ORIGEN’S longing for the salvation of all had already brought him under suspicion in his own lifetime.[19] Yet there were some among his spiritual descendants who kept alive this universal hope. The twο most notable examples are to be found at the end of the fourth century: Evagrius of Pontus, monk in the Egyptian desert, and St Gregory of Nyssa, the younger brother of St Basil the Great. Evagrius upheld and perhaps hardened the full Origenist teaching concerning the preexistence of souls, the precosmic fall, and the final apocatastasis; and for this he was condemned along with Origen in 553. Gregory of Nyssa, on the other hand, abandoned Origen’s speculations concerning preexistence and the precosmic fall,[20] while holding fast to his belief in an ultimate restoration; and, significantly, he has never been anathematized for this, either in 553 or in more recent times. In expressing his hope that all will be saved, Gregory of Nyssa is fully as confident as Origen. His words recall the great _[p.206] affirmation of Paul, “and thus God will be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). “When, through these long and circuitous methods,” writes Gregory, “the wickedness which is now mingled and consolidated with our nature has been finally expelled from it, and when all those things that are now sunk down in evil are restored to their original state, there will ascend from the entire creation a united hymn of thanksgiving... All this is contained in the great mystery of the Divine Incarnation.”[21] This final restoration, Gregory clearly states, will embrace even the devil.

        Despite this bold claim, Gregory of Nyssa has never been condemned as a heretic, but on the contrary he is honored as a saint, Why should this be so? Perhaps he escaped reprobation because he was Basil’s brother. Yet if he was treated differently from his master Origen, perhaps it was because, while retaining Origen’s hope in the eventual triumph of good over evil, he abandoned the notion of preexistence and so avoided the circularity of the Origenist scheme. Whatever the explanation, the fact that Gregory has not been anathematized is certainly significant. It suggests that, if dissociated from speculations about a precosmic fall, a carefully qualified expression of universal hope is acceptable, even within the bounds of strict orthodoxy.

        St Gregory of Nyssa is one of the patrons of the house of ecumenical studies tο which I am attached in Oxford; and personally I am delighted that this should be so.

[THE APOKATASTASIS] was explicitly taught by St. Gregory of Nyssa, and in more than one passage. It first occurs in his “De animâ et resurrectione” (P.G., XLVI, cols. 100, 101) where, in speaking of the punishment by fire assigned to souls after death, he compares it to the process whereby gold is refined in a furnace, through being separated from the dross with which it is alloyed. The punishment by fire is not, therefore, an end in itself, but is ameliorative; the very reason of its infliction is to separate the good from the evil in the soul. The process, moreover, is a painful one; the sharpness and duration of the pain are in proportion to the evil of which each soul is guilty; the flame lasts so long as there is any evil left to destroy. A time, then, will come, when all evil shall cease to be since it has no existence of its own apart from the free will, in which it inheres; when every free will shall be turned to God, shall be in God, and evil shall have no more wherein to exist. Thus, St. Gregory of Nyssa continues, shall the word of St. Paul be fulfilled: Deus erit omnia in omnibus (I Cor., xv, 28), which means that evil shall, ultimately, have an end, since, if God be all in all, there is no longer any place for evil (cols. 104, 105; cf. col. 152).

St. Gregory recurs to the same thought of the final annihilation of evil, in his “Oratio catechetica”, ch. xxvi; the same comparison of fire which purges gold of its impurities is to be found there; so also shall the power of God purge nature of that which is preternatural, namely, of evil. Such purification will be painful, as is a surgical operation, but the restoration will ultimately be complete. And, when this restoration shall have been accomplished (he eis to archaion apokatastasis ton nyn en kakia keimenon), all creation shall give thanks to God, both the souls which have had no need of purification, and those that shall have needed it. Not only man, however, shall be set free from evil, but the devil, also, by whom evil entered into the world (ton te anthropon tes kakias eleutheron kai auton ton tes kakias eyreten iomenos). The same teaching is to be found in the “De mortuis” (ibid., col. 536).

Bardenhewer justly observes (“Patrologie”, Freiburg, 1901, p. 266) that St. Gregory says elsewhere no less concerning the eternity of the fire, and of the punishment of the lost, but that the Saint himself understood this eternity as a period of very long duration, yet one which has a limit. Compare with this “Contra Usurarios” (XLVI, col. 436), where the suffering of the lost is spoken of as eternal, aionia, and “Orat. Catechet.”, XXVI (XLV, col. 69), where evil is annihilated after a long period of time, makrais periodois.

These verbal contradictions explain why the defenders of orthodoxy should have thought that St. Gregory of Nyssa’s writings had been tampered with by heretics. St. Germanus of Constantinople, writing in the eighth century, went so far as to say that those who held that the devils and lost souls would one day be set free had dared “to instil into the pure and most healthful spring of his [Gregory’s] writings the black and dangerous poison of the error of Origen, and to cunningly attribute this foolish heresy to a man famous alike for his virtue and his learning” (quoted by Photius, Bibl. Cod., 223; P.G. CIII, col. 1105). Tillemont, “Mémoires pour l’histoire ecclésiastique” (Paris, 1703), IX, p. 602, inclines to the opinion that St. Germanus had good grounds for what he said. We must, however, admit, with Bardenhewer (loc. cit.) that the explanation given by St. Germanus of Constantinople cannot hold. This was, also, the opinion of Petavius, “Theolog. dogmat.” (Antwerp, 1700), III, “De Angelis”, 109-111.

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