in hell would not desire to cease to exist (2; 23; 32b; 65; 84; 89). Eckhart cites Origen to say that the seed of goodness that God plants in each being can never be destroyed, and always inclines toward God (The Nobleman).

    Julian of Norwich (1343–1416) was an influential mystic, who came down with the plague in ca. 1373 and had sixteen visions of Christ. In her thirteenth vision, she questions why God didn’t prevent sin from happening in the first place, since then “all should have been well.” Christ answers: “It was necessary that there should be sin, but all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.” Julian then sees that sin “has no manner of substance nor any part of being, nor could it be known except by the pain that it causes.” She then considers that she is required to believe in “hell without end” by the Church, and thinks that it is impossible for all manner of things to be well. God responds, “What seems impossible to you is not impossible to me: I will save my word in all things, and I will make all manner of things well.” Like Eckhart, Julian never develops a clear theory of universal restoration, but her views point in that direction.

    Christian universalism saw a resurgence among some thinkers in the Radical Reformation, from the sixteenth century onward. [5] The clearest universalist thinker was Gerrard Winstanley, the leader of the Diggers, a dissident religious group in seventeenth-century England that can be reasonably regarded as proto-socialist and proto-anarchist. [6] Winstanley believed that “everything that is in or about the Creature that is of God will stand; but everything that is in or from the Creature that is not of God will fall and perish” (The mysterie of God 20–21). The purpose of hell is that “the Serpent [i.e., the corrupt will] only shall perish, and God will not lose a hair that he made, he will redeem his whole creation from death” (47). In the consummation of creation, God will

take up all his Creation, Mankind, into himself, and will become the only, endless, pure, absolute, and infinite being, even infinitely forever all in all, in every one, and in the whole, that no flesh may glory in itself, but in the Lord only. (13)

Winstanley’s universalism takes an extreme view of the restoration, in which humanity will be “taken up into the Being of God” (18), reminiscent of the radical ‘Origenism’ of the sixth century. As I mentioned earlier, some of the seventeenth-century Cambridge Platonists held to a less radical, more authentically Origenian view of the universal restoration. [2]

Conclusion

    Although the doctrine of universal restoration largely died off after the condemnation of ‘Origenism’ in the sixth century, this view survived among some Christian thinkers over the next millennium. In the Church of the East, where Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia were known as universalists and still venerated, universalism was considered a respectable view into the second millennium, and was supported by Isaac of Nineveh, John of Dalyatha, and Solomon of Basra. The Latin theologian John Scotus Eriugena was a proponent of the universal restoration, although it's uncertain whether he was a universalist or infernalist. Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich, two medieval theologians and mystics, may have supported the universal restoration.

______________________________

[1] Eriugena believed that the distinction between God and creation would only be undone in the elect, who would be deified by grace. This deification won’t entail the elect transforming into the substance of God, but as Eriugena repeats over and over again, “like air into light.” The elect will become totally ‘transparent’ to God so that in them only God can be seen, just as air is transparent to light.

[2] Christian Hengstermann, “Pre-existence and universal salvation – the Origenian renaissance in early modern Cambridge,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 25 (2017): 971–89.

[3] Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Norwich (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 197–210.

[4] Elisabeth Boncour, “Maître Eckhart, lecteur d’Origène,” PhD diss., (Paris, 2014).

[5] Robin Parry and Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019), 11–69.

[6] Interestingly, I’ve found that Christian universalism and anarchism have been linked in many key thinkers, from Gregory of Nyssa, to the Diggers, to Jacques Ellul and David Bentley Hart in the modern day (along with myself).

The Restoration of All: Universalism in Early Christianity (part 9)

The Condemnation of ‘Origenism’

    In the last post, we looked at the doctrine of universal restoration throughout the first Origenist controversy and afterward. Although this doctrine wasn’t the main focus of the controversy, it became less popular as a result, due to its association with Origen. In this post, we’ll look at the resurgence of ‘Origenism’ in the sixth century, its condemnation by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I and the Council of Constantinople in 553, and especially the reception of the doctrine of universal restoration before and after these events. 

Palestinian ‘Origenists’

    Origenian and ‘Origenist’ thought saw a resurgence in Syria and Palestine around the turn of the sixth century, along with belief in the universal restoration. For example, John of Caesarea, an important neo-Chalcedonian theologian in the early sixth century, supported this doctrine in his polemic against the Manichaeans: there he argues that evil is no substance, and punishment is intended to reform sinners, so that eventually evil will cease (Syll 1; 3; 5; 10). [1] His fellow neo-Chalcedonian Leontius of Byzantium, on the other hand, seems to have opposed the doctrine of universal restoration (e.g., Con Nest et Eut 3), although he was an Origenian thinker in other respects (and was actually expelled from his monastery at one point for alleged ‘Origenism’). [2]

    Severus, the Syrian miaphysite bishop of Antioch (512–518) and the Christological opponent of John of Caesarea, also opposed universalism, to which end he cites Matthew 25:46, along with the disputed passage from Basil’s Regulae and several other passages from Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria that he believes to support endless punishment (Letter 98). Philoxenus of Mabbug (d. 523), another Syrian miaphysite theologian, may have been a supporter of the universal restoration. [3] Philoxenus conceived of the restoration (universal or not) principally as a unity between God and creation, which will involve the disappearance of material bodies. This puts him squarely within the Evagrian school of thought on the restoration (even though he opposed to most radical ‘Origenism’ of bar Sudayli – see below).

    Aeneas of Gaza was a Neoplatonist philosopher who converted to Christianity in the early sixth century. After his conversion, he wrote against certain Neoplatonist doctrines that he viewed as incompatible with Christianity, which were also associated with ‘Origenism’. He especially refutes the ideas of preexistence and transmigration of souls (Theophrastus 13.1–36.3), along with the non-bodily resurrection, or the idea that the resurrection body will be “luminous, airy, or oyster-like” (51.25–61.19). Rather, we will be resurrected with the same body, which will be made “pure, light, and immortal” (54.15–60.3). The bodies of the wicked will be made fit for punishment in the resurrection, according to what is deserved by the person’s actions on earth (35.26–36.3; 61.5–9).

    For Aeneas, the purpose of punishment is to restore those who rebel against the Creator, by exposing the weakness of their rebellion and eventually destroying it, restoring the former rebels; this is “an exhibition of the power, justice, gentleness, and love of humanity of the Creator” (50.20–51.12). Even physical death was instituted so that “wickedness could be eradicated and [the soul] could find punishment for itself” (60.1–3; cf. 51.2–9), an idea which is first found in Theophilus of Antioch and Origen. Thus, in the end, every creature will be restored and made immortal, not just humanity but the whole universe (51.21–24). This will take place when God wishes it, and absolutely everything will exist in unity and harmony, according to the will of the Creator (43.10–19). Aeneas of Gaza’s view seems to be a recovery of genuine Origenian thought, in contrast to the ‘Origenism’ of the time.

Pseudo-Hierotheus and Pseudo-Dionysius

    The most radically ‘Origenist’ thinker of this period was Stephen bar Sudayli, a Syriac Christian mystic and monk. He left his hometown of Edessa in the early sixth century for Jerusalem, where ‘Origenism’ was considered more acceptable. Bar Sudayli was an overt supporter of the universal restoration. He was most likely the author of the Book of Hierotheus, which purports to be written by Hierotheus – a student of Paul, the first bishop of Athens, and the teacher of Dionysius the Areopagite (Acts 17:34). The end of this book deals with the eschatological restoration:

Then know this, my son, that the nature of all is destined to be commingled in the Father; nothing perishes or is annihilated; all returns, all is sanctified, all is made One, all is commingled, and the word is fulfilled which was said, “God will be all in all.” Even hell passes away and the damned return. Orders that are above pass away, and distinctions that are below are abolished, and all becomes One Thing: for even God [the Father] will pass away, and Christ will be done away, and the Spirit shall no longer be called Spirit, for names pass away and not essence. For if distinctions will pass away, who will call whom? And who, on the other hand, will answer whom? For One neither names nor is named. This is the limit of all and the end of everything; and take heed. (Book of Hierotheus V.2)

Whether or not this was written by Stephen bar Sudayli, this is the same view that is attributed to him in the Letter to Abraham and Orestes. This letter, written by Philoxenus of Mabbug against Stephen’s views, attributes to him the view that there will be no judgment, so that all will receive the same retribution followed by the same honor (!), and that everything will become consubstantial and identical with God, so that even distinctions between divine persons are lost. Philoxenus was himself an ‘Origenist’, but these views are far too radical for him.

    A related theologian from this period is the author of the Corpus Areopagiticum, a group of texts which purport to be written by Paul’s Athenian convert Dionysius the Areopagite. These texts were most likely written shortly after, and influenced by, the Book of Hierotheus. [4] The author, who is commonly referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius, speaks of Hierotheus as his teacher and highly praises him (Divine Names III.2). This author was a Christian Neoplatonist philosopher, most likely based in Syria, and he extensively paraphrases the Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus throughout his works, especially on the topic of the ontological non-subsistence of evil (DN IV.18–35). At the beginning of his treatise on divine names, he seems to relate the Neoplatonist concept of emanation-and-return (epistrophē) of all beings to the Christian concept of creation-and-restoration:

The Cause of all is, according to the saying, “all in all,” and truly must be praised as the Giver of existence to all, the Originator of all beings, who perfects all [teleiōtikē], holding them together and protecting them; their shrine, which has them all return [epistreptikē] to itself, and this in a uniform, irresistible, and preeminent way. (DN I.7)

Ps.-Dionysius relates the return of all beings to their “perfection,” which he elsewhere relates to the removal of ignorance and turning toward the true Being and Good, that is, God (DN IV.6). He also speaks of this cyclical view of emanation/creation-and-return/restoration of all things in his section on God as “the Good,” which he bolsters with a quote from ‘Hierotheus,’ which may actually be a paraphrase from Origen’s commentary on the Song of Songs (DN IV.14–17). [5] He goes on to prove that evil is not a substance nor in a substance, but is rather a privation, and therefore “unstable”; even the demons are good in their essence, and evil only in their wills (DN IV.18–35).

    Ps.-Dionysius insists on future punishment and that such punishment is just, because creatures have freedom of choice (DN IV.35; Ecclesiastical Hierarchy VII.3.1–3). However, he doesn’t describe such punishment as eternal or endless. [6] He is aware that aiōn and aiōnios do not strictly refer to eternity or endlessness. As he recognizes in his discussion of God’s name “Ancient of days,” aiōnios can refer to things that are strictly without beginning and without end, or to things that are only without end, or to things that seem to be without end, or to ancient things, or to the duration of our time and aeon; therefore, “one must not consider the things called ‘aeonian’ to be co-eternal with God, who is prior to every aeon” (DN X.3).

    Ps.-Dionysius conceives of the restoration as a state in which, “when our many distinctions [heterotētas] are folded up in a supermundane manner, we are collected into a God-like monad and God-imitating union [henōsin]” (DN I.4). Likewise, at the beginning of his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he states that God “elevates us, folds up our many distinctions, and... perfects us into a onelike [henoeidē] and divine life, habit, and activity”; in this way “we shall be able to become offerings and offerers, luminating and divine-workers, perfected and perfecting” (EH I.1). The one who is himself both offering and offerer, and divine-worker, and perfecter, is Christ (EH IV.3.12), so this implies a kind of identity with Christ. However, in both passages Ps.-Dionysius says that this will be “according to our power” (DN I.4; EH I.1), which implies that personal identities will remain in the restoration; thus, his ‘Origenism’ was less radical than Ps.-Hierotheus.

    The Corpus Areopagiticum was incredibly influential on later theologians, such as John of Damascus and Thomas Aquinas, both of whom quote from this corpus extensively. Ps.-Dionysius’ negative or apophatic theology had a large impact on later Eastern Christian thinking. This raises the question, how did he have such influence on Christian theology after his ‘Origenism’ was condemned? First, the Greek text of his corpus was likely altered to make it more orthodox. The earlier, Syriac translation of his work by Sergius of Reshaina is more explicitly ‘Origenist’ than the surviving Greek text. [7] Moreover, his expressions of ‘Origenism’ are clothed in philosophical language that could be reinterpreted by later anti-‘Origenist’ authors. Even so, the fact remains that one of the most influential Eastern theologians was an ‘Origenist’ and universalist.

Theodore of Caesarea

    Another prominent ‘Origenist’ from this period was Theodore of Caesarea, also known as Theodore “the Wine-Sack” (askidas). He was a monk from the New Lavra community in Palestine, who became bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia around 536, and from then on until 553 was the primary religious adviser to the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. [8] According to the anti-‘Origenist’ church historian, Cyril of Scythopolis, he was so influential on Justinian that he “held in his hands the affairs of the state” (Vita Sabae 89). He was a proponent of neo-Chalcedonian Christology, and his influence resulted in the official acceptance of this view at the Council of Constantinople II.

    Theodore belonged to the Isochrist faction of ‘Origenists’ – those who believed that, in the restoration, all rational beings would become equal to Christ’s created nature – as opposed to the Protoctists, those who believed that Christ’s created nature has an ontological priority over all others. (Ps.-Dionysius probably belonged to the Protoctist faction. [7]) This intra-‘Origenist’ dispute was a Christological one: the Isochrists accused the Protoctists of being ‘Nestorians,’ due to their overemphasis on Christ’s created nature, while the Protoctists accused the Isochrists of teaching the equality of the saints with Christ.

    The Questions and Answers of Caesarius, a work which claims to be written by Gregory of Nazianzus’ brother Caesarius, was most likely authored by Theodore of Caesarea. [9] This book repeatedly condemns Origen himself, which indicates that it was written after Justinian’s condemnation of Origen in 543, but it presents a consistently ‘Origenist’ protology, cosmology, and eschatology. [10] Ps.-Caesarius cryptically speaks of the creation of rational beings as a unified substance, which fell resulting in the material world and bodies; but when we are perfected we will “put off the tunic of matter, which is full of passions.” Following Origen and Evagrius, Ps.-Caesarius interprets Romans 11:25–26 (and 1 Cor 15:28) to refer, not to the salvation of the Jewish people, but to the restoration and subjection of all people (126; 217). [11] He refers to Christ’s incarnation as a “hook” intended to deceive the devil (represented as a sea dragon) and save people, eventually including the Dragon himself (133); this precise metaphor was developed by Gregory of Nyssa to expound his own universalism (Cat Orat 24; 26).

    In summary, far from being a marginal group within sixth-century Christianity, ‘Origenism’ was actually rather influential among theologians during this period. Two of the most influential Eastern theologians of the sixth century – Ps.-Dionysius and Theodore of Caesarea, who greatly impacted later theology and Christology – were themselves ‘Origenists’ who belonged to opposing factions (the Protoctists and Isochrists respectively). Furthermore, alongside the more radical ‘Origenist’ view, there existed some strands of authentic Origenian thought (represented by Aeneas of Gaza and possibly John of Caesarea).

Justinian and Constantinople II

    The floruit of ‘Origenism’ took place before and toward the beginning of the reign of Justinian I (527–565). He was concerned with uniting and centralizing the Roman Empire under him, both politically and religiously. Justinian was very concerned about ‘Origenism’ as both a heresy and a destabilizing force, even though his closest religious adviser, Theodore of Caesarea, was an ‘Origenist’ (and may have kept his views under wraps for this reason). At the Synod of Constantinople in 543, he condemned both Origen himself and ‘Origenism’, including the views that the soul preexisted the body (anathemas 1–3), that the resurrection body is spherical (5), and that Christ will be crucified again for demons (8). The final, ninth anathema deals with the universal restoration:

If anyone says or holds that the punishment of demons and impious human beings is temporary and that it will have an end at some time, and that there will be a restoration of demons and impious human beings, let him be anathema.

Whereas the anti-‘Origenists’ of the first controversy (Epiphanius, Theophilus of Alexandria, and Jerome) were primarily concerned about the restoration of the devil, Justinian is concerned about the restoration of demons and “impious” humans (cf. Jerome, Dial adv Pelag I.26).

    In his letter to Menas, patriarch of Constantinople, which accompanied these anathemas, he provides a few arguments against the universal restoration [PG 86.975]: it will make people lazy (this concern was shared by Origen himself, who thought that the doctrine shouldn’t be taught to the masses); it contradicts Jesus’ teaching in Matt 25:41, 46 that both heaven and hell are aeonian (this Augustinian argument was already refuted by Origen in Comm in Rom V.7.8); it makes Christ’s crucifixion worthless (not true of the authentic Origenian doctrine, nor probably ‘Origenism,’ which are both centered around Christ’s incarnation and death); and it gives sinners and saints the same reward (this concern was shared by some patristic universalists, such as Jerome in his Origenian phase).

    After Origen’s condemnation by Justinian, Theodore of Caesarea sought to also condemn some writings he viewed as ‘Nestorian’. These came to be known as the “Three Chapters”: the person and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus, and the letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris. Theodore’s crusade against the “Three Chapters” may have been, as Facundus of Hermiane suggests, a kind of ‘revenge’ against the condemnation of Origen; more likely, it had to do with the intra-‘Origenist’ feud between the Isochrists and Protoctists. Theodore of Caesarea, as an Isochrist, would have been concerned about any overemphasis on Christ’s created nature, which he saw as ‘Nestorian’.

    Theodore succeeded in getting his condemnation against the “Three Chapters,” since Justinian called an ecumenical council in 553 for this purpose (the Council of Constantinople II). However, in what may have been a political move by the emperor, a later session of this council examined Theodore himself and condemned his ‘Origenism’. [12] The fifteen anti-‘Origenist’ anathemas, which may or may not have been officially promulgated at Constantinople II, reveal exactly what was condemned:

If anyone advocates the mythical pre-existence of souls and the monstrous restoration that follows from this, let him be anathema. (anathema 1)

What was condemned here was not the universal restoration as such, but the concept of restoration to a bodiless state, which was propounded by Evagrius and sixth-century ‘Origenists’.

    The anathemas go on to condemn the view that rational beings first existed as a henad without numbers or names (2), that bodies after the resurrection are aethereal and spherical (10), that the judgment will result in disappearance of bodies (11), that all rational beings will be united to God in the same way that Christ is (12), that there will be no difference between rational beings (13) and all rational beings will form a henad (14), so that the end is identical to the beginning (15). These anathemas are focused against ‘Origenism’, and especially Theodore of Caesarea’s Isochrist faction (see anathema 12), although 13 and 14 also apply to Ps.-Dionysius’ view that distinctions will fold away and rational beings will form a monad and henad.

    The eleventh canon of Constantinople II officially anathematizes “Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinarius, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen... who have already been condemned and anathematized by the holy, catholic and apostolic church and by the four holy [ecumenical] synods”. However, as Ramelli argues, Origen’s name may not even be original to the text of the canons. [13] The other heretics are listed in chronological order, are Christological heretics, and were actually condemned at the four previous ecumenical councils. Origen fits none of this pattern, which suggests that his name is an interpolation. Even if the council did condemn him, however, the doctrines it condemns have nothing to do with his authentic thought, only the later ‘Origenism’ which was wrongly associated with him.

Maximus the Confessor

    The fifth ecumenical council didn’t condemn the universal restoration as such, but Justinian’s influence and the death of ‘Origenism’ resulted in the loss of this doctrine, for the most part, in the East (just as Augustine’s influence did earlier in the West). However, Maximus the Confessor – an influential seventh-century theologian (d. 662) – was most likely a proponent of the universal restoration. Maximus is best known for his role in the monothelite controversy, where he supported the dyothelite position (that Christ has a divine and a human will) and was actually persecuted for this. He was vindicated by the sixth ecumenical council, the Council of Constantinople III in 680–1, which condemned monothelitism as a Christological heresy.

    Maximus was a critic of both radical ‘Origenism’ and radical anti-‘Origenism’. [14] In his Ambigua, where he interprets difficult passages from Ps.-Dionysius and Gregory of Nazianzus, he comments on Gregory’s statement that we “are a portion of God that has flowed down from above,” and refutes the ‘Origenist’ interpretation that this refers to the preexistence of souls in a divine henad (Amb 7 [PG 91.1068–1101]). Our souls did not preexist; what ‘preexisted,’ in a sense, was the logoi, God’s purposes for his creatures, which existed within the Logos prior to creation [PG 91.1077–80]. This, and not the ‘Origenist’ myth of preexistence, was Origen’s actual view. [15] If a being moves in accordance with its logos (God’s purpose for it), it finds rest in God [PG 91.1080–81]. Maximus also criticizes the view that bodies will pass away into non-being after the restoration in Ambiguum 42.

    In a few places, Maximus speaks of an interpretation that he knows of, but which he will not divulge for the sake of beginners. When he talks about Christ’s victory over evil, he says that there is a “more mystical and sublime interpretation... [which] must not be committed to writing” (Ad Thal 21.8). When he comments on the “eternal chains” of fallen angels in Jude 6, he says that this might mean they will never achieve divine rest, or that they are restrained from doing evil to us now, and the fate of these fallen angels is known only to God (Ad Thal 11.3). In his comments on Luke 3:6 (“all flesh will see God’s salvation”), he says that this means “faithful flesh,” but hints at a “loftier contemplation” which relates to God becoming “all in all” in order to “save all” (Ad Thal 47.8). In his interpretation of the two trees in the garden of Eden, he says that there is another interpretation which should only be divulged to advanced believers (Ad Thal 43.2). He refers to the same in his comments on Adam’s pre-fallen state (Amb 45 [PG 91.1356]).

    Maximus believed in the ontological non-subsistence of evil (e.g., Amb 20; 45 [PG 91.1237, 1332]), and that the choice of evil is the result of ignorance (Ad Thal 16.5). It is impossible for any being to rest, that is, cease from motion, in evil (Amb 15 [PG 91.1217–20]). Thus, it’s unsurprising that he conceives of the restoration as one in which evil will cease:

The third meaning [of “restoration”] is used by Gregory of Nyssa to refer to the powers of the soul that had been corrupted by sin and then are restored to their natural state...  the powers of the soul that have been led astray will, in the duration of the aeons, shed all imprints of evil clinging to them. After passing through all aeons without finding rest, they reach God, who is without limit. Thus, by full knowledge [of God], not by participating in good things, it will recover its powers and be restored to its original state, so that the Creator will be revealed as not being responsible for sin. (Q et Dub 19)

    This passage doesn’t explicitly describe the restoration as universal, but it’s a holistic interpretation of restoration which Maximus draws directly from Gregory of Nyssa. In other passages, he does speak of the restoration of the whole human nature and bringing it to harmony within itself (Or dom I.82; Myst 19, 24; In Ps 59). Given his metaphysics of universals, in which universals only subsist in their particulars (Amb 41 [PG 91.1312]), the whole human nature could only participate in God if every individual human does. Indeed, later in the same passage Maximus says that God will unite every particular to its universal (PG 91.1313; cf. Ad Thal 2). [16] Perhaps his most universalistic passage is found toward the end of his Ambiguum 7:

The Godhead will really be “all in all,” [1 Cor 15:28] embracing all and giving substance to all in itself, in that no being will have any movement separate from it and nobody will be deprived of its presence. Thanks to this presence, we will be, and will be called, gods and children, body and limbs, because we shall be restored to the perfection of God’s project. [PG 91.1092]

    This aligns with his interpretation of 1 Cor 15:24–28 elsewhere: the subjection there is a voluntary one [PG 91.1076–77], and the last enemy, death, is destroyed when we submit our will to God (Q et Dub 21). It’s significant that this comes at the end of his anti-‘Origenist’ passage; he rejects the mythology of the preexistence of souls and disappearance of bodies, but supports the universal restoration. As Maximus says elsewhere, “divinization will be present in actuality to all, transforming all human beings into the divine likeness, in a manner proportionate to each, to the extent that each one is receptive of it” (Ad Thal 59.11; cf. Amb 47 [PG 91.1357–61]). Thus, personal distinctions will remain when all are divinized, contrary to some radical ‘Origenists’.

    Maximus certainly believed in future punishment in hell, and described it not only as aiōnios, but also apeiros (“unlimited”) and ateleutētos (“unending”) on occasion (although never as aidios, “eternal,” which he did use to describe future life). His fearsome hell passages can be explained by the fact that, in his view, “beginners” are motivated primarily by the fear of hell, whereas the “advanced” and “perfect” are motivated by love, not threats (Cap theol II.9; Myst 1060–70; cf. Ad Thal 10). In fact, he interprets “the fire of judgment” as one that consumes sin in sinners, while resulting in repentance and salvation for the human being (Q et Dub 159). In the parable of wheat and tares, the wheat are “the good things God planted in beings,” which means that the tares are evilness, and they will be completely burned away when “all the aeons have reached their appointed limit” (Amb 46 [PG 91.1357]).

    According to Maximus’ view of hell, when Christ returns, God will unite to all people, but those who act contrary to nature will experience this as suffering (Ad Thal 59.8). The wicked “will be like a part of the body utterly bereft of the soul’s vital energy” (Ad Thal 61.13–15). Maximus’ most difficult hell passage is found in his Ambiguum 65:

If, then, voluntary activity makes use of the potential of nature, either according to nature or against nature, it will receive nature’s limit of either well-being or ill-being – and this is always-being [aei einai], in which the souls celebrate their Sabbath, receiving cessation from all motion... to those who have willfully used the principle [logos] of their being contrary to nature, [God] rightly renders not well-being but always-ill-being [to kakos aei ainai], since well-being is no longer accessible to those who have placed themselves in opposition to it, and they have absolutely no motion after the manifestation of what was sought [PG 91.1392]

Maximus seems to say that it will be possible for beings to eternally rest in evil, if they use their logos contrary to nature. This would contradict his earlier statement that no being can rest in evil (Amb 15), along with his other universalist statements. Instead of concluding that his eschatology is irreconcilably contradictory, I think we should view his statement about “eternal ill-being” as a mere logical possibility, not something that will actually be realized. After all, he says elsewhere that because of Christ’s death, all movements contrary to God will cease, so that “in this restoration, not even one of the logoi of creatures will be found falsified” (Ad Thal 63.19).

    In summary, Maximus was one of the last patristic universalists – not an ‘Origenist,’ but a proponent of the Origenian universal restoration in all its key aspects (ontological non-subsistence of evil, restorative future punishment, concern about ‘honorable silence’). At his trial, he was actually accused of ‘Origenism’ in response to which he condemned Origen. He most likely knew of the universal restoration, not from the writings of Origen himself, but through the Cappadocians and Ps.-Dionysius who were deeply influenced by Origen. The fact that Maximus was nevertheless a prominent saint, a confessor who was tortured and died for his belief and was vindicated at an ecumenical council, shows that the universal restoration as such was not condemned at Constantinople II (only in its ‘Origenist’ form).

Conclusion

    Over a century after the first Origenist controversy, there was a resurgence of Origenian and more radical ‘Origenist’ thought, especially in Palestine. The radicalized ‘Origenism’ of some Palestinian monks caught the attention of the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, who believed that this set of doctrines was the authentic teaching of Origen, and took it upon himself to condemn both him and them. The Council of Constantinople (II) in 553, which was convened primarily to condemn suspected ‘Nestorian’ writings (known as the Three Chapters), likely also condemned ‘Origenism’ and possibly Origen himself. However, the doctrine of universal restoration per se was not condemned, and one prominent saint after this council – Maximus the Confessor – was himself a reticent universalist.

______________________________

[1] Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 187; Ilaria Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 721–22.

[2] Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 187.

[3] Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 690; but see Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 176–77.

[4] Nicolò Sassi, “The Corpus Areopagiticum and the Book of the Holy Hierotheos,” Orientala Christiana Analecta 307 (2019), 197–217.

[5] Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 702–04.

[6] The Greek text of EH VII.3.3 refers to the threatened punishment of the wicked as “endless impiety” (anierois ateleutētous), but describes this as a threat intended to be profitable for them, to bring them to “the perfection in Christ” (tēn en Christō teleiōsin), which according to DN I.7 will be experienced by all.

[7] For examples, see István Perczel, “Pseudo-Dionysius and Palestinian Origenism,” Orientala Christiana Analecta 98 (2001), 267–78.

[8] István Perczel, “Clandestine Heresy and Politics in Sixth-Century Constantinople: Theodore of Caesarea at the Court of Justinian,” in New Themes, New Styles in the Eastern Mediterranean (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 138–45.

[9] István Perczel, “Finding a Place for the Erotapokriseis of Pseudo-Caesarius: A New Document of Sixth-Century Palestinian Origenism,” ARAM 18 (2006): 49–83.

[10] István Perczel, “Pre-Existence and the Creation of the World in Pseudo-Caesarius,” in Questioning the World: Greek Patristic and Byzantine Question-and-Answer Literature (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 311–60.

[11] István Perczel, “Universal Salvation as an Antidote to Apocalyptic Expectations: Origenism in the Service of Justinian’s Religious Politics,” in Apocalypticism and Eschatology in Late Antiquity (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 132–40.

[12] Perczel, “Clandestine Heresy and Politics,” 154–56.

[13] Ramelli, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 737 n. 210.

[14] Vladimir Cvetković, “Maximus the Confessor’s Reading of Origen Between Origenism and Anti-Origenism,” in Origeniana Undecima (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 747–57.

[15] Daniel Heide, “The Origenism of Maximus Confessor: Critic or True Exegete?,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2019): 277–95.

[16] The universalist implications of this view are made explicit in Maximus’ scholium on this passage, where he refers this to “the union of all men according to a single movement of the will’s inclination toward the principle of nature, a union that is the work of God through His providence, so that, just as all human beings have one nature, they might also have one voluntary inclination, and thus all shall be united to God and to each other through the Spirit” (Ad Thal 2, schol 2).