276. See Ramelli–Konstan, Terms for Eternity, 185–89 on Gregory Nazianzen.
277. Carm. 1:2:1:161–67, PG 37:535.
278. Carm. dogm. 2:76–77.
279. Casiday, Evagrius; Sinkewicz, The Greek Ascetic Corpus; Ramelli, Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostika and “Evagrius’ and Gregory’s Relations.”
280. KG 4:59; 3:34; 1:63.
281. Suffering in hell will consist in ignorance, while beatitude consists in knowledge (Gnostikos 36; KG 6:8).
282. Cf. KG 1:40; Praktikos 1:65.
283. Ibid. 4:51; 1: 7; 1:65.
284. Ascesis is the practice of spiritual discipline.
285. KG 5:89; see also 4:38.
286. KG 6:35; cf. 3:5; 6:76.
287. KG 5:19; 5:22; 5:25; 2:15.
288. KG 4:26; cf. 1:90; 2:59.
289. KG 4:89; cf. 1:72–73. Indeed, the miracles worked by Christ are the symbol of the purification of rational creatures in the world to come (KG 3:9).
290. See also KG 4:28.
291. Cf. Letter on Faith 7; KG 1:7–8; 4:19; 4:81.
292. John 17:22.
7
Apokatastasis in Antioch
Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia
The doctrine of universal restoration and salvation was also upheld at Antioch in the second half of the fourth century by Diodore of Tarsus († 390ca), founder of the catechetical school near Antioch, and in the early fifth century by his disciple Theodore of Mopsuestia († 428). The Syriac mystic St. Isaac of Nineveh, who also supported apokatastasis (see below), attests that both Diodore and Theodore professed this doctrine and taught that the duration of otherworldly punishments will be commensurate to the gravity of sins and not infinite (Second Part, 39:8–11). Isaac goes on to report Diodore’s idea that otherworldly suffering will last for a temporary period, whereas blessedness will last for all eternity, and “not even the immense evilness of demons can overcome the measure of God’s goodness” (39:11–3). He quotes from Diodore’s On Providence, where Diodore very probably made the connection between divine providence and apokatastasis as its main goal.
Another witness here is Solomon of Basra, a thirteen-century supporter of the doctrine of universal restoration and salvation, who in the last chapter of his Book of the Bee agrees with Origen’s view that the doctrine of universal salvation must be preached only to those who are spiritually advanced. He then exemplifies the theory of universal restoration by excerpts from Isaac of Nineveh, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and from Diodore of Tarsus’ book on the salvific economy known as On Providence:
Saint Theodore the Exegete says: “Those who have here chosen fair things will receive in the world to come the pleasure of good things with praises; but the wicked who have turned aside to evil things all their life, when they have become ordered in their minds by penalties and the fear that springs from them, and choose good things, and learn how much they have sinned by having persevered in evil things and not in good things, and by means of these things receive the knowledge of the highest doctrine of the fear of God, and become instructed to lay hold of it with a good will, will be deemed worthy of the happiness of the Divine liberality. For he [i.e., Jesus] would never have said, ‘Until you pay the uttermost farthing’ [Matt 5:26], unless it had been possible for us to be freed from our sins through having atoned for them by paying the penalty; neither would he have said, ‘he shall be beaten with many stripes,’ or ‘he shall be beaten with few stripes’ [Luke 12:47], unless it were that the penalties, being meted out according to the sins, should finally come to an end.” These things the Exegete has handed down in his books clearly and distinctly.
So also the blessed Diodore, who says in the Book of the Salvific Economy: “A lasting reward, which is worthy of the justice of the Giver, is laid up for the good, in return for their labors; and torment for sinners, but not everlasting, that the immortality which is prepared for them may not be worthless. They must however be tormented for a limited time, as they deserve, in proportion to the measure of their iniquity and wickedness, according to the amount of the wickedness of their deeds. This they will have to bear, that they suffer for a limited time; but immortal and unending happiness is prepared for them. If it be then that the rewards of good deeds are as great (in proportion to them) as the times of the immortality which are prepared for them are longer than the times of the limited contests which take place in this world, the torments for many and great sins must be very much less than the greatness of mercy. So then it is not for the good only that the grace of the resurrection from the dead is intended, but also for the wicked; for the grace of God greatly honors the good, but chastises the wicked sparingly.”
Again he says: “God pours out the wages of reward beyond the measure of the labors (wrought), and in the abundance of his goodness he lessens and diminishes the penalty of those who are to be tormented, and in his mercy he shortens and reduces the length of the time. But even so, he does not punish the whole time according to (the length of) the time of folly, seeing that he requites them far less than they deserve, just as he does the good beyond the measure and period (of their deserts); for the reward is everlasting. It has not been revealed whether the goodness of God wishes to punish without ceasing the blameworthy who have been found guilty of evil deeds (or not), as we have already said before . . . . But if punishment is to be weighed out according to sin, not even so would punishment be endless. For as regards that which is said in the Gospel, ‘These shall go away into αἰώνιος/aiōnios punishment, but the righteous into αἰώνιος/aiōnios life’ [Matt 25:46], this word αἰώνιος/aiōnios [Syr. l-‘olam] is not definite: for if it be not so, how did Peter say to our Lord, ‘You will not wash my feet l-‘olam’ [John 13:8] and yet he washed him? And of Babylon he said, ‘No man will dwell therein l-‘olam’ [Isa 13:20], and behold many generations dwell therein. In the Book of Memorials he says: ‘I hold what the most celebrated of the holy fathers say, that he cuts off a little from much. The penalty of Gehenna is a human’s mind; for the punishment there is of two kinds, that of the body and that of the mind. That of the body is perhaps in proportion to the degree of sin, and he lessens and diminishes its duration; but that of the mind is l-‘olam, and the judgement is l-‘olam.’ But in the New Testament l-‘olam [αἰώνιος/aiōnios] is not without end.”293
Diodore conveys the notion that the eventual restoration will reveal that the resurrection is a grace for all humans, including the wicked. For, if the latter were resurrected only to be punished, the resurrection would no longer be a good, because for them it would be better not to rise again. This is the same idea as expressed in a fragment of Theodore, Diodore’s disciple, which I shall discuss in a moment. The second passage from Diodore shows his awareness of the meaning that αἰών/aiōn and αἰώνιος/aiōnios (Syriac ‘olam and l-‘olam) have in the Bible: he is very clear that they do not indicate eternity. This insight emerges not only in the fragment from Solomon, but also in some of Diodore’s preserved Greek works.294
Shortly after Isaac, in the eighth century, John of Dara confirms that “Diodore of Tarsus, in the book that he wrote on the salvific economy, and Theodore, a disciple of his and the teacher of Nestorius, in many passages claim that damnation will come to an end” (On the Resurrection of Human Bodies 4:21). Diodore’s lost work on the salvific economy is the same as quoted by Solomon of Basra. It may well have disappeared precisely on account of the doctrine of universal salvation it defended, which came to be regarded by the church with great suspicion.
Theodore Bar Konai, while discussing the question whether those who are in Gehenna can be made worthy of the kingdom, says:
Some among the wise and learned, such as Saint Diodore and the blessed Exegete [Theodore of Mopsuestia], have alluded to this in an enigmatic way, by add
ucing that God is not only just, but also merciful, and that it becomes the One who judges with justice to have sinners suffer in a measure that is proportional to their sins and then make them worthy of blessedness.295
This fragment shows that one of the arguments that Diodore and Theodore used in support of universal salvation is the theological argument already used by Origen and his followers: the universalist eschatological outcome is the only one that becomes God. The allusive way in which Diodore and Theodore spoke of universal salvation, together with the loss of most of the works in which they did so, explain the reason why their doctrine of universal salvation is generally not realized, or sometimes is questioned, by scholars.
Further confirmation of the testimonies I have adduced so far can be found in a Syriac fragment from Diodore, cited by ‘Abdisho: “Punishment . . . for the unjust, yet not eternal, . . . but such as they will be tormented for a given limited time, commensurate with their sins.”296 Indeed, Diodore, like Clement, Origen, and Gregory Nyssen, regarded the punishments established by God as therapies:
As an expert surgeon, God applies to us, or allows others to apply to us, heavy and difficult conditions, as though they were a cauterization or a surgical incision. . . . God does everything for the sake of our good. (Commentary on Psalm 4)
Diodore insists on the same concept in his commentary on Psalm 39; all sufferings inflicted by God are healing and educative: “I realize that all of your scourging is aimed at correcting and improving a person . . . in order to improve their soul. . . . I must accept a punishment that is commensurate with the limits of my life.” Moreover, Diodore understands the universal submission to Christ as a joyous submission (Comm. in Ps. 2). In this way, it will coincide with universal salvation.297
In his preface to his own commentary on the Psalms, Diodore heavily criticizes those who believe in the Creator but not in divine providence.298 He cannot have had Epicureans in mind, since they believed in gods that were not the Christian God. Those he spoke of must have been Christians who did not believe in the power of the providence of God. For Diodore, God’s providence is that which in all ways and by all means provides for the salvation of all. In On Providence he argued that providence leads to universal restoration. Thus, those who believe in God but not in providence are those Christians who believe in God, but not in the eventual universal salvation, which is the triumph of divine providence. Generally no satisfactory identification is proposed of those who allegedly believe in God but not in providence. But this is because these statements of Diodore’s, preserved in Greek, are not read in the light of the Syriac fragments and testimonies on universal restoration. When the Greek and Syriac sources of evidence are put together, the identity of those he criticizes becomes clearer.
A Greek testimony on Diodore’s disciple, Theodore, comes from Photius, who in Bibl. cod. 177 is giving a summary of his Against Those Who Claim That Humans Sin by Nature and Not by Intention. Photius says that in this treatise Theodore appears to “suffer from the heresy of Origen, at least in that he suggests the end of punishment.” He adds that Theodore indeed proclaimed that the resurrection will be followed by the restoration, for Theodore writes, “in that restoration [apokatastasis] that comes after the resurrection.”
A Latin fragment from Theodore argues: “How can the resurrection be considered a grace, if those who are resurrected will be inflicted a punishment that does not result in a correction? . . . Who is so foolish as to believe that so great a good will become the occasion for an infinite torment for those who rise?”299 The resurrection cannot result in an eternal and merely retributive punishment, if it has to be a glorious gift and good, and not a damage. The resurrection will be, not only physical—in which case it can actually become the occasion for an infinite torment—but also spiritual, so as to bring about reformation and purification. Photius indeed observes that Theodore “maintained an odd doctrine concerning the resurrection of sinners” (Bibl. cod. 81). For Theodore is confident that in the future aeon humans will be “immortal, impassible, and free from sin” and insists on his holistic notion of the resurrection in Comm. in Gal. 3:26: “Once they have received immortality, they will sin no more.”
A Syriac fragment preserved in Isaac of Nineveh’s Second Part, 3:3:94 likewise supports the idea that otherworldly punishments will be limited in time and will not endure forever. It comes from a lost work of Theodore’s, On Priesthood. And another Greek testimony confirms these fragments: Leontius of Byzantium (who in turn was a crypto-Origenist)300 accused Theodore of supporting universal restoration, deeming eternal damnation a mere threat, and thinking that Christ will give mercy to everybody.301 Here Leontius seems to have misunderstood the teaching in question, for neither Diodore nor Theodore thought that sinners will not be punished. They rather thought that punishments will not be eternal, in that they will be therapeutic and commensurate with sins.
Theodore, like Diodore, knew the exact meaning of αἰώνιος/aiōnios in the Bible; this is why in the prologue to his commentary on Psalm 2 he correctly interprets “αἰώνιος/aiōnios condemnation” as “condemnation in the world to come.” And this is also why he defines αἰών/aiōn not as “eternity,” but as “an interval of time” (Comm. in Gal. 1:4). Theodore likewise glosses “αἰώνιος/aiōnios life” with “life in the world to come.” The same is the case with “αἰώνιος/aiōnios death,” “αἰώνιον/aiōnion fire,” and the like. Theodore describes otherworldly torments only as αἰώνιοι/aiōnioi, “future,” and never as ἀΐδιοι/aidioi, “eternal” (see Fr. in Matth. fr. 28:8). Thus, he applies ἀΐδιος/aïdios to the future life when he wants to emphasize its eternity and αἰώνιος/aiōnios when he wants to indicate that it pertains to the world to come, or in Scriptural quotations. But ἀΐδιος/aïdios is never used by him of future punishment, fire, or death. For these Theodore only uses αἰώνιος/aiōnios. (He uses the latter also in various OT quotations, where it bears its typical significance of “remote,” “ancient,” “long-lasting,” or refers to a succession of generations.)
Theodore uses the very terminology of apokatastasis: “not to have them fall into perdition, but to fashion them anew; . . . to fashion them anew after they had fallen and to restore them again into their original condition” (Comm. in Ps. 8). The very expression “to restore to one’s original condition” (with the verbal correspondent of apokatastasis) is the designation of the eventual restoration in Origen and Gregory Nyssen. Theodore, like Origen,302 thinks that God destroys or kills only to rebuild in a better state. Physical death is a gift of God which puts a limit to sin and thus to otherworldly punishment; it destroys the human being to remake it anew free from evil.
Also like Origen, Gregory Nyssen, and his own teacher Diodore, Theodore interprets the eventual universal submission to Christ as universal salvation: “the submission of a soul that is not sad, but joyous, is a submission [subiectio] that produces, not suffering, but salvation [salvatio]” (Comm. in Ps. 3:11).
Theodore proclaims the universal redemption operated by Christ: “In his own body Christ has realized the salvific economy for us. With the suffering of his own body he has provided the universal remission of sin and elimination of evils” (Comm. in Ps. 40). Thus, Theodore can describe the eventual universal restoration (apokatastasis) as a recapitulation operated by Christ:
God has recapitulated all beings in Christ . . . as though he made a renewal that epitomizes all, a restoration of the whole creation, through him. . . . This will come to pass in a future aeon, when all humanity and all powers endowed with reason will adhere to him, as is right, and will obtain mutual concord and stable peace. (Comm. in Eph. 1:10)303
The first catechetical school in the early church was that in Alexandria, and we have seen how several influential universalists came out of that. What is much less well known is that the other early Christian “catechetical” school, that in Antioch, was founded by a Christian believe
r in universal salvation, Diodore of Tarsus, and had another high-profile universalist as one of its first teachers, Theodore of Mopsuestia. In other words, both of the two main centers of exegesis and theology in the Christian world of this period were at least open to the notion of apokatastasis.
Titus of Basra
It is fitting at this point to briefly mention Titus of Basra, or Bostra. Titus, a follower of Diodore of Tarsus active under the reigns of Julian and Valens (361–78) and the author of a treatise Against the Manichaeans in four books, was, according to the Byzantine theologian Stephen Gobar, among the closest followers of Origen together with Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Alexander of Jerusalem, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, and others (quoted by Photius, Library 232). Concerned as he was with theodicy, like Origen, Titus claimed that punishments in the next world will not be eternal. In Against the Manichaeans 1.32, he teaches that hell itself, “the abyss, is a place of torment and chastisement, but not eternal. It was created for it to be a medicine and help for sinners. Sacred are the stripes that are remedial to those who have sinned. Thus, we do not lament the abysses of hell, knowing rather that these are places of torment and chastisement aimed at the correction of sinners.” This aligns well with Titus’ anti-Manichaean interpretation of Genesis 3: the fall of the protoplasts304 testifies to God’s providence: it allowed the human being to exert its free will; the death that came about as a result of this is beneficial (as Origen, Methodius, and Gregory of Nyssa underscored), in that it offers rest to the just and prevents sinners from sinning further. It is not surprising that Titus in Against the Manichaeans 4.12.20 cited Origen with admiration, stating that he had denounced and fought all the heresies of his time.
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