The other way—i.e., the idea of a fire that is only retributive and not also purifying—is considered unworthy of God. Even the example of the inflamed coals, from the Old Testament, comes from Origen. Gregory often insists on the therapeutic aim of God’s punishments (Or. 16:6): “educating us both with strokes and with threats, using his wrath to open up a way for us, out of a superabundance of goodness, God begins with the lighter remedies, to avoid needing the most radical, but, if necessary, has recourse even to the most drastic, in order to educate.” Even the most drastic punishments are a form of “education” (paideusis). In Or. 3:7, PG 35:524B, Gregory refers to 1 Corinthians 3:12–15, in which the divine fire is described as purifying: it will consume in everyone whatever is unworthy of eternal life.275 In Carm. 2:1:1:545ff., PG 37:1010, Gregory depicts again the otherworldly fire as “purifying” in that it will devour evil. Of course Gregory speaks, with the Gospel, of “external darkness,” but he does not say that it will be eternal. Gregory uses αἰώνιος/aiōnios (“otherworldly”) in reference to these, and not ἀΐδιος/aïdios (“eternal”), which he reserves for life and beatitude.276 Gregory too, like Origen, interprets the otherworldly suffering of sinners in a spiritual way, as the torment of being far from God and remorse (Or. 16:8–9). Again, he does not say that this torment is eternal. The final judgment will consist in the awareness of one’s sins and the “worm that does not die” is continuous remorse (Carm. 1:2:15:100 = PG 37:773).
One of the most important testimonies comes from the fourth theological oration On the Son (30:6). Like Gregory of Nyssa, Nazianzen first observes that the Son appropriated humanity with all its sins “in order to consume in himself the worst part, as fire consumes wax.” Then he proclaims that the darkness of evil will be completely dispelled and expressly speaks of apokatastasis as the union of all rational creatures to God:
“God will be all in all” [1 Cor 15:28] in the time of the restoration [apokatastasis], when we will be no longer many, like now, with various movements of the will and passions, and it will not be the case that we carry in ourselves only little or nothing of God, but we shall be all entirely conformed to God, able to receive God wholly, and God alone. This is the perfection we aspire to, and it is especially Paul himself who guarantees this.
The final unity of all in the restoration is not a confusion of substances, as if we all merge into one undifferentiated entity, but a uniformity of wills, as it is in Origen and in Gregory of Nyssa. Even the vocabulary, “movement (of wills),” is Origenian. All wills shall be oriented toward God, the Good.
Gregory is also clear that restoration depends on Christ and is universal: “Christ’s suffering, through which all of us—not just some and not the others—have been restored” (Or. 33:9, PG 36:225B). The Greek verb is the correspondent of apokatastasis. Christ “came in human form in order to restore humanity, . . . collected the mortals and formed them into unity and placed them into the arms of the great Divinity, after washing away every stain with the blood of the Lamb, and, as the head of mortal humanity, lifted it up on the path to heaven.”277 Likewise Gregory insists on the universal purification performed by Christ, who “offered his blood to God and purified the whole cosmos; he underwent the torment of the cross and nailed sins onto it.”278
Since apokatastasis is the work of Christ, for Gregory, it is not surprising that he uses the very term ἀποκατάστασις/apokatastasis in reference to Christ’s ascension in Or. 41:11: in the ascension Gregory saw all humanity ascend with and in Christ. And in Or. 39.16 Nazianzen remarks that Christ’s baptism symbolized his ascension, when he “carries up the whole world with him, and sees the heavens open which Adam had closed to himself and to his posterity.” Nazianzen overtly speaks of universal restoration again in Or. 44.5. He uses numbers, like Origen and Maximus the Confessor, to describe the present life followed by the ultimate end. The seven represents this life, the eight the life to come, which will depend “on our good works in this life and universal restoration [ἀποκατάστασις πάντων/apokatastasis pantōn] in the next.”
In Carm. 1.5.548 Gregory announces that humans will experience either fire or illuminating light in the afterlife, “but whether all will later partake of God, let it be discussed elsewhere.” He does not avoid putting forward Origen’s and Gregory Nyssen’s view, but simply defers consideration of it. In Or. 36 Gregory meditates on the salvific value of Christ’s inhumanation: he became a human being “so as to work as leaven for the entire lump of humanity: having taken up that which was condemned, he liberates all from condemnation.” In Carm. 35.9 Gregory avers that Christ by his sacrifice “loosed all those who groaned under the chains of Tartarus [hell].” In Or. 42 Christ’s descent to hell is said to have liberated, and have brought salvation to, all visible and invisible creatures. The theme of the harrowing of hell is enhanced by the poem entitled Chistus patiens, which is traditionally attributed to Gregory Nazianzen, and which may, or may not, be by him. Verses 1934–35 of the poem proclaim the belief that Christ “will liberate from Hades as many mortals as it has imprisoned.” That this Hades is to be understood as hell is suggested by its being called by Nazianzen “Tartarus” (i.e., the place of torment in the other world) in the passage I just quoted from Carm. 35.9.
Pulling together the threads of the above discussion, we can say that Gregory Nazianzen seems to interpret Christ’s inhumanation, death, descent to Hades, resurrection, and ascension, as well as otherworldly divine punishments and the final consummation, in universalist ways. While he does not proclaim the universality of salvation with the same clarity as Origen of Gregory of Nyssa, he certainly appears to have a penchant for it.
Evagrius Ponticus
Evagrius of Pontus († 399)279 served as a lector under Basil in Neocaesarea and then a deacon under Gregory of Nazianzus in Constantinople (380 AD), rising to the level of archdeacon. He then moved to Jerusalem, where he became a monk, before finally moving to Egypt, where he lived out a monastic life. Evagrius was profoundly influenced by Origen, Neoplatonism, and the Cappadocians, of whom he was a disciple. He wrote to Rufinus, Gregory Nazianzen, Melania the Elder, and John of Jerusalem, all admirers of Origen. He supported a universal restoration of all rational creatures to their initial unity with God, after a sequence of aeons. This is especially clear in his Chapters on Knowledge (Kephalaia Gnostica: KG) and Letter to Melania (both lost in Greek, not accidentally, but thankfully preserved in Syriac). Evagrius too, like Origen and Gregory Nyssen, sees this restoration as the result of the work of Christ, who intercedes “for the whole rational nature, and separates some from evilness, and others from ignorance” (KG 5:46). The soul fell down from the superior rank of intellect, but in the restoration it will return to being an intellect (KG 2:29): a unified intellect, subsuming body and soul into itself; the true being of rational creatures is that which they were in the beginning and which they will recover in the end (Sent. 58). All will be restored to unity: “all will become coheirs of Christ, all will know the holy Unity” (KG 3:72). For Evagrius, just as for Origen, rational creatures share the same nature, but they became divided into angels, humans, and demons according to their free choices (not even demons are evil by nature, but only by misuse of the will),280 but all of them will return to unity in the eventual restoration, when evil and ignorance will be wiped out (KG 4:29: “when evil will be eliminated, ignorance will no longer exist among rational creatures, because ignorance is the shadow of evil”).281
For it is an extremely strong tenet of Evagrius’ thought—as of Origen’s and Gregory Nyssen’s, but possibly still more hammered home in Evagrius—that evil will eventually disappear, according to its ontological non-consistency, just as it did not exist at the beginning, for it is not a creature of God. The ontological and even chronological priority belongs to the Good, i.e., God:
If death comes after life, and illness after health, clearly vice, too, is secondary vis-à-vis virtue; for vice is the dea
th and illness of the soul, but virtue is anterior to it. (KG 1:41)
Evil is not a substance that actually exists: it is the absence of Good, just as darkness is a lack of light. . . . There was a time when evil did not exist, and there will come a time when evil will no longer exist. But there never has been a time when the Good did not exist, and there will be no time when it will no longer exist. (Ep. ad Anat. 23 and 65)282
Just as evil is secondary vis-à-vis the Good, so too is divine judgment—which deals with the effects of the choice of evil instead of the Good—secondary vis-à-vis providence (KG 5:23–24). Providence leads every creature to salvation by destroying sin (KG 1:28), but at the same time respecting all rational creatures’ free will (KG 6:43). Providence “pushes rational creatures from evilness and ignorance to virtue and science . . . and never abandons them . . . until they reach the Holy Trinity” (KG 6:59; 6:75). Providence will lead rational creatures through purification, which will be painful, but limited and commensurate to one’s sins (KG 4:34). The telos is when all intelligences are in the Unity, where “ineffable peace” obtains, and where the intelligences—with a reminiscence of Gregory of Nyssa—are in eternal tension, because they can never get sated of God.283
It is no surprise that Evagrius, like Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, interprets 1 Corinthians 15:24–28 as a proof of the eventual universal submission to Christ and God, which is salvific and means perfection and knowledge:
Christ’s feet are ascesis284 and contemplation, and if he will put all his enemies under his feet, then all will know ascesis and contemplation. If all nations will come and worship the Lord, then clearly also those who wage war will, and if this is the case, the whole nature of rational creatures will submit to the Name of the Lord. When Christ will no longer be impressed in various aeons and in names of every kind, then he himself will be submitted to God the Father, and will delight in the knowledge of God alone, which is not divided over the aeons and the spiritual growing of rational creatures. (KG 6:15; 6:27; 6:33)
Evagrius’ notion of the aeons is similar to that of Origen: the series of aeons, in which rational creatures are purified and grow, is limited; it began with the creation and will end with the eternal apokatastasis.285 Every aeon begins after the end of the preceding one and the relevant judgment, in which the place that rational creatures will occupy in the new aeon is determined on the basis of each one’s merits or demerits (KG 3:38; 3:47). During the aeons, angels and divine providence help rational creatures to liberate themselves from passions and instruct them,286 a process that also entails suffering (KG 3:18). For Evagrius, just as for Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, what will be burnt like chaff (Matt 3:12) will be sins, not sinners (KG 2:26).
Resurrection will not be merely a restoration of the body, which will transition from mortality to immortality, but also one of the soul, which will become free from passions, and of the intellect, which will acquire true knowledge.287 Thus, resurrection is the restoration of the whole human being, just as it is for Gregory Nyssen. All rational creatures have been created by the Godhead for itself (KG 4:1) and Christ helps them to turn to God:
All nations have been called by our Savior to eternal life.288 Who will be able to express God’s grace? Who will observe the criteria of providence, and how Christ leads the rational nature through the various aeons toward the union of the Holy Unity?289
In his Letter to Melania Evagrius expounds his ideas on the history of salvation. In the beginning, the Godhead, the Unity, created pure intellects from itself (“first creation”), but out of neglectfulness almost all of these fell from “essential knowledge” and became souls,290 which God endowed with bodies suited to their state (“second creation”). This was the result of the “first judgment” performed by Christ, who divided rational creatures into angels, humans, and demons in accord with the depth of their fall. The second creation is not a punishment, but God’s providential way to allow rational creatures to return to their intellectual state and attain salvation in contemplation. This process is enabled by Christ. The Logos is the only intellectual being that did not decay from “the knowledge of the Unity” (KG 1:77), and voluntarily adopted the body of the fallen rational creatures to help them reach essential knowledge. All will do so, including demons, because this is the end of all rational creatures (see also KG 5:61). Evagrius thought of God’s creation as divided into eight days, which reflects the seven days of God’s creation of the world (Gen 1) plus the eighth day of eschatological rest “beyond” creation, bringing creation to its final goal. On the seventh day Christ will reign over all rational creatures, and on the eighth all will return to Unity. When God, who is One, is in all, plurality as a mark of discord will disappear.291 The material creation was made by the Godhead “through its Power and Wisdom, i.e., the Son and the Spirit, that human beings might know, and get close to, God’s love for them. . . . The whole ministry of the Son and the Spirit takes place through creation, for the love of those who are far from God” (Ch. 2). Only the rational creatures who are already very close to God are helped directly by the Logos and the Spirit (Chs. 3–4). The initial fall—Evagrius claims, as Gregory of Nyssa does—transformed the human being from the “image of God” to an image of animals liable to passions (Ch. 9). But there will come the restoration in the end:
And there will be a time when the body, the soul, and the intellect will cease to be separate, with their names and plurality, because the body and the soul will be elevated to the rank of intellect. This conclusion can be drawn from the words, “that they may be one in us, as You and I are One.”292 And thus there will come a time when the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and their rational creation, which makes up their body, will cease to be separate, with their names and plurality. This conclusion can be drawn from the words, “God will be all in all” [1 Cor 15:28]. (Ep. ad Mel. 5)
In Chapter 6 Evagrius, after noting that the intellect, because of the wrong use of its free will, fell to the state of soul and further to that of body, proclaims that the body, the soul, and the intellect, “thanks to a transformation of their wills, will become one.” And all intellects in turn will become one with God:
They will no longer be many, but one, in God’s infinite and inseparable Unity, in that they are united and joined to God. . . . Before sin operated a separation between the intellects and God, like the earth that separated the sea and the rivers, they were one with God, without distinction, but when their sin was manifested, they were separated from God. . . . The rivers were eternally in the sea, just as rational creatures were eternally in God. In fact, even though they were entirely united to the Godhead in its wisdom and creative power, their creation proper had a beginning; however, one should not think that it will have an end, because they are united with God, who has no beginning and no end.
210. The authenticity of this commentary has been questioned by some, but on weak grounds.
211. “Beating is necessary with people of this kind: . . . we do not convert unless we are struck.”
212. The only passage in which it is said that αἰώνιοι/aiōnioi sufferings will be eternal, on the grounds that otherwise αἰώνιος/aiōnios life could not be eternal (short Rules for the monks 267, PG 31:1264:30–1265:47), is very probably spurious, or else inspired by a pastoral concern similar to that of Origen. See full discussion in my Apokatastasis.
213. See Ramelli and Konstan, Terms for Eternity, new ed., 182–209, and here below.
214. See my “Basil and Apokatastasis: New Findings”; on Orosius’ role in the Origenistic controversy see also Heil, “Orosius, Augustine, and the Origenist Controversy in the West.”
215. The initial and final union is indeed one of essential nature, as all rational intelligences (logokoi) have the same nature, even if some are now human while others are angelic or demonic. This union is not to be confused, however, with the idea that all logikoi are one and the same
being as each other or as God. Rather, the eschatological union will be a union of wills, since all the wills of rational creatures will be oriented towards the Good, i.e. God, instead of being dispersed in a multiplicity of lesser good or even evil objects of will.
216. See Silvas, Macrina the Younger, who regards Macrina as the mother of Greek monasticism and perhaps of cenobitic monasticism, and rightly emphasizes the philosophical character of her Christianity, which she transmitted to Gregory.
217. The Latin title is In Illud: Tunc et Ipse Filius.
218. See my “In Illud,” 259–74.
219. See also De beat. PG XLIV 1196:11. This phrase had already been used by Origen in Fr. in Matth. 78.
220. I have demonstrated this in detail in “In Illud” and, with further arguments, “The Trinitarian Theology,” 445–78.
221. See my “Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism,” and “The Father in the Son, the Son in the Father.”
222. See my “Christian Soteriology and Christian Platonism.”
223. See my “Harmony between Arkhē and Telos.”
224. I use my edition, Gregorio di Nissa sull’anima, which is also based on the collation of the Coptic translation (much more ancient than the extant Greek manuscripts; it has allowed me to restore several readings). Ekkehard Mühlenberg’s critical edition in GNO has received some of my readings. Further my “Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul (and the Restoration).”
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