Macarius of Magnesia
Another supporter of apokatastasis along Origen’s lines seems to have been Macarius of Magnesia, the author of the Apocriticus or Monogenes, very probably stemming from the fourth century. He seems to have been a semi-contemporary of Didymus and Gregory Nyssen (on whom see below) and to have followed Origen in his doctrine of rational creatures, originally homogeneous, but then divided into angels, humans, and demons, according to the gravity of their sins and degrees of elongation from God. His very refutation of a Porphyrian polemicist seems to be inspired by Origen’s refutation of Celsus.
Hints of the apokatastasis theory are to be found in the sections of his Apocriticus or Monogenes that are preserved, such as 3.43.2: when Paul says that “God grants mercy to whom he will and hardens the heart of whom he wills” (Rom 9:18), he does not mean “that some are granted mercy by God while others are not granted mercy, but have their hearts hardened, but rather he holds that all are granted mercy by God and saved, saying: ‘God, who wants all human beings to be saved’ [1 Tim 2:4].”199 But the section in which Macarius was most explicit about apokatastasis is—not accidentally—lost. This is attested by Nicephorus of Constantinople (early ninth century) in his Epikrisis against iconoclasm, 12: at the end of the fourth book, now lost (possibly just for this reason), Macarius taught “the crippled doctrines of the impious and apoplectic Origen, and undertook to teach the same things as that wretched man: that the chastisement threatened and prepared by God for impious people in the time to come will come to an end.”
In Apocr. 4.12–18 (186–88 Blondel) Macarius envisages an eschatological renovation, at the end of all aeons, at the second coming of Christ, which is configured as universal restoration. Macarius remarks that every human being at the end of all will receive back the logos of a second existence in incorruptibility—which can refer both to the physical resurrection and to the restoration of each one to virtue. He adds that in the same way the whole world, after perishing (at the “end of the world”), will be renewed in a greater beauty and in impassivity (apatheia). As a silver vase that has become tarnished over time is molted and shaped again, more beautiful and without rust, keeping its logos, likewise this world will be purified from the rust of sin coming from disobedience, but it will retain and improve “the logos of its essence” (ousia), an expression that was already used by Origen. Just as Origen said about the resurrection of the body of each human, as well as about the end of the world, so does Macarius claim that the visible shape of the world will pass away, but the Logos of the Creator, which remains in the creation, will never pass away, but will rather renovate the universe (epanakainisei to pan).200 The Logos Creator (ὁ δημιουργὸς λόγος/ho dēmiourgos logos) will create again the whole nature of creatures (πᾶσαν τῶν γενητῶν φύσιν/pasan tōn genētōn physin) in a second and better creation (δευτέραν ἀναλαβεῖν καὶ βελτίω γένεσιν/deuteran analabein kai beltiō genesin). Macarius employs the same metaphor used by Gregory of Nyssa at the end of his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection for God’s action of restoration of all rational creatures. It is also significant that the notion of the deception of the devil by the incarnate Christ is shared by Origen, his faithful followers Gregory Nyssen and Rufinus, and Macarius himself.
Didymus the Blind of Alexandria, a Faithful Follower of Origen
Didymus († 395/98) was another of the celebrated leaders of the catechetical school in Alexandria. Like Origen before him, he was an exceptionally learned teacher with an ascetic spirituality; he was also “an extremely explicit defender of Origen.”201 As we have already seen, it is reported that it was Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria who—fully aware of Didymus’ adhesion to Origen’s thought, including the doctrine of universal salvation—is reported to have appointed him the head of the catechetical school, where he served for almost half a century. Didymus wrote a commentary, now lost, devoted to the defense and clarification of Origen’s treatise On First Principles because it was widely misunderstood (Socrates HE 4:25). This commentary, also cited by Jerome at the beginning of his work against Rufinus, was the first Christian commentary on a work of a Christian author outside the Bible.202
Didymus foresees a final state in which all will be free from sin. Christ, he avers, cannot reign where sin reigns; when sin will be found in no one, then the Lord will reign eternally (Fr. in Ps. 69:23). The biblical “αἰώνιος/aiōnios punishment” is not “eternal,” but cathartic and therapeutic, “in the world to come.”203 Didymus, like Origen, is well aware of the many meanings of αἰώνιος/aiōnios (Comm. in Iob 76:11ff.).204 He thus calls the eternal life, which lasts not only throughout the future aeon (αἰώνιος/aiōnios), but beyond all aeons in eternity (ἀΐδιος/aïdios), “salvation beyond the aeons [ὑπεραιώνιος/hyperaiōnios]” (Comm. in Zach. 2:370).
Like Origen and Gregory Nyssen, Didymus also drew a close connection between resurrection and restoration. He considered the eventual restoration to be the spiritual aspect of the resurrection. Not only will the body be resurrected as a spiritual body and no longer as a psychic body, but there will be a spiritual restoration of all humans to their original and perfect condition, characterized by virtue and freedom from evil. The final universal restoration will be universal salvation, understood by Didymus as the return of all souls to God, in a perfect unity that will subsume all multiplicity. The theme of unity in apokatastasis is an Origenian heritage.205 In Comm. in Io., fr. 2, on John 3:35–36, Didymus describes the purification and subsequent restoration of fallen rational creatures:
This is said about rational creatures. Since, among all of them, there are also some who have become wicked, know how these will have a restoration [katastasis] once they have arrived in the hands of the Son, obviously after rejecting the evilness that they had, and assuming virtue. For one should not pay attention to those who propound sophisms, claiming that only those rational beings who have sanctity are called.
For Didymus, just as for Origen and Nyssen, the eventual apokatastasis will clearly depend on Christ. The use of katastasis in reference to the final restoration is common in Didymus, who indeed prefers katastasis to apokatastasis and prevalently refers it to the initial condition that will be eventually restored.206 Katastasis in his works also indicates beatitude in the next world, which awaits the virtuous (Comm. in Eccl. col. 213:12), and even refers to the final “deification” (theia katastasis, “divine state”). After leaving all that is of this aeon, the rational creature, once purified from evil and vices, attains its home, which is the divine condition (358:20). A process of rectification will bring about the blessed, final katastasis of imperturbability and peace thanks to the grace of God; this condition will be Christ himself (Comm. in Zach. 1:65). Didymus describes the eventual deification, especially in Comm. in Ps. 35–39 col. 234:22, in Fr. in Ps. fr. 845 and in In Gen. col. 222:3, in which he characterizes it as perfect beatitude. Deification is “to become God,” to reach a divine condition: Comm. in Eccl. (3–4:12) col. 101:26. It is union with God and adhesion to the Good; it is described again as a katastasis in Fr. in Ps. fr. 641a:9. The final apokatastasis is depicted also in Comm. in Zach. 1:265 as a state of peace after the war against the powers of evil, after which there will be no fighting left.
Like Clement, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus too maintains that the otherworldly fire will be purifying and will consume, not creatures, but evil:
It is impossible that wood, grass, and straw disappear in such a way as not to exist any more, but they [i.e., sinners] will disappear insofar as they are grass and so on. Indeed, this fire of the corrective punishment is not active against the substance, but against [bad] habits and qualities. For this fire consumes, not creatures, but certain conditions and certain habits” (Comm. in Ps. 20–21 col. 21:15).
Like Clement, Origen, and Nyssen, Didymus insists on the therapeutic nature of suffering and sees the Lord as a physician
who employs drastic remedies, but for no other end than salvation (Comm. in Iob 50). No creature is evil by nature,207 but due to a free choice; this is why, through purification, all will be able to convert to the Good and be restored and saved: “He calls us to salvation. The verb ‘they will return/convert’ indicates that nobody is evil by essence, by nature, but rather by free choice. If evil had the power to push free choice toward something else, something alien, the Good will have the power to call it back to its original condition” (Comm. in Ps. 20–21 col. 54:20). God-the-Good is the agent of restoration and salvation, through Christ’s work and the works of angels and holy humans:
The Savior in fact came to look for what was lost and save it. He looks for the soul, in order to lead it to salvation, to bring it back to its original condition. Now, just as the Savior does this by means of instruction and perfecting into what is good, likewise the disciples of the Savior, angels and human beings, do so. (Comm. in Ps. 35–39 col. 267:20)
The Father has given to Christ the power and dominion over all beings, that no being that has been handed to him should perish: for this glory, too, passes through us, because it was necessary that the totality of those who will have submitted to him and have arrived in the hands of the omnipotent Logos of God be saved and remain among the goods that have no end, so that it need no longer suffer the tyranny of death, nor be liable to corruption and sins, nor have to undergo punishment for ancient evils. (On John 17:1)
The insistence on “instruction” as a means of liberation from sin is consistent with Didymus’ ethical intellectualism, which he shared with Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and other Origenians. In this perspective, the original sin is considered by Didymus, just as by Gregory, to be essentially due to a deception, that of the devil, which made the soul see things opposite to the truth (Comm. in Eccl. 82–83). Original sin was thus due to a deception, a lack of knowledge. Sin depends on an obfuscated intellectual sight. This is why Christ’s illumination and instruction will liberate all souls from sin.
Didymus (Comm. in I Cor. 7–8) observes that believers will be saved first, then all the others will. This will be a return to the original condition:
Then it will be the end [telos], ordered and established as corresponding to the beginning. . . . Therefore, it is necessary that Christ reign over the beings, as they progressively add themselves, up to the totality, until all [pantes] those who are enemies because of sin have submitted to him, and Christ has destroyed every tyrannical power, after which the first evil itself, death, is destroyed, in that every [pasa] soul, now subject to death, which is joined with evil, will be joined to Christ.
Like Origen, Didymus thinks that the death that will be destroyed as the last enemy is spiritual death, not only physical death. The dominion of death will have an end because it had a beginning and thus is not eternal (Comm. in Rom. Fr. 3–4). Evagrius, Didymus’ disciple, will use this same argument in reference to evil: since there was a time when evil did not exist, there will be a time when it will no more exist (KG 1:40).208 Evil’s destruction amounts to universal restoration and salvation. Consistently with this, Didymus explains that punishment will be commensurate to sin.209 Sufferings will continue until the Lord, as a judge, “has made the sinner just” (In ep. can. br. enarr. p. 34). Christ transforms sinners into the just, through instruction and purifying suffering. (Origen similarly observed that Christ’s work will be accomplished only when he has made the very last sinner just.) According to Didymus, Christ takes away the sin of the world to restore humans into their original image and likeness of God their creator; they will thus be again “worthy of being loved” (68).
God liberates people even from spiritual death, the “second death,” in the world to come:
God not only keeps creatures in life, but also brings back to life those who have lost it, by resurrecting them from the dead. This is why we rise again, not by confidence in our own power, lest we should fall off life, but in God, who will vivify us even in case we should end up in death. . . . Now, this is not written concerning ordinary life and death, because he says: “God, who has liberated, and liberates, and will liberate again, from such a serious death; God in whom we have put our hope.” For he is speaking of the death that seizes the soul away from life in the world to come. . . . Whoever is in evil lives according to evil, and whoever errs because of it loses the life one had according to evil, in order to proceed, by doing good, toward the blessed life. (Comm. in II Cor. 16 and 22)
Didymus insists that nobody can be pulled away from the hands of the Father; even when Job is persecuted by the devil, not even the devil could separate him from God’s love (Comm. in Iob 23). This is why in Comm. in Eccl. 156 Didymus identifies the death of the soul with the “last/extreme death” (probably a reminiscence of 1 Corinthians 15:26, death as “the last enemy”), but he opposes to it the redemption and resurrection operated by Christ, who can rise from death not only the body, but also the soul, having it live “for eternity” (whereas death is never declared to last “for eternity”): “A dead has been risen, even after losing the soul, since that impious soul had descended to the last death. Therefore, the Savior, when he detaches someone from sin and impiety, behold, has operated a resurrection; . . . the daughter of the head of the synagogue did not die, because she had been made just. . . . Τhose who have risen in the soul then possess it for eternity.” Indeed, Didymus is certain that each and every action of divine providence is aimed at the salvation of rational creatures (Comm. in Eccl. 116).
168. On him see now Johnson and Schott, eds, Eusebius of Caesarea, and, for a general introduction Johnson, Eusebius.
169. See Ramelli and Konstan, Terms for Eternity, new edition (2013), 142–57.
170. “The original sin must be rectified with subsequent remedies, and it is necessary to rush to the return and restoration to the condition that is proper and familiar (to humanity). For the end of human nature is not here on earth, and it is not a reduction to corruption and perdition, but it is up there, from where the first (human) fell down.” See also Eccl. theol. 2:9:4: “at first she was one thing; then she became something else, and finally is restored again to her original condition;” Comm. in Ps. PG 23:92:7: “After their fall God shapes them again, and restores them again to their original condition.”
171. Comm. in Is. 2:9. Cf. In Luc. PG 24:580:21–24: “First, he will restore them to safety and good health, after opening the eyes of the blind and healing every illness and every weakness of their souls. Then, he will prepare for them the spiritual banquet.” Christ, healing souls, liberates them from sin and operates their restoration.
172. Comm. in Ps. PG 23:1285:56.
173. Comm. in Ps. PG 23:1049:22.
174. Especially in Hom. in Ier. 14.18 and Comm. in Matth. 17:19.
175. E.g. In Eccl. theol. 3:14:2 he refers the “times of universal restoration” to the second coming of Christ.
176. In Eccl. theol. 3:9:1 (cf. 3:13:1–3) Eusebius interprets again Acts 3:21 in relation to Paul’s prediction of the final liberation of all creation from corruption. And in 3:16 he interprets the reference to “breaking in pieces” in Psalm 2:9 as the Son’s action of breaking his enemies in pieces, to be understood as aimed at remolding them, restoring them to their original condition. Eusebius deems Psalm 124 entirely devoted to the idea of apokatastasis (Comm. in Ps. PG 23:72:26). That this restoration is eschatological is proved by the inscriptions of the immediately following psalms: “Expectation of the future; Edification of the church; The call of the nations; The victory of the army of Christ.”
177. In Luc. PG 24:549:6–36. This is not one of the fragments on Luke that Alice Whealey, “The Greek Fragments,” 18–29, attributes to Eusebius of Emesa.
178. “The Savior of all together, who loves humanity, having liberated the souls of human beings from death . . . removed every tear from every fac
e, . . . preventing the perdition of so many souls, out of his love for humanity.” In C. Marc. 2:4:28 Eusebius likewise calls Christ “the common savior of absolutely all.”
179. “He will destroy and make vanish the face of the one who had power over all: death. . . . The Lord will engulf it in such a way that it will no longer appear anywhere. . . . Now, since the last enemy, death, will be annihilated . . . , death, which once swallowed all, will be swallowed in turn.”
180. “I shall do so, he says, after I have vanquished the enemy of life, that is, death, regarding which it is said, ‘The last enemy will be annihilated, death.’ In fact, it will turn back, that is, to its first constitution, when it did not exist, because God did not create death, but death entered this world because of the devil’s envy. When this has happened, all other enemies and adversaries of your Logos will be reduced to impotence and will perish as well” (In Ps. 9, PG 23:13).
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