Regarding Augustine, I have argued in my monograph that he embraced apokatastasis during his long anti-Manichaean phase, but not later—at least not overtly, and notably not in his anti-Pelagian phase. Contrary to what McClymond argues (i.e., “[Augustine’s discussion of De moribus 2.7.9 in his Retractiones 1.6 is] a point Ramelli fails to mention,” fn. 9), I do discuss Retractationes 1.6 (on p. 674, also mentioned in my ancient authors index on p. 830), showing that Augustine was later embarrassed by his earlier adhesion to the apokatastasis doctrine, especially in De moribus 2.7.9. McClymond observes that in the latter passage I translated ordinat as “orders and leads,” which he deems incorrect: “The verb is ordinat, which translates as ‘orders’ and not as ‘orders and leads.’ There is no second verb alongside of ordinat. Moreover, Augustine’s statement that creatures are ordered toward restoration did not imply that all will attain it.” Now, that all fallen creatures are ordered and guided by God’s goodness until they are restored to the condition from which they had fallen (“Dei bonitas . . . omnia deficientia sic ordinat . . . donec ad id recurrant unde defecerunt”) manifestly means that all are restored. Ordinare means both “to order, arrange,” and “to marshal,” “to manage, regulate, direct”;436 hence the double translation of ordinat as “orders and leads,” the subject being God, and the object being rational creatures.
As to the (posthumous) condemnation of Eriugena’s Periphyseon and its causes, to which McClymond refers in his review, I did analyze them on the first page of my treatment of Eriugena. I deem him the last patristic thinker in the West, obviously not in the confessional sense as canonized father, as suggested in the review, but because he relies so heavily on patristic authorities—from Origen to the Cappadocians, from Augustine to Pseudo-Dionysius—in all aspects of his philosophical theology. McClymond admits that Eriugena’s notion of the eschaton involves a universal return of souls to God—and indeed Eriugena is unequivocal when he claims that, thanks to Christ’s inhumanation, “every creature, in heaven and on earth, has been saved” (Periphyseon 5.24)—but he avers that “for Eriugena not all souls were happy in their final state with God.” In fact, however, Eriugena is adamant that all rational creatures in their substances will be happy; no substantial nature can “be in unhappiness” (Praed. 16.1). All natures will enjoy “a wonderful joy” (Praed. 19.3). The evilness derived from sinners’ perverted will perish in the other world; only their substance will remain (substantia permansura, malitia peritura), and this—their substance—will be happy (Periphyseon 5.931A).
McClymond is correct that according to Eriugena “all . . . shall return into Paradise, but not all shall enjoy the Tree of Life—or rather . . . not all equally,” but this refers to the distinction between salvation and deification, and does not imply that not all will be saved. Sometimes Eriugena even suggests that deification itself will extend to all. For he postulates the return of all to God, and transformation of all into God, through their primordial causes; at that point all will enjoy peace and eternal splendor: “When every sense-perceptible creature will be transformed into intelligible and every intelligible one into its causes/principles, and the causes into the cause of causes / principle of principles, who is God, they will enjoy eternal peace and will shine forth with ineffable glory and celebrate a perpetual feast” (Quando omnis sensibilis creatura in intelligibilem et omnis intelligibilis in causas, et causae in causarum causam (quae Deus est) mutabuntur aeternaque requie gaudebunt ineffabilique claritate fulgebunt et sabbatizabunt, Periphyseon 5.991C). At that point, it no longer even makes sense to speak of “a beatific vision not shared by all.”
[McClymond: “Ramelli also states that Basil of Caesarea’s statements on everlasting punishment are likewise not original but probably were interpolated into the texts (pp. 354–58). Her claims of interpolation are designed to uphold Origen’s reputation and minimize disagreements between Origen and other ancient Christian authors.”]
Let us come to Basil’s problematic question-and-answer passage against apokatastasis, where he (if the passage is authentic) stated that his own brother, whom he appointed bishop, and his saintly sister, whom he greatly admired, are inspired by the devil. This seems, at very least, surprising. Here I hypothesize not only—as McClymond has it—an interpolation (and note that interpolations are demonstrably common in Basil’s question-and-answer works; moreover, anti-Origenian interpolations and glosses are abundantly attested in the case of Nyssen in the manuscripts themselves), but also pastoral concerns. If that text were genuinely Basil’s, in contradiction to his own linguistic usage and his knowledge of Origen’s argument against what is claimed in that passage, this could still be explained in light of the intended monastic, not scholarly, audience of that oeuvre. For Basil shared Origen’s own pastoral worries about the disclosure of the apokatastasis doctrine to simple or immature people. My hypothesis is furthermore supported by Orosius, who cannot be suspected of embracing apokatastasis, and who explicitly attributes this doctrine to Basil, as I argue in a separate article.437 In Basil’s commentary on Isaiah, then—whose authenticity finds more and more scholarly support—apokatastasis is simply obvious.
[McClymond writes concerning Rufinus, the ancient defender and translator of Origen who alleged that enemies of Origen deliberately interpolated theologically dubious material into his writings: “Ramelli commends ‘the perspicacious Rufinus’ (211) and writes that ‘Rufinus was a faithful Origenian for the whole of his life’ (656), who sought to ‘show directly from the evidence of the texts Origen’s greatness and his orthodoxy against his detractors’ (636). Yet, it should be noted that Rufinus tampered with the textual evidence and saddled later scholars and readers with a skewed, inaccurate Latin rendering of Peri archōn.”]
As for Rufinus, who never made any U-turn against Origen as Jerome did and shows to have understood well the reasons of the composition of Peri archōn (pointing to those that Origen himself indicated), scholars are progressively exposing his deep understanding of the aims of Origen’s thought—entirely grounded in the concern for theodicy—as well as his overall reliability as a translator, who never altered but only abridged, simplified, and glossed Origen’s texts. This is also confirmed by the newly discovered Greek homilies in the Munich codex,438 which allow for further, fairly extensive comparison between Origen’s Greek and Rufinus’ translation.
McClymond writes:
One indication of Origen’s reputation as a heretic during late antiquity and the early medieval period is found in the wholesale destruction of most of his writings. If, as Ramelli suggests, the anathematizing of Origen—in the last place in Anathema 11—was not original, then the interpolation must have been added so quickly to the original text that no one recognized it as an interpolation. But then how is Ramelli—almost 1500 years later—able to identify an interpolation when no one before her seems to have done so?
Even setting aside that the interpolation was certainly not discovered by me, Photius in the ninth century could still read all of Origen’s Peri archōn in Greek: thus, even Origen’s most “dangerous” work was not yet destroyed by that time, over three centuries after Justinian and the supposed anathemas against Origen. On McClymond’s hypothesis, this should have been the first oeuvre of Origen to be burned, shortly after the Second Council of Constantinople. Moreover, the Latin translation of Rufinus—especially treacherous because it meant to present Origen as “orthodox”—should have been destroyed; yet, it survived up to Eriugena and the mediaeval monasteries, and has reached us in numerous manuscripts. Paradoxically, what has perished is not Rufinus’ version, but Jerome’s (after his volte-face), which was aimed at uncovering the allegedly heretical nature of Origen’s work.
I am very glad that McClymond agrees that “aiōnios in ancient sources need not mean ‘eternal’ in the absolute, unqualified sense.”439 More precisely, it does not mean “eternal” beyond the strictly philosophical Platonic tradition (and certainly not in the Bible, wh
ere it has a number of other meanings, e.g., “remote,” “ancient,” “mundane,” “future,” “otherworldly,” etc.).440 Contrary to what McClymond claims, I comment on Jude 6 (which refers to the “aidioi chains” of the fallen angels) as the only biblical occurrence of aidios as describing punishment—but of fallen angels, not of fallen humans (Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis 33). Aidios in Scripture never refers to punishment/death/fire in the other world for humans. Furthermore, what is “eternal” in Jude 6 are the chains that bind the angels (not the punishment), and those “eternal chains” are only said to bind the angels until the Judgment Day, at which point it might be that their punishment will be meted out. It is not said what will happen then, but the use of aidios may also be connected with the immortal life of angels.
[McClymond states that there is much untranslated Latin and many ancient languages in my monograph and adds: “one of the oddest aspects of this book is the attempt to clinch a biblical or exegetical argument by appealing to early translations, sometimes against the Hebrew or Greek texts. She appeals to the Vulgate when its rendering supports her scriptural interpretations (14, 23, 45, 47, 51n122). She also cites Syriac (12, 48) and Coptic (47–48) versions of the Bible.”]
I cited Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Coptic, the original often being necessary for the language of restoration, but I always translated Syriac and Coptic, and Greek when the passages were long or difficult, e.g., in Dionysius the Areopagite. McClymond wonders why I reject the New Testament Greek text in favor of a Syriac translation of it. My occasional use of the Vetus Syra (anterior to the Peshitta) in NT criticism is amply justified, because it reflects a Greek Vorlage that is more ancient than all extant Greek manuscripts, apart from perhaps a couple of fragmentary papyri.441 I referred to my previous works when necessary, to document what I was saying in my monograph. Otherwise, my assertions would have seemed mere opinions unsupported by arguments; or else, I would have needed to repeat the whole arguments, but this would have made the book (impossibly) longer.
Mine is a work of historical theology and patristic philosophy. As such, it does not aim at defending or refuting apokatastasis. I have rather argued—I hope forcefully and extremely carefully, for the first time in a comprehensive monograph, how the apokatastasis doctrine is biblically, philosophically, and especially Christologically grounded in its patristic supporters. This refutes views such as De Faye’s, cited by McClymond, that “Origen made Christ all but irrelevant to the process of salvation.” Brian Daley comes to conclusions on the Christology of Origen in his last book, God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered,442 which I support in my book on Origen, and Origen specialists such as Henryk Pietras and Panayiotis Tzamalikos agree.
I have painstakingly traced and disentangled the various strands of the doctrine of apokatastasis, and dismantled widespread assumptions about its opposition to the doctrine of freewill and its dependence on “pagan” philosophy more than on Scripture in the patristic era. Both Georgios Lekkas and Alfons Fürst and Christian Hengstermann in their last books on Origen agree with me in supporting the coexistence of apokatastasis and a strong support of freewill in Origen’s thought. I have also demonstrated that the apokatastasis theory was present in more thinkers than is commonly assumed—even in Augustine for a while—and was in fact prominent in patristic thought, down to the last great Western patristic philosopher, Eriugena. Augustine himself, after rejecting apokatastasis (which he did support beforehand), and Basil attest that still late in the fourth and fifth centuries this doctrine was upheld by the vast majority of Christians—“indeed, very many” (immo quam plurimi, Aug. Ench. ad Laur. 29).
[McClymond: “The data that Daley443 has carefully sifted shows sixty-eight authors and texts that clearly affirm the eternal punishment of the wicked, while seven authors are unclear, two teach something like eschatological pantheism, and perhaps four authors appear to be universalists in the Origenian sense. To summarize the early Christian data, the support for universalism is paltry in comparison with opposition to it. There is not much of a universalist tradition during the first centuries of the Christian church.”]
Of course there were anti-universalists also in the ancient church, but scholars must be careful not to list among them—as is the case with the list of “the sixty-eight” anti-universalists, cited by McClymond on the basis of The Hope of the Early Church—an author just because he uses πῦρ αἰώνιον (“aionial” fire), κόλασις αἰώνιος (“aionial” punishment), θάνατος αἰώνιος (“aionial” death), or the like, since these biblical expressions do not necessarily refer to eternal damnation. Indeed, all universalists, from Origen to Gregory of Nyssa to Evagrius, used these phrases without problems,444 for universalists understood these expressions as “otherworldly” or “long-lasting” fire, educative punishment, and death, and not “eternal” punishment, etc., which would have contrasted with their doctrine of apokatastasis. Thus, the mere presence of such phrases is not enough to conclude that a patristic thinker “affirmed the idea of everlasting punishment.” Didache mentions the ways of life and death, but not eternal death or torment; Ignatius, as others among “the sixty-eight,” never mentions eternal punishment. Ephrem does not speak of eternal damnation, but has many hints of healing and restoration, as I pointed out in the monograph and further in a detailed article in Augustinianum. For Theodore of Mopsuestia, another of “the sixty-eight,” if one takes into account also the Syriac and Latin evidence, given that the Greek is mostly lost, it becomes impossible to list him among the anti-universalists. He explicitly ruled out unending retributive punishment (sine fine et sine correctione).445
I have shown, indeed, that a few of “the sixty-eight” were not anti-universalist, and that the uncertain were often in fact universalists, e.g., Clement of Alexandria, Apocalypse of Peter, Sibylline Oracles (in one passage), Eusebius, Gregory Nazianzen, perhaps even Basil and Athanasius, Ambrose, Jerome before his change of mind, and Augustine in his anti-Manichaean years. Maximus too, another of “the sixty-eight,” speaks only of punishment aiōnios, not aïdios, though living after Justinian he understandably talks about restoration only with circumspection, also using a persona to express the view. Torstein Tollefsen, Panayiotis Tzamalikos, and Maria Luisa Gatti, for instance, agree that Maximus affirmed apokatastasis.
It is not the case that “the support for universalism is paltry compared with opposition to it.” Not only were “the sixty-eight” in fact fewer than sixty-eight, and not only did many of McClymond’s “uncertain” in fact support apokatastasis, but the theologians who remain in the list of anti-universalists tend to be much less important. Look at the theological weight of Origen, the Cappadocians, Athanasius, or Maximus, for instance, on all of whom much of Christian doctrine and dogmas depends. Or think of the cultural significance of Eusebius, the spiritual impact of Evagrius or Isaac of Nineveh, or the philosophico-theological importance of Eriugena, the only author of a comprehensive treatise of systematic theology and theoretical philosophy between Origen’s Peri archōn and Aquinas’ Summa theologiae. Then compare, for instance, Barsanuphius, Victorinus of Pettau, Gaudentius of Brescia, Maximus of Turin, Tyconius, Evodius of Uzala, or Orientius, listed among “the sixty-eight” (and mostly ignorant of Greek). Furthermore, McClymond’s statement, “there are no unambiguous cases of universalist teaching prior to Origen,” should also be at least nuanced, in light of Bardaisan, Clement, the Apocalypse of Peter’s Rainer Fragment, parts of the Sibylline Oracles, and arguably of the NT itself, especially Paul’s letters.
Certainly, “there was a diversity of views in the early church on the scope of final salvation.” Tertullian, for instance, did not embrace apokatastasis. But my monograph is not on patristic eschatology or soteriology in general, but specifically on the doctrine of apokatastasis. Thus, I treated the theologians who supported it, and not others. It is illogical to criticize a monograph on patristic apokatastasis for not being a book on the diversity
of early Christian eschatological teachings, as McClymond does; the latter already existed—for example, works by the aforementioned Brian Daley and Henryk Pietras, as I explain in my introduction. My monograph has a clearly different scope, methodology, focus, new research, and, inevitably, different conclusions. A review of a patristic book should be informed by fresh, direct reading (in the original languages) of the patristic theologians involved and of recent research into, and reassessment of, their thought. It should reflect a thorough study of the interactions of patristic philosophy and theology with ancient philosophy. It should not, in other words, limit itself to restating in 2015 the conclusions of another scholar’s 1991 book.
424. Michael McClymond published an article review of Ilaria Ramelli’s The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis (Leiden: Brill, 2013) in Theological Studies 76.4 (2015), reprinted in Michael McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018), 1089–1101. An extensive review of the Patristic section of this volume appears here in Appendix III. It was invited by a theological journal, the International Journal of Systematic Theology, which will also publish a shorter version. This appendix, reproduced here, is a reprint of Ilaria Ramelli’s invited response to McClymond’s review in Theological Studies 76.4 (2015) 827–35, with some updates. In the text above the words of McClymond are inserted in square brackets and minor characters, so that readers are able to better appreciate what I was asked to respond to.
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