As a pious hope, Universalism is still embraced by some in the Eastern Orthodox Church. It is compatible with all the ancient creeds, was widely believed in East and West, was never formally condemned, and may have been the majority view of the undivided Church.
Some Patristic Quotes
Some maintain that the Apostle asserts here the abolition of evil, so that all will henceforth willingly yield, and not one resist or be under the power of evil, for when sin shall no longer exist, it is evident that God will be All in All. (St. John Chrysostom, on 1 Cor. 15:28.)
I know that most people understand by the story of Nineveh and it's king, the ultimate forgiveness of the devil and all rational creatures (St. Jerome, on the 3rd chapter of Jonah.)
But further, those who maintain that punishment will one day come to an end, and that torments have a limit, though after long periods, use as proofs the following testimonies of Scripture:--‘When the fullness of the Gentiles shall have come in, then all Israel shall be saved;' and again, ‘God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all;' and again, ‘I will praise thee, O Lord, for Thou wast angry with me; Thou hadst turned thy face from me; but Thou hast comforted me.' The Lord Himself also says to the sinner, ‘When the fierceness of my wrath hath passed, I will heal him.' And this is what is said in another place:--‘Oh, how great is thy goodness, which Thou hast laid up for them that fear Thee.' All which testimonies of Scripture they urge in reply against us, while they earnestly assert that after certain sufferings and torments there will be restoration. All which nevertheless they allow should not now be openly told to those with whom fear yet acts as a motive, and who may be kept from sinning by the terror of punishment. But this question we ought to leave to the wisdom of God alone, whose judgments as well as mercies are by weight and measure, and who well knows whom, and how, and how long, He ought to judge. (St. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah.)
For it is now as with those who for their cure are subjected to the knife and the cautery; they are angry with the doctors, and wince with the pain of the incision; but if recovery of health be the result of this treatment, and the pain of the cautery passes away, they will feel grateful to those who have wrought this cure upon them. In like manner, when, after long periods of time, the evil of our nature, which now is mixed up with it and has grown with its growth, has been expelled, and when there has been a restoration of those who are now lying in sin to their primal state, a harmony of thanksgiving will arise from all creation, as well from those who in the process of the purgation have suffered chastisement, as from those who needed not any purgation at all. These and the like benefits the great mystery of the Divine incarnation bestows. For in those points in which He was mingled with humanity, passing as He did through all the accidents proper to human nature, such as birth, rearing, growing up, and advancing even to the taste of death, He accomplished all the results before mentioned, freeing both man from evil, and healing even the introducer of evil himself. For the chastisement, however painful, of moral disease is a healing of its weakness. (St. Gregory of Nyssa, The Great Catechism.)
Origen
In about 541 A.D.(the exact year is uncertain) a local council at Constantinople condemned certain opinions attributed to Origen in these words:
If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.
The Bishops went on to clarify what they meant by "the fabulous pre-existence of souls," and "the monstrous restoration which follows from it" in these words:
If anyone shall say that the sun, the moon and the stars are also reasonable beings, and that they have only become what they are because they turned towards evil...If anyone shall say that there is a twofold race of demons, of which the one includes the souls of men and the other the superior spirits who fell to this, and that of all the number of reasonable beings there is but one which has remained unshaken in the love and contemplation of God, and that that spirit is become Christ and the king of all reasonable beings, and that he has created all the bodies which exist in heaven, on earth, and between heaven and earth...and that the most holy and consubstantial Trinity did not create the world, but that it was created by the working intelligence which is more ancient than the world, and which communicates to it its being...If anyone shall say that Christ, of whom it is said that he appeared in the form of God, and that he was united before all time with God the Word, and humbled himself in these last days even to humanity, had (according to their expression) pity upon the divers falls which had appeared in the spirits united in the same unity (of which he himself is part), and that to restore them he passed through divers classes, had different bodies and different names...If anyone shall say that after the resurrection the body of the Lord was ethereal, having the form of a sphere, and that such shall be the bodies of all after the resurrection; and that after the Lord himself shall have rejected his true body and after the others who rise shall have rejected theirs, the nature of their bodies shall be annihilated...If anyone shall say that the future judgment signifies the destruction of the body...and that thereafter there will no longer be any matter, but only spirit: let him be anathema.
(Anathemas Against Origen.)
About twelve years later an *Ecumenical Council (The Second Council of Constantinople) condemned Origen in these words:
If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematized by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and by the aforesaid four Holy Synods and [if anyone does not equally anathematize] all those who have held and hold or who in their impiety persist in holding to the end the same opinion as those heretics just mentioned: let him be anathema.
(The Capitula of the Council.)
The following four facts make it highly unlikely that the assembled Bishops intended this general anathema against Origen (named in company with those holding unorthodox Christological views) as a condemnation of Universalism.
1.) The object of the Council was to condemn Christological tenets distinct from Universalism.
2.) The Council expressly named St. Gregory of Nyssa (the most outspoken Universalist of all the Church Fathers) as a defender of Orthodoxy, and one of the highest doctrinal authorities in the Church.
3.) Gregory of Nyssa (though an avowed Universalist) condemned these same Origenist errors:
I have heard persons who hold these opinions saying that whole nations of souls are hidden away somewhere in a realm of their own, living a life analogous to that of the embodied soul; but such is the fineness and buoyancy of their substance that they themselves' roll round along with the revolution of the universe; and that these souls, having individually lost their wings through some gravitation towards evil, become embodied...so that that inherently fine and buoyant thing that the soul is first becomes weighted and downward tending in consequence of some vice, and so migrates to a human body...but after that mounts up again by the same gradations...A circle, in fact, of the same sequences will be perpetually traversed, where the soul, at whatever point it may be, has no resting-place...they evidently think that evil controls the creation of all beings. In some mysterious way, too, both events are to occur at once; the birth of the man in consequence of a marriage, and the fall of the soul...if a life begins in consequence of a chance accident, the whole course of it becomes at once a chapter of accidents, and the attempt to make the whole world depend on a Divine power is absurd, when it is made by these men, who deny to the individualities in it a birth from the fiat of the Divine Will and refer the several origins of beings to encounters that come of evil, as though there could never have existed such a thing as a human life, unless a vice had struck, as it were, its leading note. If the beginning is like that, a sequel will most certainly be set in motion in accordance with that beginning. (St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection.)
4.) The views condemned have nothing to do with universalism per se (as witnessed by the fact that they were rejected by Gregory.)
Athanasian Creed
Whatever we may think of the Athanasian Creed - its want of conciliar authority - its comparatively late date - its uncertain origin - its doubtful acceptance in the East - when it speaks of "everlasting," that term can mean no more than the Scriptural aionios, which it represents: and as it is clear that everlasting is not the necessary or even the usual meaning of aionios, this Creed is really quite consistent with the larger hope. (Thomas Allin.)
* Note: The Greek Orthodox believe in the Divine guidance and inspiration of the assembled bishops of seven Ecumenical Councils, Anglicans, Methodists, and most Protestants accept the authority of the first four councils, and Roman Catholics believe in the infallibility of 21 (15 of which only included Roman Catholic Bishops, and are only Ecumenical by their own standards.)
Return Home