Also, restitutus est in the Dialogue undoubtedly renders apokatestathē or another passive form of apokathistēmi, as well as restitutio perfectly corresponds to apokatastasis. This is the case also with Princ. 3.5.7, where Origen is describing the universal apokatastasis as a result of the submission of all to Christ: inimicorum quae dicitur Filio Dei esse subiectio salutaris quaedam intellegatur et utilis, ut, sicut cum dicitur Filius Patri subiectus, perfecta uniuersae creaturae restitutio declaratur, ita cum Filio Dei inimici dicuntur esse subiecti, subiectorum salus in eo intellegatur et reparatio perditorum, or: “the subjection of the enemies to the Son of God, mentioned by Scripture, should be understood as salvific and useful: just as, when the Son is said to be subject to the Father, this announces the perfect restoration of all creatures, so also, when the enemies are said to be subject to the Son of God, the salvation of those subjected should be understood in this, and the restoration of the lost.” A parallel instance is also to be found in Princ. 3.6.9, where Christ’s reign bringing about universal apokatastasis, i.e., the perfecting and restoration of all, is described as a period of illumination and instruction.
Adamantius’ statement that the apokatastasis is the reward for the agonistic effort of virtue (certaminis praemia . . . regressum ad pristinum statum) perfectly corresponds to Origen’s statement in Comm. in Io. 13.46.299: “the reward of our Lord should be interpreted as the salvation and restoration of those conquered, since he will rest after restoring them.” What is more, the association of the terms agon and certamina for the description of the present world as a place of exercise and trial in view of the ultimate end in Adamantius’ piece on the apokatastasis finds a stunningly precise correspondence in Origen: in Hom. Gen. 16.7, where he is allegorizing Jacob’s descent into Egypt as the descent of the rational creature into this world, he uses the very same terms in an identical context (of course, here too in Rufinus’ translation): in carne positi agones mundi huius et certamina sustinemus, or: “once we have been put in the flesh, we have to sustain the struggles and fights of this world.” And the homilies, too, like the dialogues, reflect Origen’s oral, initially impromptu, performances.
In Adamantius’ discussion of the apokatastasis there is also a reference to the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Luke 15:3–7) and to Jesus’ action of restoration. This is a parable on which Origen particularly insists, and which he refers precisely to the apokatastasis, which in his thought proves to be grounded primarily in Christ. Only in his extant Greek works, there are many passages in which the soteriological value of this parable is highlighted, for instance, fr. 58b-c on Luke, where he cites John 10:11 joint to Matt 18:12 and Luke 15:3–7. Even more explicit about the connection between the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the doctrine of universal salvation is Fr. in Ps. 118.176. In Fr. in Jer. fr. 28, too, the parable is related to Jesus’ action of saving what is lost or has perished and to his unifying action (unity is one of the essential traits of the apokatastasis according to Origen). In Fr. in Ps. 18.6 Origen offers an allegorical exegesis of the parable: Jesus went to rescue the lost sheep when he descended onto the earth and into the underworld. Finally, in Sel. in Ps. PG 12.1628, which is very likely to reflect Origen’s thought, Origen connects the Parable of the Lost Sheep with the apokatastasis performed by Christ first qua Justice and then qua Wisdom; in this way, he will remove from the soul both evilness and ignorance (the close connection between which will be especially emphasised by Evagrius).
Very interestingly, Macarius of Magnesia (who will be addressed below), who shows many points of contact with both Origen and Nyssen, has exactly the same exegesis in Apocr 4.18. Moreover, like Origen, he indicates sloth and negligence as the cause of the primordial fall (ibid.). The presence of exactly the same exegesis, with reference to apokatastasis, in both Hilary and the Dialogue and Macarius makes it probable that all depend on Origen’s exegesis.
Marcellus, an Origenian who Misunderstood Origen?
Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra († 374), was in line with Origen in his anti-Arianism, being one of the anti-Arian bishops at the Council of Nicaea, and indeed was profoundly influenced by him. However, he also misunderstood Origen and fell into the opposite Trinitarian extreme of monoprosopism or Sabellianism: he posited only one hypostasis or person in the Trinity.
One aspect of Marcellus’ dependence on Origen is his adhesion to the doctrine of universal salvation.190 His exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 is the same as Origen’s: the eventual submission of Christ to God is the submission of all humanity—Christ’s body—to God, and this will be a salvific submission: Paul “is speaking of the submission of the cosmos, which will take place in the flesh of Christ, . . . when, he says, all will submit to the Son, we shall find ourselves being his limbs, and thanks to him we shall become children of God. . . . Then he himself will submit to the Father on our behalf, as the head on behalf of his own limbs. For, as long as all of his limbs have not yet submitted, he himself, who is their head, has not yet submitted to the Father, because he is waiting for his own limbs . . . it is we who submit to the Father in Christ” (De Incarn. 20). Christ, “when he remits his spirit into the hands of the Father, hands himself to God qua human being, in order to hand all humans to God.”191
In Christ, “the human being, who was once deceived (by the devil), is established as king, by means of the Logos” (C. Aster. fr. 113). Like Origen, Marcellus—as is evident from the fragments that can be gleaned from Eusebius’ Against Marcellus—regards the submission of all to Christ as a recapitulation, and the restoration (apokatastasis) of the Logos as the restoration of humanity. He uses the very words “restoration of all” and “rectification of all,” meaning that all will be made just by Christ, “after the time of the Judgment,” at “the complete vanishing of every hostile power,” during Christ’s reign. Once evil has disappeared and all have been made just, the Son will be able to submit—in his “body”—to God, who will thus be “all in all.”192
St. Athanasius the Great, an Admirer of Origen
Athanasius of Alexandria († 373), who represented himself as the great defender of the Nicene faith, was also a great admirer of Origen, who indeed had anticipated the theology of Nicaea. Athanasius’ sympathy with Origenian Christians can be seen in numerous ways. He maintained an epistolary correspondence with the Origenian Palladius, the disciple of the Origenian Evagrius, he famously wrote the biography of another Origenian, St. Antony the Great, and he appointed Didymus the Blind as head of the Didaskaleion—Didymus was not only a faithful Origenian, but also (like Evagrius and Palladius, and perhaps Antony), a supporter of the doctrine of universal restoration. Athanasius also composed an apology of the thought of the Origenian Dionysius of Alexandria.
It was not only Origenists that Athanasius supported, but Origen himself. In The Decrees of the Council of Nicaea, 27.1 Athanasius quotes Origen as an authority and praises him for his commitment to labor (φιλόπονος/philoponos) and for his heuristic work, which Athanasius distinguishes from a dogmatic discourse. Athanasius thereby defends Origen, and quotes his words as authoritative in support of his own Nicene position, viz. the coeternity of the Son with the Father: “Origen the Hardworking wrote some things for the sake of philosophical research and exercise: let nobody consider these to be expressions of his own thought [. . .], for those who seek quarrels he says something in the spirit of investigation. But the Hardworking’s own thought is what he states as a definition. Now, after saying a few things as in an exercise, against the heretics, he immediately adds his own thought.” Athanasius reports at this point Origen’s words on the coeternity of the Son with the Father, on which I have commented elsewhere, demonstrating that what prevailed at Nicaea was in fact Origen’s theology.193 It is ironic, given how many have thought of Origen as a heretic, that Origen’s theology prefigured Nicene orthodoxy and that the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed shows traces of the influence of Origen and the Cappadocians. (And it should be noted in passing that
the Creed comprises among the articles of faith the final judgment, eternal life, and eternal glory—including a profession of faith “in the life of the world to come” (ζωὴ αἰώνιος/zōē aiōnios)—but not eternal damnation, death, and hell.)
In The Decrees of the Council of Nicaea, 25.1, Athanasius also exalts Theognostus, another faithful Origenian, for maintaining that the Son was born from the Father’s essence/substance (ousia)—as Origen himself thought. Likewise, in his fourth letter to Serapion, Athanasius praises Origen as “the most learned and active writer among the ancient,” and the Byzantine theologian Gobar reports that Athanasius often lauded Origen and Theognostus.194 Socrates too testifies that Athanasius was a “praiser” of Origen, that he regarded him as “wondrous” and “most hardworking,” and that in his Discourses against the Arians he adduced Origen’s words as authoritative, in defence of the faith in the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. This may refer to the passage that I have reported above, or to another passage now lost.
Athanasius shared Origen’s ideas of evil as non-being and non-existent in the beginning, and sin as moving into non-being (e.g., On the Inhumanation of the Logos, 4), as well as the notion that Christ’s inhumanation (ἐνανθρώπησις/enanthrōpēsis) has a salvific and deifying effect on humanity. Athanasius insists that Christ became human in order for humanity to be deified, for instance in On the Inhumanation of the Logos, 54.3: Christ “was made a human being, that we might be deified [θεοποιηθῶμεν/theopoiēthōmen].”195 This idea stems from Origen and Irenaeus, who formulated it as follows in Refutation of All Heresies, 3, preface: Christ became what we are to bring us to what he is. The inhumanation has taken place, says Athanasius, “thanks to the love and goodness of God the Father, for the salvation of us humans. [. . .] the salvation of the world has been performed by the same Logos who has created it” (On the Inhumanation of the Logos, 1).
Athanasius often displays universalistic overtones: “Flesh was taken up by the Logos to liberate all humans and resurrect all of them from the dead, and ransom all of them from sin” (Letter to Adelphius, PG 26.1077). Athanasius declares here that all humans will be liberated from sin. He repeats this shortly afterwards: “The Logos became a human being for the sake of our salvation [. . .] to set free all beings in himself, to lead the world to the Father and to pacify all beings in himself, in heaven and on earth” (col. 1081). In 1077A he has recourse to Philippians 2:10, one of Origen’s favorite quotations in support of the universal nature of apokatastasis, since he interpreted the submission described there as voluntary and therefore leading to salvation. This is also why in The Inhumanation of the Logos, 19.3, Athanasius calls Christ the “Saviour of all,”196 and explains: “That corruption may disappear from all, forever, thanks to the resurrection [. . .] he has paid for all, in death, all that was owed. [. . .] This glorious deed is truly worthy of God’s goodness to the highest degree. [. . .] Ηe has set right their neglectfulness by means of his teaching, having rectified all human things by means of his power.” Remarking about soteriological deeds as worthy of God’s goodness is typical of Origen, as is the description of sin as neglectfulness. The argument from what is worthy of God’s goodness is adduced by Athanasius also in On the Inhumanation of the Logos, 6, in which he remarks that it would be unworthy of the goodness of God that “creatures, which are his work, should be reduced to nothing by the deception of the devil.”
Athanasius explicitly speaks of restoration and, like Origen, has it depend on Christ, who, “through his own power, has restored the whole human nature” (On the Inhumanation of the Logos, 10). The Lord has come “to heal and teach” (43), according to the notion, dear to Clement and Origen, of Christ-Logos as Physician and Teacher. Christ’s sacrifice was “offered for all,” “had death disappear from us, and renovated us” (16.4–5). The effect of Christ’s sacrifice is “that death might be destroyed once and for all, and humans might be renewed according to the image of God” (13). Thus, Athanasius speaks of a recreation: Christ “has banished death from us and has created us anew,” bringing the knowledge of God everywhere, even “in the abyss, in Hades” (16; 45). In his festal letter 7.9.31, Athanasius refers to Luke 15:32 on the return to life from spiritual death: “This is the work of the Father’s love for humanity and goodness, which not only has people rise again to life from the dead, but makes also grace splendid by means of the Spirit [. . .] by regenerating the human beings in the image of Christ’s glory.” Like Origen, Athanasius too is convinced that all humanity and the angels who have transgressed need the grace of the Logos to be saved (Ep. ad Afr. 7), but with that grace they are saved—even demons, as Origen also taught.197
Like Origen,198 Athanasius insists on the universal scope of Christ’s sacrifice in The Inhumanation of the Logos, 8–9, 20, 25, and 32:
He handed his own body to death for the sake of all [. . .] to drive back to incorruptibility the human beings who had turned to corruptibility [. . . ,] to stop the corruptibility of all the other human beings [. . . ,] for the life of all. [. . .] [T]hrough this union of the immortal Son of God with the mortal human nature, all humans have been covered with incorruptibility, in the promise of the resurrection. [. . .] He offered the sacrifice for all [. . . ,] handing his “temple” to death for all [. . .] to liberate the human being from its first transgression. [. . .] The body that he first offered for all and which he transformed into a way to heaven [. . .] he assumed a body for the salvation of us all.
In his festal letters, Athanasius proclaims the defeat of Satan, which clearly also implies liberation from sin: “The devil, the tyrant of the world, has been killed” (4.1.3); “Death and the kingdom of the devil have been abolished” (4.3.4); “Now that we pass from earth to heaven, Satan, like a lightning, falls down from heaven” (24.17, cf. Luke 10:18). Christ “has abolished death and the one who has the power of death” (7.26). Christ “overwhelmed the whole army of the devil [. . . ;] neither death nor life [. . . ,] nor any other creature will ever be able to separate us from the love of God” (19.6). “Thanks to the Saviour’s death, hell has been trodden” (5.3.5). Christ “died for all [. . .] to abolish death with his blood [. . . ;] he has gained the whole humanity” (6.4.9–10); with a Pauline echo from Romans, “the totality of the peoples has entered, so that every human be saved” (27.24). Christ “has redeemed from death and liberated from hell all humanity” (10.10.23). Athanasius also quotes Jesus’ words, with a strong universalistic thrust, in John 12:31–32: “Now the ruler of this world will be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from earth, will drag all humans to myself” (43.20).
The eschatological universal resurrection will concern not only the body, but also the soul, implying the elimination of evil: “Our Saviour’s death has liberated the world. By his wounds all of us have been healed. [. . .] Which joy will there be for the total abolition of sin and the resurrection of the dead?” (festal letter 6.9.21–10.23). The resurrection of the dead, for Athanasius, as well as for Origen, goes hand in hand with the eventual abolition of sin. In his festal letter 27.19 Athanasius, commenting on the Parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31), claims that during the final judgement sinners will repent. For Christ helps sinners to repent (Letter 13.2.6); Christ-Logos kindles faith in people (7.7.26), which is indispensable for salvation. Christ’s providential action—for Athanasius as for Origen—does not contradict human free will, and is infallible: “It does not force one’s will beyond what is possible, and love does not address only the perfect, but it descends among those who are in a middle position, and even among those who come third, in sum in such a way as to redeem all human beings to salvation. [. . .] The enemy is cast out, and all of its army is thrown to the outer side” (festal letter 10.4.8–9).
In Christ’s cross there is “the salvation of all humans in all places,” since Christ “takes away the sins of the world and also purifies our souls” (festal letter 14.2.5). Christ, “who is everything for us, als
o becomes responsible for our salvation in myriads of ways” (14.4.16). Christ “wants the repentance and conversion of the human being, rather than its death. In this way, evilness, all of it, will be burnt away from all humans” (festal letter 3.4.8), which will happen, either in this world or in the next, though fire (3.4.9). Now, if all humans are purified from evilness (i.e. sin), as Athanasius claims, then all will be eventually saved.
Like Origen, in his oeuvre Athanasius refers the adjective ἀΐδιος/aïdios, “absolutely eternal,” to the eternity of God and to intelligible, eternal things, but he never applies this qualifier to punishment of humans, or death, or fire in the future world, thus never stating that these will be truly eternal. He only describes these as αἰώνια/aiōnia, in conformity with Scripture and Origen. That he interprets this term as “belonging to the world to come” is patent from his glossing of the biblical statement, “the Lord will reign εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα/eis ton aiōna” as “in the future and new world/aeon” (92.28–31). The words of a psalm, “Nations, go away from his land,” according to Athanasius mean that “during the [eschatological] reign of Christ they will be cast into the fire of the world to come [αἰώνιον/aiōnion],” but its aim is not perdition but conversion: “that these may revive, and those may correct themselves.” This fire is corrective, not “eternal,” but “otherworldly.”
When people dismiss early Christian universalism as an aberration in Christian theology, dreamed up by Origen in the third century under the influence of paganism and later discerned to be heretical, they err on several counts. First they fail to appreciate that Origen’s theology of apokatastasis was primarily a synthesis of much earlier Christian ideas, with deep roots in Scripture. Second, they overestimate the shaping influence of pagan wisdom—for while Origen happily adopted and adapted ideas from the philosophies of his day to help explicate his theology, as did all of the church fathers, he sought to evaluate such ideas in the light of the gospel and the Bible. Thus, for instance, he was very critical of the so-called doctrines of apokatastasis found among Stoics and “gnostics” and in no way considered them the inspiration for his own theology. Third, claims that Origen’s theology is heretical are usually based on significant and demonstrable misunderstandings of his teaching that became widespread in the church, especially as time went on. However, the fact that such major pillars of early Christian orthodoxy as Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa stood firmly in his defense ought to give us significant pause before aligning Origen with the heretics. For Athanasius, Origen should instead be seen as one of the theologians upon whose thought Nicene orthodoxy was built. And if Origen is to be dismissed as a heretic for embracing universalism then so should a host of others, including the great St. Athanasius and the Cappadocian St. Gregory of Nyssa.
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