A Larger Hope 1

by Ilaria L E Ramelli

  In Origen, aïdios occurs much less frequently than aiōnios, and when it is used, it is almost always in reference to God or his attributes, meaning “eternal” in the strict sense of limitless in time or beyond time. In On First Principles 3.3.5, Origen gives a clear sign that he understands aiōn in the sense of a succession of aiōnes prior to the final apokatastasis, at which point one arrives at the true eternity, that is, aïdiotēs. Eternity in the strict sense pertains, according to Origen, to God and the apokatastasis, not to the previous sequence of ages or aiōnes. So too, Origen explains that Christ “reigned without flesh prior to the ages, and reigned in the flesh in the ages” (aiōniōs, adverb).

  Again, the “coming aiōn” indicates the next world (ton mellonta aiōna), where sinners will indeed be consigned to the pyr aiōnion, that is, the fire that pertains to the future world; it may well last for a long time, but it is not, for Origen, eternal. Origen, consistently with Scripture, calls the punishing/purifying fire pyr aiōnion, but never pyr aïdion. The explanation is that he does not consider this flame to be absolutely eternal: it is aiōnion because it belongs to the next world, as opposed to the fire we experience in this present world, and it lasts as long as the aiōnes do, in their succession. Similarly, Origen, exactly like Scripture, never speaks of thanatos aïdios (“eternal death”), or of aïdia punishments and torments and the like, although he does speak of thanatos aiōnios or death in the world to come, and kolaseis aiōnioi, i.e., punishment in the world to come.

  For Origen, the biblical usage was further evidence for the doctrine of universal salvation. That Origen followed the Bible in never calling death, punishment, or fire “eternal,” but only “otherworldly” or “long-lasting,” is not surprising in the light of his own eschatological convictions: fire, punishment, and death imposed by God cannot be but remedial, and therefore they cannot be eternal. But what is striking is that, as emerges from Terms for Eternity, a number of other patristic thinkers closely followed this biblical usage. Among them there are, of course, all the supporters of apokatastasis, such as Didymus the Blind, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Evagrius Ponticus, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, etc. But there are also others who are usually not regarded as supporters of universal restoration, such as Eusebius, St. Athanasius, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregoy Nazianzen, Pseudo-Dionysius, and St. Maximus the Confessor. It is significant that—as I argued extensively in The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis and elsewhere, not only on the grounds of their linguistic use—all of these are in fact likely to have had a penchant for the theory of universal restoration.

  420. The book has received very positive reviews, e.g., by Carl O’Brien in The Classical Review 60.2 (2010) 390–91 [journals.cambridge.org/article_S0009840X10000272]; in International Review of Biblical Studies / Internationale Zeitschriftenschau für Bibelwissenschaft und Grenzgebiete, ed. Bernhard Lang, 54 (2007/2008), (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 444, 1901; by Danilo Ghira in Maia 61 (2009) 732–34; by Shawn Keough in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 84.4 (2008) 601; by Joel Kalvesmaki, Guide to Evagrius Ponticus, summer 2014 edition (Washington, DC, 2014), evagriusponticus.net. Referred to by Réka Valentin, “Immortality in the Book of Wisdom in the Context of the Overlapping Worlds,” Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Theologia Catholica Latina 55.2 (2010) 85–99, esp. 86; in The Cambridge Companion to Socrates, ed. D.R. Morrison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), x; by Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist (2nd ed., Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012), xv; by James Gould, Practicing Prayer for the Dead (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016), 107, 269; repeatedly by Steven Nemes, “Christian Apokatastasis: Two Paradigmatic Objections.” Journal of Analytic Theology 4 (2016) 67–86: philpapers.org/rec/NEMCA;10.12978/jat.2016–4.181913130418a; etc.

  421. Allin, Christ Triumphant, 93–98 agrees that aiōnios in Scripture and in most church fathers does not mean “eternal.”

  422. Many universalists in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century also relativized the meaning of aiōnios in Scripture. Elhanan Winchester (1751–97), for instance, says that aiōnios only means eternal when applied to God, although he has no comparison with aïdios and no argument from how the fathers used aiōnia and aïdia in the same sense and with the same limitations as Scripture does. The second volume written by Robin Parry, also using much of my preparatory material, will explore the work of many of these universalists.

  423. See my “Origen in Augustine: A Paradoxical Reception.” Further work will be done on the presence of Origen (direct, indirect, known, unknown, or even paradoxical) in the various phases of Augustine’s thought.

  Appendix II

  A Reply to Michael McClymond’s Review of The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis424

  I am very grateful for the interest in my monograph, the fruit of sixteen years of research and work. I entitled it The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis not only to indicate that this is a doctrine that is Christian (and indeed it seems to have been supported by Christian, patristic authors for the first time; the later “pagan” Platonists who supported it, as well as Zoroastrian texts, embraced forms of apokatastasis knowing well already the Christian doctrine of apokatastasis),425 but also and especially to distinguish its focus from non-Christian theories of apokatastasis, which will be the subject of a future monograph about “pagan” (pre-Christian and non-Christian) philosophical doctrines of apokatastasis. This will be the second volume of a trilogy, the third volume of which will be, God willing, an investigation into the historical, theological, political, and pastoral causes for the rejection of apokatastasis in late antiquity by the “Church of the Empire.” An important role was played by the influence of Augustine’s mature thought in the West, and of Justinian in the East. Thus, the thematic division of my trilogy is this: Christian apokatastasis, “pagan” philosophical apokatastasis (and its relation to patristic theories of apokatastasis), and the rejection of apokatastasis. Also, in my monograph’s subtitle, “critical assessment (of)” means “scholarly investigation (into),” not necessarily “denigration (of).”

  [McClymond: “Throughout her book, Ramelli reveals her ambition to vindicate the doctrine of apokatastasis as a Christian and Catholic teaching that does not violate either the teachings of Scripture or the decisions of the church councils. For this reason, one must take with a grain of salt her claim that ‘the present study is not concerned primarily about “orthodoxy” and “heresy”’ (2n3). Her book is more than a dispassionate analysis of ancient texts. On the very same page where she claims to disavow categories of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy,’ she argues for the salience of ancient discussions of universalism by appealing to pro-universalist statements by contemporary African-American Pentecostal bishop Carlton Pearson, by Christian Orthodox scholars such as Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev of Vienna and Bishop Kallistos Ware, and by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, Murphy O’Connor, and Pope John Paul II (2–3n6).”]

  I am not interested in the categories of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” except from a historical perspective. I do not “appeal to” statements by Carlton Pearson, Hilarion Alfeyev, Kallistos Ware, Murphy O’Connor, or Pope John Paul II; I simply cite them in a footnote in the introduction as examples of the debate on soteriological universalism in the contemporary Christian panorama, to show how universalistic ideas are lively and discussed in various confessions. I do not cite Pearson “favorably” or unfavorably, nor do I subscribe to his views or condemn them; my critical enquiry focuses on patristic thinkers.

  [McClymond: “From his own lifetime up through the past nineteen centuries, Origen’s reputation was mixed. Later writers borrowed from Origen’s exegesis, though the source of the ideas or quotations was usually not credited. The medieval author Peter Comestor (d. 1178) laid down the principle “Non credas Origeni dogmatizanti” (Do not trust Origen when he dogmatizes). . . . It was not Origen’s exegesis so much as his ‘dogmatizing’—and that of his followers—that
stirred controversy for over a century and a half in the early church (390s–550s CE).”]

  The dichotomy between Origen’s exegesis (good) and his theology (bad) suggested by Comestor (and cited approvingly by Professor McClymond), comes from Jerome after his U-turn against Origen (Epistle 84.2). This dichotomy is the same as that which obtained in the reception of Evagrius. In both cases, the best recent scholarship is correcting the dichotomy.426 In the case of Origen, the alleged dichotomy does not take into account his heuristic method, well known and overtly defended by the likes of Athanasius—who regarded (and quoted) Origen as an authority in support of the Nicene faith—and Gregory Nyssen and Gregory Nazianzen, who deemed Origen’s “zetetic” method (i.e., philosophical investigation or zetesis applied to Christian exegesis and theology) the only one admissible in matters left unclarified by Scripture and tradition. Origen in Peri archōn is much more zetetic/heuristic than (as Jerome and Comestor would have it) “dogmatizing.” A specific article will be devoted to this and a chapter of the future monograph on Origen will investigate Origen’s zetetic approach to philosophical and theological issues and the exegesis of Scripture.

  [McClymond: “The idea that Origen’s universalism drew from earlier gnostic universalism—which existed in Alexandria prior to Origen’s lifetime among the Carpocratians, Basilideans, and Valentinians—deserves more attention than the three pages Ramelli devotes to it (87–89). In her presentation, she ignores Holger Strutwolf’s Gnosis als System (1993), which argues convincingly for continuities between Origen and second-century gnosticism. Because Ramelli defines ‘gnosticism’ in terms of soteriological elitism and determinism, she sees Origen’s stress on free will and universal salvation as marking him as ‘anti-gnostic.’ Yet she overlooks the larger patterns, highlighted by Strutwolf, of the fall-and-restoration-of-souls motif as found among the Nag Hammadi community, the Valentinians, Plotinus and the Neoplatonists, and Origen’s Peri archōn. Moreover, Ramelli’s reduction of gnosticism to soteriological determinism is out of step with recent scholarship and does not take into account M. A. William’s argument in Rethinking ‘Gnosticism’ (1996).”]

  Origen certainly knew “gnostic ideas”—far from my being ignorant of it, I referred to Strutwolf’s book in a separate essay twelve years ago427—and of course both Origen and most “gnostics” shared some (broadly conceived) Platonic ideas applied to Christianity. But Origen was professedly anti-gnostic, as is evident in all his extant writings, even in the recently discovered Munich homilies (see below). Origen spent his life refuting what he deemed gnostic tenets such as predestinationism, different natures among rational creatures, the separation between a superior God and an inferior—if not evil—demiurge, the severing of divine justice from divine goodness, Docetism, the notion of aeons as divine and the whole “gnostic” mythology, the refusal to interpret the OT spiritually and the NT historically, and more. Origen regarded “gnostic” Platonism as a bad Platonism, while he intended to construct an “orthodox” Christian Platonism, not only against other, non-Platonic philosophical schools, and “pagan” Platonism, but also against what he regarded as the unorthodox Christian Platonism of “gnosticism.” I argued for this seminally in the chapter on Origen in the book under review, and will support this interpretive line further in the future monograph on Origen’s philosophical theology.

  On “gnostic” theories of apokatastasis, after my preliminary work in the Journal of Coptic Studies—to which I referred in my monograph under review (this is why I devoted only a few pages there to apokatastasis in “Gnosticism”)—further investigation is underway, which will lead to a major study on the subject probably within the work on ancient philosophical theories of apokatastasis and their relations to Christian doctrines. I copiously cited and discussed Michael Williams’ Rethinking “Gnosticism”: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category, not only in the above-mentioned essay in Journal of Coptic Studies, but also, e.g., in a review of Karen King’s What Is Gnosticism? and in substantial articles on Gnosticism for the Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity and the Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity.428

  The pattern of “fall and restoration of souls” is common not only to Origen and the “gnostics,” as McClymond suggests, but to all patristic Platonists, including the anti-Manichaean Augustine (who speaks of creatures’ deficere and their restoration by God).429 More broadly, it is common even to all Christians, who share the biblical story of creation and fall and believe in the restoration, the new creation, brought about by Christ.

  If one objects that the difference between Origen’s and the gnostics’ “fall and restoration of souls” on the one side, and the “orthodox” Christians on the other, lies the resurrection of the body, included in the “orthodox” account but excluded by the “gnostics” and Origen, it must be observed that Origen sided more with “orthodox” Christians than with the “gnostics” regarding the resurrection. That Origen denied the resurrection of the body, as was often asserted in antiquity and sometimes still now, is a misconstruction—probably originating in his twofold conception of the resurrection, of body and soul, later developed by Evagrius—that cannot stand careful investigation, just as the supposition that he admitted of disembodied souls. Much can be argued against this.430

  [McClymond: “Conspicuously missing from her expositions of Origen and Gregory are acknowledgements of differences between the two thinkers. . . . Gregory deviated from Origen in basic ways and repudiated Origen’s teaching on preexistent (or premortal) souls. Gregory also rejected the idea of the eschaton as the restoration of a primal condition of stasis. In Gregory’s mature theological teaching, the final state is one of continuous change and development, a conception that contradicts Origen’s apokatastasis.”]

  It can be argued that when Gregory Nyssen criticized the preexistence of disembodied souls, he was not targeting Origen, who did not in fact support it. Gregory’s statement that his argument against preexistent souls had to do with “those before us who have written about principles” (Hom. op. 28.1) is, for many reasons,431 not “an obvious reference to Origen,” as is often assumed and as McClymond believes (fn. 23); I mention here only three of those reasons: (1) Gregory, in the aforementioned passage and in De anima, is attacking the preexistence of disembodied souls together with metensomatosis (the migration of a soul into various bodies), which Origen explicitly rejected; thus, Gregory’s target could not have been Origen. (2) Among those who supported metensomatosis and the preexistence of disembodied souls were several Middle Platonists and Neoplatonists who wrote works entitled Peri archōn, including Porphyry, whom Gregory knew very well. (3) Moreover, Gregory does not say “one of us” Christians, but “one of those before us” (τις τῶν πρὸ ἡμῶν), a formula that he regularly uses to designate non-Christians, such as Philo.

  Thus, it is true that Nyssen “rejected the idea of souls existing outside of mortal bodies,” or better, he rejected the idea of souls existing outside of bodies tout court; but it is not really the case that, in McClymond’s words, “he offered a teaching on apokatastasis no longer consonant with Origen’s.” In fact, Origen never affirmed the preexistence of disembodied souls, nor did Gregory ever state that the soul comes into existence together with the mortal body (Gregory was all too aware of the “perishability axiom”). Both Gregory’s protology and eschatology are in fact in continuity with those of Origen.

  Indeed, as for the distinctions between Origen and Nyssen that I allegedly blurred, my extensive research (supported by a research fellowship from Oxford and expected to be published in a future monograph, after a few articles) shows Nyssen’s creative dependence on Origen’s true thought in all fields. Misrepresentations of Origen’s ideas clearly falsify the whole picture. The distinctions are between Origen’s alleged thought—a misconstruction ultimately stemming from the Origenistic controversies—and Nyssen’s, not between Origen’s actual thought (as it emerges from his authentic texts) and Nyssen’
s. In fact, a painstaking critical assessment of Origen’s genuine ideas allows for a reassessment of Origen’s influence on many other patristic thinkers (from Nyssen to Augustine, Evagrius to Maximus, and Pseudo-Dionysius to Eriugena, not to speak of the Dialogue of Adamantius, which will hopefully make the object of an Oxford critical edition). Indeed, this brings about—borrowing McClymond’s words—“a new paradigm for understanding the church’s first millennium.”

  That Origen envisaged a “static afterlife,” for instance, is questionable; and therefore it is debatable that “Gregory [Nyssen], Maximus Confessor, and Eriugena all rejected Origen’s static afterlife,” as McClymond alleges. I have extensively argued elsewhere that it is exactly in Origen that Gregory found inspiration for his doctrine of epektasis, which is the opposite of a static eschatology and is closely linked with apokatastasis.432 Both Origen’s and Gregory’s eschatological ideas will make their way into Maximus the Confessor’s ἀεικίνητος στάσις or “ever-moving rest.” Mateo-Seco (referenced by McClymond, n. 32) clearly acknowledges in Gregory the doctrine of universal restoration; Giulio Maspero’s objections on this specific point are thoroughly refuted already in the monograph under review (pp. 433–36—but, apart from this, Maspero’s work on Gregory is always insightful and very valuable, as my citations of it and our collaborations indicate), and a full response to Baghos’ argument is included in the aforementioned research on Origen and Nyssen.

  McClymond notes: “The vision of the eschaton in Evagrius’ Great Letter . . . involved a pantheistic or pantheizing dissolution of the Creator-creature distinction.” However, in his Great Letter/Letter to Melania Evagrius makes clear that there will be no confusion of substance between creatures and creator, but a concord of will (see pp. 474–75): “The one and the same nature and three Persons of God, and the one and the same nature and many persons of God’s image, will remain eternally, as it was before the Inhumanation, and will be after the Inhumanation, thanks to the concord of wills.”433 Therefore, no pantheistic interpretation of Evagrius is tenable, and Caelo volente a future monograph on Evagrius will deepen this and other points. While Guillaumont offered an invaluable edition of Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostika (which, apart from some new readings from the manuscript and emendations, I kept as a basis for my own commentary),434 his view that Evagrius was a radical, “isochristic” Origenist whose ideas were the real target of the II Council of Constantinople needs reconsideration.435