374. Perczel, “St. Maximus on the Lord’s Prayer,” 226–27. According to Perczel, five anecdotes in John Moschus’ Spiritual Meadow, 4, 8, 19, 96, and 104, indicate that Maximus and his circle harbored sympathy for the Origenists of their day (“St. Maximus on the Lord’s Prayer,” 255–71). Indeed, Moschus’ stance appears to be the opposite of that of the anti-Origenist Cyril of Scythopolis and his Sabaite circle.
375. His works, which address monks, are divided into a First, a Second, and a Third Part. The First is comprised of eighty-two homilies, soon translated into Greek; the Second Part, in forty-three texts, has never been translated into Greek; the Third Part has become available to scholars only recently, thanks to Sabino Chialà’s 2011 edition, Isacco di Ninive: Terza Collezione, in CSCO Syri 246 (Corpus Scriptorium Christianorum Orientalium). Brock, “Four Excerpts,” offers the edition and translation of four new excerpts never edited so far; Hansbury, Isaac’s Spiritual Works, offers a text and translation from which Isaac’s doctrine of apokatastasis emerges. Nestor Kavvadas, Isaak von Ninive, points out the frictions between East Syrian episcopacy and the anchorite mystical movement as represented by Isaac, and draws out of Isaac’s writings, and especially the Kephalaia Gnostika (the same title as Evagrius’ masterpiece), the underlying structure of Isaac’s thought on the working of the Holy Spirit, with the tension between the here and now and the “new world” that can be momentarily anticipated in the present world. Recently Scully, Isaac of Nineveh’s Ascetical Eschatology, is in full continuity with my treatment of Isaac’s eschatology and soteriology in The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis.
376. Spiritual Teachings, Slavonic Philocalia 260.
377. “The soul, according to its nature, is untouched by passions. These are something that added itself later [this is also Gregory of Nyssa’s and Evagrius’ conviction], due to the sin committed by the soul. But before that, the soul was luminous and pure, thanks to the divine illumination, and so will it be again, when it returns to its origin” (Spiritual Teachings, Slavonic Philocalia 25).
378. Second Part 39:16.
379. Second Part, 39.
380. An English translation of his letters is Hansbury, The Letters of John of Dalyatha. See also Brock, “Some Prominent Themes,” 49–59; Seppälä, “Angelic Mysticism,” 425–33.
381. This letter may be by Joseph Hazzaya, another Syriac mystic who was deeply influenced by Origen and Evagrius. In this case it would testify to the presence of the doctrine of apokatastasis in Joseph too.
It is no wonder that, under the influence of John, Dionysius Bar Tsalibi in the twelfth century commented on Evagrius’ Chapters on Knowledge, where Evagrius supported apokatastasis, including by showing that the contemplation of divine providence comes after that of divine judgment. My supposition is confirmed by Nestor Kavvadas, Joseph Hazzaya on Providence, who argues that his aim was to derive apokatastasis from Theodore of Mopsuestia.
382. De praed. adv. Joh. Erig. 1011A.
383. “Their own malice/evilness is doomed to perish in eternity/ forever” (Malitia vero, in perversa illorum voluntate reperta, in aeternum peritura) (Periph. 5:931A).
384. Quando humana natura in pristinum restaurabitur statum (Periph. 2:6).
385. Ad pristinam integritatem restituatur (Periph. 4:7).
386. Omnis creatura, in caelo et in terra, salva facta est (Periph. 5:24).
387. Nihil humanitatis, quam totam accepit, perpetuis poenis insolubilibusque malitiae, quam tormentorum calamitas sequitur, nexibus obnoxium reliquit. For Eriugena’s remarkable assimilation of Stoic ἐκπυρώσεις to the Christian conflagration, see Jeauneau, “La Métaphysique du Feu,” 299–318.
388. De corr. et gr. 14:44.
389. Heide, “Ἀποκατάστασις,” 195–213.
390. Heide, “Ἀποκατάστασις,” 209.
391. In his (otherwise very positive) review of my Apokatastasis monograph, Mark Edwards states that I omitted Eriugena’s quotation of Origen Princ. 3.6.5 on the devil nouissimus inimicus (“she omits to cite his alleged quotation of De Principiis 3.6.5, which concurs with the received text of Rufinus in all respects except that it introduces the noun diabolus”; Edwards, Review, 724), but in fact I cited and discussed it thoroughly on pp. 797–98, since this is one of the crucial points that Eriugena makes in support of universal restoration, and one in which he deliberately intends to make clear his dependence on Origen—his greatest inspirer after more than six centuries.
392. Alumnus (or the disciple) and Nutritor (or the master) are the two main characters of the Periphyseon.
393. Moran, The Philosophy of John Scottus Eriugena, 201.
10
The Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance
Fragments of Evidence for Continuing Hope
The Middle Ages were not a hospitable time for Christian universalists, and lacking any official permission from the church to entertain a larger hope, we tend to find such notions appearing among people at the fringes, and sometimes developed in theologically heterodox forms. In this final chapter, we shall consider scattered fragments of evidence for continuing hope in its various forms, both orthodox and heterodox, among ordinary believers, theologians, heretics, poets, and mystics.
Aelfric’s Testimony about Tenth-Century Anglo-Saxon Universalistic Trends
We have a tantalizing fragment of evidence from England just over a century after Eriugena’s death concerning the hope that some at least may be rescued from hell. The Anglo-Saxon bishop Aelfric of Eynsham, at the very end of the tenth century, in his eschatological homily On the Feast Day of the Virgins, testifies to the theology of some unnamed opponents, whom he calls “heretics.” These Christians, apparently at that time, believed that “the holy Mary, the Mother of Christ, and some other saints, after the Judgment will harrow the sinners from the devil.”394 This may or may not be witness to a continuing stream of Origenian thought at the grassroots—its focus on Mary and the saints seems to place the emphasis in a different place from the tradition we have been considering—but it certainly indicates that the idea of one’s fate being sealed at death continued to be a cause of concern to Christians, who sought resources from their tradition to open up a wider hope.
Theophylact
In the eleventh century, Theophylact, the archbishop of Akhrida in Bulgaria († 1107), commenting on our core text 1 Corinthians 15:28, observed that “By these words some understand the elimination of evilness, because God will be ‘all in all’ clearly once sin has ceased to exist.” He is probably speaking of contemporary theologians, although this might also refer to earlier church fathers. Certainty eludes us.
Amaury de Bène
Amaury de Bène († c.1207), a teacher of logic and theology at the University of Paris, and his followers are reported to have embraced universalistic doctrines. In 1206, the church forced him to revise his positions, which are basically unknown to us, but were obviously felt to be dangerous. This feeling of genuine concern is indicated by the fact that Eriugena’s Periphyseon was only condemned at that time (1225), centuries after it was written, because of its influence on Amaury.395 The latter was condemned by the 1215 Lateran Council.396 That his followers proclaimed universal salvation is not totally certain, though they promised that they would bring all humanity to perfection. Some of Amaury’s ideas passed on to the so-called Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries).397 In their view, God is “all in all,” not only in the end—as is proclaimed in 1 Corinthians 15:28—but already now; as a consequence, sin and its punishment are not really existent. In their view, it is not exactly the case that all will be saved, because all are already saved. Some fringes of this movement seem to have believed in a universal absorption in God in the end, in a kind of pantheism. Hell
and purgatory were regarded by these people as mere psychic states.398 They rejected the mediation of the church and even of Christ, given that they deemed themselves in communion with God.
William Hilderniss
In the early fifteenth century, a Carmelite named William Hilderniss attached much more importance to Christ’s mediating role than Amaury’s followers: all creatures will be saved by Christ’s suffering. However, the consequence he drew from this was very far removed from the positions of the patristic supporters of universal salvation: he seems to have thought that one’s personal merits or demerits are completely irrelevant, and that hell does not exist, not even in a temporary an purgative form.
Cathars
Universalistic aspects can also be found among the Cathars, a sort of Manichaean dualistic revival movement that flourished between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries in northern Italy and southern France. They regarded death as a liberation from the body, which enabled communion with God. Some of them thought that in the end evil will definitely be removed (a tenet of Origen’s, Gregory of Nyssa’s, and Evagrius’ eschatology). One branch of the Cathars even thought that the judgment has already taken place and that hell consists in suffering in this world. Christ’s work is thus deprived of significance; indeed, the Cathars, in their matter-spirit dualism, even denied Christ’s incarnation.
The forms of universalism we find in mediaeval heresies, such as Catharism, differ from that of the church fathers we have examined, who remained inside the church and, as I have shown, even elaborated their theodicy in defense of Christian orthodoxy and against the heresies of their day. Unlike these fathers, the mediaeval heretical groups that supported universalism often were against the church and did not recognize it.399 In many cases they had a poor exegetical and theological formation and made very little, or nothing, of Christ’s mediative work.
Among the Poets
Several fourteenth-century English and French vernacular poets show universalistic drifts, even though in general their universalism is restricted to the baptized. William Langland (c.1332–c.1386) composed an allegorical poem that, in its last part, narrates the history of Christianity in an allegorical fashion.400 This poem exists in at least three recensions; Recension B stems from the seventies of the fourteenth century and expounds eight visions of a dreamer, Will. In the last four visions (passus 15–20) the Soul, as a prosopopoeia, criticizes the church qua institution and emphasizes the importance of charity. The guardian of the Tree of Charity is Piers Plowman, who highlights the value of Christ’s Passion and struggle against death and hell (passus 18). A debate between Christ and Lucifer is also staged. In the whole poem, there are many references to Christ’s passion and its salvific effect. Langland especially underscores God’s love and mercy and explicitly excludes an eternal condemnation, at least for Christians:
Fiends and fiendkins · before me shall stand,And be at my bidding · wheresoere me liketh.And to be merciful to man · then my nature asketh;For we be bretheren of blood · but not in baptism all.But all that be my whole bretheren · in blood and in baptism,Shall not be damned to the death · that is without end; . . .
And I, that am king of kings · shall come in such a time,Where judgement to the death · damneth all wicked;And if law wills I look on them · it lieth in my grace,Whether they die or die not · for what they did ill.Be it anything bought · the boldness of their sins,
I may do mercy through righteousness · and all my words true.And though holy writ wills that I be avenged · on them that did ill, . . .
They shall be cleansed clearly · and washed of their sins In my prison purgatory · till parce is called,And my mercy shall be showed · to many of my bretheren.For blood may suffer blood · both hungry and a’cold,But blood may not see blood · bleed, without pity.401
(Piers Plowman B 18:374–96A)
The salvation of all Christians seems to have been supported by various English and French vernacular authors, especially Jean de Mandeville, Margery Kempe, and Langland himself.402
K. Tamburr has shown the importance of the motif of Jesus’ descent to hell from the Anglo-Saxon age to the Reformation, in liturgical, homiletic, and devotional works, as well as dramatizations of the Passion, iconographical stories, and apocryphal works (especially the Gospel of Nicodemus, which exerted a profound influence on this literature).403 In English liturgical texts Christ’s descent to hell is often deemed a sign of the liberation of the whole church from the power of evil. Its connection with universal salvation is especially evident in the above-mentioned Piers Plowman.
Mystics
Marguerite Porete
Marguerite Porete († 1310) was a learned French-Flemish mystic, perhaps a beguine, who was burnt at the stake after a trial because her ideas were deemed “heretical.”404 She wrote the Mirouer des simples ames (Mirror of Simple Souls), where elements of the Origenian tradition show up, as well as traces of Pseudo-Dionysius’ apophaticism and Eriugena. Like Origen, Marguerite bases the impeccability of souls on love. Just as Maximus the Confessor, Marguerite honors with silence the mystery of universal salvation: “Paradise? Would you not assign something else to them? For in this way even murderers will attain paradise, if they will ask for mercy! . . . But about this, since you so wish, I will keep my silence” (Ch. 121).
Meister Eckhart
The great Christian Platonist Meister Eckhart (Hochheim, Thuringia, 1260–Avignon 1328) was a German Dominican theologian and philosopher with mystical instincts.405 Kurt Flasch has recently argued that Eckhart should be thought of as a philosopher more than a mystic;406 I agree that Eckhart was indeed an important philosopher, but would add that these two aspects are not incompatible with one another, as is proved, for instance, by Plotinus, Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa. Ekhardt was both a philosopher and a mystic.
With Eckhart we can trace an influence from the Origenian tradition. Eckhart knew and cited Origen, from whom, more or less directly, he derived a number of ideas, including that of the birth of Christ in one’s soul. Eckhart frequently quotes Origen, fifty-one times in his oeuvre, even though many of these quotations seem to be indirect, mediated through Thomas Aquinas’ Catena aurea or the Glossa ordinaria.407 Eckhart, however, read directly at the very least Origen’s Homilies on Genesis, in Rufinus’ Latin translation.408 He also cites Eriugena’s homily on the Prologue of John, Vox spiritualis aquilae (The Voice of the Spiritual Eagle), as a homily of Origen (a misattribution shared also by Aquinas and highly indicative of Eriugena’s indebtedness to Origen). Others in Europe in the Middle Ages know Origen’s works and ideas: Peter Lombard (1100–1160) appreciated Origen both as an exegete and as a theologian, Albert the Great (c.1200–1280) valued him as a biblical allegorist, but rejected some of his doctrines, and Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), who cited Origen 168 times, often refuted what he deemed Origen’s doctrinal errors. But Eckhart, unlike his Scholastic colleagues, never criticized Origen in any way; rather, he treated him as an authority and derived from him important doctrines.
Eckhart’s very method, studying texts from the Holy Scriptures, whose philosophical content he set out through philosophical arguments, is the same as Origen’s and Eriugena’s. Like Origen, he regarded Scripture as a work of philosophy. In his definition of the subject matter of the gospel message—“the gospel contemplates being insofar as it is being [ens in quantum ens]” (Commentary on John, 444)—Eckhart is repeating Aristotle’s very definition of metaphysics or “first philosophy.”
The central theme of Eckhart’s German homilies—the presence of God in the individual soul, and the birth of Christ in the soul of the just—stems from Origen. Also in a Latin work, his Commentary on Exodus, 207, Eckhart speaks of a spiritual conception that is immediately a giving birth (parturitio sive partus). God the Father bears his Son in the ground of the soul (the seat of the divine presence in the human being). This motif, as Duane Williams has pointed out, amounts to applying to God a fem
ale act and characteristic.409 The male Father-God turns out to be a female Mother-God, against the backdrop of a strong apophatic drift, deeply aware of the impenetrable mystery of God. Origen had obviously in mind the Septuagint version of Psalm 110:3, in which God says to the Son, “before the morning star, I brought you forth from my womb”—where God the Father is clearly represented as a Mother. Meister Eckhart surely had Origen in mind, and also knew the Psalm. But it is in his vernacular homily On the Noble Person that Eckhart explicitly cites Origen as “the great master” (der grôze meister) who described God’s image, i.e. the Son, as being “in the ground of the soul” as a seed and a spring of living water. He is echoing Origen’s homilies, on Exodus, on Psalm 36, and especially on Genesis (13.4, also cited in Eckhart’s second Latin Commentary on Genesis, 193). Two whole homilies of Origen on Genesis, 12 and 13, are explicitly quoted by Eckhart in his second Latin Commentary on Genesis, 189–203, about five kinds of inner, divine seed.
In his German Homily 41, Eckhart explicitly cites Origen (Homilies on Jeremiah 9.4) to the effect that whenever one has good thoughts or deeds one is born anew in the Son, to support his own view that when we are “without why”410 we are reborn in the Son and the Son is born in us. And, even without citing him, Eckhart is echoing Origen’s Homilies on Luke 22.3 in his Latin Commentary on John, 117, when he says that it is useless that Christ-Logos became flesh if he is not also born in the individual. Eckhart also drew on Origen’s Homilies on Numbers 23 for the motif of God’s joy at the birth of the Logos in one’s soul, in his second Latin Commentary on Genesis, 180, and elsewhere.411 God accomplishes in the soul the birth of the Son during the life of the soul in time, continuously and repeatedly. The soul thus becomes by grace what the Son of God is by nature and can thus share in the attributes and works of God, including the creation.
A Larger Hope 1 Page 28
