Universal Love vs Eternal Damnation (journal review)

Universal Love vs. Eternal Damnation

A review of Kallistos Ware’s “Dare we hope for the salvation of all? Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Isaac of Nineveh”

How is it possible to reconcile the concept of eternal damnation with revelations of God’s infinite love and mercy? Does the idea of hell lead to duality rather than unity, implying that evil will prevail over God’s will that all should be saved ? Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware, an adult convert to the Russian Orthodox Church, delivered a speech in 1998 (reprinted in Theological Digest) that addressed these questions regarding reconciliation of human free will and God’s mercy. He discusses these mysteries in relation to Scripture and early tradition as stated in the ideas of three patristic authors: Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and the Syrian mystic St. Isaac of Nineveh .

Bishop Ware maintains that, while there are numerous texts in the Gospels that state “in what seem to be unambiguous terms” that eternal damnation awaits some , there is a strain in the epistles that he interprets as expressing on Paul’s part not just a mere possibility but a confident expectation that “…all will be made alive in Christ .” In this as in the other two texts quoted , Paul pictures Jesus as the new Adam, who leads the human race from universal sin to universal life. Ware admits that the universal redemption of human kind through Christ that Paul is discussing is not the same thing as the eternal life promised to the faithful when Christ returns in glory; however, he asserts that these passages support his premise that it is a possibility that all humanity will be joined in eternal life with God. He recognizes a challenge in these paragraphs: that God invites--but does not compel—mankind to join Him.
Answering this challenge from Scripture, Ware examines two other passages in which Paul asserts God’s ultimate sovereignty:

· And when all things are made subject to the Son, then the Son himself will also be made subject to the Father, who has subjected all things to him; and thus God will be all in all (emphasis is his)

· It is the will of God our Savior…that all should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth .

These texts suggest to Ware that God’s plan is to have all humanity in unity with Him at the end of time. Since “God cannot ultimately be defeated”, Ware states, Paul’s assertion that “God will be all in all” means that He ultimately will triumph and all creation will be united.

Origen of Alexandria (185-284 A.D.), a contemporary of St. Jerome, advanced a complicated, dualistic theology involving pre-creation ideas of a fall leading to angels, demons, human beings and Christ. He was condemned as a heretic in 553 at the Fifth Ecumenical Council, which issued 15 anathemas against his ideas. To use him as a creditable source for his premise, Ware attempts to rehabilitate him by first casting doubt on the authority of those who condemned him , and then by attempting to separate the heretical elements by attributing them only to his protology. In the first anathema, Origen’s eschatology is seen to follow from his protology, (i.e. “IF anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema ,”) and both are condemned, so this is problematic. Ware finds that Origen fully recognizes the doctrine of free will, and that his universalist belief is more a hope than a deduction. Whether this universalism includes even the devil, Origen expresses no opinion .

Origen’s best case for universalism, Ware continues, is his analysis of punishments. Origen identifies three justifications for punishments: as retribution, as deterrent, and as reformation. The retributive argument is that justice demands evildoers suffer in proportion to the ills they have caused, which he rejects based on Christ’s injunction against us so treating our neighbors . If hell is seen a deterrent to sin, Origen continues, it need not be never-ending to be effective. Origen believes that hell as a remedial method for God to restore the health of souls. From this premise, Origen maintains that an eternal hell would be immoral; rather, in his view Gehenna becomes a type of purgatory.

In his second authority, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Ware finds a universalist without the taint of heresy. Gregory eschewed most of Origen’s protology, but shared his belief in a universal salvation. As Gregory was quite clear that he included even the devil in the Word’s ultimate triumph, Ware asserts that “a carefully qualified expression of universal hope is acceptable, even within the bounds of strict orthodoxy.”
The Mesopotamian mystic Isaac of Nineveh provides stronger support for his thesis. Based on a theology of God as the source of infinite love and mercy, Isaac has a vision of Gehenna that seems almost modern. Rather than a literal and physical gnashing of teeth, he sees a psychic hell “without any delight in true knowledge and communion with God.” Ware outlines two reasons for Isaac’s confidence that all will reconciled to God. First, like Origen, he views any idea of vindictiveness in God as blasphemous. Further, his idea of God’s love as so unquenchable and limitless that evil seems inconsequential in its wake.

From Scripture and tradition, Ware summarizes three arguments in favor of the hope of universal salvation and four against. In favor of universalism, Ware finds (1) that the power of divine love is invincible, (2) that hell is not a punishment inflicted, but a state of mind humankind chooses. The third argument, which stems from the goodness of all creation, is that (3) evil is non-being (non-substantial) and thus nothing that exists can be entirely evil. This third argument is interesting because it can be understood either as a variant of (2) or as a notion that Ware calls a conditional immortality in that all are saved because the radically wicked have ceased to exist.
The arguments he advances against his hope for universal salvation are that some will not be saved because of free will; that like saints in heaven who cannot turn away from God, some sinners reach a point of no return where they cannot turn back to Him; that justice requires that the wicked should not enjoy the same reward as the righteous ; and finally that if all will be saved eventually, there is no need for the urgency stressed in Scripture to convert and repent now. This last moral and pastoral argument is best answered by Isaac of Nineveh’s observation that the torment of hell is a subjective experience.

In closing, unable to reconcile human freedom with divine love, Ware finds that it is not possible to do more than hope that all will be saved. Like our perception of evil and suffering in the Creator’s universe, what is in store after death and at the end of time is veiled in mystery.

Notes:
1 1 Tm 2:4
2 Ware wrote the forward for Hilarion Alfayev’s book on the saint.
3 He discusses Mark 9:43, Mark 47-48, Matthew 25:41, and Luke 16:26.
4 1 Cor 15:22
5 Romans 5:18 and Romans 11:32
6 1 Cor 15:28
7 1 Tm 2:4
8 The 15 Anathema against Origen may have been endorsed by a lesser council before the main council convened. 15 Anathemas against Origen, downloaded 10/11/03 from http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF2-14/Npnf2-14-116.htm#LOC_P5646_1206640 . In fact, most of the
9 Unfortunately, his humility in this matter doesn’t stop our author from speculating. He claims that the devil has a relationship with God, citing the morality tale of the Book of Job as authority.
We are enjoined to refrain from usurping God’s role as judge and warned that we will be judged based upon the mercy that we show in our own dealings on earth. Origen ignores the context of the Scripture.
10 Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration 26, as quoted in Ware, p. 317. At the same time, Ware admits that politics may have played more a role in him not sharing Origen’s fate, in the fact that Gregory is the younger brother of St. Basil the Great.
11 Mystic Treatises by Isaac of Nineveh, translated from the Syriac by A. J. Wensinck (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, 1923) 306, 350, in Ware P. 317
12 See also Hilarion Alfayev, “ST ISAAC OF NINEVEH AND SYRIAN MYSTICISM”, Lectures at the Divinity Faculty of the University of Cambridge, (Spring 1999), downloaded 10/29/03 from http://www.orthodoxia.org/hilarion/articles/mystisaac/is01.htm. A more indicative example of Isaac’s thought is “As a grain of sand cannot counterbalance a great quantity of gold, so in comparison God’s use of justice cannot counterbalance His mercy.”
13 Here Ware recognizes a weak argument, but should have countered with the parable of the workers in the vineyard.