Like Origen, Eckhart insists that creatures are “nothingness” (nihileitas, nulleitas) in comparison with God. According to the papal bull of 1329, In agro dominico (“In the Lord’s Field”), which posthumously condemned some propositions of Eckhart as “heretical,” the latter asserted that “it may be conceded that the world was from eternity.” This is a charge that was also leveled against Origen, although Origen was clear that what existed from eternity in the mind of God were the ideal paradigms and logoi of all creatures, and not their substances, which were created in time.
Origen had maintained that Christ is Justice itself—he does not participate in Justice, does not possess justice as a quality, but rather is Justice—and all the just participate in Christ, in a way becoming Christ. Eckhart elaborated on this and went further, basing himself on the notion of “becoming Christ.” He claimed that the just person is Justice itself (like Christ). This is also why in his Latin Commentary on Wisdom, 44, he can aver that “all the just, qua just, are one,” because they are Justice itself. Therefore, it is not righteous deeds that make a person just, but the just will do righteous deeds. Like Origen, Eckhart regards highly the works of charity, especially service to the poor.412
Like Eriugena, Eckhart maintained that the human being, as the mediator of the world, leads all creatures back to God, and Christ, who stands at the center of humanity, is the key to redemption. He is the sinless human being who restores the universal harmony. His temporal birth is included in his eternal birth, which also continually happens in the ground of the soul of the just. In his passion and death there is an overwhelming power that draws humans to God. Origen had similarly maintained that the cross of Christ was so powerful as to be enough to set right and save all rational creatures.
While he does not develop a consistent doctrine of universal restoration or salvation, Eckhart insists on the remedial nature of punishment. In his second Commentary on Genesis, probably stemming from his time in Strasbourg after 1313, Eckhart notes that the Genesis story of the fall teaches mythically/allegorically (parabolice) that any human being can fall into sin, and that “the punishments of the sinners bring them back to virtue and to the Lord of virtues” (de poenis peccatorum reducentibus ad virtutem et Dominum virtutum, 3.135). Indeed, like Origen (and Plato), Eckhart sees in suffering the most effective and most valuable means of purification. For suffering is a participation in the cross.
Eckhart mentions hell in various places—as virtually all the supporters of apokatastasis did—but he says that what burns there is “nothing” (das Nicht, German Sermon 5b). This is punished forever (Latin Sermon 43.1.427), but this is a limit concept, to contemplate and expect as a mental exercise (45.467) and in prayer (47.2.489). As Bardo Weiss notes, hell for Eckhart is “only the greatest suffering imaginable, . . . only an example of a huge suffering, which can befall also a righteous person, but without depriving her of her salvation.”413 In this sense, hell is not an eschatological condition to be feared. In Latin Sermon 41.1.414 hell is punishment for sins, but not eschatological—let alone that Eckhart speaks dramatically much less of hell than of salvation and bliss. Eckhart never uses fear of hell as a motivation for good behavior. Suffering the pains of hell according to God’s will even signifies salvation for a person (Pf. 1.10). Whoever has been touched by truth, goodness, and righteousness, or has seen an angel, even just once, could even wish to stay one whole millennium in hell for that (Pf. 1.11; German Sermon 15). The righteous are so steadfast in their righteousness that they would not even notice the torments of hell (German Sermon 6). The humble person could force God even into hell (15). Eckhart paradoxically associates virtuous people with hell.
Thus, there is no unambiguous evidence that Eckhart rejected the doctrine of universal restoration; rather, his great admiration for Origen, his healing and purifying notion of punishment, his concept of the restoration brought about by Christ, and his concept of hell, all suggest that he may have had a penchant for this perspective.
Catherine of Siena
St. Catherine of Siena (1347–80) was an Italian mystic, a Dominican tertiary, who was later canonized and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church. In her biography, written by her spiritual director Raymond of Capua, she voices the same desire as the just in the Apocalypse of Peter treated above: “Lord, how can I be happy as long as one of those who were created like me in your image and likeness, be lost or be taken from your hands? I do not want any of my siblings, who are united with me in nature and grace, to be lost . . . should your truth and your justice permit, I would want hell to be destroyed, or at least no soul, from now onwards, to descend there.”414 This is not a dogmatic declaration of apokatastasis, but the outpouring of a heart that yearns for such an outcome. Origen himself had previously noted that the presence of any in hell forever would diminish the heavenly joy of the saints, but also the body of Christ himself: “if the delight does not seem to be complete for you who are a member, if another member is missing, how much more does our Lord and Savior, who is the ‘head’ and the originator of the whole body, consider his delight to be incomplete as long as he sees one of the members to be missing from his body” (Origen, Hom. in Lev. 7.2.10).
Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich (1342–1416/7),415 an English anchoress faithful to the church, whose formation probably took place in the local Benedictine community in Norwich, during a severe illness in 1373 received many visions.416 These were divided into “imaginative” and “intellectual” visions, and were published in the Revelations of Divine Love in Sixteen Shewings, in a shorter and older form and in a later and longer one (1393). Here the conviction of universal salvation is grounded in the mystery of the love of God. In her Revelation 13 Christ overtly declares:
By the same Might, Wisdom, and Goodness that I have done all this, by the same Might, Wisdom, and Goodness I shall make well all that is not well. . . . It behoved that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
Julian takes over Origen’s, Gregory Nyssen’s, Evagrius’, and Pseudo-Dionysius’ doctrine of the ontological non-subsistence of evil: “I saw not sin: for I believe it hath no manner of substance nor no part of being, nor could it be known but by the pain it is cause of.” There is no evil that will not be turned into Good. As Christ explains, his work is much more powerful than sin:
Since I have made well the most harm, then it is my will that thou know thereby that I shall make well all that is less. . . . I can make all thing well, I will make all thing well, and I shall make all thing well; and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well.
This also shows that according to Julian, just as according to Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, restoration is entirely grounded in Christ.
Julian, like Origen and Gregory, understands the ultimate outcome of all in the light of 1 Corinthians 15:28 (“God will be all in all”): “The oneing [= making one] of all mankind that shall be saved unto the blessed Trinity.” This is why Julian can see Christ regarding all humanity as though it had no sin in it: it is humanity as it will be in the end, restored to its purity and freed from all evil, that Christ sees.
Just as Peter in Acts 3:21 announced the universal restoration that God planned from eternity, so too Julian announces this “great work” of God: “This is that Great Deed ordained of our Lord God from without beginning, treasured and hid in His blessed breast, only known to Himself: by which He shall make all things well. . . . For like as the blissful Trinity made all things of nought, right so the same blessed Trinity shall make well all that is not well.” As for the impious, wicked Christians, demons, and Satan, Julian objects that all these will be unable to be included in the universal “being well,” but Christ replies to her by means of the argument of God’s omnipotence that was used both by Jesus in the Gospel and by Origen in support of universal salvation: “That which is impossible to thee is not impossible to me: I sha
ll save my word in all things and I shall make all things well.”
In Revelation 16 Julian, like Origen, emphasizes that God does not want humans to do the good out of fear, but out of love. In the end “We shall see verily the cause of all things that He hath done; and evermore we shall see the cause of all things that He hath suffered. And the bliss and the fulfilling shall be so deep and so high that, for wonder and marvel, all creatures shall have to God so great reverent dread, . . . marveling at the greatness of God the Maker.” Julian notes the disproportion between “the endlessness and the unchangeability of His love” and the finitude of sins and evil. Gregory Nyssen too was well aware of this disproportion and from it he concluded the eventual victory of God—the Good over evil.
Julian’s concept of universal salvation is based on the very nature of God, who is Love: “And I saw full surely that ere God made us He loved us; which love was never slacked nor ever shall be. And in this love He hath done all His works, and in this love He hath made all things profitable to us, and in this love our life is everlasting.” It is Gregory of Nyssa’s argument in his homilies on the Song of Songs (“call God ‘Mother’ and you will not be mistaken, because God is Love, as John stated [1 John 4:8, 16]”).417
Lady Julian offers a good note on which to close. While expressing the larger hope in very evocative and moving language, language that in some ways can mask the sophisticated theological notions undergirding it, she was careful not to do so in a way that could be seen as undermining the church, to which she was always unwaveringly committed. Hers was an orthodox Christian universalism, cautiously expressed, and committed to existing within the boundaries of the ekklēsia.
394. Aelfric’s Catholic Homilies, Second Series, vol. 2, nr. 39, 373. See Cubitt, “Apocalyptic and Eschatological Thought,” esp. 45–46.
395. See Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 152–56.
396. Cf. Cross and Linvingstone, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 48. Amaury was accused of pantheism, of teaching that God permeates the whole universe, and of asserting the impeccability of his followers. This is why they were condemned in 1209 or 1210.
397. Cohn, The Pursuit, 156–86.
398. Cf. Cohn, The Pursuit, 172–73.
399. Ludlow, “Universalism in the History of Christianity,” 198–99.
400. See at least Mairey, “Pratiques de l’allégorie dans la poésie anglaise du XIVème siècle,” 266–88.
401. Fendes and fendekynes bifore me shul stande/And be at my biddyng wheresoevere be me liketh./Ac to be merciable to man thanne, my kynde it asketh,/For we beth bretheren of blood, but noght in baptisme alle./Ac alle that beth myne hole bretheren, in blood and in baptisme,/Shul noght be dampned to the deeth that is wihouten ende . . . And that I am kyng of kynges shal come swich a tyme/There doom to the deeth dampneth alle wikked;/And if lawe wole I loke on hem it lith in my grace/Wheither thei deye or deye noght for that thei diden ille./Be it any thyng abought, the boldnesse of hir synnes,/I may do mercy thorugh rightwisnesse, and alle my wordes trewe/And though Holy Writ wole that I be wroke of hem that diden ille –/Nullum malum impunitum –/Thei shul be clensed clerliche and clenewasshen of hir synnes/In my prisone Purgatorie, til Parce it hote./And my mercy shal be shewed to manye of my bretheren;/For blood may suffre blood bothe hungry and acale. / Ac blood may noght se blood blede, but hym rewe.
402. Cf. Watson, “Visions of Inclusion,” 145–87; Hill, “Universal Salvation in Piers Plowman B, XVIII 390,” 323–25.
403. Tamburr, The Harrowing of Hell in Medieval England.
404. See Field, The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor.
405. On whom see, e.g., McGinn, The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart; Woods, Meister Eckhart; Hackett, A Companion to Meister Eckhart.
406. Flasch, Meister Eckhart. On Plotinus, Origen, and Nyssen mystics and philospohers see my “The Divine as Inaccessible Object.”
407. Thomas Aquinas’ Catena aurea is Thomas’ extensive commentary on the Gospel of Luke. The Glossa ordinaria was a collection of glosses on the Bible, taken from patristic authors and thereafter, printed in the margins of the Vulgate. These glosses were widely used in cathedral schools from the Carolingian period (Eriugena’s times) onward; their use declined in the fourteenth century.
408. Rubino, “Ein grôz meister: Eckhart e Origene,” usefully collects all of Eckhart’s quotations of Origen (153–65); a comprehensive study now in Elisabeth Boncour, “Eckhart lecteur d’Origène,” PhD dissertation Paris 2014.
409. Williams, “Feminist Theology and Meister Eckhart” 275–290.
410. This odd expression is a typical notion of Marguerite Porete. Being “without a why” means to give up reason altogether and surrender to this free state of “living without a why”—which is not irrational, but supernatural.
411. See McGinn, “The Spiritual Heritage of Origen,” who, however, does not discuss Origen’s and Eckhart’s eschatologies.
412. On Origen’s attitude toward the poor, and his position that wealth is tantamount to theft, see my Social Justice and the Legitimacy of Slavery.
413. Die Heilsgeschichte bei Meister Eckhart, Mainz: Grünewald, 1965, 177. He studies the original sin and the role of Christ, Mary, and the church in the salvific economy in Eckhart, as well as his eschatology (166–80).
414. Vita di Santa Caterina scritta dal Beato Raimundo di Capua (Siena: Cantagalli, 1982), 27.
415. Critical edition Colledge and Walsh, A Book of Showings; Windeatt, Revelations, with a critical edition of the shorter and longer versions, based on all available manuscripts. See Baker, Julian of Norwich; Dutton, Julian of Norwich; Sweetman, “Sin Has Its Place, But All Shall Be Well”; Hill, Women and Religion; Whitehead, “Late Fourteenth-Century English Mystics,” 367–70; Delrosso, etc., Nuns, on Julian of Norwich onwards; Rolf, Guide to Julian.
416. The name Julian is probably not that of this woman, who is anonymous, but that of the church of St. Julian close to which she was an anchoress.
417. Julian assigns maternity to God, and likewise to Christ in his divine nature, as many other mystics have done. Jesus himself compares himself to a hen with her chicks, and in the Old Testament God compares himself to a mother. What is more, as seen, in Psalm 110 (Septuagint) God says to the Son that Godself brought him forth “from his/her womb” before all times (“before the morning star,” before Lucifer and the creation of all the angels). This characterization of God as a Mother, as well as of the Son/Wisdom as a Woman, was well remembered by Bardaisan, Clement, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Eriugena.
Conclusion
A Christian Hope over 2000 Years, Grounded in Christ and God as the Absolute Good and Supported in Defense of Orthodoxy
From the very first Christian centuries—as is clear from what I have pointed out so far—a number of Christian thinkers supported the doctrine of universal salvation. Some Platonic church fathers—among whom we find Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, and Evagrius—were convinced that God alone is the Good and the Being; creatures can only participate in the Good and in Being. However, due to their free will, creatures are also capable of falling into evil (i.e., non-being). Evil has no positive existence, being no creature of God, but is a lack of Good and thus a lack of Being. Rational creatures who choose evil face spiritual death, but there is a resurrection from it thanks to Christ, the only human being without evil. By assuming all humanity in himself, Christ abolishes evil from it. At the same time, every rational creature will have to adhere to the Good freely. Furthermore, these fathers were certain that, sooner or later, all will voluntarily adhere to the Good, because all rational creatures, whose logos is in the image of Christ-Logos, after knowing the Good with a pure and not obfuscated intellectual sight, will love it. No rational creature wi
ll be saved against its will! Instead, what these fathers were certain of is that in the end all will want to be saved and will voluntarily adhere to the Good and be brought to God, the Good, by Christ. They based their conviction, among else, on creation, ethical intellectualism, and the work of Christ (incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection).
For these authors, such as Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, the resurrection of Christ, which took place historically, is also the anticipated realization of the glorious eschatological resurrection of the “body of Christ,” which is all humanity (and, since Christ is the Logos, all rational creatures). This resurrection is all humanity’s liberation, not only from physical death, but also from spiritual death. These fathers entertained a holistic view of the resurrection, not only of the body, but also of the soul, which is purified from evil and restored to the integrity of its faculties, currently corrupted by sin. This idea is developed by Maximus the Confessor, too. Purification will go on for as long as is necessary, as a part of this process of resurrection-restoration. God himself is the “purifying fire” that performs this, according to St. John of Dalyatha.
Origen in Comm. in Io. VI 295–96 declares that the eventual submission of all creatures to God must be understood “in a way that is worthy of the goodness of the God of the universe.” Therefore, it cannot be a forced submission, but it must be a spontaneous submission, which implies a conversion and coincides with salvation. “The name of the submission with which we submit to Christ indicates the salvation [salus] of those who submit, a salvation that comes from Christ” (Princ. I 6,1). According to Origen, and to the fathers who supported universal salvation, this doctrine is preferable, and in fact offers the only acceptable account of eschatology, not because it is better from the anthropological or psychological point of view, or else because it depends on a metaphysical or cosmological necessity, but first and foremost because it is better from the theological standpoint. And it is better theologically because it is the only one that is worthy of God. Likewise, in CC IV 13 Origen declares that the only way to conceive the purifying fire in a manner that is worthy of God is to understand that God, like fire, burns evil in sinners, thus purifying them: “God is said to be a fire that consumes. But let us investigate what becomes God to consume. And let us establish that God, like fire, consumes evil and its works.” This is the idea of God as a purifying fire that will reach John of Dalyatha. God does not destroy sinners, but their sins, thus purifying sinners, and resurrecting them from the death of the soul—the death that comes from sin. This death is not eternal: it will be destroyed as “the last enemy” (1 Cor 15:26). As Origen argues in Comm. in Rom. V 7, since St. Paul reveals that death will disappear, it is impossible to believe that the kingdom of death will be eternal as that of life and justice is. Eternal life and eternal death are a contradiction in terms: if life is eternal, death cannot be eternal, as Origen puts it in his syllogism.
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