Prof. Dr. Ilaria Ramelli is one of the leading experts on early Christianity. She earned several degrees in this field and taught at many universities worldwide on the topic. Her studies of the church fathers led her to embrace the belief in apokatastasis (the belief that one day God will reconcile and restore everything and everyone). This article features my notes from an interview that Peter Hiett conducted with her in 2016. I recommend watching the full interview (the link is at the end of the article). My notes are only supposed to summarize the interview at a glance.
Many of the early church fathers believed that one day God will fill all things.
apokatastasis = to restore to an earlier condition; the word was used in many different contexts, for example, restoration of health, or even restoration of a star/planet which returned to its usual location.
The doctrine of Creation is deeply connected with the doctrine of apokatastasis.
Jesus himself spoke about apokatastasis (Mt 17:11).
1 Cor 15:28 is an important verse. Gregory of Nysa is very helpful for understanding this verse. God doesn’t want any forced submission!! He only wants honest allegiance from a repentant heart. Jesus represents all of humanity. Every human will gladly submit to God one day!!
The early church fathers saw apokatastasis as orthodoxy and used it to actually defend heresy.
Until the early 5th-century apokatastasis was likely the dominant doctrine. Even the early Augustine believed in it but later he rejected it in his writings. But he acknowledged that the majority doesn’t believe in eternal conscious torment.
“It is quite in vain, then, that some–indeed very many–yield to merely human feelings and deplore the notion of the eternal punishment of the damned and their interminable and perpetual misery. They do not believe that such things will be. Not that they would go counter to divine Scripture—but, yielding to their own human feelings, they soften what seems harsh and give a milder emphasis to statements they believe are meant more to terrify than to express literal truth.” (Augustine, Enchiridion, sec. 112.)
Only a few church fathers rejected apokatastasis (eg Tertullian).
Some church fathers believed that God will redeem even the devil and his angels but most believed at least that God will save all humans.
God alone is eternal. What he is and what he gives is eternal. But death and sin can’t be eternal because they are not from God. Jesus is Life. Jesus is God. Therefore life is eternal. But consequently, death cannot be eternal. Death will be abolished.
Sulfur (in Revelations) could be translated as divinity as well. Therefore God himself could be understood as the fire (Isaac of Niniveh and Origen understood the fire in that way).
Most church fathers agree that God‘s grace and his punishments are the same.
The Marcionites (a heretical group) separated God’s justice from his goodness and grace. They created a dichotomy between God’s grace and his justice. This heretical thinking has influence until today. God’s justice was understood by the fathers as an expression of his grace and goodness.
Augustine fell for the Marcionite heresy: he believed that God is good to some and just to others! He separated God’s goodness from his justice. This is a schizophrenic picture of God. The earlier fathers didn’t see this chasm between God’s goodness and his justice/punishment. For them, God’s justice was good news.
Origen was convinced that God will be all in all. If he is all in all then evil and sin will have no more place because God contains no evil.
Origen even mentioned that we shouldn’t call it “punishment” because God’s punishments are always for our benefit and restorative in nature.
God’s punishment is his act of purifying us from all evil that got intertwined with our nature. He is a purifying fire. Therefore we shouldn’t identify with our sin because it will be burned out of us and it is not part of who we really are.
The fathers believed in limitless grace. Grace without boundaries. But Augustine brought this 50% grace and 50% justice thinking.
Link to the interview:
https://vimeo.com/177946820?embedded=false&source=vimeo_logo&owner=3228156
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