225. De an. 100 CD–101A = 448 Ramelli. On Origen’s theology of freedom here, see my Social Justice.
226. See my Gregorio di Nissa sull’anima, introductory essay with argument and documentation.
227. Especially by Maspero and Taranto; see below.
228. Gregory insists that Jesus Christ deceived the devil just as the devil had deceived the human being at the beginning. The devil deceived Adam and Eve by having them deem the eating of the forbidden fruit something good, while this was something evil. Jesus deceived the devil by having him deem Jesus a common human, while he was God. This is also why Gregory can state that, being God, Christ will eventually convert the devil to the Good.
229. Or. cat. GNO III/4, 26,3–5: “the adversary, having mingled evilness to the human faculty of choice, produced an obfuscation and darkening of the capacity for reasoning well.” Sin comes from an obfuscation of the intellect.
230. The same idea of universal salvation as “restoration among the existing beings” performed by Christ appears in Hom. in Eccl. 2.305.10–13. It is a restoration to what does not perish or is not lost (apollymi); thanks to Christ humanity no longer passes on to non-being, i.e., evil. Apollymi (to become lost/destroyed) is the keyword of the Lukan Parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Drachma, and the Prodigal Son, all of which are found again (Luke 15); in Matthew 10:6, Jesus sends his disciples to find again the lost sheep of the house of Israel; in Luke 19:10 the Son of Man is said to have come to seek and save the lost. Thus Gregory, like Origen, does not interpret apollymi in the sense of a definitive perdition: what was lost and had perished is found by Christ and restored to being. Thus, in De virg. 13 Gregory interprets the Parable of the Lost Drachma in reference to the restoration.
231. “The nature of evil is unstable and passes away. It did not come into existence in the beginning with the creation . . . and it will not continue to exist eternally along with the beings that have ontological consistence. For the beings that derive their existence from the One who is the Being continue to be eternally [dia pantos]; but if anything is out of the One who is, its essence is not in Being. This thing, therefore, will pass away and disappear in due course, in the universal restoration [apokatastasis] οf all into the Good. Consequently, in that life which lies before us in hope there will remain no trace of evil.”
232. Likewise in De mort. 19 Lozza Gregory proclaims the infinite permanence of human beings in the Good, that is, God, who is infinite, and not in evil.
233. The same idea is found at the end of the dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection and In d. nat. Salv. GNO X/2, 237–38.
234. This also disproves claims, such as Salvatore Taranto’s (and partially Giulio Maspero’s), that Gregory upheld this doctrine only initially, but then dropped it. See below.
235. “God’s goodness can never be found separate from our nature, . . . but it is always present in every person; it may become obfuscated by the concerns or pleasures of life, and then it is unknown and hidden, but it is immediately found again, as soon as we reorient our thought to God” (De virg. GNO VIII 300).
236. Due to his misunderstanding of αἰώνιος/aiōnios as “eternal,” Germanus of Constantinople (eighth century, preserved by Photius Bibl. Cod. 233), since he found in Gregory expressions such as “αἰώνιος/aiōnios punishment” but also the doctrine of universal restoration and salvation, thought that Gregory’s manuscripts had been interpolated by Origenists who added the parts on universal salvation. But another opponent of universal salvation, Severus, simply recognized that Gregory supported the doctrine of universal restoration and did not find a problem in his use of “αἰώνιος/aiōnios punishment,” clearly because he was aware of the meaning that Gregory attached to it (in Photius Bibl. Cod. 232).
237. “The nature of evil, at last, will be reduced to non-being, completely disappearing from being, and God’s purest goodness will embrace in itself every rational creature, and none of the beings that have come to existence thanks to God will fall out of the kingdom of God, when every evilness that has mixed with beings, as a kind of spurious matter, will have been consumed by the fusion of the purifying fire, and thus every being that has come to existence thanks to God will return to being such as it was at the beginning, when it had not yet received evil” (In Illud, 13–14 D.).
238. See also CE 3 GNO II 140; De tr. sp. GNO IX 286–88.
239. De tr. sp. GNO IX/1, 298–303; CE 3, GNO II, 121–22. The four dimensions of the cross, indicated by its four arms, make it clear that “all heavenly and infernal realities and the extremes of all that exists are governed and kept together by the One who in the figure of the cross has manifested this great and ineffable power” (CE GNO II 121–2). Christ’s sacrifice took place on the cross and not in another way (De tr. sp. GNO IX,1 298–9) because “this figure of the cross, divided into four arms that stretch out from the central crossing, indicates the omnipresent power and providence of the One who was manifested upon it . . . there is no being that is not found under the providence of divine nature, most absolutely, above heaven, under the earth, and up to the extreme limits of all that exists . . . You are the one who permeates all, becoming the link of all, uniting in yourself all the extreme limits: You are above and are present below, Your hand rests on one extreme and Your right hand governs on the other.” (ibid. 300–301). “By means of the figure of the cross the Godhead indicates its power, which keeps all beings in its custody. This is why Scripture says that it was necessary that the Son of the Human Being not simply ‘should die,’ but ‘should be crucified,’ that, for those who are more insightful, the cross could become the proclaimer of the Logos of God, because in its form it proclaims the omnipotent lordship of the One who has offered himself on it, and who is ‘all in all’” (De tr. sp. GNO IX 303:2–12).
240. Contr. c. Apoll. 55, GNO III/2, 224–26.
241. In S. Pascha GNO IX 245–53; Or. cat. 37, GNO III/4 93–95.
242. The same motif of the unity of all humans in Christ, by whom the whole “lump” of humanity is sanctified and joined to the Father, is also exploited in De perf. GNO VIII/1, 197 and 206: “by assuming in body and soul the first fruits of the common nature, he has sanctified it, preserving it in himself pure from every evil and uncontaminated, to consecrate it in incorruptibility to the Father of incorruptibility, and to attract to himself, through it, all that belongs to the same species by nature and is of the same family, in order to readmit those disinherited to the inheritance of filial adoption, the enemies of God to the participation in his divinity.” See also Hom. in Cant. GNO VI 467:2–17. Gregory insists on the notion of kinship (syngeneia) of all humankind and between humankind and Christ in De perf. GNO VIII/1, 197–9. With the syngeneia between Christ and all humans Gregory motivates “the common salvation of human nature” (Contr. c. Apoll. GNO III/1, 154).
243. “God’s intention is one and only one: after the realization, through each single human, of the full totality—when some will be found to have been already purified from evil during the present life, while others will have been healed by means of fire for given periods, and yet others will have not even tasted, in this life, either good or evil to the same extent—to bestow on all the participation in the goods that are in the Godhead, of which Scripture says that no eye has ever seen, no ear has heard, nor are they graspable through reasoning. Now, this, I think, is nothing but coming to be in the Godhead itself.” Cf. Or. cat. 32: “Because the totality of the whole human nature forms, so to say, one living being, the resurrection of one part of it [i.e. Christ] extends to the whole, and, in conformity with the continuity and unity of the (human) nature, passes on from the part to the whole.”
244. See Ramelli and Konstan, Terms for Eternity, 2nd ed., chapter on Gregory; “Time and Eternity,” in The Routledge Handbook of E
arly Christian Philosophy, ed. Mark J. Edwards, forthcoming.
245. De an. 120C; Or. cat. 7; Hom. in Eccl. 8; Hom. in Cant. 2.
246. Homily 4 on Ecclesiastes; De mort. 15. God could have spared evil to humans by turning them toward the Good, even against their will, but this would have deprived them of their dignity of “image of God.” Because the Godhead possesses freedom of will, its image too must possess it. See my Social Justice, Chs 4–5.
247. See Ramelli, Social Justice.
248. A very similar rationale underlies the concept of hell as educative put forward by a contemporary theologian, MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, 136: “If we think of hell as the state in which God allows the painful reality of sin to hit home . . . God simply withdraws his protection that allows people to live under the illusion that sin is not necessarily harmful to a truly human life. The natural consequences of sin take their course, and it becomes harder and harder to fool oneself into believing the seductive lies of sin anymore. In this way hell is educative and points us towards our need for divine mercy.”
249. “If, thanks to our solicitude in the present life or purification by fire in the future one, our soul will be able to liberate itself from those which, among the emotions, are irrational [i.e., passions], nothing will be left to prevent it from contemplating the Good. For the Good is such as to attract, so to say, by its own nature, every being that looks at it. Thus, if the soul can be purified from every sin, it will certainly stay in the Good. Now, the Good is by nature identical to the Divinity, with whom the soul will be united thanks to its pureness, in that it will be found joined to what is proper and familiar to itself” (De an. 89CD).
250. Or. cat. 8. Those who have been purified in this life will enjoy beatitude immediately at the resurrection, but the others will have to be purified by fire in the other world over “long aeons” (Or. cat. 8 GNO III/4, 191). Salvation will come “thanks either to solicitude in this life or to purification afterwards” (De an. 89). For “some have already been purified from evil during the present life, while others are healed by fire in the future, for the necessary time.”
251. Cauterizations and amputations are drastic but successful therapies (Or. cat. 26). God will heal all humans from sin—the illness and death of the soul—with two medicines: virtue in this life or a “therapy” (therapeia) in the next, which can be more or less drastic depending on the seriousness of a soul’s illness. This therapy will be administered at the judgment (Or. cat. 8 GNO III/4, 31–34).
252. GNO III/4, 29:17–22; 31:19–21. Cf. De mort. GNO IX 55–62.
253. “Scoriae will disappear, those things to which the impulses of our desires are now directed: pleasures, richness, love for glory, power, anger, haughtiness, and the like. Thus, our impulse, once liberated and purified from all this, will turn in its activity only to what is worth desiring and loving: it will not altogether extinguish our natural impulses toward those objects, but will transform them in view of the immaterial participation in the true goods.”
254. E.g., Ludlow, Universal Salvation, and Gregory of Nyssa, of which see my review in Review of Biblical Literature 04/2008 [http://www.bookreviews.org/BookDetail .asp?TitleId=6173]; Tsirpanlis, “The Concept of Universal Salvation in Saint Gregory of Nyssa,” 42–43; Daley, The Hope of the Early Church, 85–88; Harrison, Grace and Freedom according to St. Gregory; Pietras, L’escatologia nei Padri della Chiesa, 104; McGuckin, “Eschatological Horizons”; Harmon, “The Work of Jesus Christ and the Universal Apokatastasis,” 225–43 and “The Subjection of All Things in Christ,” 47–64. See also Harmon, Every Knee Should Bow.
255. Taranto, Gregorio di Nissa, 615–55. Quotation from 618, my translation.
256. Taranto, Gregorio di Nissa, 615–16.
257. E.g., Taranto cites De an. 101:17 to claim that Gregory affirmed an eternal punishment in the next world (632). But here that punishment is called αἰώνιον/aiōnion, not “eternal,” and in the immediate context Macrina argues for universal salvation through purification: evil must disappear in the end; thus, those who have sinned more will be purified longer; the duration will be proportional to one’s sins, not infinite (which would exclude proportionality). Gregory then asks: “But what would be the benefit of this good hope for one who considers what great an evil is to suffer pains even just for one year, and if that unbearable pain should endure for a long [αἰώνιoν/aiōnion] interval, which consolation remains from the hope for a remote future to one whose punishment extends to the measure of a whole aeon [αἰῶνα/aiōnia]?” Macrina replies that this is exactly why it is necessary to keep one’s sins as limited as possible, “and easy to heal [εὐθεραπεύτοι/eutherapeutoi].” Taranto renders αἰώνιoν/aiōnion as “eternal” instead of “long” (but “eternal interval” is a contradiction in terms), αἰών/aiōn as “eternity” instead of “aeon” (but “eternity” is incompatible with “measure”), and εὐθεράπευτοι/eutherapeutoi as “curable” instead of “easy to heal,” thus implying that there are also sins that are “incurable” even for God, rather than “difficult to heal.” But, like Origen, Gregory thought that nothing is incurable for the Creator, and indeed Macrina goes on to argue that sins are like debts that must be extinguished by torments, whose duration will be proportional to the sins’ amount. This rules out unlimited torments and is the reason why Macrina concludes that once all have been liberated from their sins, all will come to be in God (104A).
258. Taranto, Gregorio di Nissa, 617.
259. Taranto, Gregorio di Nissa, 617.
260. See my “The Trinitarian Theology” and Apokatastasis, section on Gregory Nyssen.
261. Taranto, Gregorio di Nissa, 618.
262. Ibid., 620.
263. Taranto claims that Gregory regarded the doctrine of universal salvation as a product of reasoning, but not revealed by the Bible. He cites De mort. 20–21, where Gregory, after describing the eventual restoration as one and the same light and grace shining in all humans after the destruction of evil and death, observes that “the logos” provides an important teaching concerning the salvific destiny of the dead. Here logos means, not “rational argument,” as Taranto surmises, but, “Scripture” (a meaning that it often bears in Gregory): for Gregory has just adduced 1 Corinthians 15:26, 1 Thessalonians 4:13, and John 17: these provide the teaching to which Gregory refers. That universal salvation is based on the Bible for Gregory is indeed manifest from his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:28, the main passage in which he grounds this doctrine together with John 17.
264. La Trinità e l’uomo, 176ff.; with the observations by Ramelli, Gregorio di Nissa sull’anima, first Integrative Essay and nn. 76–80; Maspero, Trinity and Man, 76–94, reviewed by Ilaria Ramelli in RBL 2009.
265. La Trinità, 183–84 = Trinity and Man, 81–82.
266. Trinity and Man, 91.
267. See my “Αἰώνιος and αἰών”; “time and Eternity.”
268. Trinity and Man, 91–2.
269. Maspero adduces In inscr. Ps. GNO V 174:22–175:25, mentioned above, concerning people who will be chased out of the holy city and punished with the deprivation of (“hunger for”) goods. This deprivation, however, is not said to be eternal. Indeed, first Gregory comments on Psalm 59:13–14, speaking of the very end, when evil is destroyed. Then he comments on v. 15, which repeats v. 7: “then the psalm takes up again the same discourse concerning those who return in the evening and are hungry.” This is why Gregory here goes back from the ultimate end (universal salvation) to punishment for sinners “after the present life” and before the end of aeons. I already pointed out that Gregory in this whole passage states that all sinners will be purified from evil, which therefore will vanish. Maspero thinks that for Gregory those who remained fixed i
n evil in this life will enter eternity statically, but this overlooks God’s attraction on all souls, which has the collateral effect of pains for those who are immersed in evil, but God’s aim is to extract them from evil, and this aim will be fulfilled.
270. In Photius Bibl. cod. 232, p. 291b.
271. See my Preexistence of Souls?; further in “Origen” and “Gregory of Nyssa,” both in A History of Mind and Body in Late Antiquity, ed. Anna Marmodoro.
272. In S. Pascha, Or. 45; PG 36:633:14–17 = In Theoph. Or. 38; PG 36:324:49–53.
273. In the same Or. 38 (PG 36:324:45–47) Gregory embraces the same interpretation of the Genesis “skin tunics” as Origen’s and Gregory Nyssen’s: not the body per se, which the human being possessed already before the fall, but the mortality of the body and its being liable to passions.
274. It is the expression “my Jesus.” See Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy, 435–38.
275. Cf. Carm. I 2,15,99 = PG 37,773.
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