A Larger Hope 1

by Ilaria L E Ramelli

  Both Gregory and Origen deemed the doctrine of universal salvation not only compatible with, but even grounded in, each rational creature’s free will and responsibility. For each will have to adhere to the Good voluntarily, if necessary after a process of purification and education. God alone is pure Good and always remains in the Good.245 Rational creatures are free and must choose the Good freely: “‘virtue has no master’ and is voluntary: what is forced by compulsion and violence cannot be virtue” (De hom. op. 16; cf. 4). This is why in De an. 101C–104A otherworldly purification is presented as a restoration of freedom in virtue after enslavement to sin. Human nature is free because it is in the image of God.246 (This is also why the social institution and practice of slavery is illegitimate in Gregory’s view.247) Free will is a gift from God, “the noblest and most precious of blessings” (Or. cat. 5). And true freedom will be achieved once all have been purified and illuminated, thus reaching “the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). Reaching this knowledge means “the salvation of the whole human nature” (In Illud 23:15–18 D.). The original sin was due to deception (De hom. op. 20), but in the end the illumination and knowledge reached by every human being will make it impossible to choose evil in the false conviction that it is good. No one will choose evil; therefore, evil will vanish. The mind’s clouding over, resulting from passions, will have to be purified:

  Therefore, that free mastery over ourselves could remain in our nature, but evil be removed from it, divine Wisdom excogitated the following plan: allow the human being to do whatever it wanted and taste all the evils it wished, and thus learn from experience what it has preferred to the Good, and then come back, with its desire, to its original beatitude, voluntarily, banishing from its own nature all that which is subject to passions and irrationality, by purifying itself in the present life by means of meditation and philosophy, or by plunging, after death, into the purifying fire. (De mort. 15, p. 64 Lozza)248

  Restoration, with the consequent salvation, must be voluntary; apokatastasis does not cancel each human’s free will, but it rather depends on it, as Origen had also thought (Comm. in Rom. 4:10). For Gregory, the full manifestation of Christ-Logos will eliminate irrational passions and ignorance and will “persuade every soul who does not believe,” so that “all nations and peoples” will submit and be saved (In S. Pascha GNO IX 246). Salvation will be the result of freedom because Gregory, like Plato and Origen, is convinced that one is free—as God is, who is pure Good—only when one chooses the Good, being free from passions and deceptions; if one chooses evil one is enslaved to evil,249 produced by clouding of the intellect, error, and ignorance.

  This is why purification must entail instruction in the next life, if one has not achieved it in the present one: “the medication of virtue has been applied to the soul in the present life, in order to cure its wounds. But if the soul does not heal, a therapy has been predisposed for it in the life that follows the present one.”250 Purifying instruction is a therapy for the soul, as Clement and Origen also put it.251 The soul’s maladies and cancers “on the occasion of the judgment will be cut away and cauterized by that ineffable Wisdom and Power of the One who, as the Gospel says, heals those who are unwell/evil [kakoi]” (Or. cat. GNO III/4, 33:6–9). The judgment is in fact a healing action of God, just as physical death, decreed by God after the fall, is in fact beneficial. Gregory, like Methodius and Origen, deems death a way of saving all humanity. God withdrew immortality and freedom from passions (apatheia) from the human being and threw death onto it, but “not in such a way that it should persist eternally” (13): “the mortality of the nature of irrational animals was put around the human nature, created for immortality, for a providential purpose:” to save it (16–18). Indeed, “the human being is dissolved again into earth, like a clay vase, so that, after being purified from the dirtiness that has been received by it, it could be fashioned anew into its original form through the resurrection. . . . [A]fter the destruction of the matter that had received evil, God through the resurrection will fashion again our ‘vase,’ recreating it from its elements into its original beauty.”252 Death destroys what is unsuitable for the next, blessed life: “What happens to iron in fire, when the fusion destroys what is useless, will also happen when all that which is superfluous will be destroyed through dissolution in death, and our body will be set right through death.” Physical death frees humans from passions and directs their desires to God.253

  A Reply to Scholars Who Deny that Gregory Was a Universalist

  Gregory’s support of the doctrine of universal salvation is manifest throughout his works and acknowledged by many scholars.254 However, some have demurred. According to Salvatore Taranto—who cannot demonstrate his claim—Gregory rejected universal salvation; he knew this doctrine “in Origen’s ‘version,’ which he probably did not deem acceptable.”255 According to Taranto, Gregory “affirms the existence of an eternal state of damnation” and “over time, Gregory will detach himself more and more from the Alexandrian’s eschatological positions.”256 But none of the few texts he adduces claims that sinners’ sufferings will be eternal: a basic misunderstanding of the meaning of αἰώνιος/aiōnios is at work here.257 No passage from the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection or from other works corroborates the claim that Gregory “affirms the existence of a destiny of eternal suffering for those who do not allow grace to transform them and do not open themselves to virtue.”258 And to claim that “[t]his position is affirmed above all in On the Soul and the Resurrection”259 is simply incorrect. Gregory’s texts in fact show that he followed Origen’s doctrine of universal salvation up to the minutest exegetical and doctrinal points.260 Gregory even proves to be more radical than Origen in openly proclaiming universal salvation, including that of the devil (Or. cat. 26 et al.), while Origen was much more worried about divulging this idea. Taranto cites as an example of Gregory’s alleged distancing himself from Origen over time the fact that in Gregory “the persuasion that the final state is a return to the initial one will always remain, although, with the deepening of his reflection, Nyssen will see the former as exceeding the latter” (618). But Origen already deemed the end not identical to, but better than, the beginning, and insisted even more than Gregory on the difference between being in the image of God (from the beginning) and attaining likeness or assimilation to God through voluntary efforts, perfect assimilation being reserved for the end.

  Gregory states, to be sure—as Taranto notes261—that only those who will be worthy of blessedness will inherit it (De beat. 1209), but this does not contradict universal salvation. For Gregory does not declare that, if one is still unworthy at his death, one will never become worthy of beatitude through postmortem purification and instruction. Likewise, Gregory admits the final judgment (In sex. Ps. 188–91 McDonough), but he does not state that the punishments it may decide must be eternal. Taranto quotes several passages concerning the last judgment, such as Hom. in Eccl. 4, where Gregory distinguishes two immediate outcomes of it, the kingdom of heavens and Gehenna; Hom. in Cant. 15, with the mention of “crying and gnashing of teeth” (Matt 8:12); In S. Pascha 680, with the scriptural images of punishment by fire, darkness, and worm, and the distinction between those who will have “a resurrection of life” and those who will have “a resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28–29); and In S. Pascha 653, on the judgment and the otherworldly punishment of those who have followed Satan. But in none of these passages, or anywhere else, does Gregory assert the eternity of punishments in the world to come. Taranto maintains that Gregory at a certain point realized that “the creature’s freedom demands the possibility of an uncertain future, a possibility that does not conflict with the necessity of the complete vanishing of non-being [i.e., evil].”262 This, however, does not rule out universal salvation. For this “uncertain future”—of beatitude or of purifying suffering, depending on one’s deeds—in Gregory’s view is located after one’s death and before the final restoration; at the r
estoration, once all have been purified, evil will be no longer chosen by anyone and will thus vanish. Indeed, when “the enemy will have definitely disappeared and passed to non-being . . . there will be no sinner when there will be no sin left.” This ultimate state, and not the intermediate state of painful purification, will endure “eternally” (In Ps. 1:9).263 Taranto misunderstands Gregory’s eschatology mainly because of an incorrect rendering of crucial Greek terms such as αἰώνιος/aiōnios, and because he deems free will incompatible with universal salvation, overlooking Gregory’s ethical intellectualism, according to which all minds, once purified and healed, will voluntary adhere to God.

  Giulio Maspero, who has contributed much valuable scholarship on Gregory Nyssen’s theology, also tends to deny that Gregory supported universal salvation.264 He does well to emphasize that it is necessary to study Gregory’s works diachronically, but as we have seen such a study does not reveal a growing detachment from Origen’s eschatology, but a constant presence of the doctrine of universal salvation throughout Gregory’s literary career, from start to finish. Maspero says that this doctrine is reflected solely in De vit. Mos. 2:82 and Or. cat. GNO III/4, 91,265 but in fact it also appears in the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection, the commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:28, the Catechetical Oration, the works On the Infants and On the Dead, the Life of Moses, and so on until the late Homilies on the Song of Songs, where Gregory still insists that God’s will is for universal salvation and that this will shall be fulfilled. The very salvation of the devil is maintained not only in the dialogue On the Soul, as Maspero states,266 but at least also in Or. cat. 26, as I showed earlier. Another flaw of Maspero’s, as well as others’, argument lies in terminological misunderstandings. In De benef. GNO IX 100:5 Gregory describes suffering in the other world as διαιωνίζουσα/diaiōnizousa, which means “lasting for the whole aeon to come,” and not “eternally,” which would mean beyond all aeons (for Gregory, in the absolute eternity of apokatastasis). This is confirmed by De an. 101, where otherworldly punishment is described in the same way, but where it is also presented as limited and commensurate with one’s sins, and universal salvation is endorsed.267 In Ad eos qui cast. GNO X/2 328:16, “ἄληκτον/alēkton lament” (3 Mac 4:2) means a lamentation that is unbroken while it lasts, not a lamentation that lasts eternally. I already pointed out that apollymi—in De beat. GNO VII/2 135–36, another passage adduced by Maspero against universal salvation in Gregory, and elsewhere—does not imply an eternal perdition. The “worm that does not die” and the “unquenchable fire” are Gospel expressions—also used without any qualms by Origen and other supporters of universal salvation—which do not mean eternal punishment, but a fire and a worm unlike those of this world, which die and can be extinguished. By contrast, the otherworldly fire and worm cannot be stopped from their work until it is completed.

  A deeper misunderstanding concerns the interpretation of universal restoration (apokatastasis) in Gregory as “only a synonym of resurrection” that does not imply universal salvation.268 But Gregory’s description of resurrection as the restoration of human nature to its original state does not entail the reduction of the restoration to the resurrection of the body, but rather a much richer and holistic notion of resurrection: not just the rising of the body, but the restoration of all humanity in body, soul, and intellect to its original condition of freedom from evil (De an. 156C; In Eccl. GNO V 296:16–18). On the other hand, Maspero stresses the value of personal freedom in Gregory. As we have seen, this is indeed true of Gregory, and of Origen as well, but in their view this is not an impediment to universal salvation. For the final submission of all rational creatures to Christ and God will be voluntary and will come after the necessary purification and illumination. There will definitely be a reward or punishment for each one’s deeds, but punishment, being purifying, will not last forever. After the resurrection one can be condemned (De perf. GNO VIII/1 204:9–205:14), because sinners must first be purified from what is unworthy of God, but let me repeat, Gregory does not state, here or elsewhere, that this condemnation will be eternal. Gregory pastorally warns that otherworldly punishments may last long and be harsh (De beat. 5, etc.), but he never ever avers that they will be eternal. He expressly states that they will finish for all; after which, “no being will remain outside the number of the saved” (In Illud 21 D.).269 This is one of Gregory’s clearest assertions of universal salvation, along with In Illud 14: “No creature of God will fall out of the kingdom of God.” Indeed, if Satan will convert and be saved (Or. Cat. 26), it is difficult to think that some humans will not.

  Gregory Nazianzen

  Gregory of Nazianzus († 390ca), who was educated together with Basil and was friends with him and his brother Gregory of Nyssa, was also the teacher and mentor of Evagrius, whom we shall consider soon. All these men, along with Basil’s and Nyssen’s sister Macrina, were supporters of apokatastasis (Nyssen and Evagrius being the strongest, with Origen). Gregory Nazianzen defended Origen, declaring the most controversial aspects of his thought, including that of the eternal destiny of rational creatures, to be still open to rational research and not dogmatically defined (C. Eun. Or. Prod. 27:10). Not accidentally, this passage, analysed in my Apokatastasis and further in the Origen monograph, inspired Origenistic monks. Indeed, the so-called condemnation of Origen came about when in Christianity the commitment to research faded away in favor of dogmatization and institutionalization.

  The sixth-century theologian Stephan Gobar attests that Nazianzen admired Origen and called him “lover of the Good.”270 He defined Origen “the pumice stone of all of us” (Suidas, s.v. Origen), i.e. a thinker who refines other people’s thought. Nazianzen, together with Basil, is probably the author of the Philocalia, an anthology of Origen’s works from which hints of the doctrine of restoration are not absent. Gregory highly praises Origen in Or. II 107, saying that he took from him his interpretation of Genesis 1:3 and calling him a “wise man, capable of grasping the depth of a prophet.”

  Many have suggested that Gregory’s criticism of the preexistence of souls in Or. 2:48–9 and 4:114–19 is directed against Origen. (The same claim is also made of Gregory Nyssen in his repudiation of the pre-existence of souls.) However, this is unlikely to be the case. Origen is not even mentioned in this context and, contrary to popular belief, he did not support such a doctrine.271

  Like Gregory Nyssen and Methodius, Nazianzen too thinks that physical death is providential because it cuts short sins, thereby also limiting punishment in the other world. Humanity “even in this has a benefit: death, and the fact that its sin is cut away, that evil may not be immortal. Thus, punishment turns out to be an act of love for humanity. For I am convinced that this is how God punishes.”272 Nazianzen, like Clement, Origen, and Nyssen, believes that all punishments inflicted by God are remedial and beneficial to the punished.273

  Gregory’s oration In Sancta Lumina (Or. 39 On the Holy Lights), which deals with the baptism of Christ and not accidentally begins with a reminiscence of Origen,274 in Chapter 15 puts forward the notion of an extreme baptism that purifies: “What is fire? The consummation of what has no value and the fervor of the Spirit. What is the axe? The cutting away of what is incurable in the soul, even after death. What is the sword? It is the Logos’ cutting action, which divides the Good from evil.” Postmortem punishments are not retributive, but healing. The “extreme baptism” in fire removes evil from the soul: in the other world, sinners “will be baptized in fire, in an extreme baptism, more painful and longer, which devours matter as chaff and consumes the lightness of every sin” (PG 36: 356BC). This suffering will be long, but not eternal; it purifies the soul and once achieved this task it will come to an end. Gregory is reminiscent of 1 Corinthians 3:14–15, with the mention of chaff and straw and the declaration that people will be saved either at once or through fire. Neither Paul nor Gregory contemplate the case of people who will not be saved.

  Jesus
“did not come for the just, but for sinners, for their conversion. . . . And Paul, in turn, gave preeminence to love because he looked at justification, rectification, and correction. . . . God rejoices in nothing else but the correction and salvation of a human being. This is the end to which every discourse and mystery tends: that you may become the lights of the world, vivifying power for the other humans.” In Or. 41:12 Gregory foresees the overcoming of the “great chasm” between the damned and the blessed. This can take place thanks to Christ, the same who has overcome the chasm between the Creator and the creatures with his inhumanation.

  What is more, Gregory appropriates the doctrine of his friend Gregory of Nyssa in Or. 40:36 PG 35:409D3–5, supporting it as the only one that—as Origen maintained—is “worthy of God”:

  I know of a purifying fire, which Christ came to kindle on earth. Christ is called “fire” himself with metaphorical and mystical words. This fire consumes matter and the evil disposition, and Christ wants that it is kindled as soon as possible. For he ardently wants the Good to be made immediately, since even the inflamed coals he gives us in order to help us. I also know a fire that is not only purifying, but also punishing: it is the fire of Sodom, which pours down like rain on all sinners, mingled with divine storm and sulphur; it is that which is prepared for the devil and his angels; it is that which goes forward before the face of the Lord and burns his enemies all around, and the one that is even more fearful than these are: the one that is mentioned along with the worm that does not die, a fire that, for sinners, cannot be quenched, but endures during the future aeon. For all these aspects pertain to the destructive power, unless it is not dear to someone to think, even in this case, that this fire is applied for the love of human beings, and in a way that is worthy of the One who punishes.