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The early Church fathers did not concern themselves
with in-depth theology, but focused upon the person of Christ, the
work that He accomplished, and how He fulfilled biblical prophecy in
the law and prophets. The terms that they used of the judgment to
come was essentially the same as the writers of the New Testament.
Because they seldom felt the need to define their terms
specifically, there is no way to prove what they believed, except by
their use of the term aionios. Nonetheless, in the second century
we begin to see some evidence as to how they generally understood
this fiery judgment.
Irenaeus was the Church leader from Lyons, a city
in southern Gaul, which is now France. He died in 202 with thousands
of fellow Christians during the persecution of Roman Emperor
Severus. He wrote five books called Against Heresies. (See
The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, edited by Roberts and
Donaldson, 1994 reprint of the 1885 book.) He often writes of
aionian judgment, and closes
his monumental work with a commentary on 1 Corinthians 15:25 and 26,
saying,
“For He must
reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy
that shall be destroyed is death. For in the times of the kingdom,
the righteous man who is upon the earth shall then forget to die.
But when He saith, All things shall be subdued unto Him, it is
manifest that He is excepted who did put all things under Him. And
when all things shall be subdued unto Him, then shall the Son also
Himself be subject unto Him who put all things under Him, that God
may be all in all.
“John, therefore, did distinctly foresee the
first ‘resurrection of the just,' and the inheritance in the
kingdom of the earth; and what the prophets have prophesied
concerning it harmonize [with his vision]. For the Lord also
taught these things, when He promised that He would have the mixed
cup new with His disciples in the kingdom. The apostle, too,
has confessed that the creation shall be free from the bondage of
corruption, [so as to pass] into the liberty of the sons of
God. And in all these things, and by
them all, the same God the Father is manifested, who fashioned
man, and gave promise of the inheritance of the earth to the
fathers, who brought it (the creature) forth [from bondage] at the
resurrection of the just, and fulfills the promises for the
kingdom of His Son. . . .”
Here we see that
Irenaeus understood that the creation itself would ultimately be set
free from corruption and pass into the liberty of the sons of
God.
Again, in one of
Irenaeus' books that is now lost, we find another author quoting
from it, giving us what is called a “fragment.” There are 55
fragments attributed to Irenaeus. Fragment number 39
reads,
“Christ, who was called the Son of God before the
ages, was manifested in the fullness of time, in order that He
might cleanse us through His blood, who were under the power of
sin, presenting us as pure sons to His Father, if we yield
ourselves obediently to the chastisement of the Spirit. And in
the end of time He shall come to do away with all evil, and to
reconcile all things, in order that there may be an end of all
impurities.” Here it is clear that Irenaeus believed in the
reconciliation of all things at the end of time. So when Irenaeus
speaks of aionios judgment of the wicked, we are
inescapably drawn to the conclusion that he did not think the
judgment would continue for all time.
Clement was born in Athens, Greece, and later moved
to Alexandria, Egypt, where he became the head of the Church from
190-203. He fled for his life in 203 during the persecution of the
Roman Emperor, Severus, and spent his remaining years teaching in
Antioch and Palestine. In Stromata, VII, 26, Clement wrote,
“God does not
wreak vengeance, for vengeance is to return evil for evil, and God
punishes only with an eye to the good.”
9 It is a trustworthy
statement deserving full acceptance. 10 For it
is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on
the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of the
believers. 11 Prescribe and teach these
things. In his comment,
Clement shows that he understood Paul to mean that there was a
“general” salvation of all men, as well as a “particular” salvation
and reward for believers. Stromata VII, 2:5-12 says,
“Wherefore also
all men are His; some through knowledge, and others not yet so . .
. For He is the Savior; not the Saviour of some, and of others not
. . . Nor can He who is the Lord of All (and serves above all the
will of the Good and Almighty Father) ever be hindered by another
…And how is He Saviour and Lord, if not the Saviour and Lord of
all? But He is the Saviour of those who have believed . . . and
the Lord of those who have not believed, till, being enabled to
confess Him, they obtain the peculiar and appropriate book which
comes by Him. [Christ is] the First Administrator of the Universe,
Who by the will of the Father directs the salvation of all . . .
(the One only Almighty Good God—from the eon and for the eon
saving by His Son) . . . for all things are arranged with a view
to the salvation of the Universe by the Lord of the Universe, both
generally and particularly . . . .”
Clement then
speaks of the nature of the fiery judgment at the Great White Throne
where unbelievers will be judged:
“But necessary
corrections, through the goodness of the great Overseeing Judge,
both by the attendant angels, and through various preliminary
judgments, or through the Great and Final Judgment, compel
egregious sinners to repent.”
It was Clement's
opinion that the judgment would “compel egregious sinners to
repent.” I do not mean to quibble, but in this I differ slightly
with Clement. Any time a sinner is compelled to repent, the change
is only superficial. The judgment of the law can only constrain the
sinner's behavior and limit his actions to what is lawfully
acceptable. Only the love of God will change the heart and cause the
sinner to truly repent.
Clement wrote
again about the nature of God's fiery judgment in Stromata VII,
6,
“We say that
the fire purifies not the flesh but sinful souls, not an
all-devouring vulgar fire, but the ‘wise fire' as we call it, the
fire that ‘pierceth the soul' which passes through
it.”
Clement writes in Ecl. Proph., XXV, 4, that the fire is
“wise,”
“Fire is
conceived of as a beneficent and strong power, destroying what is
base, preserving what is good; therefore this fire is called
‘wise' by the Prophets.”
Clement writes in The Instructor, I, 8, that the purpose
of fire is to restore sinners,
“Punishment is,
in its operation, like medicine; it dissolves the hard heart,
purges away the filth of uncleanness, and reduces the swellings of
pride and haught iness; thus restoring its subject to a sound and
healthful state.”
Again, he writes
in Stromata VII, 3:17, “. . . at any rate, even suffering is found to be
useful alike in medicine and in education, and in
punishment; and by means of it, characters are improved for
the benefit of mankind.” Finally, in
Clement's commentary on 1 John, he writes,
(On 1 John 1:5)
“And in Him is no darkness at all,” that is, no passion, no
keeping up of evil respecting anyone; He destroys no one, but
gives salvation to all.”
(On 1 John 2:2) “ ‘And not only for our sins,'
that is, for those of the faithful, is the Lord the Propitiator
does he say, ‘but also for the whole world.' He, indeed, saves
all; but some He saves converting them by punishments; others,
however, who follow voluntarily He saves with dignity of honour;
so that ‘every knee should bow to Him, of things in heaven, or
things on earth, and things under the earth'—that is, angels and
men.”
Clement clearly
believed in the salvation of all men back to God. Some, he says, are
reconciled voluntarily—and these are those who believe in Christ
during the ages prior to the first resurrection. Others, he says,
will be saved by means of “punishments.” I do not know what Greek
word Clement was using, but I myself would use the word “judgment”
rather than punishment in order to better manifest the purpose of
the divine law (fire).
Origen was a
student of Clement who became the head of the school in Alexandria
after Clement was forced to flee. Origen is the most well-known of
the early teachers of the restoration of all things. He wrote
extensively and was the first to write a systematic theology of
early Church belief. For this reason, the people today who oppose
the teaching of restoration often call it “Origenism,” as if to
imply that it was invented and believed almost exclusively by this
one man and a few followers.
But such a view merely portrays either prejudice or
ignorance, since Origen did not differ substantially from the
teachings of Clement, his mentor, or Pantaenus before him. In Volume
6 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, page 3, in the
introduction to the writings of Gregory Thaumaturgus, the editors
tell us,
“Alexandria
continues to be the head of Christian learning. . . We have
already observed the continuity of the great Alexandrian school;
how it arose, and how Pantaenus begat Clement, and Clement begat
Origen. So Origen begat Gregory, and so the Lord has provided for
the spiritual generation of the Church's teachers, age after age,
from the beginning. Truly, the Lord gave to Origen a holy seed,
better than natural sons and daughters.”
Origen is more well known than Clement or
Pantaenus, because he produced the first real systematic theology in
the early Church, called First Principles. And so he later
became the “lightning rod” of his opponents' wrath. Hence, the
doctrine of the restoration of all things has been mislabeled
“Origenism,” as if to imply that he invented the teaching. Nothing
could be further from the truth, as every good Church historian
knows. To include all that Origen writes about the nature and
duration of God's fiery judgment would take a large book in itself,
and so we will include a sampling of what he wrote. In his book
Against Celsus, IV, 13, he
writes, “The Sacred
Scripture does, indeed, call our God ‘a consuming fire' [Heb.
12:29], and says that ‘rivers of fire go before His face' [Dan.
7:10], and that ‘He shall come as a refiner's fire and purify the
people' [Mal. 3:2-3]. As therefore, God is a consuming fire; what
is it that is to be consumed by Him? We say it is wickedness, and
whatever proceeds from it, such as is figuratively called ‘wood,
hay, and stubble' [1 Cor. 3:15]—which denote the evil works of
man. Our God is a consuming fire in this sense; and He shall come
as a refiner's fire to purify rational nature from the alloy of
wickedness and other impure matter which has adulterated the
intellectual gold and silver; consuming whatever evil is admixed
in all the soul.”
Origen, like most Christians in the second century,
seems to have lost the knowledge of biblical law. Hence, he seems to
think that the “fire” is painful to the sinner. This may simply be
because Origen held what is called “the doctrine of reserve,”
believing that certain truths ought to be held in secret. It may be,
then, that he taught in public that the fiery judgment upon sinners
was physically painful, though temporary, but in private he may have
thought otherwise. That is a matter of debate. In speaking of the
duration of the fiery judgment, Origen writes in his Commentary
in Epistle to the Romans, VIII, 11, “But how long this purification which is wrought
out by penal fire shall endure, or for how many eons it shall
torment sinners, He only knows to Whom all judgment is committed by
the Father.”
Again, Origen writes in First Principles, I,
6:3,
“And so it happens that some in the first, others
in the second, and others even in the last times, through their
endurance of greater and more severe punishments of long
duration, extending, if I may say so, over many eons, are by
these very stern methods of correction
renewed and restored . . . .”
This is an
example of how Origen taught that the “penal fire” would “torment
sinners” for “many eons.” Certainly, he did not understand the
concept of the Jubilee and how it mandated a limitation of all debt,
or liability for sin. In this way, I differ from Origen's teaching,
for I view the divine law as judgment, not punishment or torment.
Nonetheless, we are in agreement that the goal of this fiery
judgment is not to destroy sinners, but to restore them to
God.
This great Presbyter of the Church in Rome also
held the doctrine of the purifying nature of divine judgment. In
De Regula Fidei, IV, he wrote that the. . . “. . . wrath and indignation of the Lord,
so-called, are not such passions as bear those names in man; but
that they are operations of the Divine Mind directly solely to
our purification.” Didymus also held to the concept of divine
punishment, rather than what I would call judgment. He says in
De. Span. San.
II, “For although
the Judge at times inflicts tortures and anguish on those who
merit them, yet he who more deeply scans the reason of things,
perceiving the purpose of His goodness, who desires to amend the
sinner, confesses Him to be good. He who is our Lord and Saviour
inflicts on us everything that may lead us to Salvation;
inflicting on us according to His mercy, yet doing this in His
judgment.”
In his Commentary on 1 Peter, III, he
writes,
“As mankind by
being reclaimed from their sins are to be subjected to Christ in
the dispensation appointed for the Salvation of a ll, so the
angels will be reduced to obedience by the correction of their
vices.”
Gregory was educated in Alexandria and in Athens.
Along with his friend, Basil, they compiled a collection of Origen's
writings called Philokalia, or Love of the Beautiful.
He ultimately became the bishop of Constantinople and was known as
one of the four Eastern Doctors of the Church. Robert Payne writes
on page 179 of his book, The Fathers of the Eastern Church,
“Of all the
Fathers of the Church, he was the only one to be granted after his
death the title “Theologian,” which until this time was reserved
for an apostle—John of Patmos.”
Gregory wrote
this (Orat. XXXIX, 19) about the lake of fire:
“These (apostates), if they will, may go our way,
which indeed is Christ's; but if not, let them go their own way.
In another place perhaps they shall be baptized with fire, that
last baptism, which is not only very painful, but enduring
also; which eats up, as it were hay, all defiled matter, and
consumes all vanity and vice.” This Gregory was the younger brother of Basil, the
friend of Gregory of Nazianzen. He was the bishop of Nyassa, a town
in Cappadocia. Robert Payne says of him in his book, The Fathers
of the Eastern Church, page 168, 169, “Of the three
Cappadocian Fathers, Gregory of Nyassa is the one closest to us,
the least proud, the most subtle, the one most committed to the
magnificence of men. That strange, simple, happy, unhappy,
intelligent, and God-tormented man was possessed by angels. . . In
Eastern Christianity his Great Catechism follows immediately after
Origen's First Principles. These were the two seminal works,
close-woven, astonishingly lucid, final . . . Athanasius was the
hammer, Basil the stern commander, Gregory of Nazianzus the
tormented singer, and it was left to Gregory of Nyassa to be the
man enchanted with Christ . . . Four hundred years after his
death, at the Seventh General Council held in A.D. 787, the
assembled princes of the Church granted him a title which exceeded
in their eyes all the other titles granted to men: he was called
‘Father of Fathers'.”
In Gregory's Orat. in 1 Cor. 15:28, 32-44, where the
Apostle Paul writes of all things being restored to God at the end
of time, he writes,
“33. So I begin by asking what is the truth that
the divine apostle intends to convey in this passage? It is this.
In due course evil will pass over into non-existence; it will
disappear utterly from the realm of existence. Divine and
uncompounded goodness will encompass within itself every rational
nature; no single being created by God will fail to achieve the
kingdom of God. The evil that is now present in everything will be
consumed like a base metal melted by the purifying flame. Then
everything which derives from God will be as it was in the
beginning before it had ever received an admixture of evil. .
.
40. And this is the ultimate goal of our hope,
that nothing should be left in opposition to the good, but that
the divine life should permeate everything and abolish death from
every being, the sin, from which as we have already said, death
secured its hold over men, having already been destroyed. . .
[Here he quotes from 1 Cor. 15:22-28 ending with “God will be
all in all.”] 44. That last
phrase, which speaks of God coming to be in all by becoming all to
each, clearly portrays the non-existence of evil. Obviously, God
will be ‘in all' only when no trace of evil is to be found in
anything. For God cannot be in what is evil. So either He will not
be ‘in all' and some evil will be left in things, or, if we are to
believe that He is ‘in all,' then that belief declares that there
will be no evil. For God cannot be in what is
evil.”
In Gregory's Comm. on Psalm 54:17, he writes about
divine judgment and its purpose to restore mankind,
saying,
“The Lord will,
in His just judgment, destroy the wickedness of sinners; not tneir
nature . . . Wickedness being thus destroyed, and its imprint
being left in none, we shall all be fashioned after Christ, and in
all that one character shall shine, which was originally imprinted
on our nature.”
In Gregory's De Anima et Resurrectione, he comments on
the second death, saying,
“They who live in the flesh ought, by virtuous
conversation, to free themselves from fleshly lusts, lest after
death, they should again need another death, to cleanse away the
remains of fleshly vice that cling to them.” We know, of
course, from Revelation 20:14 that the second death is the lake of
fire. It is obvious from this that Gregory believed that the second
death—the lake of fire—was God's manner of cleansing the sinners,
not of destroying them. After all, Revelation 20 makes it clear that
the lake of fire is for unbelievers, not believers, and so Gregory
was speaking about the cleansing of unbelievers.
In his book Adv. Arium I, 3, he writes that Christ will
. . .
“. . .
regenerate all things, as He created all things. By the life that
is in Him all things will be cleansed and return into eonian life.
Christ is to subject all things to Himself . . . when this shall
have been accomplished, God will be in all things, because all
things will be full of God.”
It was in
Jerome's day (400 A.D.) that the belief in the salvation of all men
came to be questioned officially. It arose in Alexandria as the
by-product of a petty dispute over money. There arose in Alexandria
an unscrupulous bishop named Theophilus who became offended when a
rich widow gave money to one of his deacons (Isidorus) in order to
use the money to buy clothing for poor women. (She knew that if she
gave the money to Theophilus, he would use it on his building
projects.) Theophilus flew into a rage and banished
Isidorus.
In my book, Creation's Jubilee, I wrote a summary of the story on page 115,
saying,
“It happened that Isidorus was a great admirer of
Origen. So to get even with Isidorus, Theophilus called together a
synod of a few loyal bishops, condemned Origen as a heretic, and
forbade anyone henceforth to read his works. When a group of 300
Nitrian monks refused to acquiesce in denouncing Origen, he then
sent armed men to attack and kill them. Eighty of these monks,
however, escaped, making their way to Constantinople, appealing to
the bishop there, John Chrysostom, who, they knew, was a man of
great integrity. John was horrified, and after hearing the case,
he sided with the monks. However, Theophilus succeeded by
outrageous accusations to depose John and send him into exile. He
ultimately drove John to his death. These accusations were
gleefully tran slated into Latin by Jerome, who, according to
historian, Hans von Campenhausen, ‘lost all feeling of decency and
veracity' (The Father of the Latin Church, p.
178).”
Up until that time Jerome had written much about
the restoration of all mankind. But during this controversy, he
wrote to the bishop of Rome, asking him what position he should
take. The bishop sided with Theophilus, so Jerome suddenly stopped
teaching the salvation of all men. In one of his earlier writings,
though, Jerome wrote (In Eph. 4:16), “In the end of all things the whole body which
has been dissipated will be restored . . . What I mean is, the
fallen Angel will begin to be that which he was created, and man,
who was expelled from Paradise, will once more be restored to the
tilling of Paradise. These things will then take place
universally.”
John was one of
the most famous of the bishops of Constantinople in the late fourth
century. He is the bishop to whom the surviving Nitrian monks
appealed when attacked by the soldiers of Theophilus, Bishop of
Alexandria. His writings are not so clear as to make it certain of
his belief concerning the salvation of all, but he does give some
hints as to his belief in the purpose of judgment. In his Hom. IX in
Epis. Ad Rom. 5:11, he writes,
“. . . if
punishment were an evil to the sinner, God would not have added
evils to the evil . . . all punishment is owing to His loving us,
by pains to recover us and lead us to Him, and to deliver us from
sin which is worse than hell.”
This same teaching can be found in his Hom. V, 2
de Statuis; and in Hom. III, 2 in Epis. Ad Philem. 1:25. The problem is that there are many places in his
writings where he seems to teach endless punishment. We believe that
this is because he held the doctrine of reserve, where some thought
it better to threaten with greater punishments than they themselves
actually believed God would inflict—in order to discourage people
from turning away from God.
This bishop wrote a book against the Manichean
religion that had been started in the third century by a man named
Mani. Manicheanism taught Persian Dualism, where time would end with
the separation of light from darkness. That is, good and evil would
continue to co-exist side by side. The Christian Church adopted
parts of this view in teaching that the ultimate goal of history
would be heaven and hell forever co-existing. Titus' book,
Against Manichaeans, Book I refutes this idea, saying, “. . . the punishments of God are Holy, as they
are remedial and salutary in their effect upon transgressors; for
they are inflicted, not to preserve them in their
wickedness, but to make them cease from their sins. The abyss
. . . is indeed the place of punishment, but it is not
endless. The anguish of their sufferings compels them to break
off from their sins.”
Perhaps this
gives us some idea why Augustine, the ex-Manichean, could not shake
the idea that evil would exist forever in the sinners sent to the
lake of fire.
Ambrose was the one through whom Augustine was
converted from Manicheanism to Christianity. Ambrose wrote in his
In Psalm 1, ch. 54, “Our Saviour
has appointed two kinds of resurrection, in accordance with which
John says, in the Apocalypse, ‘Blessed is he that hath part in the
first resurrection;' for such come to grace without the judgment.
As for those who do not come to the first, but are reserved until
the second (resurrection), these shall be burning until they
fulfill their appointed times, between the first and second
resurrection; or, if they should not have fulfilled in them then,
they shall remain still longer in
punishment.”
I find it
interesting that Ambrose believed that there would be a “burning” of
the sinners during the Millennium between the first and second
resurrection, though John says nothing of any such thing. Ambrose
himself does not tell us the nature of that fire, but he does tell
us something of the duration of the judgment. He thought that some
sinners would be released from the fire at the end of the thousand
years, and only those who deserved a longer punishment would remain
in the fire beyond the Millennium.
By no means is
this a complete index of those who believed in the salvation of all
men. Nor should we think that they were all agreed in every detail
on how this was to be accomplished. Even so, they did all have one
thing in common—they all believed that judgment would come upon the
sinners, and that it was by means of this divine “fire” that all men
would ultimately be saved. None of them believed that sinners would
be saved apart from God's fiery judgment.
We should also be remiss if we did not inform our
readers that there were a minority of Church Fathers, particularly
in the Latin-speaking Church of the Western part of the Roman
Empire, who believed in eternal torment. Augustine was one. Another
was Lactantius. Thus, the idea of universal reconciliation of all
was not universally understood in the early Church. But even
Augustine himself admitted that his own view was held by a minority
of Christians. In his Enchiridion, ad Lauren. Ch. 29, Augustine
wrote that there were...
“. . . very
many, who, though not denying the Holy Scriptures, do not believe
in endless torments.”
In view of
Augustine's admission, the Church today should not think it strange
if some believe that God will save all mankind. They should not
excommunicate or expel such Christian believers, but instead should
search out the truth for themselves. And if even the search should
end in disagreement, it should not become a “point of fellowship,”
for if the early Church had done this, the majority of believers
would have been expelled from the Church.
Christianity is
based upon belief in Jesus as the Messiah, His death on the Cross in
our place, His resurrection from the dead, and His ascension to the
Throne in heaven, where He has been proclaimed King of all the
earth. These are the essentials which define a Christian. We are
justified by faith alone—not faith AND belief in any particular view
of the judgments of God. We do not mean to minimize the importance
of knowing the ultimate plan of God for the earth, but neither
should we make these beliefs a requisite for
justification.
If, then, we keep
this in perspective, we will be able to discuss the things of God
freely and openly in the spirit of love that Christ
intended.
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