In the history of Christian thought, universal salvation is not the isolated fruit of one mind, Origen’s, who is supposed to have been excessively influenced by Greek philosophy and to be a “heretic” (but in fact whose purported “condemnation” is the product of misunderstandings, hostility, prejudice, and even envy). Universal salvation has a much wider tradition, rooted in the Bible itself. Before Christianity, no philosophy or religion—not even mystery religions—had supported universal salvation proper (and Zoroastrianism, as I argued in an essay in 2017, began to teach universal restoration only after the spead of patristic apokatastasis). In Stoicism, restoration was an infinitely recurrent cosmological necessity, not final salvation, and Origen explicitly criticized it. As for Plato, whose ideas Origen was accused of following in the elaboration of his own doctrine of universal salvation, in fact he did not believe in universal salvation. On the contrary, he repeatedly affirmed that some sinners will never be purified and will suffer forever in hell (Tartarus), although the doctrine of infinite cyclicity, fully elaborated later, will relativize this theory. And the so-called “gnostics” mainly thought that the elite would participate in the apokatastasis, and that without their bodies. So, in fact, it was Christian theologians who first proclaimed the message of universal restoration. (The restoration of all souls was admitted by some late Neoplatonists—albeit without the resurrection of the body—but this was most probably under the influence of the already well-established Christian doctrine of universal restoration and salvation.418)
The doctrine of universal restoration and salvation is eminently Christian and is rooted in the Bible, where many passages, especially from St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles, inspired it. Other texts that were long deemed part of Scripture before the canon was finally settled, such as the Apocalypse of Peter, also suggested universal salvation. Precisely because they regarded it as grounded in Scripture, most supporters of universal salvation, from the church fathers to Julian of Norwich to our day, did not intend to oppose the church. Many of these, indeed, are saints, and some are martyrs, such as Pamphilus. Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa, the main patristic supporters of universal salvation, even elaborated this doctrine in defense of Christian orthodoxy and theodicy against the “heretics” of their day (Origen against “Gnosticism” and Marcionism, and Gregory against “Arianism”); both related the argument for universal salvation to that of the non-subordination of the Son to the Father in the interpretation of 1 Corinthians 15:28. Both Origen and Gregory, and many other Christian supporters of universal salvation during the centuries, are clear that the salvation of all depends on Christ, and not on any metaphysical or cosmological necessity, or a necessity of any other kind. Universal salvation as a Christian hope and a Christian doctrine consistently continued over the two millennia of Christianity.
This is not a doctrine that arises from moral relaxation—as it was depicted during the Origenistic controversy—but the expectation of the total victory of God over evil, which is grounded in the inhumanation, death, and resurrection of Christ, his work as Logos-teacher and physician, and in God’s “goodness.” This goodness is not simply God’s kindness or mercy, but it is God’s being the absolute Good—with the relevant corollary of the ontological non-substantiality of evil, which is doomed to disappearing. Evil will not exist any longer when in the end no one will choose it any more, once all have been illuminated, purified, and healed. Purification, according to all the supporters of universal salvation,419 will be commensurate to each one’s sins and therefore finite. Death itself in any case puts a providential limit to everyone’s sins—as Origen, Methodius, Gregory of Nyssa, and others later reflected, up to our day—so that their purification will not have to go on forever. As Gregory Nyssen most forcefully argued, God alone is infinite, while evil is finite. Universal restoration and salvation depends on the grace of God, who “wants all humans to be saved.” Gregory of Nyssa was clear, right until the end of his life, in his homilies on the Song of Songs, that this divine will shall be fulfilled (“until the One who wants all humans to be saved has reached his aim”). The Christian hope, which is given voice by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, is that in the end, when all have been purified and illuminated by Christ-Logos and all evil has been eliminated, all those who were enemies will submit in what Origen and many theologians over the centuries regarded as a salvific submission, whereas “the last enemy,” death, which is no creature of God, will be destroyed. Then will St. Paul’s prophecy come true that “God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).
418. This will be the subject of my second scientific monograph on apokatastasis. After the study on apokatastasis from the New Testament to Eriugena (2013), the next will focus (Caelo volente et adiuvante) on “pagan” philosophical notions of apokatastasis, from ancient to late-antique philosophy, and the third on its rejection. See the Introduction.
419. With the sole exception of the very few who thought that there will be no otherworldly punishment/purification at all for anyone.
Appendix I
The Meaning of Aiōnios
I briefly summarize here the results of Ilaria Ramelli and David Konstan, Terms for Eternity, which are highly relevant to the present discussion.420 For all the original texts, loci, and further bibliography, I refer to the most recent editions of that monograph, as well as to further research that has eventually appeared in my Tempo ed eternità in età antica e patristica. Further new research will appear in “Time and Eternity,” in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Early Christian Philosophy. Specifically for ancient philosophy, I also refer to Wilberding, “Eternity in Ancient Philosophy.”
Terms for Eternity surveys the uses of two ancient Greek adjectives—aiōnios and aïdios, commonly translated as “eternal”—from their earliest occurrences in poetry and pre-Socratic philosophy down through the Septuagint (and a thorough comparison with the Hebrew Bible), the New Testament, and the Christian theologians, from the earliest to Maximus the Confessor. The monograph examines the rise of the idea of infinitely extended time (generally denoted by aïdios), and Plato’s innovative introduction of a concept of a timeless eternity, which in Platonic technical vocabulary—and only there—was denoted by aiōn, with aiōnios meaning “eternal” in the sense of “transcending time.” In all the rest of Greek literature, however, and—what is most relevant to us here—in the Greek Bible, aiōnios has a wide range of meanings, but does not denote absolute eternity.421 Since only aiōnios, and never aïdios, is applied to the punishment of humans in the afterlife, Origen could find support in the biblical usage for his doctrine of universal salvation and the finite duration of hell.
At the beginning of Greek philosophy, with the Presocratics, the term aïdios seems to be well attested in the sense of “eternal,” although without any connotation of metaphysical transcendence. For instance, Heraclitus referred aïdios to the perpetual movement of things that are eternal and to the cyclical fire, which is god. Among the Eleatics, Parmenides is said to have described the “all” as aïdios, in that it is ungenerated and imperishable. Democritus too argued that time was aïdios, on the grounds that it was ungenerated, and that the whole of things too was eternal (aïdion to pan). It would appear, in sum, that the term of art for eternal things—all that is ungenerated and imperishable—among cosmological thinkers in the period prior to Plato was aïdios, never aiōnios. In addition, aïdios is the standard adjective meaning “eternal” in non-philosophical discourse of the fifth century as well.
Plato introduced the concept of metaphysical, timeless eternity, in reference to the model that the demiurge followed in creating the sensible universe by looking “to the eternal” (to aïdion). In a crucial passage in his Timaeus, Plato remarks that the created universe was seen to be moving and living, an image of the eternal gods (tōn aïdiōn theōn, 37C6), and adds that it was itself an “eternal living being” (aïdion). Plato goes on to say that it was the nature of the living
being to be aiōnios, but that this quality could not be attached to something that was begotten (gennēton). The creator therefore decided to make “a kind of moving image of eternity” (aiōnos), and so as he arranged the universe he made “an eternal image [aiōnion eikona] moving according to number of the eternity [aiōnos] which remains in one,” and this he called “time.” Plato seems to have found in the term aiōn a special designation for his notion of eternity as timeless; and with this new sense of aiōn, aiōnios too seems to have come into its own as a signifier for what is beyond time. However, Plato’s conception of a timeless eternity remained specific to Platonism in antiquity.
In Aristotle’s oeuvre there are nearly three hundred instances of aïdios, which is Aristotle’s preferred word to designate things eternal. It is clear that Aristotle was not moved to adopt Plato’s novel terminology, whether because he perceived some difference between his own concept of eternity and that of his teacher, or because he felt that aiōnios was an unnecessary addition to the philosophical vocabulary, given the respectability of aïdios as the appropriate technical term for eternity.
In the Stoics, aïdios occurs over thirty times in the sense of that which endures forever. It is applied to bodies and matter, the realities that truly exist according to Stoic materialism, and above all to god or Zeus. To the extent that the Stoics employed aiōnios and aiōn, however, there is either a connection with their specific view of cosmic cycles, as opposed to strictly infinite duration, or else the noun occurs in phrases indicating a long period of time. Thus, in Stoic terminology—as generally in all of Greek literature, apart from technical Platonic language—aiōnios does not mean “absolutely eternal,” a meaning that is reserved for aïdios.
The Epicureans, too, regularly employed aïdios to designate the eternity of such imperishable constituents of the universe as atoms and void. Epicurus uses aiōnios in reference to the future life that non-Epicureans expect, with its dreadful punishments: that is, to an afterlife in which Epicureans do not believe, and which does not deserve the name “eternal” (aïdios), properly reserved for truly perpetual elements.
Coming to the Bible, in the Septuagint, aïdios occurs only twice, both times in late books written originally in Greek: 4 Maccabees and Wisdom. In addition, there is one instance of the abstract noun, aïdiotēs, again in Wisdom. On the other hand, aiōnios occurs with impressive frequency, along with aiōn; behind both is the Hebrew ‘olām, which has a wide range of meanings, but per se does not mean “eternal.” Only when it refers to God can it acquire this meaning. For example, aiōnios can refer to a time in the remote past or future, or to something lasting over generations or centuries, or can even mean “mundane,” with a negative connotation. Of particular interest is the mention in Tobit 3:6 of the place of the afterlife as a topos aiōnios, the first place in the Bible in which aiōnios unequivocally refers to the world to come. In 2 Maccabees, the doctrine of resurrection is affirmed and aiōnios is used with reference to life in the future world. This meaning will become prevalent in the New Testament.
The adjective aïdios, as mentioned, occurs in the Septuagint only in 4 Maccabees and Wisdom. In Wisdom, which is saturated with the Greek philosophical lexicon, Wisdom is defined as “a reflection of the eternal [aïdion] light” that is God. In 4 Maccabees, an impious tyrant is threatened with “fire aiōnion” for the entire age or world to come (eis holon ton aiōna). But here we find the expression bios aïdios or “eternal life” as well, in reference to the afterlife of the martyrs; this blessed state, moreover, is opposed to the lasting destruction of their persecutor in the world to come. This contrast between the parallel but antithetical expressions olethros aiōnios (“otherworldly ruin”) and bios aïdios (“eternal life”) is notable: whereas retribution is described with the polysemous term aiōnios, to life in the beyond is applied the more technical term aïdios, denoting a strictly endless condition. Only life is explicitly declared to be eternal; death or ruin is “otherworldly,” possibly “long-lasting,” but not strictly “eternal.”
In the New Testament, there are only two uses of the more philosophical term aïdios. The first (Rom 1:20) refers unproblematically to the power and divinity of God, which is eternal in the absolute sense. In the second occurrence, however (Jude 6), aïdios is employed in connection with divine punishment—not of human beings, but of evil angels, who are imprisoned in darkness “with eternal chains” (desmois aïdiois). But there is a qualification: “until the judgment of the great day.” The angels, then, will remain chained up until judgment day—likewise in 2 Peter 2:4, evil angels are said to have been sent by God to Tartarus, “to be held for judgment.” We are not informed of what will become of them afterwards. Why is aïdios used of these chains, instead of aiōnios, which is used in the next verse of the fire of which the punishments of the Sodomites is an example? Perhaps because they continue from the moment of the angels’ incarceration, at the beginning of the world, or perhaps even before the world, until the judgment that signals the entry into the new aiōn: thus, the term indicates the uninterrupted continuity throughout all time in this world—this could not apply to human beings, who do not live through the entire duration of the present universe; to them applies rather the sequence of aiōnes or generations.
In the New Testament, as in the Old, death, punishment, and fire are described as aiōnia, pertaining to the world or aiōn to come, but never as aïdia or strictly eternal. This point, which I made for the first time in the above-mentioned monograph, had escaped scholars,422 but it is so important that the Greek Fathers almost unanimously followed the biblical usage carefully, and therefore called death, punishment, and fire aiōnia or “otherworldly,” or at most “long-lasting,” but never aïdia or “everlasting, absolutely eternal.” Some Latin theologians who, unlike Ambrose, Cassian, or Eriugena, did not know Greek, such as Augustine, relied on Latin translations of the Bible in which the rigorous differentiation of aiōnios and aïdios of the Greek Scriptures was completely blurred, since both adjectives were generally translated with aeternus or sempiternus. Thus, Augustine came to believe that in Scripture death, punishment, and fire in the other world are actually declared to be eternal,423 and his perspective proved immensely influential in the Latin West, especially among those who did not know Greek. This, of course, bears enormously on the development of Western eschatology. It is significant that the Latin theologians who did know Greek, such as Marius Victorinus, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, Rufinus, Cassian, and Eriugena, did not think that the Bible unequivocally proclaims eternal punishment, death, or fire, and Eriugena was even one of the most radical supporters of universal salvation.
Among the Greek fathers, the majority followed the biblical usage. Origen, who was an attentive biblical exegete and philologist, besides being one of the greatest patristic philosophers and theologians, also followed the linguistic usage of the Bible very closely, and this confirmed him in his argument that, “if life is eternal, death cannot possibly be eternal.” In Origen, there are many passages that refer to the aiōnios life, in the formula characteristic of the New Testament: the emphasis seems to be not so much on eternity, that is, temporal infinity, as on the life in the next world or aiōn (“the life of the world to come,” as the final clause of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, still recited today, has it).
In Origen’s Greek Philocalia, 1.30.21–23, the aiōnios life is defined as that which will occur in the future aiōn. God gave Scripture as a “body for those we existed before us [i.e., the Hebrews], soul for us, and spirit [pneuma] for those in the aiōn to come, who will obtain life aiōnios.” So too, in the Commentary on Matthew, 15.25, the future life (aiōnios) is contrasted with that in the present (proskairos). Again, Origen in a series of passages opposes the ephemeral sensible entities of the present time (proskaira) to the invisible and lasting objects of the world to come (aiōnia). Consistent with the usage of the Septuagint and the New Testament, Origen also applies the adjective aiōnios to a
ttributes of God. In one particularly illuminating passage, Origen speaks of the eternal God (aiōnios) and of the concealment of the mystery of Jesus over aiōnioi stretches of time (khronois aiōniois), where the sense is plainly “from time immemorial,” and obviously not “eternal times.” So too, Origen mentions the “days of the aiōn,” and “aiōnia years” (etē aiōnia), that is, very long periods of time, and the phrase eis tous aiōnas here signifies, “for a very long time.”
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