A Larger Hope 1

by Ilaria L E Ramelli

  A Larger Hope?

  A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich, by Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

  A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century, by Robin A. Parry, with Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

  A Larger Hope?

  Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich

  by

  Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

  With a foreword by Richard Bauckham

  A LARGER HOPE? UNIVERSAL SALVATION FROM CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS TO JULIAN OF NORWICH

  Copyright © 2019 Ilaria L. E. Ramelli. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

  Cascade Books

  An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

  199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

  Eugene, OR 97401

  www.wipfandstock.com

  paperback isbn: 978-1-61097-884-2

  hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8798-2

  ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4300-2

  Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  Names: Ramelli, Ilaria, 1973–, author | Bauckham, Richard, foreword writer

  Title: A larger hope? Universal salvation from Christian beginnings to Julian of Norwich / Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, with a foreword by Richard Bauckham

  Description: Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019 | Series: A Larger Hope, vol. 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: isbn 978-1-61097-884-2 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-8798-2 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-5326-4300-2 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Universalism | Origen | Restorationism—History of doctrines | Universal salvation—Biblical teaching | Hell—Christianity | Salvation—Christianity

  Classification: BT263 R36 2019 (print) | BT263 (ebook)

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  Cover image: “Origen Teaching the Saints” by Eileen McGuckin, used with permission.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Foreword

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Abbreviations

  By Way of Introduction

  Chapter 1: Some Biblical Roots of the Hope for Universal Salvation?

  Chapter 2: Universal Restoration before Origen

  Chapter 3: Origen of Alexandria

  Chapter 4: Universal Salvation in Origen’s First Followers and His Apologists

  Chapter 5: Fourth-century Origenians I

  Chapter 6: Fourth Century Origenians II

  Chapter 7: Apokatastasis in Antioch

  Chapter 8: The Latin Origenians

  Chapter 9: The Last Exponents of Patristic Thought

  Chapter 10: The Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance

  Conclusion

  Appendix I: The Meaning of Aiōnios

  Appendix II: A Reply to Michael McClymond’s Review of The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis424

  Appendix III: Is Apokatastasis “Gnostic,” Rather Than Christian?

  Bibliography

  Ad maiorem Dei gloriam

  May this contribute to the glory of God

  Foreword

  The extent to which a belief in universal salvation was held and taught in the early centuries of the Christian church has often been under-estimated. As Professor Ramelli shows, this belief did not originate with Origen, the best known patristic proponent of it, but most of those who subsequently held to it were influenced by Origen and the particular shape that he gave to this hope of the final “restoration” of all God’s rational creatures, including the importance of free will, which God will not suppress, and the purifying and restorative character of post-mortem punishment. Professor Ramelli shows that this hope cannot be dismissed as no more than an intrusion into the Christian tradition from Platonic philosophy. These theologians rooted their teaching in exegesis of Scripture and embraced a Christocentric vision of the universe and God’s purpose for it.

  Here we are taken on an enlightening tour of the relevant writings of the major figures and also some minor figures. Some are well known, others very little known. Some are surprising. Ramelli is thoroughly acquainted with all of the texts and the relevant secondary literature. A very valuable feature is the extensive quotations from all the writers in question, given in her own translations. Moreover, Professor Ramelli provides for us in each case with a full profile of the various factors that contribute to each writer’s understanding of the doctrine of universal restoration. Given the extent and diversity of the literature this is a major achievement—and a unique one too—for which anyone with an interest in this important subject will be heartily grateful. At a time when the popularity of belief in universal salvation seems to be increasing, this book will be an important resource both for learning about the form that belief actually took in a major theological tradition of the early centuries and for engaging with the arguments of the key theologians who taught it.

  Richard Bauckham

  Emeritus Professor of New Testament Studies, University of St Andrews

  Senior Scholar, Ridley Hall, Cambridge

  Preface

  No being will remain outside the number of the saved.

  (St. Gregory of Nyssa, On 1 Cor 15:28, Downing, 21)

  Laudetur Iesus Christus,

  semper laudetur.

  May Jesus Christ be praised,

  May He always be praised.

  The present book addresses a general learned readership, pastors, students (graduates and undergraduates), and other interested Christians. For all references to original texts, often in extensive quotations, and to scholarship regarding the sections from the New Testament to John the Scot Eriugena (approximately the first Christian millennium), as well as a much more detailed treatment, I refer to my The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis: A Critical Assessment from the New Testament to Eriugena,1 a very substantial, thousand-page scientific monograph aimed at scholars, academic specialists, and postgraduate students, which—much to my comfort, after an intense labor of sixteen years—has received excellent reviews, e.g., by Anthony Meredith in the International Journal of the Platonic Tradition; Mark Edwards in Journal of Theological Studies; Johannes van Oort in Vigiliae Christianae; Steven Nemes (Fuller Theological Seminary) in the Journal of Analytic Theology;2 Robin A. Parry in the International Journal of Systematic Theology, and Chris L. De Wet in the Journal of Early Christian History. Abstracts of all these reviews are available at www.brill.com/christian-doctrine-apokatastasis and https://brill.com/view/title/16787. Many scholars have referenced this monograph and endorsed its conclusions.3

  It will be followed in due course, God willing, by two other scholarly monographs: one on non-Christian and pre-Christian philosophical concepts of apokatastasis, from ancient philosophy to late antique Platonism (Proclus, Damascius), and another on the political, theological, pastoral, ecclesiastical, social, historical, and even linguistic causes for the rejection of the doctrine of apokatastasis or universal restoration, in late antiquity, by the “Church of the Empire”—mainly under the influence of Justinian in the East and of Augustine in the West.

  In addition to my monograph on apokatastasis, see Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church: A Handbook of Patristic Eschatology,4 and Brian Daley, “Eschatology in the Early Church Fathers,” in The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology.5 On p. 7 of the online edition, Daley remarked: “few general studies exist of the broader shape and development of early Christian hope concerning the end of this
present history and the beginning of God’s kingdom.” My monograph, The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, and the present book contribute to filling this persistent scholarly gap. It is helpful to read this monograph and the present book together with my invited response to Michael McClymond’s critique, in Theological Studies 76.4 (2015) 827–35.6

  For the Christian doctrine of universal salvation in more recent times, besides the present volume, which addresses also the span of time from Eriugena to Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich (absent from The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis), I refer readers to Robin Parry and Christopher Partridge (eds.), Universal Salvation? The Current Debate,7 and Gregory MacDonald (ed.), All Shall be Well: Explorations in Universal Salvation and Christian Theology, from Origen to Moltmann.8 A concise but rigorous handbook of patristic eschatology is offered by Brian Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, mentioned above. A short survey on patristic universalism was provided by Thomas Allin in 1885; see now the annotated edition: Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant: Universalism Asserted as the Hope of the Gospel on the Authority of Reason, the Fathers, and Holy Scripture.9 I look forward to David Bentley Hart’s constructive book on universalism (Yale, 2019).

  In the present book I do not merely summarize the content of The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, but also add many new sections that were absent from the larger volume, e.g., on annihilationism, some apocrypha, Hilary of Poitiers, Basil of Caesarea, Macarius of Magnesia, Aphrahat, Barsanuphius, Theophylact, Meister Eckhart, the appendix on the terminology of eternity, and all the last section from Eriugena to Julian of Norwich. Furthermore, I have added various new texts, proofs, and arguments concerning a number of theologians—from Clement and Eusebius to Basil of Caesarea, from Ambrose and Marius Victorinus to Maximus the Confessor, from Gregory of Nazianzus and Diodore of Tarsus to Titus of Basra and Eriugena, and more—which were not included in the 2013 monograph. So I hope that even those who have read The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis will find new material here that will be of interest.

  In collaboration with David Konstan, I wrote a monograph some ten years ago about the Greek words aiōnios and aidios, entitled Terms for Eternity.10 Given the significance of the word aiōnios in discussions about universal salvation in the Bible and in the early church that earlier study has predictably proven important in the preparation of my Apokatastasis monograph. Given this importance, the main findings of that extensive research are briefly summarized in an Appendix at the end of this book.

  This book is the first of a projected series of three books on the doctrine of universal salvation. In the second volume, A Larger Hope? From the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century, Robin Parry, with some contributions from me, will pick up the story in its mainly Protestant streams. The third volume, which will be co-authored, shall trace the significant developments in the shape and fortunes of the idea in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We hope that these books taken together will provide a helpful and reliable resource for those wishing to explore an often-forgotten stream in the history of the Christian tradition.

  1. Leiden: Brill, 2013. https://brill.com/view/title/16787 . Online edition: http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/books/9789004245709. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ilaria-L.-E.-Ramelli/e/B01M2WJKVL; https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Doctrine-Apokatastasis-Supplements-Christianae/dp/900424509X.

  2. http://journalofanalytictheology.com/jat/index.php/jat/article/view/jat.2015-3.181913130418a/271.

  3. For example, George Karamanolis, The Philosophy of Early Christianity (Durham: Acumen, 2013), 307; Lautaro Roig Lanzillotta, “Greek Philosophy and the Problem of Evil in Clement of Alexandria and Origen,” CFC(g) 23 (2013) 207–23, esp. n. 44; George Van Kooten, Oda Wischmeyer and N. T. Wright, “How Greek was Paul’s Eschatology?,” New Testament Studies 61.2 (2015) 239–53; Thomas McGlothlin, “Raised to Newness of Life: Resurrection and Moral Transformation in Second- and Third-Century Christian Theology” (PhD diss. Duke University, 2015, advisors J. Warren Smith, Elizabeth Clark, Joel Markus, Zlatko Plese); Nikolai Kiel, Ps-Athenagoras De Resurrectione (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 322, 330, 596, 606, n. 508, 771, etc.; Thomas Allin, Christ Triumphant, annotated edition, ed. Robin Parry (Eugene, OR, Wipf & Stock, 2015), 109, 113, 115, 117, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, 127, 130, 134, 140, 145, 149, 150, 151, 154, 158, 164, 170, 172, 173, 174, 177, 345. István Perczel, “St. Maximus on the Lord’s Prayer: An Inquiry into His Relationship to the Origenist Tradition,” in The Architecture of the Cosmos: St. Maximus the Confessor: New Perspectives, eds. Antoine Lévy, Pauli Annala, Olli Hallamaa, and Tuomo Lankila (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Society, 2015), 221–78: 230; Steven Nemes, “Christian Apokatastasis: Two Paradigmatic Objections,” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016) 67–86; Daniel Heide, “Apokatastasis: The Resolution of Good and Evil in Origen and Eriugena,” Dionysius 3 (2015) 195–213: 195, 196, 197, 199, 201, 203, 204, 205, 206, 212; James Gould, Practicing Prayer for the Dead (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016), 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 117, 123, 125, 126, 131, 132, 134, 138, 139, 142, 144, 146, 209, 244, 269, etc. Ryan Fowler, Imperial Plato: Albinus, Maximus, Apuleius (Las Vegas: Parmenides, 2016), 307; Aleksandar Dakovac, “Apocatastasis and Predestination: Ontological Assumptions of Origen’s and Augustine’s Soteriologies,” Bogoslovska smotra 86.4 (2016) 813–826: 814; Elena Ene-D Vasilescu, “Love Never Fails: Gregory of Nyssa on Theosis,” in Visions of God and Ideas on Deification in Patristic Thought, eds Mark Edwards, Elena Ene D-Vasilescu (Oxford: Routledge, 2016), Ch. 3, n. 58; 59; Maged S. A. Mikhail, The Legacy of Demetrius of Alexandria 189–232 CE: The Form and Function of Hagiography in Late Antique and Islamic Egypt (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2016), 34; Martin Wenzel, “The Omnipotence of God as a Challenge for Theology in Origen and Gregory of Nyssa,” in Theology in Evagrius, the Cappadocians, and Neoplatonism, ed. Ilaria Ramelli, with the collaboration of Kevin Corrigan, Giulio Maspero, and Monica Tobon (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 23-38; Daniel J. Crosby, “The Tyranny of Authority: Eternal Damnation in the Fragments of Clement of Alexandria?” in Scholarship, Research, and Creative Work at Bryn Mawr College (2017), 1-15: 3-5 (http://repository.brynmawr.edu/gsas_pubs/42017); Ken Parry, review of The Architecture of the Cosmos: St. Maximus the Confessor: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.10.48 (http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2017/2017-10-48.html); Giulio Malavasi, “The Greek Version(s) of Augustine’s De gestis Pelagii,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 21,3 (2017), 559–72; Women and Knowledge in Early Christianity, ed. Ulla Tervahauta, Ismo Dunderberg et alii (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 352 etc.; David Konstan, “A New Subjectivity? Teaching Eros through the Greek Novel and Early Christian Texts,” in Reading and Teaching Ancient Fiction: Jewish, Christian, and Greco-Roman Narratives, eds. Sara Johnson, Rubén René Dupertuis, and Chris Shea (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2018), 251–60: 260; Johannes Zachhuber, Oxford papers (http://www.academia.edu/36548030/Philosophy_and_Theology_in_Late_Antiquity_Some_reflections_on_concepts_and_terminologies); Nathan Eubank, “Prison, Penance or Purgatory: The Interpretation of Matthew 5.25–6 and Parallels,” New Testament Studies 64.2 (2018) 162–77; Valeriu Gherghel, Origen and The Paradox of Literalist Reading, http://hermeneia.ro/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/13_VARIA_Gherghel-V.pdf; George Karamanolis, “Gregory of Nyssa,” in Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming), etc.

  4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991; rev. ed., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2003.

  5. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, online ed. 2009 DOI: 10.1093/oxford hb/9780195170498.003.0006.

  6. DOI: 10.1177/0040563915605265. tsj.sagepub.com. Available online at: http://tsj.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/76/4/827.pdf ; http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/111306962/reply-professor-michael-mcclymond; http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Reply+to+professor+Michael+McClymond.-a0434320574 ; http://www.docfoc.com/ilaria-ramelli-theological-studies; https://www.scribd.com/doc/260021087/Ilaria-Ramelli-Theological-Studies; https://www.scribd.com/docum
ent/298849526/Reply-to-Professor-Michael-McClymond; http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Origen; http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Origen under Reply to Professor Michael McClymond;http://mahoundsparadise.blogspot.com/2017/07/pope-francis-appoints-universalist-all.html, etc. See here an updated version in Appendix 2.

  7. Carlisle, UK: Paternoster, 2003. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.

  8. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011.

  9. Edited with an introductory essay and notes by Robin A. Parry, with a foreword by Thomas Talbott (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2015), 83–136.

  10. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2007, with new editions in 2011 and 2013, reviewed by Carl O’Brien in The Classical Review 60.2 (2010), 390-391; in International Review of Biblical Studies, ed. Bernhard Lang, 54 (2007/2008), Leiden: Brill, 2009, 444, 1901; Danilo Ghira in Maia 61 (2009), 732-734; Shawn Keough in EThL 84.4 (2008) 601; in Biblical Scholarship (2016): https://biblicalscholarship.wordpress.com/2016/02/20/summary-terms-for-eternity-aionios-and-aidios-in-classical-and-christian-texts/ Referred to by Joel Kalvesmaki, ed., Guide to Evagrius Ponticus, summer 2014 edition (Washington, DC, 2014, evagriusponticus.net); The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, ed. D. R. Morrison (Cambridge: CUP, 2011), p. x; Steven Nemes, “Christian Apokatastasis: Two Paradigmatic Objections,” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016), 67-86: philpapers.org/rec/NEMCA; http://gcu.academia.edu/StevenNemes; Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), p. xv James Gould, Practicing Prayer for the Dead (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016), 107, 269; John Behr, Origen: On First Principles, vol. 1 (Oxford: OUP, 2017), lxxviii; Tera Harmon, “Motion (κίvησις) and Anthropology in the Writings of Gregory of Nyssa” (PhD diss. University of Notre Dame, 2016, advisors Susan Wessel, Robin Darling Young, William Mccarthy); Réka Valentin, “Immortality in the Book of Wisdom in the Context of the Overlapping World,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Theologia Catholica Latina 55,2 (2010) 85-99: 86; Thomas Axeland, “Origen’s Commentary on John: Spiritual Interpretation, Polemics, and Transformation” (PhD diss. University of British Columbia, Regent College, 2013), 146; David Sielaff, “Modern Recognition of Universal Salvation,” Association for Scriptural Knowledge 8.10 (2010), 1–15, etc.