A Larger Hope 1

by Ilaria L E Ramelli

  Evagrius

  On Physical Bodies

  Evagrius was strongly influenced not only by Basil and Gregory Nazianzen (293), as commonly assumed, but also very much by Nyssen.509 Concerning the two redactions of the Kephalaia Gnostika, it is noted that, unlike Casiday, Bundy does not assign S1 chronological priority over S2 (293n.230): I concur and explained some reasons in “Evagrius’ Relations.” Evagrius is often attributed the idea “that physical body or materiality will pass away” (294); however, this indicates not merely destruction, but subsumption into a higher reality: body into soul, soul into intellect, intellect into God.510 This conception will be taken over and expanded by Eriugena. Evagrius’ notion that “the movement is the cause of evil” (295) is taken from Origen, as well as his tenet that there was a time when evil was not and there will be one when it will no longer exist (295).511

  On the Trinity

  McClymond states that the idea that the Trinitarian distinctions will cease “could be inferred from Evagrius’ Great Letter, but the point was not asserted in Evagrius as it was in Bar Sudhaili” (349)! Actually, this letter (Letter to Melania) explicitly denies a cessation of Trinitarian distinctions: the three hypostases, Father Son, and Spirit, will remain distinct in the eschaton.512

  On Knowledge and Love

  McClymond’s contrast between Origen, who understood spiritual life in terms of knowledge, love, and will, and Evagrius, who understood it only in terms of knowledge (299), should be nuanced, given the equation that Evagrius draws between love and apatheia, and the importance given to both.513

  On Christology

  The question “whether Evagrius’ Christology is orthodox in the Nicene sense” (299) should be answered in the positive.514 KG 6.14 is one of the numerous statements in Evagrius’ Kephalaia Gnostika and Letter on Faith that point in the opposite direction to “subordinationism”: the Son is seen as wholly divine with the Father and the Spirit. Here I propose to read either the first sentence as that of an objector—which is attested elsewhere in Evagrius—or the whole kephalaion as an internal dialectics of thesis, antithesis, and discussion (what Evagrius repeatedly uses, in a “zetetic” fashion inherited from Origen). This is the only way to understand KG 6.14 in a non-contradictory manner, since it first states: “Christ is not consubstantial [homoousios] with the Trinity,” and then: “Christ is consubstantial [homoousios] with the Father.” The subject is always “Christ,” in two sentences that form a contradiction in terms (contradictio in adiecto). If in KG 4.9 and 4.18 Evagrius distinguishes Christ from the Logos, in KG 6.14 he considers both together as a unity: “in union, Christ is homoousios with the Father” and “is the Lord” God. In KG 3.1, Christ is considered in his divine nature as Son, and thereby God: “The Father—only he—knows Christ, and the Son—only he—the Father.” Christ and the Son occupy the same position in the equation: Father:Christ = Son:Father. This implies the identity between Son and Christ in his divine nature. Evagrius, like Origen, calls Christ sometimes the rational creature (logikon) alone, sometimes the union of this logikon with God’s Logos/Son. In Skemmata 1, Evagrius treats Christ as a compound of creatural and divine nature, claiming that Christ qua Christ possesses the essential knowledge, that is, God, who constitutes his own divine nature. Consistently, Palladius in his biography of Evagrius depicts him as supporting, against ‘heretics’ such as “Arians” and Eunomians, the full divinity of Christ-Logos, God’s Son, who also assumed a human body, soul, and nous. Thus, Christ is both God and a logikon. This hybridity of Christ was emphasized by Origen, whom Evagrius follows: see my “Atticus and Origen on the Soul of God the Creator: From the ‘Pagan’ to the Christian Side of Middle Platonism,” Jahrbuch für Religionsphilosophie 10 (2011) 13–35, and my monograph on Origen in preparation.

  Sometimes Evagrius is accused of supporting a dichotomic Christology, but this is the same that Nyssen had. This is unsurprising, as I think Gregory exerted more influence on Evagrius than is commonly assumed.515 Evagrius is also charged with theorizing a Christology that does not point in the direction of Chalcedon—an accusation that views Evagrius from the perspective of posterior theological developments. Paradoxically enough, however, precisely in KG 6.14, the adverb “inseparably,” in reference to Christ, who possesses “inseparably” the Essential Knowledge (God), is the same as the adverbs that at Chalcedon will describe the inseparability of Christ’s two natures: achōristōs, adiairetōs. Indeed, “inseparable” is used here by Evagrius exactly to describe the union of Christ’s divine and human natures: “Christ is the only one who always and inseparably possesses the Essential Knowledge in himself.” “Always” might also be taken to anticipate Chalcedon’s atreptōs, “without change over time.” Thus, Christ is the only logikon who always and inseparably possesses God in himself. Christ is both a logikon and God. In sum, Evagrius was no Christological “heretic.”

  Ephrem

  It is basically correct of McClymond to place Ephrem among the non-universalists, since he has no systematic treatment of apokatastasis, but he does show statements that open up the possibility of universal salvation, as I studied in an article and in my monograph on apokatastasis.516 It is true that the wicked are said by him to have a different postmortem status than the righteous, but this is not said to be eternal. Origen himself maintained the same thing.

  Pseudo-Dionysius

  Pseudo-Dionysius, a Christian Neoplatonist, was admired and quoted by many, including Thomas Aquinas (about 1,700 times). It has been indeed advocated that Dionysius did not support the doctrine of apocatastasis (as McClymond reminds us on p. 342), since he speaks of apokatastasis in the present, and not in the future. In fact, Dionysius speaks of apokatastasis and reversal/conversion (epistrophē) in the present517 not because he denies the eventual apokatastasis but because God, being atemporal, lives in an eternal present, as the co-eternal circle of the movements of love makes clear.518

  Bar Sudhaili

  McClymond’s treatment of Bar Sudhaili and his apokatastasis as pantheistic (and thus very different from that of Origen and Nyssen) is sound, just as the acceptance of Henri de Lubac’s suggestion that what the Emperor Justinian famously condemned in the sixth century was not Origen’s own thought, but that of Bar Sudhaili (347). Certainly, he did not condemn the real thought of Origen, least of all that of Gregory of Nyssa.519

  Maximus the Confessor

  Maximus the Confessor’s Ambigua offered, in McClymond’s view, “a systematic reinterpretation, or rather correction, of Origen and Evagrius” (364). Yet Maximus surely corrected a radicalized Origenism and Evagrianism, more than Origen’s own thought.520 He transformed and developed Origen’s ideas, rather than correcting them. Maximus did insist that “to be a creature is to be in movement” (365), but by doing so he was following Origen. Pace McClymond, Maximus was not “rejecting Origen’s idea of an original state of ontologically static creatures,” since Origen posited movement, in the primary sense of movement of the soul and an act of will, as characteristic of all rational creatures and a gift from God (and the source of their fall or their adhesion to God).521 When Maximus at the beginning of Ambiguum 7 criticizes those who posited an initial unity of rational beings “connatural with God” (symphyeis theō), this hardly could target Origen, who explicitly denied, against some “gnostics,” that rational creatures could be connatural or homoousioi with God.522 Shortly afterwards, when Maximus attacks those who thought that God imprisoned rational creatures to bodies as a result of their sin, he was not criticizing Origen’s ideas, since Origen rather maintained that God created rational creatures with a spiritual body, which after the fall became heavy and mortal (for humans) and “ridiculous” (for demons).523 Likewise, Maximus’ objection to an endless series of falls and restorations, like that of Augustine, does not correspond to Origen’s above-mentioned theory of a finite series of aeons followed by a restoration that will be definitive, the telos.

  Maximus, as
von Balthasar already suggested and as can be gathered from many more clues and further considerations, hinted at apokatastasis as a mystery to be honored by silence. The silence that Nyssen and others used in mystical apophaticism, with respect to God, Maximus seems to apply to apokatastasis and deification (theōsis), which is the culmination of apokatastasis.524 Maximus significantly speaks of the eventual apokatastasis per interpositam personam, a nameless wise man who worked as a mouthpiece, out of prudence.

  Isaac the Syrian

  Isaac the Syrian (often referred to as Isaac of Nineveh) and Eriugena are the two last patristic supporters of apokatastasis the book deals with. Isaac posited that God’s love is experienced differently in the other world and brings enjoyment to the good but torture to the wicked (372), although this torture will not be eternal but “will manifest some wonderful outcome” (Second Part 39). Isaac’s idea is similar to that of Origen, who asserted that the same God will be light for the just, but (purifying) fire for sinners: “God will become light without doubt for the just, and fire for sinners to consume in them any trace of corruptibility and fragility it will find in their soul.”525 All of Isaac’s thought revolves around the notion of God’s love and compassion, which never change, and God’s immunity towards anger (a revisitation of the concept of the divine lack of passions, or apatheia).526 God does not avenge evil, but he makes evil right and thereby makes justice: this is the notion of setting right (diorthōsis) of evil that Origen and the Origenian tradition, including Eusebius, upheld. Likewise, when Isaac specifies that in the end “all are going to exist in a single love, a single purpose, a single will, and a single perfect state of knowledge” (Second Part 40), he takes over Origen and Evagrius, who followed Origen in turn: the love of all rational creatures will be directed towards one object, God, the true Good, in a reorientation of all the dispersed wills of rational creatures, a unity of will and universal harmony (so much so that even demons will make no exception to this harmony).527 Knowledge, in Evagrius’ line, will be perfect in the eventual deification (theōsis), since this will be the nous’ life in God, who is Essential Knowledge.

  Eriugena

  Εriugena’s debt to Greek patristics is rightly acknowledged by McClymond (374), as well as his (Neoplatonist) exitus-reditus scheme (376), which dovetails with the creation–apokatastasis movement.528 Indeed, he may be reckoned the last great patristic Platonist in the West. As such, it comes as no surprise that he admired Origen a great deal.529 Against Augustine and his postlapsarian non posse non peccare, Eriugena “insisted that human nature is essentially free” and “freedom remained after sin” (377). He followed Origen rather than Augustine in this respect.

  Eriugena supported apokatastasis.530 Creatio ex nihilo is rightly equated with creatio ex Deo in Eriugena’s doctrine (378), in an apophatic perspective in which God becomes superabundant nothingness.531 Regarding his notion that “purified souls will be absorbed into pure intellects” (379), I find it in line with the theory of Evagrius: the subsumption of body into soul, soul into “unified intellect [nous],” and this into God, at the stage of deification (theōsis) and unity—a theory indebted to Nyssen, and ultimately to Origen. Now, Eriugena was right to trace this theory precisely back to Nyssen: Gregory “builds up an addition: the transformation of the body into soul at the time of the resurrection, of the soul into intellect, and of the intellect into God.”532

  Eriugena’s notion of deification appears somewhat different from that of Origen: while in Origen this was primarily a unity of will and life in God, Eriugena insisted that this will be a unity of substance or essence (homo et Deus in unitatem unius substantiae adunati sunt, Hom.Prol.Io. PL 122.296C). But it is awkward that one can question “whether the restoration of human nature carries with it the salvation of every human soul” (381, citing Gardner). Eriugena in fact is crystal clear that, thanks to Christ’s inhumanation, “every creature, in heaven and on earth, has been saved” (omnis creatura, in caelo et in terra, salva facta est, Periph. 5.24). 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 shall perish in the other world; only their substance will remain (substantia permansura, malitia in aeternum peritura) and will be happy (Periph. 5.931A).

  It is correct (381) that according to Eriugena “all . . . shall return into Paradise, but not all shall enjoy the Tree of Life—or rather . . . not all equally” (Periph. 1015A), but this refers to the distinction between salvation and deification, and does not imply that some will not be saved. Maybe some will not be deified. Though, sometimes Eriugena even suggests that deification itself will extend to all. For he postulates the return of all to God, and the transformation of all into God, through their primordial causes; at that point, all will enjoy peace and eternal splendor and joy: “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” (Periph. 5.991C). At that point, it no longer even makes sense to speak of a beatific vision not shared by all.

  I hail with comfort and satisfaction a sustained academic book of the kind that costs a long time and concentration effort to be conceived, written, and read—the type that the current academic system and even some publishers sometimes seem to discourage nowadays. I look forward to reading also That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation, by David Bentley Hart (Yale University Press, 2019).

  Ilaria L. E. Ramelli

  (Sacred Heart University; Angelicum;

  Oxford; Durham; Erfurt MWK)

  446. Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018). A much shorter version of this review appears in the International Journal of Systematic Theology (forthcoming).

  447. My response to McClymond’s review of Apokatastasis appears as Appendix I in this book.

  448. Ramelli, “Christian Apokatastasis and Zoroastrian Frashegird.”

  449. Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” 181.

  450. Treated on pp. 155–69 and from 170 respectively—including in Guillaume Postel (sixteenth century) and Sadhu Sundar Singh (nineteenth-twentieth centuries)—within a longer section on patristic thought that indeed continues (223) with a chapter on the much earlier Origen.

  451. “Apokatastasis in Coptic Gnostic Texts from Nag Hammadi and Clement’s and Origen’s Apokatastasis.”

  452. Treated in a future monograph on philosophical doctrines of apokatastasis from antiquity to late antiquity and their relation to Christian doctrines.

  453. There is no discussion of chronology in McClymond’s treatment of “gnostic” treatises, which undercuts some of his work here.

  454. On 147–48; analyzed in my “Apokatastasis in Gnostic Texts.”

  455. See my “Gal 3:28 and Aristotelian (and Jewish) Categories of Inferiority.”

  456. For Nazianzen: Apokatastasis, 440–61; Basil: Apokatastasis, 344–72; further “Origen the Christian Middle/Neoplatonist”; Nyssen: “Christian Soteriology and Christian Platonism”; Apokatastasis, 372–440; “Gregory of Nyssa on the Soul (and the Restoration): From Plato to Origen.”

  457. Demonstration in my “Origen, Bardaisan, and the Origin of Universal Salvation.”

  458. As I argue in “Origen” and “Gregory of Nyssa”; “Sôma”; “Ensomatosis vs. Metensomatosis.”

  459. Argument in my “Gregory of Nyssa’s Purported Criticism of Origen’s Purported Doctrine of the Preexistence of Souls.”

  460. C.Matt. 10.2; C.Io. 6.7; 85; 2.186. Further passages against metensomatosis in Tzamalikos, Origen, 48–53.

 
; 461. C.Matth. 11.17; Apol. 180.

  462. As analyzed in my Bardaisan of Edessa: A Reassessment of the Evidence and a New Interpretation. Also in the Light of Origen and the Original Fragments from De India, 107–26.

  463. Demonstration in my “Body” and “Double Creation”; “Christian Platonists in Support of Gender Equality”; “Patristic Anthropology, the Issue of Gender, and its Relevance to Ecclesiastical Offices.”

  464. For Origen and Nyssen see “Origen” and “Gregory of Nyssa”; for Evagrius “Gregory Nyssen’s and Evagrius’ Biographical and Theological Relations.” A future work on Evagrius’ philosophical theology will include his eschatological views.

  465. See my “Harmony”; further in the work on Origen in preparation, ch. 2.

  466. Arguments, also about the way of Augustine’s access to Origen, in my “Origen in Augustine: A Paradoxical Reception.” Research into Origen’s influence on Augustine in the various phases of his thought is needed and underway.

  467. See my “Origen in Augustine”; Apokatastasis, 169–73.

  468. On this axiom, see Elkaisy-Friemuth and Dillon, eds., The Afterlife of the Platonic Soul, and my review Bryn Mawr Classical Review, September 2010.

  469. A survey of afterlife conceptions in Greco-Roman cultures includes Plato, but Plato was no universalist and seems to have taught the eternal punishment of very bad souls, as I demonstrated in 2013 (Apokatastasis, 153–54; further in an investigation into “pagan” philosophical theories of apokatastasis); this is correctly acknowledged by McClymond on pp. 136 and 272.