by Matthew Milliner, Ph.D.
Permit me a follow up to my essay on universalism, and how the Virgin Mary—and the gospel she represents—unravels the pagan loom of doom.
First Thread: On Really Not Knowing
Of course I’ve read DBH’s own tome on the subject, That All Shall Be Saved. I’ve also worked my way through a considerable portion of McClymond’s two volumes against universalism, which I found to be effectively neutralized by Ilaria Ramelli’s two volumes for it. Especially helpful was Fr Aidan’s own contribution, which—for Capon fans such as myself— appears to push Lutheran arguments to their natural (though perhaps not necessary) conclusions. I finished one of the essays therein on a plane departing from Boston in view of Plymouth Rock, and the experience functioned for me as a felicitous corrective of the double predestination that infiltrated this continent on precisely that spot. So I’ve come a long way; and I thought it would be pedantic to mention all this on a site where such things have been exhaustively discussed.
My real push toward universalism was in fact delivered not by learned treatise like these but by my four-year-old son. Seeking to console himself from the thought of evil, he once chanted an impromptu universalist hymn of sorts. Even “the devil’s claw,” he sung out loud to himself without knowing I was listening, would be pierced by “the very light of God.” Though we had never discussed such arcane theological topics (he was, after all, only four), he chanted this message aloud as he innocently sketched. It was an experience almost too holy (like the universalist message itself perhaps) to casually relate. My point is I completely resonate with the hope, and I have the work represented by this site to thank for that.
But hope, when flatly asserted, is no longer hope. A recent essay by Michael Martin reminded me of this quote from Pavel Florensky’s The Pillar and Ground of the Truth:
Thus, if you ask me, “Will there in fact be eternal torments” I would answer “Yes.” But if you were also to ask me, “Will there be universal restoration in bliss?” I would again say “Yes.” The two are thesis and antithesis. . . . It is neither a simple “yes” nor a simple “no.” It is an antinomy. This indeed is the best proof of its religious validity.
A question: If Florensky did not collapse that tension, why must we? I think the reason Florensky offers this antinomy may be for the same reason that Brother Lazarus counseled Huston Smith to not be so loud about universalism, even if it is true. We are not yet permitted to completely disassemble this paradox. Sin is still too serious, the stakes are still too high. This is something very different I hope than gleefully proclaiming the prospect of particular people perishing forever in hell.
What would really push me over the line toward full-scale universalism is someone looking into my endnote about Gregory of Nyssa and Origen (xiv in the original essay) and explaining to me clearly that the scholarly claims that Gregory of Nyssa and Origen (like Florensky) appear to have held both positions is in fact false, or at least dubious manuscript interpolations that stain the original purity of the message. I know of no one who has done this (and it may not even be possible to do). So for now, I’m with Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Florensky (not to mention Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth) in not being entirely consistent on this issue. So it’s still hope not doctrine for me, but a hope that—thanks to recent arguments for universalism—is brimming with luminous expectation.
Even so, I do permit the tension to collapse regarding protological universalism, lest I consign myself to the hellish consequences of double-predestinarian commitments, which is why I wrote the essay (and book) that I did.
Second Thread: The Mercy of Isis?
I did, however, find one place where the argument of my essay in fact appeared to be flatly refuted. As I was re-reading Apuleius this semester, I was taken aback by these lines from The Golden Ass regarding the goddess Isis:
O Holy Blessed Lady… You are there when we fall, stretching out your hand to push aside anything that might harm us. You even untangle the web of fate in which we may be caught, even stopping the stars for us if their pattern is in any way harmful (233).
This does seem to be a stake in the heart of my claim, even an undermining of the originality of the Akathistos hymn cited in my title. The Golden Ass, it appears, made an ass out of me, or at least my argument. The unraveling of fate that I claimed only comes with the gospel appears to have unraveled in paganism as well.
But my dignity, I am glad to report, may have been restored. The novel was written in the late second century AD, and Christians were already an undeniable presence in the empire at that point. What we may see here is Apuleius, like Julian the Apostate arguing that pagans should build hospitals and soup kitchens, playing catch up with Christians.
As I’ve argued more recently, a fourth-generation goddess like Isis could not challenge the masterbatory dictates that issued from Atum-Ra at the top of the Egyptian pantheon. But Biblical Wisdom, symbolized (but not entirely reducible to) Mary, is a much more immediate manifestation of God’s primordial intention to save. Not surprisingly then, Christianity in comparison to Isis—according to Solmsen’s extensive study—offered “love of a more outgoing kind and broader in scope, love between man and his neighbor, love for the poor and the downtrodden, even, in principle at least, for one’s enemy.” What is more, John McGuckin has made the differences between the cult of Isis and the Virgin Mary undeniably clear. Surface similarities concealed a vast theological chasm. That the cult of Isis in the Roman context would all of a sudden betray a message similar to the gospel therefore strikes me as a tad suspicious.
So how to explain this remarkable, praiseworthy line from Apuleius about Isis unravelling fate? Quite simply, really (and some recent work on the subject of Jewish and Christian influence on Apuleius, moreover, appears to back me up). It was second-hand smoke inhalation from the gospel’s more original burn.
* * *
Dr Matthew Milliner is Professor of Art History at Wheaton College and is author of The Everlasting People: G.K. Chesterton and the First Nations and Mother of the Lamb: The Story of a Global Icon.
Eclectic Orthodoxy 
There’s a difference between “ever-enduring” and “eternal”. A punishment in Gehenna which is shaming and corrective but which by this means brings about salvation is for this reason a good, and, since the salvation it brings about is eternal, may therefore I think accurately be described as an eternal good. The correction of Gehenna is eternal correction, even if the actual period of punishment comes to an end when its (eternal) purpose is achieved.
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I’m just guessing, Iain, but I bet that both Florensky and Milliner know that difference. 😜
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If anyone is interested in knowing more about the Florensky antinomy, check out this article that the author was kind enough to send me. If Brian Moore was still visiting the blog, I’m sure he could explain it to us. 🥲
Click to access florensky-antinomy-of-gehenna.pdf
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Father Al,
I am no expert on Florensky—defer to DBH and Brian on that score-but it seems to me that Florensky’s meditations on divine judgment and hell in “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” don’t support the author’s assertion that there is an unresolved antimony between the statements that all will be saved and some will suffer eternal torment. Indeed Florensky’s eschatology is precisely an attempt to resolve that antimony by proposing that there is a split within the human being between the kernel which always is United with the imago dei and the husk that follows the wayward deliberations of the gnomic will, engaging in sinful acts that result in its just condemnation to the outer darkness. The divine eschatological judgment is nothing but the final separation between the core of the person, which is saved in all, and the shadow self that suffers eternal destruction. The separation of the sheep and the goats occurs within every person, as Bulgakov asserted.
Any comments from experts on the theologians of Russia’s silver age would be greatly appreciated.
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Dr Milliner I surmise one only sees a contradiction in Origin (and Nyssa) if one presupposes there is (as do Danilou, Green, Norris). What do I mean by this? You quote a Norris passage in which he sees a contradiction in Origen’s position: “In scattered places Origen says quite clearly that he things all created intelligence will be restored to God at the end of Time. In other places he says, equally clearly that only souls who make the choice for God and practice the virtues God demands will come to rest in heaven.” Choice and practice are understood to mean to rule out universalism. But this need not be so at all, why read Origen in this way? A good many universalist insist that deliberation, volition, and praxis are integral to apokatastasis – I would say one cannot even begin to think about the universal restoration of all without precisely those key dynamic aspects of the human person.
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Dr. Milliner,
Thanks so much for this.
I have to ask, if the Nyssen passage in question were sufficiently clarified for you, that would do it? That’s all that’s holding you back? You’re convinced in every other sphere in inquiry (biblical, theological, philosophical, moral) but a minority opinion about Gregory of Nyssa has you held back?
——–
I’m sure you know the line of argument from George MacDonald that suggests that evil is not defeated by imprisoning it without end, or annihilating evil persons, but only by the transformation of evil persons into a good persons. Evil is defeated only in its disappearance from those caught in its grip.
I thought of MacD’s reasoning when I ran across this early line in your post:
“We are not yet permitted to completely disassemble this paradox. Sin is still too serious, the stakes are still too high.”
I really wonder if the reason being offered here is thought through well enough by those of offer this. Might it not rather be the case that it is belief in an eternal hell that takes sin less seriously than required? Perhaps MacD was right; we take sin seriously only when the wicked are transformed out of their wickedness and made righteous. To annihilate sinners or lock their sinning selves up forever is, arguably, hardly a victory over evil.
Tom
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I apologize for the plug, but Florensky does show up on Fr Al’s blog with respect to universalism here:
See the closing two sections ‘Hell is the coincidence of salvation and condemnation’ and ‘Heaven undiminished by the suffering of the damned.’
Florensky also shows up in the comments section if anyone is interested.
Tom
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Matt
Danielou’s claim that Gregory’s universalism is not certain is absurd, and notoriously so. No patristics scholar takes it seriously. Universal redemption is so frequently, clearly, and systematically stated in Gregory’s work that it constitutes the total governing logic of his theology. As for the supposed tension in Origen’s language, one needs only think about the issue to see it is nothing of the sort. Ignatius Green is talking utter nonsense, by the way, based on one vague use of the word apeiron in De virginitate. Over against that are hundreds of explicit universalist claims in Gregory’s writings. In fact, that’s the whole point of De anima et resurrectione, In illud Tunc ipse filius, and various other works. This is not an open question for any honest and competent scholar of the Cappadocians. As for Florensky, the rubbish about eternally burning eidolons is nothing but an empty rhetorical attempt to keep faith with a dogmatic language he should have rejected without making a fool of himself.
The question isn’t whether one must embrace universalism. It’s whether Christianity is possibly true. And, if it’s not universalist, then obviously it’s not. The contradictions would be infinite.
And your arguments, frankly, are silly. I have to believe you know you’re just equivocating out of misplaced loyalty to a tradition that you don’t want to admit is essentially evil.
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Oh, and the contrast between Christian and pagan thought on fate is hugely overstated. Christianity was one of many Orphic and mystery religions of salvation from fate, and not only in late antiquity. It was of its time. Grand contrasts of that sort should always be avoided. They’re apologetic fictions.
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Thank you to all for reading and for these helpful engagements. I shall discuss them with my troubadour son!
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> But hope, when flatly asserted, is no longer hope.
Certainly not in English usage.
Merrium Webster: “desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment”
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‘But hope, when flatly asserted, is no longer hope’
I found this curious too. By ‘flatly’ Matt seems to mean ‘with absolute certitude’, not granting the possibility of being wrong.
Certainly ‘hope’ as such expresses desire regarding the future, and naturally one lives in the distance between present hope and future consummation. It’s always an act of trust, and so in some measure precarious and destabilizing. Rom 8 comes to mind: “In this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees?” What we hope for here is the final redemption of our bodies, something Matt, I suspect, does ‘not’ doubt as a Christian though he ‘hopes’ it. He asserts the resurrection as ‘flatly’ as he asserts Christianity at all.
‘Hoping’ doesn’t require us to withhold some measure of ourselves in abandoning to the object of hope while we instead contemplate the future with uncertainty, indecision, or hesitation. True, Christians should concede that we ‘could be wrong’ regarding Christianity as such. But that doesn’t undermine the sense in which one connects the necessity of universalism to Christianity should Christianity be true. I think this has been Hart’s point – not that one can claim universalism is independently beyond all rational doubt, but that the only form in which Christianity is ‘possibly true’ is in its universalist form. Universalism remains a ‘hope’, but it’s ‘the’ Christian hope, no more or less certain than Christianity, should Christianity be true.
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“I think this has been Hart’s point – not that one can claim universalism is independently beyond all rational doubt, but that the only form in which Christianity is ‘possibly true’ is in its universalist form. Universalism remains a ‘hope’, but it’s ‘the’ Christian hope, no more or less certain than Christianity, should Christianity be true.”
Exactly right Tom, well put!
The key here is that only in universalism can Christianity be true and worthy of hope. It is and remains, at the end of the day when all is said and one, a moral claim in regards to the character of God.
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Just drop that last “…should Christianity be true.”
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Totally random side note:
David, please write an essay responding to Christian Nationalism.
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“Faith is hope anticipated, and hope is faith disposed toward the future.” ~ Richard John Neuhaus
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“What would really push me over the line toward full-scale universalism is someone looking into my endnote about Gregory of Nyssa and Origen (xiv in the original essay) and explaining to me clearly that the scholarly claims that Gregory of Nyssa and Origen (like Florensky) appear to have held both positions is in fact false, or at least dubious manuscript interpolations that stain the original purity of the message. I know of no one who has done this (and it may not even be possible to do). So for now, I’m with Origen, Gregory of Nyssa and Florensky (not to mention Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth) in not being entirely consistent on this issue. So it’s still hope not doctrine for me, but a hope that—thanks to recent arguments for universalism—is brimming with luminous expectation. ”
Matt, I want to suggest that you have set a condition for embracing universal salvation that cannot be ever met. As you well know, historians and theologians disagree about just about every topic imaginable. That is the very nature of scholarship. Can patristic scholarship prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that either Origen or St Gregory of Nyssa were universalists? No. But I think it is accurate to say that the majority of patristic scholars believe that they were. There is some question whether Origen had a settled opinion about the salvation of Satan, but note that St Augustine and St Jerome certainly believed that he did. Matters are even clearer with St Gregory (see Ramelli’s extended treatment of him in her big book). Yes, there are passages in which both Origen and Gregory seem to speak of everlasting damnation as a possible eschatological outcome, but these passages are overwhelmed by their clear affirmations of apocatastasis. Why then did they threaten their readers with everlasting damnation? Who knows, but my guess is that at the time they felt they needed to summon their respective audiences to repentance. In other words, they did so for pastoral, not theological reasons. As you know, many patristic universalists believed that the gospel of universal salvation could be dangerous for immature believers.
Yes, there are a handful of scholars today–they are a small minority–who question whether Gregory had a settled opinion about universal salvation; but the very large majority have no doubts. Even in the 6th century his universalism was well known, as we see in the letters of Barsanuphius. One later Father (I forget his name, but I think it was Germanus I, Patriarch of Constantinople) attempted to save Gregory’s reputation by proposing that his universalist convictions were interpolated into his writings, but I don’t know of any reputable patristic scholar who has adopted that position. And at the Council of Florence, St Mark of Ephesus basically admitted Gregory’s universalism, but insisted that even saints can be mistaken (I think I’m right about that, but I’d have to doublecheck to confirm). Regarding the scholars who contest Gregory’s universalism today, one always has to ask whether their doubts are prompted by dogmatic considerations. In any case, I’m happy to side with the opinions of Ilaria Ramelli, John Behr, Morwenna Ludlow, David Hart, and the rest. Could they be wrong? Of course. Could future patristic scholarship someday move in the direction of the dissenters? Of course. Scholarship does not produce infallible results. You makes your choice and takes your chances, as the saying goes.
Do you believe in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as defined by the first and second ecumenical councils? There are plenty of biblical scholars who insist that this doctrine is not to be found in the New Testament. Where do we find an incontestable assertion that the Son shares the identical substance of the Father (homoousion)? Where do we find an incontestable assertion that the Spirit is divine in the same degree to the Father? As you know, many of the ante-Nicene Fathers were subordinationists. In the fourth century, many objected to the assertion that the Holy Spirit was fully divine. Why? Because they deemed the assertion to be novel and untraditional. Yet the opinion of St Gregory of Nazianzus and St Athanasius prevailed. They saw what others could not see: namely, that the salvation promised in Christ logically required that the homoousion must also be applied to the Spirit, despite the witness of the earlier tradition. Here I agree (for what it’s worth) with Thomas Torrance, Robert Jenson, and David Hart that the Nicene affirmation of the homoousion initiated a metaphysical revolution that compelled the Church to reject its earlier subordinationist interpretations of the Son and Spirit, thus forcing everyone to reread the New Testament through the hermeneutic of Nicaea. Was the Church right to do so? Are you 100% certain that she was, despite the biblical scholars and the Ante-Nicene witness? I think they were, but if it should turn out they were wrong, then I and catholic Christians will have paid the gospel a compliment it doesn’t deserve. We all must live with this measure of uncertainty. The only alternative is to adopt a doctrine of conciliar infallibility, but that won’t persuade those who have not also adopted the doctrine.
So how should you proceed? I suggest that you think more deeply and consistently about the goodness and love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ? Is God absolute love? If he is, then ask yourself, Is the doctrine of eternal damnation reconcilable with this love? You might ponder an article I wrote a few years ago: https://afkimel.wordpress.com/2020/08/17/dogma-damnation-and-the-eucatastrophe-of-the-jesus-story/. Then reread That All Shall Be Saved.
I close with these words of George MacDonald: “We do not hope half enough. ‘This is too good to believe,’ we say. But, if there be a God, nothing is too good to believe; and, if Christ be His Son and messenger and image, humanity is divine and God is human. A father’s heart, a heart like our own, only infinite in tenderness, will be found at the bottom of things.”
P.S. Do read the article on Florensky that I sent you. You will discover that the antinomy of which he speaks is not a true antinomy. Florensky really was a universalist.
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Al, Gregory never raised the threat of “everlasting” hell. He did not write in English. He wrote in Greek and, like Origen, knew how to exploit its ambiguities.
In the case of Gregory, I think one can assert beyond any shadow of *reasonable* doubt that he was a universalist. His entire system of theology entirely depends on it. A few seemingly dissonant phrases adduced out of the context of his whole theology don’t really create any areas of reasonable doubt. I’ve had people confront me with sentences from my books that might sound vaguely infernalist, as if this constitutes some kind of damning contradiction. It’s the inevitable result of using words.
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Haha, I should have written, aionion damnation. 😁
But the ambiguous passages I had in mind are the ones cited by Mario Baghos in his article “Reconsidering Apokatastasis.”
I’ve been trying to years to persuade a patristic scholar to write an article for EO specifically addressing the claims advanced by Maspero and Baghos.
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Baghos, Maspera? But they just fail to understand the passages they adduce. They think that the invocation of creaturely freedom in eternity entails the possibility of eternal rejection, which Gregory clearly denies. All Gregory is saying is that in the next life there is no limit that can prevent the soul turning to God. This life gives us only so much time, but in the age to come there is no limit. Gregory is explicit that evil’s inherent finitude makes it incapable of endless persistence.
Those chaps simply don’t understand Gregory’s logic. Of course free will is necessary. And of course it must inevitably find God.
Again, those articles are generally ignored by patristics scholars, as examples of missing the point. And Gregory is clear about his point.
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Yes exactly, and this is because a defective understanding of freedom (i.e. a freedom without a “transcendental determinism” – I am starting to like that coinage) will lead one to see contradictions in Gregory that are not there. As you say, for Baghos & Maspera the invocation of freedom entails the possibility of eternal rejection – but this can only be a contradiction in Gregory IF the nature of freedom he uses is as they claim (or assume) he does. This cannot be found in Gregory’s works; it’s unthinkable really.
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DBH wrote: “I’ve had people confront me with sentences from my books that might sound vaguely infernalist, as if this constitutes some kind of damning contradiction. It’s the inevitable result of using words.”
Exactly. Utter precision and lack of ambiguity cannot be achieved outside of pure mathematics.
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